#man you guys have not seen my headcanons yet for MCU Natasha and Bucky

[rubythecrimsonwriter]

Flipping Legacies, pt. 4 (unedited)

pt. 1 (edited)

pt. 2 (edited)

pt. 3 (unedited)

Parts of pt. 3 are included in this, simply because I ended pt. 3 in a weird spot because that was where I’d stopped writing.

For those who are new and following me from ao3--no, there’s not yet four chapters to this. On tumblr, you people get to have the dubious honor of seeing my writing process, so you guys get stuff as I’ve written it. Or as I have time to carouse tumblr and post. Mostly the former so far. The latter for this time.

~~~~~

“He goes by the name of Ra’s al Ghul—R-A-apostrophe-S, lowercase A-L, then capital G-H-U-L,” she says, letting the potatoes boil and grabbing the flour she’d set aside on the counter and the yogurt and eggs out of the fridge. “He’s apparently immortal—Hood didn’t tell me how or why—and he’s also, evidently, pervy and borderline sociopathic, which is just what everyone wants in their terrorist organization.”

She’s on speaker. She can tell because she can hear Clint snort and Steve let out a noise that is probably a mostly-strangled laugh.

“I did some digging,” she says. She leaves out the part that she’s made acquaintances with the street workers, who are wary of her, but apparently all know that she’s gotten a mostly-all-clear from Red Hood. New Yorkers’ gossip mill is only trumped by the Gothamites’. “The League is mostly based out of the Middle East, but Batman pissed them off however many years ago and have made regular forays into the city since then--just to stir up trouble.” There’s a produce vendor that got really snippy and went on a three-minute rant about how he’s supposed to make money when he’s got Batman and the League playing real-life Fruit Ninja that Natasha had to actually use her training to keep a sympathetic face on and not bust a gust laughing at.

There is also the accompanying YouTube video that she’d pulled up out of curiosity and got the magnificent image of weapons-grade steel forged with loving precision into a tool of clean death being used to slice an actual watermelon that had been chucked at the assassin by one of the Robins. The video is too grainy to get a pin on which Robin, but she would bet just about anything that it was the second Robin. The second Robin enjoyed pulling weird shit out of nowhere and throwing whatever-it-was at unsuspecting enemies before launching himself.  

The three-pronged attack—with Batman as the formidable third prong—worked about ninety-five percent of the time, and Natasha almost always gets a laugh out of whatever had been used as a distraction this time.

“Half-baked assassinating nuisances, in other words,” Tony snarked.  

It’s not a video call, but Natasha can see Steve’s eye-roll.

“In other news, I had to beat Hood over the head with the knowledge that he is a Kingpin,” she says casually, grinning outright in the privacy of her apartment.

Clint immediately bursts into laughter, while silence radiates from Steve and Tony.

“He tried arguing with me,” she continues, her grin leaking into her voice. “He defined a Kingpin, and then tried to define himself as something else. I watched him mentally flip through various adjectives and come up with synonyms to the definition he’d just read me about Kingpins.”

There’s a muted thud, and Tony finally joins Clint in laughter. Steve’s not one for boisterous laughter like the rest of the boys, but she can imagine him resting his head against the nearest flat surface and grinning helplessly at the very idea of having to be told that you’re a kingpin.

“’You’re a wizard, Harry,’” Tony chokes out, and then resumes laughing.  

Clint wheezes a little.

“Very much so,” she agrees. “He’s stupidly impressive in his criminal activities, so I did not anticipate having to argue with him about the definition of them. It’s one thing if I have to argue with someone over whether viewing a copyrighted video posted online somewhere that’s not sanctioned by the company is illegal. Its an entirely different thing if I have to argue with someone over whether their systematic takeover of power of the various mafias defines them as a Kingpin.”

Natasha folds the yogurt, flour, and eggs together to make the dough needed as she talks.

“Natasha,” Steve says. His grin is bright in his voice. “You’re breaking Clint.”

Yes, she is quite capable of hearing Clint wheeze.

“I need both hands for my perogies now, so I’m hanging up and giving Clint a chance to catch his breath,” Natasha says.

Tony shouts something to JARVIS—something mathematical that she hasn’t bothered looking up yet—and Steve says, “Clint’s flapping a hand in the phone’s direction, so I’m assuming that he’s saying goodbye.”

“Bye, Clint,” she says affectionately.

“Bye, Natasha,” Steve says.

“Bye Steve, go wrestle Tony into eating something not blended by a robot with questionable tastes and sleeping sometime before I come back to the Tower,” she says, and hangs up before she hears Tony say something lewd about wrestling.

~~~~~

She realizes something as soon as she starts trying to dig into Ra’s al Ghul’s past: Hood was not lying or exaggerating about the immortal part of the immortal asshole description. She can’t decide if she’s disgusted or impressed by the fact that he’s anywhere from two hundred to seven hundred years old, depending on what trail she follows. His actual name has long been lost to the annals of history, much like her own—though whether it was on purpose or by accident would only be known by Ra’s. His new name directly translates to Head of the Demon, or, more American-ized, Demon’s Head.

On the plus side, the word ghul—demon—has been around for many more hundreds of years before Ra’s has, so she doesn’t have to wonder if he named himself after it or if they named it after him.  

On the other hand, the only Demon’s Head that comes up during cursory google searches is some punk clubs and the occasional BDSM place. Ra’s al Ghul, as a name of a person, shows up nowhere. There is a lady named Talia al Ghul that flits in and out of Gotham elite as she ferries back and forth between her home in the Middle East and Gotham, but she’s so high profile that her secretly being part of a terrorist organization is a stretch.  

Natasha has done it. She still works undercover and she is still highly successful. It’s possible. With whatever immortality source (or possibly a gene?) that Ra’s al Ghul has, he could have theoretically passed it onto his daughter, and therefore Talia is much older than she looks. Natasha’s first instinct says that she’s spinning this yarn for far too long and it’s implausible in the extreme, but. Well. She passed her own centennial three years ago, and she still looks twenty-six. And she lives with a frozen super-soldier from 1945, who is rapidly nearing his own centennial and looks twenty-three. Plus—well. Talia al Ghul has ties with Gotham, and anyone that she would even think twice about and has ties with Gotham is probably worthy of some digging. Gotham was highly suspect long before Batman and the various Rogues showed up on the scene.

She’s beginning to suspect that she’ll get nothing from google, and only vicious, overblown rumors from the locals when she starts heading towards the most likely area where the League of Shadows is.  

But Talia. Talia might be the key.

She digs a little deeper, using her old SHIELD access paths at times (slightly illegal) and outright hacking other things (blatantly illegal) and manages to access TSA and FAA for the last few years. Talia has travelled a lot more than the tabloids have tracked—all of the countries on the Arabian Peninsula, which makes sense. Some other Middle East countries—Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq—as well as Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Egypt, Somalia, Libya, and Morocco.  

The interesting thing?

The only time Talia travels alone is when she goes to the States. All other times, she is accompanied by people that are clearly bodyguards, or one other male that fits the description of Hood, or a child.

Her phone pings and lights up next to her. She unlocks it swiftly.

ras al ghul has a daughter, Tony texts.

let me guess, her name is Talia? Natasha sends back.

her names talia al ghul and is somehow high society socialite? how does that work?

Carefully. Natasha responds snarkily.

wait what did YOU find on her?

likely the location of los and a few pieces of confirmation that hood was probably under her care for several years, but not in the last year. it fits the information i was given. hood is probably about nineteen or twenty

It’s a grim thought, but it looks like the League of Shadows are not completely to blame for Hood’s proficiency. This will be a long mission. Dismantling the child soldier/assassin organizations tend to take a while.

~~~~~

Natasha had strayed from the path laid out for her in late November of 1989. In a blatant display of correlation does not equal causation, it was also the last time she had seen Drakov—aka the Winter Soldier, aka “Bucky” Barnes. Their last time together was a traumatic one, and ended with Drakov being forcibly wiped and Natasha extracted and sent across the world.

Perhaps an outside observer would immediately jump to the Hollywood-esque conclusion: she was so distraught over what happened to him that she broke away to do good in the world. On the contrary—it was not his treatment that had bothered her. Being wiped was normal for Drakov. He became unstable rapidly, unable to do his job.

No, what had bothered her was he, himself, who named her Romanova.

“You hold the power of the states in your hand,” he’d said affectionately. “A queen among women, always.”

She was number twenty-eight among the Red Room. Her name was whatever her handlers wanted it to be for the mission.

A name. A name. A name. Strange how powerful something so simple as a name can be.

And then she had gone looking. For her name. For her sisters’ names. For the names of those that she had slaughtered and killed while training to become Chernaya Vodva.  

By 1991, the Soviet Union fell at her feet, and the Americans started realizing that there were some outside influences on how it had fallen.

By 1998, she’d been safely ensconced in SHIELD, under the protection of Coulson and the wing of Barton.  

Twenty-five years had passed, and the shock of seeing Drakov in Gotham was like Clint managing to rig one of his pranks successfully. Shocking at first, and hilarious after a few seconds had passed.

Of all the places that Drakov could have gone to. He had all of New York City, all of the US, all of the world that he could have gone to, and he chose Gotham.

“Natalia,” he says.

“Drakov,” she says.

He looks...surprisingly good, actually, for a man set free of his captors and little idea of the state of the world. If he’s who Steve says he is—which he probably is—then Natasha has little doubt that the combination of Steve Rogers Wrangler and Winter Soldier both served him in good stead in this brave new world.

“You look good,” she offers.

“You look like trouble,” he responds dryly.

She can’t help the smirk. “My specialty,” she says.  

“Are you and Steve still running headfirst into the stupidest shit?” he asks.

“Even worse: we plan on running headfirst into the stupidest shit,” she says.

“Oh, no, not the plan,” he says flatly.

She grins, sidles up to him, links their arms together. “I have missed you,” she says fondly. “And more to the point, so has Steve. How dare you not teach me how to withstand his particular brand of puppy dog eyes.”

They walk, falling into step like they had so many times before. “You overestimate my teaching abilities if you think that I can teach you that through anything but throwing you at it repeatedly.”

Remembering the times that he had actually thrown her at something, she sighs. “Bozhe moy. No. That is not an effective teaching strategy, Drakov.”

“Maybe not, but it’s highly entertaining anyways,” he says.

[aphrodaisyacs]

Stoki Fic Rec List

No Six Sentence Sunday this week just me and my first ever fic rec list. This is the result of me caring too much for a rarepair that not enough of the fandom cares about but ANYWAY. The fic rec lists I’ve seen for this pairing are quite a few years old, so I decided to make a new one of my own. The list is sorted in chronological order of the MCU timeline, and also quite long, which is why I put it under a read more:

under bright stars burning by @thelightofthingshopedfor (nearly 21k words, Teen and Up)

When Steve is a kid, he meets a boy named Loki who says he's a prince and shows him real magic. It's kind of weird (but that doesn't mean he doesn't like it).

A fic where Steve and Loki sort-of grow up together, but it’s still set in the canon-verse (don’t worry, the timeline discrepancy gets explained). Kid!Loki and Kid!Steve are so damn adorable, there’s quite a bit of angst between them but there’s also more than enough hurt/comfort to make up for it. I was so disappointed when this fic ended where it did, because I enjoyed it so much that I wanted it to go on forever.

Silver Moon by aurilly (23k+ words, Mature)

Steve and Bucky meet a weirdly dressed guy who claims to be a banished prince from some place they've never heard of. Most New Yorkers would have left the lunatic right where they found him, but Steve and Bucky have never been good at doing things the easy way.

Okay so I cheated a bit, because this fic is actually Steve/Loki/Bucky, but. It is so well-written that I’m including it in this list anyway. In this universe Loki discovers his heritage far earlier than in canon, which leads to a series of events resulting in him getting his powers stripped then banished to pre-WWII Midgard- specifically, Brooklyn. After repeatedly failing to convince Heimdall to return him to Asgard, Loki eventually settles into a life with Steve and Bucky. But then WWII happens. Slow build, quite a bit of angst, but there’s an optimistic ending.

Those Who Favor Ice by CatalenaMara (18k+ words, Explicit)

“You haven’t said anything incorrectly so far,” Steve said, and could hear an edge in his voice.

“Men of such beauty and strength and talent often feel they must outshine everyone they meet. That they must cast a very large shadow so that the world sees only them.”

So many emotions crossed Loki’s face so quickly that Steve could only interpret a few. Resentment. And longing. And need.

“I wasn’t always strong,” Steve said slowly. “Not as a child. I was sickly - so weak that anyone could beat me.”

Loki’s gaze sharpened. “And did they? Beat you?”

Don’t mind me I just love fics that feature Jotunn!Loki and/or Loki dealing with his heritage and Jotunheim in general. We get to see a possibility of what might have been if Heimdall hadn’t betrayed King Loki, which apparently involves Loki running off to become King of Jotunheim and later Steve’s lover. Beautiful prose, smut that doubles as character study, A+.

Madness by @scotlandevander (19k+ words, Teen and Up)

Time makes a deal and when Time makes a deal, it plays out till it is fulfilled. Steve Rogers is learning this the hard way and he’s quite sure it’ll end in madness.

Steve is stuck in a time loop spanning from the moment he wakes up in the 21st century to the events of T:DW. Needless to say it doesn’t take very long for him to run out of fucks to give. I really love the gradual development of Steve’s relationships with Bruce, Natasha and of course Loki throughout the loops. The progression of Stoki is slow mainly because Steve’s a useless bisexual and nice to read. Definitely one of my all-time favourites for this ship.  

Living Contradiction by Ebyru (1k+ words, Teen and Up)

Loki hates Captain America, but over time he realizes it’s a lie.

Excerpt: "Captain America is brave, strong, independent and an astounding leader. Maybe no-one can tell, but far beneath the mask of strength he wears and the flag he carries, Loki can see he’s just a follower."

Something short and sweet set vaguely post-Avengers (2012). Contemplative character study as Loki learns more about the man underneath the Captain America costume. I recommend this if you’re in the mood for a quick pre-slash read.

In The Land of Gods and Monsters by thisiswhatthewatergaveme (nearly 5k words, Explicit)

Steve makes a mistake: he lets his guard down. He lets a momentary relief cloud his judgment. He doesn’t spring into action when Loki spins around and presses a tight-lipped kiss against his mouth. Doesn’t even move when it softens, slightly, Loki’s hands curling over his arms.

And then the god is gone and Steve realizes something important. He realizes, perhaps for the first time, that there are different kinds of war.

While the author has tagged this fic as Porn Without Plot, I think it’s more accurate to say that there is plot, it’s just that the entire plot is centred on the build-up to the porn. And said build-up is mostly Loki catching Steve unawares to kiss him, interspersed with Steve suffering some moral crises over being attracted to his enemy.

Thawing Universe by Vulcanmi (17k+ words, Teen and Up)

A what if that starts after the events of Thor: the Dark World but before Winter Soldier. What if Loki had gotten tired of playing Odin?

Parts 1, 2 & 3 are purely Stoki, while part 4 & 5 are Thor/Bucky-centric with background Stoki. Loki gets bored of pretending to be Odin rather quickly, and thus he goes down to Earth to continually invite himself over to Steve’s apartment. Steve has exactly zero say in all of this. This series makes the pairing seem way more adorable than it has any right to be, all the while keeping everyone in-character. Part 1 builds the relationship, part 2 has the other Avengers reacting to it, and part 3 has Steve finally getting off his useless bisexual ass and asking Loki out for real. One of my favourite depictions of this pairing for sure.

Strange Love by @dvswraatins (12k words, Teen and Up)

It starts with a simple taunt.

Spoiler alert: the aforementioned “taunt” is Loki putting on a great show of seducing Steve in order to piss off Thor. Featuring Loki being unapologetically a piece of shit, Loki as a part-time Avenger and narration that becomes hilariously descriptive whenever Thor enters the picture. One of the things I adore about this fic is that it explores a dynamic for this pairing I didn’t know I needed- of Loki trying to use Steve for his own gain, but Steve manipulating him right back.

The Dreamfasting by suchaprettyface (80k+ words, Explicit)

This is the highly unlikely and yet somehow inevitable story of how Captain Steve Rogers, Avenger, becomes the lover of Loki Odinson, younger prince of Asgard and Public Enemy Number 1 according to the FBI database of known offenders.

Steve and Loki discover quite by accident that they are connected by a very old form of magic whose initial purpose seems to be getting them in each other's pants as often as possible. But there's far, far more at work than that...

To break this series down to its bare essentials: lots of porn + lots of plot. Post-AoU, Loki gets captured by SHIELD but almost immediately after Steve runs into him again, the two of them begin sharing wet dreams. The more dreams they share, the stronger the indescribable connection between them grows. Yet, in the background of all the dream-fucking, there is the mystery of why these dreams even exist in the first place, as well as Steve finding himself physically changed by them. 

Look At Me Now by @arimabat (33k+ words, Teen and Up)

Steve is on the run. His already complicated life becomes just a little more complicated when an old enemy shows up unexpectedly. But Loki has changed since their last encounter and he could have crucial information to stop a fast-approaching threat. If he’s willing to tell Steve.

Or, the one where Loki keeps bothering Steve until he figures out a way to get something useful out of it and then it all just becomes a mess.

Post-Civil War, pre-Ragnarok. Loki is absolutely delighted by a jaded, cynical Steve, and Steve is very much unamused by the unwanted attention. Steve attempts to take advantage of this attention anyway by interrogating Loki about the Infinity Stones, which leads to the gradual development of a relationship neither of them expected. I absolutely love the conversations and banter between everyone in this fic- not just between Steve and Loki, but also between Steve, Natasha, Sam and Wanda. However, (spoiler alert) the ending for this fic isn’t all too happy BUT the good news is that it’s part of a series, which isn’t complete yet at the time I’m typing this up.

Be My All-American Boy by @gavotteangel (6k+ words, Teen and Up)

It's Steve Rogers' birthday and it's Independence Day. Naturally, the freshly reunited Avengers vacation to a lake house and throw him a party. Nothing goes as expected.

Or: LOKI HAS A BIG FAT CRUSH HAPPY 4TH OF JULY FOLKS

Post-Ragnarok, post-Civil War, with a dose of Infinity War being cancelled. Highlights include Loki having a crush on bearded!Steve and abhorring the fact that the crush even exists in the first place, Loki trying his best to hold back his stabby instincts on his new allies, Loki and Natasha being drinking buddies and Loki eating the rest of Steve’s birthday cake out of pure pettiness.

I’m also going to shamelessly self-promote and rec my own series Mischief Managed (nearly 20k words, Teen and Up)

Set post-Ragnarok in an AU where Infinity War is cancelled and Steve and Tony have gotten their shit together.

The series follows Steve and Loki while they form an unlikely bond as they team up to prank others, again and again.

Initially based on this headcanon, with Steve getting the opportunity to confront Loki about it, which somehow leads to both of them teaming up to prank the rest of the Avengers. Part 2 expands on the unlikely friendship they formed in part 1, except this time Steve and Loki take advantage of the media circus and fake date to piss off homophobes. Meanwhile, the Avengers are forced to watch this train wreck happen in real time. According to the comments this series is funny enough that it made people laugh not that I’d be able to judge properly since I’m the one who wrote it. 

Tangerines are Sweet Enough by @fel-as-in-tumbld (4k+ words, General)

(Steve is seven, cold and hungry and it's Christmas morning; he's seven, sitting on the floor, pulling perfect miniature suns out of the foot of his stocking. Tangerines; he's seven, and he can feel the flesh tear under his thumbnail, can taste the burst of flavour on his tongue, the juice slide down his throat; he's seven, and he's sitting with his mother and everything has been cold and hunger, but there is this--tangerines, like eating the sun with his mother, and the warmth of her laughter--

Steve hasn't eaten a tangerine since she died, since Bucky vanished off to war; too many memories, too much intimacy.

Post-Infinity War fic where Loki actually gets revived I’m looking at you Russos. It has beautiful prose which sets a soft, wistful tone to the whole thing, helped by the fact that it takes place during the winter holidays. Steve and Loki’s relationship here is... well, melancholic, mostly, but it does end on a warm note. 

*

This rec list only reflects my personal reading experiences (and are also only limited to AO3), so feel free to add more suggestions in reblogs or replies!

Honorary mention goes to Remember This Cold by @veliseraptor (nearly 800k words, ranges from General to Explicit depending on the part) which I didn’t include in the main list because let’s be real, anyone who’s looking for Stoki fic recs has already read this series.

[a-deep-ocean-of-secrets]

Is there one thing that every couple you ship has, like a similar trait that draws you in?

Huh! Very interesting question. Honestly, I’ve never sat down and thought about why I love the ships that I love and if there is a common thread between them all. Wow. Well, now seems like a perfect time to try it out. I’m going to outline the major ships in my life (right now) and describe why they appeal to me, and we’ll see what - if anything - they have in common.

Stydia: Classic slowburn. Stydia is a beautiful ship because it developed slowly and thoughtfully over six seasons as we watched both Lydia and Stiles grow individually and together. It began as Stiles obsessing over her from a distance and Lydia having no idea who he was. Stiles had a crush on her since he was a kid and he simultaneously knew things about her that no one else did (her intelligence) but also had her on a lofty pedestal as his dream girl. It isn’t until season 3 that we could see a real shift in their dynamic. They become friends. They’re the brains of the pack and often do the detective work together. They lean on one another. They are vulnerable with each other. It becomes established that they have such a strong connection, Lydia can bring him back from the brink of death. They gain so much momentum in Season 3 and then the brakes are halted in Season 4. Stiles dates someone else. I’m not the biggest fan of Stiles/Malia, but I can absolutely see the necessity in them as a couple. Stiles needed to date someone other than Lydia. He needed to experience a real relationship so he could determine if what he felt for Lydia was fantasy or real. Season 5 did a great job of slowly intertwining Stiles and Lydia back into each other’s orbits. He goes to extreme lengths to save her from Eichen House. Then she does the same in 6A to bring him back when he’s taken by the Ghost Riders. I firmly believe that the reason she didn’t forget him the same way the others did (including his best friend and father) is because of the emotional tether that exists between them and was established in Season 3. That’s why she was so sure he existed even when she couldn’t remember him fully. I really love Stydia because they are such an epic love story. And it was such a delight to watch throughout the seasons. By the end of Teen Wolf, they were the only reason I was watching. 

Staron: I will preface this by saying that I have not read the comics, so most of my love of Staron comes from their MCU depictions. Wild, huh? So many people seem to hate MCU Staron, but I love them. They were definitely short-changed as a couple, but they land as well as any other pairing in the MCU. Let’s face it, the MCU kinda sucks at romance. What do I love about Staron? First of all, I think they’re a great team. Even when apart, they seem in sync with one another. Sharon is so loyal to Steve. She’s the first to fight back against Hydra - really, against SHIELD - after Steve makes the announcement through the building. And let’s face it, Steve would have been royally screwed in Civil War if he hadn’t had Sharon there to feed him intel, help him realize Zemo was a person of interest and smuggled out his gear. Steve needs Sharon’s help. And that’s saying a lot because the guy is nearly indestructible. And I love that Steve is awkward and sheepish around Sharon. We saw that on display in the hallway scene from the Winter Soldier. He reverts back to the Steve of the 40s offering that girl peanuts. As much as he is a hunk, he still has no idea how to talk to women. It’s so endearing. And with Sharon, you can see that he wants to be more than Captain America. He just wants to be Steve Rogers. He is cool, calm, and collected with all of the other women in his life (Natasha, Maria, Wanda) but Sharon gets under his skin and causes him to stumble over his words. There’s something very human about their interactions. They feel like a real world couple trying to figure things out. I don’t know, I just find the two of them so wholesome when they’re together. They have so much promise and I am bummed that AE will probably be the end of Steve, and therefore the end of Staron in the MCU. A girl can only hope we’ll see more of them. But I’m not holding my breath.

Winterpanther: I’ll admit, a lot of love for this ship is based off headcanon and fanfiction. I am a sucker for enemies to friends to lovers (shoutout to Mara and Luke from Star Wars) and Winterpanther has the potential to be this. Obviously, they may seem like an unlikely pairing because T’Challa wanted to kill Bucky. Seems kinda hard to move past that. But yet, by the end of Civil War, T’Challa has seen how poisonous revenge is to the soul and has offered asylum to Bucky in Wakanda. It’s really from there where Winterpanther grows as a ship. One reason I love them is because I’m such a big fan of the White Wolf storyline. Bucky at times never feels like a fully formed character, more like a foil to Steve and motivation for Steve’s character. As important as Steve and Bucky are to one another, I think it’s fair to say that Bucky lives in Steve’s shadow. Putting Bucky in Wakanda gives the character a whole new dimension that is sorely lacking in the MCU. When I think of the two, I think of how they have both dealt with darkness in their lives. Both physically and metaphorically, these are two characters who have fallen from great heights and had to claw their way back up. They both lived such promising lives that were torn apart by tragedy and then had to adapt to their new circumstances. Having so much in common, I can easily see the two leaning on one another, sharing their stories. T’Challa is a man willing to be vulnerable and isn’t bogged down by toxic masculinity. He’d be someone Bucky could confide in, someone Bucky isn’t afraid to let down, like Steve. They are both so strong, T’Challa is a warrior by choice and Bucky was forced to be a soldier. But yet I think they could bond over such upbringings. They know sacrifice and defeat. When written well, Winterpanther is such a compelling ship. 

Athos/Sylvie: This couple gave me all the feels when I watched The Musketeers. A lot of fans of the show ship Athos/Milady, but I could never get behind them. They are so toxic to one another that they could never make each other happy moving forward. Too much had happened, they had hurt each other too many times to ever be a couple. Honestly, they would have ended by one killing the other. That was the only way Athos/Milday would have ended had they actually become a couple again. But then Sylvie was introduced. She knows who she is and what she stands for. She doesn’t compromise her ideals or goals for other people. And she really shakes up Athos’ world. Before her, he was a man completely closed off to the world. He was a drunk and was only held together by his sense of duty to the Musketeers. He had sworn off love, marriage, children, etc. He really was a shell of the man he had once been. But when he meets Sylvie, and really opens himself up to her, you can see that he wants things out of life once again. He realizes there is more to his existence than just duty or leadership. He starts wanting things and letting go of his tightly wound up control. He gives in to Sylvie, lets her take his burdens. Athos and Sylvie are a bit like a roller coaster, constantly up and down as they fight to understand one another and be a partner to each other in a way that doesn’t completely erase who they are as individuals. But by the end of Season 3, Athos is willing to step away from the Musketeers to begin a family with Sylvie. He realizes that there is more to him than just being a soldier. He has hope again. He believes in love. He’s looking towards the future. The Athos at the end of the series is miles away from the Athos we were introduced to in Season 1. I loved watching his story with Sylvie. And I am so glad that he was given a happy ending with someone like her. Also, the sexual chemistry these two had? A-MAZ-ING.