A/N: Thanks to everyone who is reviewing. I appreciate your patience with my "taking the slow road" to get there. On we go.

You live in a church

Where you sleep with voodoo dolls

And you won't give up the search

For the ghosts in the halls

You wear sandals in the snow

And a smile that won't wash away

Can you look out the window

Without your shadow getting in the way?

You're so beautiful

With an edge and charm

But so careful

When I'm in your arms

'Cause you're working

Building a mystery

Holding on and holding it in

Yeah you're working

Building a mystery

And choosing so carefully

~ "Building a Mystery" – Sarah McLachlan

I.

The city's clock tower could be heard striking in the distance. Natasha felt the curl of excitement that had been slowly building since she'd read the Soldier's journals twist sharply.

Now we'll see if he's coming out to play.

After the briefest of stop-overs at her hotel room to gather the gear she'd need for the night's work, she'd come directly here after leaving her message at his apartment. Deep down, she knew he would not be able to resist the temptation to chase her, and she'd wanted to make sure the playing field was hers this time.

She'd already scouted these ruins online two days ago, partially as a way to pass the time while she was following him and partially because it was always nice to have an isolated location handy for certain situations.

Like a body dump. Or an ambush. Or a place far, far outside of town to meet with my former partner and lover who has tried to kill me twice now….

Instead of coming in the tour entrance, she'd slipped through the gated employee lot and come through the back gaining instant access to parts of the castle complex not open to the gawking, picture-taking groups who had milled about until the park's close at sunset. By that point, Natasha set up her observation point in this mostly intact corner tower.

Her perch gave her an uninterrupted view of the entire place except for the area just in front of the barbican. At sunset, the park's employees had dutifully cranked down the huge metal teeth of the original portcullis, so she was not worried about someone coming in that way.

Unless he's suddenly gained the ability to fly or to pass through solid walls, I should be able to see him no matter which way he approaches.

The last sonorous chime had faded away when the Soldier walked boldly into the moon-silvered grassy space where the castle's bailey had one been. He was wearing the long, dark coat Natasha had seen earlier, and she had to wonder just exactly what he might have hidden underneath it.

I also have to wonder just how he got here since I didn't see him on any of the approaches. Maybe he has learned to go through walls now…

He crossed to one of the picnic tables the park service had installed near the closed museum store and sat astride one of the benches, a position that was deceptively casual.

Ah, but I know exactly how fast he can get up from there and start wreaking havoc, don't I?

He reached into the depths of his coat, and she instinctively tightened her hand on the hilt of one of her pistols. What he pulled out, however, was an innocuous-looking, dark brown file folder. He held it up, turning it so she could see how thick it was, and then he dropped it on the table beside him with a slap that echoed through the still night.

"Yours," he said in Russian, waving his hand over it as if he were offering it. His voice was soft, conversational as if he were speaking to someone sitting at the table with him, but her enhanced hearing picked it up with no trouble.

Mine? From where? Is this where the passport photo came from? Where have you been digging, Yasha?

Almost as if he'd heard her thoughts, he continued. "It wasn't easy to get, I'll give you that. The KGB had buried the information deeply. You must have been important to them." He paused briefly. "Or perhaps you are still to those who once pulled their strings…."

She stiffened a little at the implication. Rising into a crouch, she slipped along behind the broken parapet walk wall until she reached a place that was directly in front of where he was sitting. As she'd seen him do so often, as he'd trained her, she stepped lightly off the edge and dropped, striding out of her landing as if she'd done no more than descending the last step of a staircase instead of dropping some three stories straight down.

He watched her impassively as she walked toward him. Only his left hand moved, curling into a loose fist where it rested against his thigh. Other than that small movement, he gave no sign that he was ill at ease or that he recognized her at all. She stopped halfway across the bailey, and they stared at each other in the moonlight.

After another moment, he sighed. "I thought you wanted to set things straight. I don't think either of us is here to enjoy the moonlight and the history."

No. No, I am definitely not enjoying the history right now. That's one hundred percent certain.

"You're wrong about me."

He tilted his head, a tiny smile curving one side of his mouth. "Of course I am." His tone was amused, sarcastic. He slowly moved his right hand until it rested on top of the folder.

His meaning was not lost on her. He didn't believe her because of what he'd read in that file.

But what was it? How complete was it? What did he know? What in it had led him to think she was Hydra?

He stood suddenly, and she moved her hands closer to her weapons. He made no step toward her, but he did scoop up the file. His voice cut through her uncertainty. "Either commit to this moment or run away again, Black Widow. I'm tired of waiting."

He turned and walked toward the entrance to the chapel, which was in the corner tower nearest the barbican, pushing the door open and disappearing inside.

II.

When nothing else happened, she chastised herself and walked toward the open door. Security lights stayed on in this part of the castle all night, their dim illumination not much brighter than the candles once used here might have been. Above, the remnants of a dark celestial blue sky sparkled with a tiny piece of gold leaf here or there that might have been stars once. Angels with no faces or with only one wing wheeled there, too.

He was standing near one of the narrow stained glass windows set deep into the curving tower walls. The moonlight was bright enough that faint traces of color dotted his face, casting half of his beautiful features in a deep blue. Enveloped in that great coat, long hair slightly mussed from the wind outside, he looked like he might be one of the injured angels stepped down from above to bring her some message.

She scanned the rest of the room. The folder lay squarely in the middle of the bare wood altar. Her eyes flicked back to him. He had shifted slightly, moved to lean against the other side of the window as she walked down the aisle toward the folder, and the color painting his face from the window shifted to a disturbing crimson.

Or perhaps not an angel from above at all…

She reached the folder, flipping it open with her fingertip. Her name and one of the many, many identification numbers they had given her during her decades with the KGB were written neatly on the cover in ink that was only slightly faded with time. A small, square photo of her in her KGB dress uniform was fastened there as well as one of her in one of her ballet costumes taken during a performance at some point.

"Now you will tell me that this is some distant family member of yours, that it is your grandmother or your great aunt, and that the family resemblance is shocking. That you have been mistaken for her before."

He had not moved. She turned away from the folder to consider him.

"Is that what I'm going to tell you?"

He pushed away from the wall and walked slowly around the perimeter of the room toward the door. She instantly began scanning for other escape routes. There was a staircase that ran up to the ancient wooden choir loft, but there was no exit from there that would not land her back in this same place. The windows had been built for strategic defense and were not wide enough for her to squeeze through even if they hadn't been filled with the stained glass panels and the heavy, reinforced glass on the outside that was designed to protect them. He was cutting her off from the only exit.

She tracked his movements fully, watching without giving any sign of alarm as he pushed the heavy door closed and lifted an old-fashioned wooden bar and dropped it in the waiting brackets. When that was done, he turned to her, stormy eyes focused as he stalked forward with that same measured pace.

He paused at the front pew. Perhaps twenty feet separated them. Slowly, he removed the black coat and laid it on the pew. He was wearing the full tactical gear of the Winter Soldier minus the muzzle mask and goggles she'd seen him in during their bridge battle. The supple black armor jacket that had been a part of his gear for as long as she had known him wrapped his powerful torso, weapons tucked into every slot and pocket. Knives were strapped to his strong thighs along with a pair of pistols. His silver arm gleamed in the warm light.

And there he is…. James Buchanan Barnes. The Winter Soldier. Yasha.

She nodded slightly to the door. "Feel better now? Safer?"

"As if one can feel safer with you, Black Widow," he murmured.

She smiled again. "That's rich coming from the man who shot me twice and chased me across a ruined military base."

Something troubled flickered in his expression, but he didn't pursue it.

"The message you left said that there were misunderstandings between us."

He flexed his left hand into a fist, the same gesture she'd seen him make earlier, but now that his arm was bare, she heard the plates slither softly. It was almost as if he were daring her to react, daring her to attack or run. Instead, she hopped up to perch on the altar next to the folder of information.

"Yes. I hope you liked the drawing. Art was never my forte." She looked down at the folder and skimmed her fingertips across the photograph of her in the ballet costume. "At least not that type of art…"

"What is it you think I have misunderstood about you, Agent Romanov?"

"More things that I have time to set you straight on before this place opens tomorrow morning and people are very concerned to find the chapel locked from within, I'd guess."

The flicker of a smile, as indulgent and dangerous as the one a crocodile gives its prey. "Then why don't you get to the most urgent matters. Just so we don't delay the first tour of the day."

"Okay. You think I'm Hydra. I'd like to know why."

He gave her a look that said she was either crazy or deliberately obtuse before nodding sharply at the folder.

"Because I can read."

Watching him out of the corner of her eye, she finally skimmed the first few documents. In addition to the passport he'd taken the page in his journal from, several other versions were inside it, showing different birthdays, different birth cities but always the same face. Nothing changed except for the hairstyles and the growing cynicism in her eyes. Seeing these photos all together like this for the first time, it was striking. Along with her IDs were pages and pages of stripped down mission reports filed by her and by various commanders. She glanced at them but didn't take the time to read them deeply before closing the folder, tapping her finger on it.

"How does any of this make me Hydra?"

"You are like me. You don't age. You were sent out to kill and steal and sow the seeds of destruction."

"None of this is a secret. I was an agent, and I did what I was told. I have worked hard since then to try to atone for some of it."

"You were an Asset. There is no atonement possible." His tone was hard, cruel. Again, she heard that slithering of titanium plates.

"I was never willingly or knowingly a tool of Hydra. Knowing what I know now, I can see their hand in the KGB just as they had their dirty fingers in so much of what SHIELD did, but I was never theirs. They did not make me."

"No? How is your shoulder these days? Does it ache when the weather changes? Does the scar ever pain you?"

"You know there is no scar."

A knife appeared in his left hand with that magical speed he always had. Even as she was tensing herself to evade whatever was coming next, he pulled the blade lightly across the flesh of his right palm. Blood welled and dripped to the stone floor. She forced herself not to move as he made a fist for a moment and then opened the hand wide to her. The thin slash was closing as she watched.

"Yes," he murmured, never looking away from her. "I know there is no scar. No matter how great the wound, there is no scar to show for it, isn't that right? They even erase the history from our very skin and bones…."

"Soldat," she whispered.

He jerked as though she had shocked him with one of her Widow's Bites, and his eyes narrowed. "What did you call me?"

She bit her bottom lip in hesitation. "Soldat," she said again, louder this time.

"Why that?"

"Because it is what I called you first."

He laughed harshly.

"You say it like it's meant to be an endearment."

"It was. It is."

"No. That is what they called me. Every single time. When they dragged me out of the cold, out of the dark, when they put me in the chair and fried my brain and said their words and took away my world, that is what they called me before they sent me out to kill and destroy. Every…single…time…."

"I gave you other names, too. Do you remember them? You didn't like them very much."

She slipped off the altar and took a small step forward. He backed away in equal measure.

He bared his teeth at her in a grimace. "Stop talking. You won't trigger me. I won't be used again. I'll kill you first."

"I called you Lovkij."

Another step. Another retreat.

"And Tin Man."

"I said stop."

"And I called you Eeyore because you were a dour donkey sometimes."

She stepped forward again. He threw the knife, and it buried itself in the wooden back of the pew just beside her.

"Stop," he whispered.

"But when we knew each other best, I called you Yasha."

He stumbled, going down to his knees, hand raised as if to hold her off.

She took another small step toward him, but she did not reach to touch him as she wanted so much to do. This was the closest they had been to one another in ages without trying to harm one another. This was the closest she'd been to him since the night she had pressed the muzzle of her gun to his side and pulled the trigger, ripping them apart.

"Hydra didn't make me, Yasha. You did. You were my teacher, my partner, and later my friend and my lover. I'm not their Asset. I'm yours. Just as you were mine. Don't you…don't you remember at all?"

She reached her hand out, unable to resist. She lightly touched his outstretched palm and felt a rush of satisfaction when he slowly twined his fingers with hers. He was staring at her with wide eyes as if she were a miracle or a curse, his breath coming in short panting bursts, and she closed the last of the distance between them, reaching for him with her other hand, intending to touch his face, to comfort him somehow if she could.

His head tilted suddenly, and his expression changed. Even as she registered it, his fingers closed vice-like on her own, and she felt a sharp sting of pain in her side. She looked down to see a tranquilizer bolt protruding from her lower abdomen. He'd stuck her with it with one sharp motion of his left hand while she was distracted. She tried to break free, but the combination of his strength and whatever he'd put in the bolt prevented her from doing more than a futile tugging.

"Yasha…" she gasped.

"I'm sorry, but I just don't believe you."

"The files..." she murmured. "It's in the files. It has to be. You trained me in the Red Room. We were partners after for years. It must all be there."

"Oh, it's all there," he said bitterly as he rose. She was the one falling to her knees now.

"No," she slurred.

He was standing over her now, that big black coat belling out around him like dark wings as he swung it back on, and she was falling, falling….

"Something about you keeps making me hesitate," she heard him say, but the world was so far away. "Whatever it is, I will figure it out. It doesn't matter now, anyway. I have you and you won't finish whatever your mission. I'll keep him safe this time…." His voice was in her ear, and she had the oddest sensation of movement.

Him? Who?

Above her, the broken blue sky was spinning and the wounded angels danced.

Am I flying, too? But I don't have even one wing…

Then there was darkness.

III.

She woke up in stages. Her instinctive response when she was able to move was to grab for a weapon, but her uniform was gone, a set of soft black pants and a sweatshirt with the logo of the border castle museum replacing it.

And all of my weapons, too. Clever Yasha. Did you enjoy it, though?

She took stock of her surroundings. She was in a cell. The only entrance was a huge, heavy wooden door. The hinges and metal work on it were old but thick and strong. Light flickered in from somewhere outside through a heavy grille near the top of the door providing enough illumination for her to make out rough rock walls marred by various crude carvings. Wherever he'd taken her, this was the genuine article, not some hastily constructed thing. She scanned the walls again. Given the dates she was seeing, she was not the first person to be imprisoned here. One carving read, "Johannes Marten, 1575." She shivered.

Maybe not even the fifty-first person if that's real…

She pulled herself up and slowly paced the tiny cell trying to get the pins-and-needles sensation completely worked out of her limbs.

"I swear to whatever gods there are that the next person who drugs me is going to wear his intestines as a festive garland around his neck," she growled as her stomach turned over. She rested her head against the cold stone despite its roughness, taking deep breaths as her body fought the after-effects of whatever he had injected her with.

She wasn't quite sure what made her turn back to the door suddenly. It wasn't a sound. It was more of a feeling. Sure enough, though, there he was staring at her through the grille.

"Yasha," she said softly, still leaning against the wall but turning to face him.

"Don't call me that."

Suddenly too tired even to lean, she folded down to sit cross-legged on the stone floor. "What do you want me to call you, then? Not Soldat. Not Yasha. You want me to go back to Tin Man?"

"Why do you have to call me anything?"

"What, I'm supposed to just yell, 'Hey, you'? Or would you prefer me to use some of the other names for you I have floating around in my head right now? They're not very nice…"

He smirked slightly. "It's not like there's anybody else around to answer you, doll. Knock yourself out."

She sighed. "Why am I in here, 'you'?"

"Because I need answers."

"I tried to give them to you, but you didn't seem to like them."

Again, that bitter little smile. "Yeah. I guess I've just had too much experience with things that seem one way on the surface but are another thing altogether underneath."

"I didn't lie to you, Yasha," she said, irritation in her tone even though she was trying to hide it.

"And I should believe you just like that," he said, ignoring her use of the name.

"No, you should have believed me because of the documents in the file. Did you not read them all?"

"I read enough."

There was a long moment of silence, and then a sigh.

"What you call me and why really doesn't matter. That's not what I need answers to."

She refused to rise to the bait, staring down at the floor instead.

"What I need to know is why Hydra has positioned you so close to Steve Rogers."

IV.

Her head snapped up in spite of her best intentions.

"WHAT?" she yelled, her voice echoing in the narrow confines of the stone chamber, and she jumped to her feet again and lunged closer to the grille.

His gaze was cold, but his tone was mild, reasonable. "It will be much easier if you just tell me. You know I have the skill set necessary to make you tell me…."

She sputtered, "You think I'd, that I'm, that Steve is…."

That wintery smile was back again. "What a beautiful rendition of innocent outrage! Nicely done. Let me guess. You'd never hurt Steve because now you love him, right?"

She ground her teeth and pulled her self-control back together. Her face smoothed as she took a step away.

"Steve is my teammate and one of maybe four people on earth I actually consider to be my friend. He is practically my brother."

The Soldier slid a piece of paper through a crack in the door. On the page, she saw the photo of them dancing in Tony's New York club he had a copy of in his journal, and another of Steve and her intertwined on the escalator of that mall in Virginia, the kiss she'd pulled him into the keep Rumlow's strike team from identifying them. The grainy quality of the image indicated it had come from the mall's security feed, but it was undeniably them. Her arm was around his neck, her hand pressed to the back of his neck, fingers threaded in the hair beneath his cap to keep him kissing her in case he balked, but it looked like an act of passion instead, and his hands had moved from the instinctive and alarmed grasp he'd started with when she surprised him with the kiss to something much more like a lover's embrace, one large hand splayed low on her back to lift her slightly.

"Yeah. Looks very 'brotherly' to me…."

She opened her mouth to reply, but then she stopped and shook her head.

"Nothing I say is going to convince you," she said softly.

"No."

"Why? Why won't you listen…"

"Because you were born to lie. Because you do it as often and as naturally as the next guy takes a breath. Because you've been doing it for close to a century, just like me." He paused, looked down and to the side, and two pages stapled together were suddenly shoved through the crack in the door. "Because you did it to me, and I wound up back in hell for more than fifty years and almost killed my best friend…."

She automatically grabbed the papers as they came through the door and tore her eyes away from his furious gaze to look down. She read the first few words and a noise of distress escaped her.

"Yes," he growled.

The first page was a letter of commendation on formal letterhead from the director of the KGB to Mother for the role her agent, Natalia Alianovna Romanov, had played in recovering the Asset. What followed was a mission report she did not remember giving or signing detailing the events of that last night in the warehouse. Although Ivanov and Petrov were briefly mentioned, none of the horrors they had put her through were described. From what was on the page, it looked as though she had willingly collaborated to entrap him.

"Yasha," she cried, lunging up to the door and striking it with her fist. "This isn't the way it was! This isn't all of it!"

There was no answer. He was gone. She sat down in the corner of the cell and pulled her knees up, continuing to read.

V.

At some point, she must have dropped off to sleep, but a sound woke her up. It was a small noise of distress, a breath drawn in as if a person were in pain. It was repeated. Then she heard him whisper, "No…no." There was a sound of metal against stone, and his voice came again, louder this time. "No….stop! You can't… not you…Natasha…they can't have you…" That sound of metal against stone came again, and she heard the sound of movement.

"Yasha?" she called hesitantly.

The sounds stopped immediately. Then, a moment later his face appeared in the grille of the door. She thought he looked somewhat paler than usual.

"Something you need, agent?"

She studied him for a moment. Yes. He's shaken about something….

"Are you…what happened?"

He shrugged and looked down. "A dream….a memory. Nothing to concern you."

"What was it about?"

His lips twisted into a hard smirk. "Nothing nice, doll."

She licked her lips and decided to ask, "I…heard my name?"

The little smile fell away, and he met her gaze directly. For just a moment before he masked it, she saw a flicker of pain there.

"I guess you probably did. You were the star of the show."

"What was I…"

"It's all muddled. I was trying to rescue you from something. You had just kissed me, and then you had a gun to my side and were pulling the trigger…."

Her eyes closed as the pain of the memory and everything associated with it flooded over the walls she usually kept wrapped around it.

"Ah, I see you remember it, too…"

"It wasn't like that, Yasha."

"Are you admitting that you did it?"

"I never said that I didn't."

"Answer the damn question straight. Can't you just answer it straight?"

He turned away, running his hand through his hair as if frustrated.

"Yes. Yes, okay? I did. I helped the KGB reclaim you."

He made a low noise of satisfaction, but he didn't turn back.

"But you don't know why," she continued, scooping up the papers from the cell floor and shaking them at him. "These don't tell the why. I didn't do it because I wanted to, Yasha. I swear. I would never have hurt you."

"Oh, I know, I know," he mocked. "Because we were…lovers…." He twisted the word, made it filthy. He spun back to the door, pressed close again. "And how many of your other lovers did you put in their graves, Black Widow? Do you even remember the number anymore, or did your headboard get so full of notches you just ballpark it these days?"

She pushed herself to her feet and stalked over to press her face as close to his as she could get it with the grille between them. Her fingernails curved into the wood.

"I'm not going to debase what I know we both felt by running it through this ringer even one second longer."

"Really? Anger? That training of yours must be slipping. Maybe you need a Red Room refresher course. This is the classic moment when you want to play the wounded flower sympathy card, try to evoke my inner protector instinct. Come on. Turn those big green eyes on me full of tears and beg me to listen because we loved each other so much." A scraping sound came from his side of the door, and she knew it was the bite of titanium fingertips against the weathered oak.

It struck her that except for the barrier of the door, they would be pressed chest-to-chest and palm-to-palm. Too much. She took two steps back, moving as far as the tiny cell would allow, and sat down with her back to the grille.

"I'm done talking to you about this right now."

She heard an electronic notification chime from somewhere outside the cell, and she heard him turn toward it.

"Saved by the bell. Don't think this conversation is over, Natalia. I will get the information I'm after, one way or the other. If you know me as well as you keep claiming, you know I won't stop."

His footsteps faded away, and she shivered.