[Avengers and MCU] But I love to read the words you used
Summary: This is what Natasha Romanov knows: Just because your words are gone doesn't mean they were never said. Just because you can't remember doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Notes: Soulmates AU - your platonic/familial/romatic soulmate's words with you can appear on your bodies. Title from Things We Lost in the Fire - Bastille.
**
When she bent down to fasten the watch over Tony’s wrist, she caught the question mark in black ink that brushed right against his blue-green veins. He didn’t offer to let her see the rest - and even someone as (in)famous as Tony Stark was able to keep his words to himself - and ‘Natalie Rushman’ wasn’t the type of person who would know or would ask.
Natasha Romanov, though. Natasha Romanov knew that the writing started about mid-way on his left forearm, in a neat and precise script. It wasn’t the first thing ever spoken between the two soulmates - they usually weren’t - but it was the most important, something that had meaning to the parts of one whole.
Will that be all, Mr. Stark? Was hidden like a secret by his shirtsleeves. Natasha knew that Pepper Potts religiously applied concealer every day to the matching words on her own body, That will be all, Ms. Potts, in the blocky, all capitals script of engineers.
**
She didn’t know if Clint was a fluke, because he saw the words on her before they even heard each others' voice beyond grunts and yells of pain. They didn’t know what weapons she could be hiding (soon they will realize that there was no part of her that wasn't a weapon), so she was stripped to the skin for decontamination and debrief.
They stared at each other - the glass was two way, even though she knew it could darken and render her blind to the outside. She knew what she looked like - they know about her reputation as a seductress, so she sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, concealing her nudity as much as she could in a parody of innocence.
There was a good ten feet and a thick layer of bulletproof glass between them, but he was not Hawkeye for nothing.
“…’Love is for children’.” He read, and there was nothing covetous or lustful in his gaze on the wing of her collarbone and the angular handwriting etched in the skin right under it.
“You would do well to remember that, comrade.” She rasped at him.
--
Years later, she would discover new words swirled in chicken scratch she recognized from mission reports on the inside of her elbow, nestled against a vein. Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?
On the Helicarrier, when she was huddled in the corner after the Hulk, trying to keep herself from flying apart, she remembered. The dispatch made the announcement about Agent Barton, and she made herself get up. Clint hadn’t said those words to her yet, and damned if she would let him go without answering. You know I do.
**
Steve had no words where people could casually see, and he was no Tony Stark of old, with his parties of hookers and blow and bad life decisions. It was more likely that a SHIELD agent would see the words in the communal showers post-mission than it was for a one-night stand to spill the Captain’s secrets to the media, so SHIELD didn’t make it a priority to find out. Natasha wasn’t sure why, because her mindset automatically pointed to ‘information is power’ more often than not, but then the Chitauri invasion required their collective, undivided attention.
Maybe Fury or more likely, Coulson, retained a measure of respect for Steve’s privacy.
Maybe the serum - whatever variation of it - erased the words. She could have found out, maybe, if she was willing to go the whole distance. But she wasn’t - not so much because she didn’t want to know, but because she was starting to feel something for these crazy people that called themselves (and her) the Avengers. A team.
In nature, a Black Widow was famous for her venom and devouring her mate. In the Red Room, a Black Widow is a rank earned for being a versatile, deadly agent - a scalpel or a one-woman army, as needed.
She had benefited from the legend, even as she lived up to it. But she was tired now. Her reputation was not worth losing Steve's warm smiles, Bruce's awkward invitations to tea, and Tony's exaggerated flirting. Steve can keep his secrets, they're safe from her.
**
His words never faded, but they were relegated to memory after the fall of SHIELD (Hydra). The exit wound from his shot left gruesome scarring, similar to the one low on the left side of her stomach - It was a good thing that Steve didn’t see the mess of a scar there. Bye-bye bikinis, indeed.
Memory was such an uncertain, fragile thing, though. If she tried hard enough, she could still remember the stiff material of the tutu skirt, the strain in her calves as she went en pointe. The classical music drifting in the darkened theater and the hush of the audience as she performed. The sound of her mother and father’s voice, lullabies at bedtime, gentle hands through her hair.
Those memories were not impossible, technically. But they were highly improbable.
Conversely, no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember the first time she felt the weight of a gun in her hands, the kick of the shot as the bullet left the barrel. Yet that was a thing that most certainly had happened, and kept happening, even as her mind had entertained memories of dancing the ballet and loving parents. Like his words, even though the inky blackness against her skin was now a pale star burst instead. It ached subtly when rain threatened, like so many other parts of her body - she would have to be satisfied with that as a remembrance.
**
She felt a strange sense of deja vu standing there on the other side of the two-way glass, even though it was just one-way now. The man inside was sitting at a corner of the room, naked like she was so many years ago, curled up with his mismatched arms around his knees - the perfect illusion of vulnerability.
Steve was at her elbow, silent, still. She didn't know why he hadn't gone inside already, when he had already moved heaven and earth to get to this point - Steve Rogers and James Barnes, separated by less than ten feet, but it might as well have been that abyss in the alps that devoured Barnes the first time.
As if he read her mind, he held out his left hand, palm-up. For a crazy second she thought that he wanted to hold hands, but then she noticed the barely visible marks - words - right between his heart and head lines. They were so faded as to be almost illegible, but the shape of the letters were painfully familiar.
"The words always appear on the same part of the body between pairs," he murmured, staring down at his palm. "Bucky and I weren't sure until the World Fair, but I always said that it didn't matter if our words weren't for each other, because we're with each other until the end of the line." If she squinted, she could make out the faded words - don't do anything stupid until I get back. Steve barked out a painful sounding laugh. "I used to mock him, who else would tell him that he was taking all the stupid with him?"
The man they were talking about didn't move from his corner, the chrome of his metal left arm and hand gleaming under the harsh white lights of the cell. Bucky Barnes' left hand with the match to Steve Rogers' words lost forever. She didn't even bother looking for her own words on his body - she knew all she would find is a snarl of scar tissue from the graft of the shoulder joint of the arm.
"He doesn't have them anymore," Steve whispered, closing his hand into a tight fist. "He didn't even recognize me...he lost those words seventy years ago, but I wanted to give him something, anything, to show that I mean it. Even if he has nothing now, he's got me."
But. But, "Just because the words are gone doesn't mean that they weren't said." She said. The weight of a gun and a knife in her hands, memory her mind didn't have but her body retained. "The words are gone, Steve," she threw over her shoulder as she strode to the door. The keypad accepted her access code and her thumbprint and beeped green, the subtle hum of the electromagnetic locks disengaging coupled with the sound of Steve stepping into place at her shoulder. She took a deep breath as the doors hissed open. "It's time to make new ones."
**End
Notes: Soulmates AU - your platonic/familial/romatic soulmate's words with you can appear on your bodies. Title from Things We Lost in the Fire - Bastille.
**
When she bent down to fasten the watch over Tony’s wrist, she caught the question mark in black ink that brushed right against his blue-green veins. He didn’t offer to let her see the rest - and even someone as (in)famous as Tony Stark was able to keep his words to himself - and ‘Natalie Rushman’ wasn’t the type of person who would know or would ask.
Natasha Romanov, though. Natasha Romanov knew that the writing started about mid-way on his left forearm, in a neat and precise script. It wasn’t the first thing ever spoken between the two soulmates - they usually weren’t - but it was the most important, something that had meaning to the parts of one whole.
Will that be all, Mr. Stark? Was hidden like a secret by his shirtsleeves. Natasha knew that Pepper Potts religiously applied concealer every day to the matching words on her own body, That will be all, Ms. Potts, in the blocky, all capitals script of engineers.
**
She didn’t know if Clint was a fluke, because he saw the words on her before they even heard each others' voice beyond grunts and yells of pain. They didn’t know what weapons she could be hiding (soon they will realize that there was no part of her that wasn't a weapon), so she was stripped to the skin for decontamination and debrief.
They stared at each other - the glass was two way, even though she knew it could darken and render her blind to the outside. She knew what she looked like - they know about her reputation as a seductress, so she sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, concealing her nudity as much as she could in a parody of innocence.
There was a good ten feet and a thick layer of bulletproof glass between them, but he was not Hawkeye for nothing.
“…’Love is for children’.” He read, and there was nothing covetous or lustful in his gaze on the wing of her collarbone and the angular handwriting etched in the skin right under it.
“You would do well to remember that, comrade.” She rasped at him.
--
Years later, she would discover new words swirled in chicken scratch she recognized from mission reports on the inside of her elbow, nestled against a vein. Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?
On the Helicarrier, when she was huddled in the corner after the Hulk, trying to keep herself from flying apart, she remembered. The dispatch made the announcement about Agent Barton, and she made herself get up. Clint hadn’t said those words to her yet, and damned if she would let him go without answering. You know I do.
**
Steve had no words where people could casually see, and he was no Tony Stark of old, with his parties of hookers and blow and bad life decisions. It was more likely that a SHIELD agent would see the words in the communal showers post-mission than it was for a one-night stand to spill the Captain’s secrets to the media, so SHIELD didn’t make it a priority to find out. Natasha wasn’t sure why, because her mindset automatically pointed to ‘information is power’ more often than not, but then the Chitauri invasion required their collective, undivided attention.
Maybe Fury or more likely, Coulson, retained a measure of respect for Steve’s privacy.
Maybe the serum - whatever variation of it - erased the words. She could have found out, maybe, if she was willing to go the whole distance. But she wasn’t - not so much because she didn’t want to know, but because she was starting to feel something for these crazy people that called themselves (and her) the Avengers. A team.
In nature, a Black Widow was famous for her venom and devouring her mate. In the Red Room, a Black Widow is a rank earned for being a versatile, deadly agent - a scalpel or a one-woman army, as needed.
She had benefited from the legend, even as she lived up to it. But she was tired now. Her reputation was not worth losing Steve's warm smiles, Bruce's awkward invitations to tea, and Tony's exaggerated flirting. Steve can keep his secrets, they're safe from her.
**
His words never faded, but they were relegated to memory after the fall of SHIELD (Hydra). The exit wound from his shot left gruesome scarring, similar to the one low on the left side of her stomach - It was a good thing that Steve didn’t see the mess of a scar there. Bye-bye bikinis, indeed.
Memory was such an uncertain, fragile thing, though. If she tried hard enough, she could still remember the stiff material of the tutu skirt, the strain in her calves as she went en pointe. The classical music drifting in the darkened theater and the hush of the audience as she performed. The sound of her mother and father’s voice, lullabies at bedtime, gentle hands through her hair.
Those memories were not impossible, technically. But they were highly improbable.
Conversely, no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember the first time she felt the weight of a gun in her hands, the kick of the shot as the bullet left the barrel. Yet that was a thing that most certainly had happened, and kept happening, even as her mind had entertained memories of dancing the ballet and loving parents. Like his words, even though the inky blackness against her skin was now a pale star burst instead. It ached subtly when rain threatened, like so many other parts of her body - she would have to be satisfied with that as a remembrance.
**
She felt a strange sense of deja vu standing there on the other side of the two-way glass, even though it was just one-way now. The man inside was sitting at a corner of the room, naked like she was so many years ago, curled up with his mismatched arms around his knees - the perfect illusion of vulnerability.
Steve was at her elbow, silent, still. She didn't know why he hadn't gone inside already, when he had already moved heaven and earth to get to this point - Steve Rogers and James Barnes, separated by less than ten feet, but it might as well have been that abyss in the alps that devoured Barnes the first time.
As if he read her mind, he held out his left hand, palm-up. For a crazy second she thought that he wanted to hold hands, but then she noticed the barely visible marks - words - right between his heart and head lines. They were so faded as to be almost illegible, but the shape of the letters were painfully familiar.
"The words always appear on the same part of the body between pairs," he murmured, staring down at his palm. "Bucky and I weren't sure until the World Fair, but I always said that it didn't matter if our words weren't for each other, because we're with each other until the end of the line." If she squinted, she could make out the faded words - don't do anything stupid until I get back. Steve barked out a painful sounding laugh. "I used to mock him, who else would tell him that he was taking all the stupid with him?"
The man they were talking about didn't move from his corner, the chrome of his metal left arm and hand gleaming under the harsh white lights of the cell. Bucky Barnes' left hand with the match to Steve Rogers' words lost forever. She didn't even bother looking for her own words on his body - she knew all she would find is a snarl of scar tissue from the graft of the shoulder joint of the arm.
"He doesn't have them anymore," Steve whispered, closing his hand into a tight fist. "He didn't even recognize me...he lost those words seventy years ago, but I wanted to give him something, anything, to show that I mean it. Even if he has nothing now, he's got me."
But. But, "Just because the words are gone doesn't mean that they weren't said." She said. The weight of a gun and a knife in her hands, memory her mind didn't have but her body retained. "The words are gone, Steve," she threw over her shoulder as she strode to the door. The keypad accepted her access code and her thumbprint and beeped green, the subtle hum of the electromagnetic locks disengaging coupled with the sound of Steve stepping into place at her shoulder. She took a deep breath as the doors hissed open. "It's time to make new ones."
**End