Author's Note: As per usual, I don't own Marvel of any of the characters. Anything you recognize belongs to Marvel, Stan Lee, etc. Please don't sue me.
Enemies - Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff
James should have expected this. Natalia Romanova had been his most promising student, once, and then she'd been his lover. She knew him like no other, whatever the blond man who carried the shield claimed about him. She knows his mind, knows his body and he is certain that they must all be aware of that by now. How fitting, that they should choose her to break him. She is the only one who stands a chance. He is no stranger to physical pain, after all, and perhaps they believe that his heart is the weak link in the chain. She opens her mouth to speak, but he interrupts her.
"Whatever you have to say, I don't want to hear it."
They're enemies now, and though he would never show it it pains him. They were closer than close, once. He'd taught her so much of what she knew, and she'd made his world a little brighter. He'd woken from stasis to find her married to another man, and even that he had been able to tolerate because it had given her a chance at happiness. What woman could be happy with a monster like him? He knew better than anybody just how twisted and damaged he was.
He should thank her, really. Natalia had been a weakness of his, the one thing that had helped him cling to whatever humanity had been left in him. Once she'd gone it had been easier to let the trappings of humanity fall away and to become the beast that he was today. Perhaps she had not created the monster, but her absence from his life had helped free it from its bonds. He no longer felt any remorse for the blood on his hands and the lives he'd taken, though the fact that his masters had sent him after the one woman he had ever come close to loving was not lost on him. He would grieve for her once she was gone, but he would obey his orders.
She was a traitor, and she must be eliminated. That was what he knew to be true. He tried to close his ears and his heart to the toxic words she spoke to him. Perhaps she had him at a disadvantage, restrained and unarmed as he was, but his heart was true. She would never have that again. "James, let me explain."
"I will not listen to your lies, traitor." The look on her face is one of distress and for a moment he almost yields, but no. That is what she wants. She wants him to fall prey to sentiment and emotion like the swine she now named her allies, but he was not weak. There was no softness left about him, and he would not hear her. "You might as well kill me, Natalia. This pathetic attempt at an interrogation is pointless."He wasn't going to tell her anything of use. He knew that, she knew that, and he knew she knew it. She composes herself quickly enough, hiding behind the stoic mask of the Black Widow, and leaves the room. He counts it as a victory. Right here, right now, he's proven to himself that his will is stronger than even he realized.