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blankd · 3 years

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Thoughts on The Mitchells vs the Machines

I watched it a while ago and kept forgetting to post my thoughts on it, but some posts here on tumblr recently reminded me.

I disagree with the majority takeaways I see but is that not the spice of life?

As a standalone movie its inoffensive and the writing of it will likely exit my brain in a few months. However I can appreciate that the visual style was different from the typical fare and the mixture of 2d elements for visual embellishments were mostly enjoyable and well-suited for Katie as the POV character.

It's a bit "hyper" for my liking, but that's fine, it's likely intended for an audience that's accustomed to the flood that is the current norm of the internet. It was probably made with GIFable moments in mind and that is the most frequent content that is shared about it, so it certainly succeeded in that regard.

My more critical take is that jokes are delivered at the expense of what could be more authentic themes. Quips are made that draw attention to character flaws or undercut questions the movie should try to answer, but inevitably they are ignored to move onto the next joke or story beat.

The rest would fall more into spoiler territory, so read more for that.

--"They Were Both In the Wrong"

I personally disagree heavily with the thrust of how "both sides" were wrong when the degrees are disproportionate.

I've seen claims that Katie was "as in the wrong" as her father, but she's incredibly patient to the man who does her material harm.

I've yet to have seen someone say specifically what Katie did *wrong* to her father that is at all on par with the *years* he at best hasn't been able to interact with her or worse, actively refused to engage with her interests.

I would generously venture that her flaw was that she was more willing to communicate her feelings to strangers, but she easily talks to her mother and brother- her brother even helps her with her movies and she happily engages him with his own interests, which pivots the point back to how her father is physically/emotionally unavailable and led to the erosion and distance between the two of them.

Due to this, MvM comes across more as Kaite having to do so much more to guide her father rather than a more mutual learning experience for the both of them.

--"Technology that [Dis]Connects"

It's probably beyond the scope and intent of the film, but I was surprised there was no examination about why technology can be more alluring than interacting with physically present people.

For better or worse, the internet can be used as a means of supplementing the validation and acceptance of family. It can also lead to no longer connecting to people around them because of the validation high of appealing to a constantly 'awake' sea of strangers- the spotlight is warmer than the cold reality that they are not the internet image they have cultivated.

For example, the rival 'perfect' family was never revealed to be a carefully constructed highlight reel that Mrs. Mitchell envies, they really were actually that perfect- because that provides an easier punchline than an examination or acknowledgement of how the internet can create unhealthy expectations.

I also can't expect MvM to acknowledge the reality that LGBTA+ people who are rejected by their family resort to seeking a new one through the internet because it would be much harder to redeem/rehabilitate a man defined by being tethered to "old values" if he was homophobic instead of "overprotective" and apprehensive at his daughter's departure from home and her dubious art career.

But hey we got that quick line at the end that Katie likes a girl, so that's a diversity win or something.

(To be clear I'm not expecting a whole parade or even an A or B-plot dedicated to it, but I think it should be acknowledged that this kind of "surprise inclusion" is very easily erased with a change of audio and would be completely unsurprised if this were the case for countries that are homophobic. People can be happy about it, but it is dishonest to pretend that this is a bolder statement than it is.)

In that sense, I do and don't hold MvM to taking a "safer" route about how family always has your back, but this still feels like an important omission considering the focus on technology and its dynamic with the Mitchells.

I will also say that it was also bizarre, to me at least, that the obvious route that her father sees the value of home videos didn't become an active point between him and Katie. Or that Mr. Mitchell's carpentry never really amounts to anything despite having a sentimental wooden moose.

Lastly, I think it's an unintentional, but it's interesting that Katie going to college to pursue her passion is viewed as a Terrible Thing by her father even though if he had his way, he'd be ostensibly living in the woods away from everyone else except his wife.

This isn't a problem, people are a collection of contradictions, but It's fascinating to see what the *narrative* treats as a difficult sacrifice while simultaneously pulling at heartstrings when PAL cites how children ignore their mothers. There's an unexamined comedy that Mr. Mitchell's losing out on his 'passion' to live in the woods away from people is treated as tragic despite the movie's insistence on staying connected with your blood family.

--"The Inconsistent Personhood of AI"

PAL is rightfully angry at being discarded for something new; it's provided as a glimpse of what Katie will do when she finds 'her people' at college.

This in of itself is a good hook, because there is no one universal answer to when a flawed relationship should be mended with compromise or if it's better off being broken for the wellbeing of the ones involved. Family and relationships are not programming, it's a choice and a gamble for whatever it brings but is nonetheless something that must be mutually worked upon.

Initially I thought that PAL was being set up as an exaggerated parallel to Mr. Mitchell. PAL and Mr. Mitchell did their best to provide for their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell are in different stages of being 'discarded' by their family. PAL and Mr. Mitchell both retaliate at their lack of power in the scenario by using the power granted by their roles to infringe on the autonomy of others for selfish reasons.

PAL even gives a 'chance' for her plan to be halted with, I had assumed this was being set up as the thesis of the movie, about humanity and the value of family, relationships, etc. being used to help someone who is already hurting.

But despite Katie looking at the camera and explaining herself, it is never actually directly resolved or challenged because a punchline was deemed more desirable for this narrative climax.

This begs the question of why PAL bothered with the pretense that she could be reasoned with, especially since this is not some question leveled at all of humanity, just two people.

I'm curious how the writers came to the conclusion that this was the best execution of the scene or if Katie's speech was considered immune to any challenge from PAL. Would anyone have accepted this outcome if PAL were not an AI but instead a person?

It's not necessarily bad writing they went this route, but I doubt anyone would consider this good writing either.

By the end of the movie, PAL is no longer a 'person' who was betrayed and is lashing out, she is an object to be destroyed because the movie has to wrap up. No compassion or chances are spared to this AI that did literally everything asked of her except take being discarded quietly.

Did PAL deserve a redemption arc? For this length of movie, probably not. But it could have concluded with a commitment to doing no further harm. Instead it is an accidental glimpse at how easily the pretense of compassion can be quickly discarded and mostly unexamined with the right framing.

A likely unintentional example is the conditional humanity given to Eric and Deborahbot who are adopted as "family" while the rest of the robots are mowed down without another thought. Some are even beaten and broken while begging for mercy, because again, it is a funnier punchline.

Far be it for me to advocate that the murderbots needed 'a second chance uvu' but for a movie whose conceit rests on 'sticking by family' and 'giving chances', the writers certainly made a choice in deciding which AI get honorary humanity and spared violent death- perhaps PAL had a point about humanity's callousness after all. Bad robots are discarded, good robots get to live.

Even the CEO who realizes he enabled this mess (easily the most unrealistic part of the movie, honestly) is given another chance and he manages to take away a completely wrong lesson.

Speaking of-

--"Maybe I Shouldn’t Have Used Tech Like This"

There's a particular image/gif set posted about MvM with the CEO apologizing for the machine uprising, attributing it to unchecked technology and monopolies. I've always seen it accompanied by people congratulating the scene as if any of this is at all relevant to the movie.

Charitably, these are people who haven't watched the movie and don't know that PAL is a phone AI single-handedly doing this, but most take the stance that this scene is proof the movie is not saying technology is bad, only corporations are.

The speech isn't technically wrong but it is so utterly divorced from what happens in the movie that it's surreal to see people congratulate it as anything but a moment of soapboxing.

None of the datagrabbing was used at all as part of the takeover. It's all magical kid-friendly terminators with no relevance to what anyone's browsing history is. If the company was one that produced robot assistants instead of a being a super tech monopoly, there would be no narrative difference.

The closest to a predatory tactic that is used in MvM is the offer of free wifi which is used to lure most people into their cells which they happily comply with. Curiously this... commentary of people’s mindless addiction to technology is not acknowledged by the Tumblr Court with the same intensity as the CEO’s speech.

But more constructively, I do feel it’s a missed opportunity that Katie who's supposed to be an extremely online person apparently never said any bad things about her family or made any petty vent films for PAL to weaponize. Instead an in-media audio at one of the outskirt locations was used to accomplish its Traitor Revealed moment.

IN CONCLUSION

MvM is a movie that involves topics that ought to be touched on and explored properly in media and chickens out on all of it due to possible concerns with age-appropriate handling or because it was more committed to its comedy than whatever it has to say about family, change and how technology affects people.

It also reminded me that I hope media will finally graduate from the trope that if you spec into any ‘outdoorsy’ hobby you are incurably afraid of technology.

#the mitchells vs the machines #let me ramble to you #text post #hot takes probably

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brigdh · 6 years

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Reading Saturday

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey. Book 6 of The Expanse series. "I made my name with the story on the Behemoth. Aliens and wormhole gates and a protomolecule ghost that only talked to the most famous person in the solar system. I don't think my follow-up to that can be "Humans Still Shitty to Each Other". Lacks panache." That's Monica Stuart, a journalist looking for her next story, but it makes a fairly good summary of Nemesis Games as well – though I'd disagree about it lacking panache. After five books of zombie viruses and a vast galaxy of empty planets for the taking and physics-defying abandoned security systems, Nemesis Games features pretty much no alien content at all. Instead we have humanity reacting to these events, mostly in negative ways that feature them being, well, shitty to each other. The biggest reaction comes from the Belters, millions of humans born and raised in no-gravity or low-gravity. Those conditions have led to extremely low bone-mass (among other physical adaptations), which means all those new planets out there for the taking? The Belters won't be going to them, at least not without months or years of expensive medical therapy that's out of reach for most of them. They can see the future coming, and it's going to abandon them to poverty and irrelevance. They lash out with terrorist attacks on a scale grander than any before, as though enough violence will force humanity back to where it was before the first encounter with the alien protomolecule. That might be an impossible goal, but a hell of a lot of people are going to die anyway. Meanwhile, the spaceship Rocinante is in need of repairs, which means our four main characters are out of action for a few months. They take this opportunity to split up and visit family and old friends – Amos to Earth, Alex to Mars, Naomi to the Belt, and Jim stays with the ship at the repair station. Having separate plotlines means that each one gets their own POV, and you guys, I was so excited! I've been waiting to hear Naomi or Alex's voice since Book One, and this does not disappoint. Amos's narration was particularly well-written; he's a straight-up sociopath (though one who tries to do good nonetheless) and struggles to recognize emotions either in himself or in others, often defaulting to describing social situations as a set of maneuvers toward a desired outcome. It lends his POV a curiously flat tone, but one that is really interesting to read. The four crew members are still separated when the terrorist attacks begin, and most of the emotion in the book comes from them trying to desperately make their way back to one another. Each one thinks of the others as family, as home – this is such an absolute fantastic series for those Chosen Family feels – especially Jim, and who would have thought the boring action hero of Book One could become such an adorable softie? He spends a significant portion of this book being sad that no one will do the space-equivalent of texting him back, and I love him so much. Holden could sit at a tiny table skimming the latest news on his hand terminal, reading messages, and finally check out all the books he’d downloaded over the last six years. The bar served the same food as the restaurant out front, and while it was not something anyone from Earth would have mistaken for Italian, it was edible. The cocktails were mediocre and cheap. It might almost have been tolerable if Naomi hadn’t seemingly fallen out of the universe. Alex sent regular updates about where he was and what he was up to. Amos had his terminal automatically send a message letting Holden know his flight had landed on Luna, and then New York. From Naomi, nothing. She still existed, or at least her hand terminal did. The messages he sent arrived somewhere. He never got a failed connection from the network. But the successfully received message was his only reply. After a couple weeks of his new bad Italian food and cheap cocktails routine, his terminal finally rang with an incoming voice request. He knew it couldn’t be from Naomi. The light lag made a live connection unworkable for any two people not living on the same station. But he still pulled the terminal out of his pocket so fast that he fumbled it across the room. Each character gets to star in a very different genre within this one book: Jim himself is in a political thriller, trying to find the mole hidden in the security forces; Amos is making his way through a post-apocalyptic landscape; Naomi is in a prison-break movie; and Alex gets at least two extremely cool car chases (well, spaceship chases) between being a detective following the paper trail. All of them are great, but I think my favorite is Naomi's, which is an incredible depiction of the harm and suffocation of emotional abuse (gaslighting in particular) and the depression and learned helplessness that can result, especially when everyone around you sees nothing wrong. We get a lot more about her long-awaited backstory, as well as Amos's, and there are reappearances of a lot of my favorite secondary characters: Martian marine Bobbie, failed murderer Clarissa Mao, foul-mouthed politician Chrisjen Avasarala. (Though I'm still holding out hope Prax will show up again someday; I miss him.) All through The Expanse series I've admired Corey's focus on petty human squabbling and politicking in the face of grand, universe-changing discoveries. Nemesis Games is that thread turned up to eleven. It's not a cynical series, though; for every narrow-minded failure there's an equally small but important triumph of friendship or justice or well-meaning. It reminds me of Terry Pratchett, in a way. Not at all in Corey's style of writing or type of humor, but they both have a view of humanity which is simultaneously realistic and fond and exasperated. And if there's a bigger compliment than that, I don't know what it is. Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. Book 2 of the Murderbot Diaries. A security robot/cyborg armed with all sorts of guns and other methods of killing has hacked its governor module, allowing it to do whatever it wants, and nicknames itself Murderbot. But it turns out that what Murderbot really wants to do is spend hours watching dumb sci-fi TV shows, avoid eye contact or any social encounters with humans, and not have to deal with its own emotions. Unfortunately that last one is hard to avoid. In this book, Murderbot is heading to a mining planet where it knows something bad went down in its past, involving lots of human deaths. But Murderbot can't remember exactly what happened, since its memory was wiped, and so it's off to investigate. Getting to the planet means hitching a ride on a spaceship run by a massively complicated AI (which Murderbot promptly nicknames ART: Asshole Research Transport) and then getting a job as a human bodyguard to a group of scientists heading down to the planet's surface. Things, unsurprisingly, go wrong, and Murderbot finds itself with another pack of dumb humans in need of protection. I enjoyed Artificial Condition a lot, but it's not quite as good as the first book in the series, All Systems Red. Part of that is very simply that it's a middle book of the series, and it shows; progress in the larger plot is made, but not much, and there's a feeling of spinning our wheels while we wait for big events to happen. That said, it's still an extremely enjoyable novella (only about 120 pages), which builds out the world from what we learned in All Systems Red. Now we have sexbots and ship navigators, more about how different governments interact and function (or don't), and some hints as to what's going on with the company that created Murderbot. Plus there's Murderbot's wonderful narration, which honestly is worth the price of admission all on its own. A section from where it introduces ART to trashy entertainment: I watched seven more episodes of Sanctuary Moon with it hanging around my feed. Then it pinged me, like I somehow might not know it had been in my feed all this time, and sent me a request to go back to the new adventure show I had started to watch when it had interrupted me. (It was called Worldhoppers, and was about freelance explorers who extended the wormhole and ring networks into uninhabited star systems. It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.) [...] “It’s not realistic,” I told it. “It’s not supposed to be realistic. It’s a story, not a documentary. If you complain about that, I’ll stop watching.” I will refrain from complaint, it said. (Imagine that in the most sarcastic tone you can, and you’ll have some idea of how it sounded.) So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again. C'mon, tell me you wouldn't read a million pages of that, plot or no plot.

[DW link for easier commenting]

#books #book reviews #james s.a. corey #martha wells #The expanse

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paranoidwino · 7 years

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kats (the k wasn’t intended)

...But it’s there nonetheless.

Read it here on AO3. Please leave a comment?

This is for @bloomsoftly ‘s birthday. I hope you like it bloom, because you’re the most amazing person in the world and I hope your day is awesome. Special mentions go to @dresupi who edited the thing. @latessitrice who checked it over and helped me a lot @gstarshine who got me back into gear when I was writing dry. Thank you so so much. So yeah, enjoy! Moar under the cut.

Read the first part: here

Natasha had worn a lot of faces in her life..

The first, of course, had been Natalia, and that had lasted her the longest: 10 years.

Then, there’d been a long list of confusing identities, all different.

Each one had been real, not one had been true.

She had grown attached to some; she had destroyed others.

She’d been made and unmade countless times.

She changed identity like people changed clothes, she lived between liars and lies and she survived because she was strong.

Until one day, because of a stupid mistake, she hadn’t been.

Natasha wasn’t proud to say that someone got the drop on her and had damaged her so much as to take away her whole memories and scramble her own honed muscle memory to a point where it wasn’t reacting anymore (and if she had later found the three cretins that had tried to have their fun with her that day and scared them shitless, but that was hardly anyone’s business).

However, she stored the five months following that experience in her heart, right beside Clint and Coulson and even deeper than she treasured those few moments with Yasha.

If that had been a dream, and nothing more (love is for children?), the reality and goodness of Darcy Lewis and the light that poured from her affectionate gestures were grounding and humbling.

Without Darcy, things may have ended up very differently that day. The fact went without saying. She was confident she’d have gained everything back eventually, but Darcy kept her safe and happy for the best part of half a year.

She was grateful.

She found herself thinking about that a lot recently, with Clint gone to Guatemala and no one to really talk to.

She was trained well enough not to slip on the job ever, but she quickly discovered she had acquired some strange habits since ‘Kat’. Like visiting the farmer's market or spending hours on the couch in the evenings.

Clint probably suspected her involvement with ‘some grad student’ had been more than what she’d left in the official report after debriefing with Coulson, but she’d rather stab herself than admit to him that she missed the cuddling and bed sharing and all in all, she missed being ‘just Kat’.

***

Natasha felt unbelievably stupid about this, and it wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with. She’d blame the stupid archer with nesting behaviours until her dying breath, but after she’d disappeared for a whole seven months she was back in front of the apartment building she’d shared with Darcy.

Of course, she realized in hindsight that she should have checked before turning her car in the opposite direction from home and coming here, but seeing the ‘For Rent’ sign over the window threw her for a loop.

She… Darcy had moved?

She should have checked.

Scratch that. She shouldn’t have come at all.

She raised the tinted window of the driver seat and made to leave, before stopping abruptly once again.

She threw the tiny flat another speculative glance, and turned off the engine.

***

“So you bought the thing.” Clint sounded incredulous … and was this laughter in his eyes?

“Clint.” She flexed her fingers warningly and bent her legs slightly.

They’d been going at it since morning. No one really wanted to ‘have a try on the mat’ with her, so Barton was her usual go-to sparring partner (some dude from the rookies had tried once, didn’t work out… for them. Morse was a good game too, when she was on base at the same time Natasha was).

“I mean, you actually bought the thing. And even paid money for it, at that. The landlord should have been paying you, it’s totally in ruins and putting it back together...”

“I’m going to keep it as it is,” she corrected quickly, dropping to the ground and making a sweeping motion that made him lose balance for a second. He rolled and got back in position.

“Keep- Are you serious?!” He straightened, getting out of his fighting stance, and pure glee spread on his face. “Well, is that gratitude I’m seeing? Nope, that’s not gratitude on your face, is it something more I see- OW, NAT!”

He was sent off the mat and hit the ground in a second. “You got distracted,” she said airily, from her low sweeping position. She straightened, breezed past him, but then turned and helped him on his feet.

He was still staring at her with that weird expression of happiness and wonder. “Just how much of your report is edited, Nat?”

Black Widows didn’t blush, but she still felt her face burn. Slightly. Very slightly.

***

“...Kat?”

***

It hadn’t been the smartest move.

Keeping silent, that is.

But hearing Darcy’s voice on her secure phone had been a shock. And it was Darcy, even if the trembling, unsure voice didn’t really belong to her lively personality. It’d been like fresh air inhaled after apnea. She’d been vaguely aware of how much she’d missed the woman and the apartment and their life together, but then this happened and it all came back with burning clarity.

And of course, she hadn’t been able to say a word.

Darcy hadn’t called back since, probably believing Natasha didn’t want to speak to her.

It wasn’t like that at all. It was the other way around, but she wasn’t able to vocalize that thought yet.

“How. Could. You.” She said through clenched teeth as soon as she managed to drag Clint into the nearest cabinet. Let the minions think whatever they wanted.

Clint looked at her, bewildered. “What did I do now?” He was very baffled indeed. “Because if we’re talking about the coffee, I swear to you it was that kid from legal.”

Wha- “You gave Darcy Lewis my number!” She cut off his protests. In the back of her mind, she made a mental note not to touch the coffee today or tomorrow.

“Oh! Did she call? She sure works fast, I was hoping to watch that.”

She hit him on the shoulder. “Clint.” How could he?

“Relax, it’s not your actual private phone, you can always burn it,” he said. “Besides, it’s obvious you miss her. I mean, enough to go and buy that ugly thing out of nostalgia… I was doing you a favor actually.”

She clicked her tongue, “You purposefully ignored everything I asked of you, and as soon as I went deep undercover with Stark, you went and contacted the only person I care about apart fro-”

“Care?” He jumped at the single most unimportant part of her argument.

Her eyes must have shown just how much she was angry at him even in the dimly lit room, because he immediately raised his hands in front of him and started defending himself very quickly, “look, I didn’t go looking for her, okay?”

She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “It’s true!” He argued. “Look, it’s redacted and all but she was there, in New Mexico.” New Mexico… With the Murderbot from Hell?! “Ask Coulson. He’s the one who vetted and questioned her personally.”

Her mind, which had been already been churning out images of Darcy being anywhere close to the thing with Puente Antiguo burning to the ground, stuttered to a halt.

The idea of Darcy in an interrogation room with Coulson possibly scared her just as much as the last images. Maybe more.

She was three seconds from storming Coulson’s office.

In reality, she got to his office in five minutes.

***

“You said you’d keep her safe.” She snarled as soon as the doors closed.

Phil didn’t even blink, “She’s safe.” He was probably expecting it, because there was no ‘who are you talking about’ in his eyes.

“On the landing site of a Huge Murderbot is not safe. And Clint told me you slapped her with so many NDAs she’s not getting a job ever if she leaves Foster. When I reported to you, you promised me you’d keep her out of it.” She exhaled slowly. “You redacted my data and information, only you knew about Darcy. I asked you for one thing, Phil.”

Phil sighed. “To be fair, we had no idea something like this would happen, and neither woman would budge once the shit hit the fan. I was checking on her every few days, I didn’t think she’d get herself into this. I did have an idea Clint would spill his guts to you, though.”

“Darcy called first.”

“Ah.” He nodded to something she could probably read off him, were he any less trained. “Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that she’s safe and, unless I underestimated her greatly, shrewd enough to circumvent the wording on basically every NDA we slapped her with. As we speak, she’s already put in five forms to free Dr Foster’s research with alarming alacrity.” He didn’t sound pleased at that. A bit proud of his judgement, but he had the expression of someone who was probably going to face a lot of grief.

Natasha waited a few seconds and then went to the heart of her problem. “Clint said you questioned her repeatedly.”

“All very mild, I assure you,” he confirmed blandly. “She’s clean. And loyal. To you. She keeps referring to you as ‘her cat’. And she’s been vague enough not to ping any of the agents’ radar whenever she spoke of you. I heard Thompson asking her to share pictures because he loves Russian Blue Cats.” He huffed. “Anyways, that woman is strong enough to roll with the crazy without selling you out to the first mobster that threatens her.”

She guessed Coulson and Barton had vetted the girl out of worry for her, and she was awkwardly torn between annoyance (she was a good judge of character…), affection, and some sort of pride on Darcy’s behalf.

Her handler sighed again, and then looked her in the eye. “If you want contact to stop, just burn the phone, you know that. Barton had the best intentions at heart and actually asked me first.”

Natasha nodded.

She wouldn’t burn her phone, but no reason to let Coulson or anyone else know.

***

“Natasha… Barton’s been compromised.”

“...Let me put you on hold.”

***

Barton was compromised, and she was stuck on a plane to Calcutta.

It wasn’t exactly how she’d planned to spend the night, but then again interrogating the Russian mobster had been sort of boring.

Her phone rang again. What now?

“Romanoff.”

“Natasha.” It was Coulson again. “I need you to make a call.”

She frowned, “what about?”

“We’re trying to get Jane Foster and her crew on a safe plane to Tromso, but the intern won’t cooperate. She put down one agent and has locked the other into the, literal quote, surprisingly well protected bathroom, and refuses to let them reach the astrophysicist. We need the women safe and far away, and without Prince Odinson and Erik Selvig you’re the only in we have.”

Her heart was beating painfully in her chest. She hadn’t heard from Darcy for almost a year, and even then it’d only been that stuttered word she never answered to.

You could say no, a voice snidely said in her head.

But the idea of Darcy anywhere near Loki, for she was certain Loki would go for Foster and Darcy next, made her insides twist even more.

“I’m on it.”

***

Nope.

No Man-In-Black was dragging her and Jane somewhere obscure. Not on her watch.

It was totally a hoax, too. There was no way an opportunity at the Tromso observatory had very suddenly opened up. Just like that.

No no no, Darcy had been ready for this since the day the thugs had come to their place. The moment in which they were no longer useful and needed disappearing.

And so when the same jackbooted thugs had come to their door with an offer that was making Janey salivate? Not happening. She’d whipped out Sparky and in a second one of them was down. The other one clearly had orders not to respond to fire, because instead of wrapping her like a pretzel like she’d surely been trained to do, she just kept trying to explain.

Well, she could explain that from the bathroom she was locked in.

“Darcy what have you done?!” Jane clearly did not see.

“We need to leave, Jane. Those thugs clearly want you and your stuff. But don’t worry, I’m a professional.”

She got out the travel bags she’d packed since day one, with Jane’s and her essentials, wiped the hard drives of the computers (Jane had an actual fit at that before Darcy assured her the data was somewhere else safe) and was about to filch the last of the important stuff before bosslady interrupted her again.

“You… sure are ready for a quick escape.” She sounded surprised.

Darcy aborted her movements and an hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. “Yeah, yeah. I’ve been ready for the mob to get me since 2010, Janey.”

Jane’s eyes widened. “The… the mob?! Why? Darcy, have you done something illegal??”

“...No? Don’t ask Janey, let’s just say I’ve been worried Russian assassins would pop out of the sidewalk for a long time. But that’s fine, because I have a safe route to run to. Now get in the car before they free themselves.”

They never got into the car, because her phone rang in that moment.

Oh my God she had forgotten to destroy the phone. She should have flushed it immediately! Then she recalled the bathroom now held a very pissed kidnapper wannabe.

Okay, smashing it to bits it was.

Her eyes dropped on the number before any actual smashing would come about, and she stopped.

She felt like kicking herself, but she still answered the call.

“...Kat?”

Jane was looking at her strangely, as if she was putting two and two together.

There was a soft sigh on the other side of the line. “Free the Agents, Darcy. They’re not the Russian mob.” Kat said. She sounded tired.

Anger sparked into her. Two years since she’d seen her, and that’s what Kat had to say? “Are you serious? After two years of being incommunicado, dead to the world, this is what you’re telling me?” She was probably hysterical by now, full blown panicked.

“Darcy…” Kat hesitated, “please.” This shook her out of her anger. Kat continued, “I… I’ll explain, I’ll make it up to you, but I need you to be safe. Shit is happening, and I need to know you are somewhere safe and as far away as possible. Please, please, get on that plane. Just this once. For me.”

She hung up.

No answer would have given it justice, not in the midst of her confusion. But she silently unlocked the bathroom door and unwrapped the still dazed agent on the floor.

Jane gaped, but then just shook her head, but the look of ‘we need to talk’ she pinned her with spoke volumes.

She just hoped everything would be okay.

***

Explaining ended up being so much harder than Natasha thought it would be.

Certainly, being just Kat had been much easier.

They’d been dancing around sitting down and actually talking since Natasha had been forcibly moved to Stark Tower. Darcy was already there.

It was so awkward.

There was no sorry in this world that could make up to her cowardliness, and she told her so, multiple times.

Darcy never judged, but she’d get that pinched look that bordered on hurt. Then she’d leave.

Natasha feared things would never get back to what they were before.

You were the first to pull away, nagged her subconscious, merciless.

And it was true.

As soon as she’d recovered her memories, her first thought had to be to check in, to leave and report for the mission. Once she’d done that, she had realized she’d left without telling Darcy anything, and it had already been two days. She’d be safer without you, she had thought, you don’t deserve her anyway, and so she had left her behind.

And now, it was all ruined, of course.

Darcy on her part was absolutely perfect in her behaviour. She was friendly with just about anyone, she didn’t shun her or ignore her, her looks stopped pinching.

She took the kitchen as her newfound reign of which she was the undiscussed overlord and cooked just about anything they asked of her.

But she didn’t miss how the intern would sit the farthest from her at movie night, or how she was always careful to never touch her or find herself alone with Natasha in a room.

In her many years, how to fix a relationship with someone you actually care about was never explained.

She had no idea where to start.

***

Finding out where to start began with Clint.

Natasha knew almost everything that was going on in the Tower. And so, she also knew that the single person with whom Darcy spent as much time as she spent with Jane was actually Barton. They got along swimmingly from the very first day.

Were Natasha less confident, she could even be jealous. Then again, she’d then realized there was nothing to be jealous of, and not because Clint was very married, but because Darcy did not belong to her in any capacity whatsoever, even if their… thing, was an actual thing. It wasn’t.

It took her an embarrassingly long time, however, to notice that Clint had been doing the wingman job on her behalf all along. And she probably wouldn’t have noticed, hadn’t she walked into a conversation they were having about her.

She’d left immediately, because despite being a spy, she was not going to invade anyone’s privacy (Stark and his AI made for enough peepers, and that wasn’t counting Clint and his mania of vents), but she had caught Darcy’s pensive face, the one that made the frowny lines appear close to her eyes she usually got when they couldn’t meet the end of the month, and Clint trying to explain her trust issues without betraying said trust.

No, enough was enough.

She needed to talk to her in person.

***

Darcy had dreaded the moment Natasha found her alone to have the conversation they should have had months ago.

When she found out she was going to live in Stark Tower, she’d been ecstatic. No bills, no food to buy, and most of all, an actual paid job that could give her a nice nest-egg the moment all of this ended (and it would, Janey now had unlimited funding, which meant that sooner or later she’d get actual minions with actual credentials beside ‘can drive a van’ and ‘can hack into DMV’). She was just thankful her student loans were no more. And with this thought Kat came back to the forefront of her mind.

Darcy had tried to be nonchalant about it, tried to give Natasha room and space, tried very hard not to treat her any different than she treated the other Avengers and coworkers (apart from Jane, Jane was the favourite, okay?), but the rejection still stung and she was certain she did not want to hear whatever reason the spy had cooked up to reject her, as much as she believed the woman would do it in the most painless way possible.

It wasn’t to say Darcy wasn’t mad at Kat… Nat? for having walked out on her that day, but she could kind of understand that. Sort of.

If Darcy had been in her shoes, the ones of an amnesiac-reformed-Russian super spy that suddenly recovered her memories and found herself in a godforsaken apartment with a grad student from Culver, she’d have probably freaked out too, and tried to report back to her superiors.

She understood the need to leave, the need to be safe (she was the first to admit that moving the armchair in front of the door every night to avoid people entering the apartment was not standard procedure, okay?). What she did not understand was the need to lead her on for years. The message had been clearly delivered, after all. The silence on the other end of the line, the dead, shocked and awkward silence, had rung clear.

And Darcy had tried and tried to move on after that, but then Kat had called her again and what the Hell did those words mean anyway? These were hardly the words of someone who didn’t care for you, right? Right??

Anger and sorrow made way to confusion, and now the Intern (Assistant!) could now say she had no idea of where to go next. She could no longer think of anyone else, not that there had been anyone after Kat, but…

And then they moved to Stark Tower and suddenly Natasha was everywhere.

She’d linger around the lab, probably hoping to catch her alone without drawing attention to herself, and on movie nights she’d be around just a touch before the others and leave just a second later, she’d offer help in the kitchen and yeeeeah, Darcy was a real coward but she really dreaded the ‘Sorry, I had to get you on that plane and it was the only thing that could work so please, friends?’ conversation that was sure to follow.

The smart part of herself called her a hypocrite, because she’d always preached facing the situation head on and getting over with doubts at the first occasion. The other part of herself, which probably wasn’t the brain, tried to convince her that she could just postpone it all and live in the confusional bliss that maybe she had misunderstood the whole thing (yeah, nope).

After Jane, who had been very supportive and even offered to glare at Natasha now and then (no Janey, we’re going to be mature about it), the only person who knew was Clint. And after a while she had actually had to confront him, because he kept trying to matchmake them, and everyone knew it wouldn’t work out.

“Naww, Darce, you have it wrong!” He told her after that. “She didn’t mean it like that. Do you think she says that to everyone? Nat can be many things, okay? She can be sultry, she can do coy and she’s a Master at everything she puts her head to when it comes to manipulation, but that? That was real, she doesn’t do feelings well. None of us do. But believe me, she was being sincere.”

That… that had honestly been very heartening and made her stomach go all fluttery for a while, before her brain kicked back into gear again. She shook her head, “It’s been seven months, Clint. You’d figure something would happen after seven months. And no,” she blocked him straight ahead as soon as he opened his mouth, “you know it’s not on me this time!”

He passed a hand on his face, “of course it’s not on you Darce… It’s just- We’re no good at it okay? And Nat’s been through some rough stuff… Give her time?” And then he winced at his own words. “Yeah okay, not time… Hey do you think we should make lemon cookies this time?”

Smooth, Hawkeye. No one noticed.

***

You know that moment in which you know an argument is coming, and so you prepare all the good points you want to make, you psych yourself up so you can endure the emotional backlash of the actual fighting and the hours you spend trying to convince yourself you can be mature and ignore the fact that the other side is wrong, only to find out that the points you were angry about were never points to begin with and the problem was another altogether? That. That was exactly the feeling.

Natasha had cornered her one day and without preamble said that they needed to talk. Okay, fine, you got me there.

And Darcy’s mind had flown to countless scenarios all starting with ‘You know who I am’ and ending with various mixtures of ‘you’re not good enough’ or ‘let’s be friends’ or ‘that was a moment of weakness’ and all variations thereof. She’d probably heard them all in her head at least thrice in the span of five minutes, sitting at that tiny table with the spy in front of her.

So, when Natasha started with ‘You know who I am’ and continued with ‘I wish we could have what we had before, but I realize-’ her brain just fizzled out, bleeped from existence and she forgot all manners (she was going to be mature about it!) and very intelligently interrupted her with “What?”

Natasha took a deep breath, passed both hands on her face and one in her hair afterwards, just playing a bit with the strands. “This is hard.” She said in the end, as if surprised.

She looked at her in the eye and Darcy felt exposed by the vulnerability that shone in there. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t contact you and ran away, I’m sorry I never called you back and I’m sorry I was a coward and didn’t talk to you back then. But you have to understand, you… we don’t do relationships. It’s dangerous, and I wanted you safe, and I know it’s stupidly cliché to say, but I needed you safe and I thought, maybe if I disappeared for a while you’d move on and you’d be happy and it wasn’t fair that you were still waiting for me and…”

Darcy stood there, gaping speechless at the Black Widow, word vomiting all over the kitchen like any confused smitten teenager ever, rambling about not being good enough for her and yeah, maybe her brain had got it right to go on vacation for a while, because her heart was beating furiously and melting at the same time and was it even possible?

“Dude… Natasha, stop wait, back up!” she exclaimed. Natasha shut up immediately.

“Okay, uhm, hi, first of all.” She made an awkward ‘hi’ gesture with her hand. “It’s true… I am mad at you ...” Natasha’s face fell a bit. “... and yes, I was crazy with worry about you for the first few months but I get it, yeah? Secret agent super spy and all, what I don’t get, is… why lead me on that? That last call? It- It wasn’t fair. I tried getting over you, and I couldn’t and then you didn’t answer my call and you had just picked up but didn’t want to talk to me and so I think okay fair, she realized she’s waay out of my league and it’s fine she moved on but then that last call.” She huffed and closed her eyes.

When she opened them back, Natasha was frowning cutely at her (and how was that fair, huh?). “I’m not the one who was dating down,” she said. “Darcy, I’m not good at relationships, who knows how Clint managed to stick around that long and he’s a friend, but even I realize the super spy is hardly the catch there. And I’m sorry I worried you so much-”

“I thought the mob had gotten you! Russian beauty that no one is looking for? Of course it was going to be the mob!”

“Yes, Coulson” and here she winced at the mention of Agent Ipod Thief. And yeah, rest in peace Ipod Thief, “told me how staunchly you defended me back in New Mexico.”

“I wasn’t about to tell them anything, I needed to protect you.” Darcy protested.

“Yes, you’ve always protected me, haven’t you?” Natasha quirked her lips slightly, as if the idea of someone trying to protect her was ridiculous. In hindsight, it probably was, but then again ... Darcy blushed furiously.

Natasha shook her head, “No, please don’t believe that you didn’t do a good job. For those five months you were my world. You kept me safe, happy, and I can say they were the best months of my life, and I don’t know if you read my files ...” She hadn’t … well, she had read some superficial debrief she’d been slapped with by SHIELD, but that was it. “... But it’s a long life. I- It wasn’t an easy life, and I know I have trust issues and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put them aside. But … yeah, I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I never led you on, never, please believe that. I know I can’t expect things to go back to what they were, but please believe that at least.”

And aw man, how could she not believe those pleading, shining eyes? She reached for Natasha’s hand and was surprised to find it clammy and even a bit cold, Kat had always been addicted to warmth. “I believe you.” She said, and she felt her heart miss a beat when Natasha’s eyes brightened.

“It’s more than I deserve, you know.” And Darcy now wanted to bop her head or something, because there was no ‘deserving’ or shit.

“Girl, we’re cool, okay? And don’t sidetrack me with the dazzling smile, please, I need to focus for this.” Was that a huff of amusement? Exasperation? “And it’s true, things can’t go back to what they were, for now,” she stressed, when Natasha made to remove her hand. “But. We start back slow okay? I still want to be in your life, like more than friends. I’m willing to give it a go again, okay?”

“...Okay.”

***

Things were not back to what they were, but Natasha was almost surprised at how palpable the change was.

It started with texts, on the phone she had never actually burned, and then the cute emojis and sometimes the selfies.

And Darcy was so less guarded it was absurd to believe she could even be. But she was.

Where before she’d be overly careful not to approach her too close, or for her hands to linger just a little too long on her when she needed to reach something behind her or if she just wanted to touch her shoulder, now she freely moved around her without a care.

She started hanging around her more, too, talking about anything and everything that caught her fancy, or just to vent and fume and then laugh about it all.

Natasha’s heart grew at least four sizes in the span of three weeks.

After some time, when the Team was finally home all together (which was such a rarity everyone felt like checking the sky in case a Blue Moon had spawned over them), it was voted on another movie night. By voted, it meant that Darcy sent invitations with a winky face that were probably meant to be threatening. She found it cute.

This time, instead of sitting in the far corner, squeezed right beside Thor, Darcy plopped right beside her, smiled quickly and then started staring at the screen very intently. Her hand quickly latched onto hers.

And yeah, maybe her smile had widened a bit.

***

It all escalated some time later, at yet another movie night. Popcorn was passed around freely and more often than not thrown on the heads of unsuspecting spectators (Jane, mostly Jane whenever Thor wasn’t watching. No biggy, she was sleeping anyway).

Darcy was finally sprawled on the cushy sofa in the centre of the room, because wearing heels all day in the office she’d been forced to work that day had totally killed her back, she was tired and was finally in sweatpants. There was nothing that could have convinced her to relinquish the couch. Nothing.

Kat seemed to agree.

Despite denying it fiercely, Darcy was convinced Natasha was more cat than human anyway, and had been more thrilled than she should have been when she noticed she hadn’t completely changed her cat-like ways even with her memories.

She wouldn’t sprawl all over her as she’d done in their apartment back then, not in public anyway, but Darcy had noticed just how many times Nat had to actually stop herself before leaning on her a tad too much or preening a touch too noticeably.

She was much more affectionate in private.

The intern just hoped she would stop worrying and relax a bit more.

But Tony was monopolizing the popcorn and she wasn’t getting up ever.

“Pass me the popcorn, Kat, please?” She froze. Crap.

The room seemed to freeze a bit too, and Nat tensed slightly from beside her. Oh dear, she’d made a mess.

Clint was giving her the bug eye and Steve had already probably put two and two together, because he met her eyes, leant back on his armchair and just took another swig of his beer. Tony had his mouth open and some popcorn was dropping out. Quickly, Natasha removed the popcorn from his grasp before he dropped that too, and passed it to her. She then made herself very comfortable on her lap and shrugged. “Kat’s fine.” She looked at her furtively and smiled.

It was like the world had started moving again, and Darcy exhaled in relief.

They spent the night like that, cuddling on the couch that was so different from her old green one, and yet so similar.

“So wait, no one is going to address the fact that Romanoff was just called ‘cat’? No?”

***

Natasha had been acting all secretive the whole week.

Darcy had never been in her apartment properly, like, she’d seen the living room and the kitchenette of course, but they usually spent time in her room and so she’d never wondered too much about what she was hiding in the bedroom. Toys, probably.

But that week, she’d found more and more excuses to hide in her apartment and she’d even ditched their nightly appointment for cookies and time on the sofa. Clint was no help either. He just chortled and shook his head any time Darcy asked about Nat.

Darcy was driving herself into a state. The spy didn’t have missions, the Avengers didn’t have Avenging to do, she hadn’t missed any anniversary, birthday, name day, Pi day, nothing was coming to mind. Was something wrong?

“There you are!”

“Ah!” Darcy jumped two feet and possibly tripped a bit.

It was Natasha. The woman quirked an eyebrow, but smiled anyway at Darcy’s aborted wave.

“I need to show you something.” She started. Did she sound unsure of herself?

“Oh, sure.”

In one minute they were standing in front of Natasha’s apartment.

The spy pressed something in her hands and oh- “That’s your key.” She said conversationally, opening the door for her. Darcy’s face felt strained, and the young woman realized she was smiling a tad too hard, and was her vision swimming a bit?

Her teary laugh turned into hysterics.

In the corner of Nat's apartment, so close to the window that the sun was blinding, was their green, lumpy sofa, as uncomfortable and disgusting as it had been before.

"You bought that thing!"

Natasha smiled and her arms circled her from behind. "I've got some good memories of that ugly thing." She put her head on Darcy’s shoulder from behind. “And there’s somewhere we can catch up on lost time.”

Oh. Yeah. Catch up. Sure. She liked the sound of that.

The sofa was as lumpy and as terrible as she remembered it, with the springs a bit too broken and the armrest peeled, but she couldn’t care less. The sun was shining, the labs were closed and there was nothing but cuddling in the near future. She wasn’t moving ever, ever again.

#darcy lewis #darcy x natasha #darcyland #natasha romanoff #fluff #because fluff #@bloomsoftly #happy birthday!

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