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bornrussianThe 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.
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.
NO PRESSURE AT ALL my brain just finally supplied me with what happens next nine years later
Date: 2024-09-17 11:40 pm (UTC)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.