March 1, 2013

Clint-

Has it always been you and me against the world? Have we always been so fucked up that we throw the blame on everyone else for our problems?

I know. I know that you say it's not our fault- manipulation and destruction of choices, blah blah blah and all that shit.

But have you ever wondered if maybe it is? Maybe I stood there at four years old and told them what I wanted to do- I don't know, I don't remember much of anything from before I was like twelve. I mean, you learned to be an archer by choice, after running away from home by choice. So maybe a part of the reason we're so screwed up is because of ourselves, and part of it is because of what has happened since.

You say there's nothing wrong with me. You always say that, with such confidence. No, Tash. It's the rest of the world that has the fucking issues. Think about it this way: if there wasn't something wrong with me, would I wake up at 2 in the morning, sitting on the kitchen floor and shaking, shattered glass and my own blood all around me, and not remember how I got there? Would I spend some nights so absolutely paranoid that I turn on the shower and sit in the back corner with my gun in my hand because it's where I feel safest?

If there isn't something wrong with me, what am I always hiding from, Clint? Because I don't know anymore.

Loki comes in my nightmares. He stands there, a dark shadow, and just looks at me. And I hear his words in my head, and I feel that same fear I did last May. I know you'll remember exactly the ones I'm talking about. You watched the security footage enough you probably have it memorized still.

Is it wrong of me to think I'm still hiding from him? Is it wrong to be afraid that he'll come back? Is it wrong to be scared that he'll take you from me again?

My brain won't stop thinking and I need it to so I don't weigh all the options. You can't be compromised again, not like that. I don't think I could handle it a second time. But my mind keeps jumping to the same thing now and I think it's the nightmares and lack of sleep talking because it can't be true, it just can't, that I've lost you again to the bastard. That you're going to walk through this door any minute with your eyes that awful too bright blue and that this time I'm not going to be able to stop it.

Is it wrong of me to be absolutely terrified that you trust me to kill you? I think about that a lot, the day it was all over and we walked around the city while everyone else ran off and you looked at me and whispered, "Tasha, if anything like this ever happens again, I need you to promise that you won't hesitate to kill me." Then I slapped you and said you weren't allowed to ask me things like that and called you a bastard and stalked off.

I don't want to kill you, Clint. I don't want to think there is ever a possibility that I might have to. Barcelona 0'5 was bad enough and all I did was pretend to kill you so they would chase me instead since you were being all martyr-ish and sacrificial, and I would rather never have to do that again either.

Never would I voluntarily take away the only part of my life that ever makes sense. You should know that too. I need you to much, Clint. I wouldn't survive a week here without you. All I'm really living off now is the promise you'll be back soon, and that's just from Fury.

I don't really hate you. How can you hate the only person who's ever truly cared?

-Nat

March 25, 2013

Clint-

The results from my last physical came back and I suppose I passed. Well, I was ready to get tested on that back in like January, but I guess it's still good news. Everything is healed and back in order, I just have to keep doing those stupid stretches to "strengthen" my muscles again. My data crap from the mental examination was sent in yesterday, so I should be cleared entirely by the end of the week.

Sleeping for a whole week with those neurological scanner things is a serious pain in the ass.

Even more a pain in the ass is the preparation, the randomly showing up in the lab and having Banner, not even looking up, say "Let me guess- you need something to help you sleep that they won't be able to detect." Of course, then he explained that he and Tony had already figured it all and gave me this bottle of pills. If you want to be technical about it, it is cheating the system. But I don't really need a mental health check in the first place, so jokes on them. I'd be perfectly fine if you were here and I wasn't cooped up in that building so much.

I'm back at the apartment right now. All our furniture is still here- everything is just blank and desolate and sort of creepy silent. But it's so much more relaxing without Stark's incessant noise and explosions shaking the building and Rogers always being everywhere you don't want him to be and Pepper's heels on the hardwood. You can focus your brain when the only light is what the streetlights cast around shadows on the wall and there's just silence for once. Except that goddamn pipe that always creaks. That's still here.

It's hard to believe, what with all the screaming and shattering glass and gunshots, we never got kicked out of this place. I suspect SHIELD had something to do with that. The other people in the building must like it- it would be like living in the tower without all the assholes around to be annoying all the time, only cheaper and simpler.

I remember when we first moved in here. The day Fury told us we had to share an apartment since we wouldn't be in it much anyway and threatened to make us live on site with all the junior agents if we didn't just accept his offer. You make some asshole comment about us living together and the wall I kicked you into broke. Back then, of course, we just had the SHIELD issue, post-base-living "furniture rations"- the two beds, that awful table, the refrigerator that was always humming. We bought a couch a month later and the guy at the store thought we were making a gift registry for our wedding, and you had to stop me from punching him so we wouldn't get thrown out.

You know, those drugs Banner gave me really did help. I wish they could be a constant thing- it's so nice to sleep for nine hours at once.

And I didn't have nightmares.

Dreams. I, Natasha Romanoff, had actual dreams. That were happy and stuff.

Though they might not be considered dreams. They were mostly just memories, but happy memories. The-ones-you-talk-about-at-weddings-as-big-funny-stories-in-a-person's-life kind of happy memories.

You were in all of them. Imagine that. I mean, I had so many happy memories from being a mindless Russian child soldier/robot/puppet It's hard to believe more of those weren't thrown in there.

All too well is how I remember them. Too well for being in a drug induced sleep. But I guess they were all already there in the first place.

We had a mission back in '02, one of the first they sent us on after I was cleared for duty. We were supposed to catch a train from Edinburgh to some other random Scottish city, like real tourists, but we missed the train because you couldn't read the damn map. I had to hotwire a car, and you wouldn't let me drive because it was "ungentlemanly like" if we were supposed to fit in. Then of course you found a CD in the player of the car we took and you spent the whole ride singing a load of Beatles songs and didn't know half the words. Octopus's Garden was your favorite and you made me listen to it nearly 45 times until I sang it with you.

Then of course we had to stop the deranged man who was trafficking genetically mutated sheep that were actually time bombs…the less fun part there.

Riding on the bottom of a police helicopter in Berlin while they searched the city for us- that was fun. Even after you almost fell off from laughing at their stupidity.

Brussels, '07, when we had to the target switched locations and ended up spending the night at a gay bar. The look on you face when I told you we had to switch jobs is one I may never forget- the look of pure disgust and anger and then the realization that I got to witness the whole thing from the building across the street. You were so pissed that you almost blew the operation by nearly getting thrown out.

The first time we ever got caught was in Frankfurt, and even then it was on purpose. They tried to tie us up with ropes. There we were, sitting in a room tied to chairs and you were just talking aimlessly to pass the time, something about flowers and lions. You didn't even realize I had gotten free until I cut your ropes too and tipped the chair to make you shut up. After, you refused to talk to me for three days because I wouldn't tell you how I got free.

Probation. There are always good memories of being grounded, mostly because those are the times we gave Coulson the most shit around base to get back at him for keeping us there. There are still burn marks on the walls on the fifth floor from when we rigged the office chairs so we could drag race. The ruined mats from the first paintball war are in the storage closet in the training room. You can tell where windows have been replaced from hallway soccer. A collection of cables sits in a box on the roof because we're the only ones who know it's there. They never found the microphone system we set up in the vents across the building. Or the food stash that caused the rat infestation a few years ago.

Rio is one of the places I remember the best, after the shooting match and the fire and near death experience and all. I remember waking up on the shit bed in the shit safe house the next morning and you being all worried and stuff, talking about smoke poisoning and the near 3rd degree burns across my arms and all I could think about was the fact that, when I was lying on the ground unable to breath and barely conscious, you had called me Nat, and no one had ever done that before. I'd always been Natasha up to then, or Romanoff, all formality and no real sense of self. Then suddenly I was Nat, and then I was Tasha and Tash and it felt like we finally had a connection.

And of course there's Budapest. I had a dream on…Thursday, I think it was. But not all Budapest was happy. Most of it actually wasn't, at least from what I remember, and tis memory wasn't very clear. Just a bunch of blurry things and some muddled words that I think you said, and I don't really know.

Oslo 2010- I remember Oslo. Our extraction got delayed after we finished the mission early- when all goes to shit, improvisation is necessary and all- and you were all sarcastically pissed since you didn't get that dance I promised you because of the mess we indirectly caused. It was like 3 in the morning when I was getting a glass of water- imagine that, I couldn't sleep- and you come into the kitchen of the hotel room all tired and still pretend angry. You reminded me that I owed you a dance, and you put on our song and you wouldn't even let me close the refrigerator. How romantic- a refrigerator light dance. And I purposely stomped on your foot after you said that.

There's a picture in your box from Oslo. In that exact hotel- I'm pinning up my hair and watching you in the mirror. It was right after you asked how was able to pin knives in my hair; I told you it was a trade secret. You pouted for a good five minutes before you got the camera out and all was well in the world of Clint Barton. There are a couple more pictures from that mission, just of us in the hotel, making faces at the camera as we waited to leave.

I've gone through all of them, you know. All the pictures. It's alright, sometimes. They make me angry sometimes, but mostly the one on your table. We're so unrealistically happy that it just sort of makes me want to shoot something.

But I think I'm gonna be okay. I'll be back to work soon and everything will get back to normal. Banner's still doing sciency stuff. Stark is still exploding various parts of the building. Pepper works, Steve does missions and boxes when he's home.

Routine is what I need right now. A simple schedule to work off of so I can fix…myself.

Normal.

Or as normal as we can get, right?

-Nat