The Younger Agent - Natasha Romanoff x OC

Chapter 21 - I Love It Here

After the dinner where the family information was spilt, Nat and Eleanor went upstairs to go and sleep away the jetlag. It had really started to hit them after eating and they needed to go and pass out for many hours. 

Nat looked around Eleanor's old room with great interest, taking everything in and smiling softly when something had amused her. The walls were a simple cream shade but was full of colour from the posters lining the walls, of different movies and bands. She walked around, gently running her fingertips along different surfaces, flicking through old school notebooks that had been left on the desk, smiling at all of the little doodles that lined the pages; very reminiscent of notes taken during meetings present day. 

When she reached the noticeboard with lots of photographs pinned onto it, she paused and looked at each one, a big smile on her face. There were some from when Eleanor was a small child getting up to all sorts of antics, more with her parents, and a lot of ones with her friends. When she reached a particular one, she paused. 16-year old Eleanor with 4 other people, school friends she assumed, all of them covered in paint in the middle of a field, laughing hysterically at the camera. 

"What on Earth is happening here?", Nat turned around pointing to the photo.
"Oh! We were doing an art project", Eleanor shrugged whilst putting her pyjama bottoms on.
"On each other?", Nat sarcastically replied, shaking her head ever so slightly.
"We got a bit off track", she laughed, "We were supposed to be painting the landscape but we got bored".

Once Eleanor looked up at Nat again, she could see her looking a bit glum, "Hey, you okay?".
"Hm? Yeah, just seeing some of this has gotten me a bit nostalgic but I'm okay".

Eleanor was confused at how she felt nostalgic from this as she knew that their upbringings were polar opposites, so she frowned slightly, but pulled her girlfriend into a hug regardless. "Do you wanna talk about it?", she asked whilst rubbing small circles on Nat's back.

"I don't know... maybe?".
"You can take your time, you don't have to if you don't want to".

Nat pulled away from the hug and looked into Eleanor's eyes, they were filled with love and concern, which was comforting, "I want to, I just don't know where to start", she sighed.

Eleanor guided her over to sit on the edge of the bed and waited patiently whilst Nat was silent trying to gather her thoughts. After a few minutes, Nat grabbed ahold of Eleanor's hand and began explaining her Ohio deployment in the 90s with her pretend family. Her face lit up when she spoke about Yelena, her sister. The early childhood photos had reminded Nat of some staged ones, but they particularly reminded her of Yelena. Both Yelena and Eleanor in their childhood photos had very similar facial expressions of what can only be described as pure joy. 

"I don't know what she's like now, but I like to think that you two would have gotten along, she was a bundle of chaos as well", Nat smiled a bit, recalling some old memories.
"Do you think you want to reach out to her?", Eleanor delicately asked.

Nat thought for a second, "Maybe in the future, I think for now just knowing that she's safe is good enough for me, but someday maybe". Nat loved Yelena, but she just wasn't ready to jump back into that part of her life again, she was content with where she was now for the first time and didn't know if she could deal with that changing. 

Eleanor squeezed Nat's hand, "Thank you for telling me, it was very brave".
"Thank you for listening".
"Always".

With that, the two climbed into bed, Eleanor held Nat that night, usually, it was the other way around at Nat's request, but she knew that Nat would need it tonight. Nat was slightly taken aback when Eleanor got into the position that Nat normally did, but went along with it, and sighed contentedly when she buried her head into the crook of Eleanor's neck.