Romanogers - Oneshots

forgetting to breathe

Requested by @Sxarletwidow3014. Natasha has an eating disorder. (Trigger warning).

I'm lucky enough to never have had an eating disorder, so everything I've written here is based on research and other stories I've read. A little credit is going to ameliafuckingshepherd on AO3 for this, because I binge-read all her works on the subject to get a feel for the story. You should too, they're much better than this.

Please, if I get anything wrong, correct me. I hope you enjoy!

The first time Natasha forgets to eat, it's in earnest.

It's three days, but in earnest.

Thanos is long gone, but the terror has only just caught up. It swirls her stomach. Food would taste of ashes anyway, she's sure of it.

Fear makes her head spin, her vision foggy. She doesn't see the conference in Wakanda, barely feels Steve's hand gripping hers. She doesn't see the flight back to New York. She finds her room, abandoned, on autopilot, and barely registers collapsing at the foot of the bed, falling into a sleep like death, fully clothed and caked with mud and blood. Her body aches the next morning, but that's nothing new.

The shock fends of starvation.

She staggers downstairs, and throws back a scalding coffee. It does nothing for the exhaustion in her bones. A slice of toast quenches a non-existent appetite. She eats it plain. All the cupboards have been shuffled, and the condiments are nowhere to be seen. She was right. Like swallowing cinders.

The rest of the day is consumed by walking. Walking. Walking through the empty hallways, hearing ghosts whisper in her ear. Distantly, she wonders where Steve is. And then where Tony is, and Pepper. And Rhodey. If there's anybody left. She feels like the only person on the planet.

If you'd caught her, you might have thought she was sleeping. Sleep-walking. Her eyes are blank, she treads with a soft step. Numb. Her mind is blank. A slate wiped clean. Horrors try to paint their way into her head, but their sketches fade away before they can finish. Hours later, her back slams against the wall of the training room. All these rooms, so familiar yet so different. Chairs moved a slight inch to the right. Different flowers in different vases, Pepper's attempt at keeping things light.

The training room still has that 'new' smell. Afterwards, no one to use it. Punching bags lie, good as new, in the corner. Dust motes drift in front of her nose. She slides down the wall, and enjoys the twingeing discomfort that comes from the friction, the burn, of roughened stone. Knees pulled to her chest, she stares into the nothing. Maybe she's dead. It would be better than this.

She doesn't move until the next sunrise. Until Steve, inexplicably, sits down next to her. His arm winds around her shoulders, pull her into his body, and she slumps. Tears start to roll. No longer numb. His shirt is soaked with her sobs. She struggles to breathe. He smells like home.

Her end is his beginning. She lets him cry into her hair. Anguished weeps, of grief, and guilt. Frail bodies clinging onto the last ledge of reason and rhyme. Yes, frail. To be mad in a deranged world is not madness, it's sanity. Perhaps the yawning void below is sanity. Perhaps the tears won't ever stop. The ledge is so narrow, their fingers are cracking-

The doorbell. FRIDAY speaks out of the blue, lilting Irish a quiet comfort. They struggle to standing position, limbs weak and weighted with every loss.

Pepper.

Warmth, floral perfume and hugs. More tears. Tony-

Steve says nothing when she follows him to his room that night. He says nothing when she steals one of his shirts and falls into bed beside him. They fall asleep curled against each other, clutching tight, still in fear of the dust that stole away so many. Her room is once again abandoned.