1294/Seeking Answers About the Winter Soldier

Seeking Answers About the Winter Soldier
Date of Scene:	04 July 2017
Location:	New York City
Synopsis:	Natasha approaches Claire Temple to ask questions about the Winter Soldier
Cast of Characters:	Black Widow (Romanoff), Claire Temple

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Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    It is an interesting turn of events.
    Natasha has been learning much information in regards to the Winter Soldier. None of it has been what she expected. The monster she remembers does not match with the man she met. The stories she hears from others have her wondering if there is more to the situation than what she can see through her memory tainted conclusions. Their last meetting, they fought as allies. It was like her past, when they were a well oiled machine created for destruction of their enemies. She had killed.
    It had been comfortable.
    That shook her. And Natasha did not like feeling off her game. The words of an ally had brought her here, to this apartment complex.
    She knocks lightly on the door, forcing herself to remain in place before the peephole when ever instinct told her to duck to the side where she couldn't be shot through the door. Old habits. Ones the had kept her alive so long. She's dressed casually, button down shirt, slacks, heeled boots, a light-weight black leather jacket.

Claire Temple has posed:
Hell's Kitchen turns like sour milk in the oppressive summer heat.            
Even at night, its concrete walls hold in the heat in a slow, oppressive cook, and its crumbling tenement buildings have neither the income nor the investment to bring in air conditioning.

Claire Temple's building is a crucible furnace. On the creaky stairs up, many neighbours leave their front doors open in a last-ditch attempt of ventilation, and that unknown entity who comes them -- that red-head who looks stepped out of some Vogue magazine -- draws bewildered stares of men or the open-eyed gawks of children.

That is, if she even allows herself to be seen. Such is the advantage of spies.

Only the apartment door -- fifth floor, up where all the trapped heat rises -- to Claire's place remains shut. No matter how overwarm it is. Bolted. Private. Guarded.

And through the cagey heat inside, there are the sounds of footsteps. Quick, light, but audible. Back-and-forth, either like someone's pacing, cleaning, packing -- moving in a constant, frantic momentum without end.

It only stops at that knock. Those footsteps gentle, but even to Romanova's senses, they haven't stopped -- light-footed but still there, approaching, in tandem to the peephole darkening as someone looks through.

The door opens to the length of its chain. There is a woman, tall, lean, young but with sleeplessness bringing age to her dark eyes. "Who are you?" demands Claire, no niceties here.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    Listening to the footseps approaching the door, Natasha feels the hairs at the nape of her neck standing on end. She trusts her senses and she waits without dodging out of sight. The peephole goes dark. Then the sound of a lock being disengaged followed by the door opening just enough.

The redhead in the hallway gives a polite smile and a nod. "My name is Natalia Romanova. Natasha more comoonly here in the States," she adds, unsure which name the woman may have heard from their mutual acquaintance. If at all. "I wanted to speak with you in regards to a mutual...friend." The word is chosen after a moment's hestitation. "May I come in?"

She keeps her hands out of her pockets, at her sides. "I have credentials if you wish to see them." She makes no motion to reach for them. Pockets hide weapons so better to not do so unless the young woman wishes to see them.

Claire Temple has posed:
The name 'Natasha', spoken aloud, brings a sea change across Claire's face.

That suspicious guardedness opens right up -- perhaps she's heard of the other woman, and rather recently -- and she looks her up and down, shocked, curious, and momentarily stricken speechless.
    
"You're the woman Sam Winchester mentioned," she says slowly, carefully, the skin knitting between her eyebrows. When asked to enter, Claire considers Natasha once more -- this could be a trap, could be a set-up, could be something else, but the alternative is knowing even less --

Her lips thin. She breathes out a deep, finalizing breath.

The door closes, but only with the audible scrape of the unhooking chain. When it opens again, it reveals Claire Temple in her entirety. She looks like just another working-class woman out of Hell's Kitchen, dressed down in jeans and a hoodie, her right forearm braced and strapped into a thick, removeable cast. Looks like a recent injury, by how little she uses the limb. It's her left arm that opens the door to allow Natasha entry.

"Don't need credentials," she offers. "Sam told me about you. Just repeat the story to me. How do you know him?"

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    Natasha's gaze goes to that arm and she frowns a little. Her immediate thoughts are impolite. The last person she met in a sling was Sam and his injury was caused by the very man she is here to ask about. She steps in the door, glancing around the room curiously. Only when the door is closed behind them and secured in place does she turn to Claire. Her skills allow her to read the other woman's movements, her expressions. She will be gauging her just as closely as she expects to be gauged.
    "The Winter Soldier? I met him in the Red Room in Russia, where he trained me to become an agent for the Soviet Union," she says, telling the complete truth. It's not a standard thing for her but this time, she's not playing games. "I later chose a different path in life. He does not remember me although he is starting to have glimpses. I don't understand how that is possible." She tilts her head to the side, this diminutive woman who carries herself like she's six feet tall. "How do you know him?"

Claire Temple has posed:
Bereft of any sort of training, and every bit a civilian -- civilian by look, by behaviour, by nature -- Claire wears her life transparently across her face.

Chronic insomnia alleys her eyes in shadow, and her dark skin holds the pallor of it worsening in the last few days: she looks like she's had four hours of sleep in the last forty. Worry dogs her, makes her restless around the seams, and both her hands fidget.

Her apartment, concussively small and cage-like, easily reveals current disarray: a backpack stages on the center of her couch, half-full, like a woman intending on packing. But packing for what?

"Winter Soldier," Claire repeats the words as if she's never heard them, never so much as spoken them aloud. "Is that what they call him?"

But the rest adds up from Sam's retelling: Red Room. Training. Soviets. Hard as it is for Claire to digest this story, she has to trust it's real. Has to trust Sam. Has to even trust this Natasha Romanova, whom she's only known for all of five minutes. She has nowhere or no one else to turn.

"He..." she begins, and her eyes pinch, and the woman glances briefly down. The memory brings an emotion not even Claire can immediately quantify, other than it makes her chest tighten and her heart hurt. "He sort've helped himself to my life. I'm not sure what you might know about me. I... moonlight. I'm a medic. He needed medical attention. A bullet. And then he saved my life. A lot."

She rubs feebly at her face, rubbing her fingers over one of her closed eyes. "I know how it's possible. But tell me one thing. What do you want with him? Do you want to help him? He /trained/ you?"

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    Natasha considers a moment, trying to decide what should and shouldn't be told. The woman doesn't know his title. What does she know? What is safe information? She walks closer to the couch, looking at the bag a moment then directly at Claire. Another glance to the room, looking for evidence that he may have been there recently. She isn't obvious in her quest for information. Just a glance. A moment. Then she is looking back to Claire. And she tells her things that only a handful of people in the world will know.

"I was a child when I was taken to the Red Room in the early 1930s. That is when I met the Winter Soldier. He was one of the most deadly and dangerous of our instructors. He taught me, molded me. Created me. He is the one that named me the Black Widow. Others became widows after me but I was his best student. The one he was proud of." She frowns slightly before continuing.

"In time, I was able to break free of the conditioning I'd been put through. I learned to make my own choices. I hated him. Hate him." She listens to her own words, shaking her head. "I don't know what I feel now honestly. I did hate him but our last few battles were different. Then recently, we spoke at length. I learned his memories are suppressed and that doesn't settle well with me. I intend to help him regain his memories. When he makes his choice once he knows who he is? Then I will know if he is my enemy or my friend." She's not going to say all will be well if he chooses the side of the devils.
    "Sam Winchester told me you helped save him from some sort of Hydra attack?"

Claire Temple has posed:
There appears no glaring or transparent details that the Winter Soldier graced this strange, average, crumbling apartment with his presence.

Obviously the work of a man who knows how to cover his tracks; a man who knows how to exist the way the state forged him: as a myth. As a ghost.

The only anything comes into a glance at her window, framed in the apartment's main room. While the rest of the place looks aged and weathered, it looks new. New glass, recently replaced, recently installed.

Her arms crossing loosely -- or trying to, she takes care with the right -- Claire listens with intent eyes. It's quiet a story to take in, assassins training assassins, and with that comes the realization that the woman in her apartment -- is just as dangerous as the Winter Soldier. Just as lethal. But even if she doesn't have the honed senses and trained eye of Natasha, the nurse tries to glean what she can on her own.

She's shrewd, coming with the territory, a woman who's inducted herself into these vigilante wars with the hope to survive it all. She's not a human lie detector by far, but Claire Temple has come to trust her gut. And she needs it to tell her whether or not to trust Natasha Romanova.

She holds silence for a moment, deliberating, before she wets her lips to answer that question. "Hydra," she repeats at first, "is what what the hell they're called? It wasn't an attack. It wasn't -- anything like that. A friend of mine can track people. We tracked him to --"

Claire breathes out, and begins. "He was in a machine. They had him -- cuffed into it. Shackled. Like a god damn animal. It was a chair, with -- some device locked around his head. It had needles -- going into him. There were men -- talking about resetting him. About needing to keep him from remembering. He was /screaming./ They turned it on and he /screamed/. And --" and she shot one of them. Killed one of them. Not even in self-defence.

"Natasha," she says the woman's name. "Whoever those fucking monsters are -- they got him back. Just a couple days ago. Whoever he might've been, I don't -- I promise you it wasn't his choice. He needs help. I need help."

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
She listens. Quiet. Repsectful. The story of the machine has her tensing inside. Needles to the brain, certainly a way to control someone and effect their mind. "Resetting him." It isn't a question so much as a verification of what she was beginning to suspect. He is forced to forget. He is not given a choice. He cannot choose his path as she managed to do. Then the bomb is dropped.

He's been recaptured. He will be 'reset', whatever that means. She suspects it means the Winter Soldier she hated with a passion will be returning. The confused man at the bar? A memory.

She curses softly in Russian, looking at that clean window so at odds with everything else. Something shifts inside of her. A moment ago, she was relaxed. Now when her gaze comes back to Claire, something dangerous is in those green depths.

"Tell me everything. Where was this machne? I can try to backtrack from there. And how did they recapture him?"

Claire Temple has posed:
Written across Claire's face is something resolved, and yet at the same time: pleading. Pleading for someone to help. For someone to understand.

"East Harlem," she answers. "I can show you. I was... I had it in my head to go there. See if I can find something. It was a vacant building, old bank, with a vault down in the basement. They were hurting him in there." The nurse holds a careful silence, and then confesses, "I shot one of them. One of -- those men. There was a body. I asked him about it after we got him out. He said he went back and cleaned it." Claire's eyes crease, pained. "He told me not to go back there, because of them. They might be crawling around. They might have someone keeping watch."

And how did they recapture him? "It was a couple days ago," Claire lets spill. "In Brooklyn. He was -- I was meeting with him in Prospect. We were jumped. It happened so fast. It looked like cops, don't know if they're /part/ of it -- he got me out. Him and Sam Winchester. And Sam's brother. He got us a clear way out, but they got him. They --"

She cannot seem to keep her restlessness bridled for much longer, and the woman moves, those familiar, pacing footsteps back as she goes right back to her backpack, angrily checking its contents, tossing more things inside. "I have to find him. He did it for me. Son of a bitch. I promised him. And they're going to hurt him." She glances back, something begging in her eyes. "Are you gonna help me? Because --"

Claire stops herself. "I'm sorry what he did to you, Natasha. Sam and I -- the Winter Soldier has a name. We figured it out. I saw his face in a photo. I never had a chance to tell him. I was going to -- I was going to show him. His name is James Barnes."

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    "They had attempted to recapture him the last time we met. I was looking to capture him yet we spoke intead. I want him freed. To be given the chance to choose his role in this world just like I did." She folds her arms, feeling that trickle of something down her spine as she listens to the rest of the information. She knows his name already so she is expecting to hear it. When she hears an American name instead, she tilts her head a bit to the side. Especially when that name strikes a chord. "James Barnes." It isn't that unusual of a name. It could be someone else.
    She doesn't believe in coincidence. He had been around before she was taken to the Red Room. That would put him around the right time. That name was quite well known for his association with a group of freedom fighters. Americans.
    The world has just tilted on its axis and Natasha is sure she is sliding down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. "James "Bucky" Barnes? That James Barnes?"

Claire Temple has posed:
The woman he trained says she wants him freed.

Claire has nothing in her possession -- no great abilities, no vast resources, no hidden poker hand -- to be able to do anything but trust those words at face value. Part of her, the realist side, isn't sure what she'd feel in Natasha's place. To be brought up in some Soviet shadowy underground that taught her, against her will, to be a killer? And trained by him? Trained by the same Yasha who -- who she knows dispatched countless men thoughtlessly, with an unparalleled lethality.

And yet, thanks to the magics surrounding Mercy Thompson, and her recent plight -- Claire's own, brief glimpse into Bucky Barnes's memories. How he hurt for people. How he was hurt in turn. And then how he learned to hurt, against his will -- somehow forgot he was once a man holding a weapon in his hands, and learned to become the weapon instead.

"The one and only," Claire answers bleakly. "You look the way I did when I found out. I didn't -- I heard of him. I never saw -- find a photo and you'll know. I don't know the Winter Soldier. I don't even think I know James Barnes. But I know -- someone. There's a man there. And he was trying to remember. He was..." Memory hits her, and her next breath draws thin. Her eyes shine dangerously. "He /told/ me he had memories of fighting both fronts of World War Two. Eastern and the Western. I didn't -- it didn't make sense."

The night nurse takes a deep breath, and her expression flattens with resolve. "If it can break once, it can break again. I need your help. Whatever it is you can do. We -- I have another friend who would be with me. Mercy Thompson. And the Winchesters. And... it's a good number. We find him, we get him out. We burn those sons of bitches to the ground."

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    "I will use my resources to get as much information as we can. SHIELD, contacts I've made through the years. If he can be tracked, we will find him. If not, I may have another resource or two that will be able to pull something special from beneath their sleeves." A god. A magus. It comes in handy to make a lot of contacts in her line of work.
    "If he is that Bucky Barnes, I may be having to bring someone else into this as well." Captain America will have to be told. He deserves to know. If his best friend is alive and an agent of Hydra? All hell is going to break loose.
    "Time is of the essence. He is able to ghost better than anyone I know, myself included. If they turn him back to their side, erasing whatever you have managed to free, then he could disappear off the grid entirely and no one will ever find him unless he chooses to be found. Unless..."
    Her voice fades away, brow furrowing. "I give them some bait to come to." It'd be dangerous but he did say that those he served wanted the Widow back working for them. "It'll be tricky but they would send him again, I'm sure of it. They know I will stop and talk to him now. It's an opportunity we can use."

Claire Temple has posed:
"I want you to keep SHIELD out of it," says Claire, and couched somewhere in that plea is something that comes close to a demand.

Even the nurse knows she cannot -- is in no position to -- make any demands of Natasha Romanova, but there is still something fearless enough in her to try. An iron will despite it all. "I don't know much about them, if they'll just -- I don't know. Black bag him, or kill him without even caring to sort it out. He deserves a chance. None of this matters if he's just going to rot in some cell. For shit he was forced to do."

She rubs a hand wearily through her black hair. But at least the nurse listens to Natasha, her sad, worried eyes averted, but her head tilted to hear out all of the ex-assassin's many proposals. Especially the last.

Dangling herself as bait. It's a brave, risky proposal, one that gives Claire fresh respect for the woman. "We'd need a shit load of back-up. I've seen him --" She pauses, and lets out a shaky, humourless laugh. "Talking like you don't even know. You know far more than I do, I'm sure. All I can promise, between what I've overheard, and what I know about neurobiology -- I mean, what I can theorize. They don't have a perfect process. James Barnes is in there, and I guess all these years they've just been walling the memories back. But they're there. This might sound like some magic voodoo crap, but I was even /in/ some. So they're in him. We just need to get them back out."

Claire goes quiet for a beat. "Just promise me I get to do this with you. I'm not a warrior -- though maybe a part of me is. I promised him I'd protect him. I can't..."

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
    "SHIELD will not be brought into the end game. They would put him in a cage until he could be brought back. I would not want that done to me and I will not do it to him. I will be able to use their resources though.' It is the only reassurance that Natasha can give the woman. She takes a deep breath and holds it, trying to think of a way this can work. There are no happy endings. It's going to get messy.

"You will be there. I need those who can trigger his memories. You have been there for him while most of us believed he was the monster he seemed. However, you will have to follow my lead or those of my allies that I call in. You. This Mercy Thompson. The Winchesters. This is not going to be an easy battle."
    She considers then looks to the woman. "You have been in his memories so you know what he is. What he can do. The skills he wields. I am exactly what he is. And those skills will come into use to get him out." It's on the table. She's a killer. Her skill set is equal although her body count is less. The two of them together could've laid waste to an entire enemy base with no other support. She is leaving her humanity behind and embracing what she is. "I will get back with you soon. I need to speak to a few people. Then we will all arrange a place and time. Once I do, I'll have the word leaked to Hydra that I'm interested in talking." She turns and heads for the door, her pace rapid, her mind spinning.

Claire Temple has posed:
That promise drops Claire's shoulders in weary, too-tired relief. No SHIELD. No black bags. Thank god.

With her eyes on Natasha, she listens with an intent, hungry-eyed sort of desperation for that plan, already ready to run with it. It comes with ample risk, even she knows and as someone not even versed with a decades-long spy game -- but it's /something/. It's hope, and hope is a dangerous thing.

"I can do that," she vows. Follow Natasha's lead. Put a sudden and infallible trust in a woman she's only known a night. A woman who, in the moment, she must have total faith acts in the interests and freedom of James Barnes. It is this or nothing.

And it also is -- something about Natasha. The way she speaks with the authority of someone who /knows/. Who's been there. And who expects with absolute certainty what will happen.

When Romanova attests of those skills, taught into her, something crosses Claire's eyes, something searching: like a question she wants to ask. But she does not. No time, and especially when Natasha needs to go see to some preliminaries for this plan of action. The night nurse doesn't want to slow her down.

"I'll get my people on the table too. On the level. I'll wait to hear from you."

She does not stop Natasha's retreat to the door. But Claire's voice does speak, at her back, low and soft: "Natasha -- Natalia. Thank you."