Been sitting on this awhile, and wanted to get this out before Thunderbolts comes out.
Enjoy.
"What are you doing here, Soldat ? I thought you were an Avenger now."
Bucky grinds his teeth and bristles at the use of his old moniker. He had begrudgingly grown used to being called the Winter Soldier, but hearing the shorthand Russian version was somehow worse. It was a visceral and painful callback to a time when his choices had not been his own, and far too much death and violence had been wrung from him. He glances up to find a woman sitting — lounging , really — in a chair across the room, looking at him expectantly. "I don't go by that name anymore. Or did that news not reach Russia yet?" he replies coolly. He knows she's needling him, trying to find a weak spot, and he's not inclined to let her.
A wicked smile curls on her lips, and Bucky immediately knows this woman is accustomed to making people uncomfortable at her will. "No, it did," she replies casually with a shrug. "They call you...what? Just Sergeant Barnes now?"
Bucky ignores her comment. "And who exactly are you?" he asks. He hadn't been briefed on anyone else involved in this impromptu team, only that everyone was 'uniquely qualified' as they'd described it to him. Whatever the hell that meant.
She stays silent and keeps her piercing gaze on him a moment longer as though she is considering something. "A Black Widow," she answers finally. Where her tone had been passive-aggressively casual and aiming to inflict pain before, now it held nothing but warning and ice. Don't fuck with me , it said.
Ah, so that's why she's so pissed , he realizes. The Winter Soldier had been loaned to the Red Room for a few short stints to train the Widows. From what he remembers, he hadn't killed anyone, but he had caused a lot of pain and injuries. "Look," Bucky begins with a frustrated huff, tired of explaining his situation to people, "I know I was at the Red Room for a while to train the Widows, but that wasn't really me . I was—"
"Brainwashed. Yes, I know," the woman interrupts with a dismissive wave of a hand and a shake of the head. "Believe me, I'm familiar with that," she adds after a beat.
Huh . To Bucky's ears, the dismissive tone had softened at the end into something resembling empathy. Almost. Still, he frowns because he hadn't known Black Widows underwent brainwashing. He knows Steve's friend, Natasha, had been subject to some seriously screwed up psychological conditioning in the Red Room — not that there was ever psychological conditioning that wasn't screwed up — but that was far from having trigger words which would completely render you at the mercy of another's will. Yes, there was overlap in their training and some of the approaches the two organizations had taken. But as far as he knows, the Widows and Winter Soldier programs were wholly different in method and purpose.
"I was under the control of chemical subjugation for many years and forced to do many things. Most of them horrible," the woman offers further after a few beats of silence.
Her tone has shifted now to be almost flippant in nature, as though it's merely a casual topic of conversation. Bucky recognizes the effort to give off an aura of 'I don't give a shit what you think about my past,' but he gets the feeling that, on some level, some part of her does care what he thinks. Why, though, he isn't sure. Still, her blunt honesty about the topic is a bit surprising to him.
"I'm sorry," he says, unsure what else to say. He knows what it is to be forced to be at someone else's mercy, and it isn't something he would wish on anyone. Except for Thanos, he thinks darkly. That asshole would've deserved every bit of that pain and strife.
She bristles at his apology. "I'm not looking for pity," she replies, bristling at his apology. "I'm telling you I understand what it is to have done things while you weren't you . I'm saying that I don't hold any of it against you."
He blinks once, twice, and then nods once slowly. "Uh, thanks."
"Except shooting my sister. That I hold against you," she says with a blank expression far more unnerving than her previous icy glares.
His posture stiffens. "I shot your sister?" he echoes, brow furrowing in thought. He runs through his mental list but can't pinpoint anyone without more information.
"Yes. Twice, actually."
He winces, offering a guilty expression. "Sorry," he offers again, still trying to place how this woman's sister fits into his past. The Winter Soldier never had much cause to go against the missions of the Widows, and he had never trained any of them in shooting, only hand-to-hand combat.
She is quiet for a beat as she considers something. Then she lightly sighs as though in resignation. "But she didn't hold a grudge against you, so I suppose I shouldn't either," she says, almost more to herself.
"Who exactly is your sister?" he interjects, keen to clarify the situation.
The woman meets his gaze and holds it steadily, unblinking. "Natasha Romanoff."
The declaration hits him like a ton of bricks, and he blinks again, processing the information. Natasha Romanoff… The Avenger? Like…Steve's Natasha? She had a sister? Shit. Should've put that together.
Before he can say anything, a door opens, and they're being called in to meet the rest of the "team" and be briefed on their first mission. They share a final silent look before they both shift their gazes away and head toward the door to the meeting room.
Two days later, Bucky is sitting in Steve's kitchen nursing a cup of coffee while contemplating whether to ask his oldest friend if he knows about Natasha's sister. He had spent most of the morning rolling around various ways of asking the question, trying to find a less blunt way of asking Steve about her. Bucky knows Steve and Natasha had been close, so he's mindful that the question would probably bring up memories, some maybe not so happy.
Suddenly, he realizes that he's possibly worrying over nothing. With Steve's trip back to Peggy, he's had a hell of a lot more time to process his grief over losing his friend. Maybe Bucky doesn't need to tread so lightly.
"Hey, do you know if Natasha had a sister?" Bucky asks, opting to dive straight in rather than think about it any longer.
Steve halts his motion of stirring sugar into his coffee, then tips his gaze to stare at Bucky. The confusion is painted across his face clearly, and Bucky offers a twist of lips equivalent to a shrug.
"What?" Steve asks slowly, frown deepening.
Bucky isn't surprised by the reaction. Natasha wasn't a usual topic of conversation between them, what with Bucky having not really known her, so he understood that it was a bit odd for him to be bringing her up so abruptly. "Your friend, Natasha Romanoff," he clarifies. "Did she have a sister?"
Steve keeps staring at him, confusion swirling in his eyes and creasing the furrow in his brow even further.
Clearly, that's a no , Bucky thinks.
Steve's eyebrows shift upward in a silent request for Bucky to explain why he was asking about his friend and former teammate.
"You remember I told you about that meeting I had the other day? With the team that the CIA put together?" Steve nods once, the furrow still deeply entrenched in his brow. "Well, before the meeting started, one of the other people there started talking to me. She was trying to get a read on me, calling me Soldat and trying to get a reaction out of me. Anyway, eventually she said she was a Black Widow, and that she didn't hold any of my past against me because she'd spent a long time brainwashed by the Red Room. She also said I shot her sister twice, but that she wasn't going to hold a grudge because her sister hadn't. I couldn't figure out who she was talking about, so I asked, and she said her sister was Natasha Romanoff."
Steve's frown deepens further, and Bucky can tell he's thinking deeply, pondering possible explanations and assessing their plausibility. After some quiet thought, he says, "If their time in the Red Room overlapped, maybe they were 'sisters' that way?"
Bucky considers the possibility but dismisses it almost immediately. He shakes his head a couple times. "I could tell from the look in her eyes. This was more than just someone who happened to be there at the same time as her. I really think they were family. Or they were at least close anyway."
Steve goes quiet again and begins to rub his thumb on the handle of his mug as he thinks. "I suppose it could be true," he says finally. "Nat kept a lot of things to herself."
Steve doesn't sound upset at the prospect that his friend had kept something like this from him, and Bucky marvels again at the depth of their friendship. He remembers how broken Steve had been before he'd gone back to return the stones. He'd been grieving Stark, yes, but Bucky suspected the loss of Natasha had stung more. Steve had told him she was a good friend and something of a sister to him, the same way Bucky was his brother.
"Her name's Yelena. Yelena Belova," Bucky tells him. He'd found that out in the briefing and that she'd been working for Valentina for a while already. Admittedly, Yelena hadn't looked all that happy to be in the same room as Valentina, though she'd kept the outright hostility out of her expression. Mostly.
Steve ponders that tidbit for a moment before he reaches for his phone. "Let me call Clint."
A few minutes later, they have their answer. Clint tells Steve about how Natasha had lived in Ohio for nearly three years as a kid with Yelena and two agents as part of a mission to steal some research from a SHIELD facility. He explains how Natasha had been forced to fly a plane in their escape and how she'd wanted nothing but to keep her sister safe. He tells him about how they were separated and sent back to the Red Room and how she and Yelena had reunited more than twenty years later to take it down. By the end of the call, Steve looks like he's aged a few years with a fresh weight of guilt resting on his shoulders. Bucky knows where his mind has gone and holds in a slightly frustrated sigh at his friend's predictable patterns.
"Why didn't she tell us?" Steve asks. Bucky knows the question isn't directed at him but to a woman long gone and unable to answer. "She— She sacrificed herself even though she had a sister to come back to."
Bucky doesn't hold in his sigh this time, letting his frustration be known. "It was her choice, Steve," he says gently. "Don't take that away from her. She spent so long in a regime that didn't give her any choices. This was— She chose how her story ended. She did what she did because she loved you all."
Steve shakes his head stubbornly. "Doesn't make it fair, Buck. All that stuff she went through, and she didn't get a happy ending."
"I'm not saying it's fair. But happy endings are for fairy tales. Maybe it's enough that her life meant a hell of a whole lot in the end. Maybe it's enough that she left behind people who loved her."
"When did you get so wise?"
Bucky smiles, "Well, you hang around a guy who makes grand speeches all the time and it kinda rubs off on you eventually."
Steve returns the smile, but it drops away after a moment. "I just—" he starts, then stops abruptly with a sad sigh. "She deserved so much more, you know?"
Bucky nods with a small, sad smile because he does know. He absolutely knows. "Yeah, I do."
Steve breathes out a heavy breath and then sits up a little straighter. "What's Yelena like?"
"A little scary, if I'm honest," he answers. His reply is honest, but he's hoping to lift Steve's mood with some humour, too.
He sees a half-smile spread on Steve's lips before his expression turns serious again. "I'd like to meet her."
Bucky sighs. "Steve, you can't. You know you can't."
"I want to."
"Steve, you've worked hard to get some anonymity. The world doesn't know you're still alive and well. You can't just—"
"I owe it to Nat."
He wonders if that's true because he's pretty sure Natasha wouldn't have wanted Steve to break his newly found anonymity for this. "You can't, pal."
"Buck, I owe her. She held everything together for five years. Tony, Bruce, Clint, Thor, me…" Steve counts off on his fingers. "We all left and she stayed here, holding it together because none of us were willing to. She fought more than any of us to fix it—" he stops as he shakes his head and blows a breath out. "I can't believe she had a sister and never told us. Can you talk to Yelena? Find out if she needs anything?"
"Trust me, she's just fine on her own," Bucky replies, thinking of how self-assured and confident she'd been during the meeting.
"So was Natasha, but that didn't mean she couldn't have used the help now and then."
Bucky sighs. "I'll see what I can do."
Bucky watches as Yelena adjusts the straps of her tactical suit again and then pats her pockets as though looking for something. He understands the compulsion to be as prepared as possible. His years in the war had fostered a sense of being as prepared for as many outcomes as possible at all times, and it was a habit he hadn't quite ever kicked — not even as the Winter Soldier, with super strength and a metal arm to fall back on.
Still, he smirks at her continued patting of her pockets, figuring she's either superstitious or is fond of double and triple-checking her ammo and weapons. Yelena catches him watching her and sends an icy glare back at him.
"What, you forget one of your dozen weapons?" Bucky teases her. Their interactions since their initial meeting had been few and far between and only when strictly required. He's seen her chuckle to herself quietly in response to some jokes and banter being thrown around the group, and he's heard the bitingly sarcastic remarks she's made to Alexei, so he knows she has a sense of humour. He just hasn't managed to crack her armour yet.
"This suit doesn't have enough pockets," she grumbles.
"It's your suit, isn't it?" he replies, arching an eyebrow.
She huffs, clearly frustrated. "Yes, but I used to have another vest that went over it. It had so many pockets. Enough to carry everything I needed. This one does not have as many."
"So why don't you wear that vest now?" he asks. He'd been offered a new tac suit and weapons for their missions — which he'd declined — so he knows it isn't a matter of it not being provided.
He sees her expression tighten, and she, for once, makes no effort to hide the emotion in her expression. "I gave it to my sister. Before the whole…" she trails off and then makes a vague gesture with her hand, "Blip thing."
"Ah," he says with a nod. He's a little surprised by the fact that Yelena is offering any explanation at all. Since their initial conversation at the briefing, they had interacted on only mission-oriented topics and only when necessary.
"It doesn't feel right buying another one. It was— I gave it to her. I don't want to replace it," she continues.
He doesn't know why she's chosen to share this with him after only engaging with him on mission-related discussions, but he doesn't take for granted that she'd decided to share it with him. He supposes that replacing it, in a twisted way, is another way of accepting she's really gone. And even though it's years later, he figures she's still dealing with her grief of losing her sister. He gets that. Steve's had decades, and Bucky can still see cracks now and then when she comes up in conversation.
"It's stupid, I know," she adds quickly after a beat of silence. She's almost babbling now, as though having just realized what she had revealed, and now feels the need to downplay it. "I don't even know if she ever wore it."
He shakes his head immediately. "No, it's not stupid. I get it. I do." Memories of Natasha in Wakanda rise in his mind, her outfitted in a black suit and green vest, with her short blonde hair and fierce expression, and he decides to take a chance. "Was it green? Couple of buckles in the front?"
Her eyes widen in surprise. "How do you know that?"
He smiles, realizing that perhaps he can give her some peace of mind with this little tidbit of knowledge he has. "I saw her wearing it. In Wakanda, before…" he trails off, unable to finish the sentence but knowing she understands his meaning. Yelena's eyes close momentarily, and she smiles to herself. Then her eyes open quickly, gaze fixed on him. She looks desperate to know what else of Natasha he had seen, so he keeps talking. "I didn't really know her, but I saw and heard enough to know she definitely wasn't someone I wanted to piss off," he adds with a grin. He may have shot her twice, but she'd gotten some hits in on him, too — a bullet to his goggles and several elbows to the head come to mind, not to mention one of those damn discs that had fried his arm temporarily.
"Yeah, you're lucky she didn't hold a grudge," Yelena says with a grin. "You ever talk with her?"
He shakes his head. "Maybe a couple words. Borrowed her gun once. I don't know if she knew that."
Yelena chuckles. "Hope you gave it back."
"I don't think I ever did," he says slowly, trying to think back if he ever managed to return it.
She clicks her tongue disapprovingly. "You're very lucky she didn't hold a grudge. Stealing her gun wouldn't have been something easily forgiven."
A few months later, Bucky stumbles across a surprise when helping Steve pack up some of his stuff. His eyes widen as he realizes what he's potentially found. It's a little worse for wear, with some scorch marks, tears in the fabric, and stains, but it is unquestionably a green army vest. One he's seen before, if he's not mistaken.
"Hey, Steve?"
Steve shuffles into the doorway from the other room. "Yeah?"
"This vest. Where'd it come from?"
Bucky sees the grief flicker across Steve's face before a bittersweet smile settles on his lips. "They found it in the wreckage after the battle once they started clearing some of the bigger debris away. I honestly don't know how it managed to survive the explosion, but Sam recognized it, and took it, and then offered it to me."
"And you decided to keep it."
Steve steps into the room and takes the vest from him, trailing his fingers across the buckles. "Nat wore it a lot during those years that we were on the run as fugitives." He falls quiet for one beat, two beats, and then continues. "I probably should have given it to Clint and his family, but I couldn't bring myself to give it up, so I kept it."
"It was Yelena's," Bucky says, watching Steve's eyes widen in surprise. "She told me she gave it to Natasha after they took down the Red Room."
Steve is quiet for another beat, then asks, "You think she'd want it back?"
Yes , Bucky thinks immediately, but he knows how important it is to Steve, so he isn't going to push for it. "If you still want to keep it, she doesn't need to know that we—"
"She should have it," Steve interrupts firmly. "Nat was her sister, and it sounds like they didn't get a whole lot of time together. Maybe she'd like to have a reminder of Nat."
"You sure?"
"I have pictures and even some videos of her from FRIDAY's footage at the Compound from over the years, I don't need it anymore," Steve says, holding the vest out to him. "You can tell her you found it in some old boxes of my stuff they put together from the wreckage."
Bucky nods because it's probably a better explanation than he'd have been able to come up with.
Steve looks up and meets his gaze. "If she's anything like Nat was, then she's probably more capable than you," he begins slowly, flashing a smirk at him, "but keep an eye out for her, would ya?"
Bucky knows Yelena can look after herself but also understands what Steve is asking of him. "Yeah, alright. But you should know that I can tell already she's gonna be a pain in my ass."
Steve's face splits into a wide grin. "Nat was for me, so this only seems fair."
Bucky shakes his head with a laugh. "It's too bad I never got to meet her properly. I'd have liked to see someone make a fool out of you."
"I think I've got some footage of her training me early on. Well, more like knocking me on my ass over and over again. Maybe one day I'll let you watch it."
"Oh, yes please," Bucky says with a lopsided grin.
Bucky reaches out to grab Yelena's arm, stopping her from following everyone else out of the briefing room. "Hang on a second," he says.
She looks at him in surprise, the silent question clear in her expression.
John Walker pokes his head back in and stares at them. "You guys coming?"
"Give us a minute, would you?" Bucky says, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. They had gotten off on the wrong foot, and their relationship hasn't improved much since then. He tolerated Walker more than anything, and barely most of the time.
"We're on the clock, Barnes."
Bucky grinds his teeth. "I'm aware. We'll be there in a minute," he says, staring at Walker until he relents and leaves.
He waits for the door to shut before flipping open his bag and retrieving the vest, which he'd wrapped in some newspaper. "Here," he says, holding it out to Yelena.
She looks at it skeptically and then at him. "What is it?"
"They found a bunch of the crap Steve had at the Avengers Compound in the wreckage and threw it into some boxes. Sam gave them to me a while back and I forgot about them until recently."
"You forgot about the boxes of your best friend's stuff?" she says dubiously.
Not as good a liar as you think you are, he chastises himself.
He holds the package toward her again, wiggling it a little for emphasis. "I may have been avoiding it," he says, hoping such an admission sells the lie enough for her. "But I came across this when I was going through them and I thought you might want to have it."
She looks at him again, unconvinced and still skeptical, but takes the package from him and begins unwrapping it. When the vest is finally uncovered, he sees her eyes widen. "Is this…?" she trails off, unable to say anything else. The words come out as little more than a whisper, a far cry from the self-assured quips and biting comments he usually hears from her.
"Yeah. I talked to Rhodes and he confirmed she'd kept it," he fibs, hoping again that the lie is serviceable enough for her to believe it. "He said she didn't wear it on their final mission, so he figured she'd left it in her room at the Compound. He also said according to Sam that she wore it constantly while they were on the run as fugitives."
"I— I can't believe it," she admits as she trails her fingers over the buckles, then the rips and scorch marks in the fabric. It's almost reverent how she inspects each tiny detail, as though they tell a story about her sister she never imagined she'd get to hear.
He busies himself with reorganizing some things in his bag to give her some privacy, but when he looks back up, she's still holding the vest tightly in her grasp, staring at it with an expression still filled with disbelief. But there's also a mix of grief and joy on her face.
"Barnes, thank you," she says, finally breaking her gaze on the vest to look up at him. The words are still quiet, and they have such a significant feel that he knows she's trying to express a thousand things with those few syllables.
He knows she's not the type to be so forthcoming with such an emotional sentiment, so he accepts it sincerely. "You're welcome. I know how important it was to you and that you didn't want to replace it, but I thought the original one might be okay for you to use."
She smiles then, a crooked little jump upward of one corner of her mouth. "You are not as much of an asshole as everyone says you are."
He laughs. "No, I'm not. But don't let that get around. I've got a reputation to uphold."
She looks down again at the vest, and he thinks he might see her eyes glisten with tears. She shakes her head and laughs softly, and he guesses she's remembering a fond memory. "I don't have many things to remind me of her. A couple pictures from when we were small, and just one from when we were older." She pauses then, taking a couple steadying breaths and then looking up to meet his gaze before she adds, "This means a lot. Thank you."
Her voice is tinged with that same mix of joy and grief, and it both unnerves him and brings joy to his heart. He knows what it's like to lose someone you love, but the way she'd lost her sister…that was something else altogether. That he could bring her some small measure of comfort... It was heart-warming in a way he hadn't felt in a long time. It felt good to be doing something good for someone.
"Yeah, no problem," he says with a nod.
She smiles, and he swears her shoulders aren't carrying as much weight as before. "See," she says, gesturing to her side, "pockets."
He returns the smile as she slips her hand into the pocket on her left side. Her expression morphs immediately into bewilderment, and he frowns, watching as she pulls out something from her pocket. She gasps as she looks down at the object, and then he sees her lower lip tremble as her brow furrows into a gentle frown. He follows her gaze and finds her holding a photo strip of two girls, one with bright green eyes and blue hair and the other a blonde with blue eyes. He immediately knows they are Yelena and Natasha from their years together in Ohio. His gaze slides up to find Yelena staring at it in disbelief.
"Guess she wanted to keep you close," he offers.
She chokes out a half chuckle, tears falling this time. "Yeah, I guess so." She pauses again, slipping the photo strip back into her pocket, then looks at him again. "Thank you, Barnes. Truly."
He nods once. "Don't mention it."