AN: I saw The Winter Soldier, and I may have cried over how gorgeous it was.
Okay. I did. I cried lots.
Talk about not just an amazing development for our Cap, but a kick-ass movie over all. Please, if you haven't, gooooo see it. I admit that I chuckled over [spoiler], [spoiler], [spoiler] and Natasha just [spoiler]!
Now, I'll be real with you guys. The Winter Soldier was brilliant, funny, calculating, and incredible. I can't promise you the thunder of TWS, but I can promise you my very best when it comes to my version of The Winter Soldier. It was such a thrilling story that I'm excited to share another idea of it.
Isn't any good story worth telling...worth telling twice? With changes and other plots and characters...like the other Avengers participating. I'm moving ahead with my original schemes with some added touches from the film, o'course. Speaking of which, if I am ever hitting a point of a NON-OBVIOUS spoiler for Captain America: The Winter Solider, I WILL mark it. Please don't worry about that.
This is where the story picks up much needed speed. I hope to take you guys to some interesting exploration of characters...
"Steve."
His eyes open instantly.
The ceiling fan in Beth's room is off, but the air is cool against the rapid flush of awakening to his cheeks. The entire room is drenched in night, except for that same forgotten window that casts a hue of dark blue over his body. The passing traffic flicker the walls like ocean waves, and the mattress is so soft that it feels like it could pass as another body—another body buried, piled in the dirt with the rotting of other men, with arms that are encasing him, pulling the soldier under…down…down…No, he forces himself to look up.
He isn't drowning. He isn't alone.
He breathes in.
He sighs slowly and silently out of his mouth to clear the sleep from his head. It feels like he's barely closed his eyes, merely felt the presence of Beth dreaming against him, and yet the nightmares…somehow the nightmares find him.
"Rogers."
He blinks—hard. Blue eyes stare, tracking the ceiling fan's blades, which are still and white and almost like pale fingers that are curving out along the ceiling; a stolid surface that convinces the soldier that he's not bobbing, not moving, and counts slowly backwards from ten. He flexes his fingers into the mattress, pretending to stretch. A turn of the left side of his face back into the pillow, but his eyes do not close. A gleam of sweat makes its way down his brow.
Usually the ghosts aren't so…so loud.
He swallows loudly and fully turns over, shaking the bed.
It's then he realises that Beth is no longer close to him. He can feel the small, loping indent of where she had laid. The clammy skin along Steve's waist and arms can feel the traced heat of her body, like burn coils echoing that something is missing. Someone is gone.
Alarmed, he shifts agilely on his palms to hold himself up to investigate the dark. He find that she's simply moved away from him in her sleep. Steve can contently see the rise and fall of her side, turned equally away from the blue light and away from the sudden sprawling of a nervous super soldier.
He slowly lowers himself down until his chin touches the sheets again, muffing his heavy breathing like a muzzle. He's grateful for it. He sinks down, bringing his hands to his ears; He's staring in the white of the pillow. If he can't hear it, if he can't see it, it isn't real.
They're not real.
The slightest press of a hand touches the small of his back, and every inch of hair on Steve's body stands on end. His heart clamors against his ribs—and he heaves off the mattress in a single coiled pushed —only to be pushed down, hard. He goes to kick—instantly aware of the nightstand's proximity to his hands and how a single stroke could knock a man's lights out for at least a good ten minutes, but a strong hand twists and forces the soldier onto his back. A compact weight from above lands onto his chest and pushes the air out of his lungs for a single heart-beat of a second—he goes to breathe in, to tell Beth to run—but two hands clamp over his mouth, the sharp tip of delicately managed fingernails threatening to dig into his jaw.
The blue snow dots the dim, glistening shoulder-length auburn hair hypnotically, as if sniper targets from the outside are relentlessly aiming for her mind. Steve's eyes widen as he finds himself being straddled by Black Widow herself. She slowly removes one hand towards something at her side, and for an instant, Steve swears she has a gun. He smoothly pulls his knee up to force herself to slide against his chest—but the glint of her emerald eyes seal him into place.
An unbelievably bright light—Steve's eyes water at he makes out the words on a screen.
[She's a heavy sleeper.]
Two full lips smirk at him. Natasha's thin brows rise and fall at Steve's. This close, Steve can smell the scent of pure black coffee on her breath. Steve blinks and slowly inches forward so that he can make sure she can feel the suppressed, fuming, near-heart-attack earning lash on the edge of his lips, but the closer he edges the tighter her hand gets.
'Natasha, what are you doing here?' His lips move against her hand.
Another gentle pad of thumb to a glass screen. [You didn't have your cellphone on you.]
'So that gives you all means to break into an innocent's apartment?'
[Fury issued the command to leave over twenty minutes ago to you without a response, so it was rather I come to get you, or another of Fury's agents. I figure you wanted a more delicate touch.]
This time, Steve makes sure she can feel his teeth. 'Delicate?' Blond brows furrow harshly as they lock eyes, both of them pinned.
[Tell Beth to get better locks. It was pathetic how easy it was to get in here.]
The spy's knees are starting to slide along the loose mattress to dig into both his sides. As if sensing this, the spy fluidly unfurls herself from the Captain and eases back onto the carpet. She gives Steve a final glance before she's out of the room. A true phantom along the floor.
She's leaning along the arm chair near Beth's door. His jacket is draped over one arm. Her fingers are furiously picking through his mobile.
Steve makes sure to close the bedroom door before he dares to even whisper. He crosses his hands over his chest, feeling entirely naked before the spy without even a means of appearing prepared. He isn't. His chest sinks with how useless he feels, bare-footed in the living room decorated in garish amounts of happy, festive things.
There's really only one question to ask.
"How long?"
She doesn't look up from his phone. "If we leave now? With these traffic reports, we'll be at S.H.E.I.L.D's headquarters without much trouble. Fury won't question it."
Steve looks around aimlessly. He isn't sure what he's looking for, really. A clear of his throat. "I don't have my gear."
"Packed." Natasha's voice is low and precise. She's entirely unshaken to second that she's sat on Steve's chest, less than an arm's length away from a sleeping woman. Steve doesn't know how she can move so effortlessly from situation to station. It's as she was born without the ability to feel uncomfortable. The soldier is nearly jealous of such a feat. "It has been packed days." Her brows knit and her lips purse. "It's the new suit, just so you know."
The grey existentialist monster in his closet. What else would it be?
Steve faces her stare head on. "I know. Fury told me that much."
"I recall Fury also saying that you should keep an eye on your cell for the call."
Steve nods. "I know. It's why I came all the way back from my apartment. I knew I'd forgotten it."
"Oh. That's why you came back, is it?" Her voice drips with quiet amusement.
He shifts his weight from foot to foot. "I'm not planning on letting Beth know anything, Natasha."
A flicker of emerald eyes zero in on his face. "Good. Neither do I."
Steve widens his shoulders alertly, continuing the briefing. "Flight?"
"Two tickets. Right here." She motions to her side once more. Steve's eyes take in the faint handle of a gun. "Passports—although, anything forgotten will be easily given again to us."
"I know the drill." Steve says firmly.
A pause.
"So then why aren't we moving?" She moves to hand the soldier back his jacket. "Are you forgetting anything else here that could compromise your identity?"
"I'm not sure. I had it under control before you decided to illegally break in and land yourself a foot away from Beth." He scowls. "On top of me."
Her red hair moves to drizzle down her shoulders as she passively turns off his phone. "It was urgent. I had to make a call so that you and Beth weren't discovered. It worked."
Steve breathes in through his nose and holds his jacket between tightened fingers.
"Natasha, don't do that again," he tells her steadily. There is a sudden spark behind the hardness of the spy's stare.
"What?" Her voice stays low, but there's a purring, dark edge to it. Like a panther contemplating a strike. "Did you think I'd get caught?"
"No," Steve answers back sternly. He leans in further. "For bringing a gun near Beth."
Her gaze holds grippingly to Steve's until she finally blinks. The instant that blink is over she's staring into the darkness of the hallway. "The only thing she needs to fear, for her own protection, are these locks."
"These buildings are old. I remember them." Steve defends absently, trying not to fume over Natasha's lack of cooperation. He glances around again. The air is thin and cold. His fingers are restless. He places one hand into a jean pocket to bring the paper headline of Bucky's obituary under his nails—the clarity of his own personal mission settling in.
"Steve." Natasha motions for the soldier to open his hand, and she deposits his phone. "We have to leave."
It's then Steve realises what his body is calling for. "My shield?"
"In the suitcase." A tiny jingle of keys from her direction.
It crashes into the soldier again, just how off caught he feels. Just how careless he was. Just how much he had shoved everything about the reality of his life within days of avoiding it all.
"Thanks."
"It is not a problem." The silhouette of Natasha's shoulder blades catch in the moonlight. "Are you ready?"
"Natasha," Steve's blue eyes grim in the twilight as he looks at her, bare and unmoving. "What should I tell her?"
Her answer is so quick it's almost insulting to Steve's ears. "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Steve, on an entirely rational level, what could you possibly say to her now that would make this any easier?" The spy asks smoothly. "From what I've seen of her reactions, the stress would kill her."
"I can't do that to her, Natasha."
The green inside of her dark pupils are impervious. Steve only wishes he could get inside of that mind and understand what she's thinking—what she's seen in Beth during his blackout. Enough to where Beth's afraid of her. "She couldn't handle it."
Steve takes in the living room as if understanding for the first time how everything is made of plastic, and glass and fragile moving gears. He imagines what it would be like to wake her up now and confess. Imagines her understanding what it is he has to do, why he can't stay.
At the door, he can still smell her scent from the mingling of a few hours before—where she had nearly cried over his newest wound. A wound that he could have avoided if he had just used more control…had less Fury.
At the door, he can so easily see shadowy men busting in the wood, blow by blow. Splinters of old wooden doors crushing inwards from the steel of their boots—fire in their eyes and machine guns through the windows—and the entire building going up in sudden, suffocating flames. All because he let her in—and she can't ever escape unscathed. He can't always be around to make sure she's safe…
"We have two minutes," Natasha clarifies into the silence.
He forces himself to push it all away.
"I have to—I have to say something." Steve begins.
"You can call." Natasha suggests negligibly. "After we've landed."
"And when will that be?"
"By the end of this evening. Even S.H.E.I.L.D can't travel half the world without stopping for fuel."
"Too long," Steve decides, making his way back across the living room.
For a moment, Natasha's eyes widen in sudden, unpredicted fear that Rogers is actually going to—but then he carefully turns about the kitchen, narrowly knocking all of Beth's stacked magazines to the floor. "Not for this."
Her lips part slightly in a jagged exhale. "You can text."
"Not my style." She barely sees a hand motioning through the hall. "It's not personal enough."
"Personal enough?" She curls her lips elegantly. She moves hurriedly, not a sound across the floor as she leans around the corner to spy at what the soldier is doing. "Don't tell me you're doing what I think you're doing."
Steve halts slightly to glance at her expectantly from the corner of his eyes. "You push and push for me to get out of Tony's mansion, take my motorcycle, and you give me grief when I try to keep my promises." He's leaning over the table with a pencil rolling between anxious fingers. "Sheesh."
Her lips pull tightly into a smirk at the messed up slick of his hair, sticking up and around his forehead, his tongue tapping at his teeth as he thinks. She then turns back to start up the car.
"You've got one minute, Rogers."
Seated in the passenger seat, Steve can't bring himself to look away from Beth's apartment. He feels like he's seen it more times than he's even seen his own.
Now he feels like he won't be seeing it for a very long time.
"You're a real romantic, Steve." Natasha observes. Her eyes take in Steve's solemn reaction and then return to the empty, salient street. "I bet you signed it and everything."
The car lurches forward from the blockage of the snow sticking to its dampened black paint, blending it in discreetly with the frozen cement under the tread of its own tires.
"In a way." Steve confirms closely.
He keeps his eyes to her apartment building until he can't see it anymore. He pulls out his cellphone again to turn it back on. Two missed calls. One from Natasha. One from Fury. One new message.
Steve doesn't even need to guess which of the two actually bothered to leave a message.
He takes a breath and slowly brings the receiver to his ear.
Seven in the morning comes too quickly. Or at least her phone tells her it's come too quickly.
The coldness that has taken over her room is sharp, even as she's cocooned in blankets, and it stings at her toes. She swears that the sun rises just get under the rim of her closed eyes. She opens up both arms to stretch—feeling more hung over than she's ever had when she actually drank—and groans exaggeratedly.
She turns, fingers pulling the bangs out of her face. "—And you actually like the morning?"
She collapses back onto the mattress and rolls back into the sheltered warmth.
Silence.
She keeps perfectly motionless against the pillow and holds her breath.
She can't hear anyone else breathing.
No, is all she thinks.
A hand grips at her hair to rip it back behind her ears as she reaches out timidly, not wanting to feel the empty, cool space from the adjacent pillow that's waiting for her. Her heart starts to tremble. "Steve?"
Long, pale fingers curl around empty sheets. She keeps her face pressed into the pillow. Her voice is muffled. "Steve…?"
No, no, no, no, no. Another pat up along the pillow. Down. She stretches her arm as far as she can possibly reach before she gives up the fight and faces the sprawling, no man's land of her bedroom.
She holds herself together and practices swallow breathing before she curls back up and moves over to the side of the bed that once held a sleeping soldier that promised he wouldn't leave. She loops an arm under the pillow and drags it to her face to catch what lingering smell that could be left of her soldier—but there's nothing there. She can only guess it's been too long. She can't allow herself to calculate what time it was that he decided to leave...but a fresh wave of hurt drains from the inside of her chest, and she decides to not want to know.
With a defeated sigh, she heaves herself upright to reach for her phone, hoping against hope that maybe he's left a message. Something. Anything.
A sudden crumpling sound of rattling paper makes her jump as she moves the sheets from around her legs. She stops. Turns. Gently peels back a sheet to find what looks to be a battered newspaper article. She touches faintly at its bent edges, smoothing it out with her fingers as she holds it closer in the crisp, chilling, morning light.
What…is this?
She carefully opens it up and tries to unwrinkle its surface on the corner of her nightstand. It's old, that's for sure. She carefully runs a finger along the faded ink to feel the raised dots. There's a square black and white picture of a young man, smiling, centered to the side as a highlight—but she has no idea who he is.
She tries to curiously link something about him to her memory.
He's brunette. He has dark eyes. He's…in uniform?
She traces her eyes through every line for a name, and nearly misses it.
His name is James Buchanan Barnes. And he's been dead for over 70 years.
AN:Thank you so very much for reading as usual. And hey, please tell me what you guys thought of TWS!
I'm going to try to keep my chapters shorter..if I can help it. What do you guys think?
And don't worry, if I'm ever hitting a note of MAJOR spoilers for the movie, I'm going to mark it crazy. We've cool like that, ya dig?