BINGO: Straight Line (Vertical) (Fifth)
Title: Everything of Myself.
Fandom: Avengers
Prompt: Trust Issues
Medium: Fic
Word count: 804
Rating: Teen/M
Warning: Implied past abuse, Past abuse, Death, Head!canon,
Summary: Natasha’s not a hugger.
^
The first thing Darcy learns about Natasha; after the introductions and the ‘hey, haven’t we met before’s, is that she doesn’t like to be hugged, or randomly, casually touched in any way.
Darcy’s definitely a hugger and it’s really obvious Natasha isn’t, when she freezes up and doesn’t hug Darcy back.
And you know what? Darcy’s OK with that. And even she wasn’t, it’s not her place to decide how a person should or shouldn’t react.
So Darcy stays out of Natasha’s personal space, makes sure she can see when a ‘touch’ is going to occur and limits the amount of time and the types of touching she and Clint do in front of Natasha.
Clint calls them crazy, but he knows that Natasha appreciates Darcy’s efforts.
<>
When they have to leave, Darcy wraps herself octopus-like around Clint and nudges the toe of Natasha’s shoe with the toe of her shoe as her way of saying goodbye.
Once they’re gone, Darcy sits in front of her computer and types ‘doesn’t like to be touched’ into the search engine and has a quiet little freak out about all the reasons the results offer.
In the end she calls her former psychology professor and asks for advice.
She speaks in generalisations and mentions something about a research project on the cultural applications and differences from a political/diplomatic/public relations point of view of physical contact and different cultures social norms.
He calls her bluff, commends her for making the effort to learn more and says that he’ll have some things for her to read by the end of the week, but if she wants the right answers, she’ll have to ask her friend.
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Darcy doesn’t know how to ask or if she’ll be asking the right questions.
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Eventually she sends Clint out for pizza and movies and presents Natasha with the raspberry and dark chocolate mud cake she’d bought on a hunch.
Darcy tells her about the internet searches and the information her professor had given her, and rambles on for a bit about her own mini-obsession with having to learn about things she doesn’t understand, but if Natasha wants her to stop trying to, she will.
Natasha eats half the cake before saying anything.
She shares the other half of the cake and between bites, tells Darcy about her life before she became Natasha.
<>
Her name; her grandmother’s name, had been Nadezhda. It meant hope.
Mostly her mother’s, that Nadezhda wouldn’t have any little sisters.
She’d loved her mother and all of her sisters. She hadn’t loved or trusted her father since she was five years old, when he’d shaken the youngest of her baby sisters to death and convinced everyone it was his wife’s fault.
He’d sold her to the government when she was eight. They’d called her Natalia and taught her how to dance.
And she was thirteen when she’d watched her favourite teacher, the one she’d trusted almost as much as she’d trusted her own mother, shoot one of the other girls and bury her in a shallow grave.
She doesn’t trust love because love had given a friend happiness and hope, then it had taken everything away and left her with only a piece of rope, long enough to hang herself with.
She’d stopped being Natalia the day she’d tried to go home and found that her family had been killed a week after she’d left them.
She’d become Natasha the moment Clint had decided to trust her.
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As much as she can, Natasha trusts two people.
Clint, because he thought she could be more, because everything that he wants from Natasha, he gives of himself back to her, even when she can’t, or doesn’t know how to, and because he knows that that while sometime she doesn’t trust herself, he trusts her enough to introduce her to Darcy.
And she trusts Darcy because Darcy hasn’t tried to change her, because she tried to learn more, because she makes Clint blush, because Darcy will never ask Natasha to give of herself any more than she of herself can give back.
And because, while she looks a little pale, Darcy hasn’t moved, hasn’t done anything but listen.
Natasha had broken two SHIELD shrinks telling them the less censored version.
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Clint comes back with a copy of The Princess Bride; because Natasha hasn’t seen it, hours after he should have been, with enough still-hot-pizza to save some for breakfast.
He asks how their conversation went and if they’re still a little bit crazy, because that’s his favourite thing about the three of them.
Darcy just laughs, tells him that he’s the craziest of them and threatens inventive things if there are any anchovies on the pizzas.
<>
Under the table, Natasha nudges her foot against Darcy’s.
^