Hey Everyone! So sorry for the late update. But as this is the last chapter of this story, it is a little longer :) Enjoy!
5.
"I hear you got it pretty bad last week," I remark on Monday.
Natasha doesn't look beaten now, but there is a bluish bruise on her shoulder.
She shrugs. "It was just a mock fight."
"Do mock fights usually require a visit to the med bay afterwards?"
"I didn't visit the med bay."
"But you were supposed to, weren't you?"
She pauses for a moment before shrugging. "I am supposed to do a lot of things that don't make any sense, Stella. Take the therapy for example."
I groan. "You've been here for one hundred and seventeen seconds and you've already claimed it makes no sense. Nice job, are you trying to break a record?" Before she could answer I shake my head. "Not yet. Tony Stark, one minute and twenty-eight seconds. But a close second."
"So how is it going with Tony?" She asks.
"Great, actually. Had a session with him where we could talk about his father."
"What did he say?"
I raise my eyebrow and Natasha raises her hands in surrender.
"Can't blame me for trying."
"I am not." I take a deep breath. "So, you are clearly not willing to talk about the mock fight last week."
"Definitely not."
"What are we going to talk about then?"
"You always have the best ideas, Stella."
And I feel like I am falling into the Black Widow's trap again. Sure enough, I have a lot of ideas. But she will make me regret every single one of them.
Well, I have no choice. So I bite.
"Your team."
"What about them?"
"I want to talk about your relationship with your team," I say in a rather forceful voice that only makes her grin in a deeply unsettling way.
"Oh, this will be fun" is all she says though.
"We've already talked plenty about Barton, so I think we can skip the usual round of you stating it doesn't mean anything—"
"And you insisting it does," Natasha is quick to intervene.
"That too," I respond because I really don't have time for this now.
Natasha has a deep connection with Clint Barton, we all know that. She just likes to pretend she is all alone in the world because… well, because it makes her less vulnerable? I am not sure. I stop the chain of thoughts about my lack of results after weeks upon weeks of therapy and smile at her.
"I would like to talk about the others. The team."
"The friendship you clearly think we have?" She asks.
"Don't you?"
She leans back and stretches out her legs, propping her boots on my coffee table. The glass gives a painful clink but I try not to flinch.
"I don't know."
"You don't know if you can call this kind of companionship friendship, if you can count on your teammates as one can count on friends or if you are willing to talk about them at the session today?"
"All three, I suppose," she shrugs noncommittally.
"You risked serious injury for your teammates," I point out.
"It is literally in my contract that I have to count on getting injured or ending up dead," she responds.
"I've seen how you act around Tony. I would say you are on friendly terms. And you always wait for Steve to train together."
"Because he is good and he doesn't pull his punches."
The urge to lean forward, grab her shoulders and shake her violently until she comes to her senses is so strong I fist my hand and press it agains my hip.
Natasha follows the movement with her gaze but does not make any remark.
"Natasha," I say softly. "Please. Most of the time we spend together in this room goes to waste because you want to waste it. But therapy has been proved to help people in your profession, furthermore, it has been proved to help literally everyone. If you give it a chance you might find yourself feeling better. Isn't that worth a shot?"
"Such a heartfelt speech, Stella," Natasha responds.
I can't resist the urge to roll my eyes.
"I think you are afraid, Natasha," I reply. "Oh wait. Natasha is not here, is she? I've been talking to the Widow for months."
Natasha narrows her eyes in a way that probably means to intimidate me. But I stand my ground. Not because I feel particularly confident over my skills to defend myself, especially not from her. But because I know she is able to control herself. Otherwise she wouldn't be such an asset to SHIELD.
She settles on a huff and a shrug.
"Natasha is boring, believe me. I live with her, I would know."
I chuckle despite myself. "Still. Humour me for once."
She takes a deep breath. "So you want to talk about my team?"
I nod.
"How would you describe your relationship with them? And I don't mean Barton, I realise we've been talking about him a lot."
Natasha starts observing her nails again. "I suppose we could be considered as dysfunctional friends."
"Dysfunctional as in?"
"We are not the type of friends who have a lot of fun activities together. We mostly just fight or eat bad pizza or train…" she trails off with a frown.
"What is dysfunctional about it? Many friend groups do the same."
She bites her lip. Suddenly she seems so much more human.
"I…" she swallows. "I am not sure it is safe to merge our personal and professional lives."
"Don't you think a strong relationship would develop your professional cooperation too?"
"Well, I kind of…" her voice lowers to a whisper. "I kind of like them."
She doesn't like that the confession makes her vulnerable, it is clear.
But it gives me horrible apprehension.
And there it goes. First her shoulders start shaking, then she lets out a soft sob. And then the tears start rolling down her face.
She fights with it for some moments before she speaks.
"I feel like they are… the family I never had."
The pen in my hand shakes so much I drop it on the ground.
"Natasha, get out of my office," I say softly.
She blinks at me and for a moment she forgets that her shoulders are supposed to be shaking. "What?"
"Get out."
"But Stella—" she starts but I cut her off.
"I've had enough. During the last weeks you played me over and over again, wasting most of our sessions. But I never thought you could stoop to this level, actually fake crying over your makeshift family. The fact that you clearly thought I would believe you would ever cry in front of me is just insulting."
By the time I finish talking Natasha's eyes are dry.
"Look, it is not that I don't appreciate your patience," she says.
"It is just that you want to keep your secrets. It is that you don't need therapy. It is that you don't have one hour every week for something so stupid. Fair enough. I would like you to leave now, please," I respond. "And don't bother to come back next week."
She finally leaves.
I take off the rest of the day.
+ 1
"Slow down, Stella. You'll tear a muscle."
I look up from the punching bag and blow to get the hair out of my eyes as my hands are wrapped in gloves.
Steve gives me a tentative smile.
Three days passed since I kicked Natasha out of my session, therefore everyone and their mother know about it already.
"I think I am improving," I reply.
I hold my hands up and he steps forward and helps me out of the gloves.
"Yes. But if you keep trying to exhaust yourself so much, you might end up swooning one day," he remarks.
"I am not as weak as I might seem," I reply petulantly.
His smile is kind and not patronising which I appreciate.
"Why don't you stretch and cool down a little?" He asks. "Then I'll show you how to use the bag."
I blink. My face must be tomato red by now.
"I wasn't aware there were instructions," I mumble defensively. "Seems simple enough."
"It's like your therapy," Steve replies making me chuckle.
"I can show you," I hear another voice from behind my back.
I turn around to see the Black Widow in a red tank top and black shorts. She finishes up to wrap her hands.
"I think I'll pass," I say politely but firmly.
But obviously the best assassin in the world does not accept no as an answer.
So I find myself on the mat again, with Natasha behind me controlling my hands to show me how to punch the bag correctly.
Then she steps around the bag and instructs me to try it alone.
"I know you are angry with me," she remarks.
"I am not angry," I deny as I practice the moves she showed me. "Doing therapy with you is my job. The therapist cannot get angry with their patients."
She raises her eyebrow at me in a way that clearly shows she does not believe me.
"I shouldn't have cried last time," she finally says.
"Faked crying," I correct.
"Yes," she says. "i realise I overstepped a line."
"You did," I nod and hit the bag with such a momentum I lose my balance.
In a moment she is there to stabilise me. How can she move so fast?
"I apologise," she says letting my upper arm go and stepping back again when I get back steadily on my feet.
I gape at her. "Beg your pardon?"
"I am sorry about having ruined the sessions, Stella."
I look at her; she seems genuine.
"You don't want to talk about your life. You don't want to give a shot to therapy. I understand."
"It is not that."
"Then what is it?"
"Turn your hip. Right leg forward."
I follow the instructions. She keeps correcting my moves.
She only speaks five minutes later. "I just don't know if it is worth it. What if you come to the conclusion that I cannot be saved?"
"What do you need saving from?" I ask slightly panting.
She shrugs. "Myself, I suppose."
"Not sure I understand," I comment as I sit down and stretch my legs forward.
It feels like we are entering a more serious conversation than we'd done during the sessions. So I figure it is best not to continue working out. I am not that good at multitasking.
Natasha crouches next to me, peels the gloves off my hands and puts them on before positioning herself in front of the bag.
"The guys say sometimes you help them uncover things they don't necessarily want to see."
"I prefer to see it another way. That I give them coping mechanisms."
"To face their monsters?"
"To gut and bury them. To make them vanish."
Natasha starts punching the bag.
"i didn't lie to you, you know," she says carefully.
"You just twisted the truth, right?"
"Kind of."
I don't bite. I don't ask what was true of her stories. Of her feelings. I cross my legs under me and wait.
"You were right about the Red Room. I am not grateful to it."
No shit, I want to say. But I don't talk.
She chuckles, probably to herself only, because when she keeps talking there is no smile in her tone.
"But I learned a lot about life there. Or maybe about death. I had to fight my way through everything there and the prize I won was becoming a part time whore, part time assassin and full time monster."
"You are not a monster."
"Do you think so? You are the sweetest little thing around here and I can't go a session without upsetting you."
I don't know if I should feel offended or flattered, but before I could reply she goes on.
"They sold me to the KGB. It was a transaction, plain and simple. And KGB used me as the pretty doll they purchased. You asked about the skills I learned there. They are all for survival. I spent there three years and it was all about survival."
She keeps punching the bag and her gaze is fixed on her hands.
"i know what you are expecting of me to say. That SHIELD changed me and now I get to live. I have my friends here, I have a good boss, I have Clint, whatever he is to me… and it all fell into place."
She takes a deep breath.
"Reality is uglier. Human connections make me a worse spy and a worse assassin than I am supposed to be. And I am supposed to be the best. But being the best assassin without real trust and perhaps friendship towards my teammates makes me a bad Avenger."
"You are not a bad Avenger. And you are still the best master assassin."
"And it worries me, you know? I was supposed to become a better human."
"You are talking about what you are supposed to be. But who cares about that? You turned your life around when you joined SHIELD. You took the decision alone. And look where it got you."
"Technically it was Barton's decision."
"He thinks it was yours."
She shrugs and hits the bag harder.
"I don't really know who I am," she admits to the punching bag. "Now that life is easier, that survival is not the number one focus of every single day, I have a lot of time. And it has gotten painfully obvious that I don't know shit about myself."
"You talk about your life with remarkable clarity, Natasha. I am pretty sure you know yourself well enough."
A ghost of a smile plays on her lips. "You wanted me to talk about myself. And yet you keep contradicting me when I do."
I chuckle and lay on my back to look at the ceiling.
"My apologies. I guess I am just overly excited that you're talking to me."
"Now you're ruining it," she mumbles.
"No no, I didn't say a thing," I rush to explain and sit back up. "Please, go on. I meant to say listening to your musings was fun."
She smirks to herself.
"Now if you ask if I like this job, the team, this life… I suppose I do. It is sill dangerous, but at least I don't get waterboarded for fun, right?" She says and I don't know how to respond to that.
"I am not sure if you would like a job with no danger in it," I remark.
"Do you think I would get bored?"
"I would use the word restless, but yeah, something like that."
She shrugs. "Perhaps. I am definitely not saying I could imagine it on the long run. I am pretty sure I will die during a mission in some little village in the middle of nowhere while destroying murderous wasp robots or something. But I made peace with that."
"But right now you are alive. You can try another life."
She smiles in a way that shows she finds my ignorance amusing.
"Do you think they would hire me in a coffee shop or something?"
"If you go far enough, why not? Maybe Europe?"
She stops to think for a moment before hitting the bag again. She doesn't pant, there is no trace of sweat on her and she definitely doesn't seem to want to stop the training in the next hour.
"This is the job I was made for."
"This is just another expression to talk about what you are supposed to be."
"Well, all my life has been revolving around this. How I should behave, what I should be, what I should fake to be. It is hard to drop it."
I would like to point out that she has been on my therapy for months now. It would be much easier to drop it if she had cooperated.
"I guess I would push my luck too hard if I asked if you are happy," I remark.
She laughs. "I can't answer that. I don't even know what happiness is."
She steps back from the bag and stretches her arms above her head with a pensive expression.
"When things go fine, like after a mission, when I take a shower, we order food and watch a movie that Steve didn't see yet but everyone else knows by heart… it sometimes feels like time is slowing down. Like there is nothing else in the world but us, the room and the Thai food. I think that is the closest I've been to happiness."
She shrugs and bumps her two hands together. The gloves give a faint snappy sound that Natasha seems to like so she does it again.
"That is a pretty accurate description, if you want to know what I think," I reply. "Happiness is not some mighty abstract concept that only the chosen ones can experience, you know. Sometimes it is Die Hard and Thai food. There is nothing wrong with that."
That seems to make her think. Then she smiles. "Die Hard and Thai food. I like that."
We talk a little bit more before Clint arrives to practice his hand-to-hand combat skills with Natasha. Clint is pretty good at it already and I wonder if that translates to a date night in spy land.
Natasha doesn't show up on Monday. She sends me a text saying she is busy.
But she walks into my room Saturday evening, when I am in the shower, and starts talking about her childhood.
This is it, I conclude. From now on Natasha decides where and when her therapy sessions take place.
But now she talks. She really talks.
I decide this new arrangement suits me just fine.
So that is it for this story. I hope you enjoyed reading Nat's little journey as much as I did writing it.
As for future Avenger therapy sessions, let's say I have some ideas but more are always welcome :)