Chapter Text
A few days after that came her next round of spinal chemo. Fortunately, they heeded her wishes and allowed her to refuse anesthesia. Maria went with her and provided all the instructions. She lay on her side while they stuck a needle in her lower back, just as the doctors back home had done to diagnose her with leukemia, and stayed there for thirty minutes. Then, they removed the needle and she stayed flat on her back for an hour. All things considered, Natasha found it rather relaxing.
She convinced Happy to let her have a television by arguing it would improve her language skills. Spy thrillers, it turned out, piqued her interest, and she spent nearly all her waking hours watching and picking up on new words and phrases. Maybe the vocabulary common in those films didn't align perfectly with the most commonly used English, but it held her attention better than the children's shows or any other genres.
She grew proficient enough that she could survive without Maria or a translator app. It required some serious, often ridiculous, circumlocution, but Natasha preferred it to typing what she needed to say. It was good practice. Happy and the other nurses were clearly impressed with her progress. Apparently she was learning quickly.
One lesson she'd already taken to heart was the necessity of reporting new aches and pains. The worsening throbbing in her ankles certainly qualified. After she told Happy about it, they took her to one of the weird noisy machines again. She could tell they'd found something bad when they brought Maria to explain. They knew her English was good enough to understand if they told her everything was fine, that it was just another side effect of the chemo. Natasha expected to be told she'd have to get more shots or another surgery or something equally as painful. She didn't expect to be told they had to change their entire treatment plan.
"Natasha, the chemo medicines that you're on sometimes have different side effects, and some of them are more common than others," Maria translated Dr. Potts' words for her. "Your scans show that you're experiencing a rare side effect called avascular necrosis."
"What is that?"
"It means your bones aren't getting enough blood, and they're growing weak and dying."
"How do you fix it?"
"That's the thing. We can't fix it, we can only stop it from getting worse. To do that, we have to adjust the types of medicine you're getting. You can't have any more steroids."
"Okay." She didn't understand why this was such a big deal.
"The damage that's already done can't be reversed, so you need to be careful. The damage is worst in your ankles, so you can't do anything that puts too much strain on them or you could break them."
"Break my ankles?" That was one of the most devastating injuries a ballerina could have. Uchitel would eviscerate her if she broke an ankle.
"Yes."
"What sorts of things put too much strain on them?"
"Things like running or dancing."
"No dancing?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Is there a chance it will ever get better?" she asked.
"We don't see it in people as young as you very often, so I don't know anything for certain. It's unlikely, but I'm not willing to say it's impossible," Dr. Potts said. "We'll do another MRI later on to see if there's been any improvement."
Natasha came closer to crying than ever before upon hearing that news. She'd been dancing six days a week for as long as she could remember. What would she do when she eventually went home if she couldn't return to it? How would Yelena react? Could they even remain friends if Natasha didn't join her for endless hours in the Red Room? Ballet was her entire identity, and now she'd lost it. Now the only thing that really defined her was cancer. She didn't like that idea at all.
She also didn't like the next round of news that Dr. Potts had to share. Natasha's cancer cells weren't responding as quickly as they should. By the end of her fourth week here—what should have been the end of the induction round—she still had too many blasts in her bone marrow to advance to the next phase. Which meant she had to repeat the exact same regimen again. Four more weeks of this same caliber of chemotherapy, minus the steroids that had destroyed her bones and robbed her of dance.
Happy tried to fix it. He brought one of the visiting therapy dogs to her room for her to pet and play with. Natasha preferred cats, and running her fingers through the soft fur of the gray and black dog reminded her of Liho. She missed him just as much as she missed her family. When Maria stopped by to take the dog back to the common room to see the other kids, she asked Natasha if she enjoyed it.
"Dog is nice." Natasha shrugged. "I like cats more." Maria asked her if she had a pet cat, and Natasha eagerly told her all about Liho. He often curled up in her dance bag, got irritatingly underfoot if she ever practiced at home, and snuggled with her when she sat doing homework. Talking about him only made her yearning for home grow from a gnawing itch to a gaping chasm in her soul. The next time she called her parents she asked if they could pet Liho to get him to purr and put him on the phone. If she closed her eyes and listened she could almost imagine she was there with them.
~0~
"How did it go?" Happy asked Maria.
"Pretty well, I think," Maria replied. "She said she prefers cats."
"Really?"
"Yeah. She talked a bit about her cat back home."
"What did she say?"
"His name is Liho, and he's pitch black. The way she talked; it definitely sounds like she misses him."
"I'll bet. I would be hard to be torn away from a pet like that. I feel so bad that she's going to be here that much longer. Induction isn't kind to anybody, and doing it a second time isn't going to be fun."
"I just hope she learned her lesson from the intussusception nightmare. If she continues to hide symptoms, we're all going to have to develop mind-reading abilities to have any hope of doing our jobs well."
"I think she took it to heart. She's a smart kid."
"For sure. Her English has come so far for so little time and so little interaction."
"It's those spy movies, I guess."
"It's so funny that she enjoys them so much. I would've never guessed."
"To each her own."
~0~
A few days after her second induction began, Happy presented Natasha with a surprise. A stuffed black cat that looked so much like her Liho she would've believed him if he'd told her he flew to Russia and brought him back. She held the animal up to her face and gazed into its beaded eyes. She found life in them, despite the fact she held a stuffed animal and not a living creature. She considered this the kindest gift she'd ever received, especially given that she'd received it from someone with no obligation to get her anything at all.
However, she soon discovered the gift came with a catch. Today she would get her port implanted. Apparently leukemia treatment lasted so long that they couldn't continue to use the line in her arm and needed more long-term access to her big veins. Hence the port. Maria offered her the choice between staying awake and being anesthetized for the duration, and Natasha chose awake. She always chose awake if she could. It unsettled her knowing they could do literally anything they pleased if they knocked her out. Awake, she remained at least somewhat informed of what was going on.
They numbed the skin on her chest and sanitized it thoroughly. She turned her head away and clutched her little black cat by the paw, not willing to look at them while they sliced into her. Frankly, it was one of the least uncomfortable things she'd endured since arriving here. Plus, Maria had told her she could shower normally with a port and didn't have to wrap it up like crazy as she'd had to do with the PICC line—unless it was accessed. Natasha looked forward to it.
She did not look forward to receiving chemo through this new device. The PICC line stuck out from her skin and only needed to be flushed before it was connected to whatever line was necessary. This remained hidden under her skin, and she had a sneaking suspicion there would be needles involved.
There were needles involved.
Well, just one. But it was a big one. Bigger than her Lovenox injections.
She did not like this new method.
They'd numbed the area with a special cream a while ago, but the thought of that needle piercing her disturbed her more than the fear of physical pain. She couldn't help but squirm when the nurse approached her with it.
"Natasha, none of that," she chided. Natasha steeled herself and allowed it to happen. The anticipation had been worse than the actuality. The numbing cream worked wonders and she barely felt pain as the needle entered. As the nurse flushed the line, Natasha tasted salt and metal, which she didn't like one bit. But after that, everything continued much the same as the first time, with one crucial difference: she didn't have to stay completely isolated in her room anymore.
There were other kids here, she knew. Sometimes she heard them talking in the hallway, but until now she hadn't been allowed to meet them. Natasha took advantage of this newfound freedom at her first opportunity, finding her way to a room full of comfy couches and a television. A girl several years older than her carried a big red box from the closet to a table, where two other kids awaited. Both of them looked like fellow cancer patients if the lack of hair was anything to go on.
"Hi," the girl greeted. The two boys also said hello.
"Hi," she replied.
"You must be the leukemia patient that moved in a few weeks ago. What's your name?" she asked.
"Natasha."
"Welcome to Gravesen, Natasha. I'm Carol, and this is Bucky and Clint. Would you like to play with us?"
Natasha nodded eagerly. She sat down at the table next to the younger boy and watched passively as they laid out a bunch of pieces. Fortunately, it didn't appear that this game required a lot of reading, as she still hadn't learned how to decipher English characters. Before they began, she warned the others, "My English is not great."
"That's okay. We'll work around that," Carol assured. She spent twenty minutes going over how to play and demonstrated several sample turns with Clint and Bucky's help. Natasha quickly recognized that the language barrier wouldn't even be that big of an issue because most of the game relied on numbers, and most of the cards were labeled with symbols and not words. By the end of the sixth round, Natasha was winning handedly despite facing far more experienced players.
"Bucky, you can't just straight up build a city," Carol chided. "You have to build a settlement first and then turn it into a city."
"But I don't have the cards for a settlement."
"Bummer."
"Fine," Bucky grumbled, removing his city piece from the board and nodding to Clint to take his turn.
"So Natasha, where are you from?" Clint asked as everyone gathered their cards from his roll of a five.
"Gulag in east Siberia," she answered, enjoying the looks of shock and surprise that cross all of their faces. They completely believed her.
"Those are real?" Clint questioned. "I thought those were made up."
"They are very real," Natasha assured. "And very cold."
"Wait, a minute, you're telling me we're sitting here playing board games with a prisoner?"
"No, I play board game with idiots," she replied with a smirk.
"Of course she's kidding," Carol mumbled. "I can't believe I fell for that for even a second."
"You did," Natasha reminded her.
"We all did. Nice job," Bucky commended. "You're going to be glad you have a sense of humor. Cancer doesn't leave much to laugh at."
"So true," Clint sighed. They resumed the game, and Natasha soon ran away with it and won by three victory points. They started cleaning up and when Carol took the box back to the closet, Natasha noticed the poster on the wall.
"What is this?" she asked.
"That's the gauntlet," Carol told her. She proceeded to explain all about Thanatos and the six aspects of a life. At first, Natasha was skeptical of the idea, but she observed the way Bucky and Clint looked appreciatively at the gauntlet and she realized how important it was to them. She wrote her own name—in Cyrillic characters of course, they were way prettier—and moved her Xs to where she thought they belonged. Glancing at the other names, she counted seven names before hers.
"Who?" she asked, pointing to the names.
"Who else is here?" Carol confirmed. Natasha nodded. She pointed to the second name on the list and explained, "This is Steve. He's here a few times a year for his lungs. Clint and Bucky are right here, as you know. Peter hangs out with us a lot, but I think he's with Dr. van Dyne right now. And then there's Thor and Nick."
"Crowded," Natasha remarked.
"Yeah, there's a lot more people here now than there was a few months ago. At one point it was just me and Steve," she explained.
"How romantic," Bucky said playfully. Carol just rolled her eyes at him.
~0~
Natasha considered herself pretty lucky when a charity group donated wigs to the hospital. Happy showed her the options, and she eagerly chose one dark red. She'd always secretly wanted to be a redhead. Her natural dirty blonde hair had always seemed so boring. She looked in the mirror and barely recognized herself with hair. She'd grown accustomed to baldness, but she loved having the option not to advertise her cancer to the entire hospital.
That same day, they provided her with a cell phone. She didn't know where they got it or how they set it up with the systems already in Russian, but she didn't waste too much time questioning it. Now she didn't have to ask when she wanted to call her parents, something she'd done as many times as possible since she arrived here. Hearing her native tongue from Mama and Papa eased the fear constantly gnawing at her, and her updates eased their fear of what was happening to her so far away from home. Another perk: being added to the Gravesen group chat.
Clint added her to it the next time they saw each other. He and Nick had similar chemo schedules, so she spent as much time as she could sitting in the comfy armchairs of the chemo clinic with them. When she finished induction and moved onto intensification, she'd get her own infusions in here too. For now, though, home base for medication administration was still her room. Technically, she wasn't supposed to wander around, but she memorized the schedules of all the nurses and managed to sneak around them. Heimdall knew what she was up to, but for whatever reason he didn't bust her. Maybe he understood that the company of Clint and Nick was beneficial enough for her mental health to balance out whatever risks leaving her room posed. Besides, she was careful to wear a face mask.
The three of them formed a posse of sorts, sharing in the misery of cancer treatment. Bucky also spent time in here, but he often had Steve visiting him or he was texting his school friends. He certainly didn't ignore them when their infusion times overlapped, but he didn't participate in every single conversation. Natasha bonded especially with Clint, their rooms situated directly across the hallway from each other. They exchanged lessons in Russian and American Sign Language, sometimes sneaking across the hall after curfew to review whatever they'd covered earlier that afternoon. Clint didn't need to sign; his hearing aids almost completely corrected the deficit, but he'd learned it anyway during a break between treatments when he'd still been unable to return to normal school. Occasionally, when one of their friends was being particularly annoying, they would sign or mutter in Russian at each other. They didn't actually poke fun of anyone, just said random phrases and pretended it was gossip just to piss them off.
She could almost forget she was sick when she hung out with Clint. Key word almost. The nausea, fatigue, jaw pain, and the ache that lingered in her ankles despite stopping steroids still plagued her, but the distraction of company helped her mind focus elsewhere and make the sensations less horrible. Two new arrivals increased the general hustle and bustle about the ward: Bruce Banner and Peter Quill. They were several years older so Natasha didn't see them all that often, but she witnessed their names placed on the gauntlet and their numbers added to the group chat. The ward neared maximum capacity and she wondered what would happen if the hospital received more patients than it could house.
Almost the instant she thought that, she received a text that made her wish she hadn't. Carol, who she hadn't even gotten to know all that well, yet was always kind to her, messaged the group to inform them things weren't looking good for her. Natasha ran the text through a translator to ensure she wasn't mistaken in its meaning. After that message was delivered Natasha never saw her again.
Nick informed her of Carol's death a week after the text. Natasha didn't know what to feel—didn't even know how to feel anything in that moment. Things like that happened all the time, especially in hospitals, but Natasha had never personally known anyone who died so young. Bucky sent an invitation for everyone to join him in the common room. The older boy called Steve was there, even though he wasn't admitted as a patient at the time. He shed more tears than any of the other kids, so Natasha figured he must have known Carol best. Bucky gave a brief speech and then allowed Steve to move Carol's Xs into the Thanatos column to represent the conclusion of her fight.
After that, Natasha spent ten minutes staring at the list of group chat members, a list which still included Carol. She wondered how long they would leave her number there before working up the nerve to delete it or the phone number being recycled. Or maybe it was tradition never to remove dead people from the chat. Natasha didn't know much about the formalities.
She didn't even have the energy to clench her fist during her Lovenox injection. Oddly, it hurt less than it ever had before. Maybe because her brain was too busy coping with another type of pain. She didn't sleep well that night, but the next morning Happy brought her something that lifted her spirits beyond what she ever thought possible.
A letter from home.
She tore into it eagerly, temporarily forgetting all about the sorrows of yesterday, and pulled out a piece of paper covered in Yelena's impeccable handwriting. Natasha had always been jealous of her friend's handwriting. She ran her fingers over the gorgeous Cyrillic letters before reading, savoring this taste of home. After a few minutes just staring at it, she finally allowed herself to read the letter:
Tasha,
I cannot put into words how much I miss you. All of the classrooms we shared and even the Red Room feel hollow without you in them. Uchitel nearly cried when I told her that her best dancer ran off to New York for cancer treatment. I hope everything is going well and that you will get better soon so you can return home to your parents and me. But, I do give you credit for taking my advice and skipping school that day. I won't have to hit you after all.
I know you probably don't want me to write about anything that will make you sad, but I have to say that your parents seem a bit lost without you. My folks have them over for dinner at least once a week to get them out of their empty house. I hear Liho misses you too, but not as much as I do. I looked up the hospital you're in and it seems like a place where they know what they're doing, which is good. I hope you make some new friends there, just promise not to replace me, okay? Also, hope your hair grows back red just like you've always wanted.
—Yelena
Natasha held the letter to her chest and genuinely grinned. Clint and Nick were good friends, yes, but she could never replace someone as kind and thoughtful as Yelena. Never ever.
~0~
The tragic news of Carol's passing dampened Natasha's mood for days, but exciting news from her bone marrow pull—performed without sedation per her request—turned her right around. They found no blasts. She could move on to intensification. Dr. Potts did warn her that the fact it had taken two whole rounds of induction to get her to this stage placed her firmly in the high risk of relapse category, so it was crucial they did everything right for the entire remainder of her treatment. Natasha understood the seriousness of this, so she did everything the nurses and doctors told her to without complaint or tears. As she proudly told her father when she called him most mornings, she still hadn't cried. Even though sometimes she really, really wanted to.
Steve showed up a week after Carol died, not just to accompany Bucky as he was admitted for chemo, but for his own treatment. He moved in to the room next to Carol's empty one and didn't interact much with anyone except Bucky. Now that Natasha was finished induction, she found she had more free time during which she actually felt up to doing stuff. Thor messaged the group asking if anyone was down for a round of Catan, and Quill, Natasha, and Bucky replied yes. She was eager to beat them, already formulating a plan to win. Her strategy had remained pretty consistent over the last several games, and everyone expected her to continue using it. If everyone expected one thing of her, it became that much easier to win another way. That was exactly what she planned to do. Everything fell into place and she sprung her trap, just in time for Steve and a new resident patient he'd dragged in with him to witness her victory.