Summary: I had my orders, plain and simple. And I knew better than to blow them over James Buchanan Barnes. "I thought you said we weren't going to do that." Bucklena angst, set when they're both part of the Thunderbolts.
Author's Note: This fic alludes to rape/non-con/underage content - nothing explicit, but out of an abundance of caution, consider this a trigger waring. Reader discretion is advised.
the bomb
by ninazadzia
"…I've blown apart my life for you
And bodies hit the floor for you
And break me, shake me, devastate mе
Come here, baby, tell me that I'm wrong…"
I had my orders, plain and simple. And I knew better than to blow them over James Buchanan Barnes.
"I thought you said we weren't going to do that."
His breath smelled of the wine we had at dinner.
He couldn't get drunk—that much I'd come to figure out on my own, between his and Walker's uncanny ability to polish off bottle after bottle of liquor without so much as slurring a word—but I couldn't say the same. My head was foggy, and the room was starting to spin.
It spun so much, in fact, that I could only find refuge in one place.
Whatever reaction I was having, it appeared to be on a delay. Because it took a beat too long for my lips to part from his—and for the words to escape his mouth—that it hit me what I'd done.
I'd laid down my trap. And now, he was either going to fall for it, or call me on my bluff.
I knew, deep down, what I should do. Every cell in my body begged me to snap back to reality, to pull my shit together, to complete the mission—my mission—the whole reason I was there. The whole reason Valentina had showed up on my doorstep six months earlier, and had drafted me to join the Thunderbolts in the first place.
I knew what I had to do. And James had given me a clear opening.
"Fuck, James—"
He grabbed the back of my neck, and my lips collided against his, this time more intentionally, more forcefully, with every ounce of passion I'd been holding back those past six months. And as his hands grabbed my hair by the fistful and he started to trail kisses down my jawline to my neck, my collarbone, the valley between my breasts, fucking everywhere, I knew, I just, I knew. I was screwed.
There was no way in hell I'd be able to do it.
"You're going to fucking kill me," I breathed, as he worked the fabric of my pants down my legs. A shiver worked its way down my spine as he brought his fingers inside of my cunt, and lapped his tongue against my clit. "You know that, right?"
He smiled in between my legs. "Y'know, Yelena—in this department, I've gotten some compliments in my day. But that's a first."
It wasn't until months later, that he realized what I'd meant.
They came for me—just like I knew they would. It was in the middle of a run, a mission conveniently 'gone wrong,' where I could disappear and presumably be killed in battle, and Walker or Ava or even Alexei would be none the wiser.
But at that point, James knew better.
When he found me—or, rather, when they brought him to me—my captors had either a wicked sense of humor or a surprising amount of decency, and threw him into my cell.
He was battered and bloodied and covered in bruises, and at first, he wasn't responsive. It was only after a couple of days of sheer panic and silence that he finally came to.
"They've got me on the strong stuff," he wheezed.
I rushed to his side. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd cried, since the Blip—hearing his voice and watching as he came back to life, I felt the strangled sounds of sobs escape my mouth and the tears streaming down my face, before I could feel his arms against mine, wrapping me into his embrace.
"You're okay," he kept repeating, over and over again. Even though we both knew I was the one who should be saying it, not him.
"How are you here?" I finally managed.
"With you? That part was easy." He jerked his head in the direction of the door. "These goons were practically salivating at the opportunity to throw me in here with you."
"You don't mean…" I shook my head, the implication hitting me. "You fucking didn't."
"Oh, I so did."
I couldn't tell if I should seethe or be elated. Probably the former, but I was feeling a combination of the two.
I exhaled slowly. As I counted to five under my breath, James ran his fingers through my hair—just as he would every morning when we would wake up, before he kissed my forehead and snuck back into his own bed.
It was as if he'd known, all this time, that our rendezvous best be kept a secret.
"How did you know?"
He cocked a small smile. "You Widows have a reputation. Even in HYDRA."
"Of course we do. That's the whole point."
"—which, I'll be honest, threw me off for a while. I mean, I figured if Val really wanted to kill me, she wouldn't be so brazen as to hire a Black Widow assassin to work on the same team, right?"
I forced myself to meet his gaze. Where I expected to see anger, or at least a hint of disdain, I only saw the hint of a smirk and a twinkle in his eye.
"Yeah, it is a little on the nose, isn't it?" I conceded.
"Exactly. Of course, once I figured that out, it occurred to me—maybe she had something else in mind."
I furrowed my brow. "What do you mean?"
He shrugged. "Conjecture, mostly."
He stayed silent for a moment.
"Come on, James. It's just you and me here. Spit it out."
He laced his fingers into my hands. "Maybe her plan all along was that you wouldn't do it. That this," he pointed back and forth between the two of us, "would happen instead."
I laughed. "The fuck good would that do?"
"I mean, if she wanted you to assassinate me, you would've done it by now. You've had ample opportunity." He shook his head. "No. There's something else she's after, isn't there? A reason she wanted you to get close to me."
I thought back to that first night. To that time we had too much wine at dinner, and myself and Alexei and Walker had launched into a spirited conversation about human sexuality, that devolved into crass and vulgar territory. And all the while, James and Antonia stayed completely silent.
But when Antonia, Alexei and Walker stood up to go to bed, for whatever reason, I stayed behind. And when I lobbied what was meant to be joke at James—a dig at how for a famed womanizer, he'd been awfully quiet, during our conversation about sex—in a rare moment of candor, James offered up a piece of information, that I knew would be his death knell.
It's hard for me to joke about, when the last time I had consensual sex was in 1942.
And before I could think better of it, the wine spoke for me. So it's not just a Widow rite of passage, then.
And then, when we locked eyes, and he leaned in to kiss me, it started to come back.
It was in fragments, at first.
My orders from Valentina were straightforward enough. It was to find the name of the last woman James Buchanan Barnes had been forced to sleep with as part of the Winter Soldier project.
This would require time, sure, and the development of mutual trust—but then again, that was the whole point of me joining the Thunderbolts in the first place. I had to make it appear natural. That when the time came, and James offered up the name, all it would take was the go-ahead from Valentina, and we could make it look like an accident—a mission gone wrong, a middle-of-the-night assassination, something that would never be traced back to me. And then, however many months or years later, the Thunderbolts would be disbanded, and everyone would be none-the-wiser, that I was directly involved in the death of James Buchanan Barnes.
There was just one flaw in Valentina's plan.
My memories from that phase of my life were hazy. It was so long ago—I couldn't have been much older than fourteen or fifteen. And in the two decades since then, Dreykov had played inside of my mind so many times, that discerning fact from fiction was impossible on even my best days.
And then, of course, there was a part of me—however small or large—that desperately wanted to suppress the truth.
I shook my head. Tears sprang to my eyes, again. And as I frantically tried to wipe them away, James pulled me into his arms. "Yelena, it's okay…"
"—please tell me it's not true. It's not. T-they planted it, the memories, inside my head…"
He let out a hollow laugh, and kissed the top of my head. I couldn't see, but from the sound in the his voice, he was fighting back tears, too. "Come to think of it, this always felt a little too familiar, didn't it?" he whispered.
I shook my head. I couldn't reconcile the two in my brain.
The Winter Soldier.
The memories I had of him, pinning me down to a stone cold table, while I lay spread eagle. Knowing as I searched his expression in those few moments that neither of us were willing participants—not the 90-year-old HYDRA slave who robotically thrust into me, and not the barely pubescent Widow who desperately wanted to escape her body. Who, deep down, prayed for her Graduation to come sooner rather than later, because at least then, the most hellish part of initiation would be over.
Month after month, like clockwork, it was timed with my cycle. And while bits and pieces had shifted into focus in the recesses of my subconscious, it was only then—as James stroked my shoulder and whispered into my ear that he was right there, that he wasn't going anywhere, in the dank cell where we were awaiting certain death—that it all came flooding back.
"You know what the worst part was?" I whispered, shakily. "I remember it now. Among Widows, I'm considered one of the 'lucky ones.'"
"Why's that?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and forced myself to meet his gaze.
"No," he whispered, his face falling. He covered his mouth with his hand.
"What—you think Dreykov was having you rape us for entertainment? Or was it punishment."
"But—I thought—"
"—you thought right. I'm sterile now. But I wasn't back then. The hysterectomy came after."
I didn't have to clarify what 'after' meant.
"Valentina wanted a name, didn't she?" he whispered. "Of the last Widow…"
He trailed off. And the look on his face confirmed what I long feared to be true.
"Were there many before me?" I managed.
He shook his head. "I, um—I wasn't that kind of Soldier. Not that I remember much, but from what I've pieced together—I was never very good at it. Some of those other guys , they jumped at any opportunity to lay eyes on another woman, even if it was a fucking child. I was a much harder sell."
"Yeah, I bet the Widows before me didn't like that very much, did they?"
That last part came out with a bit more bite than I would have liked it too.
"I'm sorry, Yelena," James started, his voice threateningly level. "But would you have rather I enthusiastically raped you, instead?"
"You're right. I'm sorry."
He shook his head, and sighed into his hand. I sunk into his chest, the familiar feeling of hard body molding to my cheek.
"What happened to them?" he asked. He didn't have to clarify who 'they' were.
I shrugged. "Ask Valentina. Your guess is as good as mine." I wiped another tear from my eye. "Odds are, the girls were trained to be Widows, like me. And the boys…"
James nodded. He squeezed my hand. "Like me."
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
"I have to ask."
I took a deep breath. "That part was really a blur, they had me on all kinds of meds." I exhaled slowly, and delivered what I knew would be the last thing James wanted to hear. "But I'm pretty sure she was a girl. Another Widow."
"They didn't tell you?" James asked, his eyes glassy.
I let out a hollow laugh, and shook my head. "They didn't even let me hold her. The second she was out, and the cord was cut…"
The room spun around me. What had once been a faint memory I could place together in flashes. The sterile white room. The screaming, mostly mine, until it wasn't. Until it was the sound of an infant's, one that I'd carried to term, when I was barely old enough to be considered a woman myself.
I remember crying, and begging. Please. Just once.
And then, I remember the doctor putting me back under. No time, I'm afraid. Dreykov was very clear—best we take advantage of the fact that you're already here. Your Graduation is today.
My whole life, that moment was one of those fragments I'd been able to convince myself had been nothing more than a bad dream. And at least, even then, the nightmare had been my burden to carry, and mine alone.
Watching the look on James' face split my heart all the more.
"I just—I never thought—"
He heaved, sobbing 'oh god' under his breath, so many times that he didn't have to finish his sentence. I knew. It was the same belief I'd held about myself, for so long. That this life we lead and all of the blood on our hands, setting aside the physiological impossibility of biological procreation—we weren't built for parenthood. We were born to kill and die, and not much in between.
And yet, even then. There we were.
"It's pretty fucked up, huh?"
He laughed in between the tears. "Shit, Yelena. If we get out of here—the only thing more fucked up is that I have a shot at being a parent."
He squeezed my hand, and searched my expression for a moment before going, "and even though I know this is fucked up of me to ask—I want you to take it with me."
"…But if I was free to love you
You wouldn't want me, would you?
Unavailability is the only thing that turns you on
Come here, baby, tell me that I'm wrong…"
~the bomb, florence + the machine