Archive of Our Own

There’s a look Natasha Romanoff gives you when she’s deciding whether to kill you or let you live. I know that look. I wore it, once. Felt it pull behind my eyes like a loaded string, calculating how a person might fall before they’ve even flinched.

She gave me that look the first time we met.

I was still technically the enemy. Our boots were on opposite sides of the line, hers American combat-issue, mine Eastern European scavenged, laced too tightly by hands that shook with adrenaline. I don’t think she knew what I was, only that I was something to be wary of—something that could split a man open without a blade, unmake a mind without ever raising my voice.

And still, she didn’t flinch.

Most people did, then. Pietro and I had been carving through HYDRA bases with the righteous fury of war orphans and the emotional regulation of two lit matches bumping into gasoline. They called us miracles. Weapons. Threats. The Avengers weren’t wrong to treat us like landmines with baby faces.

But Natasha didn’t treat me like that.

She didn’t smile, either. Not at first. Natasha Romanoff didn’t smile until she’d figured out where you kept your weakness. She watched. Catalogued. That kind of attention is either intimacy or preparation for assassination. Sometimes both.

I saw her in the heat of the fight—against robots, against chaos, against the stitched-together fragments of Ultron’s mechanical psychosis. Her red hair was pulled back, loose enough to be beautiful, tight enough to mean business. Every motion calculated. Ballet with bloodlust. There was a certain cruelty to how efficient she was, how calmly she moved through a collapsing city like it owed her money.

I didn’t trust her. But I wanted to.

Pietro said she was dangerous. He said it with admiration, which for him was as close as he got to respect. He had a way of boiling people down to their base elements, and for Natasha, it was this: lethal, unreadable, loyal only to her own. A redhead with secrets. Our kind of girl.

We’d had plenty of those, back in Sokovia. Women who knew how to hold grief in one hand and a knife in the other. Women who learned to hide their softness under calluses and smoke. But Natasha wasn’t one of them. She didn’t have the hunger we had. She wasn’t fighting for vengeance. She was fighting for something else—order, maybe. Redemption, if I squinted. Or maybe just distraction.

I remember the first time I looked at her too long.

It was during that first uneasy truce, when Tony Stark was pretending not to be condescending and Steve Rogers was pretending not to be suspicious. I was standing on the Quinjet, arms crossed like a barrier, watching Pietro pace. He hated small spaces. He was always moving—like if he ever stood still long enough, his grief might catch up to him.

She walked in like she owned the air, and I hated her a little for that.

Then she looked at me.

Not like the others did. Not like Bruce Banner did, with cautious curiosity. Not like Thor, with that vaguely patronizing exoticism. Not even like Steve, who looked at me the way a soldier looks at a ticking bomb. No—Natasha looked at me like she already knew me. Like she’d met the ugly parts of herself in a mirror and wasn’t afraid to see them again in someone else.

That was the first moment I realized I might like her.

Which was annoying. Deeply, viscerally annoying.

I didn’t have room for liking. I barely had room for sleeping or eating or not collapsing into a thousand tiny emotional fractures. My body had not yet adapted to housing this much power, and my mind? A wreckage. I was a girl made of rage and grief and other people’s voices. What room was there in that for attraction? For anything tender?

But still.

She leaned against the frame of the Quinjet like it had asked her to dance. Casual. Balanced. Eyes sharp but not cutting. She said something—I don’t remember what—but her voice slid under my skin like warm water. I didn’t reply. Couldn’t. My mouth forgot how.

Pietro nudged me. “She’s looking at you,” he said.

I knew.

That was the thing about Natasha Romanoff. She didn’t just look at you. She read you. Like a file. Like a recipe she wasn’t sure was worth trying. And when her gaze landed, it stayed—unafraid, unblinking.

I pretended not to notice. I was seventeen and mourning the wrong things: our childhood, our parents, the version of the world where vengeance would’ve been enough. I didn’t have language yet for what I felt in her presence. I didn’t even know if I liked women. I just knew that when she passed close by, something in me curled tight, like a match being struck.

We fought. Together, eventually. Not as a team, not yet—but side by side.

She covered me once, during the battle in Sokovia. The shield of her body over mine as debris fell, as a drone split in half midair. Her hands were on my shoulders, firm, efficient. “Get up,” she said.

And I did.

I didn’t need her help. That was the truth. But I wanted it. That was the betrayal.

Pietro teased me later. “You’ve got a crush on the scary one,” he grinned.

I threw a plate at his head.

He ducked, laughing. “You could do worse, sorella. She’s got excellent taste in weapons. And women, apparently.”

I didn’t reply. Not because he was wrong—but because I was already starting to imagine the terrible thing: what it would be like to be seen by her. Not watched. Not catalogued. Seen. For everything. For the shaking, ugly, furious mess I was then. For the girl with blood on her hands and power in her bones and nothing soft left to give.

And maybe that was why she scared me most of all.

Because something in her eyes said: I’ve been there too.

And she had.

There were stories, of course. Files. Redacted pasts and whispered names. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. Trained assassin, reformed spy, war criminal turned superhero. There were rumors of children stolen and innocence shattered and a ledger soaked in blood. Pietro called it melodrama. I didn’t.

I saw the truth in her posture. The weight she carried like it was sewn into her spine. I saw how she didn’t flinch at screams. How she never reached for a weapon in fear, only certainty. How she smiled, sometimes, when no one was looking—but it never reached her eyes.

And once—just once—I made her laugh.

I said something dry in Sokovian. Something Pietro would’ve mocked me for. Something about Americans and their obsession with gluten-free everything. I wasn’t even sure she understood.

But she did.

A real laugh. Short. Surprised. Like she hadn’t expected it either.

I kept that sound in my chest for days.

And then Pietro died.

He died saving a child. A stranger. Because that’s who he was. My brother, the fast one, the funny one, the firecracker. My brother, who loved deeply and recklessly, who always said I thought too much and didn’t laugh enough. He ran into bullets like they were raindrops. He died with a smile.

Natasha found me afterward.

She didn’t say “I’m sorry.” She didn’t try to hug me. She didn’t offer comfort the way people do when they need you to make them feel better.

She sat beside me.

That was all.

And maybe that’s why I remember it so clearly.

She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Just… sat. In the rubble. Beside the girl whose twin had just died in her arms. Beside the girl who could rip buildings apart but couldn’t stop a single bullet.

She looked at me like she knew what it was to lose something that lived inside your skin.

That was the moment I decided I would trust her.

Maybe not entirely. Not yet.

But I would watch her the way she had watched me. I would learn the shape of her shadow, the rhythm of her steps, the tone of her voice when she was tired, or angry, or trying not to care too much.

I would learn her. Eventually.

And I would never forget the way she looked at me when I was crumbling.

Like I was already known. Like I was already hers.

Even if she didn’t know it yet.

Grief doesn’t happen all at once. I thought it would. I thought it would crash through me like a bomb—quick, devastating, final. But the truth is quieter. It creeps. It lingers. It settles in the bones and curls up behind your ribs like smoke that refuses to dissipate.

After Pietro died, the world didn’t end.

That was the worst part.

People kept breathing. Kept walking and talking and nodding politely when they passed each other in the hallways of the Avengers facility, as though the sun hadn’t fallen from the sky. As though my twin hadn’t just bled out in a foreign city, trying to save a child who wouldn’t remember his name.

He always said I thought too much. That I lived too much in my head, in the “what ifs” and “why nots” and “what’s the point of even trying”s. He moved so fast he never had time for regret. For stillness. For guilt.

But I did.

I had nothing but stillness after he died. Nothing but silence. There’s a particular kind of emptiness when you lose a twin, when someone who’s shared every breath and bruise and heartbeat with you suddenly isn’t there anymore. It’s like a phantom limb. I kept reaching for him in my mind and finding only echoes.

Natasha didn’t speak to me much in those first days.

She moved around me like I was radioactive. Which, in fairness, I probably was. The other Avengers weren’t sure what to do with me either. Tony made awkward attempts at conversation—half-apologies wrapped in sarcasm. Steve offered steady nods and gentle silences, like grief could be saluted. Bruce avoided me entirely, which was wise. Thor had already gone off-world. Clint gave me a nod that was almost paternal. I gave him nothing back.

And then there was Natasha.

She watched me.

She always watched, even when pretending not to. Her gaze wasn’t sharp, not like before. It wasn’t threatening. Not exactly. But it held something I hadn’t seen before—not suspicion, but wariness. As if she was waiting to see whether I would break or explode.

To be fair, she had good reason.

I had crawled into her mind weeks earlier. Had twisted it. Warped it. Pulled the darkest fragments of her past into the forefront of her vision and left her shaking, gasping, crawling out of memories that were never meant to be relived. I had touched the bleeding core of her, and not gently.

And she still sat beside me.

Sometimes in the mornings, sometimes late at night. Always when she thought no one else would notice. She didn’t talk. She didn’t ask questions. She would just… sit. Not quite close, but close enough that I could feel the heat of her body. The steadiness of it. Like an anchor I hadn’t asked for but maybe needed.

I didn’t know what to say to her.

I wanted to apologize. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t hate me. Why she looked at me like I was a girl and not a monster. But the words stayed stuck in my throat. I wasn’t used to kindness that came without conditions. I was used to weapons. To strategies. To people who wanted something.

She never asked for anything.

That was the most disarming part.

Pietro would have hated it. He never trusted easily, especially not people with secrets. And Natasha was made of secrets. She carried them like scars—some visible, some buried so deep you’d need a scalpel and a map to find them. Pietro would have told me to be careful. To keep my distance.

But he wasn’t there anymore to tell me anything.

The silence was louder than his voice had ever been.

There was a moment, maybe a week after Sokovia, where I felt the full weight of it all for the first time. The compound was quiet. I had wandered the corridors long after midnight, barefoot, because sleep had abandoned me. I ended up in the training room. Empty, sterile. Full of mirrors.

I stared at myself for a long time.

My eyes looked older. Not tired—changed. There was something hollow there. Something sharp. I didn’t recognize my own posture. I stood like someone bracing for impact, even when no one was coming.

And then I felt her.

Not her footsteps—she moved too softly for that. But her presence. Natasha had a way of entering a room without making a sound but still altering the air. It shifted. Got tighter. Quieter. She didn’t hide it. She wanted you to know she was there. Just not how she was there.

I didn’t turn around. I waited.

She didn’t speak.

We stood there in a strange stillness, surrounded by reflections of ourselves. Dozens of Wandas and Natashas caught in suspended silence. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. If she still saw the girl who’d reached into her mind and dragged out every childhood horror. If she saw the girl who had begged for revenge and gotten nothing but loss in return.

Or maybe she just saw a scared, grieving girl in too-big clothes and bare feet and blood still under her nails.

Eventually, she said quietly, “I don’t sleep much either.”

Her voice startled me. I wasn’t ready for it. It was too human.

I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how. I was angry that she had seen me like this. Angry that she cared. Angry that she didn’t hate me like she should have.

She didn’t move. Didn’t step closer. Just said, “The mind’s a dangerous place to get lost.”

I looked up, met her gaze in the mirror. Our eyes locked across glass and distance and history. She looked tired. Not physically—emotionally. Tired in the way people get when they’ve carried too much for too long and no one ever thinks to ask if they want to set it down.

I whispered, “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“I know,” she said. No anger. Just fact.

And then, after a beat: “Doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”

She left before I could reply.

That was the thing with Natasha. She never stayed long enough to let things get messy. She dropped truth like it was a grenade and walked away before the explosion.

Still, her words stayed with me.

I thought about her a lot after that.

Not in the way you think. Not yet.

It wasn’t attraction. Not really. Not fully formed. It was more like… attention. Awareness. A gravitational pull I didn’t understand. I’d see her walking across the compound lawn, hair tied back, weapons strapped in casual symmetry, and I’d feel something shift inside me. Something curious. Something not quite safe.

There was a moment—I remember it vividly—when I saw her sparring with Steve. It was early morning, before the rest of the team had woken. I was watching from the balcony above, hidden behind one of the pillars. She moved like a ripple in water. Clean. Efficient. Lethal.

But then she laughed.

Steve had said something—probably a joke about her footwork—and she laughed. Not politely. Not sarcastically. A real laugh, open and surprised and a little sharp at the edges.

I pressed a hand to my chest like the sound had knocked the air out of me.

That laugh didn’t belong to the woman I had met in Sokovia. It didn’t belong to the assassin. It belonged to someone else. Someone younger. Someone who maybe, once, hadn’t been forged in violence.

I wanted to know that version of her. And that scared me.

Because I was not someone people wanted to know. I was someone people wanted to understand so they could neutralize me. Or pity so they could feel better about themselves. I was a girl without a brother, a home, a purpose.

I was not someone anyone chose.

But sometimes, I would catch Natasha looking at me when she thought I wasn’t paying attention.

And it wasn’t fear in her eyes.

Not really.

It was caution. Yes. Wariness. A kind of clinical respect for the things I could do, the minds I could fracture, the monsters I could summon. She hadn’t forgiven me—not fully—and she probably never would. But somewhere under that cold professionalism was something softer. Not forgiveness.

Pity.

I hated it.

I hated that she pitied me. That she looked at me like a wounded bird, feathers soaked in blood, half-collapsed on the edge of the battlefield.

But I needed it, too.

Pietro was gone. I had nothing left to anchor me. No language for my own grief. No guide through the burning wreckage of myself.

And Natasha—whatever else she was—knew how to survive that kind of silence.

Maybe that’s why I started sitting beside her during briefings. Why I started choosing the chair closest to her even when others were empty. Why I listened when she spoke, and let her see me listening.

I didn’t trust her. Not fully. But I wanted to.

Nat didn’t trust me. But she didn’t walk away and that was enough, even if it didn’t feel like it.

I didn’t expect her to be funny.

That was the first surprise. Not the laugh—I’d heard it, once or twice, rare and sharp like a break in the clouds—but her actual humor. Dry. Subtle. Dangerous, like a knife disguised as a compliment. She wielded sarcasm with the same efficiency she used in a fight: minimal effort, maximum damage.

She called Tony “Boss of Loud Buttons.” Called Steve “the world’s tallest guilt complex.” She never said much about Clint, but the way she looked at him was half-eye roll, half-affectionate threat. When she turned that same look on me for the first time, I didn’t know whether to be flattered or worried.

Probably both.

I hadn’t been expecting to want to make her laugh. I hadn’t been expecting to try. But there I was, one morning over coffee neither of us wanted, making some offhand comment about Thor and his tragic inability to use Earth technology without yelling at it.

She smirked. Just slightly. Blinked slow. “Careful, Maximoff. That almost sounded like a joke.”

I blinked back. “Almost.”

“Mm,” she said, taking a sip from her mug. “We’ll work on it.”

We.

The word lodged in my throat like something too warm.

I hadn’t been used to we. Pietro had always been my we. My partner, my shadow, my mirror. We’d been a two-person world. And then it was just me. Me, and silence, and Natasha Romanoff, drinking black coffee and pretending she wasn’t watching me watch her mouth as she drank.

That was another thing I didn’t expect.

How soft she could be.

Not in a performative way. Not like the kindness most people offered, with an expiration date and a rehearsed smile. But in the small things. The subtle ones. She held doors open longer than necessary. She adjusted the thermostat in shared rooms without saying anything, just noticed when I was cold. She let me win at chess—once—and denied it later with a smirk that told me she hadn’t.

She never asked how I was doing.

She never offered empty platitudes, or tried to push through the barbed wire of my grief with cheap comfort. She just… stayed. Occasionally close. Occasionally quiet. Occasionally sharp.

She gave me space when I needed it. And when I didn’t know what I needed, she waited until I figured it out.

There was something infuriating about her calm.

I was still on fire. Still waking up some mornings with my brother’s name in my mouth and guilt under my tongue like ash. I would lie in bed, motionless, feeling the power swirl beneath my skin like a storm I didn’t know how to tame. There were days I wanted to shatter glass just to hear it break. Days when I was afraid to touch anything for fear it would disintegrate in my hands.

She never treated me like I was dangerous.

But she didn’t treat me like I was harmless either.

She knew what I could do. She knew it intimately. She had felt it. She had crawled out of the nightmare I’d put her in with her hands shaking, her eyes too wide. I had seen the aftermath. Had heard her breathing in the dark corner of the quinjet, the hitch in it, the quiet tremble of someone walking backward through their worst memory.

And still, she chose to be near me.

That confused me more than anything.

I wasn’t used to being wanted without being feared. I wasn’t used to being seen without being assessed.

But with her, it wasn’t like that.

She didn’t flinch when I got angry. Didn’t stiffen when the lights flickered around me, when the air grew too still. She just looked at me, steady. Like she was daring me to fall apart. Like she’d already decided she’d be the one to put me back together if I did.

It was reckless. It was foolish.

It was maybe the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

We started training together.

It wasn’t formal. No one assigned us to each other. But she would show up in the training room just as I finished my warm-ups, or just as I was about to give up. She’d offer to spar. “Light contact,” she’d say. “Unless you need to scream. Then we can go full contact, I don’t mind.”

And I believed her.

Her hands were precise. Measured. She never struck without purpose. She never tested me without permission.

That was new.

Most people wanted to push me. To see how far they could go before I lost control. I was a walking experiment—how much pain can the witch take before she explodes? How much grief? How many drills? How many deaths?

Natasha didn’t push.

She pulled. Quietly. With patience. With awareness. She would correct my stance with two fingers, barely touching my elbow. She would circle me slowly, appraising. When I got frustrated, she would tilt her head and say, “Try again.”

And somehow, I would.

She didn’t praise easily. She wasn’t Steve, with his encouraging claps and “you’ve got this”s. She wasn’t Clint, who treated sparring like a game. Natasha treated it like a study. Like an art.

“You’re better than you think,” she said once, when I managed to knock her off balance for half a second.

“I doubt that,” I muttered.

She shrugged. “I don’t.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

There was a night I remember better than the rest. Early autumn. Cool enough for sweaters, the air crisp with the scent of something ending.

We had both been up late—me in the library, her somewhere I hadn’t seen—and we ended up in the kitchen at the same time. 2:00 a.m., barefoot, bleary-eyed. I was eating cold cereal straight from the box like a depressed raccoon. She raised an eyebrow when she saw me.

“Don’t judge me,” I said.

She opened the fridge, pulled out a Tupperware container, and grabbed two forks. “Too late.”

She sat on the counter. Ate straight from the leftovers. Passed me a fork without asking.

We didn’t talk much. Just sat there, tired and quiet, in the kind of silence that only exists between people who’ve both survived too many things to pretend it’s ever really quiet.

After a while, she looked at me—really looked—and said, “You remind me of someone.”

I froze.

“Who?” I asked, after a pause.

She didn’t answer right away. Just stared down at her food like it had betrayed her.

“Me,” she said eventually. “A long time ago.”

I wanted to ask what she meant. I didn’t.

I wanted to touch her hand. I didn’t.

I wanted to lean my head on her shoulder and pretend, for one second, that I wasn’t alone.

I didn’t do that either.

Instead, I asked, “Do you regret it?”

She looked up, brows drawn. “Regret what?”

“Becoming what you are.”

She didn’t answer for a long time.

Then, quietly: “Every day.”

Something about the way she said it made my heart feel like it was holding its breath.

“But,” she added, “I’m still here.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

We didn’t need to say what that meant. We both knew how many times we hadn’t wanted to be.

Somewhere in those long weeks—between the grief and the training and the sleepless nights—we became something that wasn’t quite friendship, but wasn’t nothing either.

She started waiting for me before briefings.

I started bringing her the tea she liked—black, no sugar, hot enough to burn.

We’d sit next to each other during missions. Not because we had to. Just because.

Sometimes, our arms would brush. I’d feel it like a spark. I’d pretend I didn’t.

Sometimes, she’d look at me a moment too long. I’d hold her gaze until she looked away.

We weren’t anything yet. Not really. But we were getting close. And I was terrified.

Because falling in love with Natasha Romanoff felt like standing at the edge of something enormous. Something I didn’t have words for. Something I wasn’t sure I could survive.

She wasn’t easy nor was she warm, but she was constant. She was real. And every time she looked at me—really looked—I felt a little less like I was still mourning.

And a little more like I was still alive.

There’s a particular cruelty in realizing you want something you can’t ask for.

Not because it’s forbidden. Not even because it’s impossible. But because wanting it means tearing something open. Admitting a truth you’ve spent weeks carefully avoiding. And once it’s spoken—once it’s acted on—you can’t undo it.

That’s what it was like with Natasha.

I knew I wanted her before I knew how long I’d been wanting her.

It snuck up on me. Slipped through the cracks of grief and guilt and friendship until one day, I looked at her and it hurt. Not the way it had before, not in the aching, distant sense of admiration I used to confuse with envy. No—this was worse.

This was longing.

This was knowing what her laugh sounded like and wondering what it would taste like.

This was wondering how her hands would feel if they weren’t correcting my stance in training, but cupping my face. Sliding under my shirt. Holding me like she meant it.

This was the moment everything changed, and it started with a party.

Tony threw it, of course. Stark Tower was the venue, complete with alcohol that cost more than my childhood home, glass chandeliers, music that no one over thirty understood, and a hundred strangers pretending they belonged there.

It was ridiculous.

Natasha hated it.

She stood in the corner like a beautiful, irritated cat, drink in hand, scanning the room like someone had invited her solely so she could identify exit points. Her dress was black, simple, lethal. No jewelry. No makeup besides the deep red of her lipstick, which should’ve come with a warning label.

I wasn’t much better.

Pietro used to say I had the fashion sense of a sleepy librarian, and he wasn’t wrong. I wore something sleek and forgettable and spent the first half of the night hiding near the windows, nursing one glass of champagne that tasted like carbonated flowers.

Then Sam Wilson told a joke.

I don’t even remember what it was. Something about Thor and a toaster. But it caught me off guard—I laughed. Too hard. The champagne went straight to my head.

Someone refilled my glass. Then again. And again.

The music got louder. The room got fuzzier. And somewhere between my third and fifth drink, I forgot how to look at Natasha without letting it show.

She was leaning against a pillar, one leg crossed over the other, eyes on the dance floor. She wasn’t dancing. She was just watching. And then, slowly, like she knew, her gaze shifted. Found mine.

And held it. I should’ve looked away. I didn’t. Instead, I walked toward her. It felt like walking into a storm.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked, her voice low and amused, like she already knew the answer.

“I think I’m drunk,” I said, blinking too slow.

“Clearly,” she replied, sipping her drink. “You’ve been staring at me like I’m dessert.”

I felt heat crawl up my neck. “You are.”

The words slipped out before I could catch them.

Natasha blinked.

There was a long, terrible silence. Her expression didn’t change. Not really. But her grip on the glass tightened slightly, the kind of shift you only notice when you’ve been watching someone too long.

“You’re drunk,” she said again, but softer this time. Not accusatory. Just… cautious.

“I know,” I said.

Another pause.

Then, because I was seventeen kinds of self-destructive and full of grief and champagne and every unmet need I’d never had a name for—I kissed her.

Just leaned forward and kissed her, open-mouthed, shameless, hungry.

It lasted two seconds.

Long enough to feel her go still beneath it.

Long enough to realize she wasn’t kissing me back.

I pulled away.

Her expression was unreadable.

“Okay,” I said, voice shaking. “That was a mistake.”

Natasha didn’t move. Her eyes searched my face. Not angry. Not shocked. Just… searching.

Then she said, very quietly, “Wanda.”

And I—brilliant, proud, spiraling—did what I do best.

I ran.

She found me the next morning.

Not in anger. Not even in awkwardness. She just… showed up.

I was sitting on the compound roof, legs pulled to my chest, wearing one of Pietro’s old sweatshirts and trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person. The wind was cold. My heart was colder.

She didn’t say anything at first. Just sat down beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched.

“I’m sorry,” I said, finally.

She nodded. “I know.”

“I was drunk.”

“I know that too.”

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t.”

That made me freeze.

I turned to look at her, heart hammering. “I didn’t?”

She gave a small shrug. “I was surprised. That’s not the same thing.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

The silence stretched between us again.

Then she added, voice even, “I wasn’t going to kiss you back.”

I nodded, throat tight. “I figured.”

“But not because I didn’t want to.”

That—

That broke something open inside me.

I turned sharply. “Then why?”

Natasha stared straight ahead, out toward the treeline. Her jaw clenched, like the words were costing her more than she wanted me to see.

“Because you were drunk. Because you’re grieving. Because you’re younger than me and I’ve done enough damage in my life without adding you to the list.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to reach out and grab her and demand she look at me—not at the mess I used to be, not at the power I couldn’t control, not at the girl who had crawled out of rubble with blood on her hands—but me. Now. Here. Wanting her with every thread of myself.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I said, “If I wasn’t drunk?”

She didn’t answer.

Not right away.

Then: “Then you’d have to ask me again. Sober.”

I waited three days.

I wasn’t brave enough to do it sooner. Or maybe I just wanted it to be real, not a reaction. Not a tragedy response. I wanted it to be mine.

So on the third day, I found her in the gym.

She was alone, barefoot, punching a bag like it had insulted her. Sweat clung to her collarbone. Her hair was pulled up in a haphazard knot. She looked unguarded. Unforgiving. Glorious.

I stepped inside and closed the door.

She turned, arms braced, eyes wary.

I didn’t waste time.

“Would you go on a date with me?”

Her expression didn’t change. “That’s a loaded word.”

“Fine,” I said. “Would you go somewhere with me. Food. Talking. No training. No weapons. Just… us.”

She studied me. The silence stretched. Then, she nodded. Once. “Alright.”

That night, we didn’t go far.

Just a quiet diner two towns over, dim lighting, scratched tables, a waitress who didn’t care who we were. She ordered black coffee. I got pancakes at 9pm. We didn’t talk about Sokovia. We didn’t talk about Pietro. We didn’t talk about the kiss.

We talked about books.

About bad movies.

About music neither of us liked but knew all the words to.

She made me laugh. I made her smile. At one point, she reached across the table and brushed syrup from my lip with her thumb.

My heart stopped.

“Sticky,” she said.

“You love it,” I said back.

She didn’t deny it.

We kissed again on the ride home.

I was the one who leaned in, but this time, she met me halfway. This time, her hand found the side of my neck and held it. This time, her mouth opened for mine.

It was soft, so very warm and slow. It was not a mistake. When we pulled apart, her forehead rested against mine.

No words. None needed. Something had started. Something real. Something neither of us could ignore anymore.

We didn’t plan it.

Of course we didn’t.

Nothing about us had ever followed a plan—not Sokovia, not Pietro, not the way she looked at me like I was both dangerous and worth staying close to anyway. And not this.

Not the way I reached for her.

Not the way she let me.

It was late.

We were at the safehouse outside Albany—the one Tony pretended didn’t exist but somehow always had fully stocked liquor and overpriced Turkish soap. We’d been laying low after a mission. Too much adrenaline. Not enough sleep. No danger, for once. Just quiet.

The others had gone to bed.

She hadn’t.

Neither had I.

We were sitting on the floor, backs against the couch, drinking cheap whiskey and pretending not to be watching each other’s mouths when we talked.

She was barefoot again.

Always barefoot in quiet places, like she trusted the earth to hold her without armor.

I asked her why once. She said, “You can’t feel the ground if you’re trying to control it.”

I hadn’t stopped thinking about that for days.

It started with a hand.

Just that—mine, on hers. Casual. Deliberate.

She didn’t move away.

Then her fingers curled around mine.

Then her head tilted slightly, her lips parting like a question she didn’t want to ask out loud.

And I kissed her. Not tentative. Not messy. But deep. Like I meant it. Like I’d needed to.

Like I hadn’t stopped thinking about her mouth since the last time it was on mine.

She made a sound—small, surprised, quiet—like she’d forgotten how it felt to be kissed by someone who wanted nothing but her. Not what she could do. Not what she had done. Just her.

She tasted like whiskey and winter.

And something red.

That was always the color I saw when I was near her.

Not the glowing red of my power, not the bloodstain kind of red—but something deeper. Something hot. Something human.

She kissed me back.

And when she pulled away, just slightly, just long enough to breathe, she whispered, “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

“I don’t want this to be a mistake.”

“It isn’t.”

She didn’t ask again. The bedroom was dark.

Moonlight on the sheets. The window cracked open. Her hand on my wrist as we moved.

She touched me like a secret she didn’t want anyone else to hear.

No rushing. No script.

Her fingers slid under my shirt slowly, pausing when I gasped, asking without words if this was alright. If I was still alright. And I was—god, I was more than alright.

Her mouth followed, warm and patient.

She kissed every scar she found, like she wanted to unwrite the history carved into my skin.

I wasn’t used to being touched like that.

Not gently. Not reverently.

Most people look at me and see fire, chaos, destruction.

She looked at me and saw something worth undressing slowly.

She whispered my name once—soft, hoarse.

Not in awe. Not in command. In invitation.

I touched her back.

Her spine was strong beneath my palm. Her muscles, taut and familiar. The sharp curve of her hip, the way her breath hitched when I scraped my nails just slightly along the inside of her thigh.

She wasn’t as controlled as she liked to pretend.

Not here.

Not with me.

When I kissed her neck, her head tipped back. When I bit her lip, she groaned—low and shameless. When I pushed her back against the mattress and straddled her, she looked at me like she was starving and I was the first thing she was allowed to want in years.

I never wanted to be worshipped.

But she made it feel like worship anyway.

Not for what I could do. Not for the chaos I’d survived.

But for the heat in my mouth and the way I said her name when I came apart under her hand.

We didn’t sleep much.

We stayed curled into each other, breath tangled, skin still humming.

At some point, I traced a small scar along her ribs and asked where it came from.

“Budapest,” she said.

“Of course.”

She smiled. “You want to ask me things?”

“I want to know things.”

She didn’t speak for a moment.

Then she took my hand and placed it over her chest. “Start here.”

I did.

There’s a difference between being taken and being received.

I’d never known that before her.

Sex had never been… holy. Not for me. Not something sacred. Not something that felt like holding instead of using.

But with her—it felt like the opposite of war.

It felt like home.

Her hands, her mouth, her soft curses whispered against my skin—this was not the way of assassins or witches. This was not control. Not power.

This was yielding.

This was what we made with our hands—not our pain. Not our grief. Not our fear.

Just us.

Just skin and heat and need and the quiet, terrifying relief of being wanted back.

When we woke, it was late. Sunlight streaked the bed. Her hair was a mess. My thighs ached.

She blinked up at me, lips parted, sleepy and beautiful in a way I didn’t know she could be. No one looked at Natasha Romanoff and thought soft. But here she was. Soft. Mine. For now.

She reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. The same hand had killed men. Broken necks. Defused bombs. It cradled my face like it had never known violence.

“You okay?” she asked.

I nodded, trying not to cry. “Are you?”

She didn’t answer right away.

Then she smiled. “Yeah.”

That was enough.

I thought we were being subtle.

Genuinely. Hand to God. I thought—between the mission briefings, the separate bedrooms, and the avoidance of all public-facing affection—that we were doing a good job keeping it under wraps.

It turns out we were about as subtle as a building collapse.

Which is ironic, given my history.

It started with a look. Of course it did.

Natasha was leaning against the edge of the kitchen island—black tank top, bruised knuckles, hair still damp from the shower. I was supposed to be listening to Steve debrief the last mission, something about missed rendezvous and poor comms.

Instead, I was watching her mouth.

And the way her eyes met mine for just a second longer than was necessary.

It was that kind of look.

The kind that made you feel like your shirt was on backwards and the floor was made of lava and suddenly everyone in the room could hear your heartbeat from across the building.

She didn’t smile.

She never did in public.

But her eyebrow arched just slightly—just enough to say I see you. I want you. I remember how you tasted last night.

And I—

Well.

I blushed. Because apparently I do that now. Like a virgin schoolgirl instead of a highly-trained mutant capable of reshaping reality with a flick of my wrist.

I turned back to Steve and tried to remember what words were.

Later, we were curled up on the couch in the training room, pretending to watch a movie we’d both seen at least four times.

The lights were off. The others had wandered off. No one else was around.

Her hand was on my thigh.

My head was on her shoulder.

And then the door opened.

“Hey, guys, has anyone seen—OH. OH, MY GOD.”

It was Sam.

He dropped whatever was in his hands—probably something breakable, probably something expensive—and just stared at us like we’d grown extra heads.

To be fair, he was mostly staring at our hands.

Nat didn’t flinch.

She never did.

She just sighed and said, “Close the door, Wilson.”

He did.

Eventually.

But not before whispering, “Holy shit,” at least twice.

We decided—after some mild swearing and one very stressed-out group chat full of increasingly aggressive bird emojis from Sam—that it was time to just… tell everyone.

Rip the bandaid off.

Be grown-ups.

It was Tony’s idea to “do it over dinner.”

Which, in hindsight, was the worst idea anyone’s ever had.

Because Avengers dinners are not normal dinners. They’re semi-formal interrogations conducted over wine and burnt lasagna, hosted by people who think sarcasm is a love language and personal space is a myth.

Still. We tried.

I wore a dress.

She wore leather, because of course she did.

And after a full hour of fake-laughing at Clint’s stories and dodging questions about why we’d both been “out” last weekend at the same time in totally different places, I cleared my throat and said:

“There’s something we want to tell you.”

Tony immediately raised an eyebrow. “Oh god, are you pregnant?”

Natasha didn’t blink. “Do you want to be poisoned, Stark?”

Steve looked alarmed. “Wait, are you pregnant?”

“No one is pregnant,” I snapped, already regretting this entire endeavor.

Bruce blinked at us. “Are you… moving out?”

“Why would we move out?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, sipping his wine nervously, “these things usually start with a ‘there’s something we need to tell you,’ and then someone gets written out of the third act.”

“Wait—are you two breaking up?” Clint looked actually distressed.

“No,” Natasha said, reaching under the table to squeeze my hand.

“We’re… seeing each other,” I said. “Romantically.”

There was a pause.

A long one.

And then—

“Oh, thank God,” said Sam, throwing his napkin on the table. “I thought I was losing my damn mind.”

“Yeah,” said Tony, smirking. “We clocked that, like, months ago.”

“You did not.”

“Wanda,” he said. “You stare at her like she’s a dessert menu. And Romanoff’s only ever that soft when she’s cleaning a gun. So, yeah. We knew.”

Clint raised his hand. “I actually didn’t.”

Everyone turned to look at him.

He shrugged. “I’m a little slow on the uptake.”

“You were literally there when I walked in on them cuddling.”

“Yeah, but I thought maybe they were just emotionally close.”

“Clint.”

“Okay, fine, now I see it.”

Steve smiled, that big, earnest, all-American smile. “I think it’s great.”

“You do?” I asked, genuinely startled.

“Sure. As long as you’re happy.”

“Nat?” Bruce said quietly.

She looked at him. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “You deserve something good.”

That made her eyes soften.

Only a little. Only for a moment.

But I saw it.

And I felt it like a hand around my ribs, squeezing gently.

The rest of the evening was surprisingly normal.

Tony made a joke about how we could now file taxes jointly and make use of SHIELD’s spousal benefits. Steve pretended not to know what he meant. Sam explained it in excruciating detail. Clint spilled wine on the carpet.

Nat leaned over once and whispered, “You okay?”

I nodded.

She kissed my cheek under the table.

I didn’t care if anyone saw.

We slept in my bed that night. No sneaking out. No separate exits. Just us.

When I woke, she was already up—sitting in the chair by the window, drinking coffee and looking out at the skyline like she was waiting for the world to end.

“Do you regret it?” I asked, groggily.

She didn’t look at me. “Regret what?”

“Telling them.”

A pause.

Then, “No.”

I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders. “Then why do you look like someone just told you your target got away?”

She glanced over her shoulder.

And for once—just once—she didn’t deflect. “I’m scared.”

I blinked. “Of what?”

She turned fully then. Walked over. Sat on the edge of the bed and reached for my hand. “Of how much I care about you.”

My throat closed. Because same. She kissed me before I could say anything. And I knew we were past the point of pretending.

That was the beginning of the middle. When people knew, knew about us. When we weren’t just a secret curled between the sheets and under the skin. When it became something real.

Not that it hadn’t been before. But now it was visible. And being seen? That’s its own kind of risk. But god—she was worth it. She was always worth it.

I should’ve known things would break the moment people started speaking like diplomats instead of friends.

And I should’ve known that love alone doesn’t make people stay.

Not when power’s involved.

Not when fear is louder than trust.

Not when you look like me.

The Accords were always going to tear something apart.

I just didn’t think it would be us.

Not me and her.

Not after everything we’d survived just to find each other.

But this wasn’t about survival.

This was about control.

And that—that—was a word Natasha Romanoff understood all too well.

I remember the first meeting.

Big, polished room. No windows. Government suits trying to look like peacekeepers while holding loaded guns behind their teeth.

I sat across from Vision.

Tony paced.

Steve stared like he was trying to bore a hole through the walls with the weight of his disappointment.

Nat sat beside me.

Her knee touched mine under the table.

I remember thinking: maybe that’s enough.

Maybe proximity can anchor me.

Maybe if she’s still next to me, I won’t drift too far from whatever version of me she calls good.

But the moment she opened her mouth—when she started to say things like “oversight” and “structure” and “it might not be a bad idea”—I knew we weren’t standing on the same ground anymore.

She didn’t look at me.

Not during that whole speech.

Not once.

I didn’t scream.

Not at her. Not even when I wanted to.

But I asked her, later, in the hallway where nobody could hear us but the ghosts that haunt military buildings:

“So that’s it?”

She crossed her arms. “What’s it?”

“You think I need a leash?”

“No.”

“You think I’m dangerous.”

“Everyone is dangerous, Wanda.”

“Not like me.”

She sighed. “That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it, Nat?” I asked, my voice too quiet and too sharp. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you just voted for them to own me.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

She didn’t answer.

We didn’t sleep in the same bed after that.

She said she needed time.

I said I needed honesty.

She left the room without giving me either.

And I didn’t follow.

Because maybe I was afraid that if I pushed any harder, we’d both say something we couldn’t unsay.

And because I knew—I knew—she thought she was doing the right thing.

That’s always the thing with her.

She believes in right and wrong like she believes in weight ratios and exit wounds: objectively, coldly, from experience.

But love isn’t a battlefield.

It’s a hallway you build every day, brick by brick, hoping the other person keeps walking toward you.

That week, we walked in opposite directions.

When everything collapsed in Vienna, I was locked inside the Tower.

Not figuratively.

Literally.

Vision said it was for my protection. For the team’s. For “public perception.”

But really?

It was a cage.

A polite, tastefully decorated cage with reinforced windows and warm tea brought to my room by a machine, but a cage nonetheless.

And she let them do it.

She let them lock me up.

Did she think I’d be safer?

Did she think I’d just sit there, smiling softly and twiddling my thumbs while the people I trusted tried to decide what kind of monster I was allowed to be?

I didn’t see her that whole time.

Not once.

Clint came for me.

Because of course he did.

Because Clint Barton never needed permission to choose his family.

Vision tried to stop us.

It didn’t end well.

I didn’t feel guilty about it until hours later, in the quiet of the jet, when I realized Natasha still hadn’t come.

The airport was chaos.

I saw her across the tarmac—leaning against the ramp, face unreadable, body tensed like she’d been waiting for this moment longer than any of us.

Our eyes met.

She didn’t smile.

Neither did I.

I didn’t fight her.

She didn’t fight me.

We both pretended that was on purpose.

I don’t know if she thought she could stay neutral.

She stood on Tony’s side that day. Maybe not with her fists. But she stood there.

And I stood with Steve.

And for the first time since I’d fallen into her bed and stayed there, we were soldiers again, not lovers.

Not even friends.

Just opposing sides of a line drawn by people who didn’t understand what we could’ve been.

I was on the Raft for thirteen days. That’s not a long time. Unless you’re inside it. Unless you’re inside me.

Time doesn’t work normally when you’ve been caged again.

There’s no difference between memory and the present. Between what they fear you’ll become and what you already are in their eyes.

It smelled like wet metal. The lights never turned off. The collar was heavy. I didn’t talk to anyone. Not Sam, not Clint. I remember thinking: She didn’t come.

And it felt worse than the cell.

Then she did. Not publicly. Not dramatically. No explosions. No grand declarations.

Just her in black, moving like a shadow through the power outage she caused herself, unlocking the cell, breathing hard, eyes red-rimmed like she hadn’t slept since Berlin.

She looked at me like she’d been looking for something for weeks and finally found it where she left it—broken and furious.

I didn’t say her name. She said mine. Twice.

“Wanda. Please.”

And I almost didn’t go. I almost let her turn and leave and let me stay where everyone believed I belonged.

But she begged. Not with words. With her hands.

With the way she reached for my wrist and waited—waited—for me to let her take it.

And I did. I let her. I let her take me back. Because sometimes, when you love someone, you forgive them before they even ask.

She didn’t say sorry. Not out loud. But every look said it for her.

The way she helped me out of the harness. The way she held my face like it was still mine. The way she didn’t kiss me until I kissed her first—until I gave her permission to be mine again. And I did.

Because even when I hated her, I never stopped loving her.

Not for one second.

The next few months were quiet. . New names. Shadow living. Steve looked the other way when we shared beds. No one asked questions.

And I didn’t tell her I still dreamed of that cell.

I didn’t tell her I sometimes woke up and flinched when she reached for my arm, just in case I was back there, and it wasn’t her anymore—it was someone trying to control me again.

She never asked.

But sometimes, she’d hold my hand like a lifeline, and I knew she understood.

We survived that. Barely. But something changed. Something shifted.

She never talked about the airport. Or the Tower. Or Vision’s choice to lock me up like a threat. But she never let me be alone again after that.

Not when the lights flickered. Not when the headlines came. Not when my power grew strange and sharp again. I think that was her apology. She stayed.

They say running doesn’t fix anything.

They’re wrong.

Running fixed everything.

At least for a little while.

Not forever. Not cleanly. Not the kind of fixing that makes you better. But it made us softer. Made us us again.

The first safehouse had a leaky roof and a toilet that howled like a dying animal when you flushed it. I remember laughing so hard I cried the first night I heard it. Nat just stood there, arms crossed, jaw tight, looking personally offended by the plumbing.

“You sure you don’t want to turn me in?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe after I fix the water heater.”

I wanted to kiss her then.

Not because she was sexy in the way she could rewire an entire building using kitchen utensils and pure rage—but because she was trying.

Trying to make a home in the middle of nowhere.

Trying to make me feel safe.

Trying to give us a future when we didn’t even know if we had a tomorrow.

We stayed there for six weeks.

I learned how she took her coffee—black, but only if she was cooking. With sugar and cream if she was thinking.

She learned that I talk in my sleep when I’m anxious. Sometimes in Russian. Sometimes in Sokovian. Once in English, and I said, “Please don’t let them touch me again.”

She held me the whole night after that. Didn’t even pretend she wasn’t crying.

We fought, too.

Of course we did.

Two broken women in a house too small for their ghosts? What could possibly go wrong?

Sometimes it was nothing—who used the last match, who left the radio on, who forgot to reload the gun by the door.

Sometimes it was bigger.

“Do you want to be with me?” I asked once, after a bad fight that ended with me breaking a plate and her walking out for three hours.

She didn’t answer right away.

She just stared, breathing like she’d run a mile, wet hair clinging to her neck from the rain.

Then she said, “Of course I do. I just don’t know if I deserve to be.”

That was the worst part of loving her.

Watching her try to decide if being happy made her selfish.

We left Europe after someone recognized me in Prague.

Fake IDs. Private jet. A contact of Steve’s with too many favors to call in.

We stayed in Argentina for a month. Kenya for two. Then Wakanda, because T’Challa owed Steve a debt and owed Natasha something deeper—respect, maybe. Or understanding.

In Wakanda, things shifted. The way she looked at me. The way I looked back.

I remember standing on the balcony of the room they gave us, watching the wind move through the trees, and thinking: this feels like forgiveness.

Not just from the world. From ourselves.

Wakanda was… slow. In a good way.

We helped where we could. I taught physics at a school for girls in the city. Nat trained with the Dora Milaje and didn’t complain when they knocked her flat on her back for underestimating them. (She complained to me, later, over bruises and tea. But she never stopped going.)

We cooked.

We read.

We touched each other like it was the first time, every time.

And we laughed—God, we laughed.

I didn’t even realize I’d stopped laughing until I heard myself giggling into her shoulder because she tried to make pancakes and the batter ended up on the ceiling.

“I used to do this while undercover in Amsterdam,” she said, glaring up at the ceiling.

“What, destroy kitchens?”

She threw a spoon at me.

I caught it midair and kissed her on the nose.

The nights were quiet.

Sometimes too quiet.

She still woke up sweating, reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. I still flinched when loud noises hit wrong.

But she never left the bed anymore.

And I never asked her to.

One night, a year or so after the Raft, we were lying on a blanket outside under a Wakandan sky so black it made the stars look like pinpricks in paper.

She’d stolen wine from Shuri’s personal stash. I was pretending not to be tipsy. She was pretending she didn’t care that I kept resting my foot against hers like I was thirteen and nervous.

“Do you think we’ll ever stop running?” I asked.

She didn’t answer for a while.

Then: “I don’t want to run from you.”

That was the difference. We’d both been running our whole lives. But for once, we were doing it together.

She didn’t propose with a ring. She proposed with a question.

We were washing dishes in a place we didn’t own, wearing clothes we didn’t buy, hiding under names that weren’t ours, and she looked at me with soap suds on her hands and said:

“Would you marry me if we ever get to be real people again?”

I turned off the faucet and kissed her.

That was my yes.

We didn’t need more than that.

T’Challa gifted us rings a few weeks later. Vibranium wedding bands, simple, unbreakable. He didn’t say congratulations. Just nodded once and left them in a wooden box by our bed.

We wore them on chains around our necks. It wasn’t legal. It wasn’t public. But it was ours.

And for the first time in a long, long time—I believed we’d survive.

Of course, the thing about peace is that it’s just the space between wars.

And we were never meant to be at peace for long.

But for those years in the dark—those soft, stolen days between lies and battlefields—we were more than fugitives.

We were a life.

A messy, makeshift, deeply human life.

She loved me in silence and sarcasm. I loved her in tea and laughter.

Yelena dropped into our life like a knife wrapped in bubblegum.

Which, I would later realize, was her entire personality.

But the first time I met her, I didn’t know that yet.

I just knew someone had broken our perimeter, set off our alarms, and triggered a defense spell so old I barely remembered how to deactivate it. Natasha wasn’t even home.

She’d gone out that morning to pick up supplies, maybe a few ingredients for dinner—though knowing her, she was more likely to come back with a grenade launcher than groceries.

She left with a kiss to the cheek and a promise to be back by dusk.

She did not mention her sister might drop by.

I heard the explosion first.

Not a big one—just a flash-bang. I’d modified it to blind, not maim.

Then a string of very creative curses in Russian.

Then silence.

Then: “What the hell kind of greeting is that?”

I stepped out onto the porch barefoot, holding a mug of tea and a hex glowing quietly in my palm.

The woman standing in the yard was covered in ash, wearing a green vest full of pockets, and had the same face as Natasha when she was about to say something that made you want to scream and kiss her at the same time.

“Hi,” I said.

She stared.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “You’re the witch.”

“You’re the sister?”

There was a long beat.

Then she tossed something small and metal at my feet. “Your wards are terrible. I walked right through the south line before it caught me.”

“You didn’t walk through anything,” I said, sipping my tea. “You got lit up like a Christmas tree. I just chose not to disintegrate you.”

She smirked. “Natasha said you were dramatic.”

“And you’re bleeding on our porch.”

She looked down at her elbow. Shrugged. “Barely.”

God help me, I liked her immediately.

We sat at the kitchen table in mutual silence for the first fifteen minutes.

She raided the fridge like she lived there. I let her. She stole three pierogies, a third of a baguette, and two olives straight from the jar. Then she poured herself a glass of milk.

“Do you want to tell me why you’re here?” I asked, finally.

She gave me a look I’d later come to know very well. A mix of don’t push me, I’m not scared of you, and please don’t make me say it out loud.

“I needed to talk to Natasha.”

“She’s not back yet.”

“I figured.”

Silence again.

Then: “You live here?”

“For now.”

She squinted. “Like, live live? With furniture?”

“Yes.”

“Are you married or just weird about mugs?”

I looked down at the two matching ceramic cups on the table, both with hand-painted little red hourglasses.

“Is there a difference?”

Yelena laughed. Not politely. Not bitterly.

Just… loudly.

Like someone who didn’t laugh enough.

“You’re funny. You’re not supposed to be funny.”

I shrugged. “You’re not supposed to be likable.”

She grinned wider.

She wandered the house like a wolf sniffing out a trap.

Looked at the bookshelves. The photos. The jackets hung by the door. Her fingers hovered over Natasha’s necklace where it lay in a dish beside the bed. She didn’t touch it. Just stared.

“She’s really happy, huh?”

The question wasn’t bitter.

Just surprised.

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded, then walked back to the living room like she hadn’t just cracked her own ribs open and offered me a glimpse of the soft heart underneath.

When Nat finally came home, she paused in the doorway like she’d been caught cheating.

Yelena didn’t wait for her to speak.

“Your girlfriend has booby traps.”

Nat’s face twitched. “So do you.”

“I bled.”

“You usually do.”

Then, to me: “She didn’t hex you, did she?”

“Only a little,” Yelena said sweetly, showing her elbow.

I gave Natasha a look that said, you’re going to owe me for this.

She gave me one back that said, please be nice. I love you. Also, thank you.

The three of us shared dinner.

It was awkward. Loud. Too many forks clinking. Too many stories that I wasn’t part of. But I listened. And watched. And laughed at the ones Natasha told in a voice she only used when she was talking to family.

Yelena made fun of her for everything—her hair, her taste in furniture, her tendency to over-season pasta like she was trying to recreate the salt mines of Siberia.

Nat rolled her eyes.

I watched them both.

And for the first time, I saw her as someone’s older sister.

Not just an Avenger. Not a weapon. Not my lover.

But a girl who once held her baby sister’s hand and promised her they’d get out. And did.

Yelena stayed the night.

I woke up in the middle of the night and found her on the back porch, wrapped in one of Natasha’s hoodies, drinking beer.

She looked up when she saw me.

“You can sit,” she said. “I don’t bite. Unless I’m threatened. Or hungry.”

I sat beside her.

She stared up at the stars for a while, then asked:

“How long have you loved her?”

I thought about lying. Or joking. Or dodging the question.

But there was something in her tone—honest, raw, that middle-of-the-night sort of naked—that made me answer with the same.

“Since she looked at me like I wasn’t something to be afraid of.”

Yelena nodded.

“She does that. Makes you think you’re a person.”

“I didn’t think I was, before her.”

She looked at me sideways.

Then, quiet: “Me either.”

She left in the morning. Didn’t say goodbye. Just left a note on the fridge that read: “Don’t get her killed.”

Underneath it, she drew a little stick figure wearing a red cape punching a tank. I still have it.

It’s folded in a drawer with every other piece of her I could keep.

That was the last time I saw Yelena before the world started burning again. Before Thanos. Before the dust. Before Natasha stopped coming home. But I’m glad I had that night.

Glad I got to meet the other girl Natasha would’ve died for.

Glad we got to sit in the dark, drink terrible beer, and laugh about her ugly socks and her inability to relax on vacation.

Yelena called her “our idiot.”

I didn’t argue. Because she was. Ours. And the best kind of idiot.

It was spring in Wakanda.

The air smelled like jasmine and sunburnt grass. The kind of heat that made your muscles lazy and your skin buzz with leftover light.

We had just unpacked.

I remember that clearly — boxes of old books, a cracked teacup, Nat’s red hoodie that I insisted on keeping even though it was too big. She said I looked like a kid playing soldier in it.

I told her it was comforting.

She said, “I’m not supposed to be comforting.”

I said, “You are anyway.”

That made her quiet.

She always got quiet when I said things like that.

We’d only just been allowed back in.

Back into the fold. The Avengers.

After Civil War, after the Raft, after two years of running from rooftop to rooftop, hotel to safehouse, silent to screaming. We thought we’d be fugitives forever. But then Vision called. Then Banner returned. Then Steve said “We’re gonna need everyone.”

And so we went.

Not because we trusted them.

But because Natasha still trusted Steve.

And I trusted her.

Wakanda was beautiful.

Bright, wild, vibrating with tech and tradition and something older than anything we’d ever touched before.

Nat said it reminded her of a home she never had.

I told her that’s what this could be — if we survived.

She didn’t answer.

Just held my hand tighter than usual as we crossed the threshold into the palace.

The fight wasn’t just coming — it had already started.

Thanos was on his way. Vision was hurt. Shuri worked night and day to try and save him. I stayed by his side, did what I could. Nat stayed by mine.

But she didn’t like it.

Not the lab. Not the vulnerability. Not the look in my eyes when I talked about destroying the Mind Stone.

She didn’t say it, but I knew what she was thinking.

Haven’t you lost enough?

But that’s the thing about power — about love. When you have something precious, you’d do anything to protect it.

Even if it means breaking your own heads.

The battle began on a Tuesday.

I remember that.

It should’ve been nothing — a meaningless detail — but it mattered to me, somehow.

Because Tuesday was our day.

Back when we were on the run, it was the only day we gave ourselves permission to slow down. Nat would make dinner. I’d read. We’d talk. Sometimes we didn’t.

Sometimes she’d just fall asleep on the couch with her legs tangled in mine, and I’d pretend to keep reading even though I couldn’t stop staring at her mouth.

She looked younger when she slept.

Like maybe the Red Room hadn’t stolen everything.

On the battlefield, she changed.

She always did.

The softness disappeared. The calm, steady affection swapped out for a kind of merciless efficiency.

She was beautiful, even in war.

Ruthless. Fast. Quiet.

She barely spoke to me that morning. Just kissed my forehead and said, “Don’t die.”

I said, “Not planning on it.”

She didn’t laugh.

Neither did I.

And then the monsters came.

Hordes of them. Creatures with razors for limbs and jaws like steel traps. They clawed at the barrier, tore through it. We fought. I held the front line. I tore through them with everything I had — red glowing hands, rage, grief, raw terror.

But then Vision called for me.

And I made the choice.

I left the battlefield.

Nat watched me go with a look I’ll never forget.

She wasn’t angry.

She was terrified.

Because for the first time since we met, she couldn’t follow me.

She couldn’t protect me.

I killed Vision.

I watched him die twice — once by my hand, once by Thanos’s.

The second time hurt worse.

Not just because of the stone. Not just because of what it meant.

But because I could hear Natasha screaming my name.

And then… silence.

Then ash.

Then nothing.

I don’t remember it.

Not really.

One minute I was clutching the broken body of a man I swore I’d protect.

The next… cold.

Light.

Nothing.

Like falling asleep in a snowstorm.

Like being unmade.

I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t have time to say goodbye. I didn’t see her face.

I just vanished.

People ask what it felt like.

Dying.

And I don’t have a good answer.

It’s not pain.

It’s not peace.

It’s the space between heartbeats — where you remember everything you ever loved, and none of it can save you.

I found out later that Natasha searched for me for hours.

That she dug through rubble with her bare hands.

That she didn’t cry until it was dark and the fires had all burned out.

She thought she’d failed me.

But she didn’t.

She never did.

There’s something cruel about coming back from death.

You’re the one who gets resurrected, but it’s everyone else who had to survive the aftermath.

Everyone else who grieved you.

Who buried your clothes.

Who folded your blankets.

Who whispered your name into the dark, hoping it would echo back.

When I returned, I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t whole.

Because the first person I wanted to see wasn’t there.

No one told me. No one had to. The moment I came back, I knew.

It was in the air. In the way no one met my eyes. In the silence under the celebration. I didn’t need to ask. I didn’t even want to hear it. Not really.

Because I already knew.

Natasha Romanoff was gone. Dead. Buried under the weight of everyone else’s future.

And I wasn’t there.

The sky above the battlefield was purple with smoke. The ground soaked with blood, dust, water. The ruins of a war we barely survived. I landed on it like a weapon.

Like a promise. I didn’t feel joy. Or relief. Or pain.

Just purpose. Because Thanos was there. And Natasha wasn’t. So I showed him what grief really looks like.

I don’t remember what I said.

Only that it was true.

“You took everything from me.”

And he had the audacity to say he didn’t even know who I was.
As if I was just another casualty.
As if she was just another name on his long, brutal list.

So I introduced myself with rage.

With red glowing fire from the deepest place inside me.

I broke pieces of him off — armor, pride, certainty.
I lifted him off the ground and split the sky with him.

He begged for help.

And I would have killed him.
I wanted to.

Because for one blinding moment, I thought:
If I kill him, maybe this will stop hurting.

It didn’t.

When the battle ended, everyone was hugging someone. Or looking for someone. Or crying into someone’s arms.

And I just stood there. Still wearing the clothes I died in. Still burning. Still waiting to wake up in a bed she’d made for us.

I found Clint by the river later. He looked older. Exhausted. Hollowed out.

He looked like someone who’d made a trade he couldn’t live with.

I didn’t speak. Not at first. Just sat next to him. The sun was setting. The water was soft. It felt wrong.

“She made me promise not to stop you,” he said, voice cracking like a bad joint. “If you came back angry.”

“I’m not angry,” I lied.

He laughed.

It wasn’t a happy sound.

“She told me you’d never forgive yourself for missing it,” he added.

And that was what finally broke me.

Because you were right.

There was no body.

Only a ledge on a forgotten planet and an impossible sacrifice.

She gave herself up for a stone.

For a second chance.

For me.

And I wasn’t there to stop you.

To hold you, one more time

To tell my wife not to be a hero, just this once. I had one job — survive her. Keep you safe. Grow old with the love of my life in a world we made from scratch.

And instead, you died alone.

The funeral wasn’t hers.

It was Tony’s.

I stood on the edge of the crowd, heart hollow, hands shaking. Watching Pepper hold her daughter. Watching Steve try not to crack. Watching everyone whisper about legacies and heroes and goodbyes.

No one mentioned her.

Not out loud.

No monument. No speeches.

Just a ghost in the wind.

I wanted to scream.

Where is her name? Where is her grave? Where is my goddamn wife?

But I didn’t. I just walked into the trees and let myself collapse. For the first time in years, I sobbed.

Messy. Loud. Ugly.

I tore up the grass with my bare hands and screamed into the dirt like it owed me something.

Grief with Natasha was always going to be different. It wasn’t just that you were gone. It was that you chose it. She chose everyone else. The world. Me.

Over herself. And I hated her for it. For weeks, I hated her. I hated her for dying. For leaving.

For loving me so much that she thought I was worth losing everything.

And then I hated myself for hating her. Because that’s what loss does. It makes you cruel.

Steve gave me her necklace. The one she wore during Civil War. A little red stone set in black.

“She wore it every day you were gone,” he said. I nodded and slipped it over my head. It felt cold. It always did.

I stayed at the compound for a while. Not out of loyalty. Not out of love.

Just because I didn’t know where else to go.

I sat in our old room. Slept in your hoodie. Cooked with the pan you swore was indestructible even though I dented it the first week we moved in together.

I answered the door when people came by with condolences, food, empty words.

I nodded. Smiled. Said “Thank you.”

And then I went back to sitting on the floor in the kitchen, waiting for her voice.

It never came.

Sometimes, late at night, I’d talk to her.

Whisper into the darkness.

Just to hear what it felt like to say your name out loud. “Natasha.” I’d say it once. And then again. And again.

Until the syllables stopped sounding like language and started sounding like prayer. Until I can’t say it over the sound of my tears.

People think grief is loud. And sometimes it is.

But with you, it was quiet. It was folding laundry you’ll never wear again. It was forgetting how you liked your eggs.

It was smelling her shampoo on my skin and wondering if I’d imagined her altogether.

I found your wedding ring in a drawer. The vibranium band. The one T’Challa gave us. Clint put it there, she had left it behind before her time-jump.

You never stopped wearing it. Not even during the war. I wear it now. Around my neck.

Next to the necklace. Next to my heart. Next to the part of me that never came back.

They say love is the strongest force in the universe.

That it can bend time. Rewrite destiny. Bring people back from the edge. But it didn’t save her, you.

And no matter how much power I have — how much I take, or become — I can’t change that.

You’re gone. And I’m still here. And I don’t know what to do with that.

Westview, It started with the sound of a typewriter.
Then a laugh track.
Then breakfast sizzling on a stove that hadn’t worked since 1941.

And there she was.

Natasha Romanoff in black and white.
In an apron.
In a dress with tiny polka dots.
Smiling at me like she hadn’t died.

I didn’t question it.
Not at first.

Because I was tired.
And she looked happy.

That was enough.

The 1950s were kind to us.

She wore pearls and poured coffee into cups that never emptied.
I wore lipstick that never smudged.
We danced to songs that hadn’t existed in decades.

There was a dinner party.
There was a nosy neighbor.
There was laughter, canned and clean.

She called me “darling.”
I called her “honey.”
We kissed behind closed doors, like the world wasn’t ready for us.
Like we’d made it anyway.

It was perfect.
For a day.

Then the toaster bled red.

And everything started to shift.

The ‘60s came in with technicolor and tension.

Natasha wore bell-bottoms.
I wore eyeliner so sharp it could kill a man.
We argued about dishes. About dinner. About… nothing.

The words weren’t real.

We always made up.
We always kissed in time for the credits.

But something was off.

She didn’t remember Budapest.
Didn’t remember Sokovia.
Didn’t remember that we’d been married, once, under the stars in Wakanda.

She smiled through it.
Told me I was imagining things.

Maybe I was.

In the ‘70s, I was pregnant.

Somehow.

Twins.

She built the crib herself.
Painted the nursery blue and red.

We laughed about it.
Red and blue — like us.

We held hands on the couch and watched sitcoms about families pretending to be normal.
She brushed my hair.
I held her knees when she cried.

Because sometimes, she remembered.

Just for a second.

She’d go quiet.
Touch her stomach like she’d lost something.
Whisper “Yelena” like it hurt.

And then she’d smile again.

Because I made her smile.

Because I wanted her to smile.

The ‘80s came fast.

The twins were growing.
I couldn’t remember giving birth.

She didn’t ask.
She just held them.
Kissed their cheeks.

Said, “We did it, Wands.”
Like we earned it.
Like we deserved this.

And I believed her.

Until the credits rolled too soon.

And she glitched.

It started small.

A word repeated.
A rewind.
A skip forward.

One moment, she was laughing.
The next, she was staring at the wall like she could see through it.

Like she remembered dying.

The ‘90s were messy.

So was I.

The house changed shapes every morning.
The twins were teens overnight.
Natasha forgot my name.

Sometimes she looked at me like I was a stranger.

Sometimes she looked at me like I was God.

And then she’d kiss me so hard I’d forget that none of it was real.
M

I went outside the house once.

Just once.

There was nothing.

Not even pain.

Just static.

I tried to keep it together.

Really.

I baked.
I sewed.
I rewound the clock every time she flinched.

Every time she asked, “Where are we?”
Every time she cried and didn’t know why.

I fixed it.

Because I could.

Because it was mine.

Because if I didn’t hold on to her, I’d lose her all over again.

By the 2000s, I was running out of tricks.

The set design started to flicker.
The walls warped.
The sky turned red.

She stopped sleeping.
Stopped smiling.

One night, she whispered, “This isn’t real.”

I said, “It doesn’t matter.”

She didn’t argue.

She just touched my face like she was saying goodbye.

And I broke the lamp so I wouldn’t have to hear it.

The twins asked me what death felt like.

I didn’t answer.

I just stared at their hair — one red, one dark — and wondered what parts of her I put into them.
What parts of me would outlive this lie.

It ended in silence.

No final battle.
No snapping fingers.
Just me, on the living room floor, holding her hand.

She was cold.

Not like a corpse.
Like absence.

She said my name. Once.

“Wanda.”

Not darling.
Not baby.
Not “we’ll be okay.”

Just Wanda.

Like she knew she was leaving.

Again.

I screamed.
I screamed until the walls collapsed.
Until the children were gone.
Until the color drained from the world.

I held her body in my lap and shook her and begged her and rewrote the ending and—

Still.

She vanished.

Still.

I was alone.

Reality reasserted itself.

The world came back.

But I didn’t.

Not really.

They tried to talk to me.

The other Avengers.
What’s left of them.

Clint cried.
Yelena punched a hole in my wall and then hugged me so hard I stopped breathing.

Monica looked at me like she understood.

Maybe she did.

But no one could bring her back.

Not for real.

Westview was a dream.
A spell.
A sin.

But it was mine.

And in it, she was alive.

Not because I resurrected her.

Because I remembered her too hard.

Loved her too much.

There’s a price to everything.

Even make-believe.

Especially love.

It’s quiet here.

Not the kind of quiet that comes with peace — the kind that weighs. Sits on your chest. Pulls at your spine like old grief.

The kind of quiet you only find in graveyards.

I brought flowers.

Lilies, today. Red and white.

You’d mock me for that. Too sentimental. Too Catholic. You hated lilies. Said they looked like funeral decorations.
Which… I guess is fair.

I brought them anyway.

It felt right.

You always said I was the dramatic one.

You’d hate this place.

Too plain. Too still. Just grass, trees, the hum of bugs in the summer.

No cities. No chaos. Nothing to do with the woman you were — or the life you fought so hard to build.

But they buried you here anyway.

Some off-the-books patch of land in Ohio, where the records are fake and the tombstone just says N.R. No dates. No words. Just those two letters.

Because someone decided that’s all you got to be in the end.

Just initials.

After everything you did.
After everything you gave.

It’s not enough.

It’s never been enough.

I started talking to you the day after the funeral.
There wasn’t really a funeral — just the five of us and a bottle of vodka.

Clint cried so hard I thought he’d break.
Yelena wouldn’t speak at all.

I said nothing.

Because I couldn’t.
Because if I started, I wouldn’t stop.
Because my chest felt like an implosion.
Because I’d already done the eulogy, haven’t I?

I’ve been doing it for years.

Every time I told a story.
Every time I remembered the way you used to laugh at me when I burned pancakes, or the way you kissed me like you were always slightly annoyed I wasn’t closer.

Every time I touched the ring still on my finger.

This is the eulogy.
All of it.

I just didn’t realize it until now.

I know you’d be furious with me for the hex.

You’d call it selfish. Dangerous.

You’d look at me like I was breaking everything we tried to build.

You’d be right.

And I’d do it again.

Every single time.

Because in that house, you were alive. You were mine. And we had time.

Not forever. Not even real. But time.

Time to dance in the kitchen. Time to fight about laundry. Time to teach the kids how to lie to authority and pick locks.

Time to remember who we were, before the war. Before the snap. Before the gods and stones and the wreckage of forever.

You smiled at me every morning.

That was worth breaking the world.

But it wasn’t enough.

None of it ever is.

Not for you.

Not for me.

I’ve been studying, found a book.

You knew I would. You’d hate that, too.

You always said obsession was a dangerous path for someone like me.

That power wants purpose. That grief makes it hungry.

You weren’t wrong.

But I’m tired of pretending I’m not starving.

Tired of living in the ruins of what we had and calling it survival.

Tired of dreaming of you when I could be holding you.

I found something.

Not a spell. Not quite.

A possibility.

A door.

A version of this universe, layered beneath others — thin as silk, sharp as glass.

A multiverse.

Infinite realities.

And somewhere in one of them…

You’re alive.

Maybe not my Natasha.
Maybe not even a Natasha who remembers me.

But you. Breathing. Moving. Whole.

Not ash in the wind. Not initials on a stone. Not a memory rotting inside my ribcage.

You.

I want to tell you I won’t go. That I won’t open that door. That I won’t chase you through the cracks in reality just to hear your voice one more time.

But I can’t lie to you.

I never could.

If I can find you…

Even a version of you…

I will.

Even if it destroys me.

Even if it destroys everything.

You always said the world came first.
That redemption mattered. That we weren’t just weapons.

But I wasn’t forged to save the world.

I was forged by it.

By what it took from me. By what it made me lose.

And if it won’t give you back?

Then it can burn.

I’ll be the match.

They’ll call me a villain. They’ll say I lost my mind. They’ll whisper “Wanda Maximoff” like it’s a curse as I burn all down.

Let them.

You were called worse.

And still, you saved them.

You gave everything for a world that never gave you the same.

So I’ll give everything now.

For you.

For one second in your arms.

For one kiss that doesn’t fade.
For the feel of your heartbeat against my cheek, telling me that this time, I’m not alone.

I’m not doing this because I can’t move on.

I’m doing this because I never should’ve had to.

I’d just burn down the entire world for just one more second holding you.

Goodbye, detka. For now.

But not forever.

Never forever.