venomnomnom | Open Post/Overflow

Open Post/Overflow

Overflow from any captcha memes as well as an open post for Eddie Brock/Venom. A place to start new PSLs/carry on old ones, or anything in between.

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Natasha Romanoff was technically still an international fugitive.

She couldn't even say that she had reached a tentative détente with Ross, given that she had pretty quickly spent the good will she'd earned bringing down the Red Room by helping Steve to break the rest of their team out of The Raft. They were still scattered for the time being - she had a few weeks before their scheduled rendezvous and they had their detailed instructions on how to skirt getting re-captured.

Even in normal years, Natasha didn't typically get or grant many interview requests. Which was part of what made the one she received from Eddie Brock so interesting. The rest of the intrigue was down to Eddie himself - she'd done a cursory search into his background and digital footprint before she replied. Everything added up to him having a secret. A secret that she suspected involved harboring some kind of alien.

Just because she was a fugitive didn't mean that the job was done. She could handle some light threat assessment in California. And if anyone picked up his story, well, maybe she could help point Yelena in the direction of some of the widows she hadn't found yet. So she replied in the affirmative, giving him a time and date and an address in Capitola, a little beach town about an hour and a half from San Francisco.

When he arrived, he'd find a quaint little cottage a short walk from the beach. The windows had a good sight line even as the setting sun painted the sky a wash of pastel hues. She opened the door after he knocked, a slight smile at her lips as she let him in and locked the door behind him. Even though she was indoors she was still in disguise - her wig was all curly, sun streaked hair piled up in a messy bun. She wore a floral sundress that said 'tourist special.'

"Mr. Brock, have a seat," she offered as she led the way into the living room and gestured towards the couch. There was a pitcher of water and two empty glasses on the coffee table, and she sat down in the arm chair across from him. "I have to admit that I was intrigued by your request. I don't do many interviews." It was a fairly soft opening gambit, all things considered. She wanted an opportunity to see what exactly it was he was looking for.

The odd splintering of The Avengers and everything involving the fallout had intrigued him. Hell, it had intrigued anyone with a nose for a story and a heartbeat. He'd sent out interview requests to anyone he could find a link to, hoping without genuine hope that he'd get a nibble. Imagine his surprise when he'd gotten a reply from the Black Widow herself.

The place she'd given him for the interview had just upped his curiosity, and with that voice muttering in the back of his head that maybe she would be bad enough that they could eat her and him hissing at it that no, that was a dumb, no good idea, he knocked and was surprised by the woman that answered the door. For all that he'd crawled through her records and what he could find of her online, he didn't expect her to look so... relaxed. The smile was welcoming and he found himself echoing it as he came in, though he wasn't the only one to notice the door locking behind them. Right, she was hiding.

He followed her over to the couch, then moved to sit carefully on the edge of it, wondering at the odd hominess of it all. "I've heard. Which made the acceptance of it all the more intriguing. A super spy in hiding isn't usually open to house calls."

"It's a rental," Natasha answered as the corner of her mouth lilted into a smirk, as if they were in on some kind of private joke together. It was all she said for a moment as she leaned forward to pick up the jug of water. She poured an equal measure into both glasses and set the jug back aside. He probably wouldn't have showed up if he suspected she was going to poison him, but she knew from experience that reporter types would go to staggering lengths for a story.

With her glass in hand, she leaned back in her arm chair and took a sip as she crossed her legs. Though she looked at ease, she was always conscious of her environment. She had rearranged the furniture in the living room so that she could see through the front window or the back door with just a turn of her head. There was enough of a gap between the couch and the wall so she could get behind it if she needed to. And, of course, there was a gun taped underneath the arm chair. And several further weapons besides, meticulously concealed in the knickknacks on the mantle.

"And just because I'm on the run doesn't mean that I get to stop working. Your past work makes it seem like you have a vested interest in ferreting out corruption." Her head tipped a little, her expression thoughtful now as she studied him from across the room. The way he held himself, his expression, what he'd brought in with him. "You could say that I find myself in a similar position. How do you typically like to conduct your interviews?"

There was grumbling in his head that he was doing his best to ignore. That grumbling talked about how there were better things than water in this room to put in their mouths and Eddie was trying very hard to think at Venom, which he still hadn't mastered. It made it harder to focus on her for a moment, and considering who this woman was, being unprepared around her was a bad idea.

"I have some kind of kneejerk reaction to people in positions of authority and monetary wealth that look down at the little people as lesser than or worthy only of being experiments for their crazy world view. I would love if there was a reality out there where the wealthy meant what they said, but there's always a hidden meaning. Always some game they're playing and that public face is a mask. I just happen to have a penchant for digging under that mask. Making an... irritant of myself."

He smoothed his hands down over his thighs, then flicked open a notepad he had and uncapped his pen. "Mostly? Whatever way makes you comfortable. I'd like you to talk about what you're comfortable with, but I might toss in a few questions to broaden the answer." He wasn't a stupid man. This was not the woman to play 'my brain's bigger than yours' with. Why not? Does she have a big brain? Is it juicy?

Interestingly, for a moment it looked like Eddie was - not lost in thought, exactly. But certainly distracted. Maybe a touch uncomfortable. To be fair, she probably would have been more surprised if he seemed to be at ease. "The game is always power. The money is just one of the pieces they use to play the game. It's a dangerous one to play if you make an irritant of yourself." It was a statement of acknowledgement as much as it was a gentle caution. He was going to play it because some people couldn't help themselves from trying to disrupt the terrible things that happened. He was clearly one of those people.

She considered the guidelines of his interview as he uncapped his pen. Old school. Or he didn't trust her not to bug whatever electronics came in with him. Smart. "I assume you're largely interested in what happened with the Avengers. There's some pieces I won't share so I don't jeopardize anyone else's freedom. But I'll answer what I can on the condition that you include information about the dissolution of the Red Room. I'm still looking for some of the other widows and that will help me flush out anyone that might be hiding them." Well, it would help Yelena. But if they thought she was the one coming for them, they'd never even think to look for her sister in the shadows until it was too late.

She took another sip of her water, then leaned forward to set the glass down before she settled back into her chair again. "Well, we can't talk about the Avengers splitting up and half of us becoming fugitives without talking about government oversight. Are beings with extraordinary power making the world less safe, or is the state of the world a natural reaction to governmental overreach and experimentation?" The way she phrased the question made it sound as if she might intend to use that thought as a springboard - but she didn't. She simply waited for his response, apparently intending to treat the interview as a conversation.

And as an opportunity to see how he'd respond to the topics of powered beings and government involvement.

"Sometimes the only way to get to the truth, and the story, is to kick the hornet's nest hard enough that it pisses them off enough to swarm. Let them get all settled into the core of it and all you're kicking at is paper." He'd come across more than just Drake and founders of rich-boy foundations like his. Though, granted, he hadn't had quite the lasting after effects that his run in with the psychotic 'philanthropist' had left him with in regards to any other stories or features, but after losing Anne because of his own doggedness, he'd had to learn to stop blaming everyone else for his own crap.

Having a garbage disposal living inside him that wanted to eat everything helped him a lot with his own self control, oddly enough. But that was enough ruminating. He made a notation that she'd brought up the Avengers first, then nodded. "In part. I suppose considering the type of individuals you've come across, I have a few questions in regards to your... perceptions of people that have either been born with or found, given, or imbued with, ah, out of average abilities. And maybe a bit more about The Raft and what the long-term plan is with that. Jailing people for having abilities without proper procedure. Trials. Sounds like something that could easily be abused. Like some people could become problems that just get put somewhere. Some oceanic oubliette. Maybe there's a reason that in this time period, there's more of them cropping up than there had been before. And given that, ah, that god of Thunder and that whole planet came down here enough to have a part of the world build a religion around them, you have to question the backgrounds of any of the other pantheons. Or god itself."

It was interesting to hear what he thought the only way to get the story was. And it was true - she had certainly kicked a lot of hornet's nests herself over the years. But if left to her own devices, and not backed into a corner, she'd much prefer to disguise herself as a hornet and take the nest apart from the inside. She'd done it often enough over the years that on paper, her allegiances didn't look like anything so much as a tangled mess. Natasha wasn't entirely sure what she could say what they were at present. General Ross had made it pretty clear that the government would hunt her down anywhere they found her. Well. Try to hunt her down. Maybe it would be most succinct to say her only aim was to try to do the right thing, but it would sound like sentimental goop if she said it. She'd been spending too much time with Steve Rogers.

Huh. The Raft. That wasn't an angle she'd been expecting. Her eyes focused on him as she listened to what he said and tried to back-fill the meaning in between the lines. "You should write down 'oceanic oubliette.' That's a good phrase." The comment was delivered easily, but thoughtfully, her head tipped a little as she considered his posture and tone. She found it interesting that he connected The Raft so readily with the Asgardians. "It's already been abused. I understand the necessity of a...super super max, but anything designed to detain instead of rehabilitate is going to fail. And the Asgardians may have shaped our culture, for better or worse. Or we may have shaped theirs. Gods can't exist without hands to build their temples." One shoulder lifted in a shrug - she evidently wasn't overly preoccupied with Asgardian influence.

"Are you concerned about extraterrestrial beings left to rot in there?" The question came as a sharp turn, though her tone was still reflective and even. It was the hinge between the two parts of his question. And it would support her theory that he was hiding something.

"Maybe I'm just worried about this... new phase of what we seem to have slid into. People who have been test subjects- willing or not. A few aliens. Magic. It's a lot. And we don't have any real option for it other than shoving them into a hole to forget. Where's the due process? Who's to say that any of them deserve that excessive treatment? Who's to say any of them should still be alive? It's a sliding scale of shit to worse, and we haven't adapted a... how should I put it... ethical system of due process. Because Captain America doesn't agree with something, he's now on the run? America's sweetheart? That sounds pretty counterproductive, doesn't it? Like someone's just begging the country to turn on itself." He was intentionally glossing over the alien aspect because of some very obvious (to him) reasons.

Venom, on the other hand, was having a very spirited discussion about how enhanced beings might taste better than others.

Natasha say patiently as she listened to his answer. He covered a lot of ground in there, but interestingly, none of it...really answered her question. It was both too broad in its scope and too focused on due process, with the pivot back to Steve serving as a distraction point that she might hook onto to lapse back into the debate about the whether or not the Raft was ethical.

And that wasn't a debate at all to her. The Raft wasn't ethical. It was a bandaid on a bullet hole, the best of a bunch of bad options to take care of a steadily worsening situation. Earth had been thrust into the intergalactic theater before it even came close to mastering global geopolitical cooperation. It was a recipe for disaster. And more to the point...

"That's not a story. There's been hundreds of think pieces written about that, and you're too good a writer to re-tread that ground unless you have a new angle. And an exclusive interview with me isn't the angle you'd need for that, because my associations and recent actions make my opinion a matter of public record."

Natasha had been many things in her life. Most of them a finely tuned weapon. A knife in the dark slid between someone's ribs. This, though - he was desperate for answers, for truth. This situation needed light thrown on it, not subtle finesse. Maybe if she wasn't on the run, haunted by the specter of the Red Room and what it had done to Yelena and the others, she would have taken more time to slowly leech it out of him.

"You answered my question without really answering it. You're worried about extraterrestrial beings left to rot in the Raft. You're definitely human. So who are you worried about?" One shoulder lifted in a shrug. "I'm friends with a space raccoon. I know I can't be the only human that's in contact with an extraterrestrial being."

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This month has been bullshit. Sorry so late on both.

i'm sorry to hear that! no need to apologize, i hope things look up soon!

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