#man vs his body man vs the limitations of his body man vs the breakability of his body

[lovelytonys]

the best thing about iron man comics is that at some point every writer goes “we need to break all of tony stark’s bones” “he needs to get as close to death as we can get him” “we need to INJURE tony stark” like the tragedy and the high drama is so baked into the dna of this character that even writers who understand nothing about tony stark still understand this. it’s maybe the one consistent thing about iron man books through the years: that man’s body is going to be put through The Wringer. through Five Wringers

[tilltheendwilliwrite]

Soft Names, Soft Touches

Chapter One

Pairing: Bucky x OC | Word Count: 5.9k+

Warnings: Swearing. Violence. Russian that may or may not be correct.

A/N: While this is my first Avengers fan fiction it is not my first written story. I’ve been writing fiction for three years on a few other sites. I hope you enjoy and please be kind. I’m new to Tumblr, and it may take time to get my shit together!

She had always believed pain was a relative emotion. Either you felt it, or you didn’t.

As a child, Franki had assumed she’d chosen not to feel pain and didn’t understand when others had moaned and groaned and cried out from it. Pain was a weakness she couldn’t afford. It wasn’t until she was older that she realized the truth. She couldn’t feel pain.

She couldn’t feel much at all.

The first time her wrist had broken during a spar with another girl in the Red Room she had looked at it for a moment, dangling, useless in its twisted, oddly bent shape before a madam had begun yelling for a nurse. She had only shrugged when the nurse had asked if it hurt.

Later, after she’d been sent to China, she’d snapped four ribs fighting off three other Weapons that had been tasked with beating her when she had refused to comply again. At the time she had given only a hard grunt, barely flinching, and put one of the metal hair sticks she’d fashioned from a broken spoon through each of their thighs. It wasn’t until she’d started to have difficulty breathing that she realized there was a problem.

She had always been careful to weigh the choices she made. Fight or flight. Yes vs no. Comply or resist. Each one was carefully calculated. She knew the odds, knew the risks, and had, more often than not, taken them anyways because it had been what kept her alive.

The leg, however, was a risk she hadn’t calculated.

Falling from that height should have, technically, killed an average person but by this point, Franki knew she wasn’t normal. She wasn’t sure she had ever been quote-unquote normal, but she was still learning the limits of her enhanced body and how far she could push it when it came to field work.

She healed fast, always had, but since the introduction of the serum, a sprain or laceration was usually gone in under twenty minutes. Not feeling the pain, she barely noticed when her blood splattered the walls or dripped into her boots. It wasn’t until she got back to the tower or the compound and had to peel the crusty clothing off herself that she even knew she’d been injured, though, with how fast she healed, she could rarely tell you where she’d been wounded.

The leg, however, was a total pain in her ass. Metaphorically speaking of course. Forty feet straight down onto concrete was, evidently, the extent the serum could protect her and her bones could take before they broke.

She’d stuck the landing, rolled, rose to her feet, took a single step and went down nearly on her face when the leg buckled. Landing hard, barely managing to catch herself on her hands, she rolled again and glared at her shin where the bone was protruding through the cloth of her bodysuit.  

“Shit…” hissed from Franki softly before she turned silver eyes back to the windows to see if anyone was foolish enough to follow. “Nat?”

“Franki?”

The voice of the Black Widow slid through the com and in turn her ear, a bit like velvet, or chocolate that melted heavenly in your mouth. It almost made her smile. “Broke my leg.”

“What!? Fuck!”

“Natasha! Language!” Steve growled.

Another smile twitched Franki’s lips. No matter how they teased him, Cap just couldn’t let it go. “Forty-foot drop. Stuck the landing.”

“It’s not sticking the landing when you break your damn leg!” Natasha snarled, shooting the three HYDRA agents in front of her. “Bucky, you catch that?”

Shit…. Pressing a hand to her eyes, Franki sighed. “Nat…” she nearly groaned.

“He’s the closest one to your position, Franki,” Nat smirked wickedly, knowing Franki’s particular brand of fondness extended far deeper for the Winter Soldier than she was letting on.

Franki could hear the smile in her partner’s voice before another deeper one cut through. “Inbound in two.” The Winter Soldier was pissed if the tone was anything to go by.

Shit. Shit. Shit. Bucky was going to chew out her ass for this and then Steve was going to give her the sad puppy eyes. Flopping backwards, Franki glared at the building above her, lifted her gun and shot the head that appeared from the window she’d busted through. The body fell not far from where she was laid out.

Sighing, Franki sat up and sneered at her broken tibia. “Stupid,” she grumbled.

“I agree.”

Swinging the gun up, she held it on Bucky before huffing and lowering it.  “Damn cat. Where’s your bell?” He was used to her smart mouth and only glared at her as he murder strutted his way across the roof. How someone so large could stomp like that and not make a single bloody sound astounded her. A second, less appropriate thought of damn he’s pretty was quickly locked down.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Pulling his rifle around, Bucky lifted it and shot the next agent that stuck his head out the window. That body landed on the first.

“I wanted to set a new record for the height of my unassisted swan dive?” Franki snipped, rolling her eyes. “I was stuck, dammit! It was my only option!” Throwing out her hand, she shot the third agent and the fourth without bothering to look up. The position was already well ingrained, and they all seemed too stupid to stop sticking their heads out the window in the same spot. She made quick work putting in a fresh clip, watching the man stride towards her.

Two more sickening thuds hit one after another and had Bucky arching a brow. “You couldn’t wait five minutes? I was on my way!”

Crossing her arms, Franki looked out at the building. “Managed sixty feet last time without breaking anything. How was I to know this would happen?” Even to her ears, she sounded like a pouting child.

“Jeez! Sweet fucking–” he cut himself off when the door slammed open on the roof exit, and a half dozen Hydra agents swarmed out. Snarling, Bucky turned hard, whipped both hands forwards and released six sharp throwing knives with an efficiency that caught each agent in the throat. All six bodies landed at nearly the same time. “Last time you landed in a forest and used the damn trees to break your fall!” he barked, finally arriving at her side where the sight of her tibia sticking out of the lower half of her leg made him swear. “Shit, doll. Does it hurt?” It looked nasty. She needed to stop doing these things. They gave him a damn heart attack every time, this time no different when she’d come flying out the window like she’d leapt from the pool’s high dive. He’d been on his way to her long before Nat had said anything.

“Does it ever?” Rolling her eyes, Franki motioned towards the metal arm. “Can we get on with it? I got the hard drive and would like to get out of here.”

Even after all the missions they’d done together, the fact that she still maintained nothing hurt her shocked the shit out of him. That and the fact she wanted him to set the damn thing made him both sad and angry. Sad that she’d gotten hurt, to begin with, and mad she was so nonchalant about the whole thing. It was like she expected to be injured on each and every mission.

Ever since Franki had been freed from the compound in northern China, she had been part of the Avengers. Just like Nat, she had been trained in the Red Rooms of Russia, a few classes behind the Black Widow. Her training though had taken a decidedly sideways turn when at the age of nine Hydra had come through and demanded a few select girls for a secret project, one that had seen Francessca taken to a remote base and used as a Hydra guinea pig. She’d been given a serum, not unlike the one both he and Steve had, but, unlike them who could heal fast, cuts and bruises disappearing in a few days rather than weeks, she had the ability to fast heal, and she felt no pain. Whether that was the serum or just who she had been before, an inhuman that they had found by accident, none of them knew for sure.

Still, he felt a strong attachment to the silver-eyed vixen that had figured out early just which buttons to push to mess with him. 

Tiny, just like Nat at barely five foot three, Franki had the uncanny ability to make all those around her want to protect her. Nat was a badass, they all knew it, and Franki was just as skilled, but something about Franki screamed vulnerability. Had Hydra managed to use her as a weapon she would have been formidable simply because no one would have suspected her of doing any harm. She looked like a porcelain doll, sweet and breakable.

Steve had been the one to find her strapped to a metal gurney. He’d taken one look at her bruised and bloody form, clothed in tiny shorts and sports bra, and had sent his shield into the group of doctors that had stood around her, one with a needle in hand, filled with something Bucky didn’t want to think about. Some kind of poison he assumed. Something to kill her quick so she couldn’t be turned. They wouldn’t want to lose their asset. Not another one.

Natasha had come charging through the door when Steve had sworn. Steve didn’t swear. He was the damn language police so to hear fuck come out of Cap’s mouth had sent her running. She’d burst through in time to watch him rip the straps from Franki’s wrists and legs but had been thrown for a loop when the woman he was rescuing simply swung her feet to the ground and stood up, slipping out from under his gentle hands with a quick flinch.

Bruised, bloody, battered. She had been beaten within an inch of her life yet. Still, she stood up, looked from Steve to Natasha, and spoke in fluent Russian. “I know who you are. I know where you came from. If you can overcome what was done to you, learn to trust another, believe in what they fight for, I wish to go and fight with you.” Unable to understand half of what she’d said, Steve had looked to Nat for clarification, but for once the Black Widow was nearly mute in shock. It was only the gunfire and the arrival of Bucky and Sam that had knocked her from her memories of torture and young girls with frozen faces.

“How long have you been here?” Natasha had asked, her Russian just as perfect, her grip tightening on her gun.

“Since they took me from the Red Room at nine. I refused to cooperate. They beat me. I refuse to kill for them. They beat me. I refused to become Hydra’s weapon. They beat me and stuck me in a machine to take my memories. When it did not work,” she shrugged, “They tried to break me by making me their newest experiment. They failed.”

Her eyes had drifted to him during her speech, and the silver of them had Bucky catching his breath. The skin around both eyes was black, her cheekbone was blue, her jaw was set at an odd angle that had her slurring slightly. Cuts, bruises, lacerations covered her milk-white skin, and he’d thought he’d finally lost it when those cuts and scrapes, the deep black bruises, slowly started to shrink and disappear.

“This,” she flicked her fingers, broken and crooked, at her arms, “Is why they did not just kill me. I am… different.” They had been trying to reproduce her reaction to the serum for years.

And she had proceeded to show them how different when she’d snapped her fingers back into place without a single flinch and forced her jaw into alignment. Within twenty minutes all but the most severe of the injuries were completely gone. Not that they’d had a chance to watch. They were all too busy running for the e-vac and trying not to get shot. It was Nat that had handed Franki a gun, and they’d learned first-hand just how lethal she was.

One bullet. Every kill was one bullet. A direct shot through the eye no matter how fast she was running, or how far the target, it was one fucking bullet. Bucky had never been turned on by that sort of thing before, but, as he’d chased her through the trees, her bare feet flashing through the snow, he’d watched her pick off target after target and found his heart pounding in a way it never did. Blood surged, heat warmed him, and he’d had to force himself not to react physically.

Perhaps it was her small stature or the way she had a siren’s body that made one think of satin sheets and moaning, sweating, hot nights of lust. Maybe it was the cascading fall of chestnut hair that tumbled in waves to her waist. Maybe it was the smart mouth that had an answer and a comeback for everything and anything. He couldn’t have said what it was for sure, but he’d taken one look in those silver eyes in China and known she was going to knock him on his ass.

When Natasha had tried to assist her with her seat belt on the quintet, he’d known she was going to jerk on his heart as soon as the words do not touch me had flown from her suddenly shaking form. They’d raced through a forest full of shooting Hydra agents, and she hadn’t batted an eye but someone touching her terrified her.

Giving himself a mental shake, Bucky crouched down and took a firm grip below her knee with his gloved hand, the metal one wrapping around the lower part of her shin just beneath the break. “You ready?”

Rolling her eyes, Franki rested on her elbows, watching his back while he was preoccupied. “Da, do it.”

Grinding his teeth together, Bucky tightened his hold on her leg and slowly pulled the bone back down and into place as best he could. She made no noise, didn’t even tense when the bones ground together. No blood sprayed, and he gave a sigh of relief. “Looks like you missed anything important.” They wouldn’t know for sure until they got back to the jet.

“Hm.” Franki only nodded. “Help me up.”

He damn near growled at her. “I’m not lettin’ you walk on that leg, doll.” Her silver eyes flashed defiance, but he only ignored her. Gathering her into his arms, he slung her up high on his chest and looked directly into her frozen visage. She looked about ready to chew him a new one. “Just watch my back, sweetheart.” They’d learned quickly the only time Franki was relatively okay with contact was when her skin was thoroughly covered as it was in her uniform, so he didn’t hesitate to drag her up against him.

Glaring at his smug face, she bent neatly backwards over his arm to snag the gun from his waistband before unloading three rounds into the three agents coming through the door. Straightening back up, she arched a sleek brow. “Shall we, pack mule?”

Her torso had stretched like that of a svelte feline, all black and grey catsuit pulling taunt over flexible abs, her perky breasts pressing up against the zipper. Unlike Nat, Franki had asked for a bodysuit done in black and grey, something that let her blend into the shadows. It had a hood that came up to cover the hair she always tied up, wrapping it into a thick, tight bun, leaving the creamy length of her neck bare but for a few tendrils that slipped out to stick to her skin with her sweat.

Franki had the innate ability to sneak into any place known to man, and she was deadly if cornered leaving bodies in her wake that often seemed to appear from nowhere, hence her moniker of Reaper. Once they’d learned she was computer savvy, it became her job to collect the intel while the rest of the team did a fair job of distracting the soldiers and agents of Hydra. She could blend in, appear and disappear as if she was a shade, leave no trace, bend and flex her way into spaces and places no one should be able to get into and get back out again usually without getting caught.

When she did, it was often her skin that gave her away, hence the large, deep hood. Her flesh was snow white and damn near glowed in the dark. It never scarred. It looked softer than the softest kitten, and she smelled like frost and vanilla. Both sweet and bitingly cold at the same time.

He wanted to drown in that scent. But she’d never shown even the slightest interest in him. The only thing that kept him sane around her was that she’d never shown an interest in any man.

She joined them for Tony’s parties, dressed to kill, drank at the bar, danced with Nat and Wanda, but she never looked twice at the men that looked at her, always keeping her distance. She never accepted a drink or dance invitation and had garnered a reputation as a cold-hearted bitch. But he knew better. She just didn’t like being touched.

She was better now, less likely to jump straight out of her skin if touched accidentally, but she would panic quickly if someone refused to let go, going directly into fight mode and lashing out. Something Sam had learned firsthand, the hard way. The suave debonair of the Falcon had failed him when he’d taken Franki’s hand, tightened his grip when she’d jerked away, and gotten an impressive – and incredibly flexible – foot to the side of the head for his trouble.

After years locked in a facility where every touch was a blow, every word was psychological warfare, and every day was spent fighting to hold on to what little pieces of yourself remained, it made perfect sense to Bucky. He’d been the same way not long ago.

He thanked whatever god had seen fit to grant her, her inability to feel pain because it had allowed her to survive the hell she’d been in. If he ever found the rest of those responsible for her captivity, the ones who’d taken her to China and left her there, he’d kill them. He’d kill them all, and he’d do it slowly… with his bare hands.

He shot her a glare at her unflattering name but didn’t comment. She disliked sweetheart – he did have a tendency to drawl it with a slightly condescending air – so he’d kind of had it coming. She also hated it when she needed help, so it was a double spank to her ego. Her arms wrapped his neck, and he caught the slight smile that creased her lips. It was rare, that smile, and he cherished the fact that he’d pulled it from her. “Hold on, Francessca.”

A shiver streaked her spine, but she contained the outward reaction. It shot a single bolt of sensation through her body, and she jacked herself higher in his arms until she was pressed fully against him with her elbows crossing behind his neck. Lips a breath from his ear, she growled, “Run, soldier,” and shot two more agents.

Fucking hell! How was he supposed to run when he was so god damned hard? But the guns going off were like the starter’s pistol to a race, and he heaved the two of them towards the far roof line. More agents were swarming onto the roof, and there was a chopper headed for them that had him barking out, “Stark!”

“Ah, sunshine! You miss me already?”

Tony’s smug chuckling voice would have made him snort if he wasn’t so worried about getting shot. Even with Franki’s skill, there were just too many of them. The old Soviet base was a mass of buildings, the office tower that Franki had jumped from the tallest, but the barracks she’d landed on wasn’t exactly short either. Still, a three-story jump was nothing as long as he didn’t get clipped by a bullet on the way down. He was big enough to crush her if he fell on her. “Just do it, Stark!” The helicopter exploded in a shower of sparks over everything before slamming into the tower behind them.

“Oh dear,” Franki whispered, watching the building start to crumble. “Bucky, you’d best find that super solider gear you two old guys constantly brag about.”

He didn’t bother to look back. The ominous creaking and groaning were enough heads up, as was Stark’s not so sorry sounding, whoops, that came through the comms. “Gayka rabota.”

The Russian words for nutjob growled from Bucky’s lips, and Franki couldn’t quite contain the snicker they caused. It wasn’t until after her rescue and the team’s arrival on the quinjet that she’d revealed her fluent and completely unaccented English. It was one of many languages learned before she’d been taken from the Red Room. But running through the woods, Bucky, or, as she’d thought of him at the time, the big metal one, had related information in Russian as well. While she trusted the one she knew as Black Widow and the one called Captain America because those two were spoken of in angry whispers, whispers that thrilled her and gave her hope every day, the big metal one had kind eyes. He’d been protective without crowding her, and even though it was unnecessary, he was the first one ever to do such a thing. It had been strangely… nice. She’d had very little nice in her life. It wasn’t until later that she’d learned who he was. The Winter Soldier was also spoken of in hushed, angry tones after being freed from Hydra’s programming.

Even with the revelation that she could speak perfectly good English, Bucky still, occasionally, slipped into Russian with her when he was particularly keen on not having the team overhear what he had to say. Nat would know, but she would never tell. It was no different than how Franki spoke Sokovian with Wanda, or whichever language Vision was learning at the time. He had a horrible habit of just slipping into another one midsentence, but it kept Franki on her toes.

She felt Bucky’s foot hit the edge of the barracks as he launched them both into the air, heading straight over the chain link and razor wire fence that surrounded the compound and another good thirty feet beyond that. His flesh hand gripped her thigh tightly as the metal one went up, out, and clamped into the trunk of what would eventually be a very unhappy tree as he used his vibranium fingers to slow their descent before dropping the last few feet to the ground and taking off again. “Steve, Nat, we're out.” The building went down behind them in a thunderous crash and cloud of debris, utterly destroying the barracks.

“Get to the jet.” A clang was heard as Steve slammed his shield into something, or, more likely, someone. “Nat, Tony and I are right behind you.”

“Where’s the vulture?” An arrow embedded in the tree beside him, narrowly missing Bucky’s face.

A second small snicker escaped Franki’s lips as she grabbed the shaft of the arrow and retrieved it for Clint. “You missed, vorobey.” Bucky’s chuckle rumbled through her. He highly enjoyed the fact that she called Clint sparrow, a name that Natasha had taken to using a little too often.

“On purpose! And don’t call me that!” Clint barked, but they could both hear the grin in his voice.

Out of all of the team, only Clint and Natasha had earned what Franki called soft names. Clint because he was relatively safe, married, and if he flirted a little it was meant to be platonic and nothing more than fun. And Nat, well, she was Nat. A woman Bucky knew Franki had admired for a long time. The fact that the two had become fast and close friends was of little surprise to him. Nat knew what Franki had gone through the first half of her life, and while no one, not even Bucky, truly understood what had happened during the second, Natasha had been the one to stay glued to Franki’s ass the first few months back at the tower.

At first, it had been to make sure Francessca was exactly what she claimed to be, but it had swiftly developed into true friendship when Franki’s honesty became known. She never lied. She may not always say everything, but she never told a lie, to Tony’s unending horror, Cap’s delight, and Sam’s amusement.

Scott had nearly collapsed in disbelief, while Peter, still mostly a kid, had been in awe and utterly charmed. That boy had a crush the size of Manhattan on Franki. Too bad Bucky’s was bigger, and he wasn’t afraid to slap spider punk in the head if he got out of line.

Nat’s was klubnika, strawberry, and how in the hell she’d come up with that he’d never been able to figure out. He thought it might have something to do with Nat’s hair, but he’d given up understanding the working minds of females long before he’d become the Winter Solider. Still, it irked him that Clint had a soft name. An unflattering one to be sure, but one no less.

He wanted one, a soft name, on that fell only from her lips. One he would coax from her when he finally grew the balls to ask her out. One she would sigh the first time he kissed her when she learned his touch was not one to fear. One that she could cry in the night as he thrust into her body over and over. One that would fly free when she climaxed around him. He swore if one more person earned on from her before he did, he’d take it personally.

Arriving at the quinjet, Bucky climbed the ramp, aware that the vulture was lurking in a tree to the north. “You see ‘em yet?” he asked, heading for the med bed.

“Yeah. Tony’s blowing shit up again,” Clint sighed.

“Really, Clint? You have kids.” Steve scolded through the comms.

“All work and no play makes for a bored Iron Man. Got to test out the new suit.” Tony huffed indignantly, ignoring Steve.

A snort came from Nat. “If you didn’t build a new suit every three weeks you wouldn’t have to keep testing a new suit.”

Franki snickered a third time at the banter over the comms, finally relaxing enough to draw back and look at Bucky. Her vision wavered a little, and her head felt slightly full, like how she thought a head cold should feel. Everything seemed strangely foggy, but her thoughts were full of nothing but the Winter Soldier. She’d learned early that the kind eyes matched the kind man and she had grown fond of him. Fondness blossomed into much stronger feelings and had never faded.

He was careful with her, much more so than the others. He never touched her accidentally, and if he had to, he made absolutely sure she was prepared for it, and he never touched her skin, always the suit or her clothing. He was a good man, and if she weren’t so afraid that she would hurt him by never being able to tolerate his touch, she would have told him how much she liked him long ago.

He held her still, cradled, like she was precious cargo, the longest contact she’d ever had with him and Franki looked at him for one long moment, silver eyes connecting with blue so clear they seemed to glow. The skin that usually crawled, itching to be away from the person that touched her, was, strangely silent. It surprised her, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Switching both guns to one hand, Franki took out her earpiece, tossed it to a shelf along with Clint’s arrow and placed her hand on Bucky’s cheek. It caused his eyes to widen, shocked by the action but she just left it there. If she had only this one chance, she was going to take it while her skin was distracted. “I don’t say it often because it isn’t often necessary but… thank you… snegopad. For the rescue.” Leaning in, she kissed him ever so softly on the cheek.

Everything inside him went quiet. There was no thought, no movement, no sound but the rabbit pounding of his heart. He felt nothing but her slight weight and the gentle press of lips to his cheek. Snegopad … she’d called him snowfall. A soft name all for him.

By the time she pulled away his brain had kicked back in enough for him to turn his head and look into smoky silver eyes. “Why snowfall?” It was all he could think to ask.

A soft laugh escaped her, an even rarer sound than her quiet snicker. “You are like the snow that comes upon us in the night. Quiet, deadly…” her hand lightly wandered his cheek and jaw, “Beautiful,” she whispered, eyes drifting down to his lips, followed by her thumb that lightly traced his lower one. “A force to be reckoned with, an unstoppable one. Nature’s fury at its finest. You are the soft snow falling in fat flakes over dense forests when you hunt the prey of an assassin, silent and so still. And you are the blizzard, swift and vicious when you rage through a building in search of your comrades.”

“Franki…” he breathed out softly, stunned. A woman didn’t say such things and feel nothing for the person she told them too.

She smiled then, softly, sweetly, dragging her fingertips over his full lips. “I have always loved the snow…” Franki whispered, darkness closing in on her. “Bucky…” was all she managed before her eyes rolled back and she went limp.

“Fuck!” Bucky bellowed, lunging for the med bed. “Friday! Vitals report on Francessca!”

“Bucky!?” Steve shouted from the door as he and the rest of the team barreled up the ramp.

“Get this bird in the air!” He snarled at Clint before turning back to Franki. “Friday!”

“Sergeant Barnes, Ms. Romanoff seems to have punctured the femoral artery in her right leg. It appears her femur was also cracked in her fall. Though her healing ability has repaired it, there is an excessive amount of blood pooling in that limb. Along with those injuries, she has a bruise that has penetrated all the way to her right kidney, her third, fourth, and fifth rib are cracked, and she has been dealt a nearly debilitating blow to the head. She should have lost consciousness long ago, but it appears the swelling is decreasing at a rapid pace. All in all, her body is repairing itself remarkably quickly. Ms. Romanoff is simply weak from blood loss and exhaustion. I recommend draining the blood from her leg, administering IV fluids to replace the loss, and rest.”

The AI finished speaking as Bucky’s hands made swift work of Franki’s right pant leg. The thing was shredded from where her tibia had lacerated it, and he grimaced when he found the white skin beneath was nearly as black as her suit. The stagnate blood could give her sepsis, possible though unlikely, and with Steve and Tony looking on, Nat assisting as Clint got them airborne, Bucky took the sterile scalpel in his hand and sliced open the back of Franki’s calf. All of them cringed when what seemed like an unending supply of Franki’s blood poured out onto the towels beneath her.    

Once the colour began to leach out of her snow-white skin, Bucky allowed the deep cut to close, not bothering to stitch it. There was little point as the wound he’d inflicted was already knitting itself back together. Nat had cut open Franki’s sleeve and started the IV running while he’d watched. When she’d finished, and Friday had assured them all that Ms. Romanoff, a name Franki and Nat had decided on together as Francessca had no idea what her true one was and Nat hadn’t minded claiming Franki as family, would be fine, Bucky had gotten a blanket down from the cabinet above the bed and carefully spread it over her before removing the guns from her still strong grip.

The rest of the team watched quietly as the Winter Soldier lost his heart a little more to the petite woman that no one could quite get a read on. Franki was very internalized. She usually quite quiet but her wit was quick and funny, and she would occasionally smirk a little at things she found amusing. She didn’t laugh much but when she did it was a musical sound. They all knew she was a bit broken, even though she protested otherwise. Just because she couldn’t feel physical pain didn’t mean emotional pain couldn’t take its toll. Franki had much emotional pain, she just hid it exceptionally well.

But Nat knew. She’d listened to Franki cry her first night in the tower when the water ran hot in the shower. When she had finally cleaned so many years of filth from her skin and there were towels softer and bigger than any she’d been given by Hydra. She’d watched Franki’s hands shake when she reached for the food that Natasha had also been eating, knowing it was clean and wouldn’t leave her vulnerable. Nat had listened to Franki sob softly when the nightmares took her until, unable to stand it, she’d crawled into bed with the woman and held her tight. And had learned how much Franki hated being touched yet how badly she needed the connection. She had been dehumanized for so long, it was difficult to come back from that.

Even now, it wasn’t uncommon to find Franki drifting into her room in the middle of the night after a particularly vicious nightmare. However, she threw a calculating look towards Barnes. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone. Bucky, too, Nat knew, had his share of nightmares but he was getting better; had been for a while. Tony’s forgiveness had gone a long way to allowing Bucky to heal from what Hydra had done. He’d never be the same as he was in the forties but he was better, and a better man for it. Perhaps Bucky was just what Franki needed to help her heal herself.

With the way he looked a Franki and the way Franki looked at him, she knew she was going to be doing some serious meddling over the next few days. With a glance to the man in blue and one to the one in red and gold, she knew her two co-conspirators had seen the same thing she had. Rubbing her hands gleefully together, Nat thought, let the games begin.

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