Natasha Romanoff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fallaces_sunt) wrote2014-10-26 11:36 pm
fallaces_sunt) wrote2014-10-26 11:36 pm
Entry tags:
[Home] Steve
Professionalism is a wonderful thing.
A flash of light and Natasha is standing in her office. She's wearing different than when she left, different shoes, different earrings; she's missing her gauntlets.
She's also missing a few hours.
Shit.
-- --
It's hours before she manages to get home. She calls Clint's phone first (and he's back, he's back, thank god, he's back), she calls Steve's phone (no answer, damn) she calls Fury and her SO, she rouses Dr Ishikawa. There are tests to be run.
She calls Clint, again, once she locks her front door. He sounds...strained. But he's in a different city, and tells her to go have a shower and stop being a mother hen. There's nothing she can do here, so she agrees, and then leaves another message on Steve's phone.
Then she has a shower.
(And if she ends up sitting in the tub, clutching her knees to her chest and just letting the hot water hit her back, well.
No one's watching.)
-- --
After, she tries to put herself back together. She pulls on comfort-clothes and carefully, deliberately straightens her hair like nothing is wrong. Dinner is a reheated soup pulled from her massive freezer (she leaves another message on Steve's phone while the microwave hums) and if she was sensible, this is where she'd put on some DVDs. A history on the English language, maybe. A ridiculous b-grade sci-fi show from the '90s which she could play on her laptop while she cooks, but she'd been on the Enterprise.
She finishes her soup. She puts the bowl in the sink to soak. Then she goes to her bedroom, lifts up the secret trap door at the bottom of her closet, unlocks the safe, and pulls out the only photograph she'd been able to find of her husband. Moving over to her couch, Natasha tucks her feet up underneath her, and traces the side of Alexei's face with her finger. She has other people and things that she uses almost as totems to help ground her, but they'd taken Alexei away from her once. If she can remember him, she's fine.
She's in her right mind.
She's fine.
(She'd thank Steve for the nostalgia trip, except their argument is too close at hand and he's not answering his phone and she was on the Enterprise, and she cannot quip about it, even in her head.)
A flash of light and Natasha is standing in her office. She's wearing different than when she left, different shoes, different earrings; she's missing her gauntlets.
She's also missing a few hours.
Shit.
-- --
It's hours before she manages to get home. She calls Clint's phone first (and he's back, he's back, thank god, he's back), she calls Steve's phone (no answer, damn) she calls Fury and her SO, she rouses Dr Ishikawa. There are tests to be run.
She calls Clint, again, once she locks her front door. He sounds...strained. But he's in a different city, and tells her to go have a shower and stop being a mother hen. There's nothing she can do here, so she agrees, and then leaves another message on Steve's phone.
Then she has a shower.
(And if she ends up sitting in the tub, clutching her knees to her chest and just letting the hot water hit her back, well.
No one's watching.)
-- --
After, she tries to put herself back together. She pulls on comfort-clothes and carefully, deliberately straightens her hair like nothing is wrong. Dinner is a reheated soup pulled from her massive freezer (she leaves another message on Steve's phone while the microwave hums) and if she was sensible, this is where she'd put on some DVDs. A history on the English language, maybe. A ridiculous b-grade sci-fi show from the '90s which she could play on her laptop while she cooks, but she'd been on the Enterprise.
She finishes her soup. She puts the bowl in the sink to soak. Then she goes to her bedroom, lifts up the secret trap door at the bottom of her closet, unlocks the safe, and pulls out the only photograph she'd been able to find of her husband. Moving over to her couch, Natasha tucks her feet up underneath her, and traces the side of Alexei's face with her finger. She has other people and things that she uses almost as totems to help ground her, but they'd taken Alexei away from her once. If she can remember him, she's fine.
She's in her right mind.
She's fine.
(She'd thank Steve for the nostalgia trip, except their argument is too close at hand and he's not answering his phone and she was on the Enterprise, and she cannot quip about it, even in her head.)