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Maria has tattoos- almost a dozen of them. And yes, they are literal tattoos, not some metaphor for trauma or another word for battle scars, no matter the fact that she has both of those, too. No, they’re black and gray sketches that curve across swathes of her body so naturally that sometimes Nat forgets that she wasn't born with them.
Some are older, faded or with blown-out ink from what she puts them through (and what she puts herself through, and yes, they’ve had discussions about that, thank you very much).
There’s a constellation on her ankle, inked in tandem with her college girlfriend. It started as the Big Dipper, although Nat now calls it “the big blob”, because frankly it resembles nothing more than an ink blot at this point. The origin story is stupid, according to Maria, and she and her girlfriend went to a shitty artist, Maria says, because they “were just kids in college” and “were cheesy and stereotypical as hell” and would Nat please just stop bugging her about it because yes, she “regrets it”, and if she really wants the details she should talk to “Hope Van Dyne, your little bug sister, because hell, baby, she has the matching one and is probably a fuckton more willing to tell the story”. (Nat just grins in response).
Aside from the tacky ones that Maria pretends to hate but secretly loves (because god knows if she actually hated them they would have long ago been lasered from her skin), she has some more precise designs, done by better artists for what Maria says are better reasons. There’s a violet that stands tall in the dip in the center of her back, stem echoing the elegant line of her spine, petals arching outward toward her shoulder blades. It was inked in honor of her mother; its petals delicate but untouched by the many scars that speckle Maria’s back like the freckles on her face. There’s a black and gray dragon that curls around the widest part of her thigh and her hip, a reminder of the name of her first special ops squadron in the Marines. There are roses on her rib cage whose thorns Natasha likes to run her tongue along in bed. Maria says it's there just because she thought it was pretty, but it also covers a scar that she doesn't like to talk about and Nat is pretty sure that that’s probably the real motivation. There is an iris on her hip that was chosen because of a name-twin song, and Nat’s hand will often subconsciously find its way to its petals, mapping them with her fingertips and thumb like their veins are a path to guaranteed salvation.
So in sum, Maria has tattoos and Natasha loves them. And Maria knows that. So it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when Maria came home with a new one.
—
Maria comes home one day, tattoos obscured by a t-shirt and jeans, a grin splitting her face in half and her eyes glinting. And really, Nat should’ve been suspicious, should've been on edge, because the only time she’d seen that particular look before was when Maria was about to do something crazy, something stupidly badass, in combat. But she’s not on edge, and so when Maria says “Nat. C’mere. Come look at this,” she goes, smiling, because she really would do anything for her when she's grinning like that. And she can’t say she’s mad, exactly, when Maria begins her little presentation by taking off her shirt. And then her bra. And just when it’s getting good, when Nat reaches for her, Maria redirects her hand to a patch of plastic wrap on her rib cage, covering red, irritated skin, and… “Ria.”
Maria just keeps grinning.
“Do you like it? It’s for you.”
Nat swallows, because fuck, of course it’s for her, and fuck, yes she does like it, quite a bit, actually, and her eyes are welling up, because fuck, Maria’s gone and gotten a set of pointe shoes inked onto her ribs. Permanently. In dark black ink. And she’s happy about it. And Nat doesn’t deserve this.
“I don’t…”
Maria’s face shutters, and she swallows hard. “You don’t like it?”
And now Nat’s panicking because that’s not at all what she had meant but Maria looks so crestfallen, arms coming up to cover her ribs and the tattoo, and Natasha hates that she’s made her feel anything other than happy. The next words are a rush, her face flushing in a way that she hates but can’t seem to control.
“Fuck. No, I love it, ангел. I just don’t… are you sure? I don’t…”
Realization comes rushing into Maria’s face, and she smiles, softly, pulling Natasha into her lap.
“I am very sure about the tattoo, Nat. The same way I’m very sure about you.”
Natasha’s breath comes out in something too close to a ragged gasp, and she can feel Maria’s lips press against her shoulder. She can’t manage a response beyond “Okay.”
Once again, she can feel Maria’s grin against her shoulder. Hesitantly, Natasha lifts her fingers to touch the fresh ink. Maria shivers, partly from pain and partly from… well. After sketching each finger individually around the strong outline of the ballet slippers, Natasha turns, and finds Maria’s eyes dark, and her heart racing from its position across her body from the tattoo that she got, specifically for Nat, and it's all overwhelming and beautiful. So Nat kisses her, the same kind of hard, happy kiss that they give each other after missions, when they are back together and whole, and runs her fingers across the newest tattoo, and knows that this, that they, are just as permanent as the ink that runs across Maria’s skin.