immortalweaponâ:
She understood. He realized it in an instant, at the way her eyes cut towards him. Danny was a weapon, and maybe he wasnât the only weapon with flesh and blood and sweat and tears. Maybe they lived in a world that made a habit out of forging people into things, a world that saw a human being standing on two legs and wanted to know how many times it could break before there was a polished sword in its place, like freeing a statue from marble. Danny nodded at her words, small and subtle. âMuch less drink,â he agreed.
But this man, this man she had met in the same geographical area as the entrance Danny had abandoned, did drink. And if her words were to be believed, he did more than that. He was a thing that should not exist, a person that, by all rights, couldnât be alive. Every Iron Fist to come before Danny had been buried in Kâun Lun, in catacombs heâd always known heâd be a part of sooner rather than later or in canyons designated for traitors and failures because even Iron Fists sometimes fell short. (He was always more likely to end up there, he knew. Davos had told him as much.) No one had ever told Danny about an Iron Fist who left Kâun Lun. No one had ever told any of them. And it made him wonder, made him question everything all at once. If Danny wasnât the first Fist who had ever left his post, did it make his crime more forgivable? Did it mean he wasnât as irredeemable as he sometimes felt he was? Did it suggest the bodies heâd found at the entrance were not his responsibility alone?Â
He wasnât sure what heâd do if the answer to any of those questions ended up being yes. There were things you held onto for so long that you defined yourself by them, be they good or bad. They became a part of you, a thing etched into your every heartbeat, a thing that flowed through your veins. For years now, Danny had thought of himself as a coward, a traitor, a man who ran when he should have stayed. He had considered every death Kâun Lun had suffered in his absence to be a weight on his shoulder, a crime for which he longed to be forgiven. But thisâŚÂ
If Iron Fists had left their posts before, it meant there would have been a procedure for it. It meant the elders of Kâun Lun would have had some knowledge of what to do, of how to defend themselves, even without their greatest weapon. It would mean, perhaps, that their deaths were not only Dannyâs fault. It would mean that some of them may have survived.
âNo, no. Iâm one of a kind,â Danny replied, offering a smile that his heart wasnât entirely in. His world was spinning on its axis, shaken by the revelation sheâd laid in his lap. And the more she spoke, the more it trembled. The man she had met, the Iron Fist who had left his post without leaving Kâun Lun in ruin, it was the same man whose name Danny had heard whispered in relation to the Book of the Iron Fist. It was the same man he and Ward had chased around Asia and never caught, the same man who whispers said could channel his chi into anything.
She was sure about the name, and Danny didnât doubt her because it made sense. Who would know more about the Iron Fist than a man who wielded it himself? Who would know how to channel chi better than someone who had been using it as a weapon since long before Dannyâs time. He nodded at her question. âI know of him,â he corrected. âHis nameâs come up before.â
Of course, knowing that someone had found him once didnât get Danny any closer to doing the same. And just because sheâd contacted him once didnât mean she could do it again. If the rumors about Orson Randell were true, he could only be found when he wanted to be found. And heâd never seemed too keen on Danny finding him. But⌠It was worth a shot. If nothing else, he might be able to find some way to track Randell from the cave.Â
Glancing up to meet her eye, Danny shook his head and smiled faintly. âDonât worry about the plane,â he said. âI can get us one faster. And without calling in any favors.â He paused for a moment, hesitant. To use Randâs planes, he couldnât be the Iron Fist. Not without giving himself away. So, slowly, he brought a hand up to his face and pulled down the bandanna. âDanny Rand. Itâs nice to meet you.â
She wondered if the girls that were still attached to the Red Room, who still served someone like Madame B, if they heard stories of Natalia Romanova and thought that people were mad to believe that she survived, much less got out. The way that this man was looking at her when she told him about Randall was exactly how she imagined it. Natasha fully expected someone to argue that it was impossible, or that no one who aligned themselves (no matter the reason) with the KGB or the Red Room or Hydra would be allowed anything that looked like a second chance, let alone a real one.
"Don't be so sure," she said, noticing the shift when he said that he was one of a kind. Maybe if he compared himself to the people of New York. Against the backdrop of a thousand normal faces, of people who had never had their minds touched by evil, people who had been shaped by world events and not been shaped by people who wanted to shape the events of the world? They had no idea what it was like to be them. And if Natasha was as good as she thought she was with people, she had a feeling that this Iron Fist wouldn't have wished that kind of upbringing on anyone. They were, at their core, good. Something that Natasha could never claim to be.
"I am sure you are quite special," Natasha offered. "But in my line of work? Not sharing is something I encounter often." And something she had never found herself being open to either. There were a few people who knew more than others, but Natasha was firmly planted in her idea that no one else needed to know her past. That was hers â and she didn't have much to claim as her own. (And few people understood that, the need to control even the simplest thing. Natasha was good at rolling with the hits â when things came out, she could find her footing easily â but she never offered anything without reason. Without need.)
Unfortunately, she didn't know him. Not the way she knew the Avengers or other vigilantes. She had no sources that were relevant to him to say that he wasn't alone, no comparisons that would make sense, no platitudes that she thought might touch the point the way she wanted to. "You're not alone," she finally said. A sentiment that had meaning without any outside examples, because where she lacked in those, she made up in personal experience.
When the pieces fell onto the gameboard, when the realities showed the world who she was and what she was capable of â at the end of the day, she understood. Taking off the mask and letting the world see you took a lot. Alexander Pierce had asked her, as she was unlocking SHIELD files and readying them to be put out for public consumption, if she was ready for the word to truly see her. And she had avoided the question and turned it on him â was he ready. (She had come to terms with what people knew about her, but also took comfort in knowing that it would never be the full truth.)
"He didn't mention knowing anyone else had it," Natasha allowed, figuring if she was going to be taking him right to Randall's doorstep, he might as well have all the information he had. (All of it that she deemed relevant, at least. Which wasn't much.)
He said that he didn't need her calling in any favors, that he could get them a plane in a shorter amount of time and she was a breath away from arguing when he pulled down his bandana and properly introduced himself. There was a flicker of surprise across her features, and a half-smile that came with looking at his face. "Danny Rand. You're... cousins with Tony Stark? He was who I was going to call," Natasha said. There were others, she was sure that she could have called to get a plane that would have kept them off Tony's radar, but she hadn't investigated the Iron Fist â Danny Rand â enough to know who to keep this information from.
"Does he know?" Natasha had kept a thousand secrets from Tony before, but the last time that she had held onto a secret that involved his family, the Avengers had dissolved. And even today, Tony was hurting because of it. Natasha could handle a lot, but if she could avoid digging into the same hole she had nearly buried herself in, she'd prefer that.















