ЧЕРНАЯ ВДОВА

there was every reason for natasha not to trust wanda maximoff. after all, the black widow could count on one hand the number of people she really, truly trusted – and the inclusion of a girl who started her journey as an avenger on the wrong side didn’t exactly line up with the others. but that's exactly why nat was drawn to wanda; an instinct she hasn’t felt in a long time – the instinct to take care of someone. not that she needed taking care of, but maybe a voice of defense in the face of people who didn’t understand.

wanda may not have been from the red room. she may not have been brainwashed in the most banal definition of the word. but she was young, misguided, trying to do something good for the country she called home.

so while natasha wasn’t the opening up type, she reached out. she tried to show her support in quiet acts of kindness, because those are what kept her afloat, too. every time someone trusted her in any way, she knew she was closer to redemption – to becoming the woman she wanted so badly to be.

natasha made her way through avengers headquarters in search of the scarlet witch, quietly wondering and hoping that she was adjusting to life here well. she could have found home with the x-men, but… natasha was glad she was here. when she finally found the young mutant, she smirked. “hey,” she greeted. “i haven’t seen you around much.” which didn’t say a lot. she herself had been minding her own business, spending more time with james than anyone else. she’d rescinded some of her openness with the avengers since her past had gone viral, like the re-surfacing of a corpse buried in a shallow grave. except in natasha’s case, it was hundreds of corpses. hundreds.

“you up for some training? your hand-to-hand combat’s getting good.” that much was true. natasha wasn’t much help in training wanda in her powers as much as coming up with ideas on how to use them. it was funny, she realized, that the avengers, for all that they were, didn’t really have powers until maximoff. “or tea. i would not mind a hot cup of tea right now.”

it would’ve been so easy to say that there had been nothing good in her life until nick fury. natalia would’ve welcomed the thought – a quick and easy way to forget her dark past because no good had come of it. a simple solution to all her problems now. a bow on top of a package wrapped in old newspaper clippings with marmaduke comics and unfinished crosswords that the neighbor threw out. but it wasn’t really true. because out of everything – out of the black smoke and blood and dangerous nights at the bolshoi that was her life, there was james.

james, who she’d left behind. who natasha swore she’d return for. who’d been reduced to nothing but the winter soldier once she’d gone. the red room’s mistake had been allowing them the chance to fall in love – a risk they wouldn’t take again after she’d defected. the thing about the red room is that when they didn’t want to be found, they were impossible to find. even for her. it had been crazy to think she could go back for james. she wished she’d taken the whole freezer. maybe then their relationship now would’ve been less complicated and more... marmaduke.

she found him in his room, where he was most days. avoiding everyone else, which she couldn’t blame him for. not when you considered everything. people like natalia and james would always bear the weight of shame that the other avengers could never understand. whatever bad things they’d done in their past – their guilty consciences weren’t dripping with blood. they wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives trying to make up for things that can never be taken back.

“лучик.” she greeted him in russian – an instinct natasha couldn’t quite get past. they’d helped each other on that front – he perfected her english and she’d perfected his russian. лучик had always been her favorite nickname for him. ray of sun. the one person in her life that made her feel real. the ray of sun that illuminated natalia’s true self even in the midst of an institution that wanted nothing more than to suffocate and darken it.

natasha tapped his door softly with her knuckle, a small smile on her lips. “busy?”