( ooc: um no i was so happy to find this in my inbox you have no idea? rando love all day come to my arms. )
[ It’s past 3 a.m. – all good girls and boys have gone to bed – but they’ve hit the sparring mats again.
This is their routine: they dance around each other in broad daylight, toying with band-aids where stitches should go; they keep a distance measured in waltz steps, and the music is always played in a slumbering G minor. They exchange few words. They pretend efficiently. They are professionals.
Then night falls – the key shifts and the chords rear themselves awake and vengeful, lusting after decades lost, years spent staring down the barrel – and they convene without fail to wage war. It’s no waltz, when they cross blows. This is leaving fresh bruises in an effort to claw back under flesh for their many former selves. Hold them up to the moonlight, if not accountable.
Which are you? (a right hook to a stubbled jaw) Which am I not? (a metallic grip around a pale throat) Which can we be? (a slam of two human-shaped weapons up against concrete)
He’s got his left arm around her, pinned by the neck to his chest, but he’s suddenly not there. The next moment puts him in 1944, shells blasting all around him, he’s trying to keep the rifle mount steady, Brody next to him just fell to the snow—
Then a voice speaks to him, like a nursery rhyme he’ll never forget, and he’s nameless, he’s more fist than man—
He’s sliding deftly over a hilltop, more snow, there’s a car overturned and two survivors. He really only needs to eliminate the male. The redheaded woman seems determined, though, to make the body count two. Efficiency override, always. He fires just one round, through her gut, and the man behind her slumps, glasses sliding halfway off his face. He doesn’t stay to see if the woman survives. He doesn’t—
He doesn’t know when his grip around her became so relentless, unforgiving, desperate. She’s clawing at him now, her heel sharp over his knee, and his skin goes cold. He’s ten paces away before either of them can blink, breathing as if bricks are weighing him down. ]
no subject
[ It’s past 3 a.m. – all good girls and boys have gone to bed – but they’ve hit the sparring mats again.
This is their routine: they dance around each other in broad daylight, toying with band-aids where stitches should go; they keep a distance measured in waltz steps, and the music is always played in a slumbering G minor. They exchange few words. They pretend efficiently. They are professionals.
Then night falls – the key shifts and the chords rear themselves awake and vengeful, lusting after decades lost, years spent staring down the barrel – and they convene without fail to wage war. It’s no waltz, when they cross blows. This is leaving fresh bruises in an effort to claw back under flesh for their many former selves. Hold them up to the moonlight, if not accountable.
Which are you? (a right hook to a stubbled jaw)
Which am I not? (a metallic grip around a pale throat)
Which can we be? (a slam of two human-shaped weapons up against concrete)
He’s got his left arm around her, pinned by the neck to his chest, but he’s suddenly not there. The next moment puts him in 1944, shells blasting all around him, he’s trying to keep the rifle mount steady, Brody next to him just fell to the snow—
He doesn’t know when his grip around her became so relentless, unforgiving, desperate. She’s clawing at him now, her heel sharp over his knee, and his skin goes cold. He’s ten paces away before either of them can blink, breathing as if bricks are weighing him down. ]
“…Natasha?”
[ Which one am I now? ]