Natasha was sleeping over at Steve's apartment.
Maybe it was weird – her sleeping in Captain America's apartment but to be honest, she had not given it a second thought.
The mission that they were both involved in lasted longer than they thought it would. And more stressful in that matter. Natasha could barely remember the last time she properly slept, her brain only focusing on her operation.
When the two of them stumbled in Steve's apartment, he had offered her his bed. Natasha refused and took the couch instead.
She didn't like to take offers too much. There was always a lingering feeling that she owed the person something in return and debt was the last thing she needed to worry about in her life.
And it wasn't like she could sleep anyways. Natasha was exhausted, yes, but her brain was still wide awake, distracting sleep away with bright, fluorescent colors.
And maybe it was the foreign feeling of the unusually warm covers draped around her, or the cool leather pressed against her skin, but whenever Natasha's eyes fluttered shut, the images would come and take her away.
They were always the same – repeated again and again in the same sequence. But that never failed to frighten her.
At first, it was an empty ballet studio with Swan Lake playing softly in the background in an unnerving way rather than a lull to sleep. Then, a girl dropped on the floor, her eyes rolled back. We are the wolves. The weak ones falls first. She was Natasha's first kill, and definitely not her last. There was blood everywhere – on her hands, on the wooden polished floor, spilled across her dress like coppery ink.
A pinch on her skin of her forearm when a needle punctured through. The ballet studio was brighter now, as if someone had opened the windows to let sunlight in. Natasha could see girls pirouetting to the music, spinning in graceful circles. She did too, her toes aching in her pointe shoes.
See, Natalia? You're getting better already. She didn't know if the voice was talking about ballet or the bloody knife in her hand. She didn't know anymore. Natasha just blindly followed.
Her hands were wet with more blood. She could taste the rustiness in her mouth. More blood. And agony. And anger.
Natasha did not realize that she had fallen asleep and was now screaming until she felt someone place a hand lightly on her shoulder.
Jerking upwards, her fingers found the warm hand in instinct and nearly broke the wrist before she saw who it belonged to.
"Hey." Steve winced a little when he retrieved his hand. Natasha's fell limply on her stomach. "Hey, it's alright."
He looked sleepy. There was no doubt that she had woken him up with her cry. There were heavy shadows rimming under his blue eyes and he had bed hair. He looked cute with bed hair, Natasha had to admit despite the shivers running through her body.
"Sorry." She tried to make it sound like her usual unbreakable self – as if she was not really sorry at all. But all that came out was a rough whisper that made Natasha looked down at her covers.
Steve surprised her by grabbing her chin lightly between two fingers and coaxing her to lift her face up so their eyes could meet. "Tell me." He murmured. "What is it?"
That made her let out a breath in surprise. Natasha's walls were already trembling, threatening to collapse. And she knew that once it actually did fall, Steve would back away like she was danger.
That was what everyone she loved did. Except for Clint. He was always the exception.
Natasha couldn't afford that. She couldn't afford to lose Steve, as a friend, as a partner or even as something more. She had to suck it up.
"Nothing. It's nothing." She brushed her hair away from her eyes. "Just a bad dream." Steve didn't budge so she added bluntly, "Go back to sleep."
He paused for a while as if pondering about what to do next (hopefully walk away and forget that this ever happened).
"Move over." He ordered instead. Natasha quietly sat up and retracted her legs to her chest so Steve had space to sit next to her, not questioning his motives.
Steve turned to look at her. "We are very different." He said out of the blue. She glanced up quite reluctantly, interested by the subject. "But we both have the same weak spot for our past."
That made Natasha advert her eyes again. "Yeah, because being America's greatest hero in the nineteen-thirties was such a tragedy." She said coldly.
She felt the leathery surface of the couch moved a little as Steve shifted. "Being 'America's greatest hero' came with the cost of me getting frozen for 70 years and waking up to find everyone I know either dead or waiting to die." He said. "Not so great."
Small amounts of guilt fed their way towards Natasha's emotions. She wondered if he had nightmares too – nightmares about crashing into the sea, about his dead friends, about the girl in the picture with full dark lips. "Not so great." She repeated softly.
Their eyes met, his full with assurance and trust. Natasha wondered if it was always so easy to fall for his trap. Because he got her now and she couldn't escape.
"Russia." She said. "The red room."
He stayed quiet and let her talk.
"Um, they trained us to become spies. Killers. Assassins." Natasha felt her mouth go dryer and dryer after every word. "There were 28 of us at that time. They tried to make us think that we were trained in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. I – they made me kill…"
She didn't really know where to go from there. The words on the tip of the tongue seemed to just dissolve in thin air.
"Okay." Steve's hand closed delicately around hers. "Okay."
Natasha had always knew that one day, she would have to pay the price for holding back all the memories, the emotions and the hatred for all these years.
She just never expected for it to happen in front of Steve, or much less anyone else.
They were crashing like a waterfall, breaking down any defenses she had left. There was no holding back.
She found tears leaking out her eyes. Then the sobs came to seize her out of breath. She clapped a hand to her mouth to stop it, suppressing her cries.
Natasha expected Steve to look uncomfortable and find an excuse to leave the room. It was really a strange and awkward sight to see – the Black Widow breaking down into a million pieces. But people tend to forget that she wasn't always what she was now. She was, too, once little girl that lost too much than she deserved.
Maybe it was the tears that was blurring her vision or her throbbing temples, but Steve, rather than moving further away from Natasha, he did the opposite.
He shuffled closer to her – close enough to put his arms around her like she was a little child.
"It's okay." His voice brushed lightly across her earlobe. Natasha's head nestled on the crook between his shoulders and neck like she had done it for thousands of times. "It's okay."
That was how the night ended – with Natasha slowly falling asleep in Steve's arms as he waited patiently for the next day to come, for Natasha to wake up and be the Black Widow again.