The day after the battle on the ship, Natasha sits at the kitchen table, slowly eating her bacon and eggs. Maria, obviously taking pity on her, made it for her and poured her a cup of strong black coffee. But Natasha isn't hungry. She feels sick to her stomach, and the eggs and meat only make it worse, but Maria's watching her like a vulture across the room, and made her promise to eat everything she could.
Finally, Natasha lays her fork and knife on the plate and pushes it away, running her hand through her hair. Maria, who had been watching her while talking to a controller, puts up a hand and weaves her way toward Natasha, who's now sitting with her head in her hands. She sits down and pushes the half-empty plate away.
"You know it's not your fault." Maria says quietly, gently prying Natasha's trembling hands away from her face. Natasha doesn't look up at the young woman, instead finds interest in the grains of wood in the table.
"It might as well be." She replies, her voice thick with tears. "He's my partner. Partners are supposed to look after each other. I didn't look after him!" And she suddenly jumps up, swipes out and overturns the table. Maria hops gracefully to her feet and watches, dumbstruck, as Natasha tears the kitchen to pieces, shouting at no one in particular.
"HE WAS MY PARTNER! I PROMISED TO PROTECT HIM!" the microwave and coffee machine smash on the floor. People run up, but Maria holds out her hand to stop them, quietly pushing them all backwards, and letting Natasha's fury run its course. The Black Widow continues to scream at the top of her lungs, making guttural noises as glasses, pots, pans, bowls, plates, cutlery shatter around her, making musical notes through all the horrible sounds.
Eventually, as Maria knew it would, Natasha's fury dies out and she just stands in the middle of the kitchen, looking around at the mess she made. And then suddenly, she lets out a dry sob and drops to her knees, her elbows resting on her legs, her head in her hands as her body heaves with tears that no one else can hear.
A million thoughts race through her head. She owed Clint a debt, that was true, but not only that. She owed him her life. He had saved her when it seemed that she was lost. So, she owed him more than her life. She owed him everything. Everything she owned was his. And the fact that they were partners made it 10 times worse.
"Don't touch her." Maria warns, making a flick with her hand to send them all backwards. They look at her for a moment, but then return to their stations, their eyes flickering over to the kitchen every now and then.
Natasha's rocking back and forth on the ground, glass cutting into her skin, her own blood pooling around her. Glassy tears slide down her cheeks and into her mouth, and she tries to remember the last time she felt so weak, so broken down.
So shattered.
Hands brush against her back, slide down to her hand to help her up, but she pushes them away with a snap, a snarl, a growl. "Leave me alone!" She finally shouts, throwing her hands in the air, but her voice cracks and she knows she's not as scary as she'd like to think.
After a while, Maria slowly walks toward her and kneels next to the shaking girl, gently prying her hands away from her face. "There was nothing you could have done." Maria tells her calmly, forcing Natasha's cold grey eyes to meet hers. "I want you to get yourself patched up. We'll clear this up. Stop beating yourself up over something you had no control over." There's an air of 'that's it' to Maria's tone as she drags Natasha to her feet, wipes off the glass from her back, and pushes her away.
Natasha doesn't dare contradict Maria. And besides, the cuts on her legs are already stinging.
Later that night, Natasha sits on her bed, her knees drawn to her chest as she tries to figure out what happened today. Her hands twitch toward her stitches, but she forces them to her side. Her eyes are red and her face is puffy from all the tears that have been shed, but she doesn't care.
Her sparkling eyes lift toward the ceiling; she breathes in deeply and says, "I just want to tell him I'm sorry." She waits for a minute, as if waiting for a reply.
What a stupid thing to do. No one ever listens to her.
Eventually, driven mad by her own thoughts and the silence of her room, she jumps to her feet, slips on a pair of thongs, unlocks the door to her bedroom and steps out into the silent hall.
As she wanders along aimlessly, glass crackles under her thongs, and the light reflects off the shattering pieces of destruction. Very slowly, she bends down and picks one up, inspecting it. She holds it up to the window – she's not really sure where it's from – and then she pockets it and continues down to the kitchen.
When she reaches the control station, her hand brushes against computer screens and keys, and as her fingertip touches one, a screen pops up. Natasha bends down to look at it and then reels back in horror, her hand flying to her mouth.
It's Clint, strapped to a chair, making horrible silent animal noises as doctors' fingers poke and prod him, jab him with needles, stuff him to the brim with medication. Someone must have muted the sound, and she's glad, because just looking at the way his face contorts in pain from whatever they're doing, hearing the noise would kill her inside.
Her hand inches toward the close button, but then a voice speaks from the shadows.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you."
She jumps about a foot in the air, loses her grip on the floor, slips, hits the ground and brings the chair on top of her. "Fuck!" She hisses, pushing her red hair from her eyes. She pushes the chair off of her and looks up at Steve with fire in her eyes.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" She demands nastily, pushing off his attempts to help her to her feet. She's been surviving the past 20 or so years on her own, and she doesn't plan to start living off a guy now.
"Just telling you." He says, turning crisply on his heel and marching back to the kitchen. She watches him pick his way back through the mess she created that day, and she can't help but crack a grin. "Nice handiwork, by the way, with this." He says, gesturing around. Broken plates and cups litter the ground, there's a burst packet of salt, a shattered pitcher of milk, and she's pretty sure that the black and white remnants of something near her was once Oreos.
"You know how it goes." She says with a shrug as she brushes off some sugar from a seat and sits down.
He looks at her with wide eyes. "No I don't, actually. I was trapped in ice for 70 years; I haven't got the slightest fucking clue how it goes." Natasha raises her eyebrows at his swear but doesn't say anything for a few moments as she surveys the kitchen.
"Did you love her?" She asks suddenly, and Steve flinches slightly, turning to look at her slowly. His dark green eyes meet hers and she refuses to look away.
"Yeah." He says after a minute. "Yeah, I did." And they sit in silence for a few minutes longer.
"How do you know if you love someone, Rogers?" The words slip out before she can stop them, but she knows she's curious.
There's another few seconds of silence and then Steve sighs heavily and says, still watching the dark window, rain hitting the glass like bullets, "You never really know fully. You can kind of feel it, like this wave, taking control, but you can never really be sure. Well, at least until you know you'll never see them again." His voice sounds far off, reminiscent of a time that Natasha never knew.
"What was her name?"
"Peggy." He replies with a soft smile. "The most beautiful girl you've ever laid eyes on. And she always will be."
Natasha waits for a minute, and then she wonders quietly, "How did it feel? To know that you had been inside ice for 70 years while she died"- here he flinches –"or took her final breath? Don't you ever wonder if she knew where you were?"
She can tell by the look of surprise evident on his face that he had never thought of this. He had never wondered if she knew where he lay, waiting for time to tick past. "It felt horrible." Steve says brutally. "Like my heart had been ripped from my chest. Like I'd never be whole again." There's finality to his tone that tells Natasha to end the conversation there.
"You ever been in love, Romanoff?" Steve asks, snapping his eyes onto her.
She wants to laugh, to tell him no, to push the idea aside, but that would be lying. So instead she flips the chair around to face him, crosses her arms over her chest and inclines her head. Steve's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.
"Really?"
Her lip curls back into a snarl. "Just because I work for S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't mean I'm a heartless bitch." She tells him. Steve makes a dramatic hand gesture and she flips him off. "He was a boy, and I was a girl. We fell in love, he cheated on me, I kicked his ass, end of story." She doesn't say his name because that would break the rules of the game that she's been playing for so long, and Steve doesn't ask for his name.
"You just dumped him?" Steve says incredulously. Not that he really expected anything different.
"Well, no." Natasha smirks, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "I kicked his ass then dumped him." Steve laughs and Natasha cracks a small smile.
"You feel guilty about what happened to Clint, don't you?" Steve suddenly blurts – Natasha flinches slightly but doesn't say anything or do anything. "Nat?" he repeats, leaning around the table to look at her face, and it takes him a moment to realize that she's crying.
He's on his feet instantly, darting around the table to kneel next to her, his strong arms folding around her slim frame. She leans into his neck and cries quietly, letting all her pain and anguish flood out for a few moments. "Yeah I do." She sniffles eventually, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Well, it wasn't your fault." Steve tells her strongly, and all Natasha does is rolls her eyes.
"But he was my partner. And partners are supposed to protect each other, right?" She looked to him for confirmation, and all Steve did was nod, thinking back to Bucky all those years ago, his best friend and partner-in-crime who had put his life on the line for Steve.
"But Loki's a demi-god. What he controls, what he has – it's nothing we've ever been trained for. Nothing." He puts heavy emphasis on the last word, gripping her hands tightly. She can't help but think he's kind of right, but kind of wrong. "You really should look after yourself better." Steve says with a gentle smile, pointing to the cuts and abrasions that mar her pearly white legs.
His fingertip brushes against one, and Natasha lets out a small gasp of pain. Steve retracts his hand instantly, but Natasha catches it and locks her fingers before she's even sure what she's doing. Steve looks to her with dark green eyes, and she blinks back, and before either of them have thought it through, Natasha's pressing her lips to his and his arms are winding around her waist and she's leaning into him and she can only think one word:
Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Fucking wrong.
But for some stupid reason, she doesn't stop it. Her trembling fingers wrap around the cotton of his collared shirt, his tongue slips into her mouth and locks over hers, and she's sliding onto the floor on her knees without breaking contact.
Their torsos press against each other, Steve's fingers slide up her shirt, leaving hot trails against her stomach. And then suddenly he shoves her away and scrambles to his feet. "We can't do this." He says stiffly, and she just stares at the floor and says nothing. "I just spent the last 70 years as a…'capsicle' as Stark would call it." Natasha looks away and bites her lip to refrain from laughing.
"And you're Natasha Romanoff, a Russian SHIELD agent. Why the hell would you want a 95 year old virgin?" Steve laughs bitterly and collapses next to her. It's kind of pissing him off how she won't meet his eyes. "I cannot believe I just kissed you." He says suddenly, hoping this will get a reaction from her. It does, but a bad one. A terrible one, actually.
She spins so fast he can hardly blink, reaches out a pale hand and slaps him hard. And then Natasha jumps to her feet and turns to walk away, pushing back tears and swallowing the lump in her throat. Steve regrets his words instantly, hopping to his feet and following her.
"Nat, come back! Come on, Nat, it was just a joke!" He calls to her, practically jogging to keep up with her long strides even though she's 2 times shorter than him. "For god's sake, Natasha, don't be a child!" He finally manages to catch her hand but it's knocked from his grip, his feet are swiped underneath him, and his head hits the concrete – hard.
"Don't EVER call me a child again, Rogers!" She shrieks over him, her blood red curls mussed, her eyes bloodshot, her whole body trembling violently. Considering the moment, Steve's actually petrified. "Okay, so maybe kissing you was a terrible, terrible mistake, but it doesn't mean that you say it!" He leans back as she leans forward, her knees giving way underneath her, and she's now so close to him their noses are touching.
"And what's it to you if I feel guilty for what happened to Clint? I fucking should! He's my fucking partner! We promised each other that we'd always be there to protect each other's backs. I – wasn't." she spits out the last two words venomously.
And then her voice drops suddenly and her eyes go back to normal but she's still shaking violently, and Steve's pretty sure that this is the side Stark warned him not to get on. "Yeah, I may love Clint, but we work in a dangerous line of business and to him it will always be work then me." Steve doesn't know Clint, so he can't exactly tell her she's wrong like she so desperately wants him to.
But as she climbs to her feet after a moment, her cold grey eyes stare down at him, and all she says is, "Get some sleep, Captain. We have training tomorrow, and we don't want you falling asleep on the job." She sneers at him – he gets the hidden meaning, don't worry – and then spins around and walks away, leaving him alone on the floor.
But when she's sure she's out of eye-shot, she presses against the wall, slides down to the floor and rests her head in her hands as she sobs.
Now, as you may know, I am a Clint/Natasha shipper (for those of you who checked out my profile, I applaud you) and there have been not-so-subtle hints placed throughout this whole chapter, and throughout the whole story, that lean toward Clintasha (pretty sure that's NOT a word) but putting in a bit of Cap/Tasha was quite fun. I rewatched Avengers the other day, and I realize that the facts in both the first chapters are MAJORLY incorrect - mainly the first chapter, the second was only wrong in one place. So please review? Oh, and can anyone guess what the hidden meaning in Natasha's line at the end is? If you can, I applaud.
no white horse for me