I AM NOT DEAD! And neither is this story. More notes at the end. Also note that despite the fact that they're going throuhg a rocky patch, this story is solidly stevebucky so don't worry!
When Natasha gets the phone call, she is at a café in Nice watching the sun rise.
She is really not expecting this to happen.
Her legs are crossed and she is stirring the ice in her tea with a straw. She presses the phone to her ear. "Hallo," she says, strictly casual but mentally preparing herself for the worst.
"Natalia," she hears from the other end.
"James," she replies. His voice is heavy with emotion. She shifts in her seat, places her free hand in her lap. "Are you in trouble?"
"Uh," he says. He is breathing heavily, sounds like he is actively on the move. "Not exactly," he continues, confidence draining from his voice with each word.
"What is 'not exactly'?" Natasha probes. She takes a sip of the tea.
He stammers on the other end of the line momentarily before he manages to say (in Russian) "I had a fight with Steve."
She lifts an eyebrow, considers. "Did you hurt him?" she asks.
"What?" he says in English, sounding shocked and almost offended. "No," he continues. "It wasn't – it wasn't that kind of fight."
"What kind of fight was it?" Natasha asks.
Bucky doesn't respond for a moment. "I need a place to stay," he finally says (in Russian). "I don't know what to do." His voice is thick with emotion. It makes Natasha frown.
"Are you in DC?" she asks. She is gentle, nurturing with her tone.
There is no reply. Natasha waits for a moment before assuming that Bucky is simply nodding and has forgotten that she can't see him. "I have an apartment by the old SHEILD headquarters. Break in without setting off any alarms. I'll be in DC as soon as possible." She gives him the address.
"Thank you, Natalia," he tells her as she is walking away from the café. Nice is awake, beginning to fully greet the day. She walks with purpose, buys a plane ticket and boards the first flight back to the States. She reads quietly, makes a game plan. She should text Steve, get the full story, but there is something about the trust Bucky has placed in her that makes her hesitate. It is an honor. It is more than she could have dreamed for from him, thinking about the future while applying pressure to a wound in her abdomen outside of Odessa. She flips the page of her book.
In the airport in DC she receives a text message. It's from Steve. "Is he with you?"
Natasha thinks for a moment. "Yes" she finally responds.
"is he ok?"
She purses her lips. Her fingers hesitate over the touchscreen keyboard, but she eventually replies with "Yes," and "Hes okay". She places the phone back into her bag and holds her head high. It's not really a lie. She can give Steve a more detailed report of the situation once she has all of the variables.
Natasha has not been back to her apartment in DC in months, but she finds it welcoming. A neighbor down the street smiles at her when they see her. She smiles back. The threshold of the apartment is thick with memories that she tries to displace, but she allows herself a moment of reminisce: staggering home after a mission and feeling the cool embrace of her sheets, helping a downstairs neighbor now long gone move in, a bizarrely peaceful Christmas with Clint a few years past.
The door shows no signs of forced entry, but it does not come as a surprise. The Winter Soldier preferred to force entry through windows if he could help it. She assumes that Bucky would do the same.
She enters on guard, relaxes when she sees Bucky sprawled out on the couch in the living room. He is dressed in black, shoes on and feet up. His eyes are closed, but his breathing indicates wakefulness. He has two arms wrapped around his body. Natasha raises an eyebrow.
"Paid a visit to Stark, I see," she tells him. He swallows, curls and uncurls his metal hand. The apartment is silent enough for the gentle mechanical whirring to fill the air. The sound is familiar in a way that catches Natasha off-guard and makes a part of her that she had buried very deep ache.
Bucky opens his eyes. There are great, dark bags beneath them. Sleep has not come to him in days. Natasha drops her bag and finds a place on the loveseat adjacent to the sofa. "What happened?" she asks.
Bucky opens and closes his mouth, holds up his left arm and looks at it for a moment. Light bounces off of it. Across the city, Steve Rogers is throwing a glass at the wall of his apartment. It shatters. "I fucked up," Bucky tells her.
"Elaborate," she says.
Bucky swallows. He stares at his arm. His nostrils flare. His eyes grow damp. He sets his jaw. "I thought about what you had told me," he starts.
"What did I tell you?" she asks. Her voice is even. Her face is neutral.
Bucky's lip twitches into a frown. He blinks a few more times. "Red in your ledger. Unique skillset." He waves his hand. "It sounded like I was – like it – it made sense," he manages to get out. He sounds exhausted. Natasha takes note.
Bucky licks his lips. "But it didn't – I didn't want to tell Steve," he says. He is dripping with sorrow. He looks pathetic.
"Why didn't you want to tell Steve?" Natasha asks. Her concern is now piqued with curiosity.
Bucky's eyes linger on the hardwood floor for a moment before he says "I didn't think that he would understand." His voice is hard, bitter.
Natasha frowns. "What did you do?" she asks. Bucky waves his metal fingers. Natasha bites her lip. "What did he do?"
Bucky's breath catches, and he caves in on himself. "I didn't tell him," he says.
Natasha raises an eyebrow. "Does he know?" Bucky nods. "Is that why you're here?" Bucky nods again. Natasha licks her lips, crosses her legs on the seat. "You fought?" Bucky does not reply. She lets him wallow for a few moments more before asking, with a clear and cold voice, "What do you want from me?"
Bucky looks up with wide, red eyes. His face is carved into a low, deep frown. "What do you want from me?" Natasha repeats. "Would you like a place to stay? Or would you like something else?"
Bucky swallows, doesn't answer.
"What do you want?" she asks again. "Would you like me to speak with Steve?"
"Don't talk to Steve," Bucky says immediately. His back is straight. He steels himself, cleans himself up a little. "I want –" His breath catches. "I want to go on missions."
"Good, that's a start," Natasha tells him. "What do want me to do about that?" Bucky doesn't respond. The wheels are turning. "I can train you," Natasha says. "I can speak with Fury." Bucky looks up, makes eye contact, nods. She continues. "But if we do this, I have some requirements." She stands. "You need to be focused. You cannot feel sorry for yourself. I know that you can handle more than that now. And I will be expecting more than that. Do you understand?"
Bucky's lip twitches. There is a violent, defeated emotion that passes its way across his face. He sits up straighter before nodding. "I understand," he tells her, but his voice is weak.
Natasha thinks for a moment, bites her lip. The apartment is silent. "Steve doesn't hate you," she say, finally. "And he understands better than you'd think he would." She is piercingly honest. It is like a knife in Bucky's heart.
Time drips slowly. Bucky's chest is clouded with emotion, it creeps into his vision and weighs his arms down. Something picks at Natasha's spine. "Stand up," she tells him. He raises an eyebrow, but follows the order. "No shoes in the house." Bucky looks at her, looks down, and takes his shoes off. "If you're staying here," she begins. "You're going to need the run-down. Follow me."
Bucky is quiet for the night, spends most of his time in the room allotted for him after the tour. His gaze is unreadable, his movements are marked with exhaustion. Natasha leaves him alone, buys groceries, changes sheets, wipes the dust from counters. Checks the place for bugs. She finds none.
That night, she dreams of the Winter Soldier.
"You're out of shape," she tells him as they spar. She has the upper hand. "You're fast, and you're strong," she begins, dodging a blow. She grabs him by his wrist, twists his body across her back. "But you could be faster." She flips him over. He lands on the mat with a loud thud. She is inches above him. "You could be stronger." She smirks. He frowns, attempts to grab her with his metal arm. She manages to just make it out of the way.
A smile plays on her lips. "You're holding back," she says. They are both on their feet again. "You're stance is all wrong." She swings a leg out, knocks him down. He growls. She places a leg on his shoulder, wraps her thighs around his neck and twists her body. They both hit the floor. She releases him. "I could have snapped your neck," she tells him. "You would be dead." He stands up without facing her. She follows in suit, stretches her arms.
He turns on his heel and throws a hard metal punch in her direction. She barely makes it out of the way. He is fighting furiously, backing her up into the corner. Every move is the Soldier, every step and every throw. It exhilarates her, until it begins to scare her. She begins to fight back not for demonstration, but in genuine self-defense. They go toe to toe until they are at the wall. There is no way for her to get away. He wraps his metal hand around her neck, presses her against the plaster.
Her heart races. She whimpers slightly, enough to feel embarrassed about it later. Bucky fixes his eyes on her. They are not cold. He is still in there. He lets go. She lands solidly, presses her entire body against the wall, maximizes the distance between them. "I could have snapped your neck," he tells her. "You would be dead." He stalks off to leave her to breathe.
She finds him after a shower in the guest bedroom she has lent him. He is curled around himself at the bed, staring out the window at the city lights. "More like that," she tells him. He furrows his brow, turns to face her with a puzzled look on his face. She shrugs. "You did great."
She leaves him with a smile.
She is nine when she meets him the first time, and she does not know who he is. The concept of him having a name is foreign to her, and when she thinks about it later she cannot remember a single person calling him anything in particular. He simply stands in the back, flanking handlers in all black. His arm is covered by leather and cloth. His face is hidden beneath a half-mask. His eyes are hard and dead.
She does not like the way that they follow her, and she does not like the complete silence that comes from his presence. He is the absence of something. It unnerves her, unnerves her in the way other children fear the dark. Natalia has never feared the dark. She cocks her head, stands in a well-practiced battle stance. She is the dark.
What she likes the least is the others. Little spiders who chatter about him when their handlers are not around. "He's so handsome," one of them says. She is pretending to be older than she is. Natalia rolls her eyes.
He teaches them sometimes, and when he does it is like torture. Not in the movements themselves – he has skill, and it wows her. She eats up his lessons, locks them away. Something that he has taught her saves her life hundreds of times over. But the others wear on her. They make fools of themselves in efforts to impress. She sticks her chin up high. She wants him to know that she is not a fool.
She is the biggest fool of them all. They see her precociousness as defiance, and they pit the two against each other. The other widowlings watch. Natalia's face is as red as her hair, she shakes in her boots. The Soldier sees her as they face each other. She swallows. His eye twitches, and he frowns. He turns his head, studies her. She feels stripped down, but steels herself. He shoots a worried glance at his handler. His handler nods. He turns back to Natalia.
She lasts twenty seconds. It is longer than anyone else in the room would have lasted. He snaps her arm in two. She screams and falls, and they hold the head of any widowling who tries to turn away in place. This is what happens when you cross them.
They let her scream and cry, and then they take her to medical. She heals quickly. They allow the other girls to sign her cast. She meets the asset again when she is thirteen, and she does not realize that he is the man who broke her arm until she is wearing his coat, being debriefed next to him.
Before he is frozen, the asset turns to a handler. "She was just a little girl," he says. The handler frowns.
"открой рот," he says.
He opens his mouth.
In truth, Bucky doesn't really know what to do with her.
Steve was easy. Steve was always around, always available. He was a constant body in the room. He was reading, or sketching, or online, but he was accessible at all times. He would initiate conversations. He would ask questions, or tell stories. Bucky could speak to him about anything and know that he was being listened to. He was a safety net. Bucky misses him like a knife in the heart, but he swallows it.
Natasha is different. She is sometimes around, rarely available. She is aloof if they are not sparring, or discussing plans. She walks softly, says nothing. Even if they share a room they do not speak. The silence is comfortable, like a blanket, but it wears on Bucky. He wants to speak, say something besides a dull, to-the-point observation.
Not that he'd know what to say. She is still like mist. More tangible, but like mist.
They are together a week and a half when he finally takes the chance. She is reading on the couch. Her hair is damp and in strands. She is growing it out. She is wearing yoga pants and a blue tank top. He is still getting used to seeing her in clothing that is not intimidatingly perfect.
"Um," he starts. His arms and legs are sore from sparring. He is getting faster. He is getting stronger. He isn't holding back. "Do you want to watch a movie?" he asks.
He does not expect her to turn around and say "Sure." He expects it so little that his eyebrows shoot up and his lip twitches. She smiles. "Did you have anything in mind?" she asks.
"I wasn't expecting you to say yes," he tells her. She continues to smile, narrows her eyes playfully.
"I'm sure this apartment has a few DVDs laying around," she says, standing up to look under the TV.
They end up watching a Halloween movie from the late 1990s that Bucky is pretty sure is meant for children, but he enjoys it intensely. Natasha does as well, she laughs along throughout the whole thing. When she laughs, Bucky laughs, and Bucky laughing makes her laugh harder. It is one of the most surreal things that he has ever experienced.
After the film, they are tighter. In the morning Natasha is drinking coffee in the kitchen, reading the paper. Bucky has the sports section. He lounges at the other side of the table. "Okay, I gotta question," he says, folding the paper over itself. She looks up. "But you have to promise you won't laugh."
"What is your question?" she asks.
Bucky swallows, leans forward. "Are movie theater prices ridiculous, or is it just inflation?" She grins. "Also, why does everybody on TV look the same? And why do the bananas taste different? And Coca-Cola! Why does Coca-Cola taste different? Was it not good enough? Because I'm tellin' you Nat, what we had was just fine, and I know that I sound like somebody's grandpa when I say that but it's true." Natasha has to bite her lip to keep from laughing. It only serves to egg Bucky on. He takes a look at the paper, leans even closer, nearly stands out of his chair to close the space between them. "And why did they sell the Dodgers to LA?"
She buys him Mexican coke and they discuss banana plagues and baseball for hours.
The Winter Soldier was cold. He had his moments, but even then they were frost-covered. The strings that bound them together were coated with ice. When he held her, she felt powerful and cherished. But not warm.
Bucky Barnes is a fire. He gives off heat wherever he stays, once he gets going. The strings that bind them are the same, but they have thawed. He does not hold her, and she does not want him to, but there are tokens of friendship: moments of trust, an understanding that is more intimate than anything she has felt in years.
It is easy to stand next to him and feel warm, just like it is easy to stand next to Steve and feel safe.
Not that she's particularly comfortable with either.
Sometimes Bucky moves in a way that is familiar. It shoots through her body, lands in her heart – a mix of fear and fondness. Sometimes he moves too quickly. Sometimes he moves too methodically. Sometimes he stands like a statue and watches something, observes every inch of it. Natasha knows that he is computing, making connections in his head. They taught it, programmed it in. She does the same thing.
She'll sit and watch, and wonder if Steve knew that this was the Soldier. But then she thinks:
Sometimes Bucky moves in a way that is unfamiliar. It makes her turn her head, observe with a mix of curiosity and wonder. He has a rhythm to the way he walks and talks, uses his hands. The ghost of an accent slips in when he speaks, the more he speaks. The easier it gets for them to speak to her. He has a smile that she never got to see when she knew him: a real charming thing, put-upon but genuine and gregarious.
"I remember Paris," he tells her one morning. She looks up from her phone. She has been messaging three people: Nick Fury, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson. She has kept Steve politely up to date, respecting privacy. She has kept in touch with Sam, happy to hear that he has been keeping Steve away from his melancholy. She has sent an introductory email to Nick Fury about the possibility of Bucky being involved in… whatever it is they've been trying to do. She smiles. "You were just a kid, Nat," he says. He is dripping with shame.
"I was old enough to know what I was doing," she tells him. "Don't feel bad about it. I remember it fondly."
He spends a long time thinking.
Later, they spar. He has the upper hand, but stops to linger at her right arm. She uses his hesitation as leverage, and their session ends with his arm twisted around his back and his face in the ground. He beats at the mat, and she lets him go. She stands to stretch, wipe the sweat from her face. He is still far away. "I broke your arm," he tells her.
"My arms are fine," she says.
He frowns. "No –" he pauses. "When you were little. They made me break your arm." He swallows, looks at the ground. "How old were you?"
"Do you want to know the answer?" Natasha replies. She takes a drink of water. Bucky doesn't reply. "Don't feel bad about it," she says. "It made me a better a fighter."
It continues.
"I remember London," he says.
"I remember Portland," he says.
"I remember Mumbai," he says.
"Don't feel bad about it," she tells him. "It was the first time that I felt like I was worth something."
He nods.
Things come back to him fast. Movements are ingrained in his muscles, bones. He picks up where he left off. "You are a super soldier," Natasha tells him. There is humor in her voice, light prodding.
"Yeah, but it's still kinda… I dunno," he says. His mouth is twisted. "Kinda weird."
Not that he complains. He's aware of his body. It grounds him. He's aware of the power in his left arm. He can see the path of his existence from the beginning to the now, with very little interruptions. There are blank parts. There is a hole in the form of Winifred Barnes. There are years of being a teenager that he has not yet recovered. But he can link moments from the start to finish, and all the way through. He is Bucky. He is the Winter Soldier.
Natasha quizzes him on languages. He is proficient at everything she throws at him. He can speak it if he warms up, read it if he's been speaking it. At first it makes him nervous, gives him a growing sense of dread, but the novelty of the ability soon catches on. "I could barely read English when I was a kid," he says to Nat in French. She lifts an eyebrow. "I was terrible at school," he continues in Cantonese. Nat is at full attention. She knew the Soldier, not Bucky. She finds she wants to get to know Bucky. "Steve was always better at it," he finishes in English. His voice breaks when he says Steve's name, but he recovers, forces a tone of playfulness.
"Have you spoken with him lately?" Natasha asks. She already knows the answer. This is a formality.
"He doesn't want to talk to me," Bucky tells her in Russian. His voice is flat, but there is emotion at the edges of the way he forms his words.
"You would be surprised," Natasha murmurs.
"Have you been talking to him?" Bucky asks.
"Yes," she says. He raises an eyebrow. "I haven't told him anything that you wouldn't want me to. That's your decision," she says. "But I've been keeping tabs on him."
Bucky swallows. "How's he doin'?" he asks. Every inch of him is on edge. He is dripping with emotion.
"He's well. He's been spending a lot of time with Sam." Bucky nods. Natasha considers. "Would you like me to pass on a message?"
Bucky is thinking. "No," he says. This is why:
He sees his arm in the mirror, cool metal glinting in the sunlight. He listens to the insides of it as it spins, works, whirs. He tests it while he trains, remembers all of the ways that he can use it to his advantage. It makes him feel like he has a say in his place in the world. This is the arm that Tony Stark built for him, by request. This is a choice that he has made. It is one of many choices, and all of them bring him closer to the Winter Soldier.
It comes with the territory. It is hidden in every movement that he makes. He can't escape his past, but he can live with it. He can curl and uncurl his metal fingers. He can use the thought processes they gave him to his advantage. Languages fall off his tongue. He can be colder. He can be more solid.
He doesn't think that he can be what Steve wants.
And he doesn't know if he would choose Steve over the quiet, calm feeling he gets in the back of his head when he thinks he's doing the right thing.
And it breaks his heart to think that he would cause Steve any more pain.
"You're in love with each other," Natasha says. Bucky is reading a book that she recommended. His eyes widen. She is far-away, thoughts racing a mile a minute. Her brows are furrowed. There is panic in Bucky's heart, the kind of panic that was learned years ago. That he is only now remembering. He thinks of the body of a boy in the ground in Michigan. It catches him off-guard. He doesn't reply.
Natasha narrows her eyes. She readjusts herself. She is in the middle of composing a message to Nick Fury. "You know, I'm usually better at figuring this sort of thing out," she says. "Were you lovers?" she asks. Bucky is a deer in headlights. His look is enough. A small smile plays on her lips. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she says. There is kindness, warmth, humor in her voice.
Bucky takes a moment to respond. "Used to be," he says. He is very quiet.
"You should speak with him," Natasha tells him. It has been two long months.
Bucky takes a deep breath, stays silent. Natasha looks him up, down.
"What are you afraid of?" she asks.
She did not expect them to be lovers again because she is not accustomed to expecting much of anything from people, but she does take a very quiet moment to lay in bed and mourn what could and would never have been. She spends about forty seconds on it, half turned beneath the sheets, remembering kisses and touches with quiet fondness. Then she stops herself, settles, thinks.
Looking back on it, it's hilarious to her how she hadn't thought of it before. Her own foolishness makes her laugh. She presses a smile into the cool pillow. One day, it will be Clint's favorite story.
Across the hall, Bucky shivers through his layers of clothing and traces the memory of a body that could keep him warm for hours. Thinking about it catches in his throat.
Across the city, Steve Rogers is doing the same thing.
In the morning, they meet as they always do. Bucky is skittish. Natasha fights it out of him, and by the time they are done for the day they are as they always are: sweaty, exhausted, lying beside each other on the mat.
Natasha is putting a plan in motion. Bucky is realizing for the first time that the nature of his relationship with Steve truly does not bother her. He presses his head back against the mat and smiles.
"It's not SHIELD," Natasha tells him over lunch. They are dressed in fine clothing because they can be. He has a tailored suit now, leather gloves. His hair is styled. He winked at himself in the mirror before leaving her apartment. The low murmur of the restaurant carries on around them. "It's not even an organization. It's more of a loose association of private contractors."
"How do I know I'll be workin' for the right people?" he asks.
"Anyone contacting us is from a credible organization. FBI, CIA, and so on. We don't work under them, but we do work with them." Natasha leans forward. She has bangs now. Her hair is to her upper back. "We're specialists. They call us in when they need us." Bucky looks unconvinced. "It was built by the uninfluenced remains of SHIELD. The same people who fought beside Steve in DC, the same people who have been continuing to clean up HYDRA's mess across the globe. It's the next step."
Bucky considers. "Is this my only option?"
"No," Natasha replies. "But it is our best option." She taps her fingernails on the white tablecloth. "We would be our own bosses, James. We wouldn't have to bare our necks."
Bucky furrows his eyebrows. "What about Fury?" he asks.
"Fury's involved," Natasha says. "Low-key, but involved. We've been discussing you."
"Have you?" Bucky asks.
Natasha offers a pleasant half-smile, nods. "He's impressed. He wanted to know if you were interested."
There is agency in his arm, and control in the way that he moves. The restaurant buzzes around him. He can tell exit points, entry points, vantage points, crowd control, ways to minimize casualties, ways to maximize casualties. He recognizes potential threats in the other patrons, the quiet young woman at the adjacent table with a gun in her handbag and the burly looking man by the bar who carries himself with the gait of someone who is trained in at least one form of martial arts.
But he can also hear the music over the speakers, recognizes the song and what he thinks of it (lyrically well put together, but she's not his favorite bird). He's drinking something sweet despite the time of day because he likes the taste of sugar and it's overabundance in the 21st century. He can think back to the 1933, evaluate his favorite candy bars by taste and texture, remembers having the exact conversation with Steve Rogers, whom he loves, on the fire escape of his childhood apartment. He shifts in his seat, in the suit he wore because he likes the way that he looks in it. He taps his finger on the side of his glass and knows that it's something he's always done, in a dimestore in Brooklyn or in a tavern in Southern France.
The hair on the back of his neck stands up on end. He has red in his ledger. He has a unique skillset.
He says, "I'm interested."
Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of updates. I just started college, and I've been swamped with schoolwork and people etc.
This story is not dead. I have no intention of leaving this dead. I'm still interested in this story, and I'm still interested in writing for cap2. I just need to find the time.
There are probably about four to six chapters left in this story. I hope to have it complete by Halloween. I was planning on doing some book-ends type things, like a few bonus chapters. I wrote this fic based off of a fanmix that I made and never posted, and the book-ends chapters would be the bonus song/hidden track on the mix. I still intend to do that. Just to give you and update on how things are looking for this fic.
Thank you so much for reading and sticking with me, it means a lot and I hope that you are enjoying the fic.