She sat by the hospital bed, waiting for Bucky Barnes to emerge from his cryosleep. She'd reached Wakanda three days ago. Getting away from the others had been simple; Clint had known she was going to break and run for it, even if he hadn't known why, but he'd trusted her instincts and even run interference to help her. She hadn't made contact with them since.
Finding Steve in the past with Clint as her back-up would have been a much simpler prospect. But it was unthinkable; he had a wife and family, and while right now he was separated from them, one day he'd be able to go back to them. She couldn't risk him. She was expendable, and so was the man she'd take instead. Or at least, the person he wasn't expendable to wasn't here - that was the whole point.
She eyed Barnes warily, although he still showed no sign of waking. A lot depended on him, and whether he'd agree to help her. He was an unknown quantity - although Steve had talked about him to her, he'd naturally airbrushed out the bad parts. Her own personal experience of Barnes didn't bode well - three encounters, three times he'd tried to kill her. But it hadn't really been him - he'd been brainwashed by HYDRA. He'd never have done it if he'd had a choice, but - he'd still done it. And she planned to travel back to the past with him, with no-one else to intervene if he lost control. She swallowed hard - this wasn't a good idea. So much hung on how he reacted to her news when he finally woke up.
T'Challa had been willing to help her up to a point - he'd agreed to have his sister look at the stone and try to figure it out, he'd agreed to have Barnes woken up, he'd even agreed to bankroll her mission, but when it came to telling Barnes what had happened, she'd been on her own. She grinned wryly. It certainly hadn't taken him long to realise that the berserk button worked both ways when it came to Rogers and Barnes.
She glanced again at Barnes, and jumped. He was awake - his eyes were open, and watching her. She couldn't read his expression at all - and she could read anyone. She couldn't hold his gaze, either - she was the first to look away. She didn't back down from a staring match with anyone, either. This wasn't a good start. "Where's Steve?" he asked, his voice rough. Trust him to ask the awkward question straight off.
"I don't know." Honesty was her best approach here; lying to him would just antagonise him. He had to trust her; he didn't know her, and he had no reason to like her.
But if she'd expected him to fly into a towering rage, she was disappointed. "I assume you're going to expand on that."
She took a deep breath. "He's missing. In the past."
"In the past." He didn't believe her.
"Yes. HYDRA found another Infinity Stone - they seemed to have a knack for it." He frowned as she spoke. "Like the Tesseract?"
At his nod, she continued. "This one works with time. So they used it to send him to the past."
"Why? And how far?" He asked the important questions, at least, and with a minimum of fuss. It was like talking to Clint, just without the humour. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
"I'm not sure. He's supposed to do something in the future that they don't want him to, but I don't know what it is. And - back to 1846." He blinked as she named the year so precisely, but said nothing. "Working on the assumption that if HYDRA doesn't want something to happen, we definitely do, someone needs to go back and get him. And I want my friend back." He still didn't speak, although he was thinking hard. As the silence stretched, she was compelled to speak again. "It was my fault. HYDRA tricked me, and I led him straight into a trap. That's why he's gone."
And again, his response wasn't what she'd expected. Instead of rising from his bed to throttle her and break things, the beginnings of a smile played around his lips. "I bet that was hard to say."
She glared at him. "And what would you know about that?"
"I know you're a Black Widow. And I know what they're like. They never admit they were wrong."
She sat back in her chair, frowning. A Black Widow? She was the only one. This conversation was spinning out of her control. He smiled that half-smile again, as if he knew what she was thinking. "You're the only one now, but you weren't always. They've been turning out Black Widows even longer than Winter Soldiers." His face suddenly darkened. "I even took one or two of them out when they got in the way." He looked away for a second, and then back at her, his features clouded with guilt. "I'm sorry, by the way. For what it's worth."
She nodded slowly in response. She was seriously discomfited, though she'd never admit as much. She'd prepared herself to meet the Winter Soldier, the cold-blooded, ruthless assassin of legend, but instead she'd found a different man entirely. A man who could only be Bucky Barnes. The silence stretched between them, as she rapidly revised her tactics. This man would need a different approach. But he spoke again before she could. "So why do you need me?" She hesitated, unsure how to reply. When she didn't answer, he shrugged. "Going back and getting him doesn't sound particularly difficult, assuming you can get this stone to work, anyway. Surely any of Steve's friends could do it. So what are you not telling me? Why does it have to be me?"
Fantastic. Barnes was as quick-thinking and perceptive as his best friend. "The HYDRA agent who sent him back said that a common side-effect of time travel was memory loss. I don't think he was very accomplished with the stone, and in the heat of an ambush, probably even less so. I think it's safe to assume that Steve turned up in 1846 with very little idea of who he was, or how he got there."
He nodded as he absorbed the information. He wasn't totally like Steve, then. Steve would have been up and out of the door by now, on a mission to retrieve his friend, and trampling down anyone who stood between him and his goal. Barnes was still flat on his back, thinking. Clearly he was the more restrained, calculating one of the two. Which did fit with the old Bucky Barnes. He'd been the Howling Commandos' crack sniper - you didn't get to be that without a healthy streak of ruthlessness and self-possession. Not to mention a stomach of steel. It made sense, therefore, that he wouldn't go on a rampage until he had a plan. Once he had a plan, however, it probably wasn't a good idea to get in his way.
"OK," he eventually said. "That explains a lot. But I see some problems. First, how do you propose to get us back in time with our memories intact? It's not going to do much good if we turn up in the same state he did. Second, I only have one arm. I'm not going to be much use in a fight - and I assume HYDRA have people there watching him. Third, if there are HYDRA agents there, what's to say they don't know…" He trailed off, and took a deep breath before he continued. "The trigger words?"
She smiled. They were going to get along just fine, after all. "One, we're in the most technologically-advanced nation in the world. They have some powerful drugs here - they think they can find something that will prevent the amnesia. Two, they've been working on a new arm for you. It's not perfect, but it'll work. Three, I doubt they'll know those words. This isn't the kind of mission you send your best agents on - you send your expendable people. Someone who knows how to set off the Winter Soldier is not expendable."
