When Natasha gets a bicker-y back and forth call going with Yelena during her run and can't seem to get any reasonable answer from her, she has a horrible thought.
It's quick and fleeting, but once she comprehends the fact that she had the thought, it's far less fleeting and far more concerning.
She wants to turn back time.
She pauses, with shampoo still in her hair and fingers still coated in bubbles, barely able to hear the water spraying around her anymore.
She knows it's happened already - she died because she was sent to space in 2014 after experiencing life up to 2023, but she doesn't just want to turn back time to make something happen.
Natasha can't help but hear in her head how desperately she wants to go back to a little over ten years ago, when she and Wanda still didn't know how to feel about each other, when Yelena only lived blissfully in her head, free of the Red Room and in her own life, when Melina was long gone and Alexei a distant memory and the idea of cancer not even on her radar.
She takes a breath, runs her fingers through her wet hair again, and rinses the shampoo out.
She shouldn't be thinking like this. She has a beautiful daughter and a phenomenal fiancée and even with cancer, Yelena's her sister, and she knows Yelena will beat it and things will be back to normal sooner than later.
(So why is she so fucked up?)
It makes her want to crawl into a hole and never leave, a feeling she hasn't had in so many years that it feels foreign.
She decides instead to get out of the shower, turning the water off and wringing out her hair gently. She bites her lip, trying to figure out what to do next.
She loves her life now. She does. Some parts of it suck, but she loves that she has her little sister and her daughter and Wanda. But a part of her doesn't. And she hates that part.
The part that was thrown into this life without her consent, the part that was brought back to a world that used to just be Wanda and now includes two dogs and a human relying on her and her sister. That part didn't ask for things to change so quickly.
She sinks to the bathtub floor, head softly thunking against the tiled wall. She blinks, trying to ignore the tears building in her eyes. She's had a good morning so far. She's had a good morning.
But that part - the part screaming and begging to escape from this life for just a minute - it feels like it's eating her alive.
One of her hands clamps over her mouth when she feels the sob come out of her mouth and she squeezes her eyes shut. No, no, she can't be crying right now. No.
Yet tears continue to fall down her face and she buries her face in her hands, her whole body shaking, and she can't tell if it's from sobbing or the fact that goosebumps have crawled their way up and down her arms from how cold she is.
She needs to stop crying. This is beyond pathetic. She can't be doing this.
She is Natasha Romanoff. She is a Black Widow.
But she's not, she's not. She's Natasha, Wanda's fiancée, Anya's mom, Yelena's sister.
Another sob reverberates throughout her body and she squeezes her eyes shut again. This can't be happening, this can't be happening, this can't be-
"Nat!"
Wanda.
There's a knock at the door, "Are you done in there?"
YOU ARE READING
till forever falls apart
Fanfictionyelena never expected to hate being right as much as she hates it now. she knew something was wrong, she told isabel, she insisted. she knew it. she just didn't expect that something to be cancer.
