Archive of Our Own

It was Christmas Day, not that it was acknowledged in any way in the Red Room. But Natasha knew. She had been keeping track of the days better since her time undercover in Ohio had ended, each one a pang to her heart when she couldn’t keep her thoughts focused on the present and instead accidentally let her mind wander back to what life had been like a year before.

Most days, she was able to stop herself from dwelling on something she could never get back. Her only mission now was to train and get better and become the best. She was a weapon, a means to an end, just as she had been trained to be.

The Christmas tree, the Christmas presents, the stories about Santa Claus, even the holiday meal in their cozy little house — none of that was real. None of it had ever been real, no matter how much she had wished it could be, and now it was over. It had been a mission, just a mission, and she needed to put it out of her mind just as she put out of her mind all the other missions she had done before.

But the closer it got to Christmas, the harder it was to not remember. Especially as the wind roared outside and the snow fell and the girls shivered in their thin nightdresses and bare feet.

She hadn’t seen Yelena in months, not since they were ripped apart the day their mission ended. She hadn’t seen Melina or Alexei either, and it was only recently she had stopped looking.

The only person who even looked at her kindly once in a while was the Soldat who trained them, and that was only on the rare occasions when she managed to get the upper hand during their sparring matches. The other girls, before Ohio, had been more cordial, maybe even supportive. But they had all been younger then, given a little more leeway then. They were older now, and they knew who the competition was.

Three years away had changed a lot, and not just for Natasha herself.

Natasha sighed as unwanted thoughts of the year before pushed themselves to the front of her mind — Yelena waking everyone up before dawn and screaming that Santa had come. Her and Yelena rushing to the family room to see a doll for Yelena and a bike for Natasha waiting for them.

Natasha shook her head now and tried to concentrate on the snow falling outside the windows, forcing herself to count the flakes as best she could. She wanted to be training — sparring with the other girls or doing thousands of pliés or working on her shooting skills — but she’d been sent to isolation for a week for failing on her latest assignment. She hadn’t been as focused as she should have been, and her target had gotten away.

Normally, isolation was in the dark room — no light, no sound, no nothing — but this time the room they put her in was bathed in light and horribly cold. She had a feeling they wanted her to remember what she was missing.

Time passed slower than it would seem possible. Natasha sat and stared at the flakes for as long as she could, counting as many as she could, but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get the memories of the year before out of her head, and the ache and the loneliness that settled over her because of it was worse than anything she had ever known.

She closed her eyes, finally feeling like she truly understood why their instructors had always warned them not to get attached. She hadn’t been supposed to, but she had, and now she was paying for it.

She tilted her head back against one of the icy window panes and closed her eyes, praying for sleep she knew would never come. The doctor had injected her with something that would keep her awake; they wanted her to think about what she had done and who she was becoming.

The creak of the doorknob startled her, her heart thudding in her chest at the sound. No one was supposed to come in for days. If someone was, it couldn’t be a good thing.

She forced herself to stay still, her face in a neutral expression.

The door started to open, the heavy wood gliding toward her inch by inch.

Natasha felt like she couldn’t breathe.

And then the shadow of a man slipped into the room, pressed against the wall, hidden by the dark of night.

He was big, strong — and exceedingly familiar.

She stared, wide-eyed, as the Soldat closed the door carefully and moved toward her. She’d been punished before by him, but never in isolation.

He crept toward her as Natasha focused on staying calm, keeping her breathing even, her hands loose on her lap. If he knew she was scared …

He reached her, stopping just a few inches in front of her as she sat on the ground, her knees tucked to her chest.

And then he did something she didn’t expect — he bent down, so he was almost eye level with her.

The moon in the night sky shifted at that moment, sending silvery light over him, and that’s when she realized. His eyes, his face … they weren’t of the Soldat who twisted their arms and shoved them into walls. They were the gentle eyes, the ones of the man who sometimes whispered “Good girl” into her ear or smiled softly in her direction.

The man who once told her he thought his name was James and he thought he had a family, but he couldn’t really remember.

“James?” she whispered now, as she looked up into his eyes. “What are you doing here?”

“You are sad today,” he said.

“I am in trouble. I messed up.”

He studied her with his kind eyes. “Today is … is Christmas,” he said.

Natasha nodded. She still didn’t understand what he was doing in here with her.

James reached his flesh hand up the sleeve of his other arm. Natasha watched him, frowning, as he pulled out a small piece of tissue paper.

He held it out for her.

“For you,” he said. “Take it.”

Natasha looked down at the piece of tissue paper in his hand. She realized something was tucked inside.

She looked past the Soldat — past James — to the door, trying to see if someone else was coming. But there was no noise at her door or anywhere close to it.

She slowly reached out a hand, letting her fingers drift over the tissue paper. When he didn’t try to snatch it away from her, she closed two fingers over it and pulled it back toward her body.

“Open it,” James said.

Very slowly, she lifted the tissue paper, moving it aside until she revealed a little clump of gold lying in the very center. Carefully, she picked that up, realizing as she did that it was a small gold chain. At the very end, was a tiny little heart.

She stared at the little pendant and then up at James.

“For you,” he said again.

“Why?” she whispered.

“You are sad,” he said. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

That didn’t make any sense to Natasha, but James didn’t explain. Instead he picked up the empty piece of tissue paper, shoved it back up his sleeve, and then stood up, quickly retracing his steps back to her door and then disappearing through it like he hadn’t ever been there.

Natasha stared down at the little pendant in her hand. A present, on Christmas Day, from the one person who was ever kind to her.

She could never wear it — her instructors would find it — but she didn’t want to get rid of it. No one had ever really given her anything before, at least not anything they expected her to keep.

Carefully, she slipped off one shoe, shoving the pendant and the gold chain down her sock. As soon as they let her out, she would hide it under the floor under the bed she slept it. She wouldn’t be able to look at it very often, if at all, but she would know it was there, and that was enough.

--

Natasha was curled up on the couch, watching the fresh snow dusting the windows. Across the room, the skinny Christmas tree with just a handful of ornaments twinkled merrily.

It had been James’ idea to celebrate this year. His and Yelena’s.

“You’re here, Natalia,” he had said, cupping her face in his hands. “You’re alive. That’s worth celebrating. And your sister wants to celebrate with you.”

She had tried to tell him that she didn’t want to, but he had insisted, telling her Steve and Sam would want to join them, too, and explaining they could then go to see Clint, Laura and the kids.

In the end, she couldn’t disappoint him — it would be his first real Christmas in eighty-some years — and he deserved to celebrate it. Neither he, nor their friends, deserved to have a miserable day just because she didn’t feel up to it.

Besides, this wouldn’t be near the first time she had to fake a smile for something she didn’t want to do.

The snow outside was falling harder now. Natasha tugged a blanket over her shivering body. James had said he would be gone only a couple hours but it had been much more than that.

She wondered vaguely if she should go out and get him a present. Or get one for Yelena. Or Steve. Or Sam. They all had been nothing but wonderful and supportive, just as they always had been. And they tried so hard to understand, to emphasize, but how could they? How could anyone?

She had gone over that cliff knowing full well she was going to die. She had been ready. She hadn’t expected to open her eyes three months later when Steve returned the Soul Stone. She hadn’t expected to come back to a world that was completely different from the one she had left. And she certainly hadn’t expected to come back and to feel so entirely out of place and alone, even when she was surrounded by people.

James understood the most of anyone, and Yelena after him. They both knew what it was like to try and fit into a world that you had been abruptly taken out of. They both knew what it was like to have to try and find who you were again.

It was what had drawn her and James together after her return. She found she could talk to him when she couldn’t talk to anyone else, and he was always there to listen. And then to hold her hand. And then to hold her when she cried.

And then one night he had kissed her softly, and it felt more right than anything else had since she had come back.

But even so, she still wasn’t sure she wanted to celebrate anything, let alone a holiday that always gave her such conflicting emotions anyway.

Natasha drew the blanket up over her head, closing her eyes and trying to push all her thoughts away. These were her friends that would be spending the day with her. Her friends and the man she … she what? Liked a lot? Loved? She wasn’t sure she was ready to examine that part of her life either.

The sound of a key in the door startled her awake. Natasha sat up, heart pounding, hand reaching automatically for a weapon under her pillow — even though she hadn’t touched a weapon since she returned. But some habits refused to die.

The door swung open, and Natasha held her breath, only releasing it when she saw James, even though she had known it had to be him. He was bundled up in a huge winter jacket, snow dusting his hair and his shoulders and his beard. In his hands were a couple of brightly colored shopping bags.

He grinned at her for a moment, until he caught a look at her face, the smile disappearing almost instantaneously.

“Natalia?” he said cautiously.

She tried to smile, to show him nothing was wrong, but for some reason she couldn’t force her lips to curve upward or her teeth to show through.

James dropped the bags and slid off his jacket, moving carefully to the couch and dropping down on the floor next to her.

He looked up at her, his flesh hand raised slightly, and she knew what he was asking without him having to say it. She nodded, and he took her hand in his, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb.

“Want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked softly.

She shrugged. How could she explain something to him that she couldn’t even explain to herself?

“We don’t have to do this, Natalia. Celebrate Christmas. If you don’t want.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly at that. “But you want to,” she said.

“We’re going to have so many Christmases,” he said, and his voice was so strong, so confident it caught her by surprise. Surprise that he could be so sure that their future was together.

“You think so?” she whispered.

“I know so.”

She couldn’t help the small smirk that crossed her lips at that. “Since when did you become the cheerful optimist around here?”

He snorted. “Maybe Steve’s rubbing off on me more than I thought.”

“Well, he does seem like a bad influence.”

James chuckled, but his face grew serious again. “Can I give you something?”

She frowned. “Like a present?”

“Something like that.”

He let go of her hand and pushed up the sleeve covering his metal arm, his fingers digging around for something. When he pulled his fingers away, a small little piece of paper came with them.

A small piece of tissue paper.

She stared at it, her eyes widening a little.

“For you,” he said. “Take it.”

Natasha looked back at the piece of tissue paper in his hand. She knew there was something tucked inside, and suddenly she was eleven years old and alone in an isolation room, feeling out of place in her body and the world.

Her stomach twisted and her heart skipped a beat, and for a moment she forgot how to breathe.

Slowly, she reached out a hand, letting her fingers drift over the tissue paper before closing two fingers over it and pulled it back toward her body.

“Open it,” James whispered.

Very slowly, she lifted the tissue paper, moving it aside until she revealed a little clump of gold lying in the very center. She swallowed the lump in her throat before carefully, very carefully, picking it up, revealing a thin small gold chain with a tiny little heart at the end.

It was an identical match to the pendant he had given her decades ago. The pendant she had buried under the floorboards under her bed until one of the other girls had found out her secret and their headmistress had taken it away, breaking it in front of her.

The pendant she had been yelled at over, and thrown into the dark isolation room over, but she had never told anyone who had given it to her.

She stared now at the little heart pendant and then up at James.

“For you,” he said again.

“James,” she whispered.

“You are sad,” he said, repeating the same words he had told her back then. “I don’t want you to be sad.”

She couldn’t stop looking at it, at him. “But how?” she said.

“That’s my secret,” he told her.

He gestured to the couch, and she nodded, moving her feet a little so he could sit beside her.

“I know things are hard, Natalia,” he told her quietly. “And I know they are going to take time to get better. But I need you to know you have always had a piece of my heart, and you always will.” He paused. “I love you.”

She stilled, her breath catching in her throat. She had known how he felt without him saying it, but to hear the words coming from his mouth …

She leaned forward, pressed her lips to his, kissing him hard. He wrapped his arms around her, kissing her back.

She couldn’t say it yet — she wasn’t ready — but hearing him admit it, after everything they had been through …

She clenched the little heart pendant in her hand. Outside, somewhere in the distance, bells started to ring.

Midnight.

It was Christmas.

She broke the kiss, pulled back, met his eyes.

“Merry Christmas, James,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas, Natalia.”

Their lips met again, moving against each other with more intensity.

“You know your sister is going to be here at the crack of dawn?” James said, just as Natasha’s hands slipped beneath his shirt.

For the first time since she had been back, Natasha felt a real smile start to form on her face. And also for the first time since she had been back, she knew she was going to be okay.

Not tonight. Or tomorrow. Or even next week. But someday.

She kissed James again and slid her hands higher up his chest.

“Then I guess you should stop talking and fuck me faster.”

He snorted. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said, and did as he was told.