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Ghosts of Fallen Leaves; 5/24-late night- Natasha
Topic Started: Nov 16 2014, 01:25 AM (22 Views)
Black Widow
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Moye proshloye eto moye
Creepy Crawly - Admin
The hour was late. The vodka was decent, if not much more than that. The glass was clean and the bottle was half empty as Natasha Romanoff, Natasha Romanov, Natalia Romanova, Madame Natasha, Natalia Shostakova, Natalia Alianovna Romanova - choose one name or all, for they were the parts and pieces of who she was and who she had been; real and unreal, made and unmade - sat in dim light, still in her sleek, black suit. Contemplating the swirl of colorless liquid in the tumbler pressed to her palm.

The score was Tchaikovsky, and it floated through the room. The ballet Swan Lake. The scene: Death of the Swan. Each note so familiar that her limbs remembered the movements that accompanied them. Another part of her that hadn't been real. Nothing more than implanted memories. A ballerina made of smoke and mirrors. A persona manufactured for the circles it allowed her to move within.

Those memories lingered. She could still feel the polished wood under the toes of her pointe shoes. The ache in her feet. The heat of the stage lights. The stiff brush of tulle against her skin as she danced. The thunderous applause of the audience.

Red hair, tucked behind her ear on one side, partially curtained her face on the other. Leaned back in the chair, long legs stretched out, feet crossed at the ankles and resting on the plain coffee table, Natasha contemplated the past and the present in the rippling, translucent palliative. Places and times and faces passing across her minds eyes like mist, seeming to transfer to the contents of her glass briefly, like transient images in a Seer's crystal. Insubstantial. There one moment, gone the next.

The way of life and of time.

A woman with silvery blonde hair and a ready smile. An inner light. A brown haired man with a quick wit and a sense of responsibility and right that surpassed them all. Faces of the lost, slipping by like ghosts. Marching back through her long life. Lifting the glass to her lips she tipped it back. To Tandy and Peter. Justice and Nemesis and Vanisher. To one and all. She drank the contents down in one gulp. Retrieved the bottle and refilled it again.

Smert' otvechayet pered ney prosyat. Death answers before it is asked.

The dead and the lost, they were with her tonight. Shades, pressing close. It seemed fitting, then, when another face seemed to swim into focus. A face Natalia once knew. Dark hair and eyes. A remembered smile in shadows. Time stolen more than borrowed. Too little. Gone too soon.

Fleeting, as any scrap of happiness or hope had been fleeting then.

Like a magnet, her thoughts were drawn forward again. To the present now. To another face. One she'd first seen today. Steve's son. The small, blonde haired boy with serious eyes who was, so Sharon had said, the namesake of Steve's partner and friend. The long lost Bucky Barnes. Dead since just before the end of the war. James Buchanan Barnes, who'd only been called Bucky. A nickname.

Why had she never known that? She was a spy, after all.

James. His name had been James.

More than a lifetime ago, when she'd still been the girl Natalia and the Black Widow was only a dim possibility that lay somewhere ahead of her, in an uncertain future, there'd been a man. A trainer in the Red Room. A brilliant hand to hand combatant who'd taught her much of what she knew. A skilled assassin without equal, shrouded in mystery. Surrounded by rumors, but rumors were common. Most of them propaganda. Half-truths at best. Easily dismissed, but she remembered them now. This night, as she stared into her glass and again saw his face, floating to the surface like a shade. Their prize operative. They'd called him the Winter Soldier.

For too short a while, long, long ago, Natalia had called him James. Once, the rumors had said, he'd been someone else. Very much someone else.

She'd dismissed it as so much more unreliable gossip.

Expression impassive, Natasha emptied the glass again, and again reached to refill it, hands steady. Remembering now that, every once in a very long while, there was truth hidden in the rumors. Remembering. Tonight was for memories and remembrance. For the dead and the lost.

Tomorrow, from the Black Widow of the Red Room, there would be questions. Questions of the past. Perhaps questions better left unasked and better left unanswered, but questions all the same. To find if ghosts of the past could be chased into the light of day.
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