She was a woman of few words. But her words were beautiful. Everything about her was a mess and he couldn't stay away. They had met years ago on a mission, when he had been sent to take her out. But when he got there, he saw a woman, quilted in strength. All the while, he dreams of stealing away with her because she is mad and impossible. Every year, he asks her to run away with him. She gives him that glittering smile, the smile that makes men women slight burn from within. She thought he was joking, but he's never been more serious about anything in his life.
Driving in a long, dark car; the infamous Black Widow riding shotgun, riding high, riding angry. He thinks back, and remembers Budapest. It had been a dangerous mission, and during it, they had both been captured and tortured.
They poured hot tar on her scalp. He didn't know it at the time, he could only hear her screaming down the hall. He tries to get to her, beating his fists against the cinderblock wall, and yells so loudly that you could swear you could feel the vibrations. He has to save her. That's all he can think about. The men guarding him manage to shoot him twice in the leg and arm before he breaks their necks. He doesn't feel anything except anger.
When he finds her, she is passing in and out of consciousness. She hasn't told them anything though, hasn't broken. He carries her out of an abandoned building, only stopping to kill those who would harm them. When they get back to the safe house, he's rushed away; bullets extracted like slivers. When he can finally see her, her entire head is wrapped in bandages, but there are no tears running down her face. She tells him that she's got no hair, and cracks a joke about it being a good haircut for the summer.
When they're finally alone, she squeezes his hand and pressed her palm to his own. She whispers to him that she's okay, but he can see her lying. She'll never tell him though, never tell anyone. That's not the kind of person she is. She's the Black Widow.
He flashes back to the present. They're in the car, driving to the airport; it's dark and it's cold. She looks at him in the rearview mirror, his hands tight on the steering wheel, speeding up and slowing down, and in that instant, she thinks of a Japanese phrase she heard on a mission that seemed to be a lifetime ago. "Koi No Yokan", similar to the feeling of love at first sight, but oh, so different. You do not fall in love with them in that instant, but you know somewhere in the future, you will fall in love. After all, he saved her in more ways than one. He saved her soul when she was long gone, when she had resigned herself to being damned to hell.
He believes in what others say; that love is a temporary madness, it is both an art and a fortunate accident, and the ones you love are a mess of gorgeous chaos. Because when he looks at her, he see that she is chaos and she is an anomaly and she is everything.