Disclaimer: I obviously own nothing. Natasha and Bucky are not mine. Not even the action figures.
It happens every time. Last time, the time before that, and the time before that. She knows that it will happen again this time. Doesn't stop her from hoping though.
He's just been woken up yesterday and she'll meet him at the airport. This time they're going to Paris, posing as a couple on their honeymoon. Not for the first time, Natalia wonders why the KGB would tempt fate like this, but she supposes that it's because she and James work so well together.
That's why she is waiting on an uncomfortable airport seat, passport and air ticket in hand, both bearing a fake name. He arrives ten minutes after she does, and she recognizes him easily in the crowd. He looks the same as he did that night six years ago, when he left her with a warm kiss to her cold skin and a promise – one that he knew he could not keep – to remember her. She hates herself for the bubbly feeling in her stomach, for loving the way his dark eyes flick around the dingy airport, for how his stride towards her is purpose-filled.
She gives him a smile, just slightly more genuine than the usual plastered-on smiles she gives her other partners. "There you are, dear, I've been waiting."
The Winter Soldier leans down, pecks her on the lips like the devoted husband he's supposed to be. "Comrade Romanova," he greets her in a whisper. Impersonal, professional. It's expected, but it doesn't mean that the ache in her heart hurts any less. When he draws back he takes her hand in the crook of his arm and they head towards customs. He plays the part of the doting young husband well, but that's all it is for him – a role to play, and she another actor. There is no flicker of remembrance in his eyes.
Natalia's a light sleeper, but she often wakes up alone in the bed of their hotel room to find James staring off pensively into nowhere. She's been through this enough times to know that insomnia and wakefulness are human things, signs that his humanity is coming back and soon, he'll come back to her. This is a slow mission; they could be here for a month or more. They have time. More than enough time.
Natalia hates it; while loving this, and loving him, she hates it. The guilt she feels when her stomach flutters in giddy wingbeats, the ache of not being able to cradle the hard line of his jaw and turn his head towards her for a kiss, the dread of knowing that soon, much too soon, she will have to lose him all over again. No matter how long they have this time, she knows that in a matter of weeks their mission will be over, and his mind will be taken and wiped, and she will once again be no more than another agent, one of the Black Widows. One of twenty-seven.
But it starts, because he's bound to fall in love with her, like some twisted version of star-crossed lovers, doomed to repeat the same tragedy. And no matter the time or place, it always starts with the same signs — his eyes lingering too long on her face and lips, studying her in moments where she's silent. He finds himself caught in the way her eyebrow cocks up almost unconsciously, how the shadows of her eyelashes reach across her cheekbones when she's asleep, the firm grip of her dainty hands on a gun or knife. Every one of her movements are graceful in their practicality, like a dance that she's rehearsed a thousand times. He's practical, too, but he doesn't have that polished look to his movements. He is a rifle with a single bullet to take out a target — quick, brutal, distant. She, on the other hand, is a dagger wielded with finesse, sharp and neat and entirely too close and personal.
Her proximity is intimidating. More than once he's had to physically distance himself from her to stop himself from kissing those inviting lips that look so soft. He isn't meant to be this way, affection and desire and love have been programmed out of his system. He shouldn't be capable of wanting someone in this way. And it isn't just because Natalia is beautiful; he's seen plenty of beautiful women, some of who can give Romanova a run for her money. There's something about her that infuriates and fascinates him at the same time, something that makes his heart fill with warmth and frustration simultaneously. He's starting to feel, and that scares him most of all.
"Fuck," Natalia growls under her breath. James glances up from the road to see her pant leg staining deep red, and he grips the wheel tighter, as though the pressure on the wheel can stop her bleeding. Natalia's breathing is tight and shallow. James can tell that she's fighting the pain, fighting the urge to cry out from it. From the way the blood gushes from the wound despite her hands pressing down on it as hard as she can, it's a deep wound and it's causing her much more pain than her pride will let her show.
They're almost at the safe house, and James speeds up the car in time with Natalia's breathing. He speeds onto the driveway and abruptly breaks. A twinge of unfamiliar guilt tears through his gut at Natalia's pained gasp when she's thrown against her seatbelt. He's out of the car before she recovers and is opening her door and helping her out of the car. As soon as she's on her feet her injured leg gives way and she cries out. James catches her before she falls and she lets him take her weight, breathing hard, her face white with pain, cast over by a shadow of shame.
She's trembling from the effort to hold herself up even with James's help, and his heart gives an unfamiliar wrench at the sight of her like this. "I'm okay," she says through gritted teeth. "I can make it to the house."
"The hell you can," James says brusquely. He lifts her into his arms and she curls into his body. As shameful as it is for her to admit that she can't even walk on her own, she's glad that it's James who is here, who is seeing her at her weakest moment. He carries her into the safe house and sits her on the edge of the bathtub. He cuts the pants off of her; the material is already sticking to the drying blood and she clenches her teeth forcibly, her eyes watering as he peels the material off her skin.
James takes a moment to look at the wound. It runs down half her leg, starting from the soft flesh on the inside of her thigh and harshly zags down her leg, stopping a few inches above her kneecap. It's deep, deeper than he'd expected and she's already lost too much blood. A quick glance at her face tells him that she can barely hold herself upright, she's lost too much blood and is on the verge of unconsciousness.
He cleans the wound with a deliberate gentleness, conscious that every rough touch against her skin is another iota of unnecessary pain for her. He's more like her old James than the one this time around, and Natalia lets herself believe for a moment that he is her James. The one who had silently cleaned her injuries more times than she can remember, the one she had done the same for countless times. The one who could flick his eyes towards hers and she would know exactly what he was thinking and smirk. The one who would wrap his arms around her and kiss her forehead after they make love.
He hands her a bottle of vodka silently and she drinks deeply from it until the pain in her leg subsides leg subsides enough for her to look at him and nod. He pulls the needle and thread through her skin and she hisses, taking a swig from the bottle again. She focuses on the familiar burn down her throat and the heat searing down her chest to her stomach. James is soon finished with the stitches and he wraps a bandage around the wound.
She looks down at him, her eyes not quite focusing due to blood loss and alcohol. She takes his chin in her small, elegant hand and pulls him towards her to meet his lips with hers. James doesn't know how to react, but before he can decide whether he wants to continue or push her off, she pulls back and gives him a little smile of contentment. It creates a bubble of warmth in his chest that is, like the kiss, not at all unpleasant but certainly very bewildering.
He gently picks up Natalia once again; this time she's too weak and dazed to protest. She curls against his chest, the content smile still on her lips, which are, as James now knows, as soft and kissable as they look, not to mention vodka-flavored. He lays her down on the bed, her head on a pillow, and covers her with the blanket. She's soon asleep; her injury and the events today have drained her and she needs to recuperate in order for her enhanced biology to mend her body. But she's also capable of staying awake and alert in these circumstances, and the fact that she lets herself fall asleep so quickly is a sign that she trusts him to keep her safe. The knowledge warms James's stomach with a happiness he doesn't quite understand.
Natalia wakes to a room in grey light. It takes her a moment to make out James's silhouette against the hazy film of the curtains, whose edges are sharpened by the pre-dawn light outside. When her uncertain eyes are able to focus in the dimness, she sees that he is wearing a contemplative frown, and there is a depth in his eyes that she has not see before, not this time round. Signs that he is battling his reawakening memories while his training and conditioning struggle against his inherent humanity.
"James," she says softly, and he spins around.
"Natalia?" he says, her name falling from his lips uncertainly, as though he's worried that she'll shoot him for daring to call her by her first name (men have died for less). Instead a smile flashes over her face, though her expression of sheer joy is soon tinged with sadness. He makes a tentative move towards the bed and she nods her consent.
"How are you?" he asks, the phrase sounding awkward and hesitant. It tugs at her how much more human he looks – eyes soft, face open, like a younger, less jaded version of himself.
She reaches out to cup his face, but at the last moment drops her hand to his arm instead. "I'll live," she says.
"I was so scared – " He draws in a breath and rubs a hand over his face. "It was a serious injury," he says a little defensively, as though he had to apologize for his concern.
Her lips quirk upwards a little. "I'm alive." And as long as I am, we will have to repeat this damned cycle forever. She closes her eyes against the ever-present voice of reason in her head. No. Not now. These tender moments with James do not happen often, and she wants, aches, to make the most of them, consequences be damned. Even if the consequences mean that she will lose him over and over again. Even if it means that she will spend every moment in-between hating herself and his hold over her.
"How much do you remember?" she asks.
He remembers things, hazy like dreams (but of course he's never dreamed... has he?), yet so vivid that he's no longer sure whether they're real. "Berlin," he says. "You had a hat, it was beige and lined with fur. So was your coat. It was cold, you slipped your hand into my pocket to hold my hand."
"You remember that?" She looks at him with hope and he nods.
"Tallinn, too. You were taken, they ordered me to leave you." Hesitantly, he cradles her cheek with his right hand and she leans into his palm, clasping her hand over his. "I ignored them and broke into the facility to rescue you." He watches her face for a reaction before continuing, "We had sex that night. And again in the morning before we had to go back to Russia." He finds himself smiling; he can't remember the last time he's smiled with genuine happiness. It feels good.
She's smiling, too, but there's a sadness in her eyes that he knows he has caused. "Natalia…" he murmurs her name. The use of of it speaks of an intimacy that is so hard to come by for people like them. He draws her towards him and warps his arms, one lean muscle, one cold gears and cogs, around her petite frame tentatively. It's an alien feeling, to have another body pressed against his so tenderly in a gentle, non-violent way, but at the same time it's strangely familiar, strangely right.
Natalia lays her head against his chest, his heartbeat as certain and steady as it has always been. She's going to be hurt again, she knows. He could be taken and used against her, or she could be used as a bargaining chip against him; even if their enemies don't find out their masters will. Their separation and his forgetting is an eventuality, not a possibility.
Nevertheless, she presses against him, wanting all of him, as much of him as she can get in whatever brief time they have together. These moments are all that she has to hold on to in the long stretches in-between, all that she has to remind herself that she is more than what they made her, that she is not only a killer and a weapon but a woman, a being of flesh-and-blood who is capable of defiance and thought and love. Maybe more than her need for him is her need for herself – to know that she can be her own woman, that she is more than the puppet they made her into, that she is human. And if he, and these moments with him, are what she has to remember that, she will take it.
So she pulls back slightly, only enough to reach up and meet his lips with her own in a possessive, demanding, hungry kiss. He reacts in exactly the way she knows he would, hands moving from her waist to cradle her face. She lets him tilt her face upwards to deepen the kiss, lets him push her to lay flat on the bed. She cannot stop him, cannot deny this from either of them.
She sighs as his lips trail down her throat and breasts, the pleasure filling her every nerve and pushing away, if only momentarily, the guilt and dread that's always at the back of her mind. It is a guilty pleasure, yes, but in that moment the only thing that's real is this – James pushing into her and their matching groans, the way their moans build up together, the feeling of her stitches breaking but there's no pain, none at all, because he's riding her and the wave mounts and then –
She peaks with his name in her throat. He's shuddering within her, "Natalia" falling from his lips in harsh groans.
He collapses on her, heaving chest against heaving chest. He's heavier and firmer than she remembers, but that's okay. She can take his weight – wants to take his weight, to feel how real and solid he is against her. Simultaneously a burden and a comfort.
After a moment he rolls off her, still breathing hard. She looks across at him, and he at her, and she can't help but return his smile. He looks so much younger when he smiles, she can almost see him the way he had once been – before HYDRA, before Red Room, before the KGB. Innocent and hopeful. She wonders if she had ever been innocent or hopeful; she knows that these things have been squeezed out of her before she can remember having them.
"Your stitches." His voice brings her out of her thoughts and she glances down to her leg to see the blood seeping through the bandage and staining the white sheets. James is already out of bed and halfway to the adjoining bathroom to get the first aid kit. Natalia unwinds the bandage around the wound to inspect the opening. It's mostly healed, thanks to the serum, though the stitches rupturing have opened up the skin a little.
"It's okay," she tells James when he emerges from the bathroom with the first aid kit. He seems not to have not heard her, he's removing the old stitches from her leg with the same precision that he sewed them, though Natalia senses the tremor in his hands. He's emotionally compromised. She's been through this before; he hasn't. Or at least doesn't remember going through it. She cradles his jaw to bring his gaze up to her. "Hey," she says, meeting his frightened eyes with calm ones. "It's okay, James."
"Yeah." He takes a deep breath. "Yeah, I know. Let me – I'll put a bandage over it but um – I think you don't need stitches."
"No, I don't," she agrees. "Don't worry. It's almost healed – see?" she says as he removes the last of the black thread. He nods, some of the tension obviously leaving his shoulders as he takes in the red line across her thigh. He can't help remembering how it looked earlier, how wide the gash was, how pale she had been from pain and blood loss.
"Natalia," he says as he cleans the wound carefully. He needs something to work on, something to look at so he doesn't have to look her in the face when he asks, "Do you ever blame me?"
She draws her breath in sharply. She hadn't expected that question. It's never come up before. "Not you," she says, truthfully. She owes him that much – an honest answer to a question that will soon be erased from memory. "Never you."
"Who, then?"
"Them," she says savagely. "The ones who order for your brain to be wiped. Who order me to fuck, cheat, and kill. Who order us to be partnered on missions, again and again and again." Her voice cracks and she realizes she's trembling with rage and James is looking at her like he wants to hug her but is afraid she will tear him to pieces. She realizes that, in that moment, she could tear herself to pieces.
She doesn't know how to explain this to James – James who has never known what it feels like to be the one left behind, to be the one waiting for the other to return, the one who in equal parts yearns for and dreads the inevitable. James, who has never been the one watching her leave. James, who has never needed to see his lover's eyes flint-hard without any semblance of memory or tenderness. So she whispers, "I'm sorry," and he nods and brings his arms around the ball she's curled into, her cocoon that smells and feels like James.
Their mission goes well after that. To Natalia's dismay.
Because a mission that goes well means a mission that will be over soon. By the time they have killed everyone they need to kill and gotten every document they need to get, they receive details about a flight that will take them back to Russia in two days.
She holds the slips of paper – plane tickets, flight schedule – in her hands, a scowl on her face. This makes it final; she has two more days of James, before he forgets all about her. The next time they meet, he will be the Soldier again. Not her James.
James comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist, and as he whispers his lips brush the shell of her ear. "Let's make the most of it, then."
So they spend two days in Paris, doing all the things couples should do when they go to the city. There is no running from men trying to kill them, no gunfire and bullet wounds, no keeping an eye out for snipers hidden on rooftops. Instead it's strolling along the Seine, stealing each other's ice cream, lying on the grass below the Eiffel Tower with her head on his lap. It's two days of absolute bliss, two days of reprieve, two days of acting like normal human beings. And Natalia wonders whether this is what life is like for normal people, normal couples. Whether this is what it would be like for them, if they were anywhere within the vicinity of normal.
She stops herself going down that track while she still can.
They spend their last morning in bed. It's too precious a time to waste doing anything else. Natalia's arms are around James's torso, her bare chest against his naked back, her cheek between his shoulder blades. She feels his breathing, every rise and fall of his abdomen against her hands. Up, down. Up, down. She can sense his heartbeat too, when that one vessel that's just against her cheek throbs with every pump of his heart. His breathing, his heartbeat. His rhythm. Her breathing and her heartbeat are rhythms too, rhythms that will always be slightly out of sync with his.
She feels a tear forming in the corner of her eye but she wipes it away before it can fall. She is Natalia Romanova. She is a Black Widow. She does not cry. Tears have long been beaten out of her system. Nothing, not James, not his love, nor hers, can change that.
As though sensing her agitation, the way he can sense a disruption in a tranquil air, James rolls around and takes in her expression. Every single one of her emotions is clearly written on her face for him to read. Every weakness, every sadness, every vulnerability. She doesn't have the energy for masks any more.
His heart clenches in a way that he hadn't known was possible until a couple of weeks ago. She's changed him, is still changing him. Every day he's discovered new things about himself. Forgotten pieces of humanity, unknown acts of tenderness. And soon, all that will be gone and next time he – they – will have to start afresh.
He looks at Natalia now, her wide green eyes speaking of deeply embedded sorrows that he can never understand because he cannot grasp at time the way she does. He wonders if there's a way for him to remember her this time. He doesn't know that he's thought of this every single time before. He knows, though, as well as she does, that there is no way around this. That he is doomed to forget, and she is doomed to wait, and some day they are doomed to fall in love and repeat it all.
He cradles her face in his hands; she's so delicate, he can feel her bones under her skin, he could crush her skull easily. If he were ordered to do so someday, could he do it? he wonders. But that day will not come, or so he hopes, and for now she is his lover. She will always be his lover. So he kisses her lips; tenderly, a kiss of longing and apologies, bittersweet.
When they pull apart, he runs his thumb across her cheek to stop the tears that she is powerless to stop, unaware that his own cheeks are wet until her hands wipe at the wetness on his face. "Next time," he promises.
Only there is no next time.
Less than a year later, Natalia leaves the KGB. She's been contemplating it since they put James back in cryo, but it takes her months to work up the courage and resolve. As she drives her stolen car down a Belarusian highway, the Russian border far behind her and falling further and further away with every inch of ground she covers, she finds that she doesn't know what exactly the last proverbial straw was. Maybe it's the final string of missions, the culmination of her KGB career in a series of unsavory missions, work so dirty that even she is uncomfortable with, innocent eyes of children staring up at her as she puts their lights out, candles snuffed too early. Or maybe it's the nightmares, just like those she's had her whole life but worse now, so much that she's partly scared of going to sleep but even more scared of waking. And maybe still it's James, how she hates that every breath she draws is for him and not herself, how it's taking more from her every time until she's given all of herself, until her love is no longer love and she is no more than the shell of a woman, waiting for him to come back so she can lie to herself that this time, this time, it will be forever.
Maybe it's all those reasons that made her leave. The way she paints herself with blood and calls it armor but staggers under its weight. The way she fights for breath through sleep and prays that she won't wake up. The way James is her anchor to humanity that is dragging her down to the depths and drowning her.
So she cuts herself loose while she can, and now she's free. For the first time in her life, really, truly, free. Free from duty, free from her masters, free from love. For the first time she can sleep in until twelve, decide what she wants for breakfast, choose where to go. Nothing in the world but her in a car, the open field around her, and the highway that cuts through it, unending towards the horizon where the yellow grass reaches up to kiss the blue sky, unmarred by a single cloud. Freedom, she finds, is dizzying and surreal, like inhaling too much oxygen.
But amid the intoxicating euphoria there's a sadness, one that she pushes away to the back of her mind where it stays quietly all day as long as she doesn't provoke it. But at night it rises, a great shadow that swallows all the light she's absorbed in the day. It manifests itself in lonely meals and an empty bed, taunting her in the shape of man whose arm reflects light in the darkness.
She sees him more clearly when she's dreaming. Sometimes he's tender, like that last morning when he kissed her with a promise he can't keep. Other times, like the time after she seduced and betrayed a Polish heir to her employer, she sees him with an accusation in his dark eyes. She doesn't know which is worse, but either way she wakes sobbing and stumbling into her kitchen for the vodka that is quickly becoming her constant companion.
She never stays anywhere long, never uses the same name twice. The only alias she keeps is the Black Widow. It's the armor she wears on her body, the shield that deflects blows and the weapon that deals them. Her name is whispered with fear among the underworld and traded like the rarest commodity within her employers' circles. She does the job, picks up her payment, and leaves the city. Sheds one identity for another.
The one place she won't go is Paris. There are a number of men and women there who seem to attract enemies like a corpse attracts flies, and she's been offered, on multiple occasions, ridiculous sums of money to kill one of them. But she always refuses. Paris is different from anywhere else, special. Sacred. A shrine to her past, a memory she sometimes lets herself take out and turn over in her mind but never to indulge in. It is, like the ghost of their last kiss on her lips, bittersweet.
She's not lonely, she tells herself. People like her aren't supposed to have companions, and she's just fine with that. Getting attached is dangerous. She could be betrayed, but even worse, she could become a puppet again, and that she has promised herself she would never be. Not after the KGB; not after him. She tries not to think about him, but sometimes she can't help it. When it gets too much, she drinks herself into a mess before spending the night with some man who wants nothing but an emotionless fuck. She never remembers their faces.
The only face she remembers is one that she will never see again.
Then Clint finds her, or rather she lets him find her because she's tired; tired of running and tired of spilling so much blood that she's slipping on it and she doesn't have the strength to get back up again. He offers her a hand, though, instead of killing her and mixing her blood with those of her victims. Although she would rather lie down and die, she is a survivor at heart, so she takes his hand, stands back up and, for the first time, lives.
That's the moment she knows she's turned her back on everything she once was. She's no longer the Red Room's top pupil, or one of the many Black Widows. She's no longer the KGB's dog, or James's lover. She knows with certainty that if she ever meets him again, they will be on different sides of the battlefield. He will be, not her James, but the Winter Soldier, more machine than man. If and when that happens, neither time nor love can bring him back to her.
Doesn't stop her from hoping though.
Author's note:
I wrote this months ago, way back in October for the Marvel Shipping Games. Then the idea just kind of ran away with me and this happened, a monster of a fic about 5 times its original length and about 5 times more angsty, too.
For those reading Broken, I'm working on the next chapter but I can't promise anything because I'm working on another ironwidow fic that I promise will be awesome. You've all been very patient with me, and I thank you for that.