When she calls him that night, it's about the fire in her mind.
It's about the fear she pretends isn't eating away at her soul.
It's about the loneliness she is trying to ignore.
And her voice trembles and she chokes on her breaths, falling unceremoniously to the ground as it comes back, the smoke and the heat, the...the pain and the...
Fear.
It always comes back.
The phone clatters on the carpet a few feet away, slipping from between her violently shaking fingers,and she clutches her head in her hands, screaming for it to stop, to leave her alone, and he yells her name from three countries away, pacing across a hotel room in a vain attempt to do something, anything.
"Everything is going to be okay, Natasha," he says even though he's not sure she can hear him, not sure she's listening. "Everything is going to be okay."
The screams dissolve into sobs after a minute or five, or thirty two, and he's not sure which feels more like stabs through his heart.
Her voice trembles still and she repeats his name over and over, her renewed death grip on the phone turning her knuckles white and her fingers red.
Red like blood, red like fire.
The fire is in her mind and she knows she's going absolutely crazy, but she's pretty sure she was already gone.
He tells her to breath, keep breathing, don't stop. Breathing is important.
"I'll be home, Nat. I'm coming back to you."
She nods as an answer and says his name again, quieter than a whisper.
"Everything is going to be okay."
It's a lie and he knows it, and she knows he knows it.
But it's the most beautiful lie they have.