Always Okay ─ n. romanoff ✓

two

I'm sorry that this isn't the most spectacular rewrite. It's my senior year, so I'm dealing with school and college applications, and it takes up a lot of my time. I've also been in a writing slump.

★★★

SASHA'S whole body was curled into a ball when she woke up the next morning, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms crossed behind them. She uncurled her limbs, groaning when she realized it was only six-thirty AM. Her stomach felt like it had begun to eat away at itself out of hunger. If Sasha didn't have something, she'd pass out, and she couldn't fall back to sleep like this. She rolled out of bed and dragged herself into the kitchen. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one awake. Natasha was already sipping a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter wearing her usual scowl.

"Hey," Nat said, giving Sasha a once-over. Sasha was strikingly pretty with her pale, freckled skin and her waist-length ginger hair, but she looked too pale today, emaciated. "You're up early. Everything okay?"

"Yeah." Sasha nodded, scrambling for an explanation. "Forgot I left my window open last night. The cold woke me up. I'm fine."

"Right." Natasha raised an eyebrow and took a sip from her mug. Sasha nabbed a granola bar out of the pantry and backpedaled.

"So I'm gonna go..."

She turned around and hurried away. Behind her, Natasha left the coffee cup on the counter and followed suit. Well-trained in the art of knowing when she was being followed, Sasha whipped around. Natasha froze.

"I, um..." she began. Her face was blank, but Sasha saw a slight twinge of discomfort, and possibly regret. "I...do you need a ride to school today?"

Sasha was utterly dumbfounded. She raised an eyebrow. This was new.

"I was going to walk...is this your way of telling me I'm in trouble?"

"No." Natasha shook her head. She looked at the ground. Her relationship with Sasha was just like her relationship with every other human being: tense and difficult. She supposed the average person would be capable of outright saying, "I can tell something's off, and I don't know whether I can trust you," but her tongue sank to the bottom of her mouth like a paperweight. "I just thought...if you don't want to..."

"Um..." Sasha swallowed. Something suddenly clicked in her head. "Is this about Fury's 'visit' last night? He didn't tell me anything important, if that's what you're wondering."

"What the hell are you talking about?" If Natasha wasn't a deadpan expert, she would have choked on her own tongue. "Here? Why was Fury here?"

"He didn't tell you? Yeah, while I was in my room, he "let himself" in. He said he wanted me reinstated. Gave me a new ID card and my old swords, which I'm honestly shocked hadn't been thrown out yet." She furrowed her eyebrows. "Has SHIELD really gotten that bad?"

Nat's face remained flat, and her jaw remained unclenched. She didn't know how to react. She didn't know what to think, but Sasha wasn't allowed to know that.

"I didn't think so. Guess I was wrong. Can't trust anyone. I just can't believe..."

It was easy to believe. Fury had given her a different mission than he did Steve and didn't let Steve in on it. Retrospectively, she supposed this wasn't shocking. She just didn't want to accept it. Besides Clint, Fury was the person at S.H.I.E.L.D. she knew best and trusted most. He saw what little good in her there was and gave her a chance. He was the one who stepped in and let her take in Sasha. Unfortunately, in this business, trust didn't exist, even with the people you knew had your back.

"What?" Sasha's voice caught Nat off guard.

"Nothing, Sasha."

Sasha wasn't even sure Natasha was blinking; she hadn't yet ruled out the hypothesis that Nat was secretly a robot. Something told her she should have kept her mouth shut, but in her defense, Fury never said it was a secret. She actually suspected Fury wanted Natasha to find out. His little visit had been both very planned and very deliberate. It was his message to Natasha, which genuinely scared Sasha. If things were messy enough that Fury couldn't alert Nat directly, it was only a matter of time before everything went to shit.

She felt the disapproval and anger in the air. Luckily, Sasha wasn't big on listening to Natasha, so she wasn't too fazed by it.

"I think I'll walk to school like usual," she said after a moment of uncomfortable silence. "You probably have stuff to do with S.H.I.E.L.D., and I like walking."

The "because it burns calories" remained unsaid. Accepting a ride with Nat seemed like a trap anyway.

Natasha nodded. She would be lying if she said that didn't sting a little, but she kept her face blank. Hard as it was to admit to Sasha or to herself, she truly cared for Sasha so much that it made her nervous. She watched Sasha walk away.

"Wait. Sasha."

Heart pounding, Sasha stopped dead in her tracks. Had she been caught?

"Can I trust you?" Natasha asked. Sasha raised an eyebrow.

"I told you everything about what happened last night. I don't know anything else."

"Not about that." A pause. "Are you telling me the truth about--"

Sasha lied confidently and without hesitation.

"Yes."