#yourleft

@yourleft   sent  :   " you're not your past. "

                    𝚂𝙷𝙴  𝙰𝙿𝙿𝚁𝙴𝙲𝙸𝙰𝚃𝙴𝚂  𝚃𝙷𝙴  𝚂𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙼𝙴𝙽𝚃.     truly,  she  does.     however,  agreement  with  the  it  won’t  be  found  here.     she  doesn’t  find  steve  to  look  at  things  with  rose-colored  glasses  —  he  has  seen  far  too  much  war  for  that.     but  he  doesn’t  know  the  full  extent  of  her  past.     the  only  person  who  does  is  clint  and  he  isn’t  here  to  help  steer  the  conversation  away  from  this  topic.     it  isn’t  a  lack  of  trust  that  has  her  hoarding  her  secrets  as  a  woman  of  mystery  among  the  avengers.     natasha  trusts  each  and  every  one  of  them  with  her  very  life.     but  confiding  her  past  in  someone  is  ...  complicated.     and  now  she  has  the  living  reminder  of  just  how  complicated  that  past  is  in  the  form  steve’s  own  best  friend.     she  has  omitted  truths  and  just  knows  that  he  will  deem  lies  by  omission  as  lies  none  the  less.     natasha  should  tell  him  about  the  red  room.     he  may  not  be  pleased  that  she  lied,  but  he  would  understand  —  but  she  is  just  not  ready.

     ‘  that’s the oldest trick in the book, steve.  ’   the black widow is dead.  and she is not dead.  and she thinks, to some degree, that terrifies steve, that there is a raging possibility that two extremes exist within the same person.  she’s a dead woman walking, containing multitudes, an endless circle of life and death that she manipulates because she controls her own story.  and thus, a paradox leads her here, with shower-damp hair, a bowl of cereal and a bag of peas taped to her ribs.  I  DIE  MORE  OFTEN  THAN  MANY.  the smile’s gentler than most, but still spread out around a bite of froot loops.

    ‘  of course i do.  i know everything.  ’   natasha grins, teases.  the story’s one she grew up with, and then one that she came to prominence because of.  her sixteenth birthday was spent on a russian battlefield, listening to ghost stories about the superhuman american to distract from the mild hypothermia that had set into her fingertips.  her ex-husband, a soviet experiment meant to compete with captain america.  she doesn’t just know it  —  she’s the flip side to the whole story, hers irrevocably but unknowingly intertwined with theirs.  two sides of the same coin, come around to meet in the middle.

   exhaustion threatens to shut down her system by the time they evac and climb two sets of stairs of the apartment complex to reach the front door.   steve, looking just as worn as she feels,  appears between brief flashes of complete black  –––  moments of relapse as her lids close longer than she can hold them open.    she can hear his attempts to find the right key as a bunch of them jangle in his fingers until the lock clicks softly in compliance in the door.

   the springs give a gentle groan as sharon sits at the edge and free-falls back into the duvet,  and steve offers a low chuckle to himself at it that brings a ginger smile to her lips.    her entire body sinks into the mattress,  too sore to move anymore now it's finding purchase upon a soft surface within four solid walls after so long.

   “ wait  –––  ”    she sits back up and clutches steve’s wrist just as he's turning for the door,  and it takes the agent a moment to catch herself as much as she can see it does him.    you don’t have to go.   she watches his expression shift in the matter of a moment:  shocked,  hesitant,  and a little self-conscious as he drops her gaze.

𝚒𝚗𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚖𝚒𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 :       [ DANCE ] : our muses dance together in close quarters.

The first few months after the snap had been rough. Natasha kind of disappeared. She had lost almost everyone she had ever cared about and coping with loss was just something she wasn't good at. So, she did what she did best... she ran.

That didn't last very long because soon the guilt settled in. She needed to help take care of those who were left behind. Those that needed some semblance of normalcy amidst the chaos. That and she missed him -- Natasha missed Steve and the widow didn't miss anything ( so far as anyone knew ).

He had welcomed her home with open arms and Natasha never meant to worry him, and she could tell that she had by the look on his face when he pulled her closer. It had been a couple days since she'd been back and he had allowed her some space, but she needed to see him. To explain that her leaving had nothing to do with him. But instead he just pulled her close and there was soft music playing in the background. Music she recognized of a life before all of this.

It wasn't really a life before, rather a life during. She remembered the USO shows that Steve used to put on back when the war was raging on and one of the songs that played was one she fell in love with and only his words in her hair brought her back to reality.

"I owed you a dance if I remember correctly."

Hands clutched at him and there was a smile that beamed across her features as she looked up at him from where her cheek rested against his chest. "About damn time, Rogers. Only took you sixty years." Even though their time before was a mission for her, it didn't mean she didn't have emotions, no matter how much the red room beat them out of her. Natasha loved Steve and had for a very long time.

    is there a  word  in any language to describe how she is ?  sad doesn’t quite feel like it cuts it.  she’s sad, of course, but there are other things too  —  angry, distraught, lonely.  all of the above.  devastated  feels like the closes thing she can get to, but even that doesn’t cut it close when she’s got a wreck of a man that hasn’t left her bed in two days.  not that she can bring herself to kick clint out, no matter how thick with heartache the air feels whenever he walks into the room nowadays.  normally, she’d kick him out, because normally, he isn’t reliving his best friend dying in front of him.  it’s not right.  

     so there’s bobbi and clint, bobbi and clint and the endless, gaping space between them.  it’s bobbi and clint, and they’re missing natasha, both literally and figuratively, because all they’ve got is a stupid headstone with an empty grave on a lakefront.  ridiculous, bobbi thinks, even as she uses the back of her sleeve to brush dried leaves off of it and reveal carefully carved lettering that feels both too big and too small for who natasha was.   ‘  when clint and i got married, i was   .  .  .  jealous of her before i ever met her.  i was worried i’d have to compete for his affection, you know ?  you hear stories about the black fucking widow, and how can you not be scared for your relationship ?  ’ 

        NATASHA ROMANOVA.  THE  BLACK  WIDOW.  AVENGER.  FRIEND.  HERO.  

     ‘  instead, i met her, and we knew each other for all of ten minutes before it was like clint didn’t matter anymore.  ’   i’m a third wheel in my own home, clint had said once when he’d been shoved off his own bed because his wife and best friend had wanted to have a sleepover.  there’d never been  bobbi  and  clint,  or  clint  and  natasha.  it had always been the three of them, one barely managing to exist without the other.  the best mistake of his entire life had been bringing them together.  the worst, bobbi assumes he thinks, had been bringing natasha with him to vormir.   

         ‘  most of it.  ’   she knows  a  story.  actually, she knows  several,  and she suspects that some culmination and pieces of all of those stories make up the one he indicates.  she knows from stories told to her as a girl, on a battlefield she was too young to have experienced.  she knows from stories told to her in secret, by a man who was surprised he remembered enough to tell them.  she knows from stories told to her in files  ;  grant, steven rogers.  aka  captain  america.  she knows from the mouths of others, but she also knows from living.  everything, cobbled together, like a puzzle where none of the pieces quite fit together.  it’s all half-truths and embellishments, all serving to make him larger than life.  

    in the years that she’s known him, she’s come to find that steve rogers is both larger than life, and just a man.  steve is the man, and captain america is the symbol, and they are both the same and not.  perhaps that’s where they all  —  herself and bucky included  — fit in, each doing pieces of the job to make  captain  america  happen.  and natasha is both her own story, and not at all.  she belongs simultaneously nowhere, and everywhere, both the main character in her own existence, and the supporting character and footnotes in others.  if there is a role to be played in this story, she’ll play it to perfection, if only because of what he symbolizes.