Steve goes back inside the house, feeling dazed, almost staggering. He holds onto the door frame in a sudden surge of finding solid bearings.
He is struck, punched in the guts, by the realization he might have lost Natasha. He wonders if she will ever remember who she is — if the magic of the Stone will ever allow it. But this is nothing compared to the other problematic that she does not want to remember. How can he bring her back if she refuses to go with him? He does not stand a chance if the reasons for her to stay outweigh the reasons for her to leave.
That man could be one of them.
Maybe she has found love.
How do you walk away from love to an unknown, seemingly daunting past?
Maybe he has lost her again. For good.
His mind clouded with all these thoughts assaulting him restlessly, Eliza calls his name from the living room.
"Is Katherine back?" she asks.
He tries to regain composure and walks into the room.
"I've just seen her go with…her friend, I think."
Eliza deciphers the meaning of 'friend'.
"Oh, yes. His name's Jake. He's a good guy," she comments casually. "You might see him around a lot."
Great.
They arrive back in the house about an hour later. Steve turns to look over his shoulder. Jake is walking slightly behind her, grasping the tips of her fingers as her arm hangs slightly behind her back.
"Eliza, I brought you these. I know how much you love them," he exclaims as he holds up a bunch of wildflowers.
The woman smiles. "Aren't you a charm, Donovan? I see you're eager to win the heart of all the residents of this household."
"Just trying to play it smart," he shrugs with a teasing smile as he hands them over to her.
His body then pivots toward the stranger in the room. Katherine eyes him with a slightly worried expression, Steve can feel. He stands up.
Jake has dark brown hair with faint green eyes. He has a stubble which conceals the outline of his oblong face. His hair is muffled and slightly curly at the ends. He is wearing a casual checked shirt which hangs loosely over his blue jeans. He overall has a scruffy but charming look which blends with their surroundings.
"Steve," he says, holding out his hand.
"Jake," the other answers, mirroring him.
They shake hands in a cordial manner but firm, slightly tainted with an unconscious demonstration of strength.
Jake is everything Katherine could want — he can see it so vividly it's almost blinding. A simple man leading a simple and world-in-danger trouble free kind of life.
He is the soldier who cannot live without a war, and perhaps this suited Natasha Romanoff's lifestyle. But Katherine finds peace alongside a fellow countryman.
Jake is the better choice. He is the obvious choice.
He, though, has already lost.
"Steve is our guest," Eliza says as she replaces the flowers in the vase. "It's his first time in Louisiana."
Jake smiles. "Well, I hope you enjoy your stay. It doesn't look like it at first but it's a place you grow to love."
Steve answers with a fixed grin.
Katherine steps in and presses a hand on Jake's arm. He glances down at her and nods, taking it as the signal he should now leave.
He waves everybody goodbye and pecks her on the lips — Steve suppresses a quiet groan and gulps down instead.
Jake leaves the house and Katherine goes to the kitchen, serves Eliza some cool lemonade before disappearing into another room in the back of the house.
He hesitates to follow but eventually wanders through the unexplored area of the old mansion. He steps into a bright room with naked walls and windows and almost no furniture. At the center, Katherine is sitting on a stool, facing a canvas. She's holding a worn paintbrush between her small fingers.
She senses his presence before the creaking floor makes her aware of it. She quickly glances over her shoulder then turns to the canvas again. He takes it as permission for him to come forward. He does so, very gently, cautious not to disturb or intrude.
He watches, with growing fascination, how she runs her brush across the canvas with a focused expressed and a deep frown on her forehead. Once she lifts the brush, she lets a breath out and slightly leans back to take a wider look at the picture. She then scratches the top of her temple with the other end of the brush and pushes a strand of her hair behind her ear.
"I didn't know you could paint," he remarks with a smile.
She dips her brush into the plastic cup filled with water.
"I didn't know either," she answers coolly. "It took many shots and just as many spoiled canvases to get something sort of decent."
He squats down to be at her level and looks at the painting. His eyes wander across the bright shades of purple and copper gnawed on by the dominant dark tones.
"Definitely not gallery material," she continues, "but this is what happens when you have too much time on your hands and no memories to grasp onto. That continuous silence in your mind, that blankness, it's deafening. Painting became a good distraction from it. It keeps my brain busy in a good way. It's soothing."
He watches her tamed expression.
"I get it," he murmurs. "I usually draw sketches when I need to sort out things. But for me, it's when I want to quiet down some loud memories."
She pauses in her painting and turns in his direction. She probes him for a few seconds.
"Looks like you and I are the same in different ways, strangely."
He stares into her eyes like he has many times in the past.
"It's always been like that between us," he says. "We drew similarities in our differences."
She nods musingly. "Maybe this is something worth exploring," she says. "So long as you respect the boundaries I've set."
They gaze at each other and he feels they are having for a moment. For the first time since he got there, he can feel they are reconnecting. Like an old wick rekindling.
The phone rings in the other room. She does not move immediately but is gradually pulled back to reality. She puts the brush down on the table and runs a hand through her hair. She then gets up and rushes out of the room.
Steve looks back at the painting with growing determination. He looks at the dark circle outlined with a dark yellow ring behind the heavy clouds, he looks at the grey dunes standing on the low sea, and the mountain standing ominously in the background.
He has hope again.
Natasha may not be gone, after all. And he can bring her back.
The picture proves it. He has seen the place that she painted before.
He has been there before.
And so has Natasha.
Vormir.
He is hopeful he can make her remember. All it takes is a little push.
Or well, a series of small pushes.
He decides to start with the people that once mattered to her; maybe putting faces on her unknown past might make it less daunting and more appealing. So he drops names which, he hopes, will trigger her memory.
"Sam would be very impressed with your cooking," he says casually while watching her from the counter.
She frowns. "Who's Sam?"
"He's a friend," he begins, then adds, "he's your friend, too. The three of us lived in motels together for a year."
"Sounds kinky," she comments indifferently, her eyes fixed on the cutting board.
He almost chokes in the lemonade he is sipping and coughs loudly, which brings a little smirk to her lips.
"No, no. Nothing like that! We were fugitives…on the run."
She lifts up the board and drops the slices of vegetables in the boiling water.
"This is so much more reassuring," she says drily with unconcealed sarcasm.
He runs a hand across his forehead and sighs.
The next morning, a neighbor living 5 miles East turns up with fresh milk and cream for his farm. Steve catches his name is George Donovan. A man in his late fifties with a thick southern accent and a prosthetic leg. Once he has dropped the crate, she wraps a couple of cookies in a towel and hands it to him.
"Don't tell Carol I gave you these," she says and kisses his cheek.
The man chuckles. "You know I never do. It's our little secret."
As Steve watches him walk away he cannot help but draw a similarity between the Louisianan farmer and another "father figure" of Natasha. The physical disability is another common trait.
"I don't know what Fury would think of this," he muses aloud. "He's always seen you as his protégée."
She frowns and looks at him. "Fury?"
"Technically he's your boss but you have developed a far stronger bond over the years. He's like a father to you."
Her attention span quickly comes to an end and she starts emptying the crate that was just brought in. He feels like he needs to pique her curiosity.
"He's got an eye patch, by the way. But nobody knows how he got it."
She pauses and looks him dead in the eyes.
"So my mentor was a pirate?" she comments flatly, looking highly unimpressed.
He immediately realizes he has made a mistake. "Well, not exactly. In retrospect, the eye patch is only a detail. You barely notice it."
Perhaps it is the weak counter-argument or the eye patch, but her dubious and perplexed remain plastered over her face.
He tries again after dinner, this time with something that has little to no risk of irking her. This one can't fail, he is sure of it. He walks up to her and puts his phone on the table under her nose. She unenthusiastically looks down at it. Her frown turns into a look of utter confusion.
He smiles encouragingly. "These are Clint's children. The youngest one was named after you: Nathaniel. They care about you. They call you aunt—"
"Kate, you're here?" a voice calls from the entrance. She jumps out of her chair.
Jake appears into the room. "Got my evening free, I thought we could go to town to grab a drink." She smiles.
"I'll go and grab my purse," she calls out while running up the stairs.
Steve has not moved from his spot. He rubs his chin slowly. She comes back a minute later with a subtle scent of perfume trailing behind her.
"Enjoy your afternoon," Jake tells him with a nod. He answers with a silent nod.
She does not say a word, nor looks in his direction. She leads the way to the car.
She comes back later that night — the car lights shone through into his bedroom. He walks up to the window and looks. She walks around the car to the driver's side and pokes her head inside to steal a kiss.
Steve can feel her slip away almost completely.
The next morning after breakfast, Eliza goes out to read on the porch. Katherine is the kitchen, washing the dishes. He is staring at his empty mug. Steve has been sulking all morning and it isn't like she made any effort to engage a conversation either. It used to be so easy for both of them. Even their silences were intimate and clear conversations.
He has an idea. While she is wiping the kitchen counter, his fingers slowly push the mug over to the edge until it falls off. Her eyes flicker immediately to it and she leans over before she catches it in midair. She slowly stands back straight, staring at the object in her hand. And then her eyes slowly rise to look at him.
He is looking at her with a calm, but triumphant look.
"You say you're no longer Natasha but your instincts don't lie," he begins. "This is who you are. It's in your nature."
Her stunned expression hardens. She clenches the mug.
"You're wrong. I am nothing like Romanoff. She's gone, okay? " she says. "You have to stop whatever it is you've been trying to do the past few days. She's gone. Romanoff is gone, and she's never coming back. Saying being an assassin is in my nature will not bring her back, ok?"
His eyes widen. "That's not what you were. You were an Avenger."
"…with skills intended to be lethal and inflict pain," she finishes. "I don't want to have anything to do with that. I love my life here and nothing that you tell me will ever change that, not even your attempt to guilt-trip me with pictures of children I don't even know. I don't know any of those people you keep referring to. This is all forever gone."
She starts walking away.
"You do have memories," he says. "That place you painted, it's real. You've been there before, and it's the reason why you painted it. It means you can remember."
She turns around to face him and her features are tense. He soon notices her glassy eyes.
"That place is what my worst nightmares are made of. It would keep me awake at night until I started painting it. Now I know why, and it only confirms my old life is a terrible thing to remember."
She walks up closer to him. "I told you I don't want to go back to New York but you didn't listen. Clearly, I'm not the one who needs to move on. You've found me and you know I'm fine. Now you need to leave."
His throat tightens. She remains steadfast and imperturbable. "I want you gone by tomorrow."
And with that, she walks away.