No Happy Endings?

Natasha Pt. 2

It's ready

Natasha read the text from Rick and sighed. The past week had gone excruciatingly slow, and she knew the next three weeks would be the same. Ross was close to finding her and she had to throw him off her trail and get to Norway without getting captured. Easy enough, especially since Ross was too arrogant and overconfident to think he was being outsmarted.

Tony wasn't helpful at all, which shouldn't have surprised her, but she was annoyed the first few days when she had to find a way around on her own with only a couple hundred dollars she had stashed. It was enough to buy a ticket on a boat and pay someone to stash her suit somewhere to throw Ross off. Now she stood in a small bathroom on said boat, watching him fall for her trap as she cleaned her face.

She tied her hair that had gotten longer than she's had it in years back into a bun. Victoria once told her she liked it when her hair was short, and Natasha kept it short for the past 3 years. Then she disappeared and Natasha had been letting it grow for the past year so now it fell down on her back.

She grabbed her phone when she saw dozens of agents storm the building she was supposedly in and just watched. They were getting closer to where her suit was hidden, and she just couldn't help herself. She called him just to add salt to the wound.

"Yeah?" he answered wearily.

"Don't do this," she warned although she knew he wouldn't listen.

"Do what?"

"Come after me. I mean, you're embarrassing yourself. It looks desperate."

"Thought you'd be calling me to cut a deal," he smugly replied. She put the phone down so she could pull on her hoodie. "Cause from my vantage point, it's the federal fugitive who's desperate."

"From my vantage point, you look like you could use some bed rest," she mocked. "What is this, your second triple bypass?"

"I wouldn't worry about me. We got Barton, we got Wilson and that other guy, the incredible shrinking convict. Rogers is on the run." She clenched her jaw and held back the retort on the tip of her tongue. He only got them because they were all in one place. "You got no friends. Where you gonna go?"

"I've lived a lot of lives before I met you, Ross. You shouldn't have gone through all this trouble. I'm done." She hung up the phone before he could reply, not wanting him to hear the despair in her voice.

She was ready for the next three weeks to pass. She would go with Tony to find Victoria and bring her home. And then she would retire. It was time and she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her days curled against Victoria. She wanted to go out to the middle of nowhere and build a house in the woods for her and Victoria, to have a family like Clint. She wanted—

She undid the bun she had just put up, needing to do something so she wasn't stuck with her thoughts, and she exited the boat's bathroom, the bitter air hitting her cheeks. She turned around from the blowing wind and headed toward the edge of the boat. She leaned against it and looked around before discreetly discarding her phone into the water. She wouldn't be needing it anymore.

It was cold, and although it was something she was used to from living in Russia majority of her life and then in New York, she was still only human, and she shivered lightly when another strong breeze flew past her. She pulled her hood over her head and stayed outside for a few more minutes to watch the water.

~~~

3 Years Ago

It was warm outside, the sun out proudly and shining brightly, no grey clouds unlike the day before when it was storming heavily. Even with the fresh air and some space for the first time in two weeks, Natasha still felt as if something was suffocating her and weighing heavily on her shoulders. She felt relaxed, comfortable even, something she should not feel while on a mission. She was supposed to be alert and ready for the unexpected, but instead she was slipping and she didn't know why. She stopped walking when she realized she didn't know where she was and growled lowly in frustration with herself. She tried to think of the path she took to reach the park she found herself at but was struggling with even that.