Author's Notes: Sorry, I'm a little late with the posting! Hope you enjoy the chapter!
Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel. Promise. Not making any money here.
Chapter 5: Present
Mission Report. May 18th, 1956. Two HYDRA deserters found in remote Austrian village. Marcus Schultz: Dead. Dmitri Kozlov: Dead. S. had daughter. Shopped in market. Bought apples. Don't know what happened to the girl.
Mission Report. September 3rd, 1988. Target eliminated.
Mission Report. January 22nd, 1962. Target: Matthew Brady. Status: Dead.
Mission Report. March 17th, 1971. Blonde woman. Mid 20s. Strangled.
Mission Report . . .
Mission Report . . .
Mission . . .
Mis . . .
The pen breaks.
James tosses the broken pen away with a scowl before burying his face in his hands and sighing. He lets his hands slide through his hair, tugging harder than he should like it's a pisspoor punishment. But then should he be punished? He isn't sure.
Regaining his memories is much easier than he expected. Mostly they come to him in dreams, and it's funny to him, in a morbid way, that while he hopes that the dreams of blood and death and torture are real memories, there's a part of him that is desperate for some details to just be twisted nightmares. Some random, macabre fantasy. Not real.
It's as though he can stomach killing Marcus Schultz, but thinking of the man's abandoned daughter makes him want to hurl. The death is easy. Killing doesn't faze him. There's a deep acceptance of death in his bones. People live, and people die. James thinks that's a lesson he learned and accepted long ago.
It's the consequences of killing that leave him uneasy. It's the faces of those left behind to grieve that keep him awake at night, tossing and turning and then pacing when his back grows tired of the marshmallow-like couch cushions. It's the grief that is steadily, viciously, haunting him. And it's confusing as hell.
Grief, regret . . . these aren't feelings that he remembers. He doesn't know them, doesn't understand how he can so easily accept killing—surely the morally worse offence—and yet fight back tears anytime he so much as pictures the big, doe-brown eyes of Schultz's daughter as she pulls on her daddy's sleeve to buy her an apple. The girl lived, didn't she? He didn't kill her. Why should she make him so damn upset?
He doesn't understand.
He wasn't . . . he wasn't programmed for this.
The thought sends his emotions into a tailspin, and he's abruptly so full of rage that it's all he can do to channel it into a roar and a punch. His fist comes down like a guillotine onto the tabletop, splitting the wood in a spray of splinters and dust and leaving him comically sitting stone still at a broken table when Natasha rushes in from the mud room where she'd been sorting her whites and darks.
She takes in the scene with a quick, critical eye just as she would any potentially dangerous situation. And yes, Natasha is well-aware that that is precisely what she's gotten herself into. Oh, yes, she's playing with fire brining the Winter Soldier here, and she knows it. The one time she gives into her feelings instead of logic—of course, this is what she gets: A half-sane assassin with Alzheimer's.
She can't predict his thoughts or his actions. She doesn't even have the benefit of knowing who he was before HYDRA sunk their claws into him. Natasha Romanoff is running on nothing but instinct and a far-flung prayer to a God she isn't sure she believes in, and goddammit, she really wishes she could call Clint.
"I didn't like that table anyway," she says as she tries her damnedest to seem casual and not as if her fingers are ready to reach for the Berretta lying in the rubble, still partially wrapped in the tape that had kept it concealed underneath the tabletop. James doesn't notice. He's too busy trying to breathe. Why can't he breathe? His hand fists in his shirt over his heart. Jesus Christ, why is his chest so damn tight? Poison? No. Bullet? No blood.
"What's—" He gasps, eyes wide. "What's wrong with me?"
"You're having a panic attack, James." Natasha cautiously moves toward him, the rubble of the table crunching under her feet, until she's kneeling on the floor and a splinter is digging into her left knee. She ignores it and gently places a hand behind James's head. "Put your head between your knees, soldat," she says, giving him a gentle pull until he shudders and complies. "Good. Now, I need you to breathe deeply, James." She leans forward until her forehead rests on his shoulder. "Breathe with me, okay?"
James latches onto her voice first. It's soft and lulling, gently seductive in the way it immediately soothes a part of his mind. He's able to grasp her words then. Breathe. He needs to breathe. "Natalia," he gasps, a plea in his voice that's beyond his control. And though neither are aware of it, there's a singular note of pain in the way James caresses Natasha's name that can only come from a deep love and a terrible loss. "Natalia."
Natasha shushes him. "You're not breathing, soldat," she says. "Breathe with me."
She takes a deep breath, and she's so close to him that he can feel her lungs expand against him. It's only then that he realizes he's put his arms around her. "That's it, darling." Natasha doesn't recognize her voice. She's never been able to coo. "In and out. Just follow me."
James follows her. He breathes with her until he realizes the pattern. Inhale for five seconds. Hold for two. Then exhale for five. Deep breaths. The light-headedness fades first, and he thoughtlessly turns his face into Natasha's neck as they continue to breathe together. When his pulse has returned to a normal rhythm, Natasha doesn't immediately move. This is as close as she's been to James that hasn't involved a fight. This is the exact opposite of a fight. This is vulnerability. A quiet, soft, special kind of intimacy.
There's an initial feeling of curiosity that causes her fingers to sift through his hair, followed by a flicker of pleasure at such closeness, and that's when her brain kicks into gear and she's appropriately uneasy. She doesn't feel like this. So . . . soft. Weak.
Natasha pulls back, and the small distance might as well be an ocean. James blinks, unknowingly cycling through the very same emotions, until he leans back even further. "We good?" Natasha asks.
He nods. "Yeah."
"Good."
James looks at the table. "Sorry," he says, unaware it's the first time he's felt the need to apologize in decades, "about the table."
Natasha smirks. "I told you. I never really liked it. But you realize what this means." James stares at her. "You get to help me pick out a new one."
Which meant leaving the cabin, which meant dealing with people, people who needed to believe he was normal and unassuming and not a terrorist.
Right.
"Sounds fair," he admits.
"Excellent. We'll leave in ten."
James nods once in assent, and Natasha heads for the stairs. Once the door to her bedroom shuts quietly behind her, he sighs deeply, leaning forward with his head in his hands. He breathes on his own for a whole minute, remembering how warm Natasha had felt against him and how soothing her voice had sounded in his ear. He's unsettled by how pleasant it felt to have her near like that. Sparring he can handle. It's so ingrained, so normal, damn near domestic by his standards. But this had been . . . personal.
He'd called her Natalia.
Taking one last deep breath, he gets to his feet and retrieves his notebook from the table pieces, brushing off splinters and dust as he walks toward the kitchen counter. He opens the drawer closest to the back door and pulls out a new pen. Flipping through the pages, he finds where he had been writing and makes two notes:
*They're called panic attacks. Symptoms: hyperventilation, light-headedness, tight chest. Breathe deeply. 5-2-5 count. Brought on by intense emotion. Regret.
*You call her Natalia.
He puts the notebook and the pen back in the drawer, takes another deep breath, and then grabs his jacket from the coat rack. Natasha comes down the stairs as he's pulling on his leather glove, hair in a sleek ponytail and lip gloss in her hand. Her lips twitch when she sees him waiting, and though James searches every minute detail of her expression, he doesn't find any hint of the softness she'd shown minutes earlier.
Her mask is back in place.
He's simultaneously relived and disappointed and entirely unable to explain why.
It's a thirty minute drive into town, but Natasha makes it in twenty. Corvette or no Corvette (how she misses her precious baby) she'll always see speed limits as suggestions. Not to mention the fact that it's incredibly gratifying to finally have a man in her passenger seat that isn't clutching the door handle in restrained fear or spouting off things like, But it's the law, Nat.
Honestly, Clint should trust her by now, and Steve can be such a mother hen.
But James almost has a smile on his face as she takes a turn just fast enough, and she grins freely as she puts even more pressure on the gas.
They pull into an antiques shop on the main drag, and James is grateful that it's the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. Most people are at work instead of shopping, and so he relaxes slightly as he eases out of the car. From behind her sunglasses, Natasha catalogues the way his shoulders loosen and inwardly nods in satisfaction like a proud handler even if she dislikes the comparison and what it implies. But there's a safety in the distance it provides, and she's still reeling from their moment in kitchen.
It's nothing she hasn't done before. Not really. She's had her fair share of panic attacks. So has Clint. So has Steve. Only Clint learned long ago how to control them, and Steve, though he hadn't known what they were just as James hadn't, fell back into old habits from the days when he'd had asthma. Natasha had never really had to help.
She's never had to coach Clint or Steve to breathe with her. She's never had to hold them. She's never had to speak so softly and be so gentle. And that's not the scary part. That's not what disturbs her. It's the fact that she hadn't needed to be so soft or so gentle. She could have remained firm and calmly given instructions. She could have been clinical. Professional.
But she'd disregarded that without a thought. James had been in pain, and she'd just . . . crumpled. She'd become someone soft. Someone gentle and coaxing. Reassuring. Open.
She's Natasha Romanoff. She isn't open.
It's with these thoughts in her head that she snags James's hand as they step onto the sidewalk. He glances at her, but she pretends to be unaware and tows him toward the doors of the antique shop. It has that old smell to it, a mixture of age, paper, and furniture polish that always makes her feel her age. She lets her eyes dance over each little cubicle. Most of it is junk, but she goes through a stack of records out of habit. She finds the Beatles' White album and wordlessly hands it to James. "Steve likes them," she explains. "He has it all on his iPod, but he's a bit of a snob about how we listen to our music these days. Insists it sounds better on a record. I indulge him."
James glances at the cover and frowns. "What's an iPod?"
"It's a small storage device that can hold thousands of songs," Natasha recites easily. "You can carry it with you in your pocket and listen to your music whenever you want." She glances at him. "We can get you one."
"It's not necessary."
"There are a lot of people who would argue that," she says but then shrugs. "But there's plenty of time for me to change your mind."
They fall into a not-quite-easy silence as Natasha scans for a suitable table. She finally finds one tucked in the back of the store, nearly invisible under a pile of candlesticks, a large bowl of potpourri, and a dozen old Mickey Mouse placemats splayed out like cards on a Vegas gambling table. Natasha knocks on the wood. Solid. "Cherry," she declares. "Good. I like that better than maple." She glances at the bright pink price tag and scoffs. "We'll fix that."
James stands back and watches Natasha artfully haggle over the price with an old woman in a flower-printed dress. He's amused by it all as he watches her cycle through persona after persona in order to get what she wants, going from coolly calculated to charming to funny and then finally settling on a stunning combination of mischief and shyness as she glances back at him with a blush on her cheeks and a giggle and then explains that they "broke" their last table and likely will break this one before too long.
So could she cut them a deal since they'd likely be back?
James doesn't like the appraising, appreciative look that the old woman gives him, and he pretends not to hear her launch into a story about her torrid love affair during the war with an English private. She swears she "has never walked the same again" and "misses him so dearly" and "some parts more than others" and he has to endure Natasha's little smirks and giggles as she keeps glancing at him and the brief flashes of memory that start to play behind his eyes.
He climbed through her window, hair wet with melting snow. Natalia leapt into his arms with a wide smile and bright eyes. Her arms wound around his neck as he guided her legs around his waist, her skin hot beneath his hands.
"You came," she said.
And then the picture fades away and he's left with only her voice echoing in his mind, soft like it had been in the kitchen. He doesn't know if it's the same moment or another, but he doesn't think it matters. Not when he remembers so clearly the wonder and the excitement and the thread of defiance in her voice.
"You shouldn't be here. They'll kill you if they find out."
He remembers chuckling. "Worth it."
"James? James?"
He blinks as the pressure of her hand in his increases. He manages a smile. "Sorry, sweetheart," he says. "Daydreamin'."
Natasha's eyes narrow even as she smirks. "Good ones, I hope."
He squeezes her hand to reassure her that he's not about to snap or God forbid, have another panic attack. Of course, he doesn't really feel reassured, necessarily. Nor does he know whether or not his new memories are good. They just give him more to think about.
Because as Natasha looks up at him, older and guarded and scarred, he suddenly sees her younger and softer, somehow still innocent in a way she is no longer, and it . . . hurts.
He feels like he's lost something he doesn't even remember having.
He sees the old lady watching them over Natasha's shoulder and summons a smirk. And it's so slick, so charming, that Natasha blinks in surprise and feels herself automatically smirking in return. Because she recognizes that smirk. It's eerily like hers, but roguish instead of sly, with mischief twinkling in his eyes. And Natasha suddenly, vividly understands Steve's many stories about Bucky making girls fall for him with just a look while he, gangly Steve, shook his head and tried to keep track of their names for when Bucky would inevitably try to wrangle a double date.
"I'll show you later," he promises.
A creaky giggle behind them causes Natasha to whirl and remember they aren't alone. "So," she says. "About the table?"
They get the table for half of what it's marked, and James gets the great honor of carrying it out to the car and then flipping it on top of the roof of the car before tying it down with rope. When Natasha comes outside, she appraises him as he leans against the passenger door. She unlocks the car, but it's once they're both seated and headed back toward the cabin that she glances over at James, whose gaze has been pinned on the passing scenery since she put the car in drive.
"So," she says. "What did you remember?"
James stiffens. "Nothing." Natasha hums. "It wasn't important."
"Lie."
"Leave it alone, Natalia."
Natasha's hands tighten on the wheel. "You remember."
He looks away from the window but doesn't let his eyes stray to hers. Not directly. He stares forward. "Pieces," he says.
Pieces. What a shit answer. It's not what Natasha wants. She wants details. She needs details. Nearly a month at the cabin with James, and she hasn't remembered a single thing. Her dreams have been reruns of her time in the Red Room, beautifully preserved thanks to the serum, leaving her waking in a sweat at least once a night, and despite her vivid memory, she's still missing pieces.
She's managed to identify them—those shadowy parts of her memory that she had never really noticed. They were so subtle, so small. She understands how she'd missed them. Yet identifying the holes in her memory seemed to be getting her no closer to actually remembering them.
"Well, then you're ahead of me," she says, a cynical, frustrated twist to her words.
James frowns at her tone and finally looks at her, taking in the tightness around her eyes and the way her hands briefly flex on the wheel. She's angry, he realizes. At herself or at him, he doesn't know (or care) but it's the fact that she's upset that . . . bothers him. He sees her in his mind's eye once again, young and beaming at him, and his chest tightens in a way that's strangely pleasant and distinctly uncomfortable at the exact same time.
"I think I used to sneak into your room," he says, glancing cautiously toward her, waiting to see if she'll meet his gaze. Natasha keeps her eyes on the road. James doesn't let that stop him. "You were young."
"Relatively."
"You were young," he repeats. "You were happy to see me, almost like you hadn't expected me to show." Natasha hums, and James let's his eyes drop to the console between them. "You jumped into my arms, and I just held you there."
Natasha blinks away the innocent picture in her mind, imperceptivity swallowing it down like it might choke her if she let it. "How romantic," she says. "Anything else?"
"The next one was just voices," he says dismissively.
"Whose?"
"Yours . . . and mine."
"What did I say?"
His lips twitch against his will. "You told me that if they found me with you, they'd kill me."
"What did you say?"
Somehow, he isn't sure how, James finds the gumption to meet her eyes, and Natasha senses that there's something different in his gaze, something demanding, and so she finally looks at him. She sees the confusion in his eyes, knows that he isn't sure how he feels about his new memories, but in this, he's still unbelievably certain as he says, "I said that you were worth it."
Natasha stares at him for a second longer before she abruptly looks away, numb to his revelation for the sake of her sanity—because goddammit, no one said that to her, not like that, meaning it like that—and spends the rest of the drive to the cabin trying to unhear James's words. When they pull up in front of the cabin, she cuts the engine and goes inside, leaving him to get the table.
James lets her go.
He cleans up the broken table in the kitchen, breaking it into small pieces and putting the fireplace to use as night falls and the temperature drops to a cool fifty degrees. Natasha comes downstairs once the fire is crackling softly and picks up her book she'd left on the coffee table the night before. He remains at their new table, notebook open, and a pen in hand. Neither say a word, but the silence speaks for itself.
Things had changed.
Well, there you go. Muhahaha.
No time for a special preview! I've got a big lecture to go to!
Lots of love,
AC