Never in a Million Years |N.R|

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It had been about a year since Natasha and I had left that cemetery. Since all of SHIELD's files had been leaked to the world, including every detail of where I was and who I 'worked' for before joining the Avengers. Since Natasha and I had begun something together.

A lot had changed in that time. There were more than a few rocky parts but we pushed through, only to find ourselves in more unknown territory since neither of us had really done the whole relationship thing. We were girlfriends. A fairly recent development since Nat had been waiting for me to bring it up, but she realised her mistake when my knowledge and recollection of the term was cloudy in the least. It was like I recognised what it meant, but not enough to be certain.

To begin with, I gave Nat the cold shoulder for days after I found out about that file. She kept asking me what was wrong, what happened, whether Steve had done something and finally, whether she had. But I still refused to spill. I didn't feel like I had the right to. I felt like my feelings held no merit, that it wasn't anyone else's responsibility to shoulder them other than me. So for days and days she pressed me. She began her questions gently, asking in a careful tone, but my avoidance and cold demeanour frustrated her beyond control in the end.

When she finally burst was when it hit me. She really did care about my answers because she cared about me, not because my behaviour was annoying her or an inconvenience. After some explaining from her when she noticed my confusion, she explained how important it was for me to speak up to her when something bothered me. That I couldn't always push my feelings down because I thought they were stupid or irrelevant. She encouraged me that my feelings were important, most of all to her.

I was grateful that she let me sit and think about her words for a while, because it took me a few hours to get my head around them. When I eventually did I went and found her, just standing in silence waiting for her to notice me as I picked at my cuticles. Despite us having been 'together' for a year, I still found myself getting shy around her. It wasn't an uncomfortable shy, but more of one that made butterflies erupt in my stomach when she finally noticed me.

Once she made sure I'd made sense of her previous words, she told me the truth about why that file was kept a secret. Or at least, a secret until the cemetery because I'd seen it for what it was the second Steve had opened it.

Nat knew that I would've wanted to be all hands on with finding Bucky. I would've stopped at nothing to find him. No cost too large, even if that meant giving my life. And that was the prime reason she and everyone else kept it from me. I'd almost died during my last run in with Bucky and they couldn't risk me not being so lucky a second time round. Nat wouldn't have been able to live with that. The guilt of getting me involved in something that was nothing other than a suicide mission.

She did it to protect me. To keep me safe.

At first I'd flipped at her. I began screaming at her about how it was my right, that Bucky was my friend so it was my duty to help him, that she was selfish for stopping me, but when I said that it wouldn't have mattered if I died in the process, her calm demeanour snapped. She leapt up off of the bed and flung her arms out in anger.

"How could you possibly say that?!" Her voice was loud, making me flinch.

"What? Say what? Which bit?" I was truly taken aback at first. Her outburst seemed to come straight out of left field.

"What do you mean which bit? The first ones I can understand. But for you to say that your death wouldn't matter is too far, let alone the biggest lie of all time."

"How?" I didn't mean to be so confused, my tone a lot calmer and seeming bored in comparison to Nat's. That only seemed to anger her more.

"When will you realise that you mean so much to so many people, most of all me? I don't know what I'd do without you. So you can't just say things like that so casually, because it hurts to hear you talk like that. I just wish you'd realise your value to so many people." My eyebrows furrowed at her words as they hit me, and I had to avert my gaze to the ground to try and gather myself. Her words all of a sudden hit me and any and all confusion was forgotten. Me, valued? Oh god I'd hurt her, my words had hurt her. I never wanted to do that.