because the comic that opens with Natasha rock climbing apparently wouldn't leave my muse alone.
Steve watches as Natasha flits around her kitchen, pausing only briefly to open a cupboard here and there, retrieve some unknown ingredient, and deposit it into the blender sitting on the counter. He scrunches his eyes closed, finding the quick movement more of a trigger for his hangover than anything. His brain seems to catch up abruptly then, and he realizes she'd said something and that his brain hasn't processed whatever it was. "Sorry," he says sluggishly, a hint of sheepishness colouring his expression, "what did you say?"
Nat smiles at him indulgently, though he thinks he sees some amusement in her eyes, too. "I said I'm going rock climbing today."
"Rock climbing?" he echoes in disbelief, his eyebrows rising in surprise. Of the long list of possible activities for her, rock climbing had definitely not been what he'd have guessed. Especially given how she'd died.
"Yep," she answers casually. She's stopped moving around the kitchen, and Steve figures she's finally added all the required ingredients to the blender for the promised hangover cure smoothie.
"And that's not…uh…hard for you? Because of, well, you know…" he trails off, unwilling to finish the sentence aloud. It wasn't a mental image he was keen to have playing in his mind again. Hearing Clint tell it the first time all those years ago in his grief-laden and emotionally distant tone had been hard enough.
Natasha seems unbothered by it, though, and smiles at him fondly. "I'm fine. Heights, mountains, cliffs," she lists off. "They're not a problem."
"So just picked up a new hobby?" he guesses as he slumps forward, leaning his elbow on the counter and resting his chin in his hand. God, why is everything still spinning?
"Sort of. I had a membership at an indoor climbing place for a couple of years way back in my SHIELD days, but never got around to being able to do much of it because of Fury feeling the need to keep me overly busy. When I finally got some downtime, I went on a few trips to do some climbs. It's been a long while since I've done any though."
Steve gapes at her momentarily, mind feeling like it's running through the mud to catch up with what she'd told him. Then he shakes his head — slowly, so as not to disturb his aching head — in disbelief. "I didn't have you pegged for rock climbing as a hobby," he admits.
"There's a lot you don't know about me, Cap," Nat quips with a wink and a smile.
Before he can respond, the room is filled with noise as she hits the button to turn on the blender. It runs for less than a minute but feels much longer to his aching head, and he can't help but wonder, Have blenders always been that loud?
He watches as Nat pours the worryingly thick liquid into a glass. "You wanna come?"
"Rock climbing?"
"Yeah."
Steve blinks, his sluggish mind processing the offer. "I've never been rock climbing," he says after a moment.
"You've climbed buildings before, I've seen you do it. I'm sure you'll be speeding past me in no time," Nat replies, shrugging.
"I don't know," he hedges. He's not convinced he'll be able to muster the required focus, let alone the energy, to successfully climb stairs, much less a mountain.
She pushes the glass of the greeny-brown concoction from the blender toward him, which he eyes warily. "Drink that and your hangover will be gone in like half an hour," she says. In typical Natasha fashion, there isn't a shred of doubt in her tone, as though she knows her words contain nothing but the absolute truth.
"What exactly is in this?" he asks as he lifts the glass, swirls it around a little, then holds it up to look at it in the rays of light streaming through the window. Whatever it is, it's far from appealing in terms of its colour, smell, and consistency, and he certainly isn't optimistic about the taste either.
"A girl's gotta have her secrets. Now drink."
"Why aren't you hungover? You drank more than both me and Buck," he protests.
"Yes, but I also drank water and ate food. And I made myself a batch of that earlier. Now drink it or I'm taking it away and you can suffer the consequences of your actions."
"That's just mean," he accuses.
She grins and slowly moves her hand forward, miming the action of taking the cup from him.
"Alright, alright," he says, swatting away her hand. At this point, he's willing to give anything a chance if it will lessen the headache and spinning he's experiencing.
A knock at the door interrupts their conversation. "Drink," Nat instructs pointedly, then heads to the door to answer it.
Steve brings the glass to his nose and sniffs the drink warily. He grimaces, immediately feeling a fresh wave of nausea roll through him. God, this smells awful.
"Mornin' Nat," Steve hears Bucky say.
"Come on in, Steve beat you here. He's in the kitchen contemplating his life choices last night."
Steve hears Bucky laugh and then listens to their approaching footsteps until they reach the kitchen.
"Oh, did she make you her hangover cure?" Bucky says, clapping Steve on the back once as he settles onto the stool next to him at the breakfast bar.
"Yep," Nat answers for him, "but if he doesn't drink it soon, it's getting taken away," she adds meaningfully.
"Drink up, punk. Trust me, it helps."
Steve frowns. "When have you had it?"
"A while back," he answers vaguely.
"How come you never made it for me before?" Steve asks accusingly, swinging his gaze over to Natasha.
She chuckles and grins. "Well, we," she gestures to herself and Bucky, "paid our dues with hangovers in our lives. You never really did. I thought you should get the full drinking experience."
"Buck may not have gotten the same serum I did, but he definitely couldn't get drunk as easily as—"
"Yes, but I had my fair share of hangovers before that," Bucky points out with a cheeky grin.
"Besides, in a place that caters to your every need, why would it make people have hangovers if not to let them experience it?" Nat says, a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth as she grins.
Steve glares at Nat. "You're real mean, you know that, Romanoff?"
"You tell 'er, punk," Bucky quips, failing to keep a smirk of his own off his face. "Now go on, the sooner you drink it, the sooner you'll feel better."
Steve brings the glass to his mouth, but before he can drink any, Bucky grabs his arm to stop him. "Small sips," he advises solemnly.
"He speaks from experience, I'd listen to him," Nat adds with a too-sweet smile.
With a frown, Steve takes a tentative sip of the smoothie and begins wincing and sputtering immediately. "Oh, that's awful. Is it supposed to make me vomit?"
Nat and Bucky laugh heartily. "Little sips," Bucky advises. "I promise it works."
"Seriously, what was in that drink?" Steve asks, unable to believe how quickly his hangover has dissipated. He recalls Tony suffering through some nasty hangovers after some parties in the early days of the Avengers, and he wonders if Natasha had known this recipe back then.
"Trade secret. Sorry, Cap," Nat calls down. He watches as she scans the rock face above her, sets her feet, and reaches for a tiny crack to serve as a handhold.
"And to think of all I've done for you over the years," he says, feigning disappointment.
He hears Nat snorts in amusement above him. "I literally died for you all, so I think I've got the upper hand there."
Once upon a time, that casual reference to her death would have phased him. Now, he can banter about it, even if it still leaves a bad taste in his mouth. "I crashed a plane into the ice for humanity," he argues, then watches as she pushes up from her spot and finds a groove he hadn't yet spotted for her feet.
"You didn't die," she points out. "And you only did that because you didn't think to point it down and jump out to wait for rescue."
"Had to be sure," he volleys back. He reaches up to grab a bit of protruding rock and pulls himself up while shifting one foot to another small ledge. "And anyway, technically you died for a stone."
"A magic stone," she corrects pointedly.
"Point remains, it was a stone."
"Yeah, a stone that allowed you guys to bring everybody back." Steve opens his mouth to respond, but she cuts him off. "And it ultimately allowed you to go and live your life with Peggy, so really, you owe me a few favours, Steve."
He's still pondering a reply when he hears Bucky speak. "The lady has a point," he calls from below them. "And yeah, I'm still here. Still good, too. Thank you both for asking. Now can we please start climbing again?"
Nat laughs as she leans off the rock face, holding on with only her left hand, and glances down at him. "Sorry, James. I can win an argument with you, too, if you want."
"Wait, who said you won?" Steve protests as Bucky laughs from below him.
"The logic of my argument does," she retorts before looking up and reaching for a jutting-out rock conveniently placed for another handhold.
"I mean, technically it was Pym particles and Tony's tech that let me go back to Peg—"
"No soul stone, no army at your back to fight the purple asshole and his army. And something tells me that as good a soldier as you were, that might've been a fight you couldn't win on your own," she says, not pausing to look down at him.
Steve focuses on finding a good hold for his hand and foot, ignoring Nat's argument. Yes, he could banter about everything relating to the stones now…but only up to a point. He still feels terrible she'd been the one to give her life, just as he still feels awful that Tony had done the same. It had always been in his nature to shoulder responsibility for taking care of his friends, and though they'd probably both argue with him about it at length, a part of him still felt responsible for not being there with them.
"Stop it, Steve," Nat says firmly. Her tone makes Steve look up, and he finds her looking at him with an expression that both brooked no argument but was also gentle. "I know where your mind is going and you need to stop. It wasn't your fault. I made my choice. So did Tony."
"I know," he admits sheepishly, unsurprised she'd known where his mind went. She'd always been able to read him like an open book, after all. "Force o' habit."
She looks down and smiles a little impishly. "Come on, old man. It'll be dark by the time we get up there if we keep up this pace."
"Technically I'm an old man too," Bucky calls up.
Nat looks down again and grins. "Oh, how rude of me. I meant old men."
"Yeah, that's pretty awesome," Bucky says, eyes wide as he takes in the vista in front of them from the top of the cliff.
"Yeah," Steve agrees.
"Told ya," Nat says.
In one direction, the landscape in front of them is dotted with distant mountain peaks and vast green forests in the valley below alongside a river that carves through it. In the other, there's a vast lake, shocking in size even from the view high above, with water so clear and blue that Steve wonders if he's ever seen anything like it. He wishes he'd brought something to draw it with, even though he'd never be able to do it justice.
Nat chuckles, pulling his attention from the impressive view. He furrows his brow in a silent prompt for an explanation, and she points to the ground beside him. His gaze drops to find his preferred art materials in a container alongside a folding chair and an easel.
"Guess you've got some painting to do," she says with a knowing smile.
He offers a smile of his own, a little sheepish. "Guess so," he agrees.
"Go ahead, James and I can entertain ourselves for a while."
"Yeah, go on, Steve," Bucky adds before turning to Nat and gesturing to some chairs that have appeared off to the side.
As Steve turns his attention back to the landscape to start planning how to capture its beauty, he hears Bucky and Nat chatting. The ease and familiarity in their conversation surprise him at first, but the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes he shouldn't be surprised. He'd lobbied each of them to give the other a chance, figuring they'd find common ground and a basis for a friendship — something he'd clearly been right about.
"So, you do this pretty often?" Bucky asks.
"I've always been someone who sought out adrenaline," Nat answers. "Missions and Avengers duties used to cover that, but here those aren't really a requirement, so I had to get creative."
"So...you chose rock climbing?" Steve can hear the amused smile in Bucky's voice, and though he can't see Nat's face, he can picture her expression.
"I had a membership at a local indoor climbing place back when I worked for SHIELD. I went a couple times and enjoyed it, but didn't have much time for it then. Now I've got all the time I want, I can go wherever I want to climb, and as an added bonus...I can't die."
"You didn't wanna go for the whole 'eternal peace and rest' thing?"
"Too much emotional baggage to unpack first," Nat answers bluntly, and Steve swings his gaze back to his canvas, feeling a sudden rush of shame for eavesdropping. "I went through a lot of therapy and I needed an outlet for everything I was feeling. If I'd just relaxed and 'rested,' I'm pretty sure this would not have ended up being a peaceful afterlife for me."
Steve had been surprised at first when she told him she was going to start going to therapy. From someone who had been so famously closed off and kept her cards close to her chest for most of her life and who'd had a traumatic upbringing, the decision to unpack and talk about everything seemed a strange one. But Nat had explained that she was tired of all of it weighing down on her and that there wasn't any good reason she should let it continue to suffocate her when she was meant to be at peace. He'd agreed with her logic and had realized this was perhaps the first time she could deal with everything properly, given it was no longer an issue of a therapist requiring a certain level of security clearance.
"I did the whole therapy thing while I was alive," Bucky says.
"Yeah? How was it?"
"Not a fan."
Nat chuckles. "Yeah, really sucks sometimes, doesn't it?"
"That's a big understatement."
Steve remembers how sometimes Natasha's therapy sessions had left her emotionally wrung out. She'd been almost dazed, clearly overwhelmed by her thoughts and emotions after a session of unpacking some of them. He'd never seen her like that before and had been worried, but Nat had reassured him it was helping and told him it was necessary to dig into all of it to process it. He'd wondered on more than one occasion if that were true, given how exhausted and emotionally drained she seemed afterward. But he trusted her implicitly and so had supported her unconditionally.
"I used to go for long walks after tough sessions," she continues.
Steve smiles as he remembers accompanying her on a few of those walks. Natasha had turned up at his door out of the blue, asking if he wanted to join her for a walk. Usually, they didn't talk much on those walks — Steve assumed she just wanted a familiar face and someone she trusted with her while she felt so vulnerable — but sometimes they spoke about the past or got caught up on the goings on of their mutual friends in the afterlife. More rarely, Natasha would offer glimpses into what had been covered that day in her session. And sometimes, she opted to skip the walk and instead invited him to have a delicious meal and watch a movie while she decompressed.
"The rock climbing habit is making more sense," Bucky quips. "Seems like you just enjoy being in nature."
"I guess I do," she admits. "Never really thought about it that way."
"Always liked cities, myself."
"Didn't you live among goats in Wakanda?"
"I was recovering, thank you very much," he replies dryly. "The simplicity and not being around a lot of people did a lot of good for me," he adds in a tone that's less dry and more honest.
"But you prefer city life?"
"Yeah, born and raised in Brooklyn, so… You know how it is."
"This isn't too bad though, huh?"
"Nah, this is pretty amazing. You can't beat a view like that."
"No, you can't," Nat agrees. "How's it going over there, Steve?" she calls out, and he knows she's calling him out on his eavesdropping.
"Making progress," he answers. "Might be a while though."
"Hey, did you bring food?" Bucky asks Nat.
"No, but we didn't need to. Magical afterlife, remember?"
"Right. Well, you have something in mind?"
"Steaks would be good," she says after a moment of thought.
"With garlic mashed potatoes," Bucky replies with a snap of his fingers. Steve sees the two of them exchange a knowing look that he doesn't know the meaning behind.
"And balsamic carrots. We can skip the bread though," Nat adds.
"Yeah, that could work," Bucky agrees.
"Am I missing something here?" Steve asks as he sees food and supplies appear between Bucky and Nat.
"James is going to cook our meal for us," Nat answers.
Steve's brows raise in surprise. "Bucky? Cook?" he says in disbelief.
"Thanks for that vote of confidence, punk."
"He's done it before, he'll be fine."
"What do you mean he's cooked it before? When? How do you know that?" Steve asks, confused.
"Go back to your painting, old man," Nat teases. "We're taking care of the food."
"But—"
"Painting," she repeats and points to his easel.
Steve turns to his canvas and resumes sketching out the rough outlines of the landscape. As he does, he can't help but wonder just how much time Nat and Buck have spent together. Suddenly, laughter erupts from them both, and Steve can't help but smile because they both sound so happy. Happier than he remembers either being in a very long time. Not for the first time in the afterlife, he thinks, Yeah, we're okay.
