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When they first meet, he calls her Romanoff. That's fine. Everyone at SHIELD goes by surnames. Morse. Drew. Walters. O'Grady. It's impersonal, detached, formal. Just they way she likes it. That's why she calls him Rogers. It imposes a sense of distance that is necessary in their line of work. She's not sure why she needs the separation exactly, but she does.
Romanoff. Rogers.
She's assigned to help with his training. Countless hours on sticky blue mats spent slamming each other into the ground. She does most of the slamming at first. He gets better, though. He's a good learner—she expected that. Somewhere in all this she becomes Natasha. Her first name sounds so strange falling from his lips; she can count on one hand the number of people who've ever called her that. But she doesn't bother to correct him. She does, however, make a change of her own. He's not Rogers anymore, he's Steve.
Natasha. Steve.
Natasha is a long name to use in the field. Three syllables wastes breath, so it makes sense when he says into comms, "Nat! I need you on deck four." The crunch of bones breaking in the background doesn't concern her half as much as the ease with which he said the nickname. She assures herself that he only said it to save breath for fighting, and that works until he interprets her lack of comment for permission, and nearly stops calling her Natasha altogether.
What scares her is that she doesn't mind. Sometimes she catches affection in his voice when he says it. She minds even less then. She decides the best course of action is to not acknowledge the change at all.
Romanoff, Natasha, Nat. It didn't change anything between them.
When they're in public, they're Captain America and Black Widow. For him, she knows, Captain America feels like a different entity, a separate person from himself. She's different that way. Maybe it's because she's worn the mantle of the Black Widow for over eighty years, maybe it's because it fits so well. She has a hard time separating herself from the persona sometimes. Maybe, a small voice whispers, it's not just a persona anymore.
Black Widow. Captain America.
It seems like she blinks and suddenly they're sleeping together. How did we get here so fast, she wonders one night, listening to his heartbeat beneath her cheek. In reality, it wasn't fast at all. She'd never moved so slowly in a relationship before. And here she is now, feeling him breathe and move while she tries to stop her hands from trembling. Pathetic.
"My name is Natalia," she says, and it's like spitting out a bad mouthful of food. She's tried so hard over the last decade to rid herself of everything associated with that name, given to her by a mother she'd never known. Natalia is the killer, not Natasha. Natalia is the liar, the weapon, the monster. Natasha is not. That's what she tells herself.
"Do you want me to call you that?" He doesn't sound particularly surprised at her admittance. Maybe he really hasn't read her file.
She shifts, uncomfortable. "If you want. I haven't been called that in a long time." Not since more than a decade ago, when Clint Barton was kneeling in front of her on the floor, talking to her with more kindness than she deserved.
"It'll be okay, Natalia. I promise. There are good people here—they'll help you."
She'd looked into gray eyes that seemed older than the face they belonged to. Thought about her old life, which bizarrely felt like it belonged to a different person. "My name," she'd said, "is Natasha."
She blinks and Clint's gray eyes fade, replaced with Steve's bright blue ones. They are guileless, soft. This man hadn't fallen in love with Natalia Romanova. That isn't who she is anymore. That shell of a person is gone.
"Stick with Nat," she says, and means it.
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