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Natasha saw James again sooner than she'd expected. It was Steve's fault, really. Or, maybe it was Fury's. For all that Steve had insisted on burning S.H.I.E.L.D. to the ground to eradicate any trace of Hydra, Fury had had no intention of sitting around twiddling his thumbs. He put together a strike team to root out any "rats that didn't go down with the ship," as he put it, any Hydra cells that had survived the purge. After Natasha had sorted out her cover situation, she'd had nothing better to do. Everything went fine for a few months – until Barton ditched the strike team, leaving them a sniper short and leaving Natasha without a partner.
"It's Ursa Major," he said, their code for Laura.
"Status?" Natasha asked anxiously.
"Um, Ursa Minor three-point-oh," Clint said.
"Oh."
She couldn't expect him to ignore another baby on the way, but she wasn't happy about losing him.
"Keep me updated," she said.
"I will."
A few days later, Natasha was summoned to Fury's office only to find it already occupied by Steve and the Winter Soldier.
"James." She greeted him carefully, with no inflection.
"Natal- uh, Natasha."
Steve seemed to be the only one in the room affected by the tension.
"Look, Natasha, I know your track record isn't exactly the best-"
Ignoring him, Natasha turned to Fury.
"Why are they here?"
"The Star-Spangled Man here offered me a plan."
"And that plan is?" Natasha asked, turning back to Steve and raising an eyebrow.
"You've never turned down my help before, and I heard you needed a sniper."
"And you're just so keen on jumping back into the fight?" Natasha asked James, eying him skeptically.
"Well, you know me," he drawled with a dry smile. "Not good for much else. At least I'll be on the right side of it, this time."
"Captain Rogers suggested a deal," Fury explained. "Seargent Barnes here helps us with our little serpent problem, and we make sure he gets that pardon he's been waiting for."
"He should get it anyway," Natasha said, "He's got the temporary insanity card and all."
"Maybe so. But this is the world we live in. I've got a little clout left, for a dead man, but the live ones want some recent contribution to hold up in his favor. This could be it. The only question, Agent Romanoff, is can you work with him?"
Natasha considered the Soldier for a moment. Then, quick as thought, she pulled a knife out of her sleeve and threw it across the room.
"What the hell?" Steve yelled.
She'd aimed nonfatally, but it didn't matter in the end. James caught the knife easily. Then, catching her eye, he started tossing it casually in the air and catching it by the blade in an endless loop.
"He'll do," Natasha told Fury. Then, she walked out.
Steve hurried after her, but just before he caught up to her in the hallway, Bucky put a hand on his arm.
"You're overreacting, Steve."
"Overre- Buck, she threw a knife at you! I-"
"And I shot her twice. Besides, she wasn't aiming for anything important. It was…sort of an inside joke."
Natasha, only a few steps ahead, was still within earshot. She turned around and made her way back to the men standing in the middle of the hallway.
"Sharing all my secrets, Barnes?" she asked wryly.
"Well, I had to get your attention somehow if I wanted to give you back your knife," he said with a suave smile, offering the weapon handle-first.
Natasha shook her head with a smirk.
"Think of it as a present."
James's eyebrows shot upwards, and he froze, examining the knife closely for the first time. He let out a low whistle.
"More inside jokes?" Steve asked testily.
"More like settling an old score," Natasha said.
"Hey, pal, can you give us a minute to catch up?"
Steve looked skeptically at Bucky, who rolled his eyes.
"I promise we're not gonna kill each other."
"Cross my heart and hope to die," Natasha said with saccharine sarcasm.
"Fine," Steve said. "I'll meet you in the gym."
James let Natasha take the lead as they walked through the halls together.
"You kept it?" he asked.
"It was a good blade," she said before immediately deflecting, "You know, I've been meaning to ask for a few years, was it payback? For the first time?"
James shook his head.
"I thought it was the first time. I didn't remember any more than you."
"You did, though. I remember you asking questions…"
"Eventually. I'd gotten pretty good at realizing when something was missing. But, not then. It was too soon after."
"Huh, so you really were just being rude."
"Hey, believe it or not, that was a compliment. My way of saying you impressed me."
"Still rude," Natasha said, but her voice was light, and she was smiling.
They walked a little farther in silence before she spoke again.
"Look, I kept the knife as a reminder. You were the one who warned me, you told me to leave, and if you hadn't…I felt like I owed you for that. For a long time."
"And now?"
"You shot me twice. I'd say the scales are about even."
Natasha's voice was flat, but there was a spark of humor in her eyes, and James risked a riposte.
"I mean, you weren't trying very hard not to get shot."
"Oh, is that how we're playing this?" Natasha demanded, and her smile widened.
"Playing what? I'm just pointing out, if you'd been covering yourself-"
"You're not my trainer anymore, Barnes."
"Fair enough." James sobered, then, switching to Russian.
[So, what are we, Natasha?]
Natasha sighed while she considered the subtext of his question. She knew he wasn't pushing the whole soulmate thing, but he wasn't ignoring it either. And, she could no longer pretend that it wasn't what gave her the ability to read him so well. Ultimately, he was telling her where he stood: It meant something to him, but he wasn't going to start anything she wasn't ready for. He was just asking her to let him know where she stood.
[For now, we're partners. Anything else…remains to be seen. I'm not letting the universe make my decisions for me.]
[You always did have a stubborn streak.]
[You seemed to like that about me.]
[I still do.]
The gym had sparring mats arranged across the center floor and equipment around the edges of the room. Steve had found a solid punching bag in one corner and fallen into a rhythm. There were several other agents spread throughout the room, so he didn't pay attention when he heard the door open – until Natasha's teasing voice followed.
"So, you ready to help me give Steve another heart attack?"
"I don't know," Bucky said, "Sounds rude."
Natasha laughed, and Steve got the feeling he was missing something, but at least the two sounded friendly.
"Ha-ha, very funny, guys," Steve said, walking over to them. "You two get your differences all sorted out?"
"See, that's the thing, Steve," Natasha said, and she waved a hand between her and Bucky, "We're fine. I told you, we worked together before. We can do it again. If this is going to work, though, you need to understand something about us."
"Why do I get the feeling this won't end well?" Steve asked. He was half joking, but the way Natasha kept eyeing the mats really did worry him.
It didn't help his nerves when Bucky looked at Natasha and asked, "You're really roping me into a demonstration, aren't you?"
"Steve's our friend, not our babysitter. He needs to know we're not going to break each other."
"I'm standing right here," Steve reminded them. "And you guys really don't have to do this."
"It's fine," Bucky said. "I've learned not to argue with a lady."
"Come on, don't pretend you haven't missed this," Natasha said, taking position on a sparring mat.
"That your way of admitting you missed me?" Bucky asked.
He settled into a ready stance across from her, but he spoke with an easy smile, and Steve decided to stay out of their way until he had to drag one of them off for medical attention.
"I admit nothing," Natasha said, and then she struck.
Steve had expected the spar to be brutal, and he wasn't wrong, but he'd underestimated its grace. He'd thought Natasha and Bucky were just trying to prove that they could take whatever beating the other dished out, but he quickly realized their goal was more nuanced than that. They both hit hard and fast, but they anticipated each other, moving in perfect tandem. It was like playing chess against yourself.
The message Steve had expected came through loud and clear: They played rough because each knew the other could handle it. But it was supplemented by the realization that they also knew each other's limits. They knew how to work together more intuitively than Steve would've imagined.
"You read each other well," he said when the pair finally broke apart, bickering lightly over who had won more rounds. "That'll come in handy in the field."
Even then, he didn't know how right he was.
"I knew this was too easy," Steve complained into his comm link.
He ducked and punched, but the enemy just kept coming.
"We're Fury's heavy hitters," Natasha's voice replied in his ear. "He doesn't send us on softball missions."
"I wouldn't mind a softball every now and again."
"You know you'd get bored," Bucky said, and Steve couldn't argue with that. He opened his mouth for another gripe, anyway, but the sniper's suddenly sharp tone threw him off.
"Widow, where'd you go?"
Steve hadn't worried when he'd lost sight of her on the ground; it was a dense fight, and he'd trusted his friend's aerial view of the battle. But, if Bucky had lost her-
"I'm taking a detour through Berlin," Natasha's voice answered.
That didn't make any sense. They weren't even in Germany. Before Steve could reply, he heard a spike of static, and the line went quiet.
"Natasha?" he asked anxiously.
"She fried her comm."
"We gotta find her."
"She's fine. We just need to finish this fight before she gets back, or we'll never hear the end of it."
"She could be in trouble," Steve protested. Why wasn't Bucky more worried about her? They'd seemed to get along recently.
"Trust me, Berlin means she's got things under control."
"That another inside joke?" Steve grumbled as he fought.
"Just an old mission."
Just as the fight was ending, Natasha reappeared at the door of a building, dragging behind her a man that Steve hoped was only unconscious.
He got the story on the flight back to base. Natasha had let herself be caught so as to absorb the intel her supposed captor let slip while he was posturing. Then, she'd broken out, grabbed a flash drive, and knocked out the head scientist so they could take him into custody.
"She do this often?" Steve asked.
"Just be happy she warned us this time. In Berlin, she just disappeared."
"Yeah, well I learned my lesson after you interrupted my interrogation."
"You can't do anything right with this one," Bucky joked.
It didn't end there. On a stealth mission, Natasha whispered "Prague," and Bucky threw her two stories into the air, where she grabbed onto the ledge of an open window and swung herself inside the base they were investigating. In a fight, she yelled "Belarus," and Steve flinched as a gas tower exploded, struck by a projectile that he knew originated from Bucky's position. Steve took to joking that, some days, he didn't know why they needed him at all.
Then, their luck ran out. Steve should have known the mission would end badly; it had started out too easily. They'd successfully taken out all their opponents – except one. The man held Natasha in front of him with a knife pressed against her throat while he pointed a gun at Steve. Maybe he was just lucky, or maybe he'd paid attention to where the shots were coming from and deduced Bucky's position. Either way, Natasha was between him and the sniper.
"Drop the shield," the man said.
"Okay."
Steve dropped his shield and kept his hands in plain sight. He couldn't provoke a twitchy trigger finger yet. He needed time to come up with a plan.
"Odessa," Natasha said. Her tense voice was so quiet that Steve only heard it through the comm link, though she was just a few feet away.
"Natasha," Bucky growled.
"Just do it!" she demanded. "Now!"
Before she'd finished speaking, a gunshot split the air. Natasha and the man behind her fell.
"No!" Steve yelled, running toward them.
Then Natasha groaned. She sat up, and Steve noticed that the body below her was still.
"Good angle," Natasha said, "but couldn't you have done me the favor of killing me this time? I'm getting really sick of hospitals."
"You're not funny, Widow," Bucky said.
Steve winced at his tone but couldn't help agreeing as he helped Natasha stand and put pressure on her bleeding shoulder. She seemed surprised, and then she said something in Russian in a surprisingly soft tone. Bucky's response sounded terse, but Natasha seemed unperturbed. She replied one last time, and Steve wasn't exactly fluent, but he was pretty sure he heard a "thank you" in there somewhere.