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Entry tags:

[open And we keep waiting to be seen, right?

who: Illya Kuryakin & you
what: just a general catch-all
when: End of April and beginning of May
where: around the city shopping, gym
warnings: will add if needed

1; around

Illya doesn’t get out much.

It’s not being in a strange place, in a strange world full of strange people with futuristic technology. Or… rather, even though he has to admit that’s kind of getting under the skin, it’s not just that. He’s just used to keeping to himself, to doing things on his own and only relying on his boss to give him his orders and trust Illya will know what to do.

In here it’s different. In here he doesn’t have to hide, doesn’t have to keep in the shadows and become a shadow himself. In here he can get out and try to be a normal person. Or at least do his best to look like one, since the most people know about him is a fake name and his claims that he was a rowboat champion before he ended up in this place.

So there’s probably something… calming, in just doing normal things. Grocery shopping, checking out nearby libraries, just stopping at a park and watching the animals go by. It may seem boring to most people, but to Illya is kind of refreshing to be able to do all of this without a weight on his shoulders. He figures it will get boring eventually, but for now he enjoys his newfound freedom.

Enjoying it so much he doesn’t even notice the orange firefly circling him.

2; gym

It does get boring eventually, even with all the shenanigans going around.

Illya is used to physical exertion, to being active and working out as much as he can, as much as he’s healthy. Back home he needed his body to be in peak condition, to be able to fulfill every mission as fast as efficiently as possible. Most of them ended up with him running away or towards something, after all. But in here his job, while more interesting than what he had assumed when it had been assigned to him, doesn’t require much more than a inquisitive mind and knowing where to look, what questions to ask.

He really misses the exertion. So after asking around and getting some advice he’s finally decided to join a nearby gym.

He can be seen running himself ragged on the treadmill, doing weights or basically using every single machine he can find his hands on. Yay technology. Obviously not all on the same day, he’s stubborn but not suicidal… but someone should probably tell him to slow down.

3: OPEN option! Go wild. Poke me on DM or over at

crotalus if you want a specific thread!

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“No.”

He says quickly, because that was a direct question and he definitely can’t avoid answering those and a lie is apparently unthinkable right now. But he reaches for the bar anyway, keeping his mouth occupied doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now.

“What you just said sounds a bit like a negative generalization. Those are usually untrue- you have no way of knowing opening up will cause either of us any harm. Me, I must keep a lot to myself because of my job. I would be punished if I didn’t.” It’s… becoming harder to just give vague statements and no specifics but as long as she doesn’t ask specifics, he seems to be managing.

It's not difficult to put the pieces together. The Cold War, personal responsibility, the lies, being unable to trust, and a job where talking means pain. Natasha clenches her teeth to try and keep it from happening, but it doesn't make a difference. The laugh bubbles up, and she tips her head back with an almost pained expression on her face. "Two spies, trapped in an elevator, compelled to honesty. What the fuck?"

This is going to be awful. "Some negative generalizations are true because the one common factor causes the failure. I am the one common factor. My life, and sharing it, does not end well." Like right now. Right now, she hates her fucking life, and she hates how it feels a little bit better to just be able to talk.

The corner of Illya’s lips twitch downwards and his entire body becomes tense. Natasha may find it humorous but Illya really doesn’t feel like laughing at being found out like this. He’s also utterly unsurprised at her being a spy, she’s not the only one who can draw conclusions but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.

At least he’s pretty sure he can trust her, of all people to keep a secret. He’s got her number as well, ater all.

“I have a hard time believing you sharing something specific about your life is enough to cause people any problems. But you seem like a smart woman, guess you had your reasons to reach that conclusion even if I may not agree.” He shrugs one shoulder.

“I don’t share about my life because I’d be betraying my country. It could be used against me. And also because I’d probably have to get rid of them later on.”

Natasha finds is unbearable. She has inappropriate emotional reactions a lot of the time, though. They set people on edge. They're a slightly vindictive coping mechanism.

"Maybe. I'm. Just. Rotten." It's difficult to bite the words out, and she does it around a smile gleaming white, predatory. Rotten all the way through, all the way down, try to hide it with a veneer or virtue and justice, but it won't take. You can't paint over rot and have it hold.

Fuck this. She looks down at the protein bar in her hand, frowns, thumps her head back against the elevator wall. "Do you still love it? Russia?"

Illya wants to take it seriously. She seems to mean it, the words coming out of her like every single syllable hurts deep in her soul to pronounce. And he knows, better than some, that it’s hard to convince your logical brain when your very emotional heart has already made a decision. But still the idea of her being rotten seems just impossible, to him. To say the least.

“I am resilient. You can share with me, I will survive.” He tilts his head. “Though it looks like you do not have much of an option.

And… part of me does. Part of me will always love Russia. It is who I am, it is how I was raised.”

"Turns out it is just a machine. It will grind us down and discard us. We don't matter." It's easier to talk about. Not that she thinks it's going to offer her much of a reprieve, but she doesn't feel as compelled to talk when he's also talking. She just needs to wait for him to give in. She can do that.

She hopes she can, anyway. It's not easy. "If you stay standing up for much longer, I'm pretty sure i'm going to try and hook your feet out from under you."

Illya’s hand tightens, but that’s the only outward sign of his displeasure. It’s been… an intense couple of weeks, reading about Russia’s past and future. What he knew, what he’d suspected but never dared to look into, and things he just could never have imagined were going on in Russia. So to say he’s feeling a little conflicted right now is putting it lightly.

“We shouldn’t be what matters. We are only individual people.” In the end that feels like the safest way to answer that now that he cannot lie. Because he isn’t sure what Nat’s future looks like in her world, but he still has to go back to Russia.

“And you’re welcome to try.”

Illya's hand, and Nat's jaw. First her jaw, then her shoulders, until she looks ready to attack him. "Individual people matter. We matter. They have no right-- to just-- take us, and--" She takes a shaky breath to try and calm down, but it doesn't work. It's far easier to ignore things when she doesn't have to think about them, when she doesn't have to admit them out loud. "I matter."

It has taken her a long time to come to that, to accept it. It's taken a lot of people many years to convince her that she counts for something, that she is more than just a tool, a moving part in a heartless machine. Thing is, those people aren't here, those relationships are gone. She's ruined them, or maybe just been unable to save them, but the point is they're gone. Her support network, it's gone, and it hurts.

Here’s where he would usually try to… calm things down. He may be a jerk sometimes, and he will never deny that he’s got anger issues in spades but he’s still a human with some level of empathy. But that would be when he’s not being bitten by a damn firefly that forces him to just blurt out the truth, no matter how painful, instead of trying to soften the blow.

“It’s about the good of many, not the individual.” He says, parroting what he’s been taught. Just telling her what has been repeated to him all his life until he firmly believed it.

“But working for a bigger goal doesn’t make our lives any less important.” He can agree to that.

"You deserve to make your choices for yourself. You deserve to choose to sacrifice for the greater good, and you deserve to know what you're signing up for, what you're giving your life for. They can't just-- take children-- like they don't matter, like they're stripping a car for parts." She can feel it building, hot and prickly in her chest, and she can't stop it.

He can't believe that it doesn't matter. Or that it's not worth-- Unless he's not in the dark, unless he doesn't just blindly follow orders. The greater good, duty and honour, sacrificing for what matters, she'd had that shoved down her throat for years by people who had decided that she did not matter, that she wasn't a person. They believed it. Does he?

She takes one more deep breath which does nothing to calm her. "And I said sit down."

Illya’s body goes from a sort of quiet understanding to a blunt yet quiet anger as she keeps on talking. Mostly born out of denial. Because you cannot uproot your entire life, your core beliefs in such a short amount of time. He’s working to get there, even before he came here Solo and Gabby had taught him Russia wasn’t perfect. But having an inkling doesn’t mean he’s going to just accept all of it.

“If they can’t, then my entire life has been a useless lie.” He hisses out. Luckily for him she’s given her the perfect change of subject for him to latch onto.

“And I said, you’re welcome to try to make me.”

What Natasha hears is that he believes that children are the disposable tools she and her fellow test subjects were treated as, that his whole llfe has depended on this assumption, perhaps that he has been the one stripping them for parts. There are other ways to interpret it, of course, and a calmer mind might cycle through them. She does not have a calm mind. Not right now.

Fuck it. Natasha braces her shoulders against the wall, lashes out quickly to catch his ankle with her foot. If she hooks him and pulls him down or if he dodges out of the way, she's still going to use the force of the burst of movement to shove herself away from the wall and to her feet.

To be fair, if Nat had been a little more specific he’d have agreed with her to a point. He was trained since he was very young and he came out just fine (or so he thinks), but there’s definitely a difference between training and… what Natasha went through. Plus he’d only starting seeing the difference between following orders because it’s the right thing to do and following orders blindly, it will take him a while to get there.

He was ready for Nat’s attack, he had basically been asking her to go for it, so he’s quick to dodge her. But he wasn’t expecting her to be so quick to pull herself up to her feet so quickly. He reacts as fast as he can, trying to slam his full body weight against her shoulder to pin her against the elevator’s wall.

He's enormous, and men his size tend to count on the fact that they hit hard in a fight. She anticipates his next move as soon as he jumps out of the way of her foot, and she's quick to launch herself to the side, rebound off of the perpendicular wall, and come back with a punch aimed squarely at his jaw.

She has a few people she can train with, who are willing to spar, but even those who will come to blows with her aren't really willing to hurt her. He doesn't know her. He has no reason to not want to draw blood. She's gotten a certain amount of satisfaction fighting against the monsters beyond the perimeter, but she was trained for this, and it's been a while.

Funnily enough, in a way, she was trained for exactly this. Not just the face to face violence with another human being, but being in an incredibly tight space with an attacker far larger than her, turning everything in the space, including the confines of the space itself, into an advantage.

Always four steps ahead. That's the only way to keep from getting flattened, and fighting monsters hardly requires so much forethought. This is better. If her punch connects, she'll follow with an uppercut. If he blocks her, he'll give her additional momentum, and she'll use it to duck around him. If he's actually quick enough to grab her, well, that's a whole new approach, isn't it?

Illya’s size puts him at a little bit of disadvantage in this place, and he’s aware of it. He has a harder time moving, and his brute force isn’t going to matter much if he can’t even get his hands on her. For being in a closed space she seems to be everywhere at once, avoiding most of his direct blows and making the ones that manage to hit hurt less than they could by aiming them as best as she can.

But she’s not the only one that has been trained for this, so while this isn’t the ideal place for him to fight he still manages to put up a good one. He’s strong and big, but he can also be fairly nimble when he needs to. So while she manages to avoid all the blows, he’s getting fairly good at cornering her.

This… this is a thrill. This is intense. This is the kind of fight he’s been craving for since he ended up here. He’s been against monsters fairly often, he’s gotten a chance to use his gone a few times and his job does allow him to chance a guy or two every now and then. But nothing compares to this, and even though he’s aiming to hit her as strongly as he can he has to admit this is the most fun he’s had in a long while.

Until, somehow, he ends up with her legs around his neck and her somehow managing to send him all the way to the floor. He’s not down for the count, not by a long shot but the movement does take him by surprise for a moment.

When she's fighting, she doesn't have to talk. It doesn't even make her feel like she's holding something in. This is honest, and more than that, it's enjoyable. She won't go so far as to call it fun, because they're both trapped and a bit under duress, forced to talk to one another, but this is the best fight she's had in months. He moves surprisingly well in the small space, and it's not easy. She's winning, she knows that, but it's not a wash. He's putting up a real fight, proving to be an actual challenge.

When she slams him to the ground, her thighs around his neck and her thumbs digging into the notches at his wrists, trying to make his hands go numb, she is smiling. She is actually, genuinely, smiling. It probably still looks too sharp, too predatory, but god is she loving this. Her pulse is up, her breathing heavy, cheeks flushed and eyes bright. This is what she didn't even know she needed when she woke up this morning. This is what she wants, the release of the tension.

"Should have just sat down," she says, digging her thumbs in deeper, taunting him, trying to get him to fight back harder.

She looks beautiful like that, if you ask Illya. He had already noticed she was a pretty woman when they met, most people would because Natasha is objectively beautiful. If he had given it some thought he would have realized a spy would be trained to use that to her advantage just like he had, but at the moment he had been more preoccupied with the firefly bite and how much he’d wanted to be spill the beans.

But now? Now all he can think about is how beautiful she looks with that predatory grin of hers.

“And miss out on all this fun?” He says, reaching for her own arm with his free arm and using all his strength to try to push her into the nearest wall- or at least get her out of his back. He’s beginning to lose the feeling on the other arm and it’s been a while since he was this happy.

He's not so bad himself. He's quite handsome, actually, even for the way people brought into this city tend to skew toward incredibly pretty. Natasha likes a man who knows how to handle himself, and she likes a man with issues. Issues are her bread and butter, they help her keep distance, twist people around and manipulate them into giving her what she wants without giving up anything she doesn't want to.

When he bucks up, she's not expecting it. Or, no, that's not correct. She's not expecting it to be so strong. She's got a good grip on him, she's strong herself (her thighs in particular are basically a vice), his arm has got to be going numb, and she just slammed him face first into the floor. She's impressed, which means she's still smiling, even as he manages to throw her off of him and into the wall. She hits the metal hard, because fuck, he's like a freight train. She can feel the elevator car shudder with the force he puts behind that move, and it hurts, and it helps.

He knows she’s fast, she’s faster than he is. So if he’s going to act he needs to do it now, while he still has the element of surprise and she’s still reacting to having been thrown away with all his strength. Don’t worry, Natasha no one expects Illya’s strength. He’s able to literally rip cars apart and lift them and that’s not even his full strength, of course he’ll be able to throw her entire weight against a wall with only one arm.

The arm she was twisting feels kind of numb, so he uses his other shoulder to basically tackle her against the wall and try to knock the wind out of her.

For a moment, she's wondering just how far back the KGB was experimenting on children, if it's possible that Illya went through a program like hers. Is this why it doesn't seem to bother him, the way Russia chews people up and spits them out? She thinks of some of the other girls, ones who took to the doctrine more easily, or who were broken down all the way through and more successfully rebuilt to the ideal specifications. The ones who believed in the cause, in their purpose, in the good those in charge insisted they were doing. Maybe he believes the lies, too.

Then he's got his shoulder against her chest and the breath is being knocked out of her. She briefly considers using the Bites, knowing that he can probably handle the charge. It won't kill him, at least, she's fairly certain. It will make all this less fun, though. It might make him stop entirely, and it's not that she wants to win, she just wants to fight. "You're good," she gasps out, then moves to wrap a leg around him. She doesn't want him to be able to pull away from her, build up momentum to hit her again.

If he knew what she’s keeping herself from doing he would probably laugh. And he doesn’t laugh often… or nearly at all. But the idea that she’s enjoying the fight so much that she would refrain herself from using something that would actually stop it… yeah, he’s found his match.

“So are you.” He retorts. She doesn’t have anything to worry about though, Illya is as human as it gets. He just pushed his body to the limit and is always so angry his body is permanently in adrenaline-rush mode. He slams her against the wall again for good measure, making sure she doesn’t have time to recover even when she’s pressing herself against him. If she gets out of this situation she’s going to kick his ass again, he has a very specific advantage and he’s not letting go of it.

But at least being so close to her makes him realize something.

“...You’re enjoying this.” He says, like it’s not obvious how much he’s enjoying it as well. Like it won’t be obvious to Nat now that she’s this close.

"So are you," she says, rolling her hips slightly to let him know that, yes, she knows. She doesn't harp on it, though. Mostly because she's afraid that it will make him stop, or try to talk about this, and she doesn't want to. So, instead, she jabs down into his back with the heel of her boot. The thrill of it pushing more words past her lips. "People are honest when they fight. You see how low they're willing to sink, what they can't put behind them. You might be just as fucked up as I am. It's the only reason I haven't electrocuted you yet."

Well, fuck. More than she wanted to say, and she takes a very mature and reasonable next step. She head butts him. Hard.

She mentions electrocution and he frowns, instantly on edge because that means she has some sort of weapon in her that could knock him out if she wanted to. Which means she doesn’t want to, because she wants to draw this out. He wonders if it’s because of the firefly bite, a way to make sure she doesn’t say more than what she wants to say. Or the same reason he’s fighting: simply because it makes him feel good.

“I am not ‘fucked up’.” Is all he manages to get out before she basically headbutts him. Right on his nose. It hurts like hell, but he’s pretty sure it isn’t broken. But the pain does make him take a step back, which should be enough for her to get out of his grip. He’s aware of that, though, and he’ll be quick to slam his elbow right between her breasts unless he moves quickly.

"Yes you are," she hisses out, still smiling, dodging out of the way of his attacks, side-stepping each one neatly, rebounding off of the walls, coming back to take quick jabs at him. She still moves to hit hard, but because she knows he can take it. He can take a whole hell of a lot. "It's how you survived. I know, because it's how I survived." Damnit. This is supposed to keep her from needing to talk, it's not supposed to spur her to new confessions. "The things they do to make people like us, it breaks anyone normal, breaks them beyond repair."

She dodges another wild attack of his, aware that she's struck one hell of a nerve, because he wants to shut her up. "We survived because we were already broken, because we can't live normal lives." It's not only speculation on her part any more. He's so easy to read, and it's probably mostly because he has no choice, but she's still picking up on every little micro-expression and vocal inflection. He's like her, and she can sense it.

Any sense of just enjoying the fight, of just doing it for the hell of it is flying away quickly as she keeps talking. It’s not that she struck a nerve, it’s that just like when she mentioned Russia she’s shaking the very core of his beliefs. Considering the bite in his arm, she should know for sure he means every word of what he’s saying… just like she means every word herself.

“I choose this life.” He spats out. He tries to attack her legs, since it seems like the quickest way to get her to stop moving around so quickly. Her speed is his advantage, just like his size is his biggest disadvantage and they both know it. “You know nothing, absolutely nothing. They gave me a life when I had nothing, they gave me a reason to keep on going.

They gave me a chance to clean my father’s reputation. If I fail, if I give my back on them I will have nothing.”

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