[He nods at the very beginning. He doesn't expect to like what he's about to hear, but he can respect her privacy, and whatever official red tape there is keeping her past under lock and key.
It starts off familiar enough. Lost parents, lost children... but then it becomes so much worse. One of his hands is balled into a fist in his lap, and he curls the fingers of his other hand over it, feeling the pressure of them tense and release as she speaks. He's looking at his hands but not seeing them at all. He thought Hydra was a nasty piece of work, indiscriminate as they were, but this Red Room had deliberately used children as lab rats and tried to mold them into killers. And in a horrible way this, too, is a part of the legacy Steve left. People think men like him can be made, then made into weapons. They experimented on children. On Natasha.
He doesn't know how she speaks so calmly, because he's not sure he can speak at all at the moment. He's caught somewhere between anger and a hollow kind of grief for what was done, and what wasn't. What can't be changed.
He feels her gaze on him and looks up to meet her eyes, nodding just slightly for her to continue. He realizes as soon as she says he's the one who taught me how to fight that this where he comes into the story. It feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs. It can't be true. He wants to argue, but he can't bring himself to, right at that moment. There's something in the quiet cadence of Natasha's voice that rings too true.
He helped them do whatever it was they did to her, and who knows how many other people like her. He doesn't know how or why in God's name he lived for that, but suddenly it seems like death was easy.
His arm seems like a small thing to lose in comparison, and he thinks dully of when Steve had scolded him for joking about just that. He can't decide if it's less funny or more now.]
I don't... I don't know how to... [He swallows, and makes himself look at her, at least.] I'm sorry. For everything.
Re: Feb 19th | Action
It starts off familiar enough. Lost parents, lost children... but then it becomes so much worse. One of his hands is balled into a fist in his lap, and he curls the fingers of his other hand over it, feeling the pressure of them tense and release as she speaks. He's looking at his hands but not seeing them at all. He thought Hydra was a nasty piece of work, indiscriminate as they were, but this Red Room had deliberately used children as lab rats and tried to mold them into killers. And in a horrible way this, too, is a part of the legacy Steve left. People think men like him can be made, then made into weapons. They experimented on children. On Natasha.
He doesn't know how she speaks so calmly, because he's not sure he can speak at all at the moment. He's caught somewhere between anger and a hollow kind of grief for what was done, and what wasn't. What can't be changed.
He feels her gaze on him and looks up to meet her eyes, nodding just slightly for her to continue. He realizes as soon as she says he's the one who taught me how to fight that this where he comes into the story. It feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs. It can't be true. He wants to argue, but he can't bring himself to, right at that moment. There's something in the quiet cadence of Natasha's voice that rings too true.
He helped them do whatever it was they did to her, and who knows how many other people like her. He doesn't know how or why in God's name he lived for that, but suddenly it seems like death was easy.
His arm seems like a small thing to lose in comparison, and he thinks dully of when Steve had scolded him for joking about just that. He can't decide if it's less funny or more now.]
I don't... I don't know how to... [He swallows, and makes himself look at her, at least.] I'm sorry. For everything.