distraction fic

[tielan]

Okay, I need something to distract me; I'm pretty much out of work, and fretting over something that will probably end up being meaningless anyway.

I probably shouldn't be leaving this client until at least 4pm, and while I'm hoping it rains so I won't have hockey training tonight (lazy, and tired, and not looking forward to team and player issues), I probably won't be that lucky.

So give me a character or two and a prompt or quotation or scenario and I'll try to get my brain back into writing gear.

Comments

[monanotlisa]

Steve/Natasha, or Steve and Natasha,

All my butterflies
I shooed into your garden.

I kept walking through grenades,
Saw the world burn

[tielan]

The time of heroes is at an end; it didn't last long.

They've seen New York, Shanghai, and Rome, already. They've walk through smoke and rubble, survivors, revenants of a time that passed twenty years ago and more.

Somehow, though, Paris is worse. Perhaps it's because some of her best memories are here - a swift aperitif between missions, a silver pendant in a black velvet case, a shared smile leaning off the Pont d'Iéna.

That was then. Now, Paris is burning.

The quotation is wrong. Natasha knows it. But it seems appropriate all the same - and just as hard the first time she realised it. "Some men will set the world on fire, just to watch it burn."

Steve looks out over the smoking wreck of a city, and Natasha studies the set of his face, the twist of his mouth. Does he see Paris as she remembers it - iconic and peaceful? Or does he see the city as he first saw it, tense and huddling, war-torn?

Fifty years has given her insight into the man, but she doubts she'll ever understand him. For a woman who was taught and trained to know men, that's no small compliment.

Can he envision a new world, build out of the old?

Natasha can't. Not yet. Maybe when the memories aren't so raw; when she's had time to adjust - again - to a new world, a new order of things.

"The world used to be bigger," Steve murmurs.

"World's still the same," Natasha answers, the words rising in her, unbidden, "there's just less in it."

[monanotlisa]

Oh, I love this literal take on the Else Lasker Schueler poem I cribbed from -- 'always one possible ending, isn't it? A beginning, too, maybe, just maybe. Heroes can't save the world (the world has to save itself). This snippet of Natasha and Steve walking through the ashes, together, is powerful.

Hope you had a happy Easter, girl.

<3