"She got away?" Tony asks as he paces back and forth. Rhodey's spoon clanks against his cereal bowl, and Vision rises from across the table.
"No, of course not!" Tony snaps. "What are you going to—no, I don't need you to search my tower, 'cause it's my tower and you should trust me… well, I don't care. I've been here all frickin' day. Talk to Rhodey… you want to? That's cold… All right, fine." He shoves the phone at Rhodey, who blinks.
"May I inquire who the 'she' was?" Vision requests.
"You may." Tony rolls his eyes. "Natasha."
Vision nods.
"Not Wanda. Sorry."
"We still have nothing on her?" Vision inquires.
"I can confirm Tony Stark was here all day," Rhodey says blandly into the phone.
"I wasn't aware—" Tony glances back at Rhodey and lowers his voice. "I wasn't aware that we were trying all that hard to find her."
"We aren't. We cannot let them put her back in that floating prison," Vision says.
"Keep your voice down, would you?" Tony shakes his head. "I have every reason to suspect Wanda's safe and happy."
Vision watches as Rhodey hangs up and plants both hands on the table, struggling to stand.
How did this happen?
I became distracted.
He's not entirely sure what this strange sensation of cold and warm pressure squeezing him at the same time is, but he has every reason to suspect it's guilt, and that can only make him think of Wanda and Lagos.
"Well, looks like Steve got Natasha," Rhodey reports. "Interesting that she vanishes when T'Challa's in town."
"Yes, but was it not T'Challa who informed on her letting Steve and Barnes escape?" Vision points out.
"Yeah, you're still too naïve," Rhodey informs him.
"Doesn't matter." Tony turns and stalks away. "They can be all happy and chipper in Wakanda together. I don't care."
Tony's phone starts to buzz, and Vision checks it. "Miss Potts for you," he calls.
"Let it ring." Tony ducks into the elevator.
Vision looks to Rhodey, who shrugs.
"X-rays say your knee is fine," a nurse reports to Natasha.
"Well, thanks." She could have told her the same thing. Small injuries never hamper her for long. Push through the pain. If you let it stop you, you're weak.
And where she grew up, the weak didn't survive.
Pain is irrelevant. Completing the mission—that's all that matters.
The door slides open, and T'Challa strides in. "Miss Romanoff."
"Your highness," Natasha says respectfully, even as suspicions slides through her. What does he want?
"You are wondering why I am helping you," T'Challa states.
"As any reasonable person would be," Natasha returns. Considering the fact that I stung you when we last met.
"I am done letting vengeance consume me," T'Challa says, glancing around the sterile walls. "I want no part of it. It is not what my father would have wanted."
"And you're now harboring global fugitives… why?" Natasha hobbles to her feet.
T'Challa pauses by the door. "If I have the chance to help mend broken things, I take it."
"You're talking about the Winter Soldier," Natasha realizes as she puts weight on her knee. She grimaces. Dammit.
"He is a victim."
"Do you have the record of everything he's done?" Natasha asks with a snort, remembering herself as a child, hearing stories of the famed Winter Soldier and all his exploits, all his kills and the destruction he wreaked in the name of his cause, because it was right and everything was justified by that rightness.
And she wanted to be just like that, even if her role was a bit different.
You always had a choice, didn't you?
"I was wondering if you knew anything," T'Challa broaches the subject. "Our goal is to help clean his mind of whatever poison they put in it. You were part of a similar program, and yet you changed—"
"I changed sides because Clint spared my life," Natasha cuts in. Because, for the first time, she was defeated and the pain in her back, her shattered elbow, her thigh, was too much for her to fight against, and for the first time, she realized that she was afraid of dying, afraid of the blackness that awaited her—at best, because she could think of a more than a few religions that would condemn her to a far worse place—afraid of not believing in what she'd been taught enough.
"And that single act of compassion changed your allegiance completely?" T'Challa studies her as intently as her headmistress used to study her, only there's no skepticism or suspicion poking out from his gaze.
"It was a slow process," Natasha says, choosing her words carefully.
"What helped?" T'Challa asks, stepping closer.
Oh no. Natasha retreats, leaning back against the table she'd been lying on. "It's different for Bucky. Far different than it was for me. He had a life before… I didn't. He was in it for far more years than I was. We're not comparable."
"I see. If you remember something that could help, I trust you'll inform us."
"Of course," Natasha says with a smile. Charm's second-nature for her. Like a venomous snake's flashy colors, she has her smile.
"Natasha!" Wanda leaps to her feet.
"The Spider woman," breathes Scott.
"Good grief," Natasha says as she limps towards them and casts Steve a confused look. "Are there any Avengers his Highness didn't smuggle into Germany?"
"It's just us," Sam confirms, gesturing. "The four—now five—of us. Six, if you count T'Challa, which I guess we do now."
"No Clint?" Natasha questions.
"That's kinda why we're here," says Wanda, glancing at Steve.
"Clint's family's being watched. We need to get them out," Steve explains. "T'Challa's heading to New York tomorrow to meet with Tony. Wanda will disguise herself and help smuggle them on board."
Natasha's eyebrows rise.
"I can do it," Wanda insists. "I won't use my powers unless it gets desperate. And I'm good at disguises."
"I thought I was too," Natasha tells her. Wanda's grin stiffens. "And the ant—giant—man?"
"You still remember that, huh?" Scott asks eagerly.
"Oh God," complains Sam.
"It was a good trick!" Scott protests.
"Yeah, yeah, man, we know."
"Scott wants to see his daughter, and T'Challa's arranging that as well. Just a visit," Steve clarifies. Scott stuffs his hands into his jean pockets.
"Are we all going?' Natasha asks slowly.
"No. Sam and I—and you, if you want to—are heading back to Wakanda."
"Sure." Natasha shrugs as if to say she's got nothing better to do.
"So," Steve asks a few hours later, when they're all on a plane. "What have you been up to since we last met?"
"Staying under the radar," Natasha recites, rubbing her knee.
"What're you looking for under the radar?" Steve questions. "Come on. I know you too well for that."
Natasha brushes her curls back from her face. "I went to see Clint's family for awhile, but Laura was—angry with me. Angry about this whole thing."
Steve winces. How angry is she with me?
"I'm guessing Tony found out about Bucky killing his parents," Natasha says.
"Yeah." Steve leans forward.
"He'll never forgive us," Natasha says, running her fingers across the rim of her cup of water. A hollow moan echoes from it. "For not telling him."
Steve winces. "We'll see about that." He doesn't want to believe it.
"I knew for years," Natasha says softly. "Since before I met Tony."
"Wait, what?" demands Sam.
"Tony was my mission when I first met him. And once we were friends—you can't just tell your friend their parents were murdered by an organization you used to work with." The plane's engines hum, and Natasha closes her eyes.
"Tony will—we'll be there for him if he needs us, and vice versa," Steve says. He's never given up on Bucky, not even now, with no answers in sight, and he won't give up on Tony either. There's got to be a way to heal.
Speaking of which… "T'Challa said you don't remember—"
"Anything that can help you? Help him? No." Natasha shakes her head. Her knuckles tighten around the glass. "And I'd prefer not to talk about it."
"But you did know him?" Sam asks.
"I knew of him," Natasha says, opening her eyes. "The Winter Soldier was a myth, the kind of myth that seems real, like a horror story fairy tale, or a religion. We all looked up to him, to what he accomplished. Almost like worship." Natasha sighs. "I had no idea who he was, or even that he had an identity beyond The Winter Soldier."
"And your childhood god's now a broken man," Sam says.
"I lost my faith in everything long ago," Natasha says with a wry smile. "From the moment Clint beat me. Maybe before."
"Because otherwise how could he have beaten you?" Steve jokes.
Natasha laughs and shoves at him. "Careful there. He'd better never hear you saying that."
"But is it true?" Sam teases.
"As an American now, I'm going to plead the Fifth." She rubs her knee again.
"Want some medicine for that?" he asks.
"Sure."
Steve rises and heads off to find some. A luxury plane for the Wakandan king, taking a huge risk by flying them around on it—and yet, T'Challa completely has the respect of his people, and not one rumor has slipped out that the Avengers are hiding in Wakanda.
And yet he worries. If they're in hiding, won't some organization or some person see the tatters and the tears and seize the opportunity to wreak havoc?
The Accords really meant nothing in the grand scheme, Steve realizes now. Not when there was a bomb ticking underneath them all along.
I'm with you to the end of the line.
He means it. He can't give up on his oldest friend, the only one who believed in him when he was just a scrawny kid from Brooklyn. Bucky didn't drop him even when it surely would have been easier too, simply because Steve was weak and a vulnerability. And he won't drop Bucky now.
Anger curls in Steve's stomach when he considers what they did to Bucky. What they did to Natasha, whom Steve is certain knows far, far more than she's telling.
He'll wait.
As Steve shakes two white pills into his hand, he remembers that Natasha knew about Tony's parents for years, and never said anything.
How long can I wait?
"Hey, Bucky," he hears Steve's voice outside the glass. "Got back from Germany today."
How often do you come here? Bucky wonders. Every day? Do you think I can hear you?
Because—unless this is Steve's fist time talking to him while he's 'asleep', and Bucky doubts it very much because this is just like Steve—always the idealist—he hasn't been able to hear his friend. It's been nothing, and as much as Bucky would like to say nothing was blissful after years of torment, he doesn't know that it's any better.
"We still don't have any leads, but I promise you, we'll find something. No matter how long it takes." Steve's voice catches. "I miss you."
I miss you too.
But it is easier to be asleep in some ways. He doesn't have to look at his friend and know that, instead of the hero Steve always looked up to him as, he became a monster. Someone played with his brain and turned him into the exact opposite of a hero.
And he murdered Iron Man's parents.
And countless other innocent people. The little girl with the blond pigtails, the man who screamed like a child, the elderly woman who smiled at him as he punched and punched…
He doesn't understand how Steve can really forgive that, could still fight for him, haul him off that floor and take him here.
Maybe, if his mind was healed, if it no longer ached to think and if mere words no longer tore through him like fire, incinerating every memory of Bucky Barnes and turning him into a soldier, he would understand. Let it go, even. Maybe.
He should stay.
Except… Loki's offered him a chance. Steve will understand, Bucky knows, and yet he still feels a smidgeon of guilt.
And Loki should be here soon. Any minute. Hopefully the god has the good sense to wait until after Steve leaves.
"See you later," Steve says. As footsteps clunk away, Bucky cracks his eyes open.
A redhaired woman, the one who fought with Stark and then stung T'Challa to help them escape, stands in front of him.
Bucky clamps his eyes shut again, wondering what she saw, if she saw something. He hears her stepping closer.
Nothing. No shouts, no running.
"You don't remember me, do you?" she asks.
What? He recognizes her as Steve's friend. Natasha, Steve called her. The one who packs a good punch.
"I don't blame you," she says softly.
For what?
Because whatever it is, Bucky assumes he deserves to be blamed for it.
Natasha peers out the window. She doesn't feel like sleeping yet, and Clint's too busy to talk.
"In the morning," he told her when they landed. "We'll talk then. I've got to talk to Laura."
She presses her forehead against the glass, watching the dark shapes of lush trees, partially distorted by fog. She should go to her room. Get some rest.
She hears a rustle behind her and whirls around. "Steve?"
Nothing.
Natasha frowns. She's too aware of her surroundings to worry that she's mistaken. She slinks down the hallway and sees the door to Bucky's room ajar.
Oh no. Has someone followed them? Natasha kicks the door open to see the glass chamber opened.
And no Bucky.
Shit!
Natasha whirls down the hallway, charging to see if she can catch a glimpse of anyone. Why doesn't she have a phone—dammit, she needs Steve—
There. At the end of the hallway, sliding open through a glass door that leads to a balcony.
Bucky?
"Hey!" Natasha shouts.
No one's with him. He stares back at her, eyes wide.
Who am I dealing with? Natasha wonders. Bucky, or the Winter Soldier?
"Bucky, what are you—"
"Stay away," he says, and the sound of his voice—it sends shudders down Natasha's spine.
"Why?" she asks as she continues to advance. "How did you wake up?"
Something's not right, and it's not him, it's her. She's jittery and her mind isn't working in its cool, logical, slippery spider way. She's been compromised.
He turns to leave through the door, and Natasha lunges, grabbing him and swinging herself up onto his shoulders. He bucks, trying to throw her off, and Natasha lands a blow in his face. He drops to the ground and she falls, whacking her head. She shoots out her arm and stings him. He howls and drops.
"I need to go!"
"Go where?" Natasha demands as she rolls on top of him, slamming him back against the metal floor. The humid Wakandan night steals her breath. Her hair sticks to her face. "Steve—"
"Don't you dare call him!"
"What are you—"
He kicks her off, sending her slamming into the wall. Dazed, Natasha hears him saying something about trying to fix things, and then she sees a flash of fire and it engulfs him.
What the hell?
"No!" Steve will never get over it if Bucky burns, if he dies. Natasha flings herself at the fire wall.
Except it's not fire.
It's light, and it grabs her by her hair, by her hands and her legs and her waist and drags her—somewhere.
