A/N: Inspired by the stinger at the very end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and by Bucky's confessions from the comics that Natasha was the one who gave him a home in the end. So this is kind of a blending of the movie-verse, and the comic-verse.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Homeless (or The Homelessness of Finding One's Way Back Home)
She's walking down Mass Ave. about three blocks up from Union Station when she spots him sitting in the middle of the sidewalk.
He looks like any other beggar in the city: long hair, stringy and matted from the grime of days gone unwashed, a scraggly beard, half-dead eyes, and a well-worn windbreaker that doesn't look nearly warm enough for the temperature. A baseball cap sits out on the sidewalk in front of him, and at a glance she'd say there wasn't enough in it to buy a discounted sandwich at a fast-food chain. He's wearing gloves to cover the sheen of his metal hand, and if it wasn't for the fact that she knows him to be one of the most dangerous men in the world she'd dismiss him as utterly harmless. It sends a chill down her spine at how well he blends into the cityscape.
She's surprised to see him, to say the least. She'd expected him to run, to keep moving from one obscure backwater to the next so that not Steve, nor Fury, nor even goddamn Hydra could ever hope to find him again.
But here he is, sitting out in public, in broad daylight, only about a mile from his last known location, begging… Any one of these things would be enough to send warning bells off in Natasha's mind when it came to this man, but all of them? The only thing she can think is that he wants to be found. That he doesn't care much who finds him. That he doesn't care much what they'll do to him when (not if) they do. And it's that thought that tugs on a string in her chest she thought had snapped years ago.
Natasha takes several cautious steps forward, bringing her to stand directly in front of him. He doesn't look up, but she notices that he's tense, like a cornered animal. She crouches, forcing him to meet her eyes, forcing him to see that it is not Hydra after all that's found him. She hopes that for him this will at least be the lesser of the many potential evils, that she is a more welcome sight, if only just. She knows he does not recognize her aside from the target that Hydra had painted onto her and Steve's respective backs, but she knows that that still makes her one of only a handful of familiar faces to this man. For Natasha, the Winter Soldier is more than just the assassin sent to kill her. More even than she chose to divulge to Steve. It's those memories of long ago that spur her on in the series of potentially bad decisions she makes next.
"Hi." She says with a cautious smile, schooling her features and her body language to appear as unthreatening as possible. She wants him to know that she isn't going to hurt him. She switches to Russian then, knowing that it will be a small comfort, a familiarity, in a world recently turned completely upside-down.
You look terrible. She says, a joke that she knows he would have laughed at, had he known her. Instead he simply stares at her with an expression half confusion and half sheer terror, she feels it tug at that newly rediscovered cord in her heart.
She can feel people staring as they pass the odd scene in the street; a beautiful, well-dressed woman, crouching and speaking in a strange language to a homeless man. But the city had seen a lot of strange things in the last few weeks, she hopes that this scene will be forgotten as soon as it is out of sight.
I live nearby. She continues. If you come with me now, I can promise you a shower, a hot meal, and a bed to sleep in for the night. Interested?
He doesn't reply right away, she doesn't expect him to. She can see that he's trying to read her, to see if he can find any reason why he shouldn't just punch her in the face and run like hell. But she can also see that he wants what she's offered, he wants it bad. She wonders how long it's been since someone's shown him a shred of kindness. He clearly doesn't know how to take it, so she suspects it's been a long time… Perhaps she was even the last person to do so. She hopes that's not the case even as her instincts tell her that it very likely is.
If you do come with me, no one will be able to find you. If that's what you are worried about. I won't call Steve, or Fury, unless you want me to…
Eventually he nods, and Natasha stands again, wincing as her calves protest their crouched position being sustained for so long.
Then follow me. she says, and offers him a hand up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
This is just one of her safe houses in D.C.
Since S.H.I.E.L.D. was (formerly) headquartered in the capital it made sense to keep a home-base nearby. It made even more sense to keep one or two others in the event of a security leak.
She has a few other safe houses dotted across the globe, some she owns jointly with Clint, others are purely her own, but they come in handy, and probably will be especially so as the fallout from her blowing cover begins to rack up.
She unlocks the door and flipped on the lights revealing a comfortably furnished two-bedroom apartment. This had been one of her more secret hideouts, so it had been spared the ransacking that some of her other properties had suffered while Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. was trying to track her down, but for now it was her primary residence.
Now she had the Winter Soldier standing in the middle of her living room, looking around uncomfortably like he wasn't quite sure how to handle himself outside of a wetwork operation.
"The shower's through there." She said, pointing down the hallway. "Towels are in the closet next to it, help yourself. I'm going to go get us something to eat."
He stares at her and the confusion in his eyes deepens as he realizes that she's implying that she trusts him enough to leave him alone in her house.
She smirks at him. "There's no more damage you can cause, that I haven't already done myself." She explains.
He heads for the shower without further comment, and Natasha steals his clothes and throws them in the washing machine. His leather jacket-stroke-armor which he still wore under the windbreaker she leaves on the couch after checking the pockets and lining for bugs of an intelligence-gathering nature.
She leaves the door unlocked and a window open when she leaves. She knows he'll check his exits and the last thing she wants is for him to feel like he's trapped. Besides, anyone who tries to rob her while the Winter Soldier is in residence would get the shock of a lifetime.
As she closes the front door of her apartment building she feels a twinge of worry about the weapons stash she keeps in her bedroom closet. He'll find it, without a doubt, but without direct orders he won't think to kill her… Or at least, the man she once knew wouldn't kill without an order.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
After visiting the grocery store for ingredients, Natasha stops by a department store to pick up a few things, and eventually returns home with her arms laden with bags. She's decided to leave the Winter Soldier with a few gifts. She buys him a change of clothes; a flannel shirt, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a few extra pairs of socks and underwear. At the grocery store she picked up a few days' worth of non-perishable food items, and then a backpack to hold it all in. When she returns home she stuffs an envelope with a couple thousand in cash and a credit card into one of the outer pockets. She knows he won't use the credit card, but the offer is there. She knows what it's like to have to remake yourself, and having someone there to point you in the right direction helps a lot. It's a little more than half the reason she cares for Clint like she does, he had been the one to do the same for her when she'd needed it. Natasha knows she'll never feel like she'll stop owing Barton for that, despite his constant reassurances that she's paid him back a hundred times over.
When the Soldier (Bucky, she supposes) emerges from the shower, he's clean-shaven, his long hair is slicked back out of his eyes by the water, and he's got a bath-towel wrapped around his lower half. She makes a mental note to replace her razor-blade as soon as possible, as she simultaneously notes that he's got quite a number of scars she doesn't remember being there before. She wonders if he'd even know where they came from if she asked.
"I put your clothes in the wash." She replies to his inquiring expression. "But here, I bought you some more." She hands him the backpack, and he disappears into her bedroom to change.
When he emerges once again he looks almost-human, and she can't help but smile as he tries to get used to the new clothes clearly unused to soft fabrics, and loose cuts. She had been worried that maybe she'd guessed his sizes wrong, but they seemed to fit alright.
"I'm not a good cook," she says, her voice drawing him into the kitchen, as she turns back to her work. "But even a monkey can make soup and have it taste ok."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
He doesn't talk the whole time she's preparing their dinner, so she does the talking for him. Something she's clearly not used to, but he listens politely, if only because she's giving him his first proper meal in a few days. (She doesn't know this, but he's already been banned from the local soup kitchen after an argument between two of the other patrons, a man and a woman, triggered a violent outburst and the Winter Soldier accidentally sent the offending man to the emergency room.) She tells him about Steve, probably the best man she's ever known, and definitely the most stubborn. About Falcon, the man he'd fought with the wings. His name's Sam, he's really an ex-army daredevil who would follow Steve into hell and back. She tells him he'll probably be seeing more of them both. Then she tells him about another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent called Clint, she refers to him as a "stupid asshole" but there's a fondness in her voice as she does. She talks about the Avengers; Tony Stark a self-proclaimed genius, billionaire, playboy (though slightly less-so these days), philanthropist. Thor, a demi-god from another universe, who can fly and summon lightening. Bruce Banner, brilliant physicist with truly monstrous anger management issues. Apparently Bruce's alter-ego had scared the hell out of Natasha more than once, a hard task, but only once was on purpose.
About an hour later she sets two steaming bowls of beef-stew down on the kitchen table. The broth made from onions and celery is thick with potatoes and carrots, and huge chucks of beef, and even little kernels of barley for added flavor. Natasha then sets out a loaf of crusty bread, and the Winter Soldier doesn't think he's ever seen food look this good. Even as his stomach rumbles hungrily, he stares up at her in confusion, he's been confused a lot the past few days.
"Why are you doing this?" He asks, it's the first words he's spoken since she picked him up off the side of the road. There is desperation in his tone. But the: "I tried to kill you." Is left unspoken.
She stares at him for a moment with an unreadable expression, and her hand goes up to settle over her sternum as if to soothe an aching wound. She sits down across from him at the kitchen table before she answers.
"Because I know what it's like to come out of a bad situation and have to try and figure out, out of all the memories you have and don't have, which ones are real. I was lucky, I had someone there to help me. Completely by accident; he was sent there to kill me, but there it is… And I think that he helped to set me straight, even if I didn't see it at the time."
Then slowly, ever so slowly she reaches across the table and takes his hand, the metal one, in what he supposes is meant to be an empathetic gesture. He allows it, as it is the first non-violent human contact he's had for as long as he can remember. (Which, to be fair, isn't very long.) But then his fingers tighten as if by their own accord, and he allows that too. He squeezes her hand until he can feel the joints pop, and the delicate bones of her fingers almost fracture. But she doesn't cry out, she doesn't even show any discomfort in her face aside from a faint line that forms between her brows. He wants to see what she'll do if he responds to her kindness and trust with betrayal. But he can see that she's not stupid, she knows that this is a test, and she's completely aware of the risk that she's taking in trusting him. After a tense moment he releases her hand, her fingers tremble slightly as she pulls away, but she picks up her spoon and begins to eat as if nothing had happened, he follows suit.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
That night Natasha wakes to the unnerving feeling that there is an intruder in her bedroom. She shifts, takes in a deep breath which goes out with a sigh, and allows her breathing to even out as if she had been disturbed but fallen back to sleep. Her hand is now wrapped around the handle of a semi-automatic pistol she keeps tucked under her pillows. The room is still for a moment before the air currents shift and Natasha is certain that someone is there, probably standing just beside her bed.
She waits.
A moment goes by.
Then another.
Nothing happens.
Eventually the intruder leaves, and Natasha cracks one eyelid enough to watch as the Winter Soldier silently pads out of the room and closes the door behind him.
The Winter Soldier sleeps in her spare bedroom that night, and is gone by the time she wakes up in the morning. He had indeed found her private weapons cache, and had taken several knives and a hand pistol. The backpack she'd given him is gone, but the credit card lies on the coffee table, a silent: "Thanks, but no thanks."
A small smile tugs on her lips when she makes her way into the kitchen and finds a fresh pot of coffee brewed, a plate of breakfast pastries from the bakery down the street sitting on the counter. She'd missed him leaving, but only just; and if the breakfast waiting was anything to go by she had made a good first (well, fifth at most) impression.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Natasha doesn't see or hear from the Winter Soldier again for nearly a year. She knows that Steve and Sam have been searching for him in their downtime (what little they have) between the fiascos with Ultron, and dodging the stray bullets that Hydra's death-throes send at them. But every lead they follow has either led to a dead end, or more trouble. The Winter Soldier, Bucky, remains elusive.
Turns out they've just been looking in the wrong direction, looking forward, when they should have been looking behind, because Bucky's been tracking them too.
Natasha is in London the next time she and the Winter Soldier cross paths. The mission is a simple information gathering operation, but it goes south due to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new transparency policy. The targets recognize her and she suddenly finds herself in a situation involving handcuffs, a meat locker, and being stripped down to her underwear. It's unimaginative overall, she's done something like this before, but this time it's immensely harder to get out of without Coulson and Clint on standby for extraction. She's forced to get her information the hard way; having it beaten out of her while the targets get cocky and therefore talkative. She's gotten about as much information as she can handle; a black eye, a couple bruised ribs, and the names of more than a dozen Hydra agents currently working their way into various intelligence agencies. She's just about to switch mental gears into escape mode when four silenced-shots cut through the air and her targets crumple to the floor in front of her clutching their kneecaps. Natasha is out of her handcuffs and into a crouched position before the bodies hit the floor, and she scans the shadowy warehouse for this new development. Her targets are moaning, delirious with pain, but they are visibly confused when they see Natasha get out of the chair as if he hadn't been handcuffed there, having the tar beaten out of her for the last half hour.
A man emerges from the shadows, and Natasha doesn't know whether she should laugh or run.
The Winter Soldier greets her with a crooked grin. "Natalya." He says, and Natasha relaxes from her fighting stance.
"I had this under control." She says, looking around for her uniform and Widow's-bite cuffs.
"I know." He replies, and she glances at him in surprise.
He shrugs and shoulders his rifle. "I trained you to be the best. These two morons would have been a cake-walk, but I got impatient."
She stares at him, and is about to say something when one of the men at her feet groans loudly.
"Better call it in to S.H.I.E.L.D., or whoever it is you work for these days" he says. "Don't let these two crawl away on my account."
She smiles a little sardonically. "I think you took care of that for me…"
He pulls a face. "Hmmm, so I did. Well in that case, why don't you use those handcuffs to make sure they can't get very far, send your handler the coordinates and we can ditch the debriefing and get dinner instead?"
It's absurd that he's making her blush like a teenager. It's even more absurd that she actually agrees to his suggestion, but somehow she finds herself eating fish and chips out of a Styrofoam carton, on a park bench overlooking the Thames somewhere near the Tower of London.
"You remember?" She asks, cautiously, during a lull in their conversation. He's a good deal more talkative than he was the last time she saw him, more so than when she knew him before too. She doesn't know if that's good or bad.
He nods, and his eyes grow haunted for a moment.
She raises an eyebrow. "How much?"
The haunted look disappears and he grins at her again. She knows he remembers enough.
"I think I remember everything."
"So, you followed me. Why?"
"Because I owe you. Because I wanted to. But mostly so I could tell you: you were right."
"Usually am." She says, with a smirk. "Remind me what I was right about this time?"
"Sometimes all you need is for someone to point you in the right direction."
Natasha nods. She can't think of anything more to say, but she doesn't think she really needs to. This time he does the talking for her, and she listens politely, if only because he's saved her skin and bought her dinner. Mostly he tells her what he's been up to the past few months; saving certain Avengers' asses from the shadows. But at some point when they crack open the beers they'd bought at the convenience store next to the chip shop he begins to talk about Steve, and the Howling Commandoes and WWII.
When they finish eating they linger on the park bench they've found, not quite willing to leave.
"Have you talked to Steve yet?" she asks.
He shakes his head. "Not ready yet."
"I don't suppose you're ready to turn yourself in to Fury yet, either?"
He smiles at her sadly. "Not sure I ever will be."
She nods. She understands, she wasn't too keen on taking orders from a shadowy patriarch after she got out of the Red Rooms either, but she can't say she isn't a little disappointed.
"You'll be seeing me around though." He promises. "If you don't mind." There's a boyish hope in his voice and a vulnerability in his eyes that gets Natasha somewhere deep beneath her emotional armor and tugs… Steve's mastered this sort of look too; both of them look a bit like a puppy begging for a cuddle and it annoys the crap out of her that she finds it irresistible. Must be something about guys born in the "Greatest Generation."
"I don't mind." She says, and she finds that she means it too.
He smiles at her, warmly. "Good."
From that day on, the Winter Soldier becomes a frequent facet of her life. Eventually he and Steve reunite properly, it's both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Eventually she and James (because she can't call him "Bucky" with a straight face) begin their interrupted relationship anew. But this time without the fear of discovery looming over them, and somehow it makes things easier. Having a little sanctuary of tenderness and unconditional protection can do wonders for making one's other problems seem manageable.
And for a while at least, neither one of them feels like they're searching for a place to belong. They make a home in each other, and in their friends. For that while, in between the chaos of their daily lives; alien invasions, secret Hydra cells, thwarting Armageddon, and the chaos of the Avengers in general, even in the midst of that chaos, all is well.