oOoOoOo
Malibu, CA
December 14, 1998
Toni hits the mat hard enough to drive the wind from her lungs, hard enough to make her see stars. She lays there, unable to move, sprawled akimbo on the floor with her chest hitching desperately for air and spots dancing in her eyes. For a brief moment, panic flutters in her chest and adrenaline surges, the instinctive reaction of a body when it's convinced it's dying.
Her lungs reinflate with a whoosh, and her head swims with the rush of oxygen as she sucks in the deepest breath she is sure she's ever taken. Her sinuses burn from the force of it, and her eyes water. "Need softer mats," she croaks, staring squint-eyed up at the ceiling through the shimmer of liquid.
"Any softer, and they'll be beds," Clint says, and shoves his hand out towards her. She glares at it, but grabs it and lets Clint pull her back to her feet. He grins and swigs from a bottle of water, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. "You're getting better, though. Last week, you would have bitched at me to leave you there to die."
Clint has proven immune to her dirtiest death-glare, but that never stops her from sending them his way. She grumbles and grumps wordlessly as she straightens her workout clothes around her, then stretches her arms with a grimace. "Remind me why I hired you again?"
Clint arches an eyebrow and holds the bottle out to her. "Because I'm a born performer who's circus-freak bendy and I'm really good with long shafts?"
She swipes it out of his hand and unscrews the cap. "Still can't believe you put that under Hobbies and Skills," she mutters, and tilts the bottle into her open mouth. "Not really the recommended wording for professional resumes, you know."
"Hey, it got your attention." Clint grins, thumbs tucking into the top of his sweatpants.
"No," she counters, stooping to grab a towel from the bench beside the mat. "What got my attention was My objective is to find a rich sugar mama who'll spoil me rotten. By the time I got to your hobbies and skills, I was laughing so hard I hurt myself."
Clint shrugs. "It ain't broke," he says easily. "I don't have to fix it."
Toni takes another swig from the bottle and pours the mouthful that's left over her head. It's lukewarm, but it trickles like heaven over her face. She dries away the sweat and water with the towel, and tosses it and the empty bottle back onto the bench. "I'm almost legally obliged to point out that it didn't work, because I'm not your sugar mama," she says. "I was looking for a personal assistant, not a kept man. And you didn't get that job either."
"No, but you still hired me. Personal assistant, personal trainer. I'm not that hung up on my job title. What's one word of difference?" He shoves her shoulder playfully, nudging her towards the mats again. "Get your ass in gear. You've still got thirty minutes to spend hitting the floor."
"You're a cruel man and I regret my decision to employ you," she grouses as she pads back to the center of the mats and takes the loose, defensive stance he's spent weeks drilling into her.
"Shoulda hired me as your kept man," he says, shifting into a more aggressive stance. "I'm much more agreeable when nudity is involved."
The next twenty minutes are spent in silence punctuated by the occasional grunt and Clint's corrections of her form and footwork. They finish the session with something new, as Clint declares her ready to learn more offensive moves, now that she finally understands how to fall and how to redirect incoming attackers. It's more fun for him than it is for her, because Clint's method of demonstrating various ways to lock down opponents involves wrapping her up in arms and feet and thighs.
"Jesus Christ," Toni wheezes, on her back for the thousandth time and twisted in a very uncomfortable pretzel with Clint's weight pinning her down. Her lungs are somewhere behind her tonsils. "You're part octopus. How many goddamn limbs do you actually have?"
He laughs and unlocks his ankles, propping himself over her chest on his elbows. Toni's heels hit the mat and she groans softly in relief as her circulatory system unknots itself. "I'll show you how to break it tomorrow," he says. "I'm going to schedule some time on a range too, walk you through shooting lessons. Maybe some knife throwing. You've got the reflexes for it."
She cracks a baleful eye with an ascerbic comment on the tip of her tongue, but her breath hitches in her throat. Clint's face hovers above hers so close their noses are practically touching. There's a speculative look in his eyes. She licks her lips and watches his gaze flick down. A curl of heat rolls low in her belly.
"Am I misreading this?" he murmurs.
She swallows hard against the dryness of her mouth, has to force it down past the heart that insists on hammering in her throat. "No," she says. "You're not misreading anything."
The corner of his lips curve into a smile. "Good." And his mouth slants down over hers, nipping at her bottom lip. Toni melts into it, forgetting her arms are noodles and bringing them around his shoulders, threading her fingers through his hair. He's sweaty, but so is she, and it should be gross, but it isn't.
He kisses her slow and lazy, and damn, he knows what he's doing with his mouth. Toni's used to people trying to speed through the kissing in order to get her clothes off, but Clint doesn't seem like he's in any rush whatsoever. It feels like natural progression to open her mouth, lick at his lip, invite his tongue. His hands don't go anywhere, except to cup her jaw and rub his thumb along her cheekbone.
Toni moans at that simple touch, and her fingers flex, digging her nails lightly into his scalp and neck. He shivers hard and groans, breaking from her mouth and turning his head to hide his face in her shoulder, shoulders heaving. "Sorry," he says, half-muffled by her shirt. "We shouldn't have done that. I swear to god, I'm not trying to sleep my way up the corporate ladder."
Toni shifts comfortably, feeling gloriously relaxed and … maybe not happy, but she's at the very least content in the moment. "We're okay," she says, dragging her fingertips down from his hair, tracing the line of his spine to between his shoulders, and then reversing the motion. It's a tiny thrill of satisfaction when he leans into it, and she smiles. "You can kiss me again, if you want. I can quite honestly say I've never been kissed like that before. S'nice."
He lifts his head, and there's a dazed flush high in his cheeks. "Yeah?" he says, and Toni laughs at the hint of self-satisfaction in his grin.
She nods and, because he still looks a little uncertain, lifts her head and presses her lips to his, soft and quick. "Come kiss me again," she says, nestling her head back down. "Just don't expect your job title to change. I don't need a kept man. I need a personal trainer."
He follows her down and when he kisses her again, they're both laughing.
A week later, after more sex in more positions than Toni has even dreamed existed, when Toni's fairly sure she'll never move again because everything is just so gloriously loose and relaxed, Clint kisses her shoulder and says, "I should be your soulmate."
Her brain is a slurry of post-coital mush and drifting, dreamy thoughts that basically start with wow and end with wow, but that statement snaps her right back out of her pleasant haze. She freezes, muscles locking back up into knots, and whips her head to stare wide-eyed at him. "I'm sorry, what?"
He shrugs and rolls to his stomach, muscles flexing along his back as he gets his elbows under him. "In public, I mean," he says, as if that should explain everything. It doesn't.
Slowly, cautiously, she lowers her arms back down and, because she's her and because it's happened before, she wonders exactly what absolute failure in communication resulted in his utterly clean background check. JARVIS doesn't usually make mistakes. "I repeat: I'm sorry, what?"
He frowns, looking lost in thought. "You need one," he says absently. "People are going to start to wonder about things pretty soon." He shifts his head, glancing at her, and rolls his eyes. "Oh hell, Toni. Stop looking at me like that. I don't want to be your soulmate. I said I should be your soulmate in public. It solves a whole bunch of problems. You look like I'm going to whip out a knife and go American Psycho on you."
She shimmies into a sitting position, letting the sheet fall to her lap. His eyes automatically go to her breasts and darken; there's an answering pull, sluggish but interested, in her groin. "Stop that," she snaps, feeling her cheeks flush. "I know you have this thing where you say something that makes perfect sense to you, but I am not following your crazy train of thought."
He blinks in surprise. "Oh. Okay then, let me back up." He opens his mouth, then closes it again. "Actually, let me start with pants." He fishes around his side of the bed, comes back with his jeans, and slides off the bed to put them on. Toni ignores the way her mouth goes dry even though she privately thinks his ass needs to be registered as a weapon of mass distraction.
He sits back down, folding one leg under him. "I've spent a lot of time in the spotlight," he says, reaching out to take her hand but hesitating long enough to make it clear it's her choice whether or not their fingers tangle. After a moment of pause, she allows it. His hand closes around hers, tight and warm. "I'm really good at figuring out how to play to public expectations.
"Right now, you're not really a high-value target for the paparazzi," Clint says. "However, with Stark Industries now the primary supplier for the US military in the Middle East, they're getting more interested in you. I think we have an awesome opportunity to head things off at the pass, to control the image you're going to end up getting. Everyone knows you have marks, but no one knows what they are." She shoots him a look. He raises his hands, palms forward, and shakes his head. "I assume there's a good reason for that, and I'm not asking to see them. But eventually someone's going to try to get into your bedroom, rip your clothes, something."
Toni feels the blood drain from her face, and her hand comes up to clutch at her chest. She knows no one can see, but she's suddenly aware of just how fragile her protection really is. "So what—" She stops, clears the hoarseness out of her throat, and tries again. "What are you suggesting?"
Clint looks up. "JARVIS, would you mind displaying this week's gossip page from the Times? The one you showed me earlier?"
"It would be my pleasure, Clint," JARVIS says, and the far screen flickers on. Toni eyes the ceiling, eyes Clint, wondering if she should fear for her life with her AI and her…boyfriend? friend with benefits?... conspiring.
He nods to the screen as it resolves in a full page spread, a giant blow-up photo of her and Clint, walking out of a coffee shop. She only knows it's Clint because she was there; the picture just shows the back of his head, but has caught her in full view. She's holding her coffee and a box of donuts, face turned towards him, laughing at whatever it was he said. Whoever took the photo caught her in a moment of unguarded happiness. It's a good shot.
The caption beneath it reads: NATASHA STARK FINDS HER SOULMATE.
Toni chokes. Flails. Reels. Sees stars. Clint, alarmed, thumps her on the back until she remembers how to breathe.
oOoOoOo
Siberia
JARVIS directs Toni back through the hole in the wall and towards the stairs she discovered before the Winter Soldier came out of nowhere to fuck with her day. Said Soldier is now slung unconscious over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. The elbow joint of the armor is locked into place, keeping him secure. She's pathetically grateful that she added that feature, because otherwise, she'd be reduced to dragging him along by one foot.
Toni is only on her feet because the suit is keeping her up. JARVIS has commandeered the life support functions of the suit, and she has to tolerate the indignity of an intravenous needle jammed into her wrist that's pumping mild painkillers, fluids and nutrients into her. It's the compromise they make.
Compromise, as in, he tells her very firmly what she is going to need to do in order to finish the mission, and in return for these concessions, he will not inform either Pepper, Clint or Natasha about her location or condition. The thought of none of them finding out is more than enough to convince her to do what her impertinent busybody AI tells her. Pepper's goddamn terrifying when she's in the middle of directing a project – Stark Tower in New York, this time – and Clint likes to shoot things that annoy him with arrows. Natasha is the world's most creative sadist, especially when devising ways to express her displeasure. For none of them to ever know is suddenly Toni's deepest wish.
She sighs through her nose, a deep exhalation the ends on a wince and an involuntary motion of her hand towards her ribs. Her eye is throbbing too, and there's an ache in the wide scrape above her eyebrow that's still sluggishly leaking blood. "They're still going to kill me," she mutters. "I'm not going to be able to hide any of this shit from them."
"I tried to warn you, ma'am," JARVIS says.
"I know, I know." She closes her eyes and regrets it immediately, because the world lurches to the right. She saves herself from falling only by flinging her hand out to catch the wall. Her ribs protest with a sharp twinge. She leans against the wall, faceplate pressing into the concrete, and concentrates on breathing through the waves of pain washing up her side. Her mind crunches the numbers, figures how long it would take Clint to fly her jet to Russia, how long it would take her to convince him to take one of her suits instead. Too long, too long. Where's Rhodey? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Back home in the States? It's been too long since she checked in with him. Not since War Machine had its last upgrades.
Maybe Clint or Natasha could steal a quinjet? Shit, no, she's not supposed to know about their affiliation with SHIELD, and she sure as hell doesn't want SHIELD to know about Captain Kill slung over her shoulder. She has Clint's loyalty, she knows that, she's had it for years. She has Natasha's too, though that's more recent and not as solidly built. But she doesn't like or trust the folks who sign their other paychecks as far as she can throw them. Without the suit.
"Talk to me, J," she says. "I need options. Fast. Ones that aren't the Murder Twins or War Suit."
"You're holding one," suggests JARVIS evenly.
She wants to bang her head against the wall, but it would just knock her out. Then again, unconsciousness might be nice right about now. She needs sleep, food, shower. In that order. "Twenty minutes ago, we were trying to kill each other."
"That was twenty minutes ago, ma'am. Circumstances can change."
"Not in twenty minutes, they can't. Goddammit." This time, she does thunk her head against the wall, very gently. "Do you have eyes inside here, J?"
"The building has limited camera access, but I am able to monitor approximately 60% of the remaining levels."
"Have you been rummaging through their files? How's the hack coming?"
"I've isolated a clean sandbox in the Cubby cluster. Data transfer is in progress, and is estimated to complete in ten minutes."
"Personnel files listed? Yeah, give me a head count of who's left standing."
"My best estimate is at least seventeen Hydra agents remaining, as well as an additional seven scientists." There's another of those tiny pauses, and JARVIS continues, "Ma'am, your injuries are extensive. You must take care of yours—"
"Thank you JARVIS, that will be all," she says firmly. She can feel his disapproval in the silence he leaves behind. JARVIS does more with pointed silences than most can do with an entire speech.
She racks her brain, digging deep into the tired memories and sputtering synapses, dredging for any idea that isn't going to get her a) killed, b) brainwashed, c) shot full of arrows, d) ruined at by Pepper or e) tortured by Natasha. "I got nothin'," she breathes, mostly to herself.
"You can't fight your way out," says a gruff voice over her shoulder, and Toni leaps nearly out of the suit. She unlocks the elbow of her armor, dumps the Winter Soldier onto the floor, dances back into a defensive position.
He doesn't move except to straighten his posture from where she drops him, and just sits there, staring up at her with a hollow-eyed intensity that sends chills racing down her spine. "You'll be taken. You have high value as a target. Iron Maiden, Stark Industries, Stark Solutions. One soulmate, of high value due to his unique skillset. Through you, he may be controlled."
Wild laughter is on the tip of her tongue, but she bites it back as best she can, because otherwise she might start crying. "Clint only lets me control him when there's a safeword involved. Otherwise, not so much into that kink." When there's nothing but silence, she eyes him. "Right. Sarcasm is lost on mindless assassins. Sorry, my bad. Won't happen again."
His eyes bore into hers. "Your name is Toni."
She nods, and her legs wobble like a baby deer. She turns so her back is against the wall, and she starts to slide down. "Sure is. Do you mind if I sit? I need to sit."
His eyes follow her, fixated like a cat, as she thumps onto the floor. "I know you." It sounds more like a question than a statement.
"We've met once or twice," she says, and fumbles with the helmet before removing it and raking sticky, bloody, sweaty and just downright gross hair out of her eyes. She grimaces, feeling the tack of blood cracking on her face. "Okay, more like six or seven times. You never seem to remember, though."
"They cleanse my memory." Declaration. No intonation. A simple statement of fact. But then his forehead furrows and his eyebrows draw together. His eyes cant downwards, and he seems to be staring at his hands. "It doesn't always work."
"Color me shocked," she says with a sideways twist of her mouth. "Hydra's persistent, I'll give it that, but only middling-to-fair with actual technique. Couldn't manage to get the supersoldier program right, can't manage to keep their brainwashed assassins properly brainwashed, can't even train their rank-and-file to hit the broad side of a barn with a rocket launcher. It's a wonder more of their shitty little bases in the middle of nowhere don't just spontaneously explode from the concentration of pathetically average potential within them."
He says nothing, continues staring at his hands until Toni's almost convinced he's become a statue. She sighs, closes her eyes, rests her head back against the wall. Fuck it. "J, call Clint for me."
"Very well, ma'am." JARVIS sounds pleased, the little bastard, and inside the helmet, Clint's picture flashes on the damaged HUD as the connection goes through.
"Toni," Clint says in lieu of a hello, full of fury and a note Toni's learned to identify as fear, "I'm going to kill you."
She grits her teeth. "Hi honey," she says, forcing false cheer into her tone. "How was your day?" Distantly through the connection, she can hear Natasha's rapid-fire Russian in the background, knows she's cursing Toni's lineage all the way back to the Stone Age.
"My day was going just fucking fine until I was informed that my best friend had decided to take a pleasure cruise to fucking Siberia with untested tech to assault a Hydra base and is now probably bleeding internally and might not make it out alive. How the fuck do you think I'm doing, Toni? What the hell were you thinking?"
"Red star," is all she says, because Clint is one of the three people living who know what marks she bears and what they mean.
There's a pregnant pause on the other end. "Jesus, honey," Clint says, voice thick. "Okay, what do you need?"
"Extraction. A ride home. Medical attention. A goddamn cheeseburger. A shower. In that order." Her firm tone fades. "Come get me, Clint?" she pleads.
"You got it, sweetheart. Nat and I are in Slovakia. We'll be there soon. Love you."
"Love you too," she replies softly, and the connection cuts. With a too-loud groan of too-much effort, she forces herself back to her feet, wobbles until she finds her balance. "JARVIS, status?"
"File transfers are complete, ma'am. A second sandbox has been isolated in the Cove, and copies are transferring now. Medical facilities in Malibu are being upgraded, as per your orders. Document generation is nearly complete." One of those infinitesimal pauses. "You can bring him home, ma'am. All is ready."
"Good," Toni says softly, and holds out a gauntleted hand to the man on the floor. "Alright, on your feet, Terminator. We're leaving."
He stares up at her, blank and scary as hell. But silently takes her hand and gets back to his feet. Something flickers through his eyes, too fast for most people to register. Toni sees it, though, and she isn't most people. A tiny furrow between his eyebrows. Confusion. Uncertainty. A twitch in his metal fingers, possibly a glitch in the cyberware because Hydra's competency with technology is laughable at best, but possibly an aborted instinct to touch the blue circle. "I…" A tiny hesitation. "I do not understand why," he says.
"I know," she says, sympathetic. "We'll work on it."
