A/N: This is a tie along with 'Nemnogo Pauk', but it's not necessary to read that to understand this. Reviews my make day, peeps.
Natasha knew he was there.
In his defense, he wasn't exactly trying to be subtle. He wasn't broadcasting that he was there, but he wasn't attempting to hide it either.
She'd been sitting at the park for the better part of half an hour, enjoying the time to herself as she sipped at her coffee in between commission hearings, when she saw him. He sat about a hundred yards away, staring at her intently.
Throwing her coffee cup in the trash, she stood up, stretching cramped muscles from sitting all day, and headed in his direction. She figured it was safe enough; if he'd wanted to kill her, she never would have seen him.
He didn't move as she sat down on the opposite end of the bench from him.
"Rogers is looking for you. Steve," She clarified, pulling a piece of gum from her jacket pocket.
"I know."
"And… you're here because…?"
He was silent for a moment, before he finally turned his head to look at her, his green eyes unreadable as he spoke.
"I knew you."
"Yeah. You did," Natasha said slowly, leaning forward, and resting her elbows on her knees.
"We… we were…"
"Yeah," She said softly, looking over, and finally meeting his eyes. "We were."
"I… I remember a roof, and… and a river. We… fell?"
The questioning tone in his voice was almost desperate, and Natasha knew he was doing something she herself had done a million times since her defection from Red Room. He was trying to establish what was real, and what was fake. What had actually happened, and what had been implanted in his brain.
"We didn't fall. We…" She stopped, sighing softly as she leaned back. "You weren't… You were… loaned… to the Red Room, where I was being trained, along with forty seven other girls. You were supposed to be a… a mentor, I suppose.
"You… you took a special interest in me. I don't know why; you never said. But we uh… we… started a relationship," She said, licking her lip nervously. "After about… eight months, we… we started talking about making a break for it. Leaving… well, everything behind. Two months later, you… you found the moment, and we tried running.
"The plan was to get to the roof, and jump into the river. You thought… with your arm, and the serum… you figured you could hold me, and make the swim. The currents were strong; I don't think anybody without the serum would've had a chance."
Nat watched as his foot began tapping rapidly against the pavement, as he looked up at her. "What… what happened?"
"We… made it to the roof, maybe half a minute a head of the guards. We jumped, but… They threw a taser dart at your arm. The shock… You couldn't hold on. Your arm short-circuited.
"I don't know what happened to you. If you escaped, or if they fished you out too. All I know is that they caught me a mile down river, unconscious, with two broken arms, and a broken leg. They… When I asked what happened to you, they just… Well, after the third time, I just… stopped asking."
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally, Bucky looked up at her, a small smile turning up just the corners of his lips.
"You thought I was competition."
"What?"
"Every other girl in that room… They were either scared, or… awe-struck. But not you. I… The second you saw me… the wheels started turning. I could see it, you… You thought you could take me out if… if you picked your moment. It was… your confidence."
Natasha chuckled softly. "Confidence? Try arrogance. I seem to remember you putting my place more than once in training."
He did the slight lip-up turn at the corners again, and they lapsed back into silence. Finally, Natasha sighed again.
"Why are you here? What do you want from me?"
"I… I don't know. There… there are so many… gaps. Holes. I'm just…" His voice trailed off, as he stared into the distance.
"Trying to figure out what's real," Natasha finished for him.
He shrugged noncommittally, staring off into the distance. "You seem to be doing okay for yourself."
She snorted. "Yeah. I'm doin' just great. Listen… There are still things that… That I can remember clear as day, that I know didn't happen. I have memories of dance recitals for the Bolshoi Ballet when I was in my late teens… I can… I can feel every beat of the music, every step of the routine; I remember the way the lights shone off of the stage.
"But none of that happened. It's always going to feel real; you'll still wake up from dreams or nightmares where you remember something that you know didn't actually happen. Sometimes it's better than remembering what did happen.
"What they did to us… They altered our brains. Our physicality, our psychology, our mental processes… There's no fixing that. You'll never be Bucky Barnes, best friend to Steve Rogers, lady's man extraordinaire. And I'll never be Natalia Romanova, the girl who just wanted to dance, and loved cats. We are who we are, and there's no fixing that. All we can do is try and use what was done to us to help others."
He finally looked back at her, a small, sad smile on his face. "And how's that going for you?"
"Well… I still kill people for a living," She said with a sardonic laugh. "Now I just kill bad people. Most of the time. Got myself a… Well… friend, I suppose, although he's more than that."
"Your archer." At her arched eyebrow, he shrugged again. "I've… been watching. You've been up to visit him twice. He seems… good for you."
She turned her body, so she was facing him, and she set her elbows on her knees again. "He is. Because he accepts who I am, not who he wants me to be, or who I want to be. He takes me as I am, and enjoys what we have. He doesn't make demands, and there's no pressure. And the best thing? He doesn't question why I do things.
"He doesn't ask why I get up every hour and check every possible exit. He doesn't ask why I refuse to eat certain foods, or why I can't sleep on an actual bed. He knows not to come up behind me, or to try and shake me awake. He doesn't question it, he just accepts it."
"Are you fucking?"
She chuckled softly. "Sometimes. Clint… In its own way, his childhood was almost as fucked up as mine. We fuck, and that's all it is. No personal attachments, no emotional baggage dragged in… Just a physical release. Hell, sometimes, I think we get more release from beating the hell out of each other than we do sex. But it works. He's one of the few people I trust… Hell, after Coulson, maybe the only person I trust."
"I… thought you worked with Steve, and the… the Avengers."
"I do. And they're good people; even Stark has his moments," She added with a laugh. "But I don't trust them. They don't know my secrets… They don't know me. I like them, but I don't trust them."
"Did you trust me?" His voice was quiet, almost as if he didn't truly want to know the answer.
"Honestly? You were the first and last person I ever loved. But I learned my lesson about that the hard way," She said practically. "One of the most important lessons I learned."
"What was that?"
"That love is only for children." When he looked away, she sighed again. "I don't know what you were looking for when you came here… But if it's hope that you can… I don't know, be the man you were… Be happy… Find true love… I can't give you that.
"What I can give you is… consolation. You'll never be happy. We're not programmed for it. But you'll find contentment. You'll never be the man you were, but you can become a new man… One who makes his own choices. You'll never find love, but you can find someone who accepts you… And in our case… We have to take what we can get."
She slowly pushed herself to her feet, staring down at the unmoving man. "Other than that, I don't know what I can tell you."
She started walking away, when she heard him call out behind her.
"What'd you call me?"
She turned, her face questioning. "What?"
"My… my name. What'd you call me?"
"You told me to call you James."