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✧・゚: *✧・゚:*

"There are no strings on me."

✧・゚: *✧・゚:*


Eloise had missed taking showers, the feeling of clean skin and untangled hair. This was a luxury she did not get at the HYDRA base. The soap smelled like roses, a soft undertone to the stronger scent of vanilla that bonded into the strands of her hair. Once she got out of the shower, feeling a lot better than she had a moment ago, she made her way to the bed where a dress awaited her just like Stark had promised.

There was a knock at the door, making her jump as she turned away from the dress. She cleared her throat before calling out, letting them enter the room.

Natasha entered the room swiftly, closing it silently behind her. Eloise shifted uncomfortably. The redhead hadn't seemed to like her on the Quinjet and there was no reason for her to have changed her mind. After all, Eloise had basically told her that she couldn't be fully trusted. The weight of her words settled heavily on her shoulders.

"Can I help you?" Eloise asked, tightening the bathrobe over her chest. "I don't mind an audience, you know, but I would rather my audience not have a deep-seated hatred for me before I've even begun."

There was more silence, which Eloise expected. She turned back around to observe the dress Stark had gifted her. It was very reminiscent of one of the dresses she would have worn back home but with less tulle and a bit more sleekness. It was black, seeing as the event was Black Tie Formal, and the V-neck stretched down to right below her sternum.

She let the robe fall, not caring that Natasha was in the room. She wasn't naked, the nude undergarments that Stark had provided left very little to the imagination, but Eloise figured it was nothing Natasha hadn't seen before.

She pulled the dress up, moving her hair to the side and walking over to Natasha, who had stayed standing by the door the entire time. She turned her back to her, looking over her shoulder slightly and asking, "Can you do my zipper?"

Feather-like touches brushed against her skin as Natasha reached out, tracing her fingers down along the zipper's seam before grabbing the metal tag, pulling the zipper upwards until the dress closed. It sat snugly over Eloise's chest, forcing her to stand straighter. The plastic corset boning that ran up and down her sides, keeping her from slouching over.

"You've every reason to hate me," Eloise said softly, not yet turning around. Natasha gently moved her hair from over her shoulder and arranged it so that it cascaded down her back. "I know Pietro was in the field, he probably nearly cost your friend his life. But deep down, you know I had no power over my situation. I know about you, Natasha Romanoff. I know who you are."

"You don't know anything."

Eloise shrugged. "Maybe I don't, but I think I would remember the woman that saved my mother and three sisters from an otherworldly attack."

Natasha seemed surprised by this, Eloise's hair slipping through her fingers as she walked away towards the vanity that sat in the corner of the room. Centering herself in front of the mirror, she chanced a glimpse at Natasha's reflection. The assassin looked to be in deep thought, trying to remember even a sliver of that moment. Eloise didn't doubt that it was just a forgotten moment lost to time.

"New York City, two-thousand and twelve," Eloise pulled open a drawer, pleased to see that it was full of most of the make-up products she'd need. "Queen Consort Lydia Wilson-Dupree took her three daughters--Princesses Lonnie, Beatrice, and Cindy--out to the city while King Charles and the rest of us conducted business eighty miles away in Philadelphia."

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