Chapter 12: Happiness
No one has an easy life. No matter how hard someone tries to make their life perfect, it just doesn't work out that way. Sure you can have a good life, a great one if you're lucky, but that's up to you. It's easy to blame the world for the things that happened to you in your past, or the things that didn't in the future, but that's just because when it comes down to it, it's really you against the world and the people who you come across, whether they be friends, or foes, are simply pawns in a huge game that you have no control over, one that you never did.
It would be easy for Natasha to blame everything for the life that she was cursed with, but it's hard to when it's the only thing that you've ever known. To hate something you would have to have love to compare it to, and out of all the things in her life, love was not one of them.
She thinks that maybe Steve loved her once. The way he looked into her eyes, not looking for something in return, just looking at her. Even if he did remotely feel something for how she was, he was in love with Natasha not Natalie and even the portion of her that he saw wasn't half of what she hid.
He was good inside and out, and compared to him she was road kill. Not even the kind that you feel bad for when you drive by the corpse, the kind that you don't take a second look at because it's too damaged. Even if some miracle occurred and she was able to remember the good she apparently accomplished, the lives she saved, no amount of deed could ever erase her ledger. She would never deserve him, and he was Capitan America for crying out loud. The irony of the situation was almost funny. A Russian spy falling for one of the noblest heroes in American history and vise versa. If Natasha wasn't tied to a metal table with a bunch of equipment surrounding her, fighting for her life, she might actually have laughed. But again what life was she really fighting for? What life did she have on the line?
It's easy to dream, to wonder what could have happened if she never turned into a spy. She often wondered what her family was like, if they loved her and if maybe she loved them too, but it was difficult to imagine a feeling that you weren't even sure you were capable of.
Sure she wanted to live, no one truly wants their life to end, they just want the pain to stop. They just have the hope that maybe something greater is out there. That maybe earth is the real hell and death is the heaven but Natasha wasn't sure she even had that relief. It was just getting harder and harder to remember what she was wanted to live for. She was thinking of giving up just letting the bad guys win, because in all honesty the odds were never in her favor. But then she thought of Steve and how she probably would never be good enough for him, and maybe that was her will to live. To make herself better not just for him but for herself too, because she deserved a chance at happiness. Everyone does.
So as she laid, tied down to a rusty, blood stained metal table trying to hold onto every last bit of memory that she could salvage, her only goal was once she got out of here, wasn't to wipe out her ledger, it was to start over, because she deserved at least a chance at happiness. After all, she did have something, or someone to look forwards to, she just hoped she stayed alive long enough to see him again. To get a chance to say goodbye, and maybe that was all she needed to be happy; someone to remember you once you're gone, a reason to be missed.