Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time;

[grimvisaged]

There are things which he knows, and things which he remembers, but they are seldom both at once. This is the way that it has always been

(no)

understanding kicking up sparks in the empty corners of his brain, woven with instinct to inform him what's true and what isn't

(wrong)

memories distant and unformed, hazy smeared images, impulses that pop and fade like a flashbulb, leaving him dazed, spots in his eyes.

This place he doesn't remember, but he remembers her in it. A cockeyed smile across a tabletop, perfect teeth skimming against a plush bottom lip. When he first sees her here, that shock of fiery red hair brushing a pale cheek, he remembers her through the sight of a rifle and isn't sure why.

He knows who she is, in the obtuse sense: Romanoff, Natasha. Colleague of Rogers, Steve. She's changed her name, and he isn't certain why he knows that, either.

He thinks, maybe, she knows he's there the second before his left forearm presses against her larynx; she's that good. Silently, swiftly, he pulls her from the carpeted hall and into the shadows of an alcove, dragging her back against his chest, arm firm across collar and throat, the soft scrape of metal plate beneath the soft fabric of his hoodie. She could break free if she wanted, and he thinks he'd let her.

She's that good.

"Explain," he says against the warm shell of her ear, voice low and velvet-rough from disuse.

He can smell her shampoo.

He's been here before.

Comments

[grimvisaged]

Spider though she is, this isn't a trap—No hastily-knit web to be lured into—and he knows it. What it is, however, is preposterous, a natural courtesy that is anything but natural for him. Still shaken by her new revelations, it takes him a moment to pull free from the tangled mire of his memories, but when he does, it's to regard her with a tilted head and squinted eyes, as human a gesture as he's managed yet.

(You've got to be kidding me, doll.)

No other answer is forthcoming, save for the way he swiftly and efficiently steps away. He needs answers, but more than anything right now, he needs to be less close to her, this human trip switch who has veered him so far from his original mission. From a safe distance, he watches her from the corner of his eye.

"One thing," he softly says at length, reconsidering. "Tell him to stop looking."

[regimes_fall]

The distance between them was tangible, breathable. In the absence of his warmth she found her feet once more, and she took a long, deep breath through her nostrils to steady the wayward descent of her heart, which had always been all too eager to throw itself at his feet. She could look at him and tell he was preparing to go, tell that he would disappear and she would not see him again until he willed it, and that she could live with. It had always been the way of things.

His one request was one she could easily grant, though he was fooling himself if he thought it would serve him in any way. She knew he knew that, and looked at him then in a way that someone who truly knew her would've recognized as soft and bordering on gentle.

"I'll tell him," she said, then added frankly, "it won't work, but you know that already. I'll tell him, though."