1. No one told her that her scars were a map to all her broken places, and someday a man would tread every winding path to meet her as she was and is and will be, Nat Natalia Natasha 'Tasha Romanoff Romanova Widow Weapon Woman (never anything but his.) And he'll wear his own map on the canvas of his skin, a map to all his forsaken places. And when their maps are flush together in the dark, the staggered paths cross, intersect, and where their battered bodies meet, they mend.
(Their scars match like open palms pressed to glass, hand-to-hand, a whisper, a breath fogging the barrier: we are nothing alike, we are the same, we are nothing alike, we are the same.)
2. No one told her — blood will never wash away, but neither will the shape of the words he breathes into your mouth like resuscitation: beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. No one told her — that screaming in your head will never fall silent, but whispered promises are louder when you need them. No one told her — the click of the trigger bleeds into your pulse, the crack of the bullet leaves a fissure in your chest, but even your heart will slow and sigh, even the graves inside your soul will split open and give up their skeletons when he holds you, and he will hold you, because you are strong enough to stand alone, but God knows you deserve to fall into another set of arms at least once in your long, long life.
(She isn’t the only one falling.)
3. No one told her that tears taste like salt, and that she is an open wound, and so it will burn when she finally breaks. A soldier's hands would knit her shut, tie up all her loose ends, unknot every paradox and contradiction, until he stopped the bleeding. But the boy from Brooklyn loves her like he loves his country — for her uneven sidewalks, for the way sunlight slants through her cracked and dusty windows, for her brash fierce unapologetic need to do and see and be everything, for her rowdy cities and her quiet alcoves, for her ugly victories and her well-intentioned mistakes, for the stars that still shine in her eyes even when the bombs should have long ago swallowed them whole. And like his country, he would fight for her; and like his country, all he really wants is to memorize her, like a photograph on the inside of his eyelids, so he can see her when the world is burning down (and maybe they started the fire.)
(And maybe he's had enough of ice, and he's not afraid to melt.)
4. No one told her that home could be two hands that trace her body like a sketchbook, erasing every faulty stroke of ink, writing poetry between the lines. The wind blows her scarlet hair back from her face. His eyes are blue oceans, clear waters. She plants a kiss on his mouth like a soldier plants his flag on a battlefield, a shock of color on a wasteland that runs only red. His heartbeat is a drum against her chest, her name on his tongue is a national anthem, and she would fight wars for him, she would be assassin and soldier and spy for him, but war is already woven into the pattern of his veins, so she lets him hold her like surrender.
(There are battles in their heads, never silent, never ending; they collide like impasse, loud enough to silence each other’s ghosts.)
5. No one told her that people must be broken before they can fit together. No one told her that we are none of us whole; we are none of us undamaged; we are none of us who we want to be. No one told her that love hurts more than hate, and blushes are brighter than blood, and nightmares are more real than memories, but not as real as waking up safe in his arms.
(He calls her by every name he knows, until she curls back into his chest, still here, still her, still his, and isn’t it so impossible?)
6. No one told her that happiness would feel like shattering into a thousand pieces, fragments of she and he and she colliding like puzzle pieces, and she isn't sure what picture they've become when the wind dies down, but she thinks she'd like to frame it, so the colors won't bleed together in the rain.
No one told her that art was in the eye of the beholder, and she is an abstract, she is modern art, she is a thousand people in a thousand different gazes, and when those frozen 1940s blue eyes look at her, they will see a thousand colors where she sees only red. And in his eyes it will be truth.
(She’s starting to believe him.)
7. No one told her that every scar on her body was a fault line, and she was an earthquake, she was a web of tremors and pitfalls, she would break apart if ever someone tried to make her a foundation, but when a man laid down in her arms and held tightly as her world split asunder — before and after, S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA, secrets and an Internet history that would never fade — it wouldn't matter that everything was breaking, because he was ready and willing to fall. No one told her that they could fall together. (And they do.)
No one told her that when they landed, she'd be able to breathe again.
(And she does, a deep sure steady breath that promises the world, I am not finished yet.)