tushanshu_logs | Oh lord, I have been sold; that I must take the unforsaken road...

There's a woman at one of the cafes in the fire sector still running, sitting at an outside table where she has a clear view of the foreigner suites down the street. She's not immediately recognizable as Natasha - her hair's been darkened, her features slightly altered with a touch of makeup, light enough that it's difficult to tell it's even there, and her posture's all wrong, spine and shoulders slumped, half curled in on herself.

There's a mug of weak tea at her elbow and she seems absorbed in the notebook in front of her, neat lines of handwritten Cyrillic. She hasn't actually read a line since she got here. All her attention's on the door that leads to Loki's suite, all her muscles tense and every nerve on edge behind the outward appearance of calm and distraction. She's never been an impatient person. You can't be and be successful in her line of work, but...

Right now, it's all she can do not to drop the surveillance and subtlety and see just what it takes to take down a god.

Oliver sees the cyrillic. That's what draws him over. The woman herself looks vaguely familiar, but not enough for him to place her. Another foreigner, seen at a distance, probably. When he sees what's written up-close, though, he raises his eyebrows.

In Russian, he says, "I don't think you're going to add much to that sitting here. I might be wrong, but it looks like just another cafe to me."

Who is the opposite of subtle?

Steve is the opposite of subtle!

So while Natasha sits incognito at the cafe, Captain ~~Ass~~ America is balanced on the edge of the roof closest to Loki's set of suites, in full regalia with his shield on one arm. He's not moving right now, a multicolored gargoyle waiting - like Natasha - for a reason to act.

She spots him coming from a distance, pretends not to notice as he draws close - the page she's on is hardly sensitive information, and she honestly doesn't expect him to be able to read it in the first place. There is genuine surprise in her eyes when she looks up at the sound of the Russian, and she smiles, closing the notebook on her finger.

"Review, not research. This place is a bit much to wrap your head around."

Is he serious. He can't be serious. Her attention's actually drawn away from Loki's suite as she watches him for a minute or two, hoping he'll go away instead of standing right out in the open with that enormous target on his arm. Of course, he doesn't, and she finally closes her notebook with a sigh, finishes her tea, and gets up to leave.

It's not long before she swings up onto the rooftop behind him and stalks toward him, her voice low as she snaps, "What are you doing?"

He glances over at her, and then focuses again on the apartment below. "What do you think I'm doing?"

Steve's tone contrasts her own in every possible way, to the point where it's obvious he's doing it to aggravate her. He thought he was beyond his upset about Bucky, but apparently there's still a new distrust that even a common enemy can't cut through at once. "You didn't have to leave the cafe."

Okay. Maybe Rikki should have expected this, when you think about it. She's been harrassing the gangs in her sector long enough that they know her and aren't especially fond of her, and with tensions with the kedan rising... Yeah, the smart thing to do might've been leaving the shield and goggles on the shelf and staying inside at night for a while. She gets that now.

Unfortunately, it's a little late to do anything about it.

She'd jumped in in the middle of a mugging, which is not exactly unusual for her or anything... until the guy that was getting mugged turned and attacked her too, and suddenly she's in the middle of half a dozen kedan all making very sure that she has no easy escape route, to the roofs or otherwise. Well... crap.

She's doing okay until one of the gang gets in too close while she's busy warding off another's sword with her shield. She manages to get her arm up before his heavy club comes down on her skull, but doesn't really have time to be pleased about it. Something cracks, unnaturally loud to her own ears, she screams, and her vision goes dark as the world seems to drop out from under her.

And then there's Steve.

He's been patrolling in dark clothes with the shield covered, for the past couple of weeks now, because contrary to what some people might believe he is capable of subtlety from time to time.

The time is now half-past totally not subtle.

He lands on the kedan from above, ripping the mask off of his shield and slamming it into the nearest gangster hard enough to send him flying into the alley's opposite wall. He wants them to know exactly who they're fighting, and exactly who they'll have to deal with next time they feel like like ambushing one of his people.

And if the shield doesn't leave a visual impression, he's going to make damn sure it leaves a physical one.

That particular point, he drives home when one of the kedan throws a punch - he siezes the elastic wrist in one hand and snaps the bone in two with a hammerstrike from the shield's edge before he sends the kedan flying with a booted kick. He leans away from another attack, wrapping an arm around the kedan's throat and turning so a third blow, this one with a sword, goes through his meat shield and misses Steve himself completely. He swipes the blade aside with contempt, making sure it finishes cutting the kedan it went through in two.

The rest of them break and run, leaving the corpse of their companion behind.

Steve checks shadows before he crouches next to Rikki, examining the injury that brought her down without moving it or her. He touches her face gently, peeling the goggles back and brushing her hair out of her face. "Hey, Nomad. Come in, Nomad."

She clenches her jaw and draws a deep breath, fighting down temper. This is ridiculous. Whatever they're doing now, she doesn't have the patience for it... but this isn't really the time or place to deal with it. So obviously the best thing to do is ignore it.

She lets out the breath, relaxing her shoulders, flexing her hands to shake out the tension. "I was hoping I could convince you to leave."

"How much luck would I have with you? That's how much you'll have with me."

He doesn't turn away from the edge entirely, still watching Loki's residence and the streets around it as he speaks to Natasha.

Rikki groans, forcing her eyes open at the sound of her name. It takes a moment or two for the darkness to fade enough that she can focus on a face, and even then it's hard, everything oddly dim and checkered-looking.

"Cap? What're..." She groans again and tries to push herself up - with her non-shield arm of course, which leads pretty quickly to another strangled shout, a rush of blood in her ears, another wave of darkness, though she manages to hang on until it passes this time. "Unnngh. Think I'm gonna throw up..."

"Don't-" Too late. He growls, though not at her, and turns her gently so if she does throw up, she won't choke. "Don't move."

He checks the kedan's body, stripping its shirt and taking its boots, and then ripping the latter to pieces so he can use the stiff material of the soles to stabilize her break enough to move her.

"This is going to hurt." He goes to work without another word, peeling back her ruined sleeve to get a better view of the damage done.

She lies there as still as she can, staring at the stones of the street and panting softly while she fights down wave after wave of nausea. It's okay. It's okay. It hurts like hell but Steve's here and he's going to take care of it and everything's going to be okay and god it hurts, this is nothing like the time she broke her thumbs, this is-

She swallows down tears and nods at Steve's warning, but there's still a little whimper as he pulls the sleeve back, and then...

"That's my bone," she says in distant shock, staring for a moment. Now she does need to puke, rolling slightly to her shield side and retching onto the pavement.

She slumps a little when she's done and she can breathe again, her whole body shaking with cold or pain or tears or she doesn't even know anymore. "Sorry I screwed up. Bad. I just... I didn't see the group and I thought that... thought I could handle the one guy..."

"Don't apologize, Nomad." The use of her title is intentional. He puts a hand on her face, guiding her focus away from the break and back to him. "You look at me, and only me, all right? We'll get you safe and patched up, and then we can talk, but until then don't worry about it. Besides, I need you to bite down on this for a minute."

He slips a piece of the bootleather into her mouth, and then he's back to her arm, stretching it out straight and aligning the bone before he wraps the break as tightly as he can. It's a crude reduction, a crude splint, but they don't have to go far. He settles the arm against her and eases his own arms under her. "Up you get."

She pauses for a moment, lips pressed together in annoyance, and then steps up to the edge next to him. "At this point you might as well go knock on his door. It would save a lot of time for the same result."

"What were you going to do, go after him for taking a stroll?"

He pauses, and then exhales, releasing some small part of his tension toward her. "This is idiotic. We - I'm holding a grudge for something you have... you did have every right to keep secret." He does look away then, focusing on the street. "He's my best friend."

Rikki's sobbing by the time he finishes, weak with relief when he's finally done and she can spit out the gag and cradle the arm against her, leaning into Steve and terribly glad for the warm solidity of him.

She lifts her good hand to wipe the tears from her face, but the shield's still on - actually trying the maneuver is going to end in smacking either her or Steve in the face, so she just wipes her cheek on her shoulder as best she can. When she lifts her head, her eyes settle on the body on the street, the spreading pool of whatever passes for blood in kedan. "Did you..."

Steve's killed people before. She knows that. But she's never seen him do it, and this was because of her, and the extent of the damage to the body is a little terrifying. She can't look away.

Again, he turns her face toward him, as gently as he can. "Yes. His friend put a sword through him in the confusion. Don't think for a second his death is your fault."

Because he knows that look. He's seen it before, on boys her age, on men his own. And if he has to tell her a partial lie to get her conscience clear of that corpse, even if the image won't leave her, he'll do it without hesitation.

He takes to the roofs without too much trouble, cradling her against him with one arm as he climbs. Once they're up there, it's easier, and one of his safehouses is close. He calls a kedan healer first - one who doesn't ask questions and will do a good job, though the price has gone up since rationing started.

Then, he calls Bucky. His explanation is brief, as are his assurances that Rikki is mostly all right. He knows well enough that Bucky won't believe it until he sees Rikki himself, so there's no point in wasting words.

Steve goes from the small kitchen area to the back room of the little apartment, where the cot is stationed in a windowless room. "Your granddad's on his way."

Edited 2013-04-08 06:42 (UTC)

"I know."

She goes quiet for a moment. She hadn't expected him to actually talk about it yet - certainly not here - and it's not easy shifting her thoughts from surveillance and strategy and thoughts of vivisecting Loki to... this.

"I didn't think it would help either of you worrying about something you can't change. It doesn't matter here. If it ever looked like we were going to make it home... then I would have told you."

"You don't get to choose what we worry about. Not telling me for your own, personal reasons - that's one thing. Not telling me because you decide I don't need to know? That's different." He pauses, not sure how close to home he wants to hit right now. It's a large part of the reason they're both here, after all.

"If it was Clint you'd want to know."

Edited 2013-04-08 13:42 (UTC)

Her arm's still throbbing sharply, she's still shaky and queasy, but at least now it's at a level she can deal with. Rikki smiles weakly and nods. "Thanks. For calling him and... finding me..."

There's a pause, a little frown. "Were you following me?" It's not accusing, really - hard to be too upset when she needed the save, but it is embarrassing, and it shouldn't have been necessary. Was, but shouldn't.

He rests his hand on her leg, giving it the barest squeeze. "Not the whole night."

Steve is glad he did now, though. Never mind that the Emperor probably would have brought Rikki back if- No.

He gives her leg a conciliatory scrub before he sits back. "I haven't told you how many times Bucky pulled my irons out of the fire, when we were younger."

There's another flicker of a smile, though she still looks a little put out. "I guess that makes me feel a little better."

She glances down at her arm and winces. "This is gonna keep me out of trouble for a while, huh?"

It's what he wanted, even though she knows he'd rather it didn't happen this way, but the idea of not being able to help when someone even Steve seems scared of is here... That makes her feel almost as sick as the sight of her own bone did.

"Somehow I doubt that."

He sighs. "I know it's not what you want to be doing, but I'm sure Peggy could use some help with information gathering and logistics while you're on the bench."

The scorch marks have long since been cleaned off the street and the walls of the surrounding buildings, so there's hardly any sign of what happened on this one slightly isolated street in the Earth Sector - maybe a darker area in the cracks between paving stones where the remains of charred zombies couldn't be cleaned away, but you wouldn't know what it was unless someone told you. Olivia is currently standing on this street staring at that slightly derker patch of street like it holds the secrets to the universe.

Actually, she's trying to figure out what it was here that's special, what it is about this place and that moment that actually triggered her ability. There has to be something she can put her finger on, something about the perfect certainty that she and Raylan were going to die as the jiangshi ran toward them, and the absolute calm that settled over her while she stared down a bomb in Boston... but whatever it is, she has no idea how to find it.

Oh lord, I have been sold; that I must take the unforsaken road...

FIRE SECTOR

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METAL SECTOR

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EARTH SECTOR