Chapter Text
She's anticipating rapid denial, then uncontrollable rage and then the inevitable lash out. Barnes is supposed to shove her against the wall and then threaten to kill her. Stab her in the eye socket for indubitably lying through her teeth. Or at least break one of her fingers in his undeniable temper.
Everything in Barnes' report indicated dangerous behaviour when provoked.
But he doesn't. Violence is the reaction she's expecting.
Rather, it's much worse.
He flinches away from her. Like a wild animal, his back hits the wall and he stares at the mark like it's a ghost haunting him. Gone is the confident, snarl faced man and instead it is replaced by the sickly pale state that she remembers clearly from HYDRA files. This is the reaction she isn't prepared for. Malevolence, anger, and even pain is what she's readily accepting. Barnes' weakened state makes her feel like she's hurt a wounded animal.
She closes her eyes. It reminds her of the time of when her mother had to sit her down and talk to her about her father. It was one of the most agonizing experiences of her life. Something she never wanted to ever go through again. Even the memory made her nauseous, the way her mother could barely hold it together, as if she was just glass fragments held together by badly wound tape. Words she pushed out of her mouth as if it was bursting out of her, but also choking her the same time. The most vivid thing she remembers is the hurt embarrassment and the haunting eyes her mother, telling her that she wasn't going to see her father again. She sees it every time she visits her, it's brightened by the happiness that Darcy brings with her. But just slightly. It boomeranged, sometimes it came back harder than some.
She opens her eyes when she hears the rustle of his clothes. Faster than she can process, she is restrained against the wall. Again.
"You should definitely re-evaluate your social skills if you want to make friends," she says, the fear forgotten and the false confidence slowly simmers in her blood again. She feels in control in every part, with the exception of her physical movement. If Jane had two seconds with his arm, she'd literally combust. Jane mostly kept herself within the stars and the moon but she liked to dabble in the finer arts of science, ie. things that exploded or made life cooler. She said it kept her on her toes.
"Shut up."
He stares at her like she's a puzzle he needs to solve. She sees this coming, but she's oddly exposed under his gaze. Like he's pulling out every dirty little secret out from under her. Not even Coulson with his stern dad face made Darcy feel an inch in what she's getting right now. She can barely breathe. She doesn't like the feeling, it makes her fall back into when she was constantly scared of monsters and men.
She frowns and claws at the arm constricting her. It's cold and heavy on her sternum, but she guesses anything would be if it was shoved this intensely into her lungs. She's thinking of ways to escape that doesn't resort in her death, when he shifts his attention from her face to the mark on her hip. He steps back slightly, left arm still caging her, he looks down at her mark critically before he releases his tightened fist. The fingers unfurl stiffly, as if it's been stuck in the position for eternity. Slowly, he thumbs the edge of the mark, right on her hip. Darcy breathes heavier under his touch. It's stupid and pathetic so she hides it under the pretence of swallowing. It ends up being a worse reaction because he feels the action beneath his arm and gazes at her malignantly, she's frightened that he will hurt her much worse. Something sharp enters his eyes and he presses harder into her sternum.
She wretches his arm away. The steel arm is cold and unyielding. Just like him.
“Why is it always violent outcomes when I try to talk to superheroes?” luckily for her, he loses composure at the mention of her last word. For a split second, she is able to slip from under his arm and she circumvents him and he doesn't stop her. She places her palm against the wall he previously occupied and focuses on sorting her thoughts out.
She never thought this would happen. Never in a million years. She's dreamt of this moment when she was younger and frenetic with energy, but with a different ending. A more naïve and happy ending. But as she grew older, she grew wiser. And all the fairy tales started falling apart. She knew deep that life didn't end in ways you want it to.
"You're my soulmate."
He voices it like a question. The uncertainty in his voice is a surprise to her.
She hesitates and pulls down her dress. She smooths the lacework and the rough pattern makes her focus. She's not a coward. She's always been blunt in what she thought of things. So why is it so hard to turn around to tell him that she was but didn't need him? That he can remain the same and that it shouldn't reflect or change anything in his life? She fists her hands and pushes the back the pinched sickness she feels in her chest.
"Yes, I am," she starts, she turns around. He's standing in the exact same spot, his expression is not of disgust or wonder or of anything. It's simply of nothing. Tension creeps into her, she knows that he's know using his specific skill set as the Winter Soldier. Meeting him is much worse than talking to Barnes when he was angry. At least when he was Barnes, she can get a reaction and traject from there.
With the Soldier, she doesn't know how she can defer anything. She's seen the video reports, the lethality and grace he pronounces when he's stalking his prey. The unadulterated volition of his one goal in mind.
His mission.
"I am," she starts again, she slides her eyes from his expression, no longer comfortable under the shuttered gaze. She can't make herself say the words she pre-emptively prepared in her mind. The metal of the sword catches her attention, right beside his boots, and she remembers the grip of it in her hands. The control. That's what's she needs.
"I am, but don't worry," she finally says, she clenches her teeth and looks him in the eyes, "I can tell how thrilled you are on the prospect of having a soulmate," it comes out of her mouth like she's talking about the weather and she's immensely relieved that it does. It's the sound detachment she needs at this moment. She knows that this would be for the best but she hates the fact that she feels like she won't be. Even if she's the one who's ending it before anything can start.
He says nothing and she takes it as a sign to keep going, "honestly, like I said, don't worry. I'm not gonna fuck things up for you," she smiles widely. His suspicious looks builds into paranoia and she dials it down a tone, "you're not obligated to turn this into anything." she gesticulates between them, "like at all, I'm pretty sure getting tied down to someone against your will is the last thing you wanted since HYDRA," if she wasn't looking for it, she would have missed the sharp intake of breath at the mention of the organization. It occurs to her that it is callous to acknowledge the system that turned him against his will.
"You're not obligated to be with me just cause the universe explicitly marked us to be," she softens her voice and shrugs before she takes a step to him. She watches his face for any indication that he's going to harm her. She continues until she reaches her dropped weapon. She taps the blade lightly on the wall.
"What do you mean?"
He takes the bait. She knows that the allusion of choice would always be tempting to him and she serves it up on a platter.
"I'm saying that I'm giving you an out."
**
The breath that escapes nearly knocks him off balance. He hears the shrill ringing in his hears. Twice, now. He's been surprised by this girl. Unbalanced, by this girl. He can't say it's a novel experience. He's used to everything being predictable. Patterns. Routines. Both in war and killing and people. Especially people. He knows that it thrives. He sees them everyday.
Steve wakes up and brushes his teeth before going for a run. 10k on weekdays. 5k on weekends. He invites Bucky and he sometimes indulges in their old fashioned competition on seeing who can run faster, longer, better. But even if Bucky declines, Steve runs. Everyday.
Natalia surprises him. She does have her moments of predictability. But she surprises him. She's always amazing. On the field or off. As his friend. Or. Bucky clenches his jaw. Natalia. Ever since his resurrection as James Buchanan Barnes, she's been his friend. They were something more before. Back when he was just an asset and she was a young woman. Their connection in their loyalty to Steve only heightened their mutual respect for each other. But, they have since decided that they were better remaining as allies, they weren't who they were during those times. She's stronger, better, and more importantly she didn't want it either.
He didn't know if this new development changed everything in his life. He knew before that he had a soulmate, the mark mocked him in the mirror. He was dutifully prepared to never find her or him. With his whole history revealed to the entire world, people kept their distance. The fact that he had a soulmate, someone bound to him felt like a sick joke from the universe.
Soulmate. Soulmark.
Something primal in him runs through his veins and he feels immense weight on his shoulder lift. The mark under shirt, right on top of his heart feels like it's radiating heat. The pounding of his chest suffocates him and at the same time relieves him.
He never paid any heed to the mark. It was just part of him, like his arm. Like everyone else that weren't Steve or Natasha. They were just background noise. He's used to people falling into their little boxes and staying there.
But this woman. She stares up at him like she's not afraid of him. She slashed the throat of the one whom almost killed him. He pushed her and she pushed back. She responds to his weapons and brutality with snark and laughter.
"I'm saying that I'm giving you an out."
He should feel relieved. He should be relieved that he wouldn't have to tolerate another person in his tightly knit circle of people. He should be satisfied by her lack of interest.
But he isn't. He feels a thrill up his spine and the complete and utter devastation of fascination.
Intrigued. Is what he felt.
A niggling curiosity plants in his brain as she stares up to him, no doubt waiting for his acceptance of her plan. For a moment, he considers her offer but changes his mind. He's used to having the upper hand on everyone, but she's the one handling all the cards and he's stuck with the option she gives him. It occurs to him that she has planned her carefully placed words in that order. She's giving him an out. She knows what she wants and cleverly manipulates her wording so that it seems like he's the one that has a choice.
Her manipulation is subtle and he's torn between ire and unmitigated surprise.
He hasn't been a victim of surprise for a while, and the absolute elated pitch he feels in his stomach he knows isn't from indigestion. It seems that his soulmate isn't as incompetent as he previously thought.
"Are you okay?" she snaps him from his thoughts. She's standing close to him. If he reaches out, he can just crush her windpipe like he has wanted to for the past hour. But she's staring at him like he isn't filled with those thoughts, she's staring at him like she's actually concerned.
He reaches out, but doesn't crush her windpipe. He takes her wrist gently, the one without the blade, and starts walking.
He pulls her toward the stairs that lead to the emergency exits, they take them until they reach the first floor. She's tired by the pace he sets, her breath stuttering behind him. He ignores it and tightens his hold on her wrist. She huffs an insult and quickens the pace to match his. By the time he's halfway to the car, he has made his decision.
The city is bright, the building lights illuminate the their way to their getaway. He lets go of her wrist and the feeling of her skin permeates into his flesh. She reaches for the door handle and he flexes his fingers to rid the warmth.
Just as she opens the passenger door, he forces the door close with his palm.
"Dude," her eyebrows furrow in annoyance. Her reactions are naked, she doesn't resist the way her mouth tightens or the flare of her nostrils. He pushes his tongue behind his teeth. He knows that she's never been trained or been out on the field. But the starkness of her expressions appeal to him in the most carnal sense. He wants to push and push until her colors are wrung out and bled into him.
Until she's of a carcass of what she used to hold. Until-
He shuts those thoughts down. People couldn't hurt him, he doesn't need to resort to force any more.
Except.
Her back crunches against the window, her gasp pushes through her lips and he presses the full length of his body to her. She arcs her arm, the one with her weapon, but he sees it in time and wrenches the blade from her. He grasps the blade with his metal fingers and tosses it carelessly from them. It bounces off the concrete.
"What the hell, man?"
Without her weapon, he can see the cracks of her façade. She's frightened, but still shows a stiff upper lip. She's foolish, stupid and naively brave. She's wearing a mask, but her sheer reactions underneath are so breathtakingly enticing.
"You said that you're giving me an out, what did you mean by that?" he narrows his eyes and she tilts her head slightly. His lips gradually slides into a grin as she glares at him.
"Exactly what it means, I didn't know that SHIELD operatives needed clarification on that," she says, there's the bite he's looking for. She tears her wrists from his hands but she's no match for his strength. She growls and continues.
"I don't want anything from you. That's what 'giving you an out' means. We don't have to pay false homage to our sacrilegious bond and in return, you don't have to ruin your life to appease the universal gods," her words are dripping sarcasm and she rolls her eyes the same time she forfeits her squirming.
Her wrists are limp but her eyes are of fire, "I'm rejecting you here, bud," she says easily, "I mean you should be happy, right? You've got your boy band of misfits. You. Steve. Natasha," she gestures, "Sam. Tony. Maybe. Well sometimes, he's like 25/75 on the likeability scale."
"Stark's not."
She laughs, it's relaxed and carefree, and he ignores the heat at the pit of his stomach, "yeah, you got that right. Can you let go now? I promise I won't try to defend myself when you try to kill me."
She's pliant under his body, her guard is lowered because he hasn't shown any indication that he's going to stab her. Good. He's not going to hurt her, unless she gives him a reason to.
He leans in, not touching, but enough to feel the heat from her cheek.
"I don't want an out," he says. And for a split second, it's like driving off a cliff, the pit swooping in his stomach.
“You're my soulmate, and you're mine. And I am yours, it's our duty,” his voice drops, “to explore what we possibly can.”
She stumbles, looking absolutely wrecked. But she finds her resolve as fast as she lost it.
“We're not a science experiment, Barnes,” she hisses like a wildcat, “we either work, or we don't. And judging by the way you almost killed me, we fall in category two!”
“I disagree,” the skin of her neck is light and seemingly fragile, he traces the chord of it with his nose, “Steve met Carter under terrible circumstances, and look at them now.”
She laughs caustically, “oh yeah? But we aren't Steve and Sharon? Are we?”
“No,” he chuckles, “we're not.”
“We're better.”
She startles at his statement, a snort and then a pause.
When she realizes his silence isn't of his consensus, she reacts.
"You're not fucking around, are you?" she shoves him and he moves. She's outraged and surprised. He's pleased that he has knocked her off balance.
"You don't want an out," she's feeble and she closes her eyes and breathes heavily three times through her mouth.
"Why?" her voice cracks.
He brushes a fallen strand behind her curiously tiny ear.
"Call it undeniable curiosity, I want to learn," he unconsciously pitched his voice so only she can hear, "everything about my soulmate."
And he would.
**
What the hell.
What the fuck.
Those thoughts ran through her head as the hot water soothes her sore body. She leans up to the hot water, hoping the solid jets would wake her up and clear her mind. The heat simmers the rage in her blood.
She's so goddamned stupid. Foolish. She should have never poked the lion or whatever the stupid analogy was. She should have kept her mouth shut and just ran away after rescuing him. He's a super human soldier from Russia. Of course he was going to be fine. He could get stabbed in the stomach fifty times and just walk it off. This is the man that trained the Black Widow. This is the man who almost killed Captain America.
God, Captain America. Avengers. Shit. How is she supposed to look any of them in the eye again. She hopes to God that he doesn't tell anyone, this beats that one time she walked in on her favorite astrophysicist and her soulmate. She saw a whole lot of Thor's ass that she can never unsee. It was a nice ass, but the big brother relationship that she and Thor have made it awkward for a long time.
Sighing, she curses herself at her blunder. Her stubborn and inappropriate responses should have been a red light for herself. She knows how headstrong she can be and she usually doesn't crack under pressure. But Barnes turned it around on her. She was so sure that he was going to take her initial offer of leaving their relationship before it even started. He had Natasha, or so she thought. They seemed like they were a perfect pair. Both could kill someone with their big toes. Both had shady as hell pasts. Both are Russian. Both were pants wettingly scary.
Boy, was Barnes absolutely frightening.
After the horribly nail-biting twenty minute car ride, they arrived at Stark Industries. Darcy's mind had shut down, doomed with his last statement. She remained silence throughout the whole ride. The red lights, the stop signs felt like three minutes each instead of three seconds. Before he had even stopped the car she had opened the door and took off running. She didn't look back and didn't stop until she made it safely to her room. The dress and the updo discarded, she took a long, scorching shower.
She releases the breath she's holding and removes her face from the water, she slicks her hair back. The water does nothing to calm her storming mind and she vaguely remembers that she needed to do some grocery shopping. She towels herself off and walks out to her room. Grimly, she examines the intricate mark on her hipbone. It's a mess of swirly lines and smudges, interconnected with each other. When she was younger, she thought it was beautiful, the mark that showed that you were intimately connected with another. Even if it looked like a mess, you were meant to find each other. It showed you that there was someone you were destined for. Now, it's a casual reminder that Lewis women never got that in life.
Even if not wanting a soulmate is what she wanted.
God, the irony is not lost on her.
Fate is in your own hands, Darcy always believed that. No matter how many soulmate success stories she heard, there was always the single one that didn't work out. And she firmly believe that it's written in her birth. She is the one percent. Or was.
Stuffing that thought in the corner of her mind, she pulls a tank top on. Tonight, she acted like a coward and scurried away with her tail between her legs. Barnes was playing around with her. She had no interest in being someone's soulmate. Much less anyone who actually had someone else. He said that he wants to learn everything about her, that statement still sounds as horrible as when it came out of his mouth.
She steels herself, Barnes just wants to screw around with her.
Well, she's going to show him that she isn't someone to mess with.