natasha (widowy) wrote in pastprologueic, @ 2014-11-14 13:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | !type: log, character: jessica drew, character: natasha romanoff |
Who: Jessica Drew and Natasha Romanoff
What: Natasha called in a favor and both she and Jess are getting more than they bargained for.
When: 14 November (today!)
Where: Former HYDRA base, location classified (Southeastern US).
Warnings: Canon-typical violence. Mild language.
“Geeze, Red. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.” said Jessica as she stepped into the remains of the HYDRA base.
She had settled into a fairly normal post-break up life. Found an office that doubled as an apartment, took on a few clients, even got herself a kid who was keeping her books and appointments. However, she couldn’t deny that she had felt a sense of relief at the request to meet Natasha at the base.
Normal didn’t seem to suit her as well as she tried to make herself believe. She couldn’t shake HYDRA’s influence on her life or her desire to see it wiped completely off the planet for good. Pushing her hair back into the elastic band that kept it from her face,she pushed up the sleeves of her jacket and squatted down to look at a piece of paper.
“What are we looking for?”
"About a dozen different things. Some of which I'll only know if I see them." Which wasn't much of an answer, but Natasha was chasing ghosts now: not just the ghosts of Calvin Blackwood's involvement with HYDRA, direct or indirect, but anything that would tie HYDRA to the Red Room. Her curiosity about the effect of the little bomb Tony had asked her to put into HYDRA's computer systems, such as they were, in Havana, was an obstacle, but a small one.
Since her conversation with James, she'd gone through all the evidence SGS had brought in that might conceivably touch on Russian HYDRA involvement with a fine-toothed comb. There had been things they'd missed--things she'd missed--and they had led her to this sticky-hot base in the American South, abandoned, presumably during the Winter Soldier's rampage. Ripe for the plucking.
Natasha had learned from Tony, too: don't go alone. She couldn't take Steve or James or even, this time, Clint. But she'd seen Tony after his rescue from the Ten Rings and recruited backup. Jessica Drew owed Natasha one, and this was a good reason to collect on that debt.
Her answer hadn't been helpful, so Natasha elaborated: "I'm looking for information that leads back to HYDRA involvement in Russian--or, given the timing, even Soviet--intelligence. Or anything about the Winter Soldier." She did not yet say or especially anything that combines the two because that still wasn't her story to tell.
It wasn’t an answer but Jessica knew better than to push Natasha. They weren’t too different in that respect. The other woman would reveal her intentions when it was time. “Roger that” she said as she sat down at a desk and began to rifle through papers. “I’m glad you called anyway. Turns out I’m not good at even my version of a normal life.”
There was a part of her that worried about her continued involvement with the Avengers. She knew that they had scientists working with them. SHIELD and SGS and the last thing that she wanted to do was end up strapped to a lab table while someone tried to figure out how she ticked. She was hoping that keeping it minimal and mostly just Natasha, that would limit the chances of that happening. One day she would have to interact with the rest of them. It was just a fact of doing what she did, the history that she had, in the same city as them.
The elaboration helped and Jessica decided to attempt to boot up one of the computers. “Got it.” She had a lot of questions but it was neither her op nor her right to ask just to satisfy her curiosity. “What did you guys do to this place? I mean, I’ve taken out some places but this is…” She whistled lowly. “A ghost town. Don’t get me wrong, it’s helpful but dang. I was expecting at least one errant guard.” Mostly because she was just hoping for one to kick the crap out of. She had been practicing with her blasts and they were getting stronger.
Pulling an empty thumbdrive from her pocket, she plugged it into a drive and began to download whatever she could find. It didn’t even occur to her that she should have been thinking about her own HYDRA related problems. The tail they had placed on her even if it was telepathically was definitely not a good thing.
“Why didn’t you bring one of your boys?”
"The ones who could do it, like Clint, are busy. And the rest of them aren't suited for this one in one way or another. Can you imagine Thor down here pilfering a HYDRA data dump?" Theoretically SGS had cleaned everything up in all of these old HYDRA sites, but they weren't Natasha, and they certainly weren't ex-HYDRA.
(Considering how deep HYDRA had had its tentacles in the Red Room, Natasha could almost count herself as ex-HYDRA. Just not knowingly so.)
"But mostly because if there's anything still locked up in this place in the HYDRA way that everybody else missed, you'll be the one to find it. I'm relying on that."
Natasha hadn't been on the op that had closed this facility. SGS had tagged and bagged everything they could find. Only the built-in terminals were left, probably because they were too difficult to move. She surveyed the room, eyes on the various entrances in an irregular pattern so someone couldn't sneak past when they knew she wouldn't be looking. She couldn't identify why the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, and maybe it was just everything she'd been digging up, but she was convinced they weren't entirely alone.
“And Stark would have an army of reporters following along.”
Her reasons made sense. Jessica hadn’t been HYDRA in many years but there were things that she could do. Old tricks that could reveal things that even SGS’s brightest did not know about. She didn’t really like doing that. Dipping her toes into those memories. If it helped Natasha, if it helped Barnes and helped end HYDRA, she’d do it. Typing a sequence of commands, she began to search for any hidden hard drives or files.
“Well, I hope I don’t disappoint. There is a lot about the old days I’ve tried to forget. I do remember hearing stories about things. Whispers. I’m not sure how much of it was the truth or part of my training.”
For so much of her time in HYDRA, she had been a child. They had framed the stories as great myths. The legacies that she would inherit if she did as she was told. So long she had believed it. She had lost her father, she would never see her mother again. All she had was the path that they had laid out for her, wanted her to go on.
She pushed those thoughts aside and focused on what she was doing. There seemed to be fragments of something and she was intent on loading it onto the drive. It took a few minutes but then the feeling hit her. The last time she had felt this way, she had been jumped by a few agents. She hadn’t known how they had found her before her last talk with Natasha.
“God damn it, Red.” She said softly. “I think we’re about to get company.”
Natasha hadn't forgotten her days in the Red Room, either, but it wasn't a part of her past she chose to dwell on: moreso now, since it seemed as if she'd been a HYDRA pawn all along instead of just during her SHIELD days. There was nothing to be done about that past, though. Natasha couldn't undo it; what she had to do now was change the future. The red in her ledger might never be wiped out, but she could at least keep other people's ledgers clear.
Jessica's warning only intensified the sense of imminent attack hovering on the edges of Natasha's awareness. "I know it. I've checked the doors--" what she'd been doing while Jessica extracted whatever information was left in the mainframes by some combination of electronic wheedling and threats "--and there's nothing, so that means--"
She had expected the attack to come from the ceiling, so it was actually a surprise when the floor beneath her gave way and Natasha found herself falling into a sub-basement underneath the mainframe room. The crash of flooring meant Natasha couldn't hear what was going on above. But she landed hard on one of the HYDRA agent trying to shoot her, feet first, and fried a second with her Widow's Bite.
Above her were the sounds of struggle. There were a half-dozen down here, and the bullet ricochet that suddenly deafened Natasha as she dropped the third told her they were armed. Jessica was capable of handling a few thugs, but if this was a concerted effort to grab Jessica, Natasha had to finish this and get back to her immediately.
The appearance of the agents, coupled with the loss of her backup threw her off more than she was expecting to. Before it had been a coincidence that the agents had showed up where she was. Now she knew that this was more about her. About getting an asset back.
She had nightmares about this. Agents closing in on her, the overwhelming knowledge that if she did not fight back to the best of her abilities, she’d be taken back. They would probably have her brainwashed this time. There would be no relying on just training her to be good. Who she was would be taken from her. She could not allow that. She had come way too far to be that person again.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed those thoughts aside and let herself be backed into a corner. It would be easier to fight them all at once. At least she hoped so.
Summoning her strength, she allowed one of her venomblasts to dance from her fingers. There was a time that she didn’t have to do much work to use her abilities but that had changed. It was sad but so many of her problems would be fixed if she would let them take her. “Come on boys,” she said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today.”
Letting the electricity arc across the room, she hit several agents before launching herself into the air. She hoped Natasha was alright. Judging from the noises below, she felt relatively confident that the other woman was holding her own. Swearing softly, she felt a hand grab her booted foot and pull her back down. She kicked out hard with her other foot as she reached back to grasp for the wall. If she couldn’t fly, hopefully she could climb. Something had to give. The kick made contact and the hand let go.
Natasha leapt onto one of the agents as he was outlined briefly in the light from the mainframe room, such as it was. There was another gunshot, which was about all Natasha could hear at the moment, and then Natasha felled the one whose shoulders she had landed on. Jumping clear, she landed between the other two. One had a knife and Natasha parried his thrusts with the protected forearms of her Widow suit as the other tried to get behind her so she could neither see nor hear him.
The three of them danced like that for perhaps half a minute, the knife driving one way and the crackling of the Widow's Bite keeping both of Natasha's opponents properly wary of her reach. Then the knife bit through Natasha's gear--unexpected, painful, momentarily unnerving--and the second agent moved in. Natasha turned as he rushed her, went momentarily down and threw him into his comrade, tasing him hard as he went so he landed in a heavy heap atop his partner. It took a moment for the knife-handler to struggle out and by then Natasha had rolled to her feet again, angry.
She met him as he tried to stab her in the gut, grabbing and breaking his wrist so that he yelped. Or maybe he screamed; it was hard for Natasha to tell after the gunfire. Either way, he dropped the knife and then Natasha backhanded him so hard he landed in a heap a few feet away, electricity from her Bite momentarily arcing over his skin.
Next she had to get out of the sub-basement--harder when she had no idea of what was going on above her courtesy of the close-quarters gunfire. She sighted a ceiling beam above and used her Bite to fire a line into it, pulling herself up into--
The floor that was littered with more than a few HYDRA agents’ bodies. Jessica had taken out as many as she could but knew she was tiring out quite quickly and was really glad to see her companion rise from the ground below. It would not be long before she would no longer capable of using her powers. Bracing herself against the wall, she looked over at Natasha.
“You good, Red?” she yelled out over the din. “Because I think we should probably be making an exit.”
There had to be a way to get out of there. She pulled her gun out of her pocket as best she could before taking aim and firing at the nearest set of agents. It had become more about just getting herself out. She had done the one thing she had wanted to not do. Her own history, it’s problems, had put Natasha at risk. Natasha, an Avenger, someone the world actually needed around.
“It’s nothing personal, gents,” she said as she reloaded, her stand against the wall making her appear to be more tired than she actual was. She figured she had one more good blast in her and that would take out the amount needed to get them out.
As she righted herself and released the Biteline, Natasha glanced around her at the fallen bodies, the injured and the more severely (unmoving) injured, and then at Jessica: her hands moving quickly and competently to reload the pistol and aim at one of the fallen HYDRA agents.
Natasha didn't step into the way, but she said, perhaps a touch more loudly than she meant to because of the momentary deafness, "Are you sure you want to do that?"
“I don’t have anything left. My powers are going,” she admitted. She attempted to tilt her chin defiantly. To look like the woman she wanted to be and not the broken toy she was starting to realize she was. Her head fell and she flashed Natasha a weak smile. “And it’s my fault, Red. You bet on the wrong backup this time. Barton doesn’t have my HYDRA babysitters.”
It wasn’t like she wanted to die and she definitely did not want to kill. At least for the wrong reasons. She wanted to be able to look herself in the eyes and not see the person that they wanted her to be.
“I am open to suggestions.”
She was aware of the bodies around her, and waiting for any movement. But Natasha met Jessica's gaze, her attention on the other woman for a moment. "I didn't bet on the wrong backup." A crooked smile chased across Natasha's face. "There's always another option--but it's up to you if you're willing to take it." She tapped her wrist, where her Avengers communicator was concealed. Backup would be here in a few minutes if she called for it, and the two of them could hold on long enough for a cleanup crew to arrive.
Tony and Steve would yell, but Natasha knew she was in for that either way when she showed up with a stab wound. It was the consequences for Jessica that concerned Natasha at the moment, and what Jessica wanted to do.
There was a strong part of her that wanted to say no. She knew what Natasha was suggesting and it was almost as scary as getting caught by HYDRA but for wholly different reasons. However, she knew she could not keep going like she was. Especially if she was being tracked by HYDRA. Even if she managed to get out of there, they would never leave her alone and if Natasha had not been there she would have been taken that day.
“Alright,” she said finally. “Send in the troops.”
She was tired and maybe it was time she let someone help her.