(no subject)
Real?
Avengers | The Black Widow's and the Winter Soldier's origins, interspersed with Mighty Avengers and Captain America #27-34
General/Romance | PG | 2102 words
Natasha/Bucky
Only in each other can they grasp what is real.
Nothing was right anymore.
Shadows of the warmth and love of parents who were never there; memories of her standing in the Bolshoi as a ballerina when she had hardly been out of this wretched place; the ringing laughter of friends she never had-
-what was real?
The headaches-coupled with flashing blurred images of lives she couldn’t know she’d had or hadn’t-had gotten worse lately. Before that fateful day she and Ivan were beaten within an inch of their lives, those images were mere ghosts in her dreams which scurried like the rats in the isolation chamber she had spent much of her childhood in by the time she woke up.
(Why were she and Ivan running? With each passing day the answer retreated deeper into the thickening fogs in her mind.)
The reflection in her mirror betrayed how old she felt. How old was she? She felt like she had lived an entire lifetime-maybe two or three entire different lives and-
-which one was real?
There was a click behind her and her legs moved by their own accord. The man fell with a dull thud onto the ground and she twisted his wrist to make him let go of the gun.
“Comrade, if this was real, you would have been dead seven seconds ago.”
His left arm gleamed in the dark, reflecting the dim light streaming from the cracks of the cottage. The stiff Russian tinged with that weird accent; the emotionless eyes; the level tone of his voice-it was the Winter Soldier himself, her new weapons instructor and also the harbringer of her new life in the form of the two syringes of pale yellow chemical a few weeks ago in the streets where she and Ivan lay bleeding.
“But how come I’m the one sitting on top of you with the gun trained on your head?” she grinned, cocking her gun and pressing it slightly into his temple. She leaned forward slightly more, looking directly into his face. There was something about this man-he might not have the answers she seeks but she felt that he might have something she had…
“Because this is merely a training program,” he deadpanned, staring at her fearlessly, and somehow she felt him daring her to pull the trigger-something actually stirred in the still brown eyes. “Here’s another lesson about keeping your head in the game, comrade.”
He moved so fast, before she knew it he had thrown her into the ground, the ancient wooden floorboard creaking at the sudden force, and his hand-his cool, heavy metal hand-was clamped around her throat, not too tightly, but enough for her to choke for air. “But of course I couldn’t harm mother Russia’s most promising Black Widow candidate, could I?” he whispered, his breath falling on her face.
She stopped struggling and smirked despite the increasing breathlessness in her chest. “Heh, comrade, I just don’t think you’ve got it in you to hurt a pretty girl.”
Those brown eyes narrowed, but she did not miss that shadow flickering behind them. His lips curled into something she had seen in her own reflection all too often: confusion, defiance, recklessness. She briefly wondered how old he was, or if time had stopped making sense for him too.
Did he know what was real?
The grip on her neck slackened and he made to get off her, his hair now covering his eyes so that she could no longer see the swirling emotion in them. The rumours were wrong-he was not a robot; he was not a cold emotionless killing machine-
-his lips were warm and soft and human and his breath smelled of musk and his human touch sent electric tingles down her body and most importantly of all he was the first thing that was real in her life (or lives).
“What are we doing?”
“I thought you’d know.”
They were in her bed (it was a single bed and they were squeezed in each other’s arms-not that she was complaining; she was already getting used to the cold of his metal arm), glancing at the window overlooking the vast Russian wilderness, both of them knowing all too well the flimsy curtain could never protect this secret they shared.
She snuggled into his chest and pressed her ears against his ribcage-ba dump, ba dump went his heart and she’d never felt so safe and so real. “I don’t,” she said into his skin and kissed a particularly sensitive spot. “We are in so much trouble.”
“I know.”
“We shouldn’t do this.”
“I know.”
“But we’re crazy enough to keep at it anyway.”
“I know.”
She didn’t even know his name-she never pressed him for it because she had a feeling she wouldn’t be the only one in the dark about that. How weird was it that this nameless handsome man who had neither past nor future in her arms felt like the most normal part of her life right now?
They spent some time in silence and she watched his chest rise and fall and tried to synchronise her breath to his and he chuckled at her efforts. Every night they would hold each other so tightly like it was their last, because they knew all too well one day it would be true.
“I should go now,” he said, even though he made no move to leave. “You’ve got a test tomorrow; you should be well rested before it.”
“You know very well I’d ace it,” she replied. “Stay a while longer.” Her last sentence was redundant because they both knew he would anyway.
“I should be stricter in your assessment,” he said (his chest rumbled when he spoke, tickling her cheeks), “wouldn’t want the higher-ups to think I’m playing favorites.”
Her mind lazily wandered to her classroom, the straight rows of tables occupied by the twenty eight girls and the instructors’ watching them all with hawklike eyes, constantly scribbling on clipboards and urgently whispering with each other. He’d be standing among the rest of the instructors, stoic, silent and still-he was more of show-and-tell teacher (“this is how you fatally shoot a target at long range”) than one to drone endlessly. She’d seen the rest of the girls giggling behind his back when they could afford to and she’d rolled her eyes (and smiled inwardly) while keeping her poker face on. They were both good at this game-his expression never did flicker when he had to address her and she’d just bowed and replied to him as dictated by regulations.
And it was always the formal speak in the classroom. Comrade this, comrade that. All for the glory of Mother Russia.
He was different when he was alone with her. At first, he held back and kept his distance, but it didn’t take long too cajole this hidden side of him out, and it seemed like he himself was surprised at the discovery of another side of him.
(And they both knew which one was real).
He got up fifteen minutes later and she watched him pull his pants and shirt on, his silhouette hiding the bright Russian moon behind the window. “We should stop doing this,” it was his turn to say that, which he did as he brushed his lips against her forehead.
“See you tomorrow, comrade.”
He slipped out of the windows and into the night too easily.
His name was Alexi Shostakov-that she found out by some snooping of her own, because they did not have the decency to tell her the name of the man she was to marry.
“He’s an ass,” he said and laughed into her mouth. Two years on and when he was by her side he was a drastically different man. He cracked jokes about his superiors and literally swept her off her feet from time to time and in the middle of the night as they cradled each other to sleep he would tell her stories from his dreams. His stories were all set in a war and they were extremely colourful-sometimes he could not continue, as if a thick veil had suddenly descended into his mind while trying to recall his dreams, but that was okay, because then they’d amuse themselves by trying to finish the stories the best way they could.
“So you do know him?”
“I’ve seen him around,” he replied, twirling her hair in his fingers, “I’m better looking than him.”
She chuckled. “Lucky me.”
It was harder for him to drop by these days, but somehow she was starting to believe that everything would work out, even after she found out that she was to marry a man whom she had never talked to or seen in her life.
(She started to believe in her own fantasies-she so wanted to believe they would be real).
She knew they were pushing it: he was staying longer and longer in her room, sometimes staying for entire nights, and there was even one time when he had led her into a store room as if he wanted to do a surprise inventory check and instead they did it there in the dark stuffy room with her pressed against the door and never before had she felt so much urgency and danger and desire all at once.
So what was she playing at?
“Say, Tasha,” he suddenly said, “do you know anyone called Steve around here?”
What a strange name-it sounded so foreign; so American. “No, I don’t. Why’d you ask?”
He turned to face the window. “I… don’t know-it’s just something I’ve been hearing again and again in my head and I feel like it’s a part of me somehow…”
“It’ll come to you, milii moi.” She knew how he felt, and by this time they knew that time was their ally.
She was lying against his chest and she could feel the thump of his heart beating for her.
“Natasha!”
The sun was warm on her face and the cold Russian winter was nothing but a distant memory-she was in New York City, and everything was real now: the buzzing city below her, the cup of lemonade Jarvis had just offered her, and Janet beside her.
“You look really out of sorts today; are you okay?”
It was just yesterday she had met him again on the streets and it was as if he had not aged a day (and neither had she) and he was even more fiery than she had remembered, so alive, so real. He’d given her a concussion, but it wasn’t the dull throbbing pain in her head that bothered her.
But that was classified information; of course she could not tell Jan that.
“I’m fine, Jan, thank you,” she said, sipping the lemonade (perfect for the New York summer).
Her mind was already in the debriefing Tony had in the works for her an hour from now. She had no idea whether she was still angry at Tony, or if she was grateful for the chance to meet him again (under the most twisted of circumstances).
(Whom was she angry for, anyway? Steve, for not announcing to the entire world he was back? Him, for not announcing to the entire world he was back? Her, for never bothering to find out if he was back?
Get a grip, Natasha, she gritted her teeth and told herself).
The last time she saw him, he was in a freaking oversized test tube with cables and wires poking in and out of him and he was just floating there like a corpse and she had screamed and screamed and given away her position without a single care in the world (and she got five days of solitary for sneaking off into classified areas) and after everything that had happened, she’d have liked to forget the dark days in Russia.
(Except he was the single bright light during those wretched times).
An hour from now, she was going to see him again even though she knew Tony wouldn’t let her to. She didn’t need long-just minutes, seconds, for her to finally see him in flesh and blood and metal after all these years.
(He’d recognized her then on the streets; he called her name in the same way he'd always said it).
There was something in her chest-she’d hide it well because she was a professional: an Avenger, a SHIELD agent, and the Black Widow-and she knew she had nothing to fear about him, because he was real then, and he was real now.
Avengers | The Black Widow's and the Winter Soldier's origins, interspersed with Mighty Avengers and Captain America #27-34
General/Romance | PG | 2102 words
Natasha/Bucky
Only in each other can they grasp what is real.
Nothing was right anymore.
Shadows of the warmth and love of parents who were never there; memories of her standing in the Bolshoi as a ballerina when she had hardly been out of this wretched place; the ringing laughter of friends she never had-
-what was real?
The headaches-coupled with flashing blurred images of lives she couldn’t know she’d had or hadn’t-had gotten worse lately. Before that fateful day she and Ivan were beaten within an inch of their lives, those images were mere ghosts in her dreams which scurried like the rats in the isolation chamber she had spent much of her childhood in by the time she woke up.
(Why were she and Ivan running? With each passing day the answer retreated deeper into the thickening fogs in her mind.)
The reflection in her mirror betrayed how old she felt. How old was she? She felt like she had lived an entire lifetime-maybe two or three entire different lives and-
-which one was real?
There was a click behind her and her legs moved by their own accord. The man fell with a dull thud onto the ground and she twisted his wrist to make him let go of the gun.
“Comrade, if this was real, you would have been dead seven seconds ago.”
His left arm gleamed in the dark, reflecting the dim light streaming from the cracks of the cottage. The stiff Russian tinged with that weird accent; the emotionless eyes; the level tone of his voice-it was the Winter Soldier himself, her new weapons instructor and also the harbringer of her new life in the form of the two syringes of pale yellow chemical a few weeks ago in the streets where she and Ivan lay bleeding.
“But how come I’m the one sitting on top of you with the gun trained on your head?” she grinned, cocking her gun and pressing it slightly into his temple. She leaned forward slightly more, looking directly into his face. There was something about this man-he might not have the answers she seeks but she felt that he might have something she had…
“Because this is merely a training program,” he deadpanned, staring at her fearlessly, and somehow she felt him daring her to pull the trigger-something actually stirred in the still brown eyes. “Here’s another lesson about keeping your head in the game, comrade.”
He moved so fast, before she knew it he had thrown her into the ground, the ancient wooden floorboard creaking at the sudden force, and his hand-his cool, heavy metal hand-was clamped around her throat, not too tightly, but enough for her to choke for air. “But of course I couldn’t harm mother Russia’s most promising Black Widow candidate, could I?” he whispered, his breath falling on her face.
She stopped struggling and smirked despite the increasing breathlessness in her chest. “Heh, comrade, I just don’t think you’ve got it in you to hurt a pretty girl.”
Those brown eyes narrowed, but she did not miss that shadow flickering behind them. His lips curled into something she had seen in her own reflection all too often: confusion, defiance, recklessness. She briefly wondered how old he was, or if time had stopped making sense for him too.
Did he know what was real?
The grip on her neck slackened and he made to get off her, his hair now covering his eyes so that she could no longer see the swirling emotion in them. The rumours were wrong-he was not a robot; he was not a cold emotionless killing machine-
-his lips were warm and soft and human and his breath smelled of musk and his human touch sent electric tingles down her body and most importantly of all he was the first thing that was real in her life (or lives).
“What are we doing?”
“I thought you’d know.”
They were in her bed (it was a single bed and they were squeezed in each other’s arms-not that she was complaining; she was already getting used to the cold of his metal arm), glancing at the window overlooking the vast Russian wilderness, both of them knowing all too well the flimsy curtain could never protect this secret they shared.
She snuggled into his chest and pressed her ears against his ribcage-ba dump, ba dump went his heart and she’d never felt so safe and so real. “I don’t,” she said into his skin and kissed a particularly sensitive spot. “We are in so much trouble.”
“I know.”
“We shouldn’t do this.”
“I know.”
“But we’re crazy enough to keep at it anyway.”
“I know.”
She didn’t even know his name-she never pressed him for it because she had a feeling she wouldn’t be the only one in the dark about that. How weird was it that this nameless handsome man who had neither past nor future in her arms felt like the most normal part of her life right now?
They spent some time in silence and she watched his chest rise and fall and tried to synchronise her breath to his and he chuckled at her efforts. Every night they would hold each other so tightly like it was their last, because they knew all too well one day it would be true.
“I should go now,” he said, even though he made no move to leave. “You’ve got a test tomorrow; you should be well rested before it.”
“You know very well I’d ace it,” she replied. “Stay a while longer.” Her last sentence was redundant because they both knew he would anyway.
“I should be stricter in your assessment,” he said (his chest rumbled when he spoke, tickling her cheeks), “wouldn’t want the higher-ups to think I’m playing favorites.”
Her mind lazily wandered to her classroom, the straight rows of tables occupied by the twenty eight girls and the instructors’ watching them all with hawklike eyes, constantly scribbling on clipboards and urgently whispering with each other. He’d be standing among the rest of the instructors, stoic, silent and still-he was more of show-and-tell teacher (“this is how you fatally shoot a target at long range”) than one to drone endlessly. She’d seen the rest of the girls giggling behind his back when they could afford to and she’d rolled her eyes (and smiled inwardly) while keeping her poker face on. They were both good at this game-his expression never did flicker when he had to address her and she’d just bowed and replied to him as dictated by regulations.
And it was always the formal speak in the classroom. Comrade this, comrade that. All for the glory of Mother Russia.
He was different when he was alone with her. At first, he held back and kept his distance, but it didn’t take long too cajole this hidden side of him out, and it seemed like he himself was surprised at the discovery of another side of him.
(And they both knew which one was real).
He got up fifteen minutes later and she watched him pull his pants and shirt on, his silhouette hiding the bright Russian moon behind the window. “We should stop doing this,” it was his turn to say that, which he did as he brushed his lips against her forehead.
“See you tomorrow, comrade.”
He slipped out of the windows and into the night too easily.
His name was Alexi Shostakov-that she found out by some snooping of her own, because they did not have the decency to tell her the name of the man she was to marry.
“He’s an ass,” he said and laughed into her mouth. Two years on and when he was by her side he was a drastically different man. He cracked jokes about his superiors and literally swept her off her feet from time to time and in the middle of the night as they cradled each other to sleep he would tell her stories from his dreams. His stories were all set in a war and they were extremely colourful-sometimes he could not continue, as if a thick veil had suddenly descended into his mind while trying to recall his dreams, but that was okay, because then they’d amuse themselves by trying to finish the stories the best way they could.
“So you do know him?”
“I’ve seen him around,” he replied, twirling her hair in his fingers, “I’m better looking than him.”
She chuckled. “Lucky me.”
It was harder for him to drop by these days, but somehow she was starting to believe that everything would work out, even after she found out that she was to marry a man whom she had never talked to or seen in her life.
(She started to believe in her own fantasies-she so wanted to believe they would be real).
She knew they were pushing it: he was staying longer and longer in her room, sometimes staying for entire nights, and there was even one time when he had led her into a store room as if he wanted to do a surprise inventory check and instead they did it there in the dark stuffy room with her pressed against the door and never before had she felt so much urgency and danger and desire all at once.
So what was she playing at?
“Say, Tasha,” he suddenly said, “do you know anyone called Steve around here?”
What a strange name-it sounded so foreign; so American. “No, I don’t. Why’d you ask?”
He turned to face the window. “I… don’t know-it’s just something I’ve been hearing again and again in my head and I feel like it’s a part of me somehow…”
“It’ll come to you, milii moi.” She knew how he felt, and by this time they knew that time was their ally.
She was lying against his chest and she could feel the thump of his heart beating for her.
“Natasha!”
The sun was warm on her face and the cold Russian winter was nothing but a distant memory-she was in New York City, and everything was real now: the buzzing city below her, the cup of lemonade Jarvis had just offered her, and Janet beside her.
“You look really out of sorts today; are you okay?”
It was just yesterday she had met him again on the streets and it was as if he had not aged a day (and neither had she) and he was even more fiery than she had remembered, so alive, so real. He’d given her a concussion, but it wasn’t the dull throbbing pain in her head that bothered her.
But that was classified information; of course she could not tell Jan that.
“I’m fine, Jan, thank you,” she said, sipping the lemonade (perfect for the New York summer).
Her mind was already in the debriefing Tony had in the works for her an hour from now. She had no idea whether she was still angry at Tony, or if she was grateful for the chance to meet him again (under the most twisted of circumstances).
(Whom was she angry for, anyway? Steve, for not announcing to the entire world he was back? Him, for not announcing to the entire world he was back? Her, for never bothering to find out if he was back?
Get a grip, Natasha, she gritted her teeth and told herself).
The last time she saw him, he was in a freaking oversized test tube with cables and wires poking in and out of him and he was just floating there like a corpse and she had screamed and screamed and given away her position without a single care in the world (and she got five days of solitary for sneaking off into classified areas) and after everything that had happened, she’d have liked to forget the dark days in Russia.
(Except he was the single bright light during those wretched times).
An hour from now, she was going to see him again even though she knew Tony wouldn’t let her to. She didn’t need long-just minutes, seconds, for her to finally see him in flesh and blood and metal after all these years.
(He’d recognized her then on the streets; he called her name in the same way he'd always said it).
There was something in her chest-she’d hide it well because she was a professional: an Avenger, a SHIELD agent, and the Black Widow-and she knew she had nothing to fear about him, because he was real then, and he was real now.