A/N: This chapter gets a little bit M-ish toward the middle. If you would like to avoid that, stop when you see Roman numeral II and skip down to III. Otherwise, carry on…


Ramblers in the wilderness we can't find what we need
We get a little restless from the searching
Get a little worn down in between
Like a bull chasing the matador is the man left to his own schemes
Everybody needs someone beside em' shining like a lighthouse from the sea

Brother let me be your shelter
Never leave you all alone
I can be the one you call
When you're low
Brother let me be your fortress
When the night winds are driving on
Be the one to light the way
Bring you home

~ from "Brother" by needtobreathe

I.

Natasha woke up to the sound of heavy rain and sensation of an empty bed. Her internal sense of time told her it was early yet, and when she looked at the luminous dial of the clock beside the bed for something more precise, there were hours yet before they had to get up and start pretending again.

She rolled over, looked for him, and found him standing near the large window that opened onto their tiny balcony. He was still, leaning against the frame and staring out at the rain. He'd thrown on a pair of loose pajama bottoms when he'd risen, and on top of the dresser beside him was the small mirror from the bathroom. The fingertips of his right hand rested beside it as if he had only recently put it down or as if he might be going to pick it up again at any moment.

Perhaps I should leave him alone. But….alone with what? What ghost did he see in that glass?

Then she realized what had awakened her. He was flexing the titanium fingers of his left hand over and over, causing the servos inside to whir and the plates on the exterior to shift. It was a soft noise, almost lost in the susurration of the rain, but the distinct tone of the moving metal hadn't quite been hidden thanks to her serum-enhanced senses. His hand was in constant motion, a sign of his continuing internal agitation.

And I'm pretty sure he doesn't even know he's doing it.

For someone who was totally in control of every movement and expression as he was, that soft flexing of his fingers was as large a tell as if he'd had a flashing neon sign saying, "PROBLEM!" suddenly hung over his head with a brass band playing a march alongside. She rose, drew the soft blue extra blanket off the end of the bed, and wrapped it around her as she crossed the small room to his side. She said nothing, just walked up next to him, slipped herself against his body, forcing the cool silver arm to stop its motion to embrace her.

He looked down at her briefly, summoned up the vaguest traces of a smile, turned his eyes back to the glass in front of him. Standing there now, she could see that an odd combination of light from the street beyond and the falling rain had turned the windowpane into something of a mirror in its own right. He wasn't staring at the weather. He was staring at his own slightly wavering reflection.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, leaned her head against his body, metal and flesh, and listened to the rain and his powerful heartbeat. It was fast, even for their serum-enhanced metabolisms. She could feel the slightest tremor in him, and so she turned her head to kiss him over his racing heart. His hand at her hip squeezed her just a little in acknowledgement.

"You know you could tell me, right?"

He looked at her, brow furrowing in confusion. "Tell you what?"

She gestured toward their reflections in the window, placed her hand over his still fidgeting fingers to still them. "This. I mean, it's okay not to talk about it, too. I just want you to know I would listen to…whatever..."

He sighed and ran his hand roughly through his hair, his face filled with frustration and irritation.

"What is there to talk about?"

She shrugged against him. "Anything you like. Or nothing. Either way, I'm here."

He gave one more searching look at the window and seemed to make a decision of some kind. He turned them away from the rainy night and back toward the bed. She lay down still wrapped in the loose blanket, scooted over, and he followed, pulling her against him. For a long time, he simply stroked her hair gently, over and over. She let the silence stay between them, and she had begun to think he had chosen not to say anything at all when he finally spoke.

"Do you remember anything of your life before the Red Room?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe. There's a flash of a woman with red hair like mine. It comes and goes. When I was younger, I dreamed of her all the time. Not so much now. I think I probably made her up."

His hand continued to smooth over her hair, the gesture soothing.

"I wasn't there then….I had not yet been assigned to the Red Room when they acquired you. I do not know if they lied for you and told your family that being chosen was a great honor, if they bought you from some orphanage, or if they simply stole you…."

She shifted slightly against him. The topic was…uncomfortable, she decided. Like any child, she'd once hungered to know where she came from, had dreamed of someone coming to rescue her from the awful place she'd been confined to, but again and again, those dreams had been brutally dismantled.

You start to learn that nobody is coming to save you. There is no strong hero who is going to kick down the door and carry you to safety. If you want rescue, you have to provide it for yourself.

But still, the dreams of that red-haired woman came to her sometimes, and the morning after, she was always sad, a little hollow inside, and always, always just a little more savage than necessary in practice on days after she'd had the dream.

This conversation isn't really about me, though. This is just his way into something he is struggling with. So…

"What about you? Do you remember anything from before?"

His hand stilled, and a shiver ran through him, then softly, so softly,

"Maybe."

She waited. The rain fell.

"I have the same dream over and over. There's a…train… Or at least I think it's a train. There are tracks for it sometimes, shining below…. Whatever it is, it's black and it's going so fast. It's more like a missile than a train sometimes. Every time, I know I have to get to it. It's important. And then I'm jumping off this cliff and flying toward it…." He laughed bitterly. "I told you it doesn't make any sense….."

"Did I say that?"

"No. But that doesn't stop it from being true. Sometimes there are little changes, but the key elements stay the same. Always the train, always the flying. And always I am so cold…." He shivered again, and she hooked the heavy comforter on the bed, dragged it up over both of them even though the room was not uncomfortable.

"So you're flying toward this train…"

He shook his head. "It makes no sense, Natasha. It is ridiculous."

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Is there more?"

He paused a long moment before continuing. "Yes. There is a man with me there, always. He is also flying toward the train. "

"What man?"

"….I don't know who he is, but in the dream, it feels like he's someone I've always known, like someone I trust…. His uniform is a blue like this." His fingertips plucked at a corner of the blue blanket she had wrapped around her. "Royal, but maybe more faded somehow, and with red…"

"You said uniform. Is he a soldier?"

"The best." The answer was the surest one he'd given, quick and without hesitation. "He's gotta be, right, because he always jumps off the cliff first. Sometimes I try to grab him, keep him from going…" The cadence of his voice was shifting somehow, something not quite polished and perfect Russian was sneaking into it….

"Perhaps you are remembering going into some battle? Maybe it isn't flying. Maybe it is…like a parachute?"

He made a noise that was neither agreement nor disagreement. It was a considering sound. She let him turn it over for a minute before gently prompting, "Do the two of you ever reach the train?"

The shivers took him again. "Every damn time. I don't wanna because I know something terrible is going to happen when we do…I don't know what, but I can feel it like…like a rock on my chest, like I can't breathe. Then it comes. It is a little different every time, one time there's a flash of light, another there is only suddenly a giant hole where I can see outside the train, like the walls melted away somehow, but what comes next is always the same. This wind comes howling in and is tryin' to rip me away from the train, from the man in blue. He reaches out a hand, and he is trying to get to me, trying to save me from the wind, but it's so hungry and so loud. He gets so close sometimes that I actually feel his fingers touch mine, but I know, I know every single time though that he won't make it. And then the fist of the wind closes over me, grabs me and throws me…. then the world spins and spins, and there is nothin' but pain and cold…." His eyes were far away again, empty.

She shifted and wrapped her arms around him tightly, pressing a gentle kiss against cheek, his jaw.

"I have you. Shh…"

Don't leave me again.

He returned the embrace so tightly that she knew she would have bruises where his left hand gripped her too hard. She ignored it, focused on holding him just as hard, hard enough for him to feel it instead of the phantom grip of the wind from his dream.

"I don't remember this all the time," he broke off suddenly, swallowed hard. His voice had changed again, the measured tones she knew dominant again. "They…Ivanov, the others…they have ways of taking it. Of taking everything. They hollow me out and pour other things in instead. The things they make me do, Natasha…." The last was a whisper.

"But the dream, it comes back after?" She asked, trying to understand and to pull him back to her again.

He nodded. "Something always digs it out of the hole they bury it in. There is no logic to it. It can be anything, anything at all that triggers it…."

She ran her hand soothingly down from his temple, across his cheek and jaw, and he turned to follow the touch.

"What brought it back this time?"

He burrowed his face in her neck and laughed bitterly.

"The haircut…. When I saw my face in the mirror after. I see myself in a reflection in the dream sometimes, or I'm outside my own body watching or…. Something. Anyway, I look like this except for…." He flexed the titanium hand against her, and she understood what he meant. "It is never there. The wind could not have taken me so quickly if it had been there…."

"So you remember this dream or memory now." He grunted affirmatively. "Maybe I can help you hold it this time."

He shifted so he could look at her more easily. "Help me? How?"

"Since I know about it now, too, even if…if they find it again and take it, I can hold onto it for you. Do you see?"

He considered it for a moment. "I can see that they will not like it."

She shook her head slightly, shrugged in that way she had that indicated it was of no importance to her what they thought.

"No," he said, more forcefully. "You don't understand what they are capable of. I know you think that…"

She pushed at his chest in disgust, rolled over, sat up on the edge of the bed. "Think about that statement for a moment. You are not the only one the Red Room has taken important things away from." The loose blanket she'd grabbed when she'd gone to join him by the door was still around her body, slipping down now to bare her shoulder. She reached up to pull it back over her in irritation, but his hand wrapped around hers, fingers intertwining with hers. She felt the warmth of his body against her back. His arm came around her, which she ignored. She did not push it away, but she did not yield to the temptation to lean back against him, either. After a moment, he spoke.

"It was wrong of me to have said it, Natasha…."

"Yes."

Yes, it was, you ass.

"You know more than anyone else how much the Red Room takes…"

"Yes."

How they take your past, my future, our present. My childhood and children. Your arm and free-will. Our bodies and mutual humanity. Yes.

"So you should also be able to understand that I won't willingly give them a reason to take more."

She softened slightly, turned to look at him over her shoulder.

"Soldat…"

That sardonic twisting of his lips again. "And now you will remind me of just how well you can take care of yourself, little widow….and you will be right to do so, of course…."

She shook her head, slipped her hand from his, turned on the bed to face him, placed her fingertips over his mouth to silence him.

"No. Now I will remind you that…perhaps…if you are willing, we might possibly take care of each other sometimes."

For a long moment, he just looked at her, and slowly, slowly a spark of something bright and wild grew deep inside his eyes. His body language shifted slightly somehow. That painful little self-deprecating smirk he'd had slipped away. He pulled her back into his embrace, and this time, she came willingly.

"Devil take the hindmost and no matter what? That might cover an awful lot, little widow." His hands were skating up her sides, seeking the edges of the blanket.

"No matter what," she repeated firmly. "They can't take it from both of us. If you fall, if they…if they take things, I will have them safe for you. See?" Her hands were smoothing up his strong arms, one of flesh, one of cool metal, slipping around his neck, fingers sliding into his short hair.

He unwrapped her shoulder again, and he pressed his lips to it in a gentle kiss, soft, almost chaste. "Alright then. I'll have you, too…" And kissed her again in the curve where her neck met her shoulder, less sweetly, a flicker of tongue in it before he murmured against her, "Together to the end of the line, Natasha…." Then she could feel his teeth, his tongue, as he bit softly, sucked and lapped, leaving a mark that she knew would be healed almost before he was through making it, but the sensation still had her pulling at his hair, holding him against her, a soft sound of need escaping her.

II.

Nimble fingers tugged the blanket away from her, and he lifted her with ridiculous ease over him as he rolled back. She couldn't help her startled laughter at the maneuver. Then he completed his roll and she was under him, the hot weight of him settling against her bare body. He was smiling, too, at her response, but their laughter died as his mouth found hers immediately, his tongue slicking in aggressively, hungrily against hers. She met him with equal desire, arching her body slowly under his, pressing herself against every plane.

He groaned and his hands found her hips, pressed her down again, pushing her back against the mattress. She made a sound of frustration.

"So impatient…" he murmured against her mouth.

"Yes," she growled. "Because we seem to have a pattern here in these moments. I am always naked, and you are always not…."

He laughed into the kiss.

"'S not fair, now that you mention it." He shifted, stood, untied the loose pajama bottoms, and let them slide down his legs to the floor. She reached for him as he lay back down, slipped back on top of her, his heavy erection pressing against her belly as he rose up to kiss her.

"Better?" he murmured.

She wrapped a leg around his waist, shifting beneath him so that the he slipped against her where she was wet and ready for him.

"You…tell… me," she said, her voice breathless between their kisses.

He made his own little growling sound as his hands found her hips, urged her to wrap her other leg around him. Then he braced himself on his forearms to move against her, slow, hard, grinding against the sensitive bud of her with each pass. Her head fell back, her eyes closed. Her hands caressed down his back as he thrust to try to pull him down, to get him where she needed him. Then his mouth was open over her breasts, first the right, then the left, as if he were trying to devour her. She moaned, twisting her hips against him digging lightly in with short nails. He made a short sharp sound in response.

"I need….need," she gasped, unable to finish the sentence.

"And so do I….need to know how you…" he murmured against her breast, and suddenly the delicious friction of him was gone. She looked down confused only to fall back against the mattress as if she'd been struck as he lowered his head between her legs and drew his tongue up her in a long, slow, lingering pass.

"Fuck….I knew it….sweet like... sugar candy," he groaned between little teasing licks that made her gasp, and then he set in to his task.

The sensation of his tongue lapping against her after the previous stimulation, the sight of his beautiful body kneeling between her thighs, made her writhe, buck against him as he slipped his hands beneath her hips to lift her to an angle more to his liking. She twined one hand in his hair, one in the forgotten blanket beneath her. He looked up at her, taking in her response with eyes gone thunderstorm blue, and as he lowered his head again, he muttered, "Want you to come for me, Natasha." Watching her reactions, he began to take her apart with long slow strokes of his tongue. When he slipped a finger inside her, she began to keen. When he started to suckle her, she exploded.

And then he was moving that big body back over her, filling her where she ached for him, his mouth against hers, drinking in her cries of pleasure. She could still taste herself on his lips and tongue, and she wrapped herself around him as he thrust hard, fast, relentlessly against her. He kissed her neck, whispered things hotly into her ear that made her cry out, the coil of sensation winding to its breaking point inside her again, and she gave herself up to it as he drove her to peak again before crashing over with her.

III.

The rain had stopped, and the first light of the new morning filtered in grey and watery. She was holding on to him, stroking abstract patterns lightly against his warm skin. Despite the exertions of the night, emotional and physical, she had not been able to find her own sleep. She'd been very close after when he'd pulled her next to him, wrapped her in his arms, sweat still sheening their bodies, but as her mind had begun to drift something that had been clamoring for her attention for quite some while was finally able to snap into place. Everything he'd said to her, all his words in passion, every endearment and obscenity, every command and verbal caress since that murmured phrase "to the end of the line" had actually been in English, that same strongly flavored English she'd heard him use in the training room so long ago, that she'd heard that horrible day they "reset" him.


Q: So why didn't she notice, Nemain? I mean, don't you think she would have noticed if he just suddenly started speaking English? Like, wouldn't that have been sort of a weird mood killer?

A: Nope. Not per se. She was very busy. We should all be so busy.

Q: Seriously, though.

A: We know that she's totally fluent in English – and probably a jillionty-seven other languages – as a part of her Red Room training. She would be used to situations where there's a shift in what's being spoken. She had no trouble understanding him. She just wasn't expecting Brooklyn in the bed. Again. We should all be so busy, right?

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