Devotion [Book 1]

Swan Lake Ballet Suite

FanFiction.net

Swan Lake Ballet Suite by MeryKey-7

Rated: T
Language: English
Genre: Angst/Romance
Characters: Steve.R + Natasha.R
Words: 2k+
Published: October 1st 2015

***

She knew she should be sleeping. After a 48-plus hours battle, every single bone and muscle in her body hurt. Even blinking was painful. But for some reason, she couldn't keep her eyelids shut, or her brain silent.

Tony had given her her own apartment in Avengers Tower, like he'd done for all the Avengers, but at first, just like Clint, she'd preferred the solitude of her own apartment. It wasn't as fancy as the space Tony had designed for her, with modern, stylistic furniture and Kandinsky paintings (real Kandinskys, she may add). Instead, her place was small, with a wooden bed (made by Clint), a small kitchen and tall, white, bare walls. Of course, there were some (many) hidden compartments here and there. Once a spy, always a spy.

But unlike Clint and his farm, her apartment wasn't really a home, and she found she'd been spending less and less time there, instead spending it in the Tower, taking out Hydra cells all over the world with the Cap and Falcon, and the occasional Avenger. Sure, she's intended on finding a new cover after the fall of SHIELD, leaving Rogers to his own personal quest, even thought she knew he'd benefit of her skills. But once the dust cleared, she'd realized that finding a new cover was harder than one may think, and to be honest, this was all she knew how to do.

With a tired sigh, Natasha sat on her super King sized bed (about 5 people could be sleeping in that bed), covered in the most expensive bedding set (1500 thread count, solid Egyptian cotton), stood up and walked out of her room.

The lights on the hall were eerily dimmed. A chill run through her spine and she involuntarily rubbed her exposed arms. Nat rolled her aching shoulder as she looked down one end of the hallway, and then the other, and started walking away into the silence of the night, only tarnished by the cries of the girl in the room across from hers.

She made a quick stop by Tony's bar and picked a fresh new bottle of Stolichnaya Elit Vodka that was sitting in the freezer and found her way to the training room a few levels below Tony's and Bruce's lab.

The vodka burned her throat on its way down, but it was a good kind of burn. The kind that reminded her of home.

"Friday," she called as she used to call for Jarvis.

"Yes, Agent Romanoff," the female voice answered soothingly.

"Play some Tchaikovsky, please." Natasha took another sip from her bottle as she stared at her reflection on the wall-to-wall mirror on one end of the training room.

She was bruised all over her arms and part of her torso. She knew it would be worse if it weren't for the collision-resistant cloths Tony'd created for their suits. On the bright side, she wasn't bleeding.

Natasha straightened her spine, pushed shoulders back and stuck her stomach in. She shook her head. No matter how much they'd tried, she wasn't built like a ballet dancer, but boy, could she dance.

The explosive finale of the "1812 Overture" gave her the necessary thrill to stretch her muscles and by the time the "Swan Lake Ballet" suite began, her body was in elegant motion, the steps coming back to her through muscle memory.

She remembered the first time she'd hear this symphony. She was far too young to understand what the ending of this story was really about, but she dreamed of someday being as free as Odette ascending into the Heavens. Natasha closed her eyes, avoiding her reflection. She knew now that the only way to freedom was death. They'd made sure she never wished for anything like that, like Odette's love for Siegfried. Love is for children, they'd said.