Author's Note: Nothing recognizable is mine. Anyway, Natasha couldn't shut up about Sharon in CATWS, I thought that was super cute, and they were both on the run at the end of CACW, so I decided to try my hand at fanfic for the first time in way too long. Slightly AU.

Natasha is small. Sharon forgets sometimes, even though she's known her for a decade, but at times like this, it's impossible for her to think of anything else. She leans back against the headboard, keeping watch while Natasha sleeps for the first time in what Sharon thinks must be close to three days. The redhead is curled in on herself on top of the covers—the motel's air conditioning is broken, and even with their windows open, the room is stale and oppressively warm—with her back to Sharon, and she really should be making plans, but the room is muggy and loose tendrils of her hair are sticking to the back of her sweat-dampened neck and all she can focus on is how fragile Natasha looks.

She can see the old exit wound on Natasha's shoulder where the strap of her black tank top has slipped to the side, and the older entry wound near her hip where the tank has ridden up, and even in the dim lighting of their room, the bruising on her throat is visible. She wants to wrap around Natasha and pull her closer and pretend this is one of their old SHIELD missions and Aunt Peggy isn't dead and they aren't branded as traitors and on the run.

It's not Natasha's first time on the run—Sharon remembers the shoot on sight order and her team's months-long search to find the legendary Black Widow, only to find a waifish, feral redhead barely out of her teens; remembers Clint's panicky, accusatory tone ("you didn't tell me she was a kid"); remembers the studied blankness in Nat's eyes when Coulson cuffed one of her scarred wrists to the cot in the holding cell on the Bus; remembers sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Maria while Coulson and May quietly debated and Clint called Laura to check on her and the baby and Barney stitched his brother's fresh wounds—but Sharon has never been the hunted, only the hunter.

She doesn't like how helpless she feels, even with a human weapon drooling on the pillow next to her and her handgun tucked under her own pillow, and she's self-aware enough to recognize that at some point, losing Aunt Peggy is going to sink in and she's going to shatter. When that inevitably happens, she knows Natasha will be there to comfort her and keep them both safe while she mourns.

For now, she lets her thoughts creep along sluggishly in the overheated room and carefully leans over Natasha to grab her battered copy of Little Women off the bedside table, the old mattress squeaking beneath her as she shifts and readjusts. She lets the book fall open to one of the dog-eared pages, purposely skipping the loving inscription inside the front cover (the book was a tenth birthday present from Aunt Peggy), before glancing at Natasha's back again. The fact that Natasha apparently managed to sleep through her movements confirms her suspicions about exactly how exhausted the petite redhead is, but it makes the corners of her mouth turn up in a slight smile anyway. Natasha has never trusted easily—most people would have been pinned on their back with a knife at their throat if they so much as moved around a sleeping Natasha—and Sharon is so, so relieved that she hasn't lost that hard-won trust.

She looks down at the yellowed page, but before she can find her place, a hand settles lightly on her arm. Nat has all but silently rolled over—Sharon is quiet, but she will never stop being impressed by how stealthy Natasha is—one arm tucked beneath her pillow as she blinks drowsily up at Sharon. There are still shadows under her eyes, dark against her pale skin, but she looks better than she did a few hours ago.

"Sorry," Sharon murmurs, reaching out to brush some of Nat's hair off her face as Nat withdraws her own hand. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

Natasha makes a soft, dismissive noise. "You didn't."

Liar, Sharon wants to reply, but she bites her tongue and watches Nat instead. She glances at the book in Sharon's lap, her lips quirking up in that familiar, crooked smile as she asks, "Read to me?"

She knows they'll have to talk—really talk—once they've both rested and recharged. They still don't agree on the Accords, and they need to make more permanent plans, find somewhere to lay low until the media frenzy over the "superhero civil war" dies down.

Right now, however, as the stifling, humid heat outside gives way to a steady downpour of rain and Nat stretches out lazily beside her, Sharon doesn't want to do any of that. She looks down at the page again, remembers quiet afternoons spent in old bookstores with Natasha, back when the redhead still had to stay with an approved agent when she left whatever SHIELD base or safe house she was being held at for that particular week. Natasha's training hadn't included many opportunities to read, and she had used the many long hours before she was cleared for active duty to begin to make up for a lifetime without reading materials, often with Sharon's advice and suggestions.

"Yeah," Sharon finally answers, several seconds too late to sound natural, "yeah, of course." She flips back a few pages until she finds the beginning of the chapter. "It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius," she began, reaching out with her free hand and smiling when Nat laced their fingers together on the pillow.