ten_fwd | Deck Eleven: Holodeck Two (Volga River, circa 1930s)

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Deck Eleven: Holodeck Two (Volga River, circa 1930s)

This is not the smartest idea she's ever had. The library is open; she could be reading, reading just about anything she'd like. She could be in the gym working the edge off her tension. Hell, she could turn this holodeck into a gym that she's familiar with. Test out her ability to actually handle the fake reality with something safe and mundane.

That would be sensible.

Instead, Natasha is sitting on a low pier on the west bank of the Volga River, her slacks rolled up to her knees as she dangles her toes in the water and very carefully monitors her unease.

It's late spring, a vague point in the 1930s. The only people are those working on the occasional cargo ship as they travel up and down the broad expanse of the river, but there are plenty of birds. Location, just south enough from Volgograd that she can't see it.

This might not be the smartest idea she's ever had, but she knows better than to actually go to her hometown. And at least she's got a copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories to keep her company.

[OOC: As per normal Trek holodeck set-ups, anyone can walk in as long as they don't mind entering in mid-program.

Open until I say otherwise! :-) ]

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"Another variant on Erskine's formula. Soviet variant. Administered over the course of a couple years in the late fifties."

She sighs, and glances to the side for a long moment. Then she looks back at him.

"It's why I heal faster than you. And I don't age. Or, at least I haven't so far."

His eyes grow sharp the second she mentions Erskine's name. He blinks at her, dragging the glare off his face with a heavy hand.

He always knew it could be a possibility, but it's almost like a personal slight knowing someone else has tried to continue Erskine's work. Besides his affection for the man, he knows firsthand how wrong things can go if the conditions aren't absolutely right.

But Natasha knows that, too.

"I had wondered," he says, quiet. "You took some pretty hard hits in New York."

He's really not sure what to say to her. He's upset. It's been two years and SHIELD still treats him like a backwater poster boy, just a friendly face to slap on all the questionable things they do. Nat's his partner, and partners should be able to trust each other. They should at least be able to talk to each other.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, some of that hurt bleeding through.

Natasha regards him evenly.

"I am telling you," she says at last. "But I had to trust you first."

There is a faint emphasis on the second 'I'; Natasha had to trust him, not SHIELD.

There is a flicker of a smile. "You're still technically older than me."

A micro-expression flits across Steve's face, shock and confusion and more of that hurt, before his face sets into a flat mask.

"We've been partners almost two years, and you're only now trusting me?" he says. He's got this way of sounding perfectly level and supremely disappointed at the same time. "There were times you could've said something, Nat."

He picks up on the teasing, but stubbornly holds his ground. The idea that Nat couldn't trust him with this before now makes him feel like a grade-A dunce. He really thought they were further along than that.

"Two years, and you haven't got the memo that I have a hard time trusting people?"

She bites back her temper, or tries to.

"You know where I live. There are people I've worked with for years who don't know that much. But you do. "

He sighs, casting back out over the water.

"How old?" There's a shift in his voice. It's still low, but now there's a hint of something like levity. "You said I'm still older than you, so how old are you?"

"Eighty-six. Born January 11, 1928."

The only thing her ID is wrong about is the year.

This is the dangerous thing about truth, the way when she's being honest there is always the desire to say everything. She keeps the rest of it firmly behind her teeth: the other dangerous thing about truth is that when other people know, they actually know about it.

He rubs the bridge of his nose, dragging his hand up and through his hair. It still feels strange at this length, which is an odd thought to be having right now, but he's just trying to latch onto something here.

"Who else knows?" he asks next. His personal feelings aside, he respects his partner's privacy. Even if it doesn't matter up here (blanket tactics: pretend like nobody knows anything, and everything is normal), when they do get back Steve wants to know who he has to watch himself around, and who else is in the know.

"Clint." Automatic - of course he knows. Then her mouth moves a little, and she tilts her head slightly.

"It's rumour in the intelligence community. But those who know for sure, those people you're likely to talk to? Clint, Fury, Hill. Clint's team. There are other people, but..." she shrugs, a little. Chances are, he's never going to need to talk to her therapist.

Or people from the Red Room.

Clint he expected. Fury, too. Even Hill doesn't surprise him, but she keeps on going.

"Is that all?" he asks, sarcasm dripping from his tone. It's not that she's provided him with a list of people who know, it's that it is a list of people she trusts more than him. Normally, that wouldn't even bother him -- yes, he knows she has trust issues, and it doesn't prevent them from working together -- but this? He's been a man out of time for two years, adjusting to life in a century he may not have otherwise seen. The jokes his team make about his age don't faze him, but was Natasha laughing with him, or at him? "Jeez, Natasha."

He turns, putting about three feet between them before he pulls to a stop. "You know, I get it. You're good at what you do. Secrets are part of the job. But--" He turns around. "--I could have used a friend."

"Because it's all about you," she snaps. "And no, you don't get it! You keep walking around like you think the past was somehow better.

I survived what Stalin and the police did to my country. So excuse me if I don't want to reminisce about the good old days of living in a dictatorship!"

"Is that what you think?" he counters, spreading his arms. He looks confused and offended, turning his head to one side and scoffing. My god, he is disappointed.

"I never said the past was better, Natasha. Jesus, I grew up in Brooklyn during a Depression. I've seen human beings beat each other to death fighting over the last loaf of bread." He takes a step closer, brow furrowed. "The 21st century is -- amazing. You can call someone halfway around the world, and you can even see their face while you talk to them. The place I live in is like a mansion compared to what I'm used to. I walk down Connecticut Avenue and there are 15 restaurants serving food I've never even heard of before. The cars, the computers, the neighborhoods all like Stark said they would be. But it isn't home. Don't act like you don't get that. People don't go back to 1936 because they want to forget."

He points an angry finger at the dock. "I know you had it tough. I had no idea how tough until this moment, and that's the point. Because I can take home whatever R&D throws at me and learn it backwards, cut my hair, buy new clothes, buy my furniture in flat boxes and put it together myself and call that home, but it's not home and you goddamn know it."

Natasha glances away, and concentrating on trying to reign in her temper. "I've never said I was American. I've always, always said that I'm Russian. Never lied about that, not to you."

Now she looks back at him.

"And I thought you'd get that sometimes, immigrants don't want to talk about what they left. That they shouldn't have to."

"I know that," he says, struggling to rein in his own temper. They're stuck out here in space, driving wedges between them will just make them weak. But she's right, even if he doesn't want to admit it; it is about him, and it's hard not feeling betrayed.

She keeps talking, and somehow her words shine a light through the haze. When he fought with the Allies, everyone had their own country and their own sense of pride. It's second nature to Steve, something he doesn't even think about. The word immigrant didn't cross his mind, because Natasha's roots are so much a part of who she is it's all he sees. A friend, an ally, and a Russian. But she's more, and he let himself forget that. She had a past before SHIELD, one he knows she's trying to make up for.

He bites his tongue, taking a proverbial step back. "You're right. Nat, I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking about that."

He lets out a puff of air and drags his hand through his hair, feeling the adrenaline seep from his muscles, leaving them tense and achy. His jaw is set, two angry lines between his eyebrows, but he works to keep his voice level.

"I just," he begins, finding he doesn't know how to say the words. He looks down. "I thought I was alone."

Natasha regards him for a long moment, keeping her thoughts off her face. Then her mouth curves, a little ruefully.

"I've never lost time like you have. I had to live through it like everyone else. And I don't remember as much as you'd want me to anyway. They took that from me. And no, don't ask, that is something I'm really not in the mood to explain right now."

To put it mildly.

"Steve, we grew up in two very different places. I would have been as lost in your New York as you would have in my Stalingrad."

He turns his head to look at her, giving her a quick once-over. He wonders how she could have lived all this time and never aged; he wonders what they took from her, how much she forgot. But she tells him not to ask, and angry or not, he respects that. He nods almost imperceptibly, but returns his eyes to hers to silently inform her that someday, someday that's a conversation they need to have.

He shakes his head, and returns his focus to the river. It's easier than looking her in the eye right now.

"That's just it, Natasha," he says. "I'm lost here. It has nothing to do with New York or Stalingrad or Washington D.C.. Everywhere I go, everything is different. The people, the governments, the wars we fight. People jokingly call me a fossil, and I am one not just because time has moved on, but because everyone else has, too. Nobody remembers."

He pulls his hand over his face and sighs, shaking his head. He's just looking for the right words. "It isn't about reminiscing, or the good old days. Just knowing someone else was there, that you're not the last of your kind, makes waking up every day wondering if it all happened, if your life made any difference at all, easier."

There are just some things Steve can't talk about with anyone but his comrades. There are things he remembers, and sees when he closes his eyes, that he can't tell these kids without having to explain them first.

"It makes us an us, not just two people thrown together by chance."

She bites back the first sentence that springs to her mouth, and the second.

"We're partners," she says at last. "We built that. And we built it thanks to missions, and training, and late night pizza. On what we did together. Not...because we both remember how rare telephones used to be.

But Steve...Okay. You remember the Depression. Well, we didn't have that in my country. We had a famine. And if we talked about it, we were arrested for spreading anti-Soviet propaganda." Her mouth twists. "There was a lot of things we were arrested for saying. The only reason anyone who wasn't there knows now is that eventually, word got out. You can even buy books about it. In an actual bookstore.

The wonders of the modern age."

Edited 2014-07-15 06:46 (UTC)

"Missions Fury sent us on together," he points out, frustration self-evident. The worst thing about the way things are now is never knowing when he's being manipulated. Stark's kid sent him down that rabbit hole.

Steve isn't a spy. His life is an open book, and to have something like this in common is too great a coincidence to not be intentional. He's tried opening up to Natasha, and she's shut him down. It's not easy being that honest about what he's going through with anyone but Peggy, but he wanted to think...

Looks like they're just not there yet. He hears what she's saying, carefully taking his heart off his sleeve and swallowing down the burst of anger that rises in its place. The point he takes away is that there's information she'll never volunteer, that the bond he sees is not one she does, and whatever he's looking for he should look elsewhere. Honesty and trust between partners, that's the most important thing to Steve.

And they gave him a spy.

He catches the dryness in her last comment, shooting her a sidelong glance. His lips part, realization washing over him. For years now she's been giving him things to catch up on. Movies, music, history, science; he makes lists so he won't forget between missions. He thought the 20th century Russian history was just her way of getting him to show interest in things that happened outside of his own country, but maybe it was the only way she had of telling him about her past.

He chuckles wryly. "Like I told you, I've been busy. Guess now I've got plenty of time to read up here."

There is, if he closely, something that might tentatively be classed as hope which brightly lightens her expression. Briefly; it settles into a wry smile, crooked and a shield.

"Guess you do."

One thing they're both good at is holding onto shields. Steve rubs the back of his neck and sets his hands on his hips, resisting the urge to rub his face again.

He has more questions. This conversation is going to play on repeat in his head for days before he can really come to grips with it, but he's already started internalizing everything again, sticking those thoughts and memories he can't articulate back inside his head. SHIELD wanted him to see a counsellor after the Battle of New York, but he can't see that the guy did him any good.

Some burdens you just have to carry yourself, he guesses.

"You still want to go for a run?" he asks, voice grittier than earlier but without the anger of a few minutes ago. He seems distant, half here, but he turns to give her his attention without shying away from her eyes, and he plans to take her recommendations more seriously in the future.

In fact, he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his notebook, quickly scribbling 1936, Volga, Soviet famine while he waits for her answer.

Quietly, "Look up Stalin's Great Purge, too."

(The intensity of that terror really kicked off in 1937; Steve's a smart boy, he'll catch on.)

She meets his gaze, and tilts her head a bit. But it's more playful than the intensity of before, a willingness to not shut him out completely.

"Yep. If you're still game, Rogers."

He looks up at her from under furrowed brow. That one doesn't need any further questioning, Steve can put the pieces together just fine. He clenches his jaw, nods softly, and adds it to the list.

"To be honest, a run sounds good," he says, slipping the pencil into the spine of the notebook and putting both away. He's got a lot of frustration to work out of his system. "And it'll be a good opportunity to see what this place can throw at us."

He smiles at her, the kind of diplomatic smirk that doesn't reach his eyes all the way. But there is one more thing that should be said. He glances at his feet, twisting his heel into the dock. "Thank you for trusting me."

"You earned it," she says, her voice even but far from simple. What she doesn't say: don't make me regret it.

Then she smiles, and highlights just how serious she'd been only a moment before.

"I know better than to race you...so north or south?" she asks, rising briefly on her toes to stretch her feet. Running sounds like a very, very good idea.

He opens his mouth, but thinks better of it. Wondering whether the only reason he "earned it" is because he walked in on her is just going to launch them into another argument. The fact is he knows now, regardless of whether it was intentional he find out or not.

"North," he says, squinting into the distance. He likes the look of the terrain, and there's something about going north that feels like coming out on top. "Lucky for you I'm not dressed to race, so I think I'll keep a leisurely pace."

He smirks, knowing she gets what "leisurely" means for him. Hey, she still might be able to keep up if she changes her mind.

If there is one thing Natasha has no issue about, it's lying. If she didn't trust him, than she wouldn't have said anything at all. Of course, the timing was off from when she'd planned, but she'll roll with it.

"Gracious of you, Rogers," she says, making a face at him. Captain America can be a jerk, who knew.

Not that she objects to jerks; she's one herself.

Which is a good reason for why she starts to take off towards the path.

Keep up, Cap.

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stark_spangled - 2014-07-18 07:35 (UTC) - Expand

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