open | you got the story all made up inside your head.

[debts]

CHARACTERS: natasha romanoff debts and you.
LOCATION: kitchens.
WARNINGS: n/a.
SUMMARY: natasha romanoff drinks tea. some people sit. some people don't.
NOTES: will edit for future warnings.

[ Natasha misses the tea back home. It's not a strictly Russian sentiment, either. She misses teas, her little collection in one of her safehouses where it was readily available at a local market, the ones she could mix and blend together depending on what she felt; sharp citrus and rose teas for mornings, soothing green for nights. Not, exactly, the way Natasha likes to start her day -- the reality is that she misses sun the same way people miss summer, memories with sentimental touches that include drinking tea on a Brooklyn fire escape, warmth on her back. She's sitting at one of the tables and maybe the picture she paints is dramatic, bordering on poetic; her glock, disassembled in front of her, next to her mug (coffee, not tea). Next to that are her holsters, two small flat discs and in her hands is a spool that she slowly unwinds, checks the tensile strength of.

All of this is gear she hasn't had to use in months. She polishes it up anyway, in a public area, in her tac-suit and boots up on a chair. Her hair is still sporting the remnants of how choppy it used to be when she sheared it off with a knife, sitting at uneven angles at shoulder-length as she respools her garroting wire.

So, you know. Come over if you want to touch some shiny things or whatever. ]

Comments

[debts]

I've been thinking.

[ Natasha doesn't so much as look up. She spares a single glance from the corner of her eye, and even then it could be dismissed as nothing, just the natural way a head turns when you put down one piece and put together another. Natasha slides the pieces of her glock together, neat and precise, slow enough so she can look for grooves in places where they shouldn't be. ]

You might need lessons.

[ Her head tips, a look shot over her shoulder as she quirks a brow. ]

What do you think?

[the_other_eight]

[Pepper pauses when Natasha starts to speak. Their interactions have been a bit scattered since their first meeting. At her assessment that Pepper needs lessons it's not hard for Pepper to determine what she's talking about. She means fighting doesn't she? They were all just in those hallways, and Pepper had only really made it through by hiding and running. With Extremis not manifesting here on the Tranquility she's pretty much defenseless and she knows it. May had offered once and she'd declined. She didn't want to learn to fight, but Natasha was right if that was what she was talking about now.

Still, she presses her lips together slightly and questions rather then confirms.]

Lessons?

[debts]

Lessons.

[ Some people call Natasha cold-hearted; maybe it's true, and maybe it's not as true as some people think it is. But there are reasons why she's a spy, why she spends most of her time in her room, filtering through conversations and gathering intel. Nothing is as bad as old intel; isn't that the saying?

Natasha puts her arms on the table. Leans forward, just a little, to coax her body language into something present but not insistent. ]

Basic hand to hand. I can teach you ways that better accomodate your body mass and your height.

[ Which might be a nicer way of saying that Natasha knows how to individualize that training to women. ]

[the_other_eight]

[Pepper's never thought of Natasha as cold. Efficient, yes, but not cold. The truth is that she helped Pepper when she needed it, she helped Tony when he needed it and she helped the world when it needed it. The truth was that Natasha was a good person.

She glances at the gun, lips pressed tightly together.]

Alright.

[She's not sure what else to say. She doesn't want to learn how to fight, she doesn't want to be in a situation that she's going to need to learn how to fight, but sh doesn't have a choice.]