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It was inevitable that Natasha was going to drop. Not only had her brain been totally fucked over, but her body had been thrown in a wood chipper and spat out the other side a bloodied unrecognizable mess.
Since Ultron’s first appearance at Avengers Tower, Natasha has been living in one-hour increments. Rushed calls to Pepper between assemblies are all she could afford, and Maria is under strict radio silence after the attack while she hurries to finalize prep on the helicarrier with Fury in case they need to mobilize it.
Even when the battle is over, when Ultron and Sokovia are destroyed and Natasha is with the others on the helicarrier, she doesn’t have time to seek out her doms. She doesn’t have time to drop or to process. Her one-hour increments are reduced to ten seconds. For ten seconds at a time, Natasha breathes. As she is trained in emergency field medicine, she handles anyone not in need of surgery or severe medical intervention. She treats Sokovian survivors with burn marks, gashes, and broken bones. In between each one, Natasha fiddles with her earrings, breathes, and hopes to god that Maria and Pepper will be there when this is all over.
The people don’t stop coming. Clint comes by, a concerned look on his face, but before he can ask Natasha if she needs anything, she sends him away. There is no way she can keep herself together if she touches his cuts or runs her fingers along his bruises. Clint seems to understand, because he walks towards another medic, but not before signing to Natasha, “ I’m here.”
Natasha can’t afford to think about him. Not about Clint, and especially not about a dom helping her. If she’s being honest, she’s grateful for the lapse in contact with her doms after what the witch Wanda had shown her. She’s beyond uneasy, and while her doms are typically the solution to that issue, the vision makes her hesitant to ask for help.
The helicarrier lands off the northern coast of Staten Island, and Natasha isn’t sure where she’s needed until Thor approaches her, eyebrows knit together in that puppy dog confusion he carries with him everywhere.
“You’re supposed to be gone already,” he says.
Glancing at the droves of people headed for the exits topside, Natasha returns Thor’s comment with a scoff. “Did I miss the drop off? We landed twenty minutes ago. Agents just started leading people off.”
Thor’s expression immediately shifts to one of annoyance and an underlying frustration. In her current raw state, Natasha forcibly scolds herself as it likely isn’t directed at her.
“Captain Rogers was supposed to deliver Agent Hill’s message, but clearly he did not. You were to meet her at the Quinjet to go home nearly an hour ago.”
Natasha’s heart sinks, and she feels goosebumps ripple across her skin. Instinctively, Thor reaches for her wrist, never her hands , and pulls her along with him through the throngs of people bustling this way and that to escape the helicarrier and make it onto land.
“I do apologize,” he calls back with a glance. Natasha’s legs and lungs work hard to keep up with him, but she still manages to meet his eyes for a moment. “Sincerely. Had I known you were still here, I would have gone looking much earlier.”
“I’ll be okay,” Natasha lies through her teeth. “She didn’t leave?”
“No. I was only made aware of the situation a short time ago. I ran into Hill looking frantically for you, so I offered my help.”
Natasha remains silent. While she appreciates Thor’s willingness to help, the thought of a frantic Maria is not one she’s prepared for. If Maria’s distraught, she’s going to have to hold onto these emotions of hers much longer than she could ever prepare for. Unless Pepper can help, which she is so fond of doing for her favorite sub. But Natasha doesn’t know where Pepper is, and she isn’t ready to have the conversation regarding Wanda’s induced visions, or to even relinquish control at the moment and—
“Oh my god, Natasha. Thor, you found her. Thank fuck.”
They’re on the flight deck. Natasha doesn’t remember getting up here, but god are there a lot of people. Even with a backdrop of a hundred terrified and confused Sokovians, Maria still shines like her North Star.
Thor lets go of Natasha’s hand and smiles at them tightly. “You’re welcome, Maria. I know you will take excellent care of her. Natasha, I shall see you soon, my dear friend.”
Natasha wants to hug him. This itching in her chest tells her to, but the lingering voices in her brain tell her to keep her hands to herself. She stands still and nods back. “Thank you, Thor,” is all she tells him.
When they’re alone, relatively anyway, Maria approaches Natasha like one would an alley cat. Her hand purposes to reach for Natasha at a snail’s pace, not at all reacting when Natasha recoils away.
“Please no,” she whispers. Tears prick at the corners of her eyes, and Maria is quite visibly ready to murder a village so Nat hurries to amend. “Just not right now, not yet. Please. I am in pain, and I want to get away from all these people.”
Maria understands. Natasha knows she does, because this isn’t something new. While Natasha is overzealous when it comes to your run-of-the-mill PDA, she generally refuses to submit in public. It isn’t a hard limit and it has happened several times before, which is why Maria still attempts from time to time to have her submit. Especially when it’s obvious she so badly needs it. But the last thing she’s going to do to her sub is force her into an unwanted drop.
Maria repositions herself so she’s reaching for Natasha’s hand, and the redhead smiles tentatively. She accepts and follows the gentle tug towards a Quinjet already running on the flight deck. The moment they’re inside and the hatch shuts behind them, the cacophony of people around them is drowned out. Graciously, Natasha settles into the co-pilot’s seat while Maria takes the pilot’s seat. Her bones seem to evaporate the moment her back touches the fabric, and her eyes slide shut.
She hears Maria hum next to her, flicking switches and toggling nodes and dials.
“We’re heading to Santa Monica for now, at least for the weekend.”
Natasha, eyes fully closed, hums her agreement as they begin their ascent. She hears the soft whir of the mechanics and the thrumming of the Quinjet and lets it lull her into a state of semi-relaxation.
“Pepper’s idea?” she asks quietly. There’s no need to whisper, but it feels wrong to raise her voice. Irreverent, given the circumstances.
“She does have all the good ideas between the two of us,” Maria responds. Nat smiles to herself, and, unknown to her, Maria smiles back. “We are turning off comms and spending time alone. No work. No avenging.”
“Now that doesn’t sound like a Pepper idea.”
“I did have to convince her to leave her work laptop behind.”
At that, Natasha opens her eyes. Logically, she knows they moved, but when she sees the ocean beneath them, her stomach lurches. It isn’t far from Staten Island to the safehouse, and soon she’s going to be faced with a dom in search of answers Natasha doesn’t yet have.
“Can we address why you just went pale?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Not an option. At this point, I’m not even certain it’s not physical, because you clearly haven’t seen a medic since the fight.”
Natasha flinches, her eyes fixed on the horizon. The sun is setting already. Where has the time gone?
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” Maria pushes.
If Natasha looks over, she’s going to cave. That great big part of her that craves submission, obedience, and achievement tends to win in these scenarios. Right now is no exception, because Natasha looks and locks eyes with Maria. Maria, for her part, sets the jet to autopilot and gives Nat her undivided attention.
“Wanda Maximoff.”
“The kid?”
Others would be affronted by the way Maria simplifies the witch’s existence down to just a child, but Natasha knows better. Natasha knows that children are some of the greatest weapons ever formed, no matter how cruel it is to shape them into those guns and bullets.
“She put images in my head. Memories, but they were wrong. Just right enough to make me think they were real.”
“That little—“
“She didn’t single me out. She did it to everyone, and it was only because HYDRA was controlling her.”
“Oh well that makes it okay.” Maria doesn’t yell. Maria never yells. She never needs to. Her voice echoes in Natasha’s ears, and she flinches. “Natasha, we need to talk about this before you drop, you understand that, right?
I’m not dropping, thinks Natasha. Not now, not yesterday, maybe not ever again.
“I understand.”
Maria blows out a long breath and then chews on her cheek for a moment. “We’ll wait until we’re at the safehouse, so you don’t have to go over it separately with Pepper. After we treat your wounds.”
“I understand,” Natasha repeats.
The remainder of the ride is silent. Natasha closes her eyes once more and even dozes off into an exhausted dreamless state until the commotion of landing wakes her. By the time she’s fully aware of her surroundings, Maria is already crouched in front of her, unbuckling her from the seat in an attempt at helping Natasha feel a little more dependent. It is one of her more subtle and most favorite tactics. Natasha loves it too.
Her body is incredibly stiff now, and there are more than just aches radiating throughout her joints. She makes it as far as the hatch before grasping blindly for Maria. The woman is there instantly. She keeps one hand around Nat’s waist, the other at her upper arm to guide her into the safehouse.
They’re in a decently large clearing, although the house itself is but a speck in the real estate game, standing at a measly one-story and 1200 square feet. Termed ‘Santa Monica’, the log cabin is anything but a beachfront resort, but it is fully equipped with SI security measures, SHIELD surveillance systems, and anything else a spy could dream of.
Maria leads them inside, never once letting go of Natasha. When the door shuts behind them, Pepper is quick to approach. By now Natasha has broken into a sweat and is using Maria more than her own two legs to propel herself forward, but she still feels that same tug she always does when she’s around both her doms. Pepper’s eyes are already scanning over Natasha, and although Nat knows she doesn’t have the same medical knowledge, it warms her heart to know that Pepper still cares.
“What do you need?” she asks. “Apart from a greater sense of self-preservation.”
“Oh there will be more time for that later, I promise,” Maria insists. “For now, I’m gonna get her on the coffee table. Can you grab the big kit from the hall closet, a couple rags, and a bowl of water please?”
Pepper leaves immediately, and somehow accomplishes all three tasks by the time Maria has Natasha sitting upright and mostly naked on the living room coffee table. She still has on a sports bra and a pair of panties, but the suit has to go to reach the full extent of her injuries. Currently, the uniform is lying in a crumpled heap next to the sofa, but that is a future problem. Right now all that matters is getting Natasha patched up as quickly as possible just in case she drops.
It isn’t common for her to drop unwillingly, as Maria and Pepper are good at keeping an eye on her and monitoring her needs. Beyond that, her career as a spy and then as an Avenger allow her plenty of opportunities to grow accustomed to a certain level of cataclysmic events. Most often, it’s only specific traumas that trigger a drop, and those are few and far between. However, Natasha is clearly flirting with a drop from the way she has almost completely retreated into her own head.
“Alright,” Maria says as she throws on a pair of latex gloves. “Natasha, this isn’t gonna feel good. You’ve got a lot of cuts, and a few need stitches. But I’m gonna work careful and fast, and Pepper’s gonna be a darling and hold you the whole time.”
The only indication Natasha heard her is the movement of her body. Her eyes stare dead in front of her, but she scoots closer so her legs are wedged between Maria’s while Pepper keeps a loose grip on her upper body.
“If it hurts, tell us. If you feel yourself dropping, tell us,” Pepper adds firmly. “Give me a nod for ‘I understand.’”
Natasha nods, and Maria watches her torso tense.
The process is slow-going, but Maria stays true to her word and moves as fast as possible. Unfortunately, Nat’s mottled skin is absolutely lousy with injuries. Maria has to stop stitching up a gash halfway through when Natasha realizes her shoulder is out of socket. The three of them (Pepper a more supportive role in this case) set in back in place but not without a hiss of pain from Natasha.
“I’m okay,” she says before the other two could ask.
“You know,” Maria hums as she picks up the needle and thread again. “It’s okay if you’re not. You don’t play tough with us.”
“I know, but I’m really good at acting and it’s too late for me to make it in Hollywood.”
Maria snickers, and Pepper rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. “If there was an inch of clear skin here, I would smack it.” Natasha doesn’t reply, but her head ducks down. Pepper is quick to grasp her chin in between her fingers and look right into those gorgeous green eyes. “You know better.”
Natasha nods, her head still in Pepper’s hand. “I know better,” she mumbles back. Once the woman lets go, she blows out a long puff of air.
“Is there something you’d like to say?” Pepper urges.
Genuinely there isn’t, but Natasha owes it to her doms to tell them the truth while she is coherent enough. Her reality comes in fleeting moments of Maria’s needle in her skin and Pepper’s fingers on her back. But her mind is almost wholly elsewhere. Her doms deserve to know.
“I cannot be here right now.” She says it so matter of factly, like the rent has gone up and she can’t afford it. Like the neighbor’s making too much noise at odd hours. Like an alley cat won’t stop meowing on her front porch. They give her a second to collect herself, and Natasha forces away the vision because that can come later. When she has time to react to it. “My head keeps trying to be somewhere else. V golove tuman . She is— Отвяжись! I can’t think without ужасы в моей голове. Я не могу думать. Я не могу! Фу! Заставь это уйти !”
Pepper watches Natasha’s body shake with anxiety her psyche’s unequipped to handle, and it takes the two of them to get Natasha safely onto the floor. The Russian ramblings give way to streams of tears, but one does little to interrupt the other.
Pepper positions herself against the back of the sofa and pulls Natasha up to her chest, wrapping her arms firmly around the woman. Her shirt’s getting covered in blood, only adding to the sense of urgency as she knows Natasha’s wounds can’t take the lack of attention much longer.
For only a moment, Maria disappears, returning with a soft blanket for Natasha.
Maria waits, kneeling in front of the two with her jaw firmly set. Pepper just knows she’s plotting murder against the woman who did this to their Talia. She hopes she gets to be there when it all goes down.
“ Natalia. Слушай мой голос.”
Natasha silences herself.
While Pepper can’t replicate the sounds the way Maria can, she knows exactly what she’s saying. There have been too many nightmares and missions where Natasha came back disoriented, and since then, Maria has taken it upon herself to brush up on her Russian. She’s not fluent, but certain phrases get enough use that she speaks them confidently. Unfortunately, it’s never for a good reason.
“ Ты в безопасности. Со мной и Пеппер . Ты в безопасности.”
You’re safe. With me and Pepper. You’re safe.
Pepper strokes her hair away from her face before resting her chin on Natasha’s shoulder. The shaking dies down, and the light enters Natasha’s eyes, breaking through the haze.
She looks, teary-eyed and exhausted, at Maria and hiccups.
“Hey,” Maria says softly. She smiles, and it’s hard because her sub is hurting and she has no earthly clue why except that the witch was in her head. “You back with me?”
Natasha nods, and Maria hands her the blanket she had grabbed. She scrunches the material in her fingers, runs blunt nails across it until one catches in the fabric. Natasha pauses, takes a deep breath, and continues fidgeting with the blanket.
“There you go, darling. Stay focused on your blanket, okay?” Pepper hums.
“S’not mine. I don’t live here.” The comment is unexpected, and if she hadn’t just dropped so hard, it was the kind of thing Pepper would chide her for. Right now, it’s an attempt at grasping onto reality, and the truth of the matter is that the blanket is not Natasha’s.
“You’re right. You haven’t ever used this one since we stocked this safehouse. But it can be yours for right now, how’s that?”
Natasha nods once, her eyes and hands fixed on the blanket. “I would like that.”
Maria smiles, even as Natasha’s behavior continues to break her heart. Her body may no longer be shaking, but that doesn’t mean the blood stopped seeping through mostly congealed cuts. She needs to be patched up before infection settles in, because the last thing a distressed sub needs is physical pain to accompany.
“I want you to focus on your blanket while I finish patching you up.”
It’s gonna hurt, Natasha wants to say, but she knows better. She’s lived through worse. Ultron left her battered and bruised—not sprained or broken. Usually she can close her eyes against the pain, but when she closes her eyes, she sees the Red Room, the men reaching for her and touching—She sees herself young and vulnerable.
Natasha grips the blanket a bit tighter while Pepper maneuvers her just enough that Maria can reach the worst of the cuts. Pepper can see the tension in her neck and her hands as Maria starts poking at her with a needle again, and she presses a kiss underneath Natasha’s ear.
“Tell me how your blanket feels,” she encourages.
“Soft,” Natasha says without thinking. Then, she pauses, trying to think of the right word. Her brain spins and spins, digging past all the garbage that the witch put on the forefront and going for something stable, something unchanging. “Like the one you keep on the couch in your office.”
Pepper smiles. “You do like that blanket, don’t you? Is this one softer?”
“No,” Natasha says so adamantly. Like Pepper asked if they should eat beets for dinner. “Yours is…But I like ours best.”
Pepper knows exactly which blanket Natasha is talking about. It sits at the edge of their bed back at the tower. It travels all across the tower with Natasha, is present after some of her favorite scenes, and maybe doesn’t get washed as often as it should as a result. Maria bought it for Nat after a particularly long undercover mission Natasha should never have gone on during her early SHIELD days, and it has been Natasha’s favorite ever since. It’s a miracle it’s not destroyed yet.
“What do you like about it?” Maria shoots Pepper a look from her position on the floor, and mouths a thank you that Pepper wishes she would retract.
This is what we do, Pepper thinks. When Black Widow goes down, her doms are there to catch and comfort Natasha. It’s not like she’s never returned the favor. Right now though, it’s gotta be all about her. Still, Pepper knows where Maria’s coming from. It had been just her and Natasha for years before Natalie Rushman started working for SI. Despite the amount of times Pepper shows up for them, Maria will always have that lingering thought that she’s in this alone. It’s induced more than one dom drop in the past, but Pepper is there for her every time.
As Pepper keeps Natasha distracted with talking about blankets, Maria finishes up the worst of it, leaving many smaller cuts to simply be dealt with in the shower. That being said, when she finishes, she jerks her head towards the bedroom, and Pepper catches the motion, while it goes unseen by Natasha, who is still crawling up out of her drop.
“Natty, sweetheart, you really need to get in the shower. We can be in there with you if that’s what you want, or we’ll wait outside. But you really need to get cleaned up.”
Maria hasn’t asked a question yet deliberately, because she’s positive if it were up to Natasha, they wouldn’t leave the floor until morning. She does give the girl a moment to process what’s said before speaking again.
“Would you like one of us in there with you?”
The ‘no’ comes quickly, and Maria nods before Natasha has a chance to feel bad for shutting out her doms.
While Maria gets the shower ready, Pepper takes her time guiding Natasha to the bathroom, wrapped in the blanket, but she stops at the door.
The condition (because yes, this has happened enough that they have rules in place) is that Natasha is allowed to lock the door (because Maria can unlock it anyway), but if the shower runs for longer than twenty minutes without response, her doms are to enter the room and either finish the shower with her or take Natasha out. They don’t administer other punishments for this, because Natasha is never in the right headspace to receive punishment. It’s more of a safety measure than anything else.
Pepper and Maria wait with each other. Well, their spirits are together, but in reality, Pepper is getting ice packs and heating pads, and Maria’s trying to find clothes that won’t irritate the injuries all over Natasha’s body.
The shower turns off after three minutes, all that Natasha could stand before the pain intensified. When she comes out loosely draped in a towel, Maria goes to help her get dressed and check that her bandages are secure.
Pepper spots the hoodie in her hand and inwardly praises Maria’s thoughtfulness. It isn’t her hoodie; at this point, it’s none of theirs. Pepper genuinely can’t remember who it belonged to originally, but she knows Natasha adores it. She says it carries their scents, and it’s big enough to make her feel swaddled and secure.
Maria helps Natasha into it along with a pair of joggers and tall socks because Natasha generally hates having exposed skin when she’s experiencing episodes like this.
The woman gets no say nor does she offer any when she is guided to the bed in a conglomeration of ice packs and pillows that Pepper had worked on the last three minutes.
Her eyes shut when her head hits the pillow, and the sigh that leaves her lips is a small relief that at least she’s comfortable physically. They forgo medication because Natasha certainly doesn’t have any food in her system to help absorb it, and it would be absurd to have her eat at the moment. Pepper tries to content herself with the thought of making her girl breakfast in the morning.
Brunch would be better. Brunch means Natasha slept longer.
She’s afraid there won’t be much rest at all, but Natasha falls asleep rather quickly with the two women on either side, holding her as much as possible amidst the ice packs and pillows. Twenty minutes after Natasha falls asleep, Pepper removes the ice packs and moves to get up and replace them with new ones.
Maria stops her, a hand reaching across Natasha’s torso to graze Pepper’s arm. “She’ll be alright for the night,” she whispers. “Sleep.”
With an inward sigh, Pepper settles for removing the ice packs and piling them on the floor at the foot of the bed so they don’t soak the bedsheets as they continue to melt. She wants to do more, but Maria is right.
In the morning, the three of them wake to an alarm on Maria’s phone she had forgotten to shut off. Maria slams it off and chucks her phone across the room, ready to bury herself back in her partners like it’s any other morning, but it isn’t any other morning.
Natasha’s eyes are wide, and Pepper’s hands are on her upper arms to keep her from going further into whatever hell is forming in her mind. The redhead is pale, shaking, and her skin is damp as Pepper brushes her hair away from her face.
“Darling, it was a phone. You’re safe. I’m here. Maria’s here.”
“Ria?” she asks with nothing but pure desperation in her voice.
“Right here, little bear.” The woman sets a firm hand on her knee.
Natasha shuts her eyes so hard it’s a miracle they don’t bruise. Burrowing her head into Pepper’s chest, she sniffles and sniffles, and heaves and heaves. Pepper and Maria—
Well. They’ve done this before. They’ve seen this Natasha before. But that doesn’t make it easier. Not once has Natasha ever been so completely afraid and they thought, This is better than last time. Because she’s their girl, and she’s aching for something they don’t know how to give her.
“We’ve got you,” Pepper says for the twentieth time, petting Natasha’s hair gently.
Minutes of affirmations and assurances pass, and Maria is close to swearing off alarms for life. She knows logically that this is a result of whatever the witch did to her girl, but what does that mean? How do they undo it? How does she get her precious little bear back?
When Natasha finally settles down, she turns in Pepper’s arms and looks at Maria with a sad smile.
“I don’t like your alarm.”
“Oh, baby, I know.” Maria can do nothing but pull the girl into her arms and try not to cry at how easily Nat folds under her touch. “I know, baby. I am so sorry I left it on.”
“S’okay,” Nat mumbles, like she didn’t just have a breakdown for ten minutes. She takes another moment there, silent and warm, before rolling back onto the bed. “M’tired. Wanna go sleep.”
That’s more shocking than anything, but neither of them are going to argue. It doesn’t take long for Natasha to fall back to sleep in the arms of her partners. But neither of them sleep. Because if Maria closes her eyes, Natasha might disappear. Because if Pepper falls asleep, who’s going to watch for the twitches and the stirrings that mean Natasha’s not okay?
In the morning, the proper morning, they’ll all be awake together. And maybe everything will be magically fixed. Maybe Nat won’t remember a thing of the witch.
Here’s to wishful thinking.