A/N: I need to say this. I've no idea how cars work or vans work beyond the fact they need keys and have a brake and accelerator, actually they do have an accelerator right? Point is. No idea. So I'm doing guess what what Nat did to help her.
There was a lot of things I wanted to include in this, but for the sake of it being a one-shot that is written that is below 4k words, I downsized it and removed a lot of other things I wanted to include which also includes how Bucky came across Skye. Which I want to say is - Bucky found her when he's hunting Hydra down. There'll probably a part 2 of this eventually.
I'm still not taking requests, but this is the to-do list:
- Bruce Banner
- Natasha (working on it)
- Quicksilver
- Pepper Potts
- Wanda
- Peter Parker
- Bobbi/Bucky
- Peter Quill
- More Matt, Bucky, Tony
Similarly, Natasha x Skye has elements that I'm vaguely working on.
Thanks for all your reviews, favourites and follows so far! I really appreciate them!
Russian - "Italics"
She glares at the man who stands over her. Every part of her body feels beaten thoroughly and it is. Her trainer shows no mercy to her but she doesn't want it anyway. Standing, she spits a wad of blood onto the floor, pulling her aching body into fighting position.
He swats her with his metal arm, she ducks, using a thigh to spin herself onto his shoulder and into a killing blow.
"Better." They return to rested position, Natasha sees a small wry grin beneath his bland expression. Her fellow trainees feel jealous that Yasha pays more attention to her than to them and contributes her success and skill to his attention. They only see the success, they don't see the bruises and the beatings. Yasha never goes easy on anyone and he never shows mercy.
She is running. The baby in her hands is crying. She doesn't know why her superiors want the baby, but it isn't her for her to question orders. She just carries out the missions.
He stands beside her getaway car. She heard that he died in a mission seven years ago. She never questions missions, she never questions reports until today.
"Yasha-" She doesn't know how to react to the man who she once loved and once buried in her heart.
He stiffens at his name, his hand fisting just above his knife as though he is trying to control an urge.
"Get out of here before I kill you!" He punches the window, his body is shuddering.
She understands the moment he says those words. The trigger, the command to kill the person who spoke the words runs through her. Her muscles are demanding a response, her mind is struggling to arrest it.
"Go!"
She runs and runs until she runs into a Shield team. She leaves the baby behind and keeps on running. It makes sense why she always had feelings for him before now. They were a trio and were waiting for their third to be born before their soulmarks would appear. So when the marks appeared a year ago, the next thing they'd say to each other became their first words.
Natasha traces the feminine handwriting on her inner thigh, 'Sorry about that. Reflexes.'
She has killed too many people. Their third does not deserve to be burdened with them. Perhaps if she tried cleaning her ledgers, she would become a good enough person.
Bucky remembers his soulmarks, he remembers meeting one of them. He remembers her calling him Yasha, he knows it doesn't belong to him. The doctors try to remove the words, but they do not succeed. He feels proud that he sees the writings grow back whenever they try cutting it out.
'Oh my god! You scared the shit out of me!' He likes her handwriting, it's small and scrawny that looks almost like weird lines and dots if it wasn't for the graceful loops. He traces the marks with his fingers when they are not watching him, grounding him in finding a way out of this mess. He clings onto the image of the red head like a rock in a stormy sea. One day he will break free, he'll kill everyone one of them down, then he'll search for his soulmates.
That is not threat, that is his promise.
Skye loves her van. To say it so simply is a gross underestimation of her love for her van. Skye LOVES her van. It is capitalized, capped and bolded. Her van is the very symbol of everything she has interest for - wandering and freedom. It is not the symbol of poverty contrary to Miles' and Gila's suggestion and quips.
Her van was a gift. Or rather, her van is the gift she gifted herself after ripping that very rich businessman off of the isles of she-doesn't-know-where-really. The businessman would not notice or miss the six digits she lifted from him plus he deserved it. Anyone who thinks can touch her ass and get away with it is mistaken, sorely mistaken. On hindsight, she should have lifted more, bought a cushier van.
Miles asked her that time to time but really, she doesn't know why she bought this particular van. There were better vans out there and she did had enough money but you know, this van called her. So she picked it.
It was only stability in her life apart from her growing friendship with Miles, Gila and Micro. She bunks down at their place time to time but never for long. That said, the Van isn't the most stable piece of shit.
It stalls right as she drives through an alley and refuses to move despite all the hokey pokey she does to it. The last thing she wants to do is park her van in an alley, in the middle of the night, in the part of town that is so shitty that she swears the dark stains on the concrete is actually blood. It probably is in fact.
"Come on! You piece of shit! I'm going to pawn you off, Maria! I swear to god I will!"
She swings the wrench and almost hits the van when a female voice behind her says, "Move over." Skye screams bloody murder and chucks the wrench at the voice. The voice swears and dodges the wrench. "Do you always throw wrenches at people who are trying to help you?"
The speaker is a lady with hair so red, Skye thinks it might be actually on fire. "Sorry about that, reflexes." The speaker had said her words, but her words are pretty common so when the lady doesn't react to her words, Skye figures that she's probably not her soulmate. She doesn't have that kind of luck in any case. Just from the way she moves and the shape of her body, Skye guesses she must be helluva a woman in both personality and body. Good luck to whoever has her as their soulmate, they'd be fending off suitors all the time.
"So Maria?" the woman chuckles as she bends over the engine. The wrench in her hand is a force, she moves it across the engine like a weapon; opening screwings, tightening them, tapping and shifting. Her hand is small and beautiful and Skye wonders how it'd be like in her hand.
It is an awkward and weird thought which Skye immediately squashes, clears her throat and squeaks out, "yea. I call her Maria." And then she rambles because she is nervous and her mouth has never learnt the word 'Shut up'. "There's this nun back in the orphanage and she was called Maria. We called her Maria the mean, but really because we were mean and we really liked her and it was difficult to express it."
The lady chuckles and twists the keys. The van purrs under her touch. "All yours." Skye can hear the smile in her voice even if she can't see it.
"Thanks a lot. My name's Skye by the way. What's your's?"
"Nat." She waves and disappears into the shadows.
Natasha traces her soul mark. That night she met Skye, she had chosen to not let her know. She was in so deep, her ledger had so much red, she had so many enemies that she worried for her soulmate. Skye was just a civilian, a girl who had so much life in her that to become the Black Widow's soulmate was to defile her.
After the carriers crashed, she decided she had waited long enough, she wanted to see her again but there was nothing on her; no ID, no driving license, no school records, no files. Nothing.
So it seemed that her soulmate was a ghost - a ghost on the internet and not quite as she seemed. She burst out laughing. Not even giving her soulmate a chance, Natasha had let her walk away on things she had assumed about her.
Now she's dead.
Would she be still alive if she had stuck with her? Would she still be alive if she had her to help with whatever that caused her to die. Her heart hiccuped as she considered it. What if she had died because someone had found out that Skye was her soulmate? The chances was next to none, but just because the probability was low didn't mean it didn't exist.
"Natasha?" Steve calls, breaking her out of her reverie. "Are you okay?"
She quirks an eyebrow at him, "are you? We've been chasing after your best friend for six months."
"He's my best friend but he's your soulmate." He points out gently. Steve had been rather perturbed when Bucky had recognized her instantly but not him until Sam pointed out the probable why. Natasha did not confirm or deny it and that, to him, was as good as confirming it, or so Steve said.
She'll be okay. She's the Black Widow. She's always okay even if she was alone forever.
Skye is on the run from the 'real' Shield and Hydra. She always have been on the road since she got her van but she had never been on the run. This trip taught her that being on the move and being on the run were two completely different things. Being on the run makes her feel like she is coming apart at the seams. She is exhausted, the ability to feel vibrations and control them keeps her up at night. The nights where she does fall asleep, she wakes up from the nightmare of Trip dying.
She is a monster. Even Shield thinks that she is one. She had seen Bobbi coming to take her in.
The vans were arriving. She has to leave now if she wants to escape. Running, escaping but to where and for what purpose? She has nowhere else to go, no one to go to, no one else to care. Skye sucks in a deep breath, one hand gripping her temple, the other gripping onto the gun she had stolen from Bobbi. Perhaps it was better if she just died.
Just one bullet. Straight through the brain. She toys with the idea of shooting herself, seriously toys with it. The question on how Coulson and Fitz would feel makes her hesitate.
No. Not today.
She is not a coward, she's just delaying the decision to another day. Turning, she runs towards the back exit and face first into a very hard chest. She swings a fist with the plan of channeling all that May has taught her into fighting the guy but he disarms her and pushes her towards the door in a swift move.
An ally?
"This way." He says, hand gripping her arm and pulls her through an exit that she never thought existed and into a vehicle.
"Oh my god! You scared the shit out of me!" She gasps, clutching her chest the minute that they are in the car and is speeding down the highway.
He blinks at her, surprise colouring his face. "Ok. Who the hell are you?" She points the gun at him.
"Saving you," he grunts. "And apparently your soulmate."
She hitches her shirt up and points at the handwriting. "This yours?" He nods and pulls his shirt up to show her, hers. "I see a trend."
"A trend?" he questions.
She pulls the edge of her jeans down to show her other soulmark. "I have very vocal soul mates."
He snorts and Skye thinks that wry smile looks very good on him. "So anything I need to know, seeing Hydra is chasing you?"
She shrugs. "Shield is also chasing me and I make things shake."
"You sure know how to pick them."
"Yasha!"
Yasha stops, turning at her voice. The girl that had been following him, runs into him. She turns to see what he is looking at, rubbing her nose.
"Who's that with him?" Sam asks.
"For a guy on the run, he's got more game than you," Barton tells Steve.
Steve grunts, "That's Bucky alright."
The girl's someone Natasha never expected to see again. The ghost of the internet, the girl that exists. She jumps out of the vehicle, her feet stumble but she doesn't fall.
"Go!" Steve pushes Natasha towards them, letting her get a moment. Stepping towards them cautiously, she sees the tension in their shoulders and the gradual loosen as Yasha recognizes her.
"Yasha-" she begins, he doesn't let her get another word out. He flings his arms around the two of them.
"I thought you two were dead. Especially you!" She punched Skye in the arm.
"Actually…" Skye rubbed her arm. The woman sure punched hard. "I did die. It's a bit complicated but I have to ask. Didn't I meet you in that alley?" She glanced at the trio trailing behind her. "Is that Captain America? Shit. Aren't you the Black Widow?"
Skye pauses, her face paling. "Shit. Black Widow's my other soulmate?"
