light through an open door
rating: pg-13
characters: Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff
warnings: canon-typical violence, gore
summary: Love and life I will divide / Turn away 'cause I need you more / Feel the heartbeat in my mind // We found love in a hopeless place. She has an order she has never been able to carry out. When she finds her soulmate, she will kill them.

author's note i: For scribble_mynames's prompt at the be_compromised 2014 promptathon: "Soulmarks AU where Clint has an hourglass on his back over his heart and Natasha has an arrowhead on her front over her heart. They come from different cultures though that interpret these marks differently. Soulmarks is just one theory on what they mean. Natasha recognizes Clint when he has an arrow pointed right at the arrowhead mark." This is Natasha's story - Clint's may come later, if I can get him to cooperate. :) Many thanks to cybermathwitch for beta'ing and informing me the promptathon hadn't closed while I was in the wilds!

author's note ii: Title and summary lyrics from We Found Love by Rihanna ft. Calvin Harris.



Natasha stares down the shaft of an arrow, the pieces falling into place, and hesitates.

-

She is born blank, blameless, a sheet for the world to draw upon. She has no soulmate, no mark that could tell her whose path her feet may walk beside, no compass to follow her choices. One of the many, one of the few, whose life lies in her own hands.

It is not until she is taken by the Red Room at seven years of age that the bruise blooms on her chest and spreads into an arrowhead.

Natasha is never sure if she should thank them for that.

-

There are missions, and targets, and people she learns to woo and wreck with careful precision. From the beginning, she always looks for the sign that could tell her who would pull her fate alongside theirs.

It does not appear. (http://sweetwatersong.livejournal.com/29533.html)