may catch-all

[unmakeme]

who: Natasha Romanoff and your character
what: lots of walking, fair amount of drinking, little bit of rescuing
when: month of May
where: all around town, particularly bars or clubs
warnings:

1 dino-fight

There’s something about throwing herself into work. It’s not satisfying, that’s not the word she would use. It’s… well, it’s familiar. Leaving a whole lot of death in her wake, that’s what she was built for. Usually it’s very bad people, but she’s almost used to it being weird lizard monsters, freaky insects, giant crocodiles, various dinosaur like creatures. It’s almost becoming the norm. Even better when they turn out to taste good. Save some money on a food bill. Clint would probably find that morbidly funny.

The flying ones are the worst, not because of the difficulty, but because of familiarity. Fighting with her eyes on the sky, with a mind to vertical action, that’s a throw-back to something real.

Luckily, that train of thought is cut off by a surprised shriek and a call for help, and she has something else to focus on. That something being a pterodactyl monster with a person in its claws. Not ideal. Natasha turns her attention, assesses the way the creature is moving with the additional weight, and takes the last two shots in her clip. Both connect, neither take it down. So she ejects the empty clip, slams another one into her gun, flips herself up onto the awning of a building, and takes a slower and more careful shot. This one travels through the creature’s eye, and the heavy, meaty sound of it hitting the ground would be a lot more satisfying if not for the fact that it’s landed on the intended meal.

Natasha jumps down, and jogs over, bracing her shoulder underneath the hulking corpse and shoving it up and off of the person beneath. “You ok?”

2 getting as drunk as humanly possible

It’s not just the latest monster attack that’s got her drinking. It would be nice to pretend that’s the case. It would be slightly healthier. Sadly, it’s not true. She was drinking before the dinosaurs turned up, and she’ll be drinking after they’re gone. Some nights, she goes to clubs, gets lost in the loud music and the dark corners, lets other people buy her drinks. Most of the time, she just ends up in a bar that doesn’t look to her like it’s full of people who will want to talk, and stays until closing so that she can be alone without feeling completely alone.

Which does not mean she always stays alone. It’s impossible to get away from everyone. Occasionally she ends up seeing someone she knows from work, from her building or gym, and there’s no longer an easy way to tell them to get lost. Or maybe she’s just tired. Perhaps, deep down, she doesn’t really want to be alone.

3 walking after dark

Even after the bars close, or when Natasha realizes that if she keeps going, she’s going to end up falling asleep there, she doesn’t always want to go back to her apartment. It’s not home. It’s about as far from home as any place she’s ever lived.

So she walks, just to put it all off.

She walks through streets of closed up shops, lights off and shades drawn, and most of the time she’s thinking about the stillness of Manhattan after the alien attack. Occasionally a certain stretch of the road or cluster of stores will make her think of even earlier times, of dead drops and fleeting connections in deserted town centers, dancing through camera blind spots like it was effortless, like it wasn’t a heart-pounding jumble of precision and uncertainty, tempting fate with every step.

She walks along the perimeter, checking the guards, looking for faces she knows, ones she doesn’t, listening for movement beyond the fence. She tries to imagine what’s coming next. She’s rarely correct, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop wondering. This is not the kind of life she can predict. It’s not the kind of life she ever wanted to be living. Sometimes that circuit will carry her through until morning, and she can skip sleep entirely, grab a quick shower and head to the gym, pretend she’s fine.

wildcard!
Everybody knows how to do this one. Want to do something I haven’t talked about already? This is the option for you.

Comments

3.

[technospeak]

It's early morning, and Rodney has been in the Wall R&D office all night, poring over his tablet, over the maps of the terrain he's been getting back from the teams out scouting the wall, piecing them together and putting them on the big clearboard LED displays in the team's conference room.

There's no real reason, of course, that he should still be here, but he just keeps finding new things to keep him occupied here. Things that keep his mind busy and stop him from dwelling on all the things he's trying his hardest not to dwell on - the leftover traumas from home, mostly, exacerbated by both Carson and Elizabeth having arrived. It's always been easier for Rodney to withdraw when things are painful, inside his metaphorical shell, which in reality is mostly comprised of equations and logic and science, objective things that are powerful and interesting and complicated enough to overwhelm and block out the subjective.

But there comes a point when he can no longer keep it up, when even his brain gets too tired to carry on with computations and equations, and that's when it's time to go fall into bed at home, to let himself transition immediately from awake to asleep without that troublesome time in between where overthinking ruins any chance of sleep.

It's as he leaves the office, locking it behind himself, that he sees her coming in from a patrol. He's seen her before, a pretty redheaded woman with a serious expression, always at this time of day. For a moment, he considers passing her by again like he has so many times before, and continuing home.

Instead, he lifts a hand and waves, with a tired smile.

"Good morning. Or, should I say, good night? Another patrol?"

2!

[stumbledfromtheashes]

Iona has settled into life in the Quarantine easily enough, now. She’s been there for long enough that she’s used to things. Even if it’s far too calm and far too uneventful in ways that make her itch with restless energy sometimes. She likes it, truth be told. Likes the fact that nothing is purposefully trying to kill her. Yet, anyway.

And despite the complications of… whatever it is with her and Cullen. But after the flowers, and the incident at the hot springs, she can no longer deny that there is something. (Nor can she maintain the paltry attempt at maintaining distance by thinking of him as Serah Rutherford.)

She’s restless, this evening, but she’s trying very hard to not worry either Dorian or Cullen (it won’t last, sooner or later she’s stealing outside the wall again because the Quarantine is too bloody calm, but for the moment she’s staying within its boundaries) so instead of exploring outside the Quarantine she slips off to a bar to drink. What she wouldn’t give for Bull and some of his Maraas-Lok right now.

But the strongest drink this bar has will do for the moment. She slides gracefully onto a barstool and orders, absently rubbing at her gloved left palm as she waits for the bartender to return with her drink.

2.

[causational]

[Eddie doesn't really go dancing alone that often - Cisco loves dancing just as much as he does, after all, and so why bother going alone when he can dance the night away with the guy he's going home with?

But tonight, Eddie'd really been craving some dancing, something to take the edge off, to exert himself after way too many weeks on desk detail, and Cisco had been too busy with work to go. So Eddie had suited up on his own, kissed Cisco, promised to text him, and headed out to the club for a bit.

It's been a good night so far, Eddie's danced with a few groups of people, guys and girls, but no one solo, not really. At least until he sees Natasha. Grinning a bit, he moves through the crowd of pressing bodies until he's right up in her dark corner.]

Hey!

[He has to raise his voice over the volume of the music, but he's grinning.]

What's a girl like you doing in a club like this?