Healing in the Moonlight

{Part 2}

They were standing on the edge of uncertainty, a gaping hole of problematic choice. They tried to distance themselves on missions, trying to suppress the rancid urges of unspoken desire, which was difficult, given the fact that they were both in range of imminent contact.

Steve was disarmed; the dense, well-defined planes of his torso was bare, revealing the firm indents of muscle to the flecks of hazy moonlight piercing from wisps of clouds. There were no barriers keeping him protected from the kindling variants of fire burning in her daunting gaze. Her keen eyes darkened; turquoises and emerald became molten embers against the darkness. Ravished by impulse, Natasha lowered her head, fighting not to stare.

Steve was standing upright, rigid and vaguely aware to her world of deception and the utmost of necessity. His bare muscular-Adonis- frame slanted flat against the rough bark of a tree; his head was tipped back as he gathered heavy pants of breath. Remnants of sweat trickled down his sideburns and the nape of his structured neck. His eyes were faintly shut to reveal hints of azure under the shadows; his statuesque body polished with exhaustion and battered and exposed dangerously. Most of the discolored blemishes faded but streaks of dried blood were caked onto his feverish skin.

He shifted his weight, his resilient spirit trying to elude capture in her merciless web. It was time to rest, the recon mission was over. Exhaustion was gripping in his veins and a fever was rising in the torrents of blood merging against his heart.

Natasha sat parallel to him, her black tactical uniform half unzipped to reveal a hint of cleavage; a useful tool the Widow utilized in weaving men into seduction. Steve was tense under her alluring gaze, his passive blue eyes resettled back on the alloy shield gleaming in darkness enfolding around the vacant area. In the distance, intense flickers of lightning danced across the clusters of encroaching clouds.

A summer tempest had set its rapid course towards them, and apparently a storm had suddenly become a growing sense of relief for Steve's balm, sweaty, and exposed skin. His body was presumably overheating. Restraining herself from engaging a full intimate assault, Natasha curled her lithe fingers over the sleek metal of her pistol; resettling her slender and heated body against a jagged rock.

She stared at him instead of the desert wasteland she was supposed to be scanning. She was absorbing every detail of his unguarded appearance. His youthful face wore the angelic visage of a hardened warrior, his calm eyes held the colors of radiant azure and ice. His razor-edged cheek bones held no blemishes of battle, his strong jawline set into a determined expression; all while the fading moonlight caressed his vibrant skin. Finally, his neatly-spiked blond hair was unkempt and sodden as beads of sweat rolled over the edges of his full lips. He was the world's ultimate soldier of nobility and strength. He even reeked of uncompromising virtue.

He remained stoic and observant to the dangers lurking around them.

Steve was everything that she had fought against; but when he walked into her dark world, some part of her that had not been damaged by the macabre and twisted horrors of the Red Room accepted the light radiating from him. Natasha started to believe that chance no longer seemed irreverent to take. He was a stranger—a glimpse of the purest symbol humanity that could not become corroded by pain, failure and hate. She never clung to attachments without purpose, or the fundamentals of reason—salvation.

They didn't say a word to each other, creating walls of tension and tampering with desires that were evident in their eyes.

The intoxicating stench of masculine sweat clogged her nostrils as it wavered off his body. She felt her heart pounding disobediently; her senses were coming alive as the monumental choice became a savage impulse of hunger-filled with different levels of acceptation and temptation.

She had to claim him as her own. No more barriers—just a raw extraction of release. Steve was no longer an obstructive force of foreign devotion to compromise; a wall to keep from running. He was an anchor for her to grasp onto against the clashes of the raging storms of her past.

She felt drawn to him, the urges kept increasing in strength. Finally she gave into chance and invaded his space with slow and purposeful steps; a method of distraction to obtain his vulnerability.

The scarlet haired assassin effortlessly swayed her jutting hips with rhythmic movement, carefully engaging closer to him. She kept her tainted emotions distant. She had mastered her skills of manipulation with the simplest expression of need to lure men into her web. But with Steve everything seemed to become real. Her kiss wasn't a weapon to use to obtain dominance.

She had used cunning and her beauty as tools for facilitating deception and manipulation. The instructors of the Red Room taught her how to play the dangerous game without annex or lingering guilt. It was a crucial method of succession for the mission—not a purpose to retrieve a taste of humanity. She'd been standing in the crossroads of choice and emotion, unable to move a step forward because she always ran when the chance for redemption was offered to her.

Gathering up all measures of her elusive composure, Natasha listened to the rasps of breath from his soft lips. Danger. She collected all reservations and dared her teal eyes to affix onto the upper arch that made his lip curved and end at the dimple that often appeared when he was deep in thought. Steve looked hellbent and distraught about something that was eating away at his heart. Natasha had never taken a moment to fully stare beyond the mantle of Captain America, and found the genuine Brooklyn kid that still kindled underneath the powerful muscles and the patriotic tactical suit. There was damage that bled through his stern and unyielding gaze. He needed to be saved from the past.

Sighing out a set of evened breaths; Natasha felt her icy, collective demeanor become diminished at the realization that she was indeed off of her game. "Hey," she spoke as her words fell into an utterance of concern. All things considered, she was trying to reach out to him. Unceremoniously, she stepped an inch closer. "Is everything is okay, you don't really seem like yourself tonight, Cap?"

After a long set of silence, Steve positioned his towering stature into a defensive stance, his bare muscles flexed was raw traction. Natasha could sense he was trying to shut her out; he had done it many times in the past when the flicker of a haunting memory plagued the recesses of his disciplined thoughts. He released a hitching breath, and settled his piercing eyes onto her.

There was no evidence of torment that he couldn't hide from her. "I'm fine, Natasha," the despondent captain returned petulantly, in a low grumble. His voice sounded worn out and disturbed by unseen anguish. His azure eyes pinned onto the shield, he released a calm set of breaths. He pressed the full expanse of his lips into an uneven grimace. Evidently, he focused on not breaching her unavoidable personal space.

He wanted to convince her that his emotions were in check. He was a commanding officer—a vigilant leader and unyielding fighter. He dismissed the despair crawling over him even though it felt like a dagger in the heart each time he drifted back to that shattering moment when Bucky fell from the train. Steve allowed himself to feel the pain, the sting of tears that blurred his vision as he recalled that snowy day; they were hanging on the edge of the white abyss, coldness, and fear mixed in the air as he stared into his best friend's terrified blue eyes. He watched him fall from his grasp, crash and freeze into the ice forever—endless winter.

He had experienced the constant pulses of dejection. Many of times, when he opened his eyes and found himself staring at Bucky's silver plated dogtags that hung on the door knob of his bedroom closet. He had kept them close—safe from the SSR archives. Bucky had given them to him that night in the tavern. He had worn them when the Valkyrie crashed into the ice beds of Greenland. It was all he had left to remind him that the fight wasn't over; that he wasn't alone when his heart clashed with the freezing water and his breath emptied from his lungs as he drifted into the dark void—never imagining that he would dream again. "I don't need your emotional support, Nat." he affirmed sternly.

There was a deep, bitter sighed that ghosted from her lips. "Well, you're clearly not fine," she played out with an edge of unease in her husky voice. She folded her arms protectively over her ample bust. She glared directly at the super-soldier, unblinking and guarded. "I can tell when you're lying to me, Steve." She fastened her lips into a still line. The humid air thickened around them, solidifying against their chests. "I thought Captain America was too honest to keep secrets... At least that's what Stark told me after reading through your old SSR files."

Steve narrowed his eyes, squeezing his large hands into fists. The blood in his veins coiled with heat, his eyebrows creased into deep, serious lines that gave him more of a strict demeanor. "So you've been reading up on me?" he growled in response, his severe blue eyes felt like they seared into her skull."I guess that doesn't surprise me, knowing that your type of business involves exploiting other people's secrets."

"It's a part of the job, Rogers," she rasped, abrupt, her imploring teal eyes glinted dangerously. They were same on the equal level of tension. "Sometimes the real secrets can't be found on paper work."

Steve held his ground, mentally preparing himself for her next move. He knew that the Black Widow was a master of conducting cunning tactics of manipulation, seduction and exposing men's weaknesses.

Natasha gained details of operations and utilized the methods of the KGB to create a new purpose of succession for the mission. The naive captain knew he had to watch her closely. Although infuriated by her brazen attitude, Steve had managed to muster up enough patience to reason against the equivalent uncertainty, all the while showing her that he was distinctly uncomfortable on the subject of his past.

He would have given her the answers on his own accord when he was ready, but she had proven that their partnership was just another game of deception. He's considered weighing down his options to return back to Stark Tower and forget everything, leaving the fundamental structures of SHIELD behind him. He wasn't an agent or a spy—a man trained to deceive and obtain intel for SHIELD. He was a soldier who made a pledged that he would never back down from the good fight in defending humanity's freedom.

"You know, it's kinda hard to trust someone that makes a living out of exposing details without somebody's permission. Yeah, you may know everything about me, but I've got news for you, Agent Romanoff," he spat remorsefully, his lips curling into taunt grimace, unable to deny those words to her. "...you're not the only one in here who gets to sleep with a guilty conscience every night."

Poison spiked in her veins. "You don't know me, Rogers," she enunciated flatly, holding his firm stare. She sucked in a breath, feeling bitterness reside in her throat. Under other circumstances, the vindictive part of her would have left him. Although there were no illusions of trust between them, Natasha had to utilize the moment and rekindle their partnership; regardless if he refused her rare confession. "I have no conscience for guilt to compromise, but you have demons that love to chase your dreams..."

Steve leaned back against the tree and sighed, crossing his arms over his bare, slackened pectorals. He was vaguely aware of the spite in her voice. He cast a look at her with a defiant gleam welled in his glacial eyes. Momentarily, after suppressing the irking protests that clogged his veins, he registered her words. In all honesty that flooded through him, the bond they shared back at safe house felt like a distant glimpse of an unfinished dream. She was there standing in the moonlight, fully disarmed and unsure where to take her next step—only clothes covered her scars. They had released confessions, shared heady and passionate kisses, but after that night he still wasn't convinced that it was real enough to grasp. He needed to take a different recourse of action to rebuild something that seared within both of their guarded hearts. At that moment, he felt nearly incapacitated by the unspoken truth.

"This is one of the reasons why I didn't want to join with SHIELD," he wavered uneasily, his posture turned rigid as he deduced her intentions. All reservations abandoned him. "It feels like I have to keep on proving myself to you. Almost like a contest that you and Agent Barton thought up just to level down the playing field of partnership." He needed to recalculate his efforts. "Who do you want me to be, Natasha?"

She smirked, coyly, dodging his question. "You have to treat it like a game, Rogers," she replied, the coldness in her tone belied the bitterness. "There are more losers than winners."

His hardened expression fractured into a solemn grimace. "So that's how you want to play?" he asked, brows knitted tight and darkness hooded over the blue embers that set ablaze inside his dismal stare. He parted his lips, breathing out a dismal breath, trying to grasp onto a clearer understanding of the aspects between trust and his lethal partner's guile.

Everyone in SHIELD had a darker negative that defined his or her past; molded it, or concealed it. And he had chosen to always walk in the light, never turn his back onto the shadows. He sensed that being in servitude to fundamentals, truths of freedom and liberty were just a fictitious cover-up that Fury used to earn allegiances for eliminating world threats that he had been a part of before the foundations were broken.

There was no denying, in his gut instincts, that agents of SHIELD knew how the game worked. They cheated in the gray areas. It wasn't the noble fight anymore, just a spiraling and chaotic world of illusions and misguidance. He offered his life—his dreams—to save the world from falling beneath the shadow of HYDRA. He fought for hope.

Steve took a moment to recover his thoughts while making an effort to avoid further inquiries of his grief. He leveled his sincere blue eyes back at her. "I've seen you at your best when it came to saving lives from Loki's alien army. You weren't a spy that day, but an Avenger who fought hard and didn't treat the battle as a game. I think you know that sometimes the only way out of battle is to make a sacrifice, Natasha."

She shifted uncomfortably, an oppressive weight had pinned against her. "I don't risk my life to save people," she gave him a raw declaration of the truth she'd known, sudden belligerence echoed in her tone. Absence of mortal sentiment granted her with the advantage to twist his heartstrings.

Natasha was playing him. A devilish actress of a thousand lies."The past made that clear to me a dozen times. I'm not capable of holding onto attachments. They get erased whenever I try to feel them again. That's another thing that was stolen from me," she spitefully admitted. "The only thing I can claim as my own is each red strand of my hair. Everything else belongs to the Red Room."

...Always will be...

Steve didn't reply.

She lowered her head, redirecting her glinting eyes to the red painted rings of his shield; intensely zoning in on the tarnished star painted on the middle of circular disk of indestructible alloy. It gleamed in the sables of darkness. Her lips moved against the guise of ire.

Natasha never felt alone in the darkness. She'd been stripped from her humanity with infliction of pain from torture devices. Her ivory skin was blotched with raw scabs, claw marks from rusted instruments of punishment. She was surrounded by coldness and vacant shadows of terror, encroaching, blood churning screams of depravity echoing within the halls, taunting her to the breaking point with insanity penetrating against her soul.

During the years of being imprisoned in the Room, Natasha had been given a chance to prove her resistance against the desensitization periods of injections and mind alerting methods if necessary to spear her compliance. Given treatments of experimental toxins, she was condemned. She couldn't run. She couldn't search for escape without having the sinister eyes of her handlers watching her every move. She was frozen in the red shadow, using her lithe and petite frame as an advantage to lure men close to her. She had to use the tools that the cell provided to fight and kill without a drop of morality running in her veins. It was pure carnage.

"It must be nice to know who you are and to never lose yourself in another reflection," she whispered, her voice falling away.

Feeling the penetrating stab of serrated guilt lance inside his heart, Steve regarded her with a distant restricted gaze. "Nat…" he whispered, losing the ability to convey her unreadable emotions. He was bare, wounded and utterly disarmed. She could have easily marked him as her prey.

He unlocked his arms from his chest, giving her the opportunity to rectify her darkest transgressions, and to find something permanent that couldn't become tainted with the color of red. Steve had allowed the love of his life to slip away, before they became real—Peggy was just a glimpse of his past, a broken dream of stability and love that would remain forever in the ice. "When are you going to drop the act with me?" he resettled a credulous stare at her obscured teal irises, pleading for her to release everything to him. "You can be real with me..."

"I don't know how to be real, Steve," she cut him off, pain evident in her voice. She stared at him. Eventually the fault in her heart diminished and Natasha felt something growing fully ablaze and alive inside her. She couldn't quite conceive the emotional response that he wanted to hear escape her lips. Unsure, her eyes tore away from his stoic and careworn expression that seemed to plaster across the chiseled lines of his face. Everything became palatable—torrential. Her feverish skin crawled with a dismal pulse of need. She longed for a genuine touch of devotion that could break away with meaningful trust.

The storm in the distance gave her slow and temperate revelations. Natasha was searching for surreal-permanent contentment. She looked down at her lissome body, flesh and blood that had been rewritten and molded to become a tool for murder and obedience; a weapon for her demons to use. Her scarred body had been remade marionette on raveling threads which they yanked and pulled back if her resistance overpowered the dehumanization programming. She'd told herself many of the times while on the run, that she would always be condemned to suffer like a monster unleashed from its cage.

...Twirl. Devour. Terminate...

"Why can't you understand that I can never be what you want me to be, Steve? Not even a real friend…" she gritted, trying not to succumb to the prickling of regrets, for that evoked repentance of her tortuous childhood, and the many lives she mercilessly killed; the people who suffered because of the orders she unquestionably followed, and the people who came to harm because they tried to save her from drowning. She was haunted by impulses of murder, the vibrancy of blood oozing from bullet and knife wounds, irreversible havoc, and the tortures she had conducted. She truly couldn't be rid of those horrors.

She smiled, brokenly, mustering up some form reassurance to give him. "You need somebody who is worth trusting in the field, not someone who uses her partner's strength as a distraction so that she can work in the shadows. You should ask Fury to have you resigned. It's obvious that we're not compatible with each other, even though we do exceptional work when we put our differences aside."

Steve narrowed his reserved gaze, his shoulders slumped, and his lips manage to curve into a tender smile. "That might not be the best option we've got, Natasha. We can work pretty well together...We just need to stop going back into the past and focus on what's in front of us..." He tried to erase the continuous error of instability in his life. He believed in second chances, even though he felt the compression of latent grief that would inexplicably cleave his heart apart. He tried to focus on her.

"Trust me, Rogers," she stifled her lips into a weak smirk. Despite everything they've endured in the past months, she had to let him go. She didn't deserve his trust. And somehow, she knew it was a chance for him to live back in the light and away from the dark chasm that damned the purest, honorable men into fallen angels. Steve would fall deeper into her world, feel the pain that would destroy him from the inside until he became lost in his own faults. She didn't want to see him end up as another ghost from her past. She wanted to live, to adapt and finally rediscover love. That would complete her mission. She needed to release him, for good measure, and not give into the emotions that prompted her to take another risk in entering his world.

"It's better that we both take different roads. You're a soldier and I'm a spy that has too many secrets that can never be exposed. I have enough blood on my hands that can paint the walls of your neat apartment. I'm not the person you want to trust with your life," her words became unbidden, unwarranted and filled with inverted remorse. "I don't want to hurt you, Steve."

"Hey," he said in a softer tone, disapproving of her unsettling confession. His blue eyes connected with hers with more of a modest, assuring gaze. He was hesitant, at first, respecting her space, but when her wary gaze fell, his hand lifted to the side of her pale face. His fingers brushed over the sharpened edges of her cheeks, and twined the loose scarlet locks with the pooling warmth of his soothing touch. "You can never hurt me, Natasha."

She stared up at him, her listless thoughts detached with remnants of doubt. She wondered if he'd discovered an irreverent truth that was yet to be revealed to her. "Don't say something if you can't understand me, Steve." Her rosy lips sealed into a tight crease and her grayish eyes flickered. She searched deeper into his soulful, pained gaze. "I know your weaknesses and what makes you surrender to defeat. I can see it in your eyes that pain still manages to surface when you nothing to fight against..."

"I know how to cope with my pain," he admonished firmly, his eyes never leaving her guarded stare. "I've lost everyone I've ever loved because of my choices. Those regrets may be a weakness, but I use that pain as my strength and I never let it get the best of me."

A hint of snark emitted from her throat, she almost sounded cruel. Then, there was a sudden elevation to her demeanor-it became utterly revolting for her. "Well, for what it's worth, I really hope that you find the right partner," Natasha said, her voice definitive and reluctant. Her lips creased as a gentle smile tampered over her icy collective exterior. She took a step away in a dismissive twist of her boot. She had to escape from this moment—runaway and never look back at him.

Steve could feel her withdrawing from him again—the same way she did that day at the cemetery where their long hard fought journey together had ended, and she had retreated back into the unknown where she did not want to be followed. The warmth of her presence had begun to evaporate, leaving him with a cold emptiness that he had begun to dread.

Not again. Never again.

With quick purposeful movements, Steve reached out and seized her wrist then pulled her back into his secured embrace. His lips found hers effortlessly—soft but decisive. Natasha's eyes widened with surprise. Her full lips quivered a moment beneath his tentative onslaught. Her trepidation screamed at her to brush him off, but try and she might, she allowed her eyes to droop closed and she relaxed into the kiss—threading her fingers through his rich blonde locks.

Her cool breath on his lips, the intoxicating scent of strawberry, the softness of her touch—she was heaven. Steve drank in her soft exhalations with a wistful sigh. His strong hands held her close as they moved to her lower waist. He had never been so bold before, not even with Peggy. The part of his mind that had not turned into mush wondered if this was one of the reasons why he felt so drawn to Natasha—she brought out a passion within him he didn't realize existed—she made him feel alive.

The warmth inside of him had returned and from it, a soaring of excitement as he felt her responding to his ministrations with equal fervor. From the gentle brush of their noses to the fleeting caress of their fingertips—every nerve felt like electricity.

Natasha closed her eyes, feeling every sculpt of his broad muscles ignite flares of desperation; the unexplainable need to hold onto to him forever. She was relaxed. Sated. The sharpness of her hips rocked against his torso, as his hand encompassed her back, moving to cart through her drenched copper curls with gentle ease as he dipped her head back, and molded slathering heat over her swollen lips. In response to his possessive assault, she rubbed her palm against the flat planes of his compacted abdomen. Natasha wanted to reclaim her humanity with him, no more threads entwining her heart, to fight the mental wounds that ran deep. She craved to taste freedom as it merged with the wetness and coiling heat of his ablaze mouth.

When they eventually felt the need to part for air after pleased and desperate moans, Natasha pulled back, staring into his eyes as intense lightning gathered into the embers of fathomless stormy blue. She smiled, leaning into chest, her lips pressed into his muscles and relishing the moment as moonlight shone over them like halos in the darkness.

They didn't need to say words.

Pain and demons were replaced by something that was unbreakable. She realized that his promising love was equivalent to hold onto.

Natasha could finally accept the truth that she had something more than just a field panther, consoling friend and shield...

She had Captain America.

{The End}