Submission by @reioka
So I see you like WIW. Please accept this garbage:
Bucky and Natasha are famous Russian ballet dancers and, secretly, famous Russian assassins. They dance Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and work one job each week on Mondays. It’s all very meticulous. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which job they enjoy more.
One Friday, after the beginning of a season of The Sleeping Beauty, they each receive a fan letter. This isn’t unusual for them—they’re excellent dancers, so they often get fan letters. But these… these are somehow gushing without feeling like they’re being put up on pedestals. Natasha hesitates before folding the letter up and putting it carefully in the little box that she’s kept that holds her precious things. Bucky scoffs and rolls his eyes at her, but she refuses to take it back out.
Everyone tells her she’s beautiful. The writer of her letter tells her that her leaps and bounds look effortless. That is—the greatest compliment she’s ever been given. She likes her skills being complimented, not just her looks. Bucky is used to being told he’s strong and handsome, but the writer of his letter tells him he appreciates his control and the finesse of his moves. He’s so used to being a second thought with Natasha on stage, but the writer makes him feel important, like he isn’t as easily replaced as he technically is.
The next night another letter comes for each of them. More praise. More gushing. Even Bucky is reluctantly enamored. Natasha takes his letters and puts them in her box too. The letters keep coming. They fall a little bit in love with the letter writer as time goes on. They wish they could send him something in return, but whoever it is only signs his name as ‘Ballet Aficionado.’ Instead they work harder, perfect their moves better, and the letters wax poetic about how it’s obvious they’re putting in more effort.
As the season draws to a close, the letters take on a depressed tone. The writer talks about how he’ll miss them, how he hates to lose the beauty they bring to his life. Bucky and Natasha worry and fret through practice, through assassinations, through restless, sleepless nights. They try to find the letter writer, but when they finally catch the courier that delivers them, she stutters out that she—she doesn’t know who the writer is, another boy delivers the letter to her, and when they go for the boy, he has the same story—another boy delivers the letters to him. Their mysterious Aficionado is like a ghost.
The finale of the show comes. The theater is packed. Bucky and Natasha dance their hearts out for their letter writer—they know he is there, know he is watching, and they want to make sure the last performance goes beautifully for him. They take their bows with the rest of the dancers and hurry back to their dressing room. There are letters waiting, like they’d expected. Natasha sobs over the beautiful goodbye she’s given. Their precious Aficionado had never called her beautiful, but now he does—tells her that her dancing is only half as beautiful as she is as a person. Bucky clenches his jaw and fights back tears of his own when Aficionado tells him that he appreciates all his subtle power, and he hopes that someday the rest of the world will appreciate it too.
The ‘goodbye’ written at the end is different from the others, hitched, as if a verbal sob had somehow been written. Natasha delicately slips the letters into the box, hands shaking. She doesn’t think they’ve ever received such a final goodbye from someone. At least not from someone who wanted nothing from them in return.
They don’t have time to linger on Aficionado. They have a job to do, some rich boy who spends all his time drunk and fritters away his company’s profits. Breaking into his hotel room is easy, and they hate that they don’t even have to try; they want something to challenge them, take their minds off the fact that perhaps the most romantic person in their lives is gone forever and they never even got to meet him. They snoop around the room instead, waiting for their victim to return from a night of drinking like he always does—and Bucky finds a wastebasket full of crumpled papers—crumpled letters.
All of them are smeared, some of them smelling of cheap alcohol, some of them damp from what looks like teardrops. He recognizes the words, the phrases. Praise for a perfect adagio, an ode to their pirouettes, constructive criticism for lifts. Bucky shoves his knuckles into his mouth, teeth biting into the skin, but the wounded, mournful sound escapes his lips anyway. “Natasha.” Natasha starts looking through the wastebasket as well, tears rolling down her cheeks, because oh, oh no, this man is the one who sent them the letters, ones they realized too late were actually love letters, his heart and soul being poured out to them, whose heart is so fragile, and someone wants him dead.
Tony Stark arrives, stumbling drunk, manages to give them a confused squint before saying, “Oh, right, you must be here to kill me,” and he sounds sad and resigned, but not angry or upset about it. Bucky bullies him over to the bed, and when he falls backward onto it, Natasha kneels and unties his shoes, pulls them off, as Bucky carefully unbuttons Tony’s shirt and pulls it off as well. “Oh,” Tony says, confused but not put off. “Pity fuck for the guy that creeped on you?? I accept. If I’m not so drunk that I can’t get it up.”
And that—that’s so heartbreaking, that he thinks it would be a pity fuck and that they think he’s creepy, after all the pretty words and thoughts he spilled to them. “Aw, I am too drunk,” Tony says sadly. “Will you kiss me before you kill me, at least?” And Natasha and Bucky share a look before quietly agreeing. Tony smiles and makes grabby hands. The kisses they get from him are surprisingly soft and sweet, and he never leans in for more, just taking what they’re willing to offer him. “It’s nice of you to give a dying man one last wish,” he says, smiling at them guilelessly, before promptly passing out.
“…WELL,” Natasha snaps at Bucky. Bucky rolls his eyes and carefully scoops Tony up. They keep him in their tiny apartment until they can find out who wanted him killed. Tony gives them sad eyes when they tell him “Obadiah Stane” but he isn’t surprised. “And you were just going to let us kill you?” Natasha asks one day, even though she doesn’t want to know the answer, and Bucky stops chopping beets to hear what Tony says. “Why fight it? This isn’t the first time Obie tried to have me killed. And as much as I’d like to be able to say it, I can’t beat the Winter Soldier and Black Widow. Besides.” He smiles down at his hands sadly. “You two are young and beautiful and talented. Why would you ever want me.”
And they stare at him, this poor man who thinks he’s not worth wanting, not even worth being saved, who had poured his heart and soul into making them feel wonderful, not expecting anything in return. They haven’t kissed him since they brought him here a few weeks ago, but he hadn’t asked for more and they hadn’t wanted to push. They hadn’t realized that Tony might have thought it was actually pity, that they were only doing it to comfort a sad man who thought he was about to die. Well, they can’t have that. Natasha will have to dig out her memory box to show him how all of his letters to both of them ended up in it, and Bucky will have to show him the spiral notebook in which they’d both jotted down responses of varying length.
For now, they take him to bed, kiss the questions from his lips until his words become moans, touch him until his nervous, fluttering hands grasp at them tightly. They take turns keeping him occupied until they can make arrangements: Stark Industries is an American company, so they leave their troupe, make arrangements to move to New York. (The troupes there trip over themselves to be able to list Natasha Romanova and James Barnes among their ranks. They are guaranteed jobs.) They pack up their things and have them forwarded to Tony’s apartment.
A nice British man named Jarvis heaves a long-suffering sigh when they call him to get security clearance. They bundle Tony up in Bucky’s old clothes (he is unfairly adorable) and smuggle him onto a plane. They arrive in New York and their first order of business is to get Tony safely ensconced in his penthouse suite. Their second is to take care of Stane. They do that swiftly and without mercy. Their Aficionado is precious and kind and after some digging is definitely not the one that deserves to die here.
Tony has absolutely no idea why they choose to stay after that. They got paid, technically, by Obadiah. They could leave. He tells them so. Natasha digs her memory box out of their things, resolving to unpack everything else. Bucky finds his notebook full of letters that would have been sent if only they’d found Tony before. They sit and watch Tony read them. “How could we possibly leave you when we love you?” Bucky asks quietly as a tear rolls down Tony’s cheek. “How could we possibly leave you when you love us?” Natasha adds softly as Tony chokes on a sob and covers his mouth.
Their new troupe does The Firebird and they train harder than ever before to perform well for Tony. There are letters waiting for them after the first recital. They wax poetic like they always do, but this time they’re signed, ‘See you at home! :) Love, Tony’ and when they arrive back at the penthouse, Tony is holding a bouquet of flowers for each of them. Natasha carefully dries one of her tulips and one of Bucky’s roses to put in her memory box. Bucky doesn’t make fun of her.
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Women in War -- 9
All Maggie Maravillla ever wanted was to help people. She never imagined losing damn near everything when winning a war.
WiW masterpost
Chapter 9
"Dernier, Jones, I swear on Bucky's life, I'm not going to try to shoot up the factory if you let me out for cell-hopping."
The two men in the cell eyed Maggie warily.
"You believe her, Dugan?" Gabe Jones called out.
From three cells away, Dugan yelled back an affirmation. "Doc's making rounds again, folks, call out!"
"Ready when you are, gentlemen."
Once Maggie was up on the top, she waited for a call. She made three visits before she heard someone enter. "Putain de merde," she hissed, making a beeline for the first cell. She was hanging from the bars when she heard a body fall. Maggie pulled herself up and squinted in the dark. When she realised it was Becky who had dropped a Hydra soldier, she squeaked in surprise and slipped.
"Doc!"
She fell right onto Dugan and Falsworth.
"Get me back up there!"
"Maggie?"
Maggie looked up, as did the soldiers in the cell.
"Who are you supposed to be?" Falsworth asked.
"Uh . . . I'm Captain America."
"I beg your pardon?"
Maggie stopped trying to convince Dugan and Falsworth to get her back up when Becky suddenly appeared in front of the gate with a key. "Mags! Oh, thank God, you're alive!"
"Beck, what are you doing here?"
"Beck?" Dugan repeated as Becky opened the gate. "Becky Barnes?"
"Agent Barnes, soldier. Who are you?"
"Sergeant Dugan, with the sixty-ninth infantry."
Maggie let go of Becky as she recognised the man walking up to them. "Steve Rogers, is that you?"
"Mags," Steve said, returning her hug.
"So it really worked, then? The serum?"
"Still getting used to all the . . . abilities."
"That's natural."
"Where Bucky?" Becky asked.
"We think he's in the isolation ward," Maggie said as Dugan took the keys and went down the rows, unlocking every cell. "No one ever comes out of there. Last I saw him was about a week ago. I've tried to leave this place, but soldiers' rounds never stop and . . . I figured if I got myself killed, I'd be no help to anyone."
"Smart move," Becky said. "Lead the way, Doc."
Maggie turned around. "Morita."
"Yes, Doc?"
"Find Dugan and gather the men. We're going to blow the factory to hell. You think everyone has enough hope now?"
"Don't know about hope, Doc, but rage is definitely there."
"Good enough."
"The tree line is northwest, 80 yards past the gate," Steve said. "Get out fast and give ‘em hell. We’ll meet you guys in the clearing with anybody else we find."
Morita nodded and turned to leave. "Dugan!"
"We spread through the factory," Maggie told Steve and Becky, "Steve, you hunt down Schmidt. Beck, this place has a self destruct system. See if you can locate it and set it off. Time's set for seven minutes, so we don't have a lot of time to sweep the factory. I'm going to find Bucky."
"Maggie!"
Maggie stumbled slightly as she was attacked from behind by Olivier. She turned to him and gently pushed him away, hands on his shoulders. "Olivier, aller avec Dugan et Morita."
"Non," Olivier said, shaking his head, "je ne te laisse pas. Je viens avec vous."
"Who is this?" Steve asked.
"Olivier Enzo. Olivier, c'est Steve Rogers. Change of plans, I'm taking Olivier with me. Once we find Bucky, we're fleeing the factory. I'll double back to help you once I get the two of them out."
"No," Becky said, shaking her head. "You get out, you stay with them. Steve and I will handle Schmidt."
Maggie agreed, if only to placate Becky. Grabbing Olivier's arm, she left the prisons first. Out of habit, she let Olivier take the lead. She'd gotten used to Becky dictating her every move on the field and welcomed the familiarity that came with Olivier leading their search.
She grabbed his arm to stop him when she heard Bucky's voice. Before anyone came down the corridor, she pulled Olivier into a room.
"Sergeant, 3-2-5-5-7--"
"Bucky!" Maggie rushed to the gurney in the centre of the room. "Olivier, aidez-moi avec ces contraintes."
Together, they freed Bucky and helped him to stand.
"Buck, can you hear me? What's my name? Bucky! What's my name?"
"Crystal," Bucky slurred, as if he were drunk, "but you hate it."
"And who's this?" Maggie asked, pointing to Olivier.
Olivier stared back as Bucky studied him. "Magpie's baby."
"What's his name?"
"Olivier."
Olivier chuckled. "I am not Magpie's baby," he said, his French accent blurring the words together.
Bucky scoffed. "Sure, kid, whatever." He glanced at Maggie, who was fully supporting him as they left the room. "When did you get so strong?"
"Daily pull-ups in the cells, you know how it is, Buckwheat."
"Magpie."
Maggie smiled, more than thrilled to have Bucky back.
In her defence, Maggie really did try to get Bucky and Olivier out of the factory in seven minutes. Alas, she eventually found herself on a catwalk across Steve and Becky, with the building burning and crumbling around them.
"What are you doing here?! I told you to get out!"
"I'm not leaving my best friend behind!"
Becky eventually laid eyes on a thin gantry. She turned to Steve. "Super soldiers first," she said, gesturing to the death trap.
Maggie got down on the gantry from the other side. "I got this side."
"I got this one," Becky said. "Go, Steve."
Knowing he had never won an argument against either of the two, Steve reluctantly crossed the chasm slowly. Once he was across, he immediately went to check on Bucky. Olivier, who would without hesitation admit that Maggie was stronger than him, allowed Bucky to lean against Steve instead. Becky stood up on the other side and got ready to cross the chasm.
The gantry gave way, almost taking Maggie down with it.
"Go!" Becky shouted, waving them away. "Get out of here!"
"Not without you!" Maggie yelled furiously as she stood up too. "There's gotta be a rope or something! Please! Beck, I'm not leaving you behind!"
Becky glanced around for something to swing over. When she concluded that there was nothing, she eyed the broken railing. Holding to the fixed portion, she kicked out what was already falling apart, making a gap wide enough for her to safely make the jump. Whether she would reach the other side was another question entirely. Maggie leaned over the railing, waiting.
Becky moved backwards and took a running start. Seconds after she leapt into the air, the box behind her exploded. The blast pushed Becky forward, but it also threw her balance off. Maggie leaned out as far as she could. She caught Becky's arm and Becky locked her fingers around Maggie's arm, but the jerk of gravity claiming Becky pulled Maggie over the railing.
///////////////
The typewriter's clicking seemed louder than Phillips' voice. "Senator Brandt, I regret to report that Captain Steven G. Rogers and Agent Rebecca L. Barnes went missing behind enemy lines on the third. Aerial reconnaissance has proven unfruitful. As a result, I must declare Captain Rogers and Agent Barnes killed in action. Period."
"The last surveillance flight is back," Peggy said as she entered the tent. She nodded a greeting to the corporal behind the typewriter. "No sign of activity."
"Go get a cup of coffee, Corporal."
"Yes, sir."
Once the corporal had left, Phillips turned to Peggy. "I can’t touch Stark. He’s rich and he’s the army’s number one weapons contractor. You are neither one."
"With respect, sir, I don’t regret my actions. And I don’t think Captain Rogers or Agent Barnes did either."
"What makes you think I give a damn about your opinions? I took a chance with you, Agent Carter, you and your partner, and now America’s golden boy, one of the SOE's top agents are dead, cause you had a crush."
"It wasn’t that. I had faith."
"Well, I hope that’s a big comfort to you when they shut this division down."
Peggy's response was drowned in the sound of excited yelling as soldiers ran past the tent.
"What the hell’s going on out there?" Phillips mumbled. He and Peggy followed the crowd to see hundreds of men walking up to the camp. Both pushed their way to the front when the camp met the soldiers.
Steve nodded to Phillips. "Some of these men need medical attention. Dr Maravilla won't be on duty for a few days."
"Medic!" someone shouted, "we need a medic over here!"
Nurses bled into the crowd, guiding injured soldiers to the med bays.
"We would like to surrender ourselves for disciplinary action," Becky said, glancing at Steve.
Phillips glanced at the men behind Steve. "That won't be necessary."
"Yes, sir," Steve said, a faint smile on his lips.
"Faith, huh?" Phillips murmured to Peggy before leaving.
"You're late," she told Steve.
He held up the transponder she had given him, buttons popped out and a hole right through. "Couldn't call my ride."
"Hey!" Becky shouted, "let's hear it for Captain America!"
The men cheered after her words. Peggy glanced away from Steve to hug Becky. The pair stole Maggie from Bucky and Olivier, if only for a few seconds' worth of a group hug.
Peggy left with Becky, guiding her to the med bays. Despite her arguments that she was fine, Olivier and Bucky dragged Maggie behind the pair. Steve followed Phillips to find out what happened next.
The first time Bucky had seen Howard and Becky together, Howard had been at his most awkward and unsure, shuffling about and repeatedly clearing his throat. He'd barely had his arm around her. Now, as he rushed through the med bay, searching for Becky, he couldn't care less who was watching as he showered Becky with kisses. Each "Are you okay?" and "Are you hurt?" was punctuated with another kiss on her forehead, on her cheeks, on her lips, on her nose, or a hug.
Bucky smiled as he sat next to Maggie, who was being fitted for a sling. "Never thought I'd see the day Becky would let someone fuss over her like that."
"She used to let my dad fuss over her whenever she fell."
"Okay, but Tio Hugo gave the best hugs and what kid doesn't want their scrape kissed better?"
Maggie smiled. "I guess that's fair."
"Mr Stark!" a nurse cried, huffing as she stood with her hands on her hips. "Could I please see my patient!"
Howard sat down next to Becky, never letting go of her hand.
Maggie laughed softly.
"All done, doctor."
"Thank you," Maggie told the nurse, adjusting the sling when the woman wasn't looking.
"Are you okay?" Olivier asked Bucky.
Bucky nodded. "Better now. Much better."
"That's good. Maggie sent a lot of us into a very worried state. We thought she was going to break out and start a . . . émeute?"
"Riot," Maggie said.
"A riot, all by herself."
"Is that so?" Bucky asked, glancing at Maggie, who only shrugged and turned her nose up.
Olivier grinned. "Seulement taquineries, Maggie."
"Je connais, Olivier."
///////////////
In London, Olivier marked off spots on a large map. "J'ai seulement un petit regard," he told Maggie, before repeating himself in English to Phillips and Steve.
"C'est bon, Olivier."
They walked over to another map, pinned to a wall. Maggie gestured to the pins. "These are the weapon factories we know about. Hydra shipped all the parts to another facility that isn’t on this map. They quickly figured out I speak German and generally stopped talking around me."
Phillips nodded before facing Peggy. "Agent Carter, you and Agent Barnes coordinate with MI6. I want every Allied eyeball looking for that main Hydra base."
"What about us?" Peggy asked.
"We are gonna set a fire under Johann Schmidt’s ass. What do you say, Rogers? It’s your map, you think you can wipe Hydra off of it?"
"Yes, sir. I’ll need a team."
"We’re already putting together the best men."
"With all due respect, sir. So am I."
Much later than evening, Maggie walked into the bar with Peggy and Becky, each of them dressed up for the night. Becky greeted her brother and Steve before slipping away. Maggie tried to sit down but Bucky pulled her up. "Dance with me, Magpie."
"Buck . . . oh, bien vale."
They didn't really dance. Not like the others out on the floor. Bucky's hand never moved from Maggie's wait, and the other held not too tightly to her own. They swayed gently, though it didn't quite fit the music.
"Did I ever tell you I love this dress?"
"Every time I put it on since you gave it to me."
"Doesn't matter. I love this dress on you, Magpie."
"Thank you, Bucky," Maggie said with a smile.
"Back to the jaws of death with us, huh?"
Maggie shrugged. "Wasn't so bad with you around. Got really awful really quickly when you vanished into the isolation ward."
"I promise not to disappear on you again."
"To the jaws of death, then."
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