#brutasha meta

Heehee, well okay twist my arm. 

I’ve talked this with people before so they’ll be sick of hearing it but okay, putting it out there: I’m sure actually really love the fact that they didn’t make Nat this incredible alluring seductress that was just amazing at all of this flirting because in a lot of ways I actually think Bruce has more experience in this department than she does?  

We’ve talked a lot about how one of the most important aspects of Brucenat in AOU for Nat is the idea that Bruce is someone that she’s choosing just for herself; he’s not a mission, or a necessity, he’s someone that she wants for herself, because she’s attracted to him and she feels a connection with him. And so a big big theme for Natasha’s AOU arc is choice. The idea that the choice to have children was stripped away from her, and really, if she’d gone on with the KGB/Red Room plans, she wouldn’t have had any meaningful relationships or connections to anyone. 

So you have that aspect, that in her past choice was taken away from her, she was made to be a tool and an instrument, and something destructive; so then you have her past and those fears paralleled against her present and her potential future, which is the one she wants with Bruce (and Bruce brings this up as well when he tells her he can’t give her that future because he can’t have children, but that’s straying well off topic) but the point is that Bruce presents her with; he’s something that she wants for herself, he is that potential to have a future that she never thought she could have. 

Anyway, the point of the above deviation was that, she’s really not all that experienced in this area at all, she’s never really had that, she’s more than likely had to flirt on missions at one point or another (which Steve briefly mentions) but as Steve also notes, it’s not the same thing, it’s different with Bruce. 

And that’s another one of the reasons I love their little movie roleplay (alongside the fact that it’s just adorable and gives us all sorts of lovely headcanons of the two of them sitting watching old movies together) it also gives her a little something that she does a lot; which is playing a part, and playing a role, and by doing that, she’s able to say all of the things that she wants to say to him (that little ‘he’s got a temper, but deep down he’s all fluff...’ speech she makes) that is what she thinks and it is how she feels and she’s trying to tell him that but she’s not quite sure how to say all of it in her own voice and in her own way as Nat, so it gives her a little something to help cushion her uncertainty. 

And we sort of see that coming back later at the beginning of the farmhouse scene, she segues a little into that mode again before they start really talking about their pasts and what have you, but she does that at the beginning and it’s just a little implication that she isn’t quite as sure as she might be in this area of flirting and relationships and that sort of thing. 

Hello friend, thank you for asking me! Questions may be small, answers probably won’t be, apologies and warnings up front for that.

1)- To be completely honest with you? The Calcutta scene. My shipper heart just locks on to tiny ships and gets attached within the first 0.5 seconds and yeah, I was gone. In all seriousness I seriously adore that scene with every fibre of my being, it’s just so them while deconstructing them at the same time? There’s that rawness that I think you just get whenever they’re alone on screen together, a real stripping back of the masks that they both use to cover up and hide behind and that scene is just fascinating with Nat in particular and yes, okay, I have meta’d about this before, I will not regurgitate all of that again but I think it just establishes them really really well and there’s an intriguing tension and chemistry there, it’s something I watch and want more of. 

The rest of this got huge (as it so often does) so yes, it’s under a cut to spare anyone who doesn’t want to scroll through it all, read on if you care to. 

oh my gosh hi! this is so lovely, and what a great idea, okay let’s see. 

1)- Their development? I mean, the arc they’ve had from Avengers through to Age of Ultron has just been incredible and it’s nowhere near done yet. 

2)- the duality of their relationship and the many ways that it works; the same level of caring and depth and understanding and empathy that we see between Bruce and Nat extends between Hulk and Widow; there’s no erasing of their pasts or situations, they just know and accept every part of the other. 

3)- the acceptance they share. There’s no erasing of their pasts, the things they’ve done, there’s no empty pity, no false comfort or dulling of what they’ve been through. They know almost everything the other has done and been put through and they don’t shy or run away from it, they face it all, together. 

4)- their potential - there’s so much there for them. AOU was just a foundation on which later films can build, their story isn’t done, not by a long shot, there’s so much more to come and there’s so much more good to come for them. I think that this is a ship that I could very genuinely see as being endgame if you will and it’s something that I want to be endgame as well, because I genuinely think that these characters can just continue to grow together and remain happy together and it’s something that I just want to see develop further and watch where they go from here. 

5)- the parallels between them - there are just, so many parallels in their storylines? they’re such different people and they have had really quite different experiences but there’s so much potential for empathy and understanding there that it’s hard to find from anyone else. They’ve both been made into monsters; facets of themselves that have been shaped for destruction and nothing more and how they both struggle to get past that and to be something more than that and more than the things that they’ve done. Their want to be trusted, their want to help, that they both believe that they need, and attempt to find, their own redemption (which is a big theme for them both in Avengers and AOU) The amount of humanity and empathy that they have that they extend to each other and the amount of understanding that exists between them. 

6)- the balance in their relationship - I think, there have been a few people who’ve described their relationship as sort of ‘beauty and the beast’; which I can understand, but I’m always a little bit wary of that trope just being thrown around because a lot of the time there can feel like there’s a certain imbalance there; that the ‘beauty’ of the relationship often has to sacrifice a lot for the ‘beast’ and doesn’t get a lot in return but I think that the opposite of that is true for Bruce and Natasha and that’s one of the big draws for me? There is that sort of beast aspect that they both have; along with the softer beauty side, these two halves of the whole person; Bruce and Hulk and Widow and Nat and the way that they interact with each other and it’s just so much more complex than beauty and the beast in the usual sense and it’s so much more intricate and fascinating for that, but its’ also much more mutually beneficial? One character isn’t sacrificed and hung out to draw and spread painfully thin for the benefit of the other with 0 reward for those efforts, they fit well together, they support and protect and care for and benefit each other, it’s not a one-sided relationship, they’re both very much as important and significant to and benefited by their relationship. 

7)- the things they see in each other that they can’t see in themselves, the faith that they have, the way that they complete each other’s journeys - I think this comes out most clearly at the end of AOU, the little ‘you’ve done plenty’ on Bruce’s part and her ‘now go be a hero’. The thing Natasha struggles with most is her pursuit of redemption, the red in her ledger that’s the only thing she can see and her desire to wipe it out, the fear that she can never be anything other than what she was made; and Bruce can see past all of the guilt she carries over the wrong she’s done to the good that she’s done and can truly tell her that he believes that she’s done enough, that she’s worthy of the title of Avenger, of hero. And for Nat, she encourages him to be just that, she thinks that he is capable of that, she sees that potential and that value in him that he just can’t see for himself, she has so much faith in him, in the person that he is and what he can do here and now that he struggles with so much. 

8)- their rawness and their honesty- Both of these characters I think are very practiced liars in one way or the other. Natasha is a spy, cover identities and lies are sort of her bread and butter; we’ve already seen this at play in the MCU as the different character she plays to get close to Tony in Iron Man 2, there’s always a mask there with her, a barrier between her and whoever she’s with, but as Steve actually points out in AOU, that isn’t there when she’s alone with Bruce. And he’s the same, there are a lot of layers to Bruce and they’re definitely not all on show at once, he hides a lot of who he is and can be really quite repressed in a lot of ways. but a lot of the scenes between Nat and Bruce when they’re alone together as some of the most open and the rawest scenes with the most emotional honesty we get from either of them are when they’re alone together. I’m thinking a lot about the farmhouse scene in AOU, they’re both very forthcoming there, about their pasts, their insecurities, vulnerabilities, flaws, their worries about the future, there’s a lot contained in that scene and it all just comes out with no barriers and no concealing this part or that part, it’s just all there, all the cards on the table for them and it’s just a really interesting and important aspect to them. 

9)- just their whole dynamic - just, the way they interact with each other, the chemistry that they have, the draw that their scenes together have, the subtlety of their relationship, the read-between-the-lines nature of everything, that there’s always more to get from them and their interactions if you so choose, the lullaby and the Hulk/Widow relationship, the trust that’s developed between them, the intimacy, they comfort, the fact that they’ve found something of a home in one another, a safe place, someone they feel comfortable with, someone they can trust, who can understand them and empathise with them to the greatest degree, really just everything about them, to summarise a bit you know.