THE TEST

SECTION FIVE: OH HER*

* HER REFERRING TO NATALIA ALIANOVNA ROMANOVA , ALIAS BLACK WIDOW

The soldier froze when he read the words.

He recognized that name.

He knew her. And not just as a mission, not just as Steve's friend, and for once not just as a nameless, faceless shadow at the edges of his memory.

Natalia. His Natalia, the only 'her' that had ever really mattered.

He remembered her.

Or, at least, he remembered some of her. Faint outlines, snippets of words, enough to think she was real, but, until now, not enough to be sure she was,

DID YOU LOVE HER ?

That was the only thing he was sure of when it came to her.

DID YOU LOVE HER ?

[X]  YES           [    ]  NO          [   ]  OTHER

DO YOU LOVE HER ?

Could you love a memory?

Because if you could, if that counted, loving the faintest of memories, then yes, he did, he loved her so much that his heart ached.

But he knew better than most that a memory was not reality.

DO YOU LOVE HER ?

[   ]  YES          [   ]  NO          [X]  OTHER   i don't know.

HOW DID YOU LOVE HER ?

Christ, this had to be easily the sappiest answer he had written so far. But it was true. And, when it came to Natalia, he didn't remember ever really caring about how others would think of him for loving her like he did.

HOW DID YOU LOVE HER ?

ANSWER : desperately. like i needed her to stay alive. i loved her like she was the most beautiful thing in the universe, and i was helpless before her. in a time when death would have been mercy, i loved her so much that losing her was unbearable, even when they wiped me more than once.

For that was probably his clearest memory of her: seeing her be dragged away from him, and how the last thing, the very last thing he remembered were the tears in her eyes as she called out her last words to him, though he was fairly certain that half of them she did not actually say, that he had filled in what it looked like she had wanted to say on his own.

What those last words were, he would never tell anyone. They were personal now, not something to be shared. If they were even real, that is.

Reality was always questionable when it came to her, it seemed.