Author's Notes: Hellooooooo! Sorry this is a bit late. I've been visiting my best friend in Texas and just got home. It was a very looooong drive! Anyhoo, this is one of my favorite chapters, so enjoy and review!

Disclaimer: I don't own Cap. Or Bucky. Or Nat. We just chat sometimes.

Chapter 9: Present

She knows she's dreaming the second she sees the lights. They hang overhead in long, fluorescent beams, flicking past quicker than they should. She's on a gurney, being wheeled toward the operating room. It's cold. She can feel the metal of the gurney through the paper-thin cotton pad, and it takes all her considerable self-restraint not to squirm. Her heart is thrumming. Frantic. She thinks it's normal. An annoying human trait but normal.

Knowing that, Natasha can't understand why she wants to not only jump off the gurney, but also to run. Run as far and as fast as she can. But that's not who she is. She's Black Widow. Or she's going to be. After the procedure, she will be Black Widow. It's what she wants. She wants it because . . . because . . .

She wants it.

She has her reasons. She knows she does.

She thinks it must be her headache muddling her thoughts. She's had it for days. Maybe it'll be gone when she wakes up.

She's still being wheeled, still watching the lights pass above her, when she finally looks around her. There's no one pushing the gurney, yet it keeps sliding down a never-ending hall with two plain grey doors at the end. This is her chance. She can escape. There's no one to stop her.

Leather and metal bite into her wrists and ankles when she tries to move. She's shackled to the gurney, the cuffs thick and unfailing. No matter how hard she pulls, how sharply she twists, she only begins to bleed. It's so red. Red and true. Honest.

She's forgetting something. Something important.

This is when the dream usually nds. Natasha waits for the gasping breath, the brief shiver of cold sweat, but it doesn't come. Instead, the dream becomes blurry. The lights above her begin to dull while the blood around her starts to shine a brighter and brighter scarlet. Then she watches it move. It swirls and twists until it's a soviet star framed in a familiar shoulder, and then she blinks.

The gurney is gone, but the hallway is the same.

No. No, it's different. It's somewhere she's never been. She's in the basement, the one place she was never allowed to go. Even her soldat doesn't know what goes on in the basement. That's what he tells her, anyway. Yet she always has the intuition that he is . . . afraid . . . of what lies in the basement. The strange thing is that that fear is always accompanied by confusion, as if he doesn't understand why he doesn't like the basement.

That's when she hears the screams, and that's when she starts running.

"Prosnites'!"

Faster. She needs to run faster.

"Prosnites'!"

Goddammit, why can't she go faster? She needs to . . . she needs to . . .

"Natalia!"

She reacts on instinct. Her hand flies forward, her open palm hitting a solar plexus. There's a whoosh of air and choked, angry cursing, but when she lashes out a leg to land a crushing kick to her attacker's ribs, a firm hand catches her calf. They turn together, his bigger frame wrapping around hers so that by the time they land on the mattress, she's tightly spooned against a wall of muscle and metal that she knows she can't escape.

She throws her head back anyway, and there's another curse. "Prosnites'!" Wake up. "Goddammit, wake up, Natalia."

Natalia.

She thinks it's the haze of her dream still lingering in her mind that explains her next thought. There's only one person on the planet who can say her name like it's both a curse and a prayer. "James?"

She doesn't recognize her voice. She hadn't meant to sound so small, so afraid and confused, but she can't take it back, and her head is still too clouded from her nightmare to care as much as she should. She swallows, wincing at her raw throat as she waits for an answer. His grip around her slackens so that it's no longer painful and she breathes cautiously, vividly aware of each rise and fall of his chest against her back.

"You were dreaming," he says eventually.

"That wasn't all I was doing, was it?"

"No."

Screaming, shouting in her sleep. She's done it before, in her early days at SHIELD. The first time had been on her third mission with Clint. Standard 084 retrieval. Hong Kong. He'd gotten a black eye for waking her but hadn't said anything in complaint. That's when he began to slowly coax her into wading through her memories to find the holes and loose threads. It had taken them nearly two years to sort out her fake memories from her real ones and to recover those she'd forgotten.

Well, she'd thought she'd recovered them all.

"What did I say? Nothing too embarrassing, I hope."

Her joke falls hopelessly flat, and her gut begins to churn when the silence stretches. James's arms around her become more and more confining. She wants to move, just like she'd wanted to move on the gurney, but she can't. She's trapped.

And then she's not.

He lets her go, sitting up and facing away from her. "You said my name," he finally admits, sounding just as uncomfortable and yet strangely as heartbroken as she suddenly feels.

She swallows. Her throat aches. "I remembered something," she says. "Pieces that weren't there before."

"About . . ."

Us?

She shakes her head. "After."

"I wasn't there."

They'd already taken me from you.

"I didn't remember," she says, as if this should comfort him, but it doesn't, and she knows it when he abruptly stands from the bed and takes three long strides away from her until he's as far from her as he can get in the small room.

She studies his profile. He stands in front of the window, casting a shadow in the moonlight, but it allows her to see his face. Confusion, frustration, and pain—those are emotions that she notes with ease. Those are familiar. But it's the rage that takes her by surprise. His eyes are burning with it, and his metal arm is a low whir as he continues to clench and unclench his fist. She worries for a moment that he may have an anxiety attack, but he suddenly unclenches his fist and sighs.

His shoulders slump in a futile way. James is ready for a fight, ready to punish, only there's no one to fight and no one to punish but himself. And Natasha sees it, she sees the moment that he directs the anger inward. As if her dream is his fault. As if the past is his fault. The anger is nearly overshadowed by guilt.

Natasha doesn't know much about Bucky Barnes, not really, but she thinks this is the closest glimpse she's gotten of him. From what she's read, from all that Steve has told her, if there is one trait that sums up James Buchanan Barnes, it's that he's a protector. So it is easy to assume that his greatest fear is failing the people he feels responsible for.

It shocks her to think that she is one of those people. Or was.

Because he doesn't really know her, just as she doesn't really know him. They only know the past, and the past is confined to two measly pages of yellowed paper stamped with hard type letters and embellished with a soviet star. It's the strangest, most disconcerting feeling to feel that something is true and yet not know why.

She decides that it's this precise feeling that prompts her to slide out of bed and cross the room. Her touch is deceptively confident as she lays her hand on his arm. The nerves twisting in her stomach don't register on her face as she looks up at him calmly. Firmly. "It's not your fault," she says. "None of what happened is your fault."

"Maybe," he says. "But it still happened." He looks past her toward the bed and then steps away from her. "I'll go."

She grabs his wrist. "Stay."

It takes him a long second to decide, but eventually he nods. James settles into an armchair too small for his broad frame and faces the door, as if he's prepared to fight whatever may come through. Natasha returns to bed, and while she has no idea why she asked him to stay, she's glad she did.

She's asleep within five minutes, and she doesn't dream.

James relaxes once he hears her breaths become slow and measured. He stares at her as he tries to process the last ten minutes. He'd been unable to sleep, writing in his notebook about what he thinks must have been one of Natalia's first missions for the Red Room. He remembers dancing with her, how her dress had twirled as they waltzed. He remembers faint flickers of memory when she asked about his past. A voice that he know recognizes as Steve's. A flash of gunfire. A train. He remembers feeling proud of her when she came back from Fyodorov's office, looking unruffled and graceful with a deadly little smirk on her lips.

He remembers calling her sweetheart.

He doesn't call anyone sweetheart. To the Soldat she is his malen'kiy pauk, his little spider. And he thinks that only later, as he broke through more of his programming, that she became his nemnogo balerinoy, his little ballerina. But sweetheart? That is entirely Bucky Barnes.

He remembers thinking how weird it was for one little endearment to carry so much meaning when Natasha began to scream.

"James!"

He flinches at the memory. He'd been on his feet before she'd finished saying his name, and it was only as he bound up the stairs that he even realized that it was his name. His mind had been frustratingly blank, like he was the Winter Soldier again, only his mission had not been fueled by directives but by emotion. He remembers how his chest had tightened when he burst into the room only to find her asleep, dried tears on her cheeks and clenched fists at her sides.

"James!"

Her voice had cracked over his name, and he'd found himself on the bed in the next second, desperate to wake her.

"Goddammit, Natalia! Wake up!"

His arm whirs quietly as he sits and flexes his fingers around the arms of the chair. He doesn't want to do this again. Natasha's screams, the tears, that painfully young voice that reminds him so much of Natalia. He doesn't want to go through any of it again. It fucking hurt, which he doesn't fully understand, but his chest still aches in an odd, sympathetic way and his eyes keep darting over to her without his permission to be sure that yes, she's asleep, and yes, she's safe.

Him, a protector. James doesn't remember being a protector.

Eventually he falls into a light, yet aware sleep that only a sniper can manage. He wakes when Natasha shifts in bed, turning onto her side with a little huff and snaking her hand under her pillow. His own internal clock tells him that it's nearly sunrise, and so he quietly gets to his feet and moves downstairs where he starts the coffee.

Only instead of retrieving his notebook, he pauses and opens the refrigerator. He stares at the ingredients he thinks he needs as a hazy memory of helping his mother cook breakfast plays out in his mind's eye. This time he won't have to contend with Rebecca tugging at his pant leg to pick her up.

He takes out the flour, the sugar, the eggs, and the milk and finds a pan that's adequate. It takes him a moment to think through what he wants and how best to accomplish it—working with a half-formed memory is a pain in the ass—but eventually he has a batter whipped up and pours the first circle into the pan. It only takes him two failures before he's able to flip the pancakes and keep them in the pan.

Then he settles into a rhythm and finds himself searching the refrigerator for blueberries and chocolate chips. He's unusually pleased when he finds both, and chalks it up to some memory floating around the edge of his consciousness. By the time Natasha comes down the stairs as the sun peeks through the kitchen window, James has a plate piled high with pancakes and another plate holding a mountain of bacon.

Good God, it's like the first time she took Steve to IHOP.

"James," she says. "I didn't know you could cook."

James shuffles his feet, confused by the sudden heat in his cheeks. "Yeah, well," he shrugged. "Neither did I. It might taste like shit."

Natasha lips quirk. "Then why keep cooking?"

"I might've gotten carried away."

He looks so lost and confused that she has to laugh. "Well, I just hope you're prepared to eat most of it," she says as she takes her coffee pot as usual but places it on the kitchen table instead of taking it with her to the couch. Once her back is turned, she lets herself grin widely, because the Winter Soldier made her a mountain of pancakes to make her feel better, and Jesus fucking Christ, it's the cutest thing she's ever seen.

Clint always avoids making a big deal of her nightmares, and she appreciates it. Truly. He understands her desire to move on, to keep moving forward so she isn't trapped in the past. And until this moment, she's never considered the idea that she could feel so . . . touched by someone trying to comfort her with food.

He's a man after her heart whether he knows it or not.

And God, she hopes he doesn't.

On the plus side, the pancakes do not taste like shit. They're fucking delicious. She heaps another two pancakes onto her plate, one blueberry, one chocolate chip, and douses them in syrup. "Okay," she says around a mouthful. "You're officially in charge of breakfast from now on."

James, who is secretly beyond relieved that everything is edible, smirks a little. "And what will you do?"

"I'll man the coffeemaker."

"Sounds fair."

Natasha takes her time chewing another bite, and then takes a long sip of coffee. "Thank you, James," she says quietly. "Really."

He holds her gaze for a moment, and there's a gentleness there that's new. It makes her stomach swoop. Damn him. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

Natasha wraps both of her hands around her coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into her skin. "I've always had this dream," she says before tilting her head in annoyance, "memory, if we're being honest." She offers him a humorless smile. "I'm just on a gurney, looking up at the lights on the ceiling."

James frowns in comprehension. "Graduation."

"Yeah," she says, her smile twisting into something sad for a moment before it's gone and she's all business, like she's delivering a debrief. "It usually ends once I reach the doors to the operating room, but this time it didn't. It changed. I was in a different hallway, and I was running. It was the basement of the Red Room, I'm sure of it."

"Where I was kept."

"Yes. I must have been . . . trying to save you, I guess."

James isn't sure what to make of the idea of her saving him, of anyone saving him, but he shakes the thought away. This isn't about him. "Do you think it's real?"

Natasha frowns into her coffee. "I don't know. It . . . some of it feels real. The . . . the fear feels real. The worry feels real, the panic. But I'm not," she huffs, "I'm not sure if the events are right."

James's lips twitch in sympathy. "Maybe you should write it down," he jokes lamely.

But Natasha chuckles weakly and gives him a smile that makes his heart jump. "Yeah," she agrees. "Maybe I should." She finishes off her coffee. "So," she says. "What are we doing today?"

"That Netflix thing . . ."

"It's not a thing, James. It's a streaming service."

"Whatever. That show . . ."

"The Office?"

"Yeah."

The day turns into a Netflix binge that lasts well into the evening. Natasha occupies her usual corner of the couch, wrapped up in that ugly ass afghan, while James sits on the opposite side, his metal arm draped over the back of the couch. There's a tension between them that grows with every episode that they watch, but neither are willing to be the first to cave. Because what if it crosses a line? What if it ruins . . . whatever the hell this is? Was? Could be?

But Natasha can't stop thinking about plums and just you and me. And James tries to focus on the show and the characters but he hears Natalia's voice in his head—not Natasha, but Natalia, his little ballerina—so slyly telling him to trust her. He remembers all their spars, the extra sessions, truly teaching and feeling a growing pride as she continued to exceed expectations. James continues to remember while Natasha stares blankly at the television screen and sees a dance studio with a ballet bar and a wall of mirrors. Only there are no ballerinas, just her. Mats line the floor and her Soldat is there with his twitching smile as she leaps at him. She stares and she remembers a rush of feeling, a beautiful break from the expected. She remembers feeling so warm in such a cold place.

And she isn't sure it's possible to miss what she doesn't entirely remember, but she thinks that she does.

Unknown to her, James is in the same damn boat that's rocking with indecision and waiting to capsize. Because for all his memories of Natalia, it's Natasha that stokes that fire in his chest that warms him from the inside out. And he's been so cold for so damn long.

So despite the fact that he hates the old thing, he reaches over and snags the afghan wrapped around Natasha's legs. She stares at him incredulously. "Are you serious?" she demands.

"Cold," he says.

Natasha huffs. "I would have shared."

"You looked pretty comfortable on your side." He throws the afghan over his lap. "Didn't wanna trouble you."

"I'm not letting you steal my afghan."

"You said you'd share."

Natasha narrows her eyes as she hears the faint hint of invitation in his tone. It's barely there, nearly shy, and she realizes what he's offering. He's folded, and now it's up to her. She stares at James for a long moment, and maybe it's her nightmare still lingering in her mind, or maybe it's the fact that he made those goddamn pancakes, but Natasha slides over toward him and slips under his arm and the blanket.

Her head settles on his shoulder. "You could've just asked," she says.

"You wouldn't have asked either."

"Know me that well, huh?"

"I'm starting to."

And that fills them both with such hope. Because Natasha has so few people that know her, and James is finally beginning to feel like he has his feet on the ground. He may not know who he is, what he's done, the people he's killed or even his goddamn favorite color, but Natasha? He knows her.

They fall asleep halfway into season three, and neither dream.

There you go! How about that cuteness.

See you Friday,

AC