This story came about after a wild weekend away with glitteratiglue which began a ton of binge Bucky reading. Anyway, this is now one of my favourite pairings, so I hope I've done it justice.
I don't own anything to do with MCU or Avengers. Thanks for reading.
Yasha
The first time they met she was fifteen and underestimated her opponent. He had her flat on her back, his forearm pressed brutally against her neck, in less than a minute. It wasn't a subtle way of beating down her overconfidence, but it did the trick. Later that day she was informed that he had agreed to train her.
The fourteenth time they met he started teaching her how to speak with an American accent. When she had asked why he sounded different from the characters on the television he had frowned, a blank look washing over his face. He didn't answer her. It wasn't until two years later than she identified that he had shared the same Brooklyn accent as her latest mark.
The seventeenth time they met he showed her how to seduce a man – how to touch, to kiss, to moan and share small truths so that her prey would let their guard down. Before he left, he showed her how to wrap her bare thighs around a man's neck and twist to hear the crack. She washed the dried blood from between her legs carefully that evening, every muscle aching.
The thirty-fifth time they met she hadn't seen him in years. He appeared out of nowhere, as if he was a ghost. She felt a brief flash of surprise before the car she and the scientist were travelling in upended and she was thrown around inside the vehicle as it plunged off the road. She blacked out for a brief moment before coming to and then scrambled out of a broken window, dragging the dazed scientist behind her. The car lay upside down at the bottom of the cliff, its companion a lump of twisted metal that couldn't possibly hold any survivors.
A faint noise had come from behind her and she spun abruptly to find him stood not ten metres away. She knew eventually that the Russians would come for her, but she had a job to do. She moved in front of the scientist to protect him and he cocked his head at his action before raising his gun and firing. It took her three minutes to fight through the pain in her abdomen, long enough to see that her scientist now had a bullet in his skull. She had been wrong. She wasn't his mission. She was just an obstacle in his way. He vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
The thirty-sixth time they met, he wasn't so elusive. He decorated her body with yet another scar and she finally understood where he had acquired his Brooklyn accent.
The thirty-seventh time they met he was trashing a Hydra base - bodies littered around the building, computers and papers burning giving him an eerie glow. A gun was pointing directly at her head before he even looked up at her, too busy scanning one of the monitors for something.
"Yasha?" she tried.
His lip had curled but he didn't respond.
"Bucky?" The name sounded unfamiliar on her lips, but his head finally jerked up.
He ran his eyes over her impersonally. "That's what the man on the bridge called me."
She nodded. "You knew him."
He had kept the gun up but turned back to the screen, ignoring her statement.
It didn't matter anyway, whether he remembered Steve or not. She would bring him in, whether he remembered or not. The Captain deserved that much at least and then she wouldn't owe him anymore. Relaxing her body, she spun towards him.
The thirty-eighth time she met him, he tried to kill her, metal arm swinging at her head too fast for her to block properly, snarling in Russian. In a daze, she barely registered Cap restraining him. It was the first time she ever felt like his attack was personal.
The forty-second time they met he saved her life. He had been cleared for Avengers details two months earlier but the missions they had run since then didn't require any interaction. He fought mostly besides Cap and sometimes with Thor, but avoided her and Clint like the plague. Until an explosive was tossed in her direction while she was busy fighting off an alien…something. She barely registered the device before his arm hooked around her waist and threw her to one side.
Coughing up dust and smoke she met his eyes for a split second and then he was gone.
The forty-third time they met she was sat in the dark in the tower, watching the lights of the city flare and glow beneath her. He sat next to her silently. Hours passed before he spoke.
"You were mine once, Natalia?"
A half-smile was all the confirmation she gave. Yes, she was his once, the same way that once he was hers as well.
That was enough for both of them.