Resistance
Chapter Eight
Slowly she opened her eyes, the bright lights above her caused her discomfort, but when they dimmed, she found herself looking at Pepper. A small smile appeared on her face, at the sight of her sister. She watched as she slept in the plastic chair beside her bed. Trying to sit up, pain shot through her, a whimper escaping her causing Pepper's eyes shot open. "Angela, don't move, you'll tear the stitches," her voice filled with concern and relief.
"Where am I?" She was shocked by the sound of her voice. It was rough and raspy, the worst she had ever heard it sound.
"You're at a hospital in Denver," Pepper told, but Angela couldn't seem to focus on her. Something was wrong. Something was missing. Looking around the room, she found that it was just Pepper and herself. There was another chair on the other side of the bed and it had a jacket on it that Tony would own by the looks of it. "How did I get here?"
"What was the last thing you remember?"
Standing in a clearing next to a stream—Natasha! "Where is she? Where's Natasha?" Angel shot up, ignoring the pain. Pushing the sheet and blankets off of her, she spun her feet off the side. "Tell me where is she!" Her feet touched the ground, and she doubled over in pain. It was too much, but she had to get to her. Pepper pulled Angela to her. "Where is she, Pepper? Please just tell me where she is?"
"Angela," Pepper's voice cracked with emotion.
Angela pulled away from her, and started walking across the room. There were no other beds in the room that means she was somewhere else. "Angela. You shouldn't be walking," Pepper told her as she took hold of her hand.
"Then tell me where she is," her voice weak from the slowly disappearing energy.
"I'm sorry, darling. She's gone."
"What?"
"She's gone."
"No. No! She can't be gone!" Tears ran down her face, as she sank to her knees, with Pepper wrapping her in her arms. The door swung open as nurses rushed in. The prick of a needle didn't register. The only thing that did was on repeat. She's gone. She's gone. She's gone. And then everything became fuzzy and then darkness consumed her again.
Three months had gone by. Angela now lived in the Stark Tower with the rest of the Avengers, at least all but one.
For the first couple of weeks, she stayed in her room, not moving from her bed or the chair stationed in front of the window looking out. She had fallen into depression. Everyone came to talk to her, more Pepper, Tony, and Valerie than anyone else. They would talk to her, never saying her name or anything that had any attachment to her. But it had been in the second month when Clint came to talk to her for the first time.
"Angela, how—how are you feeling?" He asked as he sat beside her. He looked out the window as he waited for a response, but none came.
"I know that you never trusted me when we first met. It was probably…well most likely because of the way I acted. But I acted that way because I was confused. Natasha," he paused when he heard her take a deep breath, "She never ever acted like the way she acted when I saw her with you. She smiled. She laughed. She was at peace when she was with you. I had never seen her act like that, because all that I had ever seen was her blank face and blatantly comments." He took a deep breath, and looked out the window. He watched birds fly by and cars drive around in the distance. "That's why I stared at you in the motel. I couldn't figure out how someone like you could do that to her. But I didn't know your history together. What you went through with only each other. You made her human." He stopped talking and just looked out the window and he waited.
Seconds turned into minutes, and minutes into hours. And soon they watched the sun set and darkness cover the city, but it never went to sleep it just kept going. Kept living.
"It's so hard," she whispered. Her voice cracked from lack of use. "It's so hard to think about living without her for the rest of my life. I loved her so much. That I wish I could have done more. That I could have saved her."
"You did save her, Angela. You gave her back her humanity. You gave her love, and peace, and family. You've given her more than you can even imagine."
"But it wasn't enough. She's gone, Clint. She's gone. And I don't know what to do."
He sighed, and then told her, "I knew she was hiding something from me for about three years now."
"What?"
"She had a cell on her that wasn't Shield issued." He explained, "There were times on a mission or right afterwards when she thought that she was alone, she would pull it out and just look at it. Sometimes just staring at it in her hand, most of the time, she actually had her finger over the call button. I never asked who she was trying to call, but I have a pretty good guess that it was you. That she needed to hear your voice to continue the mission, to get past what she saw or did."
When he heard a beep, he turned towards her. He found her with a Stark glass phone in her hands, and then she pressed a button. He watched from the back of the phone as a video started playing. "Come on just open the present," Angela said in the video.
"No, it's not Christmas yet, it's not even Christmas Eve," but the smile that was on Natasha's face Clint's heart broke. He missed Natasha just as much and probably even more than Valerie. But he realized then that no one missed her as much as Angela did.
"She loved you," he whispered to her. When she turned her glaze away from the phone to him, his heart broke even more. Her eyes that had held so much life in them when they were at the motel were gone. Instead, all he found was dull empty husks of what used to be a great woman. Standing up, he took her hand, "Get some rest. She wouldn't want to see you like this. And if you ever want to talk about her, Valerie and I, we're here. We knew her the best out of the rest of the group." When she nodded, he turned and walked out the door, leaving her to think over what he had said to her. Leaving her to think about Natasha.
The next day, she took a shower, and gave Jarvis her dirty clothes. But she still couldn't leave her room yet. She couldn't seem to handle it yet. But when dinner time came around and she could smell the food. She gathered up her courage and opened the door and walked out. With a baggy shirt and an old pair of jeans on, she walked lightly towards the kitchen following her nose.
As she peered around the corner that led into the dining room, she found everyone there. Tony and Pepper, both who looked worn with worry, and she knew that they were worried about her. Then there was Captain America, or rather Steve as he had told her to call him. Dr. Bruce Banner sat next to him, he was talking to Steve about something, by the sound of it he was explaining how the microwave worked but by the look on Steve's face all he was doing was confusing him. Two women that she didn't know sat with them. The older of the two was adding to the conversation that Banner was having. The other in the early twenties had an earphone in one ear and was listening to some sort of music as she would occasionally bounce her head slightly along with her fork. It was Clint and Valerie that caught her attention the most. They sat slightly separate from the others. Valerie's eyes rimmed pink, she had been crying Angela realized, and was picking at the food on her plate. Clint's arm was around her shoulders holding her to him. And the look he had on his face showed that he was in as much emotional pain as Valerie was.
Stepping lightly out of the shadows, she watched as Clint was the first to notice her standing there, and he patted the space next to him. Softly she made her way over to him. The others haven't noticed her yet, but when she was seated and had a plate full of food given to her by Valerie. The talking stopped. Looking up, she found everyone starring at her. "Let's just continue eating dinner," Clint said as he passed Angela a fork. Once everyone started eating, Banner went back to his explanation to Steve. With Pepper and Tony, taking occasional glances at her. After a few bites, Angela glanced at Clint and found him watching her. A small smile flickered at the corner of her lips, but he only nodded. He knew that she didn't want a big fiasco, and he made sure that it didn't happen.
She didn't talk during that dinner, or the dinners that followed, but she made sure that she didn't stay in her room all day. Tony and Pepper weren't as worried, but she still saw them give her glances and talk in shush tones when they thought that she wasn't looking.
The two women that were at the dinner table introduced themselves as Jane Foster, a scientist from New Mexico, and Darcy Lewis, Jane's babysitter, the one that made sure she ate and slept everyday. Darcy had started talking to her, about random everyday things, but then one day while they were seating on the roof, aka Clint's Nest, she asked, "So who was he?"
"What?" Angela asked confused as she stopped drawing in her sketch pad.
"Who was the man that's left you broken?" She asked as she stared at her. When all Angela did was stare at her, she explained, "I may just seem like hyper active music loving college intern, but I can see things pretty clearly when it comes to women that's why I work so well with Jane. I know when to fucking leave her alone. So who is he?"
Angela was silent for a while, wondering if it was going to be as painful as it had been when talking with Clint. "Her name was Natasha. She—she died."
"Oh. I'm sorry. What was she like?"
Slowly she flipped around her pad and showed Darcy a sketch. A young woman with curly hair, lying on her side. A sheet draped across her hip and pulled up to her chest. Her legs bare, along with her arms and stomach. And her face was emotionless even though her lips held a smirk. But it was her eyes that held everything.
"She's beautiful," Darcy whispered.
"Yeah, she was." With that she stood and headed off the roof. She couldn't fight the tears as they came streaming down her face. Once she was inside, she run across Clint and Valerie's room, only to run into Clint himself.
"Hey, hey, it's okay." He wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him. His eyes flashed to Darcy as she came walking in holding the sketch pad in her hands. Moving his head towards the door, he motioned for her to leave. Once she was gone, he focused his attention on to the woman in his arms. He held her until she stopped crying, and then let her go when she pulled away.
"I'm sorry, Clint. I ruined your shirt," she mumbled, her nose stuffy and eyes rimmed red.
"It's alright, it's not one of my favorites. Why don't you go wash your face, dinner's almost ready." With a nod, she left. She headed for the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror, the person looking back at her didn't look like her. This person had dark rings under her eyes. Her dyed black hair was showing blonde roots. Her curls weren't full of life like they had been; they now looked like they had when she had been in Sasha's clucks. With a sigh, she rinsed her face wiping away all the tears that had fallen.
Opening the door, she headed down the hall towards the dining room and attaching kitchen, but stopped at the corner when she heard them talking. "What happened? Who was this woman?" Darcy's voice asked and then was followed by a slap of paper against the counter.
"Where did you get this?" Pepper voice sounded.
"She was drawing it all day when we were up in the Nest."
"You allow her into your Nest but not me," Tony stated with a slight whine.
With a sigh, "It helps her. Beside Valerie is allowed there," Clint explained.
"Yeah, she's your soon to be wife. I would hope she'd be allowed there," Tony retorted.
"Back on topic. She could barely talk about this woman. Who was she?" Darcy asked again.
"Angela was in Russian for ballet. She was kidnapped and held ransom against Tony," Clint told her. "They held her for three months, she hasn't told anyone what they did, the only person who knew was Natasha."
"Why?"
"She was the one to rescue her." Clint told her, "They escaped Russian, and Natasha had been hiding Angela ever since. Different names, Different cities. Different countries. They had traveled the world together. Three and a half months ago, I was sent on a mission to follow Angela because there apparently was a mole in Shield and she was attached to them in some way. That's when I found out about Natasha and Angela."
"Was there a mole?"
"No, it was the Russians trying to find her, and they did. Natasha and Angela ran to Philly, where Valerie and I caught up with them. But that was also where they were able to grab her. Natasha disappeared after that. We thought that she went out to find her—"
"—But we couldn't even find her," Tony added sounding downtrodden.
"But she did somehow." Clint continued, "Tony had put a tracker on Natasha and we followed. When we got there, we found them in a clearing, knelling on the ground leaning against each other. A spear through the both of them. Angela made it, Natasha didn't."
"She loved her." Darcy said mostly to herself.
"They loved each other," Pepper corrected her.
She didn't wait to hear what else they were going to say, instead, she went back up to Clint's Nest, where she looked out over the city.
When she had been there at Stark Tower for three months, she was in her room listening to the news on the TV. As a cleaning mood demanded her attention; she had pilled all her dirty clothes by the clothes shoot, and then vacuumed the floor, even though both Jarvis and Amelia said that she didn't need to. It was while she was rearranging her collection of books, however, that the news caught her attention. "The body of Dmitri Aristov and three of his associates were found dead today in their penthouse in Manhattan. NYPD says that they were murderer. However, Dmitri Aristov body was the most mangled out of the others." The news showed a picture of Dmitri Aristov, causing Angela to drop her books.
"TV off," she commanded softly. He was dead, but who would do that? Clint? Valerie? Tony…he wasn't a killer though. 'Natasha would have.' She thought as she bent to pick up the book. A book of Russian fairy tales, just as heavy and thick as Grimm.
Knock, knock.
Turning, the book dropped to the floor again. "Angela," she said standing in the doorway ringing her hands together, as she shifted from foot to foot.
"Natasha," Angela whispered out. She couldn't believe it. She was there, alive. When a small smile played at her lips, she ran to her. Tears streamed down her face, as they held each other. Never wanting to let go again. "I thought you were dead."
"I know. I so sorry. I had to make you thought that so that if I didn't make it back you wouldn't have to worry and then grieve."
"Don't leave me. Not ever. Alright?"
"Never." Natasha whispered before pulling Angela closer. Their lips smashed together in a heated kiss. Their hands pulling at each other's hair, holding them close. Natasha pushed her back into the room as she kicked the door to Angela's room closed.
I hoped you liked it. So the next chapter is the last. So please review!