A/N: On fanfic, hugs for all my reviewers on chapter 2: GSMemorial18, nkowaliuk, Skewbald, chat noire, That-girl-from-outer-space6, sleeplessinbudapest (something tells me you're a Clintasha shipper? xD), Jaing Li, MESPX13 (who left my first review in a language I don't speak – so cool!), Littlesister007, madman42, and Christina.
Thanks to all of my followers (or in the case of Figment, those who hit reaction buttons) as well! And a final freakout to show my apprecation for theAnGerFlarE, who added this story to another community on fanfic: Avengers Assemble!
I am so honored by the sheer number of follows and favorites that this story has amassed. It's amazing and exciting and makes me want to run in circles and flail. Thank you!
In response to some questions pointed out by my reviewers:
madman42: I thought alcohol didn't effect Steve after he became Captain America? To be honest, I completely forgot about that; it's been a whole year since I watched the first Captain America film. I should re-watch it ASAP. My response to this would be that I never said Steve was drunk, only somewhat frazzled (as anyone would be, at least briefly, after drinking a straight vodka shot!)
sleeplessinbudapest: Is she going to forget this in the morning and Steve pretending it never happened? I addressed this in the author's note. Natasha has no recollection of this in the morning, but Steve does.
chat noire: Just one thing, Fury died at 1 am, and then right away Steve was taken to the Triskelion, then he had the elevator fight, before heading back to the hospital. So your timeline doesn't work out to well. You may have actually found a plot hole in my story. My best explanation (and this might still not work, in which case you'll have to accept my timeline as fanon,) Steve had the elevator fight, then went to see Natasha, and in the morning he went back to the hospital. But off the top of my head, I really can't remember if that would work or not. You're probably correct that I made a mistake. Oh, well... such is life, right?
On to chapter 3!
~x~X~x~
The third time they touch, she's lost in the wake of the winter ghost, but then the soldier (her soldier) presses his lips to hers, and all she knows is that she's home.
Natasha Romanoff has suffered bullet wounds before. It's a special brand of pain, shooting through every nerve; it takes her back to smoking skies and infernal flames, licking at a shattered dawn. It takes her back to the beginning, forever ago (only yesterday), when S.H.I.E.L.D. had every reason to end her life.
Natasha Romanoff has suffered bullet wounds before. But that only makes it worse, because memories ache like shrapnel.
This time, she's sprinting through the streets, screaming for civilians to run. Then it happens – the telltale crack; the piercing pain. It happens so fast that Natasha really does scream (or is it only in my mind?), and for an instant she's in Russia: a different girl with a different name, but a weapon nevertheless.
Then and now, all she knows is the need to survive.
Natasha staggers, slumping against the side of an abandoned car. Her breaths come in gasps. She presses a palm to her shoulder, trying to test the wound's severity. At the pressure, she nearly screams.
She must survive this.
On the bridge, the winter ghost reloads his rifle. Click. Click.
Natasha's legs are locked in place, her teeth gritted against the pain. She looks down at her hand. Blood stains her fingertips, brilliantly red. The world tilts, blurring, a tumult of real and unreal, and she's running and there's a shadow and it has her face, her eyes and her hair and her hate —
She blinks.
Blood. On her fingers.
Can you wipe out that much red?
Survive. That's all she needs to do.
Your ledger, it's dripping, it's gushing red —
The winter ghost takes aim.
A bloodstain blooms and spreads, red red red, making Natasha's shirt cling to the bullet. Taking sharp breaths, she closes her eyes. A whisper slithers through her mind.
You lie and kill, in the service of liars and killers.
She doesn't deserve to survive this. If she were smarter, she'd accept it, but all Natasha knows how to do is fight.
When Steve appears, shield in hand, to grapple with the ghost — she fights the urge to collapse, and instead stands. When the ghost's mask is torn away, and he wears the face that haunts Steve's dreams — she fights the screaming pain in her shoulder, and instead lifts a rifle. When she sees the light leave Steve's eyes, and his hand goes slack around the shield — she fights the urge to flinch, and instead fires.
The bullet hits its mark.
Their subsequent escape is a blur, everything seen through a veil of red. Natasha is still fighting against herself as they drive out of the chaos. She wants to close her eyes, but she won't. Because she has survived, and there is no shadow, and the blood on her hand is hers, not someone else's.
Because Steve's nightmare has been made flesh, and she can't leave him to face the implications alone.
With every jerk of the car, anguish shoots through Natasha's shoulder. Minutes swing by, fast and slow at the same time.
And then they're in a safe place (is anywhere safe anymore?), and Steve says something about how she lost a lot of blood, and Maria Hill asks her a question — are you okay, Agent Romanoff? — and Natasha tries to answer, but she can't. The words form on her tongue, but their meaning is lost to her. All at once, the floor lurches forward, and she lands on her wounded shoulder, and she screams and it hurtsand there's red, red, red —
And then there's only dark.
~x~X~x~
"Is she awake yet?"
Steve's voice, strong. It breaks through the dark, lifting her out of the nothingness.
Another voice, female. "I'm afraid not, Captain. You were right — she lost a lot of blood."
"I need to see her."
"She's unconscious."
Natasha tries to open her eyes, but her whole body feels heavy, like her blood has turned to metal.
"Then I'll wait beside her, until she wakes up. But with all due respect, Agent Hill, I need to see her."
Silence. Then, the door opening.
"You have five minutes, Captain."
"Thank you."
Natasha breathes shallowly. Steve takes a seat beside her cot; she hears the chair creak as he does so. For the longest time, unable to open her eyes, she listens to his ragged breathing.
When he says her name, it's broken. A knife wrenched from his chest.
"Natasha..." He tucks her hair behind her ear, his fingertip brushing her skin, dancing along the edge of her cheekbone. "I'm sorry."
He is earnest, unguarded (a web of exposed nerves, everything laid bare.) His raw honesty rattles every part of her, reviving a trickle of strength that she never knew she had. In a flash of conviction, she reaches out and grips his hand.
"Natasha." He grips back, firm, like he could force life back into her; and maybe he can, because somehow she opens her eyes.
"Hey, Rogers," she says.
His hand is warm, his smile blinding. "Hey," he says.
"The ghost... Did Agent Hill —"
"He got away."
"Damn."
They look at each other, their silence charging the air.
Steve swallows. "You're all right," he says, loosing a breath. "I was worried."
"I'm always all right," she says, but she's lying.
"I don't..." He runs a hand through his hair, and for the briefest instant, he looks lost. "I don't know what I would have done, if you —"
"It takes more than a ghost to kill me, Rogers."
"I know," he says. He looks at their interlocked hands. "I know."
In matters like this, Natasha is not naive; she has seduced men on missions, allowed them to come so very, very close in order to take their lives. But this is a different kind of touch. This is heat and hope and want. She looks at their interwoven fingers (such a trivial thing,) and her face burns.
Steve must see it; he releases her hand.
Natasha straightens, propping herself up on her good arm. "What happened?" she asks. "While I was out?"
"Agent Hill took you to surgery," Steve says. "They removed the bullet. Closed the wound."
Surgery. But the bullet was in her shoulder — it went right through her clothes. Which means...
Pulse pounding, Natasha looks down. "Damn it!"
Her dark jeans are intact, if not somewhat damaged from the skirmish; her shirt and leather jacket, however, are absent. She's alone in a recovery room with Captain America, and she's in a freaking bra.
"As I expected." Steve smirks, shifting in his chair. "You would look terrible in a bikini."
"Get me a damn shirt, Rogers."
"I'm tempted to refuse."
Natasha raises her eyebrows. "That would've been frowned upon in the forties."
"Indecent," he says.
"Shameful," she says.
Steve leans down suddenly, his lips barely brushing hers. At first, Natasha is too caught off guard to react, but then something snaps into place and she's kissing him, rough and reckless. Her shoulder throbs, but the pain is faraway (and so is the rest of the world).
It's the third time they touch, and when the soldier (her soldier) presses his lips to hers, all she knows is that she's home.
When Steve withdraws, her face is flushed. They stare at each other, breathing hard. In the silence, Natasha is acutely aware of her state of partial undress.
"Good thing it's the twenty-first century," Steve says. And then, as though nothing happened, he slips outside to ask Agent Hill for an extra shirt.
~x~X~x~
A/N: A few things I'd like to point out. 1: If Natasha's thought process seems a bit fractured during my narration of her battle with the Winter Soldier, that's because I went back to the PTSD thread, which I began in chapter 1 with Steve & Natasha's nightmares. She had a moment of flashback, where dreams and reality sort of collided; she legitimately wasn't entirely sure where she was. Hopefully, I conveyed that well; if not, now you know what the heck was going on.
2: My aforementioned friend Scott pointed out to me that according to comic book canon (I've only ever read like 4 comic books in my life, so I trust him on this,) Black Widow has anti-aging powers and is actually as old as Captain America. Another reason to ship it? You bet. I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to work this into the fanfic, but we'll see. Scott also helped to inform me a little bit about Black Widow's comic-centric past; I'm not using much of that, but I'm drawing on it for her flashbacks to working for Russia.
3: I was going to do a thing for this chapter where Steve and Natasha shop for clothes in order to go undercover (right before the mall sequence with the unforgettable escalator kiss.) It ended up looking very fluffy, not serious at all, and more of a crackfic, though, so I stuffed the outline into another document. Maybe I'll write it if I ever get bored.
4: Chapter 4 will still take place during Winter Soldier. Chapter 5 will take place after the film, and so relies on my speculation regarding what happened afterward.
5: I'm finally getting involved in the Marvel fandom! I've now seen both Captain America films, the first two Iron Man films, the first two episodes of AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Avengers. I'm planning on watching Iron Man 3 as soon as I can get my hands on a copy, and two of my friends are thinking about having a sleepover where they initiate me into the Thor films. (I'm working on it; no spoilers please!)
Songs for this chapter: 1. Here We Are (Breaking Benjamin) 2. We Fall Apart (We As Human)