NIGHTMARE ▹ Natasha Romanoff

nine.

"Well, fuck me." Svetlana looked at the scene with a sense of sadness. People died here. So many people. Her mind rang, the familiar feeling of brokenness and emptiness she always felt during her job coming over her. She shut them out with a quick thought, instead turning to the scene and looking at it coldly, analyzing every piece of rubble, ever broken pillar.

It looked, she thought, painfully and brashly, human. This was what people did. Blew each other apart. Brought death and war. Could they have done this. The thought crossed her mind for not the first time today, and it lingered, tugging away at the mental barriers she'd built. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe-

"Are you listening?" Snapping up her head to meet Romanoff's cool gaze, Svetlana steadied herself.

"Oh, definitely not. I try not to listen when other people talk. They tend to get on my nerves." She replied, and worked her way further into the debris, ignoring Romanoff's glare burning into her back.

The FBI's Albany Field Office was once a large, grey imposing slab of a building. Now, what was left of it resembled more a chunk of crumbling ash. SHIELD had cleared the investigators off the scene so that Svetlana could take a look around, and maybe spot clues as to who or what was really behind this.

So far, however, she'd found ditto. "Why are we still here? You clearly can't find anything." Romanoff said, the annoyance clear in her voice. Svetlana looked at her.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I won't find anything. But on the off chance that there is some shit around here that can help us, maybe you could try to act civil and work with me instead of against, okay?" Svetlana said angrily, meeting her gaze. "Please?" She added the end in Russian, hoping to appeal to Romanoff's better nature.

Instead, Romanoff just watched her with a complicated and guarded stare, practically wincing at Svetlana's mother tongue. She looked away. Svetlana wondered why.

It was at that moment that her foot hit something that skidded along the blackened floor. Svetlana wouldn't have given it a second thought, waving it off as another piece of debris, of it weren't for the clean glint that it gave off in the sunlight. A gun.

Stopping down to pick it up and inspect it, she brushed off a light layer of dusting. A classic six shot revolver, with a thicker leather bound handle. There was the click of a safety being pulled right by her ear.

Romanoff's cool voice came from her left. "Put down the gun. Now." Svetlana tolled her eyes, tossing the gun onto the ground.

"It isn't mine, smart ass. I found it. It's new. Someone was here after the detonation. Someone who left that behind." She turned to face Romanoff, staring down the barrel of her Sig Sauer. "Still going to shoot me, Romanoff?" She teased, an eyebrow raised. Romanoff watched her for a second more, then lowered the pistol.

She leaned down and picked up the gun herself, still watching Svetlana. "Fine." She eventually said. "We'll bring it back to HQ."