"You never used to cry," said Clint. "Either of you." A watery rendition of him met my eyes over the top of the computer monitors. Tears slid down my cheeks when I blinked. I let them drip onto the table unchecked. They sank into the dust, shining red under the bio-facility's emergency lights.
I breathed out through my mouth and the naked sound shivered into the basement. I cleared my throat and readied my answer, but Clint didn't add anything else.
We returned to skimming the hacked files.
One of these days, he'd have the courage to question me properly.
Two hours after touchdown, report filed, debrief complete, I found Clint not-so-subtly waiting for me in the common kitchen. The sky had darkened by now, dyeing the cityscape outside indigo and gray. Half-leaning against the blackstone counter, Clint gazed into his mug of tea as if it held the secrets to the universe. The microwave had been open so long the light inside had died.
"Any news from the others?" He said when he saw me.
"Nope. Still working." He would've known that. I fished in the side cabinet for a peppermint teabag, waiting for him to get on with it. There, an unopened pack peeked out behind the earl greys, instant coffees, and - was that dried goji? Weird.
"Nat. That thing with Natalia." He side-eyed me. "Is it getting easier?"
"Some days. Other days, not so much." The wrapper burst open like a seed pod in my hands, launching tea bags all over the counter. I gathered them up again, breathing against the sudden roughness in my chest.
"I mean - are you really coping as well as you say?"
"Yeah, Clint. I am." I stared at the teabags lying all haphazard now in their box. "It's not that it's too much to compartmentalize. The grief, the memories - I could've pushed that all back today. Could've sleuthed through those files just as well as if Natalia was doing it."
"Then why? You used to be like steel on the job. Both of you. Unflappable and constant as the surety of the sun rising each morning." I raised an eyebrow at the poetry. He frowned at his cup. "I'm worried about you."
I'm worried about you. Natalia used to say that. Something clenched in my throat. My eyes prickled. I let it come, the memory of Natalia smoothing back our hair to brush against the scar at our temple. The scar that formed after they'd tried to cut her out of me. I'm worried about you.
I smiled at Clint as best I could and set the teabags down. He turned his torso towards me. The angle of the light drew the bags under his eyes into sharp contrast.
"Don't be," I said. "It's a choice. Feeling the hurt, letting it show. Natalia finally gets to touch the outside world all on her own."
I saw from his frown that he didn't understand.
"Back then, before anyone knew, we had to pretend we were one. We wore one face, one body. So we showed one consistent version of us. Not Natalia, but not Natasha either. And because of that, neither of us existed fully on the outside. You understand?
"But I got lucky. Now I have you to see me, and Steve, Tony, Sam, Wanda - all the others. I'm real, really real, because you hear me, train with me, work with me. But Natalia only ever had me." I took a breath, but it didn't smooth my roughened voice. "I'm gonna make sure she always has me."
I covered my mouth - it mashed my nose a little - and shut my eyes. Tears slipped again. There she was, in those warm rivers. My other half. Natalia.
"I think I know what you mean."
A laugh burbled out of me. Just me. She would never laugh again. "Really? I didn't make myself very clear."
"Someone needs to remember her."
I nodded. I had to say it: "You don't get a funeral if your body lives on. Even if she did... no-one knew her. No-one but me." I wasn't sure Clint could make out my words anymore, thick as they were. Each breath scraped knives down my trachea. I relished it. I hugged myself tightly to keep it in, that pain, that remnant of her. The countertop dug into my back. The fluorescent light seared through my eyelids. This moment. Let it run forever. Let it burn into my memory. Let it fill that emptiness, her successor, which surges like a confused tide in the back of my head. Let it be that I never forget.
"I just wish there was someone I could celebrate her with."
"We could try that. You and me." His feather-soft voice. Hold onto that too. The musty-bright smell of peppermint. The sound of the tea wrapper snapping, crackling. Hold onto all of it. The blue gleam of the screens today, the red emergency lights glaring. Hacking had always been her scene. The shine of Clint's eyes over the top of the screens. The fall of teardrops softened by dust. Everything she left for me to feel. The hum of the bio-facility generators - "Nat. Natasha. Could we try?"
"I wish you could, Clint. I wish you'd known her. She was -" I spoke around a sob -"She was everything."
"Tell me."
"Once. Saint Petersburg. Killed a man. First man I ever killed 'cause she did all the killing 'til we were 13. No dose that night. Tore my forearms to shreds. And she came back and kissed my arms till the blood cracked and flaked off our lips and I could finally sleep."
"Oh."
"Winter in Moscow. After the Red Fall? Slept in some aristocrat's absentee mistress' wardrobe. We wanted to die. Then one morning she just got up. Pulled on the glitziest coat in that wardrobe, tied a yellow scarf round our head, pranced round the bedroom with an umbrella. Made like the mistress herself. She said to me, "Natasha, we can be anyone now, not just who the Red Room says we need to be. They said Never Die. We do better. We live.""
Clint hummed.
"I never asked her why the yellow scarf. A wig, maybe, but the mistress was a brunette. All those years. Every night, holding hands. How could I have never asked her?"
"I'm sure she would've told you."
"Yeah. She would've. Maybe she even did, but I forgot. How many things have I forgotten already? How many parts of her lost?" The heart we used to share throbbed in the throat that used to sing.
"You remember what's important."
"The scarf was important to me! The last meal she ate. The first meal she cooked for me. I lost them. I'll never get them back. What if I lose the slinking way she walked? The way she ducked her chin when I tried for a joke?"
"She'd forgive you."
"Well, yes. She always forgave me." I wiped my eyes. My tongue felt thick. The refrigerator clicked into cooling gear, humming louder. I opened and closed it with my foot. It shut up.
"I think I know her a tiny bit better now," Clint said. He hadn't moved closer, wedged between the microwave door and the open cabinet. I appreciated that. "Kind, strong. Must've loved you more than anything."
"Oh yeah."
"What about other people? Any strong opinions?"
Ah, this. I chuckled. "Hated Fury, to be honest. Loved an arrogant mark, though. Loved to fuck with them."
Clint laughed until he didn't. "Wait. Wait - in Budapest, with Father Horton, that wasn't...?"
"Mmhm, that goodbye kiss was Natalia alright."
"Oh, shit."
"Yeah." I couldn't help smiling at the memory. That old wretch with his pompous headdress and clutchety fingers, struggling against the strap-chair. Natalia, plaguing him for the short rest of his life with the perfume of a child bride who never existed and the certainty of going to hell because of it. "Night, Daddy." Clint's affronted gape unseating his professional mask for a moment.
Clint had seen. And he remembered.
The vice around my chest shifted. I sighed, taking my weight off the countertop. It had been biting into my spine. "I loved her."
"Would've been hard not to, huh."
"Mmh."
I reached around Clint, flicking the kettle on. He ducked under the microwave door like a dunce instead of shutting it on the way to the sink. I didn't feel like peppermint anymore and tossed the box down the back of the cabinet.
"You can always tell me about her, okay? Anytime you remember something," Clint said around a teaspoon. "I won't forget."
The goji and I stared each other down.
"Peppermint," I said. "It was her flavour." And I took the goji and wrangled it into some hot water.
He raised his cold mug. "To Natalia."
I lifted mine, thanking him with a smile. "Natalia."