So - this is a sorta kinda character study of Natasha Romanoff post-Cap 2. Got the idea from Tumblr and turned it into this little piece. It's short, I know. Sorry 'bout that. It's not a romance people; it's not Clintasha, not Steve/Natasha (sorry forgot the ship name, please forgive me). It's just plain old character angst.

Warning: Normally I don't swear in my fanfics, but I added a few choice words in this fic because I thought it needed it. Sorry, again.

"Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever. " -Aleksandar Hemon

She almost falls asleep.

(Almost. Because there's always a terrible note of sourness, where the nightmares come back full force and she's left gasping for air in the middle of the night, left throwing up for hours on end in the bathroom because she just cannot get the damn blood off her hands. Because she can't get the image of her victims fearful eyes out of her memories just before she kills them in cold blood. Because she can't even goddamn sleep without jolting awake to the terror that she's going to be jerked out of her bed and thrown into an icy cold lake, like she had when she was barely old enough to walk. Because she can't even sleep anymore knowing that her secrets are out in the world for all to see, for all to judge.)

It's always an almost. It's impossible to sleep now; the dreams come back and haunt her full force, so badly that she's left with a pounding heart and a heaving chest, clutching the empty sheets with pale white hands — hands that have killed thousands of people, innocents. Hands that have taken lives from children no older than she had been, hands that should be coated, dripping with red, but they aren't. Because the blood always washes it off. But she still sees it there, because it never really goes away — and fighting the bile that rises in her throat.

She remembers what she said to Clint in that corner, tucked away from the rest of the quickly panicking helicarrier.

(I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out.)

Those words haunt her and forever will. But he'd been gasping, fighting for relief — he'd killed innocents too. She knows the stories. He hadn't killed innocent people since he was nineteen, before Coulson had recruited him. Turned him into a better man.

Just like the archer had done with her. He had saved her.

He shouldn't have.

She should be dead.

But she wasn't. Hundreds were dead by her hand and she was alive, living to see another day. Living to do more dirty work for unseen killers, always working from the shadows. They never wanted to get their hands dirty, she knew; the bad guys always hid behind hundreds and thousands of masks, sending people like her to do what they didn't have the skill — or guts — to do themselves.

She can't fall asleep, though. She hasn't slept for more than a few hours at a time for weeks; not since the Triskelion had fallen. Her partner was missing. Rodgers was gone, having left in a panic, mumbling about looking for his friend.

She remembers Bucky — oh god, Bucky — from the Red Room. He had trained her; he had made her what she was today. They had only been children killing other children under the rule of men greedy for power. He had grown attached to her, and she had known it.

But their trainers — god, their trainers had found out. They had pulled them away from each other with the force of a thousand strong winds; oh, he had fought, sure. But they had put him down. And they brainwashed her again and again and again until she couldn't even remember her own name.

Only, on the bridge, she had been triggered.

She shakes her head at the thought, turning her head to the side, squeezing her eyes shut. There's light spilling from a small window to her right, revealing splashes of color spilling across the sky as the sun made it's appearance. It can't be more than three o'clock in the morning and she can't goddamn sleep. She can't eat, she can't sleep, she can't fucking breathe without the memories of her past spilling over her.

Her arms tremble with the force of her dark thoughts, and she slips back down, her head hitting the pillow with a thump. She forces herself to take deep breathes, over and over and over until she's no longer sure what her most recent nightmare had been about.

But they always came back. Oh, they always did.

She shifts restlessly, curling onto her side. Her eyes squeeze shut, ignoring the growing ache in her chest and the lump in her throat. She's supposed to be emotionless; she isn't supposed to be able to feel like this.

But, as tears slip down her face, she tries to breathe.

Because that's the only thing she knows how to do anymore.

Stupid Tumblr, making me write things like this.

If I didn't have a Tumblr or a fanfiction account I would get so much more sleep, not plagued by the thoughts and feelings of fictional characters constantly. I might even be able to get a decent grade in math.