Fury was in critical condition, surgeons and doctors leaning over him as they tried to keep him alive. Steve watched gravely from the other side of the mirror, stern and mute.
The squealing of the beeping coming from the machines suddenly got covered by the sound of the door behind him being smashed open. Natasha barged in with a blank expression and a haggard and lost look as she stood right beside him, her eyes locked on Director Fury.
Standing still, he slightly turned his head to look at her. Her face displayed an expression he had never seen have before. She looked numb, distressed, confused. It was like she had been drained of all the confidence, boldness and nonchalance that always accompanied her and that she never let go of. He furrowed his brows, concerned to find her so affected, surprised by this twist he hadn't seen coming.
"Is he gonna make it?" she asked.
"I don't know," he muttered almost inaudibly
"Tell me about the shooter," she spoke blankly but with the trail of a shaky voice not diverting her gaze from the surgery room.
The scene from an hour before played out in his head again. Everything had gone so fast. After entering his apartment from the window, he had been taken surprised to find Director Fury sitting in his armchair and in the dark. Fury looked injured, exhausted but most of all incredibly cryptic in his choice of words. EARS VERYWHERE he had typed on his phone and shown him to justify his odd behavior. And then the shots fired from outside, straight to his chest. Fury collapsed on the floor, choking in pain. He slipped a flash drive into his hand, warning him not to trust anybody before going quiet, physically unable to speak any more. Then it all rushed; someone broke into the apartment, his neighbour, still dressed in her nurse apparel but looking nothing like one as she entered the room holding a gun up in front of her, alert and confident. She introduced herself as a S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Special Forces agent, affirming her mission was to protect him, on Fury's orders obviously. As she saw her boss lying on the floor, she lowered her weapon and knelt down. She pulled a walky-talky out of her pocket and called for medics. And that was when Steve saw him, the silhouette of the sniper who was responsible for all this.
"He's fast. Strong," he said knowing those two simple words, coming from him, would be far from an understatement. Steve had had to run fast to catch up with him, and the man, hiding behind a dark mask, hadn't had much trouble stopping the shield when he had thrown it at him, using all of his tall, thick body to counter it without losing his balance. He had then jolted it back at him with almost as much strength then jumped off the roof, disappearing into the night.
"Ballistics," Natasha went on, addressing Maria this time to get those technical details.
"Soviet made," she commented after she had got the description of the bullets.
The sudden continuous beep of the electrocardiogram took everyone's attention back to the surgery room. Steve tensed, anxious that the outcome he dreaded might become true. Natasha watched silently, her mouth slightly agape.
"Don't do this to me, Nick" he heard her murmur.
"Pulse?" the doctor asked.
"Negative," the colleague answered for the second time.
The constant beeping became daunting and soon Maria let out the sound of a soft whimper. Natasha remained strong, impassive but shaken nonetheless.
Steve was unsettled too, perhaps more than he would have imagined but the sight of Fury's lifeless body made his stomach twist. He diverted his gaze and stepped away from the window as the doctor asked for the time of death.
Director Fury had just died and he hadn't been able to stop it.
Less than thirty minutes later, they were allowed in a room to see the body. Fury was lying peacefully Steve could tell from where he was standing, leaving Natasha intimacy to say goodbye.
He watched quietly as she stood by his body, her arms crossed over her chest. The moment lasted longer than expected, so long that Maria had to step in bashfully and say she needed to take his body. Natasha didn't move an inch, indifferent to Hill's request.
Steve glanced at Maria who glanced back at him, looking slightly helpless and unsure about how to react, so he took over. He walked up to her and stopped a footstep behind from where she was standing.
"Natasha," he said gently. He suddenly found his call to be cold and impassive when it wasn't what he was feeling at this moment. Seeing her so hurt and vulnerable crushed him inside and he wished he was in an environment private enough that he could let himself comfort her the way he wanted to. "Nat," he called again, more softly and in a way that he found more suitable.
Natasha reacted eventually; she laid a hand on Fury's forehead and bowed her head down as the only gesture of surrender to the sadness she was feeling. She dashed off the room an instant later but his eyes fixed on her had had the time to catch sight of the tear that rolled down her cheek.
His heart squeezed and his first instinct was to go after her and work on finding a way to soothe her regardless of the way she needed it to be. Truth was he had never seen nor suspected this side of her, so vulnerable and distraught. Maria was affected but it didn't come anywhere close to the kind of affected Natasha was. For a moment, he would have believed she had lost the closest she had to a father.
For the past few hours, he had questioned whether she had ever taken her guard off around him but here and now she had let a whole wall fall down. Natasha did care and this was what he needed to shush his irrational concerns.
Natasha walked down with the grit and determination of someone gone on a vendetta, ready to murder.
"Nat," he called after her.
She flipped around and looked at him coldly.
"What was Fury doing in your apartment?" she snapped, suddenly interrogating him.
The tone of her voice seemed to suggest she didn't ask because she was suspicious or wary, as anyone who would have been watching could have concluded; she was irked and hurt that Fury hadn't chosen her to seek shelter and help.
Part of him wanted to tell her the truth about the flash drive but his irrational concerns struck again and he found himself recalling Fury's last words not to trust anyone. As much as he trusted her, he didn't have enough faith in her at the moment (and after the last mission) to share.
"I don't know," he lied and he felt a lump in his throat for making the choice of being untruthful to her (not that it was something she had never done to him before).
Rumlow stepped in, saying that he was needed at S.H.I.E.L.D immediately.
When Steve turned his attention back to her, he found she was staring at him with a judgmental and cold expression.
"You're a terrible liar," she uttered dryly, her eyes barely concealing the disappointment of not being trusted.
She walked off without giving him a second look. He sighed deeply. How had they come so far apart in such a short span of time? He feared there would be no fixing it this time.
Steve walked past Agent 13 as she was coming out of Alexander Pierce's office. She suddenly turned sheepish when she saw him, nearly embarrassed that he might misjudge her or hold a grudge for playing a double game. He wanted to do nothing of the sort for the simple reason he had never given her enough importance or interest to feel betrayed. She was just his and Bucky's hall neighbour; nothing more, nothing less. The only resentment he felt was that Fury had yet again done something on his back.
"Captain," she said as she walked past.
"Neighbor," he answered in way to let it known that he had no appreciation for people who played games (except for his own problematic, puzzling, double-faced, red-haired friend).
The meeting turned into an implicit interrogation from Pierce whose behaviour made him look more shady than trustworthy, and it became indeed the truth when Steve was attacked by Rumlow and his tactic team in the elevator.
He escaped, jumping off the thirty-storey building (something Bucky wouldn't have approved off and called irresponsible and cheeky) and then facing a jet (something Bucky would have called just plain stupid). When he finally fled the premises, he knew this was only the beginning of trouble.
After changing into a discreet-looking tracksuit, Steve made his way back to the hospital to retrieve the flash drive from the totally clever and unperceivable hiding place he had left it in before heading to S.H.I.E.L.D. He stopped in front of the vending machine and froze in horror as he found the chewing-gum spot in which he had hidden the flash drive had only one pack left, meaning someone had gotten their hands on the valuable object. His mind buzzed with a thousand questions starting with who was the person who was now in possession of the flash drive. A civilian? Or the people who had gone after Fury and killed him?
A dark silhouette appeared on the vending machine's glass and as the person stepped closer Natasha's face reflected on it. She didn't speak a word but conveyed everything she had to share by blowing a big, pink bubble out of her mouth that she burst noisily before chewing her gum again.
It became clear she was the one who had the flash drive and that the reason she had it was because she had spied on him after pretending to walk away earlier. His body tensed, angered that she had played him yet again. He spun around, grabbed her arm and forcefully ushered her into the nearest, unoccupied room. She ended up her back slammed against the wall and he froze for a brief moment as he was hit by some sort of déjà vu. The least expected blast from the past in such a moment of tension. One with Natalie.
"Are you going to slam me against the wall, next?" her words echoed in his head as vividly as when he had heard it for the first time in 1942. He recalled how taken aback he had been when Natalie had said the words with unwavering confidence, as he would have never even thought about doing such a thing, let alone to her. And yet seventy years later, here he was doing it. To Natasha.
He looked down at his hands that were clasping her arms and dropped them immediately.
It took him a few seconds to get his head back into the current situation. But he was still too angry at Natasha to apologize.
"Where is it?" he asked.
"Safe," she replied cryptically.
"Do better," he muttered.
"Where did you get it?" she asked, deflecting his question. They didn't talk like friends but like two agents wanting answers from each other.
"Why would I tell you?" he said coldly. Thirty-six hours ago, he would have probably shared everything he knew with her. "Keeping secrets is just what we do, after all. Isn't it?"
Natasha's look changed. It softened until it nearly looked regretful. Her eyes glanced away then moved back on him as if she seemed to brush aside a roaming thought.
"Fury gave it to you. Why?" she figured out quickly.
"What's on it?" he asked as he was certain she had thoroughly browsed its content already.
"I don't know," she said. It angered him to see she wouldn't yield in and be honest for once.
"Stop lying," he hissed.
"I only act like I know everything, Steve."
He knew the whole thing was related to their latest mission as Pierce had let it on, the hostage rescue mission on the ship when Natasha had stolen intel for Fury.
"I bet you knew Fury hired the pirates, didn't you?"
What was it if not one more secret piling up with the rest of things she kept from him? She could at least admit this one.
"Well, it makes sense," she answered. "The ship was dirty. Fury needed a way in, so do you."
"I'm not gonna ask you again," he pressed her with his tone only. "You owe me the truth. For once."
Natasha gazed at him with her big green eyes, probing him quietly.
"I know who killed Fury," she started as a peace offering. It seemed she traded her lack of information on his question with another type of intel, just as valuable. "Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists but the ones that do call him Reidlos. He's credited with multiple assassinations in the last fifty years."
This sounded like weak information. How could an assassin have been working for fifty years at least?
"So he's a ghost story," he said.
Natasha paused a few seconds. "Five years ago I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tyres near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out but Reidlos was there. Luckily for me he wasn't the finest sniper. If he had been able to anticipate my next move he would have shot us both at once," she paused briefly and smirked. "And bye-bye bikinis."
Here was the smug expression again, and he wasn't sure he believed her story either. "Yeah, I bet you would have looked terrible in them."
She seemed pleased to see he was going along with the banter, even if it wasn't the usual playful kind.
"Then what happened?" he asked.
"I dove aside at his first shot but he didn't miss the engineer the second time around. Soviet slug, no rifling. That was the ME's report."
Like Fury's bullets.
"Going after him is a dead end. I know, I've tried." She pulled the flash drive as a second peace offering, which was probably more than she had ever done in her whole career. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."
And with this honest gesture, she offered to work as a team again.
A couple of hours later, they were walking in the mall on their way to the Apple store in order to look into the flash drive 'safely'. It was her idea.
After finding a map of what used to be his training camp, they left the store, only to find S.H.I.E.L.D's patrolling in civilian clothes. He was ready to attack but Natasha offered her own kind of alternative: sneaking out. It turned out to be more effective and less straining than his method. Hiding under their hoodies, she made him put his arm around her shoulders and laugh as they passed two agents. And then they got to the escalator.
She suddenly turned and looked at him.
"Kiss me," she said quietly. His ears rang at the sound of these words and it took him one or two seconds to process they were indeed the words she had just said.
"What?" he said quizzically, watching her with a slightly open mouth and probably a stunned look.
"This was neither the time nor the place", he thought. And did it mean she saw him this way? And did he want it to happen? His heart raced at the prospect of it. And would it feel like that kiss Natalie gave him? Surely her lips looked the same and his body stiffened and mellowed at the thought of his lips them again, but what if they felt or tasted different? Or what if it would feel better? He mentally shook himself up. But this was neither the time nor the place!
"Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable," she pulled him out his mental row and he was grateful for it.
"Yes, they do," he said, talking more about himself than 'people'.
She didn't let him finish. Her hand slid around the back of his neck and she pulled him in to her face, catching his lips between hers. His whole body froze while his mind seemed to need to be at full capacity to concentrate solely on the unexpected thing that was happening. His eyes were shut, first out of surprise and then, progressively, his lids relaxed as did the rest of his body. He felt all his muscles mellow under the soothing sensation of her warm and soft lips brushing his like the most comforting caress. He felt his shoulders be released off the weight of all his burdens, present and past. His hand went to her waist before he could even think about it and he let himself surrender to the moment.
When she pulled away it seemed to have lasted as long as a heartbeat and, as his lips started to grow cold from the absence of hers, he began to feel the void they had left.
"Are you still uncomfortable?" she asked nonchalantly as she went down the escalator.
He realized he had no real comeback that would suit her playful tone.
"That's not the word I would use," he answered cryptically.
Surprised, dazed, pensive, wistful, content. Only to name a few.
Driving to the boot camp that had been mentioned in the flash drive, Natasha spent long minutes of the ride glancing at him with a smirk she seemed to be having a hard time to tone down out of diplomacy.
"I'm not going to ask but I suppose that was your first kiss since 1941," she eventually blurted out, unable to hold it anymore.
"I thought you were not going to ask," he commented coolly although his heart pace had just raced a little.
"Come on, this is a long ride and I'm bored. And mildly curious," she smiled mischievously. "I mean, I'm sorry if I sound blunt b–"
"Are you?" he furrowed his brows in an amused way.
"Well, probably not, I'll give you that. But don't you miss it? Being close to someone?"
The conversation had turned grave and deep quite quickly (at least, as far as he was concerned). He had asked himself that question so many times and the answers he had come up with had never been clear and simple. Was being alone and remaining as such for a large amount of time pleasant? Definitely not. Did he miss having someone though? No, not really. He had Bucky; and with time Natasha had made herself a spot, too. Her presence, her company somehow filled the void Natalie had left. Whether as a colleague, teammate or a friend; whatever role she was willing to endorse, the place she had taken in his life wouldn't lose any of its value. Strictly speaking, he was in peace with not being with anyone, and he hoped someday, when the right time would come eventually, his heart would open up to somebody new.
"It's hard to find someone with shared life experience," he said.
"Are you looking, though?" she said softly, anxious not to push him. "It's not hard, anyway. You just make something up."
He snorted bitterly. Was that her MO with everyone, including him?
"Like you?" he asked.
"I don't know. The truth is only a matter of circumstances. It's not all things, to all people, all the time. Neither am I."
"Wow. So that's your life motto, huh?" he commented dryly. "You should have it tattooed, just in case you dare to stray from it just a little."
Natasha nodded.
"Copy that. You're still mad at me. Subtle, much."
"Perceptive, much."
His tone was flat and stern. She just smirked in response.
"Don't take it personally," she said. "It's just my thing."
"Well, being personal is my thing. As it is everyone else's. You can't connect with someone if you can't tell who they really are. Otherwise, it's just an illusion."
"A chimera," Natasha murmured, musing aloud. "Illusion is all I can give."
"It's a tough way to live," he said. He couldn't even begin to measure the depth of her solitude.
"It's a good way not to die, though."
He took his eyes off the road to look at her. She looked wistful. It pained him to realize that she had found the most faithful companion in loneliness.
It went quiet in the car. "I know you don't understand it. It's an unfamiliar concept to you."
"Not so unfamiliar, actually," he said. He clenched the wheel a bit tighter. "It's happened to me before with…her. With Natalie."
Natasha arched an eyebrow.
"I found out not so long ago that she hadn't said the truth on many things." His mouth twisted a bit. "On so many things. It's become hard to tell what was true and what was a lie."
"And you resent her for it?" she asked.
He thought of all these times frustration had taken over and led him to believe that he had been deceived. But then now, in retrospect, he knew there were things that just couldn't be faked. And their deep connection was one of them. In spite of the lies she had told him –and those he still probably had not found out about –, his love for her remained intact, immaculate. But maybe Natalie had fooled him and here he was fooled again, by Natasha this time.
"I don't know. I'd like to think she had her reasons. I just –," he shrugged slightly as a way to compress the emotion that was threatening to show in his voice. "I just wish I had the chance to ask her."
He silently cleared his throat to get rid of the lump that had appeared. What he wouldn't give to get to have her in front of him for just five minutes (four minutes of which he would take to hold her tight and breathe in her scent), to get to understand her point of view (God, he knew he would understand it, to forgive her. And this was what hurt the most. He yearned to be given just the slightest opportunity to wipe out any kind of negative emotion that was blurring his perception of her, for he wanted to have for her nothing but all the admiration she deserved to receive.
"You can ask me," she said quietly, pulling him out of his reverie
Steve frowned in surprise. He looked her in the eye and found she was encouraging him to take her up on her offer.
For the first time, Natasha was initiating a moment of truth and, therefore, let herself be vulnerable. He appreciated that she tried to do right by him where Natalie had failed.
"Did you spend all this time with me and Bucky because Fury asked you to?"
She shook her head gently. "No."
Her answer was concise and definite at the image of it not even being a possibility. And yet, it wasn't totally satisfactory. He yearned for more.
"Truth be told," Natasha continued as she seemed to realize she hadn't given him enough. "I haven't been much of my usual chimera self with you, and Bucky. I gave more things, more often than I ever would. You say you can't connect to a person unless you know who they really but you've seen more of me than anyone else."
There was a gravity in her voice that he had never heard until now. Natasha rarely gave moments of truth but this was one of them. And judging from the look on her face, it was one of her first.
He gazed at her and the shadow of a grin came to his lips, silently thanking her for her honesty with a light nod of the chin. Natasha nodded back and the silence that followed was of a new kind. It wasn't resentful like the one from a few moments before; it was serene and peaceful.
"I guess I have bent my most precious life motto for two Ancient relics," she shifted back to nonchalance.
The corner of his mouth rose slightly.
"Bent?" he teased.
"I'm not the melodrama type. You can't expect any flight of lyricism from me. The only moment of gushiness I've ever had is that time I had a cup of real coffee after returning from a 3-week-long mission in the tundra."
He rolled his eyes amusingly.
"Plus if I had said 'broken' we both know it wouldn't be true. I'll never completely break this rule. For my own safety."
He regretted that.
"You know I would never do anything to harm you," he retorted. There was absolutely no imaginable situation where he'd end up fighting against her. Absolutely none. Even if they somehow were to be fight on opposite sides, he never would perceive her as an enemy. He would always see her as Natasha.
"There is more than one way a person can be harmed, trust me. And the most painful wounds are the ones you can't see."
Maybe it was how she said it, or the flicker of horror that flashed through her pupils, but he understood that she had once been broken and damaged in the most enduring way. Survival was second nature but it was the result of having had to face something worse than death itself.
"Now it is my turn to ask you a question," Natasha said, breaking the silence. Her large green eyes dove into his. "Who do you want me to be?"
Her words lingered on in the air and brought along more earnestness than he was prepared for. He was not sure he had an answer to this question. At first, she had been another type of bearing than the kind Bucky was. While James was a steady, anchored bearing that had never left his side, Natasha had been the reassuring, familiar face in this foreign world. Then she had been the bandage that kept the stabbing, open wound that was Natalie's loss closed as tight as possible. But then she had become more than that. To what extent though? He couldn't tell; and perhaps part of him didn't want to define their relationship or put a label on it.
Natasha's gaze was still fixed on him, determined to get an answer to her question.
He eventually took his eyes off the road.
"How about a friend?" he asked. A truthful (as truthful as Natasha could be) and loyal friend he could finally trust fully.
She raised an eyebrow and smirked. A cryptic, unidentifiable emotion flickered over her eyes.
"There's a chance you might be in the wrong business," she said amusingly.
"Is that what you and Barton tell each other whenever you meet?" he teased.
Natasha snorted. "It's different. We didn't choose to be friends. It kind of fell on us. We've been through things together that brought us close," she explained. "I guess what you call shared life experience."
"Yeah. I saw that," he said matter-of-factly. "For a little while I even thought you two were together until he kinda let it slip it was not possible."
"He said that?" she mused, sounding intrigued. "Why wouldn't it be possible?"
He glanced in her direction and frowned. "You know why," he started hesitantly. "Because he's into men."
"Say what?" she exclaimed before bursting into laughter. "Did Clint really tell you he was playing for the other team?"
"He didn't but he sort of implied he was not interested in engaging into any kind of relationship with a woman."
It somehow triggered a new fit of laughter from her; enough to make him doubt of his interpretation of that conversation they had both had outside the infirmary.
"I can assure you that Clint is very much into women," she said with a slightly husky voice. Steve suddenly felt an uneasiness thinking of what her statement implied on her relationship with Barton that made her affirm he was straight with such confidence.
And Natasha spent the rest of the car ride interrupting the silence or their conversation with impromptu burst of giggles.