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It’s because of J.A.R.V.I.S., of all things.
After the Chitauri level New York, Stark decides that their official S.H.I.E.L.D meetings aren’t good enough anymore. They need to stay in contact on a more consistent, casual basis, he claims, just in case. Natasha privately thinks that he just wants an excuse to be around people who know what it was like. She sees the effect the attack has had on him, the way his hands shake slightly, the lines of exhaustion etched into his face.
She understands. She still dreams sometimes that she’s on the Helicarrier, listening to the Hulk tear the walls to pieces as he tries to get his hands on her.
Sympathy or not, though, these “informal briefs” all go the same way. It starts with a sincere attempt to talk about recent suspicious activity, then turns into one of Stark’s many tangents about whatever he happens to be interested in at that moment. The tangent inevitably devolves into a snippy argument between Stark and Rogers, with Banner gamely attempting to mediate. Then Fury loses what little patience he has left, Thor tries to bring everyone back up with Asgardian platitudes, and Dum-E brings them all coffee, spilling most of it in the process. She could set her watch by it, if she wore a watch.
Today is no exception. They’re still in the tangent phase of the meeting. This time, Stark is trying to convince them all that they need to let him build them suits.
“I’m just saying,” Stark says. The holographic map floating over the table shows seven possible locations for a Neo-Nazi terrorist cell in Bulgaria. He hasn’t looked at it for the past half hour. “It would make everything a lot easier. And more fun.”
“I do not require a suit,” Thor says, shaking his head. “My armour and my hammer are sufficient in battle.”
“You’ve made enough suits, Tony,” Banner says wearily. “I’ve seen your basement.”
He waves a hand dismissively. “Those are mine,” he replies. His voice is jittery and slightly manic, like he’s been awake for too long. Which he probably has. “I’m talking individual suits, custom made. Bespoke suits! One for each of you. Yours would be the hardest, I’d have to make sure it could expand enough to fit the other guy—J.A.R.V.I.S., make a note of that.”
“Yes, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replies. It’s amazing how much exasperated resignation it can put into just two syllables.
“Stars and Stripes there would be easy,” Stark continues, pointing to Rogers. He gestures at the air over the table. The map disappears entirely, replaced by a slowly rotating blueprint of an iron suit with a winged helm. Beside her, Fury huffs a deep sigh of annoyance. “I’d just have to paint it blue and red—”
“That could lead to some confusion, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. interjects smoothly, “as Colonel Rhodes’ suit has a similar colour scheme.”
“Right, yeah, table that then. I’ll get back to it. I could make it look like a bald eagle. Or something. J.A.R.V.I.S., make a note of that, too.” He points to Natasha. “And for From Russia With Love I’d just have to shrink the design down a little, spraypaint it black. Maybe add some web shooters or something to keep with the whole spider theme.”
“Like that kid,” Clint yawns, stretching so broadly he nearly hits Banner in the face. Banner flinches and shifts out of the way. “What’s his name? Peter something?”
“Parker.” Tony nods. “A Peter Parker suit. Only, you know, a female Peter Parker. And better, obviously, that kid clearly made his himsel—”
“Agent Romanoff is not female, sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. says.
Natasha feels herself go very still, like falling and bracing for impact. Fury stiffens, shooting her a glance from the corner of his eye.
“If we could get back on task,” he says, his tone a warning—to Stark or to J.A.R.V.I.S., she’s not sure which. But it’s too late.
“Okay, sure, not female,” Tony says, rolling his eyes. “Do you need to be debugged? I could do it right now, if nobody minds-”
“I am one hundred percent bug-free, sir, I assure you,” J.A.R.V.I.S. replies, sounding a little indignant. “There are no females in this room. Agent Romanoff is biologically male.”
Natasha grips the edge of the conference table so hard it hurts, her gaze fixed resolutely on a point near the ceiling. She doesn’t move to watch the others’ heads turn, but she can feel their eyes settling on her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck.
“Ah,” says Tony. “Well. That… what?”
***
Many of the memories she has are false. For years she couldn't distinguish between them, the real and the not-real, and it's taken long hours of work with doctors and therapists to make sense of what's been put into her brain. Even now she sometimes finds herself trying to go en pointe, forgetting that she's not a dancer and never was. Her memories lie to her, her file lies to her, her very body lies to her.
There's one she's never doubted.
It’s a brief flash in her mind, all image and no context. Darkness and rusted cots full of children who lie unnaturally still, their training holding even in sleep. The chill of tile under her feet as she slips out of bed, past the guard at the door. The long white hall to the bathroom, where she must use a stool to peer over the sink and into the mirror.
The face looking back at her is pale and thin, all eyes and sharp angles. It is delicate, which is dangerous here, where so many things are broken and remade. She looks four and knows that she isn’t. Her hair is a brighter red, almost carroty, and has only just started growing back into a fine, prickly bristle. They shave all of the children’s heads once a week, to avoid the spread of lice and vermin. She’d cried the first time, and been slapped. She hasn’t cried since.
They call her “Мальчик,” which is not her name. There is another name they say is hers, a boy's name, although it catches in her throat when she tries to say it to herself.
She takes off her pajama top, draping it over her head, where it sticks a little to the stubble. It doesn't look much like hair, really, but if she doesn't open her eyes too wide she can pretend.
***
Clint already knew, of course. Clint already knows most things about her. Natasha tries not to feel too scared about that, but she wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes, thinking she sees him in the dark, an arrow aimed between her eyes.
He comes to her anyway after it happens, letting himself in through the window (which is frankly unnecessary since she lives on the ground floor). Her apartment is covered by S.H.I.E.L.D. security systems, but he can bypass those, and he knows how to get in without setting off any of the ones she’s set up herself.
He knows because she taught him. It’s another thing she tries not to feel scared about.
He settles in next to her on the couch, clutching a pizza box in one hand and a case of beer under his arm. Her apartment isn’t big—spiders like small spaces—but it always seems much smaller when he’s there, and she finds herself worrying less about how much emptiness there still is, blank walls and unfilled bookshelves. “Hi,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You want to talk about it?”
“No.”
He nods and puts the pizza and beer on the coffee table. “Stuffed crust,” he says, flipping the box open. The scent of tomato sauce and cheese fills the room. “Onion, mushroom, extra bacon.”
She eyes it suspiciously. “Pepperoni?” she asks, wary. She can’t stand pepperoni, the taste or the smell or the sneaky way it sometimes hides under the cheese.
“Would I do that to you?” He shakes his head and hands her a slice, digging the remote out from between the couch cushions. “Get comfy. There’s a Dog Cops marathon on.”
She smiles, reaching for a beer.
***
The first time one of her instructors catches her putting on lipstick he breaks her arm. The right one, the one she was using to hold the tube. Bone presses upwards against the skin, making it bulge. He does it without comment, even without anger, and takes her to the infirmary afterwards. The lipstick is confiscated. She stole it while she was on assignment anyway, because she saw a woman applying it in the mirrored glass of a store front and couldn't stop staring.
She is twelve, she thinks. But she could be younger.
She steals again, other things, some of which she can make herself throw away. When she can't, they are eventually discovered. She is punished, again and again, and it does not stop her from doing it, again and again.
They realize soon enough that doing violence to her body is insufficient. They set their sights on her mind instead, using doctors and machines and volt after volt of sickly sharp electricity. They call her by the name she hates as she twitches and bleeds. Her head is shaved once more, this time to make way for scalpels and bone saws. She sees angels, hears music, falls down into darkness again and again, but there are things you can forget and things that are a part of you, and she knows which one this is.
It is comforting, in a way, to know that she has something they cannot take from her.
Eventually they are ordered to stop. She is an investment, after all, and if they continue they may damage the brain they spent so much time and money reshaping. It takes her weeks to return to peak condition.
The last time one of her instructors catches her, this time pulling on a pair of nylon stockings in the relative privacy of a broom closet, he simply stands in the doorway and watches her. She looks at him, neither defiant nor afraid. Defiance and fear have been burned out of her. She is probably fourteen, but feels much older, and very tired.
Maybe they’ll kill her this time, she thinks. It doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.
He rubs his chin and says slowly, "I have a proposition for you, comrade."
***
She tries to talk to Rogers about it one day after things have settled a bit, thinking that if anyone will need an explanation it will be him. He cuts her off before she can finish a sentence.
"Natasha," he says firmly, "you say you're a da—a woman, then you're a woman. What else would I need to know?”
She considers hugging him, but sees the blush rising on his cheeks and decides that he might find it strange. She buys him a cake pop instead, savouring his surprised pleasure as he bites into it.
***
It is an exchange, he says, no more than that. She is a valuable agent, an asset even at her age, and they do not want to lose her. (She knows what he means when he says “lose.”) He knows of procedures that can be done, chemicals that can be procured, so long as all parties are discreet. It takes her some time to realize the full weight of what he is saying. They will not call her by that name anymore. They will not cut her hair. She will have a new name, a changed body, and no one will tell her that she is a boy.
“Normally, of course, we do not make such allowances,” he tells her. “But this is a special circumstance.”
The circumstance is that she is the best they have. This is left unspoken, but she knows it is true.
Her side of the exchange is simple. During the procedures, she will be given additional enhancements. She will become faster, stronger, able to make tactical decisions more quickly. They will make her into a weapon.
Her codename will be Black Widow.
It's an easy decision, in the end.
***
Banner is avoiding her.
It bothers her more than she wants it to, primarily because it's unexpected. There are some people who she would expect to react this way—she’d planned for it, the way she plans for everything—but he isn’t one of them. She’s seen how people treat him when they discover who and what he is, how much it affects him to be considered other and how quickly he blooms under the attention of anyone who doesn’t. She thought he would understand, if anyone did.
He doesn’t, and it seems unfair. He broke Harlem. That he’s the one ducking when he sees her in the corridor and rushing out of any room she enters does not make sense.
She gives him a month, hoping he’ll come around on his own. When he doesn’t, she breaks into his laboratory. She’s waiting for him there the next morning when he turns on the light, clutching a cup of coffee in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other.
“We need to talk,” she says.
He yelps and spills his coffee down the front of his shirt. She hands him a damp cloth.
“Okay,” he says once he’s cleaned himself off. He doesn’t look at her, but keeps his gaze turned downward, studying the tops of his shoes. Black high-top sneakers, not his style at all. Stark’s, then. “What did you want to talk about? Are there—is there an emergency, or…?”
She knows that he knows why she’s there. She waits, letting the silence fill his ears.
He turns his back to her and begins fussing with some of the equipment on the table behind him. “I scare you,” he says.
She frowns. Is this what he thinks she wants to hear? “No, you don’t.”
“I do. Well, not me, but… the other guy. Right?”
Thousands of pounds of rage throwing itself after her, ripping metal and shattering glass. She remembers hot, sour breath on the back of her neck and is glad he isn’t looking at her.
“Everybody’s scared of the other guy, Banner,” she says, then, thinking of Thor, amends, “at least, everybody with sense.”
He turns around, one hand tangled in his greying hair. He looks miserable. “But I did it on purpose. When we were in Calcutta. I knew you knew about the other guy. I wanted you to be afraid.”
“I hired someone to lure you away under false pretenses,” she replies, baffled. “I was a potential threat. Do you know how many times I’ve deliberately frightened people I felt threatened by?” It’s honestly not that many—she uses intrigue, desire, and confusion as weapons far more often than fear—but the guilt in his eyes and voice unnerves her. She wants it to go away.
His whole body seems to slump. With a visible effort, he meets her eyes.
“I’ve seen the statistics, Natasha,” he says, shaking his head. It should be impossible to connect him to what he can become in moments like these, when he seems to be making himself smaller on purpose. It’s not. “You have more reason to be afraid than any of us. Not just because of what you do, but because of who you are. Every day. And I—I contributed to that, I made it worse.”
This response is… unexpected. She can think of a dozen ways that her other selves would react to it, but she—Natasha—does not know how.
“I don’t blame you for that, Bruce,” she says finally. “You didn’t know. No one knew.”
“You did.” His voice is bleak. “Fury did.”
“And we knew who you were, too. We still wanted you on the team. Then and now. Doesn’t that tell you something?” When he doesn’t respond she steps closer, laying a careful hand upon his arm. He twitches at the contact but doesn’t move back. “I don’t care about what happened in Calcutta,” she tells him. “I do care about this. So stop. You shouldn’t be blamed for what you are, right? Neither should I.”
They’re good words, she thinks, even if she’s not sure she believes them.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his face still a mask of guilt. She’s not sure if he’s referring to now or then. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
“How about this,” she says. “I’m going to go buy you another coffee. You’re going to stop looking at me like someone just died. Alright?”
His attempt at a smile is weak, but she lets it pass muster for now. “Alright.”
She gets him a big one, with whipped cream and caramel drizzle and four different flavor shots. It costs nearly ten dollars, but it’s worth it to see him lose that anguished expression.
***
The pills they provide make her tired and sad at first. The operations are painful, recovery tedious. She does not like her new name, because she did not choose it and because it sounds a little like her old one, the taste and shape of it too familiar for comfort.
But the first time a man on the street calls her "девушка" when he asks for directions it’s like a deep breath after a long, long time underwater.
***
She isn't alone with Thor very often, and that makes her feel slightly on edge whenever they do end up together. She knows what to expect from most people, but his odd mixed of boisterousness, solemnity, rage, and pride makes him unpredictable. It’s unsettling.
Today, both of them strapped into a S.H.I.E.L.D. jet en route to a mission in Chechnya, he seems to be in a thoughtful mood. He gazes out the window for long stretches, saying nothing. (And why is he in the jet at all, she wonders, when he can fly?) Natasha finds herself lulled by the quiet and the rocking of the plane, and is nearly asleep when he eventually speaks.
"Those mountains," he says, pointing- Natasha can't follow the direction of his finger from where she’s sitting, so she has no idea which mountains he's talking about. "They remind me of a similar range in Asgard, in the north. I forget sometimes how alike our worlds are. Cut from the same cloth, but to different patterns." He fall silent for a moment, then continues, "You would like Asgard, I think, Agent Romanoff."
"Oh?" She doubts that very much. She doesn’t trust gods.
"Yes." He turns to look at her. Inside, as always, he seems even bigger than he is. “I must confess,” he says, “I am confused by the behaviour of our comrades in our last meeting. In Asgard it is understood that the body does not always perfectly match the soul, and we have easier ways of changing both, should we need to.” He pauses again, his eyes flicking back to the window for a brief second. “I think, my lady, that had you been born there rather than here, you would have been spared much pain.”
She glances down at her arm, the right one, resting on the arm of her seat. The bone is smooth and whole now, no sign of damage. Not even a scar.
Now she knows why he took the jet.
"Perhaps," she says. They pass the rest of the journey in silence. It is not uncomfortable.
***
This is one of the brighter memories: sunshine on rumpled sheets, a small and anonymous room, the warmth of a body beside her. It's a moment they stole together, even though they both know they’ll be found out sooner or later. She can make herself care about that afterwards, but not now. She traces the scar tissue at the edge of his shoulder, marveling at the way the flesh gives in to metal. The puckered edge of it feels interesting under her hands, like the rest of him.
It has taken some time to get used to the shift that came with the drugs and surgeries, arousal changing from a sudden burst to a slow, hot suffusion creeping through her body. She likes the change. It feels comfortable.
"Does it hurt?" It's the first thing she's said to him in hours. They work in silence, the two of them, and they usually fuck that way too, all heat and motion.
"It doesn't matter," he says after a moment, as though her words have to dig their way into his brain. He does not sound distressed or afraid. More than anything he seems distracted, as though her words are competing with a thousand other noises in his head. "Pain is fine."
She hums in assent, hearing the crack of bone and a tube of lipstick hitting the floor. Pain can be overcome.
She enjoys the luxury of these moments with him. She enjoys, too, the way her body feels, how the burn and stretch of her muscles have combined with afterglow to make her sleepy and content. She’s done this with many people since transitioning—it was part of the deal, implicit rather than explicit, one she understood beforehand—but he is the only one she’s chosen, the only one she wants to do it with again.
This is not love, she thinks, but it’s something good.
She knows him from training, the same face resurfacing again and again as she grew up. She changed. He didn’t. He doesn’t even have a touch of grey in his hair, she notes as she runs her hand through it. A shiver ripples through his body, and he presses up into the movement. He is always eager to be touched like this, gentle and slow, seeming hungry for it in a way she doesn’t understand. Perhaps he had it before with someone, someones.
“Do you remember your name?” she asks. He shakes his head, turning a little on his side to look at her.
“Do you?” he asks. His eyes are very blue. The cold in them has disappeared, replaced by something sad and strange. She's timed it before. It takes a little over two days for that change to happen, for him to turn into something other than an asset. It is only then that he looks at her as though he might recognize her, past missions struggling to the surface of his mangled brain. It is only then that they go to bed.
She does not answer him. How can she? She’s had too many names already. Instead she kisses him and says, “We should get up. They’ll be expecting us at the rendezvous soon.”
He closes his eyes, resting the weight of his metal hand on her naked hip. “Not yet,” he says. It’s a whisper, a prayer.
She should insist. She is good at motivating him, persuading him and leading him when he needs to be led; it’s one of the reasons why they work so well together. Instead she nods and curls closer, tightening her grip.
“Not yet,” she agrees, resting her head on his shoulder. He smells like blood and metal, sex and sweat.
Years later they meet again in Odessa. He shoots a man right through her and does not recognize her face. Both facts hurt.
***
A year is apparently enough time for Tony Stark to make a thousand robot suits and have a few of his houses blown up and accidentally turn his girlfriend into some kind of science dragon, but not enough time to apologize. She isn’t surprised. She’s met him, and therefore isn’t expecting an apology.
Which is why she’s surprised when he shows up on her doorstep.
He’s holding a box wrapped in ribbon and colourful paper, and his expression is as close to sheepish as it gets. A black car is parked on the side of the street. It’s one of the slightly less flashy ones, which means that Pepper is probably in it.
“Stark,” she says, fighting amusement.
“I reprogrammed J.A.R.V.I.S.,” he says without preamble. “Fury had a talk with me a while ago and apparently it could stand some fine-tuning on the issue of, uh, gender identity. So. I fixed it. It knows about preferred pronouns now and everything.”
She raises an eyebrow, thinking of how that “talk” must have played out. She imagines it was both one-sided and very, very loud. “Good for you,” she says, using a cool monotone that she knows will make him squirm uncomfortably.
He does. “I made you this,” he says, thrusting the box forward. She lets him hold it out for an extra second or two before she takes it. “Pepper wrapped it. Well, took it to be wrapped. She said that it would be a nice touch.”
“I’m sure she did,” Natasha murmurs, looking over his shoulder into the car. Sure enough, Pepper is sitting in the driver’s seat flipping through a very official-looking file folder, her bare feet tucked up on the dash. She looks over and waves cheerfully, smiling. Natasha waves back.
Stark bounces on the balls of his feet a little, clearly itching to get out of there. “Can you open it?” he asks, gesturing to the box. Natasha considers saying no, but opts to pull off the ribbon and paper very, very slowly instead. By the time she gets the lid off he looks like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin.
Inside, nestled on a bed of very classy-looking midnight blue velvet, is a gun.
“Just out of curiosity,” she says, looking up at him, “what did you get Pepper for Christmas?”
He winces. “Don’t even ask. Really.” He looks at her expectantly. “So do you like it?”
She picks it up, feeling the heft of it. It fits nicely in her hand, about the same size and shape of the guns she usually uses, but lighter and with a slightly shorter barrel.
“It’s based on your widow’s bites, sort of,” he says. “Instead of bullets it shoots long-range electric charges. Like a Taser, but there’s no cartridge. You get the same distance as you do with your guns, but you can bring people down without killing them more easily. Unless you want to use it to kill people. I can adjust the charge if you do.”
She looks at him. “Stark,” she says, “you built me an ‘I’m sorry’ ray gun.”
There’s a little-kid flash of excitement on his face for a second. “I did, didn’t I?” he says. He adds, almost as an afterthought, “I am, you know. Sorry.”
It’s gratifying, she’ll admit that, but it’s still not enough. “Okay. What for?”
He blinks. “What?”
“What exactly are you sorry for?” she clarifies. “Because if you don’t understand exactly why what happened was bad-”
“It’s transphobic to imply that a transgender person’s assigned gender is their real one,” he says, like he’s been drilled on it. “It invalidates their gender identity. Also, outing a transgender person without their consent can potentially put them at risk for increased discrimination, persecution and even assault. This is especially true for transgender women, who suffer disproportionately from physical and sexual violence. J.A.R.V.I.S. should never have referred to you as male.” After a brief pause he adds, unnecessarily, “Pepper told me.”
She claps the top back on the ridiculous box. “Never let that woman go, Stark,” she says. “She almost makes you act like a human being.”
“I know,” he replies, vehemently enough that she believes him. He hesitates, then asks, “Do you want to—should we hug, or-”
She shakes her head. “Never.”
“Ah.” Relief blooms on his face. “Good. Well. Enjoy the”—he makes an abortive gesture towards the box—“that.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and gives one last shot at his usual shit-eating grin, but it’s not as wide or bright as she remembers, and it folds quickly into something smaller and more sincere. Natasha smiles back, finally relenting.
“You’ve become less of a brat, Tony,” she tells him. “It’s a good look for you.”
She watches as he turns to leave, getting into the passenger side of the car—which makes no sense, Tony Stark drives, he always drives, she remembers it from his file, but there it is. Pepper waves again before she pulls away from the curb, honking twice.
Anyway, now she has a ray gun. So things aren’t all bad.
***
The last man she kills before defecting isn’t a target or an assignment. It’s the instructor who broke her arm. She does it quickly and silently, with the garrote he taught her to use. She does not dispose of the body. This time she wants people to see it.
She feels very little about it besides satisfaction, although the sound of his head thumping against the back of his chair as he slumps backwards almost makes her retch. She’s not sure why. He’s gotten gaunt in his old age, and the skin around his eyes is paper-thin. Wrinkles on top of wrinkles, piled up like a heap of used clothes.
The next morning she turns herself in to S.H.I.E.L.D. She meets Nick Fury, who is good at secrets and promises to keep all of hers. She becomes someone new, again.
***
She’s almost done uploading the files when Pierce asks, “Are you ready for the world to see you as you really are?”
There’s something in his tone that makes her hands hover over the keys for a moment, fingertips not quite touching plastic. She looks up and sees his face, that gentle smile, those narrowed eyes. Something cold coils in the pit of her stomach. He knows, she thinks.
He knows, and now, soon, everyone else will too. She is suddenly heavy with the weight of millions of eyes.
Spiders are very shy.
She meets his gaze for a moment, then squares her shoulders and looks back down.
“They already do,” she replies. She hopes she’s right.
***
She pays in blood, her own and other people's, with the KGB and with S.H.I.E.L.D. It still stains her.
She dreams, sometimes, of what would happen if she had to do it again. Wonders if Natasha—not Black Widow, not Natalia, but the person she has become in recent years—would do as she did, if she had been the one given the choice. Would she have taken what was offered, knowing it was the only way she would be able to get it?
It's useless speculation. Natasha would not have existed if she hadn't taken that deal. Either her instructors would have killed her, or she would have done it herself.
Those were her options at the time. They weren’t good. But she'd chosen.
***
The S.H.I.E.L.D. files have been floating around on the Internet for a few months, her past splayed out like a bad hand of cards, when Sam—who has always been Sam, not Wilson, for reasons she doesn't quite understand—finally says something.
The three of them have been on the road for weeks, but there’s no sign of Barnes and hasn’t been for several days. They can both tell that Steve—who is Steve to her now, not Rogers—is getting restless, and Sam decides, very sensibly, that they need to stop somewhere nice to take his mind off things.
"Somewhere that costs more than fifty bucks a night," he says firmly, his hands tight on the steering wheel as though he expects Steve to yank it away from him. "Somewhere with a pool."
Steve grumbles at first about the unnecessary expense and wasted time, but as Natasha is quickly coming to realize, he can't actually deny Sam anything when he outright asks. He feels too guilty about pulling him away from his life, even though they all know that Sam would have come even if he’d explicitly told him not to.
The hotel they pull into isn't really that much nicer than their usual places, but at least there's no mold in the carpet. And it does have a pool, a gorgeous blue jewel of a thing with heated water that stays open all night. She's not sure if it stays open all night for everybody or if the man at the front desk recognizes Captain America and makes certain concessions, but it's clear that it's doing Steve good. He swims lap after lap, continuing long after Natasha has retreated to the deck chairs at the side of the pool. Sam doesn't swim at all, claiming to be perfectly happy to watch. The sun goes down, but the heat lingers, and she lies back with her eyes closed, luxuriating in her one-piece (she meant it about the bikinis).
"Incredible," Sam says, staring. "I think he just did one hundred meters in thirty seconds. Once this is all over he’s got to go in for the Olympics. We’d never lose again."
"No performance-enhancing drugs allowed," Natasha reminds him lazily. "I think the serum counts."
Sam grunts in acknowledgement, his eyes still fixed on Steve's broad back. Natasha wonders, not without surprise, if this is something she should keep in mind. Maybe Lillian from Accounting never got a date with Steve for a reason.
"Listen," Sam says eventually, turning to look at her, "I run a support group on Tuesday nights, seven to eight thirty, for people like us. When we get back to the city—whenever that is—you should come by."
She can’t help but laugh. "Thanks," she says, "but somehow I can't see myself in a room full of American vets. Especially now my cover’s blown. You should take Steve, though. He doesn't talk about his stuff enough."
Sam's mouth twitches. "It's not that kind of support group," he says, warm and gentle.
It still takes her a second to get it.
"Yeah," she says after a moment. Her voice does not wobble. She won't let it. "I think I'd like that."
Sam smiles and puts his hand on hers, squeezing gently. They stay like that for a while, watching Steve swim.
***
She still has moments of disconnection. When she walks by a darkened window and catches sight of her own reflection, thinking for a moment that it's someone else. When she fails to turn around when someone says "ma'am," the syllables only slotting into place after a brief delay. When she is told that she is beautiful (and she is, men and women both tell her that, and sometimes she does not like that it is something people can look at her and see) and she freezes inside, remembering electricity and pain. These moments are rare now, but they happen.
It is no longer novel to look down at her body before getting into the shower, but she does it each time anyway, reminding herself.
This is where you live, inside this skin. This is real.
This is who she is. Even when she is someone else.
***
She’s the one who guards Barnes when they find him. It’s not a decision anyone explicitly makes, but they all know that if it came down to it, Steve wouldn’t be able to defend himself against him, and Sam, for all his skill and training, isn’t as fast as she is. She sits up at night with the gun that Stark made her in her hand, the barrel aimed at his head.
He doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes are moving, flickering from point to point, but he’s got that dazed, hazy look he used to get when he’d been out too long, and he doesn’t talk, even to Steve. Which devastates Steve, she knows, but to his credit he doesn’t try to push it, just accepts the silence.
Steve still doesn’t know what they were to each other before. She plans to keep it that way. It’s one of the few secrets she has left.
On the third night she finds that his eyes are focusing for longer periods of time. His glance moves from her to Steve’s huge sleeping form in the closest queen bed, like he’s thinking of whether or not he can take them both. She tightens her grip on the gun, centering herself a little better. Just enough so he’ll notice and reconsider.
At 2:34 A.M. he turns to look at Steve again, then back at her. His face still hasn’t changed.
“Was,” he starts, then coughs. His voice is rough from disuse. “Was he smaller once?”
She’s seen photographs of Steve from before the serum, that skinny bird chest and scrawny frame. Of course that would be what Barnes remembers. That was who Steve had been for most of his life before the ice. “Yes,” she replies.
His eyes search her face, then turn inward, a crease appearing between his brows. It stays there for a long time.
“Were you?” he asks at last.
Her aim doesn’t waver as she sees the greenish light cast over her face in the mirror, the scrape of stubble against her palm.
“Yeah,” she says. “I was.”
***