. (differentcall) wrote in districtmarvel, @ 2015-11-18 10:07:00 |
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Entry tags: | bucky barnes, natasha romanoff |
Who: Bucky and Natasha
Where: District 8 - Bucky's home.
When: A day after texting.
What: Owed debts.
Natasha liked being owed. She did not like owing in return.
When she asked for favors, they tended to be small ones, casual ones. The kind traded back and forth as though they cost nothing and were easily balanced and paid. She preferred for the scales to be tipped solidly in her direction, and for a long time, with very, very few exceptions, that was the way it had stayed. Until now, of course, this was the biggest favor she'd had to ask anyone for in years directly as a result of the biggest fuck-up she'd made in... possibly ever, to be perfectly honest, and if she had fucked up this enormously before, it had been long enough that it seemed to have faded from her memory by now. The irony of which wasn't lost on her, that she'd come to James asking for this in the wake of turning him down gently when he'd asked her for help, too. You don't have nearly enough currency in the bank of Romanoff, that was what she had said, word for word.
Some sort of poetic justice that now, he didn't need to have currency in the bank, because he owned a decent percentage of it.
Truth be told, when she'd asked, she had thought telling him to transfer the money into her account would be the very least of it. That it might put him into financial hardship hadn't even occurred to her. He hadn't hesitated. He'd done it and he'd nearly cleaned himself out in the process, and for some reason, for some stupid reason, that was the gesture that stuck in her throat, that had kept her from falling asleep last night: the idea that somewhere out there, there was a chance that someone could go hungry because of her. When she knew what it was to be hungry. When she knew what it was to go without.
There was nothing Natasha could do about the rest of it. What was done was done. She couldn't fix the ugliness of the implication, the horrible story about him that was sure to at least round the corner in some circles, though she knew she could, and would, keep it discrete, on a strictly need to know basis. James knew what he had agreed to and there was nothing else to be said on the subject. Repayment, though, something small - that she could do. That, she'd felt an overpowering need to do, and she'd boarded a train for District 8 early that morning. Her distinctive hair was bound up in a scarf, her dress was as plain as she could make it, and even so, upon arrival, it was still apparent that she didn't belong here.
She'd only been to 8 twice before this in total, once on her own tour and once on Wanda's, and she really would have been happy to leave it at that. It was hushed, here, grim and dirty and veritably crawling with Peacekeepers, still in place from Stark's fateful demonstration. And it was a risky district to travel to for more than one reason right now.
It was right, though. Whatever else, this was the right thing. She would pay some of what she owed. Even if she'd never be able to repay it in full.
The Victor's Village of 8 was easy enough to find, and she remembered which house was his, from the newsreels. The basket she'd brought along lay at her feet as she knocked at the door a few times, firm, purposeful raps, and waited.