MCU (c) Marvel Studios

In the end you will give up the fight. Unescapable! 'Cause you're losing your mind and you sleep in the heart of the lies. Where is the edge of your darkest emotions? Why does it all survive? Where is the light of your deepest devotions? I pray that it's still alive. It's the rule that you live by and die for. It's the one thing you can't deny even though you don't know what the price is, it was justified. You can't stop yourself; don't want to feel, don't want to see what you've become. You can't walk awayfrom who you are. — Within Temptation

They packed without speaking; they didn't have much and any gifts they got for Christmas had been with the fact that they needed to up and leave at a moment's notice foremost in their minds. Only both she and Steve had hoped that things wouldn't be so pressing, that they both could wait a little longer and enjoy their time together. Almost three months of peace and quiet was nice, but now with the looming mission in their minds (back to Russia no less), she wasn't sure if she could do this. She paused in packing, glancing at her left hand. The ring sparkled in the dim light, she fought the urge to take it off and hide it in her pocket. It was pretty with silvery white gold and clear diamonds, a symbol of purity. How could she ever be worthy of such a ring, when her hands dripped scarlet. She looked at Steve, who had finished packing and was pulling on his uniform. The red and white stripes had darkened due to grime, a hole was starting to appear near the star on his sternum. He sniffed, rubbed his nose and grabbed his bag. "Ready?"

No. "Yeah," she said, she had changed into her cat suit before packing and donned the Kevlar vest to complete the ensemble. She offered him a weak smile, swallowing a little. There was so much she wanted to tell him, to make him understand that this mission was better done by her alone; that he should stay here and let her take care of her past. "I hate to leave Clint like this without saying goodbye," she said. "After everything…" she trailed off and shook her head and Steve close the gap between them, lifting her chin up with a crooked finger.

"He'll understand, he knows how our lives are."

Her lips twitched into a semblance of a smile as she pulled her head away. "I know." She bowed her head, thumbing her engagement ring that felt alien on her finger. The urge to take it off was strong, but she fought it, aware that Steve was watching her fiddle with it.

"Are you sure you're up for this?" he asked, tucking some blonde hair behind her ear. She knew he'd ask that, knew she was off her game when Fury brought up Alexi and Ivan, of going back to Russia; her sudden agreement to marry Steve when minutes before she had been considering telling him she needed time to think. She bit her lip and nodded, taking his hand and giving it a squeeze. "Because if you aren't, Sam and I—"

"I'll be fine, Steve," she said, a faux smile on her lips, "this… It's something I must do. Catharsis."

He thumbed the ring, a pensive look darkening his eyes. "Alright," he said. He let out a long sigh, taking a step back and that felt like he had put miles between them. Their closeness over the past months seemed to have vanish and she felt like they were back at the beginning. Distant, hesitant, and unsure of what they wanted from each other. Her hand twitched, wanting to reach for him but she didn't.

"Steve, I—" the trap door opened, and Clint poked his head in. He looked tired, worn out though not surprised to see them dressed as they were. "Clint."

"Nat," he said and gave her a smile, nodding when his eyes caught the ring on her finger. She covered her left hand with her right, feeling subconscious about it. "Steve."

"Sorry about this," Steve said, gesturing to their bags. "Afraid we can't stay for breakfast."

Clint chuckled. "It's okay, Laura's up and she made some food for the road. We knew this'll happen sooner or later," he said. "Take care of her for me, will you? She's my sister from another mister." He winked as she rolled her eyes. "It's true!"

"Don't worry," Steve said, grinning, "I will." His gaze softened, and she looked away from his intense stare, torn between going to him and telling him to stay behind. Clint looked at her, and she gave him a tight hug.

"Be careful out there, Nat. You're going—"

"I will Clint," she said, "I'm not the same person I was back then. I'll be careful." She pulled away and looked at Steve, finding strength in his silent presence. Clint nodded and went back down. She followed and caught their bags and then Steve appeared and closed the trap door. The kids weren't up, just Laura making toast and ham. She slipped the toss-together breakfast sandwiches in bags and then into an old plastic grocery bag. Her hair was mussed from sleep, her robe open to reveal her nightgown, but she smiled at them warm and maternal as she handed the bag to Natasha.

"You be careful," she said, "don't make Clint come after you." She gave them a weak smile. She nodded, feeling the warmth of the food in her hands. Steve was stoic beside her, but there was a tenderness in his gaze. "Hopefully we'll see you for Christmas next year, maybe there'll even be a new addition to the family."

Clint coughed. "Oh, wow… um… I don't know if Clint can handle baby number four," she said. "But if there is one, I hope it's a girl this time. Still waiting for baby Natasha."

"Oh, I wasn't talking about me!" Laura laughed, and mimed scissors and jerked her head at Clint. "I was talking about you two."

She stared, feeling cold dread creep up her spine. She only told two people about her infertility issue: Bruce and Steve. Clint didn't know though she suspected he had guessed, and she knew he'd never tell Laura something so personal without her consent. She jerked when she felt Steve wrap his arm around her waist. "I don't think we're quite ready for that step just yet, Laura," he said, giving her that winning smile he was so famous for. "Maybe Christmas after next or the third Christmas, there may be."

"Ah well," she said, "I just want a little niece or nephew to spoil. Nat's been spoiling my kids for years, so it's time for some payback."

She gave a half-hearted smile to complement Steve's forced laugh. "We'll see," she said, agreeing with Steve. She set the food down and gave Laura a hug, and then hugged Clint again. "Be careful too. Ross and—"

"Don't worry about me," he said, "I'm a master spy and assassin, I can keep Ross off my tail." He winked at her. "It's you I'm worried about," he said, dropping his voice. "Going back t—"

"I'll be fine Clint," she said, her voice taunt with annoyance that the two men in her life that she cared most about felt she was some fragile flower. She needed to face her past sooner or later. A past like hers had a way of eventually catching up with a person, whether for good or for ill. There was no escaping it now, her past was back, and she had to face it.

"I know," he said, she knew it was more to ease his own worry than hers. He hugged her again. "Good luck." He let her go and she picked up the bag of food and smiled at Laura again.

"Ready?" Steve asked her, and she gave a nod, following him out of the house and into the snow. It hadn't snowed during the night, so the path to barn was still clear. The world was grey and silent in the pre-dawn gloom, the stars twinkled in the inky blackness of the night sky. In the east, as the sun rose the stars faded though Venus shimmered a toxic green at the edge of the horizon. Cold air chilled her lungs with each breath and she knew the food would be tepid by the time they reached the jet. They didn't say a word, lost in their own thoughts about the impending mission, the crunch of snow beneath their boot was the only sound that broke the stillness.

She scrapped the tuna can into a small bowl, the cat meowing on her countertop. The stray started coming by a few weeks ago, she coaxed it into her apartment with food. The cat came and went as it pleased and she didn't mind, though whenever it did visit she felt better about everything. Though she never spoke the cat's name alloud, she'd taken to calling it Alexi. "There you go," she whispered setting the tuna before the cat and stroking its silky fur. Ivan was telling her about her latest mission, silvery smoke billowing out of his mouth with each word he spoke.

"You'll be heading to Kiev." She poured some coffee and came to stand in the gloaming, watching her handler with wary eyes. She took a sip. "Name's Yevheniy Vladislavovich Popov. Ukrainian mother, Russian father. Fat as a pig."

"What's the mission?" she asked, the coffee was weak. Her last mission she needed to get information from a French godfather. The money he had from all his illegal dealings had allowed him to purchase only the finest coffee money could buy. Needless to say, the few weeks she stayed in his company she'd gotten spoiled on expensive coffee. Still, weak coffee was better than no coffee, and she took another sip.

"He's been causing trouble for our friends," he drawled, another cloud of wispy smoke curling about his head. Ivan looked swallow, his cheeks sunken in, grey eyes hollow and his hair was starting to thin. He smoked like a chimney and she figured the cigarettes were finally killing him. Wouldn't it be funny, if Ivan was killed by cigarettes? She quirked a smile at the thought that she hid behind her coffee cup. "They want him to disappear."

She paused in taking a sip, then took it. The cat had finished its food and rubbed up against her legs, purring with soft content mews. Her heart hammered in her chest, trying to shoo the animal back into her kitchen, knowing what Ivan would do if he saw it. Black Widow did not have attachments, Black Widow did not love. Black Widow was a tool to be used and set aside until the next use was required. "Shoo," she whispered, prodding the cat away with her foot.

"Natalia?"

"Why not send him?" she asked. She had a few encounters with him before. The first when she was a girl on the cusp of womanhood, learning how to fight. He had been an instructor in arms combat and the garrote. He was stocky, his right arm rippled with muscles and sinew, his shoulders large and powerful. His eyes reminded her of chips of ice, though they seemed clouded with an unseen fog. She learned much beneath his tutelage. Ivan had worked with the mysterious Siberian branch of the Red Room, where he had come from. The second time had been a few months ago in St. Petersburg, in her apartment there. His hands had roamed her body, coaxed sweet sighs and erotic moans from her, as he filled her up and made her forget her life for a rapturous moment. He had babbled in her arms afterwards, telling her of a half-remembered life. A city with a watchful green lady, a bloody war, a woman whose name started with a D (Dottie, Dollie, Ditzie? He laughed and tell her he couldn't remember), and a scrawny strip of a man with eyes blue as the endless sky and a heart purer than gold. The cat mewed again, arching against her legs and slipping behind the couch that Ivan sat on. Her heart leaped into her throat; she prayed to any god that would listen that the cat would leave Ivan alone.

"They want this done quietly, he's too flashy," Ivan said, and took a draw on his cigarette. The cat hopped onto the other arm of the couch and slinked towards Ivan, meowing. The man arched a brow and she kept her face a neutral mask though inside she willed the cat to bolt and leave Ivan alone. "This your cat?" he asked, petting the feline and speaking in hushed tones to it. The cat purred, lifting its chin for scratches.

"No, just a stray," she said, "I try to ignore it, but it keeps coming back."

"Ah." Ivan stood up, the cat bolting beneath the table that she leaned against. Her handler dropped the file on the table. She glanced at it. "You leave day after tomorrow," he said, "I'll pick you up." He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray she had there and headed to the door. He paused only to put his coat and hat on. He left, and she felt herself relax, the cat came out from hiding, rubbing against her.

"You fool," she told the cat, "he could've killed you." The cat meowed at her. She swallowed the rest of her coffee in one gulp, dropping into a crouch and petting the cat. "What am I going to do with you solnishko?"

She jerked when she felt Steve's hand on her shoulder. The doors to the barn were open, the ramp down and she wondered how long she had trekked down memory lane. "I never saw that cat again," she muttered, staring at the plastic bag in her hands. She just assumed that the cat had wandered off, it was a stray after all, and it had a habit of coming and going. But she knew that Ivan had gotten rid of it, some way.

"Nat, are you… okay?" Steve asked, squeezing her shoulder. "If you aren't, I—"

"No, I'm good," she assured him, pressing their breakfast into his hand. "C'mon, I'll get this thing moving. Where did Fury say we needed to go? Poland?"

"Yeah, Sam'll meet us in Kiev." She heard his footsteps as he followed her into the jet. The pilot's chair was plush and cushy, she wouldn't expect anything less from Stark; she flicked switches and as she hummed, the jet rumbled to life and she eased the hefty machine into the clearing before taking off. Steve sat next to her as they took off heading into the east. Punching in the coordinates to Kiev into the GPS she turned around to eat. The sounds of the jet filled the space between he and Steve, a mechanical rumble instead of words. The food was warm, tasted of love and home and that greasy diner feeling (though it came from Clint's kitchen). The act of chewing consumed her conscious thoughts, counting each bite until she reached thirty-two and then she swallowed before taking another mouthful. Never once did she glance at Steve, though she felt his eyes on her, prickling her skin and asking her questions she did not want to answer.

"Stop staring at me," she said, "it's unnerving."

"I'm not… staring," he said, a bit defensive. "Do you know what… do you have any idea what'll be waiting for us in Russia?"

Memories. Memories of blood and pain, cruelty and hatred. "Gimme my bag," she said, snapping her fingers. He handed it to her, she dug through it until she pulled out the file that Fury had given them. Alexi in his red and gold uniform, a hard line instead of his usual gay smile The love of life had vanished from his brown eyes, replaced by something she didn't want to think about. The next picture was Ivan, still smoking like a chimney, though he had become a wizen old man with wispy white hair. She couldn't fathom how he wasn't dead yet, how he was still alive. Maybe he finally decided to test one of his experiments on himself and he managed to live longer because of it. Her brows pinched together, her lips turning into a small frown; the report was grim. Ivan had been buying up certain pieces of property what once belonged to the Soviet Union's more mysterious branches, the ones that Americans made movies about because how could something this horrible, this cruel, this authoritarian ever exist in a country that shouted that it was a "democracy" to anyone who listened. "Russia was never a democracy."

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," she said and flipped through the pages. Ivan was building something. He was one of the last of the Red Room operatives. Madame B was gone, the other girls she grew up with — who knows, but she assumed they had been killed or vanished into the wind. That left her, Ivan and Alexi, apparently. At the bottom of the last page, stamped in black ink was the word: Eliminate. Natasha swallowed, both Ivan and Alexi had to die for the betterment of the world.

She could still feel Alexi's fingers against her cheeks, tender kisses with traces of vodka on his lips. He'd tell her of his childhood in one of the fertile valleys of southwest Siberia with the Ural Mountains looming imposing grey sentinels, telling her stories how his cousin Yuri wrestled a bear and fought a tiger off with a broken vodka bottle. The tenderness in their love making and how he had kissed her forehead afterwards. Now he was twisted in this mockery, this Red Guardian. She dropped the file back into back, standing up and pacing the length of the jet, biting her thumbnail. Alexi had wanted to get a dog with her, told her he knew a breeder that had some husky pups for sale and would give them a discount since he was a friend. Alexi had wanted a family. He had come from a close-knit family filled with aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents. Crazy, brash, boisterous and bound by love; it was natural he wanted to build something like that for himself with the woman he had fallen in love with. Since she couldn't have children, he was attempting to fill the void with a dog. She sighed, tears coming unbidden. He was just a test pilot, he was just serving his country with pride and devotion. Being associated with her caused him to become something he was not supposed to be. "Alexi I'm—" she looked up at Steve. "Steve?"

"I… I know this is going to be difficult," he said, taking her hands and giving them a squeeze. The gesture was comforting, she smiled at him. "I felt the same way when Bucky showed up on that helicarrier. Sam told me that Bucky was the type of stop not save."

That stung, she pulled at her hands, but his grip tightened. "Are you going to tell me the same thing? That Alexi is the type you stop, not save?" She glared at him. "Because I—"

"No," he said, his voice was soft, steady and understanding. He thumbed her engagement ring. She looked at it, feeling cold sensation pool in her stomach. There was a war in Steve's eyes, she could tell, a war between what he wanted and what he felt was right. "If he can be saved, I'll do everything in my power to do it" — he smiled at her — "nobody deserves to be used against their will, and—" he stopped, swallowing down an unpleasant emotion. He was the losing the battle his sense of justice outweighing his own personal desires.

She stood on her tiptoes, kissing him as she pulled her hands free and snaking them around his neck. "Thank you," she said, "but Alexi is my past. You," she whispered, pressing a hand against his sternum, tracing the grimy white star, "are my future."

"Natasha."

"Besides," she said, dropping back down and giving a nonchalant one arm shrugged, "where am I gonna get a view like this."

"Could think of some places," he said, a soft purr in his tone as his hands fell to her hips. He pulled her flush against him, bucking his hips a little and sucked at neck. A moan escaped her throat and she felt a pleasurable shiver run down her spine. He came up for air and she saw the question in his eyes. Pulling away, she wrapped her arms around herself, thumbing the engagement ring. It was heavy and foreboding, all its implications and commitments. Steve deserved better than her; he'll learn all her dark secrets, her bloodstained past. How could he want a woman like her? She was a pariah. She had alluded that she was a monster to Bruce and he had agreed (or rather he did nothing to dispute the fact). Steve had told she was anything but that, though in her heart Bruce's silent acceptance of her statement weighed more than Steve's reassurance of the opposite. "Nat," he said. She turned and looked at him, schooling her face into a tranquil mask of calm. "I know whatever it is… whatever you're afraid of, I'll be right here, by your side. We're partners."

"I know."

"When I asked you to marry me, it wasn't something I did on the spur of a moment. I'm in this all the way" — a smile quirked along his lips — "until the end of line."

She bowed her head, blonde hair hiding her expression. He deserved better than her. "Steve…"

"Whatever we fine in Kiev or Russia, we'll face it together. I promise."

"Do you always keep your promises?"

"Yes," he said, cupping her cheek. "You're not alone, Natasha, you've never been alone. I'm right here, right by your side, every step of the way." She let him kiss her and it was what heaven felt like.

She pulled away first, aching for more than just a kiss. "I'm sorry," she said, "I do love you Steve and—"

"I figured you needed some time to think," he said, giving a little shrug, though she could tell it irked him a little.

"I wouldn't… I love you," she said, "I don't love Alexi anymore. I told you that before. Hell I thought Alexi was dead and…" she stopped when he kissed her again.

"It's fine," he said against her lips. "When this is over we can work out the details."

"I want you to understand that I… I—" she stopped when he pressed a finger to her lips. His eyes smoldered, molten sapphires. It sent shudders down her spine.

"We have a couple of hours until Kiev," he said, his finger tracing her lips, her jaw and her collarbone. "Maybe we can… occupy our time?"

His touched seared her skin and her body arched against his touch, wanting what her mind was refusing to accept. "We can go over the mission file again."

"Already remember what's in it," he said, "anything other excuses? Never thought you'd be saying no to me." He chuckled and kissed her ear. "I remember that smirk you gave me all those years ago at the Bartons when I got on your case for me being a language police."

"Oh?"

"Never got to wipe that smirk off your face." She squeaked when his hands dropped to the back of her thighs and lifted her up onto his hips. "Think I'll do it now."

"Rogers!" she shouted, smacking him on the shoulders. He laughed, eyes sparkling. "Sneak."

"There we go," he said, "love it when my best girl smiles." She blushed. "So beautiful." He kissed her, and she gave in. Kiev was, like he said, a few hours away. They had time.

They had time.

Well, I hit a slump after Romanogers week. Finished a Hero's Journey (don't get it. It's a junior novel and an insult to the intelligence of late grade school children. I mean it was cute for what it's worth and I liked the Captain America part, but meh), and now I'm trying to get back into the groove of things and find a job (which is moving at a glacial pace).

I have the rest of the story outlined. I'm predicting 34 chapters, so ten more chapters. This is the last push, the ends all tied up and we'll be ready for Infinity War.

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