Note: This story ties in with But I'll Still Fight and Summer's End. It may be read as a stand alone.
April 2014
Fast. Strong. Metal arm.
Her soldier was back.
May 2014
Nick Fury: "You're sure you don't want to come with?"
Natalia: "Yes. I am sure. There are a few things I have to deal with for myself."
Nick Fury: "Keep in touch then, huh? Never know when you could use backup."
Natalia: "I'll keep that in mind."
Nick Fury: "If we run into each other chasing the same things…it'll be nice to see your face."
Natalia: "It's actually things that predate my time with SHIELD that I'm going to be facing."
Nick Fury: "I understand. If things go further south than you're able to handle, you know how to reach me."
Natalia: "Thanks, Nick."
Nick Fury: "Check in from time to time, kid."
Natalia: "I heard you the first time."
Nick Fury: "Any supplies that you need—"
Natalia: "OK, Nick. I got it."
June 2014
She told Steve that she had to figure out a new cover, but she ended up doing the opposite. She took up an old one. She went home. Not home where she was born. Home where she was made. Back to the web that had caught her when she jumped from a burning building.
She wanted to see if any of her family was left.
Natalia found the home of Lady Ivanna. She used to train them, when the spiderlings were just barely teenagers. Lady Ivanna had sat at her little bench, posture impeccable. Her fingers would glide along the keys of a piano, her music pacing them through endless dances.
Ballet really had been the start of the spiders' training. Nick hadn't believed her when she first told him that. Why wouldn't it be? Body control was everything.
Even now, Natalia's footsteps were silent even in the hollow coldness of Lady Ivanna's abandoned house. It wasn't particularly large, but it was three stories tall. No dust had accumulated, but there was nothing to suggest the place was inhabited.
Natalia walked into the sitting room. The burgundy drapes and rug were a little on the nose. Framed photographs on a table beside an armchair caught her interest: Lady Ivanna and two little girls. She recognised one of the girls. The other she'd never seen. None of the subjects in other pictures were familiar, but they all appeared to be a proud teacher posing with students. A front. A grand performance.
Plink.
The note bounced down two staircases before it reached her. Not so abandoned after all. Natalia drew one of her Glocks and moved toward the stairs. Followed the sound. Another note came down toward her. The itsy bitsy spider went up the pianist's stairs. And then up again. Little notes like a siren's song called her.
A large room at the top of the house. It could have been a master room. But she could tell by the floor that it had been used as a studio. Could tell by the glimpses of mirrors mounted to the walls. Could tell by the fact that a piano was tucked into that same room.
Natalia gripped her Glock and stepped into the studio. Reflections of herself appeared on all four walls, weapon raised. The Winter Soldier stood beside the piano, cybernetic fingers pressing down on keys at random. He looked up at her with his blank eyes. Raised no weapon.
She couldn't look away from him, and he kept watching her. Waiting for her to make the first move? Certainly noticing the way her hold never loosened on the grip of the Glock.
"You know me?" she said.
His eyes slid from the Glock back to her face, and then his gaze became unfocused.
"Yes," he said. The inflection of his voice could almost have been a question.
He advanced toward her abruptly, and she immediately re-levelled the Glock at him. (When had she started to lower it?) Natalia got off a single round that buried itself in his right thigh. It did nothing to slow him down. He was on her before she could get another shot off, she couldn't get her Widow's Bites ready in time, he—
The Winter Soldier's arms came up, and he hugged her into his chest.
Natalia's brain was frozen. She couldn't comprehend what was happening. The scent of his tactical vest filled her nose. She felt his heart beating against her, his breathing. A different life surged up from her memory so violently that it took her breath away.
Titanium fingers cradled the back of her head. Such gentle pressure for so brutal a piece of hardware.
"Natalia," he said.
She let herself put the Glock back into its holster. Let her arms circle around him. Maybe she let herself hold him against her with a little bit of pressure.
"James."
Natalia stood there and held him. Felt him holding on to her. Until he swayed to one side.
Then she said, "I shot you."
"You owed me one," he said. But he stepped back from her to examine his thigh.
"I owe you more than one," she said. "Let me help."
"No. I mean, I can…" he trailed off as he backed away from her. Backs of his knees hit the bench at the piano, and he sat down as if pressure there were a conditioned response. "Sorry. I'm mixed up right now. I…I don't know."
She approached him at the bench but stood a metre back from where he sat. Waited for him to look at her again. "I know how you feel," she told him.
He swallowed and looked down at his wound. Absently put a hand over it. She watched him blink several times in quick succession. "I've been having a hell of a time lately."
Something told her to close the gap between them, so she did. Her hand reached out slowly. Telegraphing the whole way, she touched his cheek. Held his jaw. Moved her fingers through a length of his hair when he was ready to see her again.
"Wanna tell me about it?" she asked.
He laughed softly through his nose. "Well, I realised that I'm a person with a conscience recently, and I've been trying to come to terms with that."
"Mhm," she hummed, "Sounds like fun. Will this person with a conscience stop being an idiot and let me help him?"
James took his hand away from the thigh wound, allowed her access to him. Said in a distant voice, "It'll heal on its own in a minute."
"Yes," she said, "but then there will be a bullet stuck inside you."
"Wouldn't be the first."
She extracted the bullet with practiced hands.
"How is—?" he started to ask but then aborted the question.
Natalia looked up at him as casually as she could. "Everyone is fine. You?"
His human shoulder shrugged. She knew the cybernetic side was too heavy to spend the effort on such a gesture. James clenched his jaw and looked down.
She added, "I'm alone."
He nodded.
"And it's no one's business that we've run into each other just now."
A grateful little grimace.
"Come on," she said. "You look like you could eat. And sleep. And take a shower. Not necessarily in that order."
A little smile on half of his face. "Thanks, Natalia."
She led the way out of the room and found a full closet. Searched until she found a suitable overcoat. "Wear this," she said and tossed the coat at him.
Somewhere along the way to her hotel, when the crowds on the streets grew dense, his hand found hers. And she didn't protest the contact. They both shed all of their weapons in her hotel room. She ordered room service for a party of twelve while he took a shower. When they sat cross-legged on the bed with the television set to something about real estate and ate from their laps, she didn't comment on the bruises across his chest and back. There was a mostly-healed halo of bruises around his right shoulder.
He ate like a horse, like a man starved. He ate like he hadn't had proper food in decades. Natalia had half a mind to tell him to slow down before he made himself sick.
Cocooned in hotel sheets with nothing but the glow of the television to illuminate her, she asked him, "What were you doing there?"
James was staring up at the ceiling. "Not sure. What were you doing there?"
"I wanted to see if there was anyone left."
He turned his head to watch her. "Any of your sisters?"
"Hmm."
"Did you find any?"
"No."
He looked up at the ceiling again. His human fingers rubbed circles into his artificially reinforced collarbone.
"What were you really doing there?" she asked.
"I honestly don't know. I just…remembered a woman and a mission. Then there were coordinates in my head. So I just went there. I'm not looking for anything."
Natalia rolled onto her side so that she was facing him.
He said, "I tried to go back. At first."
"Back," she said.
Nod and swallow around a dry throat. "Yeah. At first. I went back to the last base I could remember, but it was completely abandoned. No one to receive me."
"What'd you do then?"
"I felt angry," he said. Closed his eyes. Cybernetic whirling as he made a fist. "Angry that I'd been abandoned." A pause. "And then anger that I was feeling like shit when I could have been frozen in a box instead. Didn't realise I was feeling that way because I was going through fucking drug withdrawal. Took me that long to comprehend that they weren't my allies."
She remembered when it happened to her. The torrent of confusion. Unsure of herself and her own convictions. Unsure if she had any at all. Horribly turbulent times. It felt like the very foundations of the earth were shifting under her feet, never to be the same again. Natalia reached out and poked his ribs.
"I'm your ally, James."
He turned his neck to look her straight in the eyes. "You don't want me as your ally."
"I must be really stupid then. Besides, I said that I was your ally. Not that you were mine."
"I know I just came out of a frozen box a few months ago, but I don't think that's how it's supposed to work."
She let herself smile at him. "Contact me in a few months, and we can re-evaluate."
James snorted softly through his nose and turned to face the ceiling again, breaking their eye contact. She couldn't recapture it.
"You're not a bad person," she said.
He rolled his eyes.
She amended, "You're no worse of a person than I am."
That got his attention and rolled him onto his side so he could face her. She knew lying on his side was uncomfortable for him because of the prosthesis. It was too hard to lie on that left side, but lying on the right meant all that weight was pressing down on his ribs.
"We've both done bad things for a long time," she told him, "but we're not bad people, James."
He reached out and held her hand. Her palm to his palm.
"The very first time you were given a choice, you chose to stop."
"Not right away," he mumbled.
"But you did. You recognised it as something you didn't want to do, and you stopped. That means something."
He hummed into their hands. "How long am I going to feel like this?"
"It'll always be there," she said. "But it won't always be like this."
And he looked like he accepted that. Closed his eyes and said, "I'm glad we ran into each other."
Natalia sat beside him until she was sure that he was asleep. Then she slid out of the bed and made herself comfortable at the little desk across the room. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she settled into the seat and powered up the laptop she was travelling with. Natalia knew better than to expect a quiet night. Best to keep watch and her distance. She knew from experience.
After a few hours of scouring for evidence of her old family, James sputtered awake and tangled himself in the sheets.
"Soldatchka," she said softly. Something familiar but different enough to be reassuring.
His head snapped in her direction, but the tension bled out of his neck at the same time. James kept his eyes locked on her as his breathing evened out again.
"It's just us," Natalia assured him.
He was able to lie down again for a few more hours before they repeated the scene. And three days whittled by in that hotel room. She kept a steady income of food for him, and his appetite didn't seem to be waning. Natalia was sure he hadn't showered for so many consecutive days since before 1943. (Maybe not ever, based on what she'd heard about hygiene back then.) But she knew he was more than likely just marvelling at the endless hot water and letting his body feel the relief it brought.
They talked a little bit; she let James be the one to bring up the topics of conversation. Natalia gave him the opportunity to make all of the decisions, even the small ones about where to put the food when it was delivered and what sort of music or television to put on for background noise.
Natalia asked him if he wanted to go for a walk once his wound was mostly healed up and he was looking a lot less like an assassin on the edge of a mental breakdown. Again, she let James choose the direction they'd start walking. But Natalia took over the small turns and led on the paths. Didn't want to overwhelm him. He held her hand again. When she knew he needed it, she took her hand away and rested it inside his elbow instead. She bought him a razor and a hat at a little shop. He shaved when they got back. Didn't leave any hair in the sink.
He woke up disoriented in the middle of the night again while she was researching her sisters. Natalia tried to call to him again, but he was too panicked. Threw a knife at her, which she ducked. The blade buried itself into the wall, and she winced for the charge that was sure to be on the bill.
"Soldatchka," Natalia tried again.
James rolled across the bed and onto the floor opposite her. Stance low and defensive.
"It's only me," she said. "It's Natalia. It's only the two of us, milii moi."
A part of her wondered if he knew that she knew the words. Did he remember that she had used them at one point? Would he be here with her now if he did remember that she knew how to so cruelly control him?
But James's shoulders relaxed from their position high around his head. He blinked and looked around the hotel room. Gaze hung on the knife in the wall for a moment.
"Sorry," he murmured.
"Don't worry about it," she said.
"Could have hurt you."
Natalia made sure he was looking at her when she rolled her eyes. "Do you think so little of me?"
"You know what I meant."
"I do." Natalia nodded. She crawled halfway across the bed and then sat. "Come sit with me."
James hesitated. Looked like he was considering the possibility of this being a trap. But Natalia saw him make up his mind and return to the bed. He settled down on his back, eyes on the ceiling. She curled up with her back touching his arm and tried to show him that she wasn't afraid. That she understood and trusted him.
When she woke up in the morning, he was gone.
August 2014
Natalia and Clint were sitting at a little iron table outside of a French café. It was a bit of a break from sifting through her past. There hadn't been any traces of her sisters yet. Clint's offer of meeting up had come at a good time for her, when morale was starting to sink.
After they were served, Clint said, "So you've been a little distant. Fury says you don't always give him a ring to check in."
Natalia kept her face neutral and said, "I don't work for him anymore, you know."
Clint clicked his tongue. "You know that's not why he calls."
"Yeah, I know."
"Put him out of his misery," he said around a bite of pastry. "He keeps bothering me when you don't respond. He keeps forgetting that I'm not your keeper anymore."
She could imagine the harassment he was facing. She let herself smile. "OK, OK. I"ll get him off your back."
"Thank you."
"For now," she added under her breath and then ducked Clint's hand that swatted at her.
He made an exasperated sighing sound. "So what are you doing? Everything been OK since the info dump?"
She shrugged neutrally. "It's not bad. I'm staying busy."
"Nothing you can't handle on your own, right?" The slightest furrow appeared between his brows.
"I have it entirely under control."
"I know the sort of people you're going after—"
"It's fine."
"You know how to reach me if the water starts getting high."
"I got it, and I appreciate the offer. I'm doing fine. If I need help, you'll be the first to know. Alright?" Natalia sipped from her cup.
Clint laughed and clapped her on the shoulder. "Nick better be the first one you tell, or he'll bug the pants off of everyone else asking about you. But I feel better knowing I'm high on that list, too."
Natalia rolled her eyes.
"The guys miss you, by the way."
"Please tell 'the guys' that I miss them, too. But tell them that I only said it to be polite."
"Tony will love that," Clint laughed.
They watched people walk by on the sidewalk for a few moments in silence. Clint broke it: "I was sort of surprised that you didn't head off with Rogers and his new friend."
Natalia purposely latched on to the wrong point of the question and said, "Sam? Have you met him yet?"
"No. Why? Should I?"
"Sam is an absolute pleasure to be around."
Clint arched a brow. "Are you saying that because he is not a pleasure to be around? People only say that when they mean the opposite."
"No, honestly," Natalia said while raising her free hand innocently, "he is a good guy. You'll be shocked since you're so used to being around assholes. Maybe someone ought to introduce him to Tony. Might do him some good."
"We don't want to scare off the new recruits so soon."
Natalia snorted. "You're probably right. But he did agree to go on a mission with Rogers indefinitely."
Clint bobbed his head. "That does take a lot of balls."
"Sam is the best person Rogers could have taken with him," Natalia said carefully. "He'll know when to put his foot down and be able to reign Rogers in. I'm sure you've realised by now that he's not exactly thinking rationally with this one."
"No, he is not," Clint said around a sip of his coffee.
"Is Nick keeping tabs on him?"
Clint shook his head. "Not as far as I know. He might actually be giving Rogers some real respect and privacy for once."
"Tell me about it," Natalia said. "He was monitoring just about every bowel movement Steve had when he first came out of the ice."
"You mean there wasn't any medical relevance to that?" Clint said with a smile.
"Probably not after the first one."
They ate and sipped in silence for a little while. Natalia weighed the safety of asking a question before deciding that this was Clint after all.
"Do you think they'll be able to do it?"
"Hmm?"
"Think they'll be able to bring in the Winter Soldier?"
Clint considered while he finished off his pastry. "Hard to say. I don't know what he's been through. I didn't see what he was like."
Natalia said lowly, "I don't think you want to know what he's been through."
"No, I probably don't. I'm perfectly happy with what fourth grade history class taught me about Bucky Barnes, including that he died a hero. I can go the rest of my life without knowing how he wound up where he's at."
She sipped coffee to avoid having to speak.
"That being said," Clint said in a lighter tone, "I didn't know everything you'd been through either, and that still worked out pretty good." He smiled crookedly at her. "We didn't know each other. Rogers knows him. Should be that much easier to bring him in, right?"
Natalia's phone buzzed against her leg, and she drew it out of her pocket.
"Nick?" asked Clint.
"Nope. One of my traps were just sprung," she said.
"Duty calls?"
Natalia shrugged. "I wouldn't call it duty. It can wait. I'm having lunch."
December 2014
Armed with nothing but two cups of mint-flavoured hot chocolate, Natalia approached the park bench and sat. Her heart was beating a little harder than usual, but she didn't let it make her hesitate. She held one of the cups out to her left.
James flinched at first – she saw it out of the corner of her eye because she wasn't trying to look at him right now – but he recovered quickly and accepted the cup. Natalia took that as the OK to go ahead and sip from the cup she kept. A little too rich for her own tastes. But if memory served, for him it would be just right.
He drank once and swallowed. He said, "Thanks."
"You're welcome." She felt his defences rising, his gaze sweeping their surroundings. Natalia said, "I'm alone."
James looked down at the cup, and Natalia thought he looked rather ashamed for some reason.
"I hope you're not planning to blow this place up," she said casually as two women burdened with bags of holiday shopping and a stroller shuffled by their bench. Children could be heard shouting behind them on the outdoor ice rink. "Could be a lot of casualties."
"Are you following me?"
Deciding this was the right time to make eye contact, Natalia looked over to him with her eyebrows raised. "I don't need to be following you to know why a bunch of Soviet-era buildings are being demolished all over eastern Europe."
He didn't respond, but she was fairly sure he got the warning.
Natalia said, "I didn't track you here. This is a coincidence."
"Coincidence," he repeated. As if he'd never heard of the word.
"I need something from in there." She sipped the hot chocolate to give him a moment. "If you insist on blowing it up, could you wait until after I get in and out?"
James just looked at her with an inscrutable look on his face. His lips parted after a few beats, but then he stopped. Closed his mouth. Opened it again and sipped from the cup. Let it sit on his tongue for a while before he swallowed and said, "Security is tight."
"Surveillance or actual guards?"
"Both."
"Sounds like I could use backup." She got up off the bench then and walked away. Went back to her safehouse a half hour away.
She was sitting down with the floor plan of the building with a glass of wine when she heard the knock on the door. Natalia opened it to see James standing there.
"You can't just say things like that and then walk away," he said in an irritated voice. Shouldered his way inside without waiting for invitation.
Natalia closed the door behind him.
That evening, they climbed to the roof of a building that neighboured Natalia's target building. They could see the bustling outdoor market with twinkling lights that was just a block over from there. James set up his rifle and shot rounds onto the target building's roof that would interrupt any CCTV and other video feeds.
"Those are reusable," he told her. "I want them back."
Natalia laughed softly and let her fingers ruffle his hair as she walked by him. "OK, Yasha."
"What did you just call—" he started.
Natalia leapt off the ledge of their building before he could finish. Her spider's web guided her safe onto the target building's roof without injury. The roof access door was a keypad. Natalia scanned it for prints and aged the results to determine the order. It clicked open on the first combination she tried. It was always best to do things the legal way until you couldn't anymore.
Her feet were light on the steps down to the top floor.
"All clear," James said over their comm in her ear.
Natalia pushed the door open and started down the hallway. Forgotten jackets and lunch bags sat on a rack across from the door. Bathrooms were the only other rooms on this particular corridor.
"Two hostiles on the left. Ten metres from the intersection of your path and the office."
She charged her Bites and then hurried silently up to the intersection of her hallway with the greater space up ahead (open concept offices could be both a blessing and a nuisance). Crouched down at the corner with her back to the wall. Heard their approaching footsteps.
"On your position in three, two…now."
The first hostile's safety toe shoes appeared in her vision. Natalia stuck a leg out to trip the first, launched to her feet, and shocked the second in the neck. He went down like a wet sandbag. Turning and keeping herself low, Natalia shot the second with one with a cartridge from her left Bite. That one fell, too.
"Neutralised," she said into her comm.
She disengaged the Bites and sighed. Non-lethal was always more fun on little jobs like this. The bodies went to hide in one of the bathrooms.
Natalia moved back into the office area. One wall was made entirely of glass and overlooked the lower floor, which appeared to be an entirely open space full of manufacturing equipment and assembly lines. It was busy with night shift workers earning holiday pay. Convenient that she wouldn't need to be down there. There were low clumps of desks with chest-high glass partitions organized every few metres to create a regular grid of aisles up here in the office. Easy enough to spot the big wig's place: It was the only one with a door. It was the sliding glass type. At least this person got the same amount of privacy as the people at these desks.
Natalia navigated her way through the desks, taking the most direct route to the president of operation's desk. She swiped a handful of candy out of a dish on a desk that had a potted poinsettia on it along the way.
"One. Right side. Four metres."
Natalia didn't even break stride as she walked past the position and fired another one of the cartridges. The slumping sound was enough for her.
There weren't any other encounters on the way to her target. The glass door slid open noiselessly. Natalia left it open and woke the computer up. Plugged in the drive that look strikingly similar to the one she'd used for Nick on the Lemurian Star. The screen asking for a password disappeared, replaced with a command prompt window. Natalia tapped away, setting up commands, and navigating the business's network to find what she needed.
"That keyboard is loud," said James's voice in her ear.
"Then take the comm out," she said.
He didn't. A few more keystrokes and then she just had to wait while the information transferred.
"You've got three incoming. Two south of your position and one from the west. Moving quick."
Typical. She let them get closer before she engaged. They only had tasers, bless them. It almost felt unfair to neutralise them. The upload wasn't even done by the time she was finished with the guards. Natalia unwrapped one of the pieces of candy she'd taken from the dish and started in on that as the progress bar finished up. The timer disappeared from the screen. Natalia stored the drive and shut down the computer.
No one met her on the way out. On the roof, she waved in the general direction she knew James to be in. Collected his signal jammer rounds. Grappled back up to the neighbouring rooftop.
"Hey," she said.
"You didn't need backup," he said. He was either sour about it or amused; she couldn't tell which. Maybe both?
Natalia dropped the disrupter rounds into his palm. "Put those away. Got somewhere to stash all this?" She was digging through her own bag and pulling out her jacket and a hat.
"Yes. Why?"
"Get your coat. Ditch the tac vest. Stash it with the rest."
He did as she said, but asked again, "Why?"
"I'll tell you when we get there. We can't look like assassins," she said teasingly.
James rolled his eyes but did as she said. She didn't follow him to the place where he stored all his gear. He was only gone eight minutes to do it, wherever it was. Then he came back in a perfectly normal-looking coat. Held his hands out to the side.
"Still look like an assassin?"
Natalia laughed. "No. This is acceptable."
"Good." He got even with her. Offered his arm to her.
They went arm-in-arm to the Christkindlmarkt. Natalia would feel James gets tense beside her sometimes, especially when large groups of people would come near them. But he would wind himself back down before long and they'd move on to the next stall. They stood for a moment before a choir of retired men and listened to them sing "Stille Nacht" while they sipped mulled wine from a shared mug.
Natalia watched James's eyes grow distant. Her guard rose, but she didn't hurry him away. His body wasn't tense or preparing to defend against ghosts that weren't there. She let him live through whatever he was remembering and stood her ground. They'd given her the words to manipulate him years and years ago. She was sure they'd still work. As much as she didn't want to subject him to that, she would do it to spare him from snapping on a bunch of holiday shoppers.
He came back with tears gathering in the corners of his eyes as the song was winding down. James was still in there. Still in the driver's seat. She knew for certain when he blinked back the wetness calmly and looked down at her. Knew by the tiny smile he gave her.
"OK?" she said.
"Yeah. Sorry. I just…went somewhere else for a second." He started to walk away when the choir began a new song. "Come on. Let's get some of that gingerbread and then look at the nutcrackers."
So they did.
Later, he came back to her safehouse with a bottle of the mulled wine. Their coats hung next to each other on the pegs beside the door. James's supply of weapons sat nearby and tidy below them. Natalia warmed the wine and poured it out into glasses. Put on holiday music to try to keep the calm that James had managed to hold on to at the market. He found a modest pile of logs on the back porch and split them up until they were small enough to fit in the wood-burning fireplace in the living room. Got it to start.
Both of them traded their tactical gear for softer clothes and settled against each other on the plaid sofa in front of the fire.
Natalia frowned at the pile of gear James had shed. "Why do you still wear the vest?"
He looked over his shoulder at the offending vest. Shrugged. "It's good quality."
Her brows climbed up her forehead.
"I don't exactly have a lot of options for obtaining new gear. And this stuff is holding up so far."
"I'm surprised you can get that thing on and off by yourself."
He laughed softly. "It does take a minute."
"I can imagine." Natalia set her wine on the coffee table and plucked the crochet blanket off the back of the sofa and draped it over her shoulders. "Thanks for having my back today."
"Pffft. You didn't need me there."
"Still. Thanks. Got any plans to go back and finish the place off?"
James hummed in a noncommittal sort of way. "Why were you there? What'd you need from them?"
Natalia took up her wine again. "Still looking for my sisters."
"Really."
"You still running around like a chicken with your head cut off?"
"Fair enough."
Natalia couldn't stop her smile that time. "It's only strange because I can't find a trail for any of them. It's like they didn't exist."
James made a face at his wine. "Wasn't that the point of all of us?"
"Yeah, but even I have a trail. You can find me all over the place if you know where to look—which is pretty much anywhere on the Internet now."
"Yeah, thanks for doing that, by the way," he said with a note in teasing in his voice.
"Well, keeping secrets was hurting a lot of people." She waited for him to be ready to meet her eyes.
James put the wine glass on the table and sat back. Natalia watched his walls come up.
"I'm not trying to guilt trip you," she said. "As much as I'm sure you hate the word, you are a victim in all of this."
"I'm not a victim."
"Wasn't I?"
He looked at her with eyes that were starting to get glassy around the edges. "Natalia."
"We were in it together, James. Both of us. We were victims."
He looked at the ceiling and breathed around a shaky breath. "I don't feel like I deserve to be a victim."
"I know, James. Believe me, I do."
"What do you want me to say? They should apologise to me and pay for me to get therapy?"
Natalia laughed, "Yes. Actually, yes." She nudged his shoulder. "I know you're not there yet. And it's OK that you're not there. But you know they made you suffer when they used your body like that. You know that because you're trying to blow up the reminders."
He shook his head stubbornly.
Natalia inched closer to him so that he'd look at her again. "It's not like they're trying to kill you, James. It'd be a lot easier for me not to worry about you if they were."
The look on his face looked torn between several emotions. It was rather constipated-looking.
A laugh jumped out of her mouth without thought and she punched his shoulder. "Yes, I said I worry about you, you utter dolt."
James busted up into laughter and leaned into her. "I'm sorry. I know it's not funny."
"It's not. Do you have any idea how hard it is not to track you all over the globe?" He laughed harder and leaned heavier into her shoulder, and she said, "You are incredibly hard to ignore. I have no idea how you haven't been captured yet."
He fell asleep on the sofa that night. Natalia cracked open her laptop and sifted through her stolen data. There, hidden among all of the useless crap, was a lead. She was already making travel plans when James jerked awake from a nightmare and sat up. When he saw her beside the coffee table, he relaxed and laid back down.
"Just us," Natalia said. She waited for his breathing to settle down before she caught his eye and said, "Are you available to be my backup for another job?"
Half of his face quirked upward. "Sure."
Clint: "He's bothering me again."
Natalia: "Sorry. Been busy. I caught a lead."
Clint: "Everything good?"
Natalia: "I'd tell you if it wasn't."
Clint: "You're not always honest with me about these kinds of things."
Natalia: "Trust me this time."
Clint: "OK. Call Fury."
Natalia: "I will."
Clint: "And anything I can do to h—"
James: "Stupid fucking straps."
Clint: "Who is that? Are you with someone?"
Natalia: "Yes."
Clint: "Who? You're on assignment with someone that isn't me? What the hell! You said I was top of the list!"
Natalia: "Aw, Clint, are you jealous?"
Clint: "No! I'm angry!"
Natalia: "I'll let you know if there's anyway you can help. B—"
Clint: "Nope. I take it back. Sounds like you already got all the help you need."
Natalia: "Clint."
Clint: "Call Fury. Bye. That's all I have to say to you."
Natalia: "OK. Bye, Clint. Miss you."
Clint: "Miss you, too, Nat."
January 2015
James travelled with her to Latvia. He backed her up while she scouted neighbourhoods for one Katerina Bryzgalova. He walked into the restaurant with her when they found the restaurant Katerina worked in. He followed her when they tailed Katerina back to her apartment after she hadn't recognised Natalia while she served them at the restaurant.
"She seems fine," James said while they staked out her apartment.
Natalia shook her head. "She's still in it."
"She's a waitress just getting by."
"Don't be dense, James."
"What, you think she's undercover?"
She turned her head to James. "She's asleep."
James held her eye contact. "Then let's wake her up."
So they did just that. After a time. There were hidden handlers that crept up and tried to stop her. Loath though she was to admit it, James's back up really did save her ass a few times. Things more lethal than what fitted into her Widow's Bites were used this time. James was still efficient, but Natalia noted some significant changes in his technique. And the dramatic drop in brutality to both himself and his opponents.
They fought off two elimination teams and a few handlers (not to mention the paranoia of thinking any food or water they didn't personally prepare might be tampered with) before they were able to interrogate one. Natalia confirmed the activation codes and then shot the handler through the forehead.
James stole the phone out of Katerina's purse as she prepared to leave her job at the restaurant a few days later and handed it off to Natalia. As Katerina headed off on the same old path back to her apartment, Natalia called after her and returned the device to her, sliding the activation phrase into their casual exchange. She saw the moment recognition slipped into Katerina's eyes.
She kept up the ruse as long as Katerina did, which wasn't long at all. Katerina's face broke into a relieved sort of grimace, and she and Natalia quickly embraced each other. They went back to her apartment and talked for a long time. The comm in Natalia's ear told her that James fought off at least five hostiles during that time.
Katerina didn't know anything about their sisters.
On the way back to her safehouse with James, Natalia sent a text to Clint: "Gave someone your number."
In bed, James asked her, "Will you come with me to a Hydra base?"
Natalia picked her head up off his shoulder to look him in the eyes. "I thought you'd never ask."
Natalia: "Hey, Nick. Just checking in. I'm fine. Bye."
Nick Fury: "The hell kind of check-in is that?"
February 2015
James brought her to the Sudetes in the Czech Republic. The base was visible at the top of a ridge, but James said it went deeper into the mountains. It wasn't complex tunnels, but more of a single drop down. A missile silo-shape that wasn't quite meant to house missiles.
Natalia got no joy from mercilessly killing anybody. It wasn't fun. But sometimes it was a relief to fight without out having to hold anything back. She could tell that James felt the same way when they stormed that base. His brutality came back. He treated every body inside that base as completely expendable, his own included. Natalia's was the only body he ever tried to minimise damage to (how gallant of him). He had no goal other than to kill everyone inside.
If Natalia hadn't been there, she couldn't imagine how many wounds James would have taken. His single-minded rage left him open to so many shots. When she shot the last hostile in the bottom floor, she went to examine the weapon; it hadn't looked like any of the other firearms she'd seen in a Hydra base of this age.
"Did you know they have tranq rounds?" she asked.
James looked at her and shrugged.
Natalia collected the gun and a few rounds to have them analysed back at the safehouse. "What do you usually do after you kill everyone?"
"You don't have to say it like that."
She put her hands up. "Sorry. I'm out of practice on ops like this."
It was true that SHIELD would have done the exact same thing if they had found this base first. They probably were doing this to the bases that they could find and to their own that they knew had been infiltrated.
There was no denying that they were an efficient team, though.
"Disable anything they have here. Networks, equipment, anything. Sometimes I blow the place and other times I just leave it."
"What's the plan this time?"
Destroying the weapons cache at this base went hand-in-hand with destroying the base. They watched things burn before making the long trek back to their transport and from the transport to the hotel. They washed the blood off their bodies and ordered food. Laid down to rest together. Before they fell asleep, James asked, "Another one?"
(The analysis of the tranq round came back with enough sedative to take down Steve Rogers five times.)
They raided several more bases together in Germany and Poland. They blew all of them up after clearing the inside. The first raid went well despite James taking a few grazes of the tranq rounds. He hardly made it out of the building while it blew, and Natalia had to carry him back to the transport (luckily, not too far). It took a little bit time to rouse him enough to get into their hotel room. She was not carrying him past any civilians like that.
James took a few GSWs on the third op when he was shielding Natalia after she took a shot to the calf (because she was covering for James being stupid-brutal and leaving himself open to shots). She cleaned the two of them up afterward and made him lie low until she was satisfied he was healed through. James kicked up a stink about her wound and was adamant that she be technical back up only for the next base even when she reminded him that she wasn't exactly a standard-issue human herself.
"I want to do this base right away," James said. "I can't wait any longer, especially since you already made me waste a few days."
"Don't even start that, Yasha," Natalia said, "there is absolutely not timetable for any of the stuff we've been pulling."
"I've done this before by myself. So I can definitely do it with you as technical back-up." He tried to caress her cheek, but she pulled away.
"Bullshit. I'm coming."
"You're not 100%."
"And you are? You haven't been anywhere near—James, you haven't seen 100% since you defrosted for the last time."
"I am fine, Natalia."
He wasn't fine. He was getting more and more reckless and stupid. Natalia had hoped her being with him would keep him safer. He'd reign himself in to compliment her strengths. The more bases they raided and intel they gathered, the worse he seemed to be. He patiently waited and listened to her when she tried to tell him about her worry. He always seemed perfectly receptive to it when they were eating or huddled together in the safehouse. A torn expression would crease James's face every time Natalia mentioned that there were other ways to take Hydra off the map. There was help to be had. She could feel him starting to sway, to be the first to say the S-name.
But it all went out the window as soon as the action started again. Natalia could hardly bear it, and she had to work hard to conceal her frustration. She liked running missions with him, but not when he was like this. Hours were spent at night wondering if she was going about this the right way.
In the end, he went on the fourth op alone with Natalia as remote support. James did fairly well for most of the op, until things went entirely pear-shaped halfway through. Hostiles were starting to get the upper hand after another graze from a tranq round.
Natalia heard the strangest, deep, vibrating sound through the comm, and then James: "Fucking Christ."
A clang and another vibrating sound.
Oh, no.
Clear as day, she heard through the comm Steve's voice: "Bucky, wait!"
She knew what would happen after that. James immediately fled the battle. The hostiles were his only shot at escaping Steve and Sam's pursuit, and it worked. They stayed to clear the building while he ran. Not long after hearing Steve's voice, the comm went dead and James's location on her monitored disappeared.
Natalia took her own comm out and put her head in her hands. He'd go so far to ground after this, the only way they'd know he was still alive would be if Hydra captured him and sent him on another mission for them.
July 2015
Natalia: "Hello?"
Sam: "Hey, Natasha. It's Sam."
Natalia: "Hey. This is Steve's phone, right?"
Sam: "Yeah. I don't have your number, and when I tried to steal it out of Steve's, there were frickin' wingdings where numbers should be."
Natalia: "Oh. Sorry. Privacy thing. I'll text it to you, but the message will delete itself if you don't copy it down fast enough. Screenshots won't work."
Sam: "Wow. OK. I'll be quick. Wait—you have my number?"
Natalia: "Of course I do."
Sam: "Spies. Right."
Natalia: "I won't mention it next time and just let you give it to me to make you feel better."
Sam: "Ha. Alright."
Natalia: "What's up? You doing OK?"
Sam: "Yeah, I'm hanging in there. It's actually part of why I called. I could use a break."
Natalia: "Don't be afraid to take one, Sam. You don't owe Steve anything, and no one expects you to keep up with a super soldier."
Sam: "I don't know if Steve would even notice right now."
Natalia: "What do you mean? Need me to talk to him?"
Sam: "Honestly? Maybe, yeah. I think I almost had him talked down to take a break for a while until he saw Barnes in Poland. It made him work that much harder."
Natalia: "Oh."
Sam: "Yeah. Steve saw the guy for thirty seconds in a dark basement and now suddenly thinks that we're going to run into him again any second. The trail went cold pretty much as soon as we lost visual."
Natalia: "I'm not surprised. About the fact that you couldn't track him."
Sam: "Steve really flipped his lid when we couldn't find him."
Natalia: "Sam, you really need to look after yourself, too, OK? Avenging is a rough business, and you were thrown into this with very little warning. Please, take breaks and don't feel bad about it. Steve is a grown man. Don't feel like you're responsible for him."
Sam: "Well someone ought to be."
Natalia: "I'm being serious. Take time to be with your family. It's important not to let this be your life."
Sam: "It has been a while since I've seen my nephews."
Natalia: "That's more than enough reason. Bring them some wooden clogs from Holland and spend time with them. Steve can handle himself. Or bring him with you if you think it'll work."
Sam: "You think he'll take it well if I tell him I need to step away for a bit?"
Natalia: "Who cares? Tell him to call me if he wants to be a crybaby about it. Isn't the safety of the rescuer a higher priority than that of the victim?"
Sam: "I mean, that's what the textbook says."
Natalia: "And it says that for a reason. Throw me under the bus if you have to, Sam. I'll fight Captain America to get you time off."
Sam: "See, I knew I liked you the first time I saw you."
September 2015
Sam: "Hey, just calling to tell you that I'm home. And that my nephews have met Captain America and they think it'd be really, really cool to meet Black Widow soon, too. Talk to you soon, Natasha. Bye."
November 2015
Natalia travelled to Moldova and knocked on the door of a long-term safehouse owned and supplied by the organization formerly known as SHIELD. Katerina Bryzgalova answered the door and embraced Natalia right there at the threshold.
"Come in, please," she said in their native Russian. Katerina seemed happy. Her complexion implied good health.
Natalia was relieved to see it and let herself be brought inside. She spent four days with her sister. They truly caught up. Natalia heard what the Red Room had been up to since her defection. She catalogued all of it as Katerina spoke. In return, Natalia told her sister everything that she'd done since leaving the Red Room, about how she was an Avenger. About how she was the one to spill her own secrets in the info dump. Natalia told Katerina what it was like for SHIELD to bring her into the fold, what sort of canary reports they required of her.
"You're under no obligation to work for them," Natalia made sure she said.
Katerina convinced her to stay longer. They celebrated the holidays as sisters for the first time.
February 2016
Natalia went to Rostov, Russia after that. The information from Katerina combined with some of her own digging gave her a lead. She hoped it wouldn't work out, but it did. The remains of twelve little spiders were still inside.
Natalia cried for them and left a flower for each of them. She burned the building that they died in.
May 2016
Nick Fury: "Romanoff, got a favour to ask of you."
Natalia: "Yeah?"
Nick Fury: "And I know you're a free agent or a contractor or whatever now. But I wanted one of the best to run this one for me."
Natalia: "OK. Let's hear it."
Nick Fury: "It's a suspected Hydra base in Russia. Some place called Volgograd."
Natalia: "I know the city."
Nick Fury: "I knew you would. I've sent a few people out there, but I've never heard back. They just fall off the grid. Could you get a sit-rep?"
Natalia: "Urgency?"
Nick Fury: "As soon as possible. Just like everything else."
Natalia: "Hm."
Nick Fury: "You can have any equipment you like. The full support and resources of a SHIELD."
Natalia: "Eh. SHIELD doesn't exactly exist anymore."
Nick Fury: "Fine. I'll owe you one. How about that?"
Natalia: "Now we're talking. I'll report back to you when I know something."
Nick Fury: "Accepting this assignment comes with regular check-ins!"
Natalia: "Talk to you later, Nick."
Nick Fury: "Take care, kid. Be careful."
June 2016
Natalia saw James breach the base the second she finished her walk of the perimeter of the base. Lights and alarms were blaring before she could even draw breath to call out to him to wait. She'd expected him to be in the area based on Fury's report, but this timing was uncanny. She ran after him and into the base as quickly as she could.
So much for scouting.
It was easy to catch up to James; he was that thorough at clearing a room. She didn't have to do any cleanup. A bullet from one of her Glocks punched through the head of a hostile that was approaching James from behind on the third floor. That was how she announced to him that she was there. He caught her eye, and she gave him a small nod. He didn't flee. He kept fighting.
And he fought like an idiot. He'd lost weight and speed in the months since she'd last seen him. He was slow and compensating for some nagging hurt. The idiot wouldn't wait for her to set up a coordinated attack. Just kept pushing and going forward until he got himself too outnumbered to effectively fight back. Natalia wasn't at all surprised when a bullet finally hit him square in the oblique. The impact was enough to take him by surprise.
She wasn't quick enough to get off a shot at a hostile wielding one of those tranq guns; the agent had already squeezed the trigger by the time the bullet made itself at home among his brains. The needle of the tranq round buried itself in James's thigh and the plunger was immediately depressed.
Adrenaline surged in her blood. Natalia snapped off shot after shot. She didn't waste a single bullet. Started with the ones that were in the fringes of the room. It didn't take long for James to get unsteady and fall to his knees. Natalia moved in to defend his position. Her arms were starting to shake by the time the room was cleared.
She turned on her heel to finally face James. He might as well have been dead and gone. Natalia didn't waste her time trying to rouse him. Just gripped his tactical gear as comfortably as she could and started to drag him out of there. Safety be damned, she took the elevator back to their point of entry. That thorough cleanup was coming in handy. Natalia could not have escaped with a super soldier over her shoulder and fought off hostiles with her remaining arsenal.
The march back to her transport was excruciating. Dumping James in the backseat, she sent a message to Fury with the coordinates and a bogus excuse for why she'd breached the base instead of preparing a scouting report. No SHIELD agents found inside, dead or alive. (Not that she'd been looking.) Slapping a hasty bandage on James's GWS, Natalia started the car and got the hell out of there. She drove far and long until she felt they were far enough away and not being followed. Thoughts of Hydra updating their tranq rounds to contain little trackers ghosted around in her head. Hours passed without James stirring.
It was a struggle to get him into a hotel room, but she managed it without attracting too much attention. The few instances she couldn't avoid detection she waved a hand and said he drank too much and got in a fight. Insider the room, Natalia dumped him on the bed. Her legs burned with lactic acid.
She kicked off her boots, sloppily retied her hair away from her face, and retrieved the aid kit. Pulled up a chair beside the bed. Natalia stripped away his tactical vest and tossed it away. Undid his bootlaces and eased the worn boots off of his feet. The socks were absolutely putrid. Natalia tossed them into a plastic bag, tied it shut, and put it in the little trash receptacle in the bathroom. Returning to her seat beside the bed, she made herself as comfortable as possible. Patiently she got to work. The damned bullet had splintered; it'd take a little bit of time to get all of it.
Natalia felt a change in his heart rate under her fingers. Flicked her eyes up to check his face. Nothing. She returned her focus to the task at hand and kept working. It didn't take her by surprise when he was alert and watching her a few minutes later. He waited for her eye contact to speak.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome, soldatchka," she said.
He relaxed and stared up at the ceiling. Heavy in the way she didn't like.
"How long?" he asked.
"Ten hours. Give or take."
James's eyes roved around their surroundings. "How'd…?"
She flicked her eyes toward his for less than a second before focusing on pulling the last bullet fragment out of his oblique. "I'm alone."
He released a breath.
"You were lucky I was there," she said. "I mean it."
James closed his eyes and then put his arm over them for good measure. "Please don't start, Nat."
She slid the forceps out of his flesh and dropped the bullet fragment into a paper cup. Plastic bottle of isopropyl alcohol tipped onto one of the white hotel towels. She wiped the worst of the blood off of the undamaged flesh. Took up a needle, held it in the flame of a lighter. Blowing gently on the needle to cool it, she grabbed the little pile of thread.
As she began closing it up, he said, "I can feel your anger."
"I'm not angry," she murmured.
He was watching her from under his arm. "Yes, you are."
"You were about to get yourself captured by Hydra again. Why would that make me angry, James?" If her next stitch was a little rougher than the others, Natalia would never tell.
"That won't happen."
She allowed her eyebrow to arch. Eyes still on the wound. "Really. What would you have done if I hadn't been there? Drool on them?"
"Nat."
"You can't keep doing this." Her irritation was too great to keep off of her face now. Besides, she didn't need to hide things like that from him. Tied off the last of the stitches. Pressed the alcohol-soaked towel to the wound with a little too much pressure and for a second too long. She covered it with a bandage.
James sat up and turned so that they were face-to-face. Or as close as they could get to it. "I'm sorry I've put you in this position."
Natalia searched his eyes for the truth of it. "Then come home."
He broke under the weight of it first. "I can't."
Coward, was her first thought. She knew it wasn't fair. Just a product of her own emotion. She forced him to look up and see her.
"You could be theirs again, and I'd never know. You could be dead."
His jaw worked but he didn't speak. Their hands found each other.
"Let me come with you," she said. "And don't run away from me again."
"I can't ask you to do that."
"I'm offering. We're better together."
He sighed and looked up to force the wetness back into his eyes. "Nat, please."
"You know you couldn't stop me if I wanted to follow you."
Eyes closed, head still tipped toward the ceiling: "I know."
"I could make you come home."
Her prize: a laugh.
"I know." His thumb slid across the back of her hand. "But you never would."
That much was true.
"I understand where you're at, James. Really, I do." He looked at her again. "But I think you're being a bit of an idiot about this."
His lips pursed. "I'm not ready for that." Free hand dragged through his hair. "And it's not just Steve, before you start on that again. It's all of it…"
There it finally was. The S-name. From his lips.
Natalia had never appreciated before now how difficult it was to be on this side of things. It was harder than she thought to be the one on the inside, watching someone you cared about be on the outside. To refuse to leave it. It was hard.
But she'd never force it, even if she would really, really like to.
"I worry about you."
The words drew up moisture in his eyes again. "Don't."
"It's a lot to carry on your own."
"I can handle it. I've been doing it so far."
She gave him a doubtful look.
He breathed out a laugh and said, "I didn't say that I was doing it well."
"This would be easier if you were just lying low, in hiding."
The pad of his flesh thumb ran along her fingernails. "I tried that. It didn't help."
"And doing this does?"
He shrugged his natural shoulder. "No. Not really. But it's easier than sitting still, waiting for someone else to catch me."
Natalia searched his expression for the truth.
"At least this is on my own terms."
"It doesn't have to be like this, James."
They had a short stare down before he pushed himself up off the bed and went digging through his discarded tactical vest. The sight of his bare toes beside the distressed and bloody combat gear seemed so striking to her. He came back to sit across from her with a cell phone clutched in his cybernetic hand. Held it out for her to take. She did.
"This is a SHIELD phone," Natalia said after a few seconds of examination.
"Right."
She gave him a deadpan look. "Fury?"
James nodded.
"When?"
He shrugged. "I scrambled the locating features."
Natalia nodded. She knew SHIELD's tracking capabilities with these particular devices, and it wouldn't surprise her that it could be thwarted by Hydra technology.
"I'll let you track it," he said. "Just you."
She arched an eyebrow at him. "If you're captured again, how does that help?"
"You'll know when they destroy it."
She looked for something in him then. Stared long and hard at his eyes. "A lot of people are worried about you. Not just me."
James shifted, annoyed and uncomfortable. "Don't, Nat, please."
"Why?" Her voice was a stone.
"You know why."
"Then remind me."
He had to take very deliberate breaths through his nose and look away.
Her eyes stared down at him nonetheless. "You think you have to do this. James, you don't. There are people that honestly just want to help you. I know you don't think you deserve anyone's help – or you're too scared to take it – but I promise it's better than this. You're not a machine; you can't do this indefinitely. You don't have to be alone in this."
She huffed out a frustrated breath, and he was visibly uneasy seeing her like this.
"I didn't want to do it either, James. The things I've done–…Why would anyone ever want to offer me help? And the ones that did would just use me to their own advantage, right? But there were people who honestly just wanted to help me get out. They meant it when they said they wanted me to be better. And I am. James, I have a family now. I never thought I'd get to have that again."
His cybernetic hand whirled when he made a fist. "It's not the same, Natalia."
"Why not?"
James clenched his teeth in frustration. He breathed deeply to reset his racing thoughts, the rip current of emotions inside him. "They didn't have any expectations of you."
"No one expects you to be the same old Bucky Barnes," she said.
It was his turn to scoff. His shoulders drew up at the mere sound of the name.
Natalia went soft. "He really doesn't, James. He just wants you to be OK."
"Then tell him to stop looking."
"I can't do that, and you know it." She sighed and tilted her head back.
James pushed himself up into a sitting position. "I'm sorry for the position this is putting you in. I really do wish things were different. I wish I were different."
"I know," she murmured. "I won't force you. It has to be your decision to accept the offer. But I wish you were ready now. I wish I could skip this part for you."
"Thank you," he echoed.
Per the old routine, she ordered room service for a family of twelve. He went to wash himself off as much as possible without wetting the bandage she'd just applied. They traded places after Natalia accepted the order at the door. James ate while she showered. They curled into each other's hollow spaces on the bed, a mindless programme on the television.
Natalia dragged her fingers through his hair. "Looks nice short."
He caught her fingers and brought them to his lips. "Thanks."
They slept for a few hours. She woke before long to see James watching her with a complicated expression.
"What is it?" she said with a sleep-hoarse voice.
He leaned over to kiss her forehead. "You'll be the first to know. I swear."
He climbed out of the bed and left her there alone. Again.
Note: There will be one more chapter. This one was getting long.