809/Provokatsiya

Provokatsiya
Date of Scene:	06 June 2017
Location:	Bethesda, Maryland
Synopsis:	Winter Soldier extends the Black Widow a bloody invitation and an unacceptable offer, subsequent to their encounter at the embassy attack.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, Black Widow (Romanoff)
Tinyplot:	Tayaniye

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Winter Soldier has posed:
Since that fateful encounter in Washington D.C., there has been no whisper of the Winter Soldier, no matter how hard Natasha Romanova may look. This was always his way, though, over the countless decades: strike hard, strike fast, strike brutally, and then fade like so much mist over the sea.

In fact, most of the time, it's almost impossible to even discern whether it was the Winter Soldier that was responsible for any act in particular. Many of his kills are made to look like accidents, or could simply be attributed to any number of assassins less famous and enduring. That he was identified at all, at the embassy, was highly unusual. Not his usual MO.

To the practiced eye, however -- especially the eye of one who shares a motherland with the Winter Soldier -- there are always patterns that suggest the involvement of his shadowy hand. Not just the methods used, but the targets picked. The news rolls in of a known Chechen political speaker and activist, a supporter of the insurgents, found dead in his supposed place of asylum in Bethesda, Maryland.

That stinks of Russian hands. Could be a lead on the Soldier himself.

The apartment where the man died, on the third floor of a rather squat building near the bustling downtown of the city, has long since been gone over by the local authorities and the Feds, who have come and gone. A seasoned agent of SHIELD, however, might think herself capable of picking up something that they've missed. Especially given her intimate knowledge of who she might think the perpetrator is.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
Natasha has been hunting for the last fifteen hours.

She has tapped into her many resources, not simply SHIELD. Shs has used the search algorithms to try to find a pattern, a destination. Not for the Winter Soldier. Her hunt is more personal. She is trying to find the man who turned her best friend into a monster. She had to take him down with what should have been a lethal Bite but was just enough to slow him down and get him in a containment field. If she could find the one behind it, she may be able to find a way to fix it. And if it was something that couldn't be reversed? She was going to kill the SOB.

When the computer pinged, she didn't feel happiness. That emotion was gone, buried away as the Widow embraced her Red Room training, becoming the monster. It was more a sense of satisfaction, giving her a focus for her anger.

The information that comes up on the screen makes her pause. She found someone alright but it wasn't who she wanted.

She wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The trip was short enough in the Quinjet, with the disabled tracking system since she didn't want SHIELD to find her just yet.

She examines the building closely, from several angles, before finally making entry through one of the outside windows. She looks around the apartment, taking in everything.

Winter Soldier has posed:
There's a sixth sense all good spies develop over time. Or perhaps it's something they're just born with, and that's why they become spies. That sixth sense will start screaming at Natasha shortly after she steps into the apartment. Danger-- somewhere nearby. Unclear where. But watch the windows--

A CRACK pierces the air. No small-caliber round, that. A 12.7mm anti-materiel bullet punches through one wall of the apartment, embedding in the far wall, whizzing by a few feet away from Natasha. Her practiced ears can even tell the rifle. KSVK. Big, bolt-action, nasty, and indisputably Russian.

The angle is immediately obvious. The shot originated from a building some ways down the street, not immediately across from this one. About five stories up. Not even anywhere near the top floor. It's... rather sloppy as a sniping job, all told. Usually they hide better than that. Usually they actually shoot like they're trying to hit their target.

There's really only one conclusion. This isn't a shot to kill. It's a passing hello spoken in the language of killers, a 12.7mm kiss from an old Soviet ghost.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
It's automatic that she takes cover, diving out of the line-of-sight from the windows, flattening herself on the floor. She quickly crawls to the left, making sure she's not in the same place she had been in case he goes for a shot through the wall.

An invitation. How sweet.

Likely the entire situation. For her to be able to track him when he is so often just a ghost. He had to have allowed it to happen. Which means he wants to talk. If he wanted to kill her, parts of her would already be decorating the far wall. Natasha stands up and moves right into his line of sight. She exits through the window, dropping toward the ground then firing her line to the next building. She swings in a wide arc to the next rooftop, performing a tucked roll on landing to absorb the impact. Then she is running across the rooftops, jumping from building to building, closing the distance to where the shot originated.

It is a moment later when she appears, swinging her feet into the room then the rest of her following, landing in a crouch.

Her eyes scan the room, a brief second, but taking in everything as she slowly stands. She speaks in Russian. <<You wanted to talk.>> A statement, not a question.

Winter Soldier has posed:
No further shots follow. Not even when Natasha moves into clear line of sight. He has already declared, without speaking a single word, that he is in control and his intention is not to kill her. He would not have missed his first shot, if not.

Perhaps he is grading her on how swiftly she triangulates his position and arrives.

She arrives shortly, her grace and agility and grapple line making short work of the distance, both horizontal and vertical. He is readily visible the moment she gains entry to that particular room, waiting seated on the edge of a desk in the far corner, that bulky sniper rifle held across his knees with easy nonchalance. His left arm is on full display, the dull steel of it shining in what little light comes in the window. His face is masked, but that doesn't matter to her; she knows it well. Much better than most.

Her grade is a passing one-- even impressive to him, judging by the quiet gleam in those too-familiar blue eyes. She remembers that look in his eyes from her childhood, when she did well on some exercise. That look meant she wouldn't be beaten-- wouldn't be hurt--

"Privyet, devushka," he says. His voice rasps with obvious disuse. "<<A Russian girl claiming me for her creator? My curiosity would not be quieted.>>"

He still does not remember her. It is baffling why he does not. She was his prize student. The deadliest Widow ever to come out of the Red Room. But those too-keen eyes search her obviously, straining for that recollection.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
She shifts further into the room, making sure there is a wall at her back instead of the window. He may not be intending to kill her today but that doesn't mean she is going to offer the chance to someone else by standing in such a vulnerable position. Natasha's green eyes shift, taking in his appearance, his posture. That pleased look which sends the strangest reaction through her. She feels a moment of pride, a flashback to her time training. That she performed well enough and he was not upset with her. The woman she has become is disgusted, horrified even, that she would react that way. There is the anger. How dare he look at her like she cared about his personal assessments. Her eyes narrow, her body shifting to a comfortable position. It looks casual. Relaxed. He knows better. She's prepared to move if she needs to, keeping a close watch on him. She is dressed in her working costume, complete with gauntlets and Glocks. He may notice there is a large bruise on her neck in the shape of a handprint and her knuckles show she's hit someone recently.

<<You said yourself. Another Widow. Nothing more. It should have meant nothing to you.>>

Winter Soldier has posed:
There is no shame in the automatic gladness, the pride, the relief to see that approval in his eyes. Things beaten into one from the very earliest days of childhood are not easily unlearned or forgotten, and the Winter Soldier was /there/ from the earliest days of her childhood in the Red Room: a stern, remote, looming figure who oversaw them all with absolutely no pity nor mercy for their pain or distress. A figure who, it seems, has not aged a day in the intervening decades. He looks unchanged and eternal as snow lain across a Siberian field.

No shame at all. The punishment for failure was so severe as to imprint an automatic, desperate need to perform well in his view.

Yet at the same time, she's not that child anymore. The old, canny eyes of the Winter Soldier pick that up quickly enough. "<<It should have,>>" he agrees. "<<And yet, you in particular. There is something that-->>"

An odd moment comes and goes across his features. Perhaps the only time she has ever seen the vaunted Zimniy Soldat look confused. He looks at her like she's the last piece in some intricate Burr puzzle. Like he knows there should be something there in his mind, some kind of meaning, and yet there isn't.

Then it's gone. The coldness reasserts itself. "<<A Widow,>>" he agrees. "<<A Widow who has run away. Was our life so bad that becoming a dog of SHIELD is preferable?>>"

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
She should have remembered that. His words could be as dangerous as his skills in combat. As a child, she often would rise to that bait, taking offense and that led to mistakes. Until she learned to let it roll off her back. Not take it personally. Recognize it for what it was, a way to get a reaction. It's a skill she learned well. One she has used for all these decades. For she's as long lived as he, although she retains every memory. Every moment. Every torture.

His memories get erased.

Captain America got to sleep.

Even her Little Uncle, the Wolverine, lost time with the loss of memory.

Yet the Black Widow has remained, decade after decade, for almost a century of life.

That confusion is noted and she sees an opportunity in it. If she can find the right way to exploit it. He truly does not remember her. How? Why? Amnesia? Something else? She needs to find the answer.

A rude snort is heard before she speaks. <<A Widow who chose to think for herself instead of letting others do it for her.>>

Winter Soldier has posed:
Perhaps it was that spirit that first drew the Winter Soldier's eye to Natalia Alianovna. That made him groom her beyond the other girls, and made him proud when she exceeded his expectations to rise above them all. He, who had never shown any particular emotion for any other shivering, beaten child who came to learn at his proverbial knee, saw something in her. Or perhaps he was amused by her propensity to talk back-- and then, later, to let it all roll off her like water.

That spirit of hers isn't entirely gone, however. It's quite evident in her response to his question. He is silent for some time after the sound of her voice dies in the air.

<<Pity. You little spiders, you little pavuchky, you do better when you're not thinking for yourself. Too much thinking... it's not good in our line of work.>>" His blue eyes search hers, half-lidded and watchful. "<<Our type... we go mad, thinking too hard. See where all this thinking has gotten you?>>"

It's his turn to snort. "<<Is it /penance/ you're looking for? There is no penance, Chyornaya Vdova. There is no good or bad. Only rats, all trying to kill one another in one small cage.>>"

He rises slowly. "<<I have been told to make you one offer. That's generous in and of itself. One offer-- to return.>>"

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
<<So much better to be a good little soldier and follow the orders of those who manipulate you into doing their bidding. Or be a mindless drone, following the orders of the hive. Your only purpose to serve their whims until they day they tire of you.>> Natasha shakes her head as she answers, giving him a look that shows she pities him. He's sad if he thinks the life he lives is preferable to free will.

His words hit closer to home than she likes but she shows nothing, no tell to let him know he struck gold. Penance. She has been trying to atone for her sins for a very long time now. In truth? There is no forgiveness. She has accepted her fate. Long ago, she knew that should Heaven and Hell actually exist, she would not be sitting in clouds. Yet, she still tries. Still seeks to do more, do better.

<<I prefer thinking. I prefer remembering. If you do not remember, you do not learn from your mistakes.>> She tilts her head to the side, examining him closely even as she notes his change in position. <<Does it help you sleep at night to push the memories away? You don't remember me, do you? Who I am? What I was?>>

Winter Soldier has posed:
So much better to be manipulated, Natasha sneers. So much better to be a drone in the hive?

"<<I serve,>>" the Winter Soldier snaps, with more acid than strictly necessary. It seems the Black Widow's bite found blood. "<<I serve the country to which I swore my life.>>" James Buchanan Barnes, buried somewhere deep under the ice of conditioning, would weep to hear such a thing out of his own mouth-- sworn to the wrong flag and country. "<<But what would the faithless know of such a thing?>>"

Her answer is plain from her words, however, and it is equally plain he was instructed to do only one thing if she should refuse. Now standing, bearing that heavy rifle easily in his left arm as if it were no more unwieldy or heavy than a carbine, he regards her with eyes gone frost-cold for the kill. "<<Well. There is only one thing to do with a spider out of the web-->>"

You don't remember me, do you?

He stops. That vague sense of recollection struggles in his blue eyes. She has never before seen her instructor falter, or be weak, but here and now something about what she says hits him. Why does she insist on speaking as if he should remember her? /Is/ there something to remember? The inside of his head itches; his right hand lifts on impulse, clawing into his hair, heel of his hand against his temple. He doesn't...

The delicate balance of his reprogrammed mind snaps and reasserts itself. That brief memory, almost grasped, fades. His eyes flare with unstable anger, and that weapon snaps up in both hands, aimed direly dead at the Black Widow.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
She's already moving. Diving closer, not further away. The best way to keep him from using that rifle is to be in close. If she were to go out the window, she'd have to get to a point he couldn't shoot her. No doubt he would be able to hit her if she made one mistake.

As she comes up, she brings hand above her to try and shove that rifle up and away. It needs to be taken out of the picture. Pulling it away from the power of his left arm would be unlikely but she's going to have to try. Her other hand flicks, the electrified baton landing in her palm. It expands to a full sized tonfa, flaring with blue light. With his left arm being powered, she has to have something to help brace her arm should she need to block, otherwise he can break bones. She remembers that too well. She goes for a strike to his stomach with the butt of the tonfa, the length back aligned with her forearm. No elecricity from that end but hopefully enough to get his attention.

She hit something. She presses. <<How is it you cannot remember me. How can you not recall the child that you shaped into the ultimate weapon to ever leave the Red Room. I am not just one of the many widows, I am the Black Widow. The most dangerous you ever trained. You will remember me, damn you.>>

Winter Soldier has posed:
Her rapid response takes her immediately out of the rifle's effective range. The Winter Soldier swears colorfully in Russian, aware of his own slip in trying to use such a weapon in close quarters. How did he make such an error? What was he thinking? Wait-- he was trying to remember something--

Her palm strike knocks the rifle from his grasp while he's still thinking about that. The heavy weapon leaves his hands and clatters to the floor. The Winter Soldier leaves it where it lies, his focus on the tonfa slamming into his belly. He takes the hit full-on with a grunt, winded but not put down, as resilient and unyielding as she remembers him being. Soviet Russia's answer and counter to Captain America, in just about every way.

Worse than the hit, though, is the fact she /won't shut up/. How can he not remember her? she asks. How could he not know the deadliest creature to ever leave the Red Room? He could ask the same exact question. Is it that he is not /allowed/ to know--

Ripping pain tears through his head in punishment for that stray thought. It resets his mind back to the ordered blank his masters wish it to be. "<<I don't KNOW,>>" he roars, in a rare loss of composure, as his left arm snaps around with crippling speed in an attempt to slam into her, a violent backhanded blow, and send her into the far wall.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
The speed surprises her. Even though she knows he is capable of swift movements, this time it seems powered by that anger, driving it more quickly. She tries to get the tonfa in place to try and take the brunt of the impact but its useless. The blow catches her in the chest, sending her flying across the room where she slams into the wall with a loud crash. The impact was about three feet up. As she slides down to the floor, drywall pieces fall around her.

Natasha refuses to let out a sound, not letting him know that her breathing is not impossible. Nothing seems broken, somehow, but she's going to be hurting in a little while. Staying still is even worse and she stands quickly, forcing her lungs to work. Taking in air as she spins to him again. She has no idea why speaking to him is having an effect but she will not give up any advantage she can gain.

<<Next time you go licking the boots of your masters, tell them Natalia Alianovna Romanova said 'no' to their offer.>> Maybe her name will trigger something. Maybe not. She drops the second tonfa out, a baton now in each hand. She moves to close the distance between them again. She really should just shoot him. Something keeps her from doing so. Somewhere deep inside, the need to beat him hand-to-hand. Not likely to happen but she is better than she was when he trained her. There's a chance.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Truth be told, the Winter Soldier has no idea either why her speaking to him is having any effect. No idea that his conditioning is weakening, as it once did before. If he were allowed to retain his memories, he might have recalled that time, fifty years past, back in the 1970s when he was left too long in the field and his conditioning faltered. He might have remembered that time he slipped his leash and wandered, confused and dismayed, through a changed world he did not comprehend. Up until his recapture.

He doesn't. He only knows that her words are worming their way through cracks in his mind that surprise him by their very existence-- cracks he does not understand. He only knows that this upsets him.

His displeasure sends his left arm slamming dead into her center mass. Her block shatters before his strength. He remains where he's standing, breathing erratically, his blue eyes glittering with malice. He always looked this way when his temper was up. She'd go to sleep those nights cuffed to her bed, bruised and broken, nursing whatever limb he'd shattered in punishment.

Natalia Alianovna Romanova says no to their offer, she retorts. The name interrupts his violent expression like a bad signal interrupts a TV broadcast. His features twitch like those syllables briefly meant something.

Then she's upon him. There's only time for a brief moment of surprise she chose bare hands and not a gun. "<<Whoever you are,>>" he snarls, "<<if I taught you, I taught you to be practical." It's a familiar lecture, a thing he's snapped at her before, and there's a similar ugly familiarity to the way he meets her with a snake-strike of a blow towards her face-- a feint, to distract from the left hook he swings in at her right side. At least he's not pulling a gun either.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
Familiar. She's danced this dance with him before. Even as her mind tells her to dodge the blow to her face, her body takes it a step further. Conditioning. Perform a move hundreds of times and it becomes habit. She knows that hook is coming in, she knows if it connects she will have cracked ribs. She flips her body backwards, dropping her weight back onto her hands so that his swing will pass over where she was standing. The fluid motion continues as she pushes off from the floor with her hands, whipping her feet up in front of her in a line for the center of his chest as she drives herself upwards at speed.

"<<I never did listen well.>>" she says as she hopes the blow pushes him backwards since she's using her full body weight. But he's strong and he may just shrug it off.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Countless times. Over and over. They ran this spar, and she would suffer nights of pain and blood when she would get it wrong. He never pulled any punches, did Winter Soldier. If he did, he was fond of saying, he'd produce weak dross that would be killed the moment it stepped foot out of the training ground. No, better to break them and reforge them, and if the Soviets did not want him to break them-- well, send him better men to mold.

Or better women. And Natalia Alianovna was the best.

In the end it's not all those countless training sessions that give her what she needs to avoid him. They only give her context for what he's going to do. It's her own skills, honed and developed and /changed/ since she left his tutelage. He expects her to read his feint, but doesn't expect the exact nature of HOW she dodges. The flip back to the floor throws him briefly, though he's quick to see where she's going with it-- he taught her much of how to leverage her lithe, light body in acrobatic ways-- and gets a guard up in time to prevent her feet from breaking a rib as they cannon back up into his center mass.

She never did listen well. "<<No... you didn't,>>" he says, an automatic response-- before frowning, because where did that come from?

In the distance, sirens can be heard. Someone probably called the cops about that gunshot. The Winter Soldier's head turns, his profile tense.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
She hits but it is ineffective. The force pushes her lower body backwards. She goes with it, rolling back and over, landing on her feet in a crouch. He may be pausing but she isn't going to give up that easily. She places her hands on the floor, kicking out with her legs in a sweep toward his. It's intended to make him dodge away, to give her more time to line up for another attack. He could just as easily close, taking away the space she has gained. With his strength, she has to hit and dodge, keeping away from that left arm especially. He taught her that.

Still she isn't using everything at her disposal. The electrified tonfas. Her Widow's Bite. The Glocks holstered on the outside of each thigh. Hours ago, she was stupid for not doing what had to be done and her best friend killed an agent just trying to do his job.

Here she is doing it again.

He may notice the shift in her. He's good enough to spot tiny details in her expression. She just shifted back into full on Black Widow mode instead of the hero she plays at being. Her hands tighten on the handles of the batons and she shifts them, bringing the business end forward instead of just using them to guard her forearms.

Winter Soldier has posed:
Her gambit works, the sweep forcing him back and letting her open space. That was something she learned long ago-- never to let someone bigger and stronger get close, if she didn't already have them safely in a savage joint lock of some kind. His eyes move over her with familiar cool assessment, noticing all the tools and weapons she is not employing, drawing conclusions from that in calculating silence. Most importantly, he notices her failure to use those paired Glocks.

She has become the Black Widow, and not whatever she plays at being in the halls of the Triskelion. But, it seems, similarly... he has become the Winter Soldier, and not whatever confused, dismayed creature she briefly saw, clutching at his head as if he could wrench something from it that danced just out of his easy reach. The Winter Soldier, with no memories, no attachments, and no emotions. Only a mission to kill.

In the distance, the sirens draw closer. Then, tellingly, they cease.

"<<I suppose I was your teacher,>>" he says presently, plainly recognizing in her moves echoes of his own. "<<Here is the first lesson I always teach. You have forgotten.>>"

His left arm moves, a snapped quickdraw, a SIG Sauer pulled and leveled at her face. "<<Never stand on a principle.>>"

The moment shatters when, five stories below on the ground floor, the front door of the building being kicked in-- the chatter of what sounds like a SWAT team-- can be heard. The Winter Soldier's eyes twitch downwards for a critical moment.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
At least he is admitting he what he was but she knows he still doesn't remember. He still doesn't know. He is her demon, the monster in the dark who tormented her. Yet, he did help create her and she wouldn't be able to do the things she does if not for those days of pain as a child. It's difficult to wrap her head around. It'll make her crazy if she isn't careful.

Staring down the barrel of the gun, she knows she's probably about to die but there is no fear. And then fate steps in. The sounds below, the sound of feet thundering up toward them. His loss of focus for that instant.

It's enough.

She dives to the left, taking herself out of the line of fire. He will be able to track her but with that instant, he gave her an opportunity. Her dive takes her into a roll past his legs and she brings back one of the tonfas, going for a strike on the outside of his thigh where the sciatic nerve rests. But her motion is meant to carry her past, so he doesn't spin around and catch her with that left arm in the process.

Unfortunately, he's good enough he may be able to block the strike and counter.

Winter Soldier has posed:
He is fully returned to the mantle of the Winter Soldier. Whatever brief remembrances he had are gone. The frost-blue eyes that regard her, over the stainless steel slide of his P220, are dead and empty as a trackless Siberian snowfield.

He taught her. He created her. He was, in the end, probably the only paternal figure she ever had, the only one who showed pride in her when fought correctly-- killed efficiently-- when she ultimately left the Red Room as its deadliest graduate. And it is obvious, in these fraught moments, that he will also kill her. Without a blink. Without a second thought. Without recognition. And that last might be the most unendurable thing of all.

A moment of distraction. His eyes leave her for a critical instant. And she's gone from his sights in that instant, circling around him. He whirls as she expects, and several things happen at once.

Her strike hits, a more glancing blow than she intended due to his movement, but enough; his right leg almost instantly weakens as pain flashes up and down it with an intensity that pops stars in his vision. He snarls a note of rage, the kind of sound that punches her right in the memory-- //pain to follow//-- and reaches to catch her. Not with the left arm. She dodged that intentionally, and that fact probably saves her life. But his right is still horrific enough, and if he finds purchase, it'll have more than enough strength to sling her around and hard into the far wall.

Men are ascending the steps now. The Winter Soldier spares no more time for words, nor attack. He has not lived this long as a ghost by overstaying his welcome. The nerve strike still causes him obvious pain-- he limps as he moves-- but his constitution permits him to power through just enough to cross the room, seize up his rifle, and throw himself through a window for a swift egress-- vanishing again from her life as swiftly as he re-entered it.

Black Widow (Romanoff) has posed:
It's the same damn wall she hit the first time.

She's about a foot higher. Already weakened from the earlier blow, this time the drywall gives up completely. It explodes with the impact of her slight from thrown with extreme force.

Natasha tries to relax, tries to go with the impact instead of resisting which just leads to more injuries.

Unfortunately, there is a stud at that spot on the wall and the middle of her back hits it. All air is gone from her lungs. Pain radiates through her back and down her legs. She lands in a heap half inside the wall, drywall falling upon her.

By the time she is able to shove the white board off of her head to look, the Winter Soldier is gone. She curses loudly in Russian as she carefully climbs to her feet.

The thundering footsteps are in the hallway outside by the time she makes her own exit. And exit she does. She is in no mood to deal with the local authorities. She'll put in a call to SHIELD, let them handle the situation. She exits out the same window he had used, firing a line and swinging away from the building just as the SWAT team arrived to see the mess left behind.