Echoes

Shuffling her feet along the concrete walkway to the front door of the loft, Scarlett stopped in front of the it with a heavy sigh. Instead of opening it she leaned her forehead against it and slumped against it for a very long time. It felt cool and comforting against her feverish forehead. The sky was overcast, much like her mood. Every part of her felt heavy from the day prior.

Medicated.

That was the word she was looking for but the more she focused the more she resented it. Grumbling a string of obscenities beneath her breath, Scarlett fumbled with her key in the door. Every bit of her anger was directed now toward the key, not the shaking hands that failed to complete the simple task. No, this was all the key's fault. Stupid key. Wouldn't fit in the damn lock. Sabotaging her attempts to get inside and escape the elements. Slowing down her progress toward a nap!

Finally she successfully unlocked the door, opened and slammed it closed behind her. The first aid kit was still sitting on her countertop, her laptop still tilted open with a poor connection. Scarlett wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed and sleep this dreadful feeling away. That wasn't exactly an option given the state of things but still it didn't stop her from dreaming about it. She knew she should call Tony but who could blame her for being hesitant to get into a conversation that started and ended with "hey, I've been lying about my health and I'm sort of might be dying"?

With another grumble Scarlett flopped onto the couch. The moment she rested her head back and closed her eyes there was a knock on the door. Probably someone from S.H.I.E.L.D. who had been waiting and watching to make sure she got home safe. She was not going to deal with a babysitter, it was out of the question. Yes, she was sick, but she was doing what she was told. No more missions, she took her damn medication, brought home another bag of fucking daily medication, and now she just wanted to be left to her own devices. There was plenty Scarlett could accomplish from her computer.

"Go away." Scarlett yelled when there was another knock on the door. For a moment there was silence and she waited expectantly but then another knock came and she grunted in annoyance and flopped backwards on the couch. Grabbing a pillow she shoved it over her face and yelled more obscenities into it.

Then the lock turned on the door and Scarlett sat upright and considered maybe it would be an actual intruder and not a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She thought she'd done a pretty good job of hiding her whereabouts these days, but who knew anymore? Then again, an intruder probably wouldn't knock first. S.H.I.E.L.D. knew where she was and Nick Fury had alluded to S.H.I.E.L.D. being compromised so there was a good chance that the powers that be knew exactly where to find her.

The door opened a crack. It wasn't an intruder.

It was Natasha.

"Ugh, go away." Scarlett sat up and made an attempt to fix her hair. Glancing at her reflection in the dark screen of her laptop she grimaced. There was no fixing that. It was everywhere. She needed a shower desperately. And a massage. And to not be sick. That would all be very nice.

"No."

"I'm not in the mood to argue with you. Or be belittled by you, either is super not appealing right now."

"I don't care." Natasha slipped her fingers between the door and the frame and removed the security lock with ease and then shoved a small tool back into her pocket. "We need to talk."

"You mean you need to talk. I'm perfectly content with silence." Scarlett sighed and closed the screen of her laptop. "You don't get to break into my place because you need to talk."

"Like you'd do any differently if the tables were turned."

"Ah, yeah, things would be different if the tables were turned. We wouldn't be here." Scarlett practically bit as she spoke and Natasha stood her ground but very much averted her eyes.

"I didn't mean it." Natasha took a step forward but even as the words left her lips they felt strange. These weren't the types of conversations these two were used to having and yet it felt like it was the only time they spoke anymore. Feelings were annoying, in the way, but in abundance as the days passed. The situation was far too dire to let it go. Life was much shorter than either of them had ever realized.

"Oh?"

"I didn't mean what I said to you yesterday." Natasha continued.

"Oh, yeah you did." Scarlett laughed in disbelief and stood up before walking into the kitchen. She needed a drink. As she walked to the half empty bottle of scotch on her counter she reconsidered and grabbed a glass of water. Too many drugs in her system. Simmons told her not to drink and she promised she'd listen. If she wanted to function for what she knew would come next, she'd have to make sure she was on her guard as much as possible.

"Scarlett…"

"No, you meant it." Scarlett drank from the glass but it did nothing for the annoying cling that developed in her throat overnight. "And you were right. I went about this all wrong, Romanoff."

"Don't call me that." Natasha moistened her lips in frustration. Were they really going to drag this out now? She wanted to apologize and move on, but she wondered if it would ever be that easy. Wishing your friend dead really sort of removed the whole concept of friendship entirely.

"I'll call you what I want to call you. I'm changing the game, Romanoff. Right now I need S.H.I.E.L.D. because I simply can't function without them but you were right. I never should've come to you, to them. I've put countless people in harm's way and I don't think I realized just how many until yesterday. Involving you was a big mistake."

"Don't be like this." Natasha sighed. "You're over tired."

"Don't tell me what I am and what I'm not." Scarlett tapped her hand on the counter. "You people at S.H.I.E.L.D. are really good at that. If I hadn't been blinded by fear I never would have come to you. I should have sucked it up and burned that bastard's body, gone off the grid and hunted them down one by one."

"They would have killed you." Natasha shook her head.

"You forget how good I was at my job. I forgot for a little while too. You got in my head. Made me insecure."

"You did the right thing. I'm your friend."

"Oh, you see that's where you're wrong." Scarlett pointed at her. "There are no friends in what we do. Just alliances. I should have gone to him not you. He's a stronger alliance."

"He would have gotten you killed."

"But he would have gotten the job done without putting all of you in danger." Scarlett sighed. Half of what she said wasn't true but she was cranky and tired. If she made Natasha go away then she could finally nap and go from there. She just needed to be nasty which wasn't hard. Scarlett had always had a way of getting under someone's skin when she wanted to. "I'm putting an end to this one way or another. And to be quite frank, I don't want your help."

"You would've been killed then and you will be killed now." Natasha walked to the other side of the counter and glared at the taller woman. She came to apologize, but if Scarlett was going to be stubborn and stupid, she'd have to be just as nasty. They'd never held any punches before, so she wasn't going to now.

"You don't get it. I'm dying either way, Natasha. At least this way no one else is caught in the crossfire. You focus on getting S.H.I.E.L.D. clean because I know it's compromised. I'll do what I have to do. It's only Mikhail now and I did a good number on him. Scott is of no consequence. Jackass never could pull off anything big on his own anyway. He needs Mikhail. He needs me. Always the side kick." Scarlett mused.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know how to explain that any clearer."

"You're not going to die either way, Scarlett."

"You can't tell me you're here just to apologize because you felt like I deserved an apology. You showed up to apologize because you read my file. Or someone made you feel guilty. Besides, you were there when I was in the hospital that day. You know how bad this really is. You knew it before it even hit me."

Natasha didn't say anything but shook her head. She'd gone pale. Scarlett walked around the counter and stood in front of Natasha.

"They tripled my medication, Romanoff. Simmons wouldn't tell me but I did the math myself. If it keeps going this way I'm done in a month. That's if it doesn't get worse before then." Scarlett waited for Natasha to say anything but there were no words. The redhead just stood there, glaring up at Scarlett. "That gives me a good three weeks to fight or at least until I can't feel my damn fingers anymore. I'm not going to curl up and cry, Romanoff. If I go, I go down swinging."

"It's not that simple." Natasha whispered at long last.

"It seems pretty simple. The only person I'm answering to these days? Is Tony. And to be perfectly honest I'm going to ask him to hide." Scarlett swallowed the lump in her throat. She knew Tony wouldn't hide. Hell, she knew half of what she said was a blatant lie. Scarlett was mad at Natasha, madder than she'd expected.

"It isn't about you protecting anyone, Scarlett. It's not about you keeping us safe. I made it about that. I'm sorry."

"You're not."

"If I can't tell you what you are then you can't tell me either." Natasha pointed angrily at the floor at the proverbial line in the sand between them. "This is about me caring about you. About everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. caring about you. Do you think we risk our necks because we have to? No. Jinx, Mickey, Maria? Simmons? Fitz? Even Ganter cares. You have done everything you can to keep us safe even going against your better judgment."

"Shut up, I don't need a pep talk."

"You didn't just come to me in a moment of panic, Scarlett." Natasha shook her head. "You don't do that. You're not a moment of panic person. You're calculative."

"You don't know how scared I was."

"I do. Trust me I do."

"Why don't you just get mad and leave? I know you want to."

"Because you're lashing out to get me to go."

"Yeah, take a hint."

"No." Natasha shook her head. "You thought by coming to me that I'd arrest you. You didn't care. Scarlett, you are a criminal. Like a…. international terrorist level criminal and have been for years. Just like I was. You came to me because you knew I would have to bring you to justice. Then maybe someone would listen to you and just maybe… even if you couldn't be saved, you could save other people."

It was Scarlett's turn to go silent.

"You thought about going to him, I know you did. He asked me why you didn't. I told him I didn't know but I do."

"Enough."

"He's a killer. He's not changing anytime soon, Scarlett. You knew that. I know that. It's why I told him to back off years ago."

"You what?" Scarlett blinked a few times at the revelation. "I am going to pretend you didn't say that because my time is too short to be this mad at you."

"The only way you were saving anyone was coming to me. Coming to S.H.I.E.L.D. You never expected to save yourself." Natasha watched as Scarlett walked and sat on the couch, placing her head in her hands. It was spinning, the whole world was spinning. She didn't want to deal with this anymore. Why couldn't Natasha just be like a normal person and get the fuck out when she got like this?

"Just let me do this." Scarlett sighed.

"We can stop this but we have to work together. I don't care about S.H.I.E.L.D., I care about you. We can do this. We can save you."

"You just said it yourself, I wasn't trying to save me." Scarlett felt suddenly weak. The rush of anger that she'd felt upon seeing Natasha melted away and her hands trembled, not out of fear, not out of upset, but from the stupid medicine she'd been given. Even now she could feel her stomach rebelling on top of everything else. Coughing she covered her mouth and avoided Natasha's gaze. "I can't watch anyone else die because of me. You keep everyone safe and I'll do what needs to be done."

"I'm not going to do that." Natasha sat down next to her with a sigh but kept enough distance between them as not to encroach on Scarlett's personal bubble. Right now her attitude was all over the place.

"I won't watch anyone else get hurt, Natasha."

"Do you think anyone is going to sit idly by and watch you stick your neck out for everyone? Someone has to stick their neck out for you too. Do you really think I'm not going to? Or that Tony isn't going to? Or Mickey? Or Jinx? Or any of us?"

"I can't ask any of you to do that. It was selfish of me ever to assume you would."

"Clint is going to be just fine." Natasha finally sighed and held up her hand. "I lost it because I am too close to everything and I felt guilty for not keeping him from going back under cover."

"Yeah, that was really fucking dropping the ball there." Scarlett rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty pissed at all of you for that, by the way. If it were my team? Never would have happened."

"I was torn between you and him. And he insisted. It's real tough working with people like us. We're all the same level of stubborn." Natasha smiled a little and Scarlett rolled her eyes again. "He'll be fine. Still in the hospital for awhile but he's a fighter. Did you hear what he managed to do at least?"

"No, I was too busy vomiting." Scarlett looked back to Natasha deadpan. "And everyone's afraid of me at S.H.I.E.L.D. so the only person who ever tells me anything is Nick Fury and I have spoken to him in person once. Total. So no, I don't know anything."

"Before they caught him he managed to swipe some valuable information off of the computers. He shoved a memory stick in his wound to keep them from finding it. It's gross but we sent it back with Mickey so they could take a look at it."

"Didn't get damaged in the water?"

"It was really in there. You don't want to know how far in there." Natasha grimaced. "Clint wanted to thank you for getting him out of there. Said you did good work."

"Well, I'm good at what I do so I'll make sure he knows it was no problem." Scarlett sighed.

"We're a team Scarlett, you can't just abandon the team."

"I was never going to abandon the team." Scarlett groaned in annoyance. "I just wanted you to go away."

"You can't get rid of me so easily."

"I'm learning that." Scarlett grimaced.

"If you don't let us help you then a lot of good people are going to die. Including you."

"Oh, I'm not a good person." Scarlett laughed, but it devolved into a cough which only served to irritate her so she slammed her fist against her chest to try and urge it along before she cleared her throat and spoke, her voice gritty and broken. "Never was. Not the type worth saving, Tasha."

"You're wrong." Natasha smiled, glad that they'd reached some sort of normalcy in their conversation. At least she wasn't being assaulted by her last name anymore. "Everyone is worth saving. Even as a shitty a person as you."

"Hmm, well haven't you become quite the optimist."

"That used to be you but you're really bringing me down right now."

"Maybe because someone told me I should have died." Scarlett retorted.

"I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"I’ll make sure Clint gives you a hard time about it after I'm gone."

"Morbid."

"Yeah, probably the drugs talking." Scarlett knew it wasn't, but she wouldn't argue optimism and pessimism with Natasha. The redhead leaned back on the couch but didn't speak. Scarlett guessed she wasn't going to be left alone for a little while.