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111. ❝If you find somebody you can love, you can’t let that get away.❞
Days like this were the worst days.
The days where she woke up in a cold sweat, the days where nostalgia hit her like a tidal wave and she ended up pulling out the small box she kept beneath her bed. Keepsakes, memoirs, photos...Of the things she’d lost. Or rather, the people she’d lost. Nikolai, Ivan, Alexei, Rose...People stolen from her before their time but with each individual, the relationship had been complicated. Even when she’d loved someone, it hadn’t been easy because the circumstances had never allowed it to be.
The first item she let her fingertips dance over was the black ribbon Nikolai had given her on the battlefields of old Russia, back in 1944. How it hadn’t crumbled to dust by now was beyond her but she was grateful that it hadn’t. They’d just lost a comrade; all they had left was each other and despite being no older than sixteen, Natasha had loved Nikolai. There had been no marriage ceremony, nothing official just this ribbon that his Mother had put on his uniform like a favour. He’d wrapped it around Natasha’s finger and shortly after, she’d lost him to the gunfire. That had been her first marriage, her first loss of love.
The second loss had come a few months later. She’d found out she had been pregnant. A daughter. Rose, she had called her. It hadn’t lasted, the babe didn’t even have a chance to draw a single breath before she was taken from the world. It left Natasha devastated. Sure, she had been young. A tender seventeen but she knew what it took to survive and she had been ready to cradle her child. Now, she’d lost both the father and the child. All she had left in this world was Ivan, her adoptive father who had never once left her side. In the box was a black pressed rose, preserved in a vacuum sealed bag.
Her third greatest lost came in the shape of her second husband - The Red Guardian - and there was a framed photo of her and him in her treasure chest. Initially, she hadn’t loved him. She’d been promised to him by the KGB, had lies implanted into her mind to believe that she wasn’t a spy but rather a ballerina and a housewife. Alexei had been a hero to Soviet Russia, their greatest pilot and it was a honour to be his wife but her heart was broken because despite all their attempts for children, she’d turned out barren. She was a failure as a wife, unable to continue his family name. Of course, eventually the memories begun to blur and she couldn’t recall what was real and what wasn’t. Did she love Alexei or The American? Was she a ballerina or a spy? Despite the brainwashing, the programming, she’d ended up loving him and then she’d lost him to a missile. The loss drove her further into the KGB’s arms; she’d lost everything and she was willing to be compliant and do whatever they asked of her.
The worst loss came in the form of Ivan. The man that had pulled her from the wreckage of a fire when she had been nothing but a baby. The man who had raised her through wars and enrolled her into the Red Room - giving her a chance to be educated and learn to survive. The man who had held her as she’d cried over loss after loss after loss. What stung about this loss the most was that she had been the one to cause it. She’d killed Ivan. To her, he had always been a father figure but it turned out over the decades he had loved her as more than a daughter. During the 70′s, she lost touch with him, worrying that the fact he was aging would get him hurt on her adventures but when he finally resurfaced, he had gone insane. He’d tried to launch nuclear devastation and she had been forced to put a stop to him - it was Ivan or the world and Natasha chose the world over her own feelings every damn time. All that remained of Ivan now was one of his war medals; presented to him for his outstanding loyalty to the KGB.
She’d been so wrapped up in her thoughts that she barely heard the knock at the door, barely registered as James entered the room. When she did, she lifted her gaze from the box that sat on the bed in front of her, gripped so tightly between her fingers that her knuckles were turning white. The concerned look on his face made her swallow, trying to keep down the lump that had formed in her throat. ❝If you find somebody you can love, you can’t let that get away,❞ she managed to choke out, a rogue tear slipping down her cheek as her eyes returned to the contents of the box.