A/N: This one came from a tumblr prompt: my prompt (it might be a little generic, so feel free to add whatever you'd like or change something) is Romanoff and Skye both have feelings for each other and Romanoff decides she's going to tell her but before she can, the team (AOS team plus Avengers) go on a mission and Skye gets badly injured. Fluffy part is Romanoff eventually telling her.
I took this and did a bit of a twist on it. Also (because I'm madly in love with her) I chose to write Wanda Maximoff into the story, so this story is obviously chronologically after AoU and therefore doesn't match up with the AoS timeline perfectly.
My genuine apologies for how I write Natasha, since I don't write her very often and therefore I'm pretty sure a lot of her is wrong.
Enjoy!
I.
The first time they meet, Skye has just come back from Puerto Rico. Things are shaken up all around her, she's despondent and broken, she spends an inordinate amount of time keeping herself from shattering the quarantine chamber with her fists. She's tired of everyone staring, of the medical tests, of her inability to sleep without seeing Trip shatter into hundreds of pieces right in front of her traitorous, horrified eyes.
She lies down.
She never wants to get up.
She wants to feel something.
She knows she'll never feel anything again.
II.
"What exactly happened?" Natasha asks as Melinda walks her down the hallway.
Melinda shrugs, as Tasha knew she would. "We still don't have all the answers. Skye's so confused and shaken by what occurred… we're honestly just trying to clear her and get her out of quarantine."
"And the agent you lost?"
Melinda stops, looking pensive. "He was a very good man. A good agent. A friend of Skye's."
"Has she told you what she experienced?"
Melinda shakes her head.
"Alien artifacts are tricky," Tasha says.
"Skye is… she's an 0-8-4," Melinda says hesitantly. "I have no idea if that might play into what happened in the temple."
Natasha shakes her head. "An 0-8-4 that's a person?"
Melinda nods. "As far as we can tell, Skye's the only one ever recorded."
So she's special, Natasha thinks as Melinda leads her into the lab and she comes face to face with the sleeping girl behind the glass.
III.
Skye isn't conscious the next time they meet, either. She's just shot herself full of dendrotoxin, she's passed out on the bed in the Vault, Lady Sif still staring at her because she's done something reckless and foolhardy and unbelievable.
Natasha's there too. She's stayed on as a consultant, working with Coulson as they try to figure out what's happened to Skye. A silence, a pallor of sorts has fallen over the Playground. Natasha isn't sure where it came from, or what everyone is really worried about.
She understands how terrifying it can be to become someone else, whether it's in an instant or over many years.
She understands what it's like to wake up knowing you're damaged.
Strange.
Feeling worthless.
When May and Coulson leave to return Lady Sif and the Kree man to Asgard, Natasha stays with Skye. She knows the dendrotoxin has a knockout range of five to ten hours, so Skye will never know she's alone. It still feels wrong to leave the girl alone.
The girl.
That's what Skye is. She's a girl. She's terrified.
And Natasha knows that all too well.
IV.
Skye's been at the cabin for a week, and she's gotten to the point where she's playing chess against herself, the way she saw an elderly man do in a Pixar short film. She moves, stands up, walks around the table, sits down, moves for the other side. Repeat, repeat, repeat, until she's convinced she's no longer in the cabin but in some sort of Groundhog Day dream.
Until there's a knock at the door.
Until she opens it to find a stunning redheaded woman standing there.
"Can I… help you?" Skye asks, confused as how someone managed to find her out there. Concerned that she might need to start running.
She's also thinking that it's awfully strange that someone who looks as ordinary (ordinary, but beautiful) as this woman somehow got through the big-zap electrical grids that Coulson had been so specific about.
She's hardly stopped thinking that when the woman tosses her something, which turns out to be a complicated-looking electronic gadget.
"Turns out with the right stuff you can get through almost anything," the woman says.
Skye looks at her, mouth gaping, still confused as to who this woman is.
"We've met before," the woman says.
Skye's pretty sure she'd remember someone as beautiful as this woman.
"Don't worry. You weren't conscious either time."
"That does not make me feel any better about this."
"I know your name is Skye."
"Still not decreasing the creepy factor."
"Are you going to invite me in?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether or not you're here to kill me."
The woman tilts her head to one side. "Why would I kill you? This is only our first date."
"Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were one of those assassins who likes to wait until marriage."
"If there's anything that incites my murderous rage, it's marriage."
"Closing the door now," Skye says.
"With me on the wrong side?"
"Is it the wrong side?"
"Anyone told you that your real superpower is sarcasm?"
At that Skye stops in her tracks. "You know I have powers?"
The woman nods.
Skye sighs. "Then I guess you'd better come in."
V.
The woman's name is Natasha Romanoff.
At that Skye gives a squeak and nearly falls off the chair, nearly takes the entire chessboard out with her. "You're… you're…"
Natasha shrugs.
"If you'd told me, I would have let you in sooner."
"I don't believe that."
Natasha considers the chessboard. She picks up a rook, sorts out the move in her head, and sets it down on another square. "Check."
"That's all the conversation we're going to have about this?"
"Well, it's not like I'm going to change my identity, even if we talk for hours. So, your move. Then we'll talk some more."
(Skye loses that round of chess.)
(They talk until the sun comes up, and Skye tells Natasha things she's never told anyone.)
Is that love? she wonders.
It could be, but Tasha's not telling.
VI.
Natasha reports to Coulson that Skye is fine. Terrified of herself, unsure how to heal her injuries, bored out of her mind (the one-person two-sided chess game proved that), but fine.
"She's emotionally resilient," she says to Coulson. "She'll figure this out."
She doesn't tell Coulson that they've been sitting up all hours of day and night, until they have matching deep hollows under their eyes. Skye is the best friend Natasha never knew she wanted, and sometimes in Skye's eyes she can see how desperate the girl – she'll always be a girl to Tasha – is for someone to care specifically about her, instead of the terrifying presence, the other boiling just beneath the surface of her skin.
And she doesn't tell Coulson that she holds Skye in the middle of the night, rocks Skye and her raspberry-scented hair through yet another nightmare. She's not scared of Skye hurting her. The Widow isn't scared of anything.
(Natasha is terrified.)
Terrified that Skye will hurt herself, will further damage her splintered arms and her cracked ribs, terrified that this time Skye won't wake up, that she'll just stay, all brown eyes and casted arms and hummingbird heart, in whatever darkness is just behind that sharp gaze.
Terrified that in the morning, she won't be able to get Skye to talk about any of it.
And unspeakably sad, because she wants to know where Skye goes in those nightmares, who she's really reaching for.
(Natasha knows it's not her.)
(Yet.)
Interlude
There's a phone call from May, a panic in Skye's eyes. Tasha is out the door in a flash, grabbing Skye by the arm, weapons at the ready, the electric field interrupter clenched in one hand.
Overhead there's flashing lights and the sound of search planes. Natasha sees panic flood through Skye's body. "Listen to me," she says, her voice loud enough to be heard over the noise above. "We're both going to get out of this."
Skye's eyes are wide, her breathing shallow. "I can't. I can't…"
"We're going to get out of this," Natasha repeats. "Say it."
Through chattering teeth Skye gets out, "We're… we're going to… going to get out of this."
"We stick together, we make smart decisions. Okay?"
Skye nods.
Natasha sees the planes circling, getting closer and closer. "Now or never, vozlyublennaya."
She knows Skye doesn't know what that means, there's no chance in hell she knows, but since the terrified young woman in front of her is about to get in a fight with those she, until recently, thought were family.
Everything seems to happen very quickly after that. Bobbi Morse and another agent, a man Natasha doesn't know, come bolting off a plane. They've got weapons, they've got the upper hand, and they clearly mean to take out Skye and whoever tries to stop them.
"Skye!" Natasha hollers as the man raises his gun.
Skye whirls around and her hands go up instinctively.
The shockwave ripples through the air, blasts through Natasha's chest like the beat of a thousand bass drums. The world rattles around her, trees goes flying, and the concussion knocks her off her feet. As she falls she sees a flare of blue light, and then nothing else.
VII.
It takes Natasha two weeks to find Skye, and she's not sure she could ever put a name to all of the emotions that course through her body throughout those two weeks. More than once she finds herself in a hallway, rocking back and forth, trying very hard not to bang her head into the concrete walls.
And at the bottom of it all, surprising Natasha, is love.
She's not supposed to love. Cool, calculated detachment has been the Black Widow's MO for decades.
This time she panics. Storms back into the Avengers tower with the kind of look on her face that no one's ever seen.
"We're going," she says, and not even Tony can sass back to that. Not when she's glaring at her teammates as though they were the ones who stole her Skye.
Her Skye.
Tasha's not sure where that came from, but it terrifies her. And pleases her. All at once.
(See? Too many emotions. She's getting sloppy.)
"Of course, Lady Natasha," Thor says, his voice resonant and deep, like velvet ribbon. "We will be more than honored to join in your quest."
And when Tasha turns to the next member of their team, the Sokovian girl with the deep eyes and the ethereal manner that sometimes terrifies Natasha, she's not surprised that Wanda's eyes are far away.
"She is looking for you," Wanda says in her distant way. "Is wishing you had said…"
Then a spasm of pain flits across Wanda's face. "We must go. Now. Natasha's Skye… she is…"
(The pause in there threatens to break Tasha's heart.)
"So let's get out there and find her," Tony says firmly, already calling for his Iron Man suit.
"Not without some backup," Clint says as he rejoins the group, holding his cell phone.
Natasha turns to look at him, a question on her face.
He nods. "Turns out they're in."
VIII.
Coulson demands to be on the mission. He's already offered May, Hunter, and Jemma for the cause. Hunter looks overwhelmed standing next to Thor, both in stature as well as awe for the Asgardian man. Jemma just keeps beaming at all of them.
"You don't think you should stay here?" May asks. "Wait for Bobbi and Mack to reappear?"
"Something tells me Bobbi and Mack are involved with whatever this is," Natasha says. Quickly she recounts the encounter at the cabin, the one where an agent shot an actual gun at Natasha's Skye, and then Skye shoved all three of them away from her, brought down most of the forest, and knocked Natasha out. She'd woken up alone, feeling shattered.
"Now," Wanda says from the side of the room, looking suddenly pale and sweaty.
Everyone turns to look at her. "You can't feel that?"
"Feel what?" Steve asks gently.
Wanda grabs onto the desk and looks up at them. "Earthquake."
IX.
The Agents of SHIELD and the Avengers storm into what was once clearly a delightful Chinese village. Now it's a series of broken columns, collapsed walls, tumbled pagodas, and splintered trees. Tony barks orders; the Captain tries to make sense of them all. Clint immediately goes for the highest point. Thor uses his hammer to clear debris. Coulson and May and Hunter set up a perimeter, calling Skye's name all the while.
Wanda stays with Natasha, still looking wobbly on her feet. The Sokovian girl's eyes scan every collapsed building, every sloping pagoda roof, sending out whispering trails of red. It's Wanda's version of calling Skye's name.
Natasha can't bear the feeling that they're too late. That she's too late. A quake this big, enough to get everyone else out of the way – if anyone else was there to begin with – it stopped some time ago. Things are settling.
(Where is Skye?)
It's what she's about ready to shout to the world when Wanda's hand clamps onto her arm. "There," she grits out, pointing towards a pagoda that buckled onto a series of cement benches. Natasha can't believe there's air in there, let alone her Skye, but Wanda has yet to be wrong about literally anything.
She bolts towards the pagoda, hearing Wanda yelling for the others and the medic – "RIGHT NOW!" in Sokovian, the words the wrong language but the meaning clear enough – before she comes and tries to help Natasha dig out the girl who drives the Black Widow crazy for reasons she can't quite explain.
X.
For eight days Skye stays in a coma in the SHIELD base's med facility. She's all tubes and wires, big plastic airway branching out of her mouth, thick dressings around her head, covering the places Jemma had to drill into her skull to prevent her brain from swelling any further. Whatever she's seeing is terrifying her; she grunts and moans around the breathing tube, jerking her re-casted arms up towards her head until Jemma eventually ties her down with soft restraints. She whimpers and tries to reach out for someone. But her eyes stay closed, and eventually, after several long minutes, Skye always drops back into the dark void of unconsciousness.
For eight days Natasha does not leave the base's med facility. She does not listen to anyone who tells her to leave, to sleep, to eat, to… whatever. She does not listen to Jemma or any of the SHIELD doctors who tell her that Skye's brain activity is significantly lowered, and that of course they'll give her time, but…
Natasha refuses to accept the "but…."
She does accept the one person who could truly help her.
Wanda looks like she hasn't been sleeping either, something she brushes off when she greets Natasha. "Many voices here. Only one filter. All these people… the Avengers, we are much fewer."
Natasha swallows, hard, and looks up at Wanda, her eyes begging.
"I will try," Wanda says softly.
She sits down on the other chair next to Skye's bed, lays her head on Skye's chest.
"I know," she says, before Natasha can even speak, about to remind the mind reader to be careful of Skye's broken ribs and cracked sternum.
Wanda shifts her position and Natasha is unsurprised to see thin red tendrils flowing from her fingers, wisping up and around Skye.
(Oh, please.)
(Let her be in there.)
(Let her remember me.)
(Let her love me.)
I.
(Because who says you can't begin again?)
On the morning of the ninth day, Skye swims back up through a haze of pain and opens her eyes.
Her body doesn't seem completely to be hers. She can't move her arms or legs, and there's something strange going on with her left eye.
She can't remember very much.
(Blue light.)
(Chest hurting.)
(Waking up.)
(Strange people there.)
(Angry. Them. Then her.)
(Series of earthquakes, each one larger than the last. Each one scarier than the last.)
(Red light.)
She tries to roll her head to one side and sees most of a blurry person-shape. "Huhhhh," she grunts at them. Most of the person looks like a gray bubble.
The person, whoever it is, is obviously asleep. And Skye can't turn her head to the other side, so she tries again. "Huhhhhh," she says, a little louder.
She realizes, as she somehow forces that word out of her mouth, that there's something in her mouth, obstructing her vocal cords.
The person-shape jerks upright and Skye jumps. Everything hurts.
"Skye?" Whoever it is, they're whispering, but not because they want to be quiet. It's astonishment.
The person darts out, calling "Jemma!" Skye sees a flash of red hair.
Natasha.
Natasha came to rescue me.
And then Jemma and Bobbi and some people Skye can't recognize are there, flashing lights in her eyes and asking her questions and finally, at the end of all that, pulling the damn tube in her mouth. Someone slides ice chips into her mouth and they are the best thing she's ever tasted.
Jemma says a lot of words – broken arms, fractured legs, cracked sternum, severe head trauma, burr holes to relieve pressure, going to be lucky if you get the vision in your left eye back, lucky you lived at all what the hell were you thinking?! – but Skye can't understand most of it.
"Eyesh ships," she garbles at the blurry blob that is Jemma.
Jemma throws her hands up. "They're on the table. Let your rescuer give you some."
Natasha moves into Skye's field of vision and she looks both angry and happy. Skye's fuzzy brain knows that's not right.
"Eyesh ships?" she pleads.
"No," Natasha murmurs.
Skye's eyes tear up. She feels like a child being denied something vitally important.
"Oh, darling," Natasha says, reaching up to brush tears from her face.
(Skye flinches away from her and her entire body hurts and her field of vision gets smaller.)
"Shh, shh," Natasha says, and she carefully strokes the unbandaged side of Skye's head. "Shh, that's not what I meant."
"Eyeshships," Skye sobs.
Natasha stands up and takes Skye's hands in hers. "Yes. I promise."
She just stares at Skye and Skye just continues to cry.
"I love you," Natasha says at last. "I've loved you since the first time I saw you asleep in that glass box, terrified of what was going to happen next. And the last eight days I've spent in this glass box, terrified of losing you before I never got to say these kinds of things.
"It doesn't matter what happened. Doesn't matter if you caused that earthquake or if you were forced to. I don't need to know. Somehow you were the only one who ended up hurt. I know I can't take away the guilt from that, or from watching Agent Triplett die… I know this because I can't take away any of the guilt from the things I've done.
"You're amazing, Skye. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise."
"You're… 'mazing… too," Skye manages to get out.
Natasha shakes her head. "Far too much red in the ledger."
Skye blinks, winces, and tries to turn her head a bit. "No such thing," she says.
Natasha kisses Skye.
Skye recovers from that, a bit astonished and flushed and (if she's being completely serious, entirely far too turned on) and looks up at her. "Too much red? Just turn the page. Clean sheet. Start over."
She drowses back into her twilight sleep before Natasha can say anything else, or even give her more ice chips, leaving the Black Widow alone in the room, imagining exactly what Skye had said – a fresh piece of paper, a chance to start over –
… and maybe, just maybe, throwing out all of the red pens.