outstandingbalance: (pic#10792519)
Natasha Romanoff ([personal profile] outstandingbalance) wrote in [community profile] driftfleet2017-02-12 12:38 pm

(no subject)

Who: Natasha Romanoff + various
Broadcast: N/A
Action: Starstruck, Heron, Vanquish, Iskaulit & Siourew
When: Throughout February

Visits - Starstruck & Heron

[Don't let it be said that Natasha Romanoff isn't good to her word. She's said she would pay visits to a couple of ships, and in early February, she proves good to her word.

First on the agenda, she stops in on the Heron. It gets priority because it's not just a social call. She said she'd help Barnes out with his hair—it's obviously been a while since anyone gave it a trim, and he's agreed to trust her enough to help him out. Hopefully Barnes is in. She didn't call ahead to check.

Later, she'll show up on the Starstruck. She's actually been here a couple of times recently, eating Wanda's cookies and stopping by to see Peggy, but she's trying to make more of a habit out of it. Steve clearly wanted her to. And she hasn't seen him on those visits, so here she is again.

In Starstruck's kitchen.

Making herself some coffee.]


Exploring - Siourew

[Natasha takes the opportunity to get down on the planet. Or around it, as the case proves to be. Either way, she's taking advantage of the opportunity to get outside, to see a real sky, breathe fresh air and stretch her legs.

If anyone wants to join her for a hike, she wouldn't turn down the company.]


Hallucinations - Vanquish, Islaulit & Siourew

[As the month wears on, the tone of things changes for the worse. Natasha hadn't assumed she'd escaped the glitches affecting various members of the fleet, but she had seemed no worse for them so far. That changes as the month wears on.

It starts with flashes out of the corner of her eye. Little girls who watch her with eyes too old for their faces. They stand in ones and twos, tucked around corners and in shadows, glimpsed in the reflection in a window, there for only an instant, then gone. It doesn't end there, though. After the flashes, aural hallucinations. Voices come straight from her memory, clear and distinct, speaking in any of half a dozen different languages. They bark orders. Praise her dedication. Quiz her on training. A few words, a phrase, and then they're gone.

Then the visions escalate. The girls stay are no longer just girls. They're ghosts, sporting evidence of the injuries that killed them—they're students she killed along the way, bruised or bearing bullet wounds. Sometimes they're missing eyes, missing mouths. They float in windows.

They don't speak, because the dead don't. They just follow her. Isn't that fitting?

Natasha tries to go about her days normally. She visits the shooting range, or bars. She makes her meals in Vanquishes kitchen and she stops into bars on Iskaulit. She even goes back planetside hoping getting away from the fleet will ease the glitch, but there's no such luck. By the end of the month, she might walk into a room and for five full seconds, it's as though she's stepped into the past, back in Russia, back in the Red Room, watching girls be winnowed away until only the weapons remain, or she might turn a corner and find herself standing face to face with the distorted face of one of her marks from her early days as an assassin. She tries to hide it, but as time goes on, even she can't entirely hide the signs of stress.]
mucked: (☂ if heaven and hell decide)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-17 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Alright. If you win, I'll invite him for fondue. Whether he accepts or not is his prerogative. But if I win? I want you to very seriously consider transferring over to the Starstruck.

[ she words her offer with the utmost care. consider it, she prompts, because for a bargain as casual as this it would be cruel to paint the stakes in absolutes. ]
Edited 2017-02-17 23:16 (UTC)
mucked: (☂ 'cause the hypnotist entranced him)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-17 11:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm our only comms officer. [ peggy explains. ] But it's proving a little tricky to juggle that and the captaincy.

[ it's not a challenge she enjoys discussing. evidently. because she's quick to move on with a flash of a smile and a joke. ] Unless you'd rather I wager a fondue 'tag-team' instead.

[ -- that was the word she used, yes? ]
mucked: (☂ fighting the jury in my head)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-18 12:19 am (UTC)(link)
[ a nod -- of course, of course. she'd poached steve off the pathstone -- it wouldn't do to once again deprive a ship of someone, and this time after they'd already settled into the hierarchy. ]

Not such a problem for you, though -- [ being in a position to do something anyway. ]
mucked: (☂ wake up bleary-eyed and sore)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-21 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
A bad joke. [ her smile is brief. ] You said the problem is that you'd 'do it anyway' -- makes me think it's not a problem at all, in that case. From a gambling perspective.
mucked: (☂ measured in coffee spoons)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-22 10:51 pm (UTC)(link)
[ -- that's why they call it gambling. as moments go, this one is damned inconvenient to suddenly be put in mind of daniel sousa. but it can't be helped. peggy grimaces her way through what otherwise might have been a smile. ]

One might call it a a clever play, actually.
mucked: (☂ i never lost control)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-23 03:55 pm (UTC)(link)
It might only be a game, certainly, but that doesn't make winning any less attractive.
mucked: (☂ measured in coffee spoons)

[personal profile] mucked 2017-02-24 08:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Then -- for my part -- I'll attempt not to muck with the results. I'll give it the good old college try.