A/N: Your reactions to the story (and also Comic Con advice) have been lovely. You are all fantastic. I've finally reached the chapter which addresses another of my secret ships, which sadly conflicts with Captasha: WinterWidow. I chose "Little Talks" by OF MONSTERS AND MEN for these final installments because I can't help but think of it as Bucky and Natasha's song, particularly due to the line, "All that's left is the ghost of you." Bucky is, as the WINTER SOLDIER film said, a ghost. The following installments will attempt to reconcile Natasha's past relationship with Bucky and my attempt at her present relationship with Steve.

My portrayal of Bucky is heavily inspired by Lauralot's fanfic, "And I Am Always With You." This was done with her permission.

~x~X~x~

Although this sleep was induced by electrocution, Natasha's nightmare still returns. This time, when the shadow unveils its (her) face, it also reveals a metal arm — and when she fires bullets into its (her) chest, the metal arm grips her throat and squeezes until she falls to her knees, gasping for air in a pool of its (her) blood, and suddenly she doesn't even know which one of them is dying.

Natasha wakes with a scream. She lurches upright only to collide with a metal arm, and for an instant the nightmare is irrevocably real, and she screams again as strong hands grip her shoulders and try to still her shaking. He's on his knees beside her; she's afraid to meet his eyes. She thrashes in his hold, but his fingers (half machine, half man) only tighten against her skin.

"Natalia. Natalia, it's me. It's me."

The softness in his voice cuts straight through her. "James," she tries to say, but her trembling lips cut off her voice.

"It's me," he says again, but his voice is inflectionless. His hands loosen on her shoulders. "It's me." And she wonders if he has any idea who that is, or if he's simply hoping that the words mean something to her.

They do.

They shouldn't.

Natasha breathes slowly, silently repeating simple truths to herself. You are awake. You are alive. James is here. She looks around, taking in the bare walls and cracked window. You're in some sort of abandoned warehouse.

Not asleep. Not in danger.

Natasha runs a hand through her hair. "James," she says, and meets his eyes. "Oh, hell... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Are you... all right?"

"I am now."

A shadow passes over the Soldier's face. "That... man," he says, his eyebrows drawing together in the curious way that had so amused her when they were young. "He... hurt you. Why?"

"It's been a long time," Natasha says. "I've made mistakes."

"He hurt you."

"I hurt him, years ago."

The Soldier cracks his knuckles. Softly, he says, "Don't... know."

"What?"

"Can't..." He lifts the hand of flesh to his throat. "English. Don't speak."

Fresh horror slithers down Natasha's spine. "HYDRA conditioned you," she realizes. "To speak Russian."

He nods stiffly. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

"Want..." The hand at his throat tightens slightly, as if trying to evoke speech by force. Force is the only method he knows to elecit reward. "Want to talk."

He is like a little boy, searching out language for the first time, but his desperation speaks of a life lived too long. His eyes are glassy as he looks at her, brokenhearted. "Sorry," he says. He lowers his head. "Natalia."

Her throat closing up, she lays one palm over his hand of metal. "Don't you remember?" she says, using her native tongue. "I speak Russian. You can talk to me."

He smiles, then; a real smile, the kind that HYDRA could never smash out of him. In Russian, he asks, "You can understand me?"

"Yes."

"You speak Russian."

"Yes."

He reaches out with his hand of flesh, his fingertips brushing the curve of her cheekbone. "Natalia," he exhales, choking. "They took you away. They made me forget you. They took you away —"

She grips his wrist. "James."

"They took you away." He's tracing the arc of her cheek as if he could memorize it.

"I'm here," she says. "I'm here now."

"Stay."

"James..."

"Stay," he says, his voice hoarse from disuse. "Please."

Natasha lowers his hand, knotting her fingers with his. "You remember me," she says. "What about you? Do you remember who you are?"

His eyes shutter. Releasing her hand, he says, "HYDRA's secret weapon."

"No," she whispers.

"The Winter Soldier."

"No." She reaches for him, but he flinches away as if expecting a blow.

"I'm the Winter Soldier," he says, as if reading from a script. He grips his neck again, grasping for other words. But he only repeats himself. "I'm the Winter Soldier. I'm..." He trails off. "I'm..." And then nothing.

"Your name is James," Natasha says, her eyes stinging. His answering silence pierces her heart. "James Buchanan Barnes."

"Don't call me that."

"It's your name."

The Soldier stands, averting his gaze. "That man in the museum... I'm not him." His hand of metal tightens into a fist. "Maybe I was, but now I'm not."

Natasha sighs. Her chest feels hollow, her skin raw, every layer of protection scraped away. HYDRA was his salvation as much as S.H.I.E.L.D. was hers. Their respective shelters have burned, and now they sit like children in the rubble, sifting through the ashes for any small piece of who they might have been, or who they ought to be.

They are exactly alike in the worst possible way, and to see her own emptiness, her own unspoken fear, reflected back at her in the Soldier's eyes, is unnerving to the core. But it also slows her pulse; it also stills her trembling tongue.

Because she is not alone.

Natasha looks at him, eyebrows drawn together. "I suppose we're both blank slates now, aren't we?"

The Soldier doesn't answer, only stares at a battered wall.

"It's okay, James," she says, rising to her feet. "To be different than before. To be more than one person at the same time."

His shoulders tense. He looks at her, then; this time, his are not the eyes she remembers. They are twin extensions of expert programming, the visual processors of a machine.

"I know who I am, Natalia. I'm the Winter Soldier. I'm your teacher." A muscle feathers in his jaw; crimson flushes his cheeks, boyish. "Once, I remember... I was more than that."

Natasha opens her mouth, but her reply dies on her tongue. He remembers more than she expected; she's too stunned to react. He takes a step closer, and she's struck by how tall he is. Years dulled her memory of his sheer strength — the broad shoulders, the thick arms, the chiseled chest that she can see through his shirt.

His gaze is like touch. It makes her shiver.

Softly, he says, "We could be like that again."

Natasha swallows. Something rises up in her throat, a sudden sickness without explanation. There was a time when she loved him; that much is undeniable. But that time was followed by years of wearying absence, followed by her encounter with what she had once considered to be a ghost.

The Winter Soldier sent a bullet through her hip. The Winter Soldier tried to murder Nick Fury, the closest thing she has to a father. The Winter Soldier left Steve to bleed to death on the banks of the Potomac.

But James Buchanan Barnes used to run his hands along the curves of her body and whisper, beautiful, as he kissed her in the dark.

Natasha swallows. "Why did you come here?"

He hesitates; the pause, the sharp intake of breath, lasts only for an instant, but it is there. "I wanted to see you."

"I'm a liar by trade," Natasha says. "I know a half-truth when I hear it."

The Soldier looks into her eyes, his throat working but no sound coming out. At last, he says, "I could help you."

"Help me?"

"I could give you a mission again."

He has been conditioned to think in terms of targets and distractions. Want is a foreign concept, and might as well be another English word he cannot form; he has lived a half-life of missions and cryo-freeze and missions, and nothing else. He was once a man — but the crucible of time has forged him into a rifle.

Natasha could not bear to be a weapon again.

Arms crossed, she says, "I fight my own battles."

"You have nothing left to fight for," the Soldier says, and the truth of his words is all too acute.

Natasha digs her fingernails into her palms. "What are you proposing?"

There is a stretch of silence. The Soldier looks away from her, as if ashamed. He draws his shoulders back, locks his jaw in place. "There's a rogue branch of HYDRA," he says.

Natasha stares, disbelieving. Because he cannot have gone back. Because he cannot possibly be so broken that he would return to his handlers the moment he snapped their leash. Because James Buchanan Barnes used to kiss her in the dark.

"They want to fix things. They fixed my arm — they fixed my head, my memories." The Soldier smiles, apparently at a fond recollection. "They could help —"

"Why the hell would you go back?" Natasha snaps. The question tears loose without her permission. "Why? After what they did to you? After Steve —"

"Don't talk about him," the Soldier breathes, a wavering plea.

"He loves you."

"Don't talk about him," the Soldier snarls. His eyes are windows into the abyss within him; they hold only darkness.

Natasha nearly recoils. Softly, she asks, "Do you remember anything at all?"

The Soldier blinks. Then his mouth lifts into a small smile as he says, "I remember you."

For the first time, Natasha's relief at his return is replaced by a new, insidious fear. This man does not remember who he is, but he remembers who she was to him, remembers the kisses in the dark.

The Soldier expects her to want him, and she does. But not as she once did (though she can hardly pinpoint why.) Not as he surely wants her now, his eyes traveling from her head to her feet, his mouth still upturned in that lazy smile.

Natasha turns away, unable to bear it.

"I remember everything," the Soldier says. "All of it."

She doesn't look at him. "You put your faith in the wrong woman. I don't want any part of this."

Silence falls, the lethal knife that will finally sever them. Every part of her aching, Natasha begins to walk away.

Then the Soldier says, "Nat," in a trembling voice — his nickname for her, the name he breathed against her lips, the name he trailed along her skin in the dark — and her precarious calm falls apart.

Natasha freezes, her legs locked in place. Her hands are shaking.

"Nat," the Soldier says. "Please."

Against all logic, she turns her head, looks into his faraway eyes. "What?"

He steps suddenly closer, breathing hard, and says, "I've missed you." And she's still searching for a reply when he grabs her face with his hand of flesh and brings her mouth to his.

His kiss is firm, insistent, shameless — the way he used to kiss her in the dark — and her head spins with the rush of it, present and past blurring together. And then the hand of metal is on her face, too, and something lurches in her chest and she tries to pull away, but he's far too strong. He's insensible to her refusal, unaware of her resistance, lost in what they used to be. HYDRA has conditioned him to think in terms of masters and handlers, property and owners. He doesn't want to hurt her — but when she presses an open palm to his chest, he doesn't react, doesn't understand.

He tastes like darkness, like rust and salt and sugar, like secrets and regrets.

In an act of desperation, in an attempt to say, stop, Natasha digs her teeth into his lower lip.

But when James Buchanan Barnes kissed her in the dark, they kissed just as they sparred; eager and rough, a tangle of limbs and mouths. As her teeth break the Soldier's lip, Natasha sees the memories flash in his eyes, sees that her stop has been taken as a yes.

The Soldier's hand of metal grips her wrist, wrenching it back as he steps suddenly forward, and all at once, Natasha is pinned against the wall. His kiss is hard and edged with hunger, and this is how he touched her in the Red Room, and she's so completely stunned that for an instant, she finds herself kissing him back.

Then something registers — a strange, sharp sense that this is not the man she wants to be kissing — and without thinking, she brings her knee up into his groin.

The Soldier staggers back. He doubles over, panting.

Natasha stares at him, breathing hard. "You have no right to touch me," she says, trembling. "Don't you ever touch me."

The Soldier grunts; his lip is bleeding. "I'm sorry."

"You should be."

"What happened to you, Nat?"

Her pulse still racing, a cold sweat on the nape of her neck, Natasha starts to walk away. "Seventy years."

Abruptly, metal fingers close around her wrist. "There's someone else," the Soldier says.

She stares at his hand, suddenly afraid. "Let go."

"Who is it?"

"James —"

"Who the hell is it?" he nearly screams, and with a jolt, he releases her.

Natasha's breath hitches. A purple blotch is already forming on her wrist. Even if this man cares for her, he does not remember how to love. "Don't touch me," she snarls, and there's liquid in her mouth and it tastes like salt and maybe she really is crying.

James Buchanan Barnes used to kiss her in the dark.

"You're mine, Nat," the Soldier says, softly. "You were mine."

She steels herself. "Time changes things."

And as she finally walks away, absently rubbing her bruised wrist, she hears the Soldier say, "But I never thought it would change you."

~x~X~x~

A/N: Well, I worked my way through a forty-song playlist while writing this. It's past midnight. And I broke my own emotions into a million pieces, even though I'm the writer. And this chapter is so freaking long, but I somehow wrote the whole thing tonight.

I hate to say it, but if this upset you as much as it upset me, I've done my job. Nevertheless, I swear this fanfic will have a hopeful ending.

Please review, and thanks for reading.