Sam turned on the light in the guest room and ushered Steve inside. "Sorry Joanne isn't here. The hospital doesn't take holidays. She gets off at 7, so I'll introduce you in the morning. You'll like her. She's a real charmer and she can put up with me."
Steve tried to smile. "I'm sure she's great."
"Yeah, she's pretty special. I'm sorry things went down this way. You should know, we all did our best to help out with James. Natasha's done a good job. I know she's happy to have you back."
Steve wasn't sure how to respond. He knew Natasha was relieved to see him again, but happy wasn't exactly the word he would have chosen. "She's going to let me be with James."
Sam nodded. "Look, I'm just going to come right out and ask, because I have to work in the morning, and I don't have time to pry it out of you, so what happened?"
"I told you. A malfunction of-"
"No, no, not that. I get that. Bad luck and terrible timing, pardon the pun. Pretty much story of your life, and mine, since I met you. What happened tonight with Nat? Why are you here?"
Steve sat down on the bed and looked at his borrowed shoes. "I was too late. She said she's moved on."
Sam leaned against the wall and stared at the ceiling. "Well, this is awkward. I'm sorry, Cap. I'm also a little surprised. You sure she said those exact words?"
"I wouldn't be here if she'd said anything else. I love her, Sam. Looks like I was late for another date. I'm getting real tired of always missing my chances."
Once James was finally in bed, Natasha sat on her couch and let herself cry. She hadn't given herself the right to cry when she thought he was with Peggy. As much as it hurt, it seemed poetic in its own way. Steve got his happy ending. She got hers in James. It was enough. She never put up with anyone saying anything bad about him, not even after the others found out she was carrying his child. She couldn't blame him. She came on to him, not the other way around. This was her fault.
Knowing he was happy in the past was something she could live with, but he wasn't in the past. He chose her. Everything she thought was true was a lie. If it weren't for one bad batch of Pym particles, he would have been at her side. How was she supposed to process this? How was he? It just wasn't fair.
She wasn't sure how long she sat there in the dark before Alexi entered the room. She dabbed her eyes and sat up a little straighter, hoping he wouldn't turn on the light. He didn't. He just sighed as he took a seat beside her. "Did he leave because I punched him?"
Natasha shook her head. "I sent him to Sam's. He needs someone to help talk him through all the thoughts going through his head."
"So, you believe his story?" Alexi asked. There wasn't any of his usual gruffness in his voice, just concern. "Of course you do. I believe it, too. I'll apologize for hitting him."
"Thank you. He wants to be around for James," she said.
"I won't stand in the way. Perhaps it's time I let this rivalry go. I'll try to be more American."
Natasha rolled her eyes. "You couldn't if you tried."
"I can do a lot of things. Being American is easy. John Wayne, pizza, Die Hard. See, I know how to do this? There's nothing I wouldn't do for my favorite sister."
"I think you've proven I'm your favorite more times than I can count, but thank you. I don't know how to do this, Alexi."
"What? Be happy?" Alexi asked, reaching over to turn on a lamp. "That's obvious. If you knew how to be happy, you wouldn't be sitting here slobbering. You'd be upstairs making love. He should be here, not with Sam. I will ask again, why did he leave his woman alone after learning he missed the last five years?" Alexi was frowning. "And, I will answer my own question. Because she is stubborn and doesn't know what's good for her. Natasha, Russia is far superior to America in almost every way. We are stronger, more intelligent. Our patriotism knows no bounds, but we have one flaw, just one. Stubborn women!"
"Hey, watch it. You're supposed to be on my side, remember? The father of my child just turned up on my doorstep."
Alexi nodded. "Exactly! The father of your child just came back into your life after not abandoning you in the first place, and you are not in his arms." He flung his arms up over his head and gestured wildly. "Stubborn woman, what is going through your mind?"
"It's too late," she whispered. "I've moved on."
"What? Mister Casual, Attorney-at-law? You haven't moved on. You just found a warm body to ease the pain. You love the other one."
Natasha closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "I've always tried to be more than what they made. More than just a trained killer, more than soulless monster, and I think I've become more. Really, I do, but there's always this voice in the back of my head reminding me love is for children. I thought I'd beat it down a few times, but I didn't."
"Yet, you did. You love James. You love your friends. You even love me, and I am grumpy." Natasha opened her mouth to argue, but he put his hand up to shush her. "I am. It's okay to acknowledge it."
"I'm not talking about that kind of love, and you know it. Do you realize I've never had a real romantic relationship? I wanted one with Bruce. He left. I wanted one with Steve. He left, or at least it felt like it to me. This this with Matt is probably the closest I've ever had. He doesn't love me. He just really enjoys being with me, and I enjoy being with him, too. It's never going to be serious, not really, but it is nice to have something normal. James needs me to be normal."
Alexi laughed. Natasha glared at him. "You and your obsession with normal! Ever since you retired, you've been so desperate to be normal. Normal people don't fly off to alien planets and jump off cliffs. You're never going to be normal. James isn't even normal, no matter how hard you try to pretend. He has a gift flowing through his veins, yet you won't even show him how to use it properly."
"He can be normal if we give him a chance. I didn't have a choice. Steve really didn't either. The asthma was debilitating. Taking the serum was the only way he could do what everyone else did so easily. He wanted to fight Nazis. He didn't know what it was going to cost." Natasha fidgeted in her seat. She hated having to explain herself. "Steve, God, Steve almost got to have a normal life. He had the chance to go back. He gave up it up for me, and I moved on. He's my best friend, Alexi, and I stole his chance at normal. That's not love. If I loved him, I wouldn't have moved on, right? Pepper didn't."
"Pepper's husband died. You thought your lover left you for another woman. Of course you moved on. I would have preferred you do it sooner myself, but I was angry. Moving on is not the same as getting over. Getting over is not the same as never loving. Stop thinking like a Widow, and start thinking like Natasha."
Natasha wasn't sure where her Widow training ended and where she began. Even after so many years of doing the right thing, she never knew. How do you separate yourself from years of training? She tried so hard. Sometimes she thought she had it under control, but every time something went wrong in her personal life, she just shut down another compartment of her heart.
When Bruce left, she felt unlovable. She betrayed him, because she needed the Hulk. She deserved to hurt, so she did for awhile then one day, she decided not to hurt anymore. It was that simple.
When Steve left, she felt the same way. Only this time, it hurt longer. The longer it hurt, the more she wanted it to stop. When it stopped hurting so much, it was over in her mind. To her, it meant she must not have loved him in the first place, but what if Alexi was right?
"Do you really think I would have gotten over him if I really loved him?" she asked. "If it was real, wouldn't I know?"
"Most women would know, but you are not most women. You are like a child when it comes to matters of the heart. I should know. I loved a Widow myself, remember? You're as foolish as Melena, but she loved me, too, you know."
Natasha raised an eyebrow. If Melena loved Alexi, she had a funny way of showing it. He would have done anything for her, and she let him then she double-crossed him over and over again for years. "I know you want to believe that."
"I believe it, because it's true. On the bridge, the night she died, that bullet wasn't meant for her. It was for me. She jumped in front of me. I held her as she bled out before my eyes and she told me." Alexi dabbed at his own eyes. "She never gave us a chance in life, but she loved me until she died. The Iron Maiden didn't have an iron heart. What is your heart made of, Natasha?"
When she didn't answer, he took Natasha's hand and squeezed it. "I'll tell you how this is going to go. You're going to push him away. You're going to destroy his heart and your own then this poor lawyer is going to get his heart broken, too. We'll end up sitting on this couch again, you'll be crying, telling me exactly what you're telling me now." He raised the pitch of his voice and tried to sound feminine. "You'll blabber just like a little girl, 'I just can't love, Alexi. I don't know how.' I'll wipe your tears, and say I told you so."
"But-"
"No buts. It will happen, because you're stubborn." Alexi stoop up and went to the bar. He grabbed a bottle of vodka and filled two shot glasses, "or you can just skip the heartbreak and admit you're wrong. Go to him, Natasha. Make me the most miserable Russian super soldier on the planet. Make me walk you down the aisle and give you to Captain America."
Alexi downed his shot and the one Natasha assumed was for her before walking towards the stairs. He turned to face her. "No vodka for you. You don't deserve it. Besides, you shouldn't drink and drive."
"I'm not going anywhere."
He gave her a knowing look. "Aren't you?" Without giving her time to respond, he walked up the stairs and entered his bedroom.
Natasha only stayed in her place for another minute, before getting up and grabbing her keys and heading for the front door. "What the hell am I doing?"
She didn't expect a response, so she was startled when she heard Alexi's booming voice. "Following your heart. Now get going before you talk yourself out of it or I come to my senses and stop you myself."
Steve was physically and emotionally spent by the time he and Sam finished catching up, but he couldn't sleep. He guessed technically he hadn't slept since the short nap he took on the flight to Vormir. How had he loved and lost so much in a day? It was surreal.
He was fluffing his pillow for what felt like the hundredth time when he heard the knocking. He looked at the clock. It was almost midnight. His started to ignore it. It was Sam's house. Sam could deal with it, but Sam was sleeping. He was wide awake. He might as well make himself useful.
He wasn't prepared for the vision in front of him when he opened the door. Natasha was just standing there. Her eyes were puffy like she'd been crying. Snow was falling, but she wasn't even wearing a coat. She had to be freezing. He slid aside to let her enter, but he didn't say a word. Neither did she. She just paced back and forth in Sam's living room like she didn't have any more of an idea as to why she was here than he did.
He watched her for pace several times before she stopped and faced him. "We said no regrets," she whispered.
"We did," he agreed.
"I don't regret it. I really don't. It gave me James." She paused and took a deep breath. "I didn't kiss you just because we won. It wasn't a celebration of life between two friends. I just said that so you wouldn't feel guilty about going back to Peggy." Steve nodded. She wasn't saying anything he didn't already know. "I don't know when my feelings for you started. Maybe it was in D.C. in some sort of twisted way. Maybe it was later after Bruce left, just before the Accords. They were definitely there before the Accords, but I never acted on them. I thought you deserved better."
Steve wanted to take her in his arms, but he wasn't sure she would let him. Instead, he motioned towards the couch. She took his hint and sat down. He sat beside her, careful to give her plenty of room, and took her hand. "Nobody's better than you."
"When I was standing in the water, I thought it was a dream. I never thought I'd see you again, but you were there holding my hand," she said, looking down at where their hands were joined. "I thought maybe I'd finally earned the right to be happy."
"You saved a lot of lives."
"But, I destroyed yours. You were going back to Peggy. If I would have known-"
"I'm glad you didn't."
She looked up at him. There were fresh tears on her face. "Really? Because you should hate me. If you had just stayed with Peggy, you wouldn't-"
"Have a little redheaded boy named James? I've only known him a few hours, Nat, but I sure wouldn't want to change that. I'm the one who messed up. It was my mistake. I own it. I'll learn to live with it. You had every right to start over. You thought I abandoned you. You don't have to feel guilty for falling in love again, Nat. We were friends before and we'll-"
Before he could finish declaring his promise of friendship, he felt her lips on his. Steve had no idea what triggered the kiss. He pulled back. "I shouldn't have done that," she whispered. "I don't love Matt."
Steve wrapped his arms around her and let out a long breath. "Thank God."
She pulled back slightly, but she didn't completely leave his embrace. "I don't know how to do this, Steve. He's a good person. He shouldn't be caught up in any of this. It isn't fair."
"I know."
You touched his face. "I'm not sure how I feel about you either. I thought I knew, but a lot has happened since you've been gone. Alexi thinks I love you."
He kissed her cheek, letting his lips linger on her skin for just a moment. "I hope he's right, because I know I love you."
"I'm not even sure why I'm here. This is messy. I don't do messy, Steve, not anymore. James doesn't need messy."
"We don't have to figure everything out right now. We said we'd figure this out when I got back. I'm just sorry it took so long to get here. It's been a really hard day."
She pulled herself out of his arms. "You should be sleeping. We'll talk about this later. I'll let myself out."
Before she could stand, Steve grabbed her hand. "Can you stay with me? Just for tonight. I don't want to wake up in the morning and think I dreamed this."
She nodded and let him lead her to Sam's guest room. As they crawled into bed, he put his arm around her and she scooted in closer to him. She didn't speak, but he could feel her fresh tears on his neck. He placed a kiss on the top of her head. "We'll be okay, Nat. Whatever happens, we'll be okay."
Wilson Fisk looked at the image on the screen. Of all the women in the world Murdock could get involved with, he had to choose this one. The infamous Black Widow! She was supposed to be retired, but Wilson now knew better. If this woman was on Murdock's arm, she was a risk to his empire.
It should have been a lucky break. Since his henchmen discovered Daredevil's identity, they'd been searching for the right weakness. Any other woman would have made the perfect target, but this one was too well-connected, too powerful even without her fellow do-gooders. He couldn't take her out directly.
Fisk pulled up more images. He looked at each one carefully before moving to the next. Finally, he found his target. She had a son.
