Work Text:
I am alone when the phone rings.
It is not unusual – the call, the nature of it, the manner in which I receive it. It is something that in our line of work comes frequently, something that comes often, and something that I would be lying to say I have not come to expect. Still, as I watch my life flash in front of my eyes in shades of red and grey, alternating palettes of emotion in hues that match my thoughts, it is as if I am the one who has been hurt, who has been compromised. And I cannot help but feel that this is all some part of a scheme to test me, to see how much I can truly take.
What is a life without a partner?
You asked me that once and I laughed in your face, told you co-dependency wasn’t a thing that I did and maybe at one point I believed that. Maybe at one point I didn’t love you. You helped wipe my brain and make it new again, but there are memories that are still hazy and there are parts of me that wonder if there really was anything else before what we became. Maybe there never was, or maybe there always was, and maybe that was a part of your plan all along. Then again, you have been honest enough for me to believe that all of this is real, that this time, there are no ballerinas or fake names hidden under false pretenses. And so I tell myself that if this is real, then you must be real, and in turn, we must be real. But I have never understood that kind of real before.
You haven’t, either. I saw it in your eyes the first time you spoke to me, I ascertained it the first time we truly talked beyond trading barbs and surface comments about our lives, pretend conversation about what we think and what we like as we test each other out, try to be the first to call each other on a bluff. We spend our time shooting each other down like this is all a game and we are each other’s prizes to be won until one day, on a small island between the spreads of Sweden and Finland, as we wait on a target, you say this is the first time you have trusted another human being. And maybe it's the heat or maybe it's the fatigue, but when you speak those words, I believe you. And this is when I stopped my game, started trading smaller morsels of myself I had never offered up to anyone, which you accepted with hesitancy before trading back some from your own stash. You pulled apart small intricate pieces of a puzzle that people did not and could not understand except that somehow, I did understand, so what did that make me in the folds of your life?
Sometimes, I still do not know.
Others don’t, either. The nature of how we work is something they wonder about and dare I say that makes me feel secure? It is our secret that no one can understand - the two people who should be incapable of loving anything, let alone each other, having more of a connection than people who are tied by white dresses and cheesy vows. The two people who do not fall on swords but instead fall on each other, who are woven together in an intricate bond that transcends life and death and sometimes, even the most practical methods of existence.
I sit by your bed now and hold your cold hand in my own; the coarse skin a heavy wallpaper against my fingertips. It is skin that I have traced with every muscle of my body, skin that my tongue has tasted in pleasure, that my hands have massaged in care, that my arms have clung to in moments that no one ever thinks I need. They don’t know that, though, the doctors who prod it, who poke it with sharp needles and stick tubes in and around your body. They don’t know why this flesh is so important to me. They are willing you to live by the aid of machines, but I am willing you to live by the aid of something far more significant: a person who is breathing for you and fighting for you because I know that if I do not, no one else will.
I know that if I do not, I myself will die.
Live for me, I beg silently once the lights have gone dark and the footsteps have stopped, because I need you and because I love you and because I’m realizing that I don’t know how to do this without you. There is food, but I don’t eat. There is night, but I don’t sleep. These are things that are normal, survivalist instincts that we are taught from birth – eating and sleeping and even the changing of clothes, a handful of actions that contribute to keeping us stable and human. But what no one seems to understand is that without you, none of these things are feasible. I can survive without sleep; my mercenary trained body will push me through. I can survive without food; my S.H.I.E.L.D. trained stamina will sustain me. But what I cannot do is survive without you, without your heartbeat in line with mine, without your breath on my skin when I wake up and fall asleep, without your hand on my face when I cannot speak but don’t have to. It is not possible. Nor is it desirable.
They will find me in the morning in the place that I have been for the past two weeks, the chair that is hard and molded and nowhere near as comfortable as my bed or yours, but no less uncomfortable than the small chambers I was made to sleep in during my days in the Red Room: cramped legs and arms trying to find a painless way to rest in the company of twelve other small girls, all pressed up against each other, whispering Russian lullabies and sounding out cries that fall on deaf ears.
This chair is my home now. This room is my home now. This hospital is my home now. They will carry me out at gunpoint if they have to, because I will not leave your side until I see the pupils of your eyes or until you are carried out in a body bag, whichever comes first. Perhaps this is what I deserve for loving so blindly, so freely – the horror of the freak moment in which you were taken from me, understanding the comfort of getting you back only to lose you again. If I had known better, perhaps I would have paid more attention this morning when you left your apartment. If I had known better, perhaps I would have kissed you one second longer. If I had known better, perhaps I would have wished for your return harder, said one or two words more than a simple morning grunt and a declaration of love.
But I did not do any of those. Instead, I did the things we are used to doing routinely, I did not think about the what ifs because I let down my guard, and now I am faced with the fact that we might never do those mundane things again, and whether it’s because I loved too much or too little still remains to be seen.
It is when I have knotted my body into yet another position barely passable for comfort that your hand tightens around mine in a way that is almost unnoticeable. But for me, the person who has held your limp fingers for longer than I care to admit, it is a signal strong enough to send jolts of energy through my body. You turn your head and there is surprise in your clouded gaze and yes, I am crying, but only enough for you to see and understand.
Hi, you whisper, and the voice that greets me after weeks of silence is nothing like the one that I know and love but I could care less because it’s a voice, and it’s coming from you, and your eyes are open and you are looking at me and recognizing me and that is something that I will never take for granted ever again.
Hi, I whisper back, my voice just as foreign, and I can’t suppress the tremor that I know you don’t miss.
You look up, taking in your surroundings, and for a moment I am worried that I’m going to have to talk you down, the usual standard and practice when you wake disoriented no matter where you are now. I open my mouth in the absence of words that you cannot say, hoping that if nothing else, my speech (however unintelligible) will be a soothing calm, a sense of security that will ground you and remind you that you are here and that you are safe, and when I feel your limbs relax in my hands, I know that I have succeeded.
You use your eyes to ask necessary questions – are you okay, am I okay, are we okay? I answer each as much and as fully as I can, my mouth on your face and my tears on your cheeks.
I am.
You are.
We will be.