⤷ march 28, 2014
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Her first breath burns her lungs.
The second is more bearable, but it hurts enough to have her eyes open.
It was bright.
She squints, trying to adjust to it. The light. The flames. The rubble.
Arnim Zola.
The bogie.
HYDRA.
Irina let out a harsh cough as she lurches forward, hand flying out to grab hold of anything to steady her. It finds a harsh cement wall.
As her lungs continue to choke under the excess amount of smoke in the air, Irina looks around her. She finds Romanoff, lying unconscious, and Steve, picking up her limp form while trying to hold his shield at the same time.
She offers her hand out wordlessly. Steve catches sight of it. His eyes flicker to her face, then to her hand, and then back to her face. His jaw clenches, and the last image she can remember before passing out returns in present. A hurt Steve, with eyes shining over the betrayal.
Her betrayal.
To him.
Without another word, he looks away from her, grunting as he struggles to carry out Romanoff's body from the alcove they were saved in.
Her heart gives a pang of hurt. Irina purses her lips, following after him.
They slip away under the cover of night, not a word spoken, tensions heavy and thick once again.
𓆩*𓆪
She almost feels a sense of relief once they're back in the city. It's familiar, after living in it for two years. But the newfound tension between two of the three of them weighed down on any good feelings she had, to be honest.
Steve leads them wordlessly to a house, and knocks on the glass door. Just a few seconds later, the door slides open, and Sam greets them with a worried face. "Hey, man," he says.
"I'm sorry about this," says Steve. The first words he's spoken since New Jersey. "We need a place to lay low."
"Everyone we know is trying to kill us," mutters Romanoff.
Sam looks between the three of them, eyebrows pinched together. "Not everyone," he murmurs after a moment, and steps aside to let them through.
Romanoff and Steve head in, Irina trailing loosely after them. She flashes Sam a quick, pursed smile as she passes. The dark-skinned man glances around outside, before sliding the door shut and lowering the blinds.
"Thank you, Sam, really," Irina says once he turns around to face them.
"It's no problem," he says softly, examining them all. "You all look like shit, that's for sure."
None of them can muster a smile at his words. Sam purses his lips, nodding down a hallway and gesturing with his arm. "I got a guest bathroom you guys can use to freshen up. Down the hall, to your left. You're safe here, I want you to know that," he assures them.
Steve nods gravely. "Thank you," he says, before turning to Romanoff. "Natasha, you take the first shower."
She eyes them, but Irina notes the specific unsure glances between her and the soldier. "You sure?"
"Yeah," Irina shrugs, and has to purse her lips to hold back a noise of pain at the ache the action gives. "You've got to be the most banged up out of us. Go on, we'll be fine."
Romanoff purses her lips, but nods and slowly makes her way down the hall, a small limp in her step. She disappears to the guest bedroom and bathroom. Irina turns her eyes back to Sam. "Could I borrow an ice pack? My shoulder's a bit messed up," she says sheepishly.
Sam smiles, punching out a small chuckle as he nods, gesturing to the kitchen as he passes her. "Yeah, I got you. Come on," he says.
Irina spares a quick glance over to Steve, who had been adamantly looking out the window as he sets his shield down by the couch, seeming fixated in everything that wasn't in the direction of her. After a moment, she sighs, and follows after Sam.
He fixes her up with an ice pack wrapped in paper towel so she can hold it without harming her fingers. Sitting down in a nearby chair, she presses the pack to her shoulder and lets out a small grunt of pain at first, before it devolves into a sigh of relief.
Sam chuckles lightly, already working on fixing them up some tea and coffee by the counter. "Yeah, that should do it for now, and relieve some of the tension, but you should get that checked out when you can," he advises. "It might be dislocated or bruised."
"How are you so knowledgeable on first aid?" She asks.
Sam shrugs, pouring the coffee grinds into the machine. "Well, when you're a pararescue, ya kind of have to know your stuff," he asks.
"You're an ex-army?"
"Yup. Why else would you see me down at the VA?"
"I dunno...casual meet up spot between friends?"
Sam laughs, turning on the machine before facing her and leaning against the counter as it starts up, coffee slowly dripping into the pot. "So what's your story? Why are you all so banged up?" He asks, face falling into concern.
Irina gives a wry smirk, looking away and downwards "Probably wouldn't believe us if we told you," she says.
"Girl, you fought an alien army led by a god from space in Manhattan literally two years ago. Not much can top that."
After a moment, her eyebrows lift, and she gives a shrug. "Huh. You're right," she hums. "Okay. Well, it started with the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. getting shot in my apartment by my former adviser, who is apart of an ex-Nazi organization the world thought had been destroyed after World War II, but little did they know, it wasn't,"
She continues, hardly catching a breather in her explanation. "No no. In fact, this ex-Nazi organization that abducted me as a child and turned me into an assassin actually was slowly infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D., the organization I ran to after running away from HYDRA."
"So, whoop-de-doo, I find out I never escaped, as well as find out that the ex-Nazi organization I once worked for is now planning world domination using S.H.I.E.L.D. And right after learning that, we get shot a missile that almost demolishes us, and buries us under dozens of feet of rubble. So not only has all I ever believed in been destroyed in the span of a day, now, but our chances of survival are little to zero."
Irina licks her lips, finally taking a steady breath once she's finished. She looks at Sam, who blinks owlishly at her, stunned in silence. Steve reacts with a scoff under his breath.
"Yeah, that's one way to put it," he mutters, loud enough for the two in the kitchen to hear him. "I'll go get a towel for Natasha."
He leaves, and Irina watches him go with a grimace, her heart squeezing in pain. She feels Sam's eyes on the side of her face. "You two all right?"
She lets out a small, derisive snort, slowly lowering the ice pack and setting it on her lap. "Well, the ex-Nazi organization I worked for is the same one Steve died trying to destroy. I never told him about it, and now he's..." she sighs, dipping her head to hide her sorrowful face while she throws her hand out weakly, gesturing to where Steve had just left, "...yeah."
Sam purses his lips worriedly. "Sorry, man," he puffs out an exhale. "Hey, if you really need to relax, use my shower. I'll grab you a spare change of clothes to use in the meantime," he offers.
Irina glances tiredly over at him. "I can't ask that of you," she murmurs.
Sam shrugs. "Hey, girl. My house, my rules. You know how it is. I say you can, you can. Come on, I'll fix you up with a towel," he says.
He offers her a hand, and slowly, Irina takes it. She lets Sam guide her up and gently down the hall to his bedroom. It's a neat room; the bed made, pictures on the dresser and bedside tables. A white doorway connecting to the bathroom. As she steps inside, she hears Sam rustle about in his walk-in closet, before coming out a second later with a clean, neatly-folded towel.
He offers it to her with a generous smile. Hesitantly, she takes it, flashing him a small smile back.
"I'll leave the change of clothes on the bed. That alright with you?" Sam asks.
Irina slowly nods. "Yeah, sure. But really, Sam, I can just use these —"
"Ah!" Sam holds up his pointer finger, and she stops talking. "Ah-ah. I got a few spare clothes my sister Sarah has here when she and my nephew visit. She wouldn't mind you borrowing them, really. Now go on. Really, Roberts, it's fine," he insists.
She purses her lips. She's hesitant, but after a moment, smiles softly at the generous man in front of her. Steve's friend. Maybe not her friend, but she can see it one day, maybe. After all this is over, she and Steve can visit Sam every now and again. Catch up.
Or maybe just her.
Because Steve...
Irina sighs. "Irina," she says. Sam blinks, confused. She sends him a guilty smile. "My real name. It's Irina, not Emma. And...thank you, Sam."
Sam is quiet for a moment, then smiles, more brighter than before. "Anything for a friend of a friend, Irina," he sends her a wink, more friendly than flirty, and shuts the door behind him as he leaves.
She turns the water onto a boiling hot temperature, as she likes to do, and steps into it shortly after Sam leaves. The heat hits her aching skin, and immediately, her knees are weak enough to collapse in on themselves, but she holds herself up.
Irina runs her fingers through her hair, scrubbing out the dirt and grease. Tilting her head down, she opens her eyes, finding they immediately train on a thin stream of blood sliding down from her hip to her foot, before hitting the water and trickling towards the drain.
Her fingers brush over the scrape there, most likely from the explosion, and she hisses softly at the pain that erupts from the contact.
Though, it was nothing compared to the pain she's caused countless others, she's sure.
This was nothing less than what she deserved.
Maybe she deserved even more of it, to repent for the crimes she's caused.
"Please! Please, no! I have a child! Please! She's only four! She needs me! She needs her daddy! Please! Please! Ple —"
"Не достаточно хорош. Снова."
"Please! Please, Aleksei! Don't! Please!"
"How could you? How could you?!"
"He's here — He's here for me. Aleksei — Aleksei — !!"
"Ангел."
"Come back with me! We can still fix things! We can still fix you! Just come — come with me!"
"I don't want to be fixed."
"Stop — Stop HOLDING ON!!! Let go! Let go of this! All of this! This isn't your life! Irina, please! We're — We're meant to be together!"
"I'm sorry."
"Вы сделали Божье дело."
"Ирина!"
"В этом мире нет бога."
Three gentle knocks to the bathroom door are enough for Irina to snap back to the present. She lets out a gasp, not realizing she hadn't been breathing, holding her breath under the downpour of water from the shower head.
How long had she been under? Trapped in the cages of her own memories?
Not too excited to find out, Irina shuts off the water and steps out. "One moment," she calls weakly, cursing the way her voice cracks on her. Wrapping the towel neatly folded on the bathroom counter around her torso, the ends long enough to cover down to her mid-thigh, she slowly cracks the door open, peaking into Sam's room.
She's met with the sight of Romanoff sitting on the bed, a stack of folded clothes resting on her lap. The ones from Sam.
The agent's lips tilt upwards into a wry smirk. "I don't bite," she says.
Irina purses her lips into a small smile, opening the door fully and tiptoeing over to Romanoff. She holds out the clothes for her, which the brunette takes gratefully.
"Wilson made some breakfast. And a shit ton of coffee," says Romanoff as Irina disappears back into the bathroom, shutting the door so she can dry herself off and slip into the clothes with ease.
"That's nice of him," Irina mutters as she pulls the sweats over her underwear. Thankfully he hadn't given her any of his sister's. It seemed Sam knew the limits, which she was grateful for. A baggy David Bowie sweatshirt was also presented to her, which she slipped on with ease, finding the warmth comforting.
Romanoff is quiet for a moment, before she speaks up, eyes trained on the bathroom door. "Why did you never tell us about HYDRA?" She questions.
Irina freezes, looking at herself in the mirror. Bruised, a small scratch on her cheekbone, but cleaner and more fresh.
She looks more closely.
And sees a killer.
A cold-hearted murderer.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Irina swings the bathroom door open, unable to stand looking at herself, and comes face to face with the agent again, feeling discomforted by her impassive look this time around.
"You wanna know why I never told you about HYDRA," she repeats the question in a quiet voice, a small murmur. "Alright...alright, you want to know why? Why I never spoke about the way I was picked apart and put back together again, parts of me stripped away every time for the convenience of the mission? For the ability to eliminate the target with more ease? You want to know why I never had a therapy session about that? Had a one-on-one with you guys and a couple of puppies in my lap to ease through it?"
Romanoff frowns, regretting her question bitterly. She purses her lips, casting her gaze guiltily to the carpeted floor, but doesn't say much more.
Irina slowly nods, taking that as a sign to continue. "I know that the intel I hold could have saved us time, could have prevented what it did, and looking back — yeah! It would have been the better thing to do, telling you guys. But I was scared. Scared, Romanoff. Because after seven years of believing I'd gotten away, that I was free, that I was doing good, I find out I never escaped at all. And whatever fucked up information I have in my fucked up brain, it — it's too much to know," she chokes out. "Too much to let out, too."
"I already have a damn hard enough time looking at myself in the mirror. You think I want to spill my guts to you all and have you hardly able to look at me, too? You think I can handle that? I'm fucking human, Romanoff," Irina hisses.
"I'm not as good as people like to think. It took Steve until now to realize it...and it's only a matter of time until Tony does too and I —" she squeezes her eyes shut, palms digging into them until she saw white dots.
After a moment, she drops her hands and punches out a breath, head tilting up until all she could see was the ceiling to Sam's room. "...I'm sorry I can't be good enough for this cause," she whispers. "I try — I swear I do...but it can never be good enough to erase the bad."
Romanoff purses her lips, her eyes shutting as she hangs her head in guilt. "I never escaped either," she admits quietly, voice cracking softly.
Irina looks at her tiredly. They've both been run exhausted. By the world, by themselves. Romanoff looks up at her, a sorrow in her eyes she'd never seen before. "I thought I was going straight, that I was wiping the red from my ledger bit by bit by doing good work for S.H.I.E.L.D., by protecting others with the skills I'd once used to hurt them," she murmurs. "Turns out I just traded out the cards from the same deck."
Romanoff's hand grips her own wrist, squeezing anxiously. Irina watches, a frown set on her lips. "I don't blame you for not showing all of yourself to us. I'm the same. It's like I said; the truth is a matter of circumstance. It's not all things to all people, all the time..." she glances back at her. Green meets brown. "...Neither are we."
Irina purses her lips, swallowing shakily. She steps up to the bed, slowly turning around and sitting herself beside Romanoff, who looks straight ahead with a far away look in her eyes.
"So," she speaks up softly. "Natalia, huh?"
Romanoff's lips flicker upwards. "Yeah," she confirms fondly.
Hesitantly, she takes her hand, and squeezes softly.
It's unspoken between them, two women so similar in so many ways, yet they hadn't seen it until now.
"I have your back."
Romanoff lets go of her wrist, using her free hand to place over Irina's. She curls her fingers over hers, and gives a similar squeeze in a silent response.
"And I have yours."
They meet each other's eyes, brown on green.
Together, they softly smile.
𓆩*𓆪
"Вы сделали Божье дело." = "You have done God's work."
"В этом мире нет бога." = "There is no god in this world."
"Ангел." = "Angel."
"Не достаточно хорош. Снова." = "Not good enough. Again."
𓆩*𓆪