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They had a bad habit of meeting at four in the morning. Steve would walk out from his room, sweating and shaking, to find Natasha sitting in the living room with a bottle of vodka in her hand, or else staring off into the distance. She would always look up, nod in his direction, then go back to whatever else that she was doing, and Steve would more often than not go about his own way as well. He didn’t want to disturb whatever she had going for her, and usually his mind was in no way ready to entertain of any sort. It took them a few times of meeting like this before they realized that they had the exact same problem.
“They used to call it shellshock when I was younger,” Steve muttered. “It felt like an easier word. Less clinical. Now, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Talk about a mouthful.”
Natasha’s smile was wry and said that she agreed without her having to so much as open her mouth, except to down the rest of her drink. That time, the first time they talked about it, they’d sat in the living room for a couple hours. Neither wanted to break the silence first, but at the same time neither wanted to remain in it. The silence held the screams of the fallen and the horrors of the past; nothing good came of the silence. Yet there they were, holding their tongues and their sanities with it, trying to forget by not voicing their own weaknesses and yet breathing more life into them the more they met.
“Did you ever figure out a way to deal with it?” Steve asked Natasha. He rather hoped she had. It would be nice if he could at least learn how to cope in a way that didn’t involve him going through a gym’s monthly supply of punching bags within a few evenings.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Her voice was soft, not offended but certainly not exactly pleased with his less than creative question. Steve’s cheeks reddened slightly.
“Right. But before this, did you ever learn how to?”
“Never.” The word hung between them just as heavy as the weight of the dead clung to their shoulders, dragging down the night and the two super soldiers sharing the living room. Steve left shortly after that, murmuring his goodbye before he moved to spend the rest of his evening in the gym. At least his heart beat loud enough to silence the screams of the war, and what was more it helped to remind him he was alive. In the ice, after he’d flown the damn jet into the water, he remembered feeling his heart jolt and stutter, trying to push through the cold that closed in on him until he was sure that it would have to end soon. Eventually, like his brain, his heart had just stopped to, and the silence reminded him far too much of his iced prison cell.
He would rather have listened to the ghosts of the dead screaming, however, than to go through that again.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later, when the two met again one night after Steve returned from a mission, that he came up with something. Nat had just slung back her fifth (from when he had gotten there, at least) glass of vodka and still had half a bottle left when the thought swept through Steve’s mind.
“I’ll be right back,” he told her, voice quiet, as he rose to leave. She didn't say a thing, likely thinking he was retreating back to his room as he did most nights. Her face didn’t supply shock when he returned, however, book in hand. She did look confused, though.
“The Hobbit?” She asked, skeptical, fingers tapping out a complex rhythm on the glass in her hand.
His lips twisted into a smile. “What, not a fan of Tolkien?” He’d never read the man before Bruce had given him the book, thinking it might help. Steve was incredibly grateful he had. He had the utmost respect for the author, who’d been a soldier before and had managed to find his way back into society. It gave Steve hope, hope that there was more than just the shellshock or the PTSD or whatever they wanted to call it, hope that life moved on and he could somehow find a way back into society. It didn’t hurt that the man was a literary genius, and Steve had gone on to devour the Lord of the Rings trilogy as well, unable to get enough of the world Tolkien had created, of the characters and the trials and tribulations they were put through. The sacrifices, the victories, the ups and downs and in betweens. He could never get enough of it. He explained it to Natasha, who just watched him with curious eyes, actually setting down her glass to lean forward on her knees as Steve sat on the couch opposite her, cracked the well-worn book, and began to read.
It took them all of two hours, four glasses of water, and one horrible Gollum impression to get through the whole thing. Steve actually teared up at the very end, though he made sure his voice was strong, and by the time he closed the book he caught the first genuine smile on Natasha’s lips he’d seen in . . . well, forever. It transformed her face, showing just how young she really was--despite what the serum had done to her she was still a kid, he felt. She reached out her hand for the book and he handed it over, watching as she leafed through it. She went through the chapter of the riddles in the dark once more, reading it aloud just to hear it in her own voice and cadence, and Steve allowed himself to relax as he laid back to listen.
“It sounds much better when you’re not trying to sound like a chain smoker,” he admitted. Nat’s laughter was the icing on the cake, so light and carefree he was amazed she was the same woman.
“Well I’ll just have to give you lessons on how to really read, Mr. Rogers.”
“I’d like that, Miss. Romanov.”
Neither of them addressed how just for those few hours the screams and nightmares and ghosts had gone away, hiding underneath the couch cushions and in the closets, perching to listen to Bilbo Baggins’ story, just as transfixed with the magic of the story as the two soldiers were. From them on Steve had made it a point to leave the Lord of the Rings books in the living room so that every once in awhile, when the timing was right and Nat had a glass of water and pitcher already set out for him, she could curl up beside Steve, close her eyes, and listen to the tales of Frodo and the Ring.