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Dr. Betty Ross catches a glimpse of red hair and freezes. She’s put physical distance between herself and S.H.I.E.L.D. for many reasons; she doesn’t know how to handle one of those reasons slowly snaking up to her with that unwavering stare.
And Romanoff thrives off of the way her entire body tenses, she just knows it. Betty crosses her arms across her chest, feeling disgustingly small as she takes a small step back, pretends not to know that Natasha’s nonchalance and heavy husk are just projected overcompensations for the way her ever observant eyes soften so slightly at Betty’s discomfort.
Betty has every intention of turning her back on the agent - god knows she has the practice - but damn that woman knows just what to say, every time, to pull her in, except no, it’s really just those damn eyes again. And Betty is so many things, including a researcher, and if there’s one specimens she’s studied too arduously, it’s Natasha Romanoff, and behind all the projections and compensations and mechanisms, Betty recognizes the tiny waver in her self-sure voice, knows that Natasha is more out of her depths than she cares to admit. She can see the way Natasha’s scared.
And if there’s something out there that can scare Romanoff, then Betty knows that she should be terrified.
So that’s how she ends up with the Black Widow - her former co-worker and former other things she’s trying hard not to relive - in her not-truly-empty office. She tells herself that her heart’s pounding because Bruce is hiding in the closet. It’s absolutely not the way Natasha hovers closely by her shoulder as they examine the syringe, warm breath tickling the space behind her ear, because there is no way this woman can still have that effect on her.
Betty schools herself, as if Natasha isn’t fluent in her body language, and asserts her findings. The room falls quiet for a moment as Natasha processes, and Betty could put distance between them, but she doesn’t. It’s difficult to stay in the moment, the familiarity of the spy’s presence pulling her into memories - late nights at S.H.I.E.L.D. and one drink turning to too many drinks and backs pressed against disheveled lab tables and calloused fingertips against her heated skin and deleted security footage the next morning followed by broken promises of “never again.”
Her name on Natasha’s lips also feels like a memory but it jolts her back to the present. Betty looks up expecting to meet a practiced nonchalant stare that she has to distill and interpret. Instead she sees genuineness and gentleness in a green gaze.
“How have you been holding up?”
Betty tries to balk at the sincerity but melts into it, even as she manages a dismissive bite to her shaky words.
“Since when have you ever worried about me other than what you could get from me?”
Natasha breathes out a sigh; Betty can feel it across her cheek and the chills that crawl up her spine along with it. In that moment, she really sees just how tired Natasha looks. Not just from the past couple of days, but the decades of exhaustion heaped upon itself, revealing the cracks in the Russian’s carefully crafted exterior and Betty is fighting against memories again and those fabricated moments where she thought she’d been granted a glimpse into Natasha’s truth, only to be left cold the mornings after.
“I’ve always cared,” Natasha admits in a murmur, eyes pleading quietly. “Just never been good at showing it.”
Betty means to scoff, but it comes out as a strangled breath as Natasha shifts closer. Her hand gently takes the syringe from Ross’s, lets it rest on the table before those deadly finger caress so achingly soft against her trembling knuckles.
“You were better off without me sticking around.”
Betty shakes her head.
“No. I would’ve been better off without ever knowing you.”
“Well it’s too late for that now, isn’t it?”
Each word eviscerates what’s left of the distance between them as Natasha’s chest brushes against hers and she sees nothing but green eyes and all that flashes through them; there’s no vitriol, no bitterness. Just exhaustion and remorse and want. Natasha’s fingers still crawl along hers, and Betty’s a cellular biologist, so well-acquainted with the way humans are made up, how they hurt and how they heal - she just wants to fix Natasha, just like she thought she could all those years ago.
She just wants to kiss her.
But then Natasha’s eyes are off hers, flitting past her shoulders to the baseball caps and pizza boxes piled on the table before she’s pulling away quickly towards the closet Bruce is hiding in (oh fuck, Betty had forgotten about Bruce; had he heard everything?), and things are barreling forward out of Betty’s control because of course it’s always mission first with Romanoff. Not that Betty can blame her, at least not right now, but she’s still stuck in the moment.
And that’s the thing when it comes to Natasha. Betty is always left behind in expired moments by a woman so long gone, it’s like she was never there to begin with.