A Hundred Worlds

By: InitialA

Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Marvel Universe.

She first noticed him on the morning she forgot her book.

Maria always made fun of her for reading on the bus to school every day. "1984 and Animal Farm for a grade isn't enough, you have to read War and Peace for fun?" Or something else, whatever she happened to be reading at the time. She had so much going on in her life. At the top of that list were her parents splitting up. Next came ballet and Krav Maga four nights a week. Then there were school obligations, like mandatory services. Whatever other extracurricular someone (read: Darcy) could talk her into came at the bottom. Natasha wanted just twenty minutes to herself every morning. Sometimes more, if there was a traffic jam. Okay, lots of times more; this was New York, after all.

But today she had been in a rush to get out of hearing range of her mother shouting at the lawyers (at 7am? Was it that much of a problem?). And she had forgotten to grab not only her book, but her phone sitting on top of it. Natasha's options for entertainment shrank. She could review for her trig test later, or observe the other unfortunates who had to take public transportation. She wanted to gag at the thought of more trig, so she took the second option. Her busmates were a ragtag group. People on their way to work. People needing something to do with their mornings. People traveling. A few other students; seven at most, which was unusual in this area of Brooklyn.

The bus stopped, and a boy got on. Natasha took immediate stock of him, as girls forced to attend private, all-girls schools tend to do. About the same height as she was, blonde crew cut (a little longer on top than usual), skinny in an unhealthy way. He stared at the floor the entire five seconds it took him to get to his seat, as the bus took off again. His backpack landed on the seat with a thump. Natasha thought it must have weighed more than he did.

The boy distracted her enough that a hand on her leg caught her by surprise. The man sitting next to her looked determinedly at his phone as his free hand slid up her thigh. She yelled at the top of her lungs about the pervert copping a feel, and slapped him. A man in the aisle forced the assailant up and towards the stairs. An older woman sat down next to her instead. Natasha forced a smile of thanks, and mentally scolded herself, her skin crawling. She glared out the window for the rest of the trip to school.

Jane was the soothing voice of reason as Natasha ranted about the pervert on the bus during homeroom. Pepper was full of plans of revenge. Darcy chimed in every other minute about her dad's promise of buying them all Tasers for their 18th birthdays. Natasha waved them both off. "It's… not fine, I'm just…"

"We've all been there. We get it," Jane said.

"Stupid uniforms…" Natasha muttered as roll call started.

Her bad mood stuck around all day; she glowered at the bus as it came up. She wasn't pissed off enough to walk all the way home, though. Not in her school shoes, and definitely not in the heat that was refusing to leave.

It was freaking October and it should not be 80 degrees. She attempted to read on the way home, but even in the best of moods The Scarlet Letter wasn't a page-turner. She would have to reread it later, anyway, to highlight and write her literary analysis paper for the next day. Natasha stuffed the book back into her bag, and huffed, staring out the window, her arms squeezed across her chest. And she had to work on her lines for the play, and practice for ballet tomorrow night, or Madame would never let her hear the end of it…

The boy was waiting at the bus stop, the boy from that morning. Her eyebrows furrowed in concern. He had the beginnings of a black eye; she didn't remember seeing that this morning. She glanced up at him as he walked past. His eyes met hers—well, eye, the other one swelling closed. It was bright blue. A look crossed his face, recognition. Her bad mood came back in full force when she remembered that morning, and she looked away with a scowl. She heard him, or rather his backpack, hit the seat a few rows back.

She remembered her battered copy of War and Peace the next morning, and her phone. (Her mother had delivered a blistering lecture about forgetting it. "Did you or did you not spend six weeks of last year begging us for this? Six weeks culminating with a PowerPoint presentation on why you should not be the only teenager in the New York Metropolitan Area without a smartphone?") Her headphones were on and her bag tucked next to her as a barrier on the bus seat. She opened her book and slipped back into the comfortable remnants of Tsarist Russia.

In the back of her mind, she counted the stops the bus made. She filtered out when they were actual stops (a sudden halt that left the inexperienced lurching and struggling to recover balance) and traffic stops (gentler movements, accompanied by the hum of blaring car horns in her bones). At the fourth stop, the seat next to her dipped as she got a companion for the ride. She glanced over through her curtain of hair: the skinny boy from yesterday, the area around his eye a shiny purple. Whoever had clocked him had clocked him good. Natasha scowled into her book and ignored him until his stop came.

She had play practice after school, and then went straight to ballet after. She didn't see the boy again until the following morning. He sat next to her again. She ignored him again. She scribbled notes in the margins of The Scarlet Letter (she hadn't had time to be thorough the night before) until he left. She glanced out the window to see where he was going, but there were no obvious schools around. She shook her head, and continued to write.

It became an odd routine. They sat next to each other almost every day, never saying a word to each other. She subtly watched his black eye turn green-yellow, then fade. She took note of new bruises on his hands and around his face; he wore long sleeves all the time and she was never confident about why. She had a few good ideas, though. Sometimes he had a bagel with him, but for the most part he only came aboard with his enormous backpack and stared ahead until he had to get off. He didn't bother her, she didn't bother him. Some days, Natasha left her music off to see if he would try to talk to her, but he never did. One day, just to test things, she didn't even open her book, just leaned against the window. The boy was just quiet; he had an air of determination about him, with a bit of apprehension. She wondered if it was because of school, or something else.

She wished she had the guts to ask him.

Just before Thanksgiving, it started to snow. By now, Natasha was more or less used to her strange Bus Companion (Darcy referred to him as such, capital letters implied). Her Bus Companion struggled onto the bus one day in a worn coat, scarf, gloves, and the kind of hat that would make a Bolshevik proud. Natasha caught herself smiling in amusement as she looked at him, and then made herself stop and look back at her book. She'd finished War and Peace and had now moved on to Anna Karenina. She glanced at him as he sat down, his backpack almost breaking the floor as it crashed down. There was a faint smile on his face. He glanced over at her; for the first time in weeks, their eyes met, and her eyes darted back to her book.

"Oh my God, just talk to him," Pepper scolded over lunch. She was continuing the conversation from homeroom. Natasha had insisted it wait until Maria could join them at lunch.

Maria said nothing, but Natasha knew the expression on her face. "Shut up, Maria," the redhead said.

Maria just smiled.

It took another two weeks for her to get up the guts to say anything to him. If she was honest with herself, it would have been longer if she wasn't tired from school and extracurriculars. As it was, saying anything just before winter break seemed bad enough. As the boy sat down, Natasha closed her book with determination. "Hi," she said.

The boy blinked, startled. He started to look around before realizing that she was, in fact, talking to him. "Hey." His voice cracked a little.

Natasha resisted the urge to laugh. "I've been trying to figure it out for weeks. Where the hell do you go to school?"

The boy gave a shy smile. "FDR. I'm a junior. You?"

"Bishop Kearney. Same."

"Private school."

"Got a problem with it, public school?"

"No, no. I'm an idiot; the uniform should have given it away."

"Yeah, well…" There was a moment of uncomfortable quiet. She pursed her lips. "Why do you sit next to me every day?"

The boy tilted his head in confusion. 'In for a penny, in for a pound.' Natasha thought. "Is it because of that creep back in October?"

"I'm sorry. I thought… I mean, I wouldn't presume, but… I figured I'd…"

"I'll take that as a yes."

"I just figured, a girl should be allowed to mope, or read ridiculous tomes, in peace. At least for six stops."

Natasha's eyebrow ticked in amusement. "They're not tomes."

"Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that one."

"This one's like, half as long as the last one. And I haven't even touched Les Miserables yet."

"It's a little more than half, and Les Mis is only like, 50 pages longer than War and Peace."

"You're revealing yourself by knowing that, you know."

The boy grinned. One of his front teeth was a little crooked. Natasha surprised herself by thinking it was cute. "Steve Rogers. Since you asked," the boy, Steve, said.

"Natasha Romanoff. Two f's, no v."

"That explains so much."

"You're a little punk, you know that?"

"And now you know why I get my eye blackened every other week."

Natasha laughed outright. Steve's smile widened. "I would think you'd have learned to duck by now," she said.

"I don't like bullies. You don't win by ducking," he explained.

"You don't win by going blind either."

Steve shrugged. "There are all kinds of ways to win."

"You're a bit of a weirdo."

"Says the girl who reads 19th century Russian literature for fun. Don't give me that look; everyone takes comprehensive American lit junior year. I know that's not on your reading list," Steve said.

She was, in fact, scrutinizing him. She fought the urge to punch him on principle. He looked out the window, and started to get up. "Almost my stop. See you later?"

Natasha thought it was odd he would ask at this point, but nodded. He grunted under the weight of his backpack. "What do you have in there, anyway?" She asked as he went to the stairs.

"You get punched into your locker twenty times and see how fast it gets jammed for good," he called over his shoulder as the bus stopped. "Later!"

She watched out the window as he walked down the block. 'Steve Rogers... what a weird kid...'