The Prince, The Witch, But No Wardrobe
The prompt: Inspired by Revolutionary Girl Utena and its love of playing with fairy-tale metatypes, particularly that of the prince, the princess, and the witch. Five times a male tried to fit Natasha into the traditional female roles of princess (the truly good damsel in distress who needs to be rescued) or witch (the villainous female who causes chaos and endangers others), plus one time a male realized Natasha was really a prince (the noble hero who saves the day). Can be as gen or shippy as author wants (the OP is more than open to more than one Natasha/male ship).
Bonuses
+10 if someone initially puts Natasha in one category but switches her to the other after getting to know her better.
+100 if at least two characters actually put her as a princess, but have legitimate reasons to back up that claim.
+1000 if Clint and Loki are included (as Clint/Natasha and Loki/Natasha are my two favorite Natasha ships).
(on AvengerKink on Livejournal)
The fic:
01. Fury
To the Red Room, she is the Black Widow. To Fury, she is the Wicked Witch of the East, and he may not have a house to drop on her, but he has a lot of guns and an order from the Council to shoot to kill. The question now concerns who to send.
Fury stares down at the pictures from Sao Paulo, marveling at the destruction wrought by so small a woman, the Widow killing fifteen men in as many minutes with nothing more than her feet and her fists and a slim, sharp knife. Like her namesake, she spun a web and waited for her prey to draw close, deceived by the curls in her hair and the red on her lips, and then she lunged in for the kill.
Fury knows then that, if this mission is to succeed, it requires distance.
Lifting his phone, he dials Coulson. When he answers, Fury says, "Tell Barton to get ready. It's time. She crossed a line."
"Just Barton?" Coulson asks.
And Fury would laugh were it not for the pictures. "His bow, too," he says. "It's not a house, but it'll have to do."
02. Clint
The blood on her hands matches the red of her hair.
Clint approaches her, his gun extended. He knows Fury said to use his bow, but his shot never came, the Widow dancing through the shadows, taunting him. Now she sits on the floor, her back to him, and he watches, he watches her so carefully, waiting for the trap to spring.
He edges around the room, his steps audible, but she does not move and neither does he when he sees the ballet shoe.
The girl lies on the ground before the Widow, pale in her pink tights, but dark where the blood has seeped from the wound on her chest. Her eyes stare at the ceiling, blank. Dead.
"He killed her," she says, "and then himself," her voice blank, dead, but her eyes, her eyes as they turn to Clint. "Because he knew… he knew I was…"
She looks back at the girl. She reaches out, and her hands shake as they hover over the blood.
"What have I done?" she asks.
And Clint hears a commotion further on in the house. He looks at her, then the girl, then the scuffed shoes of Anton Drakov, the rest of the man hidden behind his desk. She turns to him again, tears in her eyes, and she asks, "Will you kill me now?"
And he hears the guards approach, he sees the Widow, he sees Natasha look at him, and he holsters his weapon.
"No," he says as he reaches for her. "I'm going to save you."
03. Tony
"Okay, so, once upon a time, there was this dashing prince. The most charming of them all. A genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, let's say."
"Let's say."
"And one day, as he's trying his very best to self-destruct, because what's a good story without a redemption arc, in walks this insanely hot redhead—"
"Stop," she says. "You'll make me blush."
"I wish," he says. "Now are you going to listen? You just ruined your entrance."
"Please continue."
"Okay, so this redhead, she wasn't so good in the past. Some people even said she was… Well, let's just say it rhymes with 'witch.'"
"Let's say."
"And that's what the prince thought, too. I mean, she did lie to him and stab him with a really sharp needle."
"And he whined about it for a really long time."
"That's because it hurt. You're not exactly Florence Nightingale, you know."
"Sorry," she says. "I learned how to kill people in the Red Room, not save them."
"But that's what makes this story so good, you see. The genius billionaire playboy philanthropist prince just doesn't get a shiny redemption arc. The sassy deadly assassin prince gets one too."
She raises a brow. "I thought I was a witch."
"I thought so, too. But I was wrong. It happens sometimes. And it's not just because you have your very own damsel in distress to save."
They both look at Clint, asleep in the next bed, a thick cast covering most of his left leg.
"I almost didn't this time," she says.
"But you did. And that's what matters." He pauses and looks at her. An enormous bruise covers almost half of her face; he read the report about the rest of her injuries, too. But still she kept fighting, she kept going. He shakes his head and says, "You're a hell of a woman, Romanov."
She smiles now, a small one. "Thanks."
"No, I mean it. You ever want your own suit, you just let me know." She stares at him, and Tony thinks his heart might break at the look in her eyes if it wasn't already mangled all to hell. He smirks to break the tension and then stands. "Natasha Romanov, knight in shining armor," he says as he walks away to let her rest. "It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?"
04. Bruce
The first time it happens, Natasha merely shrugs and runs back to the battle, grateful, at least, for a moment to draw in a clear breath before a return to the fighting. The second time it happens, she quirks a brow, but she stays silent, unwilling to raise an issue if an issue does not exist. But the third time it happens, the third time she feels the Hulk charging toward her before scooping her up and depositing her somewhere far from the present conflict, she sighs and resolves to talk to Bruce once the battle ends.
"I don't know why he does it," Bruce says later, after they have returned to Stark Tower, after he has returned to himself. "We can't exactly communicate with one another."
"But he is you, right?" she asks, blocking his way out the lab, her arms folded across her chest. "Your subconscious? Your id?"
Bruce sighs and turns away. "I don't know what he is anymore," he says, his eyes fixed on the molecular diagrams before him.
Natasha looks at him for a moment, at the grey in his hair and the tension in his shoulders, and then she says, her voice quiet, "I know you still feel guilty for what happened on the Carrier, but I can take care of myself. I don't need to be saved."
Bruce does not respond. After a moment, Natasha shakes her head and walks away, and Bruce recalls once more the image of her hunched and shaking against the wall in the Carrier, and he knows that, in the next battle, despite her wish, the Hulk will still charge toward her and hide her away, far from the death and destruction that rains upon them.
He will still try to save her.
05. Loki
Of all the cages, in all the Helicarriers, in the midst of all the world domination plans, she had to walk into his.
Loki sits in his cell in Asgard, and he remembers Natasha Romanov. Barton had spoken almost reverentially of her when Loki had questioned him, and he had been a fool to dismiss what the man had said simply because Loki detected the sentiment beneath the assessment. He nearly derailed his own plan focusing too much on her soft hair and red lips and concern for Barton. He nearly missed the eyes of the wolf lurking beneath.
The eyes haunt him now, the hint of a smirk in them when she thanked him for his cooperation, the smirk confirming the truth in what Barton said of her past. The truth of her lies coiled under this veneer of redemption that she wears, and when he escapes, Loki means to smash the slick shell and find Sao Paulo, find the Red Room, find the real Black Widow.
When he escapes, she will be his wicked witch, and together they will huff and they will puff and they will blow the whole world down.