Work Text:
Natasha sees the pain in Steve’s face when he comes out of the nursing home, and she wants to ask why so badly, but for some reason the words don’t want to spill out. “You alright?” She asks instead when he opens the door and slides in.
“You don’t have to chauffeur me around, you know.” He says in reply, teasing tone masking something Natasha knows all too well. “I may be 75 years old but I do know how to drive.” If she were sentimental, she’d reach out and grab his hand, press her fingers into the raises of his knuckles, put the car in drive and go until there was nowhere left to be. She’s not sentimental, so she does none of this.
“You don’t have a car yet, and Fury doesn’t like you on that bike, you know that.” She says softly as she peels away from the curb and guns it down the street.
She feels Steve side-eye her, blue eyes narrowed. She can feel him scrutinizing her, and then out of the corner of her eye she sees a smile slide onto his face. “Or I think you just like being my mother.” Now there’s no heaviness behind his voice, and Natasha can’t help it – a similar smile spreads over her face.
“Don’t get a big head, Cap.” She laughs, and they’re back to the same way they’ve always been – Natasha silent as she drives and Steve feeling like there’s a wall he can’t see sitting right between them.
Natasha doesn’t want him to feel that way, but it seems that every time she tries to break the wall, there’s another reason for it to be there. She’s tried.
--
Steve doesn’t trust her, she can tell. He might like her, but he doesn’t trust her.
They’re driving down a highway headed to some secluded location that Steve said sounded familiar but couldn’t quite place the name. She’s got her feet propped on the dash, one hand supporting her cheek as Steve drives – not over 70 miles, thank you very much. Steve’s nothing if not a law abider.
“You don’t have a lot of secrets, do you, Cap?” Natasha begins, turning the volume of the radio down. Steve’s hands clench on the steering wheel, but only briefly before he goes back to cool and calm indifference.
“I have…enough.” He replies vaguely. Natasha tips her head back against the seat and watches the sun go down, watches it paint the sky red and gold. “There’s no need for secrets.”
Natasha laughs dryly, but the humor is missing. “Maybe not in the 40s. But now you’re in the 21st century – there’s always need for secrets.” Absentmindedly, the hand that isn’t supporting her cheek goes down to gently touch the scar under her ribs. He follows her movement and then snaps his focus back onto the road.
Silence covers the car like a thick blanket for a moment, and then Steve asks softly, “Do you really believe there is a Winter Soldier?” It’s a hesitant question, as though Steve is prying into her own private life.
She wants to tell him so badly everything she knows – who the Soldier is, how hard this whole mission might be for Steve to go through with. How the Soldier didn’t just fire a gun into her, he fired a gun into men he was fighting, men he was fighting almost 80 years ago with his Captain as a lead. She wants to tell him how this battle might be the hardest he’s ever had to fight because he’ll be fighting a piece of his past, a part of him that he thought died a long time ago.
She doesn’t tell him any of this, just simply nods. But she doesn’t miss the slightly defeated slump of his shoulders, the way his fingers loosen on the steering wheel, and she certainly doesn’t miss the sideways glance he gives her.
To be honest, she wouldn’t really trust herself either.
--
They find themselves on Natasha’s bed in Sam Wilson’s house with their feet pressed against each other, Natasha leaning against the headboard and Steve leaning on his arms. He’s telling her about Peggy and she’s telling him about the Red Room, about her past, things she’s never even told Clint.
“They told me she was dying.” Steve murmurs. “Alzheimer’s. I didn’t believe them at first, thought it was too quiet a way for a hero to die. But when I went in and talked to her, for 20 minutes she looked at me and she knew me and she remembered everything that had happened. And then, it was like there was a flip switched in her brain, and she looked at me and it was like it was the first time seeing me. And…” he trails off, voice breaking slightly. Natasha doesn’t say anything until he speaks again. “She had a good life – kids, a husband, a house with a picket fence. She got everything she ever wanted.” Another moment of silence. “I just wish I had been able to give it to her.”
“Sometimes the endings people get aren’t always the way you imagine them, Steve.” Natasha tells him softly, pressing against the ball of his left foot with hers gently, a reminder that she’s there.
“I guess so.” Steve breathes out softly.
“My parents died in a house fire.” Natasha tells him, the black darkness pressing upon her chest. She hears Steve’s breath catch in his throat. “And when I was little I thought it was just a gas leak or something like that, one of those freak accidents that can never really be pinned down to anything. As I grew, I came to understand that it wasn’t a house fire, and that I wasn’t just a lucky survivor. That’s why I joined the Red Room – to find the bastards who killed my parents.” She used to speak about this with malicious intent evident in her voice. Now all she has is resignation.
“Did you ever find them? The people?” Steve questions tentatively.
Natasha tips her head back, closes her eyes, breathes in and out slowly. “I did. In Moscow. I remember it was cold and snowy, and there were these two men in some shitty bar down a side street, and I lured them out into an alley and killed them. Tore them limb from limb – literally. Sent pieces of their bodies to their families, their wives, their children, and the people they worked for. A long time ago, I wished their families kept the pieces. Now I kind of wish I had never found the men.” When Steve says nothing, Natasha coughs out a laugh and wipes under her eye. “This is why I have secrets, Cap’n.”
There’s a rustle of sheets and the bed dips down beside her as Steve crawls into the space next to her, maneuvering his arm to wrap it around her shoulders. She leans in instinctively, resting her head on his shoulder. “You don’t need secrets, Nat.” He murmurs into her still-damp hair. A single tear slides down Natasha’s cheek, and she feels the wall built between them slowly start to crumble.
--
Getting shot actually never stops hurting, no matter how many times it happens. Natasha’s been shot a fair few times, but every single time it hurts just as much as the first time.
She hears the gun go off behind her, the reverberation of the bullet leaving the magazine ringing loud in her ears. She feels the bullet pierce her right shoulder, and pain ricochets around her body, splices down her arm and steals her breath away. She’d scream if she had any energy left to scream with, but as it is she feels like she’s going to throw up as she drops to her knees, hand going up to press against her shoulder.
She scrambles into sitting against the car, gasping for breath. She knows she won’t die from a shoulder wound, but she can hear heavy footfalls growing closer to where she’s huddled against a car, and there’s some small part of her that thinks this might be the end. But then she hears a fist connect with a face, someone grunts and there’s a loud clang as metal meets metal – shield to arm.
Natasha peels off her bomber jacket and inspects the wound. Blood is dripping from it, but she can move it with minimal pain. She calls Wilson and waits, listens to the fight going on around her and wonders how long it’s going to take for Steve to realize exactly whom he’s fighting.
--
“Did you know?” Steve questions when she slips into his room, closing the door behind her with a soft click. Natasha turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised curiously.
“About what – the Soldier or Director Fury?”
“Both.”
Natasha lowers herself onto the edge of the bed, folding her legs underneath her as she feels the bed shift under her. “I knew about B-the Soldier. I didn’t know about Director Fury.” She was so, so close to making it through clean, and part of her hopes he won’t have noticed the little stutter before the soldier, but he is Captain America and he doesn’t miss anything.
“You almost called him Bucky.” Steve mutters, voice sharp in the silence. “You knew and you didn’t tell me. You knew who he was and you decided you weren’t going to tell me. And then you want to ask me if I trust you? Maybe you should look up the definition of trust because yours certainly needs work, Natalia.”
All right, Natasha thinks. He wants to go there? Let’s go there.
“And maybe you should look up the definition of looking out for someone you care about, Steve, because let me ask you something – if you had known about Agent Barnes and the Winter Soldier being the same person, do you think you could have gone through with it? Do you think you would be able to fight him and know which side you were standing on if you thought you could change him? I was looking out for you, and I was making sure you understand exactly where your loyalties lie!”
Suddenly there’s a presence in front of her, and even though the darkness is so encompassing she can hardly see her own hand, she can feel Steve close to her, impressing on her personal space. “I don’t think I’m the one who needs to understand where my loyalties lie!” He snaps.
“You know what I think, Captain? I think you’re so desperate to do the right thing by everybody else that you’ve forgotten what the right thing is for you and for those you care about. You put on this mask of stoicism and pretend that nothing gets to you but underneath I bet you’re just a scared little boy taking on a war that you never thought you’d have to fight.” Natasha snarls, poking his chest violently. “You and I both know that if you had have known about Bucky you wouldn’t have been able to finish the job, you would have freaked out and tried to change the outcome, tried to change what he’s become but you can’t, I know, it doesn’t work that way! I was looking out for you, Steve! That’s all I’ve been trying to do, so don’t you dare tell me my ‘definition of trust’ needs work because I’ve trusted you and trusted you and now it’s time for you to start trusting me!” She’s screaming now, tears threatening to spill over her lashes, and in one quick move Steve gets his arms around her shoulders and pulls her close.
She folds her hands into his gray t-shirt and cries angry tears, hot and wet, whole body convulsing against him, and she knows she’s not really supposed to cry or show weakness but she’s kept this bottled up since New York, since New Mexico and California and all the other shit that went down, since watching Tony basically lose his mind on national television, watching Clint struggle through PTSD, seeing Steve’s face when he came out of that nursing home looking like his whole world was collapsing, and it just feels so fucking good to let go.
“I got you, Nat. I got you.” Steve murmurs into her hair, tears choking his voice, and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t doubt him.
--
There is no part of Natasha that doesn’t crumble when she sees the helicarrier Steve was on drop into the water. There’s no part of her that doesn’t snap clean in half, that doesn’t shatter to pieces as though she were on the ship with Steve and Bucky. There is no part of her that doesn’t suddenly give out, but she stands and she watches and she feels Director Fury press a hand into her back when the ordeal is done and tell her that it’s time to go.
She follows Fury out of the glass room, stepping on Alexander Pierce’s hand as she does, driving the heel of her stiletto in so hard she hopes it touches bone, the bastard. Maria is standing on the other side of the door with Sam Wilson behind her, and both look shell-shocked.
“Did you see?” Wilson asks, but the question is directed at Natasha, not Fury. Natasha nods and wrings her hands together, chokes back tears and tugs on the skirt.
“Kinda hard to miss.” She murmurs, blinking up at Sam, and she sees the pain she’s feeling reflected in his eyes, the tight press of his lips as though he’s holding down tears too.
“He died a hero.” Maria says very quietly, fixing heavy eyes on Natasha.
Natasha can’t help but snort. “Again.” There’s this heavy moment of silence as everyone processes exactly what happened and what they’re going to do now, because – they’ve lost their captain, how are the Avengers going to find out, this has really fucked them over and Natasha feels like screaming.
Suddenly, from her earpiece, there’s a waterlogged cough and a very faint voice calls, “Nat?”
Her hand flies up to press against the earpiece. “Steve?” Natasha gasps.
“Hey, you wanna come get me? Please?”
She feels the smile creep onto her face, as she looks at the other three, who are looking either very scared or very excited or a mix. “We’ll be right there.” She promises.
--
“Careful Steve,” Natasha suddenly says, spinning quickly to look at her friend. “You might not want to pull on that string.” She glances down to the manila folder he holds and hopes he understands the warning in her eyes, the fact that there might be something in that folder he doesn’t want to read, doesn’t want to know.
He doesn’t respond, just nods his head slightly and gives her a look that she imagines is supposed to be reassuring but isn’t at all. She smiles and then turns to walk away, wondering if this might be the last time she’ll see him for a while – maybe ever, but she doesn’t say that, just keeps walking.
She doesn’t think she’s ever been this scared to turn her back on someone in her life. And maybe she has a reason, knowing Steve.