"Yes, yes it is," Abigail grinned innocently and sat down on the large double bed in the middle of the bright room. "Oh, you'll never get that hoodie back, will you? But neither will I, right?" Steve had just entered the room and was also smiling wryly when he spotted his hoodie on Nat. So there they stood. The three people who were masking pain, preferring instead to put on fake smiles. Still they were sad but it was their conviction to help the others present. They helped everyone but themselves.
Hours later, there was nothing left of the tray but the plates that had been on it. The three of them sat on the bed, while Abigail had already dozed off. This day had really taken everything out of them. "How is she?" asked Steve, who was sitting next to Nat on the other side of the bed. "How do you think she's doing? First she had to watch her boyfriend die in her arms and now her best friend. To top it all off. So you tell me how she's going to be?" Natasha answered rhetorically, her choice of words being meaner than her voice conveyed. But it wasn't because of him, it was because of the question itself. She had never really answered it honestly before.
"And how are you?" asked Steve instead, exchanging his stubbornly straight gaze for her green eyes. Tasha broke eye contact, however, and stared at her fingernails as if something very exciting had just happened to them. "Good." The opposite was true, and if she looked into those ocean-like eyes now, he would be able to look right into her soul. But Steve didn't need to see the green of the forest, nor did he need to have been trained to recognize lies to take note of the untruth of her words. "Nat, don't even try to make me believe that. It's okay to grieve, it's okay not to be able to be strong all the time."
When addressed neither answered nor looked up to contradict him, he noticed that her lips trembled slightly. Concerned, he searched for her hand and carefully slid a little closer to her without waking Abigail, who lay there snuggled up to Nat on the other side. "It's just- Ever since he- I haven't heard anything from Clint and his family or from Yelena yet. Nor was I good enough to stop it," she stuttered in a whisper, her voice breaking in several places. "I'm sorry about Bucky, I know how important he was to you."
Steve swallowed. He hadn't thought about Clint and Laura along with their three children until now, and of course his best friend was worried about her sister, too. He'd known about Yelena since their conversation in the training room after Abigail was taken. And as far as he knew, he was the only one of her team besides Clint who knew of her existence. "Hey look at me," lightly he placed a finger under her chin and pushed it up toward him. Her erratic breathing met his lips and he allowed himself a quick glance at hers before continuing to speak. "It's not your fault. We lost as a team and as such we will find a way to fix it. And don't worry about them, we'll find them and you'll see they're fine." It was more a convincing speech for itself than an existing fact, but that's all they had at that point.
YOU ARE READING
The closest thing to a daughter
Adventure❝ she is the closest thing I ever had to a daughter ❝ - english version Abigail a thief on the run from her past, with extraordinary uncontrolled powers and an unhealthy amount of self-confidence, meets the famous Russian spy Black Widow. Not a g...
