Prompt by leni_ba at the LiveJournal Comment Fic community: any. any/any. She couldn't help falling for the mysterious stranger.
Is That What You Know?
She doesn't know who he is.
(She doesn't know who she is.)
She knows that he's dangerous.
(She knows that she's dangerous.)
She's not sure which bothers her more.
Natalie Rushman breezes through the bookstore certain afternoons, when the mood strikes her just right and the fresh spring air gets a faint bite of cold to it. Always the same bookstore, always the same books drawing her eye. She likes the fat books of gathered stories, Russian fairytales, Slovak myths, Yuletide collections, a properly grim anthology of Grimm's. She avoids the lighter fare and steers clear of tomes of history and politics, preferring to keep her nonfiction reading to legal work.
Natalia Romanova dances ballet in New York, her shoes red as blood or fire, her eyes dark and fathomless. She dances like she was born to it and drowns in accolades before returning to her small, dark apartment where she toes off the red shoes and stretches herself like prayer, hand on the barre and dances to silence and shadows as though there were music hiding beneath the night.
Nat— Natasha. She stutters over the name with a frown and finds herself wandering alleyways and cramped streets in the darker parts of the city, running her fingers along the spines of library books, dark Russian literature, false histories and true, war histories and books that make her brow furrow as she murmurs to herself, "That can't be right." That is where she first notices the stranger who calls her 'Widow' and looks at her as though he can see right through her soul.
"I have no husband," she says, but that is not right as her mind stutters over her name and the very lack of memory singing under the shadows. A widow has no husband.
She turns on her heel and flees.
The prima ballerina dances and laughs in the sparkling brightness of an evening charity function. Her red hair flows like a waterfall or silk over her shoulders and her bright green eyes are full of rare delight. Natalia Romanova knows how to shine, though none have seen her shoulders hunched with pain as she shudders and gasps and dances in the shadows more beautifully than she will ever dance on stage.
Tony Stark shakes her hand and says, "Don't I know you?"
And she smiles. She has heard it before. "I'm sure we have attended the same function previously," she says. Easy and gracious. She allows him to dance her around the room before allowing another gentleman to cut in and take her hand.
This second man is more interesting, though he says less. His eyes see right through her. He dances like he knows her body, like he's danced with her before.
It is her turn to whisper, "Don't I know you?"
He smiles and it transforms his face. "I'm sure we've attended the same party sometime." Her words, but not her words, and something stutters in her memory.
The song ends. He lets her go.
"I thought fairy tales were supposed to be bedtime stories," the man says near her.
Natalie covers her irritation by burrowing her nose deeper in a book, but he is too near her, near enough for her to sense his indignant disgust as he puts a book full of darker tales back on the shelf as if it has displeased him somehow.
"Reality isn't always pretty," she states icily, then wonders why she's bothered to engage. It's just an ignorant worker of some kind in a flannel shirt, hoodie, and jeans who probably wandered over specifically to bother her. Her blonde hair is sensible but stylish, and her clean good looks have drawn unwanted attention more than once. He doesn't look interested in the books shelved back in her favorite corner.
But he looks at her with genuine surprise in his eyes. He looks familiar, uncomfortably familiar, like she knows the work-worn hands and the puzzled expression. "But why read about it? Life's hard enough, isn't it?"
Natalie puts her book back on the shelf. "I have to go to work."
She thinks to escape but can't help but pause when she sees his face close and the knowing look in his eyes.
"Why pick up a book you don't want to read?" she asks him, suddenly, a pointed response to his own question.
The knowing look remains. He shrugs. "Because a friend of mine likes them."
His words unsettle her for some reason. She shoulders her purse and heads back to work.
"I don't think you really want to kill her, Widow."
"I have my orders. If you try to stop me, I'll kill you too."
"You won't be the first to try."
She sees him again when she's getting coffee, and his very existence irks her. The fact that he's one step ahead of her in line and hands her a latte exactly the way she takes it irks her more.
"Are you stalking me, Mr…?" Natalie draws out the word and arches a brow.
He chuckles. "No. And it's Barton." He cocks his head at her and stares at her with such intensity for one brief moment that it almost takes her breath away. "I don't think you'll remember that."
He doesn't explain his cryptic words. He walks away as if he has someplace to be.
Natalia Romanova dances and the guest of honor dies of a heart attack that night. She doesn't even hear it about it until the next evening after another day of grueling practice.
Natasha climbs onto a roof she doesn't quite remember and curls up under the makeshift archery target she thinks she just might possibly recognize. It's cold. She draws her hoodie tighter about her. She wonders where she was before she noticed herself on a brightly lit street corner and where she'll go when she stops remembering again.
"An entire hospital?"
"Are you here to kill me, Hawkeye?"
"No, Widow. Not yet."
"I have seen you before," Natalia says, and it is not a question.
They are at the same classy club where she goes sometimes for drinks with the other dancers, where she can practice other forms than only ballet.
He merely inclines his head. "The charity banquet last month."
Yes. She remembers that. She knows him from before what she remembers. "Will you dance with me again?" Her last word stutters. There is almost a name to go with the request, but memory fails to find it.
He smiles as they join the waltz. She knows his smile. She likes it.
She has a knife against the stranger's throat before he can get close enough to draw his own, but he's not even trying and… N—, Na—… Tasha frowns as she studies his patient expression.
"It is my roof," he finally says, calmly, as if he has a blade to his jugular every night.
She backs off, knife still naked in her hand. He confuses her. He's the stranger from the library, the one who called her… But memory fails her, and she shivers with the sudden emptiness, strange and looming over the night.
"I have dinner on," he says in easy invitation and heads down the fire escape as though it is his own personal entryway. Perhaps it is.
She has a knife and her body promises to protect her should he try anything she dislikes. She follows him down.
In the morning, someone wakes, eyelids fluttering open gently. She sees sunlight flickering on hardwood and recognizes the shape of a large, comfortable couch beneath her. She sits up, nameless, without expectation, and looks around the cramped, comfortable apartment.
He's making pancakes. She doesn't recognize him, doesn't know who he is, and she panics, pausing one long moment to stare before scaling his fire escape to the roof of his building. She doesn't know this place, but her feet and hands know it, and that scares her even more.
"Someday you're going to pick the wrong target."
"Is that a warning?"
"What do you think, Widow?"
Natalie frowns over her notes at the café she's taken her 'homework' to. "I have a case tomorrow," she irritably tells the shadow blocking her sun. "And coffee already."
Barton shrugs and settles across from her, poking a scone forward across the table. "Girl's gotta eat."
Natalie glares at him, but ten minutes later, she picks up the scone and nibbles on one end. She pretends she doesn't see his smile.
Natalia's shadow dances against her window pane, but it does not have her eyes and though she shivers, she does not see the stranger glancing upward from the street as he passes underneath.
She drifts awake to the soft sounds of someone moving around the apartment, then startles upright, covers spilling off of her body.
He pauses, framed in the bathroom doorway, towel in one hand. He takes her in with that gaze that sees right through her, and she shudders, recognizing the sensation. It is why she does not throw the knife, but lets it fall from her hand.
"I—"
She pauses, frowns as she sees the bandage around her knee.
"You had a nasty gash," he says easily, clearly deciding she no longer wants to kill him. He comes forward and lifts her leg to slowly unwrap the bandage and change it for a fresh one. He leans down and kisses her knee.
Ta—, Natasha leans forward and slides one hand behind his neck. She studies his calm waiting expression, then pulls him closer and kisses him.
"I know you," she says.
He does not answer.
"Are you here to kill me, Hawkeye? At last?"
"That's not what you want, Widow."
"Is that what you know?"
"You know that I do."