Chapter Text
Natasha wiggles the key in the lock. It always takes two attempts to fit it in and then a shove with her shoulder to open the door that seems perpetually stuck. She does her best not to simply fall into the apartment, she’s too quick on her feet for that. Her eyes scan the corners of the room, always looking for shadows that weren’t there before. It’s an old habit, maybe a habit she should quit, but it’s a habit that has kept her alive, after all. Closing the door behind her requires another shove. Natasha drops her keys into the bowl on her kitchen counter. It’s chipped in several places, cracks running through the sunflowers that are delicately painted on the white porcelain. She bought it at a secondhand shop down her street, in all its chipped glory.
Maybe she should get a cat, Natasha thinks. Someone else to occupy this small space. A sign of life beyond her own erratic heartbeat that has never felt quite right in her chest. Something to stave off the loneliness that seems to have seeped into her bones somehow, like all the blood she’s seen and shed.
Don’t get attached.
Cats die. It’s an inevitability. Natasha doesn’t know if she has any grief left in her.
You have no place in this world.
Running is hard when someone else depends on you. And sometimes, Natasha thinks that running is all she knows. She has lived in this apartment for a month. And yet her body never settled. She’s familiar with the shape of her small world. Every dent in the kitchen cupboards committed to memory, her mind memorising the steps between her bed and the door. But it’s not a home, yet. Natasha isn’t sure she knows what that word means.
The rain is pounding on the old window. It’s one of those angled ceiling windows that require all your strength to open, Natasha found this out the hard way. And now it won’t quite close. It’s cracked in several places and moss and grime cover the outside, making the light that falls in through it muddled and tinged with green. Natasha doesn’t mind, it adds character, she tells herself. So do the cracked tiles in the bathroom and the kitchen faucet that only runs smoothly if you wiggle it in the precise way that the gods of water intended. Yes, the apartment is shitty by all accounts. But it’s a roof over her head, with a landlord who doesn’t care (for better or for worse) and it is hers. A place of her own. Not a safe house, not owned by whoever she works for: hers.
Natasha hasn’t been able to call many things her own in her life, most of the time not even her body is hers (but she tries not to think about that for too long except when the darkness swallows her whole and she can’t breathe). But this tiny apartment that requires her to climb five flights of stairs because the elevator has never worked in her time here, this small space is her own.
Natasha bought a candle. It’s a nice one, in a glass jar with a lid and a little label that describes it as “calming with floral undertones”. Natasha thinks it smells like laundry detergent, the expensive kind. The thought reminds her that she needs new detergent, her bottle is almost empty. Natasha doesn’t own many clothes. She’s rarely had the time or space of mind to go shopping. Most of her life has been spent making herself invisible and small, ready to strike. Except when her work required her to be seen, to be looked at, rather.
She got rid of her dresses. The way they hugged her body reminds her of hands and too-small spaces. She has left that life behind, she tries to remind herself.
Her body is her own.
It’s a precious thing, a body. So fragile and breakable. Natasha is strong. She knows this. She’s familiar with the way her body moves through space, the force of her existence. And yet her aching shoulder and the pain in her chest that never left remind her that she is breakable, broken.
Natasha treats her body like a secret. Hidden under layers of sweatshirts in washed-out colours, the way museums drape precious artifacts.
This is a space where a body should be.
Natasha knows what it's like to unmake herself. To strip away the last person she was and become someone new, someone better suited to where she's headed next. Sometimes she wonders what happens to those girls, the ones she leaves behind. She imagines their lifeless bodies crumbling down to the floor like her suit. They're much the same, in many ways. Something she slips on when she needs it, making her a more efficient weapon. But never quite the real deal. A closet full of women she used to be, used to pretend to be. Natasha isn't so sure she knows what it's like to exist anymore.
There is a spot of mold growing in the corner by the window. Natasha wonders if she could see it grow if she looked at it long enough. Could she stay still for that long? The ache in her bones says yes. Natasha can become a statue, her body frozen in place. Her muscles remember.
The pain can only reach you if you let it.
Pain is a silly thing, Natasha thinks. Invisible, entirely made up, and yet so powerful. Natasha has spent many hours wrangling back power from the pain, trying to control it.
Pain has too many fingers. They stretch and crawl and find a way in, no matter how hard she tries. She has built barriers and labyrinths, anything to stop the hands of pain from finding her. But they always do, it’s just a matter of time. And when they find her, the fight begins.
Natasha remembers hours of this game. How long can she hold out before there are too many hands, too much to bear?
Natasha has always been strong. Sometimes she wishes she didn’t have to be.
Maybe she should let the landlord know about the mold. She knows he won’t care. Natasha decides to look up mold removal later. Maybe she can just do something about it herself.
Her bones are tired. It’s because I’ve been walking all day, Natasha thinks. But she knows. She knows the tiredness runs deeper than a few thousand steps through a city she barely knows.
But if she lets herself think it, it becomes true. So she decides not to think about the pain in her chest and the tiredness in her bones and the way her body never feels quite right.
Instead, Natasha boils pasta.