I don't own Captain America.

Enjoy!

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New York City; May 27th, 1968

Natasha should have felt bad for snagging a couple of guys' wallets, but she needed a place to crash for the night, and a bench in Central Park wasn't exactly the safest place, especially if she was on the run from Hydra. Hydra…She took a shaky breath as she let herself into the motel room. The lights flickered briefly when she turned them on, before settling on casting a dull yellow glow over the single room. It smelled like stale cigarettes and mold. The bedspread didn't match the walls. Natasha figured she'd been in worse places.

She kicked off her boots and socks, then stripped of her jacket and headed into the bathroom. She turned on the light and looked in the mirror, now knowing why she'd gotten so many weird looks on the street. And then again when she'd asked for the room, paying in advance with the cash she'd stolen. The owner had looked at her warily, with maybe even a hint of fear, but he'd handed her the key and even some extra towels.

Just as she was about to start examining all of her various wounds, there was a knock on the room's door. He senses turned back on high alert. She made her way silently over to the door. She figured Hydra wouldn't knock—they would just break the door down—but she was cautious nonetheless. She inched the door open just a crack, shielding most of her body behind it even after seeing that it was just the motel owner. The old man looked at her shyly—and still a little warily—and held one hand up in surrender.

"Don't worry," he said softly. "I mean you no harm. I don't know what kind of trouble you're in, and it's none of my business, but I can at least offer some help. I brought you some first aid supplies, some soap, and some clean clothes. They're probably too big, but it's all I could find."

Natasha reached out carefully and took the first aid kit and the clothes. She probably shouldn't have accepted his aid. If Hydra came after her, the first thing they would do is target the people she'd encountered, and torture them for information, but she was too desperate and tired to care. She would be gone by morning, anyway.

"Thank you," she said.

"I, uh, also brought you some food," he said as he reached down next to him to pick up a paper bag and reach it out to her. "Thought you might be hungry."

Natasha gave him a smile. "Thank you, really. I just….thank you."

He nodded, giving her a small smile back. "No need to thank me. You be careful, all right?"

Natasha nodded and watched him head down the hall. She ducked back into her room, clutching the supplies to her chest as she quietly shut the door. She set the clothes, which consisted of a fresh shirt, socks, and a pair of blue pants that were a different material than she was used to. She brushed her fingers over the stitching on the back pockets, which formed a sort of V-shape, remembering that it wasn't 1946 anymore. She set the bag of food down and grabbed the soap, heading back into the bathroom.

She stripped down, looking over every inch of herself. There were cuts all over her face, dried blood crusted over all of the old ones. Her hair was matted and stringy from going so long without washing it. The bullet graze on her right arm hurt like a bitch. It wasn't too deep, but wide enough that she would need to patch it up after she showered. She had bruises everywhere, spotting her skin with blue and black. Due to the serum injected in her when she was doing her Red Room training she healed quicker, though not as quickly as Steve did. As Steve had. She had to remind herself that Steve was gone, he was dead.

But apparently Bucky wasn't.

He flashed behind her eyes and Natasha suddenly couldn't breathe. Bucky was alive. He was alive. Somehow…somehow he had survived the fall off the train. Hydra had gotten to him and they brainwashed him, gave him a new arm, and molded him into nothing but a weapon. When his mask had fallen off, some semblance of humanness had returned to his eyes, but still, he'd looked right at her, she'd said his name, and he had had no clue as to who she was. He had tried to kill her. The same Bucky who had fallen in love with her, fallen like he'd fallen for Steve. Fallen in love with her just like Steve had.

She was breathing hard now, sinking to the floor, curling her naked body in on itself, as if she could shield herself from the truth. Natasha couldn't even pretend that what she had seen wasn't true, though. The proof was on her body itself, written in the bullet graze on her arm that was still oozing blood slowly. She held her head in between her bloody, dirty hands, forcing herself to take deep breaths despite the situation at hand. She wasn't going to get anything done in this state.

Shoving to her feet, Natasha turned on the shower and hopped in before even bothering to wait for the water to heat up. Even the cold water felt good, once she got over the initial frigidness of it. As she rinsed her body of all the sweat and dirt and blood that covered it, the water still icy, she thought back to her Red Room days, the first week to be specific. She had been a child then, scared, with a fire burning inside her that she did not yet know how to wield. Memories flashed in her head during that first week when, in the middle of the night, her trainers had grabbed her from her bed, bound her hands behind her back, and brought her to a room that only held a giant tub of ice water.

Not knowing then how to fight back—only knowing she had to fight, to survive—she struggled while they dunked her repeatedly. Each time they pulled her up, icy water ran down the front of her shirt, soaking her torso. The few seconds of air she got, she gasped for breath, sucking as much oxygen into her lungs before they sent her back under. It went on for a long time. The people putting her under were told to stop and she remembered one of the head trainers leaning down to whisper in her ear, "I'm disappointed in you, Natalia. Disappoint me again and next time I won't tell them to stop". They'd left her there, on the soaked floor, shivering, forcing her to make her way back through the dark to her bed. She hadn't cried. Only vowed to herself that, next time, she would be the one to put a stop to it. And she did.

Only now she was faced with something she wasn't sure she could stop. At least not alone. Natasha tried to push thoughts like that out of her head as the water finally warmed up. She used the soap the motel owner had given her and scrubbed herself clean. She had to admit that the shower felt good, that she felt better. She stood under the stream, enjoying the feeling of cleanliness, until the water started to turn cold again. Once out of the shower, she patched herself up with the first aid kit. It was now a lot easier to see what actually needed bandaging after washing all the excess blood off her body. She ate the food the man had given her—a turkey sandwich and an apple. Then she curled up under the covers, naked, saving the clean clothes for tomorrow when she woke.

Natasha thought it would take forever to fall asleep. There was a constant stream of images flowing through her mind—images of Bucky, with that mask torn off; of Steve, and everything about him; of buckets of ice water in dark rooms while men yelled in Russian. She closed her eyes and saw blood, so much blood. She heard voices, indistinct, screaming at her. And yet, when she finally did drift off into sleep, not a dream disturbed her.

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That chapter was a little shorter, but I hope you liked it nonetheless :) the next chapter will be much longer and we'll get to see some more of Howard Stark!

Please, please review! It would really mean a lot to me and I really would like to know what you guys think of the story so far, and what you hope will happen in the future, or any predictions you have. Seriously, anything you want to say, I am all ears.

Thank you all so much for reading!

-DaughterOfPoseidon333

P.S. For those of you who watched the Agent Carter premiere, wasn't it absolutely FANTASTIC? :) Peggy Carter is amazing and there will definitely be more of her coming up in the story in a few chapters or so.