~x~X~x~

A/N: This one-shot is post-CA:TWS, post-"be-my-shield" (my Cap/Widow story,) and involves established Cap/Widow.

~x~X~x~

angels in the snow (outlines of our broken bodies)

~x~X~x~

As the wind snarls, savage, its teeth tearing at her bare skin, Natasha reflects that entering combat without a readily available squad for backup was a very, very bad idea.

It is too late for this reflection to be relevant.

This mission is strictly classified; save for Maria and Steve, no one knows that Natasha and her strike team are in Alaska, attempting to quell the resistance of (yet another) HYDRA splinter cell. The entire affair was supposed to be simple; several unforeseen factors made it absurdly complicated.

First, the HYDRA agents took hostages. Second, they built an anti-aircraft barrier around their makeshift base. Third, the temperature outside dropped below twenty degrees by sunset, complete with brutal winds that felt like the roar of an icy, incensed god. (Secretly, Natasha wonders if such a thing might be true; after the conflict between Loki and Thor, it is difficult to maintain pragmatic disbelief in the supernatural.)

Natasha looks at the child — auburn hair fanned out against the snow, little fingers knitted together with her own.

She regrets nothing.

~x~X~x~

It begins with a planned attack gone horrendously wrong.

Thanks to anti-aircraft artillery, the S.H.I.E.L.D. strike team's helicopter is shot down the moment that the HYDRA base comes into view. Natasha and her soldiers leap to safety immediately, tumbling into the snow as the helicopter crashes mere yards away, its broken blades spitting fire into the white wasteland. It burns like a signal: I'm right here; come shoot me while I'm caught off guard.

But the HYDRA operatives made a critical miscalculation: if the strike team should survive the helicopter crash, the base's artillery is useless against a land invasion.

Not missing a beat, Natasha leads her men directly into the HYDRA base: a great, grayish-blue monolith amidst the snow, more about show than stealth. It is a tumult of conflict — the crack and snap of bullets, screaming, cursing, the rusty tang of burning metal, enemies seen through sheets of fog. Tendrils of smoke unfurl across the chaos, licking the sheets of bloodied snow.

Natasha has learned to block battle out. But a single shout slices through the others, cuts straight through her: "Hold your fire! We have hostages."

Returning one pistol to its holster, Natasha can only form one coherent thought (a four-letter word that would make even Fury blush.)

One of the HYDRA soldiers breaks away from a cluster of his allies. In the next second, he makes a break for a hatch in the back.

"Keep firing!" Natasha shouts to her team as she sprints through the crossfire, weaving through the tangle of bodies, swinging over and under fallen beams as the primitive HYDRA base is torn to pieces. She aims her pistol as she runs; the HYDRA soldier is cut down before he can so much as swear.

Breathing hard, Natasha reaches for the lock of the hatch. She doesn't know what she's expecting from the hostages — frightened men and women, probably, dirt-streaked and bloodstained, huddled close and cowering — but when the door opens, her heart clamps, skipping a beat. Of all things, she did not expect this.

"Are you here to save us?" The little girl peers up through too-long auburn bangs, her azure eyes shining.

Natasha blinks. "I'm to here to kick HYDRA's ass," she says without thinking (she should really watch the sort of language she uses around young people, but oh well.) She looks past the little girl — and nearly forgets to breathe. The entire room, which is roughly the size of a walk-in closet, is packed with children. HYDRA is so desperate to survive its last stand that it is using children as human shields.

"Are they gonna shoot us?" the little girl asks, and a bleak, blank shadow passes over her face.

"Not on my watch."

All at once, footsteps thunder down the hall. Natasha's comm hisses to life in her ear. A female voice: Romanoff, they've called in another wave.

Natasha's adrenaline spikes, hot and sharp. "How long?" she says over the comm.

If we cover the entrance, thirty seconds and counting.

Natasha glances over her shoulder, then back to the children. She can already see a row of HYDRA soldiers, armed with all manner of rifles and grenades. "Listen very carefully," she says, kneeling so that she is eye-to-eye with the little girl. "When I say run, I need you to run as fast as you can, straight out that door and into the snow. I need every last boy and girl to stick together. And I need you to keep running until one of the good guys tells you to stop, or until you can't see this building anymore. Can you do that?"

The children, trembling, nod their heads.

Bullets rattle at the doorway beyond.

"Wait for my signal," Natasha says, and then she dives into the fray. There is a lethal precision to her movements now, a finely honed animosity, because they were children and this is a war and there are no children in war, there are only weapons and targets and collateral damage, and this spells the end of when these children — children — believed that love would make everything all right.

"Surround HYDRA!" Natasha orders, even as brave men and women of S.H.I.E.L.D. (or what's left of it) fall to her left and right. "Make a safe path!"

The strike team enfolds HYDRA like a tide, keeping them at bay. The S.H.I.E.L.D. kevlar vests — more advanced than anything this HYDRA splinter cell can muster — will allow Natasha's agents to stand undaunted, at least for a little while.

Natasha turns back to the tightly packed cluster of children. "Run!" She gestures towards the door, though there is no other escape. "Run now!"

The children, apparently sensing the severity of their situation, do not scream. They simply charge through the door as a unit, like a battalion of soldiers. A hollowness settles in the pit of Natasha's stomach. These are (or were) children, not agents; there is no way to erase this mindset they have learned, all sharp movements and animal instinct, a primal scramble for the necessity of life (as though life were such a valuable thing.) And maybe in that sense they are still children — afraid of the dark, afraid to close their eyes (but wouldn't it be easier to lie down, and bleed the agonies of this life away?)

Natasha registers the tug on her jacket's sleeve a fractured second too late. She looks down. The little girl grips her arm, tears streaking her tiny cheeks.

"Thank you," the girl says. "Thank you, Natalia."

For an instant, the name slides under Natasha's skin like a blade. Then she remembers that her many identities have long been public (none of your past is going to remain hidden,) and her terror evaporates, leaving stark, cold reality in its place.

Natasha grips the child by the shoulders. "I told you to run!"

The little girl blinks. "Thank you," she murmurs again, and only then does she flee. Her timing could not possibly have been worse. The other children are already in the snow, and the HYDRA agents are breaking through the strike team's barrier.

With a dull whine, a single bullet exits a rifle, slices through the air, and arcs towards the little girl's throat.

Natasha doesn't know if she screams or if the keening wail is only in her head, but she's lunging for the child, tackling her to the metal floor, and pleading pleading pleading —

No no no —

A dull pain stabs through Natasha's shoulder. She looks, and the HYDRA bullet has barely grazed her skin, missing the child entirely. A thin trail of blood trickles down towards Natasha's fingertips. Ignoring the minor wound, she lurches to her feet.

"Run with me," Natasha says, lacing her fingers with the child's.

The little girl looks up, frightened out of her wits. "What?"

"Come on!"

As the HYDRA agents begin to converge upon them, Natasha and the girl sprint out the door, into the snow, stumbling, gasping, their adrenaline carrying them further and further, until the HYDRA base is far behind. Until the only sound is the mournful moaning of the wind.

~x~X~x~

A hiss of wind in the comm.

A sharp, clear voice above the gale.

Steve? Steve, it's me. I'm in a hell of a lot of trouble, and I need you to get a Quinjet here as fast as possible. HYDRA took hostages — children. They fled west on my orders, but one girl fell behind, and I took her east so that if we were pursued, we wouldn't lead HYDRA straight to the others.

I need a Quinjet scanning the snow west of here before those kids freeze. And then, after they're safe — promise me it will be after —

I need you to find me.

~x~X~x~

"I'm cold, Natalia."

"I know."

A tug on her sleeve, insistent. "Am I going to die?"

"No." A prayer; a promise. "You are not — not in a thousand years — going to die."

Ten minutes later, they have to lie down. They don't stand again.

~x~X~x~

A shriek of wind in the comm.

A steady, stretched-thin voice, balancing on a knife's edge.

The girl doesn't have the strength to run any further, and I don't have the strength to run while carrying her, and if HYDRA has survivors on our trail, this could end badly. I need you to hear me, Steve.

I need you to find me.

~x~X~x~

"I'm cold, Natalia."

A breath, pluming in the chill air. A woman's hand, firmly gripping a child's. A thought, piercing: I'm not.

In less than a minute, Natasha has made her choice.

~x~X~x~

I know you're coming, Steve. I know it in my blood.

~x~X~x~

The Red Room's equivalent of the super-soldier serum had several effects on Natasha, not the least of which was enhanced endurance of both heat and cold. Without hesitation, she slides out of her jacket, tears her shirt over her head, yanks her insulated pants off, and extends the bundle of clothes to the child.

"Take this."

Azure eyes, bright with tears. "You'll die."

"No, I won't." She promised Steve that much after her last act of sacrifice (throwing herself on to a grenade that had been intended for him.) This is not a trade of her life for the child's. Natasha trusts implicity that long before her blood runs cold, Steve will find her in these frozen wastes. She does not doubt that whatever pain might befall her, it will not kill her.

Natasha knows, with every unsteady beat of her heart, that Steve will come for her. She exposes her bare flesh to the elements in unshaken faith that this is not the end of the line.

A blink, as if to dispel a dream. A child's question, confused. "Why are you doing this?"

"No one did it for me."

"You're not telling me something."

Natasha laughs, dry, dead. "I'm always not telling something," she says, and in that statement, she's telling the absolute truth.

~x~X~x~

A sputter of wind in the comm.

A faltering breath.

Don't be scared when you find me. I'll be all right, Steve. I always am. Whatever I look like, whatever the cold did to me, I want you to gather this little girl into your arms, and I want you to carry her in the Quinjet's medical bay immediately. And then you deal with me. All right?

The child — then you deal with me.

~x~X~x~

The little girl is not shivering. She lies too still, too small, skeletal. A fallen sapling in a swirl of white, white waste.

"I'm cold, Natalia, but I'm... not."

"Stay with me."

A gasp; a choked cough.

The command is repeated: "Stay with me, kid."

A loll of the head. Snowflakes glistening in soft auburn curls. "I'm so cold, Natalia."

A squeeze of the hand. "I know."

~x~X~x~

Steve... Don't know why, but I... thought you should know... We're all right. You and I. Remember.

We'll always be all right.

~x~X~x~

"I'm... c-c-c-cold..."

"I... am... too."

"Am I... gonna..."

"No." A flat refusal. "We l-l-live. I... promise."

~x~X~x~

Steve?

Steve, it's okay.

~x~X~x~

Two bodies curl together in the snow, broken angels amidst the howling white wastes.

A metal bird lands, and a man, brilliantly clad in color (red and white and blue,) races down the ramp, and there are hands and whispers and heat, heat, heat —

The metal bird sputters, rises, and all at once they've taken flight. The wind is their chariot, and they're born away from the ice and snow.

"I'm cold, Steve."

"I know."

~x~X~x~

Steve commands another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to provide medical treatment for the child, but he waves away all those who try to touch Natasha. She is deathly pale, shivering (but only slightly,) her teeth knocking together. He grips her hand, and she sighs, her fingers folding themselves into his.

Steve does not ask questions, does not challenge Natasha's reckless decision to surrender all in defense of the little girl. He simple sweeps Natasha's (barely clothed) body into his arms, cradling her head against the strong planes of his chest, wiping snow from her pale skin, her disheveled hair, her fluttering eyelashes.

Perhaps he understands, Natasha thinks absently. He was frozen for seventy years, after all.

And she's too weak to protest, too exhausted to speak as he removes his own shirt, trying to share his body heat with her. For the duration of the flight from Alaska, he holds her close to him, skin against skin, and it's absurd because it's not pulse-pounding, not even remotely sexual. She's frozen almost to the breaking point, and his body feels like sunlight. This is alliance in its purest form. Their most chaste kisses, their briefest embraces, held more lightning than this.

Natasha tries and tries, but she cannot think of another time that a man held her nearly naked form with such... gentleness... edged with something like fright.

Steve holds her as a child might hold a snowflake — marveling at its intricate beauty, trying to memorize its every angle with his eyes — afraid to so much as twitch, for fear that the snowflake will fly back into the storm.

"You found me," she breathes when she can locate words.

"Always," he says, and she lets herself be stupid and believe him.

~x~X~x~

Tony? It's Natasha. No, this is not a booty call. I need a favor. I have a ship full of abducted, half-frozen Alaskan children, and I need to locate their families immediately. No, I can't do it myself.

Thank you. Tell Pepper we'll get coffee the next time HYDRA wanders into your neighborhood.

If you call me Natalie one more time, Stark, I will gut you with my fingernails. No, that is not a euphemism. Screw you, and thank you. No, not like... I didn't mean...

I give up. Goodbye, Tony.

~x~X~x~

One hour after landing, Natasha receives a call from Maria: there might be more of HYDRA's resurgent heads on the east coast, and Maria needs someone who can shadow a questionable business owner. Natasha agrees immediately (I'll catch a plane tomorrow morning,) if only to shake off the chill of the snow on her skin, the soft lilt of the child's voice in her ears.

An hour after the phone call, Steve corners her in the hallway. When he speaks, it's a single word, a cutting question, hoarse, almost angry: "Why?"

Natasha meets his earnest gaze with her own. "I kept my promise. That wasn't a sacrifice play, Steve. I knew you would find me."

"But what if —"

"I trust you." The words emerge of their own afford. They feel strange upon her tongue, as English once did; sharp, thin, heavy.

Steve blinks. "Damn it, Natasha," he says, and in two long strides he's right in front of her, his hands cupping her face. "I thought I was losing you."

But losing her would imply that he had, at some point, found her — damaged and resilient and beautiful — and she's not entirely sure that anyone ever has, so all she says is, "Try to understand."

"What?"

"She was a child, Steve. Alone in the cold."

"You sound like you know what that feels like."

A familiar weight sinks into the pit of Natasha's stomach. She swallows hard, weighing her options. She does not have to tell this (of all things) to Steve (of all people) — it was buried so deep, even her file doesn't contain it, and she always gave Clint a quick laugh or a sultry glance if he asked, anything to still his tongue — but it would not be unpleasant, she thinks, to test the limits of this thing she has seen fit to call trust.

"If I can't have children of my own," Natasha says, barely breathing, "there is no way in hell I'm going to watch someone else's daughter die in front of me."

Steve traces her cheekbone with his thumb. "I never said we couldn't —" But a flicker of the endless, endless pain must dart across her face, because he drops his hand and stares into her stinging eyes and whispers, slowly, "Natalia." As if the word could break her.

As if she isn't already broken, in more places than she can count (or that her file would care to recite.)

"Maria called," Natasha says. "I leave for the east coast in the morning."

Steve chokes.

Natasha does not look at him. "Promise me you'll watch the girl while I'm gathering intel. You don't let her out of your sight, Steve. You hold her hand until she wakes from whatever they pumped into her system, and then you talk to her until she falls asleep, and you keep doing that until Tony finds her family, or until I get back. All right?"

"All right," Steve says.

Silence stretches.

Natasha steps past him, her expression drawn into a semblance of calm, but everything inside of her is screaming, a deafening roar in her head, in her blood. As her foot meets the threshold, he says, "I love you, Natalia."

She hesitates, then manages, "Thanks."

~x~X~x~

He won't see her on the plane tomorrow, head lowered, saltwater leaking out of her eyes. He won't feel the shuddering breath that escapes her lips, the loosening of her shoulders as she leans back, eyes drifting shut, head braced against the airplane seat.

He won't catch her whisper, soft, sure: I love you, too. He won't know that she wishes he could hear it.

She won't know that he already saw it, in her sarcastic remarks and her unbroken allegiance and the kisses they stole when they weren't trying to save the world —

(— or maybe, just maybe, it all starts with saving themselves.)

~x~X~x~

A/N: This story began with a single image in my mind — Natasha in the snow, having given her clothes to a shivering child, strong in her sacrifice, courageous in her very feminine desire to protect a little girl.

The Marvel wiki says that the Soviet experimentation rendered Natasha infertile, and in BLACK WIDOW: THE NAME OF THE ROSE (a fantastic hardcover collection of comics,) it's revealed that Natasha gave birth to a baby at one point who was dead upon entering the world. Oddly, that baby's name would have been Rose, had she lived... and Scarlett Johansson just named her daughter Rose in real life. It's an unnerving parallel.