InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "respect the alpha"

alwaysactive (alwaysactive) wrote in snapthread,
@ 2019-10-03 17:17:00

Entry tags:

eddie kaspbrak, natasha romanoff (mcu)

Who: Natasha Romanoff and Eddie Kaspbrak
What: Handbook for the recently deceased.
Where: Around town
When: Today

Her arrival in town had been a quiet thing, which Natasha preferred, caught up in the arrival of a few others, so she managed to slip in a little bit more easily than if she'd arrived on her own. And she'd been taking the time since she arrived to get as much detail out of Tony and Steve both about what had happened, and her previous selves that had been in town. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of some other her being here in the past, not some other her from a different dimension, but a her from her own death. It was strange, and it didn't help her shake off the idea that this might just be some sort of purgatory.

But she kept that theory to herself for now, Tony had made a life for himself here, with Steve. In a way that she'd never thought they'd ever actually manage back home, so she didn't want to take away anything from that, even if it was just her own personal doubts about what all of this meant.

The town was interesting though, far smaller than she'd have guessed on her first day, and no amount of going through the woods managed to get her away from the town. So instead she was investigating houses, Steve and Tony had been more than kind enough to let her stay with them since she'd arrived but she would want her own space in time. And she'd heard you could just pick an empty house, so there she was wandering through the little rows of houses peering in the windows when she came across someone she didn't know from home. She didn't often forget a face, and even if he was some other version of someone she knew, he didn't carry himself right.

So she put on her friendliest smile, warm and easy going as she relaxed the set of her shoulders and lifted a hand to wave. "Hi," She said while there was still a little bit of distance between them so neither one of them were taken by surprise. "I'm new in town, I'm still getting my bearings." She explained, "I'm Natasha. I don't think we know each other?" She offered him her outstretched hand.

(Post a new comment)

ekaspbrak
2019-10-04 12:35 am UTC (link)

It was funny how a little sleep and a new change of clothes could make a guy feel like a new man. A new dead man, maybe, but, hey, what could you do?

A young Eddie Kaspbrak would've screamed and cried. He would've gotten super defensive and tried to fight the first person to look at him funny. He may have even broken something because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair and he was scared. He was scared and upset and he couldn't even run to Richie about it because the subject was painful for him. So little Eddie would've been out of a fucking support system. Adult Eddie had been sure he was going to go and do much of the same. Maybe without trying to fight someone because glow swords didn't sound like fun. He wound up doing none of that.... well, maybe he cried and screamed and maybe he came close to tossing his useless weapon at a window but thought better of it because someone would have to live in that house with a broken window, damnit. Mostly dealing with his death was marked by periods of unhappy silence.

It wasn't that he died. Everyone dies and Eddie had been sure of his own impending demise since he was five years old. When a barely remembered Frank Kaspbrak lost his battle with cancer and Eddie, himself, had to be hospitalized. Death was inevitable. What bothered him was the fact that he'd died a coward. He'd died in front of the person he loved the most and hadn't even been able to tell him. He couldn't have. Things would've been different. Richie wouldn't have wanted to see him. He would've been colder.

Melancholy and self-pity eventually gave way to a numb sort of feeling that left him operating on auto-pilot. Checking out the other houses had seemed like a good idea. Structural integrity was important. He didn't want to die because the building he was sleeping in wasn't up to code or had been in such disrepair before Richie picked it out that it was one slammed door away from turning into a pile of rubble for him to be buried beneath.

The house Richie picked was perfectly fine but Eddie needed something else to focus on.

He hadn't expected to run into anyone else. Richie was a motormouth. He could talk to anyone about anything. Eddie wasn't. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't made many friends. He hadn't even tried to. His own social failings aside, the population seemed to be small. So small that he hadn't really run into anyone up until he heard a voice and turned to see Natasha. She was younger than him, pretty, and carried herself with a confidence he could never have. She was also smiling. Kindly. He still had his iron fence post but he wasn't gripping onto it or holding it in a way that could be seen as menacing or like he even had any intention of using it. He didn't.

"You and me both." He admitted. "The town's a lot smaller than I thought it was." He'd been sure the houses appeared to be endless the night he arrived. "I'm Eddie Kaspbrak... and I guess that depends. You didn't happen to grow up in Derry, Maine did you?" It was a joke. Of course she didn't.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

alwaysactive
2019-10-04 12:56 am UTC (link)

He was scared, Natasha could see that easily enough - even if he hadn't been carrying around what looked to be a bit of old fencing (?), but who carried around something like that if you didn't think you might have to use it at some point? And Natasha understood that, both of this place and the world in general. Sure she'd had her own fear practically beaten out of her before she'd been old enough to really understand it, but normal people? They didn't have the benefit of that sort of thing for situations such as these. She didn't blame him of course, even for her this was more than a little bit of a shock to the system.

"It's quite possibly the smallest town I've ever been in," She admitted with a laugh, it was probably true too. But this hardly counted as a real town, even if they'd named it. "Have you tried going through the woods yet?" She frowned at her own experience with it, "I ended up coming right back out on the other side of town." It was weird and none of it made any sense, which was all well and good, but she'd have preferred a little bit of sense in all of this. She supposed she'd just have to find it with the people she knew.

"Nice to meet you Eddie, well considering the circumstances." She laughed softly, because they probably shouldn't have been meeting at all, but all the same.

"No, no I grew up in Russia actually." She told him, all things considered, she thought she could handle a little bit of honesty here. Even with the strangers. It wasn't like she had anything to go back to, so why not try on a little bit of something new while she got this second (or was it the third, or maybe fourth) shot at a second life.

"So have you picked out one of these houses yet?" She asked him, "I've been staying with Tony and Steve since I showed up, but I think maybe I should consider my own space."