No Strings Attached

All characters belong to Marvel Comics

I own nothing

"What are you not telling me, Nat?"

Crossing her arms protectively over her chest, Natasha stared him down, locking her grayish-blue eye with his stern cobalt eyes that were shadow with uncertainty.

Captain Steve Rogers, dressed in royal blue, spangled uniform leaned the muscular planes of his back against the grime covered stone brick. He stood inches from her; his towering form had dwindled into something of defeat. Scarps and red blemished covered his chiseled cheek bones and jawline, and his crystal turquoise eyes, faded into a dim stormy blue and tried to read her uncover emotions.

Weakness.

He didn't smile. His handsome features were smudged with cider of ashes, and his skin was raw and marred.

Natasha dared herself to look down at his shield-the offensive weapon that protected countless lives was now broken and cracked pieces scattered on the smoking asphalt. She tried to open her mouth, but she tore her eyes away from the defeat shards of hope.

Nothing last forever.

"It's nothing," she replied, cutting her words off short. She moved closer to the broken storefront window, keeping her eyes distance and yet focused on the faint glow of the fading sunset caressing over the leather of her jacket. Her scarlet curls dangled over her ivory skin, becoming umbrage of darkness under her acute eyes. She could sense the dread crawling against her heart, the fatal deception craving in the twines of her soul. She knew that everything impermanent-she was finally standing on the razor's edge.

She kept on replaying those words of truth in her mind, and looked over her shoulder, meeting him half way in the division of darkness and light. There were no barriers, obstruction or shields.

There was just him and her.

"Nat," Steve's soft and unimposing voice cut the silence; she blinked and suddenly became aware of his voice, he had always been her anchor against the storms; now after the horrors she watched, the seconds she had become an observer of the harvester of death-the butcher of souls unleash his power on humanity, turning everything into ruin.

The colors tuned to gray, shades of black and white.

There was no more beauty.

Ash and smoke.

Sighing deeply, Natasha pressed her full lips into a firm line, hiding the beautiful shade of pink, as trickles of blood sloped down her chin. Inside she was grieving, fighting her own war of emotions, wanting to feel the numbness encase over her bones. She felt dead.

"Do you think we'll win this, Rogers?' she asked, daring her pounding heart to listen to his answer.

Steve lowered his gaze, dropping his head somberly, he parted his lips slightly, "I don't know, Natasha. We've never face everything like this before..." He felt his voice drift, and a dull ache entered his chest. His heart was buried deep into the well of anguish. "I used to face the battles, never backing away, but after today-I feel less of a soldier than I ever have been...Less than a man," He flexed his chiseled jaw, trying to ease the distress and tension grinding inside of him. "I feel defeated," he confessed in a low monotone.

Natasha blinked and didn't respond, almost as if her mouth became sealed with ice.

The expression on Steve's face crumpled into sadness, he shifted his body and then said, «After all we've been through as partners, and we still haven't lost hope, Natasha. We're still standing...well...barely...but we're alive. We lived to fight another day." he spoke with truth ragging up his perched throat.

"This isn't living, Steve," Natasha snapped back, her voice firm and raspy, she lightly grimaced, and clenched her jaw. "We're being hunted by a machine who thinks it's a god..." She clamped her eye lids shut, wrenching her head away and exhaled sharply, "When I stared at Stark's creation...it looked at me...condemning me with no words...I felt everything in those seconds the machine was walking closer...It's like it saw my past and future."

Steve furrowed his eyebrows in disdain, and inched closer to her, placing his tattered gloved hand on her shoulder, he knew there was no subjection in the cold and metal drone that held the essence of humanity in its hands. The equalizer of balance and control.

Where are the angels?

Natasha narrowed her eyes, tasting the copper tang of blood roll over her tongue, she swallowed and felt tears begin to steadily fall. Parting her lips, she took a chance of her damaged heart and met his powerful blue eyes dead on, refuse to turn away. She had nothing to look back upon.

"I'm not trying to feel anymore, Rogers," she said, forging a frown on her lips. The drumming of her heart guided her to move in closer and closer until she felt the heat of his body radiate into her bones. "Today I realize that I had many chances to do something right. I failed to obey my own heart because I followed myself to fall back into the past."

Steve shook his head and stiffened his bruised lips. His blue eyes glistened with tears, his battered features tensed with anger. His face covered with a shroud of guilt and the golden glow faded with sickly ashen. Blood seeped from the gashes of his sharp cheekbones streaming over his broad curvatures and neck. It stained the silver star in the center of his chest.

Red.

"No," Steve's voice morphed into a calm baritone and something warm was twinkling in his gentle blue eyes. His gaze wasn't filled with the ominous truth of their future; light and trust found a way to shine through the darkness.

Nobility still flowed in his massive body, and he was a soldier, defender and an avenger.

He crouched hard, and scooped up the pieces of his shield, and sighed, "Captain America is more than just a shield. He is a man...flesh and blood. And he has a past and a future." he winced, placing his hand over his left arm, bones were jutting out.

He was wounded.

"We all have our mistakes, Nat." he lifted his head, and looked deeply into her guarded eyes, curling the edges of his lips into a faint smile. "That's what makes us human..."

Natasha nodded in agreement, and she lowered her lithe body down, settling her hand firmly on his shoulder, "Then let's fight not as puppets on string...but as Avengers that live to make their mistakes...and fight to hold on to everything that made us who we are today, Captain Rogers."

Steve lifted his hand to her face, threading his shaky fingers through her scarlet curls, fondly, and gave her an assuring smile, his blue eyes dazzled in the glimmers of the gray light streaking through the fog of smoke. "I can't protect you, Natasha...I don't have my shield anymore..."

"It was never the shield that protected me from danger, Rogers," she looked tenderly into his pained eyes, and caressed her thumb softly over his bottom lip, rubbing the smears of maroon off the cushioned flesh. "It was you...No the shield. You saved me, Steve. The shield was just a tool. Just like my guns."

Steve closed his eyes and secured his lips over her lips, declaring his love to her and swallowed down any fear.

She was regressed to the cement and fought against the pain, coiling her arms over his broad shoulders, and holding his sculpted and muscular body against her while her lips were still being seized by Steve and being penetrated by the thirst of watery mouth folding over hers mouth.

Tasting his lips melting against her own, Natasha finally danced with them, feeling the enveloping of his lips push her upper lip up as he kissed her until she was rendered breathless. He took everything out of her in those heated moments of both of their bodies surging for freedom from the dire flames consuming them.

A car exploded and the glass shattered into the air, sprinkling over their bodies.

Steve never released her lips; he embraced her, shielding her with his arms over her back and his resilient heart over her heart.

He became her shield and she was his angel.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading this one shot. I'm on vacation enjoying the rich colors of fall. I needed to fix one tiny mistake for this small story.