Who: Natasha & Wanda What: Sharing a living space with someone when you're used to being alone is. An adjustment. Where: Natasha's Capitol penthouse. When: Late late late at night. Probably at some point after Wanda's dinner with Loki.
Nightmares.
Nightmares were never really something that went away. Natasha hadn't conducted a formal poll of all the surviving Victors, but if she had, she would've been willing to put a wager on the fact that most of them had a similar take on it to hers. The nightmares were not something that dulled, and they were never something that you really got used to, but they were something you learned to live with.
A person could learn to live with just about anything. In Natasha's experience, at least.
The times when she woke up screaming were the best, as though her brain had taken care of purging itself. She'd scream herself awake, heart pounding, but when her eyes adjusted to the dark, she'd look at her surroundings, identify them instantly, and more often than not be able to roll over and go back to sleep. The worst were the times she woke up still locked in sleep paralysis, eyes rolling, chest crushed like something heavy was sitting on it. Unable to cry out or do more than suck in panicked, juddering breaths until her body let go and she could wiggle her fingers, toes, sit up in tiny increments. Drenched in cold sweat and trembling like the frightened little mouse she'd never been, not really. The little mouse she'd pretended to be to buy back her own life.
Those were the nights that Natasha had learned by now to give up on. Get out of bed, strip the sheets, get out of the room. It was a routine she had down by now, and after her heart had stopped racing, after the sheets were piled in a corner of her room, she pulled her sweat-soaked hair into a sloppy sleep-knot and headed to the kitchen to make coffee.
She hadn't been kidding when she'd made never running out of coffee a house rule. It was a desperate need on nights like this one. The familiar smell and the warmth of the mug in her hands and the careful routine she went through to prepare it. The precise scoops of grinds, the temperature of the water, the way she'd measure out cream to the exact amount she wanted. The way she'd force herself to drink slowly and let it soothe her instead of guzzling the whole pot in a desperate attempt to hold sleep at bay indefinitely. Pharmaceutical stimulants would have done the job more effectively, she supposed, but you jumped on that road and it was nothing but a long, long slide down, for most Victors. At least, that she had seen.
In her haste to banish this particular nightmare, though, still foggy with the haze of abruptly canceled sleep, she'd forgotten: she wasn't alone in this place anymore, and the smell of good, expensive coffee was a smell that traveled, once it started brewing.