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Widow Bites
I've got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out.Closed RP blog for Avengers Mansion
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Never Enough Time (Moscow, 1982)
@wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot
It didn’t look like much. A dusty jewel among all the other jewelry in the open drawer of the vanity. And she hadn’t been trained to be a looter. But something about the gem called to her. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.
“Natalia,” the Soldier said. He’d already cleaned and hidden his weapon, and was waiting impatiently for her by the door, looking deadly with tactical uniform and metal arm. He was always impatient, and with good reason. They never had enough time--
Time--
“Time,” she murmured quietly, and touched the gem.
-- and she was lying on her back on a hard mattress, the blankets piled carelessly around her body, staring at the Soldier sleeping beside her. When he slept, the line between his brows softened and the corners of his mouth relaxed. He looked almost boyish, and tired, and sad, and Natalia ached for the secrets of that grave look, secrets that the Red Room had hidden from them both. Who had he been, as a boy?
-- and she was in a street, in a place she didn’t know, that smelled of trash and car fumes and waste, and two boys hurtled down an alleyway, one blonde and one brown-haired, shouting with excitement. They nearly crashed into her. “Sorry!” the brown-haired one, in pursuit, cried over his shoulder on his way past, and Natalia felt her heart twist with the inexplicable knowledge that this was him, her Soldier.
-- and then she was lying in rocky sand, her heart beating sluggishly and her breath catching in her lungs, as a man stood over her and his shadow blotted out the sun, but she knew who it was without needing to see his face, and she knew somehow also that she was bleeding into the sand.
-- and she saw him across a room, turning away -- in a cryo-tank, his metal hand pressed against the glass -- in front of her, no recognition in his eyes.
-- and she was sitting across from him at a table in a restaurant. A nice restaurant. He was wearing a suit and the lines around his eyes looked a little more worn, and his mouth seemed more like he smiled. He was holding his hand with both of hers. She was wearing a dress that felt silky against her skin, and (she knew) his favorite set of underwear, and she was older. Much older.
“It feels like we never have enough time to ourselves, these days,” he was saying.
She laughed. “You know it’s more than we used to get. And it makes our dates even more special.”
“I know,” he said. “But I want--” He cut himself off and shook his head, laughing. Natalia was enthralled. She’d never seen him laugh like that before, so easy and free. Then he sobered up again. “Listen, Natalia. I want... to spend my life with you. Whatever that might be like. Whatever happens.” He let go of her hand with one of his so that he could reach into his jacket and pull something from his pocket. A ring box, she knew before he opened it. The ring was silver, with a blue sapphire in the center. He held it out to her, like he was offering his heart in his hands. “Natalia Alianovna Romanova,” he said in Russian, with that same slight American accent she’d caught the first time they’d met. “Will you marry--”
--
“Natalia!”
She came back to herself with tear-filled eyes and a lump in her throat, to find the Soldier in front of her, his hand around her wrist. She felt older than her twenty-two years, like she’d been gone for ages, and exhausted, like she’d slogged up a hill in mud or snow. It was similar to how she’d felt when Rodchenko had worked on her in the past, but less... sinister. Something strange had happened, but nothing was wrong.
“Natalia,” the Soldier said, his voice softer as he saw the tears in her eyes. “Are you hurt?” He glanced at the jewelry she’d been touching. “Do you... want one?”
She wanted a silver ring with a dark blue sapphire in it. “No,” Natalia said out loud and had to laugh because he could always make her feel better. “No, my darling. Our target is dead. Let’s go.”
The Soldier gave her a skeptical look, clearly deciding whether he should try to continue this conversation. But the longer they stayed in this bedroom, the more dangerous the situation became; the more likely they were to be discovered by one of the politician’s bodyguards.
A ring, Natalia thought, a little giddy, as they rappelled out the window and into an alleyway below, then, lightfooted, made their way to the rendezvous point. A ring with a sapphire. With a certainty she didn’t often feel, she knew it would happen, but not when or where. One day. Somewhere.
They just had to make it that far.
#avenmsn wc12#i watched the movie arrival last month on the plane and i'm still messed up over it#wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot
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Winter Soldier: Idiots.
Natasha: Some of them are, agreed. But not all of us.
Winter Soldier: You think I can’t disarm you?
Natasha: If you take the gun, I drop the grenade. You take the grenade, well, you know what happens…
Winter Soldier: This isn’t supposed to be a live ammunition exercise.
Natasha: Rules were meant to be broken, “капитан”.
From Captain America & Bucky #624, by Ed Brubaker, Marc Andreyko, and Chris Samnee.
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Natasha: He has to die.
Get dead Nazi Steve, imo.
From Secret Empire #2 by Nick Spencer and Andrea Sorrentino.
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wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot:
She lifted her hands from her side and reached for him. Without pressure on the wound, she’d lose consciousness in minutes, exsanguinate not long after – but she reached for him, and he stayed.
“You know me. Soldier, you know me better than anybody else.”
He wrapped his right hand around her wrist.
“We need to go,” he said.
He released her wrist, leaned forward, and seamlessly lifted her as he rose to his feet. The need to get to his pick-up point was perilously at odds with the desire to stay with this Natalya, but taking her there with him seemed unwise, somehow. Dangerous – more dangerous than not showing up at all.
He mounted the bike, pulled her close in front of him, and kicked it to life. With his right arm, he maintained control of the bike as he peeled down a service road away from the wreckage; with his left, he held her steady, his gloved palm pressed just over her hip. Her wound didn’t allow them time to cover much ground, so he stopped near a cove where he could leave the bike – unregistered, indistinct, no one could track him by it – and continued on foot, the woman in his arms, until they were hidden enough for him to decide if he wanted to tend to her.
(He did.)
He lay her against the cliff side and shed his jacket. He didn’t carry any first aid or medical equipment, so he tore the lining from the jacket and folded it into an improvised gauze. He pressed it to her side and nodded at her to hold it, and only once he had folded the shell of his jacket into a makeshift bandage and begun to tie it around her did he speak again.
“Who are you,” he asked. Demanded. No – asked.
The Soldier’s hand around her wrist felt like both an anchor and a lifeline, thrown to her across so many years, bringing her back and drawing her once more to him. Natasha’s eyes closed without her own volition. She felt him let go -- stifled a sob -- and then lift her up with no effort at all.
He smelled like leather and gunpowder and metal oil and sweat. Natasha turned towards him, gripping at his Kevlar vest. He could be taking her to his handlers, handing her off to her death, and she wouldn’t even struggle until he let her go. And maybe that was what he was doing, Natasha thought hazily as she heard the motorbike start as if from a great distance. And then movement, and the Soldier’s strong arms, and a woozy feeling as a wave of nausea and darkness swept over her...
... and then a rocking motion, boots crunching in sand...
... and then a hard surface against her back. It smelled like seawater. Natasha forced herself to open her eyes, finding the Soldier once again blocking out the sun as he tended to her wound, pressing some cloth over her hip. Natasha forced herself to shift and rise up to look -- his jacket. That could be damning, if someone found out. If, if they couldn’t simply run away here and now. If she couldn’t get him to SHIELD.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice more gentle than his question.
“You’re a marvel,” she said weakly. “Soldier, my love, my solnishka, they told me you were dead.” She reached for his hand.
Black Seas and Gunmetal Skies // Natasha & Bucky
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a-man-outof-time:
He felt something in him finally freeze over.
“Then I guess that’s that,” he said, and stood. “No sense putting on a front as a team if we aren’t going to operate like one.”
He’d risen with tablet in hand, but when he looked down to see more headlines and Tweets and YouTube rants, he dropped it back to the tabletop.
“You’re probably right,” he conceded. “If the team agreed to endorse the bill, I wouldn’t do it. I’d find my own way. But I wouldn’t undermine the decision by staying. And if we agreed not to endorse, or to endorse with conditions – I’d still have a lot to say about it.”
It belatedly occurred to him that he looked like he was looming over her. She wasn’t one to be intimidated by even overt displays of machismo, but he took a step back and propped his hands low on his hips anyway. He was just as ready to find out where everyone else stood on the bill as he was to stay put and try to persuade Natasha to oppose it, but his disappointment – and maybe his wounded ego at being pegged so bluntly – left his speechless. He shook his head, shrugged lightly.
“So we’ll…we’ll put out a ‘no comment’ statement for now. And then we’ll…”
He licked his lips.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said with a finality he wasn’t sure he felt yet.
There was a finality to Steve’s face and voice when he finally rose, tablet in hand. It was... disappointment, and underneath that, anger. Frustration. Natasha tilted her head back to meet his gaze and deliberately didn’t get up, even though that left Steve towering over her. She wasn’t afraid of what he could do. Not right now, not yet.
If this was a stalemate, then it was a stalemate, and maybe Natasha could salvage what she could from the interaction. She respected Steve; she liked him, and she had never been the type of person to let disagreements like this get in the way of her personal feelings.
(Steve... wasn’t like that, though, and it didn’t take her Black Widow training for her to know already that that would be a problem.)
“You have a lot of things to say for just about everything,” she said with a sly grin. When Steve finally stepped back, she stood as well -- not to fight, or to argue, but to say goodbye.
“So we’ll…we’ll put out a ‘no comment’ statement for now. And then we’ll… we’ll figure this out.”
“We’ll figure this out,” Natasha echoed. Empty words, and they both knew it, but hearing it in Steve’s voice made her feel a little better. Which might have been why she overstepped net, showed a few more of her cards than she’d meant to. She reached forward to take Steve’s hand, clasping it in both of her own. “You were a great teammate.”
Damage Control (Nat & Steve) | 15 June 2016
#a-man-outof-time#cold war event#damage control#sorry i thought i would end this but then nat was a drama queen
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Second Thoughts and Second Chances (Maria & Natasha) | 15 October 2016
@furyslefteye
Natasha Romanoff did not often request a private, off-the-record meeting with Maria Hill, whether to share clandestine information or as a girl’s night out. Whenever they did meet outside of SHIELD property, however, they tended to favor the seedier sorts of places, where no one but the occasional unlucky man would bother them. It was to such an establishment that Natasha had invited Maria today. Things were getting hotter, more nervewracking, with the SRA. Arrests and prosecution would begin in two days, for those who hadn’t already been arrested, and everyone, for or against the SRA, was feeling the pressure.
For her part, Natasha was feeling two kinds of pressure -- on one hand, from the government, to implement the law that she had openly approved through her own registration. On the other hand, from her own conscience, to mitigate its worst effects (and maybe, Natasha thought, all its effects).
More and more lately, she felt the consequences of her choices closing in on her like a vice. Like a spider’s web, trapping her more thoroughly the more she struggled. Was there a way out of this mess? A few months ago, Natasha would have said certainly; of course there was a way out. She could wriggle her way free of anything.
Now, she wasn’t so sure, and Maria had to feel it too. And Natasha had heard the rumors -- more news than rumors, really -- of a secret prison in the open ocean, a technological marvel (horror), and of the woman behind its creation: Maria Hill.
“Thanks for coming,” she said, looking at her glass -- whiskey, neat; she wasn’t so predictably Russian to drink vodka all the time, and this bar would undoubtedly have something cheap and second rate. She ran her finger around the rim as if she was lost in thought, rather than focusing intently on the woman next to her. “I was worried you’d be too busy.” She flicked her eyes up to meet Maria’s gaze. “How are you?”
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wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot:
She called for him – “Soldat!” – and, per his training, he stopped. Turned.
He didn’t take orders from her. But he – remembered? A voice –
“I thought—they told me you were dead! You’re not dead, please—”
A name.
“It’s me, Natalya –”
He slowly returned to her, even as his instincts screamed at him to leave, get to his rendezvous point, return to base. His instincts screamed, but something deeper, heavier, drew him back to her. Not a memory, exactly, but…a desire. He didn’t remember her, but even wounded and weakened, she invoked him in the memory of – yes, desire. He wanted to stay with her. He wanted to know who she was.
He wanted.
He lifted the goggles from his eyes, then pulled his mask from his face. He recognized now that he wanted to kneel next to her, but, for a moment, he remained standing.
“Natalya,” he repeated. The name scratched at his underused throat, but it also felt full and sweet, like the first mouthful of water he was allowed to take after a mission. It brought him to one knee in front of her.
“I know you,” he said, almost convinced that it was true, but the words nonetheless left him as a question.
Natasha couldn’t breathe.
Half of that was trauma from the bullet hole in her side, just above her hip: she was bleeding out, though she was putting pressure to her wound, and didn’t want to distract herself by actually taking care of it. Her body was going into shock. The other half was-- something deeper, if she could claim to have feelings deeper than her bodily instincts. It came from the way that the Soldier stopped in his tracks, his muscles quivering like he was contemplating fighting or running. The way that he walked back to her like he was swimming upstream against the strongest of currents.
He blocked out the sun again when he stopped in front of her, but Natasha didn’t need that anyway. Her eyes had already filled with tears at the sound of his sweet and long-awaited voice saying her name. Her real name.
When he kneeled down, her breath hitched in her throat, and she reached out with both hands, ignoring her wound, to touch him, wherever she could. One hand found nothing; the other one ended up on his shin, against the leather of his boot.
“You know me,” she agreed. A few tears escaped her eyes and ran hotly down her cheeks. “Soldier, you know me better than anybody else.”
Black Seas and Gunmetal Skies // Natasha & Bucky
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marvel meme: female characters [4/7]
Natasha Romanoff
Before I worked for SHIELD, I, uh… Well, I made a name for myself. I have a very specific skill set. I didn’t care who I used it for, or on. I got on SHIELD’s radar in a bad way.
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backwardsandinhighheels1945:
“Wintry,” Peggy replied, and returned the handshake in kind. “Though, I’m afraid I didn’t have time to do much sight seeing. I’d love to spend some real time there one day.” That was about as close as she could get to saying that she’d spent the entire time there on the job–but Romanov knew what kind of job it had been. Hydra were involved, and the paper trail had led her here. God bless the Germans and their fastidious paperwork-turned-paper-trails.
She adjusted her bag and turned again towards the door. “Are we walking or hailing a cab?” As Peggy spoke, the Russian was already approaching a parked sedan. The trip from the airport was short, and at the odd time of day, the traffic was lighter than Peggy was sure it otherwise would have been. The city was brighter than it had been last time Peggy had been there, but there were still dark shadows like dark memories littering the streets and a sort of grit that might never be washed away.
After not too long, Natasha parked and Peggy stepped out, then retrieved her bag from the back seat. The building was old. Peggy was fairly certain it pre-dated Stalin, but it was so badly worn by time that it seemed just as drab on the outside. On the next door stoop, two old ladies were sharing a bag of sunflower seeds, and eyed Peggy, obviously seeing her as an outsider. Peggy nodded to them, and went to Natasha’s own building door to await its unlocking.
Inside and in the safe house, Peggy took the bag from around her shoulders, and placed it and the information it carried down. Most, thank goodness, were in digital files, but there was still a considerable paper trail she had picked up along the way. All of it added to the weight both of the meaning and the physical bag. “After everything, I’ve been led to Moscow,” she said, and unzipped her bag, and began to spread the papers and pictures across the dining room table with no regard for meal space. Romanov would understand. “Now, I remember they nearly–the Huns, I mean–nearly reached Moscow but were stopped a few miles west. Where I believe I’m meant to go is farther east. That doesn’t seem quite right that there would be some kind of German base east of Moscow?” She looked up at Romanov. Perhaps her colleague would know something Peggy didn’t.
As they drove through Natasha's neighborhood, she tried to see it from an outsider's—Agent Carter’s—point of view: the tall concrete buildings, the drab sidewalks, the small parks that were covered in patchy green grass or dilapidated ball courts. Natasha parked in her usual spot. A few kids were playing outside. The two Kunetskaya ladies were out on their front stoop eating sunflowers. They stared as she led Carter up the steps into her building. Natasha nodded at them.
Her apartment, tidy and with a relatively fresh coat of paint, had managed to shake off most of the 1960's brutalism that suffused the apartment building. As Agent Carter put her bag down and started pulling out files, Natasha put on the kettle to make them both some tea. Then she came over to look over the papers, instantly recognizing the mark of HYDRA on some of the files. As Carter explained the situation, she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned at the documents.
“A base east of Moscow… There are two possibilities for that. It could be a relic from scientific cooperation before Russia declared war on Nazi Germany.” In the days of the shameful Moltov-Ribbentrop pact, in other words. “Or it could be from the 1970s, when HYDRA and the Red Room—the facility where I was trained—cooperated.” The kettle began to whistle. “Excuse me.”
She turned off the heat and let the water rest for a moment while she scooped black tea leaves into a teapot. Then she poured the hot water over them and left it to steep as she returned to the table. “There is a third possibility: that this was a secret base unknown to the Soviets—or at least, unknown to most of them—where the Germans carried out operations behind enemy lines. I don't know what those operations would have been, though.” She met Agent Carter’s eyes. “Do you?”
Wondrous Land (Peggy & Natasha) 20 July 2016
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thefuturistknows:
“Regarding Siberia… I’m actually curious what Brock Rumlow, a rogue HYDRA agent, was doing in a secret military base.”
Misdirection. It stuck out as a conspicuous move, now that Stark was deliberately measuring Natasha’s reactions, looking for any signs that she might have been the one to pass all that sensitive information to Steve’s reckless hands. Her words didn’t exactly help her case, and the possibility that she might be trying to maneuver Tony somehow had him fixing his posture as she talked, until he stood as rigidly as he usually did when conversing with Ross.
He was gritting his teeth. He was going to stay cold and careful–
“I suppose it’s lucky Steve got there when he did.”
“No – we’re lucky Rhodey got there when he did, in time to save Rogers’ ass from a situation he wasn’t prepared to deal with,” Stark said, and it came loaded with more emotion than he’d intended. His hands had curled into fists inside his pockets. “The Captain landed himself in jail because he refused to trust us enough to make one phone call, he put Rhodey in danger, he blew a hole in whatever credibility we still had as a group, and now, thanks to him, Siberia and whatever the hell was happening there is completely out of Avengers jurisdiction.”
He scoffed, and stepped away from the desk.
Lucky. What a fucking joke.
If anything, if this was how Steve wanted to face this entire PR storm – God, Steve might have been right, if anything he was better locked up because then he couldn’t do any more damage. Now it was just his image that they needed to worry about, because Steve Rogers behind bars inspired resistance. So they needed to tarnish his image and Tony was sure that this was exactly what Steve’s upcoming trial was going to be about, and he wasn’t sure he could do this. He was never sure he could do any of this.
“Please just cut the bullshit and tell me if you were the one who fed him intel or not,” Tony said. He stopped by the window and folded his arms tightly across his chest, regarding Natasha with hard blue eyes. “We’re all under fire, and I’m not so sure we can afford being wildcards.”
It had always been relatively easy to push Tony Stark's buttons, and right now was no different. Though, Natasha considered, as she coolly watched him speak, Steve was even better at making him mad, and right now, she was just piggybacking off of that. Sometimes she envied Tony, she reflected, for how easily he wore his heart on his sleeve. How he could make his emotions into a strength rather than a weakness. (How he'd never had those types of reactions trained—beaten—out of him.) Unfair, maybe. But that's why she kept her thoughts to herself.
And Steve—he was aggravating. Incredibly so, with his iron sense of pride and unshakeable stubbornness. He'd decided that he was right and they were wrong, and now he was going to just barrel on ahead like a charging bull and leave them to clean up his messes.
But this wasn't about either Tony or Steve, ultimately—Natasha had her own concerns, and foremost among them was Siberia. She looked Tony dead in the eyes. “It wasn't me,” she said, completely honest. All she could do was hope that he believed her. “But what he might have found there, and what Rumlow was doing there, concerns me.” And it should concern you, she thought, but you are too distracted by Steve in front of your face. “Do you have any theories? Did Steve or Rhodes find anything?”
The Man in the High Castle (Nat & Tony) | 3 September 2016
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a-man-outof-time:
Steve waited for Natasha to say something more, but when she remained silent, he felt himself go stone still.
“No,” he said flatly. “It’s not. It’s supposed to be a conversation about uniting the team.”
He watched her in the heavy silence that followed, raised his hand intending to hide his mouth behind his fist again, then changed tack and tented his fingers against the tabletop.
“You said you’ve chosen your side. I’ve chosen mine. Sounds like we could use a vote. If the majority of the team thinks this is the way to go, then I’ll consider endorsing, but – ”
He shook his head.
“ – we’ll need someone else to release a statement on the team’s behalf.” He offered her a chagrined smile. “Until we have an official stance as a team.”
At least Steve was aware of what he had almost done to the conversation, Natasha reflected, watching Steve’s body language as his fingers twitched and he brought his hand up to his mouth before changing his mind and adopting a posture that was deliberately open and defensive at the same time. Tense. This whole conversation was tense, she reflected, and they were equally at fault. Steve for his stubbornness and his inability to see past Tony Stark. Natasha, for…
She supposed she was being stubborn as well. She looked down at her empty coffee cup and then up again, keeping her hands still deliberately so that she wouldn’t give any of her own emotions away from her posture. Focusing on other people’s gestures always made her more conscious of her own.
Steve was offering an olive branch. She should accept it.
She allowed her expression to lighten into a small grin. “I agree, and you are our spokesman. Captain America. But—and I don’t want to say anything against democracy here—I don’t think a vote would solve our problems.” She leaned back a little in her chair. “Regardless of the what the majority of the team voted, I would still want to follow my own way. And,” she met Steve’s gaze, unafraid, “I imagine you would too.”
Damage Control (Nat & Steve) | 15 June 2016
#no worries about the length!#as long as we keep 'em tense for the Drama#a-man-outof-time#damage control#cold war event
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wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot:
He didn’t have to approach them to confirm the kill; he could see plainly enough that the mark was not going to survive.
But there was still the matter of the woman.
He closed the distance between them, pistol still raised, but when she looked up at him, he didn’t see the terror to which he’d become accustomed. Her eyes were bright, wide, yes, but – overriding the pain was something else, something that wasn’t fear for her own life, something – something he thought he ought to recognize, something a niggling part of him wanted to respond to, but he didn’t know how. Whatever she wanted to convey, whatever he was supposed to do in response, wasn’t in his conditioning.
He’d been ordered not to leave witnesses.
She was already wounded and without a vehicle; the nearest roads were the of the winding, scenic route that saw far less traffic than the roads further inland.
He’d never left someone for dead – he’d be disobeying – he’d never…
Had he?
Something seemed to tug at the base of his skull. He frowned.
Then he lowered the gun and returned to the bike.
He stared at her. He raised his gun.
Natasha thought—distantly, dreamily—that this would be an appropriate way for her to die. Killed by the only man she had ever loved, someone who now didn’t even remember her. She used to think about going this way. She used to think that it would be better to die by the Soldier’s hand than anyone else’s. But then he turned away.
That was almost worse. Natasha hated the sight of his back, hated the silence with which he headed back for his bike. She mustered her strength and sat up, ignoring the ripping ache in her side. “Soldier!” she called in Russian, her voice already hoarse with pain and the pure emotion that was constricting her throat.
“I thought—they told me you were dead! You’re not dead, please—” If this had worked on him before, if, years ago, she’d been able to snap him out of the haze of memory manipulation and Dr. Rodchenko’s control… she could do it again. She could bring him back now, and not everything would be lost. “It’s me, Natalya—”
But as she continued babbling, exposing things (her heart) that she’d kept locked down under the tightest possible security, she began to wonder—what if, this time, she couldn’t get him back? What if the Room had won? What if the Soldier, her Soldier, was gone?
Black Seas and Gunmetal Skies // Natasha & Bucky
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sorry ‘tasha
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a-man-outof-time:
“Will Tony and I – no. We’d vote, and then we’d restructure, just like we did after SHIELD fell.”
He watched with only barely concealed awe as Natasha recomposed herself after the closest thing to an outburst Steve had ever seen from her. He appreciated her frankness, though, and it wasn’t lost on him that he was one of few to whom she offered it. Maybe that was why he was especially put-out about this turn; he’d taken for granted that she would already understand why the SHRA was dangerous, and now he was almost at a loss for how to convince her otherwise.
“Then we’re at a stalemate.”
Maybe more than almost.
“I know your strength is in bucking the system from the inside out, and maybe…”
He inhaled deeply, held it, then slowly released the breath through his nose. If reconnaissance wasn’t his strength, then neither was compromise, but…for Natasha, for his team, he could try.
“As long as the SHRA is on the table, we need one of our own in Washington. We need someone to make sure this doesn’t pass as-is, because you know there are too many loopholes in this thing right now, and once it passes, it’s months until we can make any headway. At best.
“Our job is to protect people, and that’s what resisting the SHRA is about, too. We’re not just talking about us, but civilians – children – who would be put on a government watch list under this act. Who could be made soldiers before their time. Believe it or not, I can work under supervision” – I worked for Fury, he tried to telegraph to her with a quirk of his eyebrows – “but I won’t be the next SA. That’s the difference here.”
He was talking in circles, and as soon as he realized it, he backtracked to something else Natasha had said that had stuck in his side.
“What – what makes you think Tony and I couldn’t lead together, if that’s what the teamed wanted?”
A stalemate? Natasha wasn’t sure if that was the word she’d use to refer to their current impasse. This wasn’t a chess game, and they weren’t on opposite sides; she had the feeling that they were arguing for very similar results, but disagreeing completely on methods.
And it was a disagreement, she reflected as a bitter taste rose in her mouth when Steve mentioned children turned into soldiers before their time. What do you know? she wanted to ask him, and had a fleeting but satisfactory vision of what she could do: throw her coffee, mug included, into his face, then storm off. But she’d spent her life working not to be an egotistical team leader, and she wasn’t about to start now. She put her mug carefully down on the table and continued to listen.
Steve was wildly off base with these comparisons, she reflected. And foolish, if he thought that somehow she was his best liaison in Washington (as opposed to Janet or Hank), or that her public involvement in opposition to the SRA would do anything but damage. Before she could argue with him on those points, though, he changed the subject to Tony.
Speaking of being an egotistical team leader, Natasha thought and didn’t bother to hide her brief flash of amusement at the question. She knew she was burying her feelings of friendship for Steve under her disdain, actively working to push him away. But it was a measure taken for self-protection. They weren’t seeing eye to eye and, after this conversation, Natasha wasn’t sure that they ever would. And she also wasn’t sure how much of Steve’s opposition to the SRA was rooted in logic, and how much was rooted in his complex, messy feelings for Tony Stark.
She didn’t say any of that, of course. Instead, she gave a slight, one-shouldered shrug and said, “This is not turning into a conversation about your relationship with Stark.”
Damage Control (Nat & Steve) | 15 June 2016
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wintersoldier-weatheredpatriot:
He found the car upside-down at the bottom of a shallow cliff and his mark on the ground, still breathing if the woman attending to him was any indication. He pulled the pistol from its holster as he dismounted the bike a mere ten yards away from them.
She turned to face him. She didn’t move even as he raised the gun.
Her hair was red.
The easiest coarse of action was to shoot them both – first her, then him, then give their bodies to the Black Sea to hide the ballistics. He didn’t need to be told that. His finger was already tight around the trigger, his gaze already locked on her eyes.
He lowered the barrel of the gun a matter of inches and fired. Behind her, a spray of scarlet and ebony blossomed against the side of the car.
A motorbike, behind her. Natasha pulled herself away from the fainting Esfahani--a good scientist, perhaps, but a useless operative--to face her attacker, moving so fast that it made her already concussed head whirl. At first, she thought the dizziness was why her fingers scrabbled at her holster and came up with nothing. But then her brain caught up with her heart. It was him.
The moment seemed to last forever. Later, she would recall looking him up and down, taking in his black tactical gear and the play of the slightly hazy sunlight on his metal arm and the barely there red-gold highlights in his hair. She’d remember searching his eyes for any hint of recognition, any glimpse of their shared past, and finding nothing.
She wouldn’t remember the sound of the gunshot, or the choking noise of Esfahani behind her, coughing out his last breaths.
She would remember the pain, radiating out in fiery tendrils from just above her hipbone. She’d remember falling. She wouldn’t remember hitting the ground. It was because she was too distracted, watching the way that he blocked out the sun, so that the light became a pale halo behind him. She opened her mouth.
“Please...”
Not, please don’t hurt me. More like, please remember. Please, stay.
Black Seas and Gunmetal Skies // Natasha & Bucky
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