i'm russian. or i was.

(✉ → Nat): I thought that was because you drew the short straw with Tony. (✉ → Nat): Or something about Tony telling Senator Stern to stick his pen sideways in a certain orifice? (✉ → Nat): Ha ha. My brain’s working for the first time since 1921. Call the papers. (✉ → Nat): Speaking of bullets, though… (✉ → Nat): I might have a lead on something you would be interested in.

It was a faint thing. A buzz in the back of her mind that told her she knew him — or of him? A thread frayed at the end, familiarity with no solid memory of when she had met him or who he was. But also… some alarm. He looked the same. Why did that confuse her? It was days ago that she had first seen him. She had gone home and looked him up, pulling his picture from the cameras on the street and running it through every database she had access to. Ikaris Ambrose. A history teacher. Everything about what she had found had seemed insignificant.

So why did she know him?

With nothing of meaning to pull on from a distance, Natasha decided to pull on the line directly. She showed up in his office while he was in class, arms at her side as she looked at the shelves and searched for other things of familiarity — only glancing at him when the door finally opened. A general look of disinterest, as if he were the one intruding on her space. “Have you ever been to Russia?”

“I’m still whining now, aren’t I?” He flashed a grin, utterly unapologetic. He was pretty good at that, at always having the perfect response to whatever a person said. It drove half his siblings crazy, made the other half look at him with varying degrees of fondness. And which sibling fell on which side of that divide tended to change from day to day, tended to rotate depending on how they were feeling or thinking that week. 

He narrowed his eyes at her, tilting his head to the side and looking like a man who’d just been told something utterly impossible. “They taste like happiness,” he corrected. “And you can get dentures, anyway. Things being bad for your teeth is not an excuse not to enjoy them. Everything’s bad for your teeth! Teeth suck!” It was a stupid, silly argument to have, but he’d always liked conversations like this in the time leading up to a mission. It helped when you were able to loosen your muscles a little, when you could spend the time before a mission or a patrol or a job remembering to laugh, remembering to be human. It used to drive Bruce crazy, used to make him roll his eyes and shake his head and say Robin, not now or please stop or anything along those lines. Dick kept doing it anyway. Bruce needed to loosen up sometimes, even if he wouldn’t admit it. And Natasha was much the same. “I am not basic. You’re basic. Glazed. It’s like I don’t even know you at all.” 

The job itself was a short one, even if it was uncomfortable. It was nothing Dick wasn’t used to, as unfortunate as that was. Growing up as he had, the son of a prominent wealthy man, plenty of people had figured he was public property. People he didn’t know ‘accidentally’ brushing against him at galas, copping a feel as they passed. Dick had gotten very good at the ‘grin and bear it’ solution to this particular problem. “You sound like you’re about eighty right now,” he quipped, leaning in to look at her phone. His expression darkened a little at the reminder of what they were after here. He’d always hated human traffickers with an extra sort of anger, something he knew Natasha would agree with. “Gonna feel really good putting her in prison,” he said darkly. 

Dick carried himself in a way that made her miss her sister. It was something that was becoming more frequent since she had reunited her a few years ago, realizing what her sister had been going through and everything that she had closed her eyes to in the intermediate time. But Dick had that same humor, that same ease in conversation as if nothing had happened to tarnish his opinion or worldview. As if he weren’t just like her. (If Natasha allowed herself, she might have been jealous. Might have wished it for herself.)

“They taste like regret,” Natasha added, driving the point home before she crossed her arms again. “And dentures are a last-ditch option, that shouldn’t be the selling point on candies. Just get dentures.” Each moment she could pull from someone else. Another memory that she held close to her chest. Yelena and now? She was thinking about Wanda just before everything went to hell in Lagos. The ease of conversation that had some strange edge of seriousness – and here it wasn’t as simply defined because Natasha didn’t have any criticism for Dick. He had proven himself, just like her sister had, just like Clint had. Just like Wanda had tried to do. “I have a refined palette. Less is more, Grayson. Maybe you need to do a little more maturing before you come for my preferences.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Miguel grumbled, the words slipping out before he could stop them. It was probably a mistake, because she said it like it was the kind of thing everyone ought to know, like the way Peter and Kitty talked about their Star Wars shit. Miguel was pretty sure he could play it off if he had to, could pretend he’d never really had an interest in pop culture, but he didn’t think Nat would buy it as easily as most. She might have seen his collection of textbooks and absence of a television, but she was also a superspy. And Miguel was a subpar liar on his best days. She clarified what she meant, and Miguel snorted because it did sound fairly accurate. Up until the last bit, at least. “I’m under no illusion that the world revolves around me,” he assured her. “Just the future of humanity.” He said it in a dry tone that made it seem like a joke, but… it almost wasn’t. Miguel was in a pretty unique position to have a real impact on the future here. He just couldn’t actually do it without erasing himself from the timeline. “Sure,” he replied, dismissive in a way that betrayed the falseness of the statement. “I’ve got a swear jar. Trying not to put any more cash in it.” He smirked a little at her observation, because she was right even if she wasn’t. Slang shifted by the end of the century. Most people either didn’t pick up on what Miguel meant or wrote it off as something else. But… nothing got passed Nat. He liked that.

Blush deepening, Miguel looked away. He knew the movement was telling in and of itself, knew someone like Nat could pick it apart with ease. “It was an apology,” he insisted. “Friends apologize to friends. That’s what your advice was for, wasn’t it?” He followed her gaze to the shelf, weighed down by textbooks he’d taken from Tony or bought at used bookstores. Most of them were things that were hard to find by 2099, science Alchemax didn’t care for people to know. He was prouder of the collection than he had any right to be. “They are,” he replied, even if he knew Nat was saying it sarcastically. “Can’t the books be the point? I’d really like to talk about the books.” He glanced up at her, trying to look confused. “What? I don’t know what you mean. There’s a chat?” The words were stiff and unnatural and he was already caught anyway, so he sighed. “I thought it’d be confusing if there were two Spider-Men. And I’m not ready for people to know who I am.”

/

He might not have known what she was talking about, but it was clear by his reaction that he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being compared to someone who thought that highly of themselves that the entire world depended on them. (Destiny and all the other versions of bullshit that came with the idea of a ‘chosen one.’) “He said that too.” Harry Potter had been something she had learned about recently. After she became an Avenger. (It was strange to think that in the grand scheme of things, that was a recent event in her life.) Her relationship with popular media was almost entirely defined by Tony and the things that he was passionate about. And he had a better sense than most to pick things that she would enjoy too. “Oh?” She asked, arching a brow, “Funny, it’s almost as if those are… the exact same thing.” Natasha pretended to be confused for a moment, waving a finger in the air as if bouncing between two points. “Nothing like Harry Potter at all.” No matter what she said here, however, there was no pretending (on her part) that the weight of his words didn’t match the tone. She hadn’t known Miguel long, but the few moments she had spent with him taught her that he was more likely to joke about the truth than try to joke a lie into a proper cover story. “Right,” she replied dryly. “And I shouldn’t look into it anymore, right? That would be a waste of my time? But… if you were to ask me, using fake cursing might as well be the same thing. You owe that jar a few dollars at least.”

The smirk on her face never faded, he kept blushing and Natasha made moves to keep eye contact with him. “Friends apologize to friends,” Natasha allowed. “But I’ve never looked like that when apologizing.” Not that Natasha did that often, but she couldn’t imagine herself lighting up like a Christmas tree over a gesture like that towards someone like Tony or even Steve. “No,” she said plainly. “My advice was not for friends. I was reading the room. Something you seem to need help doing.” The confused look from Miguel was met with a blank one from Natasha, hoping that he’d drop it without her having to push. “I was proud of you, for two whole seconds, I want you to know that.” She crossed her arms and glanced away, sighing before she nodded, allowing him to change the subject. “There’s not rolling being known back, I understand. But Spider-Dude is a pretty shitty name to go by.”

Although he was in remarkably good shape, Dick’s idea of working out had never involved jogging. He preferred more acrobatic activities, preferred swinging from a trapeze or doing backflips to something as dull as a jog in the park. But with a running partner like Natasha? He figured there was entertainment to be had even with the dullest of exercise methods. “Well, you really should have remembered who you were asking, then,” he pointed out. “I’m a detective and I love to talk. So, logic dictates…” He trailed off, making a motion with his hands and grinning. “No, I don’t want you to lie to me. I can see them, Natasha. With my eyes. I just didn’t know you were that kind of a jogger. Thought we were taking it easy, you know?”

/

He was right about that. There was no doubt in her mind that anything she chose to do with Dick would involve an extensive amount of talking, no matter what her position was on that. He was a social being. And he didn't know when to stop asking questions. "Maybe I had a hope that you'd be able to focus on this one thing." But as the teasing increased, Natasha just smirked at him and rolled down her pants so that the weights were visible. "Now you can't see them! A figment of your imagination." Standing up, she looked at Dick and mimicked his expression from earlier. "You should really remember who you're jogging with, then."

Danny’s smile stretched a little wider at her words. “I bring a few things to the table,” he allowed, because he could admit to that. He might have self worth issues fueled by over a decade of being an outsider in a society that wasn’t kind to anyone who hadn’t been born to it, might have added a few more to the pile when he came back to New York and realized he didn’t fit in there, either, but he was getting to a place in his life where he was able to admit that he did have things to offer. “But Colleen? She’s incredible. She deserves the world, you know?” And Danny would give it to her if he could.

Starting with a new blade.

“It depends on your definition of practicality,” he hummed, thinking of the elegance with which Colleen used a blade, the way she could make anything an extension of her hand. Practicality all depended on how you intended to use a weapon. In the right hands? Anything was practical. He’d learned that intimately over the years, both proven it himself and had it proven to him.

At her comment, he nodded absently and lifted the blade from the display. The shop keeper gave him a wary look, but made no move to stop him — sometimes, being a famous billionaire had its perks. He weighed the blade in his hand, tossing it back and forth between his hands experimentally. “It’s got a good balance,” he mused. “Not sure about the swing.” It would be difficult to swing it in here without hitting something, and the last thing Danny wanted to do was cause a mess.

/

It was a lot like watching Tony talk about love and romance. When he was in love. Tony could talk about sex and casual relationships and make jokes about what he'd do if he was King of Asgard. But when it came down to it, he poured his whole soul into a person, into a single relationship. Danny had that same passion for Colleen. Tony's influence was strong enough that it carried over those years that Danny was absent from their lives. (She hadn't known him before he had gone missing, but it was heavily publicized. And she had looked into that relationship more deeply when she had been undercover to watch Tony.)

"You'd rearrange the stars for her." It wasn't a question, if Danny could, Natasha could see him reaching out to move the sun into a more favorable position if Colleen asked it of him. "I prefer people to not see the blade until it's too late." But from what she had learned about them, Colleen had a dojo in the past. And that her skills with a blade were impressive. Enough that SHIELD had a small file on her that was missing giant portions of information.

Like Colleen, Natasha's preference was rooted in her training. But while there was an elegance to a blade like the one Danny was looking to buy for his wife, Natasha preferred the personal touch that came with a smaller knife.

He studied her for a moment, letting the words hang between them, digesting them carefully. It wasn’t an answer, but it was one all the same. And what she said next proved as much. She was straightforward, in spite of her reputation as a spy. It was something refreshing, as far as Miguel’s opinion went. In Alchemax, every conversation was a game of chess. You had to think ten moves ahead, had to be hyperaware of everything your ‘opponent’ was saying, even if they were meant to be a friend. It was exhausting, and this… This was a nice change of pace. “Noted,” he hummed softly, looking a little too pleased considering the topic at hand. He huffed a laugh when she spoke again, pursing his lips as he nodded. “Makes sense,” he allowed. Concussed people didn’t often give great intel. Spider-Man had taught him that. When she turned the question around on him, he flashed a closed-mouth smile. “Who, me? I’m a scientist. They don’t task me with getting people to talk. Mostly, I’m the guy who works through what they say.” It was a lie, and it wasn’t. Most things out of Miguel’s mouth were like that nowadays, half truth and half fiction. He’d done plenty to make people talk, had threatened and maimed and even killed more than once, even if he didn’t cop to it much. But… there were things he wasn’t ready to say. He liked Natasha, but there was something to be said for holding some cards close to your chest.

Miguel wasn’t sure if it was a comfort or not, the idea that she, too, had made assumptions about Tony that were proven false. Maybe it should have made him feel better about the fact that he’d been so easily convinced of his grandfather’s complacency in the way history turned out, but honestly? It just left him with a hollowed out feeling in his gut, like someone took a spoon and scooped out everything real, everything tangible. It made him feel a surge of lonesomeness. Not for himself, exactly, but for Tony. For the guy who was a good man with a bad reputation, and for all the shit that had brought him over the years. “He found me out, too,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I would have told him if he hadn’t. I would have stopped, I think, but… I don’t know if I ever would have let him in on the truth.” He would have stayed Michael O’Mara forever, would have fed Tiberius falsified information until he was found out and sacked or killed or whatever Ty might have done had Tony not blown the whole thing up by storming guns blazing into the situation. 

In spite of the heavy feeling in his chest, Miguel still smiled faintly when she said his name. The name Xina had given him decades ago, fond and easy to fit between her lips. The name Dana had breathed in her sleep, smiling even at the dream of him. The name Zee used in exasperation that was more affectionate than anything, the name Maddie said in a way that made him think he’d like to hear it more often. He’d always liked it, he found, when people called him Miggy. “Nat,” he agreed with a nod, “and not Natalie. I could kick him the next time he says it, if you want.” It was a joke, light and easy, and it was almost funny that he found that so simple to offer her. That she’d only just said his real name for the first time, and he was already comfortable here. “I’m a scientist,” he said again, “and I believe in anything easily proven. And that… That’s one of the most straightforward proven facts I’ve got.” Water was wet, the sun rose in the morning, and Miguel O’Hara made life-altering mistakes often. “I guess misery loves company.” And there was certainly worse company to have. He sighed at her words, turned them over in his mind. “I’ve never been good at it,” he admitted. “Forgiving myself. I guess most people aren’t. But living with it… None of us have much of a choice there, do we?”

She was watching him — analyzing each word that came from his mouth and the expression that matched it. Natasha didn’t believe that he was telling the full truth, but he was telling something of the truth. And that had to be enough. (Forcing herself to accept that because he was like her, and if anyone pushed past what she was readily offering, she would have shut down any momentum in the conversation.) “You were around him for how long before the cat was out of the bag? Just past a year, wasn’t it?” Which meant that even if Miguel didn’t have any training with people or getting information, his own desire to protect himself was enough to keep him on the right track and keep his identity mostly secret. (He was downplaying it. But Natasha didn’t press. She was the same. Never revealing the full truth of anything without reason.)

There was something else that lingered in his expression. Something for Tony. She didn’t think it was pity, but there was an underlying sadness that made her wonder how sympathetic he was to Tony’s position. (And why did it reach him so deeply.) Natasha had already told him that she wouldn’t have had she not been told to reveal her position. And even then, she hadn’t seen the benefit of Tony knowing at that time. But all the distance they had put between themselves, and that donut shop had paid off. She had a friendship that was… It was the lifetime kind. Even if they pulled at the boundaries and hurt each other — even if they weren’t perfect. They still had each other.

@deoalexdanvers

Natasha had thrown out a few of their decorations out the window the second they spurred to life in their living room. She hadn't been much for decorating anyway, but Dylan was living with her and she deserved to have a normal holiday. Natasha had struggled with that before, trying to give a show of a normal, modern holiday. She had tried with Yelena and she had tried with Wanda - and Natasha wasn't sure if she was ever able to capture the magic that the television displayed. "Why do you-" Natasha sighed, leaning against the counter in the kitchen before shrugging. "Did you buy any spider decorations that we need to worry about?"

@firstxman

Natasha dropped her gun, looking at the creature - decoration - thing that had just tried to attack her. She had shot to wound at first, but a few body shots and she realized... it wasn't going to go down without a lethal one. She was crouched down next to the body, a finger in the pumpkin spillage and a blank expression on her face as she tried to piece it all together. Nothing about this made sense - and when Scott spoke, she glanced upward, shocked that he'd talk to her at all, but nothing on her face hinting at the feeling.

"Let's hope they don't have some kind of hive mind going on," Natasha muttered, not knowing enough about the creatures to give any helpful advice. Other than aim for the head. There was another rumbling around them, a strange shuffling that didn't match any human movements. "We're surrounded."

(✉️ ➡️ the law): you sure dd (✉️ ➡️ the law): he would know no such thng! he beleves n me :( (✉️ ➡️ the law):  tred that frst! ‘m not an dot (✉️ ➡️ the law): l don’t love lt… makes lt look llke l’m always dolng a capltal letter. lt’s rulnlng my cool hlp vlbes

“Yeah, somehow I’m still kinda feelin’ relieved an’ offended.” Even if he was supposed to be flattered that she did not think he was that stupid, it was still a little hard for Remy to digest that. Maybe he would not be stupid enough to try and put anything over on Natasha Romanoff, and she probably would have already let him know just how stupid that would be if he actually had tried it. So he supposed he really should be flattered that she did not think he was that stupid. Leaning his arm on the back of the chair, Remy slouched a bit as he looked at her. “So I must be jus’ stupide enough if you’re tryin’ t’ offer me work. I’m guessin’ you know what my skill set is den, an’ I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout my skills at makin’ t'ings go boom. So I gotta t'ink dis proposition you’re suggestin’ prob'ly ain’t somet'ing you’d offer an’ upstandin’ citizen, huh?”

/

“Flattery.” That’s what it was meant to be, at least. So she figured she’d state it plainly, not wanting it to get confused for anything else. (And judging by his expression, it was close to falling into a realm Natasha had no intention of venturing towards. Not tonight.) Natasha stirred the ice in her drink with her straw as she listened to him, letting him put the pieces together of what he knew and faintly smiling as he kept getting his assumptions right. “Boom could happen. You would have some creative liberty with this,” she replied vaguely, still not offering details until she knew he was interested. “Upstanding is overrated. And boring. And it doesn’t pay well.” Natasha looked up from her drink and at his face, arching a brow expectantly. “Don’t tell me that you’ve changed your ways?” 

Anger was curling in his gut, wrapping itself around his heart in a chokehold and in a lot of ways, he was glad for it. What were his alternatives here? The list of things you could feel when staring down the eyes of your father’s murderer wasn’t a particularly long one. There was grief for what you’d lost, heavy and so thick that you’d drown in it long before you could muster up the strength to burst through the surface. There was fear that you might be next, looming like a shadow and bathing you in darkness even when the sun was right there, hanging high in the sky. And there was anger, burning hot and bright and feeling righteous even when it was anything but, feeling justified even when your father had been a bad man with a long list of people he’d hurt, with your name written on the bottom in permanent marker. Between the three, anger was always what Ric would prefer. Anger was familiar. It was easy. And it was so much more tangible than the other two. You could shake it into the world, or scream it into someone’s face. It was the only one of the three that you could make someone else feel with you. Natasha would never grieve Louis Richter. She would never be afraid of his son. But anger? It was only ever hiding just beneath the surface. On everyone, always. Rictor knew that better than most. 

“Is that what you tell yourself?” His smile was so sharp that it could have been a blade all its own, could have slit a man’s throat. “That you never had a soul to begin with, so it doesn’t matter what you do now? That you were doomed from the start? Is that how you live with all the awful shit you do? With all the people you leave behind?” (Maybe it was coming from experience. Maybe that was how he had justified himself when he was killing whoever Cable told him to kill. He was a Richter. His family put weapons into the world. What chance had he ever had to be something different?) “Depends on who you ask. Me, I’d rather be anything than Sasha.” 

She pulled the card away before he could snatch it from her and he scowled, lip curling upwards. “I don’t hang out at them for fun,” he snapped back, anger still radiating from every pore. His nostrils flared when she claimed she’d turn the card over, because there was no way in hell it wouldn’t blow back on him or his team if she did. And they were assholes, they were. But not a single goddamn one of them deserved to spend a night in jail because Rictor had let a card with a fake name slip out of his pocket on his rush to leave a not-so-safehouse full of more ghosts than the body on the floor. “Why do you care? What do you get out of this, out of any of it? You’re a goddamn Avenger. If you wanna solve this shit, you can do it without me.” He glared daggers at the card in her hands, at the spot on the wall behind her, at anything but her because he swore he was that kid in the desert all over again with blood on his sneakers every time he caught her eye. “A woman,” he replied. “Red hair. Lighter than yours, though. Almost… blonde, I guess?”

/

His anger came out in a short slip of words, quick and harsh — and deadly if they had any real edge to them. And to someone with a softer heart, they might have cut. But Natasha just looked at him and tried not to think about the others that she had seen in his position. Tried not to think about Antonia. (There was still a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach over what had happened, and in that singular case, it had worked out. Antonia had broken free from the mind control that her father had put her under and Natasha… could pretend that she had made any real amends.)

“It’d be easier for you if I were lying, wouldn’t it?” It was easier if they didn’t know each other, if their lives weren’t linked by a string of events that had happened more than once in Natasha’s career with SHIELD. “But it’s hard to make a choice when you start as young as I did.” As young as he almost had. She remembered in the aftermath of his father’s death, the world around them rumbling and something within him had woken up. Did he remember that? Did he remember the look on the agent’s face? Or the way that Natasha drew her gun on her fellow and told them that they weren’t here to kidnap anyone. (She had let herself believe that she had saved him that day. But all she did was spare him a different, just as dark path, it seemed.) “I’m not asking you,” she said flatly. “Never got the impression that you made good choices of any kind.”