Title: You Could At Least Recognise Me
Rating: PG-13/T
Originally posted: 31st May 2022
Originally written for: buries/peaked
Characters/Pairings: Bucky/Nat
Notes: for buries/peaked's birthday.

She came back, and for the first time in years, there was no-one to turn to. The great Natasha Romanov, known to many as Black Widow, shouldn't need the comfort of familiar faces, a hand on her shoulder, a smile to let her know it would all be okay, but Nat wasn't quite the woman she used to be, in more ways than one.

What happened on Vormir, stayed on Vormir, as far as she was concerned. Little of what occurred after she plunged over the cliffs really made any sense anyway. Instead of trying to puzzle it out, she took the second chance she had been handed and ran with it. She just wasn't sure exactly where she was running to.

Stark was dead, a sacrifice to the cause, and proof he was the hero he always seemed capable of being. Rogers had lived the life he deserved with the woman he loved and was now too old and frail to be leaned on by anyone else. Of course, there was the Barton clan who would always count her as one of their own, but Nat knew better than to go there and upset the equilibrium all over again.

It seemed like a fluke when she stumbled across Barnes. Maybe it was fate somehow, but Nat never put too much stock in that kind of thing anyway. She took the situation at face value. She had found someone she at least recognised, who looked at her with the shocked face of a person told she was dead, but then he found her a smile and offered her any help she might need to find her place in a very changed world. She took it.

It wasn't as strange as she thought it might be, rooming with her former friend's old best bud from the war days. The connection might have been vague, but they made it work. She didn't pry into his business, he didn't ask too many questions either. When she heard screaming in the night, she only went as far as the bedroom door to ensure he wasn't in danger, then took herself back to bed before he woke and found her there. She could only imagine he did much the same when the boot was on the other foot, but Nat never asked and Bucky never said a word.

She had money to live on for a while, hidden in places nobody would look, under names nobody would know. Nat was unsure what she would do if and when it ran out. That was something she shared, just once, as they sat across the table from each other, eating Chinese take-out. Her half of the rent had to come from somewhere, right?

Bucky never missed a beat, telling her he was covering the whole rent before, he could do it again, so she didn't have to worry. Then he rose from the table, moved to walk away, like it was nothing, but it wasn't. None of his kindness, generosity, or understanding could be passed off as normal for a friend of a friend. For the first time since she moved in, Nat found herself asking why.

One word, three letters, but it could've broken everything. More than four months of getting along well, no problems, no issues, and she could have destroyed it all in a second. None of the worry showed on her face, Nat made sure of that. When he turned to look at her, she kept her expression neutral, even when his own seemed oddly amused.

"Why?" he echoed back to her. "Why am I helping you? Why do I care?" he clarified.

She nodded her head slowly, unsure why she was so afraid of the answer, but she was going to hear it no matter what, she just had to.

"ты серьезно, Natalia?" Bucky asked her in a flawless Russian accent that made her heart stop. "Вы бы меня хотя бы узнали."

Her breath caught when she heard those words. They translated in her head faster than any sentence ever had before. 'You could at least recognise me.' She had said it to him, once before, as his metal hand squeezed the air from her throat. It had been such a stupid thing to say, a last-ditch attempt at something... but then, she had let it go. He didn't know her, he never could, she had convinced herself so completely, hardened her heart against the idea that she could ever have back what they once shared.

By the time they saw each other again in Wakanda, the world about to fall down around their ears thanks to Thanos, she thought she was aloof enough that nobody would know. It must have worked. She must have been so entirely convincing that even he believed it, even after he remembered, because Nat knew now that he did remember, everything.

"How long have you...?" she began to ask, the shake in her voice so far beyond her control, in a way it hadn't been for years.

"Not long before the end of the world," he told her softly, a painful smile playing at his lips. "And by then I thought... I don't know." He shook his head. "There wasn't exactly a lot of hope going around for anybody then."

He had a point, but then he always did, and besides, what could Nat really accuse him of that she hadn't done herself? Keeping the secrets of the past buried where they seemed to belong, unwilling to drag up ever more pain for each other, because hadn't they suffered enough? Still, after all this time, were they really going to continue to endure it, if they didn't have to?

"James..."

She wished she knew what came after that, realised it didn't matter when his eyes fell shut at the sound of his real name from her lips. He seemed to savour the moment as much as she did, in her own way, and then, they were both in motion, rushing to each other, arms reaching, lips crashing together, holding on to each other so tightly, it was a miracle either one could breathe.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. The past, the present, the future all seemed to be at hand, all fighting to be the one that mattered most, but none of it did at all. In that moment, there was only Natalia and James. Only each other, only the perfectly imperfect match the pair had always made, and what fools they would be if they didn't recognise what they had for what it was - love.