no, there's nothing sadder (closed)

[vdova]

Who: Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers
Where: The Baromanogernesons
When: May 15th
What: Discussing the phone call.
Warnings: Googly eyes. L words like liberation. Vague allusions to non-consensual medical trauma.



[ She'll look back later on the irony of this happening so soon after Steve's (first) arrest and probably laugh softly to herself, like it was inevitable or something. But for now, she's hanging up the phone, pressing a hand to her forehead — memories come boiling up from her subconscious, and she'd think Wanda had something to do with it except Wanda's not here at her house, and hasn't been for a while. It's a mix. Some of it she knows is the Red Room, but the others she's not so sure (though it reminds her of that place, in it's own clinical, sterile, way). Certainly the memories of her youth were brought to her mind by the sudden memory of waking up in a daze with people poking and prodding her, a needle in her arm.

But she goes about her day like normal. Natasha is good at acting like things are normal. She puts on a show for the cameras — laundry, grocery shopping, dusting. She even takes some time to read in the living room, curled up in the arm chair. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

She plays nice as her housemates get home, and as she eats dinner with the boys, and even as she does the dishes, although there's a little hesitation there, enough that someone who knows her well could pick up on it. Certainly the people behind the cameras won't. She dries the last plate and sets it back into the cupboard, her hand lingering as she considers.

She should tell him. And then she should tell him that she was wrong. But not where anyone else can hear. ]

Comments

[paragon]

I will.

[ As soon as he has it. He won't tell her he's got it all worked out; he doesn't even know if it would solidify her faith in him to have a plan at the ready, or if it'd just have the opposite effect. He's been following her lead as much as he's been capable, and she knows everything he knows. She's his— partner, and if he'd thought there was a better way than her way, he would've said so. More than that, he would've acted on it.

He also wouldn't be opposed to her input — has grown used to it over the last couple years and felt its loss keenly after the Accords — but that can come later. There's more here than just a memory, just like there had been for Bucky, he knows, even though Steve hadn't been able to ask him. Natasha doesn't need to tell him anything about her past. He's never required that from her, whatever he may have wondered. He's found a kind of happiness with her that he'd never really expected to come by again, not because of their pasts or even because he has any grand plans for the future — hell, he's got no idea how this will fit with the situation back home — but because she gives him a present that he can be grateful for. Glad to be alive for. Even in this place.

Besides, he'd be the worst kind of hypocrite to ask her for something he's only just begun to figure out how to offer, all those pieces of himself he holds close to the chest for one reason or another. But he does need to know if she's only saying it because she feels like she's out of options, or if she actually trusts him to lead them to the right place.

And it's still not really why he reaches for her. He does that because he's crazy about her, because she's his girl — not something he'd say aloud anymore, not in those terms, but still something in his vocabulary and his heart — and her pain is inevitably his own. He reaches for her hand, a silent request to talk to him, not to disappear into the bathroom like the routine is what matters. ]

[vdova]

[ She nods at his response, and would continue her nightly routine — the normalcy is something she needs right now, a distraction — but he reaches for her hand, and she doesn't even hesitate. She takes it, squeezes his fingers gently. She's been distracting herself all day, and it hasn't helped. She keeps seeing it, in her mind, feels the stretcher on her back, and she feels herself tense before she can really stop it. The silent request from him isn't lost on her, and she thinks, maybe, it might help. What's the worst that could happen? He jumps on a plane and runs? She's lived through that before (even if she hadn't felt this way about him), she can do it again.

And even if he has his doubts (which she wonders — has wondered ever since their split over the Accords — does he?) about whether or not she trusts him, she doesn't. Wanting to keep her found family together had no basis on whether or not she felt like he was a good man or a good leader. He is. Period. No question. There's a reason people follow Steve Rogers into the jaws of death, and Natasha understands that. But Natasha also sees herself as his equal. She doesn't follow Steve, she walks with him. Even when they disagree. Or maybe even especially when they do. She knows Steve is no stranger to disagreements, but she wonders, sometimes, if he's a stranger to the people he cares about doing so and still staying with him. But then, that assumes she disagrees with him at all, and in her mind, she doesn't.

So she takes his hand and goes when he tugs her close, laying her hands where his neck meets his shoulders, watching his face with an inscrutable expression on her face, unsure, really, of where to even begin. ] I'm sorry.

[ She's not even sure what she's apologizing for, but it feels like it needs to be said. ]

[paragon]

[ It sounds more like a prelude than an apology, maybe something he ought to be battening down the hatches for, if the look on her face is any indication. But even if he has doubts on that count — and would tell her as much if she asked, though mostly he just tries to get them closer to a point where it won't matter anymore — he can't bring himself to doubt her. There was a reason he hadn't raised the shield against her. There's really no point, if he's asking the people he cares about the most to choose him. Why would he be worth it, if he can't give them that much? ]

You don't have anything to be sorry for.

[ Not with him, though he understands there's got to be plenty here that has nothing to do with him. Her hands feel good on the skin above his collar, but he doesn't look down. Refuses, again, to defend himself from her. ]

[vdova]

[ She huffs out a soft, just barely bitter, laugh at that, closing her eyes, but otherwise unmoved. ] Yes, I do.

[ She opens them again, and there's something resolved in them — like she's made a choice that's hard — she has gone from marble to steel, and she won't go back. Natasha brushes the pads of her thumbs across the skin of his neck, works her jaw as she tries to find the words to even begin. ]

I was raised in a place called the Red Room. The story was that it was a school for girls, orphans of the cold war, and many other wars that came before it, but the truth was — [ And here, she hesitates. Thinking. ]

The idea was that one person in the right place, at the right time, could be more effective than an army. And if that person was a woman, then even more so — after all, who suspects a woman? So they trained us. Twenty-eight of us. They let us grow together, forge alliances and friendships we thought were secret, and when they were ready, they took a group of us, dropped us off in the tundra two weeks from 'home' with two days worth of supplies and told us to come back alive. They only expected one of us to return, but I brought home three of us, including myself.

[ Yelena. Anya. ]

They punished me for that. That's the kind of place it was. You fought to get to the top, watched as the other girls around you became broken and battered and culled until you rose to the top where you graduated.

[ As she speaks, she stops looking at him, her head remaining still, but her eyes lowering, looking away, anywhere but at him. ] And when they'd taken everything from you, your mind, your individuality, your loyalty to anything but Glorious Mother Russia, they took one more thing. You can't have your secret weapon having attachments. That creates weakness.

[ She grows quiet. And from somewhere inside of her, something broken comes out, her grip on him tightening, because if she lets go, she'll drown. ]

And that's what I saw.