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She remembers fear and pain, her life flashing in front of her eyes at Zola’s words – Clint’s smile and a haze of red, nameless faces of those in front of and behind the gun, and then nothing as metal comes down on her head and rocks come down on her face. She figures at some point she must have gotten knocked out, so that realization isn’t so surprising. What is surprising is the realization that when she comes to, it’s not under a pile of rubble, but rather with her body stretched out along the hard seat of a stolen pick-up.
“Natasha.”
Right. That’s her name, maybe, although who the hell knows anymore. The organization she has given her life to, pledged her ledger of red to, it’s all corrupt and false just like her entire life’s been from the day that she was born. Her head hurts in a way that she thinks might be 60% concussion and 40% emotional damage.
She opens her eyes, emitting a groan that comes out sounding more like a whine of pain, turning her head to the side as much as she can.
“Natasha.”
His voice again, though not the one she’s used to hearing when she gets knocked out this badly. She fights through the swimming vision and the haze of thoughts, bringing his face into focus.
“Natasha,” Steve whispers again, urgently, one hand settling on her face. She winces against the sting of pain, and crap, is it possible to have a bruised cheek? There’s a new one.
Clint’s gonna fucking kill me.
“We got blown up,” she mutters, closing her eyes again. Steve sighs, losing his breath in a rush of air.
“Well, I was going to ask if you were okay,” he replies. “But if you remember what happened, it means I don’t have to worry about a concussion.”
Natasha groans again. “Number one: don’t hold your breath on that one. I have a really good memory.” She struggles to move, feeling the warmth of his hand as it circles her waist in an effort to help pull her body upright. “Number two: I was unconscious, not dead.” She rests her head painfully against the seatback, and Steve follows suit.
“Where we are?” she continues after a spell of silence. He looks up, staring out the window at the muted darkness that presses in around the stilled truck like a cloak.
“If I had to guess, somewhere between Wheaton and Newark,” he says finally. “To be honest, I just pulled over at the first place that looked secluded enough.”
Natasha nods slowly, letting out a sigh. “Well.” She swallows with a large amount of effort, cracking open one eye. “Glad to see you still have some wits left about you. I was beginning to think you’d left them all back in 1945.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “Number one: don’t hold your breath on that one,” he returns, cracking a slight smile. “Number two: I was frozen, not dead.”
***
She insists that she’s okay enough to not only sit up, but to move to the passenger seat, and while he gives her the benefit of the doubt it doesn’t do anything to quell his concern over her condition.
“Don’t think you have to keep me company or anything,” he says once they start driving again. “I’m used to the quiet.”
“Why would I want to do that?” she asks under her breath. “Driving with Clint is bad enough without worrying about him falling asleep at the wheel.”
Steve shakes his head, feeling relaxed against his will, allowing her comments to invoke a sense of levity into an otherwise tense situation which is really not anything to laugh about at all.
“Are you sure –”
Natasha sighs heavily. “I’m fine, Rogers. Shut up and keep driving.”
She realizes what must be halfway back to D.C. that she has no idea where he’s taking them, because he can’t possibly be bringing her back to his place with what happened there, and there was no way her home was an option. At this point, though, she’s too tired to care, and also too tired to worry about what’s coming next. The man with a plan was what they always said about Steve, and, well, he had to have a plan, right?
Steve Rogers always had a plan. Natasha Romanov flew by the seat of her pants. That was just the way the way it was.
***
“We need to stop,” Steve says when he looks over for the thousandth time, catching the way her head jerks back and forth against the seat. Natasha rolls her eyes.
“I told you. Shut up and drive.”
Steve grits his teeth, his fingers white against the steering wheel. “Jesus, do you need to be a martyr all the damn time? I need to at least look at your injuries.”
“And if you stop, I run the risk of being killed for real,” she responds with more force than he would expect from her prone form. “So keep driving and if you want to play doctor later, consider it my gift.”
“Yeah, I’ll be real glad when I’m transporting you to Medical while undercover because you’re bleeding out,” he deadpans, and when he sees the small smile gracing her lips, he feels like he’s passed some sort of strange test.
“You know,” he continues in an effort to keep them both talking for entirely different reasons, “we’ve been partners for over a year now.”
“I can count,” Natasha intones dryly, but there’s a hint of amusement edging out from underneath the grittiness of her voice.
“Well…” Steve stops suddenly, aware of just how silly he feels saying the words out loud, and also knowing that he’s talked himself into a trap he can’t get out of because she’ll never let it go.
“Well, what?” she asks, as if reading his mind, raising an eyebrow as much as she can.
“It’s just…I realized that I’ve still never seen your apartment.”
Natasha can’t help it, barking out a laugh that turns into a slight cough. “Ow,” she mutters as pain laces through her body, and she shifts against the seatbelt digging into her side. Steve frowns.
“That wasn’t funny.”
“I never said it was,” she returns as he looks at her again, exasperation taking over her tone, and he shakes his head.
“I want to know why.”
Natasha sighs quietly, still trying to find a comfortable angle for her body. “Look, no offense, Rogers. But I don’t give up those parts of my life so easily…not even to someone who saves it.” There’s a genuine tone of regret in her voice, and he doesn’t miss the way it sneaks in underneath the retort.
“Not even then?” he finds himself asking, glancing pointedly at the arrow around her dirt-covered neck. Natasha tenses in a way that she knows has little to do with her injuries.
“That’s not your concern,” she replies sharply, her voice growing hard again. Steve stares at her for a second longer before turning his eyes back to the road.
“Fine.”
He sets his jaw into a straight line and presses down a little harder on the gas pedal, gunning the truck past 80, the brick and white “Welcome to Washington, D.C.” placard flashing past his window like a hologram that, if you looked hard enough, might not have even been there at all.
***
The first thing Natasha does when they get shown inside Sam’s house is beeline to the bathroom, locking the door behind her and hoping that at this point he’s smart enough to not try and break in. She waits with one hand on the handle, her entire body tight with pain and exhaustion, until she starts to hear the soft padding of footsteps against the tiles and the creak of the bed as he sits down.
She undresses slowly, turning on the shower and stepping under the spray, allowing the scalding water to wash the blood and the ache from her body. Definite concussion, she thinks, mentally taking stock of her injuries as she threads her fingers through wet hair. There are some movements that hurt but everything else about her body seems fully functional, save for a few heavy bruises that she’s used to sustaining.
She exits the shower and towels her hair dry as best she can, catching her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The reappearance of slight curls makes her smile, makes her hurt in a way that most random memories don’t.
“Leave it curly.”
“I’m going on a mission, Clint; I’m not signing a modeling contract.”
Natasha slips back into her clothes before heading back into the room, finding Steve hunched over on a chair in the corner. He’s shed his soot-ridden garments and stripped down to just his undershirt, but aside from the exhaustion parading in his eyes, she notes with some disdain that he looks otherwise unharmed.
“Not fair,” she mutters, easing down on the bed. He laughs, getting up and bringing the chair closer to sit across from her.
“Well, I don’t know if you’d call it fair,” he replies with a shrug, leaning forward and closing the distance between them. “But it sure helps when you’re in a situation where it’s not just you that’s in trouble.”
The small smile that's started across her lips falters at his words, and she carefully turns her gaze to the ground, trying to direct his attention elsewhere before he notices.
“Why did you pull me out?” she asks, speaking more to the floor than to the person in front of her. She raises her head, aware of the feelings that her eyes betray, and to his credit Steve looks fairly surprised.
“Why not?”
“Because I lied to you,” Natasha replies darkly, her own confusion bleeding through her normally tough front. “Because I kept things from you, and because I didn’t deserve for you to save my life.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m a little hard to kill,” Steve answers wryly, gesturing to his undamaged body. Natasha can’t help but chuckle at that, getting up slowly and stripping off her tank top, exchanging it for an oversized shirt that she assumes Sam has left for her on the pillow.
“I don’t normally do this, you know,” she says, sitting back down as Steve raises an eyebrow.
“Undress in front of men?”
Natasha glares as she crosses her arms. “Tell people things honestly.”
“Well.” Steve leans forward again, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and looking slightly uncomfortable. “A hell of a lot better to be honest, isn’t it?”
Natasha presses her lips together, twisting them into a sad smile. “Not in my case,” she replies quietly. “In my case, when I’m honest, a lot of people usually end up dead.”
There’s a silence that settles into the room after her words, one that blankets them with an almost suffocating feel and he nods slowly.
“Must be hard to live with. All of that.”
Natasha shrugs a little weakly. “You get used to it,” she says, stretching out along the bed. “But it’s why I don’t like owing people debts.” She stops, her voice turning rough. “I don’t want to feel like I owe you something, Rogers. Especially not now.”
“You don’t,” Steve defends, a little shocked at how confidently he feels about that answer but trusting his instincts. “You would’ve done the same for me.”
“I would’ve,” Natasha echoes quietly, the response more of a statement than a question. She smiles wistfully again. “This whole thing – owing debts – it’s why Barton and I got along so well in the first place, despite our differences.” She pauses, chewing mentally on the last words of the sentence. “Not that those matter.”
It’s Steve’s turn to find the floor as he takes a breath, shuffling his feet on the hardwood. “Do they matter with me?”
Natasha looks up at the same time he does, finding his eyes, her voice just above a whisper.
“Not anymore.”
***
They don’t have the time to wait, not really, not with the fact that they know lingering in any place, no matter how secure or secluded, will probably get them killed or tortured or both. But when she finds that she can’t help giving in to the exhaustion that’s taken a toll on her body, Steve convinces her that they’re (probably) not going to die if they take a few hours to sleep.
At least, he hopes not.
With Sam allowing himself the couch, Steve makes himself comfortable on the floor and lets Natasha take the bed without question, hoping that a few hours on an actual mattress will help when they have to start moving again. He’s almost asleep when he hears the low timbre of her voice from above.
“I keep Clint’s apartment.”
“What?” Steve raises his head, both confused and alert at the same time, and Natasha sighs.
“That’s where I live – that’s my apartment. Although, well, I guess it’s technically not mine.”
He turns over, propping himself on one arm. “I thought Clint’s apartment was in New York,” he replies, still confused at the conversation and trying to work his brain, which had been drifting into unconsciousness, back into actual thought. Natasha chuckles.
“Yes. He has one in New York. I do, too. But when we started commuting to headquarters more, Fury gave us our own places so we wouldn’t have to keep staying in safe houses. Or hotels,” she adds with a bit of disdain mixed with something that sounds like wistfulness. Steve nods to himself.
“Is that where you went after you left the hospital?”
Natasha’s silent for a long time. “Yes,” she says a little hesitantly, and when she speaks, he’s almost shocked that can detect the honesty in her tone without having to search for it. When he doesn’t answer, she sighs.
“I want to trust you. I think I do, anyway.” There’s another pause, and then the sound of her turning over slowly on the mattress. “But I can’t do that when I don’t even know who I am right now.”
Steve breathes shallowly in the safety of the darkness, suddenly feeling closer to her than he ever has despite the fact that he also thinks they’ve never been more physically and mentally separated.
“That’s fair,” he answers softly, and he thinks he sees whatever rigidness her body has been harboring fading away at his words.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Natasha returns. “To get through the rest of this.”
Steve shrugs. “Do what I asked you in the car,” he says, and Natasha snorts.
“What? Be a work in progress?”
“No.” He fights the urge to roll his eyes at her trademark bite, pushing down his annoyance. “Be a friend. And if we get out of this, we’ll work on the rest together.”
He wonders for a moment if he’s gone too far or promised too much, because for all he doesn’t know about her, he does know how she feels about making promises that can’t be universally kept. But then he hears a sound of amusement and her soft voice, open and vulnerable, as she pushes out the last of her sleep-deprived words.
“You’re okay, Rogers.”
It’s a sentiment and a response that makes Steve laugh, and he smiles into the pillow pressed to his cheek.
“You too, Natasha.”