Natasha almost missed the ring of her cell phone over the roar of the food processor, the scent cilantro and garlic blending mixing sublimely with the chicken roasting in her oven. She reached the phone at the last second, the last chords of the Prince song that Darcy had set up as her ringtone starting to fade out.
“Hello?”
“Nat! Thank Frigga you picked up!” Darcy cried, words slightly slurred. Craning her neck, Natasha read the time on the oven and realized how late it was. She’d gotten in from a mission an hour or so earlier, positively starving for something that wasn’t the fast food crap Clint always got them.
“Of course I picked up, Darce, what’s up?” Nat said as she walked back to her counter to start slicing squash.
“I might,” she paused for a hiccup, “Need a kind of huge favor.”
“As much as I like you, past midnight is a soulmate favor,” Nat chuckled, pouring olive oil over her squash pieces.
“No! Don’t tell Steve! It wasn’t a huge deal, just a tiny scrape, really, but he’ll never let me hear the end of it!” Darcy yelled, panic lacing her tone.
That caught Natasha’s attention.
“Why don’t you take it from the beginning?”
“Ugh, fine,” Darcy groaned, “So I heard about this totally great dive bar over in Hell’s Kitchen from Dave, my barista, and Jemma and I thought a girl’s night would be awesome, except for our stupid bone head, super-soldiered, overprotective assbutts of boyfriends got all hissy about us going out alone to a sketchy part of town, especially after that whole Fisk thing, but they were acting like we weren’t grown and independent adults, and Jemma thought we should just go out to spite them, and I was like hey, what a genius idea…”
“Darcy,” Nat interrupted, impressed that her friend could string that many words together while three sheets to the wind, “The scrape, I meant explain the scrape.”
“We got into a tiny fight. But we won!”
Natasha took a deep breath of the food she wasn’t going to get to eat anytime soon and asked where Darcy was.
“There’s this bar called Josie’s…”
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Natasha walked through the door with no expectations, knowing Darcy to be unpredictable at best; yet she was still surprised at the scene before her.
Darcy was laid out on a pool table, seemingly passed out, with her head on Jemma’s lap, a night-night gun carelessly tossed onto the green felt amongst broken shards of at least two wooden cues.
The strangest part, however, had to be the blind man in torn clothes and a bloody lip standing next to them, congenially whispering with Jemma and leaning on his bent and dinged up walking stick.
As Natasha stood in the doorway blinking at the destruction, a voice startled her out of her trance.
“Holy shit! You’re really the Black Widow!” squeaked a man with waves of sandy hair framing his round face, “I mean, Darcy said the Black Widow was coming to get her, but she had already drank the worm, so I very much expected you to be an average redhead, not a real life Avenger!”
Observing the man coolly, Nat kept her face neutral. “I go by Natasha. Black Widow is for when I’m on the job,” she made a show of surveying the chaos around her friends in the back of the bar, “I trust that I won’t have to be on the job tonight?”
He furrowed his brow for a half second before understanding dawned. “No!” he rushed to assure her, “No, ma’am! Some dudes got mad that Darcy and Jemma beat them at pool, they lost a pretty penny, but me and Matt, that’s my friend back there, we stepped in!”
“You got into a fight with a blind man as your back up?” she asked, monotone.
“Um” he tittered, “Yes?”
He looked harmless enough, and he was telling the truth, that much Natasha could ascertain. “Then I guess I should be thanking you, Mr…” she let the unasked question hang in the air while extending a hand.
“Foggy Nelson!” he said with a friendly smile that lit up his whole face, shaking her hand with a strong grip, “Please, call me Foggy.”
A loud laugh from the back let them know that Darcy had woken up and, from the looks of things, was ready for round two.
“I think it was time I collected my friends,” Natasha said as Darcy attempted to roll to her feet, only saved from a faceplant by Jemma catching her shoulder. The blind man’s, Matt’s, hand twitched on his walking stick when Darcy had started to spin, Natasha noticed.
“Might be a good idea,” Foggy winced, immediately offering his arm to her like it was 1814 rather than 2014. By the blush the filled his cheeks, he was nervous which Nat found endearing. Laying her palm delicately on the inside of his arm, she motioned for him to lead on, silently chuckling to herself.
Jemma was the first to spot her.
“Natasha!” she said, only a slight glaze to her eyes, clearly nowhere near as gone as Darcy, “You came! I’m so sorry to have made you come all this way.”
Letting Foggy’s arm go, Nat reached over to raise Darcy’s face.
“What did you drag nice Jemma into this time?” she asked, and Darcy’s eyes widened indignation.
She didn’t get a chance to defend herself before Jemma was chiming in, “It was hardly Darcy’s fault if those men wanted to assume we weren’t any good just because we have breasts! We had it perfectly under control!”
Matt covered a laugh with his fist.
“Well,” Jemma nodded to him, “Yes, technically, we were assisted by Matt and Foggy. They were very gallant.”
“Nah, we’re even after you shot that guy that punched me,” Matt said to Jemma before turning to Natasha and whispering conspiratorially, “Ruined my dashing and unorthodox rescue, but my ego can take the hit,” and winked.
Nothing ever showed on Natasha’s face or in her actions that she didn’t let appear. It was a childish thing, to wear emotions on the surface, and people spent lifetimes either embracing or squashing it.
As she was never a child, not truly, she had to consciously let feelings bleed out. She’d always wondered what it must be like, to emote as a default.
The closest she would ever get was hearing Matt, this vulnerable man who had apparently put himself in considerable danger because strangers needed help, speak the words that were tattooed under her left breast.
Even so, the only physical effect was the sudden pause of her heart before it began trying to beat out of her chest. Since no one could witness that manifestation of her emotions, Natasha feared it didn’t count.
She took a breath to ease the thundering in her chest, looking to her right to find Matt frowning at her. Pasting a hollow smile on her face, Nat picked up Darcy bridal style to leave. She let her friend make their goodbyes from her arms, careful to give a blank nod to both Matt and Foggy before following Jemma out the front door.
She left without saying a word to Matt. Her steps were measured, her arms as loose as they could be carrying an adult woman, letting no one know of the tumult reigning within her.
Once back at her apartment on the Upper East side, she put Darcy and Jemma to bed in her guest room, fetched them water and advil, and went into her own bedroom, shooting a text to Steve and Bucky letting them know their soulmates were staying the night with her.
Natasha laid awake atop her duvet, trying to get her heart to slow.
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The media loved Hell’s Kitchen’s golden boys who were saving their neighborhood in the courts. She read about how they took down Wilson Fisk with a key witness’ testimony (and with the help of that masked vigilante they called Daredevil), how they were the first on the Union Allied case by defending an innocent woman being framed, how they championed the little guy. She even read about how Matt became blind in the first place, how he saved an old man from being hit by a truck when he was just nine years old, for Christ’s sake.
Every article she pulled up confirmed the integrity, the bravery, the overwhelming goodness of one Matt Murdock.
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The next morning, Natasha decided that reconnaissance was her best bet, and duly began to follow Matt at a safe distance. She treated the exercise as she would a mission. If she were the type to lie to herself, she could say it was because the familiarity was a touchstone in a new situation, but she had never been the sort for self-delusions.
Natasha stalked Matt because she needed the upper hand. After so many years as the puppet of others in the Red Room and even with SHIELD/HYDRA, she could not allow herself to be blind in a situation. Soulmates were a complicated business, for as much as people heralded them as gifts, to Natasha, a soulmate could just as easily be a weakness, a way into being made a tool once again.
She was done being anyone’s tool.
What she observed was a man who made the cashier at his bodega laugh, who somehow knew when children and dogs were near the end of his walking stick and always shortened his flicks so they wouldn’t be hit, who greeted the pretty blonde woman in his office with a sweet smile and his partner, Foggy, with a bagel.
A man who used his lunch break to go to church, a Father greeting him outside the door as though they had a standing appointment.
Rather than powerful, the new information made Natasha feel sick to her stomach.
How could the universe have paired her with such a man? A man she certainly could never touch, not with her hands dripping with red like they were, like they always would be.
She didn’t follow Matt into the church.
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Natasha stayed at the Tower for days. Tony made a few quips about it initially because although he had an entire apartment for her, she had never made use of it aside from the one time she was concussed and Steve made her stay the night after a mission for observation. The rest of the team have other homes too, with the exception of Bruce, but still stay at the Tower occasionally. Steve and Bucky had places in the same building in Brooklyn, Clint had that whole building in Bed-Stuy, and Thor spent his time happily traipsing after Jane.
The others didn’t say anything about her moving into the Tower, most likely because they’d made note of her time spent in the dance studio Tony had put in after Bucky asked her if she still liked ballet within the billionaire’s earshot.
Natasha only ever danced after the bad missions.
No one but Clint dared to encroach on her space, slinking in on the third day. After multiple requests to teach him how to dougie, Nat finally kicked him out. His outdated references were enough to make her chuckle, though, which seemed to have been his aim so he left willingly enough.
On the fourth day, Natasha was almost relieved when the call to assemble came, even if it was just for doombots again. She’s congregated with the team on the quinjet while Cap debriefed them, only to be taken by surprise when her heart sped up again at being assigned to Hell’s Kitchen with Thor.
Natasha almost traded with Clint for his area, but the stray thought that a blind man would make an easy target held her tongue.
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She caught a blast meant for a young girl huddled protectively over her little brother, throwing her clear through a shop window and burning through her suit on her left shoulder. The blistered skin was enough to make her woozy, but the little boy’s sobs were echoing in through the shattered glass. Natasha rolled onto her right side and pushed herself up, head clearing once she was standing, but found her services to be unneeded.
Because there was a guy in a red leather suit with little devil horns on his head beating the robot back with only a pair of batons, and he was winning. What had those articles called him?
Daredevil.
Rather than look a gift horse in the mouth, Natasha went with it and quickly ushered the girl and boy to safety inside a stable building.
Coming back outside, she approached her would-be-savior.
“You know, I don’t usually find myself as the damsel in distress, but thanks for the save all the same,” she offered, appreciating that he seemed to be fighting her enemy, but still not willing to trust an unknown stranger.
Daredevil spun around at that, mouth gaping. “Uh,” he gasped, “Those are my words.”
After the week she’d had, Natasha had no problem letting her anger show.
“Really?” she seethed, “That’s what you’re going with? What kind of moron lies about soulmarks?”
He took a step towards her, hands reaching, but an electric blue spark from her Widow’s bite halts him.
“Woah, hey! I’m not lying!” he cried, standing stock still.
Letting her every sharp edge shine on her face and with chill in her voice, she grit out, “Don’t toy with me. You’re not a match for a widow, devil.”
“I’m not toying! No toying is happening here!”
“My mark isn’t ‘Uh, those are my words’, you fucking sleaze.”
With that, Daredevil seemed to reach his breaking point as well. Letting out an aggravated huff, he dropped his baton, letting it clank on the street where they were standing completely oblivious to the dwindling battle around them.
“Yeah, I know! Your words are something about my ego taking a hit which is a terrible mark, and later, I will probably be really sorry for that,” he reached down to pull up a pant leg, no mean feat in thick leather, but he was determined. ‘You now, I don’t usually find myself as the damsel in distress, but thanks for the save all the same’ was written in Natasha’s precise cursive on his inner left calf.
Natasha stared at his leg, uncomprehending.
“Matt?” she asked, looking up to see him give a nod, “But how? All of your records say that you’re blind!”
“So you were following me and reading up on me? Should I be flattered?” he said, cautiously taking a step forward. When she let him do that, Matt went for broke and reached a hand up to trace over her face.
“Don’t be, I’m a spy,” she breathed, swept up completely in the feel of his fingers, so focused on the sensation that she could block out everything around her, a complete first. Her heart was doing that frantic beating thing again, and somehow Matt seemed to know, bringing his hand down to her chest and resting it where he could feel the beating best.
He laughed a soft but joyous sound, bringing her back to the battlefield. She blinked and looked around them, noting Thor standing unobtrusively at the end of the street, clearly ready to lend a hand should she need it but not overstepping when she had not asked for help. Natasha waved him off.
Turning back to Matt, to Daredevil, she asked again, “You’re blind. So how can you do all of...” moving her hands over his costume, “That? And how did you know I was following you?”
Wrapping an arm around her back and leading her to the sidewalk, he began, “It’s kind of a long story…”
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In the end, her red matched his devil.