look after you × winterwidow & oc

II. sputnik

Natasha always thought of herself to be a composed and hard-headed person. She had to be. It was what she was raised and trained to be. It was what people expected of her. Yet living up to those expectations when she watched James being brought in, she was at her limit.

He was caged, not even like a criminal but an animal. Feral and vicious, not worthy of any kind of trust. But Natasha knew better, she knew him better than anyone. In that year since she found him first, he proved over and over again, that he was the opposite of what people thought of him. He was getting better. Maybe it was an excruciatingly slow process, but every time she visited him she saw a difference. They were doing fine, closer than ever to what they dreamed of. Maybe they were hiding once again, but it was for safety, it wasn't forced like it used to be. And despite that, they knew there was finally no other threat to them. No one to barge in and pull them apart. No one to tell them that they're not allowed to feel.

Natasha tried to visit him as often as she could, at least once a month. And she waited impatiently for each of these meetings. Only after the first one, she realized how starved she was of him. How much she missed him all these years. The way he embraced her, the way her name sounded in his mouth, how his hair tickled her face when he forgot to tie it back. Every kiss, every touch, it felt like home. He felt like home.

And now all of that might be lost once again. That one thing that she was most afraid of was happening right before her eyes.

Maybe trusting Steve with this was a mistake. She should have taken him away earlier, much earlier, before all the accords crap. And she should have done it by herself, avoiding all of that.

When she met his gaze across the corridor, she hoped her expression wouldn't betray her. Natasha forced a smile, hoping it will send a reassuring message. Everything will be fine, I'll fix it for us, she tried to say.

"For the record, this is what making things worse looks like," Natasha caught up with Steve and Sam. "And you should be happy that I don't always keep my word because this is the exact situation I warned you about last year."

Wilson confused gaze wandered between them and Rogers looked at her like for all this time he had been thinking that she didn't really mean it. Until a few hours ago, that threat also didn't make much sense to him. The part about Katya? Sure. But not the one about Bucky, not until he saw them kiss, which still seemed a bit absurd to him.

"He's alive" he shrugged.

Natasha scoffed "That's not a life." before matching her steps with Tony she added, "Try not to break anything else while we fix this."

⧗

"You okay?" Stark stood beside Natasha.

Romanoff frowned at him. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You seem nervous," he mentioned to her hands.

"Oh." slipped out of her mouth when she looked down.

She didn't even notice that she was playing with her fingers and pulling at them, her mind trying to find anything else to focus on than looking at the image from the surveillance cameras, where she could see James, who wasn't even trying, he wasn't putting on a mask. He looked defeated and exhausted. She stayed in the back on purpose, just in case she couldn't keep up her act.

Romanoff forced a smile and nodded at Tony. "I'm fine."

Pretending to care much less about Barnes than she actually did, while she was probably the one who did the most, turned out to be more complicated than she expected. That one intrusive thought, that everything they managed to build in the last year, was already crumbling.