Chapter Text
The first time Steve’s breath hitches, the city of New York is a battlefield. Aliens charging through a gaping, ominous hole in the sky, Captain America fighting another war, alongside a brand-new team he isn’t quite sure is his.
“Yeah. It’s going to be fun,” she says.
Steve feels his heart clench in his chest as Natasha tosses aside the alien spear, turning her attention to make the jump. He readies his shield in waiting for her. She makes her move and he plays his part, boosting her up to the passing Chitauri vehicle. For the small moment after, the world seems to slow down. He watches, half in fear, as she clambers on, willing himself to trust her abilities and not run after her.
Steve is a changed man. And not just from pre-serum Steve Rogers.
New York is something else. But it isn’t really the fighting itself that phases him, he has been in a world war after all. He is used to having explosions playing in the background, being punched and kicked and thrown away, sweeping the battlefield trying to perfect their tactics every minute. It is more that there are people, powerless civilians caught in the conflict, he can see them out of the corner of his eyes, hear them in the distance, shouting their last screams before their death. His team, that he isn’t sure is his own, and isn’t sure how long they will be a team. It’s the same as the war he pretends is his, but it’s also so much different.
After the mess, he is half-asleep in his chair, and he hears footsteps walking towards him. He knows it’s her before she walks into sight, doesn’t know why he knows that.
“Hey, can we drop you somewhere?” Natasha asks, and he considers it. Then he sees Clint making small talk to Thor in the other room, and he stops considering it.
“Clint doesn’t mind,” she says with a smile, and of course she notices his doubt. Her smile is the one he remembers from the battlefield. And this time, he smiles back, shakes his head, and says he has his own ride.
Her smile droops just a hint, or maybe he’s imagining it. She nods in understanding, and she says, “we’ll keep in touch,” lightly places a hand on his shoulder. And then she leaves.
The dust from the Battle of New York is beginning to settle, and the avengers go their separate ways.
Tony and Bruce go back to science and technology and things Steve really needs to learn more about. Thor returns to Asgard, his impenitent brother in tow. Natasha and Clint – he guesses they have Shield. As for Steve, he sticks to his lackluster little life, on his own.
Until one fine day, he finds Natasha in his living room.
“Morning, Captain Rogers,” she says as he walks in, not looking up from where she’s seated on his couch, staring at her phone.
Steve should be surprised, or annoyed, but he doesn’t know what he’s feeling. Natasha casually reaches for a cup of must be coffee, takes a light sip, places the cup back on the table. He notices her jacket draped on one arm of the couch, and finally hears his radio playing.
“How did you get in?” he asks, and almost wishes he can take it back, because she grins widely to herself, then looks to him, still holding that smile.
“I don’t think that’s the right question, Captain,” she says, and gestures to the adjacent couch. She waits, and Steve waits. And when nothing happens, he gives up and takes the seat.
“I would ask if you wanted something to drink, but I see you’ve made yourself at home,” he says, and her smile doesn’t change.
“The question, Captain, is why am I here.”
“Why are you here?”
“Definitely not for coffee,” she says, and Steve doesn’t know why that disappoints him, but he doesn’t let it show.
“Fury,” he says, almost instinctively. She nods, and her expression changes to business.
She takes out a computer… thing, doesn’t wait for his approval before starting the debriefing.
It’s been a while since New York, since Steve has heard a whisper of the avengers or of Shield. Except, of course, the pages in the papers he glosses over, or the visuals on the screens he tries to skip. Those are mere echoes. Seeing Natasha is the real thing. He isn’t exactly complaining at the lack of activity, but it’s nice to know he’s needed, it’s nice to have something to do.
When she’s done, she asks if he has questions, and he almost wishes she was there for coffee.
“We’re starting small,” she says, since he doesn’t reply.
“We?” Steve asks, a bit too fast.
“You and me, Cap,” she says. Then, a small pause later, adds, “and about a dozen agents should we need them.”
That’s how it starts. Small.
Steve keeps up his training because he needs to. Natasha joins him, sometimes. Steve wonders if Fury specifically assigned Natasha to him, is too hesitant to ask, isn’t sure he wants to know. Because if she is, that means she’s not hanging around because she wants to. If she’s not, she’s hanging around because she wants to. Steve’s not sure which he prefers. Not yet.
Amid the missions, and the briefings, and the training themselves to exhaustion, Natasha becomes the ambassador for the new world. He’s almost certain it’s not a thing Fury asked her to do. Almost.
During missions and debriefings and training themselves to exhaustion, she’s as professional as can be. When it’s just them, she almost seems like a different person. And maybe he’s imagining it, but she talks about everything and nothing, is almost friendly if he can call her that. Natasha is amazingly perceptive, and even when her jokes are his expense, she knows where to draw the line. She’s mellow when he needs her to be, lively when he’s feeling alive, mirrors his moods in a way that should feel unreal, but really, it just feels right.
They touch upon the past, carefully handling old memories that might break at the wrong touch. She takes him to the Smithsonian, and Steve tries his hardest not to dwell on what was, he really does. But the sight of his old uniform, the shield, his team that was truly his own, is unsettling. He’s an outsider now, as he watches the clips of the war. And when he tries to put himself back in his own shoes, he finds they don’t fit him as well. Peggy. And Bucky. Everything he has ever known, everyone he has ever known, gone, and their traces right there in front of him, a cruel reminder mocking his fate. It’s too much, too much and yet not enough at all. It’s never going to enough.
He is grateful when Natasha doesn’t prod him to talk about why he walked out of the musuem halfway through. When she lets him be, giving him space to breathe in whatever pieces of the war he has for however long he needs.
They take a walk in the park that evening. They walk side-by-side, in sync, the air between them rife with things that need saying, but neither can. She makes small-talk, still very perceptive of his emotions. Never pushing him more than he can go. She drives him back to his place, promising another adventure ready when he will be.
Black Widow isn’t his friend. No, they’re colleagues. But the kind of job where you’re constantly risking limb and life alongside and for each other tends to forge an inexplicable bond. But Steve is never sure about Natasha. She’s an enigma. That much is clear. And everytime he looks at her, he’s left wondering who he’s really looking at. Every time he thinks he has her figured out, he realizes there’s so much more to her than she let on. Steve learns fast. Learns the first thing about learning Natasha, is not to make assumptions.
Steve hasn’t failed to notice the arrow-shaped pendant she wears around her neck after New York, small and silver and no doubt in his mind what it meant or who it stood for. It shouldn’t bother him. And to be really fair, it doesn’t. Because it isn’t that they have it. It’s just that he doesn’t. The one time it does bother him, for a moment, his mind flahes back to the 40s, to Peggy, and he shuts out the thoughts before they bring back unwanted feelings. Of a different world, a different time. The echo of a dream he has to learn to let go. Because Steve Rogers isn’t out of time. No. He has far too much of it. Too much time and not enough to spend it on.
Steve has nowhere to go. So he sticks around with Shield. It’s him and Natasha, most missions, with a team he doesn’t bother getting to know beyond work. Not that he bothers with Natasha, she just seems to have that effect. He wants to find the perfect comeback for everything she throws at him, he wants to know what’s behind her unbreakable facade, he finds himself fascinated by who she pretends to be, and intrigued to know who she really is.
The facade might be unbreakable, but it can’t hide everything. Occasionally, when she’s feeling unlike herself, or perhaps more rightly, too much like herself, a little bit of the person behind the mask slips through. In between the relentless teasing and that stupid smirk, she smiles in a way he can’t quite understand, the kind that makes him want to reach out to her as though she’s doing the same. But then, she isn’t. She isn’t even looking at him a lot of the times, content with wistfully gazing out at the empty skies as the jet flies them towards a fight or away from it.
She never speaks about her past, and he dares not ask. He understand it, really. Their pasts are their own, to stuff in a dusty corner of their minds or lay it out in the open.
He finds a new meaning in building a present. A clean slate that he scrawls her name on, fills with details that are more Natasha than Agent Romanoff, draws her the way she looks when she makes his cheeks go flush.
Everything’s all right with the world.
Until his world comes crashing down.