A/N – I think it's been already established that this story is going to be dealing with hurt and torture. I'm just going to reiterate that trigger warning now. Not so much for this chapter but the next, when it's written. Song theme is Kid Fears by Indigo Girls. Thanks for the reviews especially those with questions and comments it does help shape the story, and remind me to explain things I know but haven't told you.
Minutes pass before Steve can form a question. He realizes the gift that Natasha has given him, to share even this small bit of information about those five days. He wants to press for more but he doesn't want her to clamp back down as well. "You knew him from…before?" he asked cautiously.
"We were trained together, but I knew him since I was a child. ...How are we going to get Barton back?" Obviously the sharing was over for now.
"We wait. We don't have enough information to begin to form a rescue plan. We have to trust that Hill and her people are watching over Clint and trying to find Fury."
"Clint wouldn't wait; he didn't wait to get me out."
"He was on the inside; he knew what was going on. And more importantly he had a place to take you that he knew would be safe, at least for a while. Where would we go? I suppose Stark Tower if we could make it there but you know they have to already be watching that place. Whoever, they are. This just can't be the work of…"
"Don't. Say. His. Name."
"Wasn't planning on it. I was going to say this just can't be the work of one man. He couldn't have taken in Clint by himself. He had to have help inside the organization. We don't know who is on what side besides Hill and that is just because she knew that phone number and I just feel I can trust her."
"Then we go meet Hill and get Barton out of there."
"You are not going anywhere Romanoff and that's final. Clint didn't want you anywhere near S.H.I.E.L.D. until you were physically and mentally ready. Do you want everything he went through to get you out, everything he's probably going through now to keep you safe to be for nothing?"
"I'm ready."
Steve stares at Natasha's trembling arm leaning heavily on the kitchen table. His gaze then moves to the beads of sweat forming on her forehead, then down to the trickle of blood running down her leg, from an obviously reopened wound. He returns to his gaze to her face, staring at now two eyes, noting that although he can now see the whites of both of them the swelling hasn't completely gone away. "The only thing you are ready for is more medication and a rewrapping of that wound. Now go sit on the couch and I'll get the supplies."
Natasha doesn't move. She glares at him while trying to will the trembling to stop. Her body aches for relief but she will not be ordered around.
"I'll carry you there if necessary. But if you want to help Clint, you'll let me help you get better." Natasha reluctantly begins to limp and stumble in the general direction of the couch, but her gaze is toward the guest room. As if reading her thoughts Steve continues, "I can get to your guns quicker than you can Romanoff." Natasha sighs and continues toward the couch.
Steve brings her some food and a bottle of water he retrieves from the fridge. Then he brings the medical supplies into the living room, gives her a pill to take and begins to unwrap her wound. "That's the last of the pain medication. If Hill hasn't gotten us more by morning, I'll see if my neighbor down the road has anything. Don't worry; she's a nice old lady who doesn't know who I am. I visit her about once a week. She lost her husband during the war, World War II, and loves to reminisce about that time. She thinks I'm a history expert or something since I know so much about then." Steve removes the last of the bandages. The wound is a diagonal slash, about eight inches long and up to an inch deep, ragged and barely being held closed by surgical tape. "When Hill calls back I'll see if she can find someone who can stitch this up. I have some basic field training but I wouldn't want to attempt that, especially without anesthesia. I can't imagine how you are walking with that. You are one strong woman Romanoff." Steve was rewarded with a quick twitch of a smile.
"He was going for the femoral artery. I wasn't about to just stand there and let him bleed me out, so I struggled, that's where the rest of the cut came from."
"Didn't want you to be able to give him away?"
"Something like that."
Steve continued to clean the wound, being gentle as possible. He could feel a lot of heat around the wound and worried that it may be infected. He didn't want to remove the tape for fear that he couldn't get wound closed again so instead covered it with more tape, figuring that once Natasha got real medical care she would at least be unconscious when they took tape off. Finally when he felt he did the best first aid he could he began rewrapping the wound. "Any other wounds that need to be taken care of?" Steve said. He wanted to take care of the ones in her head and heart, but knew those would take time and she would never ask for help with them anyway. Natasha lifted her dress to show a couple more areas covered with gauze pads. Steve removed bandages, cleaned, and checked each one, noting that except for the large wound everything else was healing on their own.
"He hadn't wanted me dead when he made those, just wanted me to scream. I didn't give him the satisfaction." There was another twitch of a smile, there and gone in a second.
"Sometimes that's the only power we have over bullies, not letting them get the payoff of all the hurt they cause."
"He wasn't a bully Rogers, he was a highly trained tort…"
"Bully. When comes down to it, they are just better trained bullies. Even Hitler, with all his power and insanity was just a better equipped bully."
"What do you know of bullies?"
"Remember Romanoff, before I became Captain America I was the poster boy for the 98 pound weakling. It's like I walked around with a target on my back. Sometimes I had people that would save me but there were many times it was just me and the bully. It didn't take much for them to hurt me; with all my ailments, nature had done most of the work for them. Most times I didn't even put up much of a fight, I couldn't; I didn't have the strength. I knew I couldn't beat them physically, but what I could do is not give them the satisfaction of breaking me. Because that's where the real hurt is isn't it? It's not the cuts or bruises or even the broken bones. It's the wounds they leave in our heart, head, and on our very soul, those are the scars that truly hurt and keep on hurting long after the beating is over.
"Yes." It's barely audible and Natasha turns to Steve but can't maintain the gaze and looks away.
"I still have nightmares sometimes where I'm back to my old self; I'm trapped in an alley surrounded by bullies. I struggle with them at first but it's not long before I'm on the ground in a fetal position waiting for the beating to stop. But it never does, and parts of me are being chipped away. Not just skin and bone but I can feel my soul, my mind just leaving. I always wake up before it's all chipped away. But it leaves me wondering what would've happen if not for the serum. Would the bullies have won eventually, would they have succeeded in chipping away all that was me and replaced it with something else?"
Natasha tentatively reached for Steve but pulled her hand back at the last moment. She tries again just hovering over his forearm. In the end she gives him a quick couple of pats on his arm and then reaches for the remote on the coffee table. She flips channels until she finds a black and white movie.
"You see Romanoff, I've never experienced torture on the level you have, but I understand the basic concept."
Natasha nods in acknowledgement.
"I've finally figured out the microwave, should we have popcorn to go with our movie?"
"Yes…thank you."
"You may want to save the thank you until you've tasted the popcorn. I still working on getting the timing right, the instructions are not really helpful.
The movie ended up being some screwball comedy that Steve vaguely remembered seeing in the theatre when it first came out. He had gone by himself to escape life for a while but right now the movie wasn't having the same effect. He had too many things on his mind, Natasha, Clint, Fury, Hill and what was really going on at S.H.I.E.L.D. He was out of his depth right now and he knew it. He thought of calling Stark and Banner but figured there had to be a reason Clint hadn't gotten them involved in the first place, maybe a good reason. It was yet another thing to ask Hill if and when she called again. Steve looks over to see Natasha, hand partially in the bowl of popcorn, fast asleep. Apparently the medication was finally starting to work.
"Natasha," Steve says gently hoping not to startle her awake, "Natasha, maybe you should go to bed."
Natasha stirs, "I'm good right here."
"You won't be, this couch is not great for sleeping. I speak from experience."
"I'm much smaller than you, I'll be fine."
"I can stay with you in the guest room if that would help."
"I'm not a child; I don't need you to keep the monsters away."
"I'm sorry I'm not Clint. I wish he could be here for you."
"We have to get him back."
"Hopefully tomorrow, but you really should sleep in the bed tonight. That leg probably would heal better with less pressure on it. The quicker it can heal the better asset you will be in getting Clint back."
"Okay."
"I'm going to help you to the guest room so we don't open that wound again. I'll see if Mrs. Danvers, that's my neighbor, has an extra cane around, doesn't seem like she throws much of anything away." For once Natasha didn't argue, but allowed Steve to help her off the couch, to the guest room and into bed. Natasha drifted off immediately but was awaken minutes later by a soft scraping of a chair against the hard wood floors. Steve was seated in the chair next to the bed. Apparently, he had gone and changed into more comfortable clothes while Natasha had fallen asleep. He now was wearing a pair of well-worn grey sweat pants and a black t-shirt which when he turned to Natasha she could see bore the Wounded Warrior Project logo. She thought to herself that the t-shirt choice was not by accident.
"I'm staying in this chair tonight. It is not up for discussion Romanoff. Now, do you prefer the light on or off?"
"On."
"Okay. Good night Romanoff." Natasha said nothing but turned her back to him and went back to sleep.
At about 2 a.m. one of the phones in the bag started ringing. Steve stumbles out of the guest room to find it. "Hello."
"You'll get a delivery at 7am. You won't know the delivery man."
"Doctor?"
"No, they are all being watched too heavily but he'll have what you need. Not much, only what won't be missed around here."
"How is he?"
"In a holding cell for now. Strickland and crew have been requested. Unfortunately," Hill says with a bitter chuckle, "they are not here. They got called away as soon as Clint got brought in, they are traveling on radio silence. Should take at least 12 hours before they can call in to find it was a mistake."
"Thank you."
"I haven't done anything. Anything else you need?"
"I have a question, why hasn't Stark…"
"Too dangerous and too impulsive, that goes for either and both of them. They can come in handy if we need the big guns. What we need right now is Fury. We are doing this without any of our usual channels so it's slow going. Okay times up, I'll call again when I can."
Steve wandered back to the guest room figuring he could still get a few more hours of sleep. He got exactly one.
"Mama! Papa! Ne smotryu (don't look)" Natasha was sitting straight up, her arms wrapped around her, screaming for all it's worth. "Ukhodi, (go away)!"
"Romanoff, wake up. You're having a nightmare."
"Ukhodi, ukhodi, mama, papa, ukhodi." Her screaming was now accompanied by choking sobs. Every scream that pierced the air felt like a bolt through Steve's heart. He repeatedly asked, begged, for her to wake up but she was beyond hearing. Finally he could take no more, and figuring she could just hate him later, he sat on the bed and pulled her into a one-armed hug, stroking her hair with the other hand, telling her over and over that it was all going to be okay. After what seemed like hours Natasha began to register his touch, his words, and woke from her nightmare.
"I'm sorry Romanoff, there was no other way. I couldn't just let you be in pain like that."
Natasha went to speak but what came out hacking cough.
"I'll get you some water." Steve starts get up when Natasha grabs his hand and shakes her head no. Steve resumes holding Natasha, just a little bit tighter, putting both arms around her and moving his head down until his mouth is close by her ear. "I know I'm not Clint…"
Natasha swallows then whispers "But you understand bullies, you know what it's like to be tormented."
"Yes, I do. Let me help you, please."
Natasha's answer is once again swallowed by hacking coughs. Steve extricates himself from the hug, gently removing Natasha's hand when she tries to hold him back. "You need water. I'll be right back."
When Steve returns Natasha is sitting with her feet dangling over the side of the bed. He pushes the chair so that she can prop her wounded leg on the chair, hands her the glass of water then pulls a pillow off the bed to cushion where her leg touches the chair. He then joins her back on the bed.
"May I touch you?"
"You already did."
"You weren't in a position to answer and you needed out of that nightmare."
"You have a point." They sit in silence for a few moments. "Yes." Steve puts his arm around her shoulder and pulls her into him a bit. "Boy Scout."
"I was never a boy scout, asthma." They continued to sit. Occasionally Natasha eyes would water, she was not crying. Steve would give her shoulder a little squeeze and pretend he didn't see anything. "Romanoff, you know that eventually you are going to have to tell someone what happened."
Natasha nods.
"You know you can always talk to me about it, if you want to. I'm a good soldier, but I'm not Kolstov." Natasha nodded again. They sat in silence again; Steve had assumed that Natasha had fallen back asleep but didn't want to move, fearing he would wake her. So he is startled a bit when she turns toward him.
"He made my parents watch."
"I thought your parents were dead, Romanoff."
"They are and he had them watch every minute he degraded me."
