Chapter Text
May 2016
No one wants to talk about it. Natasha has never let herself forget, but today the memories press in around everyone. She sees it in Wanda’s face as she passes the kitchen on her way to the gym. In Sam and Vision’s absence from any of the common areas.
She certainly sees it in the tension of Steve’s shoulders. He’s on what seems to be his third punching bag of the day, and Natasha can already imagine the complaints Tony will have about the budget.
She stops in the doorway to admire the view, before the guilt slams into her again. She diverts her gaze away from Steve’s ass. “Hey, Cap.”
He slumps forward a little as he steps out of his stance, “Nat.”
Natasha pulls herself up on top of the top of the pull up bar and kicks her legs, staring down at Captain America. He stares right back up at her. She gestures to the third punching bag, “Don’t stop on my account.”
Steve ducks his head, looking a bit embarrassed. “I was done.”
Natasha swings her feet casually, relishing a little bit in the effort it takes to stay balanced, “Where’s Sam?”
“Family leave,” Steve says, with just a slight tone of bitterness. Natasha’s sure someone less trained in reading people would probably miss it.
She offers a snide follow up, “Right. Some people have those.” She slips down and lands in front of him. Steve gives her a rueful smile, amused by her cavalier humor. “Not us.”
“No,” she agrees, “Not us.”
Her eyes trace the contours of Steve’s mouth, that brave smirk creasing into a forlorn frown. She thinks about how they’d feel against hers. And then the pain digs deep into her chest. She looks away, “Anything on the radar?”
“Nothing,” Steve confirms the same disappointment she’d gotten checking the monitors that morning.
She stretches, eyes tracking his eyes tracking across her body. He wants her. His eyes slide away, blood rising against his cheeks and neck. He wants her and he’s tortured about it. That’s a shame. If he weren’t so tortured about it, she might just be able to get over her own internal torment and take that ride.
She doesn’t seduce Steve. Instead, she leans up to kiss his cheek. “We’ve still got all this, right?”
“Right,” says Steve. And he sounds a little soothed by that. She feels better for making him feel better. He looks hesitant as he asks, “Are you doing okay? About today?”
“No,” she says, because Steve is one of the few people in the world who she can give the truthful answer to that question to. She raises an eyebrow at him, he’s breaking the very distinct unspoken rule not to talk about it. Two can play that game. “Are you?”
“No,” he admits with equal honesty and equal evasiveness, “Wanda?”
“She’d be better if we had something to do,” Natasha says, and really she’s talking about herself.
Steve picks up one of the broken punching bags and hefts it into the corner. The second one follows. He offers quietly, “Nat?”
She sighs, “Cap, don’t try to tell me it wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Steve says firmly but kindly. A lump forms in Natasha’s throat.
She swallows hard, “If I wasn’t there, if I’d listened to him, he’d still be here. Or at least… I’d know where he was.”
“And you’d be with him,” Steve says softly, “Happy.”
And funny, Natasha’s certainly thought the first thing, but the second thing throws her off. Happy. What a foreign concept. She shrugs, “Maybe. At least my ledger would be clear.”
Steve’s eyes focus up sharply, “Natasha, whatever happened to Bruce, it’s not your fault.”
Of course he never listens. She blinks as tears threaten to fall. She’s supposed to be the best spy in the world. She’s not going to cry. “I pushed him. And then I was the one who didn’t get the lullaby in time. It’s been a year, if he’s not – not dead, he’s stayed gone because he doesn’t want to see us. See me.”
Steve doesn’t look away this time, doesn’t acknowledge the stammer that slips through her teeth. He looks up at the ceiling, which frankly feels a little dangerous, if the roles were reversed, she’d want to see a hit coming. “Did you love him?”
“Love?” The world tumbles through her mouth like marbles, “Cap –”
His eyes flicking to hers stops her protests. Her mouth feels dry. She shrugs, “I felt… something. Not… not yet. But something. Something we could’ve been.” She has to blink hard again, “I guess we’ll never know, huh?”
He looks down then, avoiding her gaze the whole way, like the gentleman he is. “I’m sorry. I know that’s no good.” And yeah, Steve Rogers is the poster boy of missed connections.
Natasha Romanoff always gives as good as she gets. She prods right back, “Have you heard anything? About –?”
Steve shakes his head, “No. I won’t. Not until –” He swallows hard. “She’s a fighter.”
Natasha reaches out a hesitant hand. This somehow feels more intimate than the kiss on the cheek. She squeezes tight, “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head like he’s warding off the spectre of lost loves descending around them, “Can I make you some breakfast?”
Natasha plasters an easy smile on her face, “Yes. Yes, you may.”
Wanda’s moved on from the kitchen by the time they get there. The TV is on, blaring about reparations and memorials. “...these images from the tragedy in Sokovia at the hands of rogue technology that The Avengers failed to contain –”
Steve sends the remote clattering against the table as he turns off the broadcast. Natasha reaches for a frying pan.
Steve shoos her away from the stove and she sits down at the table to watch him work. He turns around suddenly and his eyes meet hers. She sees him seeing her and his eyes widen. He frowns at her, “What is going on in that head of yours, Widow?”
Natasha kicks her feet up on the table, something she knows he hates, “Just enjoying the view, Rogers. Do you have any idea how many women out there wish they could watch you making ‘em breakfast?”
Pink tinges his cheeks again but he doesn’t give in. He rolls his eyes, “You’re a menace, Romanoff.” He still wants her. He’s getting less tortured about it. Maybe it’s the day that’s torturing him.
Natasha stands slowly as he goes back to cooking. She gently places her hands on his hips. She sees all the muscles in his back tense under his workout clothes as he freezes. She smooths her hands up his sides, watching carefully for any flinch, any hint he doesn’t want this. He doesn’t give her any.
She reaches past his hip and turns off the stove, “You know, Cap? I’m not really that hungry –”
Steve moves for the first time, lightning fast, turning to face her and crowding her against the opposite counter. Instinctively, she braces her hands against his chest. He backs off slightly, “Sorry –”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says, she has to look up slightly this close to him to meet his eyes. “The last thing I want is to be sorry.”
Steve leans in, but stops just shy of kissing her. She can feel his breath on her cheek, feel the heat of his lips just out of reach. He breathes, “What’s happening here?”
“Something that probably should’ve happened a long time ago,” she says.
He swallows and she tracks the bob of his Adam’s apple. “Bruce?”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” she says honestly. It hurts just a little to admit that the spark between them was just that – a spark. She breathes in the smell of his aftershave and her head spins a little. She tips her head forward, bumping her forehead against his cheek, “Tell me you want this, Steve?”
“I want you,” Steve breathes, tilting his head down, and this time their lips slot together.
Natasha kisses him softly, lets him press her back against the countertop again as it deepens. She slides a hand through Steve’s hair, gently gripping it a little and pulling them apart. His mouth twists up into a bit of a smirk. Natasha smiles right back, “That felt good. The first thing in a long time that feels really good.”
Steve’s smirk widens, “You sure know how to make a fella feel good about himself.” And that’s an understatement. Natasha was raised and created for that exact purpose. But this time she really means it.
She flexes her knee, propelling herself up onto the countertop, pulling him up against her. She wraps her legs around his hips, “Truth is, Cap? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
November 2017
Blood. Natasha wakes up in the apartment they’re renting in Buenos Aires to find her thighs sticky with it. She throws Steve’s arm off of her and bolts for the bathroom.
She rips down her shorts, soggy and stained. “Fuck.”
The first time this had happened had been just two months after leaving Ohio. She’d come so close to having a mother for that big milestone of womanhood. But it’s been fifteen years since she bled. Since they put her under and took her apart one last time.
Steve knocks on the door, “Nat? Are you okay?”
“Uh…” She’s not sure how to answer him. She’s got her period which is decidedly not an emergency. But she also doesn’t have any of the parts for that and hasn’t for a very long time, “I don’t know?”
She hasn’t bothered locking the door, so he swings it open. Nearly two years of intimacy – not just sexual but emotional – has left very few barriers between them. He frowns at the sight of her bloody shorts around her ankles, “What the –?”
Natasha steps out of the ruined clothing, “It’s impossible.”
Sam appears in the doorway, respectfully not looking, but concerned, “What’s up?”
Natasha freezes, eyes meeting Steve’s. Sam doesn’t know. Not intentionally – she stopped playing her personal history close to the vest with the Avengers a long time ago, and Sam specifically – but she guesses he’s just never been around for that part of it and it’s not the kind of story people are comfortable with telling second hand.
She feels a little lightheaded and she takes a deep breath in through her nose. It smells like blood. It’s the first time she’s been able to smell in over a year. “Fuck me.” She’s healing. Somehow. She should probably see a doctor. Preferably someone really good, like Helen Cho. But that’s just not possible right now.
She gets in the shower, and by the time she gets out, she knows Sam’s been brought up to speed. They go out and Steve comes back with tampons, chocolates, and a box of condoms they’ve never needed before. She begrudgingly takes the tampons and the condoms and leaves the chocolate for them.
It doesn’t come up again, they move on to Sao Paulo.
May 2016
Falling into bed with Steve over and over after that first time is easy. It’s a balm for a weary soul, it’s extremely hot. The hardest part is keeping it under wraps. Once the anniversary of Sokovia passes, Sam’s back sticking his nose in anywhere Steve is, as always. Wanda perks up slightly, in that she leaves her room. And with Wanda’s return comes Vision’s. It’s hard to find a moment where they’re alone.
Steve’s the one who suggests keeping things “private” – his words – and Natasha doubts he knows the phrase ‘on the D-L’. He says he doesn’t want the others distracted, and Natasha finds herself inclined to agree as their latest mission takes a sharp left into bioterrorism.
“Rumlow has a biological weapon.”
“I’m on it,” promises Natasha, seeing the armored truck being boarded ahead of her. She jams the brakes and slides off the bike, sending it spinning ahead of her to clear her path. As she throws the seventh armoured guard down, she’s starting to wonder if maybe Steve trusts her a little too much given her lack of quote, unquote ‘superpowers’.
As she disables guard number eight though, Rumlow himself – a dickbag as a coworker, and even more of a douche as an enemy – grabs a handful of her hair and shirt indiscriminately and drabs her onto the roof of the vehicle. She jabs him with an electrodisk and even though she gets a clean hit to the exposed skin of his neck, he doesn’t drop the way she expects. He growls, “I don’t work like that no more.” He takes advantage of her surprise and throws her headfirst inside the armoured truck.
She sits up, blinking back stars, and sees both of the armoured guards already inside, who look equally shocked to see her there. Before she even has time to move, Rumlow drops a grenade in between her feet. “Fire in the hole.”
Natasha’s stomach clenches. She kicks up at the first guard to move, grabs the second guard and uses him as a human shield. It barely helps, but he’s wearing a helmet and bulletproof vest, which is more than she’s got going on. They both slam against the doors so hard they buckle and Nat still flies about six feet and rolls another four or six. All the air is knocked from her lungs and she fights to move.
Somewhere else, something else explodes, but it’s not close enough to be an immediate danger so she keeps working on breathing.
“Sam.” Steve sounds out of breath too, like maybe he’s also been on the receiving end of an explosion or two, “He's in an AFV heading north.”
Natasha gives herself another second, then runs back to her motorcycle and steers herself north. She’s doubly pissed now that Rumlow tried directly to kill her. Sam reports back that they’re splitting up, and she steers off towards one of the teams. When the streets start to get too congested for the bike – and of course they’re running an unknown biological agent through a densely populated street – she pulls herself to standing on the bike. Last time she did this move on a mission, things ended pretty badly for her, in that she was taken prisoner by a killer android, but she’s hoping for a better outcome this time around. She jumps on top of the nearest cars and keeps running above the crowd, “I’ve got the two on the left.”
“They ditched their gear,” advises Steve, “It's a shell game now. One of them has the payload.”
Natasha ducks as an explosion happens thirty feet in the air to her right. She stays in pursuit, that’s her mission.
“He doesn't have it. I’m empty,” reports Sam on his target.
Natasha knocks a civilian aside as she chases down her target. It’s fifty-fifty whether she’s got the payload, or Steve. And Steve’s gotta be up against Rumlow, so she’s betting one of her targets has it. She comes up with a gun and she’s prepared for a standoff, except that one of the goons holds up the vial, “Drop it. Or I’ll drop this. Drop it!”
“He'll do it!” Natasha studies the two of them. She sees Sam’s drone behind the one with the vial. She does the math. It’ll be tight. But Natasha’s nothing if not ambitious. The world slows down. Redwing shoots. The vial hangs in the air. Natasha shoots, doesn’t wait to see if she hits her mark – she trusts it did, that’s what she was created to do. She dives for the vial, catches it, and twists back to her feet. She nods to the drone, “Payload secure. Thanks, Sam.”
She can hear the smirk in Sam’s voice, “Don't thank me.”
Natasha glares at the drone, knowing he’s watching, “I’m not thanking that thing.”
“His name is Redwing,” insists Sam.
“I'm still not thanking it,” she says.
“He's cute.” Sam says, daring her, “Go ahead, pet him.”
Natasha ignores that, and instead turns back towards where she thinks Steve is still engaged with Rumlow, just in time to see Rumlow lifted into the air by Wanda, mid explosion. And into the nearest building. At least two floors explode. Wanda’s hand flies over her face, filled with horror at her mistake.
As the initial blast starts to clear, Natasha sees four floors are actually actively on fire. Steve’s voice sounds a little faint and Natasha’s not sure if that’s his weakness coming through or hers, “Oh my – Sam. We need… Fire and Rescue. On the south side of the building. We gotta get up there.”
Wanda doesn’t move. Natasha passes her as she runs after Steve, “Cap!”
He keeps going, and Natasha grabs his arm. She’s not trying to fight him, and on pure strength he’s got her beat, so that doesn’t really slow him down physically, but it is effective in getting him to let her fully catch up and match pace. She holds up the vial, “You and Sam meet us at the rendezvous point. We need to secure this.”
Steve hesitates, just slightly, then nods. “Okay.” Belatedly he asks, “Are you okay?”
Natasha shrugs, ignoring the pain in her ribs from being literally blown up, “Okay enough. I’ve got Wanda. I’m calling Stark for the Relief Fund.”
Steve’s face says that’s the last thing he wants. But he nods. “See you on the jet.”
Natasha runs back to Wanda, who is still frozen, staring up at the building, “Come on, we gotta move now!”
“But –”
“Cap is on it,” Natasha promises, tugging on Wanda’s arm gently, “They’re on it, our job is to get this vial out of here, okay?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Wanda whispers breathlessly as they backtrack through the panicked crowd.
“I know,” Natasha says softly, “I know.”
Stark is calling before Natasha finishes getting Wanda back on the jet. “Widow, why are we on the news for blowing up a building of innocents?”
Natasha bites back a snide remark about how we aren’t anywhere since Tony’s not here. “Things went sideways, as they do. Can you help Steve and Sam with cleanup?”
“I want a full debrief,” says Tony, but she knows he’s already mobilizing the Stark Relief Fund.
“You can start with whoever botched the intel on what the target was,” snipes Natasha, “And whatever bastard offshoot of HYDRA is still enhancing people, Rumlow was clearly enhanced.”
Natasha gives Tony a few more details and secures the biological weapon before going back to Wanda. She crouches down in front of the young woman, “Hey, look at me. You made a split second decision. Rumlow put you in an impossible situation. Whatever the world is going to say you did wrong, they weren’t here. If that explosion had happened on the ground, there would’ve been massive casualties. You did your best.”
Steve and Sam look grim when they come back. Sam takes the controls and Wanda buries her head in her knees. Steve drops into the seat next to her. Now that they’re all on the jet, with nothing but time to process, the reality of the situation is unavoidable.
Natasha leans her head back against the headrest, “What the fuck was that?”
No one answers. Steve braces a hand against her knee, and cautiously she slips a hand over his.
Sam touches down and mutters something about a shower before stomping off the jet. Wanda flees to her room. Natasha doesn’t move. Steve’s hand is still on her leg, not that Sam or Wanda cared to notice.
Steve’s voice cracks a little when he finally says, “Rumlow knew where Bucky was.”
Natasha closes her eyes, “Steve –”
“He knew,” Steve says, “He – he remembered, before they scooped him again. He’s out there. He’s been out there for two years. But I – maybe I would’ve seen it in time, if I hadn’t been so rattled –”
Natasha kisses Steve to shut him up. She pulls away, “Don’t do that.” She flips herself to straddle his lap. She repeats what she said before to Wanda, “It was a lose-lose situation. You’re only making it worse for yourself by shouldering all the blame.”
Steve’s face clouds for a moment, but then he nods stiffly, and she goes back to kissing him. He undoes her jacket and she reaches for the zipper of his suit.
It starts hot and heavy, a forceful banishment of the horrors of the day. But as she’s undressed, Steve turns tender – kisses laving over all the tender spots starting to bruise. “Jesus Christ, Nat.”
She runs her fingers through his hair, “You should see the other guys. It was just a little grenade, I’m fine.”
His hands still against her, “Are you?”
She draws his mouth back to hers, “I am. So get to fucking me, Captain.”
She doesn’t give them time to bask. As good as the sex is, they haven’t earned the afterglow today. She forces her aching muscles up. His semen drips out of her as she pulls her pants back on. She dresses quickly, allowing herself the smallest bask in the feeling of his eyes tracing each of her movements. An artist and tactician’s eye for details.
She reaches for the vial, “I’ve got this for the lab.”
Steve is sitting up when she turns around. He reaches for a pair of sweatpants he keeps for when missions get messy. “Romanoff?”
She stops just shy of opening the bay door, “Yeah?”
“I’m going to find him,” Steve says, “And I’m going to save him.”
Barnes. Natasha’s stomach sinks. The second she learned that The Winter Soldier was Steve’s childhood best friend, she’d known that Steve would move heaven and earth to save his friend. This isn’t news. But she also knows if he’s even bothered to think ahead to what that reality looks like, he doesn’t care. She nods, “I know. And I’m here to help.”