and the ledger is red

“Ah, I see. Do you plan on being miserable your entire life or would you like to invest yourself enough to have one drink with me?”

“A drink doesn’t sound too bad-- count me in.” 

“Well, I can’t drink to be really good, but I won’t back away from a challenge.”

“I’m fully willing to wait until after you have your little one.”

“Um, are you sure you’re not a robot?”

“I wish. I mean, at least robots don’t have to worry about emotions and everything else that’s quickly becoming a burden to me.” 

“You’re not a people person are you, Nat? You’re more of a cat lady prowess at night. That’s nice.”

“I don’t have time to make friends or emotionally invest myself into relationships with people. I’m trained to complete missions and stay independent, and I fully plan on sticking to that while on this island.” 

“I don’t think they’d be here if they did, Natalia. Nobody on this island knows nothing and it seems that the little people do know, the more unlikely they are to share. This whole island is a joke. It’s a maze and we’re the lab rats. It’s.. pathetic.”

“Quick question-- how the hell did you know my name was Natalia?” 

“I hope it’s my George. I haven’t seen him since he…died. I’m Izzie. Who are you?”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. I’m Natasha. Pleasure to meet you.”

“There’s this room, we call it the archive, and in the archive there are books. They’re written in one language that nobody can seem to translate. We’ve tried everything. I’ve been looking for a secret way in. A secret within a secret. But so far, nothing.”

“We should probably seek out the resident that has been on this island the longest--see if they know anything.”

Kenzi shook her head for a moment –– not to Natasha’s question, but to herself, trying to quickly compose herself once again and running her hands over her hair. “It’s really stupid,” or at least, it felt stupid, after Natasha’s bit. “I mean, with the Fae… I was always just the weak, stupid human. Just a lost human in the Fae world… a weak, pathetic human, not apart of the future of the Fae.” It was a sensitive topic and she took a deep breath, sighing. “Which I get. They needed me to nut up and do the saving. Which… I did. That’s why I died.”

“That wasn’t stupid.” No, it wasn’t even close. Natasha could relate to the other girls story-- aside from Clint, she was the only other human on her team. Sometimes it often felt useless, but she never gave up. Giving up would mean that she had let everyone who had ever doubted her win. “Sometimes being the only human sucks, but like you said-- you ended up doing the saving, so they needed you. Sounds to me like you were one hell of an important human to them.” 

“He’ll have to put quite in effort into it”, said the Asset, emotionlessly. His voice was deprived of any sort of judgement or opinion, merely stating a fact.

“Skeleton Island.” She was starting to sound like a broken record-- always answering questions for the new residents, calming them down when reality hit them, misery building up when she realized that yet another person had been doomed to eternity on the island. It was exhausting. 

“I grew up in a small town. Just about all we had was darts. I think I play better with a little alcohol in my system than I do completely sober, if we’re being honest.”

“I now feel the strong urge to challenge you to a game of darts.”

“This doesn’t – It doesn’t make sense, like, at all.”

“Nothing on this island makes sense-- you’ll come to learn that soon enough.”

Yes. Yes, he definitely could. Not once, but twice. A train. A gunshot. Everything was the same, in the end.

Was she dead? 

“Maybe you gingers are soulless. Tell me, there’s no one here you’d give a helping hand?”

“I like to keep my hands to myself, Kenzi. Sexual encounters are not something I’m here for.”