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It hurts, but not so much as the hole in her abdomen did, once upon a time. Natasha has learned this: the body has its own way of knowing what you are going to need, in the future – and you are going to need to build this resistance, because the Winter Soldier is not a ghost, and these bullets are going to find you in the end. The readiness is all, isn't it. It sounds better in Russian.
Untraceable Soviet slugs – like everything else, they hurt a little less every time.
+ + +
Maria Hill brings her some more painkillers. You're gonna need them, she says. She doesn't ask if Natasha is up for it. No one has ever asked that question before and it sure as hell it's not going to be Commander Hill the one to start the trend.
The rooms under the dam are curiously oppressive, for all this space.
"By the way, congratulations," she says and Hill arches an eyebrow. "Great performance in the hospital. Maybe you should have been the spy."
"I was under orders, Natasha. It was out of necessity, for the mission, not cruelty to you."
Spare me, she thinks. Fuck you, she thinks. Funny, because two days ago she would have begrudged nothing. She would have understood; she would have actually admired Hill's cold blood and skills and would have probably felt closer to the woman that she ever had before.
"It must have been such a laugh, seeing me fall for your little ruse like that."
She thinks: the great spy Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, bested by a simple sleight of hand, by the oldest trick in the book. Medicine and misdirection. Bested by the likes of Maria Hill, if you could believe it. How belittling.
"We all have to follow orders we don't particularly like, from time to time."
She shrugs. "Not me, I never dislike an order. They're orders, that's the beauty of it."
Fury hasn't really apologized, and that's fine, there's nothing to be sorry for. This was the play, and he was right to make it – trust Steve. Why would you need anything else, anyone else? This was to save SHIELD and the world, her personal emotions are less than inconsequential, like they always have been.
After all, it is her job and it is her chosen path to follow his orders, anything else is just Natasha going places in her mind she has no business going.
She owes many debts.
(that's why she is here today, after all, not because there's a cause to fight – it's too late for causes, for her, and definitely too early, too)
To Clint, first of all, who made the call, and didn't let her out of his sight for the first month she was in SHIELD, who watched her erratic sleep those first nights, who looked at her as if she were a good person and taught her to lick her wounds instead of clawing her nails into her skin.
To Coulson, who read the mission protocols to her incessantly like he could convert her, and who cleaned up her cuts and bruises if something went south.
To Maria Hill, who looked at Natasha with unrelenting suspicion and never really let go of that, not even after years, not completely, and Natasha appreciated that more than almost anything, because it meant that not everybody in SHIELD was as stupid as those two men. Because it meant that if there was a chance of Natasha going back to what she once was there were people like Maria Hill to stop her – people who knew what to do with a rabid dog.
But they didn't matter, not really. She knew she could survive without them (the many times she watched Clint almost get killed and she was certain he had; that one time Coulson did get killed; the way Maria could never be a real friend, if Natasha did something as uncharacteristic as friendship) and she knew she wouldn't miss them for long and she would eventually forget.
(she also thought she could survive without Captain America and maybe she could, but Steve, that's another story)
Not Fury, though.
Fury offered something more valuable than trust or friendship; he offered survival.
You are under my orders now he had said, before Natasha had been in any state to listen to him or anyone else. You are not allowed to die.
And Natasha had believed him.
That was the deal; but she had also thought it went both ways – he wasn't allowed to die. In her mind that was the only thing she required of him, not loyalty or understanding or love. Those were soft ideas, unfit to become tools of survival. Neither Fury nor her were in the business of soft.
He betrayed some sacred vow when he got himself killed – it doesn't matter that now it turns out he is alive and (relatively) well. He cut that thread. It wasn't even that he lied to Natasha. It was that even a mockery of death, even a purpose-oriented death, was still death. He broke his promise.
He had left her (even if just briefly) with nowhere to go.
When you empty your head entirely, the vacuum will fill itself with the first voice it can. She never traded the KGB for SHIELD. She traded it for Fury.
"I am sorry, honestly," Hill says again, sounding mostly annoyed.
"Don't worry," Natasha replies, and neither soldiers nor spies are self-indulgent but where the fuck does she fall, not in any of those two categories, that's for sure. She says: "If not even Captain America could trust me, how can I expect it from Director Fury? Or you."
"Steve? He said that?"
Soft, soft, soft, Natasha thinks, with bitternes, with a long-time-ago acquired sense of superiority. Soft, soft, soft as if she wasn't doing exactly that.
+ + +
She understands Sam the most. She understands the sudden renewal of his faith, and the way he lights up at Steve, not a single doubt in his mind, like Steve is the only place in the world worth belonging to. Natasha, if only recently, knows exactly what that feels like, wanting to be part of that, the inconvenient yearning it brings.
Except Sam is a good man, and there is room for a good man at Steve's side.
+ + +
She sees Steve walking towards the staircase.
"Is it time?" she asks.
"No, we still have some. I just – I'm going to go up and take a little breather."
Things people don't know about Captain America (and Natasha does): for a symbol of the people's hero, he is pretty fond of spending time alone. He often needs to be on his own, in that headspace. All those hours drawing, the way it makes him be apart from the world, and in it at the same place. Things people don't know about Steve Rogers (and Natasha does): he's a pretty complicated guy.
"You must have a lot of things in your mind," she says. "Maybe you should just simplify them."
"If you are going to tell me to stop thinking I can get Bucky back from whatever happened to him, you can save your breath."
She didn't mean that at all. It's not easy remembering she and Steve don't speak the same language. Some words overlap, sure, but most of the time it's a futile task.
She tries to lift her shoulders into a shrug but then she remembers it hurts too much.
"I'm not gonna tell you to give up on him, Steve," she says and it's not every day you get to surprise Steve Rogers. Natasha bites her lower lip. "The things the Winter Soldier does, I was doing before I joined SHIELD. And I'm already counting on Captain America's goodwill to see past that in me. So it'd be like throwing stones at my own roof."
"Don't call him that. The Winter Soldier. He's James Buchanan Barnes."
"I'm sorry."
And she guesses there's a reason why Steve always flinches slightly when somebody (even her) uses the name Black Widow. He's just like that and it's ridiculous –he is ridiculous– but it makes Natasha feel small and inadequate.
"James Buchanan Barnes," she repeats, like some kind of enchantment, or like she was trying to commit some precious piece of information to memory.
Steve looks at her. His gaze, while still hard and focused, lights up with fondness – it takes a moment for Natasha to understand the fondness is not for Steve's childhood friend, it's for her.
"Thanks," he says.
+ + +
Fury is getting in one of those long black coats he favors so much. Natasha wonders who he sent to pick up some clothes for him. Did he have a bag marked In case I have to fake my death lying around his house?
It's a struggle, she can see, getting dressed. It's not like a collapsed lung is going to stop Nick Fury from walking into the Triskelion and raising the hell HYDRA and SHIELD deserve. But – he touches his hand to his side, feeling for the wound and Natasha knows exactly how it feels, the precise way that precise bullet must have felt when it bit and tore into his skin.
The instant connection, the places her mind goes to without her wanting it to, it sparks something in her, like a match being struck. She knows a lot about fires, about burning, about torching something so intimately not even the foundations are recognizable anymore – she knows this: conflagrations are never a good thing. When people think of fires they think of warmth. Natasha knows better.
She touches her hand to her shoulder, like a mirror, feeling for the not-quite-closed wound. Fury sees her and mistakes the gesture, gives her a slight frown that, were Fury and Natasha other people than they are, someone might take for worry.
"You sure you're up for this?" he asks. Like she had the choice to say no.
She swallows. That was the only other promise between them, now betrayed.
She thinks: Nick, Nick, of all people, when did you go and get soft on me, too?
To be fair, it's a promise Natasha herself broke some time ago.