Natasha Romanoff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matterofcircumstances) wrote2016-08-14 12:44 am
matterofcircumstances) wrote2016-08-14 12:44 am
001 just a ghost
The hallmark of a good spy is that the work is done and no one is the wiser. A good spy doesn't leave a footprint, doesn't have a calling card, doesn't have a signature. Natasha knows that she's good, infamous even, but she's not good enough. She's got her ways of dismantling situations as they arise and frequent players in the community know her style. She isn't called the Black Widow for nothing.
She's never been as good as he is. Now that she's met the infamous Winter Soldier and seen him face to face, myth and reality have begun to overlap. He's human in spite of what HYDRA's done to him and Natasha isn't certain she could have handled that much brainwashing and still recognize anyone at all; she's forcibly pushed down everything about her true identity and summoning it to the surface takes a lot of doing. She doesn't have a touchstone like Rogers or a place like Brooklyn that she cares enough about to cling to when she's dissembling. In this, the Winter Soldier has a weakness she'll never have.
(It's a weakness that's been purged out of her, over and over, both by her hand and the hands of others.)
Since they're both fugitives at the moment, Natasha finally has time to examine him up close and to compare the man who gifted her with a round to the abdomen with the man who had once been Captain America's best friend. The differences between the two are stark, the chasm insurmountable. Unraveling who and what he is will take a hell of a lot of time but if there's anything she has at the moment, it's time. It's just the two of them now, the liars and the thieves, and Natasha wonders if the liabilities that Barnes carries will ever balance out. He had started out a good man, a moral man. He'd had a compass that pointed north. All she'd ever had was the will to survive.
There's a rickety table and chairs in the kitchen of this safe house and Natasha sits down, motioning to the other chair.
"You can sit down, you know. It's just a handle. I don't actually bite."
She's never been as good as he is. Now that she's met the infamous Winter Soldier and seen him face to face, myth and reality have begun to overlap. He's human in spite of what HYDRA's done to him and Natasha isn't certain she could have handled that much brainwashing and still recognize anyone at all; she's forcibly pushed down everything about her true identity and summoning it to the surface takes a lot of doing. She doesn't have a touchstone like Rogers or a place like Brooklyn that she cares enough about to cling to when she's dissembling. In this, the Winter Soldier has a weakness she'll never have.
(It's a weakness that's been purged out of her, over and over, both by her hand and the hands of others.)
Since they're both fugitives at the moment, Natasha finally has time to examine him up close and to compare the man who gifted her with a round to the abdomen with the man who had once been Captain America's best friend. The differences between the two are stark, the chasm insurmountable. Unraveling who and what he is will take a hell of a lot of time but if there's anything she has at the moment, it's time. It's just the two of them now, the liars and the thieves, and Natasha wonders if the liabilities that Barnes carries will ever balance out. He had started out a good man, a moral man. He'd had a compass that pointed north. All she'd ever had was the will to survive.
There's a rickety table and chairs in the kitchen of this safe house and Natasha sits down, motioning to the other chair.
"You can sit down, you know. It's just a handle. I don't actually bite."
no subject
What he knows runs deeper and arrow-straight, a whetstone to the blade's edge, clear and purposeful. He is wholly a weapon, poised and glittering and hasn't the luxury of affecting her ease. They two were built for different things, and they will not be left to their own devices for long.
He doesn't like that they're here, keeps hovering at the edges of the windows, alert and grim in the stripe of sunlight slicing from behind the blinds. He doesn't bother telling her that it isn't her that keeps him wound so tightly; she already knows.
There are things he remembers and things that he knows, and she falls squarely, unnervingly, in the second category.
"He doesn't know you're here," he gruffly says without looking back. He isn't certain why he says it, apart from that being able to read her carefully contained casualness has set him off-balance. He knows she's not told anyone, and certainly not Rogers, but he doesn't know how he knows that.
no subject
Natasha doesn't even want to bring Steve's name into this. He's something completely unlike the two of them, something outside of it. He's a man whose duty and moral compass never have to compete with one another. Natasha has spent years pushing down her innate morality in favor of getting the job done. Thinking too much about the methods in which she achieves her successes tends to make her think about all the wrong she's done.
Wrong and right are only a matter of who's writing the history. Natasha has been around long enough to realize that and she thinks that Bucky has too. Even still, the stark reminder of loyalty in the form of Steve Rogers isn't something she wants to summon.
"I don't want to burden him with it. You know how he is."