Natasha opened the door to her apartment and closed it with a backwards kick of her heel. She collapsed back against it with a deep sigh. Releasing S.H.I.E.L.D. files had been the right move at the time, but she was so done with the fallout. She dodged what she could and appeared when she had to. Today, it was three NSA analysts and several cartons of Soviet era documents. Dredging through them, translating the code that she knew was still buried in her brain somewhere, had given her a deep, throbbing headache that started in the space between her eyes and wrapped around to her ears.

Kicking off her heels, she padded to the kitchen, freeing her hair from the clip that had held it back, relishing the feel of the squishy carpet under her feet and the soft touch of the hair around her neck. Her headache began to recede.

She walked around the island, pulled open the fridge door and stared into it for a moment. Milk, juice, a couple of take-out containers, a bowl of grapes and a six of beer. She reached for a bottle and as she was shutting the fridge door, a flash of movement caught her eye.

Alert, she pulled open a drawer as if she was searching for the bottle opener, but what she took out was very different. She set the beer on the counter and palmed the handgun. Headache forgotten, she stood with her back to the fridge and peered around the small divider wall that separated the kitchen from the living room.

The living room was unremarkable. A flat screen TV dominated the wall next to a window. A leather couch faced the TV with her laptop left on one of the cushions, it's cord snaking across the floor to the power strip under the TV. There was a small bookcase filled with paperbacks and an overfull basket of mail. A few framed pictures sat on top of the bookcase – an action shot of Clint shooting, a headshot of her and Clint together, and one of Tony, Thor, Bruce, her, Clint and Steve gathered around a picnic table.

Her attention was on the window. Holding the gun in both hands, she watched the way the shadow moved on the fire escape. She frowned as a confused memory surfaced of a very different room, a very long time ago, and the man who had climbed in the window. There was a glint in the moonlight and she suddenly knew who it was.

Three swift steps took her across the room, her back pressed against the wall next to the window. Shaking her head in disbelief, in wonder, she flicked the lock and stepped back, holding her gun on the figure.

A moment later, he pushed it up and climbed into the room. She stepped back, holding the gun steady, studying him.

He looked different than when she had seen him last, two months ago. The tac gear was gone and he wore street cloths: jeans and a hoodie, with the hood pulled up around his face. She thought that he looked thinner. She had no doubt he was armed, but no weapons were obvious. He held up his empty hands, both covered in fingerless gloves.

"I just want to talk, Natalia," he said, speaking in Russian. He looked around the room, searching for something, taking it in.

She lifted the gun from his head. If he had wanted her dead, he would not have been on her fire escape waiting for her to unlock the window. "Okay," she said. Now that he was in the light, she saw the dirty, worn condition of his clothes. "Is it just me, or do you have a thing for windows?" she asked.

He lowered his hands and stepped forward. "I figured you would let me in this way, for old times sake."

She snorted a little laugh and shook her head, deliberately turning her back. She walked back to the kitchen. "I was about to have a beer. Want one?"

She heard him follow behind her. "Sure," he said. She left the gun on the counter next to the fridge and pulled a second beer out. She opened both and slid one across the island to him.

Leaning back against the fridge, taking a sip of her beer, she looked at him and tried to decide what to say.

He solved that problem for her by commenting, "You slipped your leash."

She nodded, watching him.

"Took me a while to make the connections, once things started coming back."

"What connections?"

"Who you are…who you were." He looked away and stared out the window.

"And who am I?" she asked.

He did not answer but he pushed back the hood of his sweatshirt. His hair was still long but now it was held back in ponytail. His face looked gaunt, his eyes sunk, his cheeks hollow. He had not shaved in a couple of days.

Taking her bottle with her, she walked around the island and stood next to him, leaning against the counter. "James," she said softly. When he did not look at her, she said it again. "James?"

He looked at her.

"Why are you here?"

He shrugged, looking down at his metal hand wrapped around his beer bottle.

"Your memory is coming back?" she hazarded.

He nodded. "About two weeks after the last …" He shook his head. "After Steve recognized me, the wipe…" He stopped and looked at her. "How much do you know?"

"Enough," she said. "I got your file."

He licked his lips. "That must be a horror show."

She shrugged. "It is what it is. It is not so different from what they did to the Widows. You were just a harder nut to crack."

He pressed his lips together, slightly shaking his head. "Not hard enough," he said. He picked up the bottle and took a long pull from it. "Not hard enough. About two weeks after the last wipe, the one after Steve recognized me, named me, I started remembering. My handlers. The missions. And you." He glanced up, meeting her eyes briefly before looking back down at his hand. "First in missions…and then the rest of it. My life before the war came last. The stints in cryo make it hard to tell what is missing."

"How are you doing?"

He shrugged. "How do you think? I allowed them to use me. For years. I gave in to them. I made the fucking reins myself and handed them over to Zola."

She shifted, leaning forward slightly, looking him in the face. He was hunched over, his eyes cast down. He shook his head. "I should have killed myself when I had the chance." He looked at her, his eyes haunted and dark. Then he picked up the bottle and finished the remains in one long swallow. "You got another of these?"

She nodded and walked back around the island to get two more. "Steve is looking for you, you know."

"Yeah," he said as he picked up the new bottle. "I've been tracking him for a month. Him and Sam Wilson."

"Oh, he is going to love that."

He shrugged. "He's as reckless as ever. Someone's gotta watch his back." He held up his right hand, fingers bent into a gun shape, and sighted along it to explain what he means. "I think Wilson may be putting it together, that things are too easy."

She smiled at him as she took a sip of her beer.

Without warning, his eyes darkened and he lowered his hand, looking down. "I am not the man he remembers," he said.

"I don't think he is the man you remember, either."

"The man he remembers was a fighter. The man he remembers did not quit."

Steve, she knows, will say, Bucky, it is not your fault. He'll say, No one could have resisted what they did to you. She will not. Steve may think it is true, but she knows it is a lie and so will he.

She reached out, offering her hand. For a moment, he stared at it before he put his hand on top of hers. He curled his fingers into her palm. "You are here, now. Fighting, now. He will respect that," she said.

He looked at her, hope brightening his eyes, "You think so?"

She nodded, "I do. The years, they don't matter. Not to him. You both got some mileage on you. As do I." She tightened her hand around his. "What matters is that you survived. We survived."

Pressing his lips together, he nodded and pulled his hand free of hers. He pointed at her necklace, the necklace Clint had given her with an arrow suspended on a tiny chain. "Who's the archer?"

She reached up and fingered the arrow. "Hawkeye," she said.

"And he's…"

"Steve broke through your conditioning. He broke through mine."

"Ah." He drained the rest of his beer and pushed away from the counter. He glanced back at the window.

"James, before you go?"

He looked at her.

"Talk to Steve?"

He nodded.

She walked over to him and put her arms around his waist and she could feel a holster in the small of his back. She reached up and put a chaste kiss on his cheek.

"What was that?" he asked.

"For old time's sake," she said.

He shook his head and wrapped his arms around her, the wrist sheath hidden on his right arm pressed across her shoulder blades. "There must be something wrong with your memory," he said softly, amusement in his voice.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I remember old times being more like this." And he brought his lips to hers in a kiss that was anything but chaste.