Author's Notes: Hello again! I'm thrilled to announce that my first year of graduate school is officially done. Thank. God.

I'd also like to thank everyone who has reviewed, alerted, and favorited this story. It really got me through the last few weeks of this semester.

On that note: Last week FF was being weird. If you didn't get the alert for Chapter 7, you've got two chapters to read!

Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. Or Bucky. Or Nat. We're just hanging out.

Chapter 8: Past

It took all of Natalia's restraint to contain her excitement as she sat in the back of the car. She tried to keep her mask in place—cool, collected, and indifferent—as she attempted to stare absently out the window. It was impossible. She was dazzled by the lights and sounds of Moscow and entranced by the way her silk gown felt against her skin. She couldn't remember the last time she had left the Red Room or worn anything other than a uniform. It was almost like being in tights again.

Her toes flexed in her heels.

"Calm down, malen'kiy pauk."

She turned to look at the Soldat who sat next to her, his eyes casually scanning the pedestrians out of his own window. He called her little spider now, and her heart always seemed to twirl in her chest when he did. It felt personal. It was unique to them. She liked that.

She also liked how he looked in a tuxedo.

"I am calm," she said.

"You're bouncing in your seat."

"I am not."

He turned away from the window to give her a dubious look that only made her smirk, and then it was the Soldat who began to fight the urge to keep still. His eyes trailed over her without his permission, taking in her elaborately twisted curls, red lips, and the emerald green dress that flowed over her like water. She looked different. She was young, yes, but it wasn't until this moment that he realized she was a woman nonetheless.

And she was . . . beautiful.

He still wasn't used to these gentler thoughts. He understood war. He understood orders and weapons and missions. Beauty didn't matter. Beauty was superfluous.

But now it seemed to matter, and it made his chest warm to look at Natalia in her green dress with her red lips and her bright eyes staring back at him.

"Walk me through the mission," he ordered.

Natalia rolled her eyes. "Target is Viktor Fyodorov. Business magnate. If you count trading secrets as a business," she added wryly. "Recently, he got his hands on some SHIELD files, formerly SSR, reportedly containing information about the super soldier serum. He keeps his files in a safe in his office at his business headquarters in Moscow, where we are, and is hosting a gala, where we're going, and that's when I dazzle him."

The Soldat cocked an eyebrow. "Dazzle?"

"Distract, seduce, take your pick. While I'm doing all the work, you cover my six. We exit out the southeast stairwell that leads to an alley where a vehicle will be waiting to take us to back to the compound. Easy."

The car stopped and the Soldat turned to look out the window. A tall stone building with stained glass windows that reeked of money and power towered into the Moscow skyline. Something in him chaffed at the grand show of wealth. It wasn't quite resentment, but it was close. Perhaps disgust. Money wasn't something you flaunted. It was . . . it was meant to help.

The Soldat shook the thought away. It didn't make sense.

He opened the door and stepped out onto a thick carpet that tumbled down the stairs leading to the entrance. Cameras flashed, but he wasn't worried as he held out his hand to Natalia, who took it without hesitation. More cameras flashed as soon as she took her first step on the carpet, her dress trailing elegantly behind her. She threaded her fingers through his as she smiled for the cameras, hoping that the small chips hidden in her earrings were obscuring her face as the technician had promised.

As they walked the carpet Natalia realized that she should be thinking about her mission. She knew that she should be thinking about strategies and risk assessments, but all she could think about as she walked toward the doors was that the Soldat's hand was warm and rough in hers and she liked it. She'd never held hands with anyone before.

The Soldat kept her hand in his once they were inside and escorted to the ballroom. Her heels clicked over the marble floors as the Soldat led her into the room, and as they headed for the bar, Natalia let her eyes scour the room, taking in its gold embellishments and rich tapestries and crystal chandeliers. Its brightness and beauty made the Red Room look like the inside of a tomb.

The Soldat ordered them two glasses of champagne, and Natalia grasped the stem of her flute delicately even as she eyed the pale liquid inside. The Soldat's lips twitched. "It should be sweet," he said. "If it's any good."

Natalia took a sip, frowning initially at the taste. It was sweet, yes, but not the sweet she expected. A little bitter, a little bubbly. She took another sip and felt herself smile. She liked the bubbles. "It'll do," she said, smiling wider when the Soldat gave her that small smile of his.

He looked so different out of uniform. Human, vulnerable. Without the heavy leather and canvas, he didn't loom so large. His hair was tied neatly at the nape of his neck and he was clean-shaven. He looked young. Really young. Hardly older than her, and for the first time, Natalia wondered at his age. Surely, he couldn't be thirty.

A warm, heavy hand on her back jolted her from her thoughts. The Soldat's lips twitched again as he felt a familiar warmth settle in his chest as her wide, surprised eyes met his. "We need to scout the target," he said. "How do we proceed?"

Natalia's eyes drifted toward the dance floor where couples gracefully twirled to the small orchestra that played at the front of the room. She smiled beatifically as she held out her hand. "You're going to ask me to dance," she said.

And honestly, what else was the Soldat to do but take her hand?

Natalia was a brilliant dancer. As they danced, the Soldat thought that she led just as often as he did in a sense that he seemed hopeless not to follow her. Her eyes as they roved the room. Her lips as she summarized each guest. Her hair that twirled each time they spun.

He hadn't been on a mission like this in . . . he couldn't remember. His missions were solitary. Quiet. His view was typically constricted to the scope of his rifle. And though this environment was certainly different, he did not feel out of place or uncertain. This—dancing, drinking, laughing—it wasn't something beyond him. It was almost familiar.

And as the band struck up another song, and Natalia spun in his arms, the Soldat was stunned by the realization that he liked dancing.

There was no tactical advantage to dancing. It was hardly a skill required of an assassin. Even more so, the Soldat didn't remember ever liking anything. He liked his weapons in the sense that he appreciated quality and the assurance that his missions could be carried out satisfactorily. He liked food because it was essential to keeping in top form. For missions.

The Soldat didn't like anything so . . . frivolous.

But he liked dancing.

He liked the way Natalia smiled when he dipped her. He liked the way she was so close, that he could hear her heartbeat if he strained his ears. He liked the way her eyes sparkled, and the way the silk of her dress felt under his hand and the warmth that almost burned him. He just . . . he liked it, and it was fascinating how all of these new feelings seemed to revolve around the little spider in his arms.

"I was a ballerina," Natalia said suddenly, jarring him from his thoughts. "Before."

The Soldat didn't smile, but Natalia caught the way his eyes gleamed with appreciation and curiosity. "You were talented," he said.

"I loved it."

"Then why leave?"

"I was engaged. He died."

The Soldat frowned. The idea of Natalia with another man, promised to him . . . it didn't sit right to him. Not because of some notion of possessiveness or claim but because the idea of his little spider living such an innocuous life seemed a waste. Yet there was the faintest hint of wistfulness and grief in her voice, nearly smothered by the sly apathy he'd grown to expect, and he wondered then, if perhaps there was yet another Natalia hidden away in some corner of this Widow's mind.

He wanted to find her.

"What about you?" she asked, once again forcing him from his thoughts. Her smirk was back, her voice full of familiar sultry mischief. "How did you get to be here?"

"I took a car."

She laughed, and he wanted to smile at the sound. He'd never heard her laugh before, and he liked it. It made that ever-present warmth in his chest glow a little brighter. It was nearly enough to distract him from the fact that he had no answer to her question. He searched his mind with growing frustration for an answer. A beginning. Surely he had one.

He only got . . . flashes. Colors. Faint voices. Nothing that made sense, but left him—if only for a brief second—feeling like an entirely different man.

"Oh, fun's over," Natalia said with a frown as she watched their target descend the stairs with a blonde on his arm. "Target acquired." She smiled up at him. "It's been a pleasure, Soldat."

She wasn't ready for his reply in all its forms. She'd thought that she may wrangle a final smile from him, perhaps even a nod that she liked to think was fond. Instead, the Soldat gracefully spun her off the dance floor, and with a gentleness that surprised her, brought her hand to his lips as he gave her a small bow. "Don't keep me waiting, sweetheart."

She watched him blink owlishly in confusion as soon as the words left his lips, and she was relieved to see that she wasn't the only one surprised by what had just happened. She saw his eyes fill with questions, watched a swell of undefinable emotion flicker across his features, and for a single unguarded moment, he looked lost—like he was seeing something that wasn't there.

So she smiled, a small little smile that mimicked the one he often gave her when they were alone, and said, "You and me, remember?"

It meant that she wouldn't tell. She wouldn't hold it against him. It was . . . this moment was just theirs. It was safe.

The Soldat nodded and retreated into a calm corner of his mind that was single-minded and familiar. "You've got an hour," he said.

She smirked. "I'll do it in half."

She felt his eyes between her shoulders as she walked away, angling toward Fyodorov where he stood near the bar talking to a group of older men fat with wealth. It was disgustingly easy to flash him a smile as she caught his eye where she perched on a barstool stirring a martini. A dainty sip as she kept eye contact was enough for him to buy her drink. Then he was next to her, spouting about his success and its rewards—a yacht in the Caribbean, a penthouse in Paris . . .

Natalia laughed and giggled, pretended to be amazed and entranced, fed his ego like a mother spooning applesauce to a baby. And Fyodorov ate it up with a wide smile and a boisterous laugh.

It was too simple to lean forward, the neckline of her dress dipping dangerously, drawing his gaze. She let her voice settle into a warm whisper, "This music is giving me a headache."

He smiled magnanimously. "I can have them play something else."

She laughed lowly in her throat as she fingered the lapel of his tuxedo. "Or we could just go someplace quieter?"

And Viktor Fyodorov fell for it headfirst.

Natalia only had to endure his wandering hands and foul breath for seconds before her sedative-laced lipstick kicked in and Fyodorov dropped like a stone to the floor of his office. With a smirk, Natalia began her search, flipping quickly through the papers on his desk and in its drawers. There were deals for stock and shipments of various products, and she silently noted the buyers and sellers and stocks in case it might prove useful later. She recognized two of the names as arms dealers.

She checked the clock on the wall. Five minutes until the thirty-minute mark. Plenty of time.

She found the safe hidden behind a false panel in the wall. Cracking it open took no real skill, only patience and a good ear, and then the files were in her hands. She folded them carefully and then hiked her dress up, slipping the files into her garter next to her knives. She took a minute of fluff her hair and smudge her lipstick before she stepped into the hallway. She giggled at the guards standing at the end of the hall, drunkenly trying to fix her hair and her makeup.

They dismissed her with leering smirks.

Natalia reentered the party high on her success and immaculate once again. Not a hair out of place, and her lips as red as ever. The stares she garnered as she descended the stairs felt like quiet praise—how little they thought of her, just a pretty face—but only one stare mattered. The Soldat sat at the bar nursing a tumbler of whiskey that he held briefly to his lips before taking a drink. His own toast to her success.

They rendezvoused as planned at the southwest exit, meeting in the hallway and falling into step with each other. The Soldat offered her his arm, and she happily took it. "Did I pass?" she asked.

"You did well."

"Hmm," she hummed. "We should do this again." The Soldat cocked an eyebrow. "Go dancing," she said.

And he smiled, a real, true smile. "Maybe one day, nemnogo balerinoy."

Little ballerina.

And Natalia knew in that moment that she was so, so compromised.

And she didn't care.

Oh, look at that. Someone has a crush.

Things really start rolling from here, both in the past and the future, so hold on!

Okay, we need a spoiler for next chapter? Who has the line this time? I think it's Bucky's turn. - "You were dreaming."

See you Friday!

-AC