redintheledger | Central Park, Steve Rogers

Central Park, Steve Rogers

The glorious thing about New York is that if people recognize you, you are probably just another person they recognize and they pay you little heed.

Also, the footage from the battle had no close-ups and was blurry, so all the public know of Black Widow is a redhaired woman in a black catsuit. Natasha can live with that.

She can also live with the New York branch of SHIELD being annoyed at her for skipping out and taking a long lunch. It's not as if she's out of the country (this time), and she'll come back. Eventually.

For now, Natasha is sitting on a bench in Central Park sipping coffee, looking like any other office-worker out on her lunch break; dressy slacks with matching jacket, a stylish blouse, smart heels with a thick heel and a thick strap, a gun in a holster underneath her jacket-

Okay, maybe normal officer workers don't have guns.

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He glances at her.

"You know, I hadn't really thought about it.

"We were at war for years, and before that ... Well, I was fresh out of school. There wasn't anything I wanted to do more than join the army. After I met Dr. Erskine, nobody asked what I wanted to do besides save the world. It's the only thing I'm good at."

He looks embarrassed briefly, but shrugs it off with a nervous smile. "I guess I draw pretty well. The movie business wasn't too awful. I'm kind of hopeless at dancing, though."

It's the only thing I'm good at, he says, and she grimaces ever so slightly.

So slight, someone might miss it.

"There's art school, you know. If you wanted to study, and...have a life again."

That echoes in his brain for another second after she says it. He frowns, the creases in his brow deep.

The smirk that follows is light and lopsided, and doesn't seem to fit at all. "Is there life after what we've done?"

The look she shoots him is almost irritated.

'Almost', in a woman as controlled as Natasha Romanoff, says a lot.

"Yes," she says. "Of course there is. We're alive until we die, Steve. We might as well make the most of it. You pay your debts as best you can, and you make damn sure you remember how to laugh.

Unless," and her tone is light as a razor-blade, "you like behaving like you're the only one who can't go home again."

That razor blade catches him in the throat.

"No, no, that -- that isn't what I meant!" he says, lifting his hands just as much for defense as to reassure her.

He sighs, dragging a hand through his hair, and tries again. His voice is slightly tense, a combination of nerves and frustration. "I mean, yes. There's no going back home for me, or you by the sounds of it. I just meant S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, Fury, whatever -- they're going to let me go to art school?"

It's more than that. Does he even want to go to art school? Now? Ever?

"Natasha -- Ms. Romanoff -- Natasha. I just saw giant alien centipedes spill from a hole in the sky, OK? I saw half this city reduced to rubble because of one crazy ... alien, who, while green, was not as little and friendly as they would have had us believe. The world needs us, don't you think?"

"What's the point of saving the world if you're not part of it, Steve?"

He thinks before answering, even if he doesn't feel like he needs to. "I already feel like I am. Maybe not the most important part of it, but a part."

At least this is something he knows how to do. Someone he knows how to be. He's already had to start over once this month.

"Good. That's...good.

But the world doesn't need saving every day. Everyone...needs something else. Not just people, but something so you can go and relax and have a bit of normality in their lives. It's grounding. You need grounding in this kind of job.

Do school part-time. Leaves time for training, and saving the world. And if you get into trouble with the paperwork, I can help you."

Normality.

Yeah. Steve could use a little more normality. He's resigned himself to "getting used to things" because, as far as he can see, nothing is going to be normal again. Not in the ways he's used to.

"Right."

He rests his elbows on his knees, keeping his head turned so he can see the agent. He chortles when she offers to help with his paperwork.

"You're from Russia, right?"

She quirks a brow, but nods. "I left when I was twenty-one."

He nods.

(He knows better than to ask her why.)

"So what did you do?" He glances at the park, making a small gesture. "New country, new customs. Strange people. How did you rejoin the world?"

Natasha regards him for a long moment, and then looks away.

"I've had training in blending in," she says at last. "Lots of training at being American, at being French, at being Hungarian. That isn't just language skills, but it's slang and know how things worked. So, for a while I didn't really 'rejoin' anything, I just drifted and blended in and then took off again."

Mercenary, assassin-and-spy-for-hire, on the run from the Red Room and various agencies.

Until Agent Barton made a different call.

"Once I got to the US thanks to SHIELD, it...I had an agency again. I had a team to work with. I had Clint, who insisted on making me watch crappy action movies. Which is fine," she adds with a fond smile. "I like crappy action movies.

But there's no trick to it. You just have to talk to people and belong to something. Make friends. It took me several years to make myself a home. But, you're not as paranoid as I am."

He's attentive to her. It's the forties in him oozing out again: the respect for a woman his mother instilled in him; the way Being a Man means being polite, minding your manners, and taking care of someone, like his father used to say. He seems interested in what Natasha has to say because he is interested, and not just for his own benefit.

He clasps his hands, one foot bouncing almost imperceptibly under the weight of his torso (like he's sitting on the sidelines waiting to be called into the game, needing to keep his muscles active, ready to spring). He smiles when she finishes, moving around the etch-a-sketch of his forehead to show bemusement instead of consternation.

"Can you imagine me sitting down with Stark for a flick? Or Banner?" he mutters lightly. It's the kind of lightly that says it could happen, maybe, someday that isn't right now. He wonders if making friends is what he's done with the Avengers. He'd trust them, her, with the city, the country, his life; but is this right now them being friends, or just a couple of teammates shooting the breeze?

It isn't a date. He feels the need to point that out to his subconscious.

Very much not a date - he's a kid, all early twenties and shiny with ideals.

Besides, she's married.

"Funnily enough, Stark and Banner aren't the only people in the world," she observes, slightly amused and slightly blank.

"You don't...spar with anyone from SHIELD? Never suggest going out for a few beers? Join a movie club? They are around."

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Central Park, Steve Rogers

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