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In Stalingrad, the beginning of June was the best time of year. The days became exceedingly long with their late sunsets, the climate became warm, and people could be spotted all over the Volga promenading or enjoying the ‘summer’. They would all soon move to the Black Sea for the start of real summer. The best moments would of course be in the first weeks, when people who still believed would sneak out despite the prohibition and dump countless flowers into the river.
The police would close their eyes and ears against that, as long as you pretended not to be doing ‘weird’ worshipping.
After all, bad things happened if you disrespected the River.
Natalia was six, and she loved to dance at the festival. She didn’t really understand any of it, but during these few days, she got to wear beautiful dresses and she’d spend hours with her brothers on the banks of the river, while her parents discreetly dropped flowers in the water.
And so she spent the first few days like that, imitating the dances she saw the adults do, and moving gracefully along the water.
On the third day, there was another kid on the bank.
She didn’t speak much, but was energetic and liked to dance too; Natalia liked her from the first moment. She was nice, if a bit shy around the adults, and she wasn’t weird like that mean and fake Malina said. Well, Natalia allowed, she was a big strange: when she smiled, she showed off a row of pointy, shiny teeth, and always had kelp around her ankles, but Natalia supposed she’d seen weirder things.
Besides, no one who liked to dance could be that weird.
And so the first weeks of June came and went, and only on the last day of the makeshift secret festival did Natalia notice that she didn’t know her friend’s name.
She didn’t see hide nor hair of the girl for a whole year.
Natalia was seven and the girl was back.
They were once again celebrating the summer (technically they weren’t, but she’d seen some people she knew were policemen here on the banks of the river… so she supposed it was okay), and the girl was once again listening to the music.
She hadn’t changed much. She now sported numerous blue flowers all over her hair; she even had a little crown of them.
Again, on the last day she noticed she hadn’t really talked to the girl at all.
“Kak tebya zovyt?”Natalia asked one day.
She was eight and this time, this time she would find out.
The girl seemed surprised that she was being spoken to. Her green eyes darted all over, in the hopes of finding whoever else she might be talking to, maybe, but found no one.
She smiled then, showing all of her very pointy teeth (did they have that many canines? Natalia was pretty sure she didn’t). What came out was the scratchiest, grindiest sound Natalia had ever heard.
She unconsciously covered her ears and the girl, scared by the sudden movement, retreated as fast as her little legs carried her.
Without even realizing it, Natasha was already far from her family, following the scared girl.
She found her waist deep in the Volga.
“Stop! Ty budesh’ tonyt’!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The girl didn’t acknowledge her. She was going to drown . Where were the adults when you needed them?
Natalia didn’t even stop to consider. She dove in the cold waters of the river without a backwards glance.
Before she even made it two metres in, the water was already dragging her away. She was a good swimmer, but not good enough for the unforgiving waves of the Volga.
And then, instead of drowning, she was being pulled to the bank.
She dropped like a stone on the grass as soon as she touched it with her hands and started breathing quickly through her mouth. Gentle hands patted her back and she coughed out more water than she thought she’d swallowed.
It was the girl. She was frowning in worry and was carefully keeping herself under the water from the neck down. Natalia didn’t understand how she could keep afloat, she couldn’t be that better of a swimmer.
But the girl kept prodding at her and checking on her without saying a word (and maybe that was a good thing... ).
“Spasibo,” she coughed out.
The girl smiled happily. She looked far, far away to the line of the horizon, where the sun had disappeared. Her smile widened tenfold. “Nichego!” The voice was a bit high, but very far from the shrilly, annoying sound she’d made before.
The girl sunk slowly below the water, and when she came back, she had a handful of blue, shiny cornflowers with her. “Basileki!” she said and happily handed them off to her. And then another handful. She was quickly surrounded by handfuls and crowns of cornflowers.
“ Natalia? Natka! Natasha?!”
The other girl started, then flinched and retreated into the river.
When Alian found his daughter along the river Volga along with the search party, he did not expect her to be soaked wet, surrounded by blue flowers.
The cornflowers wilted more rapidly than any flower Natalia had ever seen.
The very moment the water stopped being of use to them, they’d pretend to die until they were put into fresh water. And then they skittishly repeated the process all over again.
It drove everyone in the building mad, because there was no way, no way they would let flowers from a Rusalka to die.
If asked by the police, they believed in the regime and didn’t need religion. If asked by the people around them, they believed in God. But yet, the flowers were put into a pretty vase right next to the door and everyone would check on them every hour or so.
In the end it was decided that the little ones would keep watch on the flowers, since school was over and they could spend the summer inside without having to work.
Despite their best efforts, the last of the blue flowers died after barely two months.
The old lady on the fourth floor declared it a terrible, horrible omen, and proceeded to salt the whole building with a mixture of the dead flowers and white salt from the Black Sea.
In quick succession, a series of inexplicable events happened. First, Natalia’s father fell down the stairs and as a result he’d never be able to walk without a limp. Then, her oldest brother injured his hand and would forever be unable to use it. The lady of the fourth floor was baffled indeed, until a week later Poland was invaded, and the War had begun. She complimented herself on a job well done, for with her quick thinking, she’d saved everyone.
Life went on despite the rations and the paranoid government.
The next summer, the girl was back again.
They played, they laughed, they danced, and everything was fine to nine years old Natalia.
It soon became clear that her friend wasn’t a powerful spirit, she couldn’t speak as long as the sun was in the sky, didn’t have a proper ‘human shape’, as her mother’s friends kept saying behind her back, but still, the little spirit was kind enough to show herself to them, so they couldn’t very much complain. After all, little kid spirits had presumably big parent spirits.
This time, when Natalia received her cornflowers, her brother took one with him and got on a train to the Moscow Oblast’. He came back two days later, with her flower embedded in a bakelite pendant.
Natasha was almost eleven, and since that day, she’d never removed her pendant, ever.
She never mentioned it to anyone either. Her brother, her mama and her papa were the only ones who knew of its existence, and mama had told her repeatedly to keep it this way.
The war had weakened everyone and everything, and weak and tired people made for fanatic and dangerous people.
Natasha was eleven when the Nazis attacked her house.
She had no clear memories of the day, apart from her brothers barricading the door, and her mother whispering at her to keep the jewel safe, to be safe, to be strong, and then the fall. She’d always remember falling.
Ivan wasn’t a bad guardian.
Natalia knew he had no obligation to take her in, but he did anyway.
He was a soldier, so he wasn’t affectionate and didn’t have much time, but he’d given her what she’d wanted since she was little: a chance to dance.
As soon as she’d recovered from the attack at her house, he’d enrolled her at Bol’shoi, and Natalia loved it. She missed her family, but the dance kept her busy.
There were hundreds of hopefuls at the training facilities at the theatre, but the training proved so brutal many of them dropped off. No one saw them again.
Natalia endured. The pressure increased. Natalia shone like the diamond she was.
The training got harsher. The girls didn’t care.
But in the end, instead of the hardwood floors, of the parquet of the stage, there were rooms with chains and stone and pain.
Of the hundreds of girls recruited to dance during the war, the 28 that had survived were sent to Red Room.
It was a harsh and horrible wake-up call.
The gymnastic, the grace, the poise, the beatings, all for nothing.
Despite the hurt and the betrayal, Natalia swallowed it all and, mindful of her mother’s words, fought and survived.
The cornflower pendant was taken by the caretakers, who had taken any personal item and possession and held it as bargaining chip, or something to threaten them with. She supposed their identities were only thing they had left, with their families gone and no fear of their own deaths.
So they trained.
Natalia wasn’t the oldest, nor the youngest, but she was the best of them all.
The caretakers noticed, and she got privileges.
They wouldn’t allow her to have her possessions, of course, but they allowed her to eat a bit more, and as long as she performed satisfactorily she could escape the obligatory punishment after dinner.
This made her ‘comrades’ come at her much more harshly during training. Yet, she beat them all again and again.
And one day, a new trainer was brought into their regime.
Natalia saw her chance.
‘Jakov’ was strict and a terrible trainer, but he was young and if she ever had a chance to run, this was it.
It was a terrible, utter disaster.
The Zimnij Soldat was taken away and put into whatever machine they’d take the other girls to, and was never seen again.
In the face of her failure, she was tortured for so long she couldn’t even remember how much time had passed.
They didn’t let her see the outside again for a very long time.
And then, there was only fire and poison.
Natalia supposed They had it coming.
She watched dispassionately as the last of the Red Room facilities burnt to the ground.
It had taken her twenty years.
Twenty long years of humiliations, of brainwashing, guilt tripping, torture, malnourishment and pain, but she’d done it. She’d lived and now she could dance on the ashes of her enemies. The Black Widow was finally free.
She stared with grim satisfaction as the last of the building was razed to the ground. A part of her hoped the girls had all made it, but she didn’t care enough to check. What she did care about, were her prized tokens she’d left. She wasn’t stupid, she knew there was a chance they’d destroyed everything she owned as soon as they’d found her trying to run with Yasha, but a part of her hoped to retrieve something, anything. She’d retrieved the safe of the operation base before making it all go to literal Hell, and she fingered its lock with trepidation.
It was empty.
She fought down a scream of frustration, which escaped her lips anyway.
Nothing. All gone.
And she cried. She cried like she hadn’t in the last twenty six years of her life, like it was going out of fashion and she had no other choice.
She’d come to the stark realization that nothing would ever be the same, that she’d changed too much, and in no way she could recover Natalia from these ashes. There would be no zhar-ptitsa to rise again, no phoenix rebirth for her.
It was her darkest time.
One contract followed another in quick succession, the serum coursing through her veins keeping her young and strong and ready at all times.
Before she knew it, the years had passed and she’d become a nightmare, a monster, a legend.
A legend so big, someone sent a marksman to take her out.
And she was tired of running, tired of lying, and tired of trying.
He made a different call .
They were in one of his safe houses just outside Leningrad. It was tiny, cramped and Nata...lia? didn't feel safe at all in these four walls, but she knew when she was beat, and Clint was… well, she didn’t know exactly who he was, but he’d seen something in her, and she wanted to know what.
“Hey, ‘Vdova!” He called her from just outside the house.
She hesitantly stepped in front of the door.
Clint was poking at something in the waters of the Neva. Flowers?
She blanched.
“What are you doing?!” she called harshly. What was he poking? Oh Bog what had he touched?!
“The waters are full of flowers! Fancy that!” And he picked one up.
She was there at his side in a flash, dropping the flower back into the gentler waters of the big river.
“Do not do that!” she hissed at him, in such a furious manner he almost flinched away.
She watched as the flower was taken away by the currents.
“...So….” Hawkeye started slowly, still frowning. “What’s the big deal?”
“They are offerings to the River.” She clipped harshly. “We need more flowers.”
“What?”
“You disrespected the Rusalki, now they’ll have your head. We need more flowers.”
Clint stared at her in disbelief, and then threw his head back and laughed. “Are… are you kidding me? You believe this, really? The Chernaja Vdova is superstitious?”
Natalia pursed her lips. “You do not understand, Clint Barton. The River will punish you.”
“Yeah, yeah, I can take it” He dismissed.
And he dismissed also the tripping on his own feet, the power going down and his arm protection suddenly chipping.
Natalia was uneasy the whole day. She kept going back to the girl, the magical cornflowers and how her family had avoided the war thanks to them, and her lucky pendant.
The River spirits were vengeful ones, every man in the slavic countries could and would tell you. They weren’t malicious like the wind ones, or scary like the forest ones, but they were touchy and finicky and they didn’t care one bit about morality. There was a reason no one dared to steal from them.
In fact, when Natka, long ago, had talked to the water spirit and the creature had answered with flowers, she’d been elevated to ‘blessed’ status in her street, and every June people would come and see if she was visited again.
The fact that the tiny spirit was enamored with the girl had been seen as a great blessing.
It is a moot point, now , she thought harshly, a hand on her naked neck, blessed indeed…
And yet, the next night she spent dumping pretty flowers into the Neva, hoping to placate whatever spirit Clint had offended. Unfortunately, she had little hope this would work.
‘ Nataliaaa ’ a voice called her. She stiffened.
‘Natkaaa?’ the voice was back. She whirled around, but there was nothing. There was just her on the bank, her flowers and the lights of the safe house were off as well.
‘Natashaaa?’ It still called her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, a young woman with long, green hair and green eyes was staring at her from the river. She was under the water from the neck down, and had cornflowers all over her hair. A large, big crown of the same flowers was on her head.
It was her friend! She… she never thought she’d see her ever again.
“Tantsuy, Natasha?” She smiled, and showed off all of her pointy teeth. “Pozhaluysta?”
“I didn’t think I’d see you again... Dance?” Natalia asked, smiling back, “you want me to dance? Now?”
The Rusalka frowned at her, and Natasha wondered what she’d done to offend her, when she realized she’d used english, and probably the spirit wasn’t very well-versed in different languages.
But the spirit smoothed her expression and nodded. “Please?” She was back to smiling.
Natalia looked back to the safe house and then to the streets. The sun was down already and this part of the city wasn’t particularly busy during the summer. People still loved to move south for the Black Sea, where they could actually bathe.
“Very well,” she acquiesced. The spirit clapped her hands excitedly and moved closer.
If Clint had noticed any of her strange, improvised dance, he didn’t mention it, and she kept it that way.
But the next day he was poking back at the water and bozhe moy she was going to destroy him .
“Hey Vdova!” he started again.
She wasn’t armed, but she still flexed her palms in case she had to smack him.
“Look what I found! It’s pretty, isn’t it?” In his hands, was the bakelite pendant her brother had made out of her cornflower. She took it in her hands and palmed it. It was warm and wet, but it was definitely hers and how… ?
On the back of the pendant, in the golden-like base, was crudely written ‘dlya Natashi. Temnoe’.
She sidestepped the questions Hawkeye sent her way, the only answer she gave him being ‘Yes, Natasha is my name’, and put it back where it belonged.
As soon as it was back on her neck, she felt it cool, and she felt home.
SHIELD was everything and nothing like she thought it’d be.
Throwing herself into training and missions was familiar to her. She soon became another ‘favourite’ of sorts, got a new handler and was soon sent into a STRIKE team for specialized work.
That no one except Clint had accepted her as a partner was not surprising, and Natasha Romanoff liked it that way.
After a few months, she could leave the Triskelion in DC and have an apartment all by herself, and… a number of boltholes that no one had to know about.
And if one of them just happened to face on the Potomac, well, that was her business anyway.
She spent the first ‘freedom June’ with different wigs every day on the banks of the river.
Temnoe, the Dark One, came to her every night. She watched avidly as Natasha improvised little dances and sung old Russian songs.
“I wonder why you came all this way.” Natasha asked her one day.
Temnoe shrugged, and rose from the river until she was only in the water from the waist down. She ruffled her hair like a wet dog, and a slew of cornflowers fell on the ground. She looked at them scornfully, and dropped them one by one in the polluted waters of the Potomac.
“For you.” She answered, in the end.
Natasha raised her eyebrows. Well.
“What?” Temnoe asked defensively, “Is it that weird?”
But Natasha shook her head and shrugged a bit. “No, I was just surprised by the fact that you’re talking outside the water and with the sun high in the sky,” she drawled.
Temnoe flushed. “I was tiny and young!” She protested. “I’m much more powerful now!” And the more she puffed, the redder she became.
Natasha laughed, and the tiny no-longer-tiny Rusalka deflated morosely, “Come on Natka, at least try to look properly intimidated…” she pouted.
She couldn’t. Not in a million years.
How things could have gone so wrong so quickly, she had no idea.
Well, she supposed she could blame Clint, that was always a safe bet, but this time it really wasn’t his fault.
They’d been made and for the life of her she didn’t know why. They’d walked in a trap and bullets were flying. Their cover was shot to hell, Clint was down, she didn’t know where, and Coulson wasn’t answering his comm.
Ebat’ she spat on the ground, and noticed it was blood she was spitting. Double that .
“Hawkeye?” she whispered in her comm from her hideout, “Hawkeye, can you hear me?”
Nothing. Splendid.
She scanned the warehouse they were in. Two sets of stairs, high windows and old iron bars.
A familiar bow silhouette peeked from the other side of the room.
She slithered as fast as she could on the ground, trying to reach her partner. She just… needed… a couple more… metres-- Clint!
Clint was in a pool of blood, presumably unconscious, and a part of her really hoped he was because this looked painful.
“ Itt vannak! Itt vannak!” a voice over them shouted. One of Vilasi’s men had found them and was now rallying the rest from his elevated position.
Shit . They had no escape and she was injured . She lugged Clint behind her, trying to cover him as much as possible. She’d become sentimental in the last few years , she thought bitterly.
Vilasi’s men, now that they were sure of their capture, were taking their time at approaching them.
There must be an escape , Natasha thought desperately. But jumping from the window was the only answer, and the Danube down there didn’t seem friendly at all with the heavy rain that was pouring from the sky.
She cursed again.
Bullets and certain death or torture versus big fall into water and possible death or torture.
Okay, when you put it that way.
She slid Clint’s arm over her shoulders, prayed, and with force she launched herself and her partner into the raging waters of the Danube.
The feeling of falling never goes away, there’s just how far you’re falling … was her grim thought.
And then, just like so many years ago, sixty? seventy? She wasn’t drowning anymore.
She was floating, and her head was above the water while the currents dragged her away. Clint was still on her back, but they weren’t going down, which was a plus.
The currents raged all around them and it was impossible to swim to the riverside, they were picking up speed and they almost couldn’t see the city anymore. It was absurd, too fast. But they would make it, it was impossible to keep track of them in the water, and Vilasi’s influence didn’t extend outside of Budapest. He’d need time to track them.
She tightened her hold on Clint, almost biting his shoulder to keep him close.
‘ Let go ,’ Temnoe’s voice reached her ears. Natasha fought an hysterical laugh. Of course it was her. Her eyes darted to the cornflower necklace, which was shining in the dark. How had she not noticed it?
‘ Let go, Natka’ the voice repeated urgently. ‘ I can carry you, I got you .’
It was a huge leap of faith, and she didn't have good experience with falling. But, if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that the Rusalka had never ever steered her wrong, nor had the flower on her neck.
She heaved a big sigh, and let go.
The water submerged them both.
“Nat? Nat? Nat!” Clint’s voice roused her.
She didn’t open her eyes, focused on cataloguing the situation and her injuries. Her back ached something fierce, and so did her left leg, but other than that she felt surprisingly… fine. The serum would heal the pain, she didn’t feel anything atrociously painful, and there were probably no bullets in her. That was nice.
There was grass under her, and sunshine on her head.
The thought had her opening her eyes and quickly check on Clint.
He looked, well, she didn’t want to repeat herself, but he looked much better than he should. He was in a sitting position with weird bandages all over his torso.
He wasn’t looking at her though. His eyes were fixated to a point behind her and he was clearly itching to reach his bow, which was nowhere to be seen.
She didn’t want to turn for fear of breaking whatever good luck spell was on them, instead trying her best to communicate her ‘What’ without using her voice.
“There’s something poking from the water staring very intently at me.”
Oh .
The words made her slump from her crouched position and almost laugh at his face.
“Wha-! Your friend is being awfully rude, I say!” Ah.
Clint’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. He darted his eyes from her to Temnoe so fast that if eyes could get whiplash, they would have already. Twice over.
“You know...it?”
“Her!” Temnoe shouted from the river.
Natasha sighed. “I’m sorry.” She told the Rusalka, placating. She then faced Clint fully, “You're hurt, don’t make me hit you.”
“That bandage? It’s cosmetic now, anyway.” The water spirit grouched from behind her.
Natasha’s eyebrows raised while she unwrapped the seaweed-like bandages.
“This is really slimy” Clint complained. But the skin was smooth under them, if a bit reddened.
“Don’t complain,” she admonished him. “I thought you were dead.”
“I thought so too,” piped Temnoe unhelpfully, “but then you coughed.” She heaved a long sigh, like it was some painful thing that he hadn’t died.
“Clint, this is Temnoe. Temnoe, this is Clint.” she introduced in the end.
“I know him already, he’s the guy who stole Teplo’s offering!”
Clint sputtered, “What? I didn’t steal anything.”
Temnoe drew back, offended, and well, technically Clint had made a gross miscalculation in her eyes. “He usually means well, Temnochka, do forgive him.” But the young Rusalka was still frowning.
“Clint,” Natasha explained patiently, “every flower that drops in the water? That’s theirs. Their belongings. No one picks flowers up from the rivers, there’s a reason for that.”
Clint was more disbelieving and incredulous by the second. And the more she talked, the more she felt she was losing him.
“Look, Nat, I trust you, okay, and if you say you believe in… spirits or whatever, okay... fine, but don’t expect me to believe that this girl is anything but human, or a mutant with great swimming abilities.”
“Excuse you!” The spirit’s voice raised in pitch, “How dare you to tell me what I am or not?”
And with a push she was on the bank of the river and out of the water.
Natasha had never seen Temno outside of the rivers she resided in, apart from her brief escapades when they were kids, and then she’d been human looking.
She was… frankly nothing she’d expected... well, she didn’t know what she expected. It wasn’t this.
She looked human, from her waist up. But her arms were covered in green scales and so was the rest of her lower body. It coiled into a long, long tail that didn’t resemble a fish in any way. It looked more like a serpent, all in all. Not slimy and more sleek and... shinier.
The tail was covered in flowers as much as her hair was. She resembled some kind of overgrown water plant that had been watered too much.
She was also stupidly pretty for an unnatural creature that belonged to legends and to her country’s mythology.
She had her eyebrows tilted in a very ‘Now, what, asshole?’ way. “Now what do you have to say, asshole?” she asked, crossing her arms over her breasts.
Clint Hawkeye Barton recovered much quicker than Natasha had expected him to.
There was gaping, and pointing, and answering questions with questions, but in the end he couldn’t refute the non-humanity of his saviour (“Temnoe?” “Means ‘the Dark one’” “...It really doesn’t, it’s not even a russian word. You just put together a name you liked. Are you even aware that Temnoe is neutral gendered,?” “Well, I don’t really care, I guess? I mean, we’re all female so who cares if we want to call ourselves Piotr or Masha or Okno… Neutral gender is fine until I decide I want to change it.”).
The more they spent talking on the grass though, the more Temnoe’s skin started to blister and chap harshly. The flowers on her crown wilted.
“I… really should get back in there.” She edged, staring at the water longingly. “It… was a pleasure …” she managed to sound sarcastic even when her words were becoming more strained, “to meet you.”
She entered the river with a slick sound and the cornflowers sprung back to life.
Before they could say anything more, she was gone.
“So.” Clint was back apparently. “Friends with a supernatural being, huh?”
Natasha shrugged, it wasn’t really his business but she couldn’t deny what he’d seen.
“Since when?”
“...She’s my oldest friend.” And wasn’t that the truth.
Coulson arrived with an extraction team the next day (Clint had managed to get someone from a nearby farm to allow him to use their landline, which had been hilarious, especially since the farmers believed he’d called a bakery to get pastries).
As they neared the aircraft, Natasha grabbed Clint’s hand and held him back a little.
She didn’t know how or where to start, didn’t know if she should threaten, bribe, or guilt him to avoid the situation she knew was coming. There was no way in hell he’d back her on that, especially since it was a pretty big thing she’d be asking of him.
Clint eyed her hand on his forearm and she dropped it as if burned.
He looked back at her very intently, then he sighed. “She dangerous?”
She shook her head. Water Spirits cared very little for humans, as long as they got what they wanted, and Temnoe had always been content to just watch the people. She was also a mild, young spirit, despite having grown a lot over the span of sixty years.
He nodded back, apparently satisfied with whatever he’d seen in that gesture. “Okay, for now, I got your back.”
And despite her trust issues she really, really thought highly of Clint Barton in that moment.
“Fancy meeting you here!”
“...Go away, Clint.”
They were basking in the cool evening breeze when Clint found them.
They weren’t really trying to be sneaky about it--the weather was nice and the closer to the bank you got the breezier it became. It was a splendid moment to relax (not that Natasha would confess relaxing too much… just some).
“So you’re a blonde now?” He asked casually, ignoring what she’d said.
“It’s a wig.” Temnoe supplied from her place on the grass.
There was a long beat of silence “...You look very human today.” He said in the end.
Temnoe snorted and crossed her legs. “Thank you, I try.” Her white sundress flapped a bit under the breeze.
Clint didn’t need any other invitation and sat down with them, despite Temnoe’s dramatic groan of complaint.
Natasha sighed. He was bound to invite himself sooner or later.
“So,” he smiled to her friend, “you can be a human, if you want?”
The Rusalka looked at him like he was crazy. “No? I mean, I can take human shape, if I want? But I can also do a swan or snake shape. It’s not rocket science now, is it?”
“Do you even know what rocket science is?”
Temnoe wasn’t impressed.
“Sorry, sorry,” Clint hurried to say, “it’s just… I mean, you pull human off pretty convincingly, you could probably pass for one of us real easy.”
“I do, and I did.” She had a very confused frown on her cute face. “I’ve seen the old world all around. I mean, when you don’t eat, you don’t really need sleep, and your only friend is out doing who knows what, there is not much else you can do.”
This was news to Natasha, too. She had no idea Temnoe had traveled the world while waiting for her. Frankly she was surprised Temnoe had stuck around that long. Or maybe not that long. To a Rusalka, seventy something years must be a pittance.
Clint had probably noticed the ‘who knows what’ part as much as she had, but he wasn’t going to elaborate, and for that she was grateful.
“So, where have you been?” He asked instead.
Temnoe shrugged. “I was Bruna Neri in Italy, some time ago. She studied haute cuisine, by the way. Then… I was Svetlana in… Belarus, it’s now Belarus, isn’t it? I think it is. Well, that was like, the best inside joke ever; I mean, ‘Svetlana’ means light, and my name means dark… I thought it was funny.”
“Have you ever been in America before? And also, how do you speak so many languages?” He was very interested, and Natasha was curious too.
Temnoe loved the attention. “No, most of the English-speaking countries are separated by salt water, and I hate salt water. There has to be a very important reason for me to enter it, seriously. And I speak every language of course.” She was preening a bit, “as long as people speak it near a body of water, I can learn it.” She shrugged with fake nonchalance.
Clint was mouthing ‘Every language’ with wonder.
Natasha wondered if the language powers could work on symbols, like ASL or something like that.
What came out instead was “Have you ever thought of ‘playing’ the human here?” which wasn’t smooth as she had intended. At all.
Temnoe frowned. “I have, but then again…” she let the sentence hang in the air.
Clint, however, loved the idea. “You could be... Darcy!” He piped up very quickly, “it means the Dark One, in case you were wondering.”
The Rusalka’s lips twitched, and Nat could see the considering gleam in her eyes. “Maybe…”
Thanks to Clint’s suggestion, Darcy Lewis made her first appearance in 2008.
With a realistic backstory, a convincing human act (‘ Okay, don’t smile, ever, what the hell, you don’t eat, how many canines do you even need ? ’) and a sarcastic streak a mile wide, she enrolled into Culver as a political science student. Why she’d chosen that, no one had any idea.
And yeah, she was happy for her friend who was now having fun, but she was going to miss the company.
“I miss you all so much, Mum, so much!” Darcy wailed into the phone. And really, Mum ?
“You hang on honey,” she crooned like a good mom. Never let it be said that she wasn’t good at pretending. “You go and become someone in the world.”
“ ...Yes, Mum. Say bye to my annoying older brother.”
“I will. Love you.” Oh, dear.
“Love you too.” Darcy answered softly, and hung up.
It had been almost five years since a mission was shot to hell, so Natasha admitted she was due a bad one.
This, however, was really taking the cake. After joining SHIELD her spotless record had become marred more times than she cared to count, but getting her car blown up and thrown into the Black Sea? Yeah, that had never happened, ever.
She hit the glass panel of her car window repeatedly. Her package, a nuclear physicist she’d been escorting out of Iran, had the decency to try to help her instead of whining and panicking. She was grateful.
She hissed in satisfaction as the window creaked and moved all of her weight to the opposite seat so she could use her legs to destroy it.
The rush of water in the car was less reassuring, but they wouldn’t drown today.
She grabbed the scientist, and swam to surface as fast as she could.
Breaching the water and pulling out air was a blessing to her lungs. On her right side, the physicist took great gulps of air.
They made way to the shore.
The Zimnij Soldat was there.
Fuck .
And Natasha tried to shield her mission, but in a shot he was dead, and she was down and gasping for air, again.
“ Nе ostavlyaj svidetelej !” He mumbled and that was it. Don’t leave witnesses, she was dying in a corner of Odessa and no one would know it. What an anticlimactic ending for the Black Widow.
She had no energy to fight.
She was on the ground, her hand pressed into her stomach, gasping and panting.
And suddenly the waters of the Black Sea bubbled and hissed, and a giant, sixty feet snake reared from the sea and hissed at the Winter Soldier.
The sounds it made were horrifying and menacing, and then it opened its mouth and an agonizing, sharp screeching sound poured out of it.
The Zimnij Soldat went down like a sack of potatoes, twitching, his eyes empty.
She closed her eyes, just… yeah, closing her eyes sounded nice. Just for a moment.
When she came to, she was on a bed in a med bay and Clint was snoozing on a chair on her left.
She had an IV in her right arm too. That was unpleasant.
She didn’t have an oxygen mask on, though. She might have expected worse.
“Nat!” Clint jolted awake. “You’re awake!”
“Clint?” Was she whispering or shouting? She didn’t know.
“Well, you had us all worried for a moment.” He smiled at her. She tried to smile back, but maybe she was grimacing, because Clint asked her at least three times if she was in any kind of pain.
“How… what… the Zimnij soldat…”
“Easy, Nat, easy.” He said, “you’ll report to Coulson in a few minutes. However, you should know, that I found this ,” and he held up a green, slimy bandage for her to see, “on you. I don’t think anyone else has seen it, but yeah.”
Natasha fought the tears, she really, really did, but in the end she was crying anyway.
Clint turned away.
She took a deep breath. “Clint,” she called. “I need a favour.”
Clint Francis Barton had seen stuff in his life.
In his job description, ‘weird’ was just behind ‘coffee in the morning’ and ‘purple is best color ever’. Nothing had surprised him for a very long time.
Well, nothing apart from an immortal spirit of power luck and fortune, who apparently was a well-known secret that anyone in Russia could tell you about but no Westerner would ever believe. Yeah, that was its own brand of weird.
And okay, Temnoe-now-Darcy was okay, but how many more were there that were not as okay as she was? Overall, she was pretty chill for a creature that could force you to kill yourself with a smile on your face or could probably chew you in a second with those teeth (those teeth , seriously! He was never letting that go, ever.).
He didn’t dare pick up anything flowery from the river anymore. Never again. Coulson gave him so much grief for that chipped armor. And really, he hadn’t complained half as much for bringing in a former Soviet assassin.
But that ex-Soviet assassin was now one of his best and most trusted friends, so when she asked a favour, he complied.
Even if it meant buying blue flowers from a florist and dumping them one by one in the Potomac.
And the hardship of finding just the right flowers? Yep, he wasn’t talking about that to anyone, ever.
He dropped them one by one, as ridiculous as it was.
Temnoe appeared at the fourth flower.
“Huh, didn’t expect that to really work, you know?” He said, then shook his head.
“How is Natasha?” Temnoe didn’t even care to answer.
“She’s fine, thanks to you.” And immortal creature or not, he really was grateful for his partner’s life. He’d bend over backwards for her.
Darcy smiled and showed off her teeth. “I’m glad.” Her eyes were shining.
Awww hell.
He really should shut up and cut his losses now.
He really, really should. Mind your business, Barton, don’t do it…
“Are you in love with Nat?” Yep, nicely done Hawkeye.
He really expected a denial, but Darcy blushed and sank into the water until only her eyes were visible.
“...Is that bad?” She whispered.
Awww man . Okay, fine. Clint sat down on the edge of the river, his feet dangling almost into the water and put his hands over his face a bit.
“No, kid, it’s … it’s a good thing. Can I call you kid, by the way?”
Temnoe shrugged, “I’m young for my species.”
“Okay, good. Kid, there is nothing wrong in loving someone, yeah? It’s just… Nat? She’s special, okay? Just… be careful… I don’t know, I don’t even know.” He really didn’t know what to say to an immortal water spirit. Seriously what could he say? Should he give her the shovel talk? Give her tips? There was no damn manual on this (or maybe there was in SHIELD protocol, he wouldn’t remember).
But the Rusalka seemed to understand, sort of?
Also, “Does that happen often? People like you falling for people like… me?”
Darcy shrugged helplessly. “Sometimes? Look, I have no idea, but I can’t really help it?” Well, that made two of them having no idea. At least he wasn’t the only one there...
“ Does the scar bother you? I know your people have a preference for perfection…”
“ ...Shut up and don’t say that rubbish, Natka... Just tell me if you’re in pain already.”
Leaving for New Mexico. Say hello to Stark for me!
What? Where?
Puente Antiguo, why?
She’s there. Clint, what’s going on? Clint?
We’re alive. Shit went down. Don’t worry.
Shit went down meant that aliens were as real as mythical creatures, they were many and they were angry.
Wonderful. Simply, utterly, wonderful.
At least something good came out of it.
The Avengers were now officially activated despite the hesitations of the World Security Council and that pleased Fury to no end. Also, Stark had offered them a place to stay.
She would have said no, she liked her privacy. She would absolutely have said no, if it weren’t for the fact that Stark had also collected Dr Foster and her assistant to keep ‘Point Break’ close.
And the idea of living with Darcy without hiding or being confined to shady corners in the Potomac was very appealing.
So, she and Clint uprooted themselves like the good SHIELD operatives they were and moved to New York.
By the time they arrived, Darcy Lewis had already taken over the common area and was bustling around the kitchen like there was no tomorrow.
“Hey, Darce!”
She turned around quickly, “Clint!! How nice to see you!”
And she hugged them, and Natasha realized this was the first hug they shared without counting weird saving-from-drowning episodes in a while.
It wasn’t awkward like she expected it to be.
It was nice. Like usual.
If only she could forget about the conversation she’d had with Loki and her red hands.
Stark Tower had a pool.
A very big pool, which Temnoe used any free moment she had.
Stark complained so much about the continuous privacy mode that was enacted on the pool floor ( Seriously, who’s having sex in there? Because it doesn’t make sense! ), but Darcy didn’t care one bit and kept on using it whenever she pleased. Natasha found it hilarious.
She didn’t usually hang out with her in these moments--there was apparently some serious grooming process that was extremely private--but she joined her during the evenings when they would just relax like they used to.
Natasha was sitting on the border of the pool, her legs in the water and was staring transfixed at her friend’s tail. She couldn’t help but think of Temnoe’s shiny scales and unreal face. Since that mission in Odessa, she’d forfeited bikinis. And now, thanks to Loki...
“Okay, what’s wrong?” Darcy’s voice interrupted her dark spiral of thoughts.
Natasha frowned, “What do you mean?”
Darcy scoffed. “Oh please, you’ve been so pensive since New York, so broody. I’d also bet sad, but don’t want to overreach here.” She swam a bit closer, her tail slithering behind her.
“It’s nothing…”
“Of course it is.” Darcy nodded. She pointed the strong part of her tail at the bottom of the pool and raised herself just enough to place her head and arms in Natasha’s lap, looking up at her from the water. “And since it’s nothing, you can share.” She smiled.
Natasha smiled back, and put a hand on Darcy’s head.
“I… Loki made me think of something I wish I hadn’t thought about.” She said.
Darcy’s face scrunched in a pout. “Loki’s full of hot air, don’t mind anything he said, Natka…”
Natasha shook her head. If only it were that simple. “No, he’s right. I… I have so much red in my ledger… on my hands.” She added, when Darcy’s look became confused.
Darcy’s confusion didn’t clear one bit. If anything, she was even more confused.
Natasha sighed. She’d hoped her best friend had gotten the hint without having to tell her to her face, but… “I’ve killed, Temnochka, so so many people…” and she lowered her head.
Darcy’s hands reached for her face. “Hey, hey, why are you so upset? It’s nothing I already didn’t know, right? I get it, it’s horrible, but you were doing what you thought was right. You survived. You’re not to blame .”
Natasha looked into her eyes, and saw honest conviction in what the Rusalka was saying. She shook her head, “You don’t understa-”
“What? Killing people?” Darcy scoffed. “Natka, I don’t know where you’ve been in the last several decades, but killing people is in my job description. Killing people is what I do. And yes, fine, you all remember us for the nice blessings we give you when you give us pretty gifts --we’re suckers for shinies-- but we are spirits of vengeance first and foremost. And girl, when we kill, people remember it. We’re supposed to make it so dramatic. I have drowned, strangled, gotten people to dance until they dropped dead, I get it. Killing? It’s ugly. It’s not pretty, and it’s all in all the most horrible feeling I’ve ever felt since I’ve been alive. But it’s my job. That rapist that drowned her kid in the Neva? Our job. That man that had fun killing four little girls? My responsibility. It’s a sick feeling but someone has to do it. You are as much a monster as I am, and you aren’t. You aren’t.” She stressed. “You’re the most important person in my existence. You. Are not. A monster.” She took Natasha’s hands in hers, and covered them in water. “You’re real and wonderful, you get it?” And she gave her her big smile, the one that showed a whole lot of teeth but lit up her face with sheer, unadulterated contentedness.
She really, really didn’t ‘get it’, but she smiled back anyway between her tears.
They spent the night on the edge of the pool, holding hands and watching the moon that had Temnoe’s scales sparkle and Natasha’s necklace shine with an otherworldly glow.
Her neck was aching. She was uncomfortable.
And this was definitely not her bed.
Something snuggled into her back, and her training made her snap to awareness in one second flat.
“Go back to sleep, Nat,” Darcy mumbled in her hair.
They were in Darcy’s rooms. She vaguely remembered watching the moon and then getting into bed. But now it was impossible to fall back asleep. Not with her mind kicking into gear as fast as Red Room had had her get used to.
She suddenly itched to move.
Darcy had no such compunctions and rolled almost on top of her. She was already fast asleep.
She tried to gently roll back, but the spirit snuggled deeper and draped a hand across her chest.
Fine. She huffed softly, and eased back onto the bed.
She was asleep before ten minutes went out.
When she came to, the bed was empty.
Natasha was too well-dignified to rub her eyes, but she did quickly pass her hand down her face and neck to ease some of the soreness.
Temnoe was in the kitchen. She could hear her humming softly over the sizzling of the pan.
She exited the room, which had more blue than she could ever like, and padded to the kitchen.
“Good morning!” Temnoe said cheerily, flipping rice on her plate.
Natasha smiled. “Rice with milk? And good morning, yourself.”
Temnoe nodded, smiling. “Of course! What’s the day without rice and milk, you told me that yourself!” And she had, back in Stalingrad, when life was easier and memories fresher.
The smile on her face widened and didn’t fade for the whole meal.
Life went back to normal, if not better than it was before.
Natasha frankly hadn’t realized how much keeping secrets from her dearest and most important friend had weighed on her in these years. She’d never thought she’d feel so… free.
The fact that it hadn’t had an epic blowback was a plus, too.
Darcy was as happy and as affectionate as she’d always been. She’d always been a touchy-feely creature, especially since the human form gave her much more freedom to interact with people. She touched and caressed and patted and always tried to keep her hands busy.
She’d also dance a lot, like she had in Stalingrad all those years ago.
And thinking of Stalingrad while watching Temnoe move to a beat only she could hear, her eyes fell on the calendar in the common room.
She found Temnoe in the pool, basking in the water.
Natasha didn’t usually interrupt her into her daily swims, in case the Rusalka was puttering with her flowers and she intruded such a private moment.
That day, however, she made an exception.
“Am I intruding?” She asked from the edge of the door, holding a plastic bag in front of her. If Darcy said yes, she’d leave before her eyes fell on her.
“No, absolutely, come in!” Came the chirping reply.
Temnoe was grooming.
Natasha automatically closed her eyes and turned away. Of course, she could not unsee what she’d seen, but.
The spirit laughed. “I’m not going to curse you into oblivion for this, Natya, come on! Besides, I’ve seen you naked a lot of times in eighty years, it was about time I returned the favour somehow.”
Natasha sighed. Her friend was an exibitionist. “I had suspicions on your exibitionism, but this…”
Temnoe laughed. “Not really. I’m not even very presentable at the moment.”
For an immortal spirit of luck, she really wasn’t. Her flowers were scattered all over her tail in a very confused manner, some had their petals chapped and broken, and her scales were all in disarray.
“You look like a cute mess.” She chuckled.
Darcy’s lips twitched. “At least I’m cute.” She absentmindedly reached for her tail and stroked the scales back into position. “Did you need something?”
“Actually, I did.” Natasha reached into the plastic bag.
Darcy’s eyes widened and soon became huge at the sight of cornflowers.
“It’s the first week of June.” Natasha said offhandedly, “didn’t know what to get you, so…”
And she was suddenly in the pool, soaked wet.
The Rusalka was hugging her, her face alight with joy and unshed tears.
And maybe it was the high of emotion, maybe the water, she would never know, but the kiss was nice and when it ended, they both were smiling.
Darcy’s inhumanity was an open secret in the Tower.
Natasha and Clint knew, so did Jane and, Natasha suspected, Thor. Steve was off travelling on his motorbike, and Tony and Bruce were hardly outside of the lab.
So it wasn’t unusual to see her wearing wreaths of cornflowers anywhere, singing melodiously to the notes of whatever was on her iPod and brewing ridiculous algae concoctions that smelled awful but worked miracles on their tired bones.
What was unusual, was that Tony hadn’t yet picked up on it.
What he had cottoned on, however, was the fact that Natasha and Darcy were very much an item.
And so he liked to randomly appear all over their path in hopes of ‘catching them’.
While Natasha found it mildly annoying, she perhaps found it more annoying that Darcy found it funny. So funny, that she started activating privacy mode in various places in the Tower just to see him run and knock down doors.
“Please, stop giving him ideas.” She told her one day, as they cooked dinner for the whole Tower.
“Nah, it’s fun,” Darcy replied, her tongue peeking out to lick the spoon.
“And don’t do that.” She chuckled, “it’s not for eating until it’s cooked.”
Darcy shrugged, “‘s not like I’m getting salmonella from that, honey.”
That was true. Chances for any of them of getting salmonella were literally zero. She shrugged, reached out herself and stole her spoon. “Hey!” Darcy’s face was full of mock indignation. She tried to reach for the spoon, but Natasha was quicker and in the end she ended up with a faceful of cookie batter.
Natasha chuckled, then laughed hard at the confused expression on her girlfriend’s (and didn’t that thought make her happy) face.
“What is this sound of laughter I hear!” Tony’s voice made way into the common kitchen, “is that Romanoff?” He gasped, for real.
Natasha quickly composed herself, and looked impassively at him.
He pouted. “Fine, I saw nothing.”
“Don’t worry, Tony!” Darcy smiled from behind her, “Cookies are almost ready! Now excuse me, I’m going to get changed.” And she left the room, her hand lingering a second over Natasha’s shoulder.
Tony looked at her, then back at the assassin, and mouthed ‘ so whipped ’ before leaving as well.
Natasha pursed her lips.
She was above revenge anyway.
“Hey, Nat?” That was Clint from the vents, “I’m in if you want revenge.”
Or not.
It took five more weeks before someone else walked in on Darcy while she was in her true form.
And, maybe unsurprisingly, it wasn’t Tony.
Natasha had never worried about Bruce. The man was as unobtrusive as it could be, with his gentle manners and his propensity for avoiding confrontations, or human interactions altogether.
In fact, he almost only interacted with Tony in some kind of exclusive bro-friendship that left everybody else slightly outside.
He also never went to the pool, despite his frequent use of the gym for yoga.
His alter ego was also disquieting.
Frankly, if she hadn’t lived with Temnoe most of her life, she would have been freaked out by the green giant. As it was, Snake Temnoe was much more intimidating, and with lethal powers (that didn’t involve ‘smashing’) to boot. If she had to pick one of them as an enemy, she’d go for the Hulk.
She supposed someone would have walked on Temnoe sooner or later. At least it hadn’t been Pepper.
If Pepper had seen the snake tail, she’d have screamed, and Iron Man would have been activated in less than three seconds.
As it was, Bruce was maybe the second-best option.
They were lounging in the pool, with Natasha almost ready to enter and maybe swim a bit, even if she’d have to avoid Temnoe’s tail, which was now almost as long as the pool itself.
He walked in and waved hello.
She responded in kind automatically, her eyes wide and her face pale.
Darcy slowly sunk into the water.
Bruce excused himself, because the pool was busy, and walked out.
A beat, and then he walked back in.
“...Is this some kind of kink play I’m not keeping up with, or is there a giant snake in the pool?”
Before Natasha, or Darcy for that matter, could explain, the words ‘giant snake in the pool’ had reactivated JARVIS’s security protocols, and the AI reactivated itself.
Natasha fought the urge to facepalm.
Darcy sank a bit lower into the water “Well… that escalated quickly…”
Bruce was okay with Darcy’s immortality as much as Jane had been.
As a man of science and research who had lived in India for a while, he was familiar with the cults of legends and creatures of magic and while he didn’t completely believe in them, couldn’t refute proof right in front of his eyes.
Tony had been more curious than anything else. Well, at first he’d been incredulous.
Much like Clint had been, his coping method seemed to involve question upon question upon question and each of them had a separate tab for questions that derived from those.
In the next few days, Natasha and Darcy had almost to no intimacy other than at night, which they spent together in Darcy’s bed.
“So I was thinking…”
“No.”
“But… Short stack…!”
“No, Tony.”
“But-!”
“I’m calling Pepper, Tony.”
“FINE.”
SHIELD was Hydra.
Natasha dried her hair absentmindedly. The lies, all the lies, the kills, everything she’d done for SHIELD, she’d done for the same organization she’d hoped to escape since she’d been into Red Room.
All for nothing.
Destiny truly was inescapable, sometimes. You thought it was the right thing. Yeah, yeah she had. But now? Now she didn’t know anymore.
She knew Steve, and the Avengers, they trusted her and she could trust them, somehow. She knew Temnoe, or Darcy, and she trusted her with her life.
Steve trusted Sam Wilson, and for now, she would too.
“Do you have a landline I can use?” she asked him, before they left for fort Meade.
“ Hey... we’re going dark in a few minutes… I want you to know, if this goes bad… I love you.”
The third time Natasha Romanoff, formerly Natalia Romanova, met the Zimnji Soldat, she was in another tiny, cramped car with someone she was escorting, and that someone ended up dead. The fact that this one was a prisoner did only marginally help. She wouldn’t miss Sitwell, but she would miss the information he could have provided.
But then, the Winter Soldier started going after them for real, and the possibility of the message she left Darcy being their last conversation became much more real.
But Natasha Romanoff was now a soldier (you’re a spy, not a soldier, Nat… not today Clint) , so she got up from her crouch, and went for the Winter Soldier.
It was over in a flash.
One second she was standing over him, his head in her chokehold as she tried to garrote him, and one second he had her by the neck and was stripping her of her pendant.
He threw her away like she was made of paper, and the necklace snapped under the pressure.
She gasped in a sudden intake of air spurred by her impact on the ground and spat out some blood.
Natasha could only watch in slow motion as he looked at the cornflower pendant, and with a single movement of his mechanical arm, completely destroyed it .
SHIELD went down.
Captain America was in the hospital.
Natasha had been summoned for interrogation.
The world was a horrible mess.
Despite her zero will to deal with Stark, she couldn’t wait to be ‘home’.
In the Tower’s penthouse, there was absolute silence.
The whole common area of Avengers’ Tower was empty.
Natasha frowned. That was unusual.
“JARVIS?” She called softly, palming the gun on her thigh. She also made stock of her knives, just in case.
“Yes, Miss Romanoff?” The AI answered.
“Where is everyone?” She asked.
The AI hesitated. She relaxed her muscles, just in case she had to coil them back again.
“They’re in Dr Foster’s laboratory… Miss Romanoff…” The AI replied reluctantly.
She nodded and made her way quickly downstairs.
The labs were silent too, which made her stop. The labs always, always had some kind of weird music blaring at top volume, or Darcy chattering aimlessly over Tony’s own chatter.
She entered the lab and quickly Tony went straight to her, covering her visual as much as he could.
“Look, Natasha,” this made her worry more. Stark never used anyone’s first name. And where was Darcy? And Clint? “You don’t want to see this, we need to- we…”
But she had already sidestepped him.
Dr Foster was crying over something on the floor.
On a pool of congealed blue liquid, several wilted cornflowers floated.
Natasha stood there, disbelieving, frozen, for she didn’t know how long. Time had stopped. She didn’t care. Her world was dead.
As much as it hurt to lose her identity as a child, this hurt more.
Whereas the first time she’d thrown herself in the job, getting lost through the body count left in her wake and the blood on her hands, this time it wasn’t a possibility.
And so she spent days between the dance room à la barre and her room, which she hadn’t really used for the last two years.
She avoided the pool like the plague.
She didn’t talk to anyone. She didn’t care enough.
This is what you get for caring, a tiny voice inside of her whispered maliciously. She batted it away.
I wouldn’t trade the last twenty years for anything , she repeated to herself.
But now, she had nothing.
A knock on the door interrupted her, and she forced herself not to ignore whoever it was.
“Romanoff…” it was Stark.
She took a deep breath. She really didn’t want to talk. “Stark, please-”
“No no no wait, let me speak first.” He said quickly.
She turned to him, and hoped that her face wasn’t the ugly thing she thought it was.
“So…” He started with that forced offhandedness of his, “I… really don’t know how to start this, this was a horrible idea. But okay, uhm, Barton got me these and said they were the thing Short stack had given you and…” He was gesticulating, but she didn’t have the energy to follow his hands. What a wreck she had become.
He held out his hand, palm closed.
“I’m trying to be polite about it, delicate and tactful like Pepper said, but this is not my thing really, I’m more sophisticated, or blunt. Maybe. But well. Okay, so Hawkniss got me scraps of a pendant that he said belonged to you and Short stack. It was done with some kind of old plastic…”
“If I may, Sir,” JARVIS interrupted dutifully, “the fragments of pendant were done with a substance called bakelite, which was extremely expensive at the time.”
He moved a hand in front of a camera, maybe. “Yeah okay, that. Your family must have spent a fortune on that. But no matter. The thing was basically destroyed, so I couldn’t save that. BUT! Hawkie there told me the important part was the flower in it, so here. Stark approved resin, 100% indestructible. To… you know…” He cleared his throat as he handed her the beautiful, new pendant, “remember her or something.”
“Stark…” she started and took a deep breath.
“I know, I know, it was a terrible idea I knew it I-”
“...Thank you.” She said as she carefully took the necklace from his outstretched hand.
He gaped a bit, then stammered a quick okay and beat a hasty retreat as soon as the tears started falling from her eyes.
She fell to the floor, crying.
A few days later, Natasha felt her world restart, very slowly, for a while.
She still didn’t care much about anything, but there was something she wanted to do.
She approached Clint first, since he’d known Darcy the longest, and then one by one the other Avengers and Jane Foster agreed to her plan.
They somberly boarded a Quinjet the same morning and flew towards the sun.
Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, shone brightly under the summer sun.
People were getting ready for the real summer and all in all it looked like Heaven.
And wasn’t that thought morose?
They spent the day picking up cornflowers, a lot of cornflowers, and methodically separating them from the stems.
As evening approached, they could see people getting ready to go to the river.
“What’s all this hubbub?” Sam Wilson, pararescue and newest recruit asked, genuinely curious.
And answering still pained her. “It’s the first week of June.” Clint answered in her stead. “Believers in the slavic world celebrate the Rusalki and thank them for their blessing and protection, by dumping flowers for them to decorate their bodies. The more flower a Rusalka has, the more people prayed at her feet.”
Sam Wilson looked at the thousands of flowers in their possession, and a deep understanding lit his eyes.
Dutifully, they dumped all the cornflowers in the Volga, and waited for the waters to gently sweep them away.
This is goodbye , she thought desperately.
They would be leaving at any minute.
“Nat…” Clint squeezed her shoulder.
She nodded, and closed her eyes.
‘Tantsuy, Natka?’ Her head snapped up.
She turned to her friends. “Did you hear that?”
They watched her with a mixture of pity and understanding, but shook their heads. Even Jane, who had been crying all the way, was shaking her head.
It… it could have been an hallucination. What a horrible daydream to have.
They all turned away from the river. It was time to go.
“ Are you going away ?” A voice asked from behind them.
She watched the backs of her fellow Avengers, trying to see if any of them reacted, this time.
They did. They stiffened and turned and paled and pointed.
And she couldn’t turn. She couldn’t. Because if she turned, and it was something different than what she was hoping, then…
“ Nataaalia? ” A voice sang behind her.
She drew in a shuddering breath, and turned.
Temnoe was peeking from the Volga, her body under her neck deep underwater, her smile wide and full of white teeth.
And she didn’t wait, she didn’t think and damn the currents, she was in the water and drawing the spirit in her arms before she had the time to formulate an answer.
At her neck, the cornflower shone again.