Svetlana Sergievskaya causes lyrical chess wars (thegirlisme) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2015-09-11 00:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, natasha romanoff (black widow), svetlana sergievskaya |
Who: Natasha Romanoff and Svetlana Sergievskaya
What: Spying and chess games
When: Recently - Late morning
Where: Random park with chess boards
Warnings: Russian shadiness? Low
Status: Log | Complete
Natasha had a problem. She needed an intervention. But who would intervention a spy who liked to spy on people? If she wasn’t personally keeping tabs on someone, she was having someone do it for her. Today, in this case, she’d personally taken an interest in Svetlana. Her contacts (what few were secure these days) had forwarded her some information, but it was woefully lacking. What was there was interesting enough.
So this was more of a personal interest.
Even if, right now, she was incredibly bored.
Svetlana would never consider herself interesting or worth spying on. In the Dreams, of course people kept tabs on her. She was the wife of Anatoly Sergievsky, chess player who would win fame and glory for the Soviet Union. Then she was the wife of a defector. In her real life? She was hardly interesting. She had lost her brother in Beslan eleven years ago, Alexander Molokov had kept tabs on her in Moscow because...he was creepy and disturbing. She had done NGO work but with funding being difficult and more pressure because they received foreign aid and the general political atmosphere of such organisations and workers being seen as ‘foreign agents’ (yet told the Cold War terminology didn’t mean anything, please), she had gotten out and now was in Orange County.
And life continued to be weird. But it was hardly interesting. She did her training seminars and events, spoke, pushed beyond the expected and found herself in complicated or dangerous situations. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was either playing chess with someone, at a bookstore, or looking after her brother. As well as seeing friends.
She wasn’t interesting or worth following, and because of that reason, she never could figure out why she felt like she was being watched beyond general paranoia. But it was more prominent today. Which made her uneasy. The trick of course would be figuring out who and why this was happening.
That was enough to interest Natasha. That, and some old FSB files about her NGO work. But then, the FSB could be unreasonably paranoid about anything foreign. Sometimes it was justified, sometimes it wasn’t, but honestly there’d been such an influx of Russians lately that Nat was somewhat concerned.
She sipped at her starbucks, looking particularly hipster today as she tapped away at her phone like any number of young people around her. It was good cover, but it wouldn’t help her approach the woman. So she discreetly watched her play a game of chess, before slipping her phone into her pocket and walking over. She dropped into the chair across from Svetlana. “You know, I haven’t played this game in awhile, but I’ve been watching people play all day and I figure I might as well give it a shot.”
And as per usual, Svetlana had won the game she’d been playing. Then again, the only time she ever lost a game of chess both in the waking world as well as her dreams was when she was exceptionally distracted or sick. Which was why she enjoyed playing her random games with strangers. They were always something unexpected there and even if she won, it was still experience and something new.
So when Natasha sat across from her, the blonde woman quirked a brow as she looked familiar. Oh yes. She had been at the Agency when Svetlana had done her training seminar there months ago.
“White or black?” It really didn’t matter to Svetlana which colour she played.
“Black. I’m the challenger, after all.” She leaned her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. “Besides, the first move always tells a lot about a person.”
“Fair enough.” It was easier that way, and Natasha was right about that. But given the fact that not everyone knew the rules of chess, who would go first, what colour meant what, Svetlana always made sure to offer. So setting up the board with the colours on the correct side happened as she played over Natasha’s words in her mind. Mindless chatter and small talk? Or something more?
A curious look was sent towards the other woman, critical. “That is true.” Which was the only response she gave even if she had picked up that it was a comment that undoubtedly had double meanings. Svetlana had long learned that particular art and was always cautious. Not only that, she was very adept at appearing unassuming.
With that in mind, the blonde woman looked at the board and eventually chose her first move.
There was a chess move called the Queen’s Gambit. A bold move, meant to win the game within four or five moves, at great risk to the Queen. It could also be incorporated into a long-term plan, and while Natasha preferred the long game, she wanted to see how the woman responded to such an opening. It seemed like the perfect sort of brash move that a woman drinking starbucks would make.
“I used to play regularly with someone,” she said. “It was kind of like a ritual between us.”
Well versed in myriad chess openings, it was recognisable to Svetlana that this was the start of the Queen’s Gambit. There were plenty of counters, some well known, others not so much and in Svetlana’s case, ones she worked out on her own that seemed to combine different counters yet always fell within the rules. It was why her initial counter either seemed to ignore the gambit, or seemingly move into it as if unaware.
She was a strategist, she took everything in. She was unpredictable and unassuming. She knew her strengths and played to them.
“As did I.” She wasn’t about to delve into the fact it was Erik who had been the one to introduce her to the game, both in reality and in the dreams and that she had lost him. No need to dwell on that with someone she recognised from the Agency and Network. Besides, most people were unaware of Beslan and what had happened there unless they were from the region.
She was good. Nat realized she’d lose the first game, even if she tried to win, but she didn’t want to insult the woman by losing on purpose. “It was a long time ago.”
Longer than she had any right to be alive. Dreaming decades in a matter of years, she’d had to compartmentalize. It had still changed her from what she’d been before to who she was now. Natasha would be the first to admit that her path to redemption had been jumpstarted by the dreams and that Natalia Romanova, FSB operative, had died awhile ago.
All things considered, Svetlana would appreciate that she would be given an actual game and not someone losing on purpose. Not to mention she would call Natasha out on that, questioning her reasoning. There were tells for that. She wouldn’t need to know Natasha’s normal playing style to know that. “I can understand that.”
And she did. It wasn’t so much from the dreams (though they certainly hadn’t helped, living a life so similar yet so different all in a span of months, reliving things in a way) as they had given her those years back in a twisted way, but that eleven years had passed since Erik died. A long time ago and yet the pain was as if it were from just the day before.
Compartmentalising was important. It was something Svetlana could do, though she would also be the first to acknowledge and already had acknowledged that what she had seen in the dreams made her wary. Or more wary that she had been to begin with. And yet it was still Anatoly she had gone to when she needed to not be alone and needed comfort. True it had been nothing more than a chess game, but between going to him when her parents were arrested because of her (a ploy by Molokov and Stahma, no doubt) and now this… She knew it meant something.
And so the game continued, a welcomed challenge for Svetlana, who remained unpredictable while slowly becoming less unassuming and more aggressive as it went on.
“Checkmate.”
A good spy (or Avenger) knew when to turn tail and go to ground. Nat had been ready to tip her king over, but then Svetlana pulled that last move out. She shook her head and laughed. "Rusty." As though protecting her pride. "But I don't think that would have gone any different if I wasn't." But she'd like to try again. If Svetlana was always that aggressive in the late game, Nat thought she might be able to get at least one victory. To spare her pride.
"I've been meaning to ask. Come here often?"
Each game was different, it mostly just depended on her opponent and what she was being given to work with. Each was different and that made it exciting and something to study. So she just smiled with a slight nod at the comment on being rusty though probably still would have lost regardless. “You played very well.”
Picking up a thermos with her tea, Svetlana took and a sip as she mulled the question over. Interesting choice of wording. Innocent enough, perhaps just someone looking for a person to play chess against. Her paranoia and hypervigilance when it came to such things though said be wary.
“Often enough I suppose. Depends on day, work, things like that.” There were other parks she was able to play chess in that she went to as well.
“I’m sure you meet some interesting people doing this.” Natasha gestured with one hand at the park. “I don’t know if I could do it. Seems dangerous, and I don’t like forming obvious habits. Too many people out there who might notice.”
“I do.” A fair amount of people. Different skill levels, different types. It was all quite fascinating for someone who much preferred observing people as opposed to being part of things. Guarded. Though if Svetlana had any doubts that there was more to Natasha than just some young woman who happened upon her that she had met before, it was gone. She knew the idea of the Agency. She knew the types of people it and the Network drew. The question was why had she decided to come up to Svetlana now.
“Then it is a good thing I have nothing to hide.” And she didn’t. Oh, Svetlana had her enemies with the work she did, or because of Stahma. But she was an open book in regards to what it was she did. She helped people. She might be reckless in it when she went to late night meetings alone because she was asked, but she helped people. Nothing suspicious or illegal. Just someone trying to get by in life. Her personal life? That was where she was guarded, an ice queen. It was a process to get beneath those layers and for Svetlana to let someone in.
Even so, her comment would make it clear to anyone who understood the nature of double language that she had solidified and acknowledged what was actually going on, that it wasn’t just a chance meeting and that Natasha wasn’t just human resources.
Natasha locked her fingers together, resting her thumbs against her chin. Svetlana was an intelligent woman. Nat could work with that. "Everyone has something to hide, it's just a matter of degrees. But there's been an alarming influx of people from the homeland and worrisome chatter amongst a former employer of mine."
She lifted her head and leaned back in the seat. "I just need to know if people are going to be problems, or if they're going to need help against problems."
And pretenses were (mostly) gone. Worrisome chatter amongst a former employer left little to be desired, if only because she had a very negative association with the KGB and FSB thanks to Alexander Molokov and his presence in her life, here and in the dreams. The only things Svetlana herself hid were her own thoughts and emotions. Still, she knew the only danger or trouble she would get into in regards to that would be trumped up charges based on archaic wording and a paranoid homeland when it comes to foreign aid.
“So I have noticed.”
It wasn’t hard to see that the Russian population was growing amongst the Network. There were all types there, and then of course the Russian population which already existed within Orange County. Those were fun to deal with when they were involved with the mafia, a heavy presence here just as it had been in Moscow.
“I suppose that is fair enough.” Knowing Svetlana, she would undoubtedly need protection from potential threats just because of her work and familial discourse with the Molokov family.
There were things Natasha didn't have the time to really keep up on, but she tried where she could. She at least didn't have to entirely rely on others though - her own computer skills were as formidable as someone like Kitty's, and she ran her own series of programs to keep an eye on things.
It was the FSB that concerned Nat more than the Mafia. Criminal elements could be dealt with or bribed away, but the FSB, for all it was riddled with corruption, was a lot harder to make go away. "I wanted to offer something. Nothing expected in return that you don't want to give, but if you need a place or a retreat, my doors are open."
The amount of offers Svetlana was managing to get when it came to this place was astounding. First Nikolai despite his ties to Stahma and Molokov as he knew the history and still offered as Vor should she be in need of assistance with the girls she helped. She had connections to the police via Dick. Now Natasha. Orange County certainly had a way about it.
“I… thank you.” Because what was there that could really be said or done? It wasn’t like Svetlana knew much on what might happen, just that something could. Anyone with FSB ties past or present would know the state of things, would know the wording and what it could mean all because of paranoia and history. Svetlana knew that all too well.
Natasha started to set the board back up again. “Just ask for the Black Widow.”