Bucky might not have even noticed the terrace if Carol Danvers hadn't alighted on it and made a dramatic late entrance to the festivities, ending the debate about who looked best in a tuxedo. Normally he was hyper-aware of every way in and out of a place, and where he could make one if it didn't exist yet. But he was...distracted. First by Steve and his cajoling meet-and-greets, then by the truly staggering catered spread—there were entire years in the thirties he hadn't seen that much food—and always by trying to catch that flash of red, that hint of forest green in the corner of his eye. Natasha zig-zagged through the party, as if she were trying to lose a tail. He didn't think he was being that obvious, and he wasn't intentionally following her. But he was antsy, incapable of staying in one place for too long—and Steve's frequent encouragements weren't helping. At the same time, he was trying to politely avoid Tony Stark, who seemed to be everywhere. The huge apartment had somehow become too small.

So he was out on the wide terrace getting some air, unbothered by the mild chill and slight damp of a New York December night. He looked out at the Upper West Side, never a neighborhood he'd spent much time in. Too far south to see Washington Heights, where he and Steve had gone to school. Not high up enough to see Queens beyond the skyline on the East Side. He leaned out over the stone balustrade to get a better look at the park, the sound of traffic stopping and starting on Central Park West temporarily overpowering the music drifting through the penthouse's French doors.

"Don't jump," said a wry feminine voice. The unexpectedness of it sent a zip like a trailing fingernail from between his shoulders to the back of his neck. "If you ruin that jacket, you can't return it."

He turned, casual, as if she hadn't surprised him once again. "You think I should return it?" He had been unsure about not matching the gray dinner jacket with his black pants and calfskin ankle boots, and self-conscious about the fabric, but he had also resented being forced into formalwear, and Sam had assured him that this would do. Then Sam had backed out of this event in favor of spending time with his family in Anacostia, because he was the closest to a well-adjusted, normal person among their odd, ragged association.

Natasha appraised him quickly, the weight of her gaze never settling, leaving him feeling like loose pages ready to blow away in the breeze. "No, keep it," she decided. "You might need to wear it again."

"I might need a tailor," he said, not sure why he was still talking about the damn jacket. "I can hardly move my arms enough to throw a punch."

She smiled, but bit down on it, like it had startled her. "I like your priorities." She came closer until she stood beside him at the balustrade. "You don't have to button it." Before he could move, she had reached over and released the button with one deft hand. "Better?" He rolled his shoulders a little, ignoring the twitching fist in his stomach. "Don't throw a punch," she joked.

In another circumstance, in another era, with another woman, he'd know what this was, and what came next. He'd demonstrate his range of motion by putting his arm around her waist. Or he'd shrug off the jacket and gallantly drape it over her shoulders. It was so easy to imagine that other guy doing that, with one of those other girls.

"You cold?" he asked her. Her body language said no, but he hadn't failed to notice her reddening cheeks, or the gooseflesh rising along her breastbone.

"Are you kidding? This is spring where I'm from."

"Right," he said. An acknowledgment, and a reminder, that they had both experienced a deeper chill.

She looked out over the park for a moment, and it struck him suddenly that maybe she had come out here to be alone, like he had, and prepared to make his retreat, when she asked, "Got a light?"

She had pulled a cigar from...somewhere in her dress. He didn't ponder that mystery too long. He reached into his jacket for the matchbook he still carried out of habit, along with a knife, a money clip, and, usually, extra ammo, which he'd reluctantly left behind tonight because Sam told him it "ruined the line." "I do, actually." He held out the matchbook in his palm, but the extra second she waited with the cigar in her hand clued him in that she wanted him to do the honors. That other guy would have done it automatically.

He struck the match against his thumb and she leaned in, blowing out the flame when the end had caught. She held the cigar out in front of her, positioned gracefully between her fingers, considering it for a minute before putting it to her mouth. "From Tony's stash," she explained. "Pepper lets him pretend to sneak one, once a year. But usually he just hands them out to friends." She took a puff, one shallow inhale.

"You smoke?"

"When the occasion calls for it," she said, the enigmatic spy once again, before smiling and shaking her head. "No, not really."

"No one does anymore," he observed.

"Yeah, there's been some news about that since 1945. Turns out it'll kill you. Well. Maybe not you." She held out the cigar to him, and he took it, carefully avoiding her fingers.

He turned it in his hand until he found a natural way to hold it, and for a second he was in a different time and place. "Smells like the outside of an Officer's Club. Although I don't think they ever smoked anything this swank."

"Neither did my officers. Usually they were sucking down tar in filterless cigarettes."

He nodded in recognition, stumbling forward in his own timeline. "That's right. This one old prick, they actually called him Colonel Belomor, like the brand. Yellow fingers, yellow teeth. Terrible breath."

"I know the type."

He looked at her, her easy lean against the parapet, her carefully neutral smile, and was struck by all the coincidences that had to happen to lead them to this particular conversation on this particular moonlit terrace. "Be funny if it was the same guy, wouldn't it?"

She tilted her chin down, but he caught her smile flicker out for an instant before she answered, smooth and a little arch, "Yeah, wouldn't that be something."

With nothing to say to that, he finally took a drag on the cigar, but his pristine lungs spoiled his Humphrey Bogart moment. No longer accustomed to tobacco, even the really expensive kind, they rebelled, and he strained not to cough. "Maybe I won't take this up again," he said, handing it back to her. Thank god Steve hadn't seen that.

"It's for the best," she said. At least she wasn't laughing. She put the cigar to her lips and puffed slowly and deliberately; then her lips formed an alluring oval, and she blew out one perfect ring of smoke. He watched her while she watched it waft and dissolve in the night air.

"I bet that trick really used to work on the marks," he said. From the way it had just worked on him, he wondered if he was one of them.

"Once or twice," she admitted, and stubbed out the cigar on the rail, leaving a smear of ash on the white stone. She traced a line through it with one fingernail, short and square and cranberry red. "It would be nice if we got some snow." She leaned on her forearms and craned her neck a little, looking out over the park, but making a much prettier picture up here. "I love the park when it snows."

"Yeah," he agreed, and tore his eyes away from her to follow her gaze. A phrase popped into his head, the way things sometimes did, as if they were waving little signs—hello, here we are again. "'The park is for the people.' I had a high school teacher who said that. God, I haven't thought about that in—" He exhaled, uninterested in doing the math, and his breath fogged; the temperature had dropped. "Of course rich guys went and built a wall of money around it."

"Does that happen to you a lot, since you've been back in the city? Things just...coming back to you?" she asked. Lightly, like smalltalk, and then brushed past it like the answer was barely of interest. "Is this your first time back in the city?"

"First time that wasn't for a, uh…'business trip', yeah. Wasn't too interested in sightseeing back then."

"Is that what you've been doing? Tourist stuff? Times Square? The M&Ms Store?"

He laughed. "Not quite. Steve's been dragging me around to a bunch of places in the old neighborhood. But...the old neighborhood's not the old neighborhood anymore."

"I guess not," she said, with genuine sympathy.

"I think he's testing me," he confessed. "I don't think he realizes it, though."

She smiled. "No, he wouldn't."

"Anyway, I'm probably not moving back to Brooklyn. Maybe you can answer a question for me, though."

"I'll try my best."

"What's kombucha?"

That amused her, as predicted, and it was the first time he saw a little surprise on her face. It lit it up in a very nice way. "It's fermented tea. It's not new. Siberian babas make it."

"Do they know they can get fifteen bucks a bottle if they make it in Greenpoint?" She tossed her hair when she laughed. But not on purpose, he thought. The air was getting colder, but maybe, just maybe, she was melting a little.

They both looked toward the penthouse as inside, the high-toned solo piano was switched out for a jazz combo—probably also composed of robots—that launched into an uptempo number. Natasha tapped her fingers on the rail. "So how's baby's first Christmas?"

He laughed again. "I guess it is, kind of. It's… Well, I'll let you know when it's over."

"I remember mine," she said. "It was...weird. You don't exactly feel like you're part of it. Even when people try to include you."

He nodded. "Steve's trying, but…"

"He's hovering."

"Yeah." Of course she'd understand. Maybe that was why she'd made these overtures; she'd seen him sticking out at the party like an awkward, ex-assassin, shiny sore thumb. "Do you celebrate now? Other than going to parties thrown by insanely rich people."

"Not really. Not on my own." She gave him a furtive smile. "I do like a sappy movie once in a while. Don't tell anyone."

"Barbara Stanwyck," he blurted. Another little waving sign. Maybe that's who she reminded him of. Not looks-wise, but the way she was tough and soft at the same time… Her confused little brow furrow snagged his attention and made him explain. "Uh, she made one. A sappy Christmas movie. You'd probably like it."

"Okay. I'll look that up." She crossed her arms in front of her chest, like she was starting to feel the cold, but she didn't drop eye contact with him. "So you really remember all of that stuff now? From way back then?"

"I… mostly. I think so, yeah. It's there, it's just… sometimes I don't know it until I have a reason to. They said—the doctors in Wakanda—they said—." He stopped. "Are you really interested in this?" But despite her placid expression, he knew that she was. She wouldn't have circled back to it otherwise.

"Mm hm."

"Well, they said that what was...done to me...it wasn't exactly sophisticated. So once the pathways started restoring themselves…"

"No big gaps, then?"

"It's hard to say. If there are…" He shrugged. "It's a process. That's what they said."

"The doctors."

"Yeah. Why are you asking?"

She crossed her arms tighter, and finally looked away. "You know what they did to me, right?"

He took a deep breath, not expecting this turn. "Not...No, not in detail."

"Screen memories. Know what those are?"

"I can guess," he said quietly.

"It's basically hypnosis. Like you said, not sophisticated. Just a crude party trick. They take what happened, and dress it up in different clothes. So you aren't left with any gaps." She met his eyes again. "Just lies."

"Jesus," he whispered. "Bastards." But he was torn between empathy and curiosity. "Like what?"

She was silent for a moment, and then, with a faraway smile, told him a story. "While I was in the Red Room, a Hydra officer came. And he had a dog. A huge dog; they told us it was a wolf. It might have been. It was supposed to protect us, they said. I'd been out running ops on my own since I was a kid; I didn't need protection. I think it was really supposed to scare us. Keep us in line. I was never scared of it, though. I felt sorry for it. But not just that. We understood each other, in a way. Trusted each other. It...liked me. We—" She swallowed, tamping down some unruly emotion. "We had a bond. And that was dangerous."

"They noticed."

"Yes."

He leaned in, unable not to ask. "What did they do?"

"They took him away," she said plainly. Like that was that.

"And you never saw it again," he concluded. He digested this for a minute, but it rested uneasily in his gut. That was that, but… "Did that really happen? Or was it a lie?"

"That's the tricky part." Her smile for a moment turned so deeply sad that it unsettled him, but she raised her guard again so quickly and expertly he wondered if it was even really there.

"Why are you telling me this?"

She raised her velvet-covered shoulders. "Just making conversation."

"Well," he said feebly, his own conversational skills drying up in his mouth. But she jumped in and saved him.

"It's getting colder, don't you think?"

"Do you want to go in?" He didn't know why he asked. If she wanted to, she would just go.

"Not yet. It's still nice."

Her cheeks were rosy, and they were close enough that the clouds of their breath mingled before they disappeared. "Yeah." On the other side of the leaded glass windows, the band struck up a slower tune. "Hey, I know this one," he smiled, as the opening bars of "White Christmas" floated on the air.

"It's a classic."

"No, it's a new one," he joked, and flexed his right hand as she tried to suppress a grin. "Would you…?" She tipped her head up and looked at him from under her lashes. He took a breath. "You wouldn't like to dance, would you?"

She hesitated, but not long enough that he regretted asking. "Sure," she said, with a delicate fraction of a nod.

Her palm fit inside his, and her fingertips curled around the back of his hand just so. "I'm a little rusty," he apologized, lifting his left hand to her waist. "Not literally; this version doesn't rust." She laughed that time, with a true, broad smile that gave her face a radiant new dimension, and ducked her head a little, possibly to hide it. Her right hand came to rest on his shoulder, her thumbnail lightly scraping his neck above his collar before she settled it into place. He steadied his breathing, and they started to sway. Easy, he thought. Just like at the canteen.

But there'd never been anybody like her at the canteen.

She held his gaze for what seemed a long, aching minute. When she closed her eyes, he was grateful for the reprieve. He tried to memorize her face, but found he didn't have to. When he closed his own eyes, she was already there.

When he opened them again, it was snowing. She was looking up, and he did the same, into the glittering swirl of crystals, dancing on the non-existent breeze and catching the moonlight in the strangest way. She saw the confusion on his face, and inclined her head toward the roof, where two large projectors were emitting steady beams of light.

"Holographic snow," she explained. "Tony's big showstopper."

When he looked beyond the bounds of the building's top floor, he could see that it was true. The streets, trees, neighboring rooftops were all untouched. "White Christmas for the penthouse," he said. "Not so much for the little people."

She stepped in and put her head on his shoulder, startling him into stillness for a second. "Well," she said. "There's always next year."

He stared at the silky fall of her hair down her back. The false snowflakes didn't land on her hair and make a covering of lace before melting away. They only vanished. It wasn't right. It wasn't like—

He stopped short, and her supple frame tensed in his arms.

It wasn't like—

He was somewhere else, somewhere cold; real, hard cold, indifferent to human survival. The trees, keep to the treeline and keep moving…

But even from there, he could hear the edge of worry in her voice.

"Bucky?"

And then it was gone. It happened like that, sometimes. Associations, he told himself. Memory wasn't a perfect record. The doctors had told him that, too.

"Yeah, I'm— It's fine."

She had stepped back, but hadn't dropped his hand. "Are you sure? What happened?"

"Nothing," he insisted. "I—" I imagined it. I imagined I knew what the snow in your hair should look like. Because I'm in deep, deep trouble.

"Let's go in, then." The song had changed.

He sighed, frustrated at having spoiled this unbelievable chain of events. What would have happened next? Would he have kissed her? Would she have let him?

"Come on," she nudged, and tugged on his hand.

They separated well before reaching the French doors, and when she twisted the handle and swung open the pane, more than a few sets of eyes quickly darted away. He found Steve, who made a clumsy motion to scratch his nose, index finger pointed upward.

Bucky knew what it was before he looked. Fucking mistletoe. He looked at Natasha, who was gently smirking, and let his imagination run wild one more time. The way he'd pull her close; how she'd taste faintly of fine tobacco and alcohol, and her own subtler intoxicants; the soft flow of her breath; the way she'd open her mouth, and rise like a wave to meet him. He saw it so clearly…

She reached up and snapped down the mistletoe, and tossed it to Thor.

"Thanks for the dance," she said, and reached out to straighten his tie again. "Merry Christmas, soldier." This time, she didn't look back as she walked away.

Bucky was trying to sleep on the train. Usually he could sleep anywhere, even with his skull rattling against the window, but it wasn't working tonight. At least Steve, sitting across from him, had been mostly silent since they'd left the party. At least he hadn't brought up—

"It wouldn't be weird, you know."

So they were going to talk about this. He opened one eye reluctantly. "What?"

"You and Nat. If that's what you're worried about."

Bucky sighed and lolled his head back against the seat. "That's not what I'm worried about."

"Oh. Then what—?"

"And what do you mean it wouldn't be 'weird'? You do remember that I once shot her, right?"

"It doesn't seem to bother her."

"Yeah, well maybe it should." And why didn't it? She could tell him, had told him, not to worry about it. That she understood, that it was in the past, all business. An almost casual dismissal, tossed off amidst the commotion of the big Fuck-You-Thanos victory party last year. And it certainly hadn't seemed to be an issue tonight. But when he thought about it, away from the whirlpool of her presence, it still bothered him.

Steve was looking at him like he always did, like he always had. Like none of the bad stuff had ever happened. Sometimes, that made him feel worse.

He didn't like the guy, but one thing Bucky appreciated about Tony Stark was that he wasn't and would never be one of the people strangely eager to forgive him. Right now that seemed to be a club of two.

"If that's not it," Steve probed, "what's the hang-up?"

"Buddy," he said, "she's playing me. She's gotta be."

Steve frowned. "I don't think so."

"You don't think she would?"

"I think she would," he acknowledged. "I just don't think she is. Why would she?"

"I don't know." He closed his eyes and leaned against the window, ending the conversation there. He loosened the knot of his tie, and imagined her fingers under his. He imagined them traveling to stroke his neck, his face, his hair. It was so easy to do.

She was playing him, he was pretty sure. But until he knew why, he might as well enjoy it.

Natasha left the party late, for appearances; she didn't want it to look like she had only come for one reason. She hung out with Carol and a group of other women who gathered to drink and laugh in the library. She helped Morgan with a secret dessert-related mission. She put up with Tony's glare.

Now she was back on the seventeenth floor, changed out of her Bloomingdale's gown and into leggings and her baggiest, coziest sweater. She sat on the tufted leather sofa with the bottle of top shelf vodka Tony had sent her home with, but it was more classy than comfortable, so she soon slid into a cross-legged position on the plush area rug, in front of Tony's dumb holographic fireplace.

"Pizdets," she muttered, not for the first time, and took another swig from the bottle. She had pushed too hard. And worse than that, she had lost control and let herself slip too far. But it had been so long, and he was so close…

She leaned her head back against the cushion and it squeaked a little against her neck. She shimmied until she was almost comfortable, and closed her eyes. The fireplace threw no heat, but it did sound realistic. With one snap, she could almost smell the sharp resiny aroma of burning fir.

The hunting shack was small and dilapidated, but it was shelter. They made a fire, but only long enough to heat the space before snuffing it out, not wanting the plume of smoke to be seen. They'd plowed through snowdrifts waist-high; sometimes he'd had to drag her as she fought to crawl along the crust, ice inside her gloves, under her collar, tinkling like glass chimes in her hair. She stripped down beside the stove and left her clothes to dry; they both did. They found a sheet of battered canvas and spread it over the rotting, splintered floor. She laid down, exhausted, and he covered her with his boiled wool soldier's coat. He sat facing the door, weapon on his knees, on watch, and keeping the embers burning.

They were fools to ever think they could run away. Love made fools of people; she'd learned that now.

When the moon had risen and was shining through the slats of the roof, she rose and clutched at his arm. "Soldat." He dropped his cheek to the back of her fingers, and she pulled at him, desperately. She drew him under the coat with her, drew him in. Made her body clay to remember the mark of his hand, his mouth, everywhere. Not for the first time...but likely for the last.

Natasha opened her eyes, and her knuckles were white as she was strangling the neck of the bottle. She drank again, and wiped her mouth. She rubbed her face, makeup smearing her hand. She roughly combed through her hair, breaking up the curls. The shade of lipstick she'd carefully chosen, the thoroughly researched style. Like it was a game.

But it wasn't a game. And it was too late to go back, even if that would be smart, even if that would be wise.

It was time to set up phase two.