Chapter 19

Natasha found me about an hour later. She entered the bar quietly, her coat hood pulled low to shadow her face, and slipped through the room to the gloomy corner where I sat at a small table. The few other customers looked up briefly as she passed, then went back to their drinks.

Natasha sat down in the chair facing me and surveyed the twelve empty shot glasses sitting in a tidy row in the center of the table. She glanced at the clear liquid in the thirteenth glass as I fingered it. "Vodka?" she asked blandly.

"Yeah." I drained the glass. The drink burned all the way down my throat, but I was used to the feeling by now.

"Is it nice?" She pitched her question loud enough to be heard over the blaring of the radio above the bar counter.

"Tastes like watered-down paint stripper," I replied emotionlessly.

"Does it make you feel better?"

I glared at her. "No."

She met my gaze with an equally dangerous expression. "Are you trying to get us found?" Her tone was icy.

"No. Not you, anyway." I wasn't sure about myself. "Besides, we're not on the radar here."

"We are now." She pulled a folded newspaper clipping out of her coat pocket and slid it across the table to me.

I unfolded it and read the article. Apparently the store owner in Tuapse had found out about the Sochi mess and put two and two together. They'd informed the local law enforcement, and enough dots had been connected for them to work out that we must have come at least as far north as Rostov-on-Don by now. The city was subsequently going into a lockdown until such time as we were apprehended. There was a reward offered for any information on our whereabouts, and the police still had orders to shoot on sight.

I handed the page back to Natasha. "Okay." I wasn't sure what else to say.

"Our landlord has too much stuff going on to want the publicity turning us in would cause," she told me. "I checked."

"That's good," I said.

She stood up, smiling tightly. "I'm going back now. You can come if you still want to." Then she turned and walked back out of the bar.

I sighed. Lately, all the choices I'd made had been the wrong ones. I wondered if following Natasha would add another tally to my list of mistakes. Then I decided not following her would be worse. I left the bar and caught up to her at our apartment door.

She didn't look at me as she unlocked it and let herself in. I half expected her to slam the door shut before I could enter, but she left it open and went to make up the bed in the apartment's single bedroom with a couple of the blankets we'd bought earlier.

I took the remaining blankets and laid them out for myself in the corner of the living area. The copious amount of alcohol I'd consumed didn't seem to have affected me in the slightest, thanks to my enhanced metabolism. It was a good thing too, 'cause in hindsight, I was pretty sure I didn't want to know what kind of mess a drunken assassin in a bar could've gotten into.

I made a silent promise not to turn to the bottle the next time I couldn't cope with circumstances as I lay down – regardless of whether it did anything or not.

Natasha closed her bedroom door with a soft click, shutting out the light and leaving me alone to wait for the arrival of sleep.

The silence felt like a weight pressing down on my chest. I counted my breaths in an attempt to put myself to sleep, but I hadn't even reached twenty when a soft sound coming from the bedroom drew my attention.

Natasha was crying quietly.

I felt my heart sink even lower in my chest. I wanted to block the sound out, ignore it and go to sleep, but I couldn't. I had to do something. Steve certainly would have. He wouldn't have messed up in the first place.

I got up and approached the bedroom door, hesitant to knock. I took a breath and tapped my knuckles twice against the peeling paint.

The weeping ceased. There was a moment's silence, then Natasha's muffled voice called, "Come in," quietly.

I pushed the door open and saw her sitting on the bed, fully clothed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. There was a small pile of medical supplies lying on the bed beside her and the bandage on her ankle was unknotted. It looked like she'd broken down in the middle of trying to tend to her wound.

Guilt wormed its way through my stomach at the sight. Not only had I hurt her and run off, but I'd completely forgotten Natasha was injured.

She didn't look up as I moved into the room. I reached the bed and paused. I wasn't sure what to do or say.

Natasha sniffed and looked up, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "Did you want something?" she asked despondently.

"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "For what I said … and for everything else."

She forced a small smile. "Water under the bridge."

"No." I shook my head, the words coming out in a rush. "It's not. I hurt you and I ran away. I captured you, let Rogan torture you, helped to turn you back into a killer. It's not okay, and if you hate me for it, I understand. I'll leave right now and turn myself in if that's what you want, but I don't want to hurt you anymore."

She uncurled and leant towards me at my words. "Don't turn yourself in," she said, and I saw fear in her eyes. "Promise me you won't."

"But I keep hurting you," I argued.

She reached out and grabbed my arm, forcing me to meet her gaze. "You have done nothing but try to protect me, Bucky," she said firmly. "Blame Rogan for the rest."

"But if I hadn't–" I began.

"You've made mistakes," she said, cutting me off. "So have I." She drew a shaky breath. "I betrayed my best friend and killed innocent people today. I thought I was better than that." Her voice broke and she began to sob quietly once more.

This time I moved forward, sitting beside Natasha on the bed to wrap my human arm gently around her shoulders. It felt strange to be this close to anyone besides Steve after so many years of minimal human contact – and that only from captors – but Natasha seemed okay with the touch, leaning into me as she cried.

I didn't try to tell her it would be okay, because as far as I knew it wouldn't. That guilt – the knowing that you'd unintentionally destroyed so much with no way to ever fix it – was my constant companion. And now it was hers. Again.

Eventually Natasha's sobs subsided and she sat back, her eyes red and weary. She swiped the tears off her face and sniffed, not quite meeting my gaze. "I should deal with this," she said huskily, indicating her ankle with a small nod of her head.

She went to remove the bandage, but I stopped her, gently removing her hand. "Let me help," I said quietly, and it was more a plea than a statement. I desperately wanted to do something to make some small part of everything I'd ruined right again.

Natasha met my gaze, seemed to read the thoughts behind it, and nodded.

I removed the bandage, careful not to let it pull at the wound where dried blood had fixed it to Natasha's skin. I used a piece of damp, mostly clean cloth to clean the wound. "It's gonna need stitches," I said, "but nothing's been badly damaged. I think Clint was holding back."

"Yeah." Natasha swallowed dryly.

I found a needle and small roll of surgical nylon amongst the pile of first-aid supplies. Natasha didn't make a sound while I gave her wound a more thorough clean with antiseptic. Nor did she flinch as I carefully threaded the needle through her skin.

She watched my progress silently for a couple of minutes before saying quietly, "You're pretty good at that."

"I've had practice," I muttered.

"On people during the War?" she asked.

"On myself when I was the Winter Soldier," I replied.

"Oh."

"Yeah." I didn't really want to think about those experiences. My current job required steady hands and some of those memories… No. I didn't want to go there.

I finished stitching up Natasha's wound in silence and put the medical supplies back in their bag. I rose to go, but Natasha caught my hand in hers.

"You won't leave?" The barely-masked fear was back in her voice.

I shook my head. Every part of me wanted to leave Rostov-on-Don tonight, but I couldn't run out on Natasha again. "I'll stay," I said.

"Thank you."

We stayed inside the apartment all of the next day.

There was nothing to do except sit and listen to the sounds coming from the streets and alleys beyond our living room window, but both of us were accustomed to long periods of inaction – and to be honest, after months on end of pain and orders, I was more than ready to take the opportunity to catch up on sleep and simply do nothing.

We held a mostly monosyllabic discussion about our situation as wanted murderers while we ate breakfast, and came to the conclusion that trying to leave the city right now wasn't a good idea. This soon after Rostov-on-Don was locked down, the police and citizens would be on high alert, and it would only take one slip up for everything to go completely south.

It was better to wait until Natasha had healed and we'd had a chance to scout out the best means of escape.

With that plan in mind, Natasha stayed in bed most of the day to give her leg a chance to rest. I couldn't quite bring myself to ask how she was, but based on the colorful words she used as she cleaned her wound after breakfast, I guessed she was feeling in better sorts than yesterday. Her memories had almost completely returned, she told me, with the exception of a few very early ones, that she told me she didn't care that much for anyway.

My memories had returned in full – a fact for which I was extremely grateful. I hadn't been liking the idea of having to go back to writing fragments of memories in notebooks until I could piece it all together like I'd been doing before I met Loki.

I went through a round of simple exercises in the morning to try and ease the stiffness in my bruised side from when the police car rammed me, then set my watch alarm and crashed in my corner to sleep.

I woke up four hours later, my watch gone from my wrist.

"Sleep well?" Natasha asked from where she sat in the patch of weak sunlight coming in the living room window. Her expression was too innocent to be real.

"Give it," I ordered, and she sighed, chucking the watch back to me.

"You know it's bad to keep waking yourself up, right?" she said, serious once more.

"Not as bad as the alternative."

"I have personal experience with both, and I'm afraid I have to disagree," Natasha replied. "Messing up your sleep cycle isn't a proper fix, it just causes additional problems."

"So what do you suggest?" I asked.

Natasha gave a small smile. "I've always found it better to face my fears head on. Nightmares go away, memories fade. It's not so bad once you stop being afraid of it before it's even happening."

I thought about that. I'd just woken from the best sleep I'd had in a very long time, and it had been completely nightmare-free. Maybe there was something to Natasha's recommendations, or maybe it wouldn't work and I'd simply end up reliving the horrors from my past.

Natasha seemed to sense where my mind was going, because she added gently, "I'll be just next door, you know, if you hit a bump. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

I looked down at that last part, Natasha's words hitting uncomfortably close to home. Because it wasn't just fear of what I might experience in my dreams that had me avoiding them at all costs, but also of how others would see me as a result. I didn't want people to know how my nightmares left me – broken mentally and emotionally. It was a weakness I didn't need being exploited or judged.

But something told me Natasha wouldn't do either. Whether the part of me that believed that was a remnant of the days when I trusted people or if it was simply naivety, I didn't know, but I decided to run with it anyway.

"Okay," I said, looking up again. "I'll give it a go."

Natasha nodded, and that was the end of the discussion.

We ate our simple dinner in silence once more and took turns in the tepid shower before going our separate ways for the night.

I lay down on my blankets, deliberately taking off my watch and setting it to one side, but sleep eluded me for a long time.