"he looked at her
the way she needed to be looked at
like the whole world could crumble
and he wouldn't blink."
-atticus
In which a mercenary and a super soldier meet through extraordinary circumstances.
Marvel | Bucky Barnes
Cover by @blis...
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"I never had a chance to be soft. I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass. So, tell me, Now that you've seen me bare my teeth and witnessed when I stripped lungs of their breath, Do you still think I have a chance at being soft?"
NADINE
Her opponent lurched forward.
She blocked his fist with her forearm, uppercutting him with her right hand. He stumbled backwards enough to give her a chance to kick him in the chest. The momentum threw him onto his back, but he recovered quickly and blocked her jab, narrowly missing her cheek with a punch. Nadine stepped back, hands placed in front of her face. They circled each other slowly for a minute to study their weaknesses.
"I am impressed," he said in a rough accent, but she couldn't pinpoint from where. The way he kept moving his jaw assured Nadine that her punch hurt. "I did not expect that."
"I noticed," she retorted, bending backwards as he ran forward and lifted his legs into a double roundhouse kick. She blocked his jab and sidestepped when he threw a second punch, grabbing his hands and pinning them against her torso with one hand, while holding him steady so she could knee his gut. Then she threw her right leg backwards and pushed herself into the air into a flip. The momentum threw him to the ground, his head locked between her calf and thigh and his arms still pinned by her hands. He trashed violently to get her off, screaming something in what seemed to be Romanian, but Nadine held on as best as she could. "Sorry? I can't hear you."
Everything was going her way, but Nadine made the mistake of looking into the crowd. She looked right at Steve's worried gaze, and her strength faltered. The man managed to turn them sideways with enough force to get her off of him and she scrambled to get back onto her feet before he recovered. When she turned, though she narrowly avoided it colliding with her face, his cross punch still managed to find her shoulder, which threw off her balance enough for him to punch her in the gut and grab her wrist to throw her over his shoulder with ease.
When her body collided with the floor, black spots adorned her vision and she could feel the stinging on shoulder from where she took the blow. The air was kicked right out of her as he landed a kick to her gut, then another, until she grabbed his ankle and pulled him forward. In one swift motion, she slashed the tiny knife in her ring on his ankle. He yelped in pain at the sensation, and she let go of him only to kick his leg out from under him. Nadine pinned him under her and punched him in the face. Then she did it again, and again, and again. She switched hands as she did, her knuckles stinging and most likely starting to split with every blow she landed. The sound of a crunch just egged her on, but she didn't stop until he coughed out blood, his lip split open.
She stood up, her breathing heavy and her fingers still curled into fists. "Stay down," she said, shocked at the harsh growl embedded into her words. She could barely breathe with the blows she sustained to her ribs, but the adrenaline coursing through her helped her ignore it.
