driftfleet | catching up with friends

Entry tags:

catching up with friends

Who: Natasha + Wanda, Natasha + You
Broadcast: Nope
Action: SS Starstruck, SS Vanquish, Iskaulit
When: Now-ish?

Starstruck

[With Pietro showing up, it seemed like the thing to do to check in on Wanda. Natasha had kept an eye open for the girl, but unsurprisingly their paths hadn't crossed by accident since then. She could have sent a private message—maybe should have—but the kind of distance that talking to someone through a screen would hide clues to Wanda's emotional state that Natasha would rather not miss.

It made the most sense to drop in. Have surprise on her side. See Wanda face to face.

That's how Natasha found herself on the SS Starstruck, standing outside her younger teammate's door like she belonged there and knocking confidently. Will Wanda even be in? On the other hand, would Natasha be here if she weren't?]

Starstruck - later

[It's a less confident Natasha who slips off of the ship after her meeting with Wanda, a Natasha with new memories and nursing a stabbing headache. She'd just as soon sneak off the ship without running into anyone else at this point; she could use a little time to herself to recover and regroup.

Even a spy might have a hard escaping a spaceship unnoticed, though.]

Vanquish

[Back on her own ship, Natasha retreats to her bunk almost immediately. She lays down for a bit—but she doesn't stay down long. After enough time to push aside the worst of her nagging headache, she throws herself into activity. Nothing useful. Nothing that takes focus. But empty action, something to work off a little energy while her thoughts are elsewhere. Pushups. Sit ups. Lunges. Whatever she can do with the space she has.

Eventually, the workout might spill out into the corridor...]

Iskaulit

[But after that, her workout will take her to a real gym, somewhere she can actually open up. Anyone who finds her here might run into Natasha taping up her hands before laying into a heavy bag. Or they might run into her working her frustration off on the bag itself. Spectators might be impressed—if they don't know her, and if they don't know people with superpowers. She's stronger than most people take her for, though, and her form is more or less flawless, if you notice those things.

She stays in the gym for a long while, until she feels herself back on top of her emotions. All of her reactions have been identified, categorized and compartmentalized.

That's when she she finally wanders over to one of the bars.

She's earned a drink.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[A little surprised by Natasha's concern but certainly welcoming the check-in, Wanda gives her a friendly enough grin.]

He is doing well. He's already a little antsy from being confined to his ship, but otherwise he seems to be settling in well.

[Wanda walks past Natasha, opening her bunkroom door and gestures inside.]

You want to sit down?

Hopefully it won't be too long before we get to another planet and he can stretch his legs.

[Natasha accepts the invitation, entering and glancing around, looking for a place to sit.]

It was nice to see him. Which isn't something I'd have expected to say.

[Wanda quirks an eyebrow at that. She understand that, unlike her, Pietro had not gotten a whole year after the battle with Ultron to make amends for their initial clashes with the Avengers. However, she can't help but respond with a little snark.]

IS that all then? You just wanted to check up on me?

[Wanda leans against the wall of her bunkroom, opposite of where Natasha is seated on her bed.]

No one told me joining the avengers would mean having babysitters.

[Natasha is, luckily, quite prepared for snark. She's had it rougher than that.]

I wouldn't call it babysitting. Maybe checking up, though. Teammates do that sometimes, they tell me.

Teammates...

[Wanda punctuates the word with a soft snort of derision. It's not that she is opposed to having teammates. Not at all. It's just that it's rather ironic to hear that coming from Agent Romanov, who had not exactly been a teammate of her's at the airport.]

[Then something odd happens, as Wanda's memories of the fight come back to her. She feels a sharp pain crackle through her head. She cries out, surprised by the sudden intensity of the headache.]

[Natasha hadn't thought about her word choice deeply. It wasn't inappropriate, though. She's ready to stand behind it when Wanda snorts—then there's a buzzing pain from behind one ear, and flashes of a memory not her own, a the sight of herself from someone else's eyes.

She shakes her head, the words she was ready to say vanishing in her mouth. Her brow furrows and she thinks that's not right...

Then from Natasha's own point of view, fighting Clint, asking him if they were still friends... and Wanda picking her up and tossing her like a rag doll. That scene is followed by others in a barrage, shuffled together. A giant tumbling down on a plane. A truck tossed throw the air, exploding, and afterward her hissed words at Steve about whether or not this was according to plan.

The whole situation, spiraling out of control.]

[Crimson luminescence surrounds Wanda, its energy crackling and sparking, as she clutches her head in pain. She'd experience something akin to this before--her powers going haywire, hijacked by a glitch of her augment. This time, however, Wanda does her best to maintain control, to not allow them to run wild like they had several months ago. She is somewhat successful but not completely. She can feel her telepathy powers activate. It's involuntary. Wanda doesn't mean to be reading Agent Romanoff, but it was already taking all of her focus to keep her other powers from acting up. So, reluctantly, she begins to see into Natasha's mind.]

[Wanda could at least tell that what she was seeing were the events that unfolded around the Sokovia Accords, but they didn't seem to all be her memories. In fact, there were times where she was seeing herself through the eyes of... Natasha? It had to be.]

[She can feel the confusion of her leg kick coming to a screeching halt, followed by the disorientation of being thrown through the air as if on invisible strings and colliding--hard--with a luggage cart. She could feel the very blow she had given... and it hurt...]

[Then another scene, Steve and Bucky. She was staring the duo down. The rubble of a collapsed air traffic control tower behind them. This had to have been what Steve told her about. Natasha's decision to let them through. She watches the scene play out. Natasha holding back Black Panther as much as she could with her stun rounds, buying Steve and Bucky time.]

[More moments flash before her, some more tangible than others, where she's able to pick out sentences and faces better. Others are more fluid. They are more of an emotional sensation than an actual memory. That is, Wanda was feeling the thoughts and motivations that had drove Natasha's decisions. Whatever was happening, it felt deeper and more of a mutual exchange than what Wanda's typical telepathic abilities entailed. It was like the two of them were linked. Each feeling, thinking and seeing as the other had.]

[It lasts several minutes longer before everything fades away with another white hot flash of pain. This time, it is severe enough to knock Wanda out. She slumps against the wall, unconscious. The crackling, scarlet red energy that had enshrouded her fizzles out. She lies motionless.]

[Natasha relives letting Steve and Barnes escape with a pang of some feeling she has a hard time putting a name to. Not regret. She didn't regret that decision. But there's a pain to it, to surrendering the Avengers and the hope it could go back to what it had been before the Accords. It's difficult because she cares for Steve. He's a friend.

And Barnes—

The next flash is earlier, Barnes choking her after she and Sharon engage him in the midst of a rampage. Pushing her down. "You could at least recognize me."

—but Natasha let them go, because this was too much. The destruction, watching friends and former teammates fighting, dragging in others and only making everything worse. The whole situation would only escalate unless someone stopped it. And that had been Natasha.

It was harder to keep that perspective with Wanda's memories flashing among hers, though. The contrast was distinct. The blame Wanda had to carry for Lagos, the loss of agency as Tony put her under an informal house arrest...

Then everything snaps in a bright flash of red light, and the flow of memories comes to an abrupt and painful end. Pain explodes through Natasha's skull, bright and hot and wet so for an instant she's almost surprised she isn't bleeding. For a second she struggles to stay conscious, but it's a losing battle. After only another second or two, she loses focus and slumps to the bed.]

[Wanda stirs first, her eyelids softly flutter before slowly opening. She then immediately grimaces, clutching her head with one hand. A lingering headache makes it hard for her to get up completely. It's not as painful as the sudden spike that triggered all this, but it's enough to frustrate her. Her vision clearing, Wanda spots Nat lying on her bunk. She slowly gets up, and kneels down next to her by the bed. She checks her pulse. Good, she's still breathing at least. Wanda closes her eyes and takes a few deep breaths to try and clear her head, meeting with only little success.]

Agent Roma-- Natasha, can you hear me?

Nnn—ow.

[Natasha's brows crease and her face scrunches against the persistent ache in her head, clouding her thoughts and confusing her perceptions.]

Do they always do that?

[Wanda is still wincing a little herself from the lingering headache.]

The augments?

[She sighs, trying to force the pain out with her breath.]

Only in my personal case it seems.

[She rubs her head again, starting to look a little guilty.]

Nat, I- [The more informal abbreviation of her name just slips out, but this time Wanda doesn't correct herself.] I am sorry...

[Natasha touches her own head gingerly, near the augment. She can't say she's a fan.]

Believe me, I don't think you did that on purpose. [Ignoring anything else she might be referring to in her apology.

Natasha's not ready for that.]

You okay?

[Wanda nods. The guilty look still lingering on her face.]

This is the second time something like this has happened. An augment glitch forcing my powers to go haywire. At least this time, I was able to control it better.

[She had her training with Vision and Charles to thank for that. It's bitter comfort to her though, because...]

Yet again, it seems I inadvertently dragged you into this mess.

[For a moment, Wanda has forgotten that the Natasha from before and this Natasha with her now are two separate people. Too distracted by the lingering ache and fuzziness of her head.]

[Natasha's brows draw together, a frown of confusion that she smooths out with her fingers.]

It's all right. I was going to remember eventually anyway.

[She wouldn't have seen Wanda's side of it, though.

Or the suspicion that Wanda would have seen hers, even if it wouldn't have included the worst of Natasha's memories by far.]

[Wanda still looks troubled, as her hand descends from rubbing her head to clenching her other in her lap.]

That they would use me and my powers again like this...

[The anger clearly there in Wanda's voice and flaring up behind her eyes.]

[Natasha's lips tighten slightly as she considers the younger woman's expression and whether or not she should ask the question on her mind.]

What happened the last time?

[Wanda looks up at her, confused for a moment. But she quickly realizes her mistake. Her thoughts and memories had been a little scrambled after what happened, yet it still felt like a careless mistake.]

I lost control of my powers. All of them. It was much worse than what you just experienced.

[She sighs.]

To keep others safe, I exiled myself to the nearby planet the fleet was visiting at the time. I thought I could wait it out, or that I would eventually be able to regain control.

In the meantime, the landscape around where I hid became badly damaged or even destroyed. Nightmares tormented me every time I closed my eyes. And I imagine I scared a great number of locals that dared wander too close.

... everything a monster does.

[The guilt Wanda used to feel over this was now replaced with anger. Her rage palpably boiling just below the surface of her words.]

But you were able to regain control eventually. [The monster comment manages to win a little wince out of Natasha. Nothing demonstrative, but it's there.

It seemed to be a common motif.]

Guessing being a hermit wasn't actually what did it.

[Despite her otherwise sour demeanor, Natasha's words manage to force a small, sliver of a grin out of her.]

I have Vision, James Barnes, and you to thank for that.

Another version of me. Or not.[She looks up, as though she could find some clarification on the ceiling above them.] I'm still not sure how that's supposed to work.

[She brings her attention back to Wanda, shrugging off the strangeness of that situation physically.]

Either way, you shouldn't apologize. It's a good thing you had them. And if there's something I know about me, it's that I wouldn't have been there if I didn't want to be.

I know... we were closer then.

[She sounds sad. She knows that the Natasha from her first glitch experience was a different Natasha, or might as well be as she has no memories from her first time in the fleet. Now, there was all this mess with the Sokovia Accords, and, try though they all might, there was no way to completely erase the damage they'd all done to each other from that. All of this naturally made it hard for her and Natasha to be as close as they had been.]

[Natasha glances away. The sadness makes sense, and Natasha wishes that she could be reassuring. With the new memories fresh in her head, both her own and Wanda's, it's hard to work out where the two of them stand and where they have stood.]

I'm glad you had that.

[That much at least Natasha can say with certainty.]

[Wanda only responds with a small, sad smile. She's not sure what more needs be said on that subject. Instead, her thoughts drift back to the memories she had been exposed to during the glitch. Natasha's memories... if anything, she was able to understand that Natasha had been acting from a desire to try and hold the Avengers together. Wanda's motivations... well, it seemed she had been more selective in her loyalty. Still, she feels the need to ask...]

You chose to side with Stark. Yet, in the end, you helped Steve and Bucky escape. Why? If you were willing to believe that Steve was making the right call, why even fight in the first place?

[In this case, Natasha can see how she might owe Wanda an answer to that. Natasha's position.]

I don't think Steve was making the right call. [She can't ignore his role in escalating the conflict between the Avengers. She doesn't blame him, exactly. They'd all played their parts. She hadn't seen everything she should have either. And Tony... had been Tony.

The memories are fresh in her head, but she finds it's not hard for her to pick up the threads of her thoughts.]

Tony didn't either.

Neither of them knows how to stop. They try, but it's not who they are. They're not compromisers.

[Natasha pauses a beat, untangling her emotions from her actions.]

Someone had to back down or the fight wasn't going to stop. Everything that was happening, it was all us. There weren't any aliens, no Hydra, no Ultron. That was just the Avengers destroying an airport.

I did what I had to to control the damage.

[Wanda listens to Natasha's words, neither reacting or interrupting. She knows the truth of Nat's words. Wanda had felt a degree of Natasha's emotions, her motivations, as she experienced her memories. Yet, it had still been important to her to hear the explanation out loud.]

Everyone... everyone of us did what we thought was right. All of us acting with the best intentions, and yet still coming to a clash. Perhaps the Avengers were doomed from the very beginning.

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