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[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.)

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"I can understand that," Natasha says, and then snorts faintly. Bitterly. "You...I'd say you have no idea how much I'd understand that, but I think you're one of the few who would."

He saw her while Clint had been kidnapped, after all; saw what she would do for the sake of her best friend. Her rage ran more destructive than his, but like could recognize like.

"But I gotta tell you, Steve. From personal experience, it's not a question of not being 'crazy'. Not like how...I think you're imagining it to be. You'd have no idea. Trust me on this.

So I'm not...dismissing what you think. But I gotta ask what happened on that ship after I was taken away."

She's angry. It's a fine line of tension running through her body, a hint of light in her green eyes, but she's angry. Just like she'd been on Helicarrier, until she'd knocked Loki out of Clint's head.

He nods almost imperceptibly, following her train of thought without more ever having to be said. It's both learned shorthand between them and Steve's good observation. A mark could look at her and see poise, passion, promise. All Steve sees is a cobra ready to strike.

"I've considered that," he admits, a slight tension in his voice that betrays months of second-guessing and frustration. He sets his now-empty plate down, and motions over his shoulder to the couch. "There was a planet. The ship went into orbit, and -- it was supposed to be a day trip."

The look he shoots her calls it the usual kind of day trip: the kind that's gonna take a while to explain.

She is relieved to hear that Steve considered the possibility of artificial reality. Not much relieved, but...a little. It's better than blind faith.

When he gestures over to her couch she hesitates, eyes darting to her coffee-table. She'd left her wedding photo out: careless, careless Natashka, but at least the frame was lying on its back. Well. She'd just cross that bridge if he notices.

"'Supposed to be' be the operating words here?" she asks, walking out of her kitchen to take up her customary space on her couch. Legs curled underneath her, flank pressing against the back cushion, elbow propped up on the same as she watches Steve's face as he explains all about Alemar III.

She listens.

Despite her intimidating reputation - both in SHIELD and out in the wider intelligence community - in person, Natasha is a good listener. In part, it's because her silence is more inviting than not. In another part, it's because she can listen to the undercurrents and context of the speaker, piece together the emotions behind the inflections in their voice and the movements of their hands.

Steve speaks and Natasha listens, and more than anything, he reminds her of the man she first met. There was a problem and he could help. But it's only a reminder, not a repeat: this time, with Alemar III, Steve personally gave a damn about the people he was trying to save. It wasn't idealogical, it wasn't the end of the world and his city, it was...people he knew.

Even before he started covering how Bucky had rescued him, Natasha knows that his desire to go back isn't only due to the love of one miraculously returned person.

This, Agent Romanoff notes to herself, is a problem.

This connection, Natasha observes, is what she was trying to get him to develop over the past two years of their partnership.

She's not sure what she feels about that, so she shoves it aside and continues to listen.

He takes note of her living space, which means he notices anything that's out of place. Having been here before, he doesn't recognize the overturned frame on her coffee table, and he can't place it anywhere in the room. But he figures it's face down for a reason.

It takes a while to explain the three days he spent on the planet, though the brunt of his story comes on the third day, with the faces bloodied and sooty. Sinthia's in particular. Just a kid, beat to hell and back by the cave-ins. He stood beside a lot of good fighters, and promised to help a lot of people. When he first arrived on the ship, he didn't know how, wasn't even sure he wanted to; now, he feels like maybe he can do some good there.

"... and he's different. Different than the Bucky I knew," he finishes, dragging his hand through his hair. "But he needs someone to have his back. Someone to watch out for him. Why do I get to come home when so many of them don't?"

And maybe, just maybe, there are some remnants of survivor's guilt in his voice, after years of fighting in a war that took so many. His best friend included. "On the ship, he -- he almost killed Sinthia. I don't know what he'll do to himself, alone."

He makes eye contact. If it echoes with what she told him about Clint not even a few months earlier, at least he'll know she understands where he's coming from.

"You got to come home because that was the roll of the dice, Steve." She smiles, faintly. He knows how old she actually is now; he knows what war she lived through, what battle took place on her city's streets.

"It's nothing more meaningful or sinister than that. Not unless you want it to be. And that you supply yourself."

Then she shrugs. "But that's the topic of a different therapy session. Uh.

You said Bucky was different. How was he different?"

Steve doesn't respond with anything more than a frown for a few long seconds. He's never cared for chance, even if someone could argue that's what made him who he is today. It's also what made him a skinny, sickly kid for the first two decades of his life. Cards, dice, fate, whatever you want to call it may be indiscriminate, but that doesn't make up for the people it overlooks. Good people.

The corner of his mouth tics briefly when she calls this a 'therapy session', and he drops his head just a little, focusing on his hands.

"He's -- guarded, tortured," he begins, as if the words are painful. "He can't remember huge sections of his life. He says they-- they caught him, during the war. Tortured him, turned him into this... I don't know. He has a prosthetic, talks like he's not good for anything but killing. That's not the Bucky I knew. Whatever they did to him..."

The last few words are spat, like a threat is about to follow on their heels. But Steve just shakes his head, looks angry and then emotional, and ends up pulling his hand through his hair again and letting it rest there. He clenches his free hand into a fist.

"He's strong. Too strong. I think they experimented on him, tried to make him into a soldier like me," he eventually says. And then he pauses, dragging his eyes back up to Natasha's face. "Like us."

Natasha's expressive mouth pulls to the side, more bitter than wry.

"Like us," she echoes. For a moment, she looks like she is going to say more, but she swallows it.

"Well. To be objective for a moment, I'd say he sounds...like he's probably suffering too much Post-Traumatic Stress to be an illusion. It'd be too big a gamble on your reaction. Probably.

But I had to ask," she adds, softly.

He watches her. There's something he wants to say, but as she keeps talking his face softens with surprise and then understanding, something akin to appreciation in his eyes for how she tempers her tone.

"I get it," he says. "To be honest, it's -- more reassuring than anything to have you backing me up on the 'not crazy' front."

He smirks lopsidedly, releasing that fist at last. "You know, I said 'like us', but... there's a lot I don't know, Nat. I realize the last time we tried talking didn't go well, but -- you're my partner, and I want to understand."

"I know."

Natasha breathes something that could be a laugh.

"I know, Steve. It's just..." She looks away, as if searching for something to say, when her gaze lands on the photo-frame on her coffee-table. Well. All right.

She hesitates and then leans over to pick it up, keeping the face towards her.

"Let me...explain something. Before we go into the rest.

There was a boy.

He was a bit older than me, but we lived in the same apartment building. When the war came, he enlisted. By the end of the war, well. You heard the stories of what the Eastern Front was like. I thought he was dead, like everyone else.

Moscow, after the war, I was in a park and someone said my name. 'Natalia', it's common. 'Natalia Alianovna' is not. I turned and there he was. Alive. Well. Very dashing in his uniform," she adds, and despite how tense and bitter she's been, here her smile is almost happy. It doesn't last.

"We were married for about ten years before he was killed. Plane crash, into the Pacific. He was the only person I really had left, so I think you know what that would have felt like.

I don't..." Natasha hesitates and then looks up. Her mouth is bitter and her green eyes are shiny with unshed tears. "My point is he," and she turns the photograph around so he can see, "he is not the kind of person you forget."

It is, on the face of it, a very ordinary post-World War II wedding photograph. The groom in his best uniform and still looking a bit nervous, the bride wearing a dark winter coat with her veil almost defiantly in place. The couple are young, and while the bride is more at ease than her new husband (indeed, her smile is only just short of a grin), the sheer closeness of their stance is telling. More than any vow or legal authority, they are determined to stay together, for better or for anything worse than the war they just survived.

Steve listens respectfully, keeping his eyes on her when he feels his attention is needed, dropping them when she needs her space. There's a lot he can identify with, which won't take a super spy to unravel; he smiles when she smiles, looks pensive when she's serious, shows the regret and sympathy clearly for her loss.

He's careful when he reaches for the photograph, taking it like he's just been handed an emblem in church. It's the first time he's seen Natasha like this, evidence that what she's told him is true. Young, couldn't be more than twenty with that face, and the groom beside her barely more than a kid himself. Like so many who fought in that war.

His brows knit together.

"You were married," he begins with the obvious, but there's so much more behind the words. It's understanding, at last. The things she's lost go beyond her service to the Russian government, to the Red Room. "I'm sorry, Nat."

He hands the photo back to her. "How long after was it, before -- ?" He hesitates, and when Natasha looks puzzled he clarifies in the gentlest way possible. "What year were you brought into the Red Room?"

Edited 2014-12-24 08:39 (UTC)

Natasha takes the photo back, holding it close to her chest with as much reference as her father's family would hold a Qu'ran.

I'm sorry, Nat, Steve says and there's a flicker of a smile in response. It means something, coming from him.

"Um. I'm...not great with dates for back then," she replies once he clarifies his question. "But very soon after the war. The academy was in Moscow, Alexei was stationed at the Air Force base close by. We went out while I was studying. We didn't get married until a couple years later, when the Red Room was shut down. Then the Red Room came back, Alexei's plane crashed, and, oh look, I have transfer orders back to Moscow."

Her voice is dry as grave dust, and her thumb runs down the edge of the photo-frame protectively.

"My original point was that the Red Room...at some point, I don't know when, they went into my head, and took everything and everyone I loved out. They replaced it with something pretty and fake. Certainly didn't involve a murdered husband. And sometimes, even now, I wake up. And I can't tell which memories are real."

As soon as the words 'transfer orders' leave Natasha's mouth, Steve tenses in realization. His knuckles go white around his glass of Kvass, the twin lines between his eyebrows deep with anger.

He looks at the back of the photo-frame clutched to her heart for a long, long time.

It isn't until her explanation starts to sink in that he looks at her again, face drawn and open like the words mean something to him personally. What she's describing only makes him think of Bucky again, snatches of conversations rushing through his mind, the memory of Bucky's haunted eyes and pleading expression, the nightmares...

He blinks, letting out a small puff of air, and he does what he can to wipe that look off his face. It could be nothing. At any rate, now's not the time to bring it up.

"So when I talk about my friends coming back from the dead, it hits a nerve," he surmises, eyes on his glass. He tenses his jaw once, twice, and shakes his head. "I'll be honest with you, Natasha. Even right now, I'm not 100% sure that the Enterprise is real. I know that there's something off about it, about the whole situation, and my allegiances haven't shifted. My duty, my responsibility, is always gonna be here. But if there's a chance it's real-- if the possibility exists that I was brought there for a reason, that we both were, that I can do some good ... I can't turn my back on that."

"It hits a nerve," she agrees, quietly. "And it hurts in general to talk about, and I hate doing it. So, I don't."

She huffs out a sigh and listens to him as he continues.

"I know," Natasha says then. "If Alexei was there, or...other people...

I get it. Except. How you planning on getting back, Rogers? You got a wormhole parked out the back?"

Steve glances at Natasha out of the corner of his eye, mouth twitching, but he doesn't laugh (not at first), and he doesn't make her talk about it. He'd like it if she talked to him more, but he understands well enough not to force it. After all, even if he doesn't say as much out loud, it's because he feels the same exact way that he gives her such a hard time when she pushes him to make connections, go out into the world, date. He's come a long way in the last two years, maybe longer than most people give him credit for, but it still hurts. And he doesn't like to talk about it.

He looks at his hands, nodding almost imperceptibly when she peters off. He hasn't even mentioned Peggy yet, or this new guy, Sam, but he figures commentary on what it would be like for Natasha should her dead husband show up wouldn't be appreciated.

The wormhole line is what finally makes him laugh. "Not quite. I met him. Q. He's the one who sent me back, but he made it pretty obvious that it wasn't going to be for good. And I'm OK with that."

She's a hypocrite because she cares, and she's comfortable with this.

"Did he give you a time-limit? And..."

Natasha's eyes narrow, faintly.

"You said a reason that we both were on that ship. I didn't really do anything while I was there."

His brows knit together.

"Would you take him at his word if he did?" he counters, finishing off his kvass. Men like Q aren't to be trusted, as much as Steve wants to believe there's some honor between opponents. "It could be any minute. Personally, I'm hoping it's not."

He sets his empty glass on the coffee table, and leans into the back of the couch. "We're not the only ones from S.H.I.E.L.D. who have been on that ship. Q plays the part of the typical villain, talking in riddles and trying to keep his intentions secret, but it feels like he's got some agenda. Like what happened -- it wasn't just random. Maybe I'm wrong, but I've seen that look on other faces before. Like something's about to happen, but only he knows what it is."

Then again, Q could be bluffing. Toying with him. Steve's usually good at reading people, but he hasn't had enough time to figure Q out.

"Oh, I wouldn't believe him. But lies can be useful." Then she makes a slight face, mulling what Steve said over.

"Did you get a sense of what he felt about this? Expectation, amusement...?"

His eyes flick back to her face, and hold there for a moment. He may not be the consummate boy scout the American public likes to paint him as, but he still can't toy with lies using the same catlike ease Natasha does.

"Both," he nods, eyebrows arched. "The confusion gives him some kind of pleasure. It's obvious he likes pulling everyone's strings, and not telling them why. But, considering the kind of people he's messing with, I think he wants to see them figure it out for themselves."

He rubs his hands together in thought, absently picking at his nails to remove paint and charcoal that isn't there, a nervous tic he's carried with him all his life. He looks down. "But I need you there too, Nat. No matter what the end game is-- you're my partner."

Those three words are as close to vulnerable as Steve ever gets, both an apology for the way he acted and reassurance that he's still on her side, no matter what. He half-cocks a smirk.

"I might need someone there to tell me when I'm crazy," he adds, to lighten the mood.

Natasha doesn't say thank you for the same reason that he doesn't actually say I'm sorry: it'd both say too much and not enough, and they are both good - most of the time - at reading what the other doesn't say.

Partners.

Still, she gives him one of her flickering, slightly wry smiles and laughs a little breathlessly.

"Well. I can't exactly let you run around on a spaceship by yourself, Rogers. Where's the fun in that?"

Amusement reaches his eyes at last.

"You are the one who told me I needed to catch up on my science fiction," he returns, absently patting his pocket to make sure his notebook is still there. There are a few more entries in it now than there were six months ago. "How will I manage without you there to show me the ropes?"

They both know he'll manage just fine, but the camaraderie is good. It's easy, and calming; something like a salve on what have been frayed nerves for too many months now. "How's Barton readjusting?"

Steve checked in on him, too, but Natasha knows him better than anyone else save for maybe Fury and Hill -- and Coulson, when he was alive.

"Hard to tell over the phone," Natasha says, slowly.

"But I...worry. About him."

Steve nods.

"It's not easy coming back from having someone else in your head," he remarks, keeping his voice carefully neutral while not shying away from eye contact.

It's a prompt, in a way. They've made headway tonight, and he wouldn't push her to say more than she already has, but when there's still so much about her he doesn't understand it's natural to wonder, before they go back into an unfamiliar territory, how much she'll let him in. "He's lucky to have you. I think we all needed some rest after New York."

Not that all of them did, but that's another story altogether.

"You should probably know -- Stark's on that boat," he says, lips twitching. "And a guy I think I'm supposed to meet. He knows us. From here."

He hesitates, something unreadable flickering through his eyes. "And Peggy Carter."

"May you never know what it's like, to have someone in your head," she says, and then almost visibly keeps moving onto another topic.

It's not as if Steve hasn't been a nice boy and not provided her with other targets, after all.

She quickly arranges the people into reverse order of importance.

Director Carter and her doomed love affair with Steve.

Tony Stark and just...Tony Stark.

And-

"A guy you're supposed to meet." Natasha arches her eyebrows. "Who also knows me."

He can take a cue easily enough, and right now prying into her past isn't priority one. He does look momentarily sympathetic, though.

"That's the story," he says, nodding almost imperceptibly. "And it's a pretty convincing one."

The situation he had been in with Sam was embarrassing enough he can't imagine the guy would cop to knowing him when he didn't, if he could spare himself that impression. Steve clears his throat, the tips of his ears just turning this side of rosy.

Natasha eyes him.

"You," she says, "are very lucky I value security over your lack of a dating life."

Yeah, she sees your red ears, Steve.

"On the other hand, I really value security and not being arrested, so care to explain?"

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