psl for Natasha

[advanced]

[Sometimes it feels like years since Bucky let Steve assimilate him into his life again, moved him into the compound where the Avengers lived and worked; those were the days when he felt good, when he could smile and joke around and his voice had a Brooklyn tang to it. And sometimes it felt like only scant days, like he wasn't ready to be around people; those were the days when he tensed at sudden movements and sat like a scowling statue in an easily defensible corner.

The others did their best to cope with him there, some more successfully than others, but Bucky was still mostly an outsider. He didn't trust himself, and he wasn't sure they trusted him either, to go on actual Avenger missions and so he ended up mostly around the compound just trying to figure out where the hell to go from here. He did the best with Steve, but that was to be expected, but the others made him uncomfortable to varying degrees.

Oddly, though, a friendship had sprung up between him and Natasha. Nothing major, nothing world ending, but something warm and understated and real. Perhaps because they had both suffered, or perhaps because they had both done things that would never wash clean, but she was one that he seemed to be able to sit with whether he was having a good day or a bad one.

It was late at night when he padded into the common area wearing just some loose pyjama pants, expecting to be the only one up. His brow furrowed slightly when he saw that wasn't the case and he moved to the edge of the couch, voice a quiet rasp.]

Can't sleep?

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[natalia_vdova]

[Natasha still has bad nights, sometimes.

Nightmares or half-waking sensations of the place that had trained her, old missions of blood and fire and orders breathed in Russian. The Red Room was not a kind place for anyone, and it especially hadn't been a kind place for her, but she had survived. Not in the sense that meant being alive in the twenty-four-hour period that followed the one before it- which had been her yardstick, once- but the only way you really survived places like that, by finding something else to be.

Now she's a hero. But that's harder to remind herself of these days, than it had once been, and some days she's not quite sure what it means. With the fall of SHIELD, finding out that the decade she'd spent, supposedly doing good to make up for a lifetime of wrongs had been in service to Hydra-- that had been rough. In the end, she'd come back to the Avengers, because the truth was that she was better with them than she was on her own. So when Steve had called, she'd answered. His moral center always found north better than hers, and she needed that. Needed to help someone.

Settling into the compound has been nice, honestly. She'd mostly been living out of motels since SHIELD, not that anyone aside from Clint really knows that. And Natasha doesn't bring it up, but there's something about being close to the others that's good for her. She'd supported Steve's idea of bringing Bucky in, and even if he could be cagey, he was.. easy to be around, most of the time. She did her best not to push, and even with two scars on her skin, she didn't shy from him. In her own experience the best way to make someone feel out of control was to treat them like they were. So she talked to him, and respected his boundaries. Sometimes she'd just make a point to sit in the same room when he had his back to the corner, as if she could say without words that not feeling okay didn't mean he had to be alone. But she never tried to make him stay.

Natasha tried with him because she still remembered how rough SHIELD had been, when Clint had felt like the only person that even wanted her alive. At first she just wanted him to know that Steve wasn't the only one that wanted him here. And while she didn't talk about DC or Odessa, she wanted him to know she didn't blame him, too. These days, it's more that she just likes being around him. On the good days, when she can see a sliver of the young man Steve talked about sometimes in the curl of a smile or the Brooklyn swagger that lifts his voice. But even on the bad ones, where the pieces of things they understand without the words are more clear.

Usually, it's Bucky who has the rough nights. But it's not even quite quarter of four and Natasha's there, with a mug of untouched tea that's gone cold on the coffeetable. There's something about her that's vaguely haunted around the edges, something brittle in her green eyes. Nightmares that dredged up the horrors of her past were always worse than any invented horror. Worse than the ones where she really was what they made her, where she kills her friends. That's a fiction that goes away when her eyes open.

If it had been anyone else, she'd have smiled, treated him to a glimpse of just how seamlessly she can become someone else. But there's something about Bucky that makes being not-okay feel a little bit safer for her, too. She's curled into the far side of the couch in an over-sized sweatshirt, legs folded under her, and she doesn't smile, but she does look over at him with a quiet nod of acknowledgement.]

Bad dreams. Old memories.

[Her voice is almost bittersweet. There's something that sticks in her to the marrow, and so many years later, she still doesn't really know how to feel. She's never really talked to anyone about this particular suffering, not even Clint. It was just a minor note on her SHIELD medical chart. Natasha had barely washed the blood from her hands when the Red Room had forced her onto the operating table, still so young herself, shaped into what they needed her to be.] What about you?

[advanced]

[He doesn't know about all of her past, he doesn't need to and he's never asked. He knows that she had some training that she didn't enjoy, that she didn't necessarily consent to, and he knows that she's highly skilled because of it. But that's it, that's all.

Everyone's demons are their own.

The acknowledgement of bad dreams only gets a small nod, he knows what it's like to see horrors whenever he closes his eyes. He solves that by just not sleeping much, not until he's so exhausted that his body literally forces him to. Steve says that's not a healthy way to do it, he watches him sometimes with concern and sad eyes, but he never tries to make Bucky change.]

Just a minute.

[It's a non sequitur, considering the question, but he's still not always the best with conversational flow. He gets stuck in his own head puzzling things out, and then when he does talk it can be disjointed and it's always still minimalist. He turns and walks away from her after that, but only to the small kitchenette.

If she obeys him to wait there for a minute then she'll hear the microwave going, the ping of it finishing, and the smell of molten cheese. Bucky finally reappears with a hot pocket on a little plate, holding it out to her.]