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who: Ava Orlova & Natasha Romanoff
what: two redheads, take two
when: after the acid rain
where: the ballet theater
warnings: None?

[Most of the time when she dances it's at the gym, before dawn, alone in the dim light in front of mirrors, dancing steps ground so deep in her memory she repeats them now that she remembers them. Swan Lake is the constant, but sometimes there are whispers of others, routines and half-remembered pieces. Sometimes, she stops by the ballet theater, but it's usually to watch.

The queer way it whispers against memories she can't quite remember, things about the Bolshoi and her porcelain ballet doll Carolina that she used to carry with her everywhere until she lost it to Ivan along with everything else in her life.

It's always a little like walking among ghosts, as she watches the women in leotards and silk shoes. But she comes here with her sketchpad and she draws, sitting tucked out of the way, watching the dancers, Ava folded over her own long limbs while etching shape and contour, movement and intention onto paper. She doesn't exactly have permission, but no one's ever stopped her before, and that's just about the same thing. But sometimes, when the dancers are working out on the stage, she slips into one of the practice rooms, and she dances for a little while. Her sketchpad leaning against the wall as she moves to the music she can hear wafting on the air, the rhythm in the walls.

Later, she's gathering up her sketchpad and her charcoals and pencils, getting to ready to leave but when she steps out of the door and into the hall, she sees her. Natasha. Hair as red as her own and those clear eyes. Ava refuses to fluster, even if her fingers tighten slightly, she just takes a breath before trying to speak.]

Do they have you dancing here? [She tries to make it a casual pleasantry. She idly remembers once feeling that Natasha's curse was not being able to get rid of her. The way their lives seemed to cross, and here they were-- from different worlds, standing in a theater on the moon.]

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[ It's the girl— the one from the rain, clutching pencils in her hands. Intrusive. Ava had tailed her in the rain the other day, Natasha knew, and she hadn't had the time or space to shake her. There had been people that needed her help more than she needed her privacy.

It was the same way here, she thinks. Natasha can hardly leave her drills, not for something so petty. ]

The rumor is, I'll take any job that's offered.

[ It's a lie, of course, but she says it easy. ]

What are you doing here?

[ It isn't an idle question. It's true that Natasha doesn't want a shadow, and doesn't appreciate being followed. But if Ava has nowhere else to go, then she wants to know about that, too. Something about her is frayed along the edges, worn beyond the years she carries on her face. ]

Really? I'm sure I haven't heard that one.

[She smiles, a little rough at the edges, but she's trying to work with this. Her tone light.]

I like it here.

[She's trying to feel it out. They no longer share that bond of tragedy, but they don't share the disappointments and the hurts and the vulnerabilities that fell against stone, either. Maybe it can be a good thing.]

When I was a child, I used to dance, back in Moscow. Swan Lake's the one I can remember.

[There's a thin shrug of her shoulders, looking up at the other woman. She doesn't lie, just omissions. She gives her truth, but without the darkness. Not misleading so much as trying not to push too hard.]

I come here and draw them sometimes, sell the sketches.

[ Natasha recognizes the spaces in Ava's story, only the shape of the gaps. She doesn't know what's supposed to fill them. She could press, she knows; the girl would probably tell her everything. But would that be good for either of them? Or would it only hurt more?

Instead, she looks at the pencils, the grey dust on Ava's hands. ]

It won't work, you know.

[ She tilts her head to make it clear that she means something to do with the drawings, keeping her hands to herself. Her words might be harsh, but they are not cold. ]

[There's something in that criticism that tenses her shoulders, puts a spark in her eyes. Her smudged fingers curl against her sketchbook and there's a sort of reflexive defiant tip of her chin. It's not in her voice, she's not looking for a fight, but there's hints of someone used to having to push back hard and that had lived harder.]

What won't work?

[Instead, she lets herself ask the question, a tilt of her head. And maybe it's not so bad, really. Actually allowing herself to feel that separation, and like Natasha isn't some impossible ideal to which she will always be compared and never quite measure up, even by herself. No matter how much of the other woman had been tangled in her memories and muscle memory, they'd never really been the same.

For once she doesn't feel bad for not knowing the answer.]

You cannot draw a dance.

[ She exhales. ]

Ballet is only movement; it leaves nothing lasting. [ Other art leaves poems to print out, or scripts to follow. But ballet leaves only memories, techniques to be practiced but never repeated, not just-so. ] It can't be captured.

You can sketch a pose, the way a dancer holds her hands, but—
[ Her eyes feel heavy, suddenly. She doesn't know why. Natasha has never really been a dancer. ] But that is not the dance, is it?

It's hard, but I don't think that's true.

[There's a tilt of her head as she looks at Natasha a little curiously.]

Ballet isn't just movement. The way a dancer holds her hands means more than just the position. It's about creating a feeling, an emotion, too. And maybe you can't hang that in a museum, but there's more than just the sequence of steps.

[She quiets for a moment, a slightly sheepish shrug of her shoulders. Art had been one of her few solaces since she had the space to risk having any at all. And she had strange, complicated feelings about ballet. Could remember her feelings as a child but also the reality of it--] I mean. I think it's worth trying, anyway.

And the money doesn't hurt.

That wasn't what I meant. [ In the old school, the Vaganova method, the idea was that emotion was movement, and there was no line, no also to join the two together. Soviet ballet, the Moscow ballet, was about the sequence of steps, putting the dance back into dancing, as if sheer technicality could be a conduit to something awesome and distant. It was movement that was emotion, and these were the angry, leaping movements that Natasha had trained in. It didn't matter, that way of dancing dying and dead, the Bolshoi no longer a preeminent cultural force without the backing of the too-powerful state. It was all fleeting, all the same.]

But I do not think feelings are easier to draw. [ Or more lasting, really. That was the point— some things were meant to end, not to stay.

A pause. Her next words have less steel. ]

Do you know how Plisetskaya held her hands? Always open, artless, like she had wings.

[The Bolshoi was what she had fallen in love with, as a child, somehow begging her mother into buying her one of those porcelain ballerina dolls. But her own training, the movement had been the only point. Missing the lyricism, the idea of being a conduit to something else, the way that . But then the ballet had never been the point. Just the code, even if she hadn't understood it.

But she was to be strong as an ox and sharp as a razor. It had taken a long time before how much she felt was something more than a dirty secret, or something for Ivan to exploit, to humiliate and punish her for.]

It depends on what you draw, I think. You're right-- you can't really draw the dance, but I think it's worth trying to capture what it feels like, anyway.

[She shrugs her shoulders, watches Natasha as the woman's words at less hard and she shifts a little.] I wanted to dance like that. [A quiet admittance, hands loosening against her sketchpad.] I saw Ekaterina Shipulina at the Bolshoi once when I was a child. She moved like she was weightless.

I didn't say you couldn't try.

[ You can get closer to a point without reaching it. ]

But you should ask permission first. Especially at rehearsal. Not everyone likes being watched. [ Natasha herself had no expectation of privacy. Too many years spent breaking and entering, followed by too many years on television screens. But it is not the same for the other dancers. These weren't public rehearsals. After a moment, she adds— ]

I can speak to the director, if you'd like.

[She frowns a little, because she can understand that.]

You're right. Sorry.

[She looks a little sheepish, but the apology is genuine. To be fair, back home it'd just been doodles in her sketchbook she kept under her bed set up on cinderblocks and plywood. And she'd felt so invisible in the big city, but this place is different, and she does understand that watching isn't always welcome.

At the offer, though, she blinks, looking up at Natasha and she nods, like she's not quite sure how to put it into words at first.]

That would- I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

[She hadn't expected the offer, and it catches her by surprise for a moment. It's a strange feeling, expectations twisted, but in a way that's not unpleasant. It's... nice. Makes her feel like maybe everything isn't lost. It softens her too, the way she holds herself a little less defensive.]

[ The girl's regret seemed genuine, at least. That was good. ]

I can't promise anything. They're wary of me, too.

[ She'd been placed here by the jobs authority, on the basis of some— well, some carefully manicured truths. To the rest of the ballet corps, she hadn't earned a spot. Natasha could fit in easily enough, when she wanted to, but there was still some lingering uncertainty. ]

But you get more when you ask than when you don't.

[It's less for the fact of taking, and more that she understands what it is to want to stand unseen. And there's not exactly guilt for that, but she means it when she apologizes. She nods when Natasha says that they're wary of her too, and she can understand that, she supposes.

As good as she is at fitting in, she's probably still the new girl. But then she says those words, and there's a flicker of something hot in her eyes, a tension in her hands. But it's brief, there and gone, invisible to almost anyone else as Ava chokes it down, settles for shaking her head.]

No one's ever given me anything because I asked for it. She tried to teach me that no one ever would.

[She sighs, tries to smile, even if it's a little hard to not think of the Embassies in DC, the laughter.]

[ "She?" Hopefully not this other Natasha. This Natasha had no illusions about her uniqueness, but loathed the complications of alternate universes all the same. That was something the X-Men did. Or at least it should be. She arches a single eyebrow and her voice: ]

Very capitalist.

[That's exactly who she means, of course.]

Very American, I suppose.

[It was the only place that had ever been something close to home, but she never really stopped feeling like an outsider.]

Perhaps.

[ How much does she want to say? What advice can she give? Natasha isn't well-struck for this sort of thing. She isn't the Avenger little girls hang posters of in their rooms. She's never wanted to be. ]

This is what I can tell you: [ her emphasis on the I is dripping ] you can take all you need, but it will never be all that you want.

[ "What kind of predator was she?" Natasha finds herself thinking. ]

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