Chapter Text
It’s strange, walking there together (the car parked just a couple blocks down, because even Avengers have to deal with the unadulterated pandemonium that is finding somewhere to park in New York City)—it’s strange, because she’s not alone.
Every step takes them closer to Nadia (well, what’s left of her anyhow), to the nebulous ghost of a tiny little girl Natasha hasn’t shared with anyone (not even Clint), to a long-suffering ritual of loss and grief and shame in an abandoned chapel that Natasha has always protected with more tenacity than she ever has her own life.
She doesn’t belong there, she knows, standing amidst the chipped wooden pews and numerous copies of King James’ Bibles with yellowed pages and the over-sized wooden cross mounted upon the far wall that seems to perpetually mock her every time she stumbles upon the audacity to make her yearly visits; she doesn’t belong there, but Nadia does, and that’s why it’s sacred, even if Natasha probably wouldn’t know the definition of ‘sacred’ if it came up and smacked her squarely in the face.
(She can’t really blame the mounted cross for alienating her as it does.)
And yet, if there’s anyone Natasha wants to show… it’s Wanda. Without a doubt.
They’re almost eerily silent as they walk, but Natasha’s grateful for it just the same—there’s a sort of peace in the quiet similitude of their matching strides, the way their boots crunch in time over the freshly-fallen snow, how every warm exhale forms lungfuls of wispy fog in the freezing night.
Wanda’s wearing tight blue jeans and a black blouse with a light army-green winter coat to keep her warm, along with a dark knitted beanie atop orangey-auburn locks that tumble gloriously down her shoulders—it reminds Natasha rather vividly of Edinburgh, where she and Steve had arrived to find Proxima Midnight and Co. on a single-minded mission to apprehend Vision and retrieve the Mind Stone, even if that meant killing both Wanda and Vision in the process.
Wanda had looked so beautiful then: a shallow cut tracing her brow, both cheeks flushed pink with adrenaline, lurid red energy enveloping slender hands that worked almost hypnotically to effect her will—God, how Natasha had wanted her.
It’s almost worse, now… now that Natasha innately knows her cinnamon-y scent from nights spent tangled in bed together, and the syllables upon which her Sokovian accent reappears (even if her syntax has become much more American-ized as of late), and the things she can do to make her smile that beautiful smile of hers, the one Natasha constantly yearns to see.
Now, it’s real—it’s real, and Wanda looks entirely magnificent, and Natasha’s finding it rather hard to breathe with someone she cares for so deeply staying at her side in a way no one else ever has before.
God, she’s screwed.
It feels like all too soon that they’re there, standing upon the sleet-covered sidewalk just before the tall set of creaky old wooden doors, glistening snowflakes descending from the darkened night sky above—Wanda looks beautiful, Natasha thinks, with tiny flakes of silvery-white snow twinkling in her wavy auburn locks, wide blue-green eyes sparkling under the faint pearly glow of the waxing moon overhead…. Christ, Natasha wants to kiss her.
But, instead, she steps forward and pries open the antiquated wooden door with a grating screech, willing her cold-reddened fingers not to tremble as she holds it open and gestures for Wanda to enter.
(She’s always prided herself on exercising near impeccable restraint, even in the most trying of predicaments.)
Wordlessly, Wanda does, thought there’s a sort of apprehension present upon her gorgeous features, one that Natasha knows means she wants to say something, but can’t quite figure out how (or if) she should say it.
Natasha slips in afterwards, and the two of them walk side by side down the abandoned aisle, their footfalls echoing loudly around the hallowed space—even with the pair of them in boots (Natasha’s wedge heels almost an inch taller than Wanda’s), Natasha’s still a good inch or two shorter than Wanda; she likes that, she decides.
Height isn’t something she often pays attention to—at least, not in a context that doesn’t involve fights and conflict and the best way to go about incapacitating her adversaries with respect to their physical stature.
But, in a reflexive and instinctual kind of sense, Natasha has never liked being 5’3” (~160cm)—because, maybe she’s not egregiously undersized, but, at the same time, she’s shorter than her opponents quite a lot more often than not.
And, logically, she knows that that doesn’t make much of a difference—if anything, in most cases, a substantial difference in height is something she immediately pinpoints as an area of weakness, as something to be exploited in order to successfully complete her objective of terminating the target in question (though, admittedly, that’s more relevant to her past, when she worked as a deadly assassin on the KGB’s payroll) or merely incapacitating them (what the greater majority of her most recent missions with S.H.I.E.L.D. have required).
But, still, it’s entirely spontaneous and beyond her control (as so few things are), the discontented feeling she gets at being smaller than her opponents; even with her friends, it gives her some cause for concern, whether it’s warranted or not.
Steve Rogers, for example—it’s not that she doesn’t trust him…. well, actually, that is precisely the issue when concerning the world-renowned Captain America, if she’s being perfectly honest.
She trusts him to a certain degree, of course… but, truthfully, she thinks that her capacity for ceding any sort of absolute trust in another, no matter how noble and benevolent they’ve proven themselves to be, was lost a very long time ago.
(She doubts she’ll ever get it back.)
Whenever they embarked on missions together (once Clint had placed one foot out the door of S.H.I.E.L.D. and into retirement with Laura and the kids), Natasha couldn’t help but size him up every time, even as she knew he was on her side (not to mention, not nearly complex enough in the duplicity department to be hiding much, if anything, from her), and that he probably already trusted her a hell of a lot more than he should.
(More than anyone ever should, really.)
In all their fights, she catalogued every weak spot along with his wide-eyed examination of her (that, predictably, was severely lacking in any remote kind of subtlety)—even after Ultron, and Wakanda, she watched him carefully (though surreptitiously enough that he would never know it) along with every one else on the team; after everything, trust was not a given, and it never would be. Not with her.
She doesn’t trust herself, either; though, she thinks that that’s probably more of an inevitable byproduct of having common sense than anything else.
So, it’s strange, she thinks, to walk alongside Wanda and allow herself to feel smaller—more importantly, to allow herself to feel something dangerously akin to security as she does so.
But, either way, she doesn’t ponder that for very long, because, a short moment later, they’ve reached the altar, rows of chipped and battered wooden pews in their wake (28 exactly, she knows—but, she always counts each and every one when she visits; it’s… comforting, in a way. Habitual).
Without a word, Natasha leads Wanda off to the right, where, at the bottom of the steps, there stands a smaller oakwood tabernacle (about waist-height) littered with various burn marks and housing a neat array of small circular candles: 32 exactly (4 x 8), by Natasha’s count.
It’s dark, still, but Natasha’s eyes have since adjusted to it, and she suspects Wanda’s have, as well.
They stand there for a short spell, side by side, Natasha’s faraway gaze fixed upon the display of burnt-out wicks in solid taupe-white wax even whilst she can feel Wanda silently watching her all the while.
Eventually, she takes a single wooden match from the glazed clay pot sitting just off to the side atop the podium, already having dug a blue plastic cigarette lighter out of her pocket (the match box’s red phosphorous strip nowhere to be seen); wordlessly, with the weight of Wanda’s stare still unwaveringly upon her, she lights the bud of crimson sulfur and watches it ignite before reaching out to light the candle on the very bottom right—the one she always uses, apparent by the sordid state of the blackened wick and the significantly lower dip of its beige-colored wax in comparison to its 31 counterparts.
It takes a while to light (she knows it will), but, after a good 10 seconds or so of keeping the flickering teardrop of her yellowy flame firmly against the wick (what’s left of it, anyhow), it lights, and she withdraws the matchstick, waving it twice through the frosty air to extinguish the heated flare that burns steadily down towards her fingers.
She pockets the lighter, too, as something of an afterthought.
“I come here every year at the end of November,” she speaks quietly into the darkness, delicately setting the burnt matchstick aside, a tiny elongated wisp of white-grey smoke rising up into the chilled air. “And, I light this candle for Nadia.”
Wanda’s silent for a moment, the two of them simply watching in comfortable stillness over the quivering flame, its essence contained within a cloudy round-ish glass to protect it. “Nadia?”
Natasha bites her lower lip, both trembling hands finding their way back into her coat pockets and tightening into taut fists, the plastic of the lighter cold against the knuckles of her right hand.
“She’s the first person I ever killed.” Wanda turns to her and inhales sharply at that, but Natasha continues, forcing her expression to remain neutral: “I was 8 or 9, I think, at the time. She was around that age, as well. She was… she was my only friend in the Red Room, before I knew how dangerous that could be… Before I knew the consequences of caring.”
She exhales slowly, still watching the fulgurating light of the candle, Wanda’s gentle-eyed gaze upon her.
“She was beautiful. She had these wide bright-blue eyes, and hair that was so light and blonde, I remember I thought she didn’t have eyebrows the first time we met,” Natasha murmurs with a chuckle, even if it is more than slightly bitter. “She was strong, and quick, just like me. The instructors always paired us up to spar together.”
“One day during another of our spars, I made a mistake—I lunged too heavily to throw a punch, and Nadia dodged it, just like we were trained to. In doing so, I left myself exposed, unprotected; but, she didn’t… she didn’t make me pay for it,” Natasha recalls numbly, eyes glazing over as she allows the bitter memory to overtake her. “She had an open shot to the left side of my head, which was still bleeding pretty badly, because another girl in our class, Katya, had caught me unawares with a brass-knuckled right hook a couple days ago. I remember I was pretty sure the wound was infected, and, when I showed it to Nadia that night while we were cuffed to our beds, she agreed."
She pauses, clenching her jaw against the sheer anguish cresting in her gut.
"And, honestly… it might’ve killed me, taking another hit in the same place so soon after I’d weathered such a heavy blow from Katya. I think Nadia knew that, and, she hesitated.” Natasha stops herself, shaking her head almost imperceptibly as she stares down the single burning flame. “She hesitated, because she didn’t want to kill me. But, Madame B. saw, and the next day, the instructors woke all of us at dawn to gather down at the training mats. They didn’t tell us what was happening, but I remember having this nauseous feeling in my gut that said it wasn’t going to be good.”
She pauses, taking a moment to gather herself and letting out a shaky breath, one she doesn’t bother concealing (even though she very well could)—because, this isn’t about hiding herself. Not anymore. (Even if it’s ugly.)
“They had Nadia and me stand across from one another in the center of that mats, and congregated all the other girls to stand around and watch—then, they said we were going to fight… except, this time, one of us wasn’t coming out of it alive,” she recounts in a detached tone, then finally turns to her right to meet Wanda’s soft and debilitating blue-green eyes illuminated by the faint lambency of the lone candle, all her corruption and depravity laid bare for the taller woman to see.
“I killed her that day,” Natasha says, her words hoarse and rough, wrought with guilt—even the mere inches of space between the two of them can’t save her now, and what’s more, she knows it. “I put my hands around her throat and squeezed until her heart stopped beating, because I was afraid to die. I didn’t even really think about the fact that she might be afraid, too, not until after I watched her go. After I made her go.”
She sighs heavily then, knowing there has to be a point here, a latent purpose beneath the abomination she’s finally shown herself to be: “Look, Wanda, I… I’m sorry for disappearing, okay? I really, really am,” she starts, looking Wanda directly in the eye to let her know that Natasha means that, to make her understand the immeasurably-saturated sincerity that’s currently clawing at her insides as if trying to quite literally tear her apart. “But, maybe… Maybe it’s better that I did. I’m not… I’m not a good person, and I never really have been, and—"
“Stop,” Wanda interjects quietly, tears welling in her beautiful blue-green eyes, and Natasha feels something splintering in her chest at the sight of it. “S-Stop saying that.”
Natasha furrows a brow, resisting the urge to shiver as she feels Wanda’s warm breath ghosting across her nose.
“Wanda, I’m trying to tell you that—"
She stops herself this time as Wanda’s palm cups her jaw, cold fingers and colder rings grazing deftly against the skin there—really, she isn’t sure she could’ve spoken if she’d tried, because Wanda’s face is inches from hers, those watery sea-blue eyes dotted with verdant green looking almost fondly down at her, reverence and adoration and something Natasha thinks might just be love laid gloriously unhidden in every crease of her smooth features, cheeks tinged with a rosy-pink flush, beautiful ruby-red lips slightly parted in the most breathtaking of ways.
It’s not often Natasha is taken by surprise—in fact, it never happens, not anymore.
But, Wanda leans in and presses her warm lips gently against Natasha’s, and suddenly, she isn’t quite sure she’s not dreaming, even if her dreams have never been anywhere near this exquisite since… well, since forever, really. And, maybe she’s not surprised, per se, but she’s pretty damn close, and that’s something of an anomaly in and of itself.
(Either way, though, she isn’t sure there was anything she could’ve done to prepare herself for this, to prevent the utter divinity of it all from expanding so rapidly in her chest until it physically hurts to endure.)
Suddenly, she doesn’t feel like a trespasser in this holy place, in this house of God, because Wanda’s slightly-cold fingers are stroking lazily at the heated skin of her jaw, and their lips are pressed together in the softest of kisses, and gradually, Natasha can feel her clenched fists unfurling in the pockets of her jacket, the self-hatred and guilt and shame melting into the background until all she knows is Wanda and her cinnamon-y scent and that inexplicably heaven-sent feeling of their lips joined in an achingly tender kiss for the very first time.
It’s unlike anything Natasha has ever known.
It’s like… magic, even if she knows she sounds positively nonsensical (not to mention naïve, which is something Natasha has never been known to play victim to) in saying so.
Wanda kisses her for the very first time in a Catholic church around half-past three in the morning, and Natasha feels… holy, in some strange way.
(Or, at least, as close as she’ll ever get, anyhow.)
Wanda kisses her, and Natasha knows then and there that it’s the most profoundly sublime thing she’s ever known (and, undoubtedly, the most profoundly sublime thing that she ever will know for the rest of her days).
Wanda kisses her, and Natasha knows that this is love.
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