nothinglasts | IC Inbox

Just met her. Probably not HYDRA. More info to follow.

[ In other words, she's definitely poking that bear. ]

'probably'???
hey what is the deal with shield these days?
cause sword has also already shown its ass so I'm just wondering if we should start rethinking the naming scheme

I don't want to give you false intel. Just in case.
I'm out of the espionage game. I've been coordinating Avengers business and our allies in space. Holding down the fort. Things got pretty messy after half the population disappeared.

[ he debates his answer for a while because some new things have sort of snuck in there. Still... This feels important, and it would feel disingenuous to keep it from her. ]

you got time to meet? johnson dropped a few things about shield in my lap I think you should know

Something tells me I'm going to love this. Meet you in 20?

roger that

[ He waits for her in their usual corner in the community room - tucked away a little bit, but allowing for a good vantage point throughout the rest of the area.

Natasha gets a smile when she arrives, but it's definitely a tense and strained one. Sam's not here with great news. ]

So I had another little chat with the world's least composed SHIELD agent...

[ Natasha's got the same easy smile she always wears when she's not sure what she's walking into and she doesn't want to give that away. Information he doesn't want to give her through electronics could mean a lot of things from Personal to Very Bad.

She slides into a seat next to him, leaning in but keeping her own eyes out for prying eyes and ears. ]

Oh? Do tell, because you and Barnes have seemed to find all of her anger buttons so far.

[ Sam drops his gaze for a moment, trying to deliberate how harshly he's gonna rip off this bandaid. He knows the reaction he'd get from Steve. Natasha is harder to gauge.

He doesn't want to hurt her, but he think he will. In some way or another, this information will cut. ]

Yeah, well... turns out SHIELD's not quite done pissing me off, either.

[ He looks back up. ]

Steve told me about Agent Coulson. Loki killed him, you guys rallied together as the Avengers over it, right?

Our illustrious origin story.

[ Natasha smiles sardonically. She'd been ready and willing to jump for Fury. She'd gone after Bruce, she'd been prepared to step up however she'd needed to and in a lot of ways Barton had been the same, but then their inclusion had been more about circumstance than the others. They'd already been with SHIELD and neither of them had been super soldiers or geniuses or gods. They'd just been two very capable people who had both worked with Coulson a hell of a lot longer than any of the others had.

She hasn't always been great at the whole "friends" thing--what they are and why they're sometimes needed and how to be one. It's something she'd learned along the way as an Avenger, but if she looks back now, she thinks Coulson could have made that cut at times. They'd worked together. They'd had some understandings of each other. Hell, they'd liked each other.

Best not to dwell on maybes, though. ]

[ Sam's jaw clenches for a moment. There's no version of events in which he wants to be the one telling Natasha this, and for a moment he just presses his lips together tight. ]

I don't know how to tell you this. There's no way to tell this without it being horrible.

[ He leans back then, crosses his arms tight. ]

I don't know why no-one... She mentioned Coulson, I told her Steve told me about him. And I know Steve never stopped blaming himself, and you...

[ Sam stops, wrongs his hands for a moment, then leans forwards again, forearms on the table, warm brown eyes steady on Natasha before he starts again, voice soft: ]

SHIELD did human experiments with... I think alien blood? Or tech? I.. didn't ask for details. They brought Coulson back from the dead. Basically right after. He was alive for years. Johnson worked with him.

[ Natasha's poker face is strong. There's a small flutter of her eyelashes and the corner of her lip just barely twitches but even that she covers by nodding her head enough that it's hard to notice the smaller movements.

Of course, she knows that Sam knows her well enough to know that she isn't unaffected. Things like this are more force of habit than a need to hide her feelings from Sam. He's one of the few people she's got some real trust for in that regard. ]

I can't say I'm surprised after everything else they did. It's hard to know what SHIELD was always going to do and what HYDRA steered them towards.

[ And Fury hadn't trusted her. That does sting a little more than she wants to admit, mostly because she remembers the sting of realizing that in the face of his not-quite-death at the hands of Barnes. She'd only been brought in because she'd been with Steve and Sam at the time. Otherwise she might have never known that Fury had survived, either.

She knows she's not easy to trust. She's betrayed a lot of people, small and large, but she'd thought after the Battle of New York that she'd proven something. ]

If Barton knew, he never said anything to me.

I'm not sure he'd have known. Seems no one outside a small circle of agents knew. Johnson dropped that bombshell on me a little casually... I get the feeling she knows that this shit is horrible on a variety of levels, but she's got a defense for SHIELD for everything, I swear. Including rewriting history. Which, apparently, they also did.

[ He's not impressed with Daisy - might be if she stopped drinking the kool-aid quite so deeply. She's too busy justifying SHIELD for him. There might be a decent person beyond that - but that's something she's gonna have to show him after how she exploded on the network. And even after their conversation. He won't turn her away from working together, but trust is a different matter altogether.

Doesn't sit right with him that she casually told him about Coulson, instead of taking Natasha aside for a necessary conversation about it. It's kind of why he came to Natasha right away - this isn't something that should have been kept for her, and he can't believe that Coulson himself never reached out, never let her know - and if not her, then Steve or Stark or Banner or Barton.

Sam can't believe that in his timeline, Tony, Steve and Natasha all die with the death of a man on their shoulders who got resurrected and lived for years upholding the very institution that Steve would later rightfully fight to dismantle, pockmarked as it was with HYDRA.

It's all a mess.

But for now, Sam reaches a hand out, curls it lightly around Natasha's elbow. Not gripping, just offering quiet support. ]

I'm sorry.

[ She deserved better. Always has. ]

[ She blinks deliberately. Her eyes aren't exactly filling with tears, but they might be if she doesn't do a little extra blinking right now.

She's not even sure she knows what she's upset about right now. Is it the lies she served or the ones she was fed? The lost friends or the lost hypotheticals? Natasha just doesn't even know anymore.

So much has been taken away from her, but there have been some universal truths that have never left her: the truth is malleable. No one ever deliberately said Coulson was brought back somehow. No one ever reached out, either. Was that for her benefit or for his? Would she even blame him if it wasn't about her at all?

She shakes her head slowly and then tips it to the side to rest her cheek against the side of Sam's shoulder and when she turns her head up to meet his eyes from there, they might be a little wet. ]

At least I got you back.

[ Sam's familiar with this, with holding his emotions back. With blinking against wet in his eyes because he feels that if he lets himself cry even just a little bit, he will never stop. So he does for Natasha what he knows he sometimes needs and will never allow himself to ask for, just wraps his arms around her and pulls her close to his side, lets her hide against his frame. She's small, and deceptively delicate. Sam knows better than most what strength this woman holds, and hopes she knows that she can lean on his whenever she needs to let her walls give way, too. ]

I'm still not even over having lost you.

[ A small confession, but true. He's buried his grief deep. And he thinks, maybe he could have coped. Except Steve left, and the shield was like a yoke, dragging him down into the muck. The only way to handle it all was to run, to fling himself into the open sky and pretend he could never fall. ]

Join the club.

[ Her voice loses some of its edge as she leans into him, shifting so she can wrap her arms around his middle. Much as she wants that rare bit of affection, she wants to give it, too. It may be for very different reasons, but she knows neither of them open up easily. ]

Five years and the minute we had a possible way to get you back, I jumped at it.

[ She'd been ready to toss away whatever sad little life she'd had to get them back. It's not just about Sam, of course, but he is one of the losses she'd felt most personally. ]

And I'd do it again.

Feel like we should find ourselves a better club.

[ Only half a joke. He doesn't believe in trading lives either, but he gets what she did - he'd have done the same. Would have given his life in trade for just one other. Trillions across the galaxy? Not even worth a second thought.

And still, it's unfair that it had been her. That she had fallen, like Riley, and he'd not even be there to bear witness. No body left to recover. Sam knows there's a grave somewhere - but he wishes he could show her the small corner he's made near his family graves, sheltered under a tree. For her, and for Steve. For Karli. For Riley. For the people he lost who weigh on him, whom he could not bury and keep close. ]

Tell me your death is your regret. That if I help you get it, we'll have you back. I know it's probably a lie... but... tell me anyway.

[ This club sucks, but Natasha's learned the hard way to take what she can in the moment. The sting of loss is all around her, but Sam is here now and she is going to enjoy what she can of that while she can. She hopes he can do the same. He deserves whatever comfort she can give him, even if it isn't honest. ]

You'll have me back.

[ When she shifts to look up at him now, there's an intensity in her eyes that shines through the tears. It's searching and desperate and far too raw to be a lie, even from a master liar like her. ]

I'm coming back for you. All of you. You're my family.

[ The Avengers. All of them. She's going to keep her family together. ]

[ Sam searches her eyes. It's not a lie, but he feels he should question something here anyway. Doesn't. Because he's still broken up about her death enough that he needs to cling to this.

Bucky's silence already betrays the fact that whatever he intends to do, it will take him from Sam, one way or another.

For the time being, Sam needs to believe that Natasha intends to survive Vormir - for the time being, he needs to believe it's not something more fundamental and complicated she wants to change.

So he just nods, and then quietly pulls her back in. ]

You're gonna have to visit Louisiana. I moved back home. Bucky visits often, too.

[ She relaxes into him again. She really can't remember the last time someone held her like this. Hell, she can't remember the last time she even let anyone this close, really. ]

That sounds nice. You gonna introduce me as your mysterious yet sexy friend from work?

[ Maybe they can really do that after everything. Natasha wouldn't mind meeting Sam's family. She wonders if they're as warm and smart as he is. Her own family--the one that isn't the Avengers--is steeped in odd complications and contradictions. She'd only had a few years with them, but then she'd never really had another family until the Avengers, so she figures maybe a few years is an alright measure. She still cares about them. Yelena especially. ]

[ Sam snorts softly, almost embarrassed to admit: ]

Sarah knows who you are.

[ The important parts at least. She doesn't know everything, especially the darker parts of Natasha's background. Same with Bucky - those are not his stories to share. But still - she's his sister. And he might not have been home in a long time before coming back from the blip, but he's shared his family with her in whatever way he could. She knows about them, all of them, especially the ones Sam's close to. She knows about 'on your left' and the fossil joke, she knows that to Sam, it was always Steve, Tony and Natasha who led the team rather than just Steve and Tony. She knows he grieves Natasha still, even though he's not talked about his grief in so many words. She knows that near their parents' and grandparents' gravesites there sits a small headstone for those of Sam's family he couldn't bury near home. ]

Sara would love you, and team up with you to bully Bucky and me.

It's not bullying if it's said with affection.

[ And her heart wanders a little to Yelena who is aware of the Avengers and who really wouldn't care about meeting them because they're the Avengers, but she might have enjoyed meeting Sam and Bucky. They could all tease Natasha the way Natasha teases Sam and Bucky, all laugh together with the sort of warmth that only comes with long-won love. ]

I don't have a real sister for you to meet, but you could meet my fake sister and get a go at my dignity with her.

[ Sam's got the witty retort on his tongue, the quip, the tease.

And then Natasha proceeds to short-circuit his brain a little bit. ]

Run that by me one more time. Fake sister?

[ Did he mishear?

For a moment his chest clenches and his stomach rolls with a mixture of emotion he can't quite lock down. Eventually, it settles on guilt and shame and grief - because either Natasha is joking, or she has some sort of connection back home that's important enough to earn the moniker 'sister', and Sam never even knew. Would never have known if not for this place. Someone's who grieved Natasha, too. ]

Oh, you know how it is. Sometimes when a man-spy and a woman-spy have to pretend to love each other very much, they get a couple of orphans for a little while so they can complete a mission and then toss them back to the wolves when they're done.

[ It hadn't been a long time, so it's hard to grapple with the fact that it had meant something to her. Maybe it hadn't been real to her the way it had been to Yelena, but it hadn't been nothing, either. ]

I never thought it was real, so it's not a big deal.

IC Inbox - Ximilia

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I forgot to respond to this pffffff

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