Part One
Those who lived in the North - and not the North as it would be considered by someone in the Southern Hemisphere - but the true North, they knew that cold was not enough of a descriptor. In Swedish, there were twenty-five words specifically used to describe snow, forty-six in Icelandic. The Sami people, mostly Caribou herders in Russia and the three Scandinavian countries of the far north, had a combined one hundred and eighty words through their combined languages and dialects, which described the snow and ice. One of those, Skavvi, was the best description for that day. Skavvi described snow which had a harder frozen crust over the top, it formed as a result of the top layers of snow thawing during the day only for the surface water to be chilled and turn to a hard, ice-like top. It was like one of those cakes where a spoon cut through the surface and some sort of ganash would flow out into the bowl.
This was the snow that was the most tiring to walk through in boots, each step meaning your foot punched through the top layer and into the softer snow. Natasha wondered sometimes why they made runners train in the sand when snow was equally bad, if not worse for tiring out the leg muscles. She would know, she remembered being sent to do laps in her gym clothes along with the other girls on a day with at least a foot and a half of fresh snow to get through. They were told that being so cold would make them run faster. It wasn't then - Natasha couldn't remember exactly when it was - but sometime later, when they were a bit older, Masha had lost three toes to frostbite. They had learned to strip bits of fabric from their bedsheets, wrap their hands and feet to try and keep some warmth.
Walking in this snow, was hard, but in some ways, Natasha's annual trek through the Slovensky forest was like a balm. She was no stranger to intense exercise, not to sweating and breathing hard to draw in much-needed oxygen, but this walk she imagined did for her brain what general exercise did for the average person. Her mind felt clearer on the return journey through the ancient trees, she was able to concentrate on her footing and listen only to the sounds of nature. This was one of few places she didn't hear a branch snap in the distance and presume it was under the foot of a sniper - perhaps that was naive, but she needed the sanctuary. There was no phone signal and she put a blocker on radio signals while she walked, if the world decided to end when she was in the forest then it could do so without her input.
Natasha didn't take holidays, she didn't need to leave for hospital appointments of physiotherapy. The once-yearly physical and psych eval that SHIELD insisted upon was more than enough to confirm she was healthy. As healthy as she could be that is, no one could have experienced all she had and come away without scars. This was the only time she needed to be alone, a few days each year that no one interrupted.
The type of cold she felt as she picked her way through the forest was one that Natasha was sure no word explained. A cold where her face was numb, there may have been frost in her eyebrows and each breath she took in was a shock to her lungs, but a cold when her body was warm, sweat made her underlayer cling to her back and it was tempting to remove the windshield she wore over the snowsuit. It was the cold of effort, the cold which defied expectations. This combination of hot and cold was natures way of saying 'it's not fair.' The cold couldn't win against the determination of the person walking.
It made Natasha remember not so much why she was there, but how it had felt to be there in the past. She remembered walking these forests back then, in '43. The weather had been mostly mild - or mild in comparison to what she had seen in Stalingrad - but that had allowed the snow to stay thick, powdery and impossible to walk through when carrying so much extra weight. She remembered the sweat on her back under the military issue wool coat, her calves had been burning and her thighs felt like bricks each time she lifted her feet. Her toes had been numb, fingers too. One hand had clutched the strap of the rifle against her left shoulder, the other was held by the man she had followed here. Nikolai had gripped her hand tight, staying on watch in case she fell again and dragging slightly to help her up the incline towards their resting spot for that night.
She remembered his face, the brightness in his eyes that showed the funny side of their situation. They both knew seeing the humour in it would prevent the fear. If Natasha closed her eyes and concentrated hard she could almost still feel the weight of his hand on hers.
There was an irony she thought to her fitness level at sixteen being far less than it was in the present day. Back then she was barely beginning the experimentation of the красная комната, her abilities may have been high, far beyond the average girl, but she didn't have any extras yet. And, she supposed, she had been carrying the extra weight of her daughter as well as being tired from the constant walking in her current condition.
She thought about the imaginary hand of a young soldier in hers, remembered the smile in her eyes and the smile she had felt on her own frozen face. This kind of cold, the sweating cold with numb toes and tears that stuck to a person's cheeks, it was cold of nostalgia. Not of pain, not a cold that reminded her of the unmarked grave to a baby, she had never really known, but a cold that reminded her of feeling innocent, naively happy and optimistic. The cold helped her return to the rented car a few miles from where she walked, to get on a plane back to JFK and unlock the door to her little Odessa apartment to a small black cat who would show both happiness at her return and scold her for ever leaving.
She could come here and cry, feel the emotions she had only days after they had walked the hill but there was enough of that in her past, enough pain and loss. Instead, she remembered the magic of her first love, of feeling appreciated and cared for in the arms of a man when before all there had been was pain. She remembered the laughter of a snowball fight with the regiment, the nicknames that were thrown around and the apologies they would aim her way whenever crude language was spoken.
Beginning to come back into an area of phone signal Natasha felt the cell phone in her pocket vibrate insistently as messages began to flood through. She pulled off one glove, drew out the phone and glanced at the screen. Most of the messages flagging up were to be ignored - she would deal with them once back on US soil but one caught her eye - the only one which she really cared about. James didn't know why she was here - he didn't even know where 'here' was as such, only that it was somewhere she had to go in Slovakia. He respected her demons as much as she did his, knowing that some were excised through sharing, others through warm arms and soft kisses. More still had to remain personal, closed off within the brain of the one that experienced them. He didn't ask, he didn't feel a need to, only knowing that this trip would happen and making sure to feed Liho. The text was simple:
Liho had food, don't fall for her lies! Got SHIELD stuff, will check in once your home. Love you, J xxx
The message was not what made Natasha smile, the memories were responsible for that. In the same way that she remembered the touch of Nikolai's hand in hers, she remembered James' touch, much more vividly and in many more ways. The smile that she couldn't push down was a reminder once more. Natasha, barely more than a child who had smiled through the pain and exhaustion here decades ago felt the same as she did now, looking at a typed message. The type of cold remained a memory but perhaps a part of the hopeful, love-struck young girl was also still with her.
Part Two
Natasha had been in the stage between sleeping and waking when the icy metal touched against her waist. A rude awakening in some senses, and a reminder of another reason why she never slept naked. Usually, that reason was in case of emergency, she never knew when she would be needed and sleeping in something that resembled clothes made that easier, but on that morning it would have protected her from the freezing metal hand that had flopped to rest against her side.
It didn't wake James, who had rolled over onto his back and was looking likely to inhale his own hair, but it woke Natasha enough to know falling back to sleep was unlikely. She didn't move away from the hand, even though the cold begged her to. The cold of James' arm was both as comforting as it was shocking to her bare skin. The feeling of metal fingers, half-closed sitting against her skin, they were part of him, and that was all they needed to be.
Only as she looked at his fingertips sitting in contrast to her skin did Natash see the small blushes of purple that had formed across her hip. The bruises which must have formed overnight were perfectly shaped to the tips of his fingers, there was no denying they had caused the marks to form.
They reminded her of another lifetime, of the first time she had been injured by his touch. It had still been new then, the arm not quite a part of James' body that he recognised. He had been horrified, his face draining of colour when he had seen the marks on her skin each one offending him. She hadn't felt them, not when they were happening or since, she hadn't known he would be so scared by them. A perfect handprint had been around her arm, fingerprints on her thigh and others dotted around at random, they had sickened him in a way she didn't quite understand.
Perhaps her naivety had played its part, she had grown up knowing her part was as a servant of the state. She had learned to know love but not until she had learned to kill, had washed blood from her hands, had been a pawn in the paper trail of intel. James', he had seen her bruised by others before, he had seen marks from the men she was ordered to make happy and all he saw on her that day was the abuse she had suffered for so long.
It had surprised her, how much he was repulsed by those marks. She had seen the soldier in action, watched and marvelled at his metal fist taking out the centre of a wall and bring the upper floor tumbling after. She had been there when he had pulled her underneath a slab of concrete, holding it above their heads to protect them both from the deluge of debris. There was something in that strength she hadn't really experienced before - a primal level of attraction. James was the only man she had ever met who she knew could best her in a fight. His strength was unique, a result of the metal crudely attached to his shoulder, and it was enticing at more than one level.
She heard a snuffle of protest escape from James' nose, eventually being irritated by the lock of dark hair strewn over his face. It was strange to see him sleep, to see the young man at the heart of all his experiences. She had tried to remind him of that, the first time his hand had left marks on her skin. She had tried to tell him she wasn't hurt, that although his arm may be easily controlled in most day to day activities he was still relatively new to being driven by other parts. He had been taken by the moment, as had she, he had given in to the most base instincts in the body of any living thing, perhaps that had meant being over-zealous with his metal side.
It had taken time for him to accept this, as well as other aspects of his new arm. It hadn't been a part of him, it felt alien and awkward but Natasha liked to think she had helped him accept the addition.
There had been a James Barnes before the accident, there had been one after the Winter Soldier was removed from his mind but only Natasha had ever really known the James Barnes in between. The man who had fought in a war alongside Captain America, the man who should have been dead but instead became a prisoner of the Soviets and the owner of a highly technical prosthetic.
Her James had never had a left arm, nor a left hand made of flesh. He couldn't affect the muscle density on one side, he had a deeply scarred shoulder too - but that was all she knew and it sometimes surprised her to see photographs before his arm was destroyed. She remembered the first time he had really forgotten his hand was metal. When lost in a kiss he had used his left hand somewhere he never should. Her gasp had been enough to remind James that cold fingers have their limits. They had laughed about that, a good sign of the changes in his mentality.
Otherwise, the cold didn't usually take her by surprise, she was used to grasping a cold palm to hers, or feeling the brush of metal against her jaw, her stomach still complained about the shocking change of temperature but she had given up trying to change that, they both had. Now she had memories of a cheeky grin he tried to hide before placing cold hands on sensitive skin, his whispered comment after a tv show making reference to ice cubes being used in the bedroom - pointing out ice wasn't needed, he'd just stick his hand in the freezer for a few minutes.
Her eyes wandered over his sleeping figure, seeing the ugly thick scarring around his left shoulder. They hadn't cared about how he looked, and she didn't either, the scarring acting as a reminder of his survival, not of his pain.
Natasha felt the metal fingers at her side begin to move but she hadn't expected the speed at which they would move. James slid his hand instantly around her waist and pulled her over to lie on top of him, eyes opened and smiling up at her by the time he loosened his grip.
"Got yah," He smiled, his voice rough from sleep.
"No, I knew you were awake," Natasha lied, crossing her arms on his chest so she could prop her chin on them.
"Liar," he spoke again, knowing that he would never win this argument even if he was right.
His eyes looked past her, noticing the small finger bruises and gently stroking over them with his thumb.
"Sorry," he mumbled, eyes still focused on her skin.
"Eh, it happens, I'm not complaining."
His eyes flashed back to hers for a second while he responded,
"You weren't complaining last night either."
She reached out with one hand, gently swatting his shoulder, but a smile had formed that she couldn't get rid of.
A moment of quiet formed, eyes locked to each other. The metal hand moved from her hip, sliding up under her hair and slotting into place from her ear to the angle of her jaw. He kissed her gently, lovingly, in a way that spilled 100% pure love into her.
"About last night," she grinned, giving up on any attempts to cover her emotions, "that look on your face and the way these sheets aren't quite sitting on your hips makes me think we need an encore."
Natasha knew what the prosthetic arm was to her, even if the cold metal could bite at times, even if it sometimes injured one of them more than the other. Even if the cold could be a shock, it could also be warm in that strange way that familiar things often are. For Natasha Romanoff, this cold was home.
Part Three
The human body is warm, sitting naturally at 37 degrees Celsius or 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature allows the organs to work at their best, allows blood to carry oxygen, allows muscles to relax and contract, allows neurons to fire in the brain. Sometimes the worst type of cold was 'still warm' because it wasn't the human corpse that was cold in those scenarios, but it made Natasha's soul feel cold.
She remembered the pink t-shirt the kid wore, it had Hello Kitty on it, square in the middle of the shirt. Her hands, one layered above the other, pushed down onto Hello Kitty's face over and over. She kept count in her head, пятьсот один, пяатьсот два, пяатьсот три, keeping the seconds in time so her hands pumped into the Hello Kitty face at the right speed - not too fast or too slow. Natasha's own breath became ragged with the continued pushing of her hands down on the chest of the child. She had felt a shot of ice water running through her veins when she heard and felt the first snap of a rib under her hands.
Пятьсом четире, пятьсом пять, пяатсом щест.
The second crack beneath her hands felt like the same ice-cold water was being fired through a power hose, engulfing her body.
The worst cold came when Natasha felt something warm and wet against her knees. Even through the thick material of the black denim jeans she wore, there was no missing the pool of blood which continued to grow since her first thrusts hit the kid's chest. The pool lapped at her knees, its warmth making her whole being painfully cold.
The gunshot shouldn't have been fatal, it had hit the top of her thigh, that should have made it ok but she was just a kid, too small for the bullet to slow before it ripped right through skin and muscle, exiting on the other side. It had torn the artery, the blood didn't pulse, it fired out of the hole in her leggings like a tap, no stopping it. Natasha hadn't had anything on her to use as a tourniquet, cursing that the undercover position had prevented her from wearing a holster. That would have worked, that would have done something. The kid wasn't even old enough to have laces, something else that might have helped slow the bleed; her sneakers still closed with velcro.
The guys she was after, would be long gone unless Coulson had managed to ring around for a chopper in time. Despite why she was here, despite the vital intel that had slid like sand through her fingers, Natasha couldn't bring herself to care. CPR was hopeless without a transfusion, like flooding a river when the dam was split, all it did was push more blood out of her body.
Natasha related the worst version of cold to a fever. That cold was the result of too much heat in the body as it tried to burn up the invading infection. She remembered it when she was a child, the red fiery rash on their bodies, every girl in the facility was sick. The illness was so infectious that there was no saving any of them. They all just had to fight to be well. When Natasha had shivered for so long and felt so cold it hurt to shiver anymore, that was when she had felt most alone.
It was the fever cold she felt inside her veins as Natasha lifted each of the little girl's arms carefully, crossing them over her chest. She felt the pain that came with this cold, the pain that wanted it to stop but could do nothing to make that happen, as she held her fingers on each eyelid for a second, helping them to stick in a closed position.
As she left the little girl, feeling the heavy set silence around her with each footfall, Natasha remembered the reason for this cold.
She could feel the blood of this child coagulating on her hands, could see her face inside her head. Natasha was surrounded by the pain in her heart, the ache that radiated unstoppable as the fever. She hated leaving the body but knew she had to, knew her parents needed to find her without any obvious involvement from SHIELD.
Walking away Natasha began to feel the other reason this cold reminded her of a fever. A fever was cold caused by increased temperature incidents like this, they were her psychological fever. Every time Natasha had to let an innocent die, every time she knew there was something she could have done, it ignited the flame that kept her going, step after step, knowing the only way to end this cold was to do all she could to fix it.