bulletproof

16

She winced at the curse flying out of his mouth, directed at her. Her heart felt like it was going to break open her chest, it was beating so hard. Her breathing was getting harder and harder to do and tingles of pure electricity ran through her veins as she fired with rage. Despite the loud fury inside of her and the internal screaming she faced in her mind, she replied quietly, almost unhearable, "You don't know what's been going on."

Steve's chest tightened at the broken voice of the woman he had tried so desperately to help, despite being kicked to the curb every time, but he shoved that sympathy and longing deep to the back of his mind, focusing only on the pent up aggravation which had been lurking in him for weeks and weeks, "Then tell me," His voice sounded colder than he'd liked and she frowned at it.

"You wouldn't understand. You don't get these kinds of things...you're Captain America."

He lowered his volume and softened his words, relaxing his tense limbs and sitting down on a stool to seem more approachable, "Try me." He tried to force down the depressing sensation of her not seeing him properly. of her thinking that he was just 'Captain America'.

She took a deep breath, combing her hair with her fingers as she tried to find a way to explain it to an outsider. To someone who wasn't Nat and didn't know every single bit of her past.

"Um...okay..." She exhaled, slowly, "You know how I used to have nightmares when I first joined the team?"

He nodded, unsure about what she was going on about.

"Well...I wasn't completely honest when I said why..." She bit her lip as she recounted the lies she'd spun to the others, how she'd explained that the reason she had nightmares was that she was scared of killing people, "It wasn't because of some experience out on field with you guys, it was because I...when I was younger, was part of an organisation that didn't do great things...you know?" Of course, he doesn't, Y/N, he's never been part of HYDRA or the Red Room, you idiot.

Steve furrowed his brow as he processed what she was trying to say, "Like Nat?"

She nodded rapidly, "Yes! Like Nat!" But then slowed it down to a standstill, "I was part of the Red Room like she was." Her voice was low and almost a murmur as she admitted what she'd been keeping from the team for so many years.

"You were in the Red Room?" Steve's eyebrows shot up, "You were...with Nat?"

"No...no, no...I was-am-younger. I was still around eight when she escaped." Y/N moved to the opposite side of the island, picking up a fallen stool and then sitting down on it, "But I did know her, sort of."

She placed both hands on the counter and clasped them, so tight that her knuckles went white. Y/N chewed her bottom lip for a second before continuing, "I was...I was abandoned by my mother to the people who ran the Red Room, but I thought she had been forced to give me up, it was a kid's dream but...yeah..." She picked at her nails, "Anyways, um, I was raised to...well...kill, you know? I was brought up to be a weapon but in the end, I managed to escape, like Nat."

Sympathy and heartache poured out of Steve, reaching every part of him, and he hesitantly took her hands into his and held them gently as she recalled the past she'd worked so hard on hiding. He felt shameful...to have yelled at her, to be angry at someone who had gone through worse. 

Guilt was eating him up inside as he watched her beautiful eyes darken with grief and reluctance as she delved deep into her secrets. Self-disgust slammed through him like a train. How selfish was he? To only think about himself while she locked herself away from everyone? 

He didn't deserve to listen to her explanation. He didn't deserve to have her pour out her heart and give a secret part of her away to him. 

"So, anyways, I lived on the streets for a while before coming into contact with my mother and meeting her. I guess she was shocked to see me, the baby she'd eagerly given up for money," Y/N's tone turned bitter as she spoke about her mother, even the word 'mother' went sour in her mouth as she called the woman that, "But she did look after me...for a bit. I was allowed to stay until I was cured of all the diseases I had caught when I was a 'street rat'. Then she called the Red Room, letting them know about me, and I had to leave as fast as I could before they took me back and tried to break me again."