（ he sighs, and pinches the bridge of his nose. when he responds, he has transitioned over to voice. ）
It's kind of you to inquire. （ how many people, he wonders, are aware that she is a kind person? no matter what else is going on, he has never seen her not have her heart in the right place. even when it hurts. ） But I do not require a personal reason to take issue with someone blindly trampling over other people's privacy, preferences, and cultural mores in the interest of a self-appointed position.
（ he accepts the title of ichizokugoroshi, because it is true. he has never flinched from it. but he has no desire to share it, either. or overwrite it with someone else's ridiculous idea of what it should be. ）
Titles, among my people, reflect one's deeds or skills or kekkei genkai— genetic inheritance. They are a thing borne of fear. If one has a title... it has been earned in blood.
（ well, and then there's tsunade. 'legendary sucker'. but he won't go into that, because it's ridiculous. ）
[It's more than Natasha expected. When she messaged, she was very prepared to be left on read. It's a situation where she has a very easy time finding compassion for both Rita and Itachi—she knows better than most what Rita meant when she lost her composure over the nature of being a superhero, but also understands why someone would balk.]
You don't need a personal reason, no. [She switches to voice as she agrees.] But when you put it that way, you have to admit it does sound like something cut a little close to the nerve.
[Beyond that, Itachi's comments had spiraled to the point where at least one or two other people were taking sides, which could (she wouldn't go so far to presume had) put Itachi in the position of having his comment be a flashpoint in a way he might not reasonably have expected when he originally made his comment to opt out, or even when he let himself publicly wax a little cynical to McCoy.
Even if it hadn't started personally, becoming a target like that had a way of changing things.]
Black Widow, hm.
[She follows his lead, grateful he doesn't ask about Sokovia. If he had, she'd have told him. That was something her sister didn't seem to understand.]
That is a name given to Red Room graduates. Girls who become spies and assassins. It's not a compliment. Yelena's a Black Widow too, technically, but not the Black Widow.
[It's complicated.]
About one girl in ten who starts training survives to graduation.
[She does know something about titles you earn in blood. Blood and fear and grit, and most importantly by surviving where others don't.]
The only fraying nerve is my tolerance for what I am learning to be a very American tendency to assume everyone else must accept what is normal to them, and their tendency to cry personal victimhood when others refuse.
（ he has met a broad enough sample size of them now to recognize the pattern to the behaviour. the insistence that their way is the correct way, that others should by needs conform to their beliefs. that they should let themselves be comforted or uplifted by what they personally find so — that are not either of those things to him. he would prefer a quiet cup of tea with one person he cares for over the extravagant parties, and would have taken no issue with telling rita he was called itachi of the sharingan if she'd so much as thought to ask.
the next person that insists it's all in good fun and that he should tolerate a cultural misstep because someone means well is going to get tsukuyomi'd into next week, tbqh.
he is silent a moment, digesting her words. a ninety percent rate of attrition is difficult to swallow even for one who entered the chūnin exams alone, and so, gently — ）
[Natasha hums at the observation about Americans, almost a chuckle. She's not going to dispute at least some of that, and at the end of the day Americans can defend their own particular cultural foibles.
She does add, in deference to her defection and her friends there:]
They're not all quite that bad. I think some of it's the nature of the superhero game. Very few people call themselves that, and even fewer pick their own name. Even the Americans.
[She's had her own growing pains where that's concerned. She's still not entirely comfortable being called a hero but she's made peace with the fact that it's not for her.]
How old depends what part you mean. It's a process.
[One she cycled through more than once.]
I was recruited as an infant. [Itachi will have to forgive her the euphemism when she says recruited.] Eight years old for my first long deep cover mission. In my teens when I officially graduated...
Twenty-four when I got out. I think by that point I'd earned the name.
What drives the application of the term? I have understood 'superhero' to mean, generally, one with abilities or skills considered beyond human. It seems to be primarily of Earth origin, but I am missing the context for why and how it applies to some and not others, and the broader cultural anchor of the term.
（ 'hero' is a word for dead men in his world. no one would willingly accept being called as such — it goes beyond arrogance and into willful ignorance. even being a hero to your own nation requires being a villain to another, something that is known and accepted within the shinobi ideal. the only people he considers deserving of the term are the yondaime hokage, whose death has occupied a corner of his mind since that day so many years ago, and shisui's. the difference between the two is that no one knew what shisui had sacrificed and lost in the name of protecting konoha, and no one could deny what namikaze minato had. ）
There is a black ops division within my village that operates similarly. Children — customarily orphans of war — taken and recruited before they have learned any different. Their lives are brutal and often short, they know nothing beyond service. To survive a like experience is to your credit — but it cannot be easy.
（ he does not have the words to articulate survivor's guilt, but he accepts that being the one to outlive your peers is a horrific experience just the same. he has kept tabs on konoha to the extent he could while hunted and harangued, but even he doubts he could have compiled an accurate list of how many children disappeared into danzō's shadow over the years. ）
If the name has meaning to you, I cannot say how anyone could object to your use of it.
If you called it marketing or a PR scheme, I wouldn't argue with you.
[She has her cynical moments. Nothing would ever quite shake her worldview the way seeing a Black Widow doll in the window of a toy store after New York did. In some ways it was worse than the aliens.]
My boss described it as something like a group of remarkable people to fight the battles the rest of us never could.
[She is paraphrasing. She's also not trying to change his mind, just provide something like context.]
I wasn't really supposed to be one, either. [She adds then.] I was supposed to be a spy. When I got out, I found someone to work for. Someone I thought would be better. That didn't entirely work out, but it did put me in the right place at the right time, with the skills to keep something bad from turning into something much worse.
That can be a way to make sense of things.
[Natasha does know the term survivor's guilt, and while she wouldn't use it willingly, she also couldn't deny the way it colored her choices. Repaying her debt to Clint never meant doing good things to cancel out the bad. She knows that's impossible. There's nothing she can do to make amends to the people she's hurt. What she can do is try to make the world a little better for her still being alive in it present day.]
Seems like that might be the way for Rita too. Maybe there is something American about not being able to see past what works for them and making the assumption that including others in their coping mechanism will be welcome.
（ he snorts, which is about the closest he ever really comes to laughter outside of wei wuxian and gwen's company. ）
You think I should have been kinder to her.
（ she's very good, but their tactics are too similar for him not to notice the gentle herding she's doing. the willingness to explain the other side. ）
（ like, don't get him wrong he will leave a person on read without a scrap of mercy, but he's usually polite enough not to ignore direct questions. usually!!! ）
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Why would I be otherwise?
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no subject
It's kind of you to inquire. （ how many people, he wonders, are aware that she is a kind person? no matter what else is going on, he has never seen her not have her heart in the right place. even when it hurts. ） But I do not require a personal reason to take issue with someone blindly trampling over other people's privacy, preferences, and cultural mores in the interest of a self-appointed position.
（ he accepts the title of ichizokugoroshi, because it is true. he has never flinched from it. but he has no desire to share it, either. or overwrite it with someone else's ridiculous idea of what it should be. ）
Titles, among my people, reflect one's deeds or skills or kekkei genkai— genetic inheritance. They are a thing borne of fear. If one has a title... it has been earned in blood.
（ well, and then there's tsunade. 'legendary sucker'. but he won't go into that, because it's ridiculous. ）
I saw your comment to Finn. About yours.
（ notably not asking about sokovia. ）
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You don't need a personal reason, no. [She switches to voice as she agrees.] But when you put it that way, you have to admit it does sound like something cut a little close to the nerve.
[Beyond that, Itachi's comments had spiraled to the point where at least one or two other people were taking sides, which could (she wouldn't go so far to presume had) put Itachi in the position of having his comment be a flashpoint in a way he might not reasonably have expected when he originally made his comment to opt out, or even when he let himself publicly wax a little cynical to McCoy.
Even if it hadn't started personally, becoming a target like that had a way of changing things.]
Black Widow, hm.
[She follows his lead, grateful he doesn't ask about Sokovia. If he had, she'd have told him. That was something her sister didn't seem to understand.]
That is a name given to Red Room graduates. Girls who become spies and assassins. It's not a compliment. Yelena's a Black Widow too, technically, but not the Black Widow.
[It's complicated.]
About one girl in ten who starts training survives to graduation.
[She does know something about titles you earn in blood. Blood and fear and grit, and most importantly by surviving where others don't.]
no subject
（ he has met a broad enough sample size of them now to recognize the pattern to the behaviour. the insistence that their way is the correct way, that others should by needs conform to their beliefs. that they should let themselves be comforted or uplifted by what they personally find so — that are not either of those things to him. he would prefer a quiet cup of tea with one person he cares for over the extravagant parties, and would have taken no issue with telling rita he was called itachi of the sharingan if she'd so much as thought to ask.
the next person that insists it's all in good fun and that he should tolerate a cultural misstep because someone means well is going to get tsukuyomi'd into next week, tbqh.
he is silent a moment, digesting her words. a ninety percent rate of attrition is difficult to swallow even for one who entered the chūnin exams alone, and so, gently — ）
How old were you?
no subject
She does add, in deference to her defection and her friends there:]
They're not all quite that bad. I think some of it's the nature of the superhero game. Very few people call themselves that, and even fewer pick their own name. Even the Americans.
[She's had her own growing pains where that's concerned. She's still not entirely comfortable being called a hero but she's made peace with the fact that it's not for her.]
How old depends what part you mean. It's a process.
[One she cycled through more than once.]
I was recruited as an infant. [Itachi will have to forgive her the euphemism when she says recruited.] Eight years old for my first long deep cover mission. In my teens when I officially graduated...
Twenty-four when I got out. I think by that point I'd earned the name.
no subject
（ 'hero' is a word for dead men in his world. no one would willingly accept being called as such — it goes beyond arrogance and into willful ignorance. even being a hero to your own nation requires being a villain to another, something that is known and accepted within the shinobi ideal. the only people he considers deserving of the term are the yondaime hokage, whose death has occupied a corner of his mind since that day so many years ago, and shisui's. the difference between the two is that no one knew what shisui had sacrificed and lost in the name of protecting konoha, and no one could deny what namikaze minato had. ）
There is a black ops division within my village that operates similarly. Children — customarily orphans of war — taken and recruited before they have learned any different. Their lives are brutal and often short, they know nothing beyond service. To survive a like experience is to your credit — but it cannot be easy.
（ he does not have the words to articulate survivor's guilt, but he accepts that being the one to outlive your peers is a horrific experience just the same. he has kept tabs on konoha to the extent he could while hunted and harangued, but even he doubts he could have compiled an accurate list of how many children disappeared into danzō's shadow over the years. ）
If the name has meaning to you, I cannot say how anyone could object to your use of it.
no subject
[She has her cynical moments. Nothing would ever quite shake her worldview the way seeing a Black Widow doll in the window of a toy store after New York did. In some ways it was worse than the aliens.]
My boss described it as something like a group of remarkable people to fight the battles the rest of us never could.
[She is paraphrasing. She's also not trying to change his mind, just provide something like context.]
I wasn't really supposed to be one, either. [She adds then.] I was supposed to be a spy. When I got out, I found someone to work for. Someone I thought would be better. That didn't entirely work out, but it did put me in the right place at the right time, with the skills to keep something bad from turning into something much worse.
That can be a way to make sense of things.
[Natasha does know the term survivor's guilt, and while she wouldn't use it willingly, she also couldn't deny the way it colored her choices. Repaying her debt to Clint never meant doing good things to cancel out the bad. She knows that's impossible. There's nothing she can do to make amends to the people she's hurt. What she can do is try to make the world a little better for her still being alive in it present day.]
Seems like that might be the way for Rita too. Maybe there is something American about not being able to see past what works for them and making the assumption that including others in their coping mechanism will be welcome.
Or maybe it's just extroverts.
no subject
You think I should have been kinder to her.
（ she's very good, but their tactics are too similar for him not to notice the gentle herding she's doing. the willingness to explain the other side. ）
no subject
[Which is where her concern comes in.]
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Have I made so poor a showing of myself?
（ like, don't get him wrong he will leave a person on read without a scrap of mercy, but he's usually polite enough not to ignore direct questions. usually!!! ）
no subject
[That some people forgot how young he was.]
You know, you never really said if you were okay.
[And Natasha isn't quite asking again now.]
no subject
（ not quite a question, not quite an answer. ）
My concern is for others who may not be. I am not the only one from a culture where one's title has a weight.
no subject
I can sympathize with that, I suppose. In that case thank you for letting me take up a little of your time.
no subject
Thank you for being kind.
（ from darkness on a shadowed path... ）