On the Run

[float_on_alright]

 
Title: On the Run
Series: Love on the Run
Characters: Natasha Romanov, Maria Hill
Genre: mostly friendship,
Fandom: Marvel Movie Verse -- Post Captain America: Civil War
Summary: Natasha looks for help after disobeying The Accords by helping Steve and Bucky get away at the airport.
Rating: PG
Pairings: none in this, planned Natasha/Sharon Carter for the series
Warnings/Spoilers: None.

I don't own any of these characters or anything, I'm just having fun.  

Natasha Romanov did not have a lot of friends. She’d been fine with that for a long time because the ones she did have were the kind that had your back no matter what was happening--whether that was a fist fight, a madman with a nuke, or the need not to eat cold leftover pizza, at home, alone on a Saturday night, again.

Even now that she was on the run because of her actions at the airport in Berlin, she knew that Clint would have her six in a heartbeat. The problem with asking Barton for help was the fact that he wouldn’t say “no,” and he was in enough trouble considering he had just been imprisoned for breaking The Accords. Laura was probably going to kill both Clint and Natasha over this latest business. Granted, it was a miracle that either of them were still alive considering everything they’d put Laura through over the years.

No, Natasha wouldn’t ask Clint to add her to his list of issues so she was going to have to call on a different friend. But first she was going to have to find that friend.

Natasha grabbed three burner phones and walked out of the tourist trap of a store she’d been in for the last few minutes, keeping her head low and her hood up. No one was paying attention to her here. She was just another New Yorker in a hurry to get anywhere else and not talk to anyone on the way now that she was back on the streets of the city. No matter how many cameras were around, it’d be easy to go missing in this crowd, and she’d trained for this sort of thing her whole life. A memory of dancing until her feet bled flashed across her mind, but wouldn’t let herself linger in the past right now.

Natasha did feel a little guilty about stealing phones, but she would try to leave them somewhere the owners would find again later. She tried to think of it more as borrowing without permission rather than stealing. (Steve must be rubbing off on her.) Ducking through an alley, she found herself grateful that she didn't have any family beyond the one she'd made for herself. Clint would find a way to take care of himself, and his family, and the few other friends she'd made over the same years would do the same. She never had to worry that she was putting her innocent mother at risk or that someone would chase down her sister and hold her hostage for information on Natasha. Some might call her life lonely, but compared to the cold, brutal years she'd spent in the Red Room surrounded by people who were either her enemy, her prey, or both; she figured she come a long way.

Right now though, she needed to focus. She used the first phone she'd stolen to send a text, just one word, "I."

She dumped the phone in a mailbox she passed as she walked. She was grateful for the rain today, everyone else was miserable, but it helped her blend in. No one would question why she was keeping herself folded over with her hood pulled low if they even looked up enough from watching their own path for puddles and mud to see her. She'd need to bleach out her hair soon. Red was too distinct a color to keep parading around in and maybe it was time for a new cut too. She was getting a little bored with the style again anyway.

But that would wait until later. Three blocks up and one over, Natasha sent out the next text. This time it said, "AM."

She slipped that phone into the pocket of an old lady walking past, and she could only hope that the grandmotherly aura the woman projected was genuine. Natasha was good at reading people, but she'd only had a split second to make a decision and she wasn't psychic.

Natasha jogged another block over before cutting back two blocks again. She sent out the last text, “FREEZING.” There weren't a lot of great choices for where to put the last cellphone so she snuck it into the underbrush of a potted plant that was taller than she was outside a hotel.

She'd have to hurry now, the window of getting where she needed to be at the time her friend might show up was slim and coming up quickly. She debated taking the train, but she couldn't risk any delays today so she picked the lock of the first bike on the first rack she saw and pedaled as quickly as she could for the bus station.

"Sorry, buddy." She apologized to the owner of the bike. She had no idea where the owner was right now, and unless a miracle happened, said owner would probably never see their bike again. Unfortunately for them the bike wasn’t worth as much as her life, at least not to her.

She swerved through yellow taxis and screaming pedestrians, but she didn't have time to stop for them. She missed a collision with a skateboarder by about three millimeters and had to jump over a section of torn up road. Skidding to a stop, she nearly fell off the blasted thing and only just missed throwing herself in front of a moving bus. Using the bus's slower pace and size to her advantage, she dodged behind it and skimmed herself between the back of the bus and the front bumper of the car behind it, again, barely managing not to injure herself in the process. The man in the car let out some pretty colorful language in response, but it was drowned out by the blaring horn of the woman in the car in the next lane over that only just stopped in time not to hit Natasha.

She sucked air in, breath coming hard and sharp now, and her lungs stung with it, but she couldn't slow down. If she missed this window, she was out in the cold or turning to Clint, and she hated both of those options. She pushed for another burst of speed through an intersection as the countdown for a crosswalk went down to two seconds. She didn't have time to stop. Someone yelled profanity, but there was no telling for sure if the person had meant it for her or not considering this was New York City. She jumped another curb and skidded into a turn to make the left she needed. Another skateboarder almost bumped her, and she spent precious seconds righting herself and picking up speed again.

She could see the bus stop now; she was almost there. <i>Almost there</i>. The time on her watch said she had about 90 seconds. Her calves screamed in protest, and she wasn't sure she'd ever catch her breath again, but she fought for those last few yards before tossing the bike onto the rack at the front of the grimy building, and she shot into the station. <i>Almost there</i>.

There was no way to keep the attention from herself now, but if she made it, it wouldn't matter. If she didn't make it, well, she was shit out of luck anyway.

She barely danced around a security guard that tried to stop her from bursting through the door that led to the stairwell up to the roof. A floor up, and then a window, and then a fire escape. She swung herself on the roof, gasping and grasping at the concrete until she was able to scrabble onto the roof. Her lungs heaved, and she was pretty sure she'd pulled her right calf muscle, but she could hear the hum of the helicarrier, and she smiled. She'd made it.

A rope latter appeared out of nothing, but thin air, well, what appeared to be thin air and she pulled herself up to it just as the security guard crashed onto the roof behind her. She was swinging wildly, which made it harder for her to move up the ladder, but it also made it nearly impossible for the guard to make a good shot. He still attempted a couple of shots, and she felt the whistle of one fly past her, but he missed, and after a few more pulls, she was close enough that hands reached out to pull her into the underside of the helicarrier. It wasn't glamorous; they'd pulled her into some sort of processing room, but damn, she was thankful. She laid on the floor for a few minutes, panting and wheezing. Natasha prayed she wasn't going to throw up--she knew there was a chance, after everything she'd just put her body through, that she might just be sick, especially if she couldn't catch her breath soon.

"So, it looks you've managed to piss off most of the world governments. Again."

Natasha thought about responding, but she really couldn't breathe enough to speak yet.

"Well, at least you do it well. Who in their right mind uses stunners on a king?"

Natasha glared at Maria Hill who was smiling down at her. Natasha smiled back.

"You need me to get you an oxygen tank, old woman?"

Natasha still didn't trust herself to speak, so she just flipped Maria the bird. Maria laughed, practically cackled.

"It's good to see you, Natasha. It's been too long."

Natasha coughed while she laughed.

Maria continued, "You know, it would be nice if you could visit me when you're not on the run. Maybe sometime you could just call me up and we could go to the movies and have dinner or something. Like normal people."

"I'll work on that," Natasha managed to get out, and then they laughed together while Maria helped her up. Natasha praised every deity and every ounce of training she’d ever gotten; she’d made it.