chasing karma
Maybe it was because everything was a constant reminder of all the reasons why he couldn’t possibly love her, all the reasons why he shouldn’t.
She was who she was, and no amount of repenting would change that.
And despite any faults that he may have, any wrongs that he may have committed, he’s still him, and he’s well- he’s everything she’s not.
Maybe she had let herself get away with it for far too long. She had spent so much of her life running away that she thought she could get away from the truth as well, but she’s tired of living a lie and pretending like everything is alright when it’s not. And she’s tired of living like a thief living on borrowed time, always looking over her shoulder waiting for the jig to be up.
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“We have what we have, when we have it.” Natasha repeats the exact words that she had first spoken to him in what feels like a million years ago. “Everything changes, Steve. Things change. Circumstances change. And that’s alright. It’s alright, Steve.”
He doesn’t say anything, so she takes the unwavering intensity of his eyes on her and the increasing tenseness of his body as a cue to continue.
“You’ve always been a great friend to me, Steve. You’ve been a partner…a leader, a confidant, and I will always be so grateful for that. I don’t want any of that to change.” The words sound so unconvincing even as they come out of her mouth.
“So what do you want, Natasha? You want to act as if the last two years didn’t happen? To go back to however it was before and for us to act all fine and dandy?” Steve says quietly at first. His tone uncharacteristic of his typical collected and imposing one.
“It’s not about what I want. This is how things have always been. We’ve just pretended like it wasn’t true. Everything that happened, happened because we were on the run. Those circumstances had been different.” Natasha tries to keep her tone and demeanour calm. She knows that Steve will understand in time, and allowing her facade to crack won’t be any help to anybody.
“Is this what you want, Natasha?” Steve says, through gritted teeth. His words come out terse and ice cold and she nearly flinches from how angry he is, even though she has no right to. She initiated this. The urge to to fight the vitriol in his voice with her own words of anger bubbles within her. That would be the easy way out. Maybe it would hurt so much less if she were angry. Even if it was just for a second.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Steve. I’m doing you a favour. It’s never been about what I wanted. You never wanted me before everything went to shit.” Her words of anger and insecurity tumble out despite her best attempts to contain them, her instinct to protect herself overriding all else.
“God, Natasha. I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore. How could you even say something like that?” He runs his fingers through his hair and tries his best to get a grip on his emotions. He doesn’t want to fight with Natasha, but it was difficult to not react to what she was saying.
Natasha doesn’t know how much longer she can do this for. The pain in her heart is unbearable and she wants nothing more than to run away. She would’ve been long gone by now if it wasn’t the coward’s way out, impossible for anybody to find. She’s already gone too far with her words that have built up over the years. This conversation had not gone done nearly as well as she had initially imagined, and every second that it dragged on only served to hurt the two of them more. She wishes that he could see that this is for the best, she thought that he would understand. He was pragmatic and adaptable, and she was just trying to set him free.
“This is who I am, Steve. This is who i’ve always been. You should know this. You’re who you are. You’re spotless. The perfect man, the perfect soldier, a hero to the world. Do I need to go on? And this is me, cold and cruel. I pretended that this wasn’t who I was, but who am I kidding? This will always be me. Why are we pretending like this could work when you and I both know that I’m not the kind of person that you’re meant to spend the rest of you” She knows that she’s not being nearly as cold as she can be. She’s probably hardly even convincing him with her cruel attempts.
“Why are you doing this, Natasha? This isn’t you and you know it. Did you think that I was going to just say “alright” and move on without a fight?”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do.” She retorts, firing shots at everything in her vicinity. His eyes grow steely at the increasing edginess in Natasha’s voice, bracing himself for the battle.
“Maybe not. Maybe I don’t know you at all. I sure as hell don’t know why you’re doing this right now.” Steve’s tone growing to match hers, and a tiny part of Natasha is glad that he’s starting to get her point, but so much more of her aches at the anger and cruelty that has grown between them, so much so that the pain flashes across her face for a moment before she can contain it.
“There you guys are. Have you not been checking your phones at all? Briefing in the mission room-“ Rhodey says, seemingly coming out of nowhere to appear at the doorway, though Natasha knows its just because she’s far too preoccupied with this fight.
“Not now, Rhodey.” Steve practically growls, the words slipping through his teeth as he barely succeeds in holding everything together.
“It’s urgent.” Rhodey says again, and before Steve has a chance to make any further protests, Natasha has already turned on her heel, practically running out of the room. Running from him.
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“The CIA was able to ascertain that Fury and Hill were dusted away in the aftermath. They found some sort of pager device with Fury’s vehicle and they’ve handed it over to us for further analysis.” Rhodey says to the small group. The meeting is a rather informal one, but even so, it was certainly an important one. Everybody is focused on what Rhodey is saying. Everybody but Steve, that is.
His eyes are trained on Natasha, still reeling from their conversation. Even as she tries to direct all of her attention to the meeting, Steve knows that she is painfully aware of his gaze on her.
He doesn’t know what to make of the situation. Everything had hit him like an avalanche the moment he had walked into Natasha’s room, all of it coming as a total surprise. He had come back from D.C a day earlier to surprise her, but instead he had been the one that had been surprised. He knew that she wasn’t feeling her best and was a little distant, but he had chalked it up to everything happening and him having to leave for D.C. He had never thought about the possibly of something like this is happening between them. The guilt and regret of his cruel words setting in as soon as he had a moment to take a breath. This wasn’t Natasha. She had done a damn good of trying to put on a facade, but now that he was looking back, he could see that it had been nothing but that, a facade. There was something that he was missing, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anything that had gone wrong between them.
It becomes clear to him that Natasha is not holding it together as well as Steve had originally thought. It’s obvious to him as soon as his eyes land on her. It’s minute at first, the way her facades starts to crack and fall away, but Steve has come to know Natasha well over the years, and he can’t help but notice how she wrings her hands and the way that her upper-body shakes. Natasha doesn’t fidget. She doesn’t shake. At least not normally.
It doesn’t take long for her to fall apart, and even though Steve hasn’t taken his eyes off of her for even a millisecond, he’s still surprised at how quickly the distress spreads across her face as the situation dwells on her. Natasha jumps out for her chair as soon as the first signs of distress hit her and she makes a break for her it. Steve barely registers it before his instincts kick in and he runs straight after her. He doesn’t care what the others have to say right now. But in the seconds that it takes him to reach the hallway, Natasha is nowhere to be found, like she never existed at all.
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It still manages to scare her sometimes, how much that she’s willing to do for him. It hadn’t taken her long after meeting him to realize that there wasn’t much that she wouldn’t do for him. And as time went on, as she began to learn that she loved him, and the extent of how much she loved him, it scared her to realize that she would give up everything for him.
Natasha Romanoff was a lot of things. A spy, a seductress, a murderer. But one thing she was not, was weak. Since she could remember, she had been the best at what she did. She was calm, collected, efficient, unwavering, it was what made her such a powerful weapon. Even when she knew nothing, had no one, she always knew that she could rely on herself. But that was before she had met him, and fallen for him.
She had been naive and stupid to fall for someone like him. He was kind, and good, and pure, the paragon of a hero. He lived in black and white, and she was defined by grey. And maybe this is what drew him to her. He was everything that she was not, and he made her want to be better.
But love always made people weak. It made people do things that were irrational and illogical, skewing their brains and softening them to the point of weakness, and maybe everybody else in the world could be weak, but not Natasha. She had somehow let herself forget that love was for children, and now she was paying the price, because she loved him so much. So much more than she could even fathom. He had quickly and deftly taken over her heart and now she had become someone that she could no longer recognize.
Her love for Steve had made her weak. It left her unable to keep her composure or stand her ground when it came to him, and she would always inadvertently put him before anything else. It left her vulnerable. It made her susceptible to pain that she had never felt before she fell in love with him.
It scares her to know how much she loves him, because she knows she loves him more than anything else in the world. It scares her to know how much power it has over her because it just means it would hurt her that much more. But despite it all, she still doesn’t want to let him go. Every part of her is saying that she couldn’t possibly let him go, but she knows that she has to. It’s the right thing for her to do.
Natasha knows that this is what is best for Steve, and she would do anything for him, so why was it so damn hard to let him go? It was the right thing to do, both for him and for herself. She had become too soft, too weak, and the way that she had broken down in front of everybody was just an indication of that. She had tried her best to keep it together, and even she had been surprised by her outburst.
She knew that she had to get out of there immediately, so she ran as if her life depended on it. She had contemplated leaving the complex all together, but even in this situation, it had seemed too cruel. So she had found herself here, a heap at the foot of the dock that overlooked the lake. Even now, she was trying her best to hold it together, to little avail. It is too hard to overcome the pain that fills her heart and wracks her entire body, and the tears that refuse to stop spilling don’t help either.
She’s not alone for long though. She can sense his presence approaching and the sound of his footsteps against the dock.
“Leave me alone, Steve.” Natasha says even though she hardly means it all. She tries her best to wipe away the sadness off of her face and any remnants of her outburst.
“I can’t.” He takes a seat on the dock as well, sitting so that their backs are against each other, and Natasha almost, almost, melts into him like she has so many times before. But she holds back, and the tears seemed to have stopped for the most part. Still, the heaviness in her heart is greater than ever. The situation was almost serene with the two of them sitting in silence, staring into the vast lake. But everything seemed worse now that the anger and fire was gone between them and only hurt remained.
It takes her a while to conjure up any words, or to process Steve’s words. They had been imposing or spiteful, he had just said them like they were a matter of fact. He was too good to let anybody suffer alone.
“What do you want from me?” She says, finally.
“Answers? The truth? That’s the least you can do if you’re going to unceremoniously dump me.”
“Do you trust me, Steve?”
“More than anything.” His answer hit like a punch in the gut, a sad irony in this situation. He shouldn’t trust her. He can’t. He should be yelling at her, cursing at her, anything. Anything would hurt less than this. She can’t hold back the tears that well up in her eyes this time.
“So believe me when I say this is for the best.”
“Do you love me? Did you ever love me?” He too, is trying his best to keep it together, but his question is tinged with hurt and doubt. Had he been delusional in thinking that what they had together had been love? He had never doubted it until now, but he couldn’t help but doubt everything he had thought he had known.
“This wouldn’t be so hard if I didn’t.” Natasha is crying so hard now that she slumps into a heap on the ground, her chest racking with hiccups and tears.
“So why are you doing this? What is there that we can’t work out together?” The sight of Natasha crying had always been something that cut deep, but possibly even more so now, as her tears of devastation overcome her. Steve wants to hold Natasha tight and wipe away her tears, but it feels inappropriate right now, so he just sat by her side as she cried.
“There are some things that you can’t change in the world. You can’t will it better no matter how hard you try. There are some things that are just meant to be, and all of this was inevitable. We were just fooling ourselves when we thought that we could leave this all behind. This is your life, Steve. And I always knew in my heart that you would always come back to it. Our time on the run? It was.. a lie, it was never meant to last. This, this is what you’ve always been destined for. You’re Captain fucking America, for god’s sake. You’re a hero to the world, and I don’t fit into this life of yours. There’s a reason we didn’t work the first time around. I don’t fit into your world. I’d rather just put an end to it now before everything goes to shit. I would rather have some of you than none of you.”
Steve didn’t speak for a long time as he took in her words, and despite how much it had hurt her, Natasha was glad that she had said her piece, and gotten everything off of her chest that had weighed so heavy on her for such a long time. She had long been used to losing what she loved, and one day she would heal from it. Or at least she tried to tell herself that, but the ache in her heart said otherwise, exposing the lies she had tried to tell herself.
“I never thought I would get a chance to live another life. After I woke up, and realized that everyone I had known was either dead, or had moved on, I resigned myself to the fact that the life that I had was gone. It was then that I decided that I would live out the rest of my life doing my best for the world until my time came-“ He turns to her, and looks her right in the eyes, his gaze so intense that Natasha feels like shrinking away for fear of the fact that she might just give in again, completely breaking her resolve, but she can’t bring herself to do it.
“And then I met you, and everything changed. As cliché as that sounds, and I know that it sounds very cliche, but it’s true. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I loved you, and that I didn’t want to live without you, but I wasted so much time holding back? Being a coward? Whatever it was, I thought that I was doing what was best for you, but I regret it now, because of all the time that I wasted not being with you, of all the time that we didn’t have together. I’ll always regret it. And I know it might be too little, too late, but I still have to say it, Nat. I’ve known that I’ve loved you for a long, long time, and I’m sorry that I ever made you feel as if you weren’t enough for me, because you’re everything to me. It flies in the face of everything that I’m supposed to be, and everything that I’ve ever known. I always thought that I had a duty to give everything I had to the world, even if it meant giving every bit of myself away, but I’ve come to learn that you’re my world, and there’s nothing more important to me than that. Being Captain America? Being a hero? None of that means anything to me without you, and I would happily give it up in a heartbeat if it meant that I would lose you. I love you more than anything, and I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me if I didn’t.” Natasha doesn’t realize that she’s been holding her breath until he pauses, but she feels as if all the air has been knocked out of her chest. She certainly hadn’t been expecting this.
“But there’s nothing more I want than for you to be happy, and if this is what you want, I understand, but if you’re doing this because you think that this is what’s best for me, please don’t. Because if you think you’re doing me some sort of favour, you’re not. You mean the world to me, truly. We’ve given up enough the world, and committed our fair share of noble idiocy. You deserve to be happy, Nat. More than anybody I’ve ever met. You don’t owe the world anything anymore. We deserve to be happy, don’t you think so?”
Steve’s words reverberate in her head, demanding an answer even though he doesn’t. He looks peaceful now that he too has said his piece and gotten everything off his chest.
But she doesn’t, not after all she’s done and the people that she hurt. She’s not so sure that she deserves to be happy… but she wants to be. She wants to be happy.. with him. And Natasha wants to believe Steve’s words more than anything in the world. She wants so desperately to do so that she nods her head despite her resolve not to, despite everything telling her otherwise.
Later that night as she lays in bed, Steve fast asleep next to her, Natasha fiddles with the platinum ring that was supposed to represent the happiness that she had, and all that was coming to her, but all she could feel was the wrench in her heart that told her that all of this was too good to be true. Despite what Steve had said, and how badly she wishes she could believe it all, she knows that he can never truly say goodbye to this life. He could never stand on the sidelines and do nothing, no matter how badly she wishes otherwise. And his heart would never truly belong to her, and one day she would be burnt for trying to possess something that she didn’t deserve. The thoughts haunt hurt even when she finally falls asleep, but still, Natasha tries her best to keep the faith and stay optimistic, even if it goes against everything she’s ever known.
The next morning, Natasha finds out that they had missed so much in their brief absence, including the appearance of whoever Fury had been counting on when he pulled out that old pager of his. A human being with powers like she’s never seen before, and she had set off to look for Tony, who was somewhere in the galaxy the last they heard. Pepper had arrived at the complex late in the night after receiving news that someone was on the hunt to bring Tony back, their growing group waited patiently for any news of their friend. And despite the reservations that sat heavily at the base of her stomach, she was incredibly thankful that she hadn’t lost Steve too, and she let herself believe that things would be alright between them, even if everything else told her not to.