AN This was a lovely piece that I did with the help of qualapec,who gave me the starter for this mess. It was supposed to be a short, sweet little thing, but I'm absolutely not surprised it became so big. It has been months since Cap 2 came out, and yet this is the first fic I'm writing/publishing. How could my emotions not burst forth?
Rating: High T for language and allusions to/brief descriptions of gore.
Natasha was flying for a brief, incredible moment. She was sailing through the battlefield – gold tinted bots crashing and snapping, the city burning around her. It reminded her of riding a Chitauri flyer across Manhattan, but she was less controlled this time, less sure as she gripped the back of a robot who was programmed and given purpose by a very angry, very omnicidal A.I.
The nav systems were probably damaged, because it was getting closer to the buildings every time they zoomed by one, and Natasha was trying to log as much data as she could and send it back to Avengers Tower before they crashed and she maybe-maybe-not was able to walk away from it.
It happened. The bot clipped a building, and Natasha was in air. Flying, turned on her head, and with no sure destination. She launched her grapple hook, and hoped it hit something solid. It did, but she swung wildly, hit the side of a building before the cord snapped.
Everything went black after that.
When she returned to consciousness, the sound of battle felt far away. She noted that her wounds had been field-dressed with fresh bandages, her injured ankle had been splinted.
"Well," she started, wincing in pain, "not my most graceful moment."
She opened her eyes, and the Winter Soldier was staring her down.
His hair was pulled away from his face in a loose ponytail, he didn't have the same worn-out, faraway look he'd had when she'd last seen him. This Winter Soldier was less living dead and closer to life, including all the pain that came with it.
He was also holding a gun to her, so there was that.
"I need your help," he said, and she noticed the long, bloody rod sticking in his side, just below his right lung, and how pale and sweat-drenched his face was. She also saw his metal arm was detached and laying limp at his side – the bots must have been picking up on the computers inside connecting to his nerves.
"Needs two hands."
Natasha chuckled, let her head fall back against the wall of the gutted out apartment they were hiding in. "Put the gun down, soldier, and we'll talk about it."
He stared her down, and she could see him weighing his options.
"Look," Natasha said, through a wave of pain. "These sorts of things go two ways. You patched me up, and I'm grateful, but you need my help, and I'm going to need you to put the gun down before I do that." Her eyes darted down to the rod in his side. "Besides, I'm going to need a third hand to get that out of you, and if you're pointing a gun at me, you'll fire it whether you want to or not. So, deal?"
Slowly, carefully, the Winter Soldier put the gun down.
"And slide it over?"
"Not on a first date, Black Widow," he replied, smiling, before squeezing his eyes shut. "Now, please. I'm bleeding out."
Natasha straightened, unable to resist a hiss as she gasped through her teeth.
"So, where are we?" she asked, trying to examine his wound in the half light. The Winter Soldier opened his eyes just enough to give her a flat look that said 'You've got a broken ankle, my arm's shot to hell and back, and, golly, there's a giant pipe in my chest, and you're making small talk', then spat out "I dunno. Some place in a ghetto. Didn't have many options."
She nodded, squinting. She reached for the knife she had strapped to her thigh, then realized that he had most likely removed it and all of her other weapons.
"Where's my knife? I need to cut away your shirt," she said, interrupting his wary expression before it had time to fully form. The Winter Soldier didn't say anything, just reached out behind him and tossed the knife at her. At this point, her sinking the blade into his throat or heart would only be a mercy.
Natasha didn't say anything as she worked. She cleared away the fabric from around the wound, checked the pipe to make sure it hadn't run clean through him, and prepped some of the rapid acting bandages she had by opening them and laying them on his chest. She wouldn't have time to fiddle around with them once the pipe was out of the way and the wound was allowed to bleed freely.
"Alright, Soldier, here comes the fun bit. Here, bite this." She held out a tightly wound wad of his shirt that hadn't been spoiled by blood or what she guessed was oil. He gave it a wary look, then carefully set it between his teeth so he wouldn't do something like break his teeth or bite his tongue off when she pulled the pipe out.
"By the way, you don't weigh less than two hundred pounds, right?"
"Wha?"
"I'm just trying to keep your heart from stopping when I inject you with this," she said, ignoring just how pale his lips were turning as she swiftly opened a hidden slot on her belt. Natasha pulled out a hypodermic needle and turned towards him. He tried to jerk back and catch her arm, but the pain in his side prevented him from doing much more than a strange combination between a flinch and a flail. Natasha gave him a remorseless smile as she sank the needle into his thigh. The asshole had shot her twice, and had completely trashed her friend, her organization, and all of her hard work for the last few years, not to mention had caused all sort of havoc to her personally. He could sweat under the idea of having some unknown chemical racing through him.
"Okay, now grab hold of this," she said, guiding his hand to the pipe. From the way he was baring his teeth, reaching up just a little bit farther and throttling her wasn't that distant a possibility. She just gave him a flat smile, made sure his hand had a firm grip, then pulled the pipe out of his chest.
He gasped around the fabric between his teeth, body arching from the pain. Natasha grabbed the remnants of his shirt and used that to staunch the bleeding, as well as an old sheet that was nearby (he was a World War II vet, as well as kind of a super soldier. He could handle a little dirt in his wounds). The Winter Soldier spat out the fabric as she pressed his hand against the wound to apply pressure, then finished opening the bandages. She then knocked his hands aside, and pressed the bandages into place.
"What the hell are those going to do," he snarled, making her give a tight grin.
"These are special. You know those band aids that can stop bleeding almost instantly?"
He gave a blank, if deeply disgruntled by pain, stare, and she suppressed a sigh.
"Well, these are like those, but ten times better. They stop the bleeding, they heal you faster, plus they have a bit of pain killer in the mix. God bless technology."
"Thanks," he grunted, then said "You wanna explain what you just injected me with?"
"That was pain killer. You'll thank me in a bit."
Now that he was out of the imminent danger of falling dead at her feet, Natasha administered the pain killer to herself. The needles were a relatively new addition to her belt. Each needle had actually had a separate dose of pain killer. One was measured out for her, and the other was for Clint (the science guy kitting her out with the needles was one of the hopeful ones, saying that she would thank him when he showed back up and went on a mission with her). Thankfully, there wasn't too much of a disparity between him and the Winter Soldier in the physical sense, so the pain killer would kick in as estimated.
"What now?" Natasha asked, casting the needle aside. She glanced out of the blown out window, then grimaced. The noise had died down somewhat, but there was now the tang of smoke in the air, though from rioters or the actual fight, she didn't know.
This had all gone hilariously wrong. Natasha had been dispatched with a group of SHIELD agents to sort out a problem with one or two vaguely hostile robots. Then the one or two robots turned out to be fifteen or twenty, and a mission that promised to be moderately dangerous turned out to be frankly lethal. She and her team hadn't been at all prepared, causing them to take bigger risks to try to clean up the mess as fast as possible. Hence, her midair adventure.
I wish Stark could come clean up this mess. Crazy robots are his area of expertise, she thought sourly, then focused on the Soldier, who seemed to be preparing himself for a response.
"We need to get out of here. Those robots locked onto me while I was picking you up, and the sons of bitches are out for blood."
"Do you know why they targeted you?"
"I was a threat," he said, tilting his head in way of shrug. "Or, at least, I was helping a threat. Close enough, either way."
Natasha stared at him, expression measured.
"And why did you help me, anyways? Last time we met, you tried to blow me up." At her words, he shrugged and looked away. If she had to put a name to it, Natasha would have said that he was...embarrassed.
"I recognized you. And when you don't really recognize anything...a bit of familiarity is something you want to keep hold of."
"Out of everything, you wanted to keep me alive, just because you recognized me?"
"You know Captain America," he said. His words were deliberate, like he was trying very hard not to reveal too much. Natasha felt like her soul was sighing in relief. So that's where they stood. That's what he remembered. It wasn't much, and it was something she could deal with. There was no reason for her to feel a little bit...disappointed.
"And you want to find him," she finished. The Winter Soldier's expression didn't change, but she had the strangest feeling that he was opening up, all of his uncertainty and selfish desire pouring into her lap. Natasha swallowed, closing herself up and not allowing his emotions to touch hers. They had more or less ended that a long time ago, and she wasn't really the type to indulge in a relapse.
Natasha clenched her teeth. Apprehension didn't suit him, and whatever this was didn't suit her.
"Why don't we focus on getting out of here alive, first, then we can focus on...that. Okay?"
He nodded, and instantly he was the Soldier again. Despite the sweat still coating his skin, and the sickly pallor, he was all ice and efficiency. This she could use.
"What assets do you have?"
"Me," he said, a thin smile on his face. "A knife. A few bills. Can't buy jack shit with them, though."
"Why not?"
"Everything's fucking expensive, is why."
Right, Natasha reminded herself, forcing herself not to heave a sigh and roll her eyeballs out of her head. He's from the Depression era. Ten bucks made you a millionaire back then.
"Okay. I've got all of the weapons you already stripped off, a few band aids...and it's us against a horde of angry robots."
"You want to try taking them down?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"Well, yes. They're attacking Chicago. I know it's not New York or DC, but hell, it's kind of important. And they're after something. I don't want a bunch of relatively sentient and homicidal robots to get a hold of what they want. Generally, that ends in strong robots and no people."
"I'm not doing it. Chicago's important, yeah, but we're shot to hell and back, and we have no weapons. You couldn't take care of it with a whole team. Store the hero complex for a few seconds before we're ass up in a ditch."
Natasha took exactly four seconds to appreciate how rare a treat it was to be accused of having a hero complex, then sat back on her heels.
"We were ill prepared, and we had just gotten there. If I just go back, and if you help—" Natasha cut herself off when she saw his expression. "Fine. Fine. What do you want to do, then, Soldier?"
"Get out of here. Recover in a proper shelter. Figure out what the robots are there for, if it's so important. Stop calling me 'Soldier'."
"But you—"
"I'm not a soldier. Not any more."
Natasha let that sleeping dog lie.
"...Fine. Then what can I call you?" For some reason, Natasha felt her breath catch, just a bit. She had done this before, so long ago, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted to repeat it. Names gave importance, and she didn't want another time bomb given importance and then strapped to her back.
His expression was flat as he examined her. After a small pause, he said "James."
Natasha exhaled, forcing it to sound normal. Same as last time. Different words, different manner, but the exact same name. She couldn't help but wonder if that meant the person that went with it would be anything like the last version of James.
Curious, though. He had introduced himself as James, and not Bucky. She would have thought that after the emphasis that Steve had put on it, he would have migrated towards the name and the person it implied. But then, he also might not want to be Bucky anymore, either.
"Natasha," she said, gritting out a smile. "So, first thing, get out of here. Where exactly do you want to go?"
"I have a place. It's safe."
"Safe for you, safe for us, or safe from the robots?" she asked, unable to repress a disbelieving look. In her learned opinion, him looking like a hobo meant he was living like a hobo.
"Safe enough," he said, giving her a look. 'Plus it's more comfortable than this shit hole."
Natasha quirked a smile in agreement, conceding that she didn't have much better. James tried to stand up, but a grimace and a renewal of the sweat on his forehead made her press her hand on his shoulder.
Natasha carefully worked her way to her feet, leaning against the wall to make up for her injured ankle. She offered him a hand, and after a few long, strained moments, they were both upright.
"So how do we get to this place," she asked, carefully leaning over to pick up his arm and anything else of value. She felt his eyes burning into her every second she had hold of his arm, which promptly disappeared when she gave it back.
"There's no way we can walk more than a block, the state we're in."
"You know how to hot wire a car, Natasha?" James' expression was ironic and more than a little bit amused. Natasha cracked a wide smile, and asked "Truck or compact?"
