edge_of_forever | (no subject)

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The exhileration that filled Natasha was edged with worry and fear in a way that it hadn't been in longer than she could recall. Not that she'd stop fighting. There was no way she'd stop fighting.

Have you ever had someone take your brain and play? Pull you out and stuff something else in? Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?

You know I do

The words ran through her head as she vaulted over a car, already unloading a clip into the nearest alien creature before her feet touched the ground. She wasn't doing this for Clint as much as she wasn't doing this for Fury. Natasha was there fighting for herself, for everyone she'd wronged and for everyone here that couldn't defend themselves.

Clip empty she let it fall away, slamming another in and turning to see a creature fall behind her, an arrow having taken it down.

"This is just like Budapest all over again," she smiled slyly, glancing at Clint over her shoulder.

"You and I remember Budapest very differently."

The words echoed in her head, You and I remember Budapest very differently. The light was too bright, too blue for it to be the sun. Natasha pushed up - up? - and looked around her, spying the woman in a bed across the room. Her hands went for her guns, but they weren't there, she wasn't even in her only clothes. She swore, low and in russian, spinning and looking for something, anything else.

There wasn't.

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Slaying's a lonely business - or it had been, originally. Buffy had known that from the start. She alone will stand. That word's there for a reason, after all. When you take on the gig, you take on the responsibility that comes with it. And killing the undead? Not exactly a family outing. But it's a little better, now that the Potentials have been bumped up to full-fledged Slayers thanks to a little glowy magic on Willow's part. She's not alone anymore. She doesn't have to bear the burden every single night. But the power's still so new to them - she can tell they're a little scared of it. They don't know what it's about. Not yet. But that's what she and Faith are here for. To teach.

They're not really doing a lot of that right now, though, given that the bus they've been hitching a ride on hasn't stopped to fill up on gas since they left Sunnydale. Giles is driving, insistent that he doesn't need to switch places and catch a little shuteye, but she catches him hiding a yawn behind the sleeve of his jacket every now and then. Willow and Kennedy are fast asleep, their heads occasionally lolling as the bus overcompensates for a lone pothole, rocking in the aftermath. The rest of the girls are whispering quietly. She glances back over the seats, catches sight of Faith sitting in one with Robin's head in her lap. He's been resting since they pulled out, but she's wide awake, and she looks at Buffy with a knowing smirk. Buffy resists the temptation to make a face - not out of sheer resistance, but because her jaw is still aching from that Evil-delivered punch a few hours ago. She's not worried. Thanks to accelerated healing, it'll be completely invisible by tomorrow.

And as long as she can keep Faith and the former Potentials away from having a mandatory world-saving celebratory booze-fest, everything else should be peachy.

She turns back to look ahead, finds her gaze drawn toward the double yellow lines in the middle of the road. They're constant, unending, and the smoothness of the interstate has her nodding off before she even realizes what's happened, the scythe resting in her lap.

When she wakes up, it's hard to tell her eyes are even open at first. The darkness feels crushing, claustrophobic, but she calms herself before the irrational panic sets in. Think, Buffy. Come on. And then the lights come on, and the fluorescence is so blinding that she has to throw a hand up in front of her eyes, the movement slow and sluggish. When she blinks the room into focus, she has to pause and attempt to figure out where she is. The clothes she's wearing aren't the ones she fell asleep in. The room is empty - no, there's someone else here. Her mouth is dry and she swallows back the golf ball-sized lump in her throat. She's been drugged like this before, and it hadn't ended well - for Kralik or the Council.

And hell hath no fury like a pissed-off Slayer.

The aftermath of being drugged is never enjoyable. Natasha knows this too well, and in the dozen or so times people have tried or even succeeded in drugging her she's always made them sorry for it. This won't be any exception.

She knows the soft spot on her neck, knows she's been injected with something. Natasha has no idea what, and this girl might have an answer. Or she might be another captive, just like her. Only time will tell.

"Good morning." Russian is what greets the other woman with, crouched on the balls of her feet, ready to move at any moment. "What brings you here?"

Buffy starts to open her mouth, starts to reply, and then - ow. She reaches up with equally sluggish fingers to find the spot that feels a little tender to the touch. As far as she can tell, it's an injection site - and not the happy fun kind.

"Sorry, I don't speak, uh - was that Russian? I've only seen a couple episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and that was before the world blew up and took my Saturday morning TV with it."

Rocky and Bullwinkle. Even in this situation Natasha finds the humour, her laughter a low huff as she stretches and stands. "They've injected us with something. Whoever they are."

Her English is as perfect as her Russian, well-practiced and unaccented. "I wanted to know what brought you here. World ending? Hm."

That last is an aside, a consideration to herself as she turns around the room once again looking for a way out. Being trapped is something she hates, something that anyone with sense hates. "Why did it end?"

She's quicker with a well-timed quip than she is with her reflexes; whatever she's been injected with is taking its sweet time to wear off. Buffy eases herself to the edge of the bed with a visible wince, turning her head from side to side and rolling her shoulders with a small snap, crackle and pop.

"Hmm? Oh, just a little thing that happens when your town rests over the mouth to Hell," she says as she stands. Now that the Potentials are full-blown Slayers, she doesn't feel as reluctant to keep the ongoing threat a secret anymore. There are more of them now. They can take on the fight together.

"There's got to be a way to get out of this happy little - uh, cell," she mutters. "Or, barring that, screaming."

"Not that I can find so far," she wasn't discounting it, not yet. The other woman might have a method she doesn't, she's never been one to discount the skills of others.

"The mouth of hell," Natasha smiles and shakes her head, "and you say you're not Russian."

"Not as far as I know," Buffy says. "Last I checked, the closest connection I had to Russian was the secretary my dad was spending his summers in Venice with - and, wow, overshare, you didn't need to hear that while you're still coming off our kidnapped drug high."

She offers a polite, slightly embarrassed smile. "I'm Buffy."

Her bluntness actually pulls a smile - a real smile - out of Natasha. "Natasha. I'd say good to meet you, but..."

This isn't the sort of place anyone sane would say they were happy to be, she's sure of that. Anything else she might have offered is interrupted by a hologram, a hologram that has surprisingly few answers. Natasha watches it, shaking her head as she goes to press the button it indicated to make it play again.

"Of course. Nameless captors."

"Aren't those always the best kind?" Buffy dryly agrees, her arms lightly folded across her chest as the video had played through. She drops into silence again as Natasha moves to replay it, a hollow laugh punctuating the first few sentences.

"They're happy to have us, huh? It's like, 'hi, nice to meet you, come pull up a chair in quarantine'." She slowly sinks back down onto her bed. "Wonder if they have cable."

"I'd prefer my weapons," she says, not caring what the other woman reads out of that. There's still a trace of amusement as she stalks around the room inspecting the panels as ths hologram plays on. This isn't any kind of jail she knows but Natasha also knows enough not to trust that.

"So," she whirls back to Buffy, "who have you pissed off lately and could they do this?"

"You talking today, or in the past couple of years? 'Cause, uh, that list is gonna take a while to sort through," Buffy admits, shrugging once as she watches Natasha move around the room. In her career as a Slayer, she's killed a lot of baddies. She's also acquired her fair share of enemies - and now, most of them are probably dead too, but who knows how many more were able to get out of Sunnydale before its crazy implosion? That's aside from Clem, though, who she finds herself thinking about even now, excess flaps of skin and all.

"You sure this doesn't have anything to do with friends of yours?" she asks, turning the question back around.

"Right now I'm not sure of anything." It's an honest answer, she has no reason to not give them for the moment. That's something that can change quickly for Natasha, but sometimes the truth gets her further than any prevarication. "I know of people who could possibly manage something like this."

"Yeah, you and me both," Buffy murmurs, absently rubbing a hand over her arm as she glances down at her clothes, breathing out a sigh. It's really not turning out to be her day, at this rate.

"The only people I know of who had a place that looked like this accidentally had the bad luck of letting out the things they were trying to keep captured," she adds. "I don't know if they've upped their game now or what."

"It's always dangerous to keep people like us locked up." Natasha is including the other woman in that, the way she moves and what she's mentioned so far more than she likely realises.

"Natasha," she sticks out her hand, "Natasha Romanoff, SHIELD."

"Buffy Summers," she replies, clasping the hand the other woman offers out to her. She doesn't offer anything in the way of an affiliation - maybe she could've cited the Watcher's Council, but they've gone and blown up now.

"There has to be a way out of here. Didn't they say it was only supposed to last twenty-four hours? I feel like I heard that part."

Buffy. The name is unusual, but Natasha isn't one to criticize that type of thing, especially having come from a fight with Captain American and Iron Man. "They did say 24 hours. The question is how long we were out for."

"Granted, I was already kind of on my way towards a snoozefest when I got here, so any time between that and here," Buffy replies, with a small wave of her hand.

"Is there anything specific you remember, time-wise?"

"I was in New York, in the middle of a fight." It's a nondescript enough explanation of where she's been that Natasha doesn't mind giving it. "Here it was only a few minutes before you woke up."

"Well, barring any kind of immediate escape, I guess the best thing to do now would be just to sit and wait - two of my least favorite things," Buffy admits, with a long sigh.

Natasha is better at waiting than she would admit, so much of her life spent anticipating hte right moment to take action. This is different, she thinks, not knowing what is to come at the end or what she's waiting for. "I think that we'll manage. Just."

She sits, drawing her knee up against her chest, and pauses for a beat, picking at some threads on the blanket covering her bed.

"So what's your story? We've got some time to kill - and maybe some baddies after that, depending on my mood. Granted, you could totally lie to me and I wouldn't even know the difference. It might be more entertaining that way."

What was her story? It had to be one she could tell this woman and then possibly maintain once they were out of this room. "I work for the government. Special investigations."

Close to the truth, that was always the way when a cover needed to be maintained. "It's not a very interesting truth. I could tell you I hunted monsters, but no one ever believes that."

"Actually, I do kind of get it. You'd be surprised how much getting is happening on this end right now," Buffy replies, giving Natasha a mildly incredulous look.

Considering everything, though, she's not completely surprised that she's in a room with a woman who tackles baddies. That being said, she's almost positive Natasha isn't a Slayer. She wouldn't have had the power until almost a couple hours ago.

Her monsters had tended to be the human ones - people who did bad things and got away with it. It didn't make them any less monsters in Natasha's mind. "Do you?"

That made things more interesting. Why would someone want them both? "My story's a bit long. But it seems like we have time. Let's just say I didn't start out working for the good guys, but I came around."

"So you're recently reformed?" Buffy nods thoughtfully. She's seen the power that evil has to corrupt strong people - her friends, namely, and how they've had to work to come back and redeem themselves. Willow. Faith. Angel. Even Spike, to an extent, though things are still hella complicated between the two of them.

"I was - allowed, I guess, back into the fold, after my friends thought I was being too strict, too harsh. Sometimes you need to be hard to survive," she quietly adds.

"Recently enough." It was never long enough and there was something in the way she closes her eyes for a moment, in the heaviness of her gaze when she opens them again that says that. She'll always have that red in her ledger, it's never something she's going to wipe out completely.

"You do," Natasha nods, knowing that well, "and letting people in can get you all killed."

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