c.

Natasha(/Bruce)
370 words

It gets under her skin, sometimes, the way the others see her. They all have this idea of her – super spy or badass assassin or whatever. It's all true but they don't get it. She's actually fucking killed people. Her life is not a cocktail party story. They all seem to forget that until they see her in action. Then it's all eggshells and awkward silences.

"Sorry Nat, we knew you were a Widow but, like, didn't know what that meant."

"Sorry, Nat, we knew you had tons of childhood trauma but you seem so normal we assumed you were over it."

As if seeming "normal" wasn't part of her training.

Anyway, it gets under her skin.

"It's hard for them," Bruce says, his spoon clinking against his mug as he stirred milk into his coffee. "They never had to pretend."

Natasha looks down at her own mug filled with tea and honey for the sore throat she feels coming on. She thinks about Tony and how he announced himself Iron Man at a goddamn press conference. She thinks of Steve and how he was thrust into the limelight without regard for his personal life. Rhodey, Thor, even Wanda.

"Yeah," she says eventually. "Doesn't make it easier."

Bruce nods at that. "You talk to Hawkeye?"

"It's not the same," she admits. Clint gets it and gets her and doesn't treat her like a killer or a superhero. But he's a SHIELD agent, not a methodically trained mercenary who had to blend into normal society.

"I'm not exactly the same, either."

She scrutinizes him then. Bruce Banner, man of science, still stirring his coffee for some reason. Probably to give his hands something to do. That man is never still and she theorizes it's to keep the monster at bay.

"Close?"

"But you're one person with two sides. I'm two different people. They don't see The Hulk when they look at me because I'm not."

Her stomach drops. She's just as bad as the rest of them.

"I don't mind talking about it, though," he continues quickly. "Like you said, it's pretty close." He gives her a little smile that she can't help but return.

Toph Beifong
Rated g
304 words

She can hear the sounds of quill dipping into ink, the soft scratching of quill on parchment, the rustle of the parchment being rolled, the dripping of the ink for the seal. If she reached for the earth, she could imagine the scene but as it's so familiar, she needn't bother. Her tutor is writing his report. Toph is bright, she imagines him writing. But struggles to pay attention. Maybe even that would be too harsh a reprimand less this tutor be fired. He wouldn't be the first - who deigned to call her stupid - and he won't be the last as Toph finds all this schooling boring. An earthbending master is really what she's after but she's at least smart enough to keep her bending secret. Her parents would never let her practice in the open.

She hears the seal press into the wax. The tutors says goodbye and she listens to his hard footfalls out of the room, down the hall, out the front door. She does reach for the vibrations as he traverses the front courtyard, just to practice. Sensing this way is getting easier. It's almost like hearing, she thinks. Soon, she might be able to tell one person from another if she really concentrates. Once she accesses her bending, she can't help herself. Toph is alone so she allows herself to lift a rock from its spot on her desk. It's shiny and smooth from her manipulations and masquerades as a paperweight. The feeling of the rock as it twists in the air is so different than the vibrations she feels through her feet and the sounds she hears through her ears. It feels, almost, like this rock is part of her. Maybe it's almost like seeing. But that doesn't matter much. She makes do with what she has.