Avengers One-Shots

(Natasha) Always Keep Going, Especially When it Hurts

Let me tell the tale
Of a girl who didn't stop,
Who climbed up every mountain
Without a pause upon the top.
She'd dance until each blade of grass
Was clothed in drops of dew,
And the sun knew her by name
But the silver moon did too.
For a fear had settled in her bones;
A fear of sitting still,
That if you are not moving forward
It must mean you never will.
So in time her dance got slower.
And she looked at all she'd seen,
But found gaps inside the places
That she'd never fully been,
For she was a human doing
Human moving, human seeing,
But she'd never taken time
To simply be a human being.

~e. h

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Natasha changed into her leotard slowly, not bothering to put on tights.

After stretching, she put on her pointe ballet slippers and stood up.

God, she felt so numb.

So tired.

The kind of tired that sleep could not fix.

So done with everything.

But she kept moving on, never stopping to take a breath.

Because that's just the type of person Natalia Alianovna Romanova is.

She went over to the side of the room to put some music on and she returned to her spot. 

As Natasha got into her first position she thought about why she kept dancing.

It's a part of her past.

Her past is a painful thing to her.

She's a monster, because she danced. And she still does.

So why does she still do it?

Why does she keep moving to the rhythm of her heart instead of the beat of the music.

She only knows one thing for sure; she'll keep dancing until the very end.

As she danced, the only thing that mattered was the way she moved. The way she felt free. The way everything and everyone else that mattered to her melted away as she forgot it all.

She flew high and spun briskly.

It was like a dove opening its wings to soar high.

Beautiful.

Graceful.

Free.

Yet, something was missing. There was a hole in her heart and a weight on her back. Tears in her eyes, blocked from flowing freely by a dam. A dam that would surely break soon enough.

Once when her toes felt like they were bleeding, and her arms weren't sure which way to go anymore, she stopped.

She wanted to do something else, but her body could not allow her to.

So the dancer took off the uncomfortable ballet shoes, stood up, and picked them up.

It felt like she was picking up her own heart.

Everytime someone wasn't careful enough, and they dropped it, she had to pick it up and fix it.

Or she was the reckless one, going around and dropping her heart.

And everytime she picked it up, it got heavier and heavier.

A heavy heart.

Turned into.

A heart that isn't here.

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