natasha romanoff one shots

enemies

Punches flew. From one second to the next our status was changing. Winning, to losing, to winning again. Trained in the same place, taught in agencies that mirrored each other, our skills were almost perfectly matched. Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, my enemy. My long term enemy. Since the Red Room we were pinned against each other by Dreykov. His two favourite girls destined to fight each other for the top spot. The best Widow. That was until he realised how similar we were. How evenly matched our talents were. How pointless that made his little game. So he sent me away to be trained to kill somewhere else. I was off the radar for a few years, as was she. The next thing I knew she had deflected to the US. To SHIELD. And just like that we were fighting each other again. The universe was adamant on making us enemies.

And the universe led us to here. Our third fight of the year, in the streets of London. Down a narrow alley, we dodged punch after punch only to return them moments later. One of us would kick whilst the other blocked in a raging stalemate. Neither of us would give. Neither of us would tire. It was like this every time. Every once in a while she'd attempt to use her widow bites on me, only for me to block it with something of my own invention. Neither of us could get an advantage over the other leaving us in this dreadful back and forth. SHIELD wanted me gone. My agency wanted her gone. So we were stuck.

This lasted for a while, slowly getting deeper into the alley as the light of day began to fade behind the skyscrapers. A single moment changed everything. In the blink of an eye, in the tiniest millisecond, Natasha Romanoff faltered. The tiniest trip on a bit of discarded brick. Barely noticeable. But it was all I needed to win. I kicked off the wall to get momentum and in her brief moment of distraction I pinned her to the ground. I gripped her wrists and held them taut above her head with one of my hands and made sure her legs couldn't move underneath me. With my free hand I pointed my weapon at her face. The one weapon I didn't have an opportunity to use until this very moment. The fatal shot.

Observe. Assess. Aim. Shoot. The steps I was taught all those years ago. With the weapon directed right between her eyes I got ready.

"Kill me then." Natasha grunted under me. "Do your job, Y/N."

Observed. Assessed. Aimed. But somewhere between steps three and four I got lost. Something deep inside of me telling me not to shoot. That somewhere along the line I had gone wrong, taken the wrong pathway or misunderstood a feeling.

For the first time in my career, in my lifetime, my hand started to tremble. Along with my bottom lip. Along with most of my body actually. Every single muscle, every single nerve ending, began to shake with confusion and fear and terror. This was my job. My whole life had been leading up to this moment and for some reason, unknown to me, I couldn't do it. The shaking caused me to loosen my grip and due to my loosened grip Natasha was able to escape from underneath me, flipping me over so that I was the one pinned to the floor.

A gasp for air followed the impact on the ground and before I knew it she had my hands restrained above my head, just as I had her seconds before. But she didn't aim a weapon at me. She didn't threaten me. She just asked one singular question.

"Why didn't you kill me?"

To this I did not know the answer. Not yet. So when I explained it to her, it was my first time experiencing those thoughts.

"Without you I don't have a reason to live." I whispered, unsure of myself. Natasha didn't speak, just glared into my eyes whilst she waited for me to carry on. "My whole life it's been you. Everything I do is about you. My whole purpose is you. It always has been. If I killed you then... then I wouldn't have anything to live for."

Suddenly I understood why I couldn't kill her. Since the day I got sent to the red room she was there. When we joined separate agencies she was there. Without realising, I had made Natasha Romanoff my whole world and without her there is nothing. Because she is everything to me. Natasha still said nothing, but something in the way she loosened her grip on my wrists and the subtle way her eyes softened told me she felt a similar way. So I carried on explaining, doing the talking for the both of us.

"We've been taught to hate each other our whole lives. To loathe each other. But somewhere along the line I think that changed. We didn't have to keep fighting each other when we left, but something always drew us back together. We chose to come back to each other all these times. Maybe we thought it was loathing. Maybe that's what we thought fuelled it. The purpose that was drilled into our minds all those years ago but..."

"But love is easy to mistake for loathing." Natasha finished my sentence. The revelation hit both of us at the same time. The reason why neither of us ever managed to kill or even severely injure the other. The reason why, despite no longer needing to, we found excuses to fight each other. To see each other. To chase each other. The reason why the universe always found ways of putting us together. We stared deeply into each others eyes as the epiphany struck. Somewhere in the long line of history, the loathing turned to love and we were both too blinded by our past to see it.

Slowly, Natasha stood up and held out a hand for me. She helped me up before brushing some of the dirt off my hand. Which left us face to face, just inches apart. I could feel her breath on my face and I could feel her hands as she placed them gently on my shoulders and then I could feel her soft lips on mine. Everything in me relaxed. I melted into her embrace, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her closer. Love felt so much better than loathing. Natasha Romanoff was my world, then and now, only now I get to see my world in a new light.

It turns out, the universe wasn't adamant on making us enemies. The universe was adamant on making us soulmates.

A/N: I've got to admit... I'm proud of this one. I really love it. I hope you do too!!!