a/n: for the friend who sat me down and made me finally watch the avengers. a belated merry christmas/a premature happy birthday :)
/diminuendo/ ORIGIN Italian, literally 'diminishing', from diminuire, from Latin diminuere 'lessen'
It starts off as something she can brush off easily. What's the name of the town where she beat up that one guy who was trying to rob an old lady? Can't remember (but it was quite a while ago so who can blame her).
Who was her first hired kill? She doesn't know (it's just that she doesn't care).
What does S.H.I.E.L.D stand for, again?
(What on earth is 'S.H.I.E.L.D'?)
She's walking and walking but I don't know where I am. A newspaper; The New York Times. America? Why am I here? Shouldn't I be in Russia? (Where's Russia?)
A hand on her shoulder. She turns. A pleasant looking blonde man with a kind smile. Hey there Natasha! What're you doing here?
Who are you? She thinks. Who am I? I'm Natasha.
She spins around and walks away in the opposite direction from the man, leaving him looking confused and slightly hurt.
Steve, she thinks (but forgets ten minutes later).
What year is it? 1965? Why would it be 1965? (Look at those automobiles). It's 2013, says a perplexed looking woman on the street corner when she asks her. Two-thousand-and-thirteen (the woman said twenty-thirteen but that makes no sense); how can it be? Then again, time has no concept when you don't even know your own name.
Bruce Banner. The name pops into her head after three days of wandering this vast new city. (New York, she reminds herself. It's written on her palm and sometimes it's meaningless)
I love him. (What?)
Bruce Banner. Nice name.
He must be important if he's the only thing that remains in the scattered debris of her mind.
She'll find him, if only to find herself.
Searching searching searching. It's all she does for days on end and she wonders for brief seconds after she wakes where she slept and when she last ate, but she soon doesn't care and then forgets that she couldn't remember.
By all means it's a perplexing cycle- but she doesn't remember so it doesn't matter.
On her arms and hands are many words and phrases scribbled on in ink in varying stages of visibility bar one emboldened name right over her pulse point on her wrist. She doesn't think she could ever forget it but it's there just in case.
Despite everything she's losing up in her head, these eleven letters give her something to cling to amidst the chaos. Natasha finds herself forming an odd sort of attachment with these three syllables, something she wants to only call hope but her heart calls another four letter word.
She's never been one to give away love freely, but surely when one name and a single thought are the only things you have to cling to its fair to make a few exceptions.
She finds him. After so long, she finds him.
When she finally makes it to the front door of his secluded home miles and miles and miles away from anywhere, she hesitates to knock. Why? Because she's spent God knows how long searching and remembering and forgetting and now that she's actually here, she's afraid that this was all some wild goose chase and that he'll turn her away- or worse; he won't know her at all.
Eventually she summons the courage that she knows she possesses deep down and she presses the doorbell and waits.
The door opens and a kind looking man with unruly brown hair stares down at her. In disbelief, she thinks.
'Natasha?'
'Bruce Banner.'
It's not a question.
He pulls her into a tight hug and though she wants answers more than anything, she lets herself be held for long moments because really, she's already waited quite a long time. What harm could five more minutes (or ten or fifteen) really do?
Things don't get easier for a long time, though they're a whole darn lot better than they could have been.
There are days when she wakes up in his arms and she doesn't even remember how tall she is, but there are also days when she can hum along to the whole of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
The one thing that she never fails to remember, though, is the name Bruce Banner and the flood of emotion that comes with the alliterative. The words press on her brain at all hours and protect her from the vast empty crevices of her mind that used to be filled with memories and knowledge.
He's her anchor, her haven, and it's this fact that means she looks to him for safety when she's having one of her less than great hours.
And if (only if) she happens to feel her heart lift and her eyes brighten every time she sees him, it's because she simply can't remember that she has no interest in love, not because she's so taken by this man that her soul sings the sweetest of melodies imaginable.