Ignite
All Characters Belong to Marvel Comics
I own nothing
Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Enjoy.
Inside the guest bathroom of Sam Wilson's house, the visage of a dismantled Captain America stood in front of the vanity, scrubbing the bruised planes of his firm chest with lather of foaming antibacterial soap; washing the remnants of ash and flecks of blood off the sculpted definition of his dense muscles. As the morning light reflected vividly in the depth of his azure eyes, he caught a glance of her blaze of scarlet in the mirror; a deadly illusion of beauty trapped inside woven nightmares.'Don't push Natasha away, soldier; she could be your right partner.'
Sighing out a wavering breath after underlining the logical approach of his next move, Steve gripped the edge of the porcelain basin, feeling reluctant to become involved with her. He missed Peggy...Tried to reason against doubt, but lost every time his heart clenched when he dared to stare into aging brown eyes of his cherished love.
...I will always owe her a dance...
Though, he tried to hide it, Steve couldn't deny the constant harboring guilt that forced him to remain grounded. Feeling absent with his own desires, became laborious sacrifice for Captain America to endure-friends were becoming so few and the name of freedom had been purged by infiltrated deception.
Backing away from the vanity, Steve dried his neck with a towel, wiping off streaks of grime, before he turned the cold water tap off and moved in hasten, cautious strides out of the bathroom.
For an indecisive moment, he observed her, his metallic eyes settled on the ablaze of unruly scarlet draped over her alabaster shoulders; and the reserved tension that her alluring teal—oceanic eyes held when the silence around them became unpredictable.
There was no place for him...The world had eclipsed into something that hard for an old wartime captain to adapt to. Friends had become distant and there were only a few that he could trust with the highest regards to respect. Natasha was one of those people that he could sincerely confide in when he felt displaced—inaccessible from the rest of the Avengers. Captain America wasn't a follower; but an intransigent, and enduring leader who kept his assembled team from falling into disarray because of ego complex errors and dependency issues.
It had become a real testament for Steve to break down his restrictions and allow someone experienced and more resigned to her moral purpose of securing assurance that humanity would be shielded twenty- four hours a day from critical threats the government claimed to be irrelevant.
Entrusting the faith he had within Natasha gave him disconcerting revelations that fundamental structures were being corrupted by undetectable viruses, escalation and profit that involved omnipresent surveillance programs to infiltrate databases of the any security interface—social accounts, cellphones and the media.
The real danger wasn't a preternatural HYDRA maniac with a dominating obsession to reform the world in his own deformed, monstrous image; society's enemies where no longer known on printed wartime propaganda or in contaminated nations, but individuals without a face, that were bred in the opaque shades of compromise—the shadow zone and that power was controlled with a simple tap on a keyboard.
Steve had stood on his guard, protecting humanity with his vibranium shield and enhanced strength of flesh and blood, but technology had the upper hand, his one weakness against the new world, and he was falling astray on SHIELD's vocational battlefront when he entered the transparent, adjusting world of reconnaissance operations involving bent intelligence and relevant falsehoods. A business of spies and provocateurs, not venerable GI's fighting for truth and whatever remained of independence.
...This isn't home...
The world that Steven Grant Rogers was born into—the era—had evolved into a dangerous, unpredictable and betraying game board with pawns of servility made out of marble and slate.
Resistance was a necessary sacrifice to keep Natasha safe. Captain America was a fugitive of her opaque, cruel world; just a uncompromising pawn of the grand scheme of things.
He wanted to reclaim freedom...Liberty and an untainted reason to trust foundations of world authority. He noticed that Natasha was unsteady, not grounded in her complex structures of weaved deception; it was almost like she had received the back hand of betrayal.
Something clawed against the exterior layers of his reserved heart, an impulsive dare to invade her space; sensing her disregard towards his presence, Steve drew up a hesitant breath and focused on the outcome of his rash decision, before engaging closer to the occupied mattress.
"Hey, is everything okay, Natasha," Steve eventually asked, his serene voice, hushed and unimposing. Her blanched, radiant features, exhibited limited fractures of distress as she scrunched a mass of tangled, drenched burgundy ringlets, squeezing the excess water into a towel. Sensing the distance between them, he gingerly sat across from her, firmly parallel and studying her unreadable, passive expressions. "You look a little shaken up," he issued, with a faint whisper. His trained gaze leveled on the splotches of cinder visible on her exposed skin. "What's going on, Nat?"
"Nothing of your concern, Rogers," she replied evenly, a defensive edge razed in her throaty protest to block him out her despondence. She didn't falter under his stern, penetrating azure eyes. The dark and lethal aspects of the Widow's emboldened nature, unrelated to his genuine concern about her malaise of feeling utterly abandoned to her pledge to SHIELD. "Besides I'm not the one with a bounty on their head," she pointedly admitted with a twist of a rueful smirk; devices of humor to conceal her unabated anguish, mostly the betrayal of the foundations that she had rebuilt a new, nonbelligerent life on debt-by-debt.
"I can believe everything is coming down on us," There was a vague hint of nonchalance tangible in her subdued rasp. "I thought I was choosing the right path, that joining SHIELD was the right way to go, but I can see that I just traded in another thread for deception. I guess I'm living in the afterlife."
Steve creased his brow, into a disquieted expression. "The afterlife?" he submersed with an instructive tone; he was trying to figure a meaning behind the ominous word.
Natasha clarified his perplexity, with a valid, raw confession. She absently cast an idle glance at his shield; using the symbol of freedom as a beacon to fight against the constant impulses to tangle back into her twisted lies and disreputable morals. "When you're in the wrong business for a long time, you do things that make you feel dead inside."
Carefully, Natasha stared back at Steve, fixed on the sentiment glinting in his severe blue eyes, as she continued to unravel what plagued her divided thoughts.
"When I was recruited for the KGB Black Widow program, I became an efficient and subservient weapon." Steve keenly listened to the resentment fused in her voice, a potent sourness against vices of her unforgettable past. "I followed orders and completed my missions without questioning the reason behind each kill. It was necessary to conduct processing to erase emotions when I made my mark eat bullets. Everything became easier for adaption, and that's how my ledger got painted red."
Feeling a prick of resentment in her veins, Natasha dismally narrowed her eyes; her thumb stroked against the embedded scaring around her thin wrist. A branded reminder of the torturous nightmares she endured when she watched innocence become extracted abominations in the Red Room.
"When I had a chance to retire my partner, I learned that he also received the same orders from a man who I considered my superior. Instead of pulling the trigger, I aborted the mission and faked our deaths; never looking back at the embers burning over my KBG uniform. When my groundless life fell into the steady hands of Clint Barton, I was given a second chance for my resurrection, but if my past sins emerge, than every rectifiable thing I have done as a SHIELD agent and an Avenger will be compromised. I will become a ghost searching for existence on a grave."
The Captain had shared a connection with her; and put down his heart's shield to allow her to feel his pain slicing deep until he bled out his faults. Hearing the measure of turmoil evident in Natasha's strained and subdued voice; Steve clenched his bruised jaw and fell into grave admission.
Steve wanted to keep his distance, to block her out from the realms of his leveling pain. "I know that you feel cheated out because SHIELD turned its back on you; but you of all people should know that nothing is as it seems when you're involved in a dangerous business," he eventfully returned, harsh and dispirited. His hardened gaze fell to the shield that held gleams of light—it was once a profound symbol that people used to feel safe under, but now it was considered a weapon of betrayal to the balance of power.
Natasha refused to seize the opportunity to disarm herself, masks were necessary to achieve survival. At the moment, she was depending on his prevailing, cogent strength to help protect her from the emergence of their enemies.
Time was escalating, and HYDRA was gaining power by equal measure of dominance against world security. Zola's revelation became a paradox between compromise and extinction.
The concept of trust was invalid, and people who she had trusted as an unbreakable force in SHIELD uniforms were becoming dismantled; all by the lust for power to enslave humanity into chain links for HYDRA's new world order of reformation.
The only difference marker of the ruthless game was the unyielding resilience of Captain America. He had to become the shining light against the storms of cascading darkness.
"See what happens when you're a terrible liar," Natasha teased, her voice doused fictitious mockery. Purposely, to avoid an intense stare down with the super-soldier. Natasha slowly threaded her lithe fingers through her mussed hair; unintentionally averting her cryptic gaze from his undeterred, hardened semblance of discontent.
"Thanks for reminding me," Steve abolished back, noncommittally. He leaned back ardently, folding his broad arms across his massive, sculpted chest.
With his tender blue eyes attaining a trusting glint, his focus seared directly through her invasive demeanor; feeling an unstable friction ignite through them. Intently, Steve searched for an unerring reason to put his resolved faith back into their concrete partnership as the invulnerable soldier from Brooklyn and an elusive, lethal Russian spy.
Steve couldn't strip away the pain withering his elevated spirit, not when HYDRA was demolishing the freedom that he preserved with the measures of his moral strength. Deep in his churning gut, Steve felt forsaken by his choices; it was reversion of eclipsing intimation to bench Captain America from beating the impossible odds.
He had to face the dark side, fight no matter how much he bled out—it was his war, not Natasha's nor Sam's. He had to engage the heart of the enemy alone, just like he did when the Red Skull was flying the doomsday bomb over the frigid Atlantic waters. Steve was sure in the fathoms of his irrepressible coherence that a sacrifice had to be made; the price of salvation was something that he would pay as the ultimate soldier, not the Star-Spangled hero printed on war bond posters.
Making his decision of yielding, Steve extended out his hand, caressing her knuckles with assuring heat of his touch. "I know it's gonna be difficult for you to understand, but this is my fight, Natasha. HYDRA is my enemy, not yours to take on."
"Stop putting this burden on yourself, Steve," Natasha whispered evenly, her scarlet tresses whipped against her ivory smudged cheeks. She coaxed his fractured heart with a simple truth that seemed laden against her own blemished features. She invasively watched him stand and move toward the door, he yanked the chain of his dog tags off in a low growl, and he held the silver plates in the clutch of his hand, preparing to toss his past onto the mattress.
With an effortless sway of her hips, Natasha stopped him, clasping his large hand and guiding it back to her in a single move with summoned grace. His pulse was escalating, and he felt every fiber of his enhanced strength merging with the secured embrace of her encompassing hand. "I know the risks and your stubbornness will cost you...You need to know that I've got your back in this choice of circumstance. Stop pretending that you're strong enough to fight this all on your own...You're not alone."
"I can't ask you do that, Nat," Steve whispered in a somber, discarding breath, bowing his head belatedly into a defeated stance. He didn't want to consult this with Natasha. She couldn't understand what measures of burdens he'd carried for seventy years, the heavy amounts of failure that scraped against the exterior of his heart, the Red Room had drained every inch of her sentiment, molded her into a hollow shell that was remade into a weapon of the utmost obedience—her will only to her mission.
Some part of her, that wasn't infected with the poison of the Black Widow, knew how to summon enough sense to grasp onto another's pain without searching beyond the contrasts of red.
Steve was reluctant to fully unmask his torment, to give her a chance to infiltrate and purge all the grief that whorled beyond the unbreakable masquerade of defiance. In a vague of attempt of dismissing her, Steve glanced into her steady teal eyes, and found a resolve of unparalleled trust welled in her lustrous, penetrating irises. They were partners for a bleak moment of understanding the contingency of the mission, no words were spoken.
Steve didn't want to pull her deep into the void with him. This was Captain America's laborious road to take, not hers. In those moments of feeling resentment solidify against his heart; Steve felt detached from the world as the imperishable spirit of a reserved fighter twined into threads of omission.
Stiffening his intrepid posture against the streams of light casting over his torn shirt, Steve drew up a breath of frustration, and narrowed his leveled gaze back at the shield. He clenched his bruised jaw, settling the muscle into an expression of vexation—everything seemed unresolved. "The effort I put out to keep my home safe...It always keeps on stabbing me in the back."
"Well, maybe you shouldn't turn your back on the past, Steve," Natasha told him, her voice carried a tart rasp. He looked at her with unwavering eyes; his slacken brow creasing into hard lines of anguish. She gripped the bulge of his arm, squeezing it with a sense of reassurance.
They had lived on the defensive without relying on anyone, but after Steve risked his life to saved her from the inferno; Natasha valued their established relationship more than just friends and into something that was sterling and reverent that could only become a part of a prestige if the structures of their walls came down.
There was no time to run; the missile was closing in fast on their position. Natasha felt the cement flooring crumbling underneath her boots, as Zola's inorganic voice droned in her ears. Before Natasha had a chance to decide which action to take, Steve's urgent and stern voice beckoned her to run back to him. Within seconds, she launched herself into his strong embrace, his free arm secured over her back, and his sharp cheek nuzzled against her mass of scarlet; they were prepared to face their demise, knowing that nothing lasts forever.
Listening to the percussion of his heartbeat echoing in her ears, Natasha tucked her head under his elevated bicep; closed her eyes and felt the world become devoured by the hellish flames. But somehow, he kept her strong against the dire moments; his body heat seared through the spikes of coldness, and his massive body swayed with assuring steadiness that they would make it out alive. "Do you trust me?" she heard his voice resound in a low pitch. It was in those last seconds of understanding her right choice.
Natasha stared up at him for a long moment through the loose and tangled curls of her hair, a vicious pulse kept her restrained from purchasing the full swelled arched of his lips; she felt her muscles slam into his solid torso as they dodged the blaze, diving into an air vent and he caved around her body, pinning her down, as his shield raised and protected them against the deafening explosion above their grounded level.
Everything blurred into walls of collapsing debris and ash clouds, but she wasn't afraid of the firestorm, or if they would become buried alive. She gritted her teeth, and held onto him as they waited for the consuming tempest atop of their makeshift shelter to pass.
Then, she watched the glow of firelight dissolved into a blackish void as time froze and Natasha was on the verge drifting in an unconscious state. Her pants of breath were fading, but she was aware long enough to feel his sturdy, hooked arms lift her immobilized body gently off the piles of ash. The coolness of alloy pressed into her throbbing back as she instantly became weightiness, and dependent on his amplified strength and wielded determination as his staggered footfalls carried her through the boundaries of the blazing devastation.
"Natasha," Steve urged, brushing his rough palm down her paling cheek. His fingers curled to feel the throb of her pulse. He bent down slightly, and secured her firmly in a bridal style carry against his ambled chest; looping her disused arm over his broad neck. "Hang on," he commanded, the assertive, enduring tone of Captain America was evident in his raspy pitches of dense breath, his feverish blue eyes settled on her smudged features, watching her lips twitch into a weak, absent smirk.
As drops of blood meandered down his forehead, Steve quickly stole a glance at the beaming illumination of search lights hovering above the desolated, unidentifiable area. The camp grounds were burning into embers, as he peered at the rusted flag pole over mounds of rubble, and used it as a symbol to reclaim levels of his dauntless endurance.
Feeling the heat radiate in his muscles, Steve knew that he had fallen back into his military training, engaging the unknown surroundings without the aid of his downed partner. It had become a soldier's paradox in those seconds of testing his unbreakable limits, every step he took was vital to their survival. He had to push onward, find a nearby safe house and figure out his next move before their cover was blown.
"We're almost in the clear," he managed to draw out in a shaky whisper; despite the thickness of smoke clogging in his throat. His heart thumped in his chest, and blood fused with ignition of the serum; bringing the reserves of adrenaline into full throttle.Orange blotches of smoldering flames suddenly obstructed his dominant vision as his lips grew moist with a glaze of fevered sweat. He seemed off balance, fighting the elements while feeling her limp hand stroke over the crest of his shoulder. His muscles flexed, rippling with a surge of contrasting power merging in his biceps.
Undisturbed, Steve trudged further into the tangled weeds and clustering trees; while just for a moment staring down with his glacial eyes, zoning his focus on her beautiful face as everything grew still around them. In the distant flashes of the inferno, all his self contained impulses finally breached his heart, and with slow effort Steve gently dipped his head and pressed the heated swell of his lips on her bruised cheek, urging out a strained, heaving command. "Stay with me, Natasha."
"Steve..."
After last nights events, Natasha had learned to accept threads of humanity that existed beyond her scars, it had become a sense of reverence that promised her redemption for the choices she was forced to make in another lifetime.
"You've been focused on what Zola said to you, that you're life has a zero sum, but that's not true, Steve. You're the one who has the highest value because you know the price that everyone is going to wage...This is your chance to prove to that ghost in the machine that you will have the victory," she pointed her hand to the his shield prompt against the dresser, holding her stare on the five pointed star. "Captain America never runs."
"This is not your fight, it's mine," Steve spat venomously; his blue eyes grew a shade darker when his muscles pulsed against her concerning touch. He stowed his spiteful emotions, and gave her a raw declaration to redeem himself with an answer that wasn't tainted with a vengeful growl. "I'm not backing away..." There was a hesitant pause in his edgy baritone. "No matter how many times I get thrown down."
Natasha detected a small hitch in his voice. "Steve, you need me on this mission."
Steve's grimace didn't waver. "I'm not putting you in danger again, Nat," He grunted dismally, confirming his adamant resistance. The broadness of his jaw clenched and his intent blue eyes tore away from her. "...I'm not strong enough to feel what might happen to you, not on the battlefield."
"Steve," Natasha's voice pierced through the contrast of gray devouring him, she causally stepped an inch close and leveled her passive stare with the sheen of his tag dogs clenched in his balled fist. She placed her hand on his chest, giving him a sense of assurance.
Revulsion was pulsing in his veins, she felt the condense heat of his muscles penetrate through her scars.
They faced each other, searching for another intangible reason to carry on the mission without their aligned devotion lighting a path through the destruction.
"I understand that you have allowed the pain to own you, but you're the strongest of us all and without you..." Natasha lowered her head in gesture of reverence; at the same time trying to muster up words for an uplifting declaration. "...the Avengers would be lost without a fight."
"Lost without me..." Steve grumbled back with invariability.
Natasha dismissed his fierce, mistrusting glare. She refused to allow his incorruptible strength to become diminished; but Steve was falling too deep into the desperate fathoms of twisted delusions that tampered with his mind; pulling him closer to the razor's edge of utmost defeat.
The nightmare had to end.
"Steve," she whispered, firmness wavered in her voice, there was no evidence of derision; she had to bring him back out of the collapsing abyss; it was her purpose to stand by his side, face the storms on the horizon and to never break into submission.
Natasha had to hold her ground against the pain that reflected in his dimming azure eyes, and use the buried reserves of vigor to push through the darkness. Refusing to give up on him, she splayed her graceful, poised hand over his left pectoral muscle, her fingers moved with the thunderous pound of his vigorous heartbeat. "I owe you a debt."
He shook his head, dismissing her sensible words. "Don't worry about it."
Flashes of memory of him carrying her unconscious form through the cascades of roaring flames obstructed recesses of her mind in those few, tentative of moments when she became real to him. No dissembling of the iniquitous Black Widow, just her. "Steve, I want you to give me your honest answer, if last night's events reversed with your life in jeopardy, would you trust me to save you?"
"Natasha," He lost the ability to speak for a moment, and Natasha stared into the exposed unrelented anguish welled in his adjusting blue eyes. It hurt to know that her flirtatious seduction was evolving into something unbidden, profound to grasp onto before his selfless resolve drifted back to doorway. "I hold no debts." he softly declared, turning his honest gaze back at her. He then cupped her cheek with his hand, kneading her damp scarlet tresses with his fingers.
The shadow of his angular face eclipsed over the paleness of her skin. In the wake of his definable clashes of torment, Steve leaned forward and pressed an unexpected, thermal kiss on her forehead. Her hand possessively clutched around his wrist, preventing him from escaping a moment when all their defenses, shields and doubts receded into stormless waves of devotion.
"I do trust you with my life, Nat," Steve confessed distinctly, meeting her eyes, not pulling away, as Natasha caught a glimpse of resonance building in his electrifying azure orbs. He gave out a disheartened sigh with a certain hitch of breath. "That's my honest answer."
A deviant smirk played across her lips, "Well, it's a good answer for Captain America," she retorted back, lightly tracing the chiseled edge of his jaw with her fingers. Natasha didn't want to invoke any tension with him, but relishing in the closeness of his towering body. The rational mind of Black Widow knew that at the peak of the arising battle, the moralistic soldier needed a proficient spy more than a dance partner.
Her expression fractured as she contemplated on the adamant choice of being the woman he believed still existed. She shoved away the sense of detachment and tenderly leaned forward; capturing the arch of his lips before he could walk away, melting in the damp, coiling heat that solidified her breath as his mouth rolled with pulses of her coaxing embrace.
It wasn't like the forceful, pretend kiss inside the mall, but something that she had craved to feel for what felt like a lifetime. Friction kindled and their faces aligned, as his breath ghosted over her flushed skin, until she departed while looking into anew hope shining in his mirrored eyes. "Ready to reevaluate your past mistakes, Cap?" she asked, with evidence of snark in her voice.
Steve nodded, curving his slick lips into a confident smile; knowing that there would be another chance to restore their scarred, distant hearts, but all that presently mattered to both of them was surviving the next mission.
He felt whole again thanks to Natasha for believing that hope still existed in the embers of defiance that burned inside a Brooklyn kid who never back down from a fight."Ready," he returned with a firm, certain voice, taking another sharp glance at his indomitable, chiseled visage in the alloy of his shield, but also saw her elusive reflection emboldened in red. Natasha stood at his side, and he knew that was where she needed to be as they faced the chaotic world.
The End.