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A pale hand reaches for her own. A man tells her to come with him. He asks her, ‘Who do you want to be? Do you want to be a hero?’ She wants to be warm. She is four years old, cold, hungry, and alone. He takes her hand. He smiles, a gleam in his eye that she does not yet recognize as greed. She thinks it is a lifeline. Years later, in her dreams, she swears she can hear her parents calling for her. But when she wakes she won’t even remember their names.
So it starts with him taking her hand and pulling her into a world of pain and darkness. It must start this way. With a cruel stranger, ripping her self away from her. Unmaking her. That girl never had a chance. That girl is gone and so is the woman she could have become. It starts with a lie. She is safe.
Never let them take your heart.
A gun recoiling. When hearts are high the time will fly. The taste of English words in her mouth. I’m sure I’ll get along somehow. A rib breaking. Everything’s going to be alright. Rounds hitting targets, load and reload. Whistle while you work. Blood on her feet bleeding through her slippers. We will live happily ever after. Bruises on her knuckles.
Pain only makes us stronger.
She dyes her hair and changes her name. She is Natasha now, not Natalia. Informal. Familiar. ‘Nickname’. It’s not real. Not her mother tucking her in at night. Not her father reading bedtime stories. Not the presents they opened or the photographs they posed for. Not even her sister. But Yelena. Yelena doesn’t know the truth. Love is for children and Yelena is a child. So maybe that makes it real enough.
We’re both upside down.
And I bet you’re gonna fall down first.
Yelena eats mack and cheese and plays on the swing sets and cries when she scrapes her knees. Yelena is enthralled with fireflies and caterpillars and grasshoppers. Yelena is her baby sister. And Natasha loves her. Even though she is not supposed to. Even though she is not allowed. Natasha loves. They told her not to but when she thinks back on the pain and the cries and the suffering all she thinks is that they were wrong. About everything. She thinks back on the darkness and she wants to stay right here in Ohio.
Love is for children, not for you.
Love is sunlight shining through her little sister’s yellow hair. And the flashed light of the photo booth as they clutched each other and beamed for the camera. It’s the nightlight her mother gave her when she had nightmares and was cold and afraid of the dark. It’s firelight when her father handed her a toasted marshmallow. It’s the starlight she wished upon and the moonlight gazing down on her when she looked up and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. It’s the orange glow of fireflies illuminating the trees of the one place she called home.
It was real to me too.
Love is a denial. She pretended it was real. Maybe if it was real, they wouldn’t make her go back. They wouldn’t let her go. Maybe they would hold on to her as tightly as she held on to this dream. This dream of family and home and love that she got to have for three short precious years. She pretended they wouldn’t take it all away from her.
You took my childhood. You took my choices and tried to break me.
Two little girls clung to each other. Held on as tightly as they could. And screamed and cried. For nothing. It was all for nothing. Guns were drawn and picked through them one by one. Lining them up and dictating their fate. Into the container. Into the darkness. With a child’s bloody palm where she braced her fall. And a doll in the mud. And dirt on their clothes and fear in their heart. With a picture ripped in two and a family torn apart. They came for her heart. They tried to take it. They tried.
You’ll break them.
Only the breakable ones.
Her heart is made of marble. Her heart is made of her mother’s gentle hands putting a band aid on a scraped knee. It is made of her sister looking at her bending backwards and upside down. Her heart sings to old songs on the radio. It rides a bike through the town. It climbs trees and it smiles for photographs. Her heart exists outside her body and it cannot be broken. It is already in pieces scattered across Ohio.
This’ll be the day that I die.
A bag is yanked over her head and the world is dark and muffled. His car is pulling up now. Rough hands force her into the chair. Collateral damage. A gun is cocked. She talks to the radio in her ear. The world is full of monsters, and they were going to kill her. She waits in silence. Then she hears it. The bombs go off. She is not in the chair, she is holding the gun. All clear. She’s the monster.
I have no place in the world.
She can’t deny it anymore. She is nothing. No one. She lost everything that used to mean anything. Who does she want to be? She was born and she killed. And she grew up and she killed. And she runs and kills and runs. She is given a second chance and she paints the walls red with blood. But still she dreams.
Natasha dreams that she is falling. That’s what she tells herself. Not jumping, falling. As if the choice is not hers, but rather happens to her. An inevitable conclusion to the absurdity that is her life. Or the desperate last resort as she finally succumbs to what the universe has been telling her since she was a child. If there is love in the world, it is not for her. To hold on to it is a form of insanity, surely.
She holds on anyway.
Best shot you ever took?
The one I didn’t take.
A man with a bow lined up his arrow at her heart. But her heart has not beat inside her body since she was eleven years old. There is nothing for him to take. If he ends it now, maybe she will see them again someday. Maybe she can go back home.
He brings her to his home instead. A farmhouse with a wife and a small child. With quilts that are too warm and food that is too sweet and a voice that is too soft and kindness that she did nothing to earn. She can see the stars here. It’s beautiful.
Natasha asks Clint why, later. Sitting side by side on the balcony. The tattered screen door rattling behind them protecting something far too precious for her to risk tainting. Why didn’t he take the shot? He just tells her that he saw something. Something he can’t explain, but couldn’t take away. It was something like a promise whispered by flashlight in the middle of the night with pinkies crossed and foreheads pressed together. Something like love. Like hope. Like home and forgiveness.
I’m gonna open the door. You’re gonna come after me. It’s okay. It’s okay.
She dreams that her family is real. That she is not alone. She dreams that she is an Avenger. And for a moment, it is true. The red becomes a cloud of powder, becomes freedom, becomes love, handed to her in a black vest. The red becomes a shield to fight enemies, a suit of iron tarnished with all their good intentions, lullabies whispered and bonds forged in blood on the battle field. For a moment she has two families. She presses her forehead to theirs and clasps their hands and she loves and loves and loves.
How did you do it?
Defiantly. Despite. Intentionally. In dreams.
She’s had better nightmares. She puts her hand to her stomach and she swears she feels it as it happens. As one by one they dissolve into nothing.
She loses everything.
She is still here.
I used to have nothing.
Natasha is here, and they are all gone. Gone with a snap and dust. Gone with a sword and a trail of blood. Leaving behind footprints on the ground outside a farmhouse. Leaving the whistle of shots that were never fired and whistling calls that were never returned. Leaving her standing in a vest with so many stupid pockets to hold all of the things that were never hers to own. Gone because they couldn’t stay here in the skeleton house of what used to be their home. Lost in grief and in guilt. In the shadows of all the ghosts. Natasha stays.
Natasha stays and helps orphans find families. She stays and she tries to light the broken dark streets. She stays and she helps people who need it. And she tries and she tries and she tries. Natasha leads a team across the stars and she gets emails from a damn raccoon. She coordinates and she fights and she keeps trying. Whatever it takes.
Even though they’re gone, I’m still trying to be better.
Natasha has friends that move away. She has memories that won’t leave her alone. She has ballet slippers unstained by blood. She has an arrow necklace around her neck and a phone bill that she never stops paying if only to keep hearing that soft voice telling her that she will get back to her as soon as she can. Natasha has drawings of butterflies and videos of chubby babies and half a strip of a photographs of two smiling girls, one of whom used to be alive. And one of whom used to be her.
She used to have nothing. Used to. Natasha takes Clint’s hand in hers.
How did you keep your heart?
It could not be taken. She gave it away a long time ago.
Once her best friend gave her a gift. A box wrapped in pretty paper with the corners folded tight and a ribbon tied on top. And an arrow necklace inside. Just for her. Her. Natasha, Tasha, Nat. Familiar. Nickname.
Once Natasha’s mother handed her an empty box but she smiled so brightly it didn’t matter. She held her tight and soothed away her nightmares. Once Natasha’s her father was proud of her. And her sister giggled with pure childish delight.
Once a too kind woman laughed with her. And a child was named after her. And once she had a team who trusted her with their life.
And once upon a time, she had an unnamed mother who wanted her, and never stopped looking for her.
But she never had anything to give them in return.
Just this.
Don’t give me hope.
I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner.
Love is a hand, clinging on to hers. Reaching desperately, trying to hold on. She doesn’t take it. Her best friend is trying to pull her towards him. Towards safety. In her dreams, she sees her family again. Returned to the earth as suddenly as the snap that took them away. She wants nothing more than to save them. He doesn’t let her go, of course he doesn’t. In the end, it must be her. It must end this way. She has a choice now. Who does she want to be? Better. She wants to be better. She is.
It ends with the truth. Her truth.
It’s okay.
Natasha falls. This time it is not a dream or even a nightmare. It’s a cliff and a good view. It’s a rock and a hope and a belief in them. That they can take it back. It’s a choice. She will take it all back. Natasha jumps. She lets go. She dies. What a human thing it is, to die. What a childish dream, to love. She keeps her eyes open as she falls.
And when she lands, all she feels is warmth. All she sees is light.