Work Text:
They thought that they were on to something. They thought that if they could just take down this what they thought was Hydra building, then maybe just maybe they could get as little as a hint where Bucky was, but they were wrong.
Steve was becoming desperate, Sam was growing worried, and Natasha was watching the pain slowly eat both of them up inside. She didn’t say much anymore; maybe it was because no more witty jokes could erase what had already been done, but the truth was she had run out of lies to tell, and she was afraid that if she tried to speak, the truth would spill out of her lips like a waterfall, and the words would come out too shaky and quiet to be understood.
With each passing day her head hurt a little harder, and with that her eyes blinked a little slower too. All this digging for Bucky was also bringing into light some of the things that she did while filled with a certain darkness that left a bad taste in her mouth. Natasha knew that she used to be a bad person, and she had come to terms with that a long time ago, but it was the very fact that there was things that she did, but she couldn’t quite remember why, that there were the faces of broken people that haunted her dreams, but she couldn’t put a name to them and she couldn’t remember what she had killed them for. Then was Bucky or the Winter Soldier, and she knew that she knew him from somewhere, and every time she thought of who he was there was this feeling of fear and longing combined into one that filled her up like vodka on a cold winter day.
She could take all the punishment in the world for her crimes because deep down she knew that she deserved them, but not knowing what crimes helped spill the red in her ledger left her feeling a sort of emptiness that can’t be explained.
Now here they were, Steve, Sam and Natasha, outside of some factory thinking that this would end well, but only making the way it would actually turn out so much worse.
The plan was for Sam to take the roof, Steve had the ground, and Natasha’s job was to clear the basement, and as she silently walked down the steps into the dark room she was reminded of how much she hated basements. They gave her a weird feeling in her stomach that brought up faint memories of things she had tried so hard to forget. Of days filled with so much pain that she almost forgot her own name.
Her gun was drawn as she stepped down the last step and turned to face the remainder of the dingy basement. It smelt like mold and rusty metal, and there was a slight sound of water hitting the hard ground floor as it slowly dripped from the pipes above. The place was old, and there was a sort of familiarity to it that gave Natasha chills. That was the first mistake she made; getting distracted. She had learned from an early age that distraction gets people killed, and it wasn’t until she heard a noise from behind and felt a sharp pain in her skull as she was hit with something hard, that she cursed herself for being so stupid.
There was blood dripping into her right eye, blurring her already spinning vision. Her head was pounding like a drum, and every time she tried to move she was over combed with nausea. She could feel bile in her throat, burning every time she tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry and raspy, and she felt like everything was in slow-motion.
Natasha tried to get up and reach for her gun, but she couldn’t remember where she last put it. She could hear Steve’s voice in her ear asking her if everything was alright, and she was about to respond when she felt cool breath on her neck.
“Tell him that everything is fine, or else I’ll blow this whole place to the ground,” said the man with a thick Russian accent.
“It’s all clear Cap,” she muttered out through gritted teeth, trying to keep her voice as level as possible.
She could take dying for Steve, hell she would even die for Sam, but she wouldn’t be the reason they died. Natasha had promised herself that a long time ago.
The man then roughly took the com. out of her ear, and crushed it with the bottom of his boot.
“Now it’s just you and me,” he said, and even with the lights as dim as they were, and her vision blurry, she could still see the sly grin that marked his face, and if he wasn’t pointing her own gun at herself right now, she would definitely make that look disappear.
“Go to hell,” she said just loud enough for him to hear.
He grabbed her by the neck, making it hard for her to breathe as he lifted her off the ground, and dragged her to a wooden chair in the middle of the room. “Oh, but honey we’re already there,” he said as he slapped her hard across the face.
Natasha bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from making any noise. She would not let this bastard win.
“It’s almost funny how the great Captain America is just upstairs, yet here you are, and there’s nothing he can do about it,” he said.
“You leave him out of this,” Natasha responded quickly.
“Is that love I hear, Agent Romanoff?” and she could still hear Loki in the back of her mind asking her the same question, so she decided to respond the same way.
“Love is for children; I owe him a debt.”
“Love is for children, isn’t it?” said the man, and she wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “But Natalia, you and I both know that you were never a child,” he said, and she wasn’t able to hide the split second of shock on her face.
“You really don’t know who I am?” he asked. “Well I’m not surprised, not after all the ‘training’ we put you through. I remember hearing about your deprogramming, and being so disappointed, but the truth was it was too late for you anyways. You must drive yourself crazy trying to fill the blanks in your head, you must wonder why you’ll never be anything more than a fucked up spy.”
“Stop talking.”
“You burned down a hospital full of sick kids to kill one man!”
“No I-“
“You killed a man in front of his wife and daughter!”
“Shut up!” Natasha said as loud as she dared.
“I have all the answers, and I can give them to you; all you have to do is ask,” he said.
“I don’t need any answers. I was doing good, I was saving lives,” she said.
“Oh really? I didn’t know that Hydra counted as good,” he said with a laugh. “It’s such a shame. You had so much potential, but now you’re just a waste of a women-,” and he never got to finish his sentence before Natasha kicked him between the legs; the momentum causing the chair she was sitting in to break as well.
She then walked over to him as he lifted his head up and punched him one, two, three times, breaking his nose and probably some other things in the process.
Natasha grabbed her gun from the table and pointed it at his forehead, grasping it tightly, but when he looked up at her all he did was grin with that stupid grin she hated so much.
“He’ll never love you Natalia. You’re not capable of love, and you never will be,” he muttered while spitting out blood, and she was reminded of the Winter Soldier walking away from her so many years ago telling her that ‘love was for children,’ and it made her chest hurt in a way that it hadn’t in a while.
“You’ll always just be another forgotten weapon in a world of war,” he said snapping her out of her thoughts.
“See you in hell, you son of a bitch,” she said as she shot him until her gun ran out, until her hands started to shake, until someone came down to the basement and grabbed the empty gun out of her bloody and bruised hands.
Natasha just stood in the room looking at the broken figure of an excuse for a man, the blood still running down her face.
“Are you hurt?” asked the voice she recognized as Steve.
She looked down at her bloody hands that felt like poison in her veins because the blood wasn’t hers; it was the blood of a monster, the monster lying dead in front of her, and the worst part was she was having trouble deciphering whether she was any different from him at all.
Her head was pounding terribly and she was no longer certain whether her vision was blurry because of that or because of the tears that pooled at the tip of her eyes.
“No I-,” she stopped, choking back a sob that clawed at the back of her throat like a lion waiting to come out of its cage. “This isn’t my blood.”
“You’re okay,” Steve said, slowly walking closer to her.
“This isn’t my blood,” Natasha repeated.
“I know,” he said. “You’re okay,” he said again, this time putting his hands on her shoulders.
He silently kept repeating those same words as he guided her up the steps, until they got outside and meant Sam who was waiting in the car. No one said a word on the way back to the hotel, no one said anything about the blood on her hands or the bruises forming around her neck, it was just silent, minus the soft sound of Marvin Gaye playing from the radio.
***
Now here she was, fingers bruised, knuckles bleeding, hands worn, body shaking. Hit after hit, Natasha continued to pound the punching bag, and while it did nothing to ease the pain in her head, it did help distract her from doing something stupid.
It was the middle of the night, but that didn’t matter because there was no chance that she was going to sleep. Every time she closed her eyes she saw that man’s grinning back at her and it almost made her sick. She felt ashamed that she let him get in her head, but she felt even more ashamed that she looked so weak in front of Steve. He was the one trying to find his friend that barely remembered him, so she had no right to add to that list of depressing things.
Natasha was in the middle of a punch when she heard someone walk in the training room.
“You punch that bag any harder, we’re gonna have to buy a new one,” said Steve.
She paused, fixing the wrapping around her hands and said, “About earlier-,”
“What about it? I just remember looking for some leads but coming up empty,” he said causing Natasha to smile slightly.
Steve turned to walk out the door when she said, “Steve, thanks.”
“For what?” he asked.
“For being you.”
“Well I don’t know how to be anyone else.”
He then left and went back to bed, and she went back to her punching, but now each punch hurt her fists a little less, and the next time she closed her eyes she saw hope.