Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, nor do I even have a single stock share in the company. In other words, this is just for fun (and for my Muse).
AN: This started out as a novel idea three years ago and then I shelved it. I stumbled across it yesterday and somehow it turned into post-Winter Soldier fic. It's fine, because I have two novels right now, a PhD thesis and a travel anthology. This one was a worthy sacrifice.
Tibet is a good place to get lost. Or a good place to start getting lost. It's also not an easy place to get to through official channels and far too easy to get to through unofficial ones. It is the beating heart of a land long torn asunder, but which daily finds beauty in the simplest of things.
There are many places in the world she could run to, both safe and not safe. There are many places where getting lost is expected, not just desired. She contemplates Brazil for a short while, because it is closer. She contemplates Russia too, for a split second less.
She does, in fact, go to Nepal. On foot.
Her ride takes her only as far as Patna, at the northern end of the vast country that is India. It's 150km to the Napelese border, but there are roads all the way to Kathmandu. She only takes the road as far as the border before she cuts across country, through an area of the world where tourists do not go.
She has a tent for the nights and enough food for a few days and if she pushes it she can make 50km in the daylight hours. It's 100km cross-country to the capital from where her path diverges. She can get there easily enough. It's not the first time she's done it.
The tourists think she is crazy. The locals know better.
There are ways enough to disappear in the modern world, if you have the knowledge and the guts to risk it. To vanish completely from the eyes of every world government and every satellite that could ever hope to track you. Natasha knows well how to stay off the radar map and right now she needs to be so well off of it as to be non-existent.
She left Clint in Zagreb, where she found him. His cover was already in place and HYDRA had, at least it seemed, forgotten about him. They had not forgotten about her, however, and so staying together was not an option. They agreed on lines of communication, a set timescale, and then she left. She did not want to leave. After Washington, after Barnes, all she wants is to stay with Clint. To find a tiny little hole in eastern Europe they can go to ground in and wait it all out. But she doesn't have the luxury of time on her side. Steve will need her. SHIELD will need her, one day. She needs to be in a position to help and right now, with every government eye in America watching her, she's useless.
They need to forget her existence.
Tibet is a good place to disappear in, all told. It sounds strange, because her pale skin and red hair should stand out like a laser sight, but she doesn't. The people are kind, but aloof. They assume that any westerner who can walk into their lands out of the eye of the Chinese overlords has reasons enough to go unnoticed. So they don't notice her.
It takes her two weeks of walking from Kathmandu, bypassing the well trodden paths around Everest and taking one of the less known passes over the Himalayas, to get to any sign of habitation. It isn't much, but it's a warm bed and a resupply of food and the monastery is only another five day's walk away. She'll be safe there. She'll be unwatched there. And she can stay for a few months, let the ruckus about the hearing she had walked out of die down. Wait for something else to grab their attention. Then she can set about making new identities; crawling inside a new life. It takes time and energy and it's not something she's had to do in such depth for several years. SHIELD identities can be grabbed and discarded at the least provocation, by even junior field agents. To reinvent herself completely takes more effort, especially without the resources she used to have. Russia and her contacts are not an option anymore. They are as likely to sell her out as help her and Natasha cannot take that chance. She has to remain on the outside.
And so she arrives one cold evening on the steps of the crumbling ruin that is still inhabited by nearly twenty men and is welcomed inside. It has been seven years and a lifetime since she was last there. Before SHIELD. Before Coulson and Fury and Clint. Before the Avengers. Before she was anything other than a mercenary and assassin. When she was still, in her heart, Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
Here, however, she is just Tasha and the monks do not care about her other lives.
Tibet is her peace on earth.