nysalogs | autumn red

[Her lips curve as she considers, files it away for something to look into later.

She understands the difference. That turning people against themselves, against their leaders isn't always organic. It can be so very easy to fan the flames of unrest if you set the right sort of tinder. They've both seen it often enough.]

Seems like it's an interesting place.

[In the way of Chinese curses, at least.]

Well, yeah. There's a dragon.

[ It probably isn't wearing purple shorts, though. ]

I guess that's in the other city. C'mon, we can head to my old beat.

[ It was the Red Light District. ]

I heard about that. Sounded like quite the adventure.

[Not a lot of details, but enough to know the general thrust of what had happened. To hear about the statues.]

Alright. You can show me around.

[Not that she knows they're heading to the Red Light District, but she wouldn't judge. She's more interested in seeing the city, figuring out the layout and the places she ought to know. And the truth is that the Red Light District often held the sort of people that made for good contacts.]

I wasn't there for that. Figures. [ Some part of him still thinks it would be fun to fight a dragon.

As they move on, it becomes increasingly clear where they're headed, even to someone who hasn't been here before. The air changes, becoming heavy with perfume, the streets become thicker with appraising strangers..

And then someone approaches them on the street and, with an airy grace, mentions that "Couples are no problem." ]

[She can't help giving him a bit of a look for that, half-bemused. Of course he'd want to fight the dragon. She can imagine him half-dead and smiling like an idiot.

She picks up on the shift in the air, sweet with perfume, touches of spice, the way the density of people increases, with clothes that vary from hardly there at all to layers of silken fabrics. She knows exactly where they are, even before the man so easily comments about couples.

There's a weight to having someone call them a couple. They aren't- things are too complicated for something that simple, but it's not the sort of suggestion that she feels the need to defend, either.]

They're very open here, aren't they?

Yeah, I—

[ He is visibly spooked. Part of him is still stuck back in '44, and is unused to this kind of openness. But mostly he doesn't know what to do with that word— couple— because he doesn't want to force it on Natasha, because he wants to let her have her space, however much he'd like to be closer.

Bucky's spent most of his life frozen behind glass. He has never had an ex-girlfriend. ]

I usually just ignore it.

[He's visibly bothered by it, by the way he starts to talk and stops short. It's a little bit charming.

She understands the weight of that sentiment, feels it too. She just doesn't particularly feel like she owes a stranger on the street any explanation of what they are or aren't. Bucky, on the other hand...

They haven't really talked about it. When she was first awake, it had just been nice to have a familiar face, and so they'd talked around it more than anything. What had happened. How she felt. What happened now. All things that had been easy to push to the side.]

We haven't really talked about it, have we?

Talked about what?

[ The stranger on the street fades away fast. It's just them, now, and even if the rest of the Red Light District doesn't stop moving, it might as well.

He sighs. He knows he can't play dumb with her. ]

Look, Nat. I don't want anything you don't want. [ His mind drifts back to that busted-up spaceship on the moon. He'd thought, for a second, that she'd wanted to be with him again, and he'd been dizzy and out of breath and happy.

But it had been a misunderstanding. ]

If you need space, I get it. Believe me.

It's not that I don't.

[It's a quiet truth. One she hasn't actually put into words until now because it's complicated, and even now it's something ill-suited to discussions as they walk down the street. Not having feelings for him would make this much simpler. But her life has never really been simple.]

It's that it took me a long time to remember that.

[Which is something they certainly need to talk about when they're not in the middle of the Red Light district. But for the moment, she moves on, taking a breath that feels like a sigh.

It had been easier, back on the spaceship on the moon, to push him away, throw herself into the mission, into doing things on her own. Safer, even. But she's trying to let people in. Come in from the cold as Maria had put it.]

I don't need space, James. I just need time.

[There are reasons there, things about how the memories came back in fragments, pieces, something she's put back together, woven into something that feels like truth. But she needs more than that. And maybe to punch him a little.]

Yeah. I get that, too.

[ And so he does. When Steve had used the Cube, he'd made Bucky remember everything. The color of Miss Simmons jacket on the first day of second grade and the way Senator Henry's body bobbed up twice in the pool before he drowned. It was too much memory for his mind to make sense of, and he spent the better part of a week just stitching himself together. The memories had lost their florescent clarity as the months went by, the way a piece of glass gets smudged when you touch it, the way it can cut when it shatters.

So he gets it.

Bucky tries to keep the regret out of his voice, but some of the seams show through. ]

And if you need anything else. [ Answers, maybe. Punching does not occur to him, but he'd probably be into that too. ] Just ask.

[She nods, smiles a little at that understanding. She knows that he does. And there's something that makes it a little bit easier, knowing that he understands. He tries to hide the regret, but she can see it in the edges. She tilts her head, looking up at him as they walk, and her fingers brush against his hand for a moment, a touch that's there and gone, almost invisible, like it didn't quite happen.

It's easier than the words. And it's honestly been a while since she's been tactile, willing to touch. But she's trying. Not to be someone else- but to stop running, pulling away from everything. Everyone.]

Well, I do still have a few questions. Not sure that's a discussion for the middle of the Red Light district, however.

[ It's a barely there, her touch, with all the warmth of an echo. But he doesn't think he imagined it. ]

It really was my old patrol route.

[ He hasn't re-enlisted in the guard. Bucky isn't sure if he's going to. ]

There are a couple quiet places nearby, but…

[ They're not intended for talking. ]

[He didn't imagine it. Just something to cement the words, easier than anything else she could say on the heels of that. She smiles a little as he insists it really was his old patrol route.]

I believe you.

[It's a little playful, but also true. With the way that he flustered almost immediately, she doubts there was any sort of specific intention there. At the offer she looks up at him thoughtfully, a slight tilt of her head.

Really, she's sure there are worse options.]

Well, I suppose that would at least ensure us some privacy.

Edited 2018-09-21 04:40 (UTC)

[ He raises a single eyebrow. ]

You sure?

[ They'll have to go into one of the local establishments, though it's early enough in the day that they aren't super crowded. ]

There's a place up ahead that's usually not too bad. [ Cleaner, anyway. And less pushy. Though that just means the intrigues are subtler. ]

[She looks at him and there's a quiet nod to the question.]

You're a gentleman.

[And she means it, looking over at him with a slight tilt of her head. Other people she can handle well enough, but even with questions still between them that's something she trusts. It makes the questions harder, even if she mostly knows the answer, she wants to hear it.

This is not an area she's unfamiliar with; her connections often involving some less-than-savory sorts. These are the sort of streets that she's walked before.]

Works for me.

[ Bucky doesn't think of himself as a gentleman, but he doesn't protest. He knows she doesn't always find his self-deprecation charming, and he doesn't want to push it.

He also knows that she can handle herself in the red light district, probably better than he can. She was always better with people, with moving them— that was a part of the Black Widow training they never stuck on him.

After a few blocks of walking, he stops, and jerks a thumb. ]

This is the place.

[ It's plain, with an unmarked door and small windows safely above the street level, the kind of place you'd pass right by and not notice it was there. Later on there'd be a line out the door to make the entrance a bit more conspicuous, but now it was quiet and they could stroll right in. Except for the guard at the door, of course. ]

[In her book he counts. But he doesn't argue the point, go it's there and gone, and they're moving on.

He was right about it being close, as after a few blocks he stops, and indicates the place he'd had in mind. It doesn't look like much, but she knows that with places like this, that's often the intention. There's a guard by the door, but elsewise not particularly remarkable. At least not this early in the evening.]

Let's see if we can get ourselves someplace quiet, then.

[It's not quite a smile, but her lips curl, a tilt of her head to the side as she heads for the door.]

[ He lets her go first. Not because he's a gentleman, but because he thinks it's less likely the guard will stop her. Especially since he's not wearing the all-blacks of the guard anymore, who doesn't show any signs of recognizing him.

The bouncer turns to inspect them both with a wary eye, and Bucky's pretty sure Nat will make a better impression. ]

[Natasha's always been good at this. Fitting herself into places, knowing the words to say, how to hold herself. And even having only just stepped into Olympia earlier that day, it's not hard to read the cues.

Her body language is casual, and she smiles, but she doesn't lean into it too hard. Someone who's not going to be a problem is what she says in between the words. He asks questions, she answers, and they make it through with a minimum of fuss.

She's usued to working her way through back room arms dealers, brokers and fixers and the assorted colorful characters that moved through the underworld. One door guard was hardly worth mentioning. But she the man and he lets them through.]

[ Bucky probably could've gotten himself through, but not as easily as Natasha did, and not with as much confidence.

They get to a room that's probably reserved for people with more money most of the time, with gauzy curtains covering the walls in jewel colors and plump pillows thick on the floor and the generous sofa. It looks expensive. Bucky thinks it'd be hard to clean.

But it's quiet, which is what Natasha wanted. He sits down on the sofa, the straightness of his posture incongruent with the setting. ]

[It's a nice room that they find themselves in, certainly nicer than the outside would indicate, but that's frequently the way of these things. Or the other way around, depending on the poison.

And true to what she'd asked for, it is quiet. James sits on the sofa and she does as well, close without quite touching. Her posture isn't as stiff, easy as she settles against the plush pillows, turned so she can face him.

She debates between starting easy, dancing around the question that feels heavy between them, or jumping into the deep end and hoping neither of them drown.] James. Why didn't you tell me?

[She knows, or is fairly sure that she does, but she needs to hear him say it. Because they haven't really talked about it. She might have, in the aftermath of that kiss on the moon, if there hadn't still been things she needed to do, or if there had been time to breathe afterward.]

Tell you what?

[ He isn't playing dumb. He really is dumb.

And he runs through the possibilities, numbly. The Man on the Wall job? Her death and resurrection— but she couldn't know about that, he doesn't think, and he doesn't know how to put into words everything that happened to Steve.

That he'd been in Olympia before?

And then it falls on him the way that bricks ought to. ]

Oh.

Edited 2018-10-10 15:51 (UTC)

[There's a look at the question, not that she thinks he's playing at it, but that he should be able to figure it out. And then it hits him, and her lips thin a little. Ah, there it is.

To his credit, he does get there, and it doesn't seem to take him too much effort to connect the dots to what she's asking. She takes a breath, looking over at him, meeting his brown eyes with her own sharp blue.]

I know you didn't want to hurt me.

[And she means it. If there's one thing she's sure of, it's that he wouldn't intentionally cause her pain. But she still needed- to hear him say it, to see it in his eyes. To know in more than just the pieces of her memory, something tactile and real.

There's a vulnerability to this, to admitting that it matters, but it's worth it.]

[ Bucky looks at her for a small second, but he can't hold her gaze. He wishes he could reach for her hand, but doesn't. ]

I tried. When— [ He doesn't like to say the name. ] After we stopped Novotkov, we tried… I tried, to make you remember me. [ It had been in between long debriefings, in the halogen light of the hospital ward, and he'd looked and looked but there'd never been any flash of recognition in her face. ]

SHIELD wanted to try something with machines, telepaths, but… [ He stops. ] But I realized I couldn't make you remember me. I could never make you do anything.

[ And he smiles, sad and crooked, like a boy who can't quite hit the bullseye at the state fair. He'd never wanted to hurt her, but he had: love was vulnerable, open as a wound. He could never make her do anything. ]

[She can't bring herself to tell him it was the wrong choice. Not here and now, at least. In truth there was no right choice and either way he'd have blamed himself. It should have been her choice to make, is the part of it that rubs her wrong. But it shouldn't have been something on his shoulders, either.

But the truth is that their lives aren't that clean.

So she sighs, but she looks at him, waits until he meets her eyes, and it's with empathy and not judgement. She's quiet for a long moment, and this time she's the one that looks away, and it still takes a moment before she speaks.]

It came back in pieces, slowly. Just this sense that something was missing. It was that night in Prague, when I realized what was wrong. I could feel the holes in my memory, but I didn't have the time to look into it then. But afterwards I did some digging, started putting pieces together. I kept a journal and tried to make sense of it all.

And then I sort-of threatened Clint into telling me what he knew. [There's a brief pause, a curl of her lips that's wry, and in the quiet she slowly places her hand against his. So here they are. She did mean it when she said she didn't need space, but finding the right words to say that on the end of the truth between them isn't as easy.]

I can't just step back in to what we were. But, if you were to ask me out sometime, I'd probably say yes.

[She needs something new. Memories that she hasn't had to tape back together like broken glass, and that glaring awareness that there's probably still things missing. Not what they were but what they can be.]

autumn red

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I figure we can leave it there if you wanna, but I wanted to get at least that last tag