A/N: Sorry for the late post. RL's been a PITA today.

Unblemished

Steve Rogers was working on agility training. Boxing had been great when he was fighting Nazis, but even a Super Soldier couldn't go toe-to-toe with aliens, monsters and 20-foot-tall robots; so Steve upped his training in gymnastics and added something called parkour that Clint Barton had told him about.

"You already do it, Cap," he'd said. "This is just a new name and a system of training."

With Clint coaching now, Steve was combining parkour and gymnastics, using the gymnastics equipment as obstacles as he bounced, leaped and somersaulted his way around the gym.

He finished his assigned circuit and halted in front of his coach, slightly flushed and sweating like a horse but not even breathing heavy.

"I swear you have photographic muscle memory," Clint said, shaking his head in admiring disbelief. "You do it once and your body just doesn't forget."

"It's not that easy," Steve laughed. "That's why I have to practice. Do we have time for one more?"

Clint agreed. He and Steve rearranged a couple of apparatus into different obstacles. Clint assigned Cap his mission — under this, over that, three times around the gym.

Steve's white cotton T-shirt was nearly transparent, sodden with sweat. It clung to his biceps uncomfortable when he raised his arms to start. Making a face of distaste, he pulled it off and tossed it on his gym bag, then moved to his starting point, waiting for his coach's signal.

Hardly a foot away, Clint got a good look at Steve's bare chest and ripped abs and then, when Steve turned to take his place, an equally close-up view of the rippling muscles across his bare back.

Clint felt a stirring of envy that had nothing to do with Steve's impressive muscles. He signaled his friend to start, and couldn't take his eyes off him when he set off, moving with feline grace and power.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were ogling our young captain. Admiring those rippling muscles." Tony Stark spoke the mocking words as he came up behind Clint and set down his gym bag.

The archer flexed his own powerful biceps and laughed darkly. "It's not the muscles, Stark, it's the skin. Look at him," Clint said quietly, so Steve wouldn't hear. "All the battles he's been in, all the wounds he's taken, a nearly fatal plane crash — but his skin is unblemished, unscarred. Wouldn't it be nice to heal like that? If all your scars went away?" Clint said wistfully.

He cupped his hand around his left shoulder, fingers probing under his vest to massage a ridge of scar tissue near his shoulder blade. It was just one of several discolored lines, lumpy ridges and puckered holes on his body.

Tony's hand automatically drifted to the arc reactor in the center of the huge circular scar on his chest. It was his biggest, most visible scar, but not the only one he had.

Lost in memories of pain, the two men didn't notice Steve complete his circuit. Cap finished with a tumbling pass. His friends totally missed his beautiful layout front somersault off the springboard but they reacted instinctively to the body dropping from the sky beside them.

Tony brought up one arm defensively, stepping backwards and almost tripping over his bag. Clint whipped a knife from behind his neck and struck at the attacker.

Steve saw his mistake instantly. One hand snapped out to steady Tony before he could fall. The other forearm blocked the knife strike. Still on autopilot, Clint pulled back the knife, slashing at the blocking arm, but realized in that moment who he was attacking. His quick reflexes allowed him to turn the blade while Steve's serum-enhanced speed let him pull away; so instead of gouging a great chunk out of Steve's arm, the knife nearly missed him entirely. Just the tip scored a line near Steve's wrist.

Blood welled instantly from the cut, but Steve didn't look as concerned as Clint did.

"Damn, Steve! I'm sorry," he said contritely.

"It was my fault. I surprised you," Steve answered. "I didn't realize you weren't watching any more. I thought you were still admiring my flawless complexion," he joked.

His morning runs took him past a makeup billboard with that slogan.

"Damn serum-enhanced super hearing," Tony said, a little breathless from the sudden shock.

"People always forget," Steve agreed with a twinkle in his eye that made Tony wonder uneasily what else Steve might have overheard.

Clint only had eyes for the red drops running down Steve's arm. "We should put a bandage on that," he said.

"No need," Cap assured him. "It's not deep. It will stop in a minute."

Sure enough, as Clint watched, the blood flow slowed, then stopped. Unable to help himself, Clint gripped Steve's arm and wiped away the blood with his thumb. The distinct red line of the cut began to dull and spread, until it was a blurry maroon line that grew more and more pale until it finally blended with Steve's skin tone again. Cap stood placidly the whole time, allowing the other two men to watch the transformation.

In just over a minute, the only sign of the wound was the smear of blood left by Clint's thumb.

Hawkeye rubbed a scab on his neck from a minor sparring mishap two days earlier.

"Wish my scars would disappear like that."

Steve squeezed Clint's shoulder.

"But scars never go away," Steve said seriously. "You know that."

Steve touched his abdomen, where he'd been burned by a Chitauri energy weapon, and his thigh where a healing scar had shed blue flakes every morning until it disappeared entirely — much to Tony's relief. Those were two injuries the Avengers had reason to remember.

Then, as if playing a child's game, Steve touched other parts of his body — left wrist, left forearm, right knee, ribs, small of the back and more — indicating past injuries, Tony and Clint realized. Injuries from the war, they assumed, though the broken wrist and arm were from his days as a human punching bag in Brooklyn. Remembering that, Steve rubbed his knuckles and then his jaw with a wry grin. His worst fight had left him with a broken hand, a bruised jaw and two broken ribs.

"The scars, even the ones from before the serum are gone. The bones I broke before look whole and never broken now, according to the doctors, but I still remember the pain and the frustration from every injury," Steve said.

"Oh!" Tony said in sudden comprehension. "Damn serum-enhanced memory. You can't forget."

"And pain meds don't help you," Clint remembered. "Not now." Maybe the serum enhancements weren't so great after all.

Steve pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. "The only thing I don't remember is the crash, and I think I'm just as happy to not remember."

"I've seen your file," Clint said. "Even the doctors don't know how badly you were hurt, because you heal so well. Judging by the patterns of blood in the ice around you, they think you hit your head, probably fracturing your skull, which is why you couldn't escape. And there are signs of quite a bit of bleeding, but the cold slowed that down and prevented fatal blood loss. And then, whatever happened, your body healed. Slowly, because of the cold, but after 70 years, you were whole again."

They all considered the image of Cap frozen in the Arctic, and all three men shivered. Steve shook the thought away.

"Still envious?" he asked Clint.

Clint clapped him on the shoulder. "Maybe not so much. Just because I can't see the scars doesn't meant they're not still there."

"I can get rid of them here," Steve said, touching his leg. "But I can never get rid of them here." He tapped his skull.

Author's Note: We're taking a break from A Very Good Team next Saturday (I need to finish a bunch of stories that are all half done.). I hope to post the first chapter of a three-part Avengers fic "Cerulean St. Cloud." Look for that starting March 30, as long as RL doesn't get in the way.