Title: we would have to keep this secret
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from "Secret" by Heart.
Warnings: modern AU; discussion of violence/torture
Pairings: Steve/Bucky, Natasha/Clint
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1080
Point of view: third
She's there scouting the place, doing recon for a hit due within the month and none of the idiots present have any clue they've been infiltrated. So far, everything about the scumbag checks out and it'll be a pleasure to kill him, so she decides to do one more pass before heading out and prepping.
She finds the boy on the lowest level, barely alive.
.
He is not, actually, a boy. He's at least her age, possibly a little older. He's curled into the smallest space he can fit and a very technologically advanced prosthesis has replaced his left arm; it is outside of the ball he's made of his body, either as protection or because he derives no comfort from it. Since he is unconscious, she has no way of knowing.
There is a chain connected to both of his legs.
She does not have time for this. She has obligations. The care this man would require –
Shit, she thinks and then goes to track down the target.
.
"Hey," she says, throwing a shoe at him. "Hey, wake up." She cycles through eight languages before he wakes up, shouting in English, so she switches to that. "C'mon, we have to leave. Can you walk?"
He blinks stupidly blue eyes at her. "Wha?"
"This place is going to blow in five minutes," she enunciates slowly. "We have to go. Can you walk?"
"I can damn well try," he says.
She pulls the bolt-cutters from behind her back. "Will you go for my throat if I come closer?"
He looks from the bolt-cutters to her. "I will do my best not to."
His voice is hoarse, his flesh hand trembling, and the prosthesis keeps doing some little shivering thing. She just calmly and surely moves toward him, kneels fluidly by his feet, and removes the shackles as quickly as she safely can. The countdown is steady in her head.
"There you go," she says, scuttling back before she stands. She holds out a hand.
"Why?" he asks, his flesh arm tucked around his torso, pushing up with the prosthesis. He's unsteady on his feet; she does not attempt to help him.
Her only reply is, "One minute."
"Fuck it," he mutters. "Let's go."
.
As they're driving away, she tells him, "I'm Natasha."
He passes out with no reply.
.
"Sergeant James Barnes," he says, and then a long string of numbers.
.
She sends proof of death and then takes Barnes to her closest bolthole. She is still unsure what to do with him – she is no one's idea of a caretaker. He is at least thirty pounds underweight, he has a painful-sounding cough, and the sores from the chains… those, actually, she can deal with.
She calls Clint. "Find Banner," she says. "I've got a patient for him.
.
Once, a long time ago, she was in Barnes' place. Clint was in hers.
The rest is history.
.
"Well, this is awful," Banner says ruefully, staring down at Barnes.
"He's been unconscious for two days," she reports. "Can you fix him?"
Banner gently touches Barnes' cheek and then he sighs, setting his pack on the floor. "It might be more merciful just to kill him cleanly," he says.
She shifts forward slightly; Banner holds up his hands. "I won't unless you ask me to," he assures her. "Just lettin' you know. I'll do what I can."
She nods firmly and doesn't bother warning him.
.
"Nat, what are you doing?" Clint asks.
"I have no fucking clue," she answers.
.
It takes three months before she believes Barnes when he says he's fine again. He spends whatever time he's not sleeping or compulsively showering by diving into classified files she's pulled that all have his name on them.
"Those fuckers," he says and sometimes doesn't come up for days.
She doesn't spend the entire three months with him; for two weeks, while she's on a hit, Hill swings by to babysit.
When she returns, Hill gives her a tight smile. "Let's go for a walk," she suggests.
.
"He was one of ours," Hill says. "It was a trade; I'm not sure what we got for him." She sighs. "He was good, Romanoff. One of the best. This is going to be a goddamned shitshow, isn't it."
She orders, "Tell me everything, Hill."
Hill sighs again and then she does.
.
She settles beside Barnes on the bed. He's not actually sleeping but he allows her to scoot in close. "It goes all the way up, doesn't it," he mutters. "But I still don't –"
"I'll find the name for you," she promises, reaching up to stroke his face, across the brow, down the jaw. Her fingers catch on his lip, where he's constantly biting. "Is there anywhere you can go?"
Barnes is silent for a long time. She lets her fingers rest on his lips, the only point of contact between them. He is attractive, and she knows Clint wouldn't mind - but whenever she looks at him, she sees only that boy, curled in on himself, chained to the wall and hoping to die.
"There is somewhere," he finally says, tilting his face so that her fingers slip down to his throat.
"Go there," she says. "I'll be in contact when I have the name."
.
Clint's flying Barnes back into the States, while she begins preliminary research – everything she's already got plus everything Barnes recovered during his convalescence. Just before he heads to the airstrip, Barnes pauses, reaching for her. She lets him catch her hand.
"Why?" he asks, those stupidly blue eyes pinning in her place before he lets his gaze fall.
She telegraphs every move as she leans in, rises up on her toes, and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. "Because I've been where you were," she says.
"Natasha," he says and she pulls back, shaking her head.
"Call me Natalia," she tells him. "There was a girl once. She was supposed to die but a good man didn't want to let her." Natalia shrugs. "Go home, Barnes. I'll be in touch."
He nods and turns away, but then looks back. "James," he says.
She smiles at him. "James."
.
It takes seven months. She sends a text.
Clint tells her, "You're gonna make even more enemies."
She grins down at him, setting the phone on the bedside table. "No," Natalia says. "I'm going to make even more corpses out of men who should've known better." She kisses him. "You taught me that."