∆ {3¹¹} {FIREFLIES, VANILLA AND LEMON} ∆

"WHAT?" NATASHA'S FACE was scrunched up into a confused frown as she tried to figure out what the brunette meant.

"Roxi. It's uh, it's my name," The woman in question admitted, her eyes fixed firmly on the ground. Natasha simply stared at her for a few minutes, mouth cracked open slightly, her whole face displaying shock as she processed what was happening. This woman was trusting her, more than the redhead had ever expected her to, with information only a handful of special people had access to, one of them being the woman in front of her, another, no doubt, was Nick Fury. But Natasha couldn't help but wonder what had prompted her to share something she kept so private. Had it been her? Or did it have to do with whatever Wanda Maximoff had shown her? After a moment more of consideration, deciding that she didn't need to figure that out now, she realised she hadn't spoken, and at least a few minutes had past. She let her surprised face melt away into a soft, although slightly teasing, smile.

"Roxi Ryder," Natasha announced gently, staring up at the darkening sky with a kind of wonder she hadn't shown in a while, "It's got a nice ring to it."

"Yeah, I suppose," Roxi trailed off, trying to analyse the other woman's reaction to gain a clue on how she felt about this. And still, it felt weird to have her name spoken out loud, even in the slightly chilled air of an isolated forest, on the edge of a farm, in the middle of nowhere. She had fallen into a rut, a routine, of shutting people out and keeping her past firmly to herself. Maybe, having her mind pried open by a superpowered teenager was what she needed to finally pull herself out of it. The redhead sitting beside her, forest green eyes focused on her face, she most definitely had something to do with it. Natasha's face creased into a gentle frown, more of confusion than anger or anything similar.

"Why are you telling me?" Her voice was as soft as her frown, simply trying to understand, while attempting to show that she understood how hard this was for the other woman - for Roxi. 

"Because you were right," She admitted, "I need to open up to people more, let them in. But I don't think I can tell anyone else, even if that means putting up with Tony Stark continually trying to guess my first name. I suppose it's a mental block, really. I've never been great at getting close to people; friends, family (not that I have any), anything more.." Roxi trailed off slightly at the end, trying to keep her glance at the redhead as subtly as possible. It seemed to work, because Natasha didn't mention anything about it.

"I've always struggled with it. There's not really anyone to blame for that but myself, so it's not like I can complain about it. Even as a kid, I was quiet, reserved, or so I've been told," Natasha's curiosity about Roxi grew as the woman spoke, only noticing when she paused that the sun was beginning to sink in the sky, the trees beginning to whisper the secrets they had heard as the women spoke in the evening breeze. Apparently, the ex-SHIELD agent could sense Natasha's curiosity increasing, because she turned to the redhead with a soft, genuine smile and a tiny chuckle that made the other woman feel as if she were melting, her hand growing warm in Roxi's. 

"You sure you want to know my story?" She asked, interpreting Natasha's look correctly, wondering how on earth she would explain the mess of tangled wires and strings that made up her past, her life. 

"Yeah. All of ours are messed up, just maybe ours more than the others," The redhead reassured her, as if sure that the strange knot of strings would make up a piece of art if you could see enough of it. She just couldn't see that much, at least, not yet. But maybe, in a short while, she'd be able to.

"If you're sure." The smile melted off of Roxi's face, and Natasha felt bad for a moment, before the dark haired woman began to speak, and she became completely concentrated on her words.

"I was born in Spain. Don't know where, don't know anything really. My parents died when I was one, in a train crash. The news said it was an accident, but, at the moment, I'm not too sure. When we at the army base last year, Zola showed us pictures of newspaper headlines. One was about Tony's parents dying, the other was about the 'accident' my parents died in. The way he said it, makes me think that HYDRA killed them, and probably for a reason." Roxi hadn't even gone past the first year of her life at this point, and Natasha was already struggling to find a way to assemble all the information in her head. It seemed very thrown together, but the redhead noticed that the woman seemed to have a very good picture of her own life, possibly due to a lot of time considering the topic.

"Anyway, I was sent to an orphanage until I was 12, and it was nice there, I guess. I never really made any friends, but there was this family of foxes that used to let me play with them at the bottom of the garden, the last few years I was there. They probably weren't around for much longer after that anyway. Then came the foster homes. There was plenty of them, probably had five or six a year. Most of them were pretty good, but I just didn't click. Sometimes it went really well, but then they couldn't keep me, for one reason or another. Almost a shame I had to end on such a shitty one." With her words, Roxi Ryder cracked a mirthless smile. This part particularly, so wasn't going to enjoy.

"Bearing in mind I'd moved to America about 3 years before with one of the nicer foster families, I was still pretty new to the way things worked. The last foster 'parent' I had was a guy called Victor Hale. He already had a few other kids, all American, and when I first met him, I though he looked tired. He was probably stressed from the others, or something similar. And then he took on me. I was foreign, I wasn't fluent in English, I didn't know how to do things like they do here. It was difficult for me, probably much more for him," Natasha's curiosity turned to worry, her stomach turning. She had a nasty feeling she knew where this was going. It wasn't anywhere good.

"I dealt with it by keeping to myself, staying quiet and out of trouble, like I normally did, but he dealt with it worse too. It started with alcohol, and sometimes, stronger 'substances'. I was 17 at the time, and I got what was happening, but I didn't understand why someone would do that to themselves, even if I'd had bad experiences with alcoholics in the past. It got even worse, and I would say eventually, but unfortunately for the kids in his care, it was a pretty fast transition. He wanted other ways to cope, he didn't care about how we felt, didn't consider what he might be doing was illegal, he just did it," Roxi swallowed hard. It felt almost impossible to continue speaking; it was taking her back to darker minds, hurting her head and her throat, but one glance at the redhead next to her and the way her face was full of curiosity and a hint of horror, the ice-eyed woman who'd been through hell more than once knew that she couldn't stop here, not now. She was too far in, she couldn't back out.

"Of course, he was always amazing when the social workers came over, and none of us were brave enough to say anything. The others blamed me for what he did, said that if I hadn't come, he hadn't taken me on, they'd be fine, they'd still be whole. It was hard, everyone there, including myself, blaming me for him," a brief pause while she swallowed again, trying to keep her composure as she figured out how to say it, "taking advantage of us." She had decided it was the best route to take, the most delicate way to proceed. 

"I didn't blame them for blaming me, though, because it was true, and even at 17, I knew that. I just didn't know how to fight back. And I got fed up of it," She admitted, trying to keep the topic as light as she could while still saying what she needed to. Natasha seemed entirely focused on the story, though her hand was gripping Roxi's tighter than it had been before.

"So I left. I was on the streets for maybe a month and a half before SHIELD found me. Luckiest I've ever been in my damn life, really. Apparently whoever it was that found me talked to their superior and decided that if they trained me, I could be useful. No idea who thought that, but I guess they were right, in the end. I didn't want to tell anyone my first name, so I didn't. I thought they'd send me back." Her voice was quiet now, barely above a whisper, and her gaze was on the fleeting water of the river, ashamed she might've ever thought such a thing. But maybe that's what SHIELD had seen in her. 

"They trained me for a while, maybe for a year. I knew how to shoot, I knew how to keep a steady hand, a cool head. I knew how to keep my emotions in check, so they gave me a mission. It was a personal one, and they knew it, That's why they'd given it to me, as a test, maybe a final one before I became an agent. Either way, I did it. I went to my old foster home in early evening, just walked in. The bastard left the door open. I was even starting to have regrets until I found him. He was lying face down on the kitchen floor, no top, sprawled out, and he had a bottle in his hand. I don't know what it was about it that made my doubts go away. Maybe a thirst for revenge, maybe something else, In not sure, but it didn't matter, because he was my mission.

"I shot him, there and then. I remember the way his blood leaked onto the grey tiles, the way I had to leave as quickly as I could, in case one of the kids woke up and found me there. And I ran. But not away, I ran back to SHIELD. I felt safe, I felt useful, and that was pretty much everything teenage me wanted. But I still had this doubt. I couldn't tell anyone my name, 'just in case'. Of course, Fury found my file, but he was kind - or smart - enough to let me read it, and keep it to myself. He took it off the system, there's almost nothing about me on there. It took a huge weight off my shoulders, and I felt like I could do what I was meant to while working for someone who was clever enough to have my best interests at heart." Roxi's voice was shaking, and she pulled her feet out of the stream, even if the feeling of the blood want gone, still feeling the ghostly rush of the scarlet fluid against her legs.

The movement seemed to bring Natasha back into the more normal, more crazy world, because her eyes focused properly on Roxi's face. The woman met her gaze, creeping ice against a deep forest, and for once, Roxi felt encouraged to finish her story, to explain, even if it would never have one of the fairy tale endings she'd always despised.

"I spent 13 years with SHIELD, and in that time, I fought an alien army from space, gained superpowers like the ones you read about, and I found a family in my team, even if some of them annoy me." Natasha marvelled at Roxi's sentiment for a few moments in silence, still trying to piece the woman's shattered life back together in her head to show her a decent picture. However hard she tried, there were always cracks, and gaps of nothingness that she had to assume Roxi didn't know herself. And then the silence, like the image, broke again as Roxi spoke.

"I think that might be why they did it." A clueless glance from Natasha showed Roxi that she needed to extrapolate.

"I think that's why HYDRA killed my parents. I mean, my powers can't have come from nowhere. Maybe my parents were mutants that just happened to piss them off slightly more than anyone else. It's just a theory, though." Natasha finally spoke, trying to find something to reassure the woman she liked.

"Well, when you've crushed Ultron into a tiny metal football, you could ask Bruce to take a look." She thought it was working for a second, until Roxi's face dropped ever so slightly at the mention of the doctor, and she looked back at the riverbank. Natasha tried to stay calm, letting out a gentle

"Hey," as she placed her fingers on the woman's jaw and turned her face back to the redhead's own, the distance between them considerably less, so much so that both of them could feel the others' breath. They weren't far apart, and both were having an emotional conversation through their eyes.

Natasha could smell lemon and peppermint as the sun began to finish setting somewhere to the east of them, the enchanting amber beams spilling over them like firelight. It was so infinitesimally flawless, that she felt as if anything sudden would splinter the glass room the women had grown so carefully.

Roxi could smell vanilla and roses, and it was so perfectly intoxicating that she almost felt she could drown in it, the rich scent enveloping her completely in an ocean of calm.

And then the fireflies came out. Their wings hummed and buzzed at a careful volume, loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough not to disturb to blissful haze of emotion the two women seemed to have entered. Their lights blinked softly, reflected in the gentle ripples of the stream below, lighting up the darkening sky spectacularly, a form of ethereal enchantment designed to draw the other in.

But of course, nothing happened at that point in time, because the author wants to make you wait, and because Natasha Romanoff said to Roxi Ryder, in a low voice that could make the normally icy woman melt,

"You know, we're sharing a room." Am eyebrow raised above a blue eye, a slight smirk, and a careful retaliation followed.

"And who do I have to thank for that?" The two women's lips were so close that they could feel the others' hovering, waiting, taunting.

"Laura," the redhead's answer was simple, never breaking the gaze the two of them held, her own smirk growing onto her face.

"Well, I can say gracias to Laura later. But right now, I think we have some business to attend to," one broken woman suggested.

The other broken woman's face twisted into a mixture of a smile and a smirk.

And together, two broken women stood up in a darkening wood, a stream at their feet, fireflies dancing around them erratically, the moon starting to rise as they walked through the half-light; and together, two broken women became whole.

{A/N:} Okay, you're probably mad at me but oh well ;). I thought I would screw this chapter up so bad but I'm actually pretty happy with it.
Let me know what you think,

Please comment and vote.

And for those of you asking me to update more often, it is now my Christmas Holidays, so that will be happening, along with updates for Blood Moon and Point Blank (hopefully).

Sorry it's late, I was distracted today xD. Thanks for reading.

2735 Words

Written: 19 / 12 / 2020

Published: 19 / 12 / 2020