❝ how many more jobs... how long will it take... i don't know if i can do it. even if i could forgive myself, this is what I am now. and you'll never know who i was before. my past is my own. ❞
- n.r.
COVERS CAPTAIN AMERICA : CIVIL WAR & BLACK WIDOW...
A black-dressed figure walks slowly down the aisle of the cathedral.
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Natasha's body is glowing with different shades of the light that pours in through the stained glass windows. Her friend, one of her closest friends, stands at the end of the aisle and leans against a wooden pew. Steve glances back at her, tearing his gaze from the wilting flowers and black-wicked candles that were set out to honor the death of the woman he loved.
"When I came out of the ice..."
Natasha silently comes to a stop a few feet across from him; her eyes sympathetic and her expression solemn.
"I thought everyone I had known was gone." He looks back up at the golden picture frame that houses Peggy Carter's photo, shaking his head and saying quietly, "Then I found out she was alive. I was just lucky to have her."
Natasha looks at him from across her shoulder, giving a soft and encouraging smile, "She had you back, too."
The man just nods down a little, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with her. They both know that the woman only had him back sometimes. Yes, certainly, Steve had been busy with the Avengers and with S.H.I.E.L.D. before it fell, but that isn't what's meant. That strong-willed and fearless woman that stole Steve's heart could only remember him for maybe hours at a time before she was gone from him again, lost in her world of dementia and old age.
Natasha takes a deep breath, knowing that there isn't much else that she has to comfort him by. So, she uses the only things that she really has: the truth.
"After everything happened with S.H.I.E.L.D., during my little hiatus..."
Steve looks back up at her with his blonde brows slightly bent in, listening as the woman shares something personal and painful; something Natasha isn't very well known to do.
"I went back to Russia and tried to find Svet and my parents. An empty grave for my baby and then two little gravestones by a chain link fence for my parents." Steve's blue eyes pierce into Natasha's green ones as she nods with a sorrowful and bitter-sweet smile, "I pulled some weeds and left some flowers."
She's forgiven her parents from what they did to her, for selling her as they did. She knows that either she will find her daughter or her daughter will find her when the time is right, when they're both ready.
"We have what we have when we have it."
Natasha can't change anything. She's a survivor, but survivors can't change the past and they don't change the future. All they can do is try to keep the good memories close and the ones that hurt far away enough to still live.
