The Marquis de All The Knives (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
balsamandash) wrote2017-01-02 04:53 am
balsamandash) wrote2017-01-02 04:53 am
Entry tags:
January Meme: Day Two
Day Two: Headlights (from thebonesofferalletters)
(Prompt list; I'm 7 shy of the full month.)
and if you come to find me, I'll color you red
MCU AU, Pepper Potts & Bucky Barnes, 727 words
Content warnings: Red Room issues (nothing explicit, but very much there)
... Uh. This one might take some explaining. So there's a story I've been wanting to write, which is... backtracked into a canon AU from a totally modern AU. Basically it started with the modern AU where Pepper, Natasha, and Bucky are adopted siblings, and then it turned into the AU where Pepper is a Black Widow and escaped the Red Room with Bucky's help. It's... a very intricate AU and I have a lot of backstory and scenes planned for it and I love it even if Bast is probably the only other person who will ever give a damn about it. This is maybe the first scene, definitely a scene, that I had in mind for it; if I ever get around to writing it probably it may or may not be in the fic at all, let alone in this form exactly, but... dammit, I did the thing. Considering how long I've wanted to get any of this out, I'll take it.
They play the perfect couple well, standing in the shadows of the building and looking at each other like there's nobody else in the world.
She presses up to kiss his cheek and breathes, "How long?" into his ear in careful English.
"Two minutes," he answers, just as soft as he embraces her. His English is much better than hers, actually natural to his tongue instead of masterfully taught like hers. She doubts anyone who isn't them, or like them, could tell the difference, but she can hear it, hear the markers of an accent that they still haven't quite driven out of him. She can do accents, when she wants to, but she doesn't have one in any language, any more than she has a name of her own.
On that field, at least, they're even.
"Five to finish the exchange," he goes on, kissing the corner of her mouth. She can feel his lips barely move against her skin when he finishes. "You'll be gone in twenty. Three hours before they look for you."
She swallows the barest flutter of nerves, turning her head just enough to meet his mouth. "Are you ready?" she asks, as the first light disturbs them. His answering nod would be invisible if she wasn't pressed against his lips.
The exchange goes off without a hitch, their handlers suspicious behind their casual smiles in a way that's a comfort. If they were hiding all suspicion, they'd probably have guessed that their agents were planning something they hadn't put in their heads. When the Red Room looks like they trust you the most, they're preparing to strike you down; it's a lesson she took to heart, one they never wanted to teach her.
They give the directions they're asked for, the code phrases giving them all they need to know about the target's surveillance, the plan they're to enact. They wave a goodbye and turn their backs on the car, and she doesn't glance back over her shoulder as she hears it start and turn, the headlights sweeping across the world in front of them. They trained her better than that.
She wraps her arm around his waist instead, tucking herself into his side, the perfect picture of young lovers on this warm night, from the way they laugh to the rings glinting on their fingers in the moonlight.
"You could come," she says one last time, far too quiet for anyone but him to hear, almost too quiet to even hear herself.
He leans down to kiss her temple, and she doesn't even hear the, "No, I couldn't," he says against her skin. She doesn't have to; she feels it. She heard it the last time. She could forget everything else about the Red Room -- aches to, would love to -- but she won't forget the bitter twist in his mouth or the way he wouldn't meet her eyes when he said he wouldn't know how to keep them from finding him, that he doesn't want to be the reason she gets dragged back.
The target's building is twelve-point-two minutes away from the street their handlers asked to meet them. Nine-point-six minutes into the walk, they take a different turn, her heart hammering in her chest for the first time in years as she tells herself there's no reason to think they're suspicious, no reason to think they're waiting.
He doesn't say good luck before she hits him from behind. There's no point to trying to make it look real; it's real or nothing, so she does her best to find the point between knocking him out and killing him, and doesn't let herself wonder if it'd be better to go past that line. He'd said no to every out she'd offered, and she'll honor that, because nobody else would do that for him.
Nobody else would do that for her, if not for him.
They cut it close; by the time she slips out of a different alley altogether, wearing a stranger's clothes. Every instinct they taught her says to leave the city, to change her name, to change herself, so she rents a hotel room with stolen money, using the first name given to her for the job.
She doesn't feel like she's safe; she doesn't feel like anything, pacing the small room and trying to ignore every alarm in her head going off.
But she survives the night, and that's a start.
thebonesofferalletters)(Prompt list; I'm 7 shy of the full month.)
and if you come to find me, I'll color you red
MCU AU, Pepper Potts & Bucky Barnes, 727 words
Content warnings: Red Room issues (nothing explicit, but very much there)
... Uh. This one might take some explaining. So there's a story I've been wanting to write, which is... backtracked into a canon AU from a totally modern AU. Basically it started with the modern AU where Pepper, Natasha, and Bucky are adopted siblings, and then it turned into the AU where Pepper is a Black Widow and escaped the Red Room with Bucky's help. It's... a very intricate AU and I have a lot of backstory and scenes planned for it and I love it even if Bast is probably the only other person who will ever give a damn about it. This is maybe the first scene, definitely a scene, that I had in mind for it; if I ever get around to writing it probably it may or may not be in the fic at all, let alone in this form exactly, but... dammit, I did the thing. Considering how long I've wanted to get any of this out, I'll take it.
They play the perfect couple well, standing in the shadows of the building and looking at each other like there's nobody else in the world.
She presses up to kiss his cheek and breathes, "How long?" into his ear in careful English.
"Two minutes," he answers, just as soft as he embraces her. His English is much better than hers, actually natural to his tongue instead of masterfully taught like hers. She doubts anyone who isn't them, or like them, could tell the difference, but she can hear it, hear the markers of an accent that they still haven't quite driven out of him. She can do accents, when she wants to, but she doesn't have one in any language, any more than she has a name of her own.
On that field, at least, they're even.
"Five to finish the exchange," he goes on, kissing the corner of her mouth. She can feel his lips barely move against her skin when he finishes. "You'll be gone in twenty. Three hours before they look for you."
She swallows the barest flutter of nerves, turning her head just enough to meet his mouth. "Are you ready?" she asks, as the first light disturbs them. His answering nod would be invisible if she wasn't pressed against his lips.
The exchange goes off without a hitch, their handlers suspicious behind their casual smiles in a way that's a comfort. If they were hiding all suspicion, they'd probably have guessed that their agents were planning something they hadn't put in their heads. When the Red Room looks like they trust you the most, they're preparing to strike you down; it's a lesson she took to heart, one they never wanted to teach her.
They give the directions they're asked for, the code phrases giving them all they need to know about the target's surveillance, the plan they're to enact. They wave a goodbye and turn their backs on the car, and she doesn't glance back over her shoulder as she hears it start and turn, the headlights sweeping across the world in front of them. They trained her better than that.
She wraps her arm around his waist instead, tucking herself into his side, the perfect picture of young lovers on this warm night, from the way they laugh to the rings glinting on their fingers in the moonlight.
"You could come," she says one last time, far too quiet for anyone but him to hear, almost too quiet to even hear herself.
He leans down to kiss her temple, and she doesn't even hear the, "No, I couldn't," he says against her skin. She doesn't have to; she feels it. She heard it the last time. She could forget everything else about the Red Room -- aches to, would love to -- but she won't forget the bitter twist in his mouth or the way he wouldn't meet her eyes when he said he wouldn't know how to keep them from finding him, that he doesn't want to be the reason she gets dragged back.
The target's building is twelve-point-two minutes away from the street their handlers asked to meet them. Nine-point-six minutes into the walk, they take a different turn, her heart hammering in her chest for the first time in years as she tells herself there's no reason to think they're suspicious, no reason to think they're waiting.
He doesn't say good luck before she hits him from behind. There's no point to trying to make it look real; it's real or nothing, so she does her best to find the point between knocking him out and killing him, and doesn't let herself wonder if it'd be better to go past that line. He'd said no to every out she'd offered, and she'll honor that, because nobody else would do that for him.
Nobody else would do that for her, if not for him.
They cut it close; by the time she slips out of a different alley altogether, wearing a stranger's clothes. Every instinct they taught her says to leave the city, to change her name, to change herself, so she rents a hotel room with stolen money, using the first name given to her for the job.
She doesn't feel like she's safe; she doesn't feel like anything, pacing the small room and trying to ignore every alarm in her head going off.
But she survives the night, and that's a start.
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