Soulmates

Day By Day

You and Nat pull up to a little suburban house. In a picket fenced neighborhood. You get out of the car and grab your stuff, looking around at the house, wondering whose it was and what you were doing here.

"It's one of Tony's safe houses. I felt like you needed to get away and this is a good place to do it. It's quiet and it's a place you'll end up in the future. With Steve and Bucky, and your Rogers-Barnes babies."

"Not anytime soon. I can't even let them touch me. I want them too, I want them to hold me, to help me, but my mind, it just wanders, to him...and every time they go to help me, I feel like i'm back there."

"How about we unpack and we can have a girls night, we can talk about it if you want to, watch a movie, eat snacks. Tony has this place stacked with food already."

"Ok. I think I can talk about it. A little...not all of it just...some." Natasha nods and you both head into the house, unpacking your bags, each in your own bedroom.

When you're done you get settled on the couch with each other, sitting across from each other. "So..." She says. "So..." You repeat. Not knowing how to start. "If you changed your mind, that's fine. You don't have to talk about it."

"No. I need to. I need to tell someone or I'll explode. Keeping it bottled up is killing me and I can't tell the boys because they'll blame themselves and it'll upset them and I hate seeing them upset. They were both crying Nat. I hate that I made them cry."

"I know it's hard to see them upset, but they're upset because they love you and you got hurt and they want to help you, but they can't. They don't know how to. It sucks for them, it sucks more for you, but they feel helpless." You nod, not saying anything.

"As for them crying, I don't know what to tell you, I've never seen either of them cry the entire time I've known them. They really really love you." You can't help but chuckle. "They do, don't they."

"They do." After another moment of silence you decide it was time to open up. "I had to shower with him first. And he wouldn't keep his hands off of me. It took everything I had to hold myself together..."

She reaches for your hand to hold it, seeing you're getting choked up, and you let her. "After, I stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes to call the boys, I told him I had to do something and he told me when I was finished he was going to 'have his way with me'."

You scoff and chuckle, comically, repeating his words, biting your lip and shaking away the tears forming in your eyes. "I called them, and then-then I had to go back out there with him. And he was rough, and cruel, and just evil. He enjoyed the fact that he knew I didn't want to do it, but I had to pretend I did so he wouldn't kill me."

She just listens, as you tell her your story. You open up and tell her what happened to you. How you were defiled. Taken advantage of. Used. Violated. Left in pieces you didn't know how to pick up.

And it helped.

It helped to tell her everything because she understood. She understood not only because of the Red Room but because it had happened to her once too, and she shared her story with you as well.

It was everything you needed to start your journey to being better. Getting back to who you were and not letting this event control the rest of your life. Putting the past behind you.

You still had a long way to go. No doubt. You were taking it day by day. And you'd still spend this week here with her, to get space and more time. But you knew that talking helped, and when you got back, you'd tell your boys, and they would listen.