Not had been the right decision. This particular nightmare had been trying his best to keep his head, not bothering with bargaining or getting angry but watching and testing his restraints and then the restraints had released on him and in the military, you don't hesitate. Even if he'd wanted to draw it out, they'd starved him dry. He hadn't been so hungry in recent memory. He had barely the presence of mind to make sure the man died, one precise and vicious bite-and-tear painting the wall red before a quick snap of the neck, no chance he might survive the venom and transform, but it hadn't mattered anyway. Jasper had drained him, and with it, drowned his last hopes of being reunited with his family.
Oh, they'd welcome him back, but he wouldn't welcome himself. He'd never been as strong as the rest, but he'd also never relapsed, and he'd told himself he never would. Never mind that it wasn't his fault. Never mind that he'd held back and stood between his fleeing family and the black beetles of SHIELD agents descending on them, never mind that they'd thrown him into a pit and discussed with interest right in front of him his eyes as they'd darkened from gold to soulless shark-black.
He hadn't known how long he'd sat there, watching the blood dry on his fingers, before she'd come in. He'd wondered if she'd been nearby, or if he'd only been imagining her particular tangled flavor of emotions, but he was in no position to be angry. She had warned them. Possible she herself hadn't been told how fast they'd be moving in. It was still a tense several days laying low, hiding from the sun, hiding his eyes behind sunglasses even indoors, before she'd managed to maneuver them both to her safehouse in the woods.
And she'd left him there, and he'd really expected he wouldn't see her again. His first few days had been a shipwreck, a drifting agony of indecision—he'd come close to leaving that first night, come close to running south again, looking for Maria again, she'd take him back and he was useless to anyone else like this—but this place was far, far off any beaten trail. When he got hungry again, animal blood was all he could scent, and he thanked every god he cared to name for that. It kept him there, the silence and the solitude and the peace, and by the time he hears footsteps in the leaves, his eyes are back to bright, burnished gold.
She doesn't say a word when she stares him down like she's angry about something and walks past and inside, and he frowns and almost follows, but no, that's not the look of someone inviting questions, or company. Instead, he slips into the kitchen for the first time to see what's there, and it's sparse. If she's staying, and it looks like she might be, he'll go out and bring something back for her. Even though this is her house, and he is her guest, he feels oddly like he ought to be a good host.
He is still on the porch, a finger marking his place in the book he's reading, something he hasn't gone back to since he'd first looked up to see her watching him. "Yes, ma'am," he says, standing immediately and setting the book aside, and folding his hands behind his back, not quite at a military at-ease but it's there in him. "Welcome back. I must say, this is a surprise."
She doesn't know much about him, only what he is; even then, the details are apparently foggy, because he's standing outside in the sun and he's lighting up like a Christmas tree instead of bursting into flame. So when she sees the way that he stands and holds his body, Natasha is slightly surprised to see a touch of military in there... what sort of military she isn't sure, not Navy, not Air Force. He doesn't look like a Marine, so she's going to go with Army, and she's already making her own file on him in her head with all of the possible qualities that may come with.
Ma'am. Southern gentleman. She'll see just how legitimate that is.
"It wasn't my plan," she admits after a brief pause, her eyes moving up and down his body to take in the sight of him before her hands move to pull her wet hair out of her face. She ties it out of the way, studying the color in his eyes - different. They were red, she remembers that clearly. She's not familiar with vampires but when it comes to the realm of supernatural Natasha knows one thing after the Battle of New York; never assume that you know anything.
"Natasha." She says her name flatly because she can't remember if she had even introduced herself last time they had met; she's not him, she doesn't come with a side of southern charm. "I know that you don't have any contact to the outside world here but it's practically on fire and it's because I did something that needed to be done. And because I did, everybody knows that I got you out of there, now. This is my only safe house." Her hands fall from her hair with a sigh, and she rubs her arms as she looks at the immediate land surrounding them. It's getting cooler. "So it looks like we're going to be roommates."
Her eyes move back to him. "I'm going to go inside and start a fire, it's going to get cold soon. If you want to come in after you're done out here, I'll be in the living room. I'm sure there's a lot we should probably talk about - okay." She had turned as if to walk into the cabin once more before she stops herself abruptly and turns to face him once again. "You're sparkling. Do you know that?"
There's a lot that humans never got quite right about vampires. They don't burn in the sun, but they do dazzle. The corner of Jasper's lips quirks into a smirk as he tugs up a sleeve and turns his arm in the late afternoon sun, sending little facets of light dancing over the clearing. "I surely do. It's a curious little evolution. Never been quite sure what purpose that's meant to serve."
He lets his sleeve fall back down to his wrist and folds his hands behind his back again, watching her with a slight tilt to his head. There's always been a lot to her, layers upon layers, constantly shifting and freezing and settling, rising and falling. It's been a challenge to him to find what she's really feeling inside it all, ever since he'd first run into her acting like their new neighbor down the road, trying to unload a truck of furniture on her own. Naturally he'd offered his services, it wouldn't have felt right to do anything less. He knows now that he was the reason she'd been there in the first place, and there's a little flare of anger again at the memory of his family clearing out of their home because of him, because of her, but they'd gotten out. That's what's important now.
"If you need this place for yourself now, I don't need to stay," he says after a few moments of thoughtful silence. "You've been more'n generous enough to me as it is, with very little reason for it that I can tell. I can't figure you."
She blinks when she watches the way that his arm shines, glittering in the oncoming light, and her eyes flicker back up to his face before she gives an honest reply. "I can't imagine what that could possibly do for you, but your complexion is literally glowing so I guess there's that." There's an underlying tone of... something, perhaps she's actually teasing him, but if she is she's not putting too much stock into it. There's an undeniable sense of guilt there, because she knows that she was a part of the process that separated him from his family. She's under no illusion that helping him get here makes up for that; Natasha knows how to take responsibility for the bad she's done.
"You're not going anywhere." She sighs at her own response, because although it would be better for her, that doesn't mean that it would be safe for him. "They're going to be looking for you and they actually have the equipment it takes to catch you, I'm not letting them throw you back into that hole. You'll stay here with me, I know what they're looking for and I know how to stay under their radar." She reaches for the door but she stops at his last comment, and Natasha glances Jasper's way to eye him strangely. He must be furious with her, isn't he? Even if she did try to warn him ahead of time, this is still her fault. She had lied to him. Given him a fake name, a fake life... how can he call her generous after all of that?
He must be trying to get her guard down. "Well I'm not here for you to figure, so that's fine." She raises an eyebrow at him as she says it before finally opening the screen again. "I'm going to start that fire. I have some provisions here but not many, so next time you go hunting, bring it back. I can skin it and butcher it for myself."
"I suppose you're not. Same old," he murmurs with a faint smile, thinking back to the other women in his life he's never quite figured. First Maria, then Alice, now this one. Not even a vampire, and by rights he shouldn't even be considering staying this close after his...unfortunate lapse...but there's something about that tangled complexity of hers that's just distracting enough for him to keep from fixing on her scent or her pulse. She's confused by him too, he can tell that much, which is oddly satisfying.
He's also never much thought he deserved to be saved, but if she thinks he's worth saving and keeping that way, he'll do his best to live up to that. Even if he can't go back to the family, at least he can do that. If it means sticking around so she can keep an eye on him, that's not so unreasonable. At least for now. Until it gets too dangerous.
He nods, half-turned toward the woods already. "Be happy to. Any requests for dinner? Plenty of deer in these woods. Rabbits. Spotted a flock of wild turkeys a few miles up. ...bear, if you'd like something a little stronger."
She stops once more when he questions what she wants and she looks back at him, a little surprised to see that he's already prepared to go out and get her something. Her eyes move to the sky to get a feel on what time it is, an she's already tired after her long day... "Rabbit." She nods her head toward him, eyes searching him curiously as if she's uncertain as to whether or not he'll actually be able to bring something back on such short notice. He's acting as if she just asked him to run out to Wendy's. "It's small and it'll take less work. I need a lot of time for large game."
She offers a polite smile, mostly because she knows that she should, before she disappears into the house and she starts the fire. He's got some wood left but she's going to have to cut more tomorrow, which is fine; anything to keep her busy. Natasha feels as if her entire life has fallen apart all at once, she doesn't know what her next step is and she's never felt this aimless before. It was always simple, finding the next step. She followed orders in Russia, and then she told herself that she would be different. She would make choices that could help people, and the difference that she'd make in the world was going to matter. She was supposed to be working for the good guys.
Maybe she can't tell the difference anymore.
She's alone and her walls of self defense slowly lower, and for a moment after starting the fire Natasha simply sits on the floor in front of it and allows herself to feel. Depressed. Angry. Disappointed. Not at her superiors, but at herself. She should have known better. When had she become so foolish?
Her guard isn't thrown back up until she hears the screen door finally move, and Natasha half glances over her shoulder when Jasper finally comes in. She has no idea how much time has passed. "How did it go?" She finally turns to look at him more completely, but she looks weary now. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
Rabbits were an interesting challenge, too small to bother with when the family was hunting for themselves, so he was out of practice with just how good at dodging they were. There was more than one muttered curse in the darkening woods and there's a long streak of mud up one leg from an injudicious slide along a creek bed, but he holds up a brace of three rabbits, intact, necks broken.
"Surely did," he says with satisfaction, continuing through to the kitchen to lay them out on the drainboard next to the sink, then reappears in the doorway and pauses, tilting his head again as he takes in the posture, the low light, the emotions darting through her like the flames from her fire. Whatever had happened out in the world, it's hit her deep. It's left her drifting.
"I'd offer to sort these out for you, but you look like you might welcome the distraction," he adds more quietly.
The first thing that she notices is the large streak of mud down his leg that he's tracking into the house, and it's the second thing that she notices that keeps her from snapping at him for doing just that. It's the smile, that stupid, proud curl at the corners of his mouth, subtle enough to be missed by anyone who isn't her, that makes her annoyance immediately dissipate only to be replaced with a vague sense of endearment. She made a request and he put out effort to fulfill it, she can't be frustrated with him about that.
"No, I've got it." She replies in a voice that's uncharacteristically soft almost to the point of passiveness, and she shifts to get up off of the floor before moving over to him and taking the rabbits with a minor, but genuine, smile. "Thank you. I've got a drainage system in the kitchen, I'll take care of them right now. I don't know how much clothing you have here, but if you want you can put those in my room and I'll wash them for you. I'd offer you a pair of sweatpants but..." she trails off, looking up at him and the twelve inch disparity between them, and she can't help but give a dry but crooked smirk. "I don't think you have the hips for them." Or they wouldn't make it past his knees. Either way.
Natasha moves into the kitchen with Jasper's kill, and it doesn't take her too long before she's lost in the project before her, enough to put her mind at ease. It isn't long before she's singing to herself, low and quiet, and at least two hours later she finally walks back into the living room and drying her washed hands on a small towel. "I've got a stew going," she informs him, partially distracted as she checks the fire. "I made a lot, I don't know if you really... eat? Well, you obviously eat but I mean - you know what I mean." She finishes dismissively before looking at him directly. "You're welcome to it if you'd like."
It seems like the first time he's noticed it when he glances down, leaning over a bit to get the full effect of that long streak of mud. "They're quicker'n I remember," he murmurs, looking back up at her, or down, as the case may be here. She's even a little shorter than Alice, and he'd always towered over her. "No need for that, I'm well supplied, but thank you for the thought."
When she disappears, so does he, into the bedroom he hasn't used for more than the storage of a few shopping bags, collected one day a few weeks into his stay, when he'd just needed to feel himself moving. He'd made it into an errand, running hours toward a city just to pick up supplies he didn't strictly need, but it does mean there's a new stiff pair of jeans to change into. The muddy sweatpants he wouldn't dream of leaving for her to sort out, he's no stranger to coming home soaked and streaked up after a hunt, and with things far worse than mud. He can hear her in the kitchen when he slips into the bathroom to scrub them down, and with Natasha here now, he's truly intruding on her space. He won't leave them hanging there to dry, a low tree branch will do.
He's long since discovered the tilt of the roof is ideal for the gap in the trees, the best view of the stars as they turn around the sky's axis, and that's where he is when he picks up the soft, smoky-edged singing from inside. It's too quiet for a human to hear, it's not meant to be heard, so it's with hesitation after a long bout of indecision when he swings off the edge of the roof and drops to the ground and slips back inside to listen.
The fire is the only light in the room when she comes back, and the only source of warmth, and one would expect him to be sitting closer to it instead of perched in the windowsill looking out at the few stars he can see from this angle, but he turns his attention to her as soon as she appears in the door, head turning to follow as she walks across the room to the fire, attuned—maybe a little too attuned for comfort—to the only person he's seen in over a month.
"We can eat, a little," he admits. "Not too much. I'm sure they would've gotten around to testing that." Because they should really talk about that, shouldn't they? That whole raid situation, and what they'd done to him. Or tried to do. He'd been more resilient than they'd planned on, that much had been obvious, even after they'd managed to starve him enough to control him.
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."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moodshifter) wrote2017-02-16 01:26 pm
no subject
Oh, they'd welcome him back, but he wouldn't welcome himself. He'd never been as strong as the rest, but he'd also never relapsed, and he'd told himself he never would. Never mind that it wasn't his fault. Never mind that he'd held back and stood between his fleeing family and the black beetles of SHIELD agents descending on them, never mind that they'd thrown him into a pit and discussed with interest right in front of him his eyes as they'd darkened from gold to soulless shark-black.
He hadn't known how long he'd sat there, watching the blood dry on his fingers, before she'd come in. He'd wondered if she'd been nearby, or if he'd only been imagining her particular tangled flavor of emotions, but he was in no position to be angry. She had warned them. Possible she herself hadn't been told how fast they'd be moving in. It was still a tense several days laying low, hiding from the sun, hiding his eyes behind sunglasses even indoors, before she'd managed to maneuver them both to her safehouse in the woods.
And she'd left him there, and he'd really expected he wouldn't see her again. His first few days had been a shipwreck, a drifting agony of indecision—he'd come close to leaving that first night, come close to running south again, looking for Maria again, she'd take him back and he was useless to anyone else like this—but this place was far, far off any beaten trail. When he got hungry again, animal blood was all he could scent, and he thanked every god he cared to name for that. It kept him there, the silence and the solitude and the peace, and by the time he hears footsteps in the leaves, his eyes are back to bright, burnished gold.
She doesn't say a word when she stares him down like she's angry about something and walks past and inside, and he frowns and almost follows, but no, that's not the look of someone inviting questions, or company. Instead, he slips into the kitchen for the first time to see what's there, and it's sparse. If she's staying, and it looks like she might be, he'll go out and bring something back for her. Even though this is her house, and he is her guest, he feels oddly like he ought to be a good host.
He is still on the porch, a finger marking his place in the book he's reading, something he hasn't gone back to since he'd first looked up to see her watching him. "Yes, ma'am," he says, standing immediately and setting the book aside, and folding his hands behind his back, not quite at a military at-ease but it's there in him. "Welcome back. I must say, this is a surprise."
no subject
Ma'am. Southern gentleman. She'll see just how legitimate that is.
"It wasn't my plan," she admits after a brief pause, her eyes moving up and down his body to take in the sight of him before her hands move to pull her wet hair out of her face. She ties it out of the way, studying the color in his eyes - different. They were red, she remembers that clearly. She's not familiar with vampires but when it comes to the realm of supernatural Natasha knows one thing after the Battle of New York; never assume that you know anything.
"Natasha." She says her name flatly because she can't remember if she had even introduced herself last time they had met; she's not him, she doesn't come with a side of southern charm. "I know that you don't have any contact to the outside world here but it's practically on fire and it's because I did something that needed to be done. And because I did, everybody knows that I got you out of there, now. This is my only safe house." Her hands fall from her hair with a sigh, and she rubs her arms as she looks at the immediate land surrounding them. It's getting cooler. "So it looks like we're going to be roommates."
Her eyes move back to him. "I'm going to go inside and start a fire, it's going to get cold soon. If you want to come in after you're done out here, I'll be in the living room. I'm sure there's a lot we should probably talk about - okay." She had turned as if to walk into the cabin once more before she stops herself abruptly and turns to face him once again. "You're sparkling. Do you know that?"
no subject
He lets his sleeve fall back down to his wrist and folds his hands behind his back again, watching her with a slight tilt to his head. There's always been a lot to her, layers upon layers, constantly shifting and freezing and settling, rising and falling. It's been a challenge to him to find what she's really feeling inside it all, ever since he'd first run into her acting like their new neighbor down the road, trying to unload a truck of furniture on her own. Naturally he'd offered his services, it wouldn't have felt right to do anything less. He knows now that he was the reason she'd been there in the first place, and there's a little flare of anger again at the memory of his family clearing out of their home because of him, because of her, but they'd gotten out. That's what's important now.
"If you need this place for yourself now, I don't need to stay," he says after a few moments of thoughtful silence. "You've been more'n generous enough to me as it is, with very little reason for it that I can tell. I can't figure you."
no subject
"You're not going anywhere." She sighs at her own response, because although it would be better for her, that doesn't mean that it would be safe for him. "They're going to be looking for you and they actually have the equipment it takes to catch you, I'm not letting them throw you back into that hole. You'll stay here with me, I know what they're looking for and I know how to stay under their radar." She reaches for the door but she stops at his last comment, and Natasha glances Jasper's way to eye him strangely. He must be furious with her, isn't he? Even if she did try to warn him ahead of time, this is still her fault. She had lied to him. Given him a fake name, a fake life... how can he call her generous after all of that?
He must be trying to get her guard down. "Well I'm not here for you to figure, so that's fine." She raises an eyebrow at him as she says it before finally opening the screen again. "I'm going to start that fire. I have some provisions here but not many, so next time you go hunting, bring it back. I can skin it and butcher it for myself."
no subject
He's also never much thought he deserved to be saved, but if she thinks he's worth saving and keeping that way, he'll do his best to live up to that. Even if he can't go back to the family, at least he can do that. If it means sticking around so she can keep an eye on him, that's not so unreasonable. At least for now. Until it gets too dangerous.
He nods, half-turned toward the woods already. "Be happy to. Any requests for dinner? Plenty of deer in these woods. Rabbits. Spotted a flock of wild turkeys a few miles up. ...bear, if you'd like something a little stronger."
no subject
She offers a polite smile, mostly because she knows that she should, before she disappears into the house and she starts the fire. He's got some wood left but she's going to have to cut more tomorrow, which is fine; anything to keep her busy. Natasha feels as if her entire life has fallen apart all at once, she doesn't know what her next step is and she's never felt this aimless before. It was always simple, finding the next step. She followed orders in Russia, and then she told herself that she would be different. She would make choices that could help people, and the difference that she'd make in the world was going to matter. She was supposed to be working for the good guys.
Maybe she can't tell the difference anymore.
She's alone and her walls of self defense slowly lower, and for a moment after starting the fire Natasha simply sits on the floor in front of it and allows herself to feel. Depressed. Angry. Disappointed. Not at her superiors, but at herself. She should have known better. When had she become so foolish?
Her guard isn't thrown back up until she hears the screen door finally move, and Natasha half glances over her shoulder when Jasper finally comes in. She has no idea how much time has passed. "How did it go?" She finally turns to look at him more completely, but she looks weary now. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
no subject
"Surely did," he says with satisfaction, continuing through to the kitchen to lay them out on the drainboard next to the sink, then reappears in the doorway and pauses, tilting his head again as he takes in the posture, the low light, the emotions darting through her like the flames from her fire. Whatever had happened out in the world, it's hit her deep. It's left her drifting.
"I'd offer to sort these out for you, but you look like you might welcome the distraction," he adds more quietly.
no subject
"No, I've got it." She replies in a voice that's uncharacteristically soft almost to the point of passiveness, and she shifts to get up off of the floor before moving over to him and taking the rabbits with a minor, but genuine, smile. "Thank you. I've got a drainage system in the kitchen, I'll take care of them right now. I don't know how much clothing you have here, but if you want you can put those in my room and I'll wash them for you. I'd offer you a pair of sweatpants but..." she trails off, looking up at him and the twelve inch disparity between them, and she can't help but give a dry but crooked smirk. "I don't think you have the hips for them." Or they wouldn't make it past his knees. Either way.
Natasha moves into the kitchen with Jasper's kill, and it doesn't take her too long before she's lost in the project before her, enough to put her mind at ease. It isn't long before she's singing to herself, low and quiet, and at least two hours later she finally walks back into the living room and drying her washed hands on a small towel. "I've got a stew going," she informs him, partially distracted as she checks the fire. "I made a lot, I don't know if you really... eat? Well, you obviously eat but I mean - you know what I mean." She finishes dismissively before looking at him directly. "You're welcome to it if you'd like."
no subject
When she disappears, so does he, into the bedroom he hasn't used for more than the storage of a few shopping bags, collected one day a few weeks into his stay, when he'd just needed to feel himself moving. He'd made it into an errand, running hours toward a city just to pick up supplies he didn't strictly need, but it does mean there's a new stiff pair of jeans to change into. The muddy sweatpants he wouldn't dream of leaving for her to sort out, he's no stranger to coming home soaked and streaked up after a hunt, and with things far worse than mud. He can hear her in the kitchen when he slips into the bathroom to scrub them down, and with Natasha here now, he's truly intruding on her space. He won't leave them hanging there to dry, a low tree branch will do.
He's long since discovered the tilt of the roof is ideal for the gap in the trees, the best view of the stars as they turn around the sky's axis, and that's where he is when he picks up the soft, smoky-edged singing from inside. It's too quiet for a human to hear, it's not meant to be heard, so it's with hesitation after a long bout of indecision when he swings off the edge of the roof and drops to the ground and slips back inside to listen.
The fire is the only light in the room when she comes back, and the only source of warmth, and one would expect him to be sitting closer to it instead of perched in the windowsill looking out at the few stars he can see from this angle, but he turns his attention to her as soon as she appears in the door, head turning to follow as she walks across the room to the fire, attuned—maybe a little too attuned for comfort—to the only person he's seen in over a month.
"We can eat, a little," he admits. "Not too much. I'm sure they would've gotten around to testing that." Because they should really talk about that, shouldn't they? That whole raid situation, and what they'd done to him. Or tried to do. He'd been more resilient than they'd planned on, that much had been obvious, even after they'd managed to starve him enough to control him.
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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..."
no subject
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."
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)