RESURRECTION OVERTURE ▹ barnes-romanoff

восемнадцать. (black widow)

𝐀𝐂𝐓 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄.
chapter eighteen
no more roles to play

NATASHA Romanoff is used to being alone.

Alone is what she's good at. Alone is what she knows. Alone is what she's known for so long that she can even convince herself she halfway likes it. She likes it the same way one likes stitches through an open wound; it stops the bleeding, it stops the dying, it doesn't stop the hurting, it doesn't stop the scarring. Alone is painful. Alone is safe.

This is the trajectory of Natasha's life: nothing lasts forever.

Natasha runs.

Rogers runs. Wilson runs.

Barton takes a deal. Lang takes a deal.

Barnes is gone. Svetlana is... gone.

Again. Again. Again.

When the Avengers inevitably broke her family apart (nothing lasts forever), Natasha knew that she would mourn (for them, for herself, for what they could have become together), but she knows herself. Or not so much herself but what she is capable of. She can bury herself in running until missing them becomes a scar instead of an open wound and she can finally leave without looking back.

She's always been good at that.

There are sharks, someone once told her, sharks that must continue to swim or they will drown. All their lives they must swim — day in, day out. If they ever stop, they will sink to the bottom of the ocean and drown. Maybe, just maybe, she won't drown if she keeps running. Maybe if she keeps running, she won't notice the gaping wound where her heart should be.

It's not enough. It's never enough. But it's all she has left.

So, she runs and she runs until she's certain she's mostly safe. But there is no escaping the memories. Not by running. No one can run that far. I will feel better tomorrow. This she repeats like a mantra. Alone on the run, alone in the middle of Norway, alone in a trailer whose power just went out, she repeats it over and over. I will feel better tomorrow. Another failed family, another fallen regime. Another safe house, another new persona. I will feel better tomorrow.

Maybe one day she'll actually believe it.

The ride into the small Norwegian town is a quiet one, the radio playing softly in the background.

The car explodes out of nowhere.

Natasha's head cracks into the window when a fire bursts beneath the wheels, flipping the car side over side. The car crashes into the barrier of the bridge, screeching to a halt, chunks of metal flying. The vehicle creaks and groans in threat, two front tires hanging off the side of the bridge. When her vision finally clears and she tries to move, the car teeters dangerously on the edge, broken glass and boxes falling towards the river almost sixty feet below.

Her attacker's feet hit the bridge and then they're in a fight, but the enemy is a masked creature, following and mimicking her every move, copying her every action and reaction. It's not until Natasha is in a low crouch and then staring at her own reflection in the mask of her attacker that she realizes that they are not alone on the bridge.

She can sense it, like a shift in the air, a feeling in her bones.

It's a sense that has kept her alive many times. But this isn't a presence that's meant to hurt her, no. She doesn't have time to check before a bullet is pinging off the back of the masked being's metal.