Title: And The Rock Cried Out … No Hiding Place
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Pairings: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff
Rating: PG-15
Word Count: 296
Summary: Prompt: There is no victory. There are only battles. And in the end, the best you can hope for is to find a place to make your stand. And if you’re lucky, you find someone willing to stand with you.
Author’s Note: Title lifted from Season 3 Episode 20 of Babylon 5. Written for Be_Compromised prompt-a-thon.
They remade her until all she remembered were the battles. Battles against her age mates … Battles against her tender heart to please her teachers … Battles to hide her soul from their soullessness … Battles against her teachers until they crowned her Black Widow, their perfect weapon.
Their weapon was perfect until they had remade her into so many names, so many faces cracks appeared. Stress applied to the cracks made fissures until pieces fell away … Until the wall around her tender heart collapsed, and her soul cried out, No hiding place!
Now she battles those from before. All the skills they used for their nefarious agendas, became their downfall. Free to choose her path, she battles those who would capture and remake their creation. She battles to become more while running from those who would reduce her to less.
She battles until her soul is bereft and her heart bleak. She knows he is there … Knows he watches. He is the one. The only one she can’t lose … Can’t find to kill … Can’t understand why he lets her live. So she stops … Stops running … Stops thinking … Exhausted to the depths of her soul … She stops.
Into the silence a rustle draws green eyes from where they watch her pale hands waiting to draw her final breath. Green eyes look up and see … Gray, blue, green, gold … So alive … So fierce … Eyes of the hunter … The raptor.
Green eyes see the hands. Long fingered, calloused, open, weapons tucked away from those who cannot understand who they are. Open hands … Open eyes that show her the battle scarred heart that still beats fiercely inside the broad chest. Eyes that beckon her to come … Come to him … With him … To stand by his side to never again battle alone.
~ Fini ~
Whispers In The Mind 