Chapter Text
Tonight was the avenger's weekly movie night, and Nat was just leaving her room in the tower to go to the movie room. No matter how much she wanted to lie down in her bed and not move for the rest of the night, she wouldn't miss out on movie night, especially since she was one of the people to come up with it, but she also just enjoys it a lot.
As she was walking down the hallways lost in her own thoughts, she bumped into Steve, or maybe Steve bumped into her, she isn't really sure. But that's enough to snap her out of the little trance she was in and she says, "Sorry," but Steve just says, "Don't worry about it" with a small smile, then Nat asks, "You coming to movie night today?" and he nods. They walk the rest of the way there together, with occasional conversation, and when they get to the room, everyone else is already there.
Tony and Bruce were sitting in the front row and they're talking about some kind of science-y thing, Clint is sitting behind them, listening but not talking too much, and Thor is who knows where, but he always comes and goes. Then Steve goes to the front row and he sits beside Tony, so Nat decides to go and sit by Clint. When she sits down beside him he looks over and smiles a little at her, and then he turns his attention to the screen and says, "So, what're we watchin today?" And that gets everyone chatting, except for Nat, she usually just sits back and lets them choose which movie, and then she agrees with whatever movie they suggest. They ended up choosing a movie about two sisters who get lost in the forest and they learn to live there, she couldn't remember the name of it, but it sounded interesting enough so she agreed to it.
Everyone was watching the movie and they all seemed pretty interested, but Nat's mind was elsewhere. Throughout the whole day today her mind had been wandering off to whatever it could think of, some things were completely random, like what she was going to eat tomorrow, or getting distracted by a bird flying by her window and thinking about what it was going to do with the rest of it's day.
But right now was different, her mind immediately went to thinking about Ohio and her old family. She thought about her little sister Yelena, but instead of thinking of the few fun times they had, her brain skipped over those and wandered to the day where she had to fly the plane and her "mom", Melina, getting shot, and then being shipped off to the Red Room. She'll never forget that day, but just because she'll never forget it, doesn't means she wants to think about it.
Her mind keeps working against her, she wants to just try to have a good day and watch the movie, but no, she keeps going back to thinking about the Red Room and all the things they would do to her. Hours of seemingly endless training, with weapons and fists, acrobatics, and those god-damn daily ballet classes. She used to like ballet, but once you have do something day after day after day for years, you start to hate it, and that definitely was what happened with ballet for Nat.
That wasn't all though, they also psychologically conditioned the girls to do what they wanted, and to make them learn what was "right" or "wrong", and of course they was the experimentation every now and then, none of the widows ever knew what the experiments were for, but they couldn't say no or else they would be punished in bizarre ways.
The movie is still playing, and they've watched a bit more than half of the movie, when Clint looks over and sees Nat completed zoned out. She's looking at the screen, but almost anyone would be able to tell she isn't actually watching, and she's barely touched her popcorn, and Nat usually eats the majority of her popcorn.
So Clint puts his hand on her shoulder and whispers, "Hey, you alright?" and she didn't notice his hand on her shoulder, but when he started talking, she jumped a little and she was brought back to reality. Clint was looking at her as if he was expecting an answer, but she hadn't heard him say anything, so she just looked at him, everyone was still here and the movie was still playing, so she wasn't sure what he would be asking about.
"I was just asking if you were alright" he says again, and then Nat whispers back, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, why?" and then he points at her popcorn, "You've barely eaten your popcorn, so I was just making sure" she smiles at him, and then he leans back and refocuses on the movie. Nat looks down at her bag of popcorn, she purposefully made sure to grab one of the smaller bags since she didn't feel like eating lots of popcorn tonight, but she decides it would be best if she eats some more so that Clint, or anyone else, doesn't ask if something's wrong.
She does manage to make it through the rest of the movie with minimal thoughts about the Red Room and her past, but she can't help but think about the amount of people she's killed, and that little voice in her head telling her that she deserves to bleed to try and make up for all the blood she's spilled over time. Almost as quickly as that thought appears, she tries to shove it back into the corner of her mind that it crawled out of.
Its been around 4 or 5 months since the last time she did that, and she definitely doesn't want to break that streak. Although.. all her scars have pretty much faded, so maybe she needs to make some more? No, no, no, she reminds herself that she's doing better and doesn't need any new scars.
The thoughts leave her alone for a little while after that, because she actually was starting to get invested in the movie, and trying to look happy and fine, too bad the movie ended about 30 minutes after she got into it. Maybe she should watch the first part of it on her own sometime when she's in a better head space.
Everyone gets up to leave, and Nat had almost finished all the popcorn in her bag, so she thought no one else would bring up the fact that she was so quiet during the movie today. But of course, just as she was leaving the room, Tony stopped her and he said, "Are you okay? I know I'm not always the most observant," Nat snickered a little at that part, at least he's a little self-aware, "But you usually talk a bit more during movie night, and you know, if anything's wrong, you have us to talk to"
Nat just smiles, "I'm just a bit tired today, and thanks for caring" and Tony lets out a little smile after that, and Nat starts walking back to her room.
Once she gets back into her room, she puts on her plaid pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt, and climbs into her bed.
Almost immediately after her head hit the pillow she fell asleep.