Disclaimer: Do not own.
Author's note: For deadlyromanova. This all sounded better in my head, I promise. Forgive me. Leave a comment?
.
i love you when you're singing that song and
i got a lump in my throat 'cause
you're gonna sing the words wrong
riptide, vance joy
.
Here is something he knows.
x
x
x
He doesn't remember.
.
He knows the blond man who smiles like the sun, laughs like he'll still be alive tomorrow, and doesn't stay down even with his body battered and broken.
Here is something he remembers. He remembers frail bones and listening to ragged breath and beaten lungs. He remembers wishing and hoping and praying –
.
Her, though.
He remembers that he knows her.
He just doesn't remember her.
.
"I know you."
"You shot me twice."
He can see Steve wincing from the corner of his eyes. He shakes his head. Frowns.
"I know you," he says again. He isn't sure about anything much nowadays, but here is something he feels deep in his bones – like the color blue of Steve's eyes and creaky wooden floors he hears constantly as a ringing in his ears, and yet she says it's not true. He also knows that she is a liar.
This time she smiles at him, all teeth and red lips. Like she's fully capable of carving his chest open and she's well aware of it. Like it's something he should already be aware of. A familiar smile.
"No," she says. "You don't."
There is a warning in there somewhere. He doesn't listen.
.
They don't trust him.
He doesn't blame them.
She's the only one who isn't afraid of him. Well, her and Steve. But Steve is an idiot, and he has grown wary of telling him not to do things, because he'll do them anyway. That's why he doesn't tell him to stay away – he knows it will only make him determined to be closer. He likes the others. They make sure Steve is never alone with him. They make sure Steve doesn't do anything stupid.
Her? It's another story. The others seem to think she's fully qualified to handle him. He doesn't know what to feel about to that. He's not sure he knows how to feel.
She brings cards, and they play poker. He's oddly good at it.
"Have we played before?" He tries, when she has beaten him for the third time in a row. He throws the cards he's holding to the table in frustration. She watches in amusement. He's good. She's better.
"We've never met before," she replies, not missing a beat. "It's your turn to shuffle the cards, Barnes."
He doesn't move. "That's wrong," he tells her. She raises an eyebrow. "You're not – you're not supposed to call me that."
There is a brief pause in her. Subtle, but enough for him to catch. As if she's thinking. "Bucky, then?" He nods, although something in him is screaming that it's not that either. Something in him is saying that it's terribly important, what she chooses to call him. "Okay. If so, don't call me Romanoff."
The others call her… "Natasha."
She hums. "Just because we're on first name basis now, that doesn't mean I'll shuffle the cards for you."
He shuffles the cards. He doesn't understand why Natasha feels wrong on his tongue.
.
It doesn't end there.
He keeps trying to prod, around the shambles of his brain. Tries to catch her off guard with saying things he suddenly just knows – because it has been happening more frequently and he has mostly kept it in for himself. He doesn't need to share the horrors in his head with anyone, not even Steve. (But there are things like eating chocolate on a train in Germany with someone named Dugan or that Steve is used to being beat up on the back of an alley that he shares, just to see the other guy smile, for a little bit.)
He knows that she dances.
"I do," she says. "I breakdance."
Ballet, he says.
She laughs.
He knows that she knows how to sail a boat.
"Yes," she intones. "I watched it on Discovery Channel with Rogers once."
No, he wants to say. You sailed across the Atlantic Ocean once. But that is a weird thing for him to say, because he didn't even know why he thinks she had, so he doesn't say it.
He knows that she can snap someone's neck with her bare hands.
She looks at him pointedly. "Don't we all?"
And isn't that the sad, sad, truth.
It isn't until a few months of this have passed, that they let him join their briefings. He lurks in the corner of the room, not really saying anything. Merely listening. Watching. He doesn't even intend to speak up, until his mouth decides it for himself. "She can," he announces, to the other shocked faces who obviously also didn't think he was going to speak, given how rarely he talks to them. "Natasha can speak Kazakh." She has never told him that.
She nods in affirmation, and it is decided that they'll be sending her for the undercover mission. Natasha doesn't react to him, as usual. But here is also the moment when he decides that he has had enough – the moment when Barton tenses and his eyes flick between him and Natasha and there is no surprise in them.
.
He confronts her in the gun range and waits impatiently until she acknowledges his presence. She turns, and he is surprised when she offers him the gun in her hand. He reaches out to take it. The weight is familiar in his hand.
"Why does it matter so much," she asks, and he thinks finally finally. Yet it still isn't a confession. He swallows the disappointment. "That you think you know me?"
It still isn't a confession, and he can't read between her lines. He thinks he could, sometime in the past in a life he doesn't recall. One long gone beneath stacks of fire and dirt and blood. He thinks he used to be good at reading her, used to be someone she couldn't hide anything from. The thought bothers him. He answers her either way, metal fingers fiddling with the gun in his hand – the one she handed to him when the others wouldn't even let him around a butter knife (good decision, there are thirty ways he can kill someone with one). "Because everything is screwed up in my head, and some days I'm not even sure of who I am – but I'm always sure that I know you. Why is that?"
"It's better if you don't know," she says. It is the closest she'll ever get to actually admitting it. They are both well aware of that.
"That is my choice!" He snaps, his voice rising. It is the first time he can remember feeling angry about something – a white hot anger, not blind rage. It feels good. He feels in control. He hasn't felt in control for a really long time. "Who the hell are you to say which one is and which one isn't?"
She is calm, steady. She doesn't even flinch. "Bucky," she says. And it's like a switch has been flicked, because he is suddenly hyper aware of his surroundings. Of her. In a way that he doesn't even realize he could be. Her presence is soothing, and he takes a shuddering breath, trying to calm himself down. She lets him, just standing there and watching him with something unreadable in her gaze. Because this is not her fault, and deep down he knows that fact.
"So we did know each other," he repeats quietly. And suddenly his thoughts turn, and he's horrified – because what if he – his hands are so tainted with blood that he has lost track of who they belonged to. "Did I - ? Is that why you – ?"
"No," and there's a shift in her, because now she's glaring at him. Her voice is stern. "You would never hurt me."
"Yet I shot you twice," he says.
Her lips curl, something mystifying. "Not knowingly."
But that's the problem, isn't it? He doesn't know.
"Besides," she says again, interrupting his train of thoughts, lightly but with conviction. "I can always kick your ass." That, he doesn't doubt.
He hesitates. "Was it bad? What happened between us?"
She doesn't lie. Not this time. "Yes," she says. His heart stutters. But then she smiles. This smile is different from the previous smiles he has seen from her before. It's genuine. "It ended badly. It wasn't our faults, though. And it wasn't always bad. It was a good thing."
He's still not satisfied with the answers she is giving him. "Then why don't you want me to remember? I don't understand." It has been what everyone has been trying to get him to do. They've been trying anything, everything, to jog his memory. And yet here she is, the only one who doesn't even try.
She takes a step closer to him, reaches up to rest a hand on the back of his neck. Her touch is gentle, and he doesn't startle, just leans down a little bit when her fingertips dig slightly into the patch of skin there. It's almost as if his body remembers. It's almost as if this is something he has done a thousand of times. It's almost as if this is something they have done a thousand of times.
"I know what it's like to have someone tinker with your mind and leave a mess there," she murmurs, her eyes staring right into his. "And believe me, you're pushing yourself too hard with this. It's not going to help you. You have to let it go. When you remember, then you'll remember. It's okay if you don't. But you shouldn't strain yourself." He presses his forehead down to hers in a gesture that clogs up his throat. "Don't go chasing things around just because you think you should remember, and I don't want you to try just because someone tells you to."
"Natasha, I –"
Her green eyes are so bright and they make his chest aches in a way he doesn't get. "Stop trying so hard, Bucky," she says. Something about her is weighing him down, anchoring him. He breathes. She smiles again, softly. "Wish me luck for the mission."
"Yeah," he says. "Good luck, Natasha."
He stays long after she is gone. The gun is limp in his grasp, his finger on the trigger.
.
Here is what he doesn't tell her.
He doesn't tell her about the dreams – the ones that blur the second he opens his eyes.
Of a woman with red curls who laughs at what he says, kisses him, and calls him—
.
(One day, he'll look up at her, on a day with clear blue sky and absolutely no memorable moment. And he'll say, "Natalia."
And she'll smile, a bit coy, with hope and promises. "James."
That day is not today.)
.
End.
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