Who: Natasha Romanoff & Bucky Barnes Where: Tribute center courtyard When: A night leading up to the Games.
The reality of the situation was easier to deal with, somehow, during the day. It wasn't so bad then. There were things to be done, activities that all of the Tributes were constantly shuttled back and forth between: fittings, for one thing, for the upcoming televised interviews with Christine Everhart, even if none of them were still very sure of exactly how that night would go, when it came up. Plenty of other things to push into place for the plan beneath the plan, the secondary agenda that not everyone was clued into, yet. And, of course, all that mandatory time in the training center, where they were all trying to pretend that they weren't watching each other out of the corners of their eyes and breaking into a cold sweat. Every time Natasha saw Rumlow swinging a lance around with naked, open hunger in his eyes, or Dottie standing still and patient as she worked to turn a wooden post into a makeshift spear with unsettling quickness, it was a reminder that not everyone was in this with the hope of survival. Some people's games had broken them. Others, well. In others it had brought out some sleeping monster that had always lived there, and the chance to have a free pass to go through it again had made the monster hungry.
Natasha had mostly been spending her time refreshing herself on how to make knots and snares. Movements that her fingers hadn't quite forgotten from childhood, exactly, but she was unpleasantly aware that it had been awhile - it had been a long time since she'd gone hungry, since trapping a rabbit in a snare meant the difference between eating that day or not. She needed the practice for that far more than she did throwing axes and knives. She knew what she could hit, and everyone else int hat room did, too. Even if the gambit she'd used all those years ago wouldn't work this time around, there was no reason to remind them of how good she really was. Not until her one-on-one session with the Gamemakers.
Those were all things that occupied her mind during the day, but once the sessions ended and they were turned loose for free time, it was hard to just - sit. She didn't want to go back to the seventh floor suite and sink into the same kind of stupor that Tony had found her in after the Tribute parade. He'd pulled her out of it once, but she wasn't entirely sure that he had another "Steve's gotta live if we want anyone else to get out" anger bomb tucked in his back pocket to drop on her. And so she'd kept moving, had dinner and then said she wanted to be by herself for awhile, take a walk, roam the grounds a little.
It might have been smarter to get her rest while she could still get it, but there was something to be said for moving all her limbs right now, being vividly aware of the blood still pumping through her. And the courtyard was, as ever, a relatively good spot to go to be alone. It never got much use, once the Tributes were all settled, a good place to go to breathe in the flowers, see little glimpses of the city out past the enforced invisible boundaries.