Everyone has a soul mate. It is said that when a person makes that most crucial decision that affects their life, the name of their soulmate will slowly emerge on a certain patch of skin on their body. But there are still many people who never see their soulmate's name in their lives, perhaps because they made the wrong decision and missed out on their soulmate forever. There are also many more people who, even though they know that name, do not end up with their soul mate. This is so common that almost no one cares that the name on their real partner is not himself/herself.
The moment Natasha Stark stepped on the plane to Afghanistan, she felt a warm patch of skin on her chest, and Rhodey told her that it was a sign that her soul mate's name would appeared.
Natasha didn't think so. Having just dumped a bed partner for a plane ride, she didn't believe she could have a soul mate, she thought she had made enough bad decisions to not have the name. Secondly, she couldn't understand how this seemingly ordinary trip could be the pivotal event that would affect her life.
Then, by the time she understood how this trip would change her life, she had lost that skin on her chest.
She would never see that name again.
She had asked Yinsen if she had seen the name during the surgery when she was in the cave, and Yinsen said that the initials of two words had just surfaced on the skin before the surgery, S-R.
There were already a lot of people with the same name, and even more people with the same initials. No matter. She hadn't expected to find that person anyway. It was questionable whether she would even survive.
Then she survived and Yinsen had stayed there forever. She promised Yinsen she wouldn't waste her life, so she started to get really busy and never tried to find that name again.
There are not many people in the station late at night, and as Natasha walked quickly through the station, there were few passengers like her who were in a hurry to catch the last train. There were only several homeless people and street artists who wanted to stay in the warmth of the station for a while to protect themselves from the cold, lying or sitting against the walls of the aisles.
As she watched the last train back to New York leave, Natasha muttered a series of No's followed by a few unintelligible curses. She walked back the way she had come, distracted by Pepper's voice in her head, reminding her of how the CEO of SI had ended up in this situation.
Pepper brought her to Boston for a holiday after she had spent sleepless hours in the lab upgrading her armour for she couldn't remember how many times. She was worried more about her mental state than her physical health. Natasha responded by fiddling with her electronic screen in the midst of the various leisure activities Pepper had arranged, and also by talking back to her before Pepper's anger reached its breaking point. The result was that Pepper confiscated her armour case in a fit of anger and forced Jarvis offline, leaving her with only a mobile phone and enough change to buy a ticket back to New York, and flying back to New York herself first.
"Nat, I can't stand by and watch you push yourself to the dead end every day anymore, you're going to crush yourself sooner or later. Stop working on your armour! Or, at least, just take a little more time for yourself, okay? Calm yourself down, I'll be waiting for you back in New York, or you can call me when you're ready and I'll come and get you. You know, I'm always there."
She really wanted to be back in New York right now, in her lab, or at least anywhere that had Jarvis. There were at least ten new ideas screaming in her head right now that she wanted to experiment quickly. But now she'd missed this last train of the day and still didn't want to call Pepper.
She knew that Pepper didn't have the answers she wanted in her head, and calling now would only extend her exile.
I don't want to lie to her, Natasha said to herself in her mind. But she won't understand me. Only by devoting all her time to something more meaningful, whether it was perfecting her armour, dealing with emergencies, or surrounding herself with people to get more opportunities to help more people, would she feel that she wasn't wasting her life.
She walked on in a daze, not paying attention and bumping into someone.
The man's blonde hair seemed long and unkempt, and his beard covered most of his face, but his clear blue eyes still struck Natasha as handsome. There was also something inexplicably familiar about him, though she couldn't recall it for a while. He looked like a street painter with a sketchbook in one hand and what appeared to be some drawing equipment in a backpack behind him. If I was still living the playgirl life, I would have slept with him tonight. The thought flashed through Natasha's mind.
Against Natasha's thoughts, the man in front of her spoke, "Excuse me, you should still want this, but I think it might be broken."
Natasha looked down at his other hand spread out in his palm, there was the phone Pepper had stuffed in his arms earlier, it had fallen out of his coat pocket at some point and was probably broken.
Natasha thanked him when the announcement came over that the station was closing. She nodded to the man and continued walking, thinking about how she was going to get back to New York today.
It was almost Christmas time, the weather was already cold and almost every shop on the far side of the street had a Christmas tree, a festive atmosphere that delighted everyone but Natasha. She didn't love Christmas, perhaps because she had lost something on Christmas Eve one year, and Natasha tightened her coat and pondered the feasibility of catching a taxi by showing her identity now.
She stopped several taxis in quick succession, but no one believed her. One of the drivers did think she resembled the SI CEO, who had been in the media, but decided that the famous Natasha Stark could never be in such a situation where she could not afford a ride, and finally decided she was a fraud. So she taunted the drivers with those harsh words before they took off. At the end of the day, she returned to a slightly sheltered spot in front of the station and thought about what she should do.
That was when she met the blonde man for the second time.
He seemed to have noticed her unsuccessful dealings with the drivers, "Are you going to stand here all night?"
"I've lost my wallet ....... So all I have now is this ticket that's been voided and this crappy phone."
"That sucks. Oh, I was just wondering if we could share a ride, I have about ...... eighty bucks here? Where are you going?"
"It's far, eighty bucks can be a lot worse. I'm going to New York."
"New York ......" he repeated twice in his low voice before leading her to hail a taxi again, trying to convince the driver to take her back to New York with some of the same tactics that Natasha had just employed. A few conversations ended with the man taking out his credit card.
"Well, give me your name and contact details and I'll send you a check later, maybe for the price multiplied by ten." Natasha raised an eyebrow, not expressing any gratitude in her tone. The man probably recognised her identity and wanted to make a buck.
The man smiled, "No need, I've just finished a very long holiday and I'm leaving here tomorrow, so maybe I'll be living out of my home again for the rest of my life, so you don't have to think about paying it back."
It had been a long time since Natasha had felt any kindness from anyone other than Rhodey and Pepper that had nothing to do with her status, and she remained unconvinced for a moment, "You, don't know me?"
The man's smile widened, "Am I supposed to know you? I think this is the second time we've met? If you count the time I just gave you back your phone."
Natasha didn't know how to react yet, when the driver held out his hand and handed back his credit card, "Your card won't work." He then handed out another card, "It still won't work." Whereupon the driver flung his car door shut and left the two to continue standing on the side of the road.
"Do you have anything that is not useless?" Natasha's best response to kindness was to put up spikes to drive away anyone who offered it.
"I'm sorry, are you saying I'm taking up space and getting in the way of people lining up to give you a hand?" The man retorted before frowning again, seemingly chagrined that he would react in such an uncouth manner.
"So be it." Natasha shrugged expressionlessly and turned to leave.
Natasha wandered aimlessly through the late-night streets, and by the time she looked back again, she noticed that there were no street lights on the road, only a few youths who had drunk too much to vent their anger on a bin. She clenched her fists and mentally calculated the chances of leaving her armour and relying only on her recently trained fighting skills to swing these men without scratching her face if they launched themselves at her in a frenzy.
At that moment someone came up fast from behind and grabbed her, before she subconsciously swung she heard the blonde man's voice from earlier, "Honey, I'm sorry I'm late." Then he kept his grip on her and didn't let her go until the men's voices were barely audible.
Natasha said to herself that she could have handled those without him, but shrugged and said thank you anyway.
"So what's next for you?"
"I don't know. Maybe ask around from hotel to hotel and see if any of them will take my watch and give me a room as a favour?"
"If you don't mind, I thought I'd walk you around until you find one. My name is S......Grant," he then sincerely extended his hand.
"I'm ......Toni."
It had been a long time since Natasha had met someone she could talk to so well. She could deal with all sorts of people in all sorts of situations and purse the perfect laugh with them, but she never really wanted to listen to people who had a purpose. She just felt it was just something she had to do, that it was a means to an end rather than an enjoyment.
Grant's voice seemed magical and she didn't really seem to be in such a hurry to get back to New York to upgrade her armour. Natasha had grown up working with machinery and had no knowledge of art, except for people who wanted to get investment from her and talked about how masterful their work was. This was the first time she had become interested in art.
They passed by several hotels during this time, but their enquiries resulted in either no rooms or doubts about the value of the watch.
Later Natasha even thought it would be nice to just walk and talk all night.
She couldn't even imagine the sarcasm they had exchanged just a short time before.
As they passed a phone booth, Grant stopped to ask if she needed to call a friend or something, and again Natasha gave that look of disinterest, "I only have about two friends, I think, and I don't remember the mobile numbers of any of them."
"Well, that sucks," Grant's expression didn't show that it sucked, "we have no money, no phones, oh no, just a broken and a dead phone, and no plan."
"Maybe we need a time machine." Natasha wasn't sure how the idea had jumped out at her.
"There seems to be one right here." Grant stretched his hands in the direction of the phone booths, "They converted all these phone booths into time machines a few years ago, you pick up the receiver and you can talk to yourself at any time."
With that, he literally picked up the microphone and handed it to Natasha, who looked past him to the Christmas tree in the distance and took it, "Hi Toni, this is you in the future and it's 2012. Oh she doesn't believe me", Natasha covered the microphone and skewered at Grant, "you should, didn't you grow up believing that one day you would build a time machine? Okay listen, what I'm trying to tell you is don't let the old man and Mom go out on holiday for Christmas. Or, if ...... that thing ends up being inevitable, always remember to tell him you love him every time you see him. Don't be so quick to deny it! You know I am you, and I know you really love him and he loves you."
The man didn't seem to know what to say to make her hurt feelings better, so he took the microphone and pretended to press a few more buttons, "Hi Grant, this is ...... tomorrow." He skimmed his lips as Natasha covered the microphone, "He believed it, I knew I would be convinced of something like time travel. Anyway, your biggest task today is to spend all the money in your wallet and break your card. It's important. bye."
"Really? That's all you have to say? Then I'll come too." Natasha dialled randomly again, "Hey Toni, it's you tomorrow, your most important task today is to never argue with Pepper, never talk back to her, or you'll end up in a situation where you have no money, no phone, nothing. If you do, you'll also meet one less nosy man." She said and raised an eyebrow.
Grant smiled and shook his head, not picking up the microphone again. Instinct told Natasha that there was something else he should have left unsaid to his longer ago self, but this elusive feeling kept her from asking. So the two fell silent until they walked to the door of the next hotel.
Before getting out of the bathroom, Natasha looked at herself in the mirror, not knowing what else was going to happen this night, or she didn't know if she was looking forward to what else was going to happen this night. By the time Natasha and Grant both came out of the shower, it was almost dawn.
It was true, as she had thought before, that if she were still living the life of a playgirl, she would not hesitate to jump on the man in front of her. One night together had shown her the sincerity and kindness that he could not fake, and the courage she desired but could not have. But she was tired of the emptiness she felt after the constant one-night stands, and at least she saw Grant in a different way to those she had slept with before.
Maybe it wasn't a one-night stand?
Natasha seemed shocked by the thought, and she immediately dismissed it. There was no way in hell she was ready to enter into a normal good and healthy relationship. Not to mention the fact that she was also Iron Woman and should not and could not have brought an ordinary person into her life that was so full of danger. If she really was just an ordinary white-collar worker, she would have pursued him.
Her thoughts turned once again to the goodness of the man in front of her, her mind wandering before she finally gave up thinking. She tugged on the man's collar and kissed him, letting him fall on top of her. She left it up to him to decide what would happen next, or to fate.
Grant moved for a moment to regain his senses and then pushed her away slightly, "Can I ask you the name of your soul mate?"
"Told you I didn't have a soul mate. But really? Asking that at a time like this? Are you from what, the 40's, and you're just going to have to be a gentleman if you can't get the name right? Why don't you say the name on you too and maybe it'll be me." Natasha was still lying on her back with her hair down, and although there was some mockery in her tone, there was nothing sarcastic in her expression, nor did she look like she had any anger.
"I've had injuries to that skin, and all I know is that the initials are N-S."
"Is that so? That's a coincidence, I'm N-S," Natasha said, still staring at the ceiling, her tone not audibly wavering.
"But you said your name was Toni."
"Maybe I lied to you at first, or maybe I'm lying to you now." Natasha sat up, smirking as she watched Grant in front of her take two steps back and raise his hands to her.
He held that pose of surrender, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come and take advantage. Though I do wish you were telling the truth, I even wondered earlier if I could just be capricious for once if the names did match up. No ...... I just can't, that's not right."
"I didn't think anyone would really spend their whole life looking for someone in this day and age." Instead of showing the anger Grant expected in his mind, Natasha actually laughed out loud.
Grant slowly lowered his hands and came to sit next to Natasha, "I'm a person out of time. I used to be a ...... soldier, and I came back from the war to find that I had nothing left. My former girlfriend had left me, my good comrades were gone, and even after the war was over, I was no longer needed on the battlefield. No one needed me. I took a long leave of absence thinking that maybe I could make it a goal to find that person, that I could maybe start a family and stay in the city and be a cop or something. But ......"
"But what?"
"But I'm not so stereotypical that I have to have that name. Honestly, if I hadn't gotten my orders to return to the field today, I would have pursued you, Toni. I really would have. It's just that I'm going away again, maybe never able to settle down again, so I can't."
Whether Grant was the right man Natasha wouldn't know anymore, but there was no doubt they had met at the wrong time. "Well, I know." Natasha didn't persist in the conversation and again jumped in thought, "You said you were an amateur painter in addition to being a soldier, paint a picture for me."
"I wanted to do that when I first met you, you have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen."
At Natasha's suggestion, instead of using his own sketchbook, Grant took down the wall art used to decorate the room and drew on the blank back of a replica of the famous painting. "It's called hotel graffiti. To be fair, let's not either of us take the painting with us." She figured that the first thing she would do when she got back to New York tomorrow would be to get Pepper to buy the hotel as fast as she could, and then she could keep the painting.
Grant didn't object, just took down the other hanging and turned it over in front of Natasha, "Then you can paint me too."
So the two scribbled away at dawn, each holding a board.
Natasha soon finished, her artless work looking less like the man in front of her and more like a furry kiwi.
Grant glanced at it and smiled helplessly, continuing to concentrate on the girl's eyebrows, only looking up at her every now and then.
When he was finished he didn't show it to Natasha, but hung it back on the wall, "I just don't think it gives you the right look." Natasha didn't reach for it, thinking that it would be mine tomorrow anyway.
She picked up the hotel service comment card on the bedside table, "Thank you for staying with us, please help us improve our service. Idle enough to fill it out?"
By the time the two had ticked off every item on the card, it was the morning.
There was only one final question, "Will you patronize again?" The two tacitly left this blank together.
Grant bought Natasha a ticket back to New York and watched her disappear. He turned back to the station entrance and waited for the agent Fury had sent to pick him up. There was a moment when he wanted to go back to the station and catch up with Natasha before the agent came, but what could he say if he did? That was all there was to say.
Natasha sat in the early morning train, not many people around, wondering if she should call Pepper. She reached into her pocket to see if the phone would turn on and call Pepper's number. She felt a piece of paper. She drew it out and saw the hotel service comment card, folded down the middle, opened and a small branch of mistletoe fell out. And on that piece of paper, "Would you patronise again?" There was a small checkmark in the Yes column after the question.
Three days later.
Germany.
Stuttgart.
Captain America had been knocked down by Loki in a moment of carelessness and was about to get back up to continue the fight when a golden-red armor fell from the sky, knocking Loki to the ground with lasers from both hands before she could land between him and Loki.
Before Loki could get up, the lasers aimed at him again and it wasn't until Loki phased out of his armour and raised his hands that the armor removed her helmet. Iron Woman's long brown hair flew wildly in the wind, as warm and flamboyant as she herself.
Captain America picked up his shield and walked over to her, looking at the side of her face, "Miss Stark."
Iron Woman turned her head and looked into those blue eyes she had been thinking about for days, "Captain."
Epilogue 1:
As everything went as Loki had expected, the scepter manipulated them all to reveal their hidden grievances to each other.
"What, have you never cheated on anyone before? Captain America, the poster boy for morality? Mr. Steve Grant Rogers?"
"You've kept secrets from me too, Miss Natasha Stark. or should I call you Toni?"
The eloquent Natasha didn't know what to say, she just found the piece of mistletoe from some unknown corner of her armour, pinned it behind her ear and kissed him viciously, on the basis that she was about the same height as Steve in the armour.
Epilogue 2:
Fury: I shouldn't have to worry about my team breaking up on the spot, right?
Epilogue 3:
Steve looked at Natasha, who had just fallen through a wormhole and come back from the dead, awakened by Hulk's roar, and felt his stopped heart slowly begin to regain consciousness.
Natasha looked at Steve's relaxed smiling face and blinked, "What happened? No one just kissed me, did they?"
He stared intently at Natasha with blue eyes, "Not just now, but right away."
Epilogue 4:
Without saying a word, Iron Woman immediately flew off with Captain America, leaving confusing Hulk and Thor behind.
They landed in Boston. That hotel had been bought by Stark Industries, and that room was no longer available for public accommodation. Only because that room contained one of the SI president's favourite paintings that she couldn't bear to take away.
By the time Steve got out of the shower and thought about how to ask Natasha to be his girlfriend, Natasha was already waiting for him.
"Paint me another picture. Something like in Titanic."
Steve's perspective:
Steve didn't believe in the whole soul mate thing at first. One of the biggest reasons was that Peggy Carter's name had never been on anywhere of his skin when Peggy came into his life and he was convinced that Peggy was the love of his life.
The day he went for the serum injection, a patch of skin on his wrist started to glow and Howard later told him that it was a sign that his soul mate's name had appeared. The name hadn't quite appeared yet and he just held his wrist and watched as Howard said to Peggy, "Peg, look at him, the serum injection will indicate his soul mate, maybe him becoming a super soldier is a sign of leaving you."
The prophecy came true.
The cut on Steve's wrist from the battle had healed before he sank into the Arctic Ocean with that plane. But that skin had stopped glowing, and the name hadn't had time to fully emerge, with only two initials. n-s. The name that had been forcibly interrupted to emerge was also like his life that had been forcibly interrupted.
It didn't matter. I'll never see anyone again anyway. I'll never see Peggy again either.
Steve didn't know what he could do for a long time after he woke up, and he mostly just spent his time in the gym. Since time had sent him here, maybe one day he would continue fighting on the battlefield in this day and age.
Until one day Fury finally arranged for him to meet Peggy.
"Steve, I want you to be happy. Find a purpose for yourself. How about finding your soul mate? That name should have come up a long time ago, maybe you can still have the days you used to imagine, you can still have a long life, just give yourself some space, Steve, don't crush yourself, you know that, I never blamed you."
So he left New York temporarily and came to Boston alone to live like a normal person. He grew his hair long, grew a beard and did his best to widen the gap between his appearance and the well-known image of Captain America. Pretending he was a street painter, a bachelor who barely broke even, a good neighbour who was happy to help others.
He also began to learn to keep up with this new age, like how to use a mobile phone and how to use a credit card. He also began to read novels and films so that he wouldn't be unable to pick up the conversation.
He learned that the most prominent building in New York was the Stark Tower, owned by Howard's daughter Natasha Stark, the unearthly genius who had appeared only as Iron Women these years. He looked at the pictures of the gold and red armour on the news, remembering his time with Bucky, with Peggy, with Howard, all those times he couldn't go back to, and closed his phone after a moment's wandering.
There was so much to catch up on from the past 70 years.
The night before he was picked up by Agent Romanoff and taken back to New York, he almost thought he'd met the one. The girl's beautiful eyes had almost given him the rare thought of being capricious for once. But he couldn't. If he were really just an ordinary man, he would have given up clinging to that name once again and believed that the person in front of him was the love he longed to pursue that had nothing to do with a soul mate. But he couldn't. He was a warrior who would return to battle tomorrow and should not and could not bring an ordinary man into his uprooted life.
Perhaps his fighting on the battlefield could protect ordinary people like Toni from the cruelty he faced, Steve thought as he watched her back from the station door.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
By the time the red-haired female agent handed Steve the files of the members Fury had assembled in the hope that he would get to know his teammates in advance, he had fixed his hair and shaved off his beard to revert to his Captain America persona.
Bruce Banner, Clint Barton and, in front of him, Natasha Romanoff, the last one being Natasha Stark.
When he put the identities of Howard's daughter, Iron Woman, and Natasha Stark, the brown-haired, brown-eyed girl with the warm smile in the photo, together, it suddenly dawned on him that he had found the one.
Since he had woken up in a time that was not his, he had rarely felt truly alive until the night he met her in Boston, after his heart had beaten for her briefly and passionately, when he had frozen his heart once again. And at that moment his heart found a new impetus, and he thought he would never forget those beautiful eyes. "Toni......," he murmured as his fingers rubbed the picture on the file like he was gently stroking his lover's hair.
"I didn't think the lace tabloids would know such an intimate name that only those close to her would use to call her, what, did old Mr Stark tell you this was the nickname he was going to give to his daughter?"
Natasha Stark was not a little girl to be protected, she was Iron Woman alongside Captain America. He was also bound to do more than pampering her, but to live and die with her. They would rely on each other, understand each other, and grow old together, Steve thought aimlessly as he held Natasha in his arms as she drifted off to sleep.
He withdrew Natasha's left hand and lifted her ring finger, gently squeezing it as he made a mental note of the size. On her wrist, in the same place where Steve's wrist had his name, there were two more letters, SR, which Natasha had written in pen herself before she went to sleep. He kissed her lightly and then lay back down with Natasha in his arms, ready to sleep with her, listening to the heartbeat of the person in his arms, satisfied beyond belief.
End.