bygone (avengers)

два : 2

Feeble souls conjure grace as graceless minds abstain — the waltz of the end behind those doors. Anastasia hooks the webbing over her ear, listening in.

"I'm too recognizable to him, I've got you backup, just listen to my instruction."

She stays on her toes, slipping through the crimson vaulted doors, looking up through unruly lashes. "Heard."

The air filled with laughter and the fizz of champagne, she did dread this hunt. But, to stop looking over her shoulder in life: would make this worth it.

Degenerate in decadence, she spirals through the halls, feeling the weight of eyes follow, like the predator to prey. "Someone's watching,"

Though mostly suspicious, she tilts, turning her head to peer from over her shoulder. Her choked breath paused the clock, the seconds wailed to go on.
She waits— stares to her hands with memories painting her lids, she blinks them 'way.
"I need that backup."

She was choking on the brutality of her words and the thoughts of which the soldier provoked in her.
Ivan knew just how to ruin her.

She finds herself incapable of shouting at such a might, she worries he's grown stronger. And, just to turn round, to look down upon him from atop of the stairs, she can see the bulk of metal hidden away under the ore coat; it could take her breath away.

But that doesn't do it.

It's the way he stares, nearly agape, containing the drop of his jaw with a shaking pant, the stretching of his hands. He is aware, and that's what robs the air from her lungs.

"What's going on Stasia?"

He seems unfazed within moments, lips set thin, every step he rises she takes two.

"I've alerted them."

And he lifts a metal digit to his ear, she can't hear over the cheer of the hall but she knows he's responding, she knows that he's her backup.

"Nastasia." He exhales, and she let's the tension fall, hand resting to her holster, she can rid of him. She can.

"James," She lets him invade her personal space, stepping nearly toe to toe with her. And it makes every hair on the back of her neck stand taller than she could. "You're going to take me back to them, eh?"

He looks onward, no response, surveying the guests scattered below, nodding off to another.
"A friend helped me unscramble my mind, I thought you were.."

She can feel the energy from him revert, he's soft, gone nearly limp in her presence — he wasn't here to betray her again. "Dead?"

He nods, and she can't pay attention. A head of balding grey, glass in hand. He looks no menacing, but to have experienced his wrath: she wants to kill him all over again.

"у нас пока нет времени говорить, миссия первая." (we have no time to talk, mission first.)

Bucky offers his hand, agreement. Smiling just a tad, and it's a slight frenzy of feelings that bubble in her gut —

She'd never seen him truly smile.

"конечно, давай потанцуем." (of course, let's dance.)