Just enough:
"No way!"
"I swear! There was no other way to get him to tell me!"
"You're crazy…"
"Crazy for you."
The way her lips curled into a smile right after I said that came way too naturally. All this time Tasha and I have been together, I've always tried to figure out if it would ever become something more. And now I know. Now I know the walls can be broken down and we can be happy. She was the sunlight I've always needed and to be honest, I never thought it would have been her. There was something dark and mysterious about her I could never exactly encode and it frustrated me to bits. She was definitely someone to trust but in this kind of business you never really know.
Three years ago, I never would have put my bet on it. I had heard of ''the Widow'' before, but I had never met her. That is until Fury asked me to go kill her myself. I watched footage of her previous encounters and was impressed quite a bit. Her skillset was very developed and full of moves none of us had ever heard of before. But they seemed to work and she was actually pretty handy with a gun. I never understood how she enjoyed having red hair. I mean, it's beautiful, but it didn't exactly go undercover. It just didn't make sense. Why would she wear a black jumpsuit that goes completely under radar, when she had fiery red hair that gave her away? When I mentioned it to her later I was rewarded with a punch to the stomach. But anyway, I was sent to get rid of her but it didn't seem right. She was Russian and had illegally entered the country with some fake papers. What was the big deal? So she had killed a few people on the way, so what? Okay, maybe that was a problem. But she was protecting herself; it wasn't in hate or anything.
The thing about Tasha is that she always seemed like she was hiding something. Something that S.H.I.E.L.D would never ever find out. And that scared me. I knew she would be a challenge. That's why I suggested her to Fury. He first looked at me like I was crazy and then nodded approvingly. That was surprising; I thought he would need more convincing, which led me to think maybe he had thought of the idea himself before.
Then, there was Budapest. Probably the worst four months of our lives…until the incident in New York that is. It was the first time we were working together and we weren't exactly fond of one another yet. She believed I was doing everything wrong and she hated me for it. Which was fine with me at the time because I hated her for it too. I guess we just weren't familiar with our methods of working just yet. Most of the mission consisted of us trying to survive in the forest because of some dumb map someone had given us over there. We spent three weeks in that forest trying to figure out what to do. The first few days were terrible. She kept getting mad at me because I had never learnt to build shelter (still don't know how). And I got mad at her because she kept trying to help me. As much as Natasha enjoyed going solo, she always got worried when I didn't answer her RIGHT AWAY. Because she always thought I just died there for no reason. Woman's intuition? Anyway, about a week in we realised there was no point in trying to do this alone, so we actually teamed up. We spent most of our days hunting and most of our nights holding each other to keep warm; our noses pressed in each other's cheeks. We talked about our past; which was something neither of us did on a regular basis. It scared us and we felt obliged to keep certain things secret sometimes. But with her…with her it was different. Because she was the girl with the fiery red hair. She was the girl that I was sent to kill. She was the girl who I had known for only a short period of time, yet it seemed like I had known her for years now. During our time in the woods we found out some embarrassing things about ourselves. Things only she knows about me and things I only know about her. She hated birds and was slightly afraid of them. I was terrified of spiders (which is why I hated her name in the first place). She was ticklish, but only on the left side of her rib cage. I hated birthdays. She hated owing people. I had never drunk any alcohol. Neither had she (or so she tells me). All of these secrets make us the people we are today. Obviously we would never reveal any of them if we wanted to keep our job. Which is why we never spoke of Budapest. Ever.
I had gained a lot of respect for her during that mission. After all the personal attacks we were getting as soon as we escaped the woods, we managed to stick together. And then it was over and our lives could get back to normal…but not quite yet.
New York happened. With Loki and his alien friends…scary stuff if I do say so myself. Considering I was held 'captive' during half of the mission, I think we did pretty well. She helped me snap out of it and barely left any scratches. But let's just say trying to save the world half-way into the mission isn't exactly the easiest thing to do. That's why I'm glad it was Tasha. There was no way we would have made it without her. There was no way I would have made it without her.
And now…now that we've beat everything. Now that we've come up with a way to forget yet remember our past. Now that we're a team. I feel grateful.
The wall was beaten down a very long time ago. And now…now you know our story. Or part of it at least. You know about our bullheadedness and our mania. You know about Tasha's red hair and about my fear of spiders.
Better yet, you know just enough.