Note: This took a long time and I'm sorry about that! I'm planning to push on to finish this story instead of hopping around to other works in progress! Still not sure if it'll end at 7 or 8 chapters, depends on how much time we cover per chapter, heh.
Chapter Five: Collapse
As Christmas approaches and she is faced with the knowledge that she'll be spending it alone, Natasha gets an idea that she just can't shake. Once he'd brought her into SHIELD, she'd spent a good half of her Christmases with Clint and his family, if not more. Always careful; the agency and later the Avengers knew that they were close friends, but idle curiosity at what Natasha and Clint might be up to could easily have translated into discovering the homestead. In retrospect, she wishes she'd just said to hell with it and gone every year, but discovery hadn't been a chance either of them had wanted to take. Now Nat's looking at the long gap of time since she'd last spent the holiday with the Bartons and the fact that it's just going to get progressively wider. 'Just coping' no longer feels like enough.
Natasha spends the three days leading up to the twenty-fourth writing code to create a compact, portable version of their holographic contact program so she can take it with her to Missouri just in case. Okoye, Rhodes, and Steve can't contact her, but Tony and Pepper might, and she doesn't want to miss that. She doesn't know if Rocket or Nebula or even Carol celebrate the holiday, but they might know that she does. As solitary as she's been at various points in her life, Nat wants to keep the family she has, this time. Time, circumstance, and actual villains have ripped her away from her loved ones in the past, sometimes when she couldn't fight back, but she's fighting with all of her power now.
Natasha packs up the laptop supercomputer and loads it with her smaller bag into the Quinjet, and right before she leaves, she heads down to the equipment lockers. There, she takes her arc reactor nanosuit and Clint's, smoothing her fingertips across the Black Widow symbol that Tony had fashioned onto the circular shape. The light in the wall space where they had been housed goes out when she takes them, something she never noticed before.
Nat wonders if that sends a message to Tony. She further wonders, as she leaves a note behind and heads out to the Quinjet, if it'll hurt more if she doesn't hear from the Starks, now that she's seen that light go out. After setting up the flight and putting it on autopilot, Natasha pulls out the laptop and connects it to the secure network linking to FRIDAY's database at the Facility. Since she and Steve had trolled the press earlier that year for the first anniversary of the Snap, she knows exactly where to find the files that govern the lighting grid for the entire Facility site. It takes most of the flight for her to find where the toggle that the lights for the nanosuits leads to, but when she finds it, she hugs her arms around herself in unexpected happiness.
It's a world map with active signal displays for the three suits missing from the equipment locker. Nat stares at the Hong Kong dot for probably more than is necessary, but does notice that the cluster of two dots in the US are moving together. It's not a proof of life, but it is a locator beacon of sorts, one that sits more comfortably in the back of her mind than the mere knowledge that Steve's on a mission and can't contact her. She can look and see exactly where the suit is, if need be. Because he can't have known this was possible when he took the device, she decides not to zoom in on the map and see just how high the locator resolution gets.
Natasha parks the Quinjet the same place she always does. Her visits have been infrequent, but she's kept their pipes from freezing, their vehicles from rusting, and their house from succumbing to the gloom that she's felt there since their loss. It probably shouldn't hurt as much as it does to drag their Christmas tree from its loft storage location, but then again, the ornaments are mostly handmade by the children, so maybe she feels exactly the way she should.
Taking it back down with no Bartons having witnessed its existence this year will be worse, she predicts.
She finds outdoor lights and thinks, 'fuck it.' Nat puts them out, even the unopened package of icicle lights that Clint had bitched about for two separate Christmases after she'd bought them for him on a whim. Her philosophy is, if Clint shows up and leaves right away, he'll be unable to resist complaining to her about it, and that will mean something too. As long as that's not a new tradition, she'll take what she can get.
When she's done decorating, it's dinner time on Christmas Eve, and she stands beside one of the dried-out piles of dirt in the living room and surveys her handiwork.
The fully-lit, expertly decorated tree looks bare with no presents underneath it.
Fuck.
Laura Barton has always been one of those people who buys things far in advance, so Natasha grits her teeth and goes upstairs, into spaces she doesn't belong, and starts looking for the presents Laura has undoubtedly stashed away. When she finds them, some of them are labeled with future ages. Ages that those children will never achieve, if no one reverses the snap. Tears don't work well with tape or wrapping paper, so Nat goes for a walk instead. After she comes back, she wraps up a present for each kid and files the existence of Laura's stockpile away as a motivator.
Natasha makes Clint's favorite cookies instead of eating a late dinner. She sets out a plate of them and a glass of milk on a table next to the Christmas tree, propping Clint's arc reactor nanosuit against the biggest box (for Lila, a brand new quiver, compound bow, and set of high-quality arrows. Nat had retrieved older, worn versions of the latter two from outside on that first horrible day). The room looks better now, so she curls up on the couch with the blanket she always uses when she sleeps over.
Clint is not going to show up, but if he does, she's shown him that she cares about something she knows he cares about, which is the best Christmas present she can offer in times like these.
88888888
Nat wakes up in the dark to a feeling of unease. Something is off- a smell, a sound, a general sensation of wrong-ness. She knows that Clint's been up to activities that create durable enemies, and she'd gone to bed with ready knives tucked into the couch cushion. Without opening her eyes, Natasha lets her right arm slide sleepily down to where a hilt is waiting.
"Just me," Clint says in a gruff voice.
She pulls the knife anyway, just for old time's sake. "I didn't think you'd come," she says, fluidly shifting from sleep laxity to battle ready with a few shifts of position.
"Yeah, sure looks like it." He finishes off the last of the milk from the glass and leans over to set it back down next to the empty plate.
Natasha turns the lamp beside her on at the lowest setting. "If you want to count this as 'looking' for you, you're going to have to be more clear in your next letter." Clint is wearing fighting gear, tight-fitting maroon pants with straps and pockets and a black vest that wouldn't count as a shirt but for the suppleness of the leather it's made out of. What really stands out, though, is that he's got a partial tattoo sleeve on one arm, now, obviously a work in progress. "So you've just left someplace warm, and you feel safe enough there to make appointments," she observes.
"A contact. He comes to me, I don't go to him," he corrects, touching his blunt fingers to the tattoo he knows she's referring to. "I pay him in retribution."
"Sounds healthy."
He sighs. "I missed your face, but the whole judgment thing? Not so much." Clint runs a hand through his hair and she sees that it's different, too. He has shaved the sides, reminding her of the one summer when he let Lila dye a chunk of hers red and allowed Cooper to get a mohawk that would grow out before school started. Nat doesn't want to know if his current 'do is in his son's honor. She's wrung out enough already.
"You never took my jibes all that personally before," Natasha reminds him. "I missed your face too. She slides down into the seat and sets the knife down beside her as a concession to the idea of not being in conflict, despite her words.
Clint reaches a hand out quickly, then crushes it into a fist and lets it drop, a twisted, sad look on his face. Natasha immediately interprets it as 'please don't leave a knife out where my kids can grab it,' and she rushes to locate the sheath that's still buried between the couch cushion and the frame.
"Still haven't kicked that instinct," Clint rumbles out, "-but I don't know what I expected, coming here." He looks over at the boxes under the tree. "Empty?"
"No. Laura had a stash." She knows the words will hurt no matter what, so she just says them simply.
"Yeah," Clint's face is a mask, but his eyes are glittering. "Everything looks great. Even the lights outside." Nothing much has changed on his face, but Nat knows that the quality of his muscle tension has shifted from pain to panacea. She's always appreciated this aspect of his character, but she sure wishes he didn't have to employ it like this. It makes her push back, even though she doesn't want to push him away.
"Has all that retribution you're involved with screwed with your vision or your memory?"
"It's not-" he huffed out a breath, rubbed at his chin with the flat of his hand for a second, and continued. "Doesn't it bother you, the disparity? The people who survived? I'm not tied down anymore, I can even that out, a little."
Natasha wants to ask him if they've just traded places, but it's unfair, because he's right. The people she was tasked with taking out as a Widow had offended the will of her bosses, but many of the people she's seen death reports of since Clint started his crusade had offended the laws of human decency. Still, it wasn't just the murders she'd carried out that bothered her in retrospect, it was the fact that they were extrajudicial in nature.
"You think my ledger bothers me because of the death? I've killed more HYDRA agents for SHIELD or the Avengers than as a Widow," Natasha tells him. "What's wearing is being in the position to decide life or death in the first place. Would you have saved me, if you met me this year instead of back then?"
His clenched jaw chisels disapproval onto his expression. "You're worth a hundred of those thugs."
"And you're sure?" She means whether he knows they're not savable, and his response makes clear that he understands her exactly.
"I make sure."
She tries one more time. "Would none of them make that assumption about you?"
"What do you want me to do, Nat?" Clint explodes as he stands up, throwing his hands out.
"I want you to come back! I want you to remember who you are. You're not a murderer!" she says, staying put, making him feel the weight of her disapproval in their disparate heights. Her whole body is in tension; if she were still holding that knife, its hilt would have bit into the skin of her hand by now.
"You followed your progression. I'm doing the same."
"Your REgression, you mean," she throws back.
He bows, sardonically. "If you like." Instead of sitting back down or continuing to stand there staring at her, Clint moves to stand near one of the piles of dirt which could still contain dust-like remnants of Thanos's own moral progression. Natasha watches him realize that, sees his eyes close tightly for a few seconds before opening to shift their gaze out the window at the barn. "What's option number two?"
"I didn't come here to make you feel guilty, Clint. I came here to-" her throat closes up. Nat coughs, and the act of coughing makes her need to cough harder.
"Yeah," he whispers. She stands up, goes over to stand on the other side of him, across the dirt.
"A family doesn't break apart because some or even most of them are gone. You're my family, Clint." Natasha smiles."I'm going to fight for that, for you, whether you like it or not."
"You're a pain in my ass."
"Tattoo my name on it then," she says.
"Don't think I won't. As far in as I can, you'll have to dig deep to find it," he tells her. It's so crude that Natasha doesn't think before she shoots a nervous look behind her at the kitchen to see if Laura heard him. It's her responsibility to meet his eyes when she turns her head back and sees that all humor is gone from his face.
"She's going to stand there again," she whispers.
He points at her, his finger barely an inch from her face. She can see that he's been biting his nails down to the quick. "Don't."
"I can't. It's pathological. And the thing that I can't stop thinking about is this: Clint, what happens when we figure out how to bring them back and you and I are back in the middle of a 'do not contact?'"
Clint's arm goes limp, and his expression droops with it. He reaches up with his other hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. His answer is huffed out along with a long sigh. "Simple answer?"
"You stay in touch here or there instead, and I don't spend months worrying about making you angry by wanting to know you're okay?" Natasha suggests, her lips twisting into a wry smile.
"Or you keep me in your heart and out of your mind, and when you figure out how to bring them back, you can come get me." He concedes the misery of this suggestion by moving his hand to the side slowly, almost peeking around it, rather than dropping it away from his face.
"I don't know whether to kick your ass or shove you into therapy," Nat snaps, reaching out to smack his hand away so she can see him. He lets her, and that's probably a bad sign. "I chose the ass kicking with the last friend, jury's still out about whether he needs therapy. He's been spending time with me, so." Clint's brows furrow, and his gaze is perceptive, so she feels every sinew shift as she shrugs as casually as she can, her momentary fury abated. "Rogers."
There's a joyous relief that washes over her best friend's face on hearing the name, and despite everything- the place they're standing, the people missing, the way he's dodged her and demanded that she accept a state of being that keeps them apart -Natasha almost, almost wants to tell him how she feels about Steve. She's given herself permission to accept ninety-five percent of a life that without reciprocation is closer to fifteen, though, and Clint will ferret that out immediately. He'll put paid to the lies she's lived with, and she can't give that life up, not yet.
It's probably as toxic as his murderous life on the run, in the end.
"Hey," Natasha says. She moves around the pile of dirt, shoves at Clint's shoulder. His hand shoots out to grab hers in the same way, their arms partially entwined, palms pressing a little too hard, fingers gripping a little too tight. "What's that face? This is not a handoff, no one is being replaced."
"You're right. Look around, Natasha. No one. My heart is dust."
"What happened to 'I can't afford to lose you too?'" she asks, reminding him of the first time she tracked him down. "What happened to scraping you up and putting you back together?"
Clint's thumb swipes against the fabric of her shirt, a caress softer than any other part of him right now. "I had to compromise to survive. Left most of me here." He swears under his breath and clenches his jaw, looking up at the ceiling, his eyes closed tight. The breath he draws in doesn't form into the words he's struggling to say until she swipes her own thumb against the leather under her own hand. "I was afraid this wouldn't feel like home anymore," he whispers, finally. "If you hadn't been here-" Clint breaks off, drops his head, makes eye contact. The darkness there frightens her by proxy, because it threatens the man she knows he is.
"The skeleton," she says, deliberately breaking his gaze to look at his upper arm where a skull and part of its bony body have been inked into his skin. It's dressed in some kind of armor, maybe, but she doesn't recognize it, and the image is clearly unfinished. "Is that-"
"Ronin," he says, stepping back, rubbing his hand across the tattooed image. "Nomad. Wandering warrior." He smiles humorlessly. "'S what happens when a Samurai loses his master."
Natasha finally recognizes the tone of voice he's been using, and its pungent odor in her memory brings to mind the sulfur-tinged despair of Budapest. Clint had used the same fatalism there, the same 'if this is how we go down, then fuck it, the bad guys go down with us' attitude.
She'd brought him out of it then, and she'd bring him out of it again.
"If you're asking me to cut ties, Clint, you gotta know I'd rather knock you the fuck out, drag your ass back with me to the complex, and stick you in Banner's old digs," she says, crossing the room. The value of the threat is in the knowledge of what she'd like to do versus what she actually does.
Nat goes up to the Christmas tree, reaches up to touch various ornaments. This has to be done right, if she can pull it off at all. She wants Clint to think she's going to bind him to her with the memories of his family, his blood family, until he's so desperate to avoid that pain he'll accept what she offers instead.
"You could try, I guess," he says. "I got pretty good with swords while you were off kicking Cap's ass."
Nat leans down and plucks one of Nathaniel's ornaments from the tree at the same time she picks up the nanosuit. Pressing the dark blue glitter-soaked snowflake against the glow, she walks back to Clint. Defensiveness paints every angle of his face, but she just picks up Nate's ornament and pushes it, glitter side first, into his vest.
"Put the last one on, will you?"
"You know it took me till just about this month to eradicate all of that glitter shit from my life, right?" he gripes, stomping over to the tree. From the back, though, she can see that he's smiling.
"About time to re-up, then. About the no-contact thing: I accept, on one condition."
Natasha had waited until he'd touched her namesake's ornament, till he was faced away from her, until she'd made peace with the sacrifice. Clint turns around, clearly surprised, and Natasha holds up the arc reactor suit. The look on his face shifts to grudging admiration, and she realizes he probably knew when he'd had it the first time that it was trackable. He's already nodding when she says her next words.
"Take this with you, and I'll hold off until we figure out a way to bring everyone back."
88888888
When Nat gets back to the Facility, she puts the computer back mostly unused, except for the tracking program she'd discovered on the way to Missouri. No one had contacted her digitally over the Christmas holiday, but when she checks it the next day, the physical mailbox is full.
After she carries all of the mail inside to examine it, Natasha finds that a disproportionate number of it is for her. They should mean more than they do, these cards and notes sent from across the world, some from other worlds by proxy, but Natasha's spent so much time in the last few days grappling with profound loss that all they're doing is reminding her that each of those people may very well do the same thing that Clint has just done.
Most of the envelopes have the same unfamiliar handwriting on them, meaning that one person in particular probably organized the effort. It's somehow not Steve's, though there's one there in his writing. Nat leaves it to last, along with the one in Pepper's handwriting. Her heart makes her open Steve's before Pepper's, as if Pepper's soothing cursive could heal whatever injuries she might incur from what she's about to read.
Brunhilde's original plan was to request messages from everyone for Thor, but we agreed you could use the boost, too. I signed Thor's from both of us to keep the surprise, I hope you don't mind.
Natasha, your generosity and patience have been personally meaningful, and I've been inspired to reach out to a few survivor groups to pay it forward. I hope I can provide a fraction of the strength you've shared with me.
Love,
Steve
It says a lot of things she'd really love to hear from Steve, but after reading messages of encouragement and well wishes from the others, his feels like… nothing at all, even with the 'love' at the end.
Natasha's seen movies that depict the accepted stereotype of a lovesick teenage girl. Invariably, they're safe, privileged young ladies who might meticulously trace a letter from their crush onto a second sheet of paper in secret, cut the sentiments out, and reframe it into something much more obvious. 'I love you, Natasha' could be easily constructed, she supposes, but her own adolescence had borne an entirely different kind of emotional weight. Thirteen year-old Natasha Romanoff was much more likely to have been sent to a corrupt businessman's house who was known to 'like them young,' kill him with something that mimicked a drug overdose, and construct a suicide letter with the same methods as her American counterparts.
Pepper's letter is similarly short and sweet, summarizing into, 'our daughter is adorable, Tony is a doting dad (take my word for it), thanks for staying in touch even though we've been distant.'
Steve's letter is functionally no different from the others, and yet she feels like it ought to be. She snatches up the envelope and runs her finger across the strip of glue. It's unused. Would he have changed anything if he'd been able to physically slip his letter into the mailbox, fresh from the writing desk that he'd added to his room at the Facility, instead of needing to be careful lest someone read what he wrote to her?
Nat doesn't think so, and that feeling roils her gut more than it ought to. It's a sense of entitlement, one that's physically painful.
This indulgence she's allowed herself with Steve has hobbled her.
Worse, it's unfair to him.
Shit.
She leaves everything where it is (no one's scheduled to be in the building until January 2nd) and heads straight to the sparring room. She's in workout clothes already, this had been her plan anyway, but she can't focus. The room stands for something else now, a repository of spent feelings bought with cash on hand, with no paper trail, no receipts for return.
It's cold outside. She pushes aside the memories of Steve trying to run off his desire for her in the summer heat eighteen months before, but the parallels poison each breath she takes for the first mile.
It's dark when she finally staggers inside, many miles later. Nat has successfully transferred the ache from her heart into her limbs, but the transaction is neatly reversed by the sight of her laptop on her nightstand, opened to the tracking map.
88888888
Throughout January, Natasha's dreams involve Steve knocking at her door while she withers away in various states of decay, reaching out draught-stiffened hands that can't reach far enough to let him in.
Nat wakes up with his fervent words echoing in her ears, longing for the actions that had followed them.
'Thank god.'
88888888
February brings a clear, cold winter sun that helps burn away the deep sense of longing she'd felt in the last weeks of January. Just like before, though, the core of her feelings for Steve remain, as if she'd once again sought an answer in geology and managed to create a refined iron armor for her gemstone heart. The analogy is apt, as she's struck up an unexpected correspondence with Pepper Stark. Listening to the way the other woman describes watching her husband slowly shed the carapace of metal he'd sheathed himself with over the years of their acquaintance is uplifting, even as Natasha steals those freed petals to construct her own version.
She's coming back from dropping off her letter to Brunhilde (the press are desperate for any news about the Stark family, but international mail tampering carries a pretty hefty penalty, so Natasha and Pepper mail their letters to New Asgard as an extra buffer of security) when she walks in and sees that Steve's bag is sitting in the doorway to the small cafeteria.
There's no mistaking the way her pulse quickens.
"Изменник," she accuses herself. The word is more powerful in her mind in Russian, more than a traitor, more than a person who turns her back on the correct course of action. Her heart has chosen the cowardly way out, holding onto what's not hers, rather than choosing to be strong, like she's always taught herself to be.
Natasha walks into the room and sees that Steve's got a knee on the chair at the table where they always sit, and the box where she keeps the letters she'd received for Christmas is open. She wants to call out to him and tease him for invading her privacy until she remembers.
She'd opened the box herself, when referencing something for her letter to Pepper. Steve's had already been laying out.
Her entire plan for convincing him she's ready to stand strong without his shoulder (his dick, her mind helpfully supplies) to lean on is in tatters, now. Will he think she's been rereading it over and over?
Steve turns, sees her, and doesn't smile.
"That bad of a mission, huh?" Nat asks, offering the words with a tone like a ripe mango, tart and familiar.
"You didn't… leave this out since-" he starts, horribly gently.
"No! Jeez, Steve, no. I'm pen pals with Pepper now, I had it out to analyze your handwriting." She walks over, shoulders him out of the way like she's not doing it to feel his warmth. He lets her, but a peek up at him shows that he's got a tiny smile brewing. "Did you know that only nosy, inconsiderate jerks draw their lower-case D's like this? According to Pepper, it's pathological," she says, holding up the letter as she folds it away and stuffs it back into the envelope.
Steve holds both hands up in surrender, the smile fully formed now. "Yeah, I know. Bucky used to give me shit for that." The smile turns slightly smug in a clear reaction to his own words, and Nat turns her body to shrug her hip against the table.
"Tell the truth, how much did that hurt?" she asks.
"Not as much as it used to, still way too much," Steve tells her. He's clearly talking about Barnes, she's clearly talking about Barnes, but she's been practicing the gentle distance thing in her head for over a month now. Time to employ it.
"Well, don't worry, with practice, you'll be swearing as well as Stark does," she says, lifting her eyebrows at him before she snatches away the box with the rest of the letters and starts for the door. She shouldn't have left them out anyway, but the Facility is basically private at this point, with cleaners coming in on a regular schedule, delivery people coming in and out by appointment.
"Nat?" he calls out, and she doesn't want to stop, but she does.
"Mmm?" she intones, spinning around, letting herself look inconvenienced. Steve nods at the box.
"You taking that back to your room?" he asks, and then he winces. "I wanted to talk to you about the, the mission, other things. Wasn't implying-"
If she hadn't spent weeks trying to wean herself off of Steve Rogers, Natasha would have made a comment about not having to kill Okoye, because Steve clearly has completely forgotten how to act around a woman he's fucking. Instead, she puts on her businesswoman face and nods, coolly polite, no innuendo whatsoever.
"No worries. Yes, I am. Talk as we go?"
"Sure," he says, looking relieved. She lets him stew on what he's trying to say, her heart rate jumping and soothing multiple times on the walk, depending on how much of an iron grip she has on her thoughts. Finally, he bursts out, "I've been really unfair to you."
He has stopped walking, so she does, too. "I think I'm obligated to ask you to continue by virtue of my membership in the sacred order of all womankind, and since they're the only ones who know what gear has pockets…"
She trails off, reigning in the thoughts of a different conversation about pockets with another person she's spent long hours searching for to no avail. One mystery at a time, Nat reminds herself. Steve's arms are crossed when he starts speaking again. She wonders if he knows how well she can read his body language, if after months of time spent around her, he's learned to conceal any of it.
"I've been taking advantage of you," Steve says.
"Yeah, right back at you, Rogers!"
"It's not right."
"Which part in particular? Living in sin? Using contraception? Are we extending this to fantasies? Thought crimes?" she asks, rattling through the suggestions faster as his frown grows deeper.
"Stop," Steve says, stepping forward, reaching out. He's the picture of contrition, a choir boy seeking penance after spending over a month in confession, and she's over it.
"That's the word, isn't it? Stop. If that's what you want, say it, Captain America," she throws at him. How dare he reach so deeply inside her to steal away her reasoning? Blindsiding her so she looks like the clingy one, after all of her hard work? Steve's got his hands out to placate her, and he looks so miserable that she's actively frightened about what her own expression might be twisting into.
As she has done for months, Natasha reaches for the thought that's instantly sobering, the thought that always shapes her up, straightens her spine- the person she's deliberately ignored the existence of since he'd left: the 'other woman.'
And it hits her.
"You're in love," Nat whispers. It's so, so obvious.
Steve freezes.
Loving him animates Natasha back into herself like a cartoon character catching up with the reality of gravity. She marches over and slaps his arm, reaching up to try to smack the side of his head, to get some sense into the man. "It's not like you spent the past month and change mooning over me. Go to her! She's obviously still alive somewhere, what are you waiting for?"
He's got his arms up protecting his head. "I don't know, peace talks?"
"I bet she'd never hit you," Natasha says disgustedly, stepping back. "She's probably some midwestern cheerleader who only moved to New York because her dying father made her promise to chase her Broadway dreams. Just promise me you'll forgive me if I throw up in my mouth a little every time she smiles at me with her undoubtedly perfect teeth?"
"You really think that's my type?" Steve asks, leaning back as if he's propping up the wall instead of the other way around. The quiet words are perceptive, edging back toward dangerous territory.
"If you need me to relinquish any kind of claim on you-"
He straightens, his jaw tight, eyes earnest, as he stops her. "It's not about you, Natasha, it's about my selfish-"
"So fucking help me if you turn this into an argument about decency," Natasha spits out, interrupting him right on back. "I knew about her, and I didn't care enough to stop! Do you know I spent the last month trying to figure out how to end our arrangement, to encourage you to find her again? I was only strong enough to do that because you weren't here to remind me not to! So don't talk to me about decency."
It's a lie, a shocking one, and she can't bring herself to give a shit. It's camouflage, spycraft, and Nat's one of the best in the business. Steve buys it. He looks relieved for just long enough for her to see it before he turns away, ostensibly to pick up the box she'd left on the floor to argue with him.
It's the last bullet in the chamber, the last millimeter of the syringe.
The exact wrong kind of little death.
"Can I have my box, please?"
Steve stands completely still as he answers, faced away from her, but his tone is the voice he uses when they're fucking, low and challenging. "Only if you promise you'll still spar with me."
Well, she'd wanted to teach him to fight dirty.
"Always."
