comesfrompain | [ to-do list ]

Yeah maybe. Types like us, we're not meant for the limelight.

A lecture's one thing, but coming up with a false equivalency like that is some serious bullshit. Sounds like maybe he ain't too happy you're not an angel like him. A little holier than thou crap.

You're not wrong.

Yeah, well, he also asked me if I worked for Hydra, so he definitely has an opinion on what sort of person I am. And apparently what I did do to help him was 'too little too late'. I didn't expect him to throw me a party, but it does feel a bit intentionally hurtful which I didn't expect from him.

Edited 2016-08-31 02:28 (UTC)

Wow, that's about as much of a 'fuck you' as you can get from the guy.

That's rough, Romanova. Sucks that he's being such an asshole about it. Maybe his panties'll unwad later. You wanna have a drink? Get your mind off it?

Yeah, it was a pretty charming conversation on all fronts.

Maybe. Those panties are made of righteousness, you know. Guess we'll see. On the other hand, a drink sounds like a great idea. Where do you wanna meet?

Ain't worth worrying about too much right now, nothing you can do about it until he gets off his high horse. Whenever that'll be.

You remember the bar I pointed out on the tour I took you on, right?

You're right. See how things go, I guess.

Yeah, I'll meet you there.

[She's actually not too far away from the Drag, so it doesn't take her too long to find her way to the bar. She has clothes on now, having finished with her dares, but there are still red swirls on the exposed skin of her arms from the body paint she'd worn. That red hair makes her fairly hard to miss, admittedly as she looks around for him, and if she doesn't see Rumlow there already she'll grab them a table with a good view of the exits.]

[Rumlow himself takes a moment longer, if only because there's always heavy foot traffic this time of day on the quickest route to the bar. He'd just teleport through, but he's not interested in showing off that power so blatantly. When he winds into the bar, Romanova is already there. He approaches her and slides into the seat across from her, tail curling at his side.]

Traffic's a bitch fuckin' everywhere.

[He blinks and tilts his head slightly at the color on her skin. He doesn't remember seeing that the last time they'd spoken. He gestures towards them.]

What's that from?

[She waves a few fingers in his direction as she catches sight of him, watching as he makes his way through the crowd and takes a seat at the table that she managed to secure for them. She's never been the drinking her problems away type, but having company is a pleasant balm to the events of the evening, at least.]

I haven't been here long, and the traffic always sucks.

[Her head tilts as he gestures at the marks on her arms and she grins with a shake of her head.]

It's from one of those bullshit dares. Had to find three other people and more or less impersonate the whole Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Except wearing nothing but bodypaint. You missed a show.

[Her lips twitch and there's a lift of an eyebrow as she teases him. It's also the truth, because this place is strange, and Initiation Day was a trainwreck. But things had been better for a while. And then she'd talked to Steve and things had crashed in a pile of ruin. But, here they were now.]

[Sounds like it had been, Rumlow thinks, vivid imagination going to work. He wishes he'd been there. But, he's still got a dare of his own he needs to accomplish and seeing Romanova in very little clothing is part of it. Funny how it works out.

Rumlow grins at her and catches the attention of one of the staff, so they can order drinks, maybe risk something to eat.]

Red like that, I'm guessing you were War.

[He pauses in the conversation to order his drink, gesturing for Romanova to do the same. Once the man leaves, Rumlow's tail curls and pats softly against the bench. He watches for a moment before his attention turns back to her.]

Bet it was a Hell of a sight.

[She smiles, a glint in her green eyes as he grins at her. She's not the most modest person in existence, to put it mildly. She's accustomed to using her body, being looked at as an object of desire. Sometimes it's a good feeling, and sometimes it's part of her job.]

There were two other girls as Famine and Pestilence, and an ex-mafia swordsman that happens to be a co-worker of mine as Death.

[She orders a Vodka tonic, figuring there's less to screw up than a martini. It makes a good drink to test the waters, so to speak.]

Chaos and dramatics. It was quite the spectacle. Though everything seems like a spectacle today.

[Ex-mafia swordsman sounds familiar. Rumlow wonders if he's the same one he's thinking of. He's met a few people since arriving, mostly keeps tabs via the hellnet. He keeps his personal relationships to a relative minimum.]

Yeah, you're telling me. Guess it's just all a part of business as usual down here. Chaos, public humiliation, mass round ups. [A snort.] All for the amusement of the heads of state -- or Brimstone. Which seems as much the government as anything else.

[Their drinks come, and Rumlow nods his thanks to the server. His hand wraps around the glass, blessedly cool. He lifts it to his lips, takes a sip. Ah, that familiar burn.]

[It's sort of the exact same approach that she's been taking. Not that she posts much -- watching and reading tells you a lot more, after all. But other than work she keeps her head down, more or less.]

Yeah. Brimstone isn't really all that different from SHIELD, I guess, if you think about it. Sure, no World Security Council, fewer nukes, so on. But, a shadowy quasi-government organization trying to impose some sort of order onto a world of chaos? We've both been here before. I'm glad this wasn't SHIELD's idea of hazing, though. They'd probably have locked me up and thrown away the key.

[Nat thanks the server with a smile, grabbing her own drink as she takes a sip. It's not too difficult to get her buzzed, it's beyond there when everything that's been done to her body starts to kick in. But buzzed is still enough to pull down some of her safeguards. And maybe in this context at least that pleasant fuzziness should be welcome, but some habits die hard. She still doesn't quite trust him. But she's here anyway, with a drink in her hand, and maybe that says something.]

Hate SHIELD that much, hunh?

[Rumlow asks, tone amused, but intention serious. Sure, Romanova had been loyal to Fury, the way he knew her, and he understood the man to have questionable morals (recruiting a former Soviet agent, agreeing to INSIGHT), but it surprises him to hear her speak ill of the organization. Did she not believe in the mission? Or is it something she's hiding from him that he's yet unaware of?]

I would've thought you liked getting out of Russia. You seemed happy, at least, back when we were all a team.

[He sips passively at his drink, as if the question is totally innocent curiosity rather than trying to suss out her loyalties. His tail flicks, then he shrugs and leans back.]

But I guess none of that shit really makes a difference now. Brimstone's the new Big Brother, even have an expeditionary force with the reapers, though I guess their missions are pretty singular in purpose.

It's not hate. There have been people I hated. With SHIELD-- [She sighs, takes a sip from her glass. Maybe it's a little bit of 20/20 hindsight, her inability to ignore the fact that the signs had been there if she'd bothered looking.] We were always about morally questionable things done to bring peace to the world.

[He does get a curl of her lips into a smile as he mentions when they were all a team, her being happy. And, the truth is, that he's not wrong. She had enjoyed it. The missions, working with people that she'd trusted. There had been times she'd missed it, even knowing it had been lies.]

Yeah, it was good. We worked well together and there were some fun times.

[She's never said that outloud, at least not since the Triskellion, not since realizing just what STRIKE had been. Having to wonder what it said about her that it had been so comfortable for her, that people like Rumlow and Rollins had been people she'd found it easy to get along with. Questions she was probably better off without the answers to.]

Pretty much everything that happened before is as good as ashes here. Rogers and Stark will hold onto it because they've never been good with change. But as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that matters is what we can make this world into.

[When she smiles this time, it's knife-sharp before she tempers it into something a little less devious. It's as close as he's going to get from her in regard to cards-on-the-table.]

[Morally questionable is one way of putting it. Rumlow knows HYDRA's beliefs, as well as his own, were hardly conventional when it came to what they did to push their agenda. It was entirely utilitarian, and he'd held firm to it. Once. Now? He knows it's everyone for themselves.

He shrugs to the comment though. There's nothing to disagree with. Even within SHIELD, whether it had been driven by HYDRA or not, he knows she's not just saying it. Nothing surprising, really, for an intelligence agency. Ethics are striven for, but compromises have to be made. It doesn't really keep him up at night.]

Yeah. No reason some of those can't continue though, right? [At the mention of Stark, Rumlow makes note.] If they ain't gonna play, then I guess we oughta step to the plate.

[He doesn't mind sharing this part of his agenda. After all, it isn't as if Romanova has any attachment to Hell or Brimstone. They're on a level playing field, so inviting her to share in this endeavor is harmless. Even if she tells Rogers or Stark, it won't matter. Hell, it might even entice Rogers -- not that Rumlow's got any interest in teaming up with him until after he's satisfied he's had his revenge. And maybe not even then.]

[The thing that got to her about it, was not knowing where SHIELD ended and Hydra began. For the years that she'd worked for SHIELD, she had no idea how much of it had just been working for Hydra. Still working for Hydra, if they're being completely honest about what Leviathan was.

It doesn't keep her up at night as often as it should. Because the worst things she's done weren't in service to SHIELD. And she'd known, known Hydra was a ghost in the dark, even if she hadn't know they were inside SHIELD, she'd known they were out there. And in the end it's too perfect and it makes too much sense. The fact that James had tried to kill her had almost been a comfort, a reassurance that they hadn't kept her under their thumb.]

Mm, I suppose. If you ever need someone for a mission... [She trails off, but the smile that curls her lips is offer enough. She assumed he knew about Stark already; Tony was an Avenger and he isn't subtle. But she's hoping they don't talk much, that Rumlow's on Tony's punch in the face list too. Because given what he knows about her and his likely desire to throw her under a bus, he could unravel what she told Rumlow.]

The two of us? Sounds interesting. You have a plan or just grand intentions?

[It sharpens her smile, puts a glint in her eyes. She is sure that this is what the Road to Hell looks like. But thankfully, she's already in Hell. She bothered lying to him in the first place because he's capable, competent, and this is exactly the sort of thing that could make it worth it, depending on the precise sort of groundwork this works out to. She takes a slow sip of her drink, more cursory than anything, putting on the show of it. He's sharp enough she's not inclined to risk even the little bit alcohol affects her without a reason.]

I've picked up a few jobs, but I'm still working on getting pieces in play, so to speak.

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