Tony was waiting for her on the bed. There was a smudge of dried blood on his t-shirt from when he had touched her bloodied hands. "Heyya," he said gently as she came out of the bathroom. He extended a hand and she took it, letting him draw her down onto the bed next to him.
"You okay?" he asked, running his thumb over the back of her hand. Natasha looked up from their joined hands to Tony's face, his features soft with concern. She wanted to tell him that she was fine, that she was free now and that she loved him. But she couldn't find the right words, so she cupped his face with a hand cleaned of blooed and kissed him. Not a soft, careful, hesitant kiss, but one that was firm and reassuring and sure of what she wanted.
He was taken aback for a moment, but then his lips yielded to move against hers, strong and steady without being forceful. His hands came up to cradle her head and his fingers carded through her hair. She could feel their bodies humming with the same rhythm, like two guitar strings. He pulled back, his lips leaving hers reluctantly, and she opened her eyes to look at him. "Natasha," he said. The sound of her real name on his lips grounded her to real life; this amazing, too-good-to-be-true life that somehow was hers now.
"Yes?" she asked, expectant.
"I –" He began to speak, but closed his mouth again, the struggle to speak clear in his anguished gaze. "You've been honest with me," he said slowly, and Natasha could tell that each word was deliberate. "Now I gotta – there's stuff I haven't told you and I want you to know because I don't want there to be secrets anymore." The words came faster now, occasionally tripping over each other as they formed from syllables into meaning.
"You don't have to," Natasha said. It wasn't easy, coming out of the shadows, and she never would have unless she was forced to. Tony had his secrets, and even though hers were dragged into the light it didn't mean that his had to be.
"But I do," he insisted, his brown eyes deep with emotion. She bit her lip, and nodded. That was okay, too, if he wanted to tell her. Secrets were hard things to keep and harder things to reveal. She waited for him to continue, but he didn't. Instead, he he gripped the bottom of his shirt and slowly, like he was peeling off a scab, he pulled it off over his head. He bared his torso to her for the first time, his eyes downcast to avoid watching her reaction.
She knew then why he never took his shirt off. His chest was branded. Raised scar tissue, pink and angry, in the shape of ten little rings that formed a circle around a pair of crossed scimitar blades. In the middle of his chest, right on his sternum. Natasha raised her fingers. "Can I…?" she said and he gave a slight nod that was barely a twitch of his head, still avoiding her eyes. She laid her fingertips on the scar. The skin was toughened, like on any scar, but she could almost feel it simmering with heat from the branding iron. "They did this to you? In Afghanistan?" Her voice was coiled tight with rage.
He gave another nod. "That was one of the first things they did after they took me."
Her anger was a dark tangle of shadows that burned in her chest. How dare they touch him like that? Like he was an animal for slaughter? Like he was a thing that they owned? "I'll kill them," she whispered fiercely, her face dark with protectiveness and vehemence. "How dare they?"
He shook his head and closed her small hand, the hand on his scar, in his own large, calloused one. "Too late," he said, his voice raw with pain. Chilling realization crept up on her. The hair on the back of her neck rose and she involuntarily tightened her grip on Tony's hand. "You –" she cut herself off. She didn't judge him, was in no position to, but he would hear an accusation in her voice and that was the last thing he needed.
Tony gave a bitter smile. "How did you think I got out?" he said. "They took me, and kept me in a cave for weeks. They wanted me to make a missile for them. Gave me scrap metal, bullets, ammunition… basically, everything I needed to escape. I set a trap for them. Made bullets for a machine gun, and a handful of bombs. When guards came to check on our progress we – me and Yinsen – we ran out, shooting everyone in our way. I didn't care who I killed, if they had a family waiting for them, if they were forced to be there – and I know that at least some of them were." Tony's voice was thick with anguish and his eyes were shinier than usual. Natasha sat closer to him, wrapping her free arm around his waist. He leaned into her touch, and she could feel the tremors running through his body. She held him closer to her, wanting to calm his shaking.
"We were almost out of the complex," he continued, "when all of them– or those we hadn't killed yet – surrounded us." He looked at Natasha with grief and self-loathing swimming in the dark pools of his eyes. "Yinsen yelled at me to run and dropped the bombs. And I listened and ran, my finger down hard on the trigger. He killed himself for me. That's what happened in Afghanistan."
To call what she felt sympathy was inadequate; she felt his pain as acutely as if it were her own. She could just imagine – he had never drawn blood before, at least not with his own two hands, and now the blood of all those men, be they enemy or ally, was on his hands. She knew how it felt to kill, yes, had been trained for it since she was a child. Violence and death was a part of her life, so much that she couldn't remember a time when her soul wasn't stained dark red from the blood she was raised in. But Tony had known otherwise; he hadn't been a good person, but he hadn't been a murderer either. The bloodstains must be harder to bear for him than they ever had been for her.
"Tony…" she murmured, holding him close. There were no words she could give him, no comfort to offer except a physical one. He melted into her embrace, hugging her fiercely to him as though she were keeping him afloat from the darkness of his memories. When his trembling had stopped, she drew back, and said, "You're a fighter, Tony. This" – she laid a finger on the scar on his chest – "is a mark of that."
He gave a wry smile. "Not a fighter. Just one lucky coward. But you… you're a fighter. You've fought to be free and now you are."
She returned a genuine smile. "We both are," she said firmly. She had freed herself from her past, and he from his captors and vices. "And now, for the first time in my life, I can choose where I want to go. I don't think I know that yet, but I think we both know who I want to go with," she finished, for once feeling shy as a schoolgirl.
His smile was sad and bittersweet, but hopeful too. "Really, Tasha?" The new nickname brought a thrill running down her spine. "You would want" – he gestured at his body – "this? Not just the scar but – but this mess of a person?"
"If you want me and all my scars and the darkness behind them," she answered.
The corners of his eyes crinkled as his smile turned to one filled with love. "I do."
That was a vow more potent than any that had ever been made to her before, or any that could ever be made. "As do I," she said softly. She cradled his face and pressed a slow, intimate kiss to his lips. After all, she was free to choose what she wanted, and this was her choice, and it will be for years to come.
Note: So this is definitely, the last chapter of Strings. I'm sorry it took so long.
Strings was originally supposed to be a one-shot, a response to ThaliaClio's fic 'people aren't supposed to look back'. Go read it if you liked Strings, it's beautiful and still one of the best ironwidow fics I've ever read.
Thank you all of you for sticking with me and leaving me all your lovely comments even when I'm so bad at updating and replying. Your comments are what reminds me that this fic exists and that people are reading it and waiting for the next chapter. To all of you who have ever commented, especially those anonymous comments I can't reply to – thank you. For liking my writing, for the encouragements, for the death threats, and for those rare times when someone really gets what I'm trying to say and lets me know that. Thank you.
Until next time,
-letthesongtakeflight