#[disaster russian assassins who have never known normalcy in their lives grasping hands]

[rorykillmore]

so today is @firelxdykatara‘s birthday!!!! she asked for a fic with natasha in it, and i thought, well, villanelle went home a few days ago on denny but we never got to rp her’s and nat’s reunion. so i did a little fic of it!!! i hope you enjoy, kitty (and i hope i wrote nat okay, im love her) because i do adore this dynamic and i am just so happy we’ve gotten the chance to build it together as much as we have

also, have a wonderful wonderful birthday!!!  i know this is not exactly the easiest time of year to be celebrating, but keep your chin up and know that you have friends who love you and certainly love getting to spend a little bit of extra time with you. you have lifted my mood more times than you know by just being around and making me laugh, so i hope i can return the favor <3

Natasha is telling her little parts are enough, and oddly and inexplicably, Vilanelle thinks just then that maybe this is the safest she’s ever felt with another person.

The house is quiet the night Villanelle finally goes home. For a moment, she stands there out on the front porch and just breathes in the familiarity, the smell of the ocean and fire pits from down at the beach on the breeze, the sound of waves crashing against the shore in the distance. It soothes her, even if imagining what might be waiting for her inside does not.

With her and Draco gone, maybe Natasha and Fox have already cleared out. Personally, Villanelle doesn’t see grief or mourning as very good reasons not to live in a gorgeous and expensive mansion, but people and their emotions can be so unpredictable sometimes.

Maybe they are just out doing something. Maybe they are planning her funeral. Villanelle had considered further delaying her return for the sole reason that it would be incredibly fun and dramatic to crash her own funeral.

But barring that, she should probably stop standing here wondering about it and actually go inside, she figures. So she steps up to the door, and --

Damn it. 

It’s only when she tries the handle that she remembers she does not exactly have a key on her. To her own goddamn house. Wonderful.

Villanelle steps off the porch in favor of prowling the perimeter of the house instead, making for the pool deck in the back. Neither she nor her roommates are exactly the “hide a spare key under the doormat” type (they are all much too paranoid for that), but fuck, what is she, an amateur? If she cannot even break into her own home?

She’s just trying to figure out a way to do it without having to pay a window repair man -- and that’s when she rounds the corner of the mansion and sees that she was wrong.  The house is not completely dark.

There is a light on in (what she estimates with a fair amount of confidence, considering how long she’s been here) Natasha’s window.

And suddenly, Villanelle gets the perfect idea.

Experimentally, she grips some of the ivy casing crawling along the wall and, once she’s sure it’s not going to give, she starts to climb. Natasha’s bedroom is only on the second floor, thankfully, so it’s not like she has to make it the whole way. When she gets up to the window, she pauses briefly to readjust herself before giving it a quick tap. She doesn’t even detect any movement in response, but she knows that’s most likely because Natasha is smart enough not to put herself in plain view of a potential intruder.

Sure enough, the curtain gets pulled back a second later, though, and Villanelle finds herself face to face with her friend with only a panel of glass to separate them.

Natasha stares.

Villanelle grins, and uses her free hand to give her a little wave.

She holds her position as Natasha finally seems to remember herself, unlocking the window and pulling it open, and by way of greeting --  “You... realize you could have knocked.”

“I did,” Villanelle responds innocently.  “Technically.”

“At the door.”

“I thought you would respect me making an entrance.”

Natasha’s lips twitch, like she wants to smirk, but she doesn’t.  Maybe she’s still a little too rattled. Villanelle will have to try harder. But that will have to wait until she actually climbs inside, which she does carefully when Natasha moves back in clear invitation.

“Surprised to see me?”  she asks once she’s steadily back on her feet, offering Natasha a crooked grin.

Natasha doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, she first takes a moment to study Villanelle, who studies her right back, taking a quiet sort of delight in how good she’s gotten at reading Natasha’s usually inscrutable expressions.

She takes less delight in the troubled shadow of sadness she sees in Natasha’s eyes, but... well, what can she do? She can’t take back the fact that she was forced into the Games. Or the fact that she died there. 

“There were rumors some of the tributes were coming back,” Natasha finally responds. “But the RID hasn’t gotten anywhere close to verifying all of them.  So... yes.”  She gives Villanelle a tired sort of smile.  

Unexpectedly, Villanelle wants to reach out to her.  That’s a relatively new impulse -- so far, she’s shied away from too much physical contact with most of her reunions, or at the very least being the one to initiate it. Maybe the difference here is that Nat has always been so unexpectedly grounding for Villanelle -- not that she would ever be sappy enough to put that into words. But --

-- In some ways, it’s only now that she’s here with Natasha that it finally registers that she’s home.

She curbs her impulse and sits down on the edge of Natasha’s bed instead, shrugging.  “It was a surprise to me too,” she admits simply. Understatement of the century, but that part probably doesn’t need to be said.

Carefully, quietly, Natasha sits down beside her.  “...I’m not going to ask if you’re okay, because at this point that’s a stupid question.”

Villanelle hums in agreement.

“But depending on your level of... not okay, I’m...  you know. I’m here.”

And Villanelle supposes that she wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of scaling the wall to climb in through Natasha’s bedroom window if she had not, on some level, wanted her to be. She considers for another stretch of silence before she attempts a response.  “...You know what it’s like.”  Perhaps not the Hunger Games specifically, but extreme conditions of survival, endless cycles of violence, trauma? Villanelle is sure Natasha’s on the same page.  “Sometimes it is best to just compartmentalize and move on.”

Natasha exhales slowly, but there’s nothing remotely judgmental in her expression.  “It’s certainly easiest,” she agrees, without pushing. Villanelle instinctively relaxes a fraction.  “Especially since you haven’t exactly had a lot of privacy over the last few weeks. It’s just... sometimes it’s also good to have people you don’t have to hide everything from.”

It’s the way Natasha says it that makes Villanelle pause before just shoving the idea away completely. Most other people, Villanelle knows, would have said “you can talk to me” or “you don’t have to hide from me” or some bullshit like that, expecting her to open up like a book waiting to be read.

But Natasha knows that for people like them - people who have worn and shed the skins of many, many different personas, who may not even know who they really are if they dig deep enough underneath all that - it’s not such an easy thing to do. An impossibility, even, to give someone the whole of yourself, or even just the whole of a singular feeling, when you are so used to only chipping off and offering little parts.

Natasha is telling her little parts are enough, and oddly and inexplicably, Vilanelle thinks just then that maybe this is the safest she’s ever felt with another person. She sighs, and then laughs, the sound rusty with disuse.  “It feels weird. Giving your life for someone else.  Not good. Not special.”

Silence answers her briefly as Natasha turns to stare at the wall opposite, her mouth twisting wryly, sadly.  “...Yeah. I know what you mean.”

And she does, Villanelle realizes belatedly. Everything before the Games feels so much further away now, but she still remembers that ridiculous future marriage they’ve both avoided talking about. And she still remembers what Natasha told her, even if she has been trying to do Natasha the courtesy of pretending that she didn’t.

“I know what you did in there must go against all of your instincts. And everything you’ve been taught,” Natasha starts, her voice hitched with just enough emotion for Villanelle to know she’s speaking from experience.  “...But you made your own choice. And you did it for someone you love. And whatever else you want to think about it, Villanelle, that still proves that you are so much more than just anything anyone could train you to be. Than every fucked up thing you’ve been through.”

Villanelle swallows without saying anything and stares down at her hands. It makes her think of what Natasha said before, when she had described the sacrifice she’d made for Clint.  That she was broken. Villanelle has never thought of herself as “broken”, at least not in any kind of self-deprecating way, but she feels a little bit like she is now.

Mostly, though, she thinks about how Natasha came here after dying. How Natasha has probably not had anyone to tell her these things.  And Villanelle, surely, would not be very good at it if she tried, but...

...She finally reaches out the way she wants to, and squeezes one of Nat’s hands with her own. “So are you,”  she asserts firmly, determinedly, staring back at Natasha with all the adoration she can still muster (surprisingly, a lot, even given how exhausted she is) as if she can single-handedly, telepathically convince Natasha of how amazing she is.

And when Natasha squeezes her hand back tightly, Villanelle thinks, maybe she can’t fix everything for Nat just like Nat can’t fix everything for her. 

But maybe they can do it in little parts, just like everything else.

#fic #[disaster russian assassins who have never known normalcy in their lives grasping hands]