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[mohini-musing]

Here's a second small offering to the @whumpmasinjuly festivities this year. No guarantees I'll manage another word this month, but here ya go for now. This one's Chasing Ghosts 'verse, stream of consciousness style. Usual warnings apply. Tasha's not the healthiest thing on legs and I'm not much for dancing around the hard stuff.

--

Whumpmas in July - Day 6 - Deprivation

Her vision blurs when she stands. The world tilts on its axis, throat tightening at the urge to vomit. She’s empty and there will be naught but air and pain if she allows her traitorous body to make good on the threat. She won’t. Can’t. He will know. He cannot know.

Barnes watches her stand, sees the tiny hesitation before she takes the first step out of the classroom. He doesn’t believe that anything happens by chance. Finding her? That was not random. She’s the one part of his world before war that he has ever regretted leaving behind. Now he has this second chance. He’s not going to blow it. He watches her go, knowing full well she’s struggling to stay upright. He tamps down to desire to follow her, to remind her that she is worth so much more. He didn’t tell her that when they were children. He doesn’t know if he can make her believe it now.

~~~

The shine of cellophane and foil glints from the counter in the tiny apartment. The tang of vodka overpowers the bitterness of the chocolates, the salt of the chips, the cloying sugar of the pastries that once filled a crinkly plastic package. She sweeps the lot into a trash bin. Closes the lid. Sprays the counter with a mix of bleach and water. Wipes it down with a paper towel and tosses that into the bin atop the evidence of her sins.

Her fingers taste of bleach as they slide into the far reaches of her throat. She doesn’t fight now. Breathes deep. Tightens the muscles of her core, allows the pain, welcomes absolution.

~~~

The frat bro grins at her, his drunken smile repulsive just as she resigns herself to the necessity of pretending he is appealing. Maria is there, someplace in the darkness of the house, probably four solo cups deep into the bathtub hooch of everclear and god only knows what else. Natasha has consumed her fair share of the cloying liquid. The everclear burns her ragged throat, but it does the job she asks of it. She can close her eyes and send her mind far from these little rooms and little men, she can do what she must and take their packets of powders and pills with a smile of her own.

She slips barely there hints of fabric back up her legs, straightens the hem of her skirt, and tosses her hair behind her shoulders. Index fingers swipe beneath her eyes, smudging the liner there back into position and removing the evidence of the tears she doesn’t allow to fall. Walks out of the room with the sated man child on the bed, a cellophane packet of oblivion in her bra for her troubles. Finds Maria. Tells her it’s time to leave.

She sleeps in the arms of a girl she knows likes her much more for her drugs than her personality. They wake in a tangled web of hangover and the void of missing serotonin in the wake of ecstasy from the night before. Party drugs are Maria’s poison of choice. Natasha is happy to indulge. The packet of China White is hidden well in the back of the dresser. Some things aren’t meant to be shared.

~~~

She tells him she’s not using. He knows she’s lying. He knows not to press.

She tells him she’s being safe. He knows that’s another lie. He watches for the moment she’s willing to tell him so. He can be patient.

She tells him she’s tired. He knows she’s not talking about sleep. He wraps arms of flesh and metal around her body, holds her while she shakes. Wipes the tears. Whispers comfort. Love. Forgiveness. He doesn’t mention the packets in the drawer. He doesn’t tell her he knows what’s taped to the sink basin beneath the cabinet.

They can pretend it’s about starvation. They can pretend it’s about the purging. They can pretend it’s about the drugs.

It isn’t. Never has been. Tasha knows deprivation. Has known it all her life. She indulges herself in a dozen different ways to forget what she knows too well.

She craves oblivion.

She craves satiation.

She craves love.

She knows beyond all else that she cannot have any of them for long.

[mohini-musing]

Whumpmas in July 2023 - Day 3 Stitches

I'm dreadful at keeping up with these events, but here's a little something for Day 3, several days late.

Coming Home 'verse, the usual warnings apply

--

“A little help?”

Those words never mean anything good. Nat doesn’t ask for assistance until she’s practically on the edge of consciousness. Clint looks up from today’s honey-do project in the barn and sees her pants slung lower than usual on her narrow frame and the fly undone to expose a sunken expanse of too pale skin and a pad of combat gauze pressed beneath slim fingers to what’s bound to be yet another self imposed punishment for sins she won’t confess to anything but an unholy blade. 

“What now?” he asks her, after scanning through available options for conversation and settling on sidestepping the elephant in the room via direct action on its results. 

“Won’t clot,” she murmurs.

“C’mere,” he beckons, rising from his crouched position near the tractor engine and patting a mostly intact kitchen chair a few feet away. 

She sits with the leg on the injured side stretched out rather than sitting properly. That tells Clint whatever she’s done went deep enough to hurt with movement rather than just bleed. 

“Show me,” he instructs. 

Nat lifts the combat gauze and it’s immediately clear that this one isn’t self imposed. 

“You said you weren’t hit.” The words are calm, measured. 

“It’s a graze,” she counters, face ashen.

Clint pulls his phone from the back pocket of worn work jeans and calls his wife, asking Laura to bring supplies out to the barn and warning her to leave the kids with whatever bribery is necessary to ensure no one is coming with her. 

She appears a few minutes later, a duffle slung over one shoulder. 

“Oh honey,” she murmurs when she peels back the gauze and examines the ragged, swollen wound that’s definitely infected before taking Nat’s face in her hands and leaning in close to kiss her forehead.

“You know better than this,” she chides her.

“It was fine,” Nat counters. 

“Mmhmm, so I see,” Laura returns. “Very fine indeed. Don’t barf on me while I clean it, huh?”

Natasha nods, but it is obvious that’s a command she’s probably not capable of obeying. 

Laura removes the combat gauze, rinses the wound with a saline syringe and ignores Nat’s stifled groan as she does so. 

“You do realize I could have sewn this up without the funk a couple days ago?” Laura tells her conversationally. She might as well be commenting on the clouds outside.

“I glued it.”

“That seems to have worked well for you,” Laura tells her as she takes a pair of sterile qtips from a package and wipes along the edges of the swollen flesh before rinsing the lot again with more saline. Nat’s swallowing convulsively now, her face two shades past night of the living dead. 

Next come tweezers and the careful removal of glue flakes from the decidedly ineffective dermabond. Nat’s trembling all over and Clint moves to support her from behind, guiding her to rest her head against him while he wraps his hands around her wrists and brings them above her heart. It won’t stop her from passing out, but it will make sure she doesn’t get hurt if she does. 

Laura’s hands make quick work of the rest, irrigating the gash until the saline no longer runs yellow with infected fluid. 

“You know I can’t actually stitch this up right now?”

Natasha nods, sucking in a breath as Laura bathes the surface in antibiotic spray and presses a fresh pad of combat gauze with its integrated styptic powder onto the wound before slapping a sheet of tegaderm over the lot. 

“Done,” Laura tells her before rising from her knees and wrapping her arms around Natasha. They stay there a long while, Nat resting against Clint and Laura holding onto them both while reminding the pair of them in a tone that doesn’t match her words that if she’s going to keep their idiotic selves in one piece it helps if they don’t make her pretend she can’t see them favoring a goddamned bullet wound they aren’t admitting to having. 

[mohini-musing]

Life’s Not Your Friend

Coming Home ‘verse - somewhere between Black Widow and Infinity War

She largely lost the ability to sleep soundly years ago. It’s the blessing and curse of motherhood – eternal vigilance whether in the dark hours or the light. It makes the appearance of her eldest at the bedside more than a bit of a shock.

“Auntie Nat’s crying,” he tells her.

“Nat’s not here, love,” she murmurs back, silently cursing her husband’s half feral partner and her own mostly lost cause in falling off clothes. It was one thing when the kids were toddlers, mostly unaware of their beloved auntie’s broken edges. But if it’s causing nightmares, there will have to be changes. To what she can’t begin to postulate.

“She’s in the kitchen, mama,” he tries again. “I think she’s hurt.”

Clint’s up and moving before Laura fully processes that one. She shepherds Cooper to his room before heading downstairs to survey the damage.

The kid was not at all mistaken. Nat’s in the kitchen. Under the kitchen table, to be more accurate. There is a tang of vomit in the air and a glance toward the sink sends Laura’s hand to her own lips, swallowing hard before flipping on the disposal and forcing the mess down the drain with the faucet sprayer on high. She can smell iron in the air and she wonders whether the woman child has yet another bleeding ulcer or got into a fight. Clint’s kneeling just beneath the edge of the table, speaking softly as though he’s trying to gentle a cornered animal.

Nat’s muttering something back, a mix of languages that make sense only in her head.

“Let me try?” Laura asks her husband, lowering herself to her own knees closer to the end of the table where Nat has herself wadded into a tight ball with knees to chest and top of head just barely beneath the wood above her.

“Come here,” she commands in the voice that has stilled a thousand tantrums and misdeeds in her children, the tone that settles babies in the throes of colic and husbands in midnight flashbacks alike.

The flow of mangled languages cuts off before a blur of bleached blonde hair and spindly legs flies into her chest, knocking them both backward into a heap on the hardwood.

“M’sorry, m’sorry, m’sorry.”

“Shhh, that’s enough of that, love. Be still. Just be still a moment now,” Laura tells her. She wraps her arms around Nat and takes stock of the ridges of vertebrae and ribs beneath her grasp. She reeks of vomit, smoke, and a mildewed tang that brings to mind abandoned buildings in seedy urban sprawl – or captivity. They’re equally likely when she’s been gone a while.

The woman in her arms goes limp, melting into her grasp and taking a long series of ragged breaths. Laura’s hands roam over her, surveying too slim arms and hips that jut outward more sharply than they’ve any valid reason to. There aren’t any flinching startles, no evidence of outright injury. Not a fight, then.

“Run me a bath,” she tells Clint. She doesn’t tell him to add the Epson salts and oils. He knows what is needed when Nat shows up like this. It’s a long-practiced routine now. Neither of them trusts her lies when she swears blind that it’s the last time. There won’t be one of those before they put her in the ground.

Laura drags the pair of them upright without dislodging the body tangled into hers. She half supports, half drags Nat down the hall and up the stairs to the large tub in the main bathroom. She flips on the shower taps as well, coaxing Nat out of her clothing and discarding her own oversized pajamas. Once upon a time she stood outside the frosted glass door of the shower. Those days are long gone. She presses Nat onto the little bench in the stall, pulling down the shower head and hosing the worst of the grime from her skin while pressing a washcloth and baby soap into trembling hands. The water runs rust colored into the drain and Laura tries not to think of what that means when she cannot find a single visible injury.

Nat holds the cloth up, eyes flicking back and forth to avoid making contact. It’s quick work, sponging her off and then soaping up and rinsing hair that feels like straw beneath her fingers. Bleach. Malnutrition. One of those. Another quick rinse to be sure the soap is off before closing the taps and leading Nat across the tile to the tub. Clint’s added the salts and oils, and there’s a rubber ducky bobbing jauntily on the water – an utterly incongruous remnant from evening bath time with the kids.

“In you go, love,” Laura tells her, reaching for a towel to dry herself off. Clint slips out to get fresh clothing for the pair of them, returning a few moments later with soft pajamas in tidy stacks.

Nat’s still utterly silent, eyes red rimmed but calm. She reaches out to poke the bath toy as Laura pulls on fresh sleepwear, pushing the bright yellow duck beneath the water and watching it surface like a small child. Laura settles onto her knees once she’s clothed, the plush mat beside the tub a necessity both for parenting three children who play hard outdoors and rescuing a wayward assassin who tends to turn up filthy and bruised.

They stay there in silence until Nat’s eyes begin to drift closed and her head risks slipping into the water. “Up you get,” Laura tells her, guiding her to her feet and passing her a fluffy towel and then the set of clothing Clint brought. The drawstring waist of the sleep pants proves vital as the things billow around her but the too large sweatshirt seems to provide the right kind of warm comfort as she burrows into it and accepts Laura’s offered hand.

It’s nearing five in the morning when they settle into bed, Nat between Clint and Laura, arms wrapped around her own torso and knees drawn up to meet them. Daylight will bring more time for explanations of where she’s been and what she needs moving forward. Now, though, Laura watches her face relax into sleep and closes her own eyes.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 17

Day 17

Dread

 Coming Home ‘verse

 She’s grown used to the waiting. It’s the life of every woman with a husband who serves something larger than his family. At least that’s what she tells herself when days of no contact stretch into weeks. When a short text from Nat is the best she can expect and comes with zero guarantee that they’re even together – it’s equally likely that Nat’s just the one who has access to a secure enough line and has weaseled adequate intel out of someone to be sure he’s still breathing.

She’s seen the videos on social media of fathers coming home from war, surprising their children in classrooms, school assemblies, and the like. Knows good and well that it’s not the life her family leads. That while the task is sometimes likened to it in her head, Clint is, first and foremost, an assassin. He works for the highest bidder. Right now, that’s SHIELD. At least on paper. She also knows that he operates outside official channels more often than not. That he is sent to places no one would ever admit to having sent him. That he and Nat do things that are scrubbed so clean from the records that they will never see the light of day.

The sense of utter dread at seeing a black SUV on the long driveway to the house, though? She’s fairly certain that is a sensation she shares with a lot of other women. She glances down at the baby at her breast. Nate is still so young, and for a moment she considers just how she’s going to tell him about a father he won’t have known. A rogue thought presses in, that maybe Nat is still alive, that she could help her tell the kids, that she would help to raise them – though really Nat’s almost as much one of the children as one of the adults when left to her own devices. Goodness only knows what she could get herself into with Clint to drag her back from the edge.

The knot of worry in her throat stops all oxygen when a man she doesn’t recognize exits the vehicle first. A moment later, that knot dissolves in utter relief, seeing Nat climb out as well. Then there is a flurry of red hair heading toward the ground and a flash of movement before the stranger is carrying Nat to the house.

Laura doesn’t bother detaching the baby from his meal as she rushes out the door to meet them, grateful for what she jokingly refers to as a third baby problem – namely that baby Nate spends a LOT of time in the sling carrier so she has hands available for other tasks. Right now, that task is directing a stranger to the bedroom Nat claims as hers. She’s so focused on it that she only barely registers that Steve is also coming up the stairs of the porch until he’s speaking to her.

“Clint’s due back in a few more hours, but she was adamant we needed to bring her to you, not the medical,” Steve tells her.

“She does that,” is the automatic reply. Laura half processes that this means transport was either limited or that there’s some other reason Clint isn’t there. The lump of worry leaves her with a churning sense of nausea, but there’s nothing for it.

The baby is making the soft mumbling noises that mean he will sleep easily now, so Laura detours to the family room, pops him into the bassinet, tosses the sling onto the couch, and grabs the baby monitor to clip to her pocket. Nat’s settled into the bed when Laura reaches her, the contrast between her soft, shallow breaths and the deep ones of the baby over the monitor is outright disturbing. Laura thumbs the control over to the vibration alert. It will tell her if he wakes. Right now, she needs to know why Natasha is clearly sedated.

“What did she take?”

“Donnatal.”

“Glorious,” Laura mutters in reply. It’s a barbiturate, mostly. Nat uses it when she’s detoxing hard. “And you are?” she finally gets around to asking.

“James Barnes, ma’am.”

A raised eyebrow is all she offers in reply. She knew that Steve’s Bucky is participating in things, atoning for past sins in much the way Nat does. There’s some kind of history there, that Natasha flat refuses to address out loud. Laura takes that to mean it’s a connection of the Russian variety.

“Laura?” Nat mumbles from the bed and she goes to her, shifting a few fallen curls away from fluttering eyelids.

“Hey there,” she tells her, voice soft and measured.

“I tried,” she whispers, before pressing her lips into a tight line and swallowing hard.

Laura reaches into the bedside table and grabs a shallow plastic basin that lives in the drawer, rolls Nat to her side, and pins the basin under her chin.

“M’empty,” Nat grumbles at her, before proving the point with a couple of pitiful retches.

“What’d you try, love?” Laura presses when she’s finished.

“T’get us out, I did. I tried,” she babbles, and Laura begins to think that she’s going to need that bin for herself soon.

She looks to Steve and James, hoping one of them will offer a more coherent explanation. It’s James who speaks.

“They were picked up. Took us a couple days to find them and extract. Clint needs a couple bones set properly – he’ll be along once that’s dealt with by the medical people. This one’s too stubborn for that and she wanted to come home. So we’re here.”

“Nothing they’ll do to help,” Nat counters, and Laura spares a thought to wonder just what is in her system besides the Donnatal.

“Tell me what you need?” Laura asks her instead.

“M’sorry,” is all she gets in reply before Nat rolls over and wraps her arms around her, burying her face at her hip and curling up there like a cat. Her shoulders are trembling and Laura runs her hands through her hair, offering what comfort she can while sitting with her own worries. For Clint and whatever injuries he’s having tended. For Nat and the detox to come. For the baby who will wake soon to a worried mama, a sick Auntie Nat, and a pair of men who Laura would put money on being more comfortable with high explosives than small humans.

Laura’s grown used to the undercurrent of worry that is part and parcel of the life she chose. Or so she tells herself for the thousandth time as she settles in to wait for whatever shoe will next drop.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 5

Day Five – Betrayal

Chasing Ghosts ‘verse

The group home years

Enlistment

~~~

“You knew I was going to,” he tries.

“Fuck you.”

“It’s four years. Same as college.” The explanation sounds better in his head than in the space between them.

“We have tuition covered if we recommit,” she counters. It’s technically true. In state tuition at any school is a part of the contract for remaining a ward of the state through age 22 or college completion, whichever comes first. Housing, too. Though he’s heard enough nightmare stories of what that truly looks like to know it’s a crapshoot when it comes to decency of housing.

“And four more years of workers breathing down my neck. No thank you.”

She outright snorts at that one. “Please tell me you don’t think four years in the mother fucking army is going to be less of a pain in your ass. At least the workers don’t shoot at you!”

James has the presence of mind to refrain from telling her it won’t be the first time he’s dodged jacketed lead. Some things are best left unsaid.

“Can’t back out now,” he tells her instead. It’s mostly true. He signed the contract that he will enlist once he’s 18. In theory, there’s probably a way out. In reality, he’s not planning to find one. He could claim some bullshit about fighting for something bigger than him. But he is honest enough with himself to know that it’s really about knowing that for at least the next four years there is a roof over his head and meals to eat. It will be the most stability he’s had in his life and as much as he cares for Tasha and wants her to be happy, she’s two years younger and he knows he cannot tread water long enough to wait for her to age out. They’ve been fighting about this for months and it’s not going to change.

“Fuck you, James.” She growls, turns on the balls of her feet and bolts down the hall and out the front door. He knows better than to follow.

She shows back up all of a couple minutes before curfew, face obscured by an oversized hoodie and hands shoved in her pockets. James bides his time until everyone else is asleep before springing the lock on her door and perching on the edge of her bed.

“M’sorry,” he whispers. It’s not enough. This isn’t something he can fix. He hadn’t considered the betrayal his enlistment was going to be to her. Thought once it was done she’d just… accept it? Move on? They’ve been siblings two years now. Longer than either of them has ever been in one place. But the part of him that’s always going to be half a nomad and half a bundle of trauma responses really did think that this parting was just inevitable. That they would reach the end of their time together the same way the courts count up days in therapy and hours of visit time and all the other meaningless benchmarks in case plans that mean absolutely nothing real or good. Only this is real. And probably also good. He doesn’t know how to be good. Never has. Is almost certain he never will.

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move.

He puts a hand on her shoulder. Just to feel that she’s still breathing. To be sure. She opens her eyes then, looking up at him. He’s sure her pupils would be all wrong if the lights were on, but in the dark he can pretend everything is fine. That she’s okay. That he hasn’t betrayed the only real family he has.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 4

Day Four: “Do you trust me?”

Chasing Ghosts ‘verse

~~~

The railing gives way with the sort of ominous creak one expects to hear in a low budget film at the cinema. James has just enough to time chide himself for thinking punching the guy was a good idea before he hits the ground flat on his back. It isn’t a long fall, just from a porch a few feet up to the muddy back yard. The broken wood beneath him is digging into his back in a way that spells out all kinds of ugly lacerations and his new sparring buddy is fast on the way to continue their discussion.

He staggers onto his feet, barely ahead of the next swing. James silently thanks that one foster home with the bio kid who’s very definitely going to kill someone for his skill at taking a punch and giving back hard. He dodges a fist and kicks up and forward. Hard. The resulting thud of a body hitting the mud is a lot more satisfying than it ought to be. But hey, if he’s going to get his ass kicked by his (very decidedly now former) dealer, might as well repay the favor.

Someone is yelling and it takes a minute for him to realize it’s Tasha. Then it’s everyone. He comprehends one word. Cops.

All thoughts of continuing the fight are gone. He cannot deal with the fallout of either of them being found at a party full of drunken teenagers and a lot of pills. Tasha has the same reaction and they’re running hand in hand toward the far reaches of the yard and into a shallow creek before anything but instinct can make a plan.

He spots a culvert a few yards away and shoves her in that direction, the pair of them curling into the damp space and panting. He pulls her into his lap, wrapping arms around her to ground them both. Small spaces aren’t fun. Small, dark spaces are especially not okay. Her breath comes in shallow pants, and he whispers that it’s fine. That they’re fine.

She’s shaking her head, little whimpers between breaths, and though he can’t make out the words he knows she’s repeating something at impressive speed.

“Tasha? You good?”

The answer comes in a wet belch and a torrent of cheap beer down both their bodies.

“I’ll call that a no,” he mutters, thumping her soundly between the shoulder blades as she coughs and sputters before more beer joins the mess.

By the time it’s over, she’s crying, he’s struggling not to gag in sympathy, and the culvert has gone from small, dark, and damp to small, dark, and outright gross.

James can’t hear the sounds of arguing kids and blundering cops anymore, but he’s also not confident that it’s safe to try to move. He leans backs against the concrete and settles Tasha on his opposite shoulder. It doesn’t do much for getting either of them cleaner, but at least she’s not curled up with her face directly in her upchucked alcohol.

He waits until it’s been long enough to be sure they won’t be seen before trying to rouse her.

She startles, curses, then remembers where they are.

“Fuck me,” she grumbles.

“Um, no thanks?” James tries for some levity.

She glares at him in reply.

“Ready to get out of here?”

“You sure we’re clear?” she glances toward the opening of the small space, obviously weighing the merits of leaving their bolt hole against the consequences of anyone seeing them do so.

“S’been long enough. Trust me?”

“Hell no, Barnes,” she tells him, but rises to a half crouch anyway, a hand trailing behind to grasp his as they emerge like a pair of vomit soaked rats into the creek and begin the trek toward temporary home.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 3

Day Three : Taunting

Set during Captain America: The First Avenger

 ~~~

Name.

Rank.

Serial.

He’s said no other words for days, not that his captors care. They bring him food not fit for a dog. They don’t know that he grew up hard and doesn’t care if the broth is a touch rancid. He’ll choke it down anyway, absorb what nutrition he can before his stomach overrides his will and there is no choice but to vomit it up in the corner of his cell with as much dignity as he can muster.

He watched from another cell as his men were led to this space and did not return. When his time came he walked with head as high as he could lift it. Defeat is about more than numbers. It’s a game of morale as much as anything else and he’d be damned if their last glimpse of him was what brought anyone else down.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” today’s goon of an escort greets him, smile wide on his face as he drinks from a mug of fragrant coffee. In a place where everything is a weapon, these people have capitalized on all possibly options. They needn’t shout insults or threats to taunt him.

The walk to the place he’s come to think of as the needle room is short but hard. His body is starting to show the strain of all it’s endured.

Name.

Rank.

Serial.

He repeats them once more, as the man named Zola comes toward him.

“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” he mutters.

Today’s needle feels large enough to go straight through his arm to the other side. He could swear it glances off bone before the burning begins. Whatever they’re pumping him full of, it hails straight from the pits of hell.

A new sensation dawns before he has time to consider what this one will do. He’s had seizures. He’s lost control of a wide variety of bodily functions. One of them took his sight for days. This time the world is suddenly too bright, too loud, too everything. Each sense is dialed to a thousand notches higher than normal, and he cannot stop the scream that tears from his lips.

“Ah, Sargeant, you do know other speech!” Zola exclaims, and James cannot decide if it’s another taunt or genuine surprise. Then the tremors begin and the lightning comes from the edges of his vision inward.

He’s not aware of anything after that.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 2

Day Two - Gagged

He’s trapped. Again. Shackles up his arms, pulling shoulders tightly back against his spine, wrists secured at an angle that might have torn ligaments had his been made of the usual sinew. Long ago rooms full of needles and pain made that rather nearly a fantasy. The ability to be damaged beyond repair, to hold the potential for death. He fears he may be immortal now.

The fist of HYDRA. That’s what they tell him he is. An enforcer. A weapon. A thing. There are faint wisps of memory that tell him he is something else. James. A name he forbids himself to utter. A world he refuses to remember with any clarity. He did once. Longed for it. Begged to return. It was useless. Jolts of fire in every synapse of his brain. They think he can be wiped clean. Like a stain bleached from the chairs in which he is so often bound. He knows that he cannot.

“Bucky,” the voice is so familiar. It calls him home. Home does not exist.

He knew him.

“Wipe him.”

Those words. He’s come to both dread and await them. First will come the bite block, then the IVs through which the chemical restraints will flood his body. Finally, there will come the helmet, a damp sponge within it every bit as ominous as those placed upon the condemned. For isn’t he just as damned as they are? Sentenced to murder and to maim, to be aimed and fired at whatever HYDRA and Pierce chose?

The screams come before the medications ramp up to doses high enough to render him mute. His throat aches with the force of them. His stomach contracts, forces up and out the meager contents. He hasn’t eaten proper food since he fell from a freight car. Yet his body never fails to find something sour and slimy within the depths to expel. He chokes on it until the suction catheter is shoved into his mouth, the sludge siphoned from the space in and above his soft palate. Bowels and bladder void in tandem, warm fluid turning cold and acidic almost immediately.

He will wake hosed clean of all his body loses in these moments. The bite block will be replaced with the mask. And though it will not rest heavily upon his tongue like the heavy silicone now there, it will keep him gagged just the same. The fist of HYDRA can speak. Can direct his teams. Can assign marks and take those he is assigned. But he cannot speak freely. There are consequences for that.

Another jolt burns through his skull and he welcomes it now. It is the only peace he can receive and so he enters the purgatory space, where the drugs are finally strong enough, the synaptic relays overloaded enough, for even his thoughts to be gagged.

[mohini-musing]

Whumptober 2021 - Day 1

Day One – “You have to let go.”

The gun rests on the table before her. Hoppes no.9 burns her sinuses, the scent a part of the craft for as long as she can recall. Mission completion means stripping the weapon, cleaning each part, applying the oil that maintains it perfectly, assembling through muscle memory honed before she can remember a time without.

The mission report tells of the mark she took out, the threat now eliminated. The scalding shower washed away the musk of the lure, the lie her body made good on before a silenced shot ended the night in bone and tissue against white sheets.

The gun rests on the table before her. The magazine beside it, bullets shiny and perfect within their little staggered rows. High capacity in a tiny space and outlawed in a time her papers claim she ought to have been a child. She knows what children are. She knows she never was.

The vodka burns within her, and she tips her head from side to side, testing the degree to which the world follows suit. She’s been at this all her life. Knows good and well the ways to cope, to box up and secure the thoughts that aren’t welcome, aren’t productive, aren’t meant to be. She wonders sometimes, is she?

She closes her eyes, drops her head to folded arms and breathes deep. Gun oil. Vodka. Regret. All so familiar and just a little too real. She lifts the bottle to her lips without bothering to open her eyes. Drinks deep and long. It burns, but not with enough heat to matter. Drops her forehead back to the table. It’s too heavy. Too much.

The gun rests on the table before her. It calls to her. Safety. Peace. Emptiness.

Hinges creak as the door opens. Boots on the tile floor. His hand around hers before she fully registers his entrance. The metallic click as he engages the safety without removing the weapon from her hand. Still he pins her index finger above the trigger guard, removing any possibility of her making good on the nebulous threats within a psyche she’s not confident is under her control.

“Nat,” he whispers, his other arm wrapping around her narrow chest, blocking her from fighting him, stopping a response she hasn’t the strength to try. “You have to let go.”

She can’t form words. She can’t release the hold on the hunk of steel against her palm. He does it for her, sliding it free and away. Probably into a pocket somewhere.Close enough that she could retrieve if she put in the effort. There isn’t enough drive left in her to fight. Perhaps there wasn’t enough to begin with on this night.

“I’ve got her,” Clint reports into a cell phone as she remembers that the walls have eyes. That they report her self destruction and that within them she will never have the freedom to end a life she didn’t choose.

[mohini-musing]

Any fic, anything you want, but bonus points if you include a roadside market’s inflatable steak. 🥩

Coming Home 'verse

marginally compliant with Black Widow movie

~~~

She is unbreakable.

That’s the cover she chose long ago. Before she was a widow. Before she was Tasha. Before she was Natalie. Before she was… anything.

The Red Room didn’t break her. It made her.

A monster.

A killer.

A whore.

It made her less than human. And something infinitely more.

She thinks of all these things as she sits on the floor just outside the nursery, a word that surely the child within would argue against. Still, it’s what Laura calls it and so that is what it remains. She listens to Nathaniel’s soft snuffling breaths. Times her own inhalations with his.

Home.

Safe.

Loved.

The words don’t belong to her world. She will burn herself to ashes to make absolutely certain that they are his world. Their world.

Nathaniel.

Lila.

Cooper.

She remembers learning what mothers look like with their children. Remembers watching Clint and discovering that fathers could encourage without demanding perfection. She knows nothing of those things in her own past. Cannot remember being a child. Only a machine. In the academies there was only one way to be loved. Perfection. She was absolutely, utterly devoted to achieving that perfection in long lines and deadly aim alike.

There are footsteps behind her. Laura kneels a few feet away, feet tucked beneath her body and eyes searching over Nat’s face in a way that stops just short of uncomfortable.

“Tell me what happened.”

It’s an invitation to speak, neither question nor demand. Just an opening – one she can choose to step into or away from. That’s Laura’s way. She wants to explain. She wishes she could offer stories of the blue dye that she got all over the bathroom, a shade eerily similar to the one currently adorning Lila’s long braid (and the countertops of the upstairs bath). To tell the story of a little blonde child, of a blue haired older sister, of a backyard playset and fireflies in the trees.

But that story ended in a needle in her neck, blue strands chopped off until nothing remained of the little bit of experimentation she was allowed on what she thinks of only in her most private of moments as that one mission where she was a child. Clint asked her once where she learnt to fly a plane. She told him she doesn’t remember not knowing. It’s easier than explaining that she was coached into her first takeoff by a bleeding woman she called mom while a little child cried out in terror inches behind her and bullets pinged off the glass ahead.

Bile rises at the memory and she chokes it back, sputtering. She doesn’t think about that. Not ever. But she’s here again in this home where mom and dad are real and not just mission directives. Where family actually exists and by some hideous miracle she’s included. Her body lurches forward unbidden and she heaves, stomach long emptied but trying to expel its very lining anyway.

Laura doesn’t wait for her to finish before pulling her into arms, coaxing her shaking limbs against warmth and the scent of something earthy and organic – whatever handmade soap she last picked up at the farm market in town.

“Shhhh, just breathe,” she tells her.

Natasha obeys, breathing slow and deep, eyes drifting closed in a mixture of adrenaline crash and honest fatigue. She startles when her body shifts upward, transferred to arms that carry her like a toddler into the bedroom where a cot awaits her. She has a bedroom. But she also has a space in their room, for the hard nights. There are so many hard nights.

“No,” she whimpers, shaking her head as hard as she dares. Sleep isn’t safe. Sleep brings dreams. Sleep could bring words brought into the open, and tonight she dares not risk telling the one story left to her. Fury knows. Fury knows everything. There’s a folder in her room, slipped beneath the mattress that’s evidence enough of that. Yelena. Still blonde. No longer a child. Abandoned by her when they were children, abandoned once more when she left for SHIELD. When she struck a deal with the devil she trusted more than the one she knew better. For that she will always hate him. She doesn’t refuse Nick often. But that folder – that’s a mission she’s not accepting. It’s also a mission she made damn clear no one else would survive taking. She knows Nick sees her as both a weapon and a bit of a hazard. It’s lucky for her that he knows she means it when she makes promises.

It's just her luck she came home to a bathroom full of blue drips and an excited child who wanted to show off her new look to Auntie Nat. She thanks a wide variety of gods in which she does not believe that Lila bought her lies about a migraine when that excitement set off a panic attack impressive even by Natasha’s standards.

“Tell me what to do?”

“Shoot me up,” she grumbles, tired and wrung out and too fresh from falling to pieces on the hallway floor to care what’s coming out of her mouth.

It’s been a long time since she’s asked him for a drug run. He used to do it, before there was a family, before he was a reasonable adult, before she was the only one who was testing and fucking past limits at every opportunity. She hears their hushed voices, and it’s a shock when the suggestion comes from Laura.

“You know the one. Up by the stockyards, with that stupid inflatable steak in front. There’s always someone around selling what she needs.”

Natasha knows the one as well. It’s something of a running joke. The revolting nine foot tall blow up t-bone, with the handwritten sign for discount beef taped to it with what is clearly repurposed electrical tape. No sane human would ever buy such a thing. But it’s a hell of a landmark none the less.

Laura’s holding her in the big bed when Clint slips a needle into her arm an hour later. The world goes dim around the edges and she drifts, images of fireflies in the treetops dancing behind closed lids.

--

I sat with my anger long enough that she told me her real name was grief.

~ C.S. Lewis

[mohini-musing]

I used to have a purpose (then again that might have been a dream)

set somewhere in the space between CA:CW and all the rest

warnings for self harm and references (offscreen and implied) to dubious consent

---

Mistakes were made.

It’s the only thing she can think to put in the mission conclusion slot. The paperwork mocks her. Empty spaces and a blinking cursor waiting for the truth or a reasonable facsimile. The silent walls watch her, the AI within them on pause but never truly gone.

She knows that if she makes any real moves to harm herself it will alert someone. But these days Steve is up to his eyeballs in rehabilitating a former fist of HYDRA. Maybe that buys her a little time. Maybe it doesn’t. It’s worth testing at any rate.

And so it is that she drops her clothes to the floor and steps into the shower room. Bathrooms require a tub. For reasons she doesn’t understand, this space is naught but a toilet and a spigot high on one wall. No curtain. No rim to keep water in. Tonight, it’s a blessing rather than a curse.

She turns the water to the highest setting she can stand. Goes through the motions of calisthenics burnt into her muscle memory a lifetime ago. She cannot cause overt harm. The tattletale in the walls with rat her out in a heartbeat. She can cause pain.

Pain is close enough.

She works until that pain consumes her, until the dinner choked down to convince medical to release her is churning in a way that is just short of forcing itself up unbidden. Her body is hers to control. At least in one way. The ache between her legs reminds her that in others, she is naught but a weapon to be aimed in whichever direction SHIELD desires.

She moves from the floor nearest the shower spigot to the tiles nearest the toilet. No sense in stopping the spray. She’ll need it to clean up after. She takes in a breath. Another. Relaxes her jaw until she might as well be impersonating a snake and does what must be done.

Hvatit

The word is visceral. An admonishment heard so many times that it ought to have lost the sting long ago. Google will tell you it’s an iteration of “stop.” But it is so much more. It is a command, and one that stills her fingers where they are – jammed into the soft palate just above and behind the rise of her tongue. Her heaving stomach pays no mind, propelling half digested food and liquid over her hand and into the waiting toilet.

Cool metal grips her forearm, tugging it from its frozen position, resting her slimy fingers on the rim of the toilet. She can’t stop retching, her throat raw and her body turning inside out.

She’s naked. She should care that his hands are on her. But he knew her before she was a woman. Despite having tried to kill her (at least once – her brain supplies muzzily) she registers him as safe in a primitive way.

When her body finally gives up the purging of her very soul, she relaxes into his chest. He’s kneeling behind her, ready for what comes next. The blurring of her vision, the plummeting blood pressure and the whoosh of her pulse in her ears.

When the dizziness recedes, she follows his orders to stand beneath the water once more. To rinse her mouth, her hands, her body. He wraps a towel around her, lifts her like a little child, and places her spent body on the bed, wrapping her in soft sheets, fuzzy blankets, and quiet words in a language some part of her will always know as home.

She sleeps.

And the former fist of HYDRA stands guard, as he once did over a red-haired child he knew would grow to be either asset or adversary. She’s proven herself to be both.

[mohini-musing]

May peace attend thee

Coming Home ‘verse

She counts the rings with dread in every part of her soul. This isn’t her. She was raised in the Bolshoi, crossed into adulthood in the Red Room. She is a fighter, a weapon, a force of nature stronger than anything her life can throw at her. She’s also curled into a ball in the passenger seat of a rented economy car, trying desperately not to vomit in the plastic bag James shoved into her lap when her face went six shades too pale a couple miles ago.

The phone is on speaker, so she can hear the hint of worry in Laura’s voice when she picks up. Four in the morning is no one’s idea of a good time for a call. If your husband is a sniper for a not so covert government agency - and your whatever Natasha is to her is a whatever SHIELD is calling her these days – well, that does not improve the joy and happiness when the phone springs to life while the lights are long off.

James offers report, tells Laura their arrival time, and readies for the woman child he’s bringing her. She hasn’t explained to him why she’s sick as a dog and he probably assumes she’s detoxing in some way. The truth isn’t far off but it’s a lot more embarrassing. Mission assignment in a city that might as well have been a 24-hour buffet of all her most binge-worthy sins. Inadequate access to amphetamines to suppress appetite so she did the reasonable thing and drank an ungodly amount of water to leave as little room as possible for food. Probably should have checked the overall safety of the local water supply first. She’s been sick for days now and it’s not improving. Should anyone ever need to know, she actually can take down a target so sick she can only just barely see through the stars in her vision.  

Laura meets them in the driveway, gentle hands guiding Nat out of the car and into the downstairs toilet they’ve spent so many hours trapped in over the years that Laura carpeted the place in a thick memory foam bath mat a while back. At least it means her knees don’t bruise when she falls the last couple inches between upright and kneeling.

“Talk to me,” Laura coaxes when all Nat can do is groan and spit. Everything hurts.

“Sick,” she whines, embarrassed at the juvenile lilt to her voice.

“I can see that,” Laura shoots back. “What’d you take?”

She wants to defend herself. Explain that this is indeed a result of stupid decisions but not the chemical kind for once. She retches up deep green sludge instead.

“Jesus,” James mutters from the doorway.

“Care to tell me why she’s not in medical getting rehydrated?” Laura asks him.

Even with her head in the toilet Nat can hear the grumbling not quite laugh before he answers. “Because she’s a stubborn child who threatened to take off my other arm if I took her anywhere but straight to you.”

“Brat,” Laura chides her, rubbing circles between her shoulder blades as she keeps coughing up thick bile.

She drifts, slipping in and out of real and not real until the bout of sickness passes. She knows it isn’t over. Not truly, but there will be a brief reprieve before her hollowed out body can make more slime to expel.

“Done?” Laura asks her when she’s been still a while.

“mmhmm,” is all the answer she can muster. Her tongue is glued to the top of her mouth and her lips have gone papery fragile, liable to split with the slightest movement.

She’s tugged to her feet and led to the bedroom she claims as her own. Close to the master as though she were a small child in need of nighttime tending rather than an adult who ought to mind their own.

“Tell me what I’m dealing with here,” Laura asks again. This time, Nat explains.

There is a quiet phone call, and James is sent off to the drugstore to retrieve whatever Banner sends a script in for. Laura scolds her gently for her aversion to medical, but doesn’t push the matter. An IV would do the job faster, would make her feel like a human sooner, but she hates the bite of needle in flesh when it doesn’t bring heat and numbing fog. Laura knows her well enough to not offer a second time.

Crinkling paper pharmacy packets are spread over the top of the dresser when James returns.

Laura drapes a cool cloth over her forehead, slips a powdery antiemetic under her dry tongue, guides a straw past her lips for her to take the tiniest sip of electrolyte drink to wash down an antibiotic she feels sure will be back up soon, and finally perches at the edge of the mattress as sleep claims her.

[mohini-musing]

Count down (to the end of the day)

Chasing Ghosts

He’s sitting in Steve’s car, waiting outside a club because Tasha called and asked him to come to her. He should go in. He should dance with her. Have drinks with her. Ward off potential hookups for her…

That last one. It’s the thing he hates most about Tasha and clubs. She swears blind that the sex is transactional. Her body for their drugs. Nothing more. James knows why she sees her body as an ATM. He also knows there’s a lot more than a transaction of goods going on. Self-harm takes many forms. Tasha prefers to use other people to hurt herself.

He’s nearly convinced himself to go inside and find her when EMS rolls up with lights blazing. Jump-suited figures race inside with a gurney and James is on his feet and sprinting in behind him. The bouncer at the door doesn’t give him so much as a glance, clearly assuming he’s with the team. He hopes to hell he isn’t, but Tasha is a nightmare. She doesn’t know what limits are these days and the pills and powders she plays with don’t come with dosage guidelines.

He’s unreasonably relieved when the jumpsuits head for the men’s restroom. Not that it’s beyond the realm of possibility that she’s within. But it does reduce the likelihood.

He finds her at the bar, knocking back a lethal looking blue concoction that smells heavily enough of vodka to strip paint. She leans into him, her smile all teeth and no emotion.

“Dance with me,” she commands once the glass is drained and placed back on the oak.

There’s no point in arguing. The next hour is dim lights and pulsing music and Tasha’s body against his. She’s good at this. He’s marginally passable. It’s fun either way and as much as he hates being summoned like a puppy, these nights remind him of the few glorious weeks of freedom the summer before he shipped off to sand and flames.

Home is a study in trying – and failing – to enter quietly. Tasha is drunk and James is sober but tired. He follows her stumbling footsteps to the kitchen, pretends he doesn’t care when she downs a bottle of water and instructs him to wait for her at the table. The only sound from the hall bath is a faint splashing before she’s back, eyes damp but calm. He justifies it by trying to believe that at least this way he won’t be cleaning vomit from the carpet later.

They settle in on the couch with a movie, something that’s supposed to be on the awards list this year and should thus be watched. Its… not stellar. They’re most of the way through when he realizes how unreasonably warm she is against him.

“Tash?”

“Mhmm?”

“You okay there?”

“M’here,” she mumbles back before nuzzling deeper into his shoulder and going still. It’s not an answer to the question he asked her, but it’s answer enough. He drops his head onto the back of the couch and allows the boring film to send him into sleep.

Morning finds them still wrapped up together on the couch, though a blanket has appeared at some point in the night and been draped over the pair of them. Steve’s work, no doubt.

“Tash?” he asks when trying to gently shift her off his body makes her cling like some kind of infant marsupial on the nature shows Steve tries to convince them to watch to wind down. He’s never going to find programs with the possibility of predator vs prey dynamics to be relaxing, but it’s a good effort on Steve’s part.

“G’way,” she mutters at him.

He quirks an eyebrow and tries to make sense of that one. She’s little. Not a hundred pounds if he’s any decent sort of judge. But she’s wrapped around him and shows no sign of wanting to release her grip.

“That’s – not possible right now,” he offers. “You’re on me.”

“I’ll barf if I move,” she mumbles. “Ergo, it’s your job.”

“Ergo?” he repeats and fails at stifling a chuckle. It would be funnier if she didn’t hiccup and promptly dig her angular face into the meat at his shoulder joint. It’s not the one that stops short of being a full arm, but it doesn’t feel great either way.

James casts around in search of a bin. Steve brought a blanket so hopefully he left other provisions nearby as well. Yes, there it is. A stainless-steel mixing bowl that’s never once played host to food not previously masticated. He shifts just enough to grab the thing, pulling them both upright and bending Tasha double so that her now wide stretched jaw is above the thing.

“I hate you,” she whines.

“You’re more than free to hate me as much as you need, you little beast,” he tells her.

She shudders in response but spits into the bowl with a hollow ping as the saliva bounces off the metal. It sounds like medical in the field, like sand dusted paths and blood covered tarps. No – nothing good lies that way. He fights his brain back to the here and now. It’s a present that very clearly needs him to hold her head while she chokes up bile and mucus. It’s somewhere between an eternity and a couple minutes later when she flops backward against him and declares herself to be finished.

James slips the bowl onto the thrift store coffee table and gently rolls Tasha onto her side against the back of the sofa so he can pull his own body out from the space beneath her. She’s already drifting back into sleep as he pulls the blanket to her shoulders. They know this script down to their bones.

Her absolution comes not from the supplications of the faithful in ancient prayers and recitations but in living through that darkness one more time. Much as he hates it, James will guard her like the saints neither of them believe exist. To make sure that last bit happens – even when neither of them quite knows why it should.

[mohini-musing]

Redliner

Chasing ghosts. A continuation of this.

James leaves the bathroom, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. It's been a long time since he rolled on oxy, and his old dose has done more than a number on him. His eyes feel gritty, and his salivary glands still burn with the threat of more sick.

"Too much?" Tasha asks with a blurry laugh when he wobbles back into the living room. "Or too much fun?"

"You're having too much fun," James says, nodding to the orange soda and cough syrup on the coffee table beside his little sister. She's nowhere near sober, but he's surprised how calm she is, not to mention aware, and not even vaguely nauseated.

"Nah, this is just regular." Tasha flashes a grin and offers up her bottle of Sunkist. "You need rehydrating now."

"Whoa, now." James puts up his hands and takes a step backward. "Couple things here. You don't get to look after me like that. " He narrows his eyes. "And that shit tastes like ass and Delsym."

Tasha puts the bottle down. "I only know what one of those tastes like."

"You're a twerp."

"Your best one," Tasha says.

"Huh." James tips his head toward his shoulder, accidentally bringing on a rush of vertigo. "I guess you're right."

"And I guess you're about to fall down." Tasha gathers herself up and shifts down the sofa cushions to make room for James. "Here. The footrest on that recliner is probably too hard for you to work right now."

She's right, but James gives her the finger anyway. Then he flops onto the couch beside her and lowers his head practically to his knees, willing the sickening spinning to stop so he can have half a chance at enjoying the lightness of his body.

"You haven't even cracked the Xanax yet," Tasha giggles, pulling a small, dark bottle from her pocket. Her tone implies that she has, and that James is a pussy for cutting out after the first round of drugs.

"Yeah, and it's just gonna make me barf again..."

"Might clear your head, though," Tasha says with a shrug. "You're looking awful guilty over there."

"You mean just awful..." The truth of the matter is that half of what turns James's stomach is the frustrated feeling that he's broken his streak after so long, but there's no way he's telling Tasha that. There's no discussing abstinence with her, for the word may as well not exist in any way, shape, or form.

"I mean, honestly." Tasha bites her lip. "How long've you been clean?"

James scoffs. "You know I'm not clean."

"Well." Tasha rolls her eyes. "Cali clean? Into party stuff, but off the hard shit?"

"Um..." The calculation is hard to make, what with his brain stuffed with cotton. And even once he figures a rough estimate, he isn't sure he wants to share it. "I'm not sure that's so much your business, Tash."

At that moment, the apartment door opens, and a windswept Steve walks in. "What's not her business?" he asks, joining the conversation as if he's been there all along.

James and Tasha exchange looks as Steve turns away from them to hang up his coat.

"Whatever it is," Steve says, spinning around and taking his backpack to the kitchen table, "I'm on Buck's side."

"Ha, see?" James says, more than a little shakily. "I win. Not telling." But the words rise into his throat with a gag and a splash of bile that have him quickly off the couch and halfway down the hall.

James slams his knees into the tile before the toilet and grasps the seat with both hands, one flesh and one prosthetic. A gush of fluid comes up, then the residue of things he doesn't remember eating. He hangs his head over the porcelain bowl, panting, and trying to organize his brain into telling his body how to straighten up, wipe his mouth, and be a functioning human again.

"Buck?" There's a soft knock on the door, and it opens a crack. Steve squeezes inside, then closes it again and latches it. "You ok?"

"Hm. Yeah." James hurriedly uses his sleeve to clean up his mouth again, then flushes and hops to his feet, moves too quickly, and promptly loses his balance.

"Hey, ok." Steve catches him around the middle and carefully lowers him back to the floor. "Just sit a minute, alright?"

"Hm." James isn't happy to oblige, but he doesn't see any other options at the moment.

"D'you want me to help you get to bed?" Steve offers. "You feeling bad or something?"

"Yeah," James says honestly, "But..." He shakes his head. "Gotta look out for Tash..."

"What were you guys doing?" Steve pulls off a length of toilet paper and sees to cleaning James up properly. "And what did you not want to tell her?"

Not seeing any point in hiding it from Steve, James sighs and mutters, "Oxy."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"No offense, but it looks like it's kinda kicking your ass." Steve half smiles and pets strings of sweaty hair off James's forehead. "Not your usual poison?"

James pauses. "Not, uh, anymore." He swallows, tasting the residue of sick and guilt. "Not something I've had a lot of chance to talk about."

"Oh," Steve says again. "And I'm guessing you're probably not ready to change that?"

"Probably not yet." James lets out a shaky breath and lets himself feel immensely grateful for the love and trust he has in Steve.

"Ok." Steve nods. "Well, whenever you're ready... You know."

James blinks, then sighs. "Sure. Thanks."

[mohini-musing]

Ring the bells that still can ring

Coming Home ‘verse

~~~

Home is for other people. For real people. Not for a burnt-out husk of tactical advantage wrapped in a tight blouse. She’s deadly. To others for sure. To herself if she can manage it. Clint wants her to be a person. A soft limbed, smiling faced creature of comfort and ease. A hard muscled, highly responsive body of sex and lies – harder, faster, more. A flint eyed, deadly accurate sniper on a rooftop they’ll never admit to seeing.

Hmm, that last one she might actually be. Option one – that’s more Laura than Natasha. Though she can play the part if she must. Option two – well, they aren’t forgetting Budapest any time soon. Back before she loved Laura. Before Laura loved her. There’s always option four – the pills and vials in her go bag remind her. It isn’t only HYDRA who gives their operatives little capsules of death. Though the Red Room didn’t so much go for the mediocrity of cyanide. No, no, Red Room Girls go out in style. A little needle. A very hot shot. Up. Up. Up. And gone.

She’s not their girl anymore. If she ever truly was. KGB, yes. She was theirs. Now she’s property of SHIELD. Clint tells her she’s an operative and not a possession. She gave up trying to explain how the two are the same a long time ago. Some truths just don’t add up in his head.

She drifts, aching muscles and roiling innards be damned. She’s exhausted and though sleep is just barely out of reach she can access this in-between place. Not aware, not truly. Far enough out of her head that she can rest. Close enough to in it to be safe in the grand scheme of things. Because after all, that’s what matters. That she keep waking up, or so she’s been told so many times within this house of lavender scented sheets and cold hardwood floor that she’s almost willing to start believing it.

Laura’s back. Slipping a straw between her lips. Telling her to drink it down. Broth. Chicken. Bland but a little salty. Goes down easily. Won’t hurt if – when – it comes back up. Laura knows she’s sick after the long missions. A combination of coming off the drugs that keep her sharp; SHIELD docs are just as free with those as the old Soviets ever were; and the nausea that stems from a mix of guilt and self-hate.

Time swirls in and out of focus. There is light shimmering through the curtains, and then there are only long shadows and the quiet creaking of an old house. The broth spills back over her lips, a basin held near enough to ensure no mess comes of it. There are damp cloths, deft hands weaving her hair into a braid to keep it clear of whatever happens as her body empties itself of all her sins. There are so many sins.

Clint returns. A rattling bottle of pills passed from his hands to Laura’s. Natasha’s shake too much to work the tops. No one trusts her with them anyway. Option four looms before them all. It wouldn’t be the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last. She knows what Clint’s fingers feel like at the back of her throat. Knows the taste of Laura’s rose hand lotion in her soft palate. Knows the looks they give her when they worry for her. Knows she earns the worry. Feels immeasurably guilty when she does.

“C’mere.”

Soft hands. Guiding. No questions asked. Not ever. Laura doesn’t want those answers any more than Natasha wants to give them. She won’t go prying into boxes best left tightly closed. Natasha curls up in her lap like the child she never was. Or at least the child she very much stopped being when she became a part of the academy. Which academy doesn’t matter. They all taught very the same thing.

Get up. Keep moving. You’re fine.

[mohini-musing]

Blood on our hands

Chasing Ghosts - set during the time James was at war

Warnings for violence, offscreen death (not major character), and dubious coping skills

---

James stands by. Observes the doctor open a body once occupied by a man. A man who died for people who will never know what he did. Who he was. How he served. The fragments of a bullet ping into a metal basin. Falling from forceps to a surface quickly going from shiny to marred by blood.

Black thread. Tidy stitches garish against skin once pink and alive – now purpling with livor mortis. He carried this man. Fought with him. Relied upon him to watch his back when he was behind the scope of a sniper rifle. His spotter. His brother. His friend. Now he is a body on a metal cart.

James stands by. Watches. Silent. Parade rest – his drill instructors named this posture as they programmed his body to assume it over any other option when not called to attention. There will be no parade. Not for him. Not for the man whose body he watches. Only death.

When it is over, James zips the bag over his friend. Takes the bullet fragments in their little box, he trusts no one but himself to dispose of them. They were not here, even if in some ways one of them will now be here forever. He walks with what was once a friend to a staging area. Walks across searing tarmac onto a transport. When the plane touches down, he wakes with a start. Hadn’t realized he was capable of sleeping. Feels a mixture of relief and regret that he is rested. There is no way to know how long it will be before his phone rings. Before there is a briefing. An agenda. Another body on the business end of his scope.

Now, though, now there is only the handoff to graves. The walk to the office. The curt nods from his bosses and the condolences offered. James is an operator. It is a part of his life to watch others lose theirs. He watches pink mist through the scope. Watches people scatter and run from the inescapable accuracy for which he was chosen to do what he does. Watches his friend die beneath his hands, a bullet in his chest and a wound in his neck. The handiwork of another sniper, a bullet from nowhere and everywhere.

There is a debrief. The report of successful kill, of unsuccessful exfil. Of a marine transport shot to shit from the roof of a building in a place he never was. Two days, soldier. Two days to make his peace and then out he’ll go. There is a mission waiting, there is always a mission waiting. Death comes for everyone. It will come for him someday. He stopped wondering when a long time ago.

He goes to the quarters he calls his own. It’s nothing extravagant, but he’s not one for luxuries. His superiors praise him for his adaptability. His ease at moving from place to place, base to base, hovel in the desert to apartment in Europe to jungles of the equator. He doesn’t explain why it matters not even the slightest bit where he lays his head. Doesn’t have the slightest desire for psych to get wind of his childhood rootlessness. He’s a sniper. Plain and simple. There’s no need to look into why he can kill without remorse and still be a human after.

Losing Kris, that’s different. They met in selection. Came through hell week together. Dragged each other through it, truth be told. He takes a bottle from the cabinet. Takes a glass from another. James doesn’t drink from the bottle. He’d say it reminds him too much of baby memories but the truth is it brings Tasha and her drunken smile to his consciousness and that needs to stay down in a tidy little box where the memory doesn’t hurt as sharply.

He’s solid muscle and none too small, so the bottle is nearing naught but air by the time the blackout arrives. Healthy coping skills are for other people on nights like this. He has two days. One of them can be spent sleeping this off. Two days are an eternity if you know how to use them.

James wakes to a hiccup that turns sour and liquid just the wrong side of slow enough to get off the couch. Whiskey and bile pool on the floor as he braces hands on his knees and fails at keeping his pants and socks anything even resembling clean. When the first round ends, he stumbles to the bathroom, knees cracking into ancient tile before another tide of awesome choices come up from the depths of his gut. Everything hurts. The light coming in the bathroom window burns his eyes, the acid stings his raw throat, and the desperate clinging to the toilet pulls at muscles still worn from the pointless CPR he performed in the back of a transport on a road to nowhere.

He wipes his mouth on the thin tissue from the roll. Flushes the mess away. Yanks a towel from the rack and bunches it under his head. He’s done this enough to know leaving the bathroom is a mistake he’ll regret. Closes his eyes. Wills himself to sleep. He can see Kris, calling the last kill they made together, can feel his hand on his shoulder, clasping there once in confirmation that it’s time to move. Neither of them sees the man on another rooftop.

“M’sorry,” James whispers. To Kris. To Tasha. To himself.

He sleeps. He has two days. He can do anything in two days.

[mohini-musing]

Haven for your broken bones

Chasing Ghosts 'verse

The blast clears and James shakes his head, willing the screeching within it to clear alongside the dust in the air. Automatic inventory of body parts. All the ones he arrived with are present and accounted for. Fingers can move - even the one he's definitely broken on landing. Vision - acceptable if a smidge blurry. Hearing - hearing. It's all a high pitched wail in his head. 

Panic. 

Followed by the body clamping down into training instilled so deep it can't be forgotten. This was why the officers beat it into them. Deep enough it can't be forgotten. He breathes. Holds. Breathes again. Rinse and repeat. 

Objective? Get up. Get moving. Get away. Get safe. Find the rest of his team.

His team. They're… he doesn't remember. The ringing is too loud to think. He's starting to shake, too. Nothing's bleeding so it shouldn't be shock. Maybe. Everything is wrong and the wailing won't stop. There's something on his arm, wrapping around. 

He throws it off, and there's a muffled curse. 

"Don't touch him."

Tasha's voice. She doesn't belong here. Can't be here. 

"Jamie? Open your eyes for us."

Something else touches him and he swings. Connects with a full thud. 

"I did tell you not to touch him."

Tasha again. Which means he's not there. He's here. He's. Oh shit.

Forces eyes open and they're on the kitchen floor. A chair is overturned. Something wet is all over the linoleum. He doesn't have the brainpower to care what. 

"There you are, dumbass," Tasha teases. "Got all your bits?" 

"mmhmm," he grumbles. 

His body's coming back online, and with it the burn of nausea in the back of his throat. He lets it pull his jaw down. Let's the rush of chyme past his lips, hears the splatter as it hits the floor where he's still only just barely conscious. 

Damn seizures. His neuro decided to change out his meds. Because insurance. It's not been fun. Steve says they can cover the old stuff out of pocket. He's just about ready to agree with him. 

"You're so gross," Tasha tells him, even as she reaches forward to wipe the slime from his chin and roll him to his side away from it. Tiny hands, but sure of themselves and strong enough to do what he needs. 

Today that's to scrub at him with a rough paper towel and tug him up to sitting. He leans into her, trying not to look at Steve's wounded puppy face a few feet away. He loves the man. But sick and a little lost means he wants his sister. Even if she tells him he smells and that he owes her for this.

He nods, closes his eyes, drifts into a postictal sleep on the kitchen floor - head on Tasha's shoulder and safe at home where the heat and the sand can't come for him again.