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Entry tags:

Open Log

Who: Yelena Belova and anyone
When: Mid-August up to just before the event
Where: ADI housing and the surrounding neighbourhood, the railyard
Summary: Getting the lay of the land, and investigating the phantom crash.
Warnings: fire, destruction of home, mention of insects, mention of potential death and corpses, paranoia

ADI Housing - C2

It's a solid few hours between when Yelena is first deposited in one of the maintenance ducts in ADI headquarters, and when she turns up at the apartment - shared, she's been warned, and while that's less than ideal, she's dealt with less privacy before - she's been assigned to. This once, she takes no pains to be silent, though neither is she overly loud.

If there's no one immediately in evidence in the common area of the apartment, she'll set about exploring, committing the layout and location of various useful items to memory. If one of the apartment's other residents is in evidence, or else when they make an appearance, she greets them with a small smile and a, "Hello. I think we're to be roommates."

(And, ok, maybe only half of the other residents of the apartment will think she's harmless for even a second, but half is better than none.)

ADI Housing - General

After she's acquainted - or reacquainted - herself with her roommates and washed the cobwebs and dust from her hair, Yelena sets out to acquaint herself with the grounds of the housing complex and the area just beyond. The first evening, she's concerned mainly with the major landmarks: the apartment blocks, the fitness and laundry facilities, the gate and the bus stops, the nearby grocery store. The next few evenings, she can be found wandering the grounds and the nearby neighbourhood with less apparent intent - just stretching her legs, if asked. (Just cataloging the surveillance equipment; she's seen high-security facilities with far fewer cameras.)

Over the course of the first two weeks she's there, she establishes something of a routine, alternating running and swimming in the early mornings, visiting the gym at night. Occasionally, after curfew, she might be found up on the roof of one of the buildings. It's not against the rules - she's checked.

Railyard - August 21-24

It doesn't take any convincing to get Yelena down to the railyard after the crash that has, apparently, gone unnoticed or ignored by the majority of the town. Including, apparently, the people who work in that selfsame railyard. After the third repetition of "I just started here", she abandons questioning to those less physically adventurous in favour of inspecting the rusting tracks and decaying train car. She slips in through the half-fused door, the beam of her heavily-weighted flashlight bobbing as she scrambles over detritus best left unidentified, and struggles not to cough at the haze of dust and ash in the air. That the burnt-out hulk is ancient is clear enough. So too is the fact that it was once a sleeper car, and she supposes it's fortunate that some long-ago rescue crew has already removed the bodies, even if no one's bothered to haul the car away.

(Or would it not have been here yesterday, if anyone had taken it into their heads to explore the railyard without the impetus of the crash?)

She runs a finger carefully along the lip of the washbasin, then turns her attention to the walls, squinting at the ruined posters. After a moment, she pulls her phone out of her pocket, and starts recording. Most of posters and playbills are destroyed beyond any use, but some few might yield more information on closer inspection, somewhere that feels less like a tomb and doesn't force her to take shallow breaths.

It doesn't take long for the theme to become apparent even in the few posters that remain.

Something - maybe the creak of fire-and-rot weakened flooring, maybe the scuttling or chittering of disturbed vermin, maybe just a shift in the air - alerts her to another person's presence, and she glances sharply over. She relaxes only a little when she spies another person, and not anything particularly sinister.

"It's strange, isn't it?" she says. "This still being here."

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Kate is surprised to find the door unlocked but perhaps that just means that Winter is home. Wait. She pauses before entering even though she's already turned the doorknob. Would Winter leave the door unlocked? No. That doesn't seem to be something he would do. It is a little feeling that he is more overly cautious than she is that maybe borders on paranoia. And maybe he's been through some things but it's not her place to ask.

She lets out a sigh and cautiously opens the door, her head peering inside before the rest of her follows. Kate is carrying a reusable shopping bag from a nearby grocery store. What's for dinner? Pasta.

When she sees her new roommate, Kate is surprised. It shows on her face. Her eyebrows rise slightly and it takes her a moment to respond. "Oh." Yelena is far better outcome than she expected. A new roommate is better than finding the place ransacked and robbed of what little they had. "Hello."

Kate steps the rest of the way in and heads to the kitchen area of their shared space. "I'm Kate." She flashes her a sympathetic smile. "Did you just arrive?" Arriving is rough especially if one is unlucky enough to arrive in one of the ducts or locked supply closets. Kate has been here one month and she still finds it rough.

Yelena turns slightly to keep Kate in view as she moves deeper into the apartment, leaning back and bracing herself with her hands on the back of the couch to make it seem casual. Friendly, even. She's just facing the person she's speaking to, nothing strange about that.

"Yelena," she replies. "I've been here..." She takes a quick glance at the clock on the microwave. "Six hours. Maybe a little less. Not enough time to warn you to expect someone new, I guess."

The corners of her mouth tug down in a slight, apologetic grimace. That much, at least, is genuine - she certainly wouldn't appreciate a stranger in her space without any warning.

"No, no warning." Despite working at ADI, there had been no warning of a new roommate. Yelena is not unwelcome but a heads up would have been nice if only to prevent any more awkwardness. "But these are three bedrooms units and they are providing them to us." She shrugs her shoulders a little bit. It makes sense that they would fill them up. It is a shame the way that they are getting filled up, however.

Kate sits her bag of groceries on the counter. "It's nice to meet you Yelena, I wish the circumstances were better." Then she takes out a bag of artichokes and a lemon. She washes her hands and fetches a glass bowl which is filled with cold water and placed on the counter. "I hope you're hungry." She goes about as if Yelena is not a threat because Kate doesn't feel that she is. She has no reason to expect otherwise.

She starts by washing the artichokes and lemons. Organic or not, Kate is too germophobic to not wash them before using them. Has Yelena paid attention to the people inside grocery stores? Some of them are gross and they may have touched the vegetables. She can't have that. What does that say about her? That she's a clean freak? That she takes care with cooking food? That she tries harder than is necessary? "I usually make dinner around here." Though it is a couple of hours until dinner, it doesn't hurt to do the prep work now, especially with the artichokes.

From there, Kate takes out a knife. It is very sharp and is one of the few investments she's made since arriving, a couple of good knives. "Do you have any allergies I should know about?"

Yelena recognizes a routine when she sees one. It's not one she's familiar with - meals had been something of an industrial affair for most of her life, and then a mix of takeout and whatever she felt like throwing together once she had the freedom to choose for herself - but it's almost soothing to watch.

(She evaluates the knife when it comes out. She can't not. Some habits are carved in bone deep.)

"No allergies," she says. "Do you have a rota for chores? Or just whoever sees something that needs to be done does it?"

Kate slices a lemon and squeezes one half into the bowl of water. She then sets to work on peeling and prepping the artichokes. It is a lot of slicing and dicing and then putting them into the bowl of water to keep the pieces from browning before she can use them. Besides, the lemon will get the dish a touch of acidity to round out the flavors.

"Pretty much if you see something that needs to be done, just go ahead. We're all pretty self sufficient here." There is more cutting of the artichoke. Kate tosses out the fuzzy innards before going onto the next one. While holding the artichoke with one hand, Kate keeps her fingers curved and out of the way to prevent accidentally cutting herself. She doesn't cut it too quickly but she does cut it like she knows what she's doing and has had a lot of practice.

"What do you think of ADI so far?"

"They need to clean their vents more often," Yelena replies, lips twisting in a wry grimace. "And they seem to very much want new talent. I'm withholding judgment on other things until it has been more than a day."

Or rather, until she has a read on how her new roommate might take suspicion directed at their employer.

"What sort of work do you do for them?"

Kate nods her head as she continues to slice and then dump the artichoke pieces in the lemon water. "You're not wrong. It makes you wonder what happened to drive people away." She shakes her head because if she allows her imagination to go down that road, she'll be gone all day.

"Administration, mostly. I'm good at organizing people and things. What have you been conscripted into?"

As they talk, the front door opens again, though Kate will recognize this time the intentionally-audible tread and buzzing gears of her more familiar roommate. He stops after closing (and locking) the door, taking off his mask and frowning at the two women in the kitchen.

He only expected one. Why are there two. Why does he know them both.

... Why is the Widow in this apartment?

"To start, just..." Yelena begins to say, then looks over as she hears someone enter, putting on a friendly smile for what she assumes will be the third resident of the apartment.

Which, to be fair, she's reasonably sure he is. She just wasn't expecting to see the one person she actually knows so far at ADI. It's enough to set her mind racing. Is this a coincidence? A power play? Do they expect him to keep an eye on her, or vice versa? Or, most unlikely of all possible options, is this some fumbled attempt at kindness to offset just how disturbing all of this has been so far?

"I think maybe someone involved in assigning quarters has a sense of humour."

"Do you two know each other?" Kate asks because Yelena's comment has caught her attention. She doesn't mean from ADI, she means from before. Are they from the same world?

Kate has finished with the artichokes and starts to tidy up after herself. Since Winter is home, she'll go ahead and start on dinner proper. "That's interesting."

The answer to that is complicated. He's not entirely sure what to say, when the only memories he has of her are from a couple hours ago, or are from when she was practically a baby.

"From a long time ago," he finally settles on, drifting further inside towards the kitchen and the two of them. His eyes flick between the two of them, but mostly settle on Yelena in the end. This is her apartment now, too. Filling the last empty space. That feels right.

"And not so long ago," Yelena adds cheerfully, jumping in to redirect follow-up questions away from him and towards herself, protective instincts disguised as amiability.

He isn't a Widow, but they share some of the same horrors.

"He found me in the vents. I almost fell on him. I'm guessing that's not how rooms are normally assigned?"

"That's nice that you two know each other. Misery loves company, right?" She says with a small smile. It is something of a little joke. Kate hasn't met anyone from her own world. She doesn't know of anyone else that has met someone from their own universe.

Kate is going through the steps of getting dinner ready. She's already removed a pot and a frying pan from the cabinets. "That's one way to make an entrance." She shoots a concerned look at the both of them. "I thought that they were picked based on arrival time but now that some people have disappeared they might be filling in holes." She shrugs her shoulders because she really isn't sure. While she does work in Administration the housing assignments are not under her purview.

She gets the pot filled with water then she adds salt and sets it on the stove to boil. Kate looks between the two of them. She gets the feeling that there is something that they aren't telling her. What that could be, she doesn't know. Maybe they had dated before Winter's obvious trauma?

"Winter, before you came in Yelena and I were discussing ADI."

Not a saying he's heard before. He gives Yelena a look that skews skeptical. Does misery love company? Are they miserable here? He's not sure what miserable feels like. "Reasonable subject," he allows. "Since we work for them. Most of us."

He's not sure if Yelena agreed or not, but he's reasonably sure nobody gets to stay in their official housing without taking their orders.

Somewhere between surprise, relief, and a tiny grain of pleasure (not misery), he finds himself adding, "And you did not almost fall on me. I knew exactly where you were."

Yelena hitches one shoulder in a shrug in response to that skeptical look. "It's good to have backup," she suggests, which isn't quite the same thing, but hews close enough to the principle.

"And my way makes for a better story." She glances at Kate, and adds almost playfully, "Don't you think?"

"We all do work for them but what do we think of them so far?"

'And you did not almost fall on me. I knew exactly where you were.' If they looked similar she might have suspected them of being related. But they don't and with that line, Kate's suspicions grow that they used to date or something.

"Nearly falling on someone does make a better story, sorry Winter." Her tone is almost apologetic. "It's dramatic and funny. People like a funny story."

Not for the first time, he wonders if he just doesn't understand what counts as "funny", because someone falling on someone else from a ceiling vent does not seem all that funny to him. But he's not going to argue about it, either. Instead he settles into a comfortable parade rest for the conversation in the entryway from living room to kitchen.

"ADI does not function like HYDRA, my previous handlers. They allow--" Require, even. "--much more freedom. There are fewer missions, and the ones assigned so far have supernatural elements. But they do not provide thorough documentation for their missions, so we are going in without all the relevant details. Unclear whether ADI handlers have thorough intel to start with."

Look, you ask for an opinion, and you get a report. That's probably more words than Kate has ever heard him say at once.

"They are recruiting investigators - that's where I was going to say I was assigned, before - so at least some of what they must need is more people to gather intel." She sighs and runs a hand over her hair, grimacing a little when it catches on a whisp of cobweb she hadn't managed to shed earlier.

"I think if they're willing to bring on people who are from another world, whether or not they're a part of what brought us here, they must be desperate for allies."

Or cannon fodder, she doesn't say. Not yet.

Indeed. Winter had just spoken more words than Kate has ever heard him say. She would have thought it progress had he not given what sounded like a military report. What had been done to him?

She also has this weird feeling that she's not meant to know about HYDRA. Kate thinks he doesn't mean the mythological beast. Perhaps it is best not to comment on that now. Based on what Winter just had said, it sounded like they didn't give him freedom of choice. It sounded like they were secretive. What did they do?

While they talk, Kate continues to cook dinner. She gets a pot of water on the stove to boil. She gets a pan out to start cooking the rest of the items. "We're expendable." Kate says simply.

"We arrive in this world with no documentation. We are almost at ADI's mercy." She says almost because she didn't have to work for ADI. She could have gone to live in a flophouse. "It could all be a test." She chops up garlic and vegetables. "What do they have to lose by sending us in? I'm not sure which option I like better. They know nothing and need help or they know everything and we're a bunch of green shirts." A reference that is sure to go over their heads because Space Trails nor any of its spinoffs exist in this universe.

"There is very little in the ADI operation that shows desperation or a desire to recruit many outsiders," he says, shaking his head. "It is more likely. That they do not trust us. They know very little about us or how we arrive. But we have no support structures except what they offer us. They could put us to use while keeping us under their control."

Says the guy who fell immediately into the situation without actually caring that he's being controlled. That's familiar. Anyone who offered structure would probably be first on his list to sign up with, and ADI just got him first.

“That is probably a part of it,” Yelena says. “We’re useful tools that will not deplete their resources or raise many questions if we die. But if they do not trust us, they would hide any desperation they have. They would not want to show weakness to people they can’t reliably predict.”

"You two sound like you know what you're talking about. Have you seen this kind of organization before?" Don't mind her as she drains the artichokes to get them ready to cook.

He considers a moment, then says firmly, "Worse." ADI might not be very transparent, but he's used to that. They haven't even suggested maintenance or cryo, haven't sent him on any missions explicitly to kill anyone, haven't given him any unpleasant orders, and haven't hurt him pretty much at all. So ADI is automatically several orders of magnitude better than HYDRA or the Red Room-- and he doesn't even know about all of what happened to Yelena.

"The fighting monsters from outside of reality is new," Yelena puts in. "But we've seen other conflicts. There's always a group that is seen as less valuable, more expendable."

"There is?" Kate can't help but hide the surprise in her voice. No group on her world is considered expendable. Then again, everyone on her Earth has an ability. "Nevermind, forget I said that." She tacks on quickly. "Of course, there are people who think that way." She reaches up to touch the bridge of her nose.

Kate is reminded of her part in finding specials and having them conscripted into service whether they wanted to or not. Is that what happened to Winter? Oh, Gods. What if it is? What had she been doing? What had she been contributing too. She lowers her hand and snakes her head. No, she's just jumping to conclusions.

"So, shady organization that we can barely trust. Where do we go from that point?"

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Open Log

Roomy? Roomey? Roomie?!

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this okay? <3

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