16430/Stories of Stalinists

Stories of Stalinists
Date of Scene:	28 November 2023
Location:	The Corral, near Yonkers, NY
Synopsis:	Natasha and Opal talk about Stalingrad. And war. And the universality of how it brings misery.
Cast of Characters:	Opal Moirai, Natasha Romanoff

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Opal Moirai has posed:
Sitting back off of a side street near the Yonkers Historic District is a bar. From the outside it could be a Cracker Barrel, complete with front porch and railing, if it wasn't for the pink and blue neon sign running the full length of the building. 'The Corral' There's even a shifting, 3-color neon image of a cowgirl riding a bull to complete the picture.

The sounds of steel guitar and harmonica assault the senses even before opening the front door, where the music just *blasts* new customers. The bouncer looks like he probably has a collection of wrestling championship belts at home, and is wearing a t-shirt with the bar logo that shows he has no definable neck.

The lighting in the bar is a bit low, but good enough to give a clear view of the place. There's a long bar on the right side with tall, swivel stools that are bolted down. A good assortment of four-top tables occupy the center before giving way to a hardwood dance floor. The stage is centered against the back wall with three steps leading up. On the back left side is a mechanical bull in its own 'pen' filled with sawdust.

There are a few regulars in tonight, but it's still early. A tall blonde leans against the bar, wearing classic western attire. A leather vest is worn over a red and black checked shirt. The jeans could have been painted on, tucked into brown boots with riding heels. An off-white cowboy hat is pulled down over long, blonde hair and mirrored aviators cover her eyes.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
It's a rather quiet night, brisk and cold outside. On the edge of snowing, but without the amount of moisture needed. It's still enough for most that are out to be wearing jackets, and for a bar anyhting being served hot is surprisingly popular. The bell rings as someone from outside comes in. It's a familiar figure - even if just in passing rather than directness.

Natalia Alianova Romanova enters in, her hair done up to be rather drab looking and flat, wearing a faded baseball jacket on her, heads in and moves over towards a seat by the back. She looks.. Melancholy, for those that can read whisps of her body language. Something that is rarely felt, even more rarely shown. Sometimes memories can be a bit much.. Without the perspective to share themon.

The bell rings, she heads towards somewhere in the back, a corner booth where she can sit wiht her back to the wall, up against a support beam in a corner.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Natalia's arrival doesn't go unnoticed. Very little in this bar does, after all. The blonde at the bar watches behind mirrored lenses as the woman in the baseball jacket finds a back booth and sits with a good view of the door. Opal says something to one of the servers, then she makes her way to the booth after a few moments.

Rather than stopping to take an order, Opal settles into the seat across from Natalia. "It's good to see you again." she offers, speaking in English this time. "Would you like a drink?"

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would gesture over at Opal, "If you wouldn't mind." She's speaking in Russian. A bit strangely accented - lower class urban. Somewhat more stilted and formally. "And if you would care to join me?" An invitation in a contemplative sort of way. Natasha was very, very rarely open to speaking about things that were not related to her assignments.

So the fact that she was here without any indications of anoncoming catastrophe meant it had to be one of those things about -feelings-

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai glances towards the bar, catching the server's attention with a tip of her hat. While the young woman is on her way, Opal responds in Russian. "I would like that very much. And thank you." Her own accent would fit in quite well with the Russian military.

Stretching her long legs out, the blonde tips her hat back a little and looks up when the waitress arrives. "Will we be drinking vodka tonight?" she asks softly, still in Russian. The server waits.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would give a nod over to Opal, "Yes, we will. Whatever the cheapest you have is." Her tone is sad. Almost regretful for a moment. An emotion so alien to her normal range of expressions one might almost wonder if it was completely feigned. Natasha had many, many regrets. A lifetime. They were all her own failures. All the red in her ledger.

This regret? Was a rare thing that did not have much of anyhting to do with her at all.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai switches to English and orders a particular brand of Russian vodka. "Two glasses, and leave the bottle." she instructs, adding. "My tab." Turning back to her table-mate, Opal switches to Russian once more. <I suspect that you have either been thinking too much or drinking too little. Perhaps something of both. Tell me, Natalia, what is it that brings you into my bar tonight?>

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would pause for a moment. "Memories. Something that I think you would have been there for." Her eyes take a moment to scan the room, before settling on her conversation partner. "Stalingrad. Where I grew up." Under hails of artillery, mortars, Stukas, and millions upon millions of men.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai's demeanor softens, and she removes the glasses to show the perfectly smooth gemstone that is her namesake in place of her left eye. Natasha has seen this before. "I was there twice. Once just before the lockdown. And the fighting. I was working as a courier back then, often in plain clothes."

A polite way of saying she was a spy.

"I visited again after the war, while the rubble was still fresh and the wounds were still raw." She pauses, then adds. "I haven't been back."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would nod, her mind distant, on somewhere far away. Far in the past - by the definition a human would have of the past. "There wasn't much left of the city after it. Rebuilt mostly over rubble. From rubble. Out of rubble. Too much misery and suffering. Too much death. I was a child for it." How young was she? She couldn't recall, exactly.

There was probably a record on a file somewhere with it. But the exact day and time did not particularly matter. Just that she was a child.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai tilts her head a little at the reference, nodding in understanding. She only saw the aftermath; Natasha lived through it. "That was not a nice way to grow up." she replies.

The vodka arrives and the waitress opens it, splashing some into each glass before leaving the two.

"There are so many children who did not have that chance." Opal isn't trying to put a positive spin on this, just offer some perspective.

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would shrug, "The same would apply to all of that part of the world at the time." And quite likely to the current day. And back centuries. Russia was built upon a foundation of misery and suffering. "I was a courier too." She would half smile. A ghostly, ethereal thing.

"I was small, I had an easier time going through barbed wire. I was light, I was less likely to set off land mines when I went over them. Many children did the same thing." Not many of them came out.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai echoes that smile with one of her own. She picks up the two glasses, offering one. "War is not kind and it is not fair." she replies.

"It has been my fate since..." a vague gesture in the direction of her left eye, then she continues "... since -this-, to work behind the scenes. It was my fate to do so, perhaps, but it was not always possible to do so without getting my hands dirty."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would muse, "It never has been. Not ever in human history. And we've had enough experience with beings from beyond our world to know that it is not by any. Some cultures might find it glorious and purposeful.. But it never really is." War is hard. For everyone who goes through it.

"It divides everyone into two groups. The living and the dead. In the end, everyone is the second." Russian wit.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai lifts her glass at the last, taking a drink of her vodka. "In the end, we are all the same." she agrees. "I have not met so many from other worlds, as you have, but war is fundamentally the same everywhere. Killing someone before they kill you is ugly and messy."

Opal takes another, deeper drink, then. "Honor is a lie told to the naive. Glory is a lie told for justification. The only purpose of war is to reduce the population."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would nod, "The tactics change, the technology changes, the terrain changes, the participants change.. But war is still war. Conflict is always conflict." It was an unfortunate universality seemingly of sentient existence. Then barking out a laugh at Opal's definition of the two things. "Da." Taking a hard pull from the vodka herself.

"Wars sometimes end in justice. But always end in misery. The Great Patriotic War.. Started after decades of Stalin's culling of his own people." After the Tsar's had. "Then of the Fascists." THe Nazis. "THen of his own again." Few survived the decades of purges and genocide.

Opal Moirai has posed:
"Russia has seen its fair share of regime changes." Opal agrees. Then again, she has watched the landscape of Europe change significantly over the past hundred years or so. "At the end of the day, I sometimes wonder if the only constant in it all is change."

Opal tosses back the last of her drink, then refills both glasses.

"Perhaps things would be different if those who had much would die for those who had little, instead of the other way around. But the ones in power try to keep themselves far from actual danger."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would nod, "The country has a long, long history of dictatorship. Whether by Tsar, Communist, Oligarch.. By whomever. One might say it's just part of it's DNA." Russians, unable to govern themselves or purge thier corruption. Always an active participant in thier own poverty and misery.

"And that does not change. Whether it's an officer driving through the mud in Ypres horrified that they sent men to fight in it or through a random island on a map."

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai takes a smaller sip, now, nodding in agreement. "The ones making the decisions are never the first ones to die, but they are always the ones in the news reels." she replies. "The greatest risks they take are with lives that do not belong to them."

"My sister Ruby spent more time in your country than I did. She has a greater appreciation for it." As Jade spent more time in Asia. "But all three of us understand what has been lost over the decades."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would nod absently at Opal. "Or the first to take it as excuse to wage more for the sake of it." Franz Ferdinand went that route, for all the horrors it rought and the horrors and catastrophe it brought to the world, one grenade in a car going down the wrong alleyway.

"Everyone has lost things. There is nothing special about it. Loss is loss, misery is misery. Having more or less of it is not a bragging point."

Opal Moirai has posed:
"If more people understood that, there would have been no need for a -Second- Great War. Reparations. Blame. The so-called Treaty of Versailles only created the backdrop for another war. You cannot keep score in terms of lives lost or crimes committed. That isn't the point."

After all, Opal was there at Versailles, in the background. Same with Neuremburg.

"The most important thing is the rebuilding, and to have enough left TO rebuild. At the end of the Civil War in the United States, the Confederates were withdrawing from Richmond and burning everything that they could, so the Union couldn't use it. One man and his workers blocked the gates to an ironworks in the center of the city, not because it was his livelihood, but because he knew it would be instrumental to rebuilding the South."

Natasha Romanoff has posed:
Natasha Romanova would lean back over in thought as she wouldlisten. "Yes, and when one does not fulfill that need for blood, need for vengeance, need for payback.. It just cycles around to itself again. No one's quite figured out how to avoid it. That sense of betrayal, of revenge.." She would look distantly over.

"And that went so well for them." The rebuilding after the war. To trying to make amends for all that was done. Even Natasha knew about that.

Opal Moirai has posed:
Opal Moirai shrugs a little at that. "At least one man knew better than to burn the world down out of spite." she replies. "One person can't solve a nation's problems, any more than one person isn't responsible for all of them." Getting a little more personal, perhaps?

"Remembering past scores doesn't solve problems." Like opening one's ledger to count all the red ink. "Likewise, while our past makes us who we are, it doesn't define who we must become. Those are choices we still can make. I like to think that I am here to help with some of those choices."

Opal drinks, then refills both glasses again. It's going to be a long night, and this is only the first bottle of vodka.