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It had been hard enough to see him battered and bruised the nights he came back to the apartment after being out, playing the part of Captain America while she handled business with the Avengers. It had only gotten worse when he had been sentenced to the Gulag. But it had never been as bad as it had become after the battle with Skadi.
She had watched as he bled out on the concrete, watched as he continued to bleed on the way out; he was going to die, she was watching him die right in front of her and there was nothing she could do about it. She had helped patch him up as Captain America, she had saved him from the Gulag, but there was no way for her to save him from this.
Natasha had nearly been inconsolable then, demanding they do something while they insisted she say whatever last words she had for him right then and there before his pulse faded away. While Steve and the others formulated a funeral, she had stayed with the team, waiting and praying to a deity she didn’t know if she believed in for him to hold on just a little longer. Fury could save him but he needed to hang on. Eventually they set him up in a room and she had sat at his bedside wrapped in his sweater, waiting for any sign of life to come from the man himself and not the machines strapped to him. She’d never forget that first quiet ‘hey’ that let her know he had fought and pulled through, that he was still alive.
Right now, he was running late from the mission Sitwell had sent him on, arguing until he gave in that there was no need for the both of them to go. And though she knew it was pointless, that fear she had felt on the plane returned the longer he was gone.
It was pointless, stupid, and irrational but she had already been through the hell of watching him die in front of her. If something happened to him, even if she still wasn’t there…
The glass in her hand was crushed as the door opened, the shards slicing into her palm.
“Shit,” she cursed as she moved towards the first aid kit; his familiar foot falls catching her ear as he called out to her. Just his voice was enough to calm the fear. “In here!”
Working with one hand, Natasha managed to get the kit down from the shelf and sort through the supplies to find what she’d need to clean up her hand as he came into the room, having kicked his boots off at the door. She could hear as he came up behind her and caught his intake of breath when he spotted her hand. “Are you alright?”
Turning as he reached for her injured hand, she took in the bruised and battered face of her…boyfriend almost seemed like too childish a word for what it was but it was the term he seemed happy to go with. “Looks like I should be asking you that question. What happened out there?”
James shrugged as he reached for the tweezers to get any loose shards out of her palm. “A couple AIM grunts tried to team up with me. I’ve had worse.” As much as she loved that playful smirk on his lips, it was hard to admire as the reminder of recent events washed over her.
“No concussion?” She let him finish removing the shards and bandaging the hand before she reached for the alcohol wipes to start in on the cuts near his eye and along his jaw.
He shook his head before a small glare got him to hold still as she cleaned up the damage. “Not that the medical team caught but the doc said to keep an eye out just in case. Said with the Formula, I might be fine in a couple hours.”
Her hands were trembling as she closed up the first aid kit and returned it back to its spot on the shelf to be used again another day, the reminders and the fears from earlier making a harsh return before she could lock it back under control.
“Natasha…”
She let him take her hand, the other clenching as she tried to keep it from shaking. He brought it to his chest, placing it over his heart.
“I’m fine…I swear I’m fine…Feel.”
And she could. She could feel the steady beat of his heart under her hand, reassuring her that he was perfectly fine. Everything that had happened on the field, everything that had happened on the plane, every nightmare she envisioned as he had laid there motionless in the hospital bed was nothing more than memories.
“You’re not going to lose me.”
They were just words; there wasn’t anything he could say that could guarantee she would never lose him or that he would never lose her. It was the reality of the life they lived…
But for now, they were solace and a salve to the dread.