Clara Oswald is going the long way round (alwaysbeenthere) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-10-30 13:09:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, clara oswald, natasha romanoff (black widow) |
Who: Clara, Natasha and NPC!Hydra
What: Lunch dates and kidnapping
When: 30 October 2017, afternoon
Where: Random restaurant
Warnings: Low violence
Status: Log | Complete
Sometimes, Natasha didn’t really want to be subtle. Inviting Clara to lunch wasn’t exactly subtle. After all, someone had to look out for Bucky, even if he didn’t really know who she was.
Which was a really irritating part of the dreams. It was hard to have that kind of connection with someone and know that they’d never feel the same way. After all, there was no guarantee he’d ever dream anything but the dreams he dreamed of now.
At least she knew Clara, so it was less weird than it might be otherwise. She had no real updates on the hydra situation either, which annoyed her perhaps more than the dreams did. Nat hated not knowing, and it had been well over a year since they’d met, and since Clara had become the Agency’s Undead Asset.
Even though Clara had no real need to eat (nor did she broadcast her current state though it was becoming more and more known thanks to events from the past few months), she was always up for getting lunch or a drink with people. Especially as she did still need to keep up appearances.
Still, she didn’t mind getting lunch with Natasha. True she didn’t know quite what the other woman had in mind for the random request to get lunch. Perhaps something with the Agency that Natasha wanted investigated? It wasn’t like she had any cases going on at the moment. It did make her think back to when she had met the other woman, how she’d nearly been jumped and wondered if it had anything to do with what had happened last month when she had ended up in the morgue.
Oh well. She would find out soon enough. Arriving at the agreed upon location, Clara noticed Natasha and sat down across from her. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Natasha replied, giving Clara a smile. It wasn’t a scary smile at least, but there were hints of what was to come - unrelenting teasing and basically a shovel talk.
She should have brought a shovel.
Taking a sip of her drink, Nat started with basic pleasantries. “Invasions aside, how’s life been treating you lately?”
Basic pleasantries were always good, so once Clara had put in her own order, she turned her attention back to Natasha. She honestly had no idea just what this was about but that never was known to stop her before. Yes she was a control freak, but she was also reckless sometimes, it was an interesting dichotomy.
“Life’s been good.” Random investigations, randomly playing waitress in her TARDIS, dating. Okay and the getting jumped thing but mostly she was focused on the good things going on. “You?”
"Pretty good too." Natasha liked where her own relationship was. It was nice to have someone who understood, and who was just as dangerous. And yet they could turn all of that off for a few hours and pretend to be normal people.
"Moved in with Stahma." She took another sip and smirked behind the glass.
Well well well, that was certainly something and Clara’s eyes lit up at that.
“Is that so? Well, congratulations on that.” Because really, that was always an important step in the relationship department. Not that Clara herself had any experience with it. But she knew that was typically an important step. And well, even with all the madness going on? It was good to have those moments of normal and having a life to live outside it all.
"Put it off for awhile. Her place is... huge. Didn't want it to look like I was just interested in her money." She set her drink down. The hard thing with Clara was there wasn't much there to be able to read to gauge her true mood. No changes in breathing or the other tell-tale signs Nat was trained to read. Even Logan wouldn't be able to read her. He wouldn't be able to hear a heartbeat or smell a change in her body chemistry.
It was annoying even without a super sniffer.
“Ah yeah, that’s always a bit awkward, isn’t it? But hey, you still got to that point so good on you.” Clara didn’t really know what it was Natasha was hoping to read from her or get off of her. To the brunette it was just two women catching up over lunch. This time without Natasha stalking her randomly because she had heard something. So while she could go through the motions of breathing, she never really seemed to react as most people would with those tell tale signs.
“How are things with you and Bucky?” Natasha really wished she had a shovel. Even if he wasn’t her Bucky (he was kind of her Bucky but that was just complicated multiverse bullcrap), he was still Bucky, and for both her sake and Steve’s, she’d watch out for him.
“We’re…. Do I even want to know how you know Bucky and I are dating?” Because while it had come up with a couple of friends, she knew that she hadn’t told Natasha and she wasn’t sure that Bucky and Natasha knew one another here. But then she remembered the post Bucky had put up about losing her in a bookstore, mystery solved. Right then. “Um. Anyway… we’re doing fine.”
Natasha just shrugged and replied, "I have my ways." She liked to keep tabs on the people from her dreams, especially ones that were friends, or had used to be friends. Or a lot more, in Bucky's case.
"That's good to hear. I worry about him, sometimes. Old habit."
Ah. That explained it. Especially the comment about it being an old habit. After all, Bucky hadn’t been in the area all that long for an old habit to develop and from what she knew, their paths hadn’t crossed prior to Orange County either. So. Dream thing then. And the fact that Natasha was Natasha so of course she would know things.
“Makes sense.”
Not that there was much time to really question as suddenly the door opened and the room was filled with smoke. What the hell?!
“See, I would have brought a shovel for this talk but-” Natasha straightened, turning towards the door. She drew her gun and reached across the table, “Get down!”
Even prepared for it, the flashbangs blinded her. With her ears ringing, she fired in the most likely direction of attack.
There was no time to respond to the comment about a shovel given the smoke and then flashbang. She had managed to get on the ground and it was one of those moments Clara was thankful she didn’t actually need to breathe as the smoke did nothing to her. But that didn’t mean that the flashbang was uneffective.
She also had no time to respond when she suddenly felt a hand over her mouth. Biting it, Clara struggled against the hold around her as she got pulled towards the kitchen in the opposite direction Natasha was firing, the restaurant still in chaos. And she didn’t even have the option to grab anything given the tight grip was and then getting hit in the head and knocked out.
“Clara?!” Nat rolled behind a booth, rubbing at her eyes. Everything was still ringing, and a bullet tore a hole into the booth near her head. She dodged to the right, feeling one impact her thigh. Cursing, she tried to crawl towards the kitchen, catching just a glimpse of Clara’s shoes through the swinging doors.
As the smoke cleared, there was no longer a sign of Clara. She’d been loaded into an unmarked car and that disappeared in the midst of everything that was happening so that by the time everything finally calmed, there was no sign of Clara or the car or those who had taken her.
Nat pressed her hand against her wound, and reached for her phone. There were calls to make, and no time to waste if they hoped to find Clara before it was too late.