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Home is for other people. For real people. Not for a burnt-out husk of tactical advantage wrapped in a tight blouse. She’s deadly. To others for sure. To herself if she can manage it. Clint wants her to be a person. A soft limbed, smiling faced creature of comfort and ease. A hard muscled, highly responsive body of sex and lies – harder, faster, more. A flint eyed, deadly accurate sniper on a rooftop they’ll never admit to seeing.
Hmm, that last one she might actually be. Option one – that’s more Laura than Natasha. Though she can play the part if she must. Option two – well, they aren’t forgetting Budapest any time soon. Back before she loved Laura. Before Laura loved her. There’s always option four – the pills and vials in her go bag remind her. It isn’t only HYDRA who gives their operatives little capsules of death. Though the Red Room didn’t so much go for the mediocrity of cyanide. No, no, Red Room Girls go out in style. A little needle. A very hot shot. Up. Up. Up. And gone.
She’s not their girl anymore. If she ever truly was. KGB, yes. She was theirs. Now she’s property of SHIELD. Clint tells her she’s an operative and not a possession. She gave up trying to explain how the two are the same a long time ago. Some truths just don’t add up in his head.
She drifts, aching muscles and roiling innards be damned. She’s exhausted and though sleep is just barely out of reach she can access this in-between place. Not aware, not truly. Far enough out of her head that she can rest. Close enough to in it to be safe in the grand scheme of things. Because after all, that’s what matters. That she keep waking up, or so she’s been told so many times within this house of lavender scented sheets and cold hardwood floor that she’s almost willing to start believing it.
Laura’s back. Slipping a straw between her lips. Telling her to drink it down. Broth. Chicken. Bland but a little salty. Goes down easily. Won’t hurt if – when – it comes back up. Laura knows she’s sick after the long missions. A combination of coming off the drugs that keep her sharp; SHIELD docs are just as free with those as the old Soviets ever were; and the nausea that stems from a mix of guilt and self-hate.
Time swirls in and out of focus. There is light shimmering through the curtains, and then there are only long shadows and the quiet creaking of an old house. The broth spills back over her lips, a basin held near enough to ensure no mess comes of it. There are damp cloths, deft hands weaving her hair into a braid to keep it clear of whatever happens as her body empties itself of all her sins. There are so many sins.
Clint returns. A rattling bottle of pills passed from his hands to Laura’s. Natasha’s shake too much to work the tops. No one trusts her with them anyway. Option four looms before them all. It wouldn’t be the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last. She knows what Clint’s fingers feel like at the back of her throat. Knows the taste of Laura’s rose hand lotion in her soft palate. Knows the looks they give her when they worry for her. Knows she earns the worry. Feels immeasurably guilty when she does.
“C’mere.”
Soft hands. Guiding. No questions asked. Not ever. Laura doesn’t want those answers any more than Natasha wants to give them. She won’t go prying into boxes best left tightly closed. Natasha curls up in her lap like the child she never was. Or at least the child she very much stopped being when she became a part of the academy. Which academy doesn’t matter. They all taught very the same thing.
Get up. Keep moving. You’re fine.