Work Text:
“Clint,” she said.
His grip was bruising at her wrist. Every pound of her dangled from that one connection-- her aching ribs, the old wound in her thigh, her comfy boots, Tony’s gadget, the braid she’d grown out for five years. It all hung there--all of her--in this chill alien wind, while Clint stared at her down the long taut line of his own outstretched arm.
“Clint,” Natasha said. “You’ve got to let me go.”
Every inch of her was cold. The planet’s gravity pulled every part of her downward. Her wrist, where Clint was clutching at her, bruising her, holding tight, his palm sweaty and strained-- it was the only warm place on her whole tired body.
“Clint,” she said, and he let her go.
Natalia Romanoff was born to a man named Ivan and his wife, Alena. She was seven pounds and six ounces of screaming red rage, hungry and cold, quickly swaddled. They loved her.
They were hungry when the men came knocking at the door. They had hungry sons, hungry daughters, but they loved her. The men came with bread, with meat and firewood. The men promised Natalia would never be hungry, never cold. She would be a great service to the state.
Natasha did not know her father’s name until a dead man said it on a cliff on an alien world. She never knew her mother’s.
Natasha didn't feel herself hit ground-- she just was, all of a sudden, standing. Shallow water lapped at her toes, glinting gold in the dim light. She could hear nothing but her own harsh breathing.
“Why are you here?”
The voice echoed all around her. Natasha turned slowly, knees bent, hands open, but she still couldn't see anyone.
“We need the soul stone,” she said slowly. “Is this a test? Is this part of the-- trial?”
“Why?” The voice came from everywhere. Natasha moved one boot through the shallow water at her feet, watching the ripples spread. The horizonline was low and endless, the light strange and golden. Her thigh still hurt, an old wound, close to the bone.
Cold water sank through her boots. She said, “To save our world.”
“Why you?”
“Because someone has to.”
The voice considered her. Light glinted off the ripples of water. “All power comes at a cost,” it said finally. “But you know that, don’t you?”
Natasha's hand closed on one of her knives, and the water swallowed her whole.
Natasha Romanoff was born in a cold, SHIELD office, among grey walls and a weaponized lack of personality. The intake form asked for her name. The tip of her ballpoint hesitated on the paper.
Natasha is the diminutive form of Natalia. She wasn’t sure why she wrote it down, but she did.
When Natasha hit ground, she slammed to her knees on cement.
“Fuck,” she said into the sudden silence.
Moonlight slanted through the windows, which were high and narrow, too small and out of reach even for the dozen nimble girls sleeping cuffed to their beds around her.
Natasha rose slowly to her feet. Her joints creaked. Her own sleeping face twisted, two feet from her.
“A cost,” said the voice.
Another girl was sitting up on her bunk, this one dark haired, dark eyed, thirteen. She had a trio of pimples on her forehead. “A cost,” she said again. “A life.”
Natasha took a step to the left, moving out of range of both girls. They could reach much farther than a stranger might guess, but she wasn’t a stranger. “Lise,” she said.
Lise reached under her pillow with her free hand. Natasha flinched back, but it wasn’t a knife. It was just a crust of old brown bread. Some of the girls had saved up their daily bread, day after day. They had traded it. They had taken it. They had given it away. Natasha had not.
Natasha glanced at her own sleeping face again. This didn’t feel like time travel-- which was something she could say now, wasn't that fun. “What is this, a test? A riddle?”
Lise brightened. “You always were the best at tests, weren’t you? Or better than me, the day it mattered.”
Natasha didn’t move. Moonlight dripped through the windows. Little girls breathed softly under thin covers.
“Oh, I’m not angry,” Lise said.
“You’re not Lise, either,” said Natasha.
“I’m not angry,” Lise said. She broke off a bit of bread and reached out. “It takes a life. All power comes at a cost. All survival.”
“You were angry,” said Natasha.
“You don’t remember. They took so much of you-- years and thoughts and afternoons. You don’t remember that night, that test. The other girls had to tell you what happened.”
“You were angry,” said Natasha. “I hope you were angry.” Lise looked back at her, drowning in moonlight, her hand outstretched. The pimples on her forehead were red and raised. Lila Barton had gotten her first pimple five years and six months ago, and sulkily reread the whole Chrestomanci series in protest of puberty. Natasha swallowed and said, “I hope you were furious.”
Lise reached out. “For you,” she said. Natasha shook her head. She stepped back and the darkness grabbed her ankle and yanked her down.
Natasha was born on a rooftop, in the rain. A man laid down his weapon and reached out an open hand.
Natasha slammed into the guard rail in a dark service corridor, alarms blaring and metal creaking in her ears. She only had the faintest rustle of sound to warn her before Clint’s fist slammed through where her trachea had been a second before. She whipped around, slamming a knee into his side.
“All power comes at a cost,” Clint said, his eyes blazing blue as he lunged at her again. “But you have always known that.”
The helicarrier alarms screamed in the dim, flashing lights of corridor. She ducked around him, trying to swipe one of his legs out while he was unbalanced.
“You have always known what it is like to be taken apart.”
“Shut up,” she said, blocking a blow and jabbing him in the ribs. She reached for the railing to get a bit of leverage, but her hand went straight through the metal and the alarms cut out.
The sky opened up, drenching an unmarked roof somewhere in Europe. Gravel bit into Natasha’s knees.
Even over the rain, she heard his footsteps crunch behind her, because he was trying to be heard.
“Hey,” Clint said, and she’d thought he was old, then, she’d thought--
She shook her head. Wet hair smacked her cheeks--
When she opened her eyes, it was still raining but she was dry. She was on a street in Tokyo, the gutters running colorful with more than just neon reflections. Her umbrella twisted in her grip as she watched Clint stand over the corpse of the last of them.
“Feel better?” she called, stepping forward.
He turned to look at her, but the black of the street opened up at her feet.
She hit ground again-- grass, trees, blue sky-- and Cooper was laughing, wrestling with his dad in the grass.
She hit ground again-- the soft mats of HQ, Maria Hill cat-calling from the sidelines, dodging under Clint’s right hook like it was an old, well-worn dance.
She hit-- Wanda was giving her nightmares in an abandoned old tanker ship, throwing her back to cold porcelain hells.
Again-- she was soothing Wanda after a nightmare, two thousand feet above sea level in the careful air pressure of their jet, her hand on the girl’s sweaty forehead. Sam came in the door with hot cocoa.
Again-- Lila was asking her for the Scarlet Witch’s autograph while Clint was feigning offense in the corner, because his daughter didn’t want his--
Natasha hit ground again-- the cold stone of an alien world-- and she pushed herself to her feet.
Clint was sprinting for the cliff’s edge. The world was cold. She had been here before.
She reached for her toolbelt and ran after him. This fight she was going to win-- she knew how, she’d done it, she’d won, she’d leapt. She leapt again, her tether line securing Clint to solid ground, nothing but air below her feet.
She slammed into the cliff wall, all the breath knocked out of her.
“I am a power,” the voice said. Natasha spat bloody spittle out and watched it fall past her swinging toes.
Clint was clutching at Natasha’s wrist. Natasha’s wrist was bruising. Her thigh was aching. In a moment, it wouldn’t matter. His eyes were wide and tired, desperate and resigned and angry. She missed him. She’d been missing him for five years. In a moment, it wouldn’t matter.
“Power,” said the voice, “always comes at a cost.”
Natasha twisted in the cold wind, trying to wrench at Clint’s grip. “He let me go,” she spat out. “He loved me and he let me die. I know him and his stupid heart and he’s going to hurt over this forever. Give him the stone. He paid .”
“You let go,” said the voice, and now it was using Clint’s mouth. He said, “You jumped. I wouldn’t have let you fall on my own.”
She glared up at him, twisting in the wind. “Well, good thing then that you weren’t alone. You had me.”
“You leapt. I wouldn’t-- I wouldn’t have--”
Natasha yanked one more time and Clint’s grip shattered. The voice rose up with the wind as she fell.
“What do you want?”
Natasha Romanoff was born at the first taste of a frappuccino, sweet hedonistic cold on her tongue. There was no point to it but pleasure.
She hit ground on green grass. Trees rose up around her-- slim, young ones that she knew. The blue sky broke open above her and she could hear their feet moving in the grass. She turned around.
"What do you want?" whispered the voice.
“Aunty Nat!” said Lila Barton, thirteen, bright-eyed, a pimple on her cheek, as she slammed into Natasha’s bruising ribs.
“Hey, you,” said Natasha. “I-- hey.”
They were all lies, these things thrown up before her waking eyes, these worlds it kept dropping her into. She was falling, or fallen. When she hit ground (had she hit ground?), she wouldn’t land in a warm afterlife. Even if she did, the whole point was that this girl wouldn’t be there.
Wind rustled soft through the trees. Natasha put a gentle hand on the back of Lila’s head.
There were footsteps in the grass and she didn’t move, didn’t flinch, just smelled Lila’s flowery deodorant and closed her eyes.
“Where’s your worst half?” Laura said, when she got close enough, and Natasha could hear her smiling.
“Same place yours is,” Natasha said. She didn’t open her eyes. Warm sunlight filtered through her eyelids, red and luminescent. “He’s really mad at me, right now, I bet.”
“What’d you do, steal his coffee cup?” Laura was laughing, that quiet low thing, and the sound fell perfect onto the green green grass.
Sometimes Natasha had heard that laugh drop down through the floorboards of the old farmhouse while she lay with eyes closed on their battered couch. She had laid there and thought how nice that must be, to have a laugh like that tucked into bed with you.
“I let go,” Natasha said. “Laur, I--”
“Hey,” said Laura, and her hand was touching Natasha’s cheek. Nat didn’t flinch. She opened her eyes. Green branches reached up to blue sky. “Hey,” Laura said. “What’s wrong?”
Natasha’s vision was blurry, but she blinked and Laura’s face swam into view. She knew that face-- the pale skin, the dark clumps of eyelashes, her careful eyes.
Natasha said, “It’s been terrible. They-- I missed you. But I think maybe we can get you back. Save you. Save everyone.”
Laura looked at her sadly. It was an old look, one Natasha knew. It came out when Natasha was happy, with the children; or when she was scared; any time Laura looked at her and wished she had gotten a better lot, once upon a time. But it wasn’t Laura looking at her now.
“All power has a cost,” said the thing wearing Laura’s face.
Lila hadn’t moved, her head heavy on Natasha’s shoulder. She hadn’t spoken, which wasn’t right either. Natasha should have had half a book report by now.
Natasha let her arms drop, and Lila stepped back. “A life,” Lila said.
Natasha turned to Laura, because she could stand that, and shoved her hard in the shoulder. “No,” she said. “You don’t get to use her. Not Lila.”
Laura’s face twisted with frustration. “I am trying-- I am trying to speak. I am trying to ask.”
“Then ask,” Natasha said. She shoved her in the shoulder again, her boot splashing down into orange water. The horizon circled around them, treeless and wide. Lila was gone.
“Why are you here?” said Laura.
“We need you!” Natasha said. She closed her eyes tight, her boots an inch deep in water, her extremities growing cold. “To get them back. To fix it.”
“Why you, of the two of you?”
Natasha’s thigh ached. Warmth leeched out through her sodden boots. Ripples faded to calm around her. “Because it’s worth it.”
“Why you?” the voice repeated.
“Because I deserve it.”
“Do you?”
Laughter pealed across the water, high and reverberating. This time, she didn’t fall. Images rose up like smoke and swallowed her.
She was helping Cooper and Lila play dress up, dropping a orange feather boa on Cooper’s laughing face. Lila twirled, seven years old, a string of plastic pearls around her neck that almost reached her knees.
Natasha was pulling out two small guns against an alien invasion on the streets of New York, putting her back to Clint while he drew back his bow. She was holding Nathaniel in the hospital, terrified of dropping him, bruising him, breaking him. She was ripping the mask from her face, stepping over Pierce’s cooling body, setting all of SHIELD’s ugly secrets free. Her fingers were aching with cold, pressed up against glass, as she watched Fury’s vitals fade away.
Natasha stood on the edge of a floating city in the sky, Steve Rogers at her side. She could see for miles. She could see the curve of the horizon. Her body ached from the fight, but she didn’t regret, didn’t regret--
“They don’t cancel each other out,” Natasha said. Images flicked by her, sensations-- her back bent over a desk; peanut butter sandwiches swallowed dry; the humid heat of visits to Okoye’s HQ, the harsh air conditioning of the UN, the haunting quiet of Times Square in the days after. “You can’t weigh destroying one soul over helping another.”
“You did terrible things,” the voice agreed. “You can never repent.”
There was a woman in an office, chewing slowly on a peanut butter sandwich. Papers were strewn around her. Screens and holograms flickered, a constant migraine of input.
Footsteps approached her. Natasha heard them and looked up, expecting Steve and his bemused exhaustion, his tales of whales. But it wasn’t him.
Sam Wilson was standing there, watching her. “Hey,” he said. He looked like he always had, even after months crammed onto the stealth jet-- healthy and wry, tightly-coiled and smiling.
“Hey,” she said. “We needed you.”
“You know you’re full of crap, right?” said Sam. Natasha pushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. She wiped a smear of peanut butter on the back of her hand. “You don’t deserve any of this. Even you don’t believe that.”
“Neither did you,” she said. “Not-- not the snap, but not any of it, either. Not us on your doorstep, not Riley, not the Accords or all those years in hiding. Not cold showers in European hostels and those terrible cots on the jet.”
“But someone had to.”
“You stepped up,” Natasha said. “I’m stepping up. It’s got to be someone.”
The floor opened up below her. She fell through floors and dusty ducts for the space of a held breath before she slipped into darkness again.
The voice said, “Souls are never scrubbed clean. But they can be overgrown.”
Natasha shook her head. In the darkness, she couldn’t feel her hair against her cheek, the clench of her fists. All she could feel was the cold.
“ I know every path you’ve ever walked. I know the names of cities you’ve forgotten. Every life you’ve touched or snuffed out-- I know their names. I know the space they once inhabited.”
“What are you trying to say? What are you trying to get me to say? That I didn’t deserve this? That it should have been him? It shouldn’t have been any of us!” She caught her breath, feeling like her lungs had been hollowed out. “But some things are worth it.”
“What do you want, Natasha?”
“I want the goddamn stone,” she said.
“You want time,” said the voice, and the hue of the darkness changed, rushing by her open eyes. “You want to live.”
“Of course I want to live,” Natasha said. “But I want--”
She was still falling, but the dark lit up: Cooper danced around the living room, weighed down by a feather boa and three different hats. Nathaniel smeared spaghetti sauce all over his shirt. Lila pulled back a bowstring, eyes narrowed on the target nailed up to the oak tree.
“You will never get them back,” said the voice. “But-- isn’t this what you want? I will give you time.”
Cooper danced around the living room, reaching out for his little brother and picking him up to swing him around.
Cooper twirled around a dark high school dance, off-beat and laughing, until another teenager tapped his shoulder when he stopped to breathe. She wiped her nervous hands on her blue jeans. He hesitated, shifting on his feet, but then she said in slow, clumsy sign language, Do you want some punch?
Nathaniel cried in Natasha’s arms, a half hour old and pissed about it. Nathaniel stumbled over the carpet on toddler legs, reaching for his sister. Nathaniel spent a whole summer afternoon watching his father install a new bannister for the stairs, the sun glinting off the dark wood. Clint let him help slot the final pieces into place, his big hands over Nathaniel’s small ones.
Lila biked four miles out to the town library on her bike with its little blue basket and its chiming bell. She had bungee cords coiled in the basket to hold down all the books she was going to bring back.
Summer turned to a distant fall Laura’s old station wagon was packed almost full, waiting outside the house. A young man pulled his baseball cap on more snugly, reaching in to hug his father. Clint squeezed his son’s shoulders tight and Cooper pulled back to grin shyly at him. Natasha couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could see the IKEA furniture packed carefully into the car, the college logo on Cooper’s starched new hat.
When Nathaniel burst out the door at the top of the porch steps, Natasha barely recognized him-- his hair was long and curling past his ears, pulled back into a stubby little ponytail. With his hands full, Nate came careful down the stairs, grinning at the surprise on Cooper’s face, the smug look on Clint’s. Laura held the other end of the bookcase-- heavy walnut, stained dark, clearly made out in the old woodshed and sized perfectly for his big brother’s dorm room.
Natasha moved through the darkness. She could have stayed forever in that moment-- seen them fit it into the last place in the crowded station wagon, seen Clint cry as his oldest son drove off to start the next part of his life. But she dropped down through darkness until the lights flickered on around her again.
A woman moved through a crowded street, past skyscrapers and heaping dumpsters and overpriced coffee kiosks, as her brown ponytail bobbed behind her. She looked like any other person on the street, except Natasha knew that face, knew Lila’s bright eyes and tucked-away smile even looking a little less freckled, a little more worn.
She looked like any other person on the street, except Natasha saw the way she was checking sightlines, saw the folds of her clothes that held hidden weapons. Natasha was nowhere near her, but she heard the voice on the wire as though it was tucked into her own ear.
I’ve got eyes on our guy. I think he’s heading for Grand Central --
She saw Lila tip her head just slightly to listen. Rookie move, kid, Natasha thought, but the voice kept talking.
Widow, it said, do you copy?
Natasha hit ground.
Grass rose up under her feet. The sky shone blue, a rare treat for San Francisco.
Stone monoliths stood in rows and rows as Natasha made her way down the hill toward them. She and Clint had come here, once, early on-- she’d never come back, but she knew the way. Halfway down a big stone in the third row was a cluster of names-- Laura Barton; Lila, Cooper, Nathaniel Barton.
Natasha pressed her fingers up against the names and tried to tamp down the fury that was rising in her gut. “That’s why we’re here,” she said, soft, under the sounds of strangers murmuring and the teasing sea wind. “Stop messing with me and give it up. He played your game. Give him the stone so he can bring his family back.”
“Why you, of the two of you? Why do you think you deserve to die?”
Natasha stood still for a moment, carved names cutting into the pads of her fingers. Then she said, “I’ve got red in my ledger.”
“Doesn’t he?”
She closed her eyes. “He’s got a family.”
“Don’t you?”
“They took that from me,” she said. “The Red Room, years ago.”
“You took it back.”
Green grass rushed up between her toes-- when had she lost her shoes? The blue sky broke open above her. Footsteps hit soft ground. “Aunty Nat!” said Lila Barton, and slammed into her bruising ribs.
It wasn’t real. She was falling, or fallen. Natasha wrapped her arms around Lila’s warm shoulders. She buried her face into the girl’s tied-back hair.
“I didn’t take anything,” Natasha whispered.
A man on a rooftop held out a hand.
“Didn’t you?” said the voice.
A girl knelt beside an old thin cot, cradling a crust of brown bread.
“Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want to die,” said Natasha. “I didn’t mean-- I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t--”
A woman stood in the cold outside a young girl’s eleventh birthday and told the girl’s father, “Nothing's allowed to touch her, Clint, not anybody.”
“Why are you here?” said the voice, into the darkness.
Natasha hit ground-- Clint’s floor, refinished over a long winter, the corner spattered with specks of Laura’s paints.
“What do you want, Natasha?” Laura tucked some orange along the edge of a cloud, not looking away from the canvas.
Outside, through the window, the sky was blue. Cooper was blowing soap bubbles and Nathaniel was chasing them on chubby toddler legs. Sam lay on the couch with his legs crossed, his head tipped back on the arm. He’d never been to the farmhouse, but he looked good there, half-smiling in the pale light.
“I want you back,” said Natasha. “All of you.”
Laura hummed softly, laying her brush down and reaching for her lukewarm mug. Natasha knew it would be lukewarm because it always was. She always forgot her tea and drank it anyway.
“But what do you want, Natasha?”
Lila was coming pounding down the stairs. Natasha could hear her coming. Her heartbeat was rising up in her throat, her ears, her mouth.
Laura took a long sip of tea, grimacing at the temperature. “Do you want to die?”
“Of course I don’t want to die,” she said. “But what the hell does that matter, now? Lise didn’t want to die, but I wanted to live. You didn’t want to die. I don’t want to die, but I want you to live.”
“It matters,” said Laura. She put down her tea with a quiet clink and looked out the window.
Sam said, without opening his eyes, “It makes this a sacrifice.”
Natasha Romanoff was born the day SHIELD died, collapsing on its rotten core. She took every file they had, every lie and secret and hard choice, including her own, and set them free.
The next October, little girls around the world put on red wigs and black suits.
“I’m angry,” she whispered.
“Be angry,” said Laura. Her eyes were glinting orange with the light streaming through the windows. “I’m angry.”
Lila was coming down the stairs, thumping her feet. Natasha felt her heart bursting with every beat. She turned to face her and--
“What if I can’t do this?” she whispered.
“Good thing, then, that you aren’t alone.”
Little lightnings of pain danced across her ribs. Their bigger, angrier cousins shot up her left knee and into her thigh, pulsing there. That one was an old wound. The ribs, sure, they were Clint’s fault, but the knee would fall apart at a stiff breeze.
Every part of her body hurt, but Natasha had spent years learning to ignore that. The wind on Vormir was cold, but she’d spent years learning to ignore that. The only warmth in her entire body was her wrist, where Clint was holding onto her.
Moonlight fell down through high, narrow windows. Natasha scraped her feet quietly over cold concrete.
A small redheaded teenager knelt beside an old thin cot. Moonlight was falling onto the cold floor, but the girl wasn’t looking at it. Natalia, thirteen, threadbare, tired-eyed, was looking at Natasha.
She held out her hands.
Natasha walked forward, slowly, and knelt beside her younger self. She didn’t reach out, just sat and looked at her. “And what are you going to tell me?” Natasha said, tired.
Natalia lifted her young face, eyes bright with tears she was too well trained to let fall. Natasha knew this face more from old surveillance tape than anything else, but she knew it. Natalia whispered in a small voice that Natasha barely remembered, “I think I killed Lise.”
Natasha said nothing.
“I don’t remember,” Natalia went on, and Natasha let her. “But the other girls say… It was a test day. They send two of us in and only one of us comes out.” She pressed her hands up over her lips. Through disobedient tears, she got out, “I didn’t-- I didn’t mean to.”
“I know. I know you didn’t.”
“I didn’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”
“I know,” Natasha whispered. The girl was all skin and muscle, bone and bitten fingernail. “I know you don’t.”
Natalia sat back and scrubbed tears off her cheeks with the rough palms of her hands. She pulled a crust of brown bread out of her pocket. She looked at Natasha. “But all power comes at a cost,” she said. “We’ve always known that.”
Natasha shook her head.
“Take it,” said the girl. “Take it. Take it .” Her hands were shaking. Some of the girls had saved up their daily bread, day after day. They had traded it. They had taken it. They had given it away. “We killed for this,” said the girl. “We’re dying for this. We fought for this. Why are you here?”
Natasha shook her head. She didn’t reach for the crust. Natalia’s hands were shaking, and so were hers.
“I don’t want to die,” said Natalia.
“I know,” said Natasha.
Her thigh ached, kneeling there on the floor. Natalia was small in front of her, all bone and muscle, nothing soft around the edges. She looked back up at Natasha with her jaw just barely trembling.
Natasha wet her lips softly. She said, “You’re going to live.” Natasha’s hands were bigger than Natalia’s, her legs longer, her face more drawn with care. Natalia’s posture was perfect, even kneeling on hard ground, even looking like she wanted to curl over that crust and hide it away. Natasha didn’t miss it. She reached out and touched the girl’s knee, softly. “You’re going to live. Someday you’re not going to be hungry.”
Natalia lifted her head and Natasha went on, “Someday you’re going to have a family that loves you. Someday you’ll be free to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom and drive out to a 24 hour diner and get a coffee if you want to.”
The girl wiped at her brimming eyes.
Natasha’s ribs were aching. Her thigh throbbed, painful. Her braid hung heavy from her skull. There were bruises forming where Clint had tried to hold onto her.
“Someday you’re going to die,” she said. “And it will be after years of wonderful things. Hard things and sweet things and wonderful things.” She reached out and touched the girl’s chin, lifting it so she’d look her in the eyes. “And I hope you’re angry. I hope you’re furious.”
The girl cupped her hands around the crust of brown bread, hiding it from view. “Why us?” she said. “I don’t-- I don’t want to die. It’s not fair. It’s not-- I want to live.”
“Because you’re going to love them so much,” Natasha said. “They’re going to make you better. They’re going to love you back, forever.” She reached out and pushed Natalia’s hair out of her face. “There’s a girl out there, who’s around your age. She loves to read. She’s hardly ever been scared, in her whole life. She wants to grow up to be just like you.”
Natalia lifted her head and Natasha reached forward to touch her shoulder gently. “And you’re someone you’re proud to be.”
“How?” she whispered. Her skin pressed tight over her cheekbones, her skinny wrists. Her nails were bitten down as far as they could go. She was warm under Natasha’s hand.
“You get free. You grow up, and you’re not alone. You live.”
The girl uncurled her hands. A small stone glowed orange in her palms.
Natasha reached out to take it.
Her whole world goes white.
There is rain on a rooftop.
A girl is coming apart at the seams. She’s been tearing at the stitches for years.
In the rain, on the roof, he offers her a hand. She does not kill him. She was meant to, but the rain is soaking his bangs down over his forehead. His hands are empty. He is reaching out.
The rain washes the city clean. She has never been clean but she takes his hand.
Cooper dances in the dark, wearing his sister’s orange boa. Nathaniel ties back his hair and pulls on his safety goggles while the woodshop fills with the heady perfume of cut timber. Lila toasts her coffee at Nick Fury over a stack of paperwork, and Fury says, “You know who you remind me of?” and Natasha never hears the answer.
There is rain on a Tokyo street. It will wash the city clean, the blood pooling in the gutters.
She is meant to stop him. She thinks they meant kill. So many people have meant kill, speaking to her.
She is meant to stop him. So she takes him home. She gives him hope.
Sam Wilson visits Riley’s grave, his mother’s. He stands at Natasha’s in a light drizzle, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed.
A girl crouches in the rain, and he lowers his weapon, and she doesn’t know how to do the same.
It’s thundering outside the farmhouse, the rain dancing on the roof, and Lila climbs into her aunt’s bed because she’s scared of the thunder. She’s scared, and it’s safe there. It will always be safe there.
A woman dangles by her wrist off the edge of a cliff, looking up into her best friend’s face and hoping he loves her enough to let go.
He lets her go.
She falls.
Green grass rises up between Natasha’s toes. The blue sky breaks over her head. Footsteps whisper in the grass. A young girl crashes into Natasha’s bruising ribs.
It isn’t real. She is falling, or fallen. Natasha wraps her arms around her shaking shoulders. She buries her face into the girl’s red hair.
“What did it cost?” the voice asks from everywhere.
The sky keeps breaking blue above her. The girl in Natasha’s arms is refusing to cry, pressing her face into Natasha’s shoulder. When Natasha had really been this age, really been this small, no one had ever held her like this.
She puts a gentle hand on the back of Natalia’s head. The only warm thing in the whole world are the tears on her shoulder, until the sun burns through the mist.
Everything turns to glowing warmth. Natasha doesn’t let go.