Work Text:
“Other people,” Bruce says, voice tight and hands steady, looking at the wound, but not really looking at her, “might say ‘hey, I’ve been stabbed with something. I might bleed out, maybe take a look at that so I don’t die in your kitchen?”
He hasn’t seen her in 8 months. He has barely thought of her.
(Lie #1. Of course he thinks of her. He misses her fiercely, like breathing, like need and possibility. Like hope. If he closes his eyes, he can see the curve of her skull, smell her perfume, feel her fingertips on his skin.)
He has never once thought of going back.
(Lie #2. He thinks of it every day. Rejects it every day. Imagines how well he fit into that world, longs for it. Pretends he doesn’t.)
He is completely unsurprised that this reunion is happening over blood and stitches and stiff, tense banter in a squalid Rio slum.
(Lie #3. He’d stopped expecting to see her after she failed to haul him from a jungle, off an island, out of a cave. When he finally accepted that she was respecting his wishes, he was grateful and devastated and resigned. And so he found himself the busiest, filthiest, noisiest place he could stand, and struggled to gain a little peace. And if he’d envisioned a reunion, there was never blood involved. His reunion dreams were absurdly sappy. They involved a lot of sitting on the edge of her bed, penitent, waiting for her to walk in, filthy, and bloody, and safe. They involved her sitting down next to him, putting her forehead on his shoulder, and never, ever talking about the future they both betrayed before it even got going.)
“Got a lot of people bleeding out in your kitchen?“
He doesn’t bother to reply.
"I’m fine,” Natasha says, voice lax and lazily controlled, belying the tension in her body as she holds still in an awkward twist. Bruce snaps on nitrile gloves, irrigates the wound, probing it gently to see if stitches will even be adequate.
“And this barely qualifies as a kitchen,” she continues. "I’m going to tell Stark so he can be properly horrified.“
“Sure,” he continues, threading a surgical needle. “You walk in, nearly pass out, pretend that the worst of it is nothing to worry about. You’re totally fine. Of course you’re fine, you’re always fine. You’re perfect. It’s just a little blood, a little death.”
The cut is deep, but seems to have missed her organs. He makes a noise in his throat because he wants to yell at her, and he wants to shut the hell up, and he wants some universal acknowledgement of the injustice of her vulnerable, bleeding in his kitchen, when he hasn’t even been able to make himself say her name.
She’s marble pale, half naked on this rickety table. It’s not how he’d envisioned her undressed in front of him. But then he should have; they’ve always done damage so much better than love, so he goes back to damage control.
She turns her head at the sound, then winces, but it’s just ordinary anger, a little frustration, and a little fear. It’s not going anywhere, and she easily reads that he’s all bluster and no force. It’s been such a long time since she was afraid of him, even though his dreams are filled with her bones cracking in his fists, blood pooling in his palms.
(Lie #4. His dreams are not solely of horror. Sometimes he dreams of success, of redemption, of equations and discovery, of waking to her in a light-filled room, of breaking things in glee and not rage. In his dreams, his hands bring her as much transcendence as pain. That’s how he knows they’re dreams. He’s death, not life.)
She continues to hold his gaze, and he sighs. “Also, there’s a table, a kettle, and a hot plate that sometimes works when we’ve got electricity. It’s a kitchen.”
“This isn’t death,” she says. “And I didn’t kill anyone tonight, and neither did you, so maybe get the fuck over it.”
***
Natasha doesn’t twitch, doesn’t flinch as he pulls a needle through her fine skin. Her hair is still wet from blood (other people’s -- she doesn’t have a head wound) and the rain, flesh pimpled with goosebumps, flecked with tiny, brutal cuts. There’s a bruise that curves around her other side, potentially cracked ribs that probably hurt more than the stab wound.
She always bleeds a lot, but heals so quickly.
Bruce works as efficiently as he can, finally tying off the thread, and putting down the scissors and needle.
“Okay,” he says, and she sits up, waving off his hands as he moves to help her. She takes a deep breath, and crosses her arms over her chest. Her breaths are shallow. The adrenaline, the cold and pain she’s been pushing aside are starting to catch up with her, deep shivers rolling through her body and he can’t stand it anymore.
“This place doesn’t have a private shower, but I’ve uh, got a tub. It’s small, and kind of miserable, but there’s hot water.”
She nods, once, like she doesn’t want to accept, but she’s not a martyr and it’s not worth shivering herself into shock.
He tapes plastic wrap over the stitches, securing it with waterproof gauze tape, then grabs the blanket he’d hauled off his mattress, and hands it to her. She wraps it around her shoulders.
"Your feet,” he says, and she interrupts, “I’m fine, I’m just cold.”
They stare at each other and finally he turns away. They are both stubborn but a battle of wills with Natasha is not something he can win. He sticks to his pattern and retreats, gritting his teeth and goes to take care of the bath.
His hands are shaking as he twists the taps, struggling against the ever present lime buildup and ancient plumbing.
She shouldn’t be here. He’s not…ready. To make a decision, to go back, to stop running. To forgive either of them. He’s not even sure if there’s anything to forgive. But seeing her so unexpectedly, her brutality and strength, the flash of compassion on her face when she’d seen him…
It devastates him. Even bound to a chair, playing at helpless, she changed the course of his direction, betraying just how very weak he is. His ropes and chains are invisible, weighing him down even as she snaps hers in two.
***
He’d caught a glimpse of black silk and red hair on the dark street, walking back towards his flat. It was a long walk to the tram stop, but he’d rather go a little out of his way, even in the mist, than take the 42 bus. Someone was always vomiting on the 42. It hadn’t registered at first, just a small woman in a nice dress, tucked into the side of a bigger man, two others walking in front of them. He was mostly looking at the ground, and red hair didn’t even catch at him any more.
(Other things did- a laugh like hers, someone moving with sinuous agility, moments of stillness between two people in this teeming city, contained compassion and he’d fall into memories of her palm sliding along his, the grace in her smile. How hard she worked to do her best. Her taste, and scent, and beautiful, shining violence.)
Lust and loneliness were nothing compared to the screams he heard when he closed his eyes. Those feelings were so pointless compared to the lives he’d destroyed because he’d let himself believe that he had control when he didn’t, that he was safe.
The thing was, it wasn’t even the other guy that he needed to keep away from the world. It was him. The Hulk hadn’t built a robot that wanted to cleanse the world of humanity in order to save it. Bruce was hiding in the midst of slums full of violence because it was the only place he wasn’t a danger to others.
So it wasn’t the hair ultimately, that had stopped him, it was the dress - incongruous in this neighborhood. The woman had one hand fisted in her long skirt, and she’d stumbled a little, almost deliberately. Her companion had an arm around her, but he hadn’t moved to catch her, just jerked up on her arm. It was nothing, except it wasn’t; it was the kind of petty brutality that he’d been turning a blind eye to in order to live, and while he’s survived here by minding his own business, moving along if he couldn’t do anything, it suddenly hit him that he’d left to make things safe, and instead he’d just been contributing to the apathy, the pain around him, and he made himself think back.
What had he seen?
Fuck.
A battered sedan, one woman, too many men in bulky jackets, a deliberate stumble. Red hair. Black dress. Messages coded in movement. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Her. Was it a warning or a request? Stay away or help me? Or was he just miserable, and looking for signs in the dark, willing to walk into someone else’s disaster to assuage his curiosity and his conscience.
He didn’t help people that way. Not anymore. He had contained the violence. He addressed the aftermath, stayed out of the storm and tried not to cause it. He’d learned calm, made an uneasy peace, and if it felt like he’d lost a part of himself, that was a worthwhile trade for not hurting anyone.
In the end, though, wavering in the street, he found that there really wasn’t a choice in front of him. Whether it was Natasha or not, he couldn’t let someone in need just suffer. Not anymore. She’d be so ashamed of him.
He backtracked to the alley he’d passed, followed his instinct. There wasn’t anywhere else for the group to go. He scanned the ground for any kind of weapon, found a length of wood, heavy and solid, picked it up. He pushed against the metal door, and it swung open. He set down his bag, and then quietly made his way through the cavernous warehouse, following the sounds of voices.
It looked like a set-up: Natasha bound, artful bruises covering her arms from rough handling, that perfect skin, so easily damaged on the surface, just another beautiful lie. Her hair had come out of its pins, hanging in clumps around her face. One of the captors backhanded her, and it was so petty, so unnecessary. Bruce cringed, and she licked the blood from her lip, face distorted with something indefinable, then looked straight at him.
He was standing in the shadows, but she knew he was there. He could see it flicker across her face, a small shake of her head which her captors probably read as shaking off the blow. He could read a signal, could still read her, so he waited.
As far as interrogations went, it wasn’t terrible. That alone horrified him. But there were only five of them, and if she hadn’t wanted to be in that chair, she wouldn’t be.
This trick was an old favorite of hers.
They prodded and pushed, grinding at her with taunts and small cuts as she whimpered and deceived, shivering in a torn dress, fooling them with frayed composure. “Where is it? Where is he? We will hurt you if you’d don’t tell us.” Over and over again in Portuguese and English.
Her replies were trembling negatives. “I don’t know who you want. I don’t know where he is. I’d tell you, please, stop. Please.”
It went on for some time, and his stomach clenched. He knew what her pain looked like. This hurt her, but she wasn’t truly afraid, and finally, she got whatever it was that she’d wanted from the situation. She lifted her chin, tilted her head, and nodded at him. Fair enough. You introduced a gun to a scene, you had to be prepared to fire it. Natasha had never shied from using the tools at her disposal. She knew he wouldn’t unleash his rage in this space, not with the risk of hurting her or civilians. But he wasn’t helpless either.
Bruce set the end of the wood against the concrete, tapping it a little and cleared his throat. It sounded very loud in the cavernous room. All but one of the interrogators then turned towards him, so they missed it when she stood up, arms free, lashing out a kick to the head, taking down the closest thug, and said to Bruce, casually, as if they’d just had lunch, “Don’t turn green. I don’t want bodies.”
Two of the men had guns,the other two relying on more easily concealed knives, but she was just so breathtakingly fast dispatching them, regardless of weapon choice. The largest of the four, a bleached blond, lunged at Bruce, and he swung the wood like a bat, making solid contact, then dropped it to the ground.
That had felt a little too good. Between the swing and the scent of her blood and sweat, the Other Guy was straining at the leash. Her violence was pure pornography to his other half, heady and hypnotic amidst the enforced celibacy, and Bruce tried to just keep breathing,tried to stay human and tried not to die.
The fifth and final assailant lay quivering on the ground.
“We should get out of here.”
She moved towards him, and he saw she was barefoot. She held the trailing edge of her dress in one hand, the way she had in the street, and her ankle was swollen and bruised. She hobbled a little, trying to hide it.
“Which way?”
He raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “They put a coat over my head like I couldn’t find my way out of a warehouse. Idiots.”
She said it with an edge of affection. It set his teeth on edge. He wanted a little sense from her, a little fear, something to indicate that being tied and tortured wasn’t a game, no matter how much control she’d had over the situation, but he’d never get that. “I could figure it out, but I’d rather not waste the time.”
He didn’t offer to help her, just turned and led the way to the door in the back, pushing it open. The misty threat of rain had turned to icy pellets while they’d been inside.
He picked up his paper bag which was still resting by the door.
“Now what?” he asked. She was covered in other people’s blood; flagging a taxi was unlikely.
“You leave, I leave. Never the twain shall meet,” she said.
“No.” He should have said sure, fine, whatever, walked away. He couldn’t.
She met his eyes. “Fine.”
She scanned the alley. There was an ancient Mini Cooper at the one end, and a Vespa at the other. She looked longingly at the scooter, then at her feet before sighing and nodding at the car. They jogged to it, the rain cold and and she picked up a brick to smash in the driver’s side window. A few wire twists and the engine turned over as he stood in the rain.
He took her arm, and tugged. “I can drive,” he said, “we can go to my place. We don’t need to break any traffic laws, just get away from here.”
She nodded, clamboring over to the passenger side and he should have known then that she was more hurt than she’d let on. “I just need to lay low for a little while,” she said, “before I can retrieve my things, and get out of the city.”
He stripped off his jacket, handing it to her along with the paper bag. She put on the jacket, and he drove through the rain, twisting crowded streets mixed with a broken headlight and an ancient transmission making the journey more nerve-wracking than necessary, but she didn’t say anything until he pulled into a miraculously empty space.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” he said. “sorry.”
She shrugged like it didn’t matter, trudging the half mile up the hill to his flat, huddled into herself, close but not too close; just two people caught out in miserable weather, at odds with each other, making their way home.
If her feet hurt, and they must have, she didn’t let him see.
He opened the door to the his bachelor on the second floor, full of rough squalor. She was fine, standing tall in his entrance, filthy and wet and graceful, completely out of place. He wasn’t going to touch her. He let her stand.
(Lies, so many lies. He was dying to touch her, and fearing it, but touching her would make this real, and it couldn’t be. If it were real, he’d have to make a choice, and he can’t make a choice, so it couldn’t be real.)
But she wasn’t moving, wasn’t saying anything, dripping wet, and it was so like her and unlike her, this still silence, that he put his hand on her arm, just to check. She flinched and his jacket gapped open at her waist, and he could see the the stain spreading across the lining. He caught her as she swayed, her eyes rolling back in annoyed surprise, hauling her up in his arms and taking her to the small wooden table.
She faded in and out for a few seconds, long enough for him to get the jacket off, then for her to knock his hands away. He stood back, hands up, surrendering like he was capable of letting her suffer in front of him. The other guy growled in his head and something must have crossed Bruce’s face, because she dropped her eyes and unzipped the dress, shoving it down to expose a deep, bleeding cut that wrapped her right side. It slashed across her ribs, which had probably saved her life.
“There was a scuffle. Earlier.” she said tightly. “It just felt like a scratch.”
It’s a lie, and she’s his favorite liar, but he just gets his kit and doesn’t call her on the moment of weakness until he’s got gloves on like armor.
***
When the water is ready, he shows her to the small bathroom. She hands him the blanket, strips off the rest of the dress and her underthings. He turns away, but it doesn’t help. She’s completely bare in his tiny bathroom, just a tub and toilet, the sink in the hall, and the weight of everything stretched between them. He waits to make sure she doesn’t need anything, trying not twist his hands against the tension.
He’s set out a washcloth, soap and a towel for her, and he closes his eyes against the sound of her stepping into the water. It shouldn’t affect him like this, and he moves to go when her voice stops him. It’s a little ragged. “I can’t…I need help. Washing my hair.”
She sounds angry, and he closes his eyes, hands balled into fists because he has so little resistance to her at the very best of times, and her unexpected presence here, the need that claws at him – to hold on to her, to strip away that pain, to give in and allow himself the luxury of love and care, to elicit something beyond the cool blank amusement– is so fierce in the face of her presence. He can rail against her, can hate her, but none of it stops him from loving her.
He turns back, meets her gaze. He remembers a time when she would have shared her pain with him, let him take it from her, soothe her, would have put her cool fingers on his own face, his neck, bare shoulders, the knobs of his spine, to soothe him in return.
He picks up the washcloth.The steam from the water fogs his glasses, and he puts them on the lid of the toilet, rolls up his sleeves. The cuts are closing, and the blood runs off her body, water in rivulets over her pale skin, sliding along the muscle and bone. He’s shaking again, and he hands her the cloth. She slides down in the tub to saturate her hair.
He swallows hard. “I’ll be right back,” he says, and goes to the kitchen for a glass. He kneels next to her, and pours shampoo into his hands and tries to be gentle, to make this less awkward, less intimate, failing on both counts.
Her skin is finally pinking, the heat seeping in enough to warm her, to drive away the shock.
“Close your eyes,” he says, and turns the tap back on, testing the water, and pouring warm, clean glassfuls of water over his hands, keeping the strands and the soap, and the worst of the water out of her eyes.
When he’s finished, he helps her to stand, and hands her the towel, and it is everything he has not to wrap her in it himself, to hold her fast.
“I’m going to make coffee,” he says, and leaves her behind to get out of the tub.
The kettle is whistling when she comes into the kitchen wearing one of his t-shirts and the blanket, hair combed back from her face. She sits down in the chair, still not talking, and it’s not until he’s poured, and brewed, and found some sugar for her, that he sits opposite and looks at her.
“I didn’t come here for you,” she says.
“But you knew I was here.”
She shrugs. “Yes. It didn’t matter. It doesn’t.”
“How did you find me.”
She fixes him with a look. “Information retrieval.”
He waits.
“Patterns. I find patterns in people’s lies. I find patterns in their movements. Predictive behavior, and I know you.”
“You’ve known where I was? Where I am.”
She shrugs one shoulder. That shouldn’t hurt. Truly, it shouldn’t.
She leans forward a little, then winces, and says, “Did you want me to come find you?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Huh,” she says, then pauses, sips at the coffee. “I was never going to come after you. It was enough to know I could.”
Finally, he thinks, a truth in this house of lies.
***
There are enough croquettes for them both. He reheats them in a pan on the hot plate, serves them with hot sauce and the beer.
They eat in silence.
He cleans the dishes, and digs around in some of the jars until he finds the bar of dark, bitter chocolate that he’d been saving. He breaks it into pieces, and hands her half. She’s always liked a hint of sweet after a meal.
“Jesus, Banner,” she says, and scrubs at her face, like her skin itches. “What am I supposed to say?”
She’s sitting across from him, pale and scrubbed, and he reminds himself that he left for a reason. He needed space, and time. He needed to know he could live with himself, that control wasn’t just the shattered illusion it had seemed to be. He needed to not be anyone’s weapon, to be part of creating forces of destruction. But now, all he can think of is what he left behind. Not simply Natasha, but all of them.
“Let me see your ankle,” he says, and she puts her foot up on his thigh. The swelling has gone down. He palpates the bone, tests the reflexes of her toes, runs his thumb along her arch, pressing into the ball of her foot. It’s going to be tender, but nothing’s broken. The cuts on her soles are healing. He draws his finger along her instep, takes in her sharp breath, looks at her face, but doesn’t see pain. “You want me to wrap it?”
She shakes her head, but she puts her other foot up. He’s very aware that she doesn’t have anything on but his shirt. Heat steals through his body. It’s a play, he thinks. Manipulation. He’s not immune, but he can say no. Maybe.
“Don’t,” he says, sounds shaky and breathless. She puts her feet down, picks up the chocolate, fiddling with it.
“Why are you here?” he says it as gently as he can, because if he chooses to believe her, that she’s not here for him, she’s still here for a reason.
There’s a long silence, and finally, she looks back up and it’s worse, almost, than seeing her naked because whatever she’d been playing at before is gone. It’s just her, across the table, hair damp and curling, wide eyed, and alone, huddled in a blanket.
“I needed a reminder,” she says finally, “of what I am.”
“I thought you were an Avenger,” he says, because it turns out that it still hurts. Just a little, and maybe he is that petty.
“A weapon,” she says, “I’m a weapon. A tool. A spy. An assassin. A blank slate.”
He winces, feels like he’s been slapped.
“Natasha…”
“Steve sends his love,” she says, fiddling with the chocolate. “He took it hard. Felt like he’d failed you. I tried to tell him that I’d been the one to push you over the edge,” she smirks, bitter as the candy in her grip, “but you know Steve. He likes to take responsibility.”
He’d never thought of it. Steve was all alone in the world, and Bruce hadn’t just left Natasha and the potential they’d been building between them, or Tony and his friendship, the incredible work they’d been doing, the successes as well as the harm.
He’d left Steve too. A man who had never been less than kind, and brave, and fierce in the face of overwhelming odds.
Shame floods his cheeks, not for leaving, but for failing to remember that his choices had such consequences.
Natasha looks at him like she understands. “Nothing worse than disappointing Steve Rogers. Captain America’s got nothing on that guy.”
“I couldn’t stay,” he says. “I couldn’t take the risk.”
“Life is risk,” she says, and pushes the chocolate away.
***
He finds her a pair of sweatpants in the cardboard dresser by the bed. The frame had been there when he took the flat, and he’d bargained for a relatively new mattress.
She puts them on with a raised eyebrow, and he gestures to the bed. “You can have it. You should get some rest.”
She doesn’t argue with him, instead, she flips back the covers and crawls into his bed and it’s just too much.
“Why are you here?” he whispers. Because he hates himself for wanting her here. He’s been travelling, living in the slums, returning to the work of helping people in small ways, work that had maybe him if not happy, at least useful. It is better, he is keeping people safe. But it’s a salve, a temporary fix. He knows that. Longing can only be contained so much before it breaks you, makes you worse.
“Does it feel good,” she asks softly, “To be a martyr? Does it make it better?”
He shakes his head, just a little.
“Because I thought it would feel like something,” she continues, “but instead being right feels the same as being alone. So, I figure, you know all about that. Maybe you could teach me.”
It’s worse than a punch for all that it may be true but he doesn’t have to roll over and take it.
“Fuck you,” he says. “This was never about martyrdom.”
The tension stretches along his neck, down his spine. She has killed, destroyed and he hates it when she pretends he can walk away from his destruction. She holds his gaze, and he sees, finally, that she’s not just being petty. There’s hurt there. Human pain, and he put it there.
“Good,” she says quietly, like something in her is satisfied, “you do still know how to fight back.”
“You weren’t a martyr, Natasha. You made a choice. You hijacked my choice.”
“To save the world. It seemed like a fair trade. And besides, isn’t that your line? We don’t get what we want.”
“I destroyed a city,” he says, “Countless deaths. I built something that wanted to break the world, make it anew. I had to leave. I let myself believe I could be in the world, and I was wrong.”
“Do you think I’m angry about that?” she says, and there’s a catch in her voice.
He looks up, and she has pulled her arms around her knees and she looks so very young, and he feels so very, very old. And it’s Natasha– every action has the potential to be manipulation, but there’s no reason for it here. She doesn’t have anything to gain.
“A postcard,” she says, and sounds small. “A phone call. Voicemail, skywriting, email, a goddamned text message, Bruce. Anything. A simple, ‘not dead’ would have been enough. Not even to me - to Tony, to Steve, to Clint. To Maria, even. To Nick goddamned Fury. We all run, but we don’t all hide.”
“You knew I wasn’t dead. He…he doesn’t let that happen.”
There is something in her voice that claws at him, that shame returning full force.
“You know that’s not the point. You want to drown yourself in guilt, stay out of the fight, fine. It’s stupid, but fine, it’s just…” She pauses, bites her lip like it’s more than she wanted to say.
Her eyes are hot, and hurt, and he wants to double over, because this, finally, is the pain she’s letting him see.
“It wasn’t the rejection,” she says softly. “I’m a big girl. You didn’t want me, didn’t want what I represented. Fine. I wouldn’t have begged. I wouldn’t have chased you. Persuaded you. I haven’t. I’ve even kept Tony for looking for you. He quit, by the way, gave us a building in the middle of nowhere, and just…walked away. Clint too. After the Maximoff boy died, Clint just…couldn’t. Not now.”
Tony, licking his wounds, rejecting the team. Clint surrounded by his children, protecting them, blaming himself. They all punish themselves accordingly. They all follow their paths.
“But you left us like we didn’t need you, too.”
She’s unerring in her knife work, an artist and he pushes against the ache in his gut. He wasn’t wrong to leave, but it was selfish too.
“Natasha, why are you here?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Why are you here?”
“I needed some space.”
“Stop lying to me. Why are you here?”
It’s so quiet and he waits her out, and she puts her head back against the wall, slumped with weariness. “Steve found his prize. Barnes. Steve believes it, you know, so strongly. Redemption isn’t just a word for him, he just vibrates with it, and I’m not sure there’s anything left in Barnes to be redeemed.”
She pauses. “I don’t want him to be wrong. I didn’t want to watch him be wrong.”
Because he knows her, he hears the undertone.
“If Steve is wrong here, what does that mean about me?”
“You’re more than your past, Natasha.”
“Yes,” she says softly, “I am. But I’m still what they made me. I’m a liar and a killer. I’m a monster. I’m more. But I’m those things too, and I needed to remember…it feels like we’re on a precipice. New fighters, but old arguments and sometimes it seems so pointless. Trying to save the world when the people in it are so cruel.”
He’d felt the heady surge of violence earlier that night, and the other guy had cheered. He’d sewed her wounds, and he’d reveled in it, not her pain, but the stitching back together of rended flesh.
He misses creation, expansion, seeing the universe and standing in it’s glory. Holding its possibilities in his hands.
He knows what she means about the reminder, holding the past and the future together, trying to bind the seam with something more than ragged stitches.
“There’s always regular human evil to be met,” she says, “Drug running, human trafficking,a stolen shipments of medicine sold on the black market, a kidnapped dignitary. I didn’t care about the crime, just the criminal. The men in the warehouse thought I was protecting one of their former assets. I’m not. He’s dead. But I let them catch me, sent them a message that someone was watching. I want people to know that there’s always someone watching them in the dark.”
She says it like it’s nothing, a training exercise. Misdirection, misinformation, manipulation. Her bone deep talents.
He’s been rubbing his hands against each other, keeping things contained, controlled, trying to keep himself calm. Somehow, Natasha talking about using herself so…pointlessly…stirs at all the rage he’s been banking. She’s worth so much more.
“I just,” she says, and her eyes are luminous. “I really, really needed to break something in two. I was hoping it would be something big. But really, I just wanted to claw something open, see guts spill out and then I got here, and it seemed so pointless. Such a waste.“
She pauses and he watches something roll across her fine features. Honesty, maybe.
"And then I saw you, in the street, and it all…I didn’t want to cause any more deaths. Not here, where you’re hiding.”
If he were a better man, he’d offer himself up to her- to be rended in two, to be broken, to be healed. Once upon a time, he’d stripped himself bare, and let her use his body to remember how to feel, had wrapped himself around her, and felt himself knit back together. He’d put his hand in hers, and trusted that she’d bring him home, keep him safe, that he’d protect her with everything he had.
He swallows hard, humbled. The rage quieting.
“You should get some rest,” he says, instead, and turns, not waiting to see what she’ll do. There’s a pause, then she snaps off the light.
The small, crappy futon in the part of the flat that counts as the living room is too low for a couch, too small for a bed, but he sits on it at night, reviews medical cases, and research, and sometimes just reads the paper, listens to the radio, checks his fucking email. He sinks down on it, and tries to read in the light provided by the small desklamp. He puts his head back, closes his eyes, tries so hard not to wish things were different.
At the bottom of the cardboard dresser in the bedroom are 10 different postcards that he’d bought to send her. He’s written something on each, but it always came down to "I miss you, I want you, I’m sorry, and I can’t.”
There’s never been anything more to say.
It’s truly late, or truly early when he wakes up to see her standing over him. The light is still on and his neck aches. She’s back to just the t-shirt and her legs are very pale, and very lovely, and he doesn’t think, just brushes the back of his hand against the side of her knee, relishing the feel of her skin. Her fingers are in his hair, gentle, barely noticeable but he feels her touch in every cell.
“You’re an idiot,” she says. “Come to bed.”
He gets up turning off the light, stumbling after her. It’s only a few steps to the bed. She unbuttons his shirt, and lets it fall, stroking along his collarbone with her thumbs, hand resting briefly, over his heart. He toes off his shoes, takes off his pants, leaves his boxers on, and follows her into his bed.
She turns on her side, and he lays on his back. There’s room in the bed for them both, but just barely.
“I missed you,” she says, so quietly that he can barely make out the words.
“I miss you too,” he says. “Every day, I miss you more.”
She moves her hand behind her, catches his fingers, and pulls his hand so that it rests on her hip. He can feel her heat through the blanket, knows the curve under his palm, and he squeezes his eyes tightly and keeps his hand where it is, grounding himself, falls asleep.
***
In the morning, he borrows a pair of slippers for her from his upstairs neighbor, and Natasha puts her soiled dress back on and they take a taxi to her hotel.
There are circles under her eyes, but the wounds are healing, and while she’s being careful with the ribs, her range of motion is smoother this morning, easier.
He’d woken to find her up and dressed, coffee on the table. He’s surprised, frankly, that she didn’t slip away in the night.
It’s her gift, he thinks. Her apology in the way that stitching her up had been his.
He walks her into the lobby, and she gives him that assessing look that always makes him feel turned inside out.
“Clearly, your martyrdom isn’t over,” she says. “So I won’t bother asking you to come home.”
“I’m not ready,” he says,“but I’m working on it.”
She twitches her mouth like she has so much more to say, but finally, just lifts her shoulder.
He wants to touch her, but the concierge and maitre’d are watching and she already looks roughed up, but then she gives him that smirk, that half-smile that has always made him feel like his bones are melting, like he doesn’t know what to do with his brain or his hands, and she reaches up, threading her fingers through his hair, and pulls him down to meet her mouth.
It’s bruising, and lovely, and desperate. It’s everything he hasn’t allowed himself to want, the coolness of her lips, and the stroke of her tongue, and he wraps his hands around her neck and her waist and lets himself go. Maybe they will get to have a memory that doesn’t end in violence or silence or destruction after all.
She steps away far too soon, head under his chin as he tries to find composure, and then she looks up and he doesn’t know her anymore. She’s wearing a new identity in the cock of her hip and the tilt of her head, and she hands him the slippers and just walks away.
It’s clearly what she needs, but he can still taste her, taste Natasha, feel the curve of her skull and the flair of her lower back, and he knows in his palms that he has a place to come home to. Or rather an idea. If he’s ever ready. Maybe even when.
He walks out of the hotel, takes the long way back.
The next day, he mails her all the postcards in a packet.
A few weeks later, he gets one back.
It’s the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. On the back, it says “Risk and Redemption. Just click your heels.”
And he thinks, “Maybe it’s time.”