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12. Curious, Venomous
Natasha stood against the wall of the interior cabin of the plane, staring intently at the Winter Soldier. Bucky. Whoever he was these days. He was again seated in the chair near the bed, facing one of the windows and ignoring her inspection. He was still wearing his mask and held very still, perhaps asleep. Somehow, she didn't think so. "Not yet, Steve," his words echoed in her head and her brow furrowed in thought. She had been too surprised by Steve's presence to react when the Soldier had taken one of her discs and tossed it at his (former?) friend. Well, that's what she told herself. Maybe she had just been too apprehensive about getting in the way of the Soldier, particularly if it meant being between him and Captain America. If they were clashing, she didn't want to be around.
There you go, Romanoff, saving your own skin, she thought to herself. She'd thought she had changed since she left the KGB. Collaboration was important these days, and she owed it to Steve to stick with him. Even if it meant hanging out with his brainwashed best friend. She didn't think cognitive recalibration would be quite as effective on Bucky as it had been on Clint. Clint had just been controlled, not had parts of his brain burned away. Or at least electroshocked away. The files were meticulously detailed technically, but a little out of her realm of expertise to follow. In any case, this was different.
After Steve was knocked out (momentarily) from the electrical charge, the Soldier had dragged him by the collar out of the way of their plane. She had noted how careful he seemed to be, perhaps remembering how he'd put Steve in the hospital for a few days after their last encounter. The mercenaries had arrived with two new recruits, and all were staring wide-eyed at the three of them. Without comment, the Soldier had released his grip on the dazed super soldier and gone placidly back into the plane. The men followed and reported to him. She had gone to check on Steve. His radio was blaring static.
"Steve!" a distorted voice broke through the noise as she leaned closer.
Glancing back at the plane, she tentatively picked up the device and pressed the button. "Sam?" she guessed.
"Natasha! What the hell are you doing here?" Sam demanded. "Why isn't Steve answering me?"
"He's unconscious," she replied, standing up straight and surveying the runway. There was a quinjet some hundred yards away, a familiar figure standing nearby. She sighed. "Stay there, Sam," she added, ignoring the expletives the soldier was directing at her.
"If you hurt him," he began ominously.
"I won't. I didn't. It was Bucky," she murmured.
"What?!"
"Listen, I have to go. Come get Steve after we take off. Then maybe you guys should hang back a little. I'll bring the Soldier in as soon as I can, but he's not willing right now," she whispered hurriedly, seeing movement on the plane.
"This isn't at all how I thought our working relationship would go," Sam muttered.
She smirked. "Well, there's always next time."
"Natalia."
She dropped the radio, checked Steve's pulse, then walked back to the plane, where the Soldier stood looking down at her. "Shall we?" she asked, brushing passed him and ignoring the men's stares.
His fingers wrapped around her forearm, arresting her movement. "It's not time yet," he hissed in Russian before releasing her. She lingered uncertainly for a moment, then strode to the private cabin, shutting the door behind her. After a few minutes, the Soldier had entered and glanced briefly in her direction before dropping into the chair. Now she watched him silently, wondering what exactly he had meant by that comment.
It was perplexing that the Soldier was willing to allow her to accompany him, but not Steve. She was certainly more knowledgeable about his past than he allowed his men to be, particularly apparent since he didn't let them see his face. If he was upset to see Steve again, he hadn't shown it. He had been calm throughout the experience, and continued to be so now. She didn't know him, not like Steve did, but she suspected that it was a façade. The Soldier had been able to control the physical manifestations of his distress when they had taken off, not on edge like he'd obviously been before. That may have been act, but she suspected he was now keeping a tighter rein on himself because of what happened with Steve.
"Where are we going?" she asked abruptly, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor, looking up at him.
"South America." The Soldier's response was emotionless enough to be almost mechanical.
"Anywhere in particular?" Natasha pressed, stretching out her legs in front of her.
"Yep."
She sighed. "You know, if you'd kept me in the loop, I could have warned you what kind of plane Steve would probably come after you in."
"I know."
"Not going to let me help you?"
"Not yet."
Natasha wasn't sure, but she suspected his detached tone was hiding a growing volatility, so she let it go. It wasn't a good idea to antagonize someone in his position. She may or may not be a prisoner; she figured she'd better assume she was, even if he had said the choice to be here was hers. So she made herself comfortable and hoped Steve okay.
Eventually, they landed. The Soldier got to his feet as soon as they had set down, still taxiing, and strode out of the cabin. Natasha watched him go carefully, but still found him to be unreadable. She climbed slowly to her feet and went to the door, leaning against the frame. The mercenaries were gathering their weapons and glancing curiously between the Soldier and her, conversing quietly. She ignored them and watched the Soldier attaching weapons to his various harnesses.
"Stand down and wait here," the Soldier ordered, the men falling silent as soon as he began to speak. "Natalia, with me," he added in Russian. She glanced at the other men and gauged whether or not they'd understood. The Soldier had stopped and was facing her. She nodded and started forward, checking absently on her own weaponry.
The hatch was opened and the Soldier jumped out, landing solidly on both feet a yard below. She slipped out after him. They were on a short runway; a larger plane could never have landed here. There was jungle all around them and the heat was staggering. The concrete under them went into some kind of bunker, sloping down abruptly and broken only by a very secure-looking large door. The Soldier was striding toward it. Natasha glanced back at the plane, then followed him, drawing her pistols.
"Is this another base?" she murmured.
"Yes."
"HYDRA's?"
"Mine."
She stopped in her tracks. "Yours?"
"It may have been infiltrated while we were gone," he explained, lifting a small panel beside the door and placing his thumb on the scanner hidden there. There was the sound of something heavy and mechanical, and he pulled open the door. "Ladies first," he said, stepping back.
She frowned at him, tightened her grip on her pistols, and stepped into the dark interior. She moved slowly, letting her eyes adjust before she got too far. The front room was mostly empty and about twenty feet by fifteen, a few tables stacked against the wall. There was a corridor to the right that extended thirty feet, with doors on either side, probably barracks. Ahead, the floor sloped sharply down and was wide enough for a truck to drive down. There were only two doors this direction, both on the right side. The left was just a blank wall.
Heading for the furthest door, she didn't wait to see what the Soldier would do. Her footsteps echoed off the walls as she descended the slope. A single yellow bulb was hung every few feet down the center of the hallway, but the corners remained enshrouded in darkness. She was aware that the Soldier had gone down the corridor to the right. The doors were both locked, but she managed to open them with a little persistence.
The furthest door opened onto a narrow room that was less than ten feet wide but twenty feet long. It was empty, but there was a door at the opposite end. Checking to make sure the door she was walking through would not trap her there, she closed the distance to the other side and found this door to be unlocked. It opened onto a room containing a cot, a rickety table, and a metal deck chair. The left armrest of the chair had been dented deeply. The room was twenty feet long and about ten feet wide, the length now to her left instead of in front of her. There was also a water closet and another door. She checked the area then opened the second door. It was locked, and took a few tries to get open. The room inside was easily twenty feet by twenty and empty. Except for a few restraints on the walls.
Her inspection led her back out onto the large hallway where she had started. As soon as she opened the door, the Soldier appeared before her. He could move pretty quietly for a big guy, she thought, hiding her surprise.
"All clear?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He turned and walked further down, to the second door. "I assume you'd rather not bunk with the men," he said quietly.
"Preferably," she answered, following him into the narrow room.
"Stay here. I'll see what I can do." He pulled the door shut after she entered and she was left in the empty space.
Natasha had been on many missions, had stayed a lot of places, catching sleep when she could. A man came and brought in a cot for her, and she was otherwise left alone. After a while, the Soldier opened the inner door, which clearly led to his quarters, and brought a laptop. She helped him access the information he had acquired, much of which was heavily encrypted. He spoke very little to her, and she had a difficult time reading him, even with his mask removed. A part of her wondered if there was anything to read. His mission was to destroy HYDRA; it was entirely possible that there was nothing else on his mind. For her part, she kept her thoughts to herself and considered how she was going to do what she'd promised Sam. And Steve.
The intel the Soldier had gathered, both from the base in Ukraine and beforehand, provided the locations of eleven recently-used bases. It was impossible to tell if they were still utilized, but that didn't seem to matter to him. After a few hours of sleep, they set out again. Natasha was surprised to find that new recruits were assimilated into the ranks seamlessly, and she couldn't even be sure who they were. It set her on edge. It was less surprising that the Soldier kept his men's loyalty through encouraging fear of him. His mythos certainly leant itself to that kind of reaction, and the mask made him seem inhuman. Even having been taken into his confidence, apparently, did little to lessen her own fear of the ghost. Though perhaps her reasoning was different from the mercenaries'.
After the complete destruction of each base, they always returned to the bunker. All the mercenaries were taken every time, and it was made to look abandoned when they were gone. The Soldier and Natasha went in first to gather intel, and, after the third base, he allowed her to go in alone for this. She found herself surprisingly pleased by that show of trust; not as pleased as when Steve expressed his faith in her at Sam's house, but still. It made her resist attempting any kind of contact with the rest of the world for two more bases. Then she sent a message to Steve, updating him on the situation. It was encrypted, she couldn't be sure he'd get it, and it felt a little like betrayal of the Soldier, but she thought he needed to be kept informed so he didn't do anything reckless.
Returning from that mission, she paced the floor of her quarters, deep in thought. She didn't feel too bad about contacting Steve, though she didn't want the Soldier to know. But something was definitely wrong and she was trying to figure out how to approach it properly. The Soldier was unstable; not often, but things weren't as well-in-hand as he wanted his men to think. She could hear him, faintly, through the walls. Wrestling with his demons, she supposed. As they brought down more abandoned and nearly empty bases, where there were few casualties on HYDRA's side and none on theirs, she could tell he was losing his grip. They were only half done, but air travel was clearly a problem for him.
She stopped pacing and walked over to the door connecting her quarters to his. It had been locked as long as she'd been here. Taking a deep breath, she knocked. "Bucky?"
