After "When do we start?" Natasha is still around and she's got a few more reasons behind telling Steve "You might not want to pull on that thread" than she's willing to share. At least not with him. A Natasha-centric scene set immediately after the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Disclaimer: Not mine, all Marvel's. They can have this if they want.
AN: I'm apparently now writing a series on one-shots. Too many stories in my head!
A justification is what you make of it. That's what Natasha tells herself. That and that she's been more honest with Steven Grant Rogers than she is with herself the majority of the time.
She's not a believer in absolute truths. They're ugly, blunt and usually miss the ambiguity and delicate nature of human interaction and shifting alliances. But as she looks at the folder in front of her, none of that is making a difference to the guilt that's knotting up her insides.
She considers for a moment getting out of her car and going back to Nick's false graveside and her two new friends. That keeps surprising her, that she might now be someone with friends. Clint is different, he's family, and that family is where she's headed now, well as soon as she's able to, new covers take a while to establish.
This wasn't how she wanted to start this new chapter of her life though.
She looked up and could just make out Sam and Steve through the trees screening the car park. She wanted them safe and she wanted Steve happy. Someone that good deserved all the happiness they could get. She loves him. She loves his bravery, his passion, his strength of will and his uncrushable optimism. It's a pure love, she'd never want him for herself as attractive as he is, but she might have to step up in Coulson's place as they head of the Cap appreciation society. Although Sam might give her some competition on that front.
She loved that he said he'd trust her, maybe not her actions or words entirely, but her motives. That was enough. She hopes that if he ever finds out about the sheaf of paper currently burning a morally-painful hole in her lap that this would still hold true.
They were still talking. She knew he wasn't going to head back to a civilian life, or call Sharon. She knew he was about to torture himself over things he couldn't change and head off in a search that very well might never end.
She flipped open the file to her copy of the photos she's just given Steve and traced her finger over the smile of the young man in uniform captured in the image.
"I tried James. But you know how stubborn he is. I know you'd just want to see him happy like I do."
She sighed to herself – she was talking to ghosts. The fact that she and Steve shared one had been something totally unexpected.
After Odessa she'd had a driving need to find him, to track down this spectre who'd beaten her and left her alive. She couldn't explain it. She'd never even seen his face until she'd searched for his SSR file in the SHIELD records once they'd finished patching up the bullet wound he'd just put in her – the second bullet wound. Clearly she was special, she was still alive and she was pretty sure it wasn't anything to do with her own skills. She should have been dead twice over.
She looks closely at the picture of the young soldier. He's as beautiful as Steve in his own way. Hearts must have broken all over America when the two of them were lost within weeks of each other. Or was the public simply not told? It wouldn't have been good for the war effort and morale that's for sure.
Steve had never mentioned him before the attack on the bridge, but the pain in his voice in the back of the STRIKE van had told her all she needed to know about how deeply he'd mourned, was still mourning his friend. He must really have been something for his memory to become something sacred to a man like Steve Rogers.
But it's not Bucky Barnes that captivates her. It's The Winter Soldier – all deadly grace and lethal force. He's a masterpiece in motion and the fact that she's a little bit smitten when he's tried to kill her and those she cares about multiple times is why she could never look at Steve romantically. She needs a little monster in her man. Her growing crush on Banner is proof enough of that.
Plus she's trying to accept herself and that includes the darkness in her. She refuses to live in it any more but it's an important part of her. She owns so little of her past that she needs to own this.
But she can all too clearly imagine Steve's horrified face if she told him that she had the hots for the killer his beloved best friend had been twisted into. She thinks even his understanding nature would struggle with that one.
But the Soldier is so much like her, they even seemingly had the same masters at one point, and this is why she won't help Steve find him. That and the information she's held back – part of which is his involvement with the Red Room.
She escaped her darkness and now with the end of SHIELD she may even get to move out of the shadows and live in the light alongside people like the courageous Captain America. The Winter Soldier – Barnes – whoever he is now - also deserves the right to find his own place to exist, free of any demands or external control, however well intentioned.
He also deserves to have the information contained in these files burnt. There are enough horrors already in what she gave Steve to give anyone nightmares, never mind someone who loved the person detailed in the cold and clinical reports of experimentation and torture.
Adding these pages in wouldn't tell him anything he needed to know. Not really. But they'd spare him some pain and that's what she needs to do, and what she believes the man who was his family would approve of. They'd just complicate things. Things she honestly hopes Barnes never has to remember. She doesn't want Steve to fail but she doesn't think that he understands what it is he'd possibly be doing by trying to get his friend back, that it would be kinder to simply grant him this fresh start, let him be free.
But she knows that saying that would break Steve's heart completely and her loyalty is to him, not to the stranger she now knows far too intimately. And while Steve needed to know how his friend had been broken and re-forged into a weapon and the targets he'd been aimed at, he didn't need to know about the rest.
He didn't need to know about the generations of assassins The Winter Soldier had made into better killers; he didn't need to know about the moments of rebellion that had resulted in brutal punishments; he didn't need to know about an implied love affair that had broken through the intense conditioning and it seemed ended tragically; and he didn't need to know about the Hydra funding crisis post-Watergate that had led to the Soldier's services being sold to the highest bidder.
And he most especially didn't need to know that the Soldier had on occasion been used as a recruitment incentive and on one instance in the 60s passed around as a party favour for guests who included some of the most powerful and famous individuals in the world.
She wished she didn't know.
She closed the file and stared up at the blue sky above the peaceful cemetery and reminded herself that these sorts of things weren't the way of the world in general. There were millions of good people, people worth saving. The Insight carriers' massive hit list was proof enough of that, as was the presence of the man walking towards her car window. She lowered it before he had time to knock and shot him her flirtiest smile.
"So are you going with him?"
Sam shot her a tight grin and lent against the hood of the car "You knew?"
"It's Steve 'save the world' Rogers, of course he's going to want to save his best friend."
Sam suddenly looked all serious and Natasha recalled he worked as a counsellor in his civilian life: "Do you think that's possible?"
"For anyone other than Rogers, probably not, but after seeing him in action this past couple of years I don't think anything could withstand that barrage of Captain America stubbornness. I wouldn't bet against him. He's gone?"
"Gone to pack up what's left of his apartment and I hope have a good cathartic cry. He needs to get some of that grief out in the open. As adaptable as he is he's still too 40s to do it in front of me. He took his bike, I came in the rental," Sam nodded over to the only other car in the lot.
"He probably won't be able to stop himself when he reads what's in the file" Natasha said sadly.
"That bad huh?"
"Worse."
Sam shook his head sadly.
She looked down at the passenger seat where she'd placed the full file and made a decision. She grabbed it and opened the car door. Sam straightened up as she climbed out.
"But not as bad as this." She held out the dossier to him.
Sam looked confused "What do you mean?"
She looked him straight in the eye "I didn't give Steve the original, he has an edited version."
Clearly Steve Rogers' trust in her must be catching as Sam didn't utter the expected 'why?' but instead asked "Why are you giving it to me?" He still hadn't taken it from her.
"Because Steve might actually succeed and you're the best one to help him deal with whatever, or whoever, it is you find at the end of this ghost hunt. Because you need to know that the people you might come across are complicit in doing that to another human being and don't deserve the leniency that Steve might grant them. And because Steve might find out anyway and at least this way you'll be prepared to deal with the fallout."
Sam reached out and accepted the file and with it the responsibility and trust she was placing on him. He really was a good man.
"If he finds out we kept this from him it's not going to be pretty" Sam warned. "How will I know what's in Steve's version and what you've held back?"
Natasha held out her hand for the folder and leant back into the car, grabbing a pen from the glove compartment. She quickly flicked through the pages and scribbled an hourglass on the relevant pages before handing it back. "I would have said take a look at Steve's copy, but I think you'll have difficulty prying it away from his hands, you should try though."
Sam took it with a grimace "I will. I would say thanks but I'm really not feeling it. Any particular highlights I should book myself a therapy session for?"
"There's a pretty twisted swingers party in 64 that takes some getting over – plus you'll never be able to watch some movies ever again."
Sam raised an eyebrow "Yeesh. And none of this stuff is in the SHIELD files?"
"No, not as far as I was able to tell with a search algorithm I ran but that's not an iron clad guarantee. There might be something."
Sam had the file open and was looking at the photo of Barnes in cryo, "And if I think that there are parts of it that Steve needs to know?" He looked up and met her eye.
Natasha shrugged "I trust your judgement but he doesn't need to know it now. He needs to deal with the reality of it all first. Plus that's by no means everything – there are whole decades of reports missing. And who knows what the two of you will uncover as you go along."
"Yes, this is possibly going to be the world's least fun road trip," Sam said with a quirk of his lips. "OK I've got this, go do what you need to do."
Nat smiled at him, sad but grateful. "If I get any leads I'll send them your way."
She got back in the car and started the engine. Sam closed the file and began walking towards his rental car. "Take care of yourself Sam, and take care of him too."
"I will. Good luck with everything."
She smiled "Thanks, I'll need it."
She drove off sparing one last glimpse at her rear view mirror to catch Sam leaning on his car folder open and a distressed expression on his face. It shouldn't have made her feel better but it did.
She'd reached out and trusted someone, shared a secret. She could only hope that if, no when, Steve found out he'd at least be proud of her for that if nothing else. Maybe this Natasha was one who might deserve his friendship and might deserve the title of Avenger. She could only hope.