clandestinement | Unexpected Aid

Unexpected Aid - for wereperrito

The burning wing of the laboratory facility is just a smudge of smoke on the horizon when the snowmobile dies beneath her. Natasha blinks in confusion for a moment, then tries to restart it. Tries again. Notices, finally, that the fuel gauge rests on empty, which is distantly worrying, but less so than the fact that she no longer feels the cracked ribs, or the roughly bound wound that punches through the meat of her thigh, or the laceration along the side of her head that has turned her hair to a frozen, bloody horror in the alpine wind.

Of course it's empty. She'd had barely enough time to steal a vehicle in the chaos of the explosion she'd set off to cover her escape, let alone find one in ideal condition to make it to her rendezvous point. Just more proof that an op designed for two people is a disaster for just one, even one at the top of her field.

Natasha smacks dash of the snowmobile with one hand in helpless frustration, then slides off the saddle - and keeps sliding, wounded leg going out from under her in the snow. She digs in her pack for a moment until she finds her communicator and - no signal. Of course there isn't. This entire network of valleys is a dead zone, which is what had attracted her attention in the first place.

No choice but to get to her extraction point - which would be difficult enough on foot if she were whole. She estimates it's at least 20 miles off, and that's if her tunnel vision hadn't been bad enough that she veered off course. At least she can't hear the sound of engines approaching. The pursuit had dropped off half an hour ago.

Maybe because they knew her fuel would run out, and expected her to bleed out and be easy enough to find and mop up later.

She bows her head, then snaps upright again when exhaustion tugs at her, forcing herself to her feet. Her leg holds this time, but she should probably find something to use as a walking stick if she wants to stay standing.

She makes it all of a mile from the vehicle, in an increasingly-weaving line, before her leg goes out from under her again, and she falls, clutching the gnarled branch she'd picked up along the way to give her some semblance of control in her descent. Black spots dance at the corners of her vision, and when she shakes her head to try to clear them, they flood inward, and her stomach rolls in protest.

Her last coherent thought is that it's a bitter sort of irony to have survived the death of half the universe only to wind up here, alone in the forest, because the one person she'd been absolutely certain she could count on had decided abruptly that it was more important to chase ghosts than to try to put the rest of a broken world back together.

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Natasha wakes up in what looks like a rough log cabin, but it's cozy enough that the walls must at least be solid. There are rugs on the wooden and a fire in the fireplace. She's on a threadbare couch that smells like moths and dog fur, but she doesn't smell like blood, her wounds fully bandaged and cleaned.

There's also the sound of someone puttering around in a kitchen somewhere behind her, blocked from immediate sight by the back of the couch. There's the sounds of an old-fashioned pump splashing water into a copper kettle.

For a long moment, she lies absolutely still, taking stock of her surroundings, with only the shift in the sound of her breathing to hint that she might have awakened. She hadn't precisely expected to wake at all, but if she had, it would've been to prison walls or a guarded medical facility, not something homey, if rustic. She shouldn't have been anywhere near a town. A hunter's cabin, maybe? If so, it's a remarkable stroke of luck that there was someone in residence, close enough to stumble across her and with enough skill to bandage her wounds.

Too much luck, maybe.

She eases herself up slowly, then stops with a hiss as her cracked ribs remind her of their presence, almost sharply enough to drown out the throbbing in her temples as her much-abused body protests the very concept of verticality. Her hypothermic reprieve from pain is, apparently, at an end.

"Oh, no. No, do not do that," comes a faintly-accented voice from the direction of the kettle and the pump. Male, late 30s or early 40s, healthy but tired and a little worried, probably Latino of some stripe. "Lay back down, I will come to you."

And he does, bustling around the couch with a battered copper kettle in hand. He's slight, with a strong chin, and hair so gray it's almost blue, despite his apparent young age. There's a worry-line between his brows.

"I don't think sitting up's going to kill me," she says, with enough gallows humour to suggest that she's been near death just enough times to have experience. But she still eases herself back down, and the process hurts almost as much as trying to sit up in the first place had.

She presses her eyes briefly shut to banish the sparks dancing across her field of vision, then opens them again to take in the person who is likely her rescuer.

About her age, she thinks, maybe a few years older. Slim. Kind face, though she knows better than most how deceptive that can be. Unusual colouring - she's seen men gone prematurely grey, but the colour of his hair isn't that of aging. It reminds her of the cat that had decided to make itself at home on the balcony of her first apartment, almost pewter, with hints of blue, and god, she's definitely suffering blood loss if her thoughts are scattering this badly.

The urge, brief and easily squashed, to pet his hair to see if it's as soft as fur makes her add potential concussion to the list of her injuries. Thankfully, telepathy is exceedingly rare - she's probably safe from embarrassment.

"Hypothermia probably would have, though," she adds after a moment. "Thank you."

"Blood loss might have before that did," her rescuer says, and leans over to hang the kettle over the fire. "You were not in a good way. I patched you up as well as I could." Which, from the looks of things, is actually pretty well. He hasn't done anything for her ribs, but then, there's not much to do for broken ribs, but her leg is tightly wrapped and her hair is mostly free of blood, a butterfly bandage over the cut there. He hasn't changed her clothes, but the worst of the stained pants leg has been cut away.

He settles onto his knees between her and the fire, just to one side so she can still make him out. The rest of the cabin isn't particularly well lit. "You're welcome to whatever help I can give you. I'm Jack, by the way."

"Natasha," she says, briefly - and not for the first time - mourning the loss of her anonymity. He might not know her face - not everyone does, and this isn't the context in which most people would expect to find her - but giving a false name and being caught out would just make her look foolish.

"You've done this before." It's not really a question - someone inexperienced would have tried to strip her pants off rather than cut away the parts that interfered with tending her wound, would've used cloth bandages to wrap her head. The placement of the bandages suggest practice, not just training.

He doesn't know her face. Superheroes and international spies are a few rungs above where he usually focuses his attention on the ladder of problems. He might put it together later and kick himself, but for now there's no sudden sign of recognition or alarm or even confusion.

"I haven't brought any half-dead people to a cabin in a snowstorm before," he protests, but he quickly adds, more seriously, "But I have treated wounds before, if that's what you mean. I have lots of experience with that."

Natasha snorts in amusement, then winces as the motion reminds her ribs of their general objection to existing at this current moment in time.

"Ow," she says. "Don't make me laugh. --Medic on a vacation retreat?"

It's more curious than deliberately probing: interested, but not overtly concerned.

"No, not a medic. Just run into people who need patching up a lot," he says, looking vaguely embarrassed by it. "This is a friend's house I was stopping by to stay the night at. You were lucky," he adds. "If it had been a day before or a day after, I wouldn't have been here."

Or, more accurately, would have been locked in the basement and unable to help her out. The full moon is tonight. He's not looking forward to trying to talk his way around that with her, because there's no way he's getting her out of here in time.

"I'll take it." She smiles faintly, the expression not quite touching her eyes. "I think we've all been short on luck recently."

That, at least, won't be hard to interpret - it hasn't been that long since half the world was reduced to dust.

"This is a bit out of the way for a one-night stay, though. I was starting to think I'd actually found the literal middle of nowhere."

"I did have to drag you a little ways to get here," Jack admits, and doesn't ask about what she means. Even he, off the grid as he is, has had people disappear on him. He knows.

The teapot behind him starts to whistle, so he lifts it off the fire, picking himself up again to collect the heavy mugs he'd left behind. "I only have tea here, I'm afraid. Will that be all right? I was working on a soup when you woke up, I'll have that cooking soon."

"Tea's fine," she says, gaze tracking him until he moves out of her field of view. Despite her earlier quip, she doesn't try to sit up again. She'll have to eventually, but right now, it'll just be unnecessary pain.

"Besides, it would be tacky to complain about the refreshments when I've just been rescued."

"Maybe a little bit tacky," Jack agrees, with a smile in his voice. "You should tell me if there's anything you're allergic to, though. Just in case. I don't want to kill my rescuee on accident." He returns a moment later with a mug, a teabag string hanging out of it and a spoon sitting in it, steam drifting off the top. "You can sit up now. Just do it slowly, okay?"

"Just on purpose if I'm too obnoxious?" she asks, tone clearly teasing. "Just lidocaine. Makes getting any dental work done an adventure, but it shouldn't cause any problems here."

It also makes getting stitched up an adventure, but she'll worry about that when she's found a way to rendezvous with her extraction team.

She carefully pushes herself up, scooching back against the armrest of the couch to borrow a little leverage, keep her core as still as she can. It still hurts enough that there are lines of tension around her eyes and lips by the time she's something resembling upright. She hasn't gone any paler, but that may well just be the blood loss masking things.

Jack hovers a little, like he'd love to help but is afraid he'll be rebuffed. When she's finally upright, he offers the mug, and also a large pill. "Here. If you don't mind feeling a little loopy, this will help with the pain."

It is, in fact, a pretty heavy-duty pain med. He won't feel bad if she turns him down, he is in fact a stranger, but he has to offer.

She accepts the mug, but not the pill, offering him a brief smile. "Thanks, but I think I'm loopy enough already."

Even aside from the fact that he's a complete stranger, she's still in what might be classed as hostile territory. Much as she might want the pain relief, she can't afford to be impaired.

Too bad. It would have made life easier on both of them if he could just quietly knock her out for a night. Oh well, it was a long shot to begin with. Jack pockets it with a shrug. "I can bring you a regular painkiller, instead, if you like, but I won't blame you if you don't trust that it's just an over-the-counter thing."

There's a moment's pause in which she actually considers it, then shakes her head, giving him a slightly apologetic smile. "I'll be okay without. And yes, you have permission to remind me I said that if I start whining."

"I will do that," he promises, and leaves her with the tea, to finish putting the soup together in a pot he can hang over the fire, too. He says from the nearby kitchen counter, "You will have to be here a couple of days, probably. I don't think the storm is going to let up to let you leave until then. Will anyone be looking for you?"

She winces a little at that - the storm must have grown well beyond what the meteorological predictions had given her before she landed, if it's going to last that long. One more hitch on a mission made almost entirely of hitches.

"Is there a radio here? I have some friends expecting me."

"Ah, I don't know, maybe?" Jack looks around. He has a receiving radio, for listening to stations on the AM frequencies and also because there's a tape deck attached to it, but it doesn't transmit that he's aware of. He's not sure what all his friend who actually owns the place has tucked away in corners, though, he hasn't sheltered here in a few years. "Let me check once I get the soup cooking, okay?"

"All right," she says. "It's not urgent - if the storm's that bad, they aren't going to come through in a panic."

It occurs to her belatedly that she's just made a dangerous admission, and she grimaces to herself. Blood loss has definitely turned her thoughts to sludge, and she takes a sip of tea in hope that it will jolt her back to form. Jack doesn't seem like a threat, but that doesn't excuse getting sloppy.

If he understands the slip, Jack doesn't give much sign. Honestly, he's already figured out she was doing something either nefarious or law-enforcement related, given that was a bullet hole he patched up, and her outfit is not exactly subtle, so her having friends who might over-react to her disappearance is a thing which has already occurred to him. He's not terribly worried about it.

He just isn't aware they're superheroes yet. Of course, he might be even less worried then, since superheroes usually don't shoot first and ask questions of the bodies later.

He comes back around the couch lugging a heavy pot, which he hangs over the fire where the tea kettle had been a moment before. "There's no real stove in here," he explains apologetically. "And the oven is part of the fireplace, too. Really, we're pretty lucky that there is power at all."

It isn't revealing the fact that she has dangerous friends that concerns her - given how she arrived in his care, she's already discarded any notion of playing the harmless citizen. Rather, it's revealing the fact that any such dangerous friends are cool-headed enough that she is effectively on her own for the duration of the storm. If he meant her harm, that would be confirmation of a window in which to inflict it.

She watches him hang the pot, and smiles faintly in response to his explanation. "This far out from any towns, I can imagine. Your friend must be handy, if they're able to keep a generator running."

"I had to bring my own gasoline for it," Jack says, wrinkling his nose. Before the storm kicked in, he could smell it. Now the snow has thankfully masked the scent. "I know how to run it, but we'll both have to hope it doesn't break. I definitely cannot fix it myself."

He picks himself up. "I know there's a radio that receives things in the other room. I used it this morning when I was cleaning up. I don't think you can use that to contact your friends, though. Can you?"

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