She's leaning down in front of the fire to stoke it when he responds, and the poker freezes in Natasha's hand as she falls unnaturally still, not moving to the point where it can almost be considered as a skill. She doesn't know that he can feel it; the complicated layers, blocks upon blocks of numbness and indifference piling up upon each other with almost unsettling speed and precision as they create a wall around her true, raw emotions. She's done hid like this plenty of times before, now is certainly no different.
At first she doesn't respond, her arm starting to move again to prod at the embers in the fireplace before she tosses another log on, and even then she takes her time placing the poker back before she moves slowly to her feet. "I'm sure they would have." She agrees with a strange evenness, her voice betraying nothing but calculated calm.
She knew that it would come up at some point, it would be naive to believe any differently, and she also knows that Jasper can, without a doubt, kill her here and nobody would know. She's practically walked into her own tomb, a cabin purposefully undetectable from the rest of humanity; she'd never be found. Yet, she isn't afraid. Coming here was the right thing to do in the end, not only for her safety but for Jasper's sake, because she owes him answers, doesn't she? He's stronger than her. Faster. Powerful. Yet she isn't afraid, because Natasha never believed she'd ever grow old. Perhaps now is her time.
She turns and faces him directly, uncertain of how the next sixty seconds will go.
"Probably not with rabbit stew." A pause. "I got you out as soon as I could."
It floats in the air, twisting between them, and he doesn't touch it. It's no apology, he won't take it as one, it's just a statement of what she sees as fact.
His eyes narrow a fraction. He doesn't tend to delve when he touches layered emotions, it's generally unnecessary in addition to being rude, but the time's come. He exhales slowly, then holds his breath to avoid her scent clouding and confusing his senses. She's cloaked in a thin layer of calm, the surface layer that never means much even among people who don't know how to guard themselves and regulate what they feel and when they feel it. When he moves boldly beneath that, Jasper's sense slides over…guilt. Reams of it, folded over and over, and all wrapped up in a strange, disconnected sense of calm, determined calm, like a resolution. Almost a sense of relief, when he looks very very close.
He knows she can't feel it when he's looking at her like this, but he still pulls back all the way before he takes a breath again to speak, a little tighter now.
"I don't recall saying otherwise. What exactly is it made you decide on that course of action?"
She doesn't know exactly what he's doing but he's doing something. Natasha can't help but wonder for a fleeting moment whether or not his age has anything to do with his tells; do they get worse with time? Do they become so ingrained after a hundred years that they become impossible to hide, and are instead as plain as the pale skin of his face? Does it happen after two hundred years? Three, perhaps?
It doesn't matter. The way that he exhales slowly, his chest moving as a sense of calm seems to settle around him, is enough to tell her that he's preparing himself. After that he stops breathing at all and although she isn't sure whether or not he actually needs to, she knows that along with the look in his eye means that he's up to something. All she can do is stand there and wait, and maybe that would be more unsettling if she didn't truly believe that she could die very soon. When a realization like that settles, uncertainty seems so trivial.
Then he's breathing again and his voice takes a turn, almost terse, while Natasha stays exactly where she is both physically and emotionally. There's no waver in the way that she holds herself and her gaze doesn't falter from the strange amber shine of his eyes, even when his words turn to be sharper than they usually are.
"I was presented with new intel." She sounds almost peaceful, her outward impression in direct conflict with the layered war going on within her. "It turns out you aren't much of a super soldier." A pause. "And I'm not much of a good guy. You'd think I'd be able to tell the difference by now." She says it as if it's supposed to be a joke, the sentence ending in a flat edge that suggests sarcasm, but it's missing the humor. Her head tilts with a sense of curiosity, as if she can only wonder what his intentions are.
Natasha gestures to the seating area behind him. "If you want to talk about this do you want to sit down or do you prefer to have me cornered between you and a fire?" She cocks a delicate eyebrow, and despite the performance that she puts on the only consistency in the way she looks and the way she feels is a lack of fear. She's feeling a lot of things, but fear isn't one of them. "I'm not going to try to escape a conversation when you can barricade the door before I can get to it. I'm not going anywhere." Her eyes barely move as she searches his face for something that isn't clear. "We both know that I owe you answers. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
Jasper opens his mouth to answer, not even entirely certain what it's going to be, but closes it again when his position relative to everything else in the room snaps into focus. The fire doesn't have any effect on him, save for how unfortunately flammable he is—also something they would've gotten around to testing eventually, but hadn't checked off their little lists yet. He'd kept his distance from it on the assumption that she'd want it as her territory.
It still takes a narrow-eyed moment before he slips off the windowsill and walks across the floor, a little too slowly in his efforts not to move too preternaturally fast, and sits on the couch, and looks at her again, still with that odd intensity of focus. "While I won't object to answers, I was under the impression this was your only safe house," he says, and it's still taut, but there's still no anger there either.
This close to the fire, the orange light of the flames makes his skin look like painted stone, but it brings his eyes somewhere between the peace-loving yellow and the danger-zone red. "I was never a super soldier. Never claimed to be. Never even tried to be. Certainly never wanted to be."
The way that he watches her should probably put her on edge, but Jasper isn't the most dangerous thing Natasha has been trapped with and he's not the first man to look at her as if she's the most lethal type of prey he's manage to hunt down. It isn't until he sits that she moves with a grace of a dancer in her stride and the tension of a mercenary in her shoulders, and she lowers herself into the chair across from him to lean back and meet his curious, almost sunstone eyes with jade.
"It is. In this country, anyway." She half-concedes to his point, but she adds on with honesty, "I don't need a house to be safe." Natasha knows how to run, and she's not foolish enough to put all of her eggs in one basket. "My ability to disappear isn't something I take lightly, I wouldn't risk losing it to something as arbitrary as a forest fire." Simple, flat, factual. She doesn't have to be here, and it's obvious by her delivery that she isn't pointing it out to impress him; she's doing it to simply correct his assumption. She doesn't, however, correct the assumption that she needs to find safety for some reason in the first place.
"And no. You're not a super soldier, it would have probably been easier if you were." Natasha leans back into the chair with a half roll of her eyes before they settle back onto him. He looks almost carved in this light, the glow of fire melting against him like sunlight shining through stained glass to paint a cathedral pillar. She's seen a lot in her life, but admittedly nothing like him.
"Steve Rogers. Captain America? He's a super soldier." The careful way she's been speaking thus far seems to give way to a flat monotone as she slips into a mode of debriefing, instead of inspecting. "There was a serum developed in the forties, Steve was the candidate chosen but others were in consideration, you were one of them. Apparently, you were lucky enough to catch the eye of someone high up." Her head tilts to the side with a visage that would almost convey curiosity if it wasn't so dry. "And then again almost eighty years later. Now either you haven't physically aged a day since nineteen forty two, or you need to share your skincare routine. Knowing my luck, it's the former."
Natasha pauses just long enough to give the illusion that it's a two sided conversation. "I was under the impression that we were trying to investigate whether or not there were more successful trials that weren't recorded. Obviously, my impression wasn't correct. Like I said. I'm bad at being a good guy, which has recently been confirmed when the agency I work -" When Natasha stops, it's the first time her gaze falters away from him to instead fall to the floor. She recovers just as quickly. "I worked at ended up being a shell for a terrorist organization. So, I hacked into their system and leaked all of their files, I'm sure it's hit every news station by now."
Whatever variation her voice has gained through her explanation suddenly flattens once again. "Which means, everyone should know that I broke you out of there by now. That kind of story doesn't win popularity contests. What can I say."
"I see." 1942. That hadn't been an easy time for him. Freshly nomadic, no path, no compass, no guiding star, nothing but a certainty that doing something to people that made them that afraid, just to survive, wasn't worth doing, and a complete helpless blank as to what to do about it.
"I was not an…overly cautious man at that time. I'd just left my coven behind, and Maria." And there's a new timbre in his voice, thoughtful and a little nostalgic, and the smallest quirk of a smile. "The one who turned me. We were…together…a long time. Nearly eighty years. Leaving her behind was almost the hardest thing I've done."
Almost. His eyes move from her face to her throat and back. It should be too fast to see, but somehow he has a feeling she'll spot it. Best not to dwell on that.
"You're right. It's the former. I haven't changed since the day I was turned. Neither has anyone else in my family." And now he does look away for the first time since he'd sat down, turning his head to stare past the flames. "They got out. I know they did. Alice told me what I'd need to do to make sure. Stay behind, fight but don't bite, don't run. She said we'd see each other again."
For a moment, his stare turns desolate, but only for that moment. Then he straightens again, resolute, and continues, with a decided flatness to his voice now. "So I did that. Nearly lost my rational mind when they hit me from behind with a bucket or two of blood. Pig's, luckily for them. If they'd actually used human blood...anyway. I got unfocused, slipped up enough they managed to get close with cattle prods. Two of those to the ribs will distract just about anyone. They got cuffs on me that I couldn't even budge. Not sure even Emmett could've gotten out of those. Maybe not even a newborn. Couldn't tranq me, so it was just the prods until I was down."
It's almost comforting, reporting what had happened to him, even to someone partly responsible for it. "I won't be returning to them," he says as his head snaps back around to look at her again. "But they got out ahead of your organization, and that's partly due to your warning, and I do thank you for that. They're good people." And maybe there's a little emphasis on the they in that statement, a little separation from including himself in that category.
It comes like lightning in both speed and power, electrifying the air for the briefest of moments. When Jasper speaks of the woman named Maria with such nostalgia in his voice Natasha's wall shatters, a wave coursing through her that burns of pure sympathy and overwhelming envy that makes her chest hurt. That's only been happening lately, she finds; it started after she realized just how far Steve was willing to go to save Barnes. She has nobody like that in her past, nobody to look back on to miss, and no matter how much she's managed to contain every other emotional trigger that exists within her, that one has been a particular pain as of late. She wants to know what feeling that close to someone is like, and isn't that foolish?
Just as quickly as it pierces the air the emotional assault is gone, shoved beneath the layers that she's so carefully constructed with nothing left but a residual hint of frustration. Her eyes never move from him, and her face never changes. "I know." She responds with tenderness. "I read the report, I saw how it all happened. That was my first sign that something wasn't right. We're not supposed to be the ones who make families separate. That's not what I do - that's..." she trails off, the corners of her mouth turning down in a frown. "...that's not what I'm supposed to do. "
The day is growing weary on her and for the first time since her arrival, Natasha slips and allows it to show. Her eyes move away from him to stare off at nothing, through the floorboards and down into the earth. Has it always been like this? Had she ever been an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, or simply H.Y.D.R.A? Tearing families apart and becoming the force that ruined her when she was just a child? Her shoulders seem to sink a little and her throat moves in a hard swallow, the guilt threatening to rise until she forces it back down.
"Stop thanking me." She tries to say it as a flat demand but it almost comes out as a request, because who is she in this moment to demand anything of this man? "I'm sure they are. That didn't matter, it should have but it didn't. I should have caught on sooner." She doesn't say that she's sorry, and not because of her pride. Natasha knows how useless words are, apologies mean nothing in the grand scheme of it all. Sorry doesn't get him back to his family. "You should return to them," she suggests, her lids drooping a little with her journey and the comforting sense of peace that comes with defeat. "You have a family that loves you, and worries about you. SHIELD is over. They're not going to try and find you anymore, there's nobody left to track you."
Finally she moves. Natasha looks back at Jasper, still weary and resolute, and her posture is listless as if she's reached the end of a journey she's been struggling through for thirty years. The question is almost polite, as if she'd like a response but doesn't necessarily require one, and it comes easier now than it would have a few moments before. "Are you going to kill me?" She holds his gaze with too little effort.
As he's still a little lost in thinking about Alice, when that shock of pure raw-edged envy and sympathy hits him, it hits hard. He loses his breath in a sharp exhale as if he's been physically punched, one hand clutching tight to the couch cushion next to him, the other pushing down on the arm of the couch, tensed and ready to disappear in the blink of an eye. It's so strong it almost feels like a threat, like a weapon, but it's gone so quickly, it takes him a few moments to convince himself he'd really felt it.
He can't risk getting any closer, just in case, but as he relaxes slowly back onto the couch and uncurls his fingers from the tears in the cushion beneath him, he chases that bolt of emotion and he can't find it, it's nowhere near the surface, not even in any of the upper layers. She's wrapped now in a smothering blanket of supreme indifference, it's coating every word, and while he wants to know how she can have such intense control over her emotions, he's getting a lot more curious as to why.
And then she asks him that, she asks it of him and looks him straight in the eye as she does it. He honestly cannot tell, no matter where he looks, whether or not she cares if the answer is yes. She doesn't know, but she also doesn't care.
"In my many years of hearing that question in all its permutations," he says quietly after a few startled moments of silence, "I have not once felt someone ask that of me and care so little about the answer." He tilts his head, the startled expression now softened into something curious. There's still not a hint of fear in her, not one thread of it. She knows what he can do, she'd watched him do it to one of his tormentors.
"Surprised you made it all the way inside without being drained dry?" It's polite, that same wry humor, but there's some anger underneath it. If she'd come all the way out here because she'd predicted her death at his hands… "I told you, ma'am. I don't do that anymore. Unless pushed."
He moves as if he's been struck and Natasha would almost think that he's moving to attach her if he didn't look just as confused as she does. Then he relaxes as if nothing happens, and in her state Natasha would almost believe that if it wasn't for the tears that now exist in her couch. There's something going on with him and she hasn't been able to deduce exactly what that is yet, all she knows is that he has a list of strange abilities that she has little to no experience with and that it might not even matter, depending on the decisions made within the next sixty seconds.
He seems confused by her and at first she doesn't know why. All of this seems to have taken the most direct and simple road in her eyes, and his eventual reply has her arching an inquisitive eyebrow as if she's just realizing, perhaps they aren't on the same page after all. "When you're living on stolen time, you'd be surprised at how ready you are to lose it to someone else." Natasha has been waiting for this moment, and Jasper can't possibly know that the situation is, in her eyes, ideal. She walked into this knowing that it could happen, he isn't taking her life; she's giving it to him, if he so chooses. In the end, Natasha has a say, and he can't take that from her. Nobody can. Because of that, this is as much a win for her as it could ever be.
"Unless pushed?" It isn't accusatory in the least; simply curious. "You haven't been pushed? Being separated from your family because a strange woman falls into your life and ruins everything that you've tried to build for yourself, that isn't being pushed? I don't think you understand, Jasper." She leans forward with ease, her elbows resting on her knees so that her fingers can twine together and her hands can hang loosely between them. "If I thought that you weren't capable of self control then I wouldn't have gotten you out in the first place, that isn't why I'm here. If I were you, I'd want me dead." Stark honesty. It's still something that she's trying to get used to. "I thought that I owed you that opportunity, but from what I'm seeing, you aren't ready to take it just yet." That doesn't mean he won't tomorrow, or the day after; Natasha knows that. She has no purpose anymore, every decision that she's ever had to make was made for her up until now.
"I can't fix all of the things I just found out I've done." She shrugs weakly with one shoulder. "But I can try to fix one, so here I am. And I will be until you decide if you want to do something about it. Until then," she stands slowly with a sigh, and Natasha turns her back on him without hesitation so she can walk toward the kitchen. "I have to finish my stew." She stops only once to linger in the kitchen doorway, and she glances over her shoulder halfway. "If you're not going to kill me, you're fixing that couch. We don't live like animals."
It's both force of habit and his preferred behavior: he stands when she does, at attention with his hands folded behind his back, though that look of confusion is still at the forefront. "I understand plenty. With all due respect to your abilities, ma'am, if I did want you dead, you would be." It would sound like a threat to anyone else, but somehow he knows she'll take it for the statement of fact that it is. "And quite frankly, you're not me."
He watches her with his head tipped to one side as she turns her back on him and looks back, and then glances down at the couch to see the small rips he's accidentally put there. Fix the couch? Out here? It's irritating, he thinks suddenly, she's irritating in a way none of his siblings have ever quite managed, but that's only one tiny thread out of the tangle.
Still, though. Irritating. "Fine," he says shortly, looking back at her again. "I'm not going to kill you. I'm afraid you'll need to look elsewhere for that kind of absolution." And now that she's leaving the room, he returns to the windowsill in a blur of motion almost too fast to see, and sits again more slowly, already turning away to look out at the stars and the lines of shadow in the woods.
The only reaction that she can give him is a little nod paired with a passive tone. "And I suppose we're both lucky for that."
By the time she's done eating Natasha is exhausted, and she drags herself to the bedroom after glancing at him to see if he's going to protest. She doesn't know if he's been using the bedroom but it doesn't look like it; the bed is still made the way that she makes it, the way that she learned as a child. A part of her knows that she should be unsettled, sleeping with a stranger in the house, but what does she truly have to lose? She wasn't bluffing when she asked him if he was going to kill her. Natasha has little to wake up for now, save for the stranger currently in her living room.
The next morning she's up before the sun, and she goes through the morning process of making coffee and sitting outside to watch the sun rise through the trees. She's thinking about breakfast when she sees it, a squirrel scurrying around at the base of a large tree a few yards away, and the idea hits her suddenly. She sips her coffee before setting it down on the small table beside her chair, and she gets up to walk to the small shed beside the house outside.
She returns to the porch with a small hunting crossbow, and she waits for the critter to come back down before she has it loaded, aimed, and released within mere seconds. She hits it directly at the neck so it doesn't suffer, and she sets the crossbow down on her chair before going to retrieve the thing and bring it into the house.
Half an hour later she has a plate of eggs and a coffee mug filled with something that definitely isn't coffee.
The eggs are for her, and she calls out to him to see if he's around. "Jasper? I have something for you." If he is, she'll give him the drained blood now before eating, assuming that he prefers it still warm; it isn't glamorous but a boys gotta eat, and she's seen what happens when he hunts. She doesn't feel like moping.
He spends the evening in the dwindling light from the fire until the ashes are cold, then slips outside and up to the roof, and that's where he stays, on watch until he hears her stirring. Then he stands and takes a standing leap into the trees, supposedly to hunt, but mainly because every scrap of last night's conversation is still fresh in his mind, and he doesn't know anything more what he should be thinking of it. He still can't figure her, and in a way he wishes Edward was around to clue him in a little.
He's still near enough to smell the little splash of blood, but he isn't near hungry enough to need to investigate it. Hearing his name, however, is enough to bring him sprinting back through the branches to land lightly on the ground outside, though he walks inside at an ordinary speed. The blood scent is stronger here, almost enough to mask her, and he frowns inquisitively as he steps into the kitchen.
Is that...he sniffs once, sharply, eyes fixed on the table. Is that squirrel blood in a coffee mug? Had she gone and hunted something for him? "What's all this?"
Natasha glances his way when she hears him approach, and there's a spark of annoyance when he moves into the kitchen with ease. Does he know how he looks? It's actually a bit obnoxious, how pretty he is, and Natasha is a full grown woman who can have any man she desires. She shouldn't feel that silly little flutter of attraction over someone who can't even cut his hair properly.
It passes quickly enough for her to move into the conversation without fault. "Well, this is a mug," she begins slowly as she approaches him, showing no hesitance in getting close as she holds it up between them. "And in it is squirrel. Not the whole squirrel. The important part." She gives a little facial shrug that's paired with a tilt of her head as she looks down at the mug herself. "You seem to only go out to hunt when you're starving and you end up draining a huge animal or setting yourself on edge while in the presence of a living person. Seems a bit more logical to feed a bit every day so that your larger meals aren't so erratic and hunger doesn't hit you so violently, no?"
She actually looks a little sheepish as she gives it to him, her own plate on the table and her coffee mug in her other hand. She holds it between both when she can, chewing on her bottom lip nervously. "I don't know much about this but I thought that it just seemed a bit easier? To keep you satisfied longer? You don't have to drink it." She tacks it on hastily. "It wasn't hard for me to get, I just thought that if I was going to give it to you I should do it now. I'm assuming that cold blood isn't exactly... appetizing..."
Unsure what else to do, thoroughly unused to a gesture like this, he takes the mug she hands to him and stares down at it, tilting it a little to watch the thick slide of blood against the ceramic. It's strange to see it like this, still warm but not body-warm, not a body in sight in fact. It's almost as though blood for breakfast is as ordinary as the eggs she's ignoring in favor of waiting on him.
After a few moments the corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile and he pulls out the chair opposite her and sits, wrapping both hands around the mug to mirror her position. "I wouldn't know," he says with a one-shouldered shrug, suddenly more at ease now that he's seeing she can relax enough to feel a little uncertain herself. "Never tried it like that. I can't imagine I'd enjoy it much though, you're right. Very thoughtful."
He lifts the mug in a little toast, still half-smiling, and if he could linger over it, he would, but that isn't how the thirst works. He's been feeling the craving, a low-key dry scratch in his throat, ever since that first little tang had come to him on the wind, and now that it's on his tongue, he can't help but drain the mug in a few long swallows.
"We've never done it this way," he says when he's finally finished, idly sweeping a finger through the leftover blood clinging to the inside of the mug and licking it off, "a little taste a day just to keep the thirst down. Hunting expeditions were always that, family excursions. High in the mountains to make sure carrion birds got our kills before anyone else stumbled on them. There's an...instinct, to our hunting. More than just feeding. We're predators. A rabbit a day...it's enough, I'd figure, but not exactly as satisfying as bringing down an elk, or a cougar."
But if he's meant to be sharing quarters with a human, however resourceful she might be, it's probably for the best he doesn't let himself get thirsty, he decides as he sets the empty mug down and swipes a little fleck of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Thank you, ma'am. That was very thoughtful."
She seems to relax a little when he actually sits down, but her eyes don't move away from him until he actually tries it. She waits somewhat impatiently for his verdict, but the way that he drains the mug like a man dying of thirst is enough for her. Apparently it's still good enough to drink, and that's all she wanted; she finally pulls her plate of eggs closer.
"Don't get comfortable, we're still going to need you to bring down big game. Or at least, carry it back home after I bring it down, I just thought it would be easier if you weren't always starving." She gives a shy shrug as she starts to eat, her eyes falling to her plate as a little wave of satisfaction moves through her. If anybody told her that she could find a way to make herself useful in this situation, she might actually doubt them; he can hunt, he doesn't need to cook... based off of what she knows of last night, he doesn't even need to sleep. So, this - innovation - that can be where she proves her worth.
Her eyes flicker up to watch him as he cleans the corner of his mouth, but it's only until he calls her that again that she actually winces. "Natasha," she corrects, voice pained with a hint of amusement. "I'm a lot of things. Ma'am isn't one of them." She stops eating for a moment and reaches for her coffee, sipping it slowly before looking back at him after setting it down. "I thought that maybe we should talk if we're going to be living in the same space." Her eyes move from her mug and back to him, both curious and a little uncertain as to whether he'd be willing to stick around long enough for a chat.
"There's one bedroom but from what I've gathered so far you don't really sleep. We should still go into town together at some point to pick up more supplies, probably on Sunday morning. the majority of them will be in church which means less of a risk of being recognized because I'm sure my face is everywhere, if yours isn't as well." She sips her coffee slowly, holding her intense gaze on him. "I die if I get too cold and it's going to get colder. So if we can use the firewood sparingly, that would be great. When my skin gets pale I don't sparkle." She gives a teasing smirk around the rim of her mug. "Just decay, sadly."
"My apologies, Natasha," he says immediately, dipping his head a little. "Force of habit for a lady I'm not particularly acquainted with." But he falls silent again and lets her finish, listening with some interest to the plans she's already made. The experiments they'd performed on him had mostly revolved around his thirst, and they'd only just been starting to test the hardness of his skin when he'd been let loose. They hadn't gotten around to anything else. Even if she knows the results of those tests, she might not know much else.
She likely doesn't know his range of movement extends hundreds of miles. Or that he could run halfway across the country and be back in the same day. Near-starving from the energy he'd expend doing it, admittedly, but it's still doable. Needs must, after all, when you spend your life trying to stay hidden from millions of people. "I don't sleep. Don't need to. But firewood won't be a problem. There's a few downed trees, birches, some miles from here. Easy enough to collect them up, after that little pick-me-up of yours."
He sets the empty mug aside and folds his hands on the table, shoulders still straight, as he considers his next words. "You're right. I do have some measure of self control. But not as much as the rest in my family. I spent a lot of years living like any vampire does, in addition to fighting in the wars. Being...sated...like this, that's a help, but my years as a vegetarian vampire still don't top my years spent otherwise." He glances up then, meeting her eyes as steadily as she can meet his. "I know for a fact you're not afraid of me, and I'm not questioning that. But there will be times when I cannot be around you. Even times when I up and vanish in the middle of a sentence. I'll need to apologize in advance for that, there will not be time in the moment."
He looks down again at his neatly-folded fingers, stone-pale against the dark, scarred wood of the table, and half-smiles. "Being the cause of your decay is not something I want."
"Some miles?" She repeats to him with a raised eyebrow, as if uncertain whether or not he had misspoken, because she doesn't remember him ever being away long enough to travel for miles. Her eyes move down to her food as she finishes it, listening carefully as he continues, an she can't help but crack a small smile as he speaks. Vegetarian vampire. She supposes there's a trend for everything.
She looks back at him when he apologizes ahead of time for leaving abruptly, and she gives a single nod of understanding to convey that he doesn't have to convey beyond that. "I have no reason to be scared of you." She hesitates for a moment, and when she puts her fork down she pushes her plate to the side before leaning back in her chair to look at him directly. "You're far from the scariest thing I've been in the same room with. I've seen mindless monstrosity, that's not you." She pauses for a moment, as if uncertain whether or not she wants to continue, but he's here because of her. Separated from his family, Alice, because of her. She owes him at least some honesty.
"The invasion in New York City, the woman people saw fighting with the Avengers, that was me. I used to have an anonymous public presence but that's not necessarily the case, anymore." She gives a little tilt of her head, as if dismissing it. Dismissing that everything she's built for herself is gone. "Once you fight monsters coming through a portal in the sky and get cornered in a helicarrier with Hulk, your definition of dangerous shifts a little. And that's good to hear." She offers him a half-smile in return before she stands to grab her plate, and then his mug. "You're part of a small group, if that's true. A lot of people want to see me dead, more than usual right now, I'm assuming."
She moves to the sink to clean up, glancing at him over her shoulder. "You've given me no reason to fear you, Jasper. If anything, it's the other way around." She isn't able to say it without a pang of guilt cracking through her wall, and she pushes it back down quickly as she looks back down into the sink. "If I go into town for food, would you prefer to stay here? Is there anything I can get you, books or... something?"
It impresses him a little every time she can meet his gaze so unflinchingly. Even if there were any humans who knew what they were and that they meant no harm...well, it's one thing to say it, another thing entirely to turn off thousands of years of instinct. And yet, here she is, sitting there telling him she's not afraid of him, and meaning it. Really meaning it.
There's a little stirring in him at that, and after a moment he recognizes it as a strengthening of his resolve. He will not, not do anything to bring her to harm. She doesn't fear him, and he doesn't fear her. He's started with less of a footing than that.
He lets her speak and doesn't interrupt, not until she's finished and asked a question. "I'll stay. I'll spend that time fetching those birches back here for you. They're not more'n ten miles out. Won't take long. But I wouldn't say no to something to read." He turns in his seat to keep facing her as she does the washing up. "Pick things you'd enjoy. I have an...eclectic array of interests, after this long. That was you?"
Now she gets an admiring smile as he shifts to sit backward on the chair, resting his crossed arms against the back. "I remember that fight, Emmett wanted to pitch in but it would've taken us too long to get there." It's a shame it would be too dangerous for them to spar, he can still remember admiring that redheaded spitfire in the flashes of news footage that had actually shown her. Naturally most of the coverage had been of Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor.
"Oh, I don't know if you want to read what I want to read," she manages to respond with a rare, almost self depreciating tease in her voice. She's getting more comfortable around him and that's strange; she hasn't spent enough time around him to justify that, but it seems that it's a little easier to be comfortable when someone is openly capable of killing her. He can end her, and he hasn't. The way she sees it, they're good.
"And yeah, that was me. Don't worry about it, we had it under control." Barely. She smiles a little down at her dish as she dries it. "So you can imagine that I'm not a stranger to being in the same room with someone stronger than me. ...I'd say that you'd be a great ally in something like that but there's a lot of bloodshed. The smell is thick, even I can pick it up when things get really dirty. Or maybe that's just because I'm the one who's usually bleeding at the end of the day... I'm not a giant suit of armor type of girl." She finishes with a sigh, putting her plate away before turning to lean back against the counter. Instead of approaching the table again Natasha instead folds her arms, watching Jasper with an inquisitive tilt of her head.
"You would know what to do though, wouldn't you, soldier?" It's a nickname she usually reserves for Steve, but it's fitting for him. She can see that. "You've got a touch of military in you. It's buried in there, under all of that proper southern gentleman mess." Another tease in a smile. Genuine this time; pretty, and not in the usual artificial way with her. "You haven't served in a while though, have you?"
Another grin as he dips his head in a nod. "Guilty as charged, ma'am," he says, slipping it in once more as a tease this time as he sits up again, shoulders straight, a military bearing even sitting backward in a chair. "I was a major in the Texas cavalry. I was never formally discharged that I know of, but as the Confederacy lost the war..." A little one-shouldered shrug. He's never been ashamed of his service, and he doesn't plan on starting now.
"Whitlock was my name then, Major Jasper Whitlock. I took the name 'Hale' when Alice and I joined the family in 1950. My adopted sister Rosalie's surname." He smiles wryly, nostalgic for those first fraught months with the family. It had taken him a long time to adjust to being around so many other vampires who had no ill intentions, and even longer for him to stop feeling overprotective of Alice being around so many other vampires who had no ill intentions. "She wasn't too keen to share it at first, but eventually she admitted it would help us blend in if she and I could pose as twins. You didn't meet her, I don't believe, but we have very similar coloring."
Natasha gives him a narrow-eyed smirk, acknowledging the little tease but letting it go for now. There's an undeniable amount of surprise there when he says that he had served in the Confederacy, because she knew he was old but she didn't think he was that old. "Well. If it makes you feel better, I don't think I'd ever been discharged from the KGB." Although it's because she had killed the man who could officially discharge her. Semantics.
"Major Jasper Whitlock," she repeats back to him with playful air, looking both impressed and amused all at once. She takes a few steps forward to grab the other chair, mimicking him in the way that she turns it and sits down to face him. "That's got a nice ring to it, I'll admit." She pauses for a moment before she shrugs a single shoulder, as if having just convinced herself of something silently. "Natalia Romanova." She gives him an almost sheepish smile, brushing her hair behind her ear nervously. "Natasha Romanoff is more Americanized, they said that I would fit in better that way." The smile fades, and her gaze falls for a moment before returning. "I changed it when I joined SHIELD after switching sides. At least, that was the intention."
"Vy russkiy?" he asks immediately, the Texan drawl coming through even thicker in Russian than in English. "I'd wondered a little, hearing that last name of yours when I really learned it, but you never know where people are from these days." He'd taught himself Russian a little later, once he'd moved onto the Russian philosophers sometime in the Seventies. Learning languages was commonplace in the family, but Jasper had always focused on the languages most prominent in philosophy: German, French, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian.
She isn't making too great an effort to hide what she's feeling from him now. She's opened up, or relaxed herself, and it's easy to look beyond the surface layers. It's been a challenge to reveal that detail, he thinks, it's a vulnerability she's handed him. "Natalia," he says thoughtfully, experimentally, like he's tasting the name. "That actually kinda suits you. Maybe it reminds you of where you're from though." He wouldn't want to start using it if she didn't want it to be used. That would be ungentlemanly.
For a second it looks like Natasha has to comprehend what he'd just done, but that was certainly Russian despite his thick accent, which she certainly did not enjoy more than she should. There's an undeniable little light that brightens her eyes, and her smile only exemplifies it. "Da. Posmotrite na vas, polnyy syurprizov." She sounds just as impressed as she is, and the words come to her with an obvious fluency that's only evident when it's clear how much faster she speaks in Russian than she does in English, to this day. "Again. Working for an American secret agency is a lot harder if you sound like a Russian, it took me months to get rid of my accent." She sounds as if she's speaking of an impossible struggle, as if it's normal for it to take months, and not an entire lifetime.
The way that he says her name catches her off guard an it shows in small ways; a slight twitch at the corner of her eyebrow, a little part of her lips. People don't call her that; in fact, she can't remember the last time she was called Natalia. It sounds nice, though, the way that it flows from his tongue in that lazy drawl, and her sheepish smile returns as she shakes her head slightly. "No," she begins, "Natalia is fine. You can call me that." He doesn't know it's strange that she's allowing it, and nobody else is here to tell him as much. What harm can it do? "You don't have to worry about reminding me where I'm from." She tilts her head. "I don't run from it." Not anymore.
"Did you ever serve, again?" She's surprising herself by asking it, because she isn't doing so to get on his good side. She's asking because she actually wants to know, and isn't that a strange thing? "After the Confederacy dissolved?"
Definitely a natural speaker, that's easy to see, but there isn't a trace of accent when she flips back to English, and that's impressive on its own. Now that they've both slowed down a little, taken a chance to really look at each other, it's almost surprising how much they have in common.
"Natalia, then," he says with a firm little nod. It's better for him anyway, it sits better with him, the little extra layer of formality. It's a part of his nature. And he can certainly identify with running from where you're from, and trying like hell to stop doing it.
He looks thoughtful as he considers how to answer her question. Her genuine interest feels comfortable already. Maybe they will be able to coexist without anything...unfortunate...occurring.
"Not in any human army, but plenty in the Southern Vampire Wars. It was commonplace in the South during the War Between the States and after, armies of newborns created only to fight each other and win territory for their masters. A newborn is much more dangerous than a full grown vampire," and as he speaks, his voice takes on the cadence of a military lecture, "in their first year of existence a newborn vampire is much stronger, until their human blood is leached out of their tissues entirely, but their thirst is almost uncontrollable. Maria turned me so I could use my abilities to control her army. I was her second in command, in charge of training them after she turned them."
His eyes slant away from her in sharp memory of the bewildered fear, over and over, before the hard crack of death. "Training them, and killing them off when she'd decided they'd served their purpose. She could always make more."
She feels an annoyingly pleasant little flutter when he says it again, simply because she likes the way that it sounds on his tongue. She never thought she'd get to enjoy the sound of her own name.
When he begins to educate her he obviously has Natasha's full attention, her arms crossed over the back of the chair and her chin resting on them comfortably as she looks up at him through her lashes. Eyes widen when he uses the phrase 'vampire army' seriously, and she seems wrapped up in his story until he looks away from her suddenly. She knows that look, and although she's admittedly fascinated by exactly what he is and what he's capable of, Natasha doesn't want to push him too far to speak of something that brings him discomfort. Especially one that, it seems, she can understand on a deeper level.
The empathy that she feels for him isn't shielded this time, she's much too wrapped in their conversation with genuine interest for that to happen, but she slowly sits up from where her chin was resting on her hands before giving him a soft frown. "That sounds terrible." She looks away from him as well, and it's with more hesitance this time that she starts speaking. She doesn't know how far she's willing to go with this just yet, but its a bit freeing, not having to worry about who you're speaking to and who they know. Who they report back to.
"I was my own army." Her eyes flicker to his face once more. "Every assassination you heard about in the news before six years ago, that was me back to about '99." When she was fifteen. "And those were the ones that were reported. I didn't know who I was or who was pulling my strings, I just... did as I was told until a Shield agent pulled me to the other side. Clint, he's still - ...he's my best friend now, after what he did for me." She frowns a little, sighing quietly. "It doesn't take away from what happened but I thought that maybe if I did a little bit of good after everything... it doesn't matter now." She shakes her head suddenly, pushing the thought out of her head, and she moves just as abruptly to stand. "Enough." She speaks as if she's speaking for both of them, and she places a kind hand on his shoulder as she passes him to move to her kettle.
"I'm sure we both think about the things that we've done whenever we have a silent moment. It's not necessary to do it while we have the opportunity not to."
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moodshifter) wrote2017-02-16 01:26 pm
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At first she doesn't respond, her arm starting to move again to prod at the embers in the fireplace before she tosses another log on, and even then she takes her time placing the poker back before she moves slowly to her feet. "I'm sure they would have." She agrees with a strange evenness, her voice betraying nothing but calculated calm.
She knew that it would come up at some point, it would be naive to believe any differently, and she also knows that Jasper can, without a doubt, kill her here and nobody would know. She's practically walked into her own tomb, a cabin purposefully undetectable from the rest of humanity; she'd never be found. Yet, she isn't afraid. Coming here was the right thing to do in the end, not only for her safety but for Jasper's sake, because she owes him answers, doesn't she? He's stronger than her. Faster. Powerful. Yet she isn't afraid, because Natasha never believed she'd ever grow old. Perhaps now is her time.
She turns and faces him directly, uncertain of how the next sixty seconds will go.
"Probably not with rabbit stew." A pause. "I got you out as soon as I could."
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His eyes narrow a fraction. He doesn't tend to delve when he touches layered emotions, it's generally unnecessary in addition to being rude, but the time's come. He exhales slowly, then holds his breath to avoid her scent clouding and confusing his senses. She's cloaked in a thin layer of calm, the surface layer that never means much even among people who don't know how to guard themselves and regulate what they feel and when they feel it. When he moves boldly beneath that, Jasper's sense slides over…guilt. Reams of it, folded over and over, and all wrapped up in a strange, disconnected sense of calm, determined calm, like a resolution. Almost a sense of relief, when he looks very very close.
He knows she can't feel it when he's looking at her like this, but he still pulls back all the way before he takes a breath again to speak, a little tighter now.
"I don't recall saying otherwise. What exactly is it made you decide on that course of action?"
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It doesn't matter. The way that he exhales slowly, his chest moving as a sense of calm seems to settle around him, is enough to tell her that he's preparing himself. After that he stops breathing at all and although she isn't sure whether or not he actually needs to, she knows that along with the look in his eye means that he's up to something. All she can do is stand there and wait, and maybe that would be more unsettling if she didn't truly believe that she could die very soon. When a realization like that settles, uncertainty seems so trivial.
Then he's breathing again and his voice takes a turn, almost terse, while Natasha stays exactly where she is both physically and emotionally. There's no waver in the way that she holds herself and her gaze doesn't falter from the strange amber shine of his eyes, even when his words turn to be sharper than they usually are.
"I was presented with new intel." She sounds almost peaceful, her outward impression in direct conflict with the layered war going on within her. "It turns out you aren't much of a super soldier." A pause. "And I'm not much of a good guy. You'd think I'd be able to tell the difference by now." She says it as if it's supposed to be a joke, the sentence ending in a flat edge that suggests sarcasm, but it's missing the humor. Her head tilts with a sense of curiosity, as if she can only wonder what his intentions are.
Natasha gestures to the seating area behind him. "If you want to talk about this do you want to sit down or do you prefer to have me cornered between you and a fire?" She cocks a delicate eyebrow, and despite the performance that she puts on the only consistency in the way she looks and the way she feels is a lack of fear. She's feeling a lot of things, but fear isn't one of them. "I'm not going to try to escape a conversation when you can barricade the door before I can get to it. I'm not going anywhere." Her eyes barely move as she searches his face for something that isn't clear. "We both know that I owe you answers. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."
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It still takes a narrow-eyed moment before he slips off the windowsill and walks across the floor, a little too slowly in his efforts not to move too preternaturally fast, and sits on the couch, and looks at her again, still with that odd intensity of focus. "While I won't object to answers, I was under the impression this was your only safe house," he says, and it's still taut, but there's still no anger there either.
This close to the fire, the orange light of the flames makes his skin look like painted stone, but it brings his eyes somewhere between the peace-loving yellow and the danger-zone red. "I was never a super soldier. Never claimed to be. Never even tried to be. Certainly never wanted to be."
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"It is. In this country, anyway." She half-concedes to his point, but she adds on with honesty, "I don't need a house to be safe." Natasha knows how to run, and she's not foolish enough to put all of her eggs in one basket. "My ability to disappear isn't something I take lightly, I wouldn't risk losing it to something as arbitrary as a forest fire." Simple, flat, factual. She doesn't have to be here, and it's obvious by her delivery that she isn't pointing it out to impress him; she's doing it to simply correct his assumption. She doesn't, however, correct the assumption that she needs to find safety for some reason in the first place.
"And no. You're not a super soldier, it would have probably been easier if you were." Natasha leans back into the chair with a half roll of her eyes before they settle back onto him. He looks almost carved in this light, the glow of fire melting against him like sunlight shining through stained glass to paint a cathedral pillar. She's seen a lot in her life, but admittedly nothing like him.
"Steve Rogers. Captain America? He's a super soldier." The careful way she's been speaking thus far seems to give way to a flat monotone as she slips into a mode of debriefing, instead of inspecting. "There was a serum developed in the forties, Steve was the candidate chosen but others were in consideration, you were one of them. Apparently, you were lucky enough to catch the eye of someone high up." Her head tilts to the side with a visage that would almost convey curiosity if it wasn't so dry. "And then again almost eighty years later. Now either you haven't physically aged a day since nineteen forty two, or you need to share your skincare routine. Knowing my luck, it's the former."
Natasha pauses just long enough to give the illusion that it's a two sided conversation. "I was under the impression that we were trying to investigate whether or not there were more successful trials that weren't recorded. Obviously, my impression wasn't correct. Like I said. I'm bad at being a good guy, which has recently been confirmed when the agency I work -" When Natasha stops, it's the first time her gaze falters away from him to instead fall to the floor. She recovers just as quickly. "I worked at ended up being a shell for a terrorist organization. So, I hacked into their system and leaked all of their files, I'm sure it's hit every news station by now."
Whatever variation her voice has gained through her explanation suddenly flattens once again. "Which means, everyone should know that I broke you out of there by now. That kind of story doesn't win popularity contests. What can I say."
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"I was not an…overly cautious man at that time. I'd just left my coven behind, and Maria." And there's a new timbre in his voice, thoughtful and a little nostalgic, and the smallest quirk of a smile. "The one who turned me. We were…together…a long time. Nearly eighty years. Leaving her behind was almost the hardest thing I've done."
Almost. His eyes move from her face to her throat and back. It should be too fast to see, but somehow he has a feeling she'll spot it. Best not to dwell on that.
"You're right. It's the former. I haven't changed since the day I was turned. Neither has anyone else in my family." And now he does look away for the first time since he'd sat down, turning his head to stare past the flames. "They got out. I know they did. Alice told me what I'd need to do to make sure. Stay behind, fight but don't bite, don't run. She said we'd see each other again."
For a moment, his stare turns desolate, but only for that moment. Then he straightens again, resolute, and continues, with a decided flatness to his voice now. "So I did that. Nearly lost my rational mind when they hit me from behind with a bucket or two of blood. Pig's, luckily for them. If they'd actually used human blood...anyway. I got unfocused, slipped up enough they managed to get close with cattle prods. Two of those to the ribs will distract just about anyone. They got cuffs on me that I couldn't even budge. Not sure even Emmett could've gotten out of those. Maybe not even a newborn. Couldn't tranq me, so it was just the prods until I was down."
It's almost comforting, reporting what had happened to him, even to someone partly responsible for it. "I won't be returning to them," he says as his head snaps back around to look at her again. "But they got out ahead of your organization, and that's partly due to your warning, and I do thank you for that. They're good people." And maybe there's a little emphasis on the they in that statement, a little separation from including himself in that category.
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Just as quickly as it pierces the air the emotional assault is gone, shoved beneath the layers that she's so carefully constructed with nothing left but a residual hint of frustration. Her eyes never move from him, and her face never changes. "I know." She responds with tenderness. "I read the report, I saw how it all happened. That was my first sign that something wasn't right. We're not supposed to be the ones who make families separate. That's not what I do - that's..." she trails off, the corners of her mouth turning down in a frown. "...that's not what I'm supposed to do. "
The day is growing weary on her and for the first time since her arrival, Natasha slips and allows it to show. Her eyes move away from him to stare off at nothing, through the floorboards and down into the earth. Has it always been like this? Had she ever been an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, or simply H.Y.D.R.A? Tearing families apart and becoming the force that ruined her when she was just a child? Her shoulders seem to sink a little and her throat moves in a hard swallow, the guilt threatening to rise until she forces it back down.
"Stop thanking me." She tries to say it as a flat demand but it almost comes out as a request, because who is she in this moment to demand anything of this man? "I'm sure they are. That didn't matter, it should have but it didn't. I should have caught on sooner." She doesn't say that she's sorry, and not because of her pride. Natasha knows how useless words are, apologies mean nothing in the grand scheme of it all. Sorry doesn't get him back to his family. "You should return to them," she suggests, her lids drooping a little with her journey and the comforting sense of peace that comes with defeat. "You have a family that loves you, and worries about you. SHIELD is over. They're not going to try and find you anymore, there's nobody left to track you."
Finally she moves. Natasha looks back at Jasper, still weary and resolute, and her posture is listless as if she's reached the end of a journey she's been struggling through for thirty years. The question is almost polite, as if she'd like a response but doesn't necessarily require one, and it comes easier now than it would have a few moments before. "Are you going to kill me?" She holds his gaze with too little effort.
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He can't risk getting any closer, just in case, but as he relaxes slowly back onto the couch and uncurls his fingers from the tears in the cushion beneath him, he chases that bolt of emotion and he can't find it, it's nowhere near the surface, not even in any of the upper layers. She's wrapped now in a smothering blanket of supreme indifference, it's coating every word, and while he wants to know how she can have such intense control over her emotions, he's getting a lot more curious as to why.
And then she asks him that, she asks it of him and looks him straight in the eye as she does it. He honestly cannot tell, no matter where he looks, whether or not she cares if the answer is yes. She doesn't know, but she also doesn't care.
"In my many years of hearing that question in all its permutations," he says quietly after a few startled moments of silence, "I have not once felt someone ask that of me and care so little about the answer." He tilts his head, the startled expression now softened into something curious. There's still not a hint of fear in her, not one thread of it. She knows what he can do, she'd watched him do it to one of his tormentors.
"Surprised you made it all the way inside without being drained dry?" It's polite, that same wry humor, but there's some anger underneath it. If she'd come all the way out here because she'd predicted her death at his hands… "I told you, ma'am. I don't do that anymore. Unless pushed."
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He seems confused by her and at first she doesn't know why. All of this seems to have taken the most direct and simple road in her eyes, and his eventual reply has her arching an inquisitive eyebrow as if she's just realizing, perhaps they aren't on the same page after all. "When you're living on stolen time, you'd be surprised at how ready you are to lose it to someone else." Natasha has been waiting for this moment, and Jasper can't possibly know that the situation is, in her eyes, ideal. She walked into this knowing that it could happen, he isn't taking her life; she's giving it to him, if he so chooses. In the end, Natasha has a say, and he can't take that from her. Nobody can. Because of that, this is as much a win for her as it could ever be.
"Unless pushed?" It isn't accusatory in the least; simply curious. "You haven't been pushed? Being separated from your family because a strange woman falls into your life and ruins everything that you've tried to build for yourself, that isn't being pushed? I don't think you understand, Jasper." She leans forward with ease, her elbows resting on her knees so that her fingers can twine together and her hands can hang loosely between them. "If I thought that you weren't capable of self control then I wouldn't have gotten you out in the first place, that isn't why I'm here. If I were you, I'd want me dead." Stark honesty. It's still something that she's trying to get used to. "I thought that I owed you that opportunity, but from what I'm seeing, you aren't ready to take it just yet." That doesn't mean he won't tomorrow, or the day after; Natasha knows that. She has no purpose anymore, every decision that she's ever had to make was made for her up until now.
"I can't fix all of the things I just found out I've done." She shrugs weakly with one shoulder. "But I can try to fix one, so here I am. And I will be until you decide if you want to do something about it. Until then," she stands slowly with a sigh, and Natasha turns her back on him without hesitation so she can walk toward the kitchen. "I have to finish my stew." She stops only once to linger in the kitchen doorway, and she glances over her shoulder halfway. "If you're not going to kill me, you're fixing that couch. We don't live like animals."
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He watches her with his head tipped to one side as she turns her back on him and looks back, and then glances down at the couch to see the small rips he's accidentally put there. Fix the couch? Out here? It's irritating, he thinks suddenly, she's irritating in a way none of his siblings have ever quite managed, but that's only one tiny thread out of the tangle.
Still, though. Irritating. "Fine," he says shortly, looking back at her again. "I'm not going to kill you. I'm afraid you'll need to look elsewhere for that kind of absolution." And now that she's leaving the room, he returns to the windowsill in a blur of motion almost too fast to see, and sits again more slowly, already turning away to look out at the stars and the lines of shadow in the woods.
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By the time she's done eating Natasha is exhausted, and she drags herself to the bedroom after glancing at him to see if he's going to protest. She doesn't know if he's been using the bedroom but it doesn't look like it; the bed is still made the way that she makes it, the way that she learned as a child. A part of her knows that she should be unsettled, sleeping with a stranger in the house, but what does she truly have to lose? She wasn't bluffing when she asked him if he was going to kill her. Natasha has little to wake up for now, save for the stranger currently in her living room.
The next morning she's up before the sun, and she goes through the morning process of making coffee and sitting outside to watch the sun rise through the trees. She's thinking about breakfast when she sees it, a squirrel scurrying around at the base of a large tree a few yards away, and the idea hits her suddenly. She sips her coffee before setting it down on the small table beside her chair, and she gets up to walk to the small shed beside the house outside.
She returns to the porch with a small hunting crossbow, and she waits for the critter to come back down before she has it loaded, aimed, and released within mere seconds. She hits it directly at the neck so it doesn't suffer, and she sets the crossbow down on her chair before going to retrieve the thing and bring it into the house.
Half an hour later she has a plate of eggs and a coffee mug filled with something that definitely isn't coffee.
The eggs are for her, and she calls out to him to see if he's around. "Jasper? I have something for you." If he is, she'll give him the drained blood now before eating, assuming that he prefers it still warm; it isn't glamorous but a boys gotta eat, and she's seen what happens when he hunts. She doesn't feel like moping.
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He's still near enough to smell the little splash of blood, but he isn't near hungry enough to need to investigate it. Hearing his name, however, is enough to bring him sprinting back through the branches to land lightly on the ground outside, though he walks inside at an ordinary speed. The blood scent is stronger here, almost enough to mask her, and he frowns inquisitively as he steps into the kitchen.
Is that...he sniffs once, sharply, eyes fixed on the table. Is that squirrel blood in a coffee mug? Had she gone and hunted something for him? "What's all this?"
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It passes quickly enough for her to move into the conversation without fault. "Well, this is a mug," she begins slowly as she approaches him, showing no hesitance in getting close as she holds it up between them. "And in it is squirrel. Not the whole squirrel. The important part." She gives a little facial shrug that's paired with a tilt of her head as she looks down at the mug herself. "You seem to only go out to hunt when you're starving and you end up draining a huge animal or setting yourself on edge while in the presence of a living person. Seems a bit more logical to feed a bit every day so that your larger meals aren't so erratic and hunger doesn't hit you so violently, no?"
She actually looks a little sheepish as she gives it to him, her own plate on the table and her coffee mug in her other hand. She holds it between both when she can, chewing on her bottom lip nervously. "I don't know much about this but I thought that it just seemed a bit easier? To keep you satisfied longer? You don't have to drink it." She tacks it on hastily. "It wasn't hard for me to get, I just thought that if I was going to give it to you I should do it now. I'm assuming that cold blood isn't exactly... appetizing..."
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After a few moments the corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile and he pulls out the chair opposite her and sits, wrapping both hands around the mug to mirror her position. "I wouldn't know," he says with a one-shouldered shrug, suddenly more at ease now that he's seeing she can relax enough to feel a little uncertain herself. "Never tried it like that. I can't imagine I'd enjoy it much though, you're right. Very thoughtful."
He lifts the mug in a little toast, still half-smiling, and if he could linger over it, he would, but that isn't how the thirst works. He's been feeling the craving, a low-key dry scratch in his throat, ever since that first little tang had come to him on the wind, and now that it's on his tongue, he can't help but drain the mug in a few long swallows.
"We've never done it this way," he says when he's finally finished, idly sweeping a finger through the leftover blood clinging to the inside of the mug and licking it off, "a little taste a day just to keep the thirst down. Hunting expeditions were always that, family excursions. High in the mountains to make sure carrion birds got our kills before anyone else stumbled on them. There's an...instinct, to our hunting. More than just feeding. We're predators. A rabbit a day...it's enough, I'd figure, but not exactly as satisfying as bringing down an elk, or a cougar."
But if he's meant to be sharing quarters with a human, however resourceful she might be, it's probably for the best he doesn't let himself get thirsty, he decides as he sets the empty mug down and swipes a little fleck of blood from the corner of his mouth. "Thank you, ma'am. That was very thoughtful."
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"Don't get comfortable, we're still going to need you to bring down big game. Or at least, carry it back home after I bring it down, I just thought it would be easier if you weren't always starving." She gives a shy shrug as she starts to eat, her eyes falling to her plate as a little wave of satisfaction moves through her. If anybody told her that she could find a way to make herself useful in this situation, she might actually doubt them; he can hunt, he doesn't need to cook... based off of what she knows of last night, he doesn't even need to sleep. So, this - innovation - that can be where she proves her worth.
Her eyes flicker up to watch him as he cleans the corner of his mouth, but it's only until he calls her that again that she actually winces. "Natasha," she corrects, voice pained with a hint of amusement. "I'm a lot of things. Ma'am isn't one of them." She stops eating for a moment and reaches for her coffee, sipping it slowly before looking back at him after setting it down. "I thought that maybe we should talk if we're going to be living in the same space." Her eyes move from her mug and back to him, both curious and a little uncertain as to whether he'd be willing to stick around long enough for a chat.
"There's one bedroom but from what I've gathered so far you don't really sleep. We should still go into town together at some point to pick up more supplies, probably on Sunday morning. the majority of them will be in church which means less of a risk of being recognized because I'm sure my face is everywhere, if yours isn't as well." She sips her coffee slowly, holding her intense gaze on him. "I die if I get too cold and it's going to get colder. So if we can use the firewood sparingly, that would be great. When my skin gets pale I don't sparkle." She gives a teasing smirk around the rim of her mug. "Just decay, sadly."
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She likely doesn't know his range of movement extends hundreds of miles. Or that he could run halfway across the country and be back in the same day. Near-starving from the energy he'd expend doing it, admittedly, but it's still doable. Needs must, after all, when you spend your life trying to stay hidden from millions of people. "I don't sleep. Don't need to. But firewood won't be a problem. There's a few downed trees, birches, some miles from here. Easy enough to collect them up, after that little pick-me-up of yours."
He sets the empty mug aside and folds his hands on the table, shoulders still straight, as he considers his next words. "You're right. I do have some measure of self control. But not as much as the rest in my family. I spent a lot of years living like any vampire does, in addition to fighting in the wars. Being...sated...like this, that's a help, but my years as a vegetarian vampire still don't top my years spent otherwise." He glances up then, meeting her eyes as steadily as she can meet his. "I know for a fact you're not afraid of me, and I'm not questioning that. But there will be times when I cannot be around you. Even times when I up and vanish in the middle of a sentence. I'll need to apologize in advance for that, there will not be time in the moment."
He looks down again at his neatly-folded fingers, stone-pale against the dark, scarred wood of the table, and half-smiles. "Being the cause of your decay is not something I want."
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She looks back at him when he apologizes ahead of time for leaving abruptly, and she gives a single nod of understanding to convey that he doesn't have to convey beyond that. "I have no reason to be scared of you." She hesitates for a moment, and when she puts her fork down she pushes her plate to the side before leaning back in her chair to look at him directly. "You're far from the scariest thing I've been in the same room with. I've seen mindless monstrosity, that's not you." She pauses for a moment, as if uncertain whether or not she wants to continue, but he's here because of her. Separated from his family, Alice, because of her. She owes him at least some honesty.
"The invasion in New York City, the woman people saw fighting with the Avengers, that was me. I used to have an anonymous public presence but that's not necessarily the case, anymore." She gives a little tilt of her head, as if dismissing it. Dismissing that everything she's built for herself is gone. "Once you fight monsters coming through a portal in the sky and get cornered in a helicarrier with Hulk, your definition of dangerous shifts a little. And that's good to hear." She offers him a half-smile in return before she stands to grab her plate, and then his mug. "You're part of a small group, if that's true. A lot of people want to see me dead, more than usual right now, I'm assuming."
She moves to the sink to clean up, glancing at him over her shoulder. "You've given me no reason to fear you, Jasper. If anything, it's the other way around." She isn't able to say it without a pang of guilt cracking through her wall, and she pushes it back down quickly as she looks back down into the sink. "If I go into town for food, would you prefer to stay here? Is there anything I can get you, books or... something?"
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There's a little stirring in him at that, and after a moment he recognizes it as a strengthening of his resolve. He will not, not do anything to bring her to harm. She doesn't fear him, and he doesn't fear her. He's started with less of a footing than that.
He lets her speak and doesn't interrupt, not until she's finished and asked a question. "I'll stay. I'll spend that time fetching those birches back here for you. They're not more'n ten miles out. Won't take long. But I wouldn't say no to something to read." He turns in his seat to keep facing her as she does the washing up. "Pick things you'd enjoy. I have an...eclectic array of interests, after this long. That was you?"
Now she gets an admiring smile as he shifts to sit backward on the chair, resting his crossed arms against the back. "I remember that fight, Emmett wanted to pitch in but it would've taken us too long to get there." It's a shame it would be too dangerous for them to spar, he can still remember admiring that redheaded spitfire in the flashes of news footage that had actually shown her. Naturally most of the coverage had been of Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor.
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"And yeah, that was me. Don't worry about it, we had it under control." Barely. She smiles a little down at her dish as she dries it. "So you can imagine that I'm not a stranger to being in the same room with someone stronger than me. ...I'd say that you'd be a great ally in something like that but there's a lot of bloodshed. The smell is thick, even I can pick it up when things get really dirty. Or maybe that's just because I'm the one who's usually bleeding at the end of the day... I'm not a giant suit of armor type of girl." She finishes with a sigh, putting her plate away before turning to lean back against the counter. Instead of approaching the table again Natasha instead folds her arms, watching Jasper with an inquisitive tilt of her head.
"You would know what to do though, wouldn't you, soldier?" It's a nickname she usually reserves for Steve, but it's fitting for him. She can see that. "You've got a touch of military in you. It's buried in there, under all of that proper southern gentleman mess." Another tease in a smile. Genuine this time; pretty, and not in the usual artificial way with her. "You haven't served in a while though, have you?"
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"Whitlock was my name then, Major Jasper Whitlock. I took the name 'Hale' when Alice and I joined the family in 1950. My adopted sister Rosalie's surname." He smiles wryly, nostalgic for those first fraught months with the family. It had taken him a long time to adjust to being around so many other vampires who had no ill intentions, and even longer for him to stop feeling overprotective of Alice being around so many other vampires who had no ill intentions. "She wasn't too keen to share it at first, but eventually she admitted it would help us blend in if she and I could pose as twins. You didn't meet her, I don't believe, but we have very similar coloring."
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"Major Jasper Whitlock," she repeats back to him with playful air, looking both impressed and amused all at once. She takes a few steps forward to grab the other chair, mimicking him in the way that she turns it and sits down to face him. "That's got a nice ring to it, I'll admit." She pauses for a moment before she shrugs a single shoulder, as if having just convinced herself of something silently. "Natalia Romanova." She gives him an almost sheepish smile, brushing her hair behind her ear nervously. "Natasha Romanoff is more Americanized, they said that I would fit in better that way." The smile fades, and her gaze falls for a moment before returning. "I changed it when I joined SHIELD after switching sides. At least, that was the intention."
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She isn't making too great an effort to hide what she's feeling from him now. She's opened up, or relaxed herself, and it's easy to look beyond the surface layers. It's been a challenge to reveal that detail, he thinks, it's a vulnerability she's handed him. "Natalia," he says thoughtfully, experimentally, like he's tasting the name. "That actually kinda suits you. Maybe it reminds you of where you're from though." He wouldn't want to start using it if she didn't want it to be used. That would be ungentlemanly.
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The way that he says her name catches her off guard an it shows in small ways; a slight twitch at the corner of her eyebrow, a little part of her lips. People don't call her that; in fact, she can't remember the last time she was called Natalia. It sounds nice, though, the way that it flows from his tongue in that lazy drawl, and her sheepish smile returns as she shakes her head slightly. "No," she begins, "Natalia is fine. You can call me that." He doesn't know it's strange that she's allowing it, and nobody else is here to tell him as much. What harm can it do? "You don't have to worry about reminding me where I'm from." She tilts her head. "I don't run from it." Not anymore.
"Did you ever serve, again?" She's surprising herself by asking it, because she isn't doing so to get on his good side. She's asking because she actually wants to know, and isn't that a strange thing? "After the Confederacy dissolved?"
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"Natalia, then," he says with a firm little nod. It's better for him anyway, it sits better with him, the little extra layer of formality. It's a part of his nature. And he can certainly identify with running from where you're from, and trying like hell to stop doing it.
He looks thoughtful as he considers how to answer her question. Her genuine interest feels comfortable already. Maybe they will be able to coexist without anything...unfortunate...occurring.
"Not in any human army, but plenty in the Southern Vampire Wars. It was commonplace in the South during the War Between the States and after, armies of newborns created only to fight each other and win territory for their masters. A newborn is much more dangerous than a full grown vampire," and as he speaks, his voice takes on the cadence of a military lecture, "in their first year of existence a newborn vampire is much stronger, until their human blood is leached out of their tissues entirely, but their thirst is almost uncontrollable. Maria turned me so I could use my abilities to control her army. I was her second in command, in charge of training them after she turned them."
His eyes slant away from her in sharp memory of the bewildered fear, over and over, before the hard crack of death. "Training them, and killing them off when she'd decided they'd served their purpose. She could always make more."
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When he begins to educate her he obviously has Natasha's full attention, her arms crossed over the back of the chair and her chin resting on them comfortably as she looks up at him through her lashes. Eyes widen when he uses the phrase 'vampire army' seriously, and she seems wrapped up in his story until he looks away from her suddenly. She knows that look, and although she's admittedly fascinated by exactly what he is and what he's capable of, Natasha doesn't want to push him too far to speak of something that brings him discomfort. Especially one that, it seems, she can understand on a deeper level.
The empathy that she feels for him isn't shielded this time, she's much too wrapped in their conversation with genuine interest for that to happen, but she slowly sits up from where her chin was resting on her hands before giving him a soft frown. "That sounds terrible." She looks away from him as well, and it's with more hesitance this time that she starts speaking. She doesn't know how far she's willing to go with this just yet, but its a bit freeing, not having to worry about who you're speaking to and who they know. Who they report back to.
"I was my own army." Her eyes flicker to his face once more. "Every assassination you heard about in the news before six years ago, that was me back to about '99." When she was fifteen. "And those were the ones that were reported. I didn't know who I was or who was pulling my strings, I just... did as I was told until a Shield agent pulled me to the other side. Clint, he's still - ...he's my best friend now, after what he did for me." She frowns a little, sighing quietly. "It doesn't take away from what happened but I thought that maybe if I did a little bit of good after everything... it doesn't matter now." She shakes her head suddenly, pushing the thought out of her head, and she moves just as abruptly to stand. "Enough." She speaks as if she's speaking for both of them, and she places a kind hand on his shoulder as she passes him to move to her kettle.
"I'm sure we both think about the things that we've done whenever we have a silent moment. It's not necessary to do it while we have the opportunity not to."
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