“Chicken noodle. I’m making a double batch, if you want some.”
It was something so banal: standing in a kitchen with Natasha Romanoff, cooking dinner for him-slash-them, the quiet Russian night sitting heavy outside their dark windows. He wished that was all it was, and that they could just sit tight and enjoy it properly without some masked monster blowing up the whole street to get at them. If he squinted, this could just be an evening in with a friend, with no further concerns haunting them, no complicated mission waiting for them at the end of the road.
Which, speaking of those complications.
Bucky glanced back at her. Wanted to keep the conversation light, frothy — private beaches and holidays, he wasn’t above teasing the idea of Nat in a bikini — but the curiosity was digging beneath his skin like a thorn in his paw, and so he had to ask.
“So it was a family cover story, right? But you still call him your father?”
"Yes please." It was a simple answer, but she was hungry. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stopped long enough to eat something. If the kitchen only held clam chowder again, she probably still would have bolted down a bowl.
It was nice, to let herself get lost in the tide of light conversation for a while. She could almost picture the bleached white shoreline, the warm ocean water, the sun over head. Just about as far away from a cold Russian night as you could get. When he asked about the family cover story, the fabricated beach in her mind's eye faded, replaced by that sandy landing strip in Cuba. There was a momentary pause before she said, "family's complicated." The ring of soldiers. Melina laying on a stretcher. Her last desperate attempt to protect Yelena.
It was quiet again after she said that. She'd known, she'd always known, that their lives in Ohio had been a fiction. But it had been a beautiful fiction. One that a child that grew up learning how to be a weapon couldn't help but want to believe. It had been harder for Yelena, she knew. She'd been so young.
Natasha cleared her throat and shifted forward so that she could fold her arms along the back of the couch as she looked into the kitchen at him. "My family abandoned me when I was born, so I was raised in the Red Room. Those three years we spent in Ohio were the only time I ever had a family. Even if it wasn't real." She pointed at the bag that contained the antidote, an indicator that he could get it if he wanted to look. "There's photo booth pictures in there of me and Yelena. We both had half of the strip while we were in there. Alexei let Dreykov take us back. But they're all still a part of me." Her mouth quirked into a tired little half smile. "For better or worse."
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It was something so banal: standing in a kitchen with Natasha Romanoff, cooking dinner for him-slash-them, the quiet Russian night sitting heavy outside their dark windows. He wished that was all it was, and that they could just sit tight and enjoy it properly without some masked monster blowing up the whole street to get at them. If he squinted, this could just be an evening in with a friend, with no further concerns haunting them, no complicated mission waiting for them at the end of the road.
Which, speaking of those complications.
Bucky glanced back at her. Wanted to keep the conversation light, frothy — private beaches and holidays, he wasn’t above teasing the idea of Nat in a bikini — but the curiosity was digging beneath his skin like a thorn in his paw, and so he had to ask.
“So it was a family cover story, right? But you still call him your father?”
no subject
It was nice, to let herself get lost in the tide of light conversation for a while. She could almost picture the bleached white shoreline, the warm ocean water, the sun over head. Just about as far away from a cold Russian night as you could get. When he asked about the family cover story, the fabricated beach in her mind's eye faded, replaced by that sandy landing strip in Cuba. There was a momentary pause before she said, "family's complicated." The ring of soldiers. Melina laying on a stretcher. Her last desperate attempt to protect Yelena.
It was quiet again after she said that. She'd known, she'd always known, that their lives in Ohio had been a fiction. But it had been a beautiful fiction. One that a child that grew up learning how to be a weapon couldn't help but want to believe. It had been harder for Yelena, she knew. She'd been so young.
Natasha cleared her throat and shifted forward so that she could fold her arms along the back of the couch as she looked into the kitchen at him. "My family abandoned me when I was born, so I was raised in the Red Room. Those three years we spent in Ohio were the only time I ever had a family. Even if it wasn't real." She pointed at the bag that contained the antidote, an indicator that he could get it if he wanted to look. "There's photo booth pictures in there of me and Yelena. We both had half of the strip while we were in there. Alexei let Dreykov take us back. But they're all still a part of me." Her mouth quirked into a tired little half smile. "For better or worse."