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Her eyes shot open at 3 am on the dot. Slipping from bed, she walked the perimeter of the room checking the door to the hall, the door to the bathroom and the walk-in closet. Secure. She checked under the bed and behind the few pieces of furniture. All clear. Then she climbed back into bed, resettled the blankets just so and fell back asleep.
6 am. She woke to the first pale light of dawn filtering through the window. She lingered in bed for another minute, stretching each tendon and muscle as she accessed the sharpness of her mind with math problems. Determining that she had slept enough, she rose and checked the perimeter again.
When they had first relocated to the Tower, Natasha had woken every hour on the hour to pace the dimensions of her new space. It was one of the safest places she had ever lived. On top of Tony’s obsessive security measures, she had been allowed to make whatever modification she liked to her suite up to and including reinforcing the door with steel. Pepper had quietly made any changes she wanted without question. There was even extra large air ducts in the drop ceiling with a points of access over the bed and over the toilet, locked to her thumbprint.
Clint had made similar modifications and for practical reasons their suites abutted each other, the ducts ranging over both rooms before leading out into a private staircase. Sometimes she heard the faint wheeze of his familiar snore through the vent above her bed.
Aside from living in constant lockdown, there was no place more secure for someone like her. It had still taken her six months to get to the point where she only woke up every three hours when she slept here. It was the longest bouts of uninterrupted sleep she had had in years and her body took shameless advantage. Sometimes she slept in until nine and woke a little drugged with the restfulness of it.
Six was better though. At six, the Tower was quiet. Anyone awake was still holed up in their rooms or the labs. At six, she could feel the quality of the silence when she slipped from her room and walked the few feet down the hall to knock on Clint’s door.
He had a peephole in his door and she waved a little when the shadow fell across it. His door opened silently and by the time she was closing it behind herself, he was already back in bed. He kept the shades pulled on the floor to ceiling windows, blocking out all hints of passing time. It was always midnight here. The air was thick with the sleeping smell of him: sweat and hair and safety. He kept his suite far warmer than hers, almost tropical, so that he could sleep without the weight of anything on top of him. When they had first started working together, he would wear a t-shirt and long pants to sleep in their shared cramped space. She hadn’t known that that it was a courtesy.
Now she knew he only wore boxers to sleep, riding low on his hips. He kept a sheathed knife under his pillow and a gun in the drawer of his bedside table. She sat on the edge of his bed. He rolled toward her, yawning and rested his head on her thigh.
“We’re going on a run.” She reminded him.
“I got into bed two hours ago. Ain’t happening.” He mumbled against her yoga pants.
Hesitantly, she dropped her fingers into his hair. It was a little greasy from the long hours before bed, but he made a soft sound of appreciation at the touch. She studied his face in the dark and discovered nothing new. He wasn’t a handsome man, not really. He wore his life on his face and that life had been one full of loss and danger. She scratched lightly at his scalp.
“I’ll get us some breakfast.” She said when his body went heavy against hers, falling more deeply asleep.
“Ok.” He muttered, rolling away just enough to free her. Impulsively she left a feather light kiss just at his hairline. He didn’t say anything, but there was a faint twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
The hallway was still peacefully silent. Out of habit, she pressed an ear to Steve’s door and could just make out his heavy breaths. Still asleep. She took the stairs on tiptoe and even then she could feel the cool marble bleeding through the toes of her slippers. Before she reached the bottom, she heard the sounds of bustling around the kitchen.
“Good morning, Bruce.” She said ten steps before she reached the door. Warning him.
“Good morning.” He looked up from the pan with his hair stuck up in thousand wild directions and glasses a little askew. It should have been hard to remember that he could be dangerous, but Natasha never forgot. Not for a second. “Blueberry pancakes, you want some?”
“Yes.” She said before she could say no because they smelled delicious. Generally she preferred to watch her food be prepared, but whatever else Bruce was, he was a good cook and hardly a poisoner. If he wanted her to go down, there were easier ways. “And some for Clint, if you have any to spare.”
“I always prepare enough batter for two Steves, just in case.” He flipped a pancake with a quick move of his spatula. “I didn’t have time to start the coffee.”
“I can do it.” The familiar rhythm of grinds and hot water settled her a little. She leaned against the counter watching Bruce cook as the coffee pot gurgled behind her.
“Something on my face?” He asked after a few minutes.
“No.” She didn’t look away and he didn’t say anything else. The kitchen grew thick with the smells of coffee and sugar as she studied his worn, tanned features. She heard footsteps, identified the light tread as Pepper. She watched Bruce’s tired lines disappear, his body opening up to accept Pepper under one arm, her head on his shoulder. Strawberry blond hair pulled back in a loose bun softened Pepper’s eyes and sharp cheekbones into something more pliant. The two of them could have been any couple in the world just then.
“Hi.” Pepper’s glance finally flickered over to her, one eyebrow arching upwards.
“Hello.” Natasha removed the hot pink mug with black letters that read ‘HBIC’ , filled it with coffee and passed it to Pepper, who accepted it with a grateful smile.
“Skipping the morning run?” Pepper asked after taking a sip.
“Clint got in late.” Bruce supplied.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Pepper kissed his cheek and headed for the kitchen table.
“Work to do.” He shrugged.
“We’ll go later.” Natasha filled her own cup, a simple elegant black one with no lettering. It had appeared a few weeks ago, sitting among the bright humorous mugs like a threat. No one admitted to purchasing it. She’d run it through the dishwasher and sterilized it before using it.
“Or you could come with us to the Met.” Pepper flipped open the paper, casually dissecting it into Tony, Steve and Bruce sized pieces (Business, Sports, Arts and Leisure). “We’re introducing Steve to the Modern Art wing.”
“He found Warhol’s soup cans online. It was a long conversation.” Bruce set a stack of pancakes in front of Natasha, more than enough for her, Clint and some bottomless pit of a third party.
“I’ll think about it.” She balanced the plate, two forks, her cup and Clint’s ‘Archers do it with a longbow’ mug and headed back upstairs.
“Bus leaves at 11!” Pepper called after her.
Returning to the darkness of Clint’s room was...odd. Warm. He was right where she’d left him, still snoring. She set the plate and mugs down on his bedside table with an intentional click. She could feel the instant he woke, eyes on her, steady.
“Blueberry pancakes.” She peeled a long strip from the middle of the top pancake, rolled it and offered it over. He took it, sniffed and popped it in his mouth.
“Bruce.” He sighed blissfully.
“Do you think...” She started, then stopped, suddenly unsure of where that question had been going.
“Not as often as I should.” He answered because Clint never left her hanging. It was a reassuring quality in a partner.
She took a bite of pancake which melted over her tongue and bought her time to think. What was she trying to ask? It was on the tip of her tongue without permission. Something about Bruce and the Avengers as a whole and living here with all of them. Something about Clint and his fortitude and endless patience. Something about Phil, who they both missed like a lost limb.
“Let’s sleep in.” She said, lying down beside him, not quite touching. Two knives instead of spoons. “Then go watch Pepper and Bruce scandalize Steve with pop art.”
“Steve is a lot harder to scandalize than that these days.” Clint snorted. “Tony broke him in with the really good stuff a while ago.”
“Do you ever get the feeling that Steve was just humoring him?”
“All the time. The man was an actor then a soldier before he went under, not a saint. I don’t think much actually phases him.” When he spoke, faint vibrations traveled through the mattress. She knew if she put her head on his chest, she would feel them through her skin. “We should go though. I don’t think I’ve gone to a single museum since we rebased to New York. Seems like the sort of thing that should get done.”
“I went to the Guggenheim that one time.” As arm candy for a fat state senator, who ignored her entirely to the good of her mission. When she’d obtained what she needed, she’d slipped away, walking the curving incline while Phil gave her an impromptu lesson on religious iconography through the ages over the comms.
“Yeah.” Clint had been laid up with a leg injury, but still listening over the wire. They always listened for each other if they could. One ear to the ground, one finger on the trigger. “I remember.”
She let the quiet sink in. Clint seemed content to close his eyes again, no longer even close to sleep, but relaxed in a way she envied. He could do that. Be casual and open. Still willing to be wounded.
“What if I’m never ready?” She asked finally.
“Then you’re not.” He rolled up onto his elbow. “Shit, Tash. Is that the bone you’ve been gnawing on all week?”
“Yes.” Because she was never anything less than honest with him. There had to be someone that knew her truths. She would go mad telling lies otherwise. “Pepper and I were talking over Ventrilo while we decimated the Alliance in Warsong Gulch.”
“I will pretend I understood that sentence.”
“Thank you. Anyway, she keeps getting me to open up when I don’t have to make eye contact. It’s disconcerting.” She rolled onto her back to better catch his expression. “She doesn’t give advice. I like that.”
“I think she gave up on advice a long time ago in favor of damage control.”
“Maybe.”
“So she got you talking about sex.” Clint prompted.
“Sort of. I was telling her about waiting and thinking it over.” She sighed. “She compared me to Bruce.”
“Ouch.” He said neutrally. “Or not ouch. Depends on the comparison.”
“I’m not sure. She said I was cautious like him. That I got in my own way because of it. Do you think that’s true?”
“I think you’ve spent a lot of time rebuilding yourself from the ground up. That comes with a price. In your case, maybe the price was being impulsive. But it’s not like you don’t react well in uncontrolled situations. You excel in chaos.”
She reached for his right hand, the one with thick callouses that spoke to the hours of practice one had to put in to maintain perfection. His fingers were broad, but nimble. It was no great leap to imagine them on her body. They would be capable hands, warm and maybe a little tender. She knew that she might enjoy the encounter, if she could turn off her mind and focus on the sensation. If she could stop planning escape routes and critical moments for questioning. She had never disliked sex, never minded having it in the name of information solicitation. She’d never gone to bed with a man she found unattractive or likely to turn violent. There had even been a few she might have lingered with if they hadn’t been marks. There had been one before the rest of them, who she had even nearly loved...but that had been long ago in another country.
The trouble was that sex had become what she did with people that she could not allow herself to feel for.
The trouble was that she felt more for Clint than any other living soul.
If those two facts collided, what good could come of it?
“I don’t do regret.” She told him, running her fingers over his palm until he shivered. “But if I did....”
“Don’t. Like you said. Don’t go there.” He lay back down. “Come on. Sleep a little.”
She surprised herself by actually falling asleep. Dozing was to be expected in the sludgy heat of his room, but she couldn’t recall the last time she’d lost complete touch with wakefulness this close to another person. When she woke, it was to Clint’s arm thrown carelessly over her stomach, his face smashed into the pillow she was using. His bicep flexed uneasily as she shifted slightly. It was...nice.
“Wake up.” She commanded, rolling out from under the touch. “Shower. You reek.”
“Thanks for the tip.” He said into the pillow.
Retreating to her own room, she threw herself into the shower, turning the heat all the way up. It reddened her skin and sluiced her perfectly clean. Dressing for just herself, she pulled on a black lacy camisole top, a loose black skirt that flowed with her and black ballet flats. She could run like that if she needed. On the way out, she paused at the mirror to survey herself. Hair growing long again, skin clear and eyes bright. She reached for her makeup, then let her hand drop away. Off duty, she decided. She could afford to look a little pale and colorless. It might make her a little less memorable, a little less like Black Widow in her bodysuit and eyeliner.
“Ready?” Pepper asked as Natasha descended the stairs. Steve and Bruce were loitering in the front hall while Pepper tucked a small pile of electronics into a tiny purse.
“I am. Clint’s coming too.”
“Coming!” A shout carried down the hall from behind her.
“Right on time.” She made way for him to barrel down the staircase. He was wearing ancient jeans, a white undershirt and a worn plaid button down over it. The uniform of masculine ubiquity. Notice me not, he fairly screamed, I’m no one special. No one memorable.
“Great.” Pepper tucked a key card into the last centimeter of space. “Let’s go before Tony changes his mind about coming.”
They all left at double time with that threat over them. Natasha had made peace with Tony, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend several hours with him in a place dedicated to quiet contemplation.
“Can you imagine Tony in church?” She asked sotto voce to Clint as they got into the limo.
“Are you trying to make the baby Jesus cry?” He widened his eyes at her.
“Do we really need to take a limo to a museum?” Steve asked. "The subway-”
“I’ve met my Paparazzi quota for the week.” Bruce said mildly. “Did you see the picture of me on TMZ buying milk?”
“I told you to wear a hat and sunglasses.” Pepper sighed in exasperation.
“It’s not like buying milk is scandalous or anything.” Clint offered.
“He was wearing a Stark Industries t-shirt.” Pepper shook her head. “The caption read: Hunky Hulk New Manservant for Stark?’.”
“At least they called you hunky.”
“Yes. Now my American dream is complete.” Bruce rolled his eyes.
“They keep calling me clean cut.” Steve grumbled. “I’m going to grow a beard.”
“That’ll show ‘em.” Clint leaned back with a bark of laughter.
They reached the museum with only a minimum of bickering. Steve brought up Warhol and Bruce did a credible job of explaining the philosophy behind the Factory. Natasha took mental notes, filing away the information. One never knew what might be useful. They piled out in the parking garage, using the back entrance. Moving together there was almost no chance that they wouldn’t be recognized. Probably they should have done this on a quieter day or had the place closed altogether, but sometimes they had to pretend to be normal.
“Let’s go straight to the modern art wing.” Pepper unfolded the map after slipping the ticket saleswoman an obscene amount of cash. The museum was donation driven and there was almost definitely a Stark gallery somewhere. Still, Pepper liked art and it was her money.
“I want to look at the Egyptian stuff.” Clint cut in. “I heard they have an entire temple.”
“Hm. Alright, how about we meet up here?” Pepper pointed to a special exhibit. “Say in an hour?”
“Works for me.” He peeled away from the group.
Pepper looked at Natasha over the map. Then frowned.
“What?”
“You don’t have to stay with us. It’s going to be Bruce and I lecturing until Steve reminds us that he can, in fact, read.”
“Oh.” She looked at Clint’s retreating back.
“Go on.”
And then Pepper made a shooing gesture at her with the pamphlet. Natasha narrowed her eyes, held up one warning finger, then slipped away into the crowd. She was not to be shooed.
“Wow. Way to play with fire, dear.” She heard Bruce say as she left.
She caught up with Clint just outside the entrance to exhibit. He was reading over one of the plaques, hands held loosely behind his back.
“Hieroglyphics over pretty pictures?” He asked her with a small smile.
“I like things built to last.”
They walked through the rooms filled with stone worked by hands thousands of years gone. She admired the artistry put into practical things. Clint looked at everything with equal interest, reading almost everything.
“There.” He pointed. “The Temple of Dendur.”
There was an entire enormous room dedicated to the temple. The ceiling vaulted upwards, one slanted wall entirely window. A fountain surrounded the huge raised platform in the middle, mimicking the Nile. The air was a little cooler and the atmosphere oddly joyful. Children tipped coins into the water and students typed furiously on their laptops.
“I was in Egypt a few years ago.” Clint told her as they climbed the few steps upwards. “On my way from Point A to B. I saw the pyramids from the back of a truck at night.”
“We should go back.” She’d been there too and for a longer time, but it hadn’t been to site-see. “There are a lot of places I’d like to see differently.”
“Natasha and Clint’s World Tour.” He grinned. “Let’s do it. I bet Tony would fund it.”
“Why do you insist on encouraging his sugar daddy impulses?”
“Will you call him that? Just once? I think he’d actually explode in joy.”
“No. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Oh, look, you can go inside.”
The temple wasn’t huge. It wasn’t even all that impressive compared to some of the other things she’d seen. It did carry that sobering, holy feeling though. She looked at the ancient paint and slipped her hand into Clint’s. He squeezed her fingers gently.
She thought about Pepper fitting in under Bruce’s arm while he cooked. How simple it looked. Right now, other people probably glanced at Natasha and Clint and thought ‘couple’. How easy on the outside. But she knew that Pepper dug in her heels and fought to keep what was hers. That Bruce must wake up every morning and wrestle with his all too present demons. That Tony had consuming doubts that opened unexpected chasms under their feet.
“They moved this place here stone by stone.” Clint said. “Can you imagine that kind of dedication?”
“Yes, I can.”
Phil had moved them here. Stone by stone. Trusted that they would settle in this new life, this better, harder, confusing, lovely, terrible, dangerous life. Sometimes she hated him for dying on them, leaving them without guidance. Sometimes she hated herself for not telling him what it meant to have his wise, clever voice in her ear, like a vengeful guardian angel.
They worked their way out and back across the museum. The crowds pressed around them and a few heads turned to follow their progress, but no one stopped them. When they reached the exhibit, Pepper, Steve and Bruce were waiting outside.
“We don’t have to go in.” Pepper had the guide out again. “There’s always the stained glass exhibit.”
‘The Summer of Protest, Photographs of 1969’ was crammed into a small side gallery, already packed full. Natasha wrinkled her nose.
“Let’s look, at least.” Steve was already going inside and they trailed after him like confused ducklings.
The pictures were good from a multitude of artists, but nothing new to her. Angry people started to look the same after awhile. She appreciated their fervor as long as it stayed at a distance. There were few things that Natasha felt passionately about and none of them would end with her carrying a sign as her only weapon against the National Guard .
“I think I would have been one of them.” Steve said as they exited back into the flow of traffic.
“What?” Clint voiced all their thoughts.
“Well. Maybe not with the kids. But I would have protested.” He turned around to catch all their incredulous looks. “What?”
“I can’t see you as a hippie.” Bruce thrust his hands in his pockets.
“I believe in standing up for what you believe in. That isn’t always what the authorities say.” He surveyed their faces and let out an annoyed huff. “For the love of...look. Think about it. I would have been in my forties. If things had gone differently, I might have asked Peggy to marry me. We might have had kids. Who would have been old enough to get drafted into that war. Do you really think I’d let some politician send my child off to a senseless war?”
It’s hard to contextualize Steve sometimes. He seemed so unlikely, more like an archetype than a man. Yet, in so many ways, he was just another kid grown up too fast on the battlefield. In years conscious, he was only twenty-seven. There had been a life in front of him that had been pulled away from him, spitting him out in a bewildering future with the rules changed and no one’s hand to hold.
“Of course not.” Pepper slid a hand around Steve’s bicep and guided them out of the line of foot traffic. “It’s just hard to think of you with a sign instead of a shield.”
“Everyone has layers.” He seethed. “What’s right and what I’m comfortable with don’t always get to be the same thing.”
“Amen, brother.” Clint clapped him on the back.
“You know something has always bothered me about that timeline.” Bruce rocked a little on his feet. “I mean, Steve. You met Howard in what...1940?”
“1942.” Steve supplied immediately.
“And how old was he then?”
“I don’t know. I’d guess about his mid-twenties.”
“All right. Peg him at twenty-five. He wasn’t married yet, right?”
“Right.” Steve looked perplexed. “Why?”
“Stay with me.” Bruce licked his lips. “So. 1942, 25, not yet married. Let’s say he doesn’t get married until 30. 1947. Let’s then say that it takes them a few years to have children. It happens. Again, being generous, let’s call it 1955.”
“Where is this going?” Clint asked in exasperation.
“That would make Tony fifty-seven years old.” Pepper said with dawning horror. “But he’s not. I mean. I’ve seen his birth certificate. He’s forty-five. He was born in 1965.”
“So Howard was old when he had him, so what?” Steve shifted uncomfortably.
“He would have been forty-eight though that was a lot of generous fudging on the math. He could have been as old as fifty-five” Bruce supplied. “It’s completely possible, of course. Yet, all the pictures I’ve seen of Howard with Tony as a child, he looks much younger than that.”
They all thought over that in silence for a moment.
“Some things are best left unknown.” Pepper said with the resignation of someone who had looked too often into the Abyss and had the Abyss look back at her.
Natasha had to hand it to Bruce: the topics of Vietnam and Steve’s lost future weren’t raised again even as they settled into a long lunch at the Museum cafe. The conversation flowed over her as she scanned the crowd and absently picked apart her sandwich. A year ago today, she had been running through the streets in stocking feet to catch her flight out. To rescue her partner, to put together an impossible team. To save the world that she was coming to care about again. Now she was eating terrible tuna fish salad while her partner, team mates and lone female friend talked about the merits of Minimalism. Life was occasionally very strange.
Pepper and Bruce’s phones buzzed to life.
“He noticed we were gone.” Pepper rolled her eyes, phone in hand immediately as Bruce fumbled for his. “It’s late anyway. I need to get a few hours in at the office.”
“I’ve got a debriefing scheduled with Fury at four. Doubt I can get away with skipping that.” Clint said, shooting her an apologetic look. She raised a questioning eyebrow back. They’d hardly planned anything else for together for the day. Debriefings mattered.
“Maybe the car can swing us by SHIELD then.” Steve got up, folding his napkin neatly. “I have to talk to Agent Hill about a few things.”
“I’ll walk.” Natasha decided. “Make up for missing my run.”
“Great.” Pepper didn’t look up from her phone, punching at the keys. “Let’s go.”
The hair on the back of her neck told her that Bruce had stayed by her side as the others walked back to the parking garage.
“Can I come with you?” He asked, shoulders hunched. “It’s a nice day.”
“Yes. But I walk quickly.”
“I’m shocked.”
He kept up with her. It shouldn’t have surprised her. In this form, he wasn’t particularly sturdy nor strong, but he could endure. Bruce Banner should have a second doctorate in endurance.
“Was there something you wanted to say?” She asked when she caught his fifth sidelong look.
“You’re very beautiful.” He said without artifice or even clear interest.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He stooped down for a moment, tying a loose shoelace. “Beauty must make it harder.”
“Make what harder?” She stopped for him, waiting though she hadn’t meant to.
“Disappearing.”
“Oh, no. Beauty makes that substantially easier.”
They continued on in silence again for a while.
“Pepper thinks we’re alike.” She said when it was clear he was content to keep pace with her, letting the city flow around him like a river around a submerged boulder.
“Does she?” He asked absently. “How so?”
“She said we’re both cautious.”
“Well. We both have reason to be, don’t we?”
“You gave them a chance though.”
“You mean Tony and Pepper?” Bruce sighed. “I suppose I did. I had too.”
“Just like that?”
“No. No, of course not. A few sleepless nights and long looks in the mirror, all that,” he waved his hand as if dismissing all his angst, “but really. I was so tired, Natasha. Do you know that sort of fatigue when you’ve been running for so long? When everything hurts and all you want to do is stop and let someone carry you a while?”
“Yes.” She had run through the streets barefoot and terribly afraid. Afraid for Clint, afraid for herself sent to retrieve a man with a monster living under his skin.
“Pepper and Tony carry me. I carry them. That’s what keeps it working most days.”
“We already do that.” She said, more to solidify the thought out loud.
“You and Clint?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got no reason to listen to my advice.” He tilted his head back, the sun glinting off his glasses. “Hell, I wouldn’t listen to it, considering the mess I was making of my life up until recently. Here it is anyway: caution is smart. Caution keeps you alive, but after a while you have to ask ‘Alive for what?’ You need something that makes you go on.”
“Are you implying that all you need is love?” She asked with a laugh.
“I’m implying that life is too hard to do alone, guarding yourself against all comers.” He laughed with her and for the first time, she realized he had a nice laugh. Rusty and real. “Life would be easier if we only needed love.”
“Would it?” She smiled and he smiled back and they talked of other things. Music and poetry and soon they were back at the Tower.
“I better get to the lab. Tony wants to run some stress tests on the new alloy.” Bruce hit the button for the fifteenth floor, a sprawling space of equipment and the whirlwind of Tony’s genius.
“Thank you. For walking back with me.”
“My pleasure. See you later.” He stepped out right into the arms of a waiting Tony. “Hi.”
“You’re late. Where were you?” Tony asked Bruce, but his eyes cutting to her. He embraced his lover as if shielding him from her. The reversal powered her smile to shark like proportions which only increased Tony’s paranoia. Probably for the best. She pushed the button for the roof.
“I had something important to do.” She heard Bruce say before the door closed her away from the scene and whisked her upwards.
She got out on the roof, heading straight for the greenhouse. It was too windy to stand exposed outside. Inside the humid embrace of lush flowers, she tucked herself up in the wooden rocking chair that she’d smuggled up weeks ago. No one would care, of course, but she liked the privacy of it. The chair was tucked deep into the tangle of roses and required some care to reach without getting scratched.
Dropping neatly into it, she retrieved her book from its perch. Most of the books that had passed into her possession were gifts (generally famous Russian literature which she had no patience for from well meaning would be friends) or airport finds. Discarded by their temporary owners, she picked them up herself and left them in turn wherever she wound up.
Not this one. This book she had bought dozens of times in dozens of languages. She had little in the way of permanent possessions, but the book came close. It was always at hand if she wanted it. Drawing her finger across the page, she could practically recite the passage.
“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”
Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.
“And your will shall decide your destiny,” he said: “I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.”
“You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.”
She heard another voice in those words, from many years ago and very far away. An older girl, Yasmin, holding a very young Natasha on her lap. The words, stolen from torn pages, whispered in her ear. English had been new to her then and the concepts sometimes flew high over her head. Yet, they filled a place in her that longed for stories, for fantasy. For escape. It was Yasmin’s voice she heard in her mind when she read the familiar words. Jane Eyre was the first book Natasha bought when she had left the Red Room for the greater world. She had read it under the covers of a hotel bed as if someone might yet snatch it from her. The entirety of the story laid out before her took her breath away. To know Jane’s origins and what became of her was like hearing the story of a dear friend long since gone. She had wept over the pages. Wept for Yasmin, for Jane and a little for herself.
Now Jane was her comfort. Here among the roses, she could rock and read and indulge in a little of what other people might call nostalgia. She never wanted to go back. Her past was all spikes and pain, punctuated with acts of kindness from people long since gone from her. Flowers and a book though, there was nothing dangerous there. A taste of a sweet memory in a sea of bitter ones.
She read for hours, the sun descending and the flowers furling in for their nightly slumber. The quiet click of the door opening and closing alerted her to the presence of another. She kept the book open on her lap, waiting.
“You don’t look real, just now.” Clint wound through the roses, garnering only a few scratches, before dropping to sit at her feet. He liked to do that. He was forever with his head on her knee: on the floor in front of the couch while they watched television, leaning against her bunk in their SHIELD corners, insinutating himself between her legs like a cat when she typed reports on her laptop. “White and red roses, white and red Natasha.”
“Don’t romanticize. It doesn’t look good on you.” Reluctantly, she closed the book and slipped it back into its half-hidden place. “How’d the debriefing go?”
“Well first we classified, then we redacted. Then there was a long stream of censored. It’s not good. There’s solid evidence that some heavy hitter assassin did in the leader of the neo-Hyrda group. Which you know, all to the good but also means there’s a player in all this we don’t know.”
“Details?”
He tilted his head up to her, “Heavy caliber bullet. Execution style. No witnesses. The best I could run down was some bullshit about him having a bionic arm.”
She froze. “Clint...are you sure?”
“Well, the guy was a little hard to hear over the screaming, but yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He twisted around. “You recognize that?”
One warm hand of flesh and blood, the other metal and strong on her waist. He had kissed her like she was oxygen, held her like she could give him meaning. They came together and parted dozens of times, two shadows merging to trick the eye.
“He was...is.” She stopped. “Extraordinary. He was my first everything. He taught me everything.”
“Emotionally compromised?”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed without humor. “I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near this one.”
“I’ll get you assigned tomorrow. Fury won’t ask questions. It’s been too long since we worked together on something anyway.” He promised. “What was his name?”
“He didn’t have one. They called him the Winter Soldier. He was known for wetworks, deep, difficult jobs. They kept him on ice most of the time, thawing him out when he was needed. I don’t know how old he must be now, but he couldn’t be much older than me in years lived.” She hugged her arms close to herself. “He could kill children without blinking if that’s what was asked of him, but he was always sweet and gentle with me. Trained me to survive, to be better.”
“And he was your first?”
“Yes.” She tried not to sound wistful, but she could remember everything being so much simpler than. All black and white, us and them. He’d held her close and she’s said yes and for two years they had enjoyed each other when they could.
“Man. So. That’s the Ex.”
“What Ex?”
“Well no one else counted, did they?” Clint gazed up at her, unreadable. “I knew that there was someone you had to have in your head that you were measuring me against. That’s this guy, isn’t it?”
“Not measuring.” She corrected. “There’s nothing to compare. It was me that I was thinking of, who I was and what I’ve become.”
“I like what you’ve become.”
“So do I.” She reached down to card a hand through his hair now that she knew she could. “This...looking for him. Finding him. That will be...hard for me. You’ll be here, right?”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”
She slipped off the chair to settle across his crossed legs. His arms went around her, strong and capable. There was a nick on his chin where he’d shaved too quickly. She bent to press her lips to it, the faint tinge of copper on her tongue. Then she tilted her head up fractionally to draw a kiss from him. It lingered between them. When they parted, breathless, she dropped her head to his shoulder.
“Not today. Not until we find him and I can lay that to rest. But I want this. With you.” She closed her eyes against his happy expression. “If it doesn’t work though...”
“I’ll still be here. You’re my partner, Tash. Always.”
“It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your frame.” She recited, changing it just enough to fit. “And if too much distance comes between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.”
“We’re connected by more than thread, Tash. It’s steel and iron and serum and memory and love.” He held her closer, until she was somehow entirely piled in his lap.
For a little while, it was as if he carried her.