WHO: Natasha and Kenzi WHERE: ALL OVER THE PLACE. WHEN: We can say this morning! WHAT: Nat tries to whip Kenz into shape. Cue bonding of things. WARNINGS: Kenzi's terrible vocabulary, glossed over mentions of sexual abuse. STATUS: Complete!
Being that Natasha wanted to be respectful toward her new roommate, she didn’t bang around in the kitchen well before the new day began. Jefferson likely wasn’t a heavy sleeper but it was practically the witching hour - and so preparing the energy drinks the night before and leaving them in the fridge was the best course of action. At 5:20, Natasha was up and ready to leave, grabbing those two travel cups and slipping out of the apartment like a ghost. Kenzi only lived a few doors down anyway; she didn’t have to travel far.
Outside the door, she had their morning beverages (called the fire hydrant - water, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper), and she sent Kenzi an electronic message to let her know that her running partner was waiting. The other occupants of the apartment probably weren’t up yet either, but Natasha was trying the polite thing first - if her fellow Rusky didn’t come to the door, then Widow was going inside. Would stand above Kenzi’s bed intimidatingly, potentially would even drag her out.
All of this was healthy. It’d be good for them, to get into this routine. Made facing the gray, abysmal morgue of the town just a little better.
Tough shit for Kenzi that this ancient device of magical darkness didn’t have a snooze button. It beeped, the sound singular and a little loud in the eerie silence. And ever since coming here, her sleep hadn’t been the best - always waking up in the middle of the night, tossing and turning, night terrors - but just knowing people were under the same roof proved to soothe those high-strung nerves and fears from waking up.
But there wasn’t anything scary to jolt her awake, and after a miserable glance at the device, Kenzi groaned.
It took her a minute, but she got up, threw on some tight ‘workout’ clothes (everything Kenzi wore was tight, okay, and she would wear a corset for this if she didn’t feel the laziness right now), whipped her hair up, and peeked out the front door with a stick of mascara and a leer.
“You weren’t kidding.” Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
“I never kid.” Spoke in a deadpanned tone, husky and warm like the blankets the girl had no doubt just dragged her ass out of. We’re in the army now, Kenzi, welcome. Natasha eyed the mascara wand with equal parts amusement and disbelief, which seemed to be a theme for the raven-tressed lady. Still, she wasn’t boring, Natasha had to give her that much.
Even if she’d likely be raccoon-eyed and sweating all that makeup off by the time the jaunty run around Marrowood was finished.
As a peace offering, a sacrifice in this holy hour, she held out the cup of energy juice. “As requested,” the redhead smirked. “It has a bit of a bite to it, but it’s good for you. Gets the blood flowing, and also good for cardiovascular health.”
Lady Deathtrap was some serious fucking business, apparently. Kenzi made a face and stuck the makeup tool into her cleavage, for safe-keeping. Close to her heart and all, because her and Mascara were True Wuv. Her own OTP.
“Maybe if you look hard enough in that shady ass grocery store, you’ll find a can of redbull,” was Kenzi’s suggestion, offering the cup a suspicious glance. Then she took it, held it under her nose for a sniff, and it smelled...citrusy? She trusted Nat and that alone gave her the green light to take a taste-testing sip. And then kind of regretted it, because what the blue balling hell? “Rat poison for breakfast. Thaaaaaaaaaaaanks, homie, you da best. I was thinking more like...pancakes.”
Carbs. Carbs were good.
She should probably complain less, however. She did want Nat’s help. She asked for it. Super cool magic powers weren’t in her cards (unless someone sold magic in a bottle, which, y’know, that happened to her before), so she might as well improve on her humanly capabilities that weren’t just looking fucking fantastic in black and purple.
Black Widow was many things, but a chef was not one of them. Pancakes were also not going to happen, though somehow the suggestion was almost adorable coming from Kenzi. “You’ll get used to it,” she assured the girl, drinking her own breakfast in a few gulps - well accustomed to the burn by now, and it really did give you a nice little zap to help with the sluggishness.
“Пошли. Мимо парка, вокруг площади и обратно.” Natasha would also test Kenzi’s Russian comprehension to get the brain cogs turning. But the route she had in mind was safe - nowhere near the hospital, or the other unsavory places, mostly just sticking to the square where there’d be the stirrings of a new day in Marrowood anyway.
Set and determined, she in her workout clothes and sturdy trainers jogged down toward the exit to emerge into the...creepy darkness. Even the moon looked odd.
“I usually reserve trips to the shady-ass grocery store for my roommate. He’s the domestic goddess, out of the two of us. But I suppose if you’re hungry after this, we can grab something from the coffee shop.”
Kenzi’s voice didn’t carry an accent, not like her mother. Or the rest of her family, for that matter - she grew up fairly bilingual, but ended up using English on the streets more and Russian only if necessary. And it was necessary when she had to pull some strings, call in some favors from her cousins - they were sort of reliable, at least.
Might as well chug the damn drink rather than sip on it - not like she was nursing beer, and she wanted to get the whole ‘organic energy drink’ aspect of this out of the way. So she knocked it down in several gulps too (practice from being a messy alcoholic) and boy, it did kick - burned in a weird way down, the taste familiar but it was too bitter to try and figure it out.
“Иисус гребаный Христос!.” See? Her Russian was there, foul words and monotheistic deities and everything! “Oh, yeah, because Marrowood coffee is totes reliable,” she continued, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Anna and Mother Mermaid and even that weird Andy guy did work at the place, so it couldn’t be too bad.
She hoped.
Towards the park, they trudged, and Kenzi guessed she might do the whole jogging thing. Ugh, exercise. It was usually the couch to the fridge and that was generally the extent of it. “Soooooo, you wanna tell me how you ended up becoming a badass ninja? Are you a secret agent?”
Marrowood coffee was actually one of the better things the town had to offer. It was why, when Natasha first arrived, she’d gone to the shop to check things out - her nose led her there, and she had made the correct assumption that she’d run into someone of use. Thus followed the information from America Chavez regarding the multiverse. Most people couldn’t resist the siren’s song of a cup o’joe.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Natasha joked dryly, jogging alongside Kenzi now that their muscles were nice and limber and burning thanks to a quick warmup and a few dashes of cayenne pepper. The story of how she became a ‘badass ninja’ was quite long and depressing, so she’d gloss over the unpleasant parts - also known as ‘nearly everything.’ “I was raised to be this way. Trained and conditioned. A weapon in the name of my home country - but what I did wasn’t always nice.”
She’d leave out the multiple mind wipes, as details about those were fuzzy even for her. “At some point I took matters into my own hands and decided I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny.”
Way to leave it vague, lady. Kenzi eyed her with some suspicion; it’s not like she thought Nat was lying, and there was truth there, hell yeah. Just a kind of truth with a lot of gritty details missing, and those gritty details were often the most interesting parts. And Kenzi was a nosy Russian Princess of Darkness, sooooo…
“Sounds awesome. And probably pretty sucky,” she said, the jogging thing not exactly terrible right now. It was probably from all the times she’d run in the opposite direction when shit got hairy. Because sometimes, the smartest thing was to get out of a tough situation before you got yourself killed out of stupid bravery. “Almost sounds like you did some shady ass government work there, homefry!”
Ohmygosh, that’d be the coolest. Was she a secret spy? Government assassin? Kenzi was jogging with a super secret government assassin spy that was also a ninja?
Or maybe she was shitting out assumptions, who knew, but that sounded amazeballs.
“Something like that,” Natasha smiled to herself, Mona Lisa at its finest. The Red Room was a covert facility that trained many in the art of espionage and combat; the Black Widow initiative hadn’t been solely limited to her either. “It was shady. I was...well, they did things to me. To my memory, mostly.” And rendered her infertile - she was quite sure she’d never have children, not that it was ever a good idea at any point in time for her.
A pause, easing further into the rhythm and flow of the jog as they passed the park. “Then I fell in love with the man who trained me.” It wasn’t something she talked about much (she didn’t talk about herself much as a general rule, preferring to let others do the talking about themselves), but perhaps Kenzi would find it interesting.
“Like...Men in Black shit?” Whoa, that sounded kind of serious, didn’t it? Serious enough at asscrack o’ dawn anyway, and Kenzi was losing her breath. Soon, she stopped and bent over, hands on knees, and panted. “Whoa, whoa, wait. This--why aren’t we drinking? Why are we jogging? Men in Black shit and getting gooey like a chocolate chip cookie for your ninja teacher conversations require liquor, not cardio!”
And, well, also because Kenzi was a big weenie and thought she had enough exercising, okay? What about that coffee? Those pancakes? Replenish those lost calories?
...even if they were only jogging or ten minutes??
Drinking? Natasha enjoyed a bottle of high-grade vodka just for herself like any other Russian worth her weight in gold (even if she had technically deflected) but the sun wasn’t even up yet. That was a problem. And it spoke volumes about her jogging partner here. “Good thing I intervened when I did,” she chuckled, gripping Kenzi’s arm and tugging her along. Come on, brave soldier, that was enough of a break. The girl was slender enough but clearly out of shape - and Natasha would hate to see her liver under a microscope, especially if drinking this early was kind of a go-to.
“You don’t want me to zap you with a Widow’s Bite. But now tell me more about you. Russian mafia ties and all? Married, divorced, crazy cat lady?”
Kenzi let out a big pathetic whine at being tugged along, and Nat had to honestly kind of just drag her along for a second before her feet picked back up and there was a semblance of a light jog again, tongue sticking out as she panted like a dog.
“No zapping, that’s abuse,” she wheezed and flailed about some. “My family was just--uh. Complicated. Creepy step dad that loved me a bit too much, if you know what I mean. Mom chose him, so I ran off into the night! Then I found out faeries existed, so that was weird.” And cool at first, because heeeey, human being besties with supernatural things! What whaaaaaaat! No one liked the annoying human that tagged along, even if she helped them out and hell, even got screwed by the Norn for them, but that’s a-okay! “I was--engaged? Sort...of!”
Oh my god, talking and jogging, who did this? Was Natasha even human? Bitch still looked good running and Kenzi probably smelled like sweaty booze and looked like a mess! Wah, wah. First world probz.
Complicated family, Natasha understood that. It had been so long since she’d had any semblance of family, though she remembered Ivan and him helping to raise her - and of course, Logan. The training and the preparations. Then the Red Room happened, and everything got murkier and murkier until, now, she sometimes questioned her sanity. And everything else about herself.
“If he were around, I’d offer to cut your stepfather’s balls off,” she stated casually - jogging and talking wasn’t much of a stretch for her; her body was built to be put through such things. “What happened to your sort-of fiance?” The girl wasn’t wearing a ring. Hopefully she hadn’t been jilted at the altar.
They were around the Square now, and Kenzi had to stop for another break because goddamn. There was that throbbing ache on her side, a symptom of someone who clearly didn’t run or even exercise enough, and she put a hand over it.
“Um…” Well, shit. She should really be drunk for this, shouldn’t she? Kenzi made a little note to herself to steal the mini-liquor bottles of the hotel to carry them around for emergencies. Like this one. “He died. Technically before I could tell him ‘yes.’ When he asked, I told him I’d think about it, and...I waited too late to give him a response. Hence… ‘sort-of fiance.’”
It felt raw still, like throwing even a drop of vinegar in that wound would set it ablaze in pain. It was an all-around bad situation, Bo was always looking after Bo (and whatever dick or vag was waving at her), and shit went downhill.
“Your turn on your guy, cutestuff.”
“I see.” Contrary to what impressions might give off, Natasha had a heart. It twisted, sympathy and understanding. There was really nothing she could say that would ease that kind of pain, but she had lived with it too. “It will take time, for you to come to terms with it.” However, not by drowning in a bottle - at the very least, she could help prevent that.
Cutestuff? Never in her life had she been called cute. She wasn’t even very affectionate, except around James. That was a side of her she kept hidden, a very deliberate move. “We were discovered and our memories of each other were wiped. But then we found each other years later and he was...going through some things, so it wasn’t the right time to jump into romance..” Like dealing with the aftermath of everything returning to him in a rush thanks to the cosmic cube, dealing with Steve’s disappearance, dealing with the struggle of realizing what he’d been used for and what he’d done because of it. James didn’t think he was ready to be Captain America, but Natasha supported him even through the hellstorm of doubts.
“We finally got back together and then I ended up here. Before, a version of him was here - slightly different, but I still loved him. A person who has been brainwashed as deeply as he had, it’s not easy coming out of it but we were making progress. Then he disappeared.”
Since they had ended up in the square, she veered off toward the coffee shop for the promised brew. But first there was a brief cooldown, and a stretch of her muscles - Kenzi might just collapse into a heap, from the looks of it.
Coming to terms with it. Right. Kenzi left out the tidbit of self-blame - she thought it was her fault, it’d always be her fault, for being the one normal human among them that wanted something more. Something to help out that wasn’t just ‘stealing panties.’ Hale died protecting her from Massimo, because she owed him money for borrowing the ‘magic cream’ for super-duper sparkly powers. But thank fuck for Dyson and his quick intro to the ‘shadow thief’ trade - maybe she should really hone her ninja skills and be a creature of the night. Like a fashionable Batman who was never sober and looked better in spandex.
That sounded bad ass.
She listened to Natasha’s vent closely, all while catching her breath and straightening up to look less like a crippled Quasimoto. Damn, it really was Men in Black shit. Memory wiping. Such a shady government thing to do, too. “Damn, girl. That’s some--that’s a serious love story.” Romantic, bittersweet, fucked up - all rolled into one. “Y’know, you are really put together despite all that. Or does the whole ‘stoic’ thing come with years of being a disciplined badass? Or are you bottling everything up ready to pop? This is some hardcore girl talk we have going on here.”
Coffee shop, in sight! Now Kenz looked a little more pepped up, like she could actually MOVE again.
Was it? Natasha supposed the ‘love story’ could fall under the category of inspiring - it meant perseverance and understanding, trust, respect, everything all rolled into one. Because no one could understand what the two of them went through, better than the other. They needed that, in order to cope with the ghosts that haunted them. “It was difficult,” she said, fixing her hair, re-tying the fiery locks back into a sleek ponytail. “I...was afraid he might resent me. Because when we were discovered, things got much worse for him. I was sent out into the field.”
She had some self-blame going on there too, Kenzi, don’t worry.
“It’s probably years of discipline. But I don’t bottle anything up. It’s unhealthy. I’m just...slow to trust, is all. Well - “ A glance at the caffeinated salvation, which was starting to come to life much like the square. As lively as a dreary, depressing landscape could be. “Shall we?”
“Well,” Kenzi smirked, the ice that were her eyes slanted into something of an impish leer, and she gave the woman a playful elbow nudge. “We successfully bonded about our questionable relationships.” Lady Deathtrap was the first she’d spoken to about Hale; no real reason why, aside from the fact that the timing seemed right, and things were a little less...sore. Hurt plenty, but...the acceptance was sinking in. Slowly and surely. “While sober, even. That’s something.” That was progress; a tiny inching step of it.
“Next time we talk about our deepest darkest secrets, we should paint each other’s nails or put highlights in each other’s hair. Black seems like it’s both our colors, huh? Or you can try and test my cardio again and almost kill me, that’s cool too. I love being super stinky this early in the morning, my pits thank you for it.” Kenzi snorted a laugh because while it was a complain, technically, she didn’t seem too scared off of another jogging exercise. Meant that she wouldn’t be able to snore a couple of Zzzzz’s until late noon, but she did want to be...better. Feel better.