REQUIEM | Avengers

V.

- V -

There was an ease to the way he walked. It was not the same as her, the movement beaten in to her for so many years. If you can't blend in, you'll die, she remembered being told with a vicious snarl. If you can't be graceful, you'll die. If you can't be enough, you'll die. Those were the truths that she thought she had come to peace with, but two years alone were cruel, and so were memories, when left untamed. 

No, Steve Rogers walked with the ease of a man who was no longer afraid. That was all. There was a simplicity in the way he straightened his shoulders and tilted his chin. Each step he took towards her was marked only by the uncertainty of what she might do, how she might react. 

She stared at him, his blue eyes so impossibly dark in the domed walkway. If he was remembering their last goodbye, that moment two years ago, he said nothing. 

"If it's the Trinity who has come to help, I don't want her."

The words were simple enough, but they cut straight to her heart. Or at least whatever was left of it, shuddering beneath the arc reactor. Of course she wasn't enough. 

"I want Nina Blahov. No one else."

"They're the same-"

"No."

He was quick to cut her off. It was not in anger, but in...exhaustion. She could see it lining his face, along with some other expression that she didn't have the energy to solve, either. He continued. 

"No, they're not."

He surveyed her with a kind of preternatural slowness, his eyes taking in the forced smirk on her lips, the dirty clothing that she was still wearing from the last time he had seen her, the circular glow emanating from her chest. 

She was thankful for the shuffle of feet behind her. She turned. 

Natasha stood only three feet away, her own lips pulled in a smirk. She looked mostly the same, except her normal vibrant hair had been chopped to a sharp line at her jaw and died a platinum blonde. It would have been shocking if she didn't posses the uncanny and enviable ability to look like herself in every possibly outfit or disguise. 

"You look awful," Natasha said, smirking. Nina crossed her arms over her chest. She could make out the outline of six weapons strapped to Natasha's fitted black vest- two knives, two pistols, and two tasers. She let out a small laugh. 

"Yelena will be missing her jacket."

Natasha froze, and a part of Nina relished the fear and anger that pulled at Natasha's features, her deep eyes, her stern nose and mouth, her arched brows. Another part of her felt sick to her stomach.

"What?" Steve said from behind them, but Nina just smiled at Natasha and turned. 

"It's nothing," she cooed, turning back to the Widow, an adder's smile on her lips. "She's an old friend."

"I thought you came to help?" Natasha said, any humour in her voice gone. 

"I did," she conceded, turning to look at both her and Steve. She wanted to let it be, to go with them in peace, but that hot anger was still eating at her chest, as she roiled silently in the night. 

"Then leave whatever petty shit you brought here and follow me."

Natasha turned on her heel, disappearing into the grave stones and up a small path that lead back towards the main part of the city. Nina turned to look at Steve behind her. The super soldier said nothing, instead just nodding his head towards where Natasha had gone and following.