Unbroken

{Chapter 6}

Deep breath, Ната́ша,

Natasha felt the constant ache of regret harboring in her distant, guarded soul; she didn't know what direction to take. Her posture was firm, resolute. Her reinforced tactical boots were grounded on the white painted steps of the Barton's farmhouse porch.

Unbidden guilt had stalked her, awakening her warped senses with a loitering smell of potent, tainted and soiled blood; marking her alabaster skin with unfading red webs of another lifetime she had no soul to claim as her own.

After an indistinct moment of recollecting her choices, despite rushes of unsettled bile churning up her strained throat; Natasha resumed her grayish teal eyes dismally skyward; fighting against the impasse of choice and raw emotional complexes; feeling the remnants of hesitation thinning away.

To her rational array of instincts, it became a continued sense of weakness—volition—when facing a new storm arising on the horizon.

Under normal circumstances, she would have wasted no time and sprung into the line of fire with Steve and Clint; discharge a few rounds and maintaining all sectors of untainted HYDRA security protocols, but it seemed like an abnormal evolution was pinning her down and the growing apparitions of fear for the life blood of Captain America—the child that was secured in her swelling womb had alternated reserves of her immense strength with protective sentiments. The baby's life was dependent on every decision she would make in the impending months of her pregnancy.

Fire seized in her gut for a vague moment, Natasha knew that her daughter or son was the core of the mission, as pain followed the trek of searing coldness rippling in her veins, but only momentarily.

Once more, the past of her horrid nightmares had grappled her back into the contracting void. She was rarely unprepared, frozen and unable to withdraw out of the unpredictable illusion of failure.

She stared intently at the transparent canvas of embellished azure splashed against muted colors of golden seams of light reflecting over heavy entanglements of obscuring clouds: morning was still present, but she became vaguely aware of the disruption of encroaching darkness looming with a feel of an intimate storm brewing in the distance.

It was nearly three in the morning when Natasha woke to the distant sound of a strangled gasp—a desperate plea for release from the barrages of torment coursing through his mind. Her body leaned upright, bolting out of the bedside chair the moment he twisted under the linen sheets; thrashing his broad arms wildly against the rails, tangling the IV's lines attached to his wrist. The nursing stuff had diminished in the hallways.

She had ignored the visiting hours that weren't permitted during early morning, wearing a guise of a doctor, black scrubs just to protect his dormant-bedridden form. Eating a chilled ice cream bar from a vending machine wasn't her best option for snacking, but it supplied a bit of relief to her when his breathing elevated into harsh pants, and sweat glazed his tarnished skin with feverish treks over his bare, carved torso serving as a canvas of discolored gashes, welts and yellow patches of bruising under his pectorals.

Gingerly with much effort of confidence, she grabbed his twitching hand, curling her fingers over his pulsing knuckles with a gentle squeeze of assurance. "I know you're in pain, Steve," she answered the echoes of his beckoning cries, her raspy voice wavered into a cadence of hinting empathy. Her thumb brushed over his bruised wrist."You're going to win this fight. Captain America always finds a way to beat the odds and you never back down, солдат."

Becoming self-aware with each passing moment, Steve listened to the measure of genuine urgency in her voice, clear and beautiful against the droning bleeps of the heart monitor encompassing in his ears. It hurt to breathe; harsh muscle spasms ignited in his fractured ribs as he managed convene a low process of awakening from his nightmarish disjointed state. Thoughts drifted by low volumes of sound; he realized that he was depending on Natasha; searching for her hand to pull him out before he could become held captive to his distant regrets.

"Steve, come on, old man, you've slept for seventy years, remember? You did more practice with dancing..." She urged, sliding the tips of her fingers over his scraped knuckles, but waiting for a response seemed taxing.

With a stern pitch of voice, Natasha executed command, she never reduced a moment to disparage the value of their friendship.

Determined to remain strong and fight the betrayal of her emotions; she interlocked her fingers with his callused digits; securing warmth with a fastened embrace of defining her trust."Now, you listen to me, Captain Rogers, you've got a lot of people counting on you to wake up. No falling back, unless you want me to replay Sam's track list, because don't think I will..."

Groaning out a muffled noise, Steve felt his bones jostling as unrested disturbance fogged his senses. Obtrusive weight of his pain crushed him against the mattress, barring him from motion. His nose crinkled as stench of a expelled fever reeked over his muscles. His throat felt raw from the lack of use in his voice. And she was so close, that he relished in warmth emitting off her skin.

He peeled his chalky lips open; breath escaped during his first attempt to muster up the arrival of an indecipherable whisper. "Tasha..." he slurred lowly, wrestling out syllables of an expected question.

"Are you okay?"

Her lips slanted into a weak smirk, gripping his arm. She summoned enough poise and dominance, holding back of what she assumed were tears. "I'm fine, Rogers. The illusion of worry lessened over her paled features. "Well, I'm a lot better off than you, considering those battle scars you carry."

Steve weakly mirrored her coy grin, his blue eyes regained clarity under the shadow of his eyelashes, and then focused his resolve on her blaze of scarlet ringlets, twining curls shaping over her angelic face, but he knew that darkness in her eyes would never abide to the gravity of sympathy. "Remind me never to ask you that question again."

"Noted," she returned evenly, offering him up one of her roguish smiles that Steve read all too well. "Honestly, you need to get back into action, Steve," she patted his disused arm."The guys miss hearing your old war stories...Well, Thor especially." He settled his glassy blue eyes on the plate of banana bread Sam had made for him, and digressed out a sigh. Natasha detected his disquiet and continued."Tony has been underground for months, Pepper keeps in touch. And Clint has been recovering from a mission in Romania. So, you haven't really missed out..."

"I've been on the bench too long, Nat," he winced, inclining his head off the pillow, his ruffled blonde hair spiked in the wake of compression, and his slacked brow creased as he failed to straighten his body into a comfort position under the layer of sheets. His pained crystal eyes caught slits of light bleeding through the shadows of the dim room; over the plastic tubes and wires attached to his body, when his hard abdomen crunched the EKG stickers, creating friction on his exposed muscles. Glints of the dawn streamed through the curtains. "How long have I been in here...It feels like I've slept for another seventy years."

"Not long," Natasha grinned beguilingly, doing her best to keep his mind less focused on the dull misery reflecting in his hazed blue eyes. She reached for a plastic cup of apple juice and ripped off the seal, handing it effortlessly to him. "A couple of days at the least." Steve accepted the drink with a muted nod, and took small cautious sips as the gash on his lips stung."You're making good progress. I'm guessing you'll be out by the end of the week. If you keep yourself out of trouble with the nurses."

"Natasha—" Steve admonished quietly, catching his breath, his busted lips fastened into a taut line, "I'm not worrying about dating any hospital dames." Unhinged embers of defiance kindled in his stern eyes, unwavering with recognized guilt of holding back a life time promise: until the end of line.

For days, Steve had tortured himself, pinning all the sickening blame on the mistake Captain America made on the edge of Zola's train; ever since he'd stared into the deaden gaze of HYDRA's dehumanized assassin, the iciness of blue that held no memory or brotherly love—just granted pain and reckoning of death.

Breathing deeply, he commanded the square edge of his heavy jaw to clench as his pulse spiked with a torrential rush of adrenaline. He clamped his eyes in resentment. A single tear slid down his temple. "I can't-I can't stay here." He managed in a dry gasp; frustratingly summoning up his moral composure to evaluate the outcome of his choice to chase after the ghost of his best friend—alone. Resonating, unfathomable denial and pain fractured his chiseled, battered features."I have a mission to finish."

"Steve, leave the Winter Soldier...I mean Barnes in the dark." she urged softly, swallowing down her bitterness. Vivid images flashed in her wandering mind, almost holding her with treason as shadowing memories infested, and she was trapped in the distorting reflection of ice—staring into desensitize azure eyes, haunting and filled with glints of malice. He stared into her soul, prying resilience out of her; wordlessly calling her back into the caving void as the threatening clutch of his metal hand reached to drag her within the ice.

Natasha felt her chest tighten in the moment; her teeth grounded. Fighting the spirals of conflict, she narrowed her gaze at her trim waist, imagining the discolored and affected skin of the Odessa scar, tearing apart in the wake of a cold intrusion of possessed memory."You can't fix the damage that has been done, Steve. If Barnes wants you to find him, he'll leave you a blood trail to follow."

"No, Tasha," he seethed in a cracking protest, flexing his jaw against her envisage warning. "I'm not going to pretend that Bucky doesn't exist. He's not a some machine that HYDRA can play with… He's all the family I've got left," he admitted dismally, his veins burned with pumps of another dosage of morphine.

His face crumpled into a grimace and his breath clogged with uneven hitches to evoke a reminder that he had survived another war with HYDRA—only this time, victory seemed absent.

"I'm taking a stand for his sake, and I will do whatever it takes to get him back." His expression hollowed, and his voice didn't waver.

Natasha reined her posture back against the chair; a bit daunted by his raw declaration of saving a man-a weaponzied and brutal monster—who had left her to bleed in the mountain pass.

"Friends never turn their backs on each other..." He cleared his throat and set his jaw, deciding on the inevitable choice to follow Bucky's shadow. "I won't turn mine on Buck."

"How are you planning on finding him?" she pried, her voice teeming with an edge of indifference. She quickly rose from the chair, swaying her sculpted curves to the window; crossing her arms protectively over her solid bust."You only know his face, but nothing of his past."

"I'll figure it out." Steve regarded her with a hard, driven look, searing azure orbs bored into her skull as they exchanged another unreadable gaze with each other; rejecting deficits of their unspoken emotions. "I'm not askin' you to help me, but you know damn well that Bucky is being used for HYDRA. So if you don't want to give me directions to follow, I fully accept your decision."

"You're terrible at this, Steve," she retorted in an irate breath, shifting her teal eyes to the amber glow of light illumining through the parking lot down below.

She shook her head, reluctant to offer him assistance. Copper wisps of curls hung over her lips, obscuring a less effective smirk upon her reasoning. "Alright. I'll offer my services to you, but on one condition...Whatever you find, keep it to yourself. The Winter Soldier's past isn't a nice story to read, believe me I've tried to piece it together."

Steve felt a weak smile tug on his lips, his gentle blue eyes crinkled, matching the stretched corners of his mouth. He had always believed in her, despite her previous employment, but those sins were slowly etching away; and there was something unmistakable forming between them. "You know somethin' Natasha, you're terrible at lyin'...You said there's no good in you, but clearly that is a defective truth."

She smirked, eyeing the IV bag. "Are you sure it's not the morphine talkin' since you are on a heavy dosage?" Without giving him time to answer, she inched closer, and caressed his bruised jaw with a weightless swipe of her knuckles, feeling the prick of faint stubble bristling his skin."Get some rest, Steve," she ordered in a soothing whisper, staring deeply into his heavy-lidded blue eyes, and tilted her head downward, pressing the swell of her lips into a tentative kiss on his feverish skin. She backed away, watching him drift into a contented sleep, and when he was out, she walked away, not turning back.

"Don't go where I can't follow you," she whispered to him again. Don't go.

It became an absent sense of attachment; harsh and unrelenting pain morphed into searing remorse, mauling against the exterior layers of her torn heart; fraying her willpower into shreds, and not giving her a chance to release building tears that sat in her eyes.

She'd been unprepared to carry out the mission, her unborn child was growing strong in her womb; the components of the alpha serum were merging within her bones, giving her renewed strength to push her limits and overcome the harrowing situations that she would soon face alone—well maybe not fully alone. However, she did feel detached from the aspects of maternal love that soon became weaving instincts coursing through her veins; the intangible need to protect her baby at all cost, to fight against the hordes of the demons birthed in the realm of the Red Room, and to reclaim her freedom—her one chance to embrace what had been stolen from her: humanity.

{Red Room}

In the ambiance of the old, abandoned theater, Natalia stood behind the planes of glass, still and observant to the shadows enthralling her to follow the vague stench of spilled-innocent blood wavering through the vast corridors that surrounded her displaced body.

She became attuned to the encroaching shades around her; the red haze glowing on polished mahogany walls and granite flooring, with curved brass lamps holding the constant illumination of deceptive warmth against darkness. It offered no comfort to the young orphans limping up the stairwell behind her, their taped feet bruised from dancing the same routine of pure discipline—an endless performance to erase vestiges of weakness, and harbor vigil and control of their flawless bodies; and to never break when the piano replayed the somber, inexorable melody.

'They dance for life.' She always heard the haunting, spiteful cadence of Ivan's voice, a cold reminder of the reason why she had become a captive in a dance school that transformed girls into dark, blood-lusting ravens instead of graceful swans 'They're unbreakable. Dancers. Symbols of dedication and prime obedience. The piano keys play the melody and the girls follow every tempo, my little Natalia.'

For two years, Natalia craved to feel warmth penetrate bone-deep within her scars; the need was unfathomable to tolerate. To accept the need became a weakness that wasn't easily shared by her fellow classmates; she was considered an outsider among the selected ranks—an unavailing stray without moral purpose; destined to be purged from the sheltering depths of humanity.

'Do you want to dance, little Natalia?'

The little red haired girl who was birthed in the desolated streets of Stalingrad—Natalia Alianovna Romanova—lost everything in blink of eye: existence, love and hope because she allowed the macabre shades of red to pierce through the innocence of her irreproachable shadow.

Soon after the merciless deal had sparked to life with a firm handshake, Natalia tasted the bitterness of betrayal when she entrusted a Russian soldier, deemed him as her surrogate father; and allowed him to mold her into an obedient daughter. She followed his orders and never hesitated to execute his commands.

...Natalia, come, there is someone I want you to meet...

Believing in Ivan, she put all measures of faith into his tarnished promises of making her a dancer of the Bolshoi Theater, but each covenant had only brought visages of pain that kept on devouring until she became numb to protest against it.

Beyond the glass, another strict performance was in session; mature girls twirled on extended feet, holding precise balance as their sylph bodies spun like rotating clockwork on the stage—mechanisms of strife and precision; the balance of harnessing dominance over pain and wearing disguises of marble to hide the terror that welled under the surface of their idealistic, mirrored smiles.

Their expressions were hollow as the metallic guns that were loaded with three bullets, resting on top of the piano, to keep order in line if hinged links of the chain unlocked.

They weren't eager girls, just specters of their former selves; nearly ghosts trapped in the sinister grayness of the stage; their marred hands cuffed behind their backs as they were fastened in lines of sync and poise; lithe bodies dressed in black leotards with hair tightened into buns that reveal every crease of paleness.

The ballerinas' were beautiful, angelic, graceful and dangerous. If they broke the rhythm of expected harmony, the music would stop, and their bodies would shatter as weakness in the group would be removed. Faults were something that no dancer could afford, not in the soulless eyes of the demons that fed off their bleeding failures.

'They never falter, because if one falls out of line, red paints the stage.'

Responding to the coldness of those malicious words, Natalia managed to give her instructor a effortless nod; feeling her blood run cold in the moment a towering shadow devoured the light casting over her small, violated body.

The disfavoring taste of blood tainted her dormant lips, treks of metallic and bitter acid, searing into her exposed heart and turning her bones into marble. Natalia was hopelessly condemned to feel nothing, just remain still as the touch of ice traced over her ivory skin—hollowness of her pain obscured the embers of grayish emerald, the enigmatic color that held last remaining memories of her deceased mother became a vacant ambiance of tractability to the simple commands echoing in her ears.

'Are you ready for the next performance, little Natalia?'

"I'm not a good dancer," she admitted in a low breath, refusing to look at the shadow looming behind her. It wasn't until she caught the sheen of handcuffs that she knew submission was her only option to survive.

Natalia wanted to resist, but her life was nothing to them, just a stringed marionette that would shatter into pieces. They would remake her, twist the weaves of her innocent soul and violate her heart with scars, deep until blood poured out. They would mold her by instrumental torments, strip her flesh and infuse her veins with rancid venom until she accepted the bite of death."I will fall..."

'With practice you will never fail a lesson.'

"I will never fail," Natasha answered the phantoms in a pitch of despondence; she felt the coldness of the sleek metal slide against her fingers. Fighting against the eruptions of harsh sickening waves of nausea growing constant in her swollen abdomen, she quickly placed the pistol into a hostler strap wrapped around her sculpted thigh.

Her skin became glazed with sickening perspiration and her teal eyes were heavy-lidded as she fought against the urge to race into the bathroom and flip the toilet seat up.

Summoning all measures of her composure, Natasha gritted her teeth, and staggered towards the barn. She then halted in her strides; taking a moment to seize control of her betraying emotions.

It became an interminable moment; muscle joints and rigid bones were riddled with an assault of spasms and her vision glazed with a feverish haze.

"Not again," she grumbled in a shuttering breath, and instantly squatted down to her shaky knees, and parted her quivering lips. Her stomach lurched and regressed as the bitter taste of bile arose in her throat. Everything gurgled inside, and gagging noises consumed her labored hitches of breath as she emptied out the contents of her stomach—releasing all the remnants of breakfast onto the grass and trying to grasp onto the strongholds of her turbulent mind.

After heaving out the last pint of bile, Natasha wiped her lips, crawling towards a hard surface. The planes of her back pressed against the barn's wooden door, trying to ease down the increasing levels of morning sickness that ravaged through her weakened—exploited body.

There was a vicious pulse elevating in her veins, rancid phantoms of anguish that seemed to clog torrents of blood—she felt the sudden chill ghosting in the stillness penetrating through the humid air—a merciless shadow of her stolen past that entrenched her during moments of vulnerability.

With each shaky step towards parked Harley Davidson, Natasha could feel the invisible hand of her demon slithering around her throat, fastening over her exposed skin and pinning her lithe body into the darkness.

That possessive touch was the reason she had been condemned to have a barren womb—she was betrayed and unwillingly forced to endure the procedure of having her humanity become stripped and threadbare of all her reserves of strength; it unravel with each prick of a needle that invaded her veins.

It was a degrading solution of creating emotionless and skilled hybrids of intelligence, obedience and resistance.

She wasn't used to feeling the clashes of muscle tension merging against her expanding abdomen; the recesses of her embroiled mind were plagued with constant surrender of thoughts that it was a risk of disobeying her lover's orders and engaging cross fire while being unprotected by Steve's indestructible shield—the reserves of his enhanced strength and moral guidance that always set her into the right direction, no matter which road she decided to take.

Clenching her jaw, Natasha effortlessly suppressed the fleeting visages of pain; her shaky hand grasped the strap of the backpack she'd left prompt against door—storing her necessary supplies for the mission that mostly contained packages of graham crackers, rice cakes and apple juice packs she had managed to salvage from Clint's fridge. She was efficiently prepared for traveling, even though her stomach gurgled ominously underneath her stealth uniform.

Breathing calmly helped her vent the surges of queasiness, Natasha carefully unzipped the backpack with slow ease, and intently found herself staring down at the dark blue Avenger's hooded sweater; her lithe fingers shakily clutched over the sleeve, as she lifted the sweater up to her nose and blissfully inhaled the heady, unbidden masculine scent lingering in the fabric.

She remembered aligning her lithe frame against the muscular planes of his back, feeling the heat inviting, daring her to lock herself fully into his embracing arms as the soft expanse of his lips made wet impressions of kisses underneath the bend of her jaw. She was safe. Untouched by the shadows, and fully aware of his unbreakable devotion merging against her heart.

Running had always lead her to escape from the truth in the matter of circumstances, but this time she wasn't alone on her unexpected journey. The weight of a blossoming new life was putting her down a different road—a path that wasn't easily chosen, but granted when she felt the fluttering vibrations of a strong pulse ripple inside the compacted layers of her protected, swollen womb.

It was her choice to follow him back onto the battlefield, to face the unavailing power of their stolen pasts and reclaim victorious redemption. The Black Widow stood by his side when the remnants of the battle scattered through the shafts of light, breaking through the darkness. This wasn't no different then what they faced as partners, fighters and lovers.

She refused to stand on the sidelines, and to allow the father of her unborn child to endure levels of pain and torment because the super-soldier distanced himself in order to protect his family: his burden of sacrifice.

{Flashback}

Steve was close to her, inadvertently standing by her side; august, stalwart and well reserved. They'd been separated from each other for a while—almost three months—taking different laborious roads, and gathering up scattered pieces of their stolen pasts.

Ultimately, it was Steve's choice to distance himself from her torturous world of cruelty and deception; the soldier in him respected the Black Widow's concealed motives of rectifying her virulent sins; regardless of how naturally concerned he was for her life.

He couldn't untangle himself from the invariable desires to claim the fullness of her rose tinted lips into a heatedly, wistful kiss; the variants of his choices kept him restricted from taking another risk with her.

So he remained stoic, underlying reason and stability for reclaiming levels of trust with the murderous, efficient siren of the Red Room; and he couldn't avoid a chance to unmask his devotion willingly to her, not when the recurring emptiness of his severed promise to Peggy still kept splinting his dormant, safeguarded heart with resistance to dare himself to move onward.

They were inside the Quinjet; recovering from a recon mission in Bolivia, the rays of the fading sunset pierced through entanglements of clouds, merging into a canvas of fuchsia and tangerine. Steve pretended that nothing was wrong, and took a few refreshing swigs of water to quench the dryness of his throat.

Remnants of dried blood solidified on his chiseled features, evidence of an intense combat and his crystalline—azure eyes severely focused on the sketch pad underneath his navy-blue helmet, fighting the urge to draw the barrage of images emanating from the disciplined recesses of his mind.

He tried to deal with his torment alone. He resisted the impulses to ravage her mouth with contact, assurance and heat. At the moment, Steve seemed fundamentally disturbed by the unsettled regrets and fractured promises that always resurfaced when he clung onto the interweaves of his past failures.

As Natasha shifted her vehement grayish eyes to the glass windows of the cockpit, she caught the obscuring veils of darkness approaching; glistening waves underneath the hovering jet captured reflections of the dimming sky. It felt like a chimera, nothing was absent and distant between them.

Heat wavered off his solid muscles, compacting against her rigid bones; a soothing elation sealed in her veins. Natasha became immobilized and trapped within his towering embrace of raw, enhanced power.

Nothing could have prevented the moment, there were no barriers to cross, just a daring contingent of reclaiming a purpose within the foundations built on the incomplex acts of their credence.

For some vague reason, Steve kept his inner reservations buried, his stowed desires were fastened under the assertive, stoic exterior of Captain America, but pain adhered in the deepness of his metallic turquoise eyes.

Before Natasha could break the silence with her teasing snark, an intense and unexpected flash of lightning crashed on the horizon; sonic booms of thunder defeated through masses of building clouds. She felt the power of the storm, vibrations and heat intermixed, and her arm intentionally brushed the star emblem of his carved pectorals as a violent gush of wind rattled the jet into the air streams, directing it through the eye of the tempest.

It was an empowering moment, Natasha fought against the wrangled—protesting—urge to invade his reserved thoughts, to relish control over the asylums of his stowed regrets. And she vaguely wondered if he was reclaiming untainted memories of his stolen past, beyond all the solid muscles and enhanced strength, she found a distant, broken man—a displaced soldier—chasing a regrettable promise that had been lodged into his fractured heart.

She detected all the signs—the oppressive silence that cast over his stoic and passive features; the wrenching guilt that made him surrender to delusion of failure, and the swell of tears building in the fathoms of his wintry-metallic stare. Each shade of blue held crescents of his laden pain that seemed almost unreachable. None of that sparked empathy to her, it when the dark embrace of solace raveled in his purest heart. Natasha couldn't look away, nor deny the uncanny stirrings of wanting to hold on through every second she deserved.

No matter how many times she tried, Natasha could never reveal the unbidden truth; she always came up with a rational excuse to keep her guard up, even though it seemed crippling to endure whenever she was close to him.

Feeling her unsettled stomach churn inevitably, Natasha had permitted her lips to press into distasteful grimace. Uncertainly vented in her heart, she felt suddenly off-balance; despite the driving force of impulse spiking in her chest. After taking in a few deep breaths; Natasha had collectively trained her grayish eyes at the chiseled and fierce presence of her observant and enigmatic partner: Captain Steven Rogers—the timeless soldier that never yielded from a fight. Something wavered over them, undetected to the obvious desire of taking a risk.

She was the Russian spider of a thousand lies and bullets of red—a marble encased siren that was meant to endure the absence of a man's love. She swallowed hard, pushing all doubt and chancing her deepest emotions.

"The storm's getting worse," she clarified, devising a suggestion while a deviant smirk crossed over her lips. "We could land on one of the islands and wait for it to pass. It's your call, Rogers."

Clenching the protesting muscle of his jaw, Steve dismissed her seductive purr, leveling his wary eyes on the thunderheads looming above them. After one breath, he parted his lips, and returned; detecting her undisclosed intentions.

"No, the jet is on autopilot," he whispered low and gravelly; refusing to meet her imploring stare."Besides, this Atlantic storm is nothing like what Thor does with his hammer." His lips slanted into a wry grin. "Now that's a lightning show."

"Always the spoiler of the party," Natasha retorted back sharply, Steve watched a dangerous glint become evident in her teal irises, and the Soviet spy knew that her tactics couldn't reckon with his nobility. Instead she stared at the discontent obscuring his intent focus. After releasing a few impatient breaths, she seized the advantage of unnerved opportune moment; alarmingly grasping his wrist, twisting his stiffen forearm into a possessive lock of submission. "I think you need to learn how to relax, soldier."

"Enough, Natasha," Steve dismissed tensely, the firmness in his voice dipped into a restrained growl and he wrenched his wrist from her avaricious hold. She had caught him off guard, and he was regressing against her imploring performance of seduction. "I'm not in the mood to play your games…" He spat, clenching his broad jaw obstinately, while he stood his ground against her.

Alarmed by her sudden impulse of dominance, Steve involuntarily took a step back, deciphering her next move as he looked skeptically between her and the visages of threatening weather, preparing to arm his heart again or trying to find a good enough ration to believe in their connected future.

It was a bit disconcerting.

The measure of subterfuge she exhibited left him guessing while the chicanery of her actions were distracting: confusion and discontent mounted against his chest, until he managed to draw out an addled sigh. "Why are you pretending again, Nat?" he asked with a softer edge dragging in his crisp Brooklyn drawl, while holding his penetrating gaze steady onto her masked emotions playing across her ivory features.

Natasha stared up at him, searching for the abated truth welled in his stern eyes."Why are you acting like this, Steve?" she rebuffed back.

He inhaled deeply, his demeanor revealed evidence of tainted remorse. Memories plagued his mind. His regarding eyes were gentle and refusing to give his pain an outlet.

"I dunno," he stiffened with nonchalance reeling himself away from her, Natasha watched his eyebrows crease into hardened lines, and his blue eyes steeled with an impassive gleam as he scouted for a resolve beyond his realms of pain. "It hasn't been easy on me these last few months." He admitted sincerely, bowing his head down, and drew out a wavering, abashed breath. "Sometimes I just can't focus straight."

He gave her a faint dissatisfied grimace, sealing his lips tight and he was breathing through his nostrils. He had to find another reason to follow Nick Fury's shadow, but lately he was plagued with too much unsettled, torturous regrets. He wanted a guiltless release, an unbidden chance for freedom without the dark shroud of his past mistakes pinning him down.

"You know it's kinda hard following orders without knowing what exactly I'm fighting for…It's not freedom or peace…I'm just cleaning up another man's mistakes." The smooth edges of his lips curved into a doubtful frown. As he held her gaze even, Natasha swiftly averted her irritated focus back to the gloaming clouds. After clearing his throat, Steve invaded her drifting thoughts and asked his simple question in a slow, contained breath, "Do you trust, Fury?" he asked, with a firmness dipping in his tone.

Natasha remained leveled in her defenses; avoidance pricked in her veins. She attempted to block out the urgency in his voice, but something cut deep as memories that she had pushed into the chasms of her mind threatened to betray her with cyclones of regrets and nightmarish images of having needles and machines extract every piece of her innocence and recreate her existence into a dangerous, untamed, and enslaved demon that was destined to do terrible things to good people.

Unfathomable emotions stirred inside Natasha; harboring thoughts lulled her back to the defining moment of facing the soul carbon truth etched against layers of unsettled regrets. For days, she eluded herself from the unbridled compromise of her emotions; shadows veiled over her; awakening of agony grew into a paramount test of her endurance, refusing to offer an opening to expose her impending confessions.

Discontentment rippled in her bones, she forced a deviant smirk across her lips; tension grappled her closer to him, dangerously parallel, and Natasha became caught in the moment, equality staring intensely into the fierce and calm hues of azure. They claimed a risk to remain unadulterated while everything fell into an array of spiraling desires, expunging her rations to keep distant when she dared to peer deep and beyond the purity of his stalwart, chiseled visage of strife and authority.

Rebellion glinted in her aphonic eyes, Steve didn't understand the penalty she had paid to seek atonement for her relentless sins; Nick Fury offered her repentance, giving the Widow a second chance to prove that monsters could be reverted back to their humanity.

"Nick Fury is a good man, Steve," Natasha declared in a firm defense, regarding him with her fervent teal eyes, trying to divert the emboldened sentiment in her raspy tone. "Mind you, that he does have his secrets, but at the end of the day, the world is spared from another threat because he keeps both eyes open."

Steve scoffed, looking affronted; after a momentary lapse of silence, the still arch of his lips degenerated into scowl, a taunt grimace of dejection. He barred his emotions from her invasive motives; keeping his azure eyes steady on the devious obscurity captured in her eyes.

Raving fire tore in his veins, a blaze of discontent spread across the muscle planes of his heaving chest. Lightning broke through the red canvas of cloud, reflecting the stillness of his eyes, and his heart felt laden as stone.

Immobilized by the reoccurrence of his doubts, Steve listened to the silent accord, the somber percussion of a pulse against ice encased was driving himself back into the abyss, turning away from the reproach of reverential strength to given into the variants of his raw desires to face her, without the incorruptible mantle of Captain America, the insurmountable burdens weighing him down.

"Secrets," Steve held back a dry seethe ragging up his throat; fastening his hands into restricted fists; the skin layered over his knuckles faded into a dull white. His stormy blue orbs flashed with intensity, red lightning coursed in his veins.

The haunting and deaden face of his best friend scraped against the forefront of his mind, convicting him with throes of guilt as he tried to hasten the storm within.

For a single moment, he was drawn back to the conjuring of hate rippling into the pale wintry eyes of Bucky, a feral phantom of HYDRA's merciless tortures; tortures which sentenced an honorable, good soldier into life of screaming, vacant shadows and following the bloody footprints of his targets.

Steve was barely adjoined with her stare, the sharp edge of his jaw flexed a hollowed as he wrenched with a enraged jerk, recalling vexed memories with cynical precision. "Fury kept the most important truth hidden from me..." he admitted in a hoarse growl, fighting against the intrusion of solace."My best friend never went home. His life was stolen because I never tried to search for him when the SSR had Zola in custody... I—" He swallowed a lump in his throat, "I failed him."

"Enough with the guilt trip, Steve," Natasha leveled, attempting to roll her eyes. "What happened to James Barnes wasn't your fault. Sometimes we have no victory, but it doesn't mean you have to live in his shadow."

Steve stifled a disconcerting frown. "You don't know what I've lost," he berated her. He tried to look away, but the phantoms of his regrets prevented him. His gaze never wavered off of her.

Staring intensely into his azure eyes, Natasha became engrossed, searching a way inside and unabashedly stole a glance at his gloved fingers obstinately coiled over the plastic surface of the water bottled, but his reserved emotions seemed transparent. It was a childish game to believe in false hope and reveal something undeniable—unconfirmed when the complex darkness and legacy of the Black Widow had been stripped away.

"What? Do you think the world goes dark just because of a few debts of your failures?" Natasha surmised, indifferently with an indistinct edge in her voice that barely held reverence.

Steve dismissed an audible grunt, regarding a weighted stare back at the shield. It was customary to adapt; regrets were attachments—distractions that held everything back on a mission. Throughout the hardships of her other life time, Natasha refused to embrace a conventional life; spending days trapped in lapses of memory in order to survive without feeling her skin become encased with ice.

There had been moments when Natasha wondered how Ivan became so invested with sparing her life from the harsh Russian winter; removing her frail and sickly existence from the vacant streets; and gave her inhumane purpose to serve the will of the KBG-becoming a ghost agent. She was a utilized weapon of obtaining mastery and succession that was granted whenever she fired the gun—despite her reluctance to obey General Karpov's orders.

'Remember your training. Kill and don't ask questions.'

"Before I was recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D's ranks, I used to do business that would require getting rid of evidence of protective details involving the mission," she evoked out a breath, despite the bitterness coiling in her veins.

The coldness of her teal eyes was unwavering, observing him closely, almost inspecting all his grievances he eluded into the cold ambiance of his negligence. "It was never about steadying down and seeing the world the way many see it every day. I wasn't permitted to enjoy the simple things...I followed orders and completed my objectives."

She shrugged nonchalantly, not removing her scrutiny from the stillness of his pained blue eyes. Coyness shadowed over the fullness of her claret lips, but Steve was still unresponsive towards her, intently staring at the red paint of his shield; absent and trapped in a distant void, using the elements around them as a distraction of avoidance. "I guess I should have looked in other directions."

Subduing her dominant impulses, Natasha released a frustrated sigh and promptly continued, with a distinctive husky edge in her voice. "It feels real to me...This life...Well, at least the trust issue part of it."

Feeling his final assault of unadulterated regression, Steve affixed a dismal resolve at her concerned look. "Sometimes you can't turn back," he said, narrowing down at her left hand, noticing a patch of marred scarring around her wrist as she removed her glove. A branded symbol of the traumatic and nightmarish experiences she had underwent in prisons of the Red Room. He felt his heart clenched, he was on the verge of falling into the utmost of despair; a cold wave of regret clashed against him, but still he remained guarded.

"Are you talking about that first practiced kiss, lover boy?" she asked, encompassing her words with a tentative—uncharacteristic edge. Surely, there was more depth in his admission, back in those silent moments where the pocketed afterglow of a sunset half-caressed his angular face. Natasha detected that his heart seemed avulsed with unseen pain. Taking the opportunity to deliver the right amount of questioning, she met his stare before he could counter out a protest. "It must've meant something to you, since you clearly don't want to talk about it."

His towering stance resumed pliant, dissonant rumbles of thunder vibrated through the interior of the jet, as he drew out even, inaudible breaths. Natasha watched his brow crease with engraved lines. His whole demeanor changed in the instant as he became ensnared with the unexplained force of mounted grief. The images replaying in his mind created awful feelings—abated from shattered promises and rushes of venting frustration.

The deep, unexpected kiss he'd shared with Peggy Carter on the runway invaded the conjures of his thoughts; the softness of a steady rhythmical pace was just a taste of what love could have been; he remembered every surging moment- time around them had accelerated and froze as he drifted into another world. He was staring evenly into her depthless brown eyes looking steady into his stern gaze with unrestrained desire; he almost caught his breath; Peggy made a graceful effort to reach his lips.

Feeling inexplicably, and naturally close to her, Steve fought against the frantic pace of hesitance, his heart skipped a few beats when he gripped onto his reservations. He could feel the temperate pulse of her desperation, swallowing breathes had bated out of his mouth and tangible fire rushed in his blood. He felt so weightless—unsteady—when Peggy smiled beautifully at him.

There were no crushing mulls of doubt that could keep him from capturing a real, enthralling moment with his best girl. Steve needed to kiss her, to prove to his barred heart that love could spear right through it. Stillness made a reproach over his guarded emotions, and he looked tentatively down at her, timid and uncertain, if he had the right to claim her beautiful, waiting lips.

All it took was a leap of faith to give into the breathless moment, Peggy gripped onto his chest hostler strap; and Steve felt a momentarily lapse of hesitance, the sharp edge of his square jaw instantly clenched as he slowly withdrew to angle his head down, the arch of his lips enveloped hers with a tentative caress over the fullness of her ruby lips.

A heated sense arose in his veins and he relished the igniting sensation of her breath ghosting over his urging mouth; temperate swell of his lips made blissful contact with hers in the moment he turned away from fear, and his breathing slowed, gentle pressure merged into a monumental embrace of unforgettable equal love.

Steadiness witted in his chest, Steve remained motionless, breath hitched into soft moans as he fully absorbed the decant taste of her, feeling the softness of her lips dance with shivery pulses that outmatched spent moments they shared with an empowering kiss until the mission called him back.

He broke away, with slow reluctant motion; his lips hovered over her skin as the hardness of his helmet pressed against her forehead. A knife in the heart, that's the only way to describe what he felt before he slipped away from Peggy. He whispered out a small order, hotly against the expanse of her contented lips. "Wait for me..."

"Two minutes," he finally hitched out in a despondent whisper, trying to compose himself. "That's how much time I had to say the things I wanted Peggy to hear...It wasn't enough. Just my stupid way of easing her pain when I went under," he confessed, brokenly.

"Well, maybe you should go to her and finish that message," she offered, gently. "It's never too late to fix your mistakes. I feel like if you don't say those words to Agent Carter, you're sort of surrendering to your pain, am I right?"

"I dunno," he returned evenly, his wavering voice laced with unmasked bereavement. "Peggy...She was my..." His blue eyes averted back to the road, and his mused expression wore a diminished semblance; rawness scraped against his throat, he swallowed thickly. "It just doesn't feel deserving enough to go through with it. Years are against us, and Peggy is not the same woman I loved back in 1945. She's reaching a point where I can't be there to save her."

"Somehow I get the feeling you already did, Rogers..." Natasha confirmed, in a softer, more moderated tone of understanding. It felt ineffectual to summon a measure of empathy to form a tender smile that wasn't overshadowed with coldness.

Natasha effortlessly lifted her hand over his star emblem, and stole another dismal glance at the white embedded link of deep scarring encircled over her wrist. Feeling groundless in her own right was an abnormal sensation, she wasn't a revisionist—a dreamer to rebuild broken down structures—walls.

She had survived years as a victim of transgressions, depending on her skill-set and combat training to maintain self-preservation while chasing her demons.

For two missions, she had used Steve as an anchor to pull her out of tempests, never giving him anything in return. Love wasn't real, as it was evidently serving as a fetal—clandestine—distraction between them. Captain America and the Black Widow were polar opposites.

Natasha never blinked; stillness locked onto matching sincere gaze of his unwavering azure became captives in a duel of unspoken confessions. As soon, Steve reached the rifts of her heart, there was a impenetrable force blocking his love—he didn't give up, not on her, nor himself.

With a strong pulse of his heart, Steve reasoned with his restricted desires. He parted his lips, irregular paces of breath hitched in his chest. He flashed his gaze to the wind shield, staring intently at the mundane patterns of ice frosted over the plane of glass. He could taste the sweat sloping over the arch fullness of his lips.

Swallowing down a lump in his throat, he fought against the reservations, he felt off balance, almost surrendering to gravity. Tonight, he wasn't listening to the soldier logic that usually spun his moral compass; for one moment, he wanted to lay down his shield and fully embrace her, not as a dream, but as flesh and blood—a woman that was meant to be loved by an earnest benevolent man who needed to learn how to dance.

Everything felt groundless, Steve used her warmth as an anchor; clinging onto her beauty as his unfrayed life-line. "Nat," he finally said, in a low hesitant breath. He didn't want to resort to desperation, he had to keep the pace tentative and focus on her. With a slow reach of his hand, he gripped her shoulder with feathered weight; and tenderly stared into her unreadable gaze. "Would you...Uh...I mean...Did you have someone you considered as your right partner?"

Intrigued by his forward—effective approach to gain her attention, Natasha quirked an eyebrow up, waiting for him to babble on like a schoolboy asking his favorite crush for a date. It seemed childish, but she played along, even though she felt the spark of connection between them.

With an even breath, she curved her lips into a surly grin, knowing he intentionally diverted his true intentions of asking her out on a date.

"In the Red Room, where I was trained to become the monster I am today, one sleeper agent became my mentor for a few years of my enrollment. He gave me a chance to prove strength to my fellow classmates. In the end, I discovered that it was a childish game, and that he never belonged to me."

Every lash that struck her body, gave her a surge of defiance—power against the agonizing brutally that marked her skin. With her failures, she adapted, craving for the taste of blood to drown her lungs as her teachers whittled away pieces of humanity, infusing the ruthless lust of a hardcore killer, that never doubted her resilience, and utilized the methods ingrained in her to reach succession: performance, mastery, drive and resistance.

However, her impulses of rage never lasted; not when the silent wraith entered her space, and brought her down to a pitiful level of dissemblance and subordination.

He was ruthless, brutal and relentless with his attacks. His methods were elusive and lethal.

The butchers called him 'James'; he adopted that name when he was thawed out from the ice coffin, and placed into an isolation chamber until his voice drained out of him. It was a method of torture. He was mute and obedient to every command programmed within the binary codes of his disassembled mind. In other words, he was a hollow semblance of a nameless man. A senseless weapon created for the purpose to destroy and obey.

Within the next months, James had become her mentor and partner on covert missions of infiltration, assassinations and interference with data mining.

She became the venomous weaver of KBG—the infamous Black Widow, an efficient spy who killed her prey with rounds of bullets and wire.

Through the harsh relents of her training, Natasha became a symbol of death in the hearts and minds of Russia; and her fame granted her power against international threats. And James had developed a new identity after receiving a new weapon—a metallic alloy arm that had replaced his old plastic and steel limb. It was forged in the molten heart of HYDRA, and attached to the marred and detached skin of his left shoulder.

It was inorganic, but he learn how to control every movement of its contortion, and after a few terminations, a red star was painted on the chrome plating. A symbol of his willed alliance with his new masters: General Karpov, Aleksander Lukin, and Yuri Brushov.

Natasha narrowed her gaze at the white remnants of scarring reflecting in the caress of pale light. "He never belonged to anyone." A streak of red flashed in the stillness of her teal eyes, resolving into a symbol of the Soviet star branded on polished alloy. Menacing, steely blue eyes faded into the whiteness. Dead and frozen.

"Natalia, it's only me," He spoke in a low timber, his straining voice held an American drawl, urgency was evident in his words. He was dangerously close to her, barely a shadow against her exposed skin.

Carefully his chrome fingers graced through her vibrant russet curls; and obscurity welled in his azure eyes held regarded contempt against the betrayal that was embedded on her skin. He didn't expect her to forgive him, not even whisper his true name. All he wanted was a chance to stare into her alluring eyes once again.

"You need to relax." He implored, brushing his lips, full and urging to claim her again as his dance partner for the next sparring match. The coldness of his digits stroked over her jawline, almost making her dormant. "They've done somethin' to the others...You have to get out, Natalia."

"I can't leave," Natalia returned evenly in a low wince, implying her fate. She lifted her arm to reveal the marred indention of the handcuffs. "If I run, they will terminate me and the other Black Widows of my class."

She looked away, drawing out a shaky exhale, and didn't falter in her poised stance."I refuse to watch their necks be snapped for something that they never did because of my selfish choice of action to ensure freedom."

"General Kaprov will terminate you no matter what choice you follow, Natalia," he seethed in throaty response; his jaw settled into a sharp clench. "You can't fight for them...They are not your friends and wouldn't respect your choice."

The amount of concern in his voice reverberated with a haunting edge. "You're not a name in the ranks, just an empty pair of cuffs hanging on a bed post. They will extract what is needed, and then leave you to bleed out in the cold."

Natalia felt her heart rate climbing, listening to thumps of heavy boots emanating from the corridor. Time crept as a slow descent ache elevated in her chest; they both shared an equal gaze. She edged closer to the door, with graceful ease, while feeling drained of energy. "I am not defective," she objected, settling her teal eyes at her scarred wrist. "My name will not go unnoticed in the ranks. They can extract all the blood they need out me, but I will still fight to live."

James glanced down at his metal hand, which squeezed into a fist. "I don't want to pull the trigger on you," he confessed in a heavy pant. His hauntingly blue eyes resisted to stare at his holstered weapon attached to his belt.

Swallowing against a slosh of bile, he breathed, holding back the grim truth of the disciplinary orders he unwillingly executed when he received his orders."You're very different than the other girls, Natalia, they didn't dance well."

Her eyes widened in horror. "You?" she gasped breathless, feeling her throat seizing up, and the complexion of her skin grew sallow. It was hard to fathom that her only friend was the one responsible for almost fifteen deaths. "It was you that put bullet holes into their heads? That left them to bleed on the stage floor?" James bowed his head, lengthy chestnut tresses of his disheveled hair shadowed his chiseled face; he pressed his lips into a hard grimace, having betrayed her trust."Kaprov gave you the orders to extract them from the ranks."

"Like you, Natalia, I had no choice." he receded a step back, and then he reluctantly administered the cold truth to her, rolling up his uniform's sleeve, and allowed her to stare at the punctured holes in his wrist. "I never wanted to execute his orders, but he injected me with somethin' and I couldn't resist his commands."

Tears gathered in his blue eyes, as James reached out his hand to cup her face. "If you follow that bastard, he will destroy you. So please get out of here..." He caressed his gloved knuckles over the curve of her jaw, an assuring touch of his devotion to her. "Go find a good man who you can trust and allow him the honor of loving you," he said gently, confirming his abandonment of her."You've gotta blank everything out—run and don't look back."

In those impulsive moments, Natalia stared up at him, unable to force out words that didn't trail after a clogging sob. His defensive posture didn't relent and his boyish face became impassive as she watched the endearing light in his eyes diminish into hollow malice that was ingrained in his veins.

Refining her trust in him, she encompassed her hand on his smooth edged cheek, her fingers wove through his unruly locks and watched his glacial eyes center on her lips. Feeling the coils heat of his solid body radiate through her, Natalia became fearless, granted she was soon to live a condemned walk in the shadows, but it was chance to reclaim a life without pain and availing nightmares; it was vestiges of poisoned red.

Heat rippled in her heart until coldness doused it. "I can't do this, not risking a few more lives. I don't deserve freedom." she protested with spite, reining back from him. "I know that I have no place in this world."

James gripped her shoulders, firmly, steadying her against the wall. "You only think that because of the pain they inflict when you fail to reach success in their ranks. You do have a place in this world, but if you stay in this hell, it will be a grave."

He glared down at her, hitching up heavy breaths, and she couldn't fight him. She was pinned against the hardness of his sculpted torso with sturdy force that kept her immobilized in those few seconds of stillness.

Natalia wanted him to remember the moment, no torturous obligations or scars; just him and her together for a final time before the darkness consumed them both."What will happen to you if I decide to run?" she asked, fixing her eyes at alloy plates adorned with the red star."You can run with me...We can live—"

"I'm already dead, Natalia," he admitted with grief edging in his soothing tone, accepting the truth interlacing with those hollow words. He tilted his head, angling the softness of his lips, and left a kiss on her clammy forehead, breathing in the wafting scent of her body and Natalia felt a repulse animating in her chest, a silent accord of desire that placed value on those years they shared together on the sparring mats and outside the walls of the theater.

She couldn't deny her love for him, but he had to push her away—to save her from sharing his sentenced fate as an assassin—turned into a cold blooded monster with no humanity left to rip out. He meant to say those to her in a mournful confession.

Even as she listened to the pain wavering in his voice, Natalia found herself at a standstill of choice.

Weaves of sentiment gave her a dream to hold a little girl, to teach her daughter how to twirl and to never become afraid of nightmares, but her accepting grief whittled that invalid dream away; tainting her desires with ingrained impulse to kill people that had their own story to tell, but the Black Widow offered them no audience.

She had been viewed as a demon, tormented by succession of continuous sins. And that was to become her fated legacy; to adapt to a chained life wearing the mark of Russia.

Red morphed into a semblance of the brutalized trauma she endured, when Ivan gave her a purpose away from the cold and desolate streets of Stalingrad—through the deals he bargained with the devil, he had forsaken her to the ranks of the Red Room, betraying her trust and selling her unwilling soul for a price to settle his own debts. It wasn't the deserving freedom that she wanted, just prestige of enslavement.

"Tell me something," she used a pitch of unnerved abruptness in her discontented voice; utilizing her words to recall his precise attention in those last moments they were granted to share.

With gentle effort of her splaying hand, she flattened her palm on the left side of his rigid chest; feeling a strong pulse of his restricted heartbeat setting against her possessive fingers. It was still active, blood still flowed in his veins. "If you're really dead, than why can I still feel a pulse?" she beseeched, remotely considering to devour his lips into a feverish melding kiss of surrendering passion.

Alarmed by the sudden approach of tolerating sentiment, James relented a step away from her desperate touch; inwardly battling against the undeviating urges to claim her lips, his paled blue irises held a distant and permitted gleam, but the tangled interweaves of his strained emotions refused to discard truths from her.

He couldn't become compromised by attachment, regardless what the embossed layers of his damaged heart held; it was an undulating choice that made him feel as if he was bleeding inside.

"Natalia," he whispered in a cautious hitch of his monotone; aiming his daunting steely eyes on the door opening, until a shadowy figure blocked the haze of light. Blood chilled down his body. The nefarious reproach of dread echoed in the recess of his altered mind as gloved hands seized Natalia with violent possession. The glint of needle a shimmered over her exposed, ashen skin. "Run," he growled fiercely, his voice dying into the coiling fog of heavy dosages of sedative which had started to filter through the air vent. Inhaling a lungful made his wobbling stance surrender to gravity.

Watching James' body crash to the floor, through the apex of pain, Natalia clenched her jaw, unhinged, releasing a low seethe; until a trickle of blood aimlessly slid out of her nostril. Whirls of her thoughts became concussed, the world spun until the needle reached her pulsing vein."Leave him alone," she commanded in a snarling protest; her fingernails clawed into a handler's arm with a feral slash.

"Rebellion is not permitted in our ranks, Tsnarina!" Karpov barked at her with a harsh volume of authority in his voice, he obstructed her view of the doorway. Sensing his ruthless surge of dominance, Natalia falsified an unwavering stance of resisting defiance, not blanching as the cruel name of her ancestry intermixed with his spite. "You have disobeyed my orders, маленькая принцесса!"

It was a branding of revolution, on the night she survived the inferno, her nine-year old self hid under the smoldering ruin of the Tsar's palace; a shelter where she had felt most welcomed, almost like she belonged in the shadow of the Empress-Alexandra. Her late mother had told her stories about the royal-most despised family of Russia, and the betrayal that stained the steps during the riots and holocausts of fire.

The family name was defiled, the bloodline existed in the two children whose bodies were uncovered; it was possible that the last remnants of their blood sustained.

"Your corpse will be thrown into the fire, along with the remains of your dead father."

Ivan. He was threatening to desecrate her surrogate-untruthful guardian. He saved her from being executed at the palace walls, where her parents wore black bags over their heads and bullets pierced their chests.

Looking down at James' limp—immobilized frame obscured by the general's looming shadow, Natalia felt the potent urge to retaliate against his will, to prove to her handlers that she was strong enough to fight for her right of freedom—she wouldn't submit; not when a pulse still resided in her misused body. "Do not speak to me about Ivan," she hissed in an irate breath, fastening her hand into an effectual fist. "I know where he belongs...I'm just waiting to put you in that place, монстр!"

Karpov released an unaffected laugh. "Brave words, my Tsnarina," he spoke as if he owned her, not a daughter or student, but a fragile possession to easily break with simple commands.

"You see, we're all monsters in this hell. Some of us have discipline to control the rages of hunger, while others with their wretched defiance fail to commit to it, but you are a dancer of precision. Your body is a weapon that will be used to eliminate those who have defiled our motherland. If you chose to disobey, you will be eliminated. Do you understand?"

For that predictable moment, Natalia involuntarily stared into his dark, soulless eyes. Mustering up an objection against his order, twinged in her aching throat. Her body absently rejected to become a dehumanized and scarred drone that most of her classmates had been converted into through sessions of brainwashing and chemical, electronic manipulation; but it was out of her control.

Vivid flashbacks of girls who reeked of exhaustion, collapsing on the stage, crossed through her mind; they were dragged away screaming apathetically for their parents to save them and then everything would grow silent until shots echoed in the vast corridor, and body bags were stationed at the furnace. James was the gunman—the executioner who had filled their weakened bodies with untraceable slugs of lead.

At one time, she had considered James as her guardian angel, not a ghost who entreated red shadows, but a form of trust which she salvaged throughout the enduring sessions of her core training. Everything was unraveling; Karpov did not value life, just succession that granted him-dominance and control over a vacant army of marble soldiers.

Breathing in the poisoned air didn't affect her senses, the odorless compound was irregular to her system that wouldn't place her into a comatose state. Natalia became aware of the measure of precautions the raven bearded General was taking; rampant thoughts surged in her mind when she dared an availing look down at the murderous phantom that wore the visage of a dismayed man- Зимний солдат...the Winter Soldier.

Natalia closed her eyes, and submitted to evolution of tolerance, his gloved hand abrasively twisted her arm into a vise grip, exposing the plump vein for injection. Torrents of liquid scraped against her bones, she would endure it, but the pain drove into the marrow and blood couldn't deny scorching tendrils consuming her veins. "Yes, sir," she eventfully answered him in a croak; emotionless and absent from warmth. "I understand."

"Natasha," his deep reserved baritone anchored her back, before reluctance spread to life. Releasing a shaky exhale, Natasha awoke with an automatic jerk, connective heat merged against her tensed muscles when his arm snaked carefully around her jutting hip bones; securing her lithe frame snug against him.

She gazed blearily at him as the visions blotted away, unresponsive to the alarming sense of need throbbing in her chest. An errant tear slid down her cheek, balance faltered to a surrender of prevented her from touching the grated ramp beneath their boots. "It's alright," he promised genuinely, in a breathless yet certain voice. "I've got you, Tasha."

In that attaching moment of unexpected comfort, the undeniable trust Natasha permitted disposed hazardous urges to flee, and she wasn't tangled up on faults, but steady and shielded by a close embrace of what her opposing instincts considered as love. No more gaps, limitations or rational excuses to claim resistance.

She couldn't master enough control to abate the foreign stirrings, control has always been her weapon to utilize during situations. She never felt torn apart, unstable with her choices. It was a bit disarming, to feel a touch of freedom that wasn't deserved.

The devoid of ghosts still prevented her from living—the Winter Soldier had her blood on his hands, and inexorably belonging to him just like the untraceable bullet of his that she kept on her shelf in her studio apartment. If he ever aimed at Steve again, she would retire him with that same bullet.

"I suppose I owe you again," she said eventually, pivoting on her heels into a graceful balletic spin, fitting her trim stature against his torso. The smell of dampness and sweat lingered on his blemished skin, seams of his uniform had come undone, revealing faint redden gashes on the compacted muscle of his biceps. The intrusion of his body heat pressed against her, penetrating through sore limbs as their adjoining symmetry formed a swell of acceptance.

The Black Widow was unnervingly disarmed; there was no impulse to fight. The desire had become unadulterated solidifying euphoria fueled with a chemical burst of liquid fire. The interior of the jet was darkening around them, streaks of lightning flickered into the depth of his azure eyes, still and electrifying, as she counted silently for dissonance of thunder to match the friction in the humid air.

The grayness in her eyes held the fierce energy of the storm as her resolve centered on his full arched lips; his chiseled boyish features, stoic and defining. Her fingers splayed over his chest, relishing to feel his bare and raw muscles pulsate with feverish heat. "We have some time to practice," she offered, a seductive convey of a whisper, soothingly glided over his jaw. She held his tensed-addled stare; waiting for him to break out of his dormant stance. "Since you do need it."

"I get the feelin' that you already had this planned out," he retorted in a long breath, defenses arose, as he intently watched her lips bleed into variants of a purposeful—effective smirk of eclipsed succession. He didn't budge; remaining grounded with his limits, and cast a hooded intent gaze at her. Refusing to subject himself into her web was the only way to hold his guard.

Temptation was intimate, a raving clash of thoughtless decision and surges of impulsive momentum. Peggy still enthralled his mind; he couldn't just submit his vulnerable heart to Natasha, not when it was barred to the commitment of rekindling his promise.

"I'm gonna to have to take a rain check, Natasha." He was wary fool, isolating himself yet again from an opportunity to really live. "I finally know what I need to do when we land back at Avenger's Tower—Peggy is waiting for me," He receded a step; his eyes gained a resolute look, seconding the thought. "I intend to finish our dance."

Steve composed himself reverently, moving to one of the hard seats, and eased his weight down. His catatonic demeanor held a display of rampant emotions, briefly— after a moment of being a captive in oppressive silence, and shrugging off the dull ache lingering in his body; he discarded the top of his torn uniform.

With a swift yank off his broad chest and arm, he threw it over the shield.

His unkempt blond tresses hung over his forehead, obscuring crescents of luminous azure of his narrowing eyes.

He scarcely regarded her, copper ringlets formed around her ivory face, shadowing the freckles on her cheeks and her alluring teal eyes matched his own as they searched for a untainted legible reason to prove to their doubting hearts.

"The funny thing is, I don't know how to dance," he admitted sheepishly. Despondence crept in his voice, and his lips flattened into an ashamed grimace. Movies were his private gateway to learn, old and new films that Sam collected in stacks of thinned disks back in Washington. Timidly his fingers carted through his blond locks. "I wouldn't even know how to start..."

Sensing the ache of incompleteness pooling inside his veins, it became understandable to her rebelling and embezzled spirit. Steve was divided from the people he loved; the important and meaningful parts of his old life were ruined by a hero's sacrifice and a soldier's honor to complete the mission.

Though Steve wouldn't reveal it, he seemed to believe that only hopelessness waited for him in the future.

Peggy was reaching the end of her terminal stage of bone cancer; she lived a fulfilling life and changed the world with Howard Stark and a loyal bio-chemist engineer named Hank Pym. It was a rewarding life, granted with small victories, but the core truth of her inviolable strength remained in the fractured heart of Captain America—the Brooklyn kid who gave his everything to ensure that she would embrace his legacy of rebuilding a better tomorrow. Steve had been her guiding compass that never steered her into the wrong direction.

Natasha climbed over the seat, contorting her slender body against the cold steel wall, and then wrapped her arms over his ample back, encompassing her reserves of bodily warmth over exposed areas of his exhausted and strained muscles. "I can teach you some moves."

The gravity of her elusive words speared him deep, irritated by the encroaching approach of her insisting motives; Steve shot up to his full height and strode to the back of the ramp, muscular bulge of his arm flexed as he pressed against the metal frame, emboldened with restrictive thoughts of taking another risk.

"I'm not ready for the next step, Natasha," his confession stumbled out of his throat, ragged and distressing. "I apologize for the misdirection I gave to you, but this is all new to me, and I don't wanna ruin something that is meant for greatness." His somber eyes held an amending gleam as he glanced back, having full effect on her. "If you really want to share a dance, then let me take the lead."

Natasha enclosed their distance, standing dangerously close to him. She became transfixed in the flaring rim of azure engulfed by darkness of a feverish storm in his eyes.

She felt the pulsing heat of his solid chest merge into her bones; pooling the iciness in her veins with a surge of his enhanced strength. It was lethal and compromising. She resisted the urge to assault his full lips—he needed to feel again. "You're inexperienced..."

Steve groaned out a faint protest of negligence, the cleaving knife once again puncture his heart, extracting and numbing. Will it be worth it, Steve? He heard Peggy's soft voice replaying in his thoughts, forcing him to withdraw, Natasha blurred as he lost all focus on the moment and delved back into the past.

"What brought this on?" he inquired, unknowingly, a whisper was all he managed to say. He need to restrict himself from accepting the chance to desperately plunge into her urging mouth. His body screamed to remove himself, to find another distraction, but the choices of his heart kept him weighted down. Natasha wouldn't let him move away-retreat-he was losing the battle-surrendering to full extent of his the olden guilt.

The contact of their bodies was tense, but she pinned him against her, giving him a chance to experience a taste of fire without drifting back into the past. Natasha held onto him, using him as an anchor to grasp if she drowned sea of red, their bodies joined into interlock of trust and the utmost of devotion. She wanted to give him everything that was alive in her; she wanted to feel every part of him set ablaze against her exposed skin. Faint halos of interior light caressed over his bare chest planes—his silver plated dog tags hung over the dip of his engraved pectorals, and his youthful skin aglow in strikes of lightning.

The Captain was her captive; he fully surrendered his noble and vigilant heart to her unspoken desires, and allowed her hands to mold him into a new man. She lined up against his bulky frame, feeling his muscles tense with hesitation.

This was the first time they shared themselves—all barriers were crossed and tension was thick in the humid air. She rested her chin on his shoulder, scarlet ringlets cascaded over his bicep and the square curve of his pronounced jaw; his skin heated as her lips were just a breath away from claiming his mouth.

"Will you save me if I drown?" she asked, with a low and definitive tone, her full lips ghosting over his neck; she took his pulse in the second that his calm and reverent breath was a given response.

It wasn't enough to numb the overwhelming torrents of guilt—the abhorred sins that she tried to bury deeper and erase the leverage that marked onto her each time she had pulled the trigger. It was always the balance of power and control, no sentimental value could weigh her condemning past.

When she looked into his eyes, staring into the ocean of azure, she felt obliged to ask the dismal question that had been leaden on her heart. In one steady breath, she met his benevolent, piercing stare and leveled her face with him, but the urge to run again grew potent. "Do you trust me enough to save you if you fall?"

"Nat," Steve whispered, no hesitation evident in his low voice. His rough fingers caressed the bare skin over her forearm, soothing and endearing, but he didn't grasp the tensed muscle, or forced her down. He detected her pain, and even tried to search for the nightmares that consumed her thoughts when she became reserved and silent. He was meeting her half-way between the past and the future. He wasn't going to let her slip away—not into the blood pooling abyss of the Red Room.

When Steve braved a gaze into her obscured teal eyes, his lips curved into a weak smile, but his blue eyes were full of anguish, resentment and they beseech her for security of her undeniable love and trust.

"Nat, I trust you." His voice was clear and held the authoritative firmness of Captain America. It seemed that his confession stretched into oblivion, nothing felt reformed between them: no stability or untainted were balancing their emotions, choices and commitment to the mission.

To break the tension, Steve lifted her hand to his face, and dropped his soft lips over her bruised knuckles, feeling her pulse move against the gentle, reverent coaxes of his urging mouth hovering over her scars. "You're the only one that can guide me back if I do cross a line and can't find a reason to return."

It was hard for her to process those words.

This was their freedom and his chance to finally allow her to embrace his scarred heart. Natasha emitted a even breath, meeting his tender gaze of icy blue, she was full of acceptance and no surges to fight back. She allowed him to have control of the moment. She looped her arms over the back of his thick neck with tactical precision; and caressed her lips in slow, possessive motion over his shoulder, leaving a smears of red on the heated skin.

As she mashed herself against his torso, she mustered enough patience to allow him to start dance with a bang."Well, what are you waiting for, Rogers… To the lead," she enticed, against his squared jaw.

A ravenous impulse overtook him, and Steve unleashed a fierce growl, filled with unyielding determination and seized her slender body with might of his enhanced strength holding her firm and crashed their lips together into breathless pace. He locked his lips into her mouth, sealing the air supply with wet heat, forcing her lips to roll with unbreakable passion.

His eyes fluttered shut in sheer ignition of blissful ecstasy, her long tresses of hair cascaded over his flushed skin as he melted into her mouth, plunging deeper into fathoms of her devotion.

Tears dripped from his eyes, and streaked over her face as they kissed and dissolved into the wavering heat engulfing over their bodies. He knew nothing would separate them as their skin merged with their clothing and hearts pounded with intense climactic rhythm.

All air had been emptied from her lungs, Natasha felt her chest ached with a coils of vise throbbing as as her mouth melted under the swell of Steve's plush lips, intensity rapidly consumed them, blood and serum rushed in their veins, breath hitched and his hands danced idly down her curves.

Her balance was faltering, and her bones felt like jelly as he pressed harder, claiming every inch of her lips with the slip of his tongue; and he pushed her strands back with the clutch of his fingers, tilting her head back as he fully roamed into her mouth, reigniting flares of passion that seared through their hearts.

They kissed until their lungs strained, air pulses were absent and the world was off balance in those moments of holding onto to each other like anchors against the raging storm, as the sonic rumble of thunder resounded in their ears, Steve detached his mouth breathlessly, and pressed his forehead against hers, both regathering breath.

"I thought you were gonna to show my how to dance?" he whispered in a heavy pant, his lips ghosted raw heat over her bruised flesh.

"Oh, that's just the first step, Rogers," she smirked darkly, splaying her hand over the indention of his slick, hot muscles. "Now the fun really begins."

{End of Flashback}

The stakes are higher. Natasha conceived in a rational thought; feeling stripped bare of her vices, humanity exposed—she was vulnerable; a target to any old associate who had emerged from the chambers of the Red Room. The Winter Soldier's glacial presence did not evade her mind; Bucky was trapped in the dark, searching for answers that won't be scribbled on his collected Soviet file. And even though she couldn't detect him, since his last known sighting in Romania, her residual instincts sensed that he was still a potential threat to her and the baby's life. The Odessa scar never cooled, it kept burning every time his name crossed the forefront of her mind.

Easing down another vexed gurgle of nausea, Natasha expertly threw her balanced leg over the bike and eased herself down onto the hard saddle with poise and grace; her scanning teal eyes steadied on the small bump secured underneath the tri-weaved material of her tactical uniform—the baby was nestled safe in her expanding womb, just a clump of cells forming into a tiny human that would eventfully share her world.

It became difficult for her to fathom that she received the rare blessing of motherhood; after all her life's experiences in serving the Red Room—the KGB and SHIELD. When she felt little pulsations of a heartbeat, it was strong enough for her body to respond as jolts of enhanced serum embraced her child; merging with developing bones that would eventfully hold the raw, unbreakable, and indomitable power of Captain America.

"Let my body be your shield my little танцор..." She murmured in a soothing voice, sensing that her baby would hear that soft declaration. Curving her lips into a tentative smirk, carefully sliding her fingers over the small bump; her other hand slotted the key into the ignition. The bike's engine vroomed to life, emitting a deafening roar that carried the echoes of thunder.

Natasha grabbed the spare helmet off the handle bar, eased it over her rich locks, and fastened the chin strap. Another bombardment of morning sickness coiled in her stomach. Instead of giving it access to control her, she kept moving her hand over her belly, with gentle strokes.

She zoned in on the dials, waiting for a moment until the circular caps glowed vibrant red. It was exhilarating to reclaim independence; in some way, the baby was going onto the battlefield with her, most children would never share a hell raising experience with their parents, but this unborn child was the legacy of Captain America and the Black Widow—a new Avenger.

She kicked the chrome kick stand with a shove of her boot and clanked it into place. She firmly gripped the accelerator, revving the engine and feeling the horsepower vibrate through her body as it notched up to speed, and with a angled spun of wheel folk, she swerved the opposite way from the barn; pieces of stone flecked her leg and she hit full throttle, zooming down the driveway, taking a screeching turn and chased the dark walls of the rolling storm down the highway.

"Let me keep you safe from this world..."