milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The woman walking into the bar today still has the remains of eyeliner and glitter around her eyes, but the clothes themselves are a perfectly ordinary set of shorts and fitted t-shirt.

If anyone asks, Nadine was at a party last night. And, because she can, Natasha is going to make sure that party was way, way more fun than 'Tanya's' waitressing shift.

Mostly, though, she's going to claim a couch, slip off her tennis shoes, and curl her feet up, just because she can.

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One Russian deserves another, and this one comes armed with a bottle of vodka and two glasses. Her silver bangles telegraph her progress across the bar in bright chimes.

"Dobryy vecher, tovarishch."

"Thank you, comrade," she replies in the same language with a smile, dropping the Muscovite accent and sounding like her actual self.

She really wants to rant about the new Russian upper-classes, and how much capitalism has fucked things over. But Nadine isn't in Russia, hasn't been a waitress since she was an undergrad, so Natasha says no such thing.

What she does is jerk her head sideways to the couch. It's an offer, if Katya wants.

Katya takes it, curling comfortably into the open space and pouring Natasha a glass of vodka before pouring one for herself.

"Fun night?"

"You could say that."

She hates rich people.

"You been having fun?"

"Someone challenged me to a duel here." Her grin is a little crooked - she hasn't been challenged in ages, and found it quite a lot of fun.

"A duel?"

She looks entertained. Maybe a little wistful, maybe.

"Swords or, uh, claws?"

"Swords - very few know about the rest of it, and it really wouldn't have been fair. He is a Musketeer, and very ill-equipped to deal with things not explicitly set forth by church and state." Which Katya considers quite a shame - there's some very nice Light Others in France, fun to get drunk with, certainly.

She's looking enchanted.

And wistful, yep.

"So, it'd be more rapiers. How dashing, Katya."

"I used to collect them - swords, not Musketeers, I mean. Kept them at the dacha so as to avoid frightening the newer recruits. I forever scarred an Other I was mentoring in the thirties." She snickers, shaking her head. "It was just as well for him edged weapons fell out of favor."

She's about to say something about swords, and tiny baby agents, when she stops.

To start with, she shouldn't say anything about tiny baby agents, as Nadine wouldn't have a clue.

Secondly...

"In the thirties?"

"Da." She grins, toothily. "I look good for my age, no? I was a child when Lenin and his supporters marched on the Winter Palace." And not too much longer after that, she fell into the gloom after getting lost in the middle of a protest.

"Yes," she says faintly.

"Very good for your age. I can't imagine."

That earns a tiny, tiny little bit of a look, because Katya remembers a tiny and quite adorable little Soviet girl that, if not Nat, then her family's genes breed very true. But she learned a long time ago to hold her tongue when she doesn't know all the facts.

"I'm actually one of the youngest in my Watch. I evidently missed some great parties."

She catches the look, and makes a small face - subtle, Romanoff, real subtle.

"Really? They've been drinking with Peter the Great?"

"There was a Light Other presence in the Tsar's palace, evidently - part of the treaty, since there was already a strong Dark Other presence." She shrugs. "Of course, with my luck, I wouldn't be anywhere near the palace."

"...I'd be in the palace. And it wouldn't be fun."

Not with her luck.

"Treaty? So you have to have equal representatives?"

"A balance of influence, rather. Whether that influence is used where the opposite side thinks it will be used is an entirely different matter." She smirks faintly.

"Ohhh, sphere of influences crap. I know that."

Just as wry, "Good luck with it."

"Eh. No longer my problem, unless Dark Others from my world decide to come here. Then I'll have to obey the Treaty again." She still does... mostly. She doesn't worry quite so much about minor remoralizations, or about trouncing the dark creatures she finds while scouting with Skellig.

Quietly,

"You left?"

"Picked a fight above my weight class." She can still be very angry about that if she thinks about it too hard - it was a trap from the word go, but with her temper it was one that was impossible to avoid. "My door no longer opens to Moscow."

"Ah."

She chose to leave, but still; an exile is an exile.

"I am sorry, Katya."

She shrugs, slightly - what is she going to do? There's nothing she can do to change it now.

"It is well. I have a partner again, and a new world to explore, and there are Russians in the bar."

"There are," she concedes.

"Still outnumbered by the Americans."

"A tragedy I bemoan daily." She drawls, with a smirk. A tragedy that calls for more vodka, evidently. "But at least I can hear my own language with a native accent."