Natasha/Peter
Natasha's soulmate is younger than her. It's the scratchy nature of the writing, the words themselves lending truth to her guess. Younger than her, but she can't remember when they first appeared on her hips. Sometime when she was with the red room, no doubt, too busy with her training to notice her soulmate being born.
Steve saw them, when she showed him the scar that mars them, the one that the Winter Soldier gave her. He's never said anything though, never commented on their nature, on whether she's found them or not. She thanks him for that, thanks him silently in her head, doesn't bring it up in vocal because that would be to acknowledge that he's seen the words as well, and that is more than she dares.
Natasha watches Steve wheel the cart through the medical bay doors, Wanda ever beside it, and wonders if the smirk driven speedster will make it. Clint, standing beside her, taps his foot. "Paramedics on the way over said they can't get him stable enough to extract the bullets." Clint had been flying one of the small planes, and Natasha knew he would want to hear the updates on Pietro. "He's moving too much, and the drugs they tried giving him aren't working."
Clint's face is pale, swallow, and Natasha's struck by just how old he looks. Laura was right; he needed some time off. Maybe after this. Maybe she could finally convince him. "I think... I know a guy."
She looks at him.
"Old friend," and that's the most she's going to get out of him, she knows, "bet anything he can help." Bet Pietro's life goes unsaid, but they're already betting that, and Natasha has no doubt that if Clint thinks the guy can help, the guy can help.
"Want me to go pick him up?" There's one of the planes that didn't get pulled into extraction duty in Sokovia, one left that she won't have to refuel and check for repairs. Bust it out, pick the guy up from wherever Clint's stashed him, be back before anything else could go wrong.
Clint shakes his head. "Has to be me."
Clint doesn't explain any more, and he doesn't go to say goodbye to Pietro or his sister, just heads straight for the hanger and the waiting plane. Natasha watches him go, an itch under her skin.
Pietro doesn't improve on the next several hours, but he doesn't die either, and Natasha joins Wanda in a vigil at Pietro's bedside. Red light dances around Pietro's head constantly; Wanda is the only thing they have to keep him unconscious, and Natasha is worried because the girl can't keep this up forever, where has Clint gone to that takes him this long to get back, they need him, they need this mysterious friend that he's gone to find. Natasha paces, and every noise from the hallway outside makes her look up, hoping that it's Clint, pained when it's not.
And then it finally is. Clint comes in, followed by a man who has shocking grey hair despite looking like he's no older than Clint, and Wanda stands, glaring at them both, her hands shimmering in light around them. "He's going to help," Clint reassures her, and Wanda lets the stranger put his hands on her brother's.
There's a moment when none of them move, and then the man breaks it with a long sigh. "Clint, what we talked about. The professor was right."
Clint looks at Natasha, and then at Wanda. "Peter can help. He has similar powers to your brother. There's a drug, one developed for him," Natasha hears Peter scoff, "that will slow Pietro down. Enough to let the doctors do what they need to."
Because it's not just that Pietro is healing too fast; they can't even get his heart rate down to something normal. He's going into overdrive, and the doctors tell them they need the bullets out before he can properly heal, something that his unconscious body doesn't understand. Wanda hesitates for a moment, and then she nods, and Natasha is pretty certain she's the only one who sees the little dance of red light about Peter's head.
"Careful," she tells him, as he unwraps a single syringe from his pocket, while Clint looks at Pietro's arm for the vein. "His powers aren't a mutation like yours." And it's not Peter who reacts, but Wanda, jerking back from the bed, her eyes dancing between Natasha and Peter. And then the young woman is smiling, like she knows something incredible.
"Oh, I'm so happy for you, Natasha. душа срећа!"
How Wanda would know, Natasha has no clue. But somehow she does know, and Natasha knows the meaning of those words, and she watches in wide eyed shock as Peter sticks the needle into Pietro's arm, and Wanda brushes the hair on her brother's forehead back, murmuring soothing words, and Pietro gradually falls still. Clint lets the doctors in, and Natasha stays standing in the corner, and her heart won't come down to normal. Clint brushes her hand; "you alright, Tasha?"
She shakes her head. "Wanda seems to think that Peter is my soulmate."
And now it's Clint's turn to have his breath hitch up, and they're both looking at the man kneeling by the bedside, talking in a hushed voice to the doctors. He seems to sense their eyes on him, and with another couple words, he stands and walks over to them. And Natasha is just noticing now how he has a false grace to his movements, like he has to think to slow himself down, each step careful on the ground. Clint slaps her back.
"Go get him."
Natasha is still in shock from the battle of Sokovia. It's the only explanation for the words that come out of her mouth when Peter's right in front of her, and Clint is back at Pietro's bedside. "I'm much too old for you."
Peter laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and Natasha finds herself thinking that it will be nice to have someone who laughs like that. They don't laugh enough, Red Room or KGB, or Avengers. "I'm no kid, beautiful, I am older than I look."
And those are the words, the ones that have been in her skin since the day she knew herself enough to look. Natasha pauses, looks at him, and he's holding his hands out to her, open palms and a cocky little smile. She shakes her head, doesn't take his fingers. "You're what, twenty? Twenty-one?"
"Sixty two, actually. I remember when you were born. Hurt like the dickens, thought I was dying after all."
Natasha pauses, takes that in, rearranges her estimate of him, and then slowly, carefully takes his still outstretched hands. "Okay. Okay."