First Meeting
The first time Mary Sue Poots meets her soulmate, she is eight. And cold. And lonely. And frightened.
Especially frightened.
Mary had honestly thought the Carmichael’s would be different, or at least have the decency to, you know, actually drop her back at the orphanage rather than just leave her in a shady alley in Hell’s Kitchen a good hour's walk from St. Agnes on her short legs.
It’s dark and wet and Mary is only wearing some loose, ripped jeans and a cotton bare polo top, but she starts her trek back to St. Agnes anyway; she had long ago memorised a complete map of all five boroughs in preparation for this kind of situation. Matt was always telling her that it was important to know where you were at all times.
It seemed pretty sage advice from the blind kid, though she didn’t know how he followed it. You know, being blind and all.
So Mary knew a few short cuts, and maybe it wasn’t her smartest idea to use them in the dead of the night when there was no CCTV or pay phones or anything nearby. But, hey, she was eight and just wanted to sleep, so sue her.
She only realised what a mistake she made as she cut through behind a bar notorious for entertaining most of the local scum and was confronted with a bunch of hairy, smelly, gnarly looking middle aged men who seemed to be focussed on something at the other end of the alley that was blocked from her eyesight by their imposing statures.
She was about to double back when she accidently scuffed her worn sneaker and kicked a loose piece of gravel into a nearby trashcan. The sound bounced off of the buildings either side of the alley and Mary froze.
Half of the burly men turned to search for the source of the sound while the other half stayed focussed on their previous target.
“Looks like we have another one boys.” The obvious ring leader drawled with a perverse smirk and swiftly grabbed her upper arm in a bruising grip before she could even fully turn to run away.
The small brunette slapped uselessly at the hand dragging her further into the alley, trying to dig her heels into the ground before realising that it causing more damage to her shoes than it impeded the man’s progress. Mary gave in and let her whole body go limp in his grasp. That didn’t affect him either.
Mary wondered, distantly, why she wasn’t far more panicked in this moment, instead eerily calm but, before she could fully consider it, she saw her. The original target of this group’s attention: a girl who couldn’t be more than four or five years older than Mary herself with vibrant red, unruly hair and piercing green eyes that seemed to read Mary’s very soul.
Though, unlike the young orphan, this girl stood confidently, sizing up the men instead of cowering before them. Her eyes flickered with something Mary couldn’t understand when she caught sight of her, but otherwise she stood impassive and Mary couldn’t help but be mesmerised.
She looked even more grown up than the big girls at St. Agnes that teased her for being a reject.
But there was something else as well, some other draw that left Mary unable to tears her gaze from the red head.
“Tell Markovnikov,” the man hold her growled, and Mary realised he had a thick, deep accent. From where, she didn’t know, but it sounded imposing, “that if he can use children, so can we.”
Suddenly, she was yanked up and the only thing keeping her feet off the ground was the thickly muscled forearm around her neck. Yet, she still couldn’t find it in herself to panic and that alone was starting to worry her. Sure, she had never really panicked, well, ever, but she had also never been in a situation like this before.
Somehow, through the hazy mist that her vision was slowly becoming as she still wasn’t allowed to breathe, she locked eyes with the mystery girl not ten feet from her.
It was as if that was all the prompting she needed, because she suddenly leapt into action, sprinting at one of the men taking him down with an ease that looked even more fluid through Mary’s blurred vision.
Mary continued to watch until one last jerk of her captor’s arm sent her spiralling into unconsciousness. She barely even registered the thud as she hit the ground, the overwhelming urge to sleep becoming too much.
When Mary woke again, her back and the seat of her pants were damp from the building she was propped up against, her vision came in spotty and her neck ached but what she really noticed was the girl sat against the wall opposite her, playing with something sleek and sharp in her hands.
The girl sensed her awakening and quickly stored the- knife, was it? In a pocket sewn into her clothing. Mary cautiously watched as the girl approached, cradling her bruised throat carefully with her hand.
“You were very brave, devushka.” The red head nodded, as if to second her own opinion.
Mary merely stared up at the girl in awe, letting her deep, lilting voice soothe the fuzziness in her head and the pain in her neck. This girl – her soulmate – saved her life and spoke the words elegantly scrawled across her collar bone.
“You,” Mary croaked and winced as the gravelly sound stung her throat, “Are you some kind of ninja?”
Mary thought it was an understandable question, what with the awesome fighting moves she took down those idiots with, but unexpectedly, the gentleness on the red head’s face disappeared as she completely shut down, her features becoming hard and fearsome.
Mary was roughly helped to her feet and half-dragged half-carried out of the alley.
“You should forget this ever happened.” She spoke swiftly and professionally as she briskly made her way down the block, Mary stumbling clumsily after, “If you don’t you will find yourself in much more danger much more frequently.” She jerked to a stop and stared determinedly into Mary’s eyes, “Understand?”
The brunette nodded mutely and raced after her protector again as she turned on her heel and strutted away.
The rest of the journey to the orphanage was made in silence, apart from to tell the red head where Mary was going. She didn’t question why the brash red head seemed so intent on delivering her there safely.
The older girl stopped just around the corner from St. Agnes so Mary turned to her questionably.
“It is best if I am not seen with you at the orphanage.”
Mary nodded with an understanding she didn’t possess, then shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, unsure how to say goodbye to a soulmate that seemed to want nothing to do with her, just like her parents. Though, at least this time it seemed to be for her safety, whatever that meant.
“Thank you.” She said instead and wondered why her saviour seemed to squirm uncomfortably under the praise before she nodded, “I guess maybe I’ll see you around someday.”
The red head looked pained, then murmured, “For your sake, I hope not.”
Mary couldn’t help the twinge of hurt she felt at those words, but she tried not to show it. Who knew what would happen in the future, they were only children with their whole lives ahead of them. Maybe circumstance would change. But for now, eight year old Mary Sue Poots had to accept her fate, if somewhat begrudgingly.
Determined to not let the situation mar their first meeting, Mary beamed up at her soulmate and quickly placed a smacking kiss to her cheek, one which she was too surprised to flinch away from quickly enough.
“Bye.” She sing-songed with her still croaky voice and pranced around the corner, leaving a somewhat gobsmacked KGB child-assassin staring after her with the slightest of blushes rising to her cheeks.
Snapping herself out of it, Natalia Romanova rubbed sullenly at her cheeks as she turned towards her lodgings for the night, muttering grumpily to herself.
“You are better than this. You are a soviet spy. Damn it, you have a crush.”