till the World Ends, for ceptme

[bornrussian]

The sky spins, clouds become the dusty California ground, become mountains in the distance, clouds again, dirt. Light blue. Pale white. Dirt. The colors flash and despite Natasha's tight grip on the controls, the nose keeps dipping down, down, down to the soundtrack of angry beeping and wailing warning signals. Red lights flash rapidly, lighting up the dashboard and dancing across the grim line of Natasha's jaw.

The impact with the ground comes quicker than expected. Like the dirt rose up to meet them. The initial jolt rattles Natasha's bone and a bright taste of burnt copper bursts in her mouth. The quinjet slides across the ground, gravel spattering across the windshield and the whole world seems to shake apart. The harsh dig of the safety harness is all that keeps her in her seat, each jolt of the machine driving the breath right out of her lungs. Her head knocks straight into the headrest, pain blossoming in her head and turning into fireworks as each shudder and slide sends her careening again, hitting the armrests, the backrest, the headrest and finally ripping the controls straight out of her hands.

The quinjet shudders to a halt and the sudden stillness is startling. Somewhere in the long slide, the alarms stopped screaming at Natasha, the warning lights winked out of existence. Her breath comes ragged and loud in the silence. Her throat pulls together, her chest convulsing with little hiccups of breath as she struggles not to throw up on top of everything else. Her hands find their way back around the controls, the familiar and well-worn plastic (worn down into groves by another set of hands, wider and more calloused) is somehow comforting. There's nothing to be done, but holding on affords her a sense of control.

Okay. Damage control. Cracked ribs, sprained wrist, bleeding tongue and pounding head. Could be worse. Windshield held. No obvious breaches in the hull. Natasha forces herself to unwind her fingers from around the controls. They feel clumsy and too thick as she unbuckles the harness.

When the wrenching sound was followed by a sudden dip downwards, Natasha immediately drowned out the shrill screams coming from behind her. They weren't useful to her then. But now, she hears the soft creak of hot metal cooling rapidly, and her own breaths, but nothing else. No screams, no constant barrage of questions like what has been plaguing her since they took off from the Tower, no cowering whimpers. She doesn't want to look behind her. So, she turns quickly.

Well.

The hull held anyway.

It's a good thing she never bothered to learn their names.

Yellow-Jacket sags forward against his safety harness, head lolling forward at a strange angle. His neck must've snapped in the fall. Green-Shirt's harness must've snapped, or maybe she wasn't wearing it. Her body is crumpled on the floor, splayed across the tins that have spilled out of a torn cardboard box. The gallons of water that cost Torn-Jeans his life are now slowly pouring out across the metal floor through cracked plastic.

It's almost funny. This has been a clusterfuck from beginning to sharp and relentless end.

The quinjet is done for, that much seems obvious. Tony might've been able to repair it, but he's not exactly here. (As it turned out, Tony Stark was nowhere near callous enough for this brand new world. Who would've known?) Clint probably could have-- A bright grin, hands streaked with oil and the battlesuit rolled down to his waist, he's jerry-rigged this quinjet (or others) to give just another coupla miles too many times to count. Natasha's mind basks in the warmth of that memory, and it skitters across the grey and flat (tucked away and smoothed down so she won't keep snagging on them all the time) memories that follow.

Tony could have fixed it, Clint could've, hell Green-Shirt probably could have too, but the stark, unavoidable truth is that Natasha can't. Which leaves her on the wrong side of the country, with no means of transport, no back-up, and shit out of luck.

Goody.

Natasha steps over Green-Shirt's body, gingerly nuding the rolling tins away with the side of her foot, and grabs the shotgun from the weapon's locker. It's time to see what she's working with. The hydraulics of the rear hatch don't work and she has to force her way out. The sun is already high in the sky -- that's good, they're more sluggish during the day -- and she blinks in the sudden light. Her shoulders tense and hands curled gently around the shotgun, she looks around herself for any sign of movement.

Comments

[ceptme]

For the first few days, weeks, the quiet had driven him crazy. He's never had much of an affinity for nature; life has always been metal walls and airlock pressure doors, the constant steady thrum of machinery underpinning every other sound and vibrating through the floor underfoot, as far back as he can remember to sterile white and the smell of antiseptic. In a world sustained by the unobtrusive workings of life support filters and grav generators, silence has always meant something horribly wrong.

As it turns out, it's not so different here.

The sounds of their ungainly land vehicles stopped first, along with the hum of the power lines overhead. After a while the screaming mostly stopped too. It's nothing but the sounds of the planet now, wind stirring the plant life, various animals squeaking and growling and chirruping in the undergrowth. The quiet has its upsides though. Now that he's starting the learn the sounds this place makes, it's easier to pick out the ones that don't belong; the shuffling and moaning that comes along with the stench of rotting flesh on the air to warn of the arrival of-- whatever the fuck those things are.

He's seen a lot of horrible shit in his time, a lot of things most normal people would pay anything to unsee, but he's never seen anything like this. Every sense he has says that they're dead. He knows what a corpse looks like, grey and bloated with putrid flesh hanging from exposed bones, and he sure as hell knows what eyes look like after that last spark of vitality and awareness goes out of them. Everything he's seen of these things tallies up...apart from the fact that they're still moving around.

Not that it matters. He's a pragmatist by nature, and what they are and how they came to be really isn't his problem. All he needs to know is that they're a threat - and they were pretty fucking well filed under that category long before the first time he saw them rip some poor fucker to blood shreds - and how to deal with them. Shot to the head, fire in a pinch. Explosives work well, but most of the time they're not worth the way the noise draws more. They're not particularly fast or well-coordinated, but they're incredibly persistent and too dumb to be tricked or scared off. One of them's easy enough to see off. The problem is, you never see just one of them any more.

For the last few months stranded on this stupid fucking planet, he's been surviving mostly by keeping his head down. At night, when those things are more active, he finds somewhere with a sturdy door to barricade - or at the very least a tree or something else he can climb - and gets what sleep he can. And then once the sun's risen, he walks. He's hit a couple of cities and towns so far, but none of them have had what he needs. Until something usable turns up, it's just a matter of surviving. And fortunately survival is something he's very, very good at.

Now and then he crosses paths with other survivors. Some are fucking crazy, seemingly out just to murder a path through what's left of this world while they still can. Most are just people, tired and scared and doing what they can to stay alive. He doesn't pay them much attention. On the rare occasions he doesn't just slip away without ever letting them know he was around, he only stays just long enough to trade intel about the road ahead and maybe supplies if there's anything worth bartering for. Maybe it'd be useful now and then to have someone to cover his back, but it's not worth it. He can pass for Terran for an hour or two if he's careful to keep the cybernetics covered, but much longer than that and people start asking questions he can't answer, making references more recent than what decades-old scraps of Terran pop culture he's picked up from Quill. It's easier to stay alone. Certainly a lot easier than trying to explain to someone from this backwater of a world why the fuck he's so dead set on finding a functional deep-space transmitter.

The days are starting to get shorter and colder, and from what info he's been able to glean from the detritus of the local civilization, it looks like this hemisphere of the planet is about to enter its winter phase. He's managed to pick up some warmer clothes; stolen a jacket and sturdy boots taken from a boarded up store, traded in a thick set of gloves to a small band of survivors in exchange for lighter fingerless ones he doesn't have to take off to work his 'borrowed' rifle. He might end up needing more. He guesses he'll need to wait and see how cold it gets. If nothing else, at least the dust in the air that had made his eyes water and his throat itch and burn seems to be going away as the plant life gradually changes color.

The routine of the day is fairly well set by now. He wakes up in a nest of tattered blankets in the fork of a large tree around dawn, patiently chewing through a ration bar with the texture of cardboard and sipping from his supply of water as he watches the light grow clearer and brighter, listening out for the sounds of the dead moving around below. Eventually, when he's satisfied himself that he can risk moving, the blankets get rolled up and strapped back onto his battered rucksack of supplies - lighter than he'd like, he'll need to do another supply run soon - and he carefully checks and loads his rifle and sidearm before climbing down and getting on his way. He'll pause briefly for a rest and to eat about halfway through the day, veer aside to refill his water bottle or search any buildings he passes for supplies as necessary, but other than that the day ahead of him is nothing but walking until it's time to scout out a place to sleep.

He's grown so used to the quiet that it takes him a moment to place the low drone at the edge of hearing, growing steadily louder and closer. And then there's a roar of engines and a glint of light on a metal hull overhead, and for a moment - just a moment - he almost hopes that he'll look up and see a familiar flash of blue and orange coming in to land.

He doesn't, of course. Even if they're looking for him, the odds of finding any one person on the face of this blue-green speck are literally astronomical. The Milano isn't coming, not unless he gets them a signal to home in on. No, the craft overhead is definitely of Terran make, if a little more well put together than the sad tin cans he's seen sitting on abandoned airstrips. And-- fuck, it's in trouble if the falling pitch of the engines and the drunken way it's listing to the side is anything to judge by. Almost before he's finished having the thought, there's a sudden gout of smoke bursting from the engine and the list turns into an outright spin. He watches it tumble out of the sky to go down somewhere on the other side of the ridge to the north.

He tilts his head consideringly and reviews his options. The noise and the plume of smoke will have attracted the attention of every walking corpse for a ten mile radius, and the buffet table of dead crew and injured survivors will keep them there for at least the rest of the day. Now would be a very good time to take advantage of the distraction and slip on by. It'll be at least a week to get to the next city of any size, if the route he's picked out from the local maps he managed to scrounge up is any good - more if any of the bridges along the way are out, which is pretty possible - and a day's head start where he's probably not going to be attacked would make the going easier.

But on the other hand...it's not every day a supply bonanza literally drops out of the sky. Anyone with that kind of tech still working is definitely going to have something worth scavenging, even if it's only food and ammo. He's not gonna turn his nose up at that when it's barely even out of his way.

And fuck it, he's kind of curious about who around here still has the resources to be maintaining aircraft.

He doesn't abandon stealth entirely, but he does move more quickly than he has been as he slips through the forest toward the crash site. It's a bit of a scramble to get up the ridge, but the other side turns out to slope more gently, and once he's over the crest the plume of smoke rising from the downed craft is all the landmark he needs to make it the rest of the way quickly and easily. Slowing to a more cautious pace, his picks his way the last hundred yards to the still-smoking wreckage, which is-- huh. Less wrecked than he'd been expecting, actually. Score one for Terran tech.

There's a flicker of movement, and he instinctively tucks himself in against a tree for cover, half raising his rifle. One survivor that he can see; no dead yet. There's a gun in her hands, and there's blood on her clothes and on her face but she sure as hell doesn't move like she's injured. No, the way she moves spells out danger in more languages than he cares to name. His eyes narrow assessingly.

After a long moment he sets his back solidly against the tree he's using for cover and raises his fingers to his mouth to give a high whistle, his other hand still coiled ready around the stock of the rifle. It's a gamble, drawing her attention to him, but he's discovered over the last few months that startling armed survivors without announcing yourself first is a really good way of getting mistaken for one of the walking dead and shot at. He really doesn't feel like getting shot today. It'd be kind of a pain in the ass.

"One comin' in," he calls, rifle ready but dipped a little as he looks cautiously around the thick tree trunk. "Don't shoot."

[bornrussian]

The sickness came slowly. It crept up on an unsuspecting populace so efficiently that by the time they had a name for it, it was already too late. A new strain of the flu, that's what the doctor's called it. Mortality was high, but they were working on a vaccine. It's unclear what came first, the vaccine or the first infected biting another fellow human. What is certain is that by the time the inoculations became mandatory, the "flu" had mutated into something worse.

Various Internet forums dubbed it the "zombie"-disease. It was a world-wide joke. Until suddenly it wasn't.

The Avengers were called out to the first mass rising in New York. The Presbyterian Hospital had seen a slew of sudden "flu"-deaths and their morgue was packed to the rafters. Death is always hardest on the young and the old, and these corpses were so fresh they still looked alive. Diseased, yes. But living. Sure, there was a five year old girl chewing through the skull of one of the morgue attendants, but that didn't make it any easier to put a bullet or an arrow (or goddamn Mjölnir) through the head of paper-thin and frail old lady stumbling down the hall towards them.

The memory of that day -- three hours of non-stop fighting -- is flat as a sheet of paper in Natasha's mind, brushed over and flattened over and over again, until the only thing that remains is a thick scent just at the back of her nose. The sharp sting of antiseptics mingling with the almost sweet smell of decay. If she closes her eyes she can see the muzzle flash of her gun illuminating face after face. A boy, not even three years old; an old man with laughter lines around his dull and life-less eyes; a teenage girl with hair dyed a bright pink, her hospital gown slipping down over narrow and bony shoulders. Natasha doesn't close her eyes much these days.

Three months later, the Avengers boarded up a hospital filled with infected. (Mothers, young men in the prime of their life, grandparents, babies. Still alive, only waiting to die and join the hungry hordes.) Natasha doesn't know what the official plan was. Quarantine, perhaps. And then what?

As it turns out: Hospitals burn easy.

Another flattened and tucked away memory; Clint's hands pressing against her back, the heat of the fire licking at her face. Time wavered, between two burning hospitals at two different points in time, and in her the same sickening sensation of falling, falling, falling and spinning out of control. Perhaps she thought it would feel different when she struck the match this time. Turns out it didn't.

The world went gray and a little drab after that. Like all of the color bled out of it with every new death, every news story about closing borders or infected schools. The networks all become 24/7 news outlets. The Food Network had Martha Stewart advising how to make an excellent meal out of strict rations. National Geographic had Bear Grylls talking survival. Live footage blended with old programs. Whatever they dug out of the archives that might be applicable to what the Internet had dubbed the "Zombie Apocalypse" and CNN called a "pandemic panic." In the end, the Internet won that one.

Stark Industries joined the race to find a cure, or a way to stop the ravages of the infection. The first vaccine had accomplished one thing; the virus was no longer airborne. The only way to catch it was via bodily fluids. Blood, saliva-- One woman caught it by having sex with her infected (and diseased) husband. Her face was splashed across the newspapers, back when the printing presses still ran.

One after one the newscast started to drop out, network after network going dark. CNN kept going into the last. Their last broadcast ended with the failure of the last power plant. Slowly, the lights of America flickered out and died. Only one last light refused to go out; Stark Tower.

Tony envisioned it as an Ark; a safe haven. But it became a dirty scrabble for survival (just like everything else), nothing like the shining beacon of hope he imagined.

It's true that disaster brings out the best in humanity, but desperation brings out the worst. The layers of humanity have been peeled back, revealing dark and twisted cores. Natasha never trusted easily, these days, she doesn't trust at all. She doesn't need to learn their names. They'll die or betray her, and she doesn't need names to go with the faces of corpses.

The sound of another human voice makes her flinch, and in a second she's got her shotgun trained on the flicker of motion behind the tree. The zombies -- good a word as any, right? -- will come, lured by the loud noise and the smell of those decomposing corpses. If she's lucky she'll be far away by then. But she forgot about the living. The quinjet will make a tempting target for Scavengers. It's filled up with food, water, weapons, ammo, and medical supplies. Not to mention the fuel. Some poor bastard might try to use it in place of gasoline.

Three seconds. He's a man, a bit taller than average, with the look of a man who has been living rough. But, then again, haven't they all been lately? The rifle in his hands has one up on the shotgun in her hands (if he knows how to use it), but they're close enough the handgun tucked in the back of her dirty jeans could be its equal. If she can draw it before his bullet hits it mark that is. Better bet is throwing herself behind the curve of the quinjet, and taking him out when he comes closer.

Wary, Natasha keeps her shotgun trained on him, but she lets her body loosen, drops the threat written clear across the tense lines of her muscles. Feel free to underestimate her. She can ill-afford to add a bullet wound to her list right now.

"Put up your rifle," she calls back, drawing closer to the hatch back inside the quinjet, boots skittering across loose gravel. Sure, she'll be trapped, but he'll have to come in after her. "I won't shoot unless you make me."

[ceptme]

Survival at any cost is an old habit long since ingrained into bone-deep instinct. Maybe the way he's been living lately is different, for the setting if nothing else, but this? A wary stand off while two people with no reason to trust each other weigh up the options and decide if it's worth taking a chance on not shooting first? Yeah, this is pretty familiar ground. There was a time not really all that long ago when something like this was just about the closest thing to a civilized social interaction he knew how to have.

Things change. Being back to living like this, sleeping lightly with his back against a wall and his fingers curled around a weapon, doesn't change the fact that he knows now what it's like to have people he trusts completely and without question to have his back. But it's not difficult to slip back into that old mindset, to let go of everything else and trust the feral survival instincts that have seen him through so much worse than this. Nothing else matters but surviving long enough to get out of here.

He responds to the slight uncoiling of the tension in her stance in kind, easing out from behind the cover of the tree. After a pregnant pause he dips the barrel of his rifle and makes a show of slowly and deliberately putting the safety back on before sliding it back into the makeshift holster strapped across his back, keeping his movements easy and non-threatening. If he'd wanted to shoot her he wouldn't have bothered announcing his presence with anything other than a bullet, but mentioning that doesn't really seem like it's going to achieve anything. Holstering the rifle is a gesture as much as anything else. He's got good cover here, and no real investment in sticking around if this looks like it's going to go south; if she decides she wants to start shooting at him, all he's got to do is duck back behind the tree and lay down a little cover fire with the pistol currently strapped to his thigh for long enough to melt away into the undergrowth.

He folds his arms and leans against the tree, and though his body language is relaxed, his eyes are still intent as he watches her warily. "Wasn't expectin' survivors," he comments, eyes flickering sideways to the hatch of the crashed craft. He sure as hell wasn't expecting survivors as intact and functional as she appears to be. It does complicate matters a bit, but there's no reason for this to be a complete waste of time.

His gaze sweeps assessingly over the craft before returning to her. He gives a small shrug. "Look, we don't gotta waste time and ammo here. More company's gonna be comin'. That thing ain't goin' anywhere, and you can only carry so much. I'm just here for first crack at whatever's left after you're on your way."

[bornrussian]

With the man fully out from behind the tree, Natasha can assess him more fully. He could do with a hot shower and a shave, but underneath the scruff and the layer of grime he's more attractive than average. Probably part of why he's still alive. These days, who lives and who dies is a little bit of a lottery, but after luck has had its say, it comes down to skill and charm and wit. Human beings are stupid creatures sometimes, they put their trust in pretty features. Trustworthy, a face like that says. The soft lines around his mouths and eyes spell out c-h-a-r-m-i-n-g. She's willing to bet trades go his way more often than not, and that strangers hesitate to put a bullet between his eyes. She's not judging here, she skates by on much the same things. Of course, he is less likely to be pushed down into the dirt by someone intent to have a piece of him, but that's neither here nor there.

The shotgun won't do Natasha much good at this distance; she sets it down as a sign of good faith, propping it up against the side of the jet. Any other time, she'd have a second to spare to the deep scratches in the side-panelling. Her fingertips brush along the worst of it -- they can't afford to lose another quinjet -- but her eyes never leave the man.

Rifle-man. That's as good a name as any. If he wanted to shoot her, Natasha would be dead already. So either he has no bullets in his gun, he doesn't want the extra noise to excite their coming company further, or he has need of her alive. What need that might be, she can only speculate. She opens her hands wide, showing him her empty palms. Look. Unarmed. (But for the heavy weight of the gun fitted against the small of her back, that is.) The motion tugs at her sprained wrist, and she rolls it lightly, trying to soften aching muscles.

The plan was; assess the situation; drag out the bodies (she'd bury them, but the zombies are relentless diggers, and she doesn't even have a shovel, either way they're getting eaten so she might as well save her back); give the radio a good solid try; pack as much as she can carry; set the quinjet to stealth mode with a beacon lit; and bug out. His presence complicates that.

Natasha's gaze flickers from his boots up to mouth holding that promise of a smile. There's something familiar about his eyes, but whatever it is keeps slipping away whenever she thinks about it. She could kill him. But she's already injured. The pilot's seat protected her, but she's still plenty banged up. Another fight and she might not be walking quick enough to make it to town before nightfall. She feels naked out here in the open with no vehicle to take her quick and safe where she needs to go.

"How about you grab what you need and take off? I still have work here. I gotta bury my dead."

[ceptme]

Her answer isn't what he's expecting, and his eyes narrow a little as he tilts his head slightly and considers her, weighing up his options. Instinct demands that care be taken here. She doesn't look like much of a threat at a glance, but then neither does he really; even if the shotgun is the only weapon she had, unarmed doesn't mean not dangerous. He may not know who she is or what she's capable of, but he knows that the thought of turning his undefended back on her makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. If he does go for this, it's going to have to be a quick in and out.

On balance that's still a win, if there aren't any nasty surprises coming. He'd wanted to get a better look at the craft itself, maybe see if there was any tech worth cannibalizing, but odds are there's nothing worth having on it anyway. Coming away from this with enough food and ammo to see him through to the next city on the road is already a better result than he'd expected out of today when he woke up this morning. If he can manage to navigate the next ten minutes without getting shot at, yeah, he's prepared to call that a win and quit while he's ahead. If nothing else at least all this is a bit elaborate for a deliberately staged trap.

"...okay," he says eventually, taking another cautious step out away from the cover of the trees. He doesn't have the first idea why the fuck she'd wanna waste time making dead meat comfortable, but he's not gonna argue. He assumes it's part of all that real people shit Quill still hasn't quite managed to convince him isn't so alien after all. Either way, it's not his problem.

He keeps his eyes on her all the way to the hatch. His fingers itch to wrap around his pistol, but he pushes down the useless urge; shotgun beats pistol at this range, and he couldn't draw the rifle fast enough for it to make a difference. Much as he normally loves escalating the situation, there's a time and a place. He's not getting into any fights he doesn't have to unless he's damn sure he'll win. Nothing's more important than making it back to the Milano.

The interior of the craft is about as much of a mess as he'd expected to find after a crash like that, the cargo strewn everywhere in and around dead bodies. He can't help but give the bodies a cautious second glance to make sure they don't look like they're thinking about getting up again, but on the whole he's definitely breathing a little easier with some sturdy metal walls between him and his new friend. He watches the hatch carefully as he swings his battered rucksack off his shoulders and sets about efficiently filling it with food and ammo. There's medical supplies rolling around too; after a moment's thought he grabs a basic medkit and tucks it away at the bottom of the bag. With any luck it'll be unnecessary, but he'd sure as hell rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

He has a quick glance at the console. That's about all it takes to confirm that there's nothing there he can use.

The newly refilled bag settled back across his shoulders, he rests his fingers lightly against the pistol at his hip as he leans warily out of the hatch to assess whether or not she's about to attempt to kill him. It looks like a cautiously optimistic no as things stand, and he lets his hand fall again as he moves carefully out and back toward the trees. "Well, it's been fun," he says, some of the tension easing back out of him as he reaches the cover of a broad tree trunk. "See ya n--"

A twig snaps somewhere behind him and he cuts off mid-word, drawing and raising his pistol in one fluid motion as he spins to face the source of the noise. And then, carried on the breeze, comes the all too familiar putrid odor of rotting flesh, accompanied by a groan of mindless hunger. "Fuck," he mutters, low and heartfelt, backing up a couple of steps toward the downed aircraft.

[bornrussian]

The walk between the downed jet and the trees gives Natasha plenty of time to observe Rifle-Man. He moves like he knows how to fight. Not like a soldier exactly, but like he’s coiled tight and ready to spring into action. Something about his motions — the tension in his shoulders — when he comes closer suggest paranoia. But of the professional variety and not the healthy skittishness born from living among the walking dead for five years.

Their eyes meet before he steps into the quinjet and she squares her shoulders, ready to go for her gun if he makes a move. He doesn’t. And he doesn’t seem to recognize her either. People don’t, as a general rule. The big guys had their own action figures and their faces splayed across lunch boxes, but she and Clint kept a more low profile. But it still happens though, and the plain relief on people’s faces when they realize who she is, makes her gut twist with nausea. They think she’ll save them. She’s a hero, right?

Five years ago, she would have laid down her life for a civilian in a heartbeat. These days, the stakes are higher and her loyalties have narrowed down significantly. If you’re not in Stark Tower, you’re a liability or a zombie, and either one won’t endear you to her. Still, she tries. But when it comes down to it, she has to make the quick choices.

Once he’s inside, she picks up the shotgun again, walks a slow circle around the quinjet to get the lay of the land. There’s a town in the distance, she’s pretty sure. Maybe a couple of days walk out. A week if she’s unlucky.

Natasha tries not to think about the wealth of weapons inside the quinjet, or how easily he could take her down on the way back out. When she hears the scramble of metal of the hatch, she puts up the shotgun away. Neither one of them has to die today.

He’s quick, she’ll give him that. There was no lengthy weighing of what to bring or what to leave. That speaks to professional. Or maybe he’s just gotten used to making choices quickly. Time is always of the essence in this brand new world.

His goodbye falls mostly on deaf ears, Natasha already moving back towards the hatch with quick, purposeful motions. It’s the mid-word interruption that catches her attention.

A quick glance tells Natasha all she needs to know. It’s written in the twist of his features, the way his shoulders are squared and his gun out and pointed at the tree line. Zombie. The stench hasn’t hit her yet, and she can’t see how many they are through the trees. But this means she is out of time.

Fuck. Her thoughts unknowingly echo his sentiment. She had hoped to be gone before they arrived. She ducks into the quinjet. The zombies have their prey, until he’s dead, they won’t go looking for anyone else. As long as they don’t see or hear her, that is. Rifle-Man makes for an excellent distraction. And if he’s half the professional she thinks he might be, there’s a good chance he’ll still be alive after buying her ten minutes to get her shit together.

Inside the quinjet, lies a calm of sorts despite the mess of hastily secured supplies. There are dents where Rifle-Man took his fill, and had she more time, she could tell a lot about him by what he chose to take with him. First things first— Yellow-jacket’s body is held up only by the safety harness and she has to bodily shove it back to find and release the clasp on the front. It snaps open, and suddenly all his weight (dead weight by now) bears down on her. With a curse and a jerk of her shoulders, she steps away and to the side and the body crashes down to the floor.

Outside, she hears the first pop of gunfire. No time.

Every zombie attack, there’s a choice to make. Stay your ground and fight, hide or run. A split-second to make it and no way of knowing if it was the right call until you live or die. The supplies in the quin jet could last her (and Rifle-man) for a month if they ration well. But there’s no way to evacuate waste without opening the hatch, and if the jet is swarmed— Zombies don’t exactly get bored. Distracted, yes. Bored, no. There’s a chance they could just end up trapped and slowly dying in a glorified tin can.

Either way, the bodies need out. She’s not spending a month with Green-Shirt or Yellow-Jacket’s slowly decomposing bodies, and she can’t let them rot in here with all the supplies. There’s an infinitesimal chance the quinjet can still be retrieved and she has to act like it is a fact.

Natasha’s wrist protest as she grabs Yellow-Jacket by the waistband and begins bodily dragging him towards the hatch. She ignores the grinding pain, grits her teeth and works quicker. How much water spilled on the floor? How much still salvageable? It can cut their survival rate in here down to as little as three days. Yellow-Jacket tumbles down the still-open hatch, and she darts a quick look outside.

Just like that, the decision is made for her. They’re spilling out between the trees, rotting scraps of clothes hanging from narrow shoulders, mouths open in a twisted mockery of a scream for help. They stumble over piles of rags and bones — the ones that came before and fell under Rifle-Man’s bullets — some fall and are stepped over by the ones that came before. Their hands grab at the dust and even under the feet of the others, they keep trying to drag themselves forward. Yeah, they’ve got the scent of fresh meat alright. There’s no fighting all of them, and no outrunning this many.

Well, then.

Rifle-Man has made it to the quinjet, and he is tucking his rifle up against his shoulder. One shot, one zombie down. He’s good and they’re slow. That’s a point to her advantage. There’s still another couple of seconds.

Natasha darts back inside the hatch. Green-Shirt is closer — and, thank whoever is listening, lighter — and it’s a matter of moments before she falls into the dust as well, joining the crumpled heap of limbs on the ground.

It would be so easy now, to close and lock the hatch, leave him outside to distract the swarm and maybe his death will satisfy them, make them move on. Her hand is on the metal, ready to tug it closed, and then she leans out instead, drawing her gun and aiming it at the slowly approaching swarm.

”Get in,” she orders, leaving plenty of space for him to squeeze past without taking her eyes off the zombies. ”I’ll cover you.” Still too much of an Avenger to let a man die when she can save him, apparently. (Or maybe too much of a coward to be alone with her thoughts for too long.)

[ceptme]

As the stench of death thickens and the sound of rustling undergrowth grows ever closer, he backs up slowly toward the downed craft and watches the treeline carefully as he rapidly runs through his options. Animal instinct is screaming at him to run; he ruthlessly suppresses it. He doesn't know how many of them are out there or which direction they're coming from. If he goes charging off blindly into the trees, there's a very good chance he's going to run right into them. He needs to see what he's dealing with here before he makes a decision.

The first flicker of movement comes ahead and to his right. He keep an eye on it in the periphery of his vision as he continues scanning the treeline, watching humanoid shapes start to resolve themselves out of the shadows in the undergrowth. He keeps the pistol raised and ready, but he doesn't start firing, not yet. He can't afford to waste bullets on anything other than a clear shot. Putting a few new holes in some tree isn't going to help him right now.

The first of the things stumbles out into the open, and without hesitation he sights on it and squeezes off one shot, bone fragments and brain matter spraying out as the bullet punches through its skull. It crumples to the ground like a puppet with cut strings, but more are following relentlessly behind it, all slack rotten faces and bony, grasping hands. He continues backing up with steady, sure-footed steps, his shots urgent but not panicked as he takes down one after the other with deadly efficiency. Spray and pray won't do here; it's headshots or nothing. Staying calm is the only way to stay alive.

His back hits the cool metal of the aircraft's hull, and he swings the rucksack and rifle off his shoulders together as he drops down to one knee, yanking the rucksack open and leaving it by his forward foot - the better to easily reach his stash of ammo - and shouldering the rifle. He hasn't missed yet, but fuck, they just keep coming. He concentrates his fire on those stumbling over the fallen bodies of the others. If he can build up a roadblock of corpses it'll slow the ones still moving, maybe force them to bottleneck a little. And if he can get them to cluster...fuck, maybe if they clump up enough he'll be able to bring the homemade explosives stashed away in various pockets into play, blast a hole in the crowd big enough for him to make a run for it.

He'll think of something. He'll get out of this somehow. He's not fucking dying here, unmarked on this nowhere little backwater of a planet. He's getting home no matter what.

The pilot's voice draws him out of the trancelike ritual of aim-breathe-fire, and he chances a glance in her direction. The bodies that had been in the craft have been tossed outside, and she's standing at the hatch, gun drawn. It takes him half a heartbeat to get his head around what she's saying, what she's offering, but when he does-- fuck, he's in no position to question it. He downs one last target that's a little too close for comfort before grabbing the rucksack and making a break for it. The reassuring sound of cover fire rings out, and he doesn't waste time glancing back as he dives past her into the cover of the craft.

In a split-second decision he makes some hasty educated guesses about the structural integrity of their little bolthole, and pulls one of his improvized little explosives out of an inner pocket of his jacket. "Close it, close it--" he chants breathlessly as he primes the device and tosses it over her shoulder out of the hatch. The hatch scrapes shut, and for a moment, there's nothing but the muffled groaning and shuffling on the other side of the hull. Then the banging starts, the dull pounding on the closed hatch, the scratching of rotten nails and exposed fingerbones on the unyielding metal.

The subsonic thump of detonation shudders through the structure of the craft. And then, there is silence.

He takes another step back away from the hatch and draws in a steadying breath. The explosion, at least, should have taken care of any that actually saw them. With any luck those that will continue arriving over the next few hours will be sated by the charred corpses lying on the ground outside, and move on after they've finished eating never any the wiser that there's fresher meat a few yards away.

His gaze settles on the pilot, and after a moment he slowly moves to set his rifle aside, leaning it up against one of the (bloodstained) seats. They have supplies enough in here to last them at least a good few days - hopefully until the crowd outside dissipates. He doesn't know what the hell made her decide he might do her more good alive than dead, but if they're gonna be spending the next little while trapped in here together, he'd rather avoid giving her a reason to question that decision.

[bornrussian]

The recoil of her handgun rattles the bones in Natasha's sprained wrist, each pop of a bullet sending a lance of hot pain from her wrist through her elbow all the way up to her shoulder. The pain is secondary -- felt like a noise heard under water -- to the steady repetition of aim-fire-breathe. One shot. One decomposing body crumpling to the dusty ground. Another shot. Another body.

Five bodies on the ground before Rifle-Man is inside, but more zombies are coming to take their place. Scattered moans can be heard above the rattle of thin bones and the rasp of dry skin over rotting flesh. Natasha gives up the cover-fire, stepping back inside the jet. The stench of death rolls through the hatch as she pulls it forcibly closed, her stomach turning with a familiar ease.

There's barely time to register the fact that Rifle-Man throws something out before the hatch is fully closed. Natasha hits the mechanical lock, sealing them in tight. The metal walls vibrate with the force of the detonation outside, and Natasha's mind belatedly puts the pieces together: Grenade of some sort.

Definitely a professional.

The adrenaline buzzing through Natasha's veins begins to fade, sending a faint tremor through her hands. Her muscles have been so tense since the craft spun out of her control, she has to make a conscious effort to relax them. Turning her back on Rifle-Man, now that his rifle has been put down (though that doesn't make the skin at the back of her neck crawl any less exactly, she makes her way to the little cock-pit. The cloaking runs on a different circuit from the main power. Its power source is nestled deep inside the craft, and even with the quinjet dead in the water, it should work.

Hitting the button doesn't produce any sound. No sense of change. Then again, the instruments are all dark, and the cloaking only apparent from the outside. There's no way to know if it worked. Though, they could always go outside and check. Laughter tries to force itself up her throat, and she swallows it back down before she returns to the back of the quinjet.

Natasha sinks down in one of the stylish leather seats opposite Rifle-Man's rifle, every line of her body suddenly betraying her exhaustion. This day just keeps on getting better, doesn't it?

They flew out before dawn, hitting their target just after daybreak. The zombies don't sleep or retreat, but they go more sluggish during the day. Clumsier, easier to outrun. Sure, in the dark shadows of the abandoned (but, this is the important bit, fully-stocked) warehouse there wasn't really any daylight to slow them. But the site was sealed shut. It should have been empty.

It wasn't.

If her team had been professionals (there are nights when she dreams about a fully equipped SHIELD tac-team at her back, or even just one qualified agent), six lone zombies wouldn't have been an issue. Hell, if she'd been the first one to stumble into them, she could've made short work of them. Of course that's not how it went.

No. Half her goddamned team went down over a stupid mistake and lack of training.

Still, weighed against the inelegantly packed supplies filling up every available space in the quinjet, the loss of three lives would've been deemed acceptable. Everyone knows when they go out there's always a chance they won't come back. Except now the death toll is up to five and the quinjet is busted. Potentially beyond repair. She's so far out of the realm of acceptable losses here that her head is spinning with it. Her whole body feels heavy, sagging back against the smooth leather.

Everyone's luck runs out sooner or later. Exhaustion takes it's toll, and before long smart people start making bad calls. It was only a matter of time before it happened to Natasha. She's been running on fumes for the past six months now. It was bound to catch up with her.

Now she has made a potentially fatal mistake, trapping herself with a stranger she doesn't know the first thing about. All for a second of weakness and compassion. Natasha heaves a heavy sigh and looks over at Rifle-Man. Her gun is pointed at the floor, wrist braced against the side of her knee. Not aiming at him, but giving every impression that might change.

"I'm going to need you to strip," she says, flatly. Ideally, the demand should have come before she let him inside. When she had the promise of safety as leverage. Split-second decisions. They get you every time. Well, the threat of death is going to have to do for now.

NO PRESSURE AT ALL my brain just finally supplied me with what happens next nine years later

[ceptme]

He doesn't tense at the demand, but he does go very, very still. His eyes flicker from her face to her gun and back again, his expression shuttered as he considers her. "Didn't think this was going to be that kind of party," he says lightly, easy tone belied by the renewed wariness in his gaze.

The gun is loose at her side, her grip relaxed around it. It's a hair more reassuring than being pointed directly at him, but only a hair; there's only so much difference a detail like that can make when the simple fact of the matter is that she has a gun in her hand and he doesn't. Nothing he's seen so far has given him any reason to think that she doesn't know what she's doing with it. Nor does he have any delusions of being some kind of quickdraw gunslinger. Half a mile out with a sniper scope or on the other side of a blast wall with a detonator, that's more his niche. If it comes to gunfire she's going to get the first shot.

Of course the ace that's still tucked away up his sleeve at this point is that thanks to his hardware, he can take a hit that would put a human down for good. Odds are he takes a bullet either way, but with the crates of supplies piled up behind the cargo netting, even if half of it ends up being useless he can still afford to stay holed up here and heal for a while. There's even real medkits. He doesn't need to walk away from this unscathed; all he needs to do is be the last one standing.

There is another option, of course. His gaze slides away from her and off to one side to land on the hatch release. Much as violence is always an easy Plan A, he could just do what he's been doing since he washed up on this shithole planet and run. The odds aren't great, but if he goes now, he might have a chance. The dead are persistent, but they aren't fast. If he makes it out of the clearing without getting swarmed...

It's a big if. Too big.

So his options, as they stand, are fight or cooperate. Roughly 99% of him wants to go for 'fight'. But there's always been a clever, whirring little part of his brain that likes to take what's in front of him and fit it together into something new and useful, and right now that part is whispering that someone who's still got access to aircraft and a team that's moving supplies in this quantity might just have access to the kind of intel — the kind of tech — he hasn't been able to get his hands on anywhere else. Survival is muscle memory at this point, but it's only going to get him so far. He's not spending the rest of his fucking life here.

So what it comes down to, really, is whether he wants to prioritise avoiding awkward questions about the cybernetics, or taking a chance on getting a step closer to getting off this fucking rock. Put like that it's not much of a choice.

"...fine," he says eventually, raising his hands in the universal gesture for you win. "I'm just uh. Gonna need you to be cool about anything weird you see that's not a bitemark." And with that, he begins shrugging out of his jacket.