Chapter Text
Her apartment was shrouded in shadow as she pushed the door open, a shadow within a shadow sat in her living room, occupying the best armchair.
“Welcome back.” Fury leant on her coffee table, three bottles and two glasses lined up neatly upon it. It felt like a ritual, like something she should have expected.
“Are you here to babysit me?” She dropped her bag by the door and collapsed heavily onto the sofa.
“No.” He poured two glasses and pushed one towards her.
“I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Why not, indeed.
“I might not stop.”
He shrugged, “Your call.”
She had two, in the end. The first tasted bitter, like vinegar and acid on her tongue. She persevered, choked it down and waited to forget. The second made her feel sick.
They didn’t speak and she left abruptly, lay in bed fully-clothed and stared at the ceiling. At some point she must have fallen asleep because suddenly there was sun streaming in through the window and she was blinking away fog with the start of a headache behind her eyes.
She half expected to find Fury sat in the armchair where she’d left him, a silent presence. But he was long gone.
The freezer was full of microwave meals and there was fruit in the bowl and a note tacked to the fridge.
Two weeks, Romanoff. No less.
…
She watched mindless daytime television and planned the murder of each and every one of her neighbours as they clattered up and down the stairs. Her brain was heavy with fog and her body…
On day three, she woke suddenly to a grey and overcast sky. The semi-darkness demanded less from her. She showered and dressed and took a walk around the block, emptying the trash on the way, the wind batting at the cobwebs in her mind.
She’d been ignoring the building pain in her breasts, taking it as just punishment for the utter madness she was slowly waking up from. But that wasn’t how she thought any more, she’d promised herself that.
She found painkillers in the drawer, sage in the cupboard and cabbage in the fridge. The internet was good for something after all. She hoped Fury had wiped his search history after.
…
She ran. Not far and not fast but pushing desperately onwards. She’d go mad if she couldn’t work and she’d die working if she wasn’t fit. It had been meant to be over now, life snapping back to normal.
She slowed to a walk, halfway around the block. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she’d run it all, and she’d be back in the gym at the end of the week, swinging and leaping and dancing. She just had to keep going.
…
Stop sending me pictures.
She tapped out the message between her thumbs, staring at the little black pixels against the faint green screen. Clint kept emailing her. Tiny perfect fingers and long dark eyelashes on soft ruddy cheeks.
Her thumb hit send. A few minutes later, the phone buzzed, a harsh vibrate against the table-top.
Ok.
And a few minutes after that:
I’m coming back next week.
Natasha leant hard against the back of the couch. Her hand drifted unthinkingly towards her stomach. Empty. As it should be. She was on her own.
…
The microwave beeped.
The last lasagne, greasy cheese and bubbling hot, layers smearing together as she poured it onto a plate.
Her two weeks were up. She could go back. If she wanted to.
As she sat, something dark caught her eye. She glanced down at the damp patch leaking through her t-shirt. Shit. The pain she’d learnt to ignore, but this was evidence too obvious to go unnoticed.
She sent Fury a text.
I need more time.
He replied almost instantly.
I want weekly updates.
She needed to get groceries, to interact with the world. She ate half the lasagne and saved the rest for later.
…
Clint came calling as soon as he was back in the city, predictable as clockwork with five short raps on her front door.
She opened it with a raised eyebrow, a hundred percent the Natasha of before, winding back a year and playing it over again.
“What’s up?”
“Can I come in?”
She stepped aside with an expansive gesture, her lip twitching at the corner, “Mí casa es tu casa.”
He entered and she continued to put her groceries away. Wine, cheese, pate, shellfish. And a bag of sage she hid at the bottom of the drawer.
“Fancy a drink?”
“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning.”
She shrugged. It had never stopped them before. His eyebrows knitted together, concern creasing lines into his skin.
“Stop it, Barton.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop thinking. Nothing happened. I was on a mission in Argentina. It was successful, but I got sick and now I’m recovering. There’s no need to look at me like that.”
“Is that what you want?”
“That’s what happened. Want has nothing to do with it.”
“Ok then.” He took the bottle from her hands and placed it in the cupboard, “We’re still not drinking vodka at eleven o’clock in the morning.”
She pouted.
“I have a much better idea.”
…
He took her to freaking lasertag. She resisted vociferously, but he grabbed her arm and whispered, “I thought you were trying to blend in.”
She had been. She was. And if this was something American families did at eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, then she should know about it.
It was kind of fun. They were both too good, obviously. But it was freeing in the dark, the absolute ridiculousness of it all.
It was only in the locker room after, reclaiming their belongings and returning their gear that the problem became apparent.
“I know you’ve had fun, but you gotta give the vest back Nat.”
“I can’t”
“You what?”
He looked at her, looked down. “Oh.”
“Yes, oh.” Her stomach twisted with betrayal.
He handed her his jacket and she shimmied out of the vest before shrugging it on and zipping up tight.
“Those tropical diseases are weird, huh?” His tone was gentle.
“Don’t.”
…
I said weekly updates, Romanoff.
Not yet. I need more time.
…
There were a lot of children in DC. She’d never noticed before.
…
The sun streamed through the window, filtered through the blind in shafts that stabbed her eyes when she shifted. She opened them.
There was something missing.
Something had changed, sometime in the last few days. She rolled out of bed, turned a handstand in the living room, tucked and rolled back to her feet. She landed just right, just there, her head not spinning and her vision perfectly straight.
She plucked her phone off the table, toyed with it, tossed it between her hands. She had to take one more leap, to pull herself back over the edge.
She didn’t give herself time to think.
Tomorrow.
The reply was seconds in coming.
Just in time. My office, nine o’clock.
…
The day dawned grey and dreary. It was appropriate.
Coulson was in Fury’s office, expression typically impassive, pretending not to be at all curious about where she’d been, about what was so top secret that he’d been skipped out of the chain of command.
He handed her a pile of files.
“We need a hard-drive. There’ll be a handover at the end of next week, in London. You’re going to intercept. Barton’s on point. You’ll have Morse and Ward at your disposal.”
“Sir?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“MI5 wants it too.”
They arranged a strategy meeting after lunch, and Coulson left the room.
“Romanoff.”
“Director?”
“How are you?”
It wasn’t a question she’d ever heard cross Fury’s lips. It tipped the day into the twilight zone.
“Fine, Director.” He was silent, “Completely recovered.”
“Glad to hear it.”
She waited. Impatience bubbled under her skin.
“Am I dismissed?”
He paused. She cocked an eyebrow.
“Yes.”
…
“Having fun?” Clint chirped in her ear.
Natasha ground her teeth in frustration as a tall Asian mad stopped directly in front her. She stepped around him, pushing through the crowds of tourists milling around at the top of the tube station steps.
Oxford Circus. On the first sunny Saturday afternoon of the year.
She’d have quite liked to kill someone, but it (probably) wasn’t that sort of mission.
Retreating against a glass store front, she squinted upwards. Clint was a dark smudge on the rooftop across the street. She was too much of a professional to flip him off.
“Direction?”
“Behind you. Towards Tottenham Court Road. He—hang on.” Natasha twitched as a burst of white noise filled her earpiece, “Morse, your man’s just exited the station. He’s heading north. I’m gonna lose him.”
“Copy.” Bobbi’s reply was brief and functional.
Natasha strode along the sidewalk, passing repetitive cheap fashion and fast food. She searched for somewhere she’d hate more, and could only come up with Times Square, five hours from now.
“Nat, your guy’s just passing H&M. Big red sign.”
She glanced behind her at the store she’d just passed, “I thought you said east.” It came out with a sigh, bursting out between her teeth.
“There’s another one. Just—Keep going. He’s wearing a beige t-shirt and jeans.”
She scanned the crowds ahead of her, neatly side-stepping a Spanish school group, matching hats and a flag pole at the head. There was a man just past them, his gait out of place although she couldn’t have articulated why, “Got him.”
The radio chatter continued and she tuned it out, her brain filtering the unnecessary information. Her target wasn’t going to get within fifty yards of the exchange site.
She trailed him along Oxford Street, weaving through obnoxiously large shopping bags and children sticky with ice cream. The man was on a call, a real one, she was fairly sure. Not many people can fake a one-sided conversation. People don’t talk like they think they do. Most conversations are two separate monologues, crashing against each other but never quite touching. No-one ever answers the question they were asked.
A bus pulled up, red and shiny and over-crowded, and she studied his reflection in the window. Bland, was all she could say. Pale, some stubble, not enough to call rugged. Hair somewhere between mousy brown and dark blond. No remarkable features other than his extreme ordinariness.
He soon hung a left, slipping into a smaller street. She followed. The crowds thinned as the attractions petered out. A shop and a few cafes, swiftly dwindling to three- or four-storey brick terraces and the spindly form of the BT Tower rising behind them. There was something alien about it, viewed from this obnoxiously ordinary street.
She could make a scene whilst there were still enough hapless passers-by to be effective. But she wasn’t much in the mood. Irrational anger bubbled under her skin, piercing through the numbness and waiting to be let loose. They’d soon be surrounded by office buildings, conveniently empty and deserted on a Saturday afternoon.
A commotion dragged her attention back to the airwaves. Morse had opted for making a scene. It seemed to be working nicely.
Another voice, male and less familiar, “I’m closing in. Five minutes.” Ward was lined up to take the hard drive. Everything was falling into place.
“Nat?” Clint’s voice held a hint of concern.
“Go ahead.”
“Still heading north?”
“Yes.”
He was quiet for a few moments.
“The package is going south.”
“Great.”
She watched as her target put his phone back into his pocket.
“Am I following some guy on a shopping trip?”
“No. That’s our guy. I’m sure of it.”
If Clint was sure, then he was sure. Which left two possibilities: decoy (annoying, but perhaps not fatal to the mission), or trap (even more annoying, possibly more fatal). She sighed, but a frisson of energy sparked through her. There was a comfort in this, a sideways step into a well-known routine.
Ahead of her, the man pulled his phone out and something white fluttered to the ground. She bent to pick it up as she passed.
Goodge Street Station.
Southbound platform.
Ten minutes.
And underneath, an hourglass drawn in blotchy red ink.
She crumpled the paper and stuffed it in her back pocket, the thrum of adrenaline building in her veins. This was dangerous, this feeling, the warning signals spurted in the back of her brain. But they were unceremoniously quashed. She’d been a passenger too long, forced into passivity and excruciating patience. Now, she had something to do. Now, it was time to act.
“I’m going dark. Rendezvous in three hours, location romeo.”
A splutter filled her ear as she flicked the switch and sunk into blessed silence.
The hunt was on.
…
The station was quiet when she exited the elevators, following the signs to the southbound platform. A smattering of tourists and teenagers loitered, waiting impatiently for the next train. She stuck her hands in her pockets and played at being one of the teenagers, slouching against the wall and avoiding eye contact.
Her mark wasn’t there yet. She scanned for anything out of place, a nervous shift or a too-hard stare or a conversation flowing too smoothly.
A train arrived. The tourists and teenagers boarded in noisy chaos. A scattering of people alighted and moved off the platform. She glanced at her watch and sighed theatrically, looking back towards the elevators as if waiting on a late companion. Her phone came out of her pocket and she fiddled with it impatiently, thumbs flickering over a mindless game.
Two trains came and went. They were trying to make her nervous. She laughed internally, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes unconcernedly.
Someone stepped up beside her.
“You should be more careful.” He dangled her phone in his right hand.
“It’s a bomb.” She deadpanned. His eyes widened and she swiped it back, laughing wildly, a manic thread weaving itself in, “And now you’ll never know.”
“Funny.”
Closer up, he was as indistinguishable as she’d thought. Uninteresting brown-blonde hair lightly windswept, average height, average build. Mismatched brightly coloured socks steering him just the right side of boring. Too average to be average.
“What do you want?” She looked at him directly. They always expected to dance with her, to unpeel the layers, unravel the mystery. They believed they’d find what lay beneath. But there was no mystery. She simply became a new person, whoever they wanted to see.
“I was going to ask you the same question.”
She laughed again, “What do I want? Money, power, pants with pockets…”
An old lady arrived and sat on the bench next to them. They ignored each other until she was spirited away by the next train, rumbling and squeaking past the platform.
“What are you offering?”
“Resources.”
She raised an eyebrow.
He was trying to dance, to withhold, to initiate a push and pull. He was a romantic, obscuring the simple truth of the game with unnecessary complications and he didn’t respond well to her bluntness. He wanted her to dig for it. He wanted her to want to dig for it.
“Are you offering me a job?”
“Of a sort.”
“I’m going to need more than that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, staring him out like the petulant teenager she was pretending to be.
“We’ve been paying attention.” He was pretentious as shit. And who were ‘we’?
“I highly doubt it.” She leant back against the wall, one leg shifting impatiently, “Go on then, tempt me. I’m not going anywhere. I’m like a rabbit in a burrow down here.”
“We can help you find it.” He waited expectantly. He was searching for the hook, the one thing they could offer that might draw her in before she knew exactly what she was being drawn in to.
She gestured expansively, “The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Sorry, beat you to it.”
“The Red Room.” She raised an unimpressed eyebrow, “The place you were raised, the bunker you never found. The only part that didn’t burn.”
“Why do you think I care?”
“Don’t you?”
“I burned my parents to death when I was three years old. I’m not the caring type.”
“You’re not at all like I’d imagined.”
She wasn’t biting. He was boring her. He’d lose interest soon. Then things might get interesting.
“And you’re… I have no idea who you are.” She said.
He smiled, smug and self-satisfied. She’d finally taken his hand to dance, “We rule the world. We bring order. You could be part of that.”
Danger zinged sharp through the air. Not for her life, but for everything she had with SHIELD. She could not have a shoot-out with a British intelligence agent in a London tube station. Whoever he was really working for. She’d lose everything.
“That doesn’t seem like my style.” The next train wasn’t due for five minutes. The elevator was a death trap. That left the stairs.
“That’s a shame.”
His hand moved. It pinged a warning. It was time to go.
Natasha leant towards him, “You’re sweet.” She muttered in his ear, and shoved him hard in the chest. “Get away from me you pervert!” She shouted, staggering backwards. A few heads turned. It was disappointingly unlikely that anyone would intervene.
She sprinted down the platform towards the exit, pushing through gaggles of people heading for the elevators. This staircase has 136 steps. Use only in an emergency. She leapt up them two at a time, footsteps light and silent on the tightly spiralling tiles.
A shout rang out behind, an angry woman’s voice, “Stop that man!” and more shouting and cursing and chaos. She smiled, climbing steadily upwards, her hand light on the worn brass rail.
She hadn’t been joking about being a rabbit in a burrow. If he had any sense, he would have collaborators above her. They’d have the high ground and her only cover would be the tight spiral of the stairs. Her pistol stayed tucked tight in the back of her pants. It would be deafening in this space, all ceramic and concrete and echoes. She’d never get out before the police arrived.
Her heart was pounding uncomfortably in her rib cage, her breathing hard and fast. She ignored it, pushed on harder but it shook her still. Her vision was wavering, cloudy at the edges. It shouldn’t be like this. Five flights of stairs and the length of a station platform. It was nothing.
A shadow moved above her. She darted right and leapt blindly, grabbing at the handrail and throwing herself higher. Surprise was everything. She counted three pairs of legs as she ducked blows, twisting wildly in the tight space. Two went down with shocks from her gauntlets. The third was somehow below her. She swung her legs around his shoulders, toppling him downwards. Her fingers reached for the handrail.
She missed.
There was a vertiginous moment at the top of the leap, a pause in reality as her fingertips brushed the rail, cool against her skin and the sharp tang of iron in the air. And then she was plummeting downwards twisting hard and fast to protect her head.
The steps rose up to meet her. She landed on her hands and one knee with a sickening crunch that shot numbness calf to hip. The agent was half on top of her, bleeding from the head, his expression forever frozen in dumbfounded shock. Footsteps rose behind her. She scrambled away, forcing herself upwards, sending three unconscious bodies toppling downwards to slow her pursuer as she passed. She leapt the final flight, her knee pounding white-hot through her at every other step.
In the ticket hall she slowed her pace, slipping out anonymously with the crowds. She forced an even gait. Limping got you noticed. Getting noticed got you killed.
Tottenham Court Road was noisy, the sky filled with white fluffy clouds like candyfloss floating past. She glanced at her watch. There were hours to kill. She could have turned her comm back on. Clint was probably having kittens. But she didn’t. The post-adrenaline high was notably absent. A horrible wrongness, a flatness seeping through her. There had been no need for that, for the air rushing past as she’d crashed wildly downwards. No need at all.
She walked fast. If she made it to Charing Cross Road, then everything was fine. If she could walk that far, a steady cadence in her stride, then it wasn’t a big deal. She hadn’t failed.
She wove around Tottenham Court Road station, avoiding tourists and shoppers streaming in and out of the unnecessary number of entrances. It wasn’t far enough. She had to reach Trafalgar Square. Charing Cross Station.
Her vision tunnelled and she pushed onwards. One foot in front of the other. Her eyes glazed past the lions and Nelson on his column. Train announcements buzzed through her consciousness. The 18.48 to Tunbridge Wells is delayed by approximately seven minutes. A breeze wafted, cool against her cheeks. The Thames twinkled in the lowering sun. Her eyes focussed on the footbridge in front of her, cursing the crowd forming around an enthusiastic busker. She paused at the end, contemplating the stairs down to the South Bank. It would have been easy to rest there, to lean against the railing and admire St Paul’s lighting up pink on the other side of the water.
But she didn’t. This nonsensical challenge had come to mean something. If she could make it all the way, then there was nothing wrong with her. Then she would bounce back, same as she always did. And next time, she wouldn’t miss.
She descended briskly, one foot after the other, matching her pace to the young woman with the backpack two steps ahead. At the bottom she followed the river east, counting benches and collapsing (no, not collapsing, sitting) on the fifth one down.
Here was fine. This was the place, the end of the journey. Only an hour to wait. She could watch the early evening joggers and the boats chugging past on the river. She could watch the buildings opposite turn pink and orange, admire the hodge-podge of mis-matched eras crowding for space. Her eyes screwed shut involuntarily as her knee screamed for attention. She could have caught a bus.
She should have caught a bus. She knew that. Consciously, intellectually, she knew that she had given birth less than a month ago, literally grown a new human being and squeezed it out of her. She had to give herself time, to cut herself some slack. But it was easier to pretend it had never happened, to let her life close neatly around that minor misadventure. It was protection. If she kept on as though nothing had changed, then everyone was safer.
A blur approached. A child on a scooter, craning backwards, squealing for attention from a distracted parent. He brushed against her toes as he passed and she bit down hard on her tongue, her mouth filling with the coppery taste of blood.
The sun was gently lowering, the water turning glassily opaque as the shadows lengthened. A sharp chill snapped through the air, a reminder that it was still early in the year, that the trees weren’t quite blossoming though the daffodils swayed gently in the breeze. She pulled her jacket tight around her, stopping up the cracks against the invading tendrils of cold. Warmth was a luxury she was loathe to give up.
She listened to the people passing, to the rhythm of their footsteps and the rise and fall of their conversation. There were patterns in it, the clipping stride of hurry and intent, the soft padding and breathless gasp of an out-of-practice runner, the strained cry of seagulls, confused and a little far from home. Her eyes closed and she wove the tapestry in her mind, a web of observations, of life viewed from the outside.
Clint’s footsteps strode towards her from the bridge. He had an athletic stride and relaxed purpose that was impossible to miss, threaded through today with a subtle bouquet of tension. The bench creaked as he dropped beside her and she blinked her eyes open, squinting at the sun dazzling off the water. He filled the air with frustration.
“Where did you go?”
He was tightly controlled, his voice feigning calm as his body screamed otherwise.
“Goodge Street.”
His teeth ground together, little clicks and snaps buried in an outrush of breath.
“…why?”
She shifted on the bench, lifting one hip to pull a crumpled piece of paper from her back pocket. Her knee screeched, but it belonged to someone else so it didn’t bother her. She offered it to him, the creases soft between her fingertips.
He unfolded it and absorbed the scratchy biro lines. One of his eyebrows twitched, voice filled with derision, “Jesus Nat, is that all it takes?”
He was ramping up, wound up tight like clockwork. She waited for the outburst, her spine calcifying, hardening her insides. She could have offered justification. She did her job, after all. In and out, no harm done. But the tension escaped him in a sudden rush of air and fingers tangling through his too-long hair.
He sighed, “What did they want?”
Natasha frowned, movement twitching across her forehead. She parsed the previous two hours, steering clear of the moment her fingers had brushed so delicately against the handrail. “He was trying to recruit me.”
“The British?” Clint’s eyebrows rise in disbelief.
“No…” She trailed off. “He was working for someone else.” She paused squinting at the water, “It felt like a test.”
He sat with his legs apart, a casual recline against the worn wood. There was a deliberate distance between them, a deliberate space. Not close enough to feel the warmth surely emanating from him. He turned to look at her. She stared back, feeling the challenge in his gaze.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing.”
He let out a derisive huff of air, not quite a sound, not quite a breath.
“You got what we needed?”
He nodded shortly.
It had been too easy. Natasha knew when she’d been manipulated. She’d had a lifetime of too much experience. But she couldn’t quite see here, who was pulling their strings.
Clint was fingering something, a stiff square of paper held carefully between his hands. He was watching the river, eyes lost in its depths.
Natasha watched Clint’s fingers, worn and callused.
She swallowed. She had a part to play, to shift the universe back into alignment.
“What did you call her?”
Clint started, his hand tightening. He looked at her with an eyebrow raised. She owned the part like she always did, feeling the imaginary audience, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck.
“Your daughter.” Her lip quirked, a brief flash of laughter at his startled expression, “Or have you already forgotten?”
“No.” He shook his head, “Lila. We called her Lila.”
There was a flutter in her chest. It was a nice name. Nothing that she would have chosen, but nice nonetheless. He unfolded himself from the bench, handing her the paper and stretching dramatically towards the darkening sky.
“You’ll be alright getting home?”
“Always.”
He was prodding, feeling out his concern but she didn’t let him near. The plan was piled neatly somewhere at the back of her mind. A couple of motels and separate routes home. She’d survive.
As he walked away, she looked at what he’d handed her. It was a photograph.
Her stride was stiff and awkward as she walked towards the river. The railing was waist high, the metal cool and hard against her palm. She held on for a moment, memorising the detail. Her vision blurred. She couldn’t keep it.
Lila.
She weighed the word in her mind and rolled it around her tongue. Night, in Hebrew, perhaps. Not that Clint or Laura were Jewish. She scrolled through languages. Lilac in Spanish. She thought of lilies: a symbol of death, sometimes, and sometimes what comes after.
Her fingernails tore the photo end to end and fluffy white confetti fluttered into the water. It bloated and swelled and sank below the surface.
There was a pull in her chest, a line reeling her in. It tugged at her as she walked away.
…
“Did you bring Auntie Nat?”
The words soak into her mind , an anchor, a touch-point, a rope leading her home. Through the darkness, she smiles.
“Why don’t you hug her and find out?”
Her arms open. Lila fills them. Warm and heavy and fearless and somehow part of her.
She breathes her in and holds on.