Chapter 2
It was well-known throughout the world that most people were born with timers etched into some part of their body. The vast majority of people had those timers etched into the inside of their non-dominant wrist; lefties had theirs on the inside of their right wrist, and right handers had theirs etched on the inside of their left. Those born with only one wrist had it etched therein, and those born without wrists often had theirs etched onto the inside of their ankle. Unlike dominant hand, there seemed to be no particular rhyme or reason to which ankle, just as for those who were ambidextrous, which wrist had the timer seemed chosen at random. Those born without arms or legs often had a timer upside down on their chest so that they could look down and see the numbers whensoever they wanted. Just because it did not happen often did not mean it did not happen at all.
There, of course, were theories for this sort of thing. If your timer was on the inside of your left ankle, then you should have been right-handed. If your timer was on the inside of your left wrist, then despite your ambidexterity, you were really right-handed. So on, and so forth. In most cases, this was used to push biases that weren’t necessary, but in others, given to common wisdom, it seemed as though the timer was meant less for the people around you than it was for you yourself. Why else would the timer on the upper chest be upside down, reflected so that you could see it, regardless of how inconvenient that might be for the other people around you? The timer must, therefore, have been meant for the one who had it; your timer was for you, not for me.
It was the intersection of this particular theory of thought along with the treatment of those born timerless that led to the first golden band intended to hide one’s wrist. Whether that was to hide the timer or the lack thereof was up to interpretation, but the bands themselves had grown both more frequent and more accepted in common society since their first inception among rulers and dignitaries. Although the first was created of pure gold, as time went by they came in more colors and more styles, even though they were always always some form of metal. Metal helped to hide the blinding flash of a timer zeroing out just as well as it hid a wrist without a timer. It was considered impolite to ask someone to remove their band so that you could check their wrist for a timer, especially since so many wearers had a timer and just wanted to hide it from prying eyes.
Peggy began to wear a band as soon as one was available to her, once her dashes reverted and her timer started up again. She knew who and what she was, and she knew, too, that strangers might peer in at her timer and try to hang around to make sure that they could claim the title of soulmate to her as soon as it went off. Leering old men, leering young men, leering women, or, worse yet, an enemy agent, taking advantage of the common law among nations: soulmates could not testify against soulmates. But she couldn’t avoid crowds, and she couldn’t take a chance that it would go off on a mission – and while she could use her timer as an excuse to avoid one, she wouldn’t. That would lower her viability as an agent; they already thought little of her, to do that would be to make their views even lower, would risk her assumed usefulness. Not that they thought she was useful in the first place.
Besides – Peggy didn’t want another soulmate. She didn’t want a civilian who would be put at risk for being mated with her, and she didn’t want another agent who could end up with the same fate as Steve or Bucky.
(Peggy remembered when Bucky fell. She remembered the bright blinding flash that echoed throughout the canyon. She remembered Bucky’s timer’s tick-tick-ticking, a reset that started soon after he met Steve, one that seemed to be counting down to his very death. How unfortunate, to find a soulmate in those few seconds of freefall. Better to have no other soulmate at all.)
So she hid it. For herself. For her soulmate. For the liability of the thing.
But that didn’t stop it from continuing to tick down.
An untold amount of mornings earlier, a Black Widow Operative left her mark still alive and breathing, unawake and unaware that the young woman he’d spent the weekend with was leaving him quite the same way that he often left those like her. Of course, those young women didn’t often get the fortune – or misfortune – of spending an entire weekend with him. This one was just special. Extraordinary.
Better at sex than a woman twice her age, and likely more experienced.
Americans and their supposed cultural values. It just made it easier for an operative like her to—
Well.
Her name right now was of little consequence. She considered herself between names, between persons. They would give her another one soon enough. Same mark, just a different way of hitting him. He’d liked being hit. Americans.
The numbers on her wrist reflected the glare from a streetlamp overhead, and she let out a hiss, clamping a hand over them. This close, she could feel the whir of the milliseconds tickling her palm, the consistent flick of the seconds like eyelashes fluttering against her skin. This was a new development. She would need to find a band – and find one quickly – before she took up her new post. Worse, she’d have to find one to match the new person and others besides that, if the numbers stayed between switches. She scowled at the thought.
Black Widow Operatives were not meant to have functional timers.
Timers couldn’t be removed, of course, not without amputation, and that would destroy part of a Widow’s multifunctional abilities. The higher-ups went through orphanages to select their students, and outside of those born timerless, they only took those children whose timers went off the moment they entered the room. They claimed the timers went off for them, and there was no quite credible way to dispute it. Few wanted a timerless orphan, and fewer still wanted a child whose timer had already gone off – one with attachments. Especially if those attachments were to government officials.
Of course, she didn’t quite remember all of that. There were a lot of differing memories conflicting in her mind. The Red Room liked to tamper with those sorts of things, although that was knowledge she didn’t have. They didn’t do as much tampering then as they would in the future, but the precursors of it were still there, just like the scar she should have had along her abdomen for the removal of parts a Black Widow Operative couldn’t have – parts that, later, will not be removed, only rendered useless through injections and non-invasive medical procedures – was invisible along her freckled, porcelain skin.
There were concrete remembrances. She didn’t dwell on them. They were less important than this fucking ticking bomb etched into her skin. A bomb that was meant to have gone off over a decade past and now decided all on its own, through no reason she could think, to start ticking again. Like someone pressed a button and those dark, darkened dashes span to – to this.
Her teeth gritted together as she stripped out of her fancy finery, clothes uncomfortable against her skin, and slipped into something much more suited to her own personal preferences. Someone would be here to collect her soon. Not here, but close. The meeting place needed to be far enough that her mark wouldn’t follow but close enough that she wouldn’t be a single woman walking alone in the darkness for too long. Not that she should need to be afraid, but that an unnecessary body to cover up would be a waste of time and a missing person could potentially draw attention they didn’t want.
She made one stop before making it to the meeting place, still early enough that no one was there waiting for her. Then she clasped a silver and black band around her left wrist, hiding the numbers still whirring there. She could look at them later. They would give her an exact date and time.
Perhaps she could use that to her advantage.