Title: Once Upon A Dream
Rating: PG-13/T
Originally posted: 15th June 2022
Originally written for: flipflop_diva
Characters/Pairings: Bucky/Nat
Notes: for Fairytale Inspired Exchange 2022 at Dreamwidth and AO3.

"You have got to be kidding me!"

Natasha looked around at the dark forest looming on three sides and could hardly believe her eyes. Sure, Shuri had warned her what to expect, more or less, but this was truly incredible, just ridiculously realistic for a world that didn't actually exist.

After everything she had been through since she became an Avenger, including an outerspace fall to her death that had been less than permanent, Nat still couldn't have predicted this new twist.

"If there was going to be a fairytale, I guess happily ever after was too much to hope for," she muttered to herself, walking forward into the trees and hoping rather than believing it would be easy to find her way through.

As she hacked through undergrowth with the sword she was glad to have mysteriously found at her hip, Nat's mind went back over the crazy steps that had led to her being there. First, finding herself back on Earth, transported from Vormir, with no explanation as to how or why. Then finding the message from Steve, explaining he had returned the soul stone and bargained for her release. The part where he told her she might not be seeing him around anymore confused her, and then, when she tried to make contact with Tony for further explanation, hearing from Pepper that he was gone.

It hurt. All of it cut her deeper than she was ready for. There were a lot of tears, but still, a glimmer of hope. Finding out everybody lost in The Blip was back. Seeing Sam again, hearing that a deprogrammed Bucky was still around, not lost in battle. The smile that news brought to her lips was brief at best.

Bringing back her arm, Nat slashed at vines that tried to creep up over her boots, the legs of her pants, desperate to pull her back, pull her down. She was not going to be beaten, not now, not when she was this close.

All the way back to Wakanda, she was sure she held her breath until the plane landed, until she saw Shuri waiting to take her to the only person she wanted to see.

"Did the winged man tell you everything?"

"Sam said it was bad," Nat forced out. "How bad is it?"

On the journey to the palace, Shuri explained all. How Bucky's mind had broken again, not long after the battle. The pain and regret of seeing Stark die without ever getting the chance to make amends, the site of Tony's wife and daughter grieving. Knowing he lost Steve in such a permanent way this time. Unsure how to face the world.

"All of this, and losing you too, just when he remembered..." Shuri shook her head sadly. "I think it was just too much and all at the same time. I tried to reach him but..."

Nat never thought she would see the Princess of Wakanda lost for words and out of answers, and yet, it had happened. Almost, anyway. Of course, there was one possibility, but it was risky. A way to reach the unreachable Bucky Barnes who was, to all intents and purposes, stuck in a coma dream he couldn't get out of, maybe even didn't want to get out of, in the circumstances.

"It is so complex, the human mind," said Shuri, somewhere vague and in the background, while Nat stood by the bed, staring down at James Buchanan Barnes, the only man she had ever loved. "It is lucky that I have studied his brain so closely before. Every neuron, every synapse, I have mapped the whole thing, learned it intimately. Still, I can only do so much. It will take another to bring him home."

Nat looked up and met the princess' eyes, realising she was most definitely talking about her. "Anything," she said definitely, keeping the quiver out of her voice by pure force of will. "I'll do anything."

She meant it, with everything she had, she truly did. It was how Nat had found herself lying on another hospital-style bed, alongside Bucky, the both of them wired up to machines she could never have understood herself. Shuri couldn't promise complete safety or any kind of definite success. It was all unprecedented, untested, unstable, but it was the only shot they had.

"When the system engages, it will connect your mind to the White Wolf's dreamscape. You will appear within that world, a place that I have barely been able to see and cannot guide you through. Given the subjects we talked about during the deprogramming, the images that emerged, the coping mechanisms, it is likely that he has retreated into the safety of a fictional world, perhaps from his childhood. A fairytale maybe."

To anyone else, it would sound ridiculous. To Nat, it was nothing to get all that freaked out about. A fairytale world inside someone's head was certainly no worse than alien hordes over New York, a droid drone army in Sokovia, or a mad Titan from space eliminating half the known universe. By comparison, this was cake.

"Week old cake with mouldy frosting," Nat muttered now, as she slashed away another vine, another reaching branch, knowing she had not gotten away from them all quite as successfully as she would like.

She may be inside a dreamworld, quite literally, but the pain was real, the blood trickling stickily from two or three gashes already. Still, it was worth it. He was worth it.

"Come on, James," she urged him, eyes turned Heavenward. "Go a little easy on a girl, huh?"

There was a moment when Nat thought he might actually be hearing her, that he might just have some semblance of control over the obstacles getting in her way. Shuri had said she was unsure about the particulars, how much Bucky's consciousness was in charge, how much was lost to him in the mire of his own pain and confusion.

"I have no way to know or to help you," she had said sadly. "I can only monitor from the outside, and if the situation grows too dangerous, too unstable, pull you out before it is too late."

Nat didn't like to ask what that meant, what 'too unstable' entailed or what it would mean for Bucky. She wasn't so sure it was worth saving her if she was going to lose him, but she never said as much. She couldn't give up hope like that. Hadn't Steve taught her that just about anything could be overcome if you only believed enough? He had succeeded in bringing her back from the end, after all. The least she could do now was have a little of his faith in herself to get Bucky out of his own head, somehow.

"We have this," she told the both of them, whether he knew it or not. "Hey, we really do have this," she realised aloud, raising her eyes to the horizon and noticing the trees had thinned considerably.

A few more paces brought her to a clearing, and there in the distance, not even a very great distance, sat a castle. It was big, dark and foreboding, nothing like a Disneyland attraction, that was for sure, but Nat would bet everything that it was her destination. Her destiny.

"Get to the castle, slay the dragon, save the prince, right?" she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Can't be so hard."

The moment she said it, Nat regretted her words. Her eyes grew wide as, in the space between her and the castle, the ground seemed to shift in some otherworldly fashion. She was just about to groan about more trees and vines that might be about to appear, when she realised that wasn't it at all. Instead, the structures rising up from the ground were very definitely made of stone. Walls in every possible formation, facing in every compass point, and not dissimilar to something she once saw in an eighties movie.

Tipping her head back and peering up into the sky, she sighed. "Seriously, James? You pick now to be the babe with the power? When did you even see that movie?" she wondered, shaking her head.

Maybe Shuri showed it to him when he was in Wakanda. Maybe it just showed up on TV sometime when he was running around in Romania or wherever else. Nat had no idea. There was so much she didn't know, including how to get through the vast labyrinth spread out before her. That didn't mean she wasn't going to give it her best shot.

"Eeny, meeny, miney, mo?" she tried, pointing left to right, back and forth trying to decide which way to go. "Trust my gut, I guess."

It seemed to work for a while, a left, a right, trying to put together any kind of pattern that she could as she went along. Nat figured eventually she had to come to the other side, but after walking what seemed like an hour or more, she didn't feel any further forward.

Not that she could tell if she was closer to the castle or not. The stone walls towered over her head, becoming all she could see, trying to disorientate her. She wouldn't let that happen. She fought for concentration, even as a few Bowie hits leaked into her mind and made her hum out loud without hardly noticing. After all, there was nobody else there to tell her to stop.

"Except, maybe there is," she considered, glancing up into the sky.

It was black as night still, even though she could see well enough inside the labyrinth that held no obvious sources of light. That was fairytales for you, Nat supposed.

"So, if this is all in your head, Soldat," she said, addressing the midnight sky, "that would explain the darker aspects, I guess. You know I can understand that. You know better than anyone, but please, if you have any kind of control here, any way to help me through this, now is very much the time," she urged him.

Nat wasn't sure what she was expecting. A miracle, perhaps? It wasn't as if she never saw one happen before. Wasn't her very presence the result of at least two? Arriving back to life after death on Vormir. Being dropped right into the unconscious mind of another person and experiencing a strange, ever-changing fairytale world.

"I'm doing my best here, but it would be easier if you could give me just a little help. A clue? Anything?"

She started to feel foolish, talking to the man whose mind she was walking through. Nat had been in weirder spots, but still, this was pretty out there, even for a former Agent of SHIELD, a former Avenger.

Turning the next corner with a sigh, Nat stopped dead in her tracks as she noticed something forming on the stone right in front of her eyes. A line, no, an arrow, pointing the way to the castle, at least she hoped so.

"Thank you," she said softly with a small smile as she picked up the pace.

At every junction, a new arrow appeared, guiding her through. It wasn't long before Nat started to feel she must be gaining ground, getting to the end of the great maze that would hold her back.

One more turn and there it was, the open gate that brought her out right in front of the imposing, dark castle. Lightning cracked overhead just as she looked up.

"Wow. Never took you for a cliche kind of guy," she muttered, shaking her head. "Okay, so onward?" she added, reaching for the sword that had aided her so much before.

Nat was surprised to realise it was gone, that the belt she wore no longer had a scabbard with a blade inside, but instead a much more familiar holster and gun arrangement to her right and a flashlight to her left. Shrugging a shoulder, she pulled out the weapon and checked it over. Loaded and ready to go. She was suddenly feeling a little more confident, until a wolf howled, long and loud.

"That's... eerie," she said to herself, readying the gun and flashlight in her hands as she nudged the door open with her boot.

For a large wooden door, it gave way pretty easy. Nat was glad of any help she could get, quite honestly. Moving around carefully, she swung the beam of light over the dusty, cold stone ground, a falling down staircase, broken and moulding furniture, a series of doors that could lead anywhere.

"Come on, James. Now would be a good time for another clue."

Once again, an animalistic howl sounded, long and loud in the dark, closer now, dangerously so. Nat fought the shiver that tried to go through her as she moved through the nearest door that had been left ajar, gun ready for whatever she found there. As the beam of light reached the far corner of the room, it flashed in the eyes of the creature crouching there.

"Hey, Big Bad," she said to the wolf, approaching warily.

Immediately, it was on guard, growling instead of keening now, baring its teeth as if to frighten her away. Nat didn't flinch, though her heart beat a hundred miles an hour in her chest. If she backed out of the room, she might get away, but the animal's howling had led her there, right after she asked James for help. It meant something, she was sure it did. Nat became ten times more certain when she suddenly noticed the intensity in the wolf's steel blue eyes.

"Not so big and bad after all," she said softly, crouching down to the animal's level, gently laying down the gun, propping the flashlight up enough to illuminate the space between the two of them. "It's okay," she said, hands raised in surrender. "Come on, you know I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help. James?"

It sounded so ridiculous, calling a wolf by her old lover's name, but she was just so sure. If this was a fairytale, albeit it a strange and twisted one, then there was every chance she was right in her assumption. Reaching out with one tentative hand, Nat almost made contact with the wolf's dark and white streaked fur. A moment before she managed it, the creature suddenly retreated further into the corner.

Worried she would lose him just when she found him, Nat grabbed for the flashlight and shifted forward, following him across the floor. Him. James, she was just so sure, and never more so as the animal laid down on the stone and slowly started to shape-shift.

For all that she had been through, it was still one of the stranger things Nat had seen in her life, when suddenly the wolf transformed completely into the man the world knew as Bucky Barnes. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come, as she watched him lie there, shivering and apparently confused.

"James..." she began to say, catching his attention.

The fear in his eyes as he looked at her then cut her like a knife. Nat had seen him afraid before, but never of her, never once.

"No. No, no, no," he was muttered as she scrambled up to sitting then backed quickly into the corner, crushing himself against the walls. "No, it's... You're not real! Not real!" he said, drawing up his knees, covering his head with his arms.

Nat's heart clenched in her chest and then shattered entirely. She knew Bucky was broken, as if she hadn't been told before, as if Steve hadn't explained, as if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. To be trapped inside his own mind, the way Shuri told it, she ought to have known how bad it truly was, but Nat had held onto the slightest sliver of hope. She hoped if she could find him, this avatar inside a coma dream, she really believed he would know her and realise he had a reason to come back to reality. Now, she worried she had been wrong. That this time things had just gone too far.

"James, please," she said softly, swallowing down the lump in her throat as best she could. "Please, I'm real. I'm here."

It seemed absurd to talk of being real given where they were, but there was nothing but truth in what she said. Though they were only affectations inside his head, they both existed out in the world too, flesh and bone and breath in their bodies. There was still a chance, Nat knew there had to be.

"Everybody is gone," Bucky continued to sob. "Steve and Stark and... and Natalia and... and it's my fault. Everything. When I came back and... and it's not worth anything. I'm not..."

"No," Nat said firmly, reaching out to grasp his arm, making him look at her. "James, listen to me. None of that is true," she said, eyes fixed on his own. "Yes, Tony and Steve, they are gone, but it is not your fault. You know that, I know you do. Neither of them would blame you for anything, and I don't either. I'm not gone. I'm still here, James," she told him over again, hoping and praying the words and their true meaning were finally sinking in. "I'm here and... and I love you."

She needed him to believe her, they both needed that, but he looked so unsure. For someone who had always been so strong in the face of unimaginable pain when she knew him before, it was so heart-breaking to see him crumbling now. Not that she didn't understand why. All that he had been through in the last century of elongated life, everything that he had endured, everybody had a breaking point. Nat was just determined not to let this moment be James' last stand.

"Please, believe me," she urged him, shifting ever closer, filling his vision. "Remember how to be strong, please, James, and just trust me. We always trusted each other, didn't we? We always loved each other..."

As her hand moved on his arm, it got both their attention at once. Nat was disturbed to find that there was a strange, translucent quality to her fingers, her hand, her wrist.

"What?" she gasped, raising her arm, staring blankly at the floor she could soon plainly see right through her own limb. "No!"

Despite her protest, that same floor went out from under her, a strange but unfamiliar plunging sensation taking over, until suddenly Nat found herself sat up on the bed in Shuri's lab. Reality came back to her in an instant as she stared at the science-minded princess.

"What the hell?!"

"I am sorry, Agent Romanov," she told her, shaking her head sadly. "The equipment was starting to fritz. I couldn't risk letting you become trapped forever. I had to pull you out."

There was no time for arguing the point, Nat knew. Instead, she hopped down from the bed, tearing the sensors from her body in the scramble to get to the only person that mattered in that moment. The body of Bucky Barnes seemed as unresponsive as when she first entered his mind, the dream or nightmare created there, but things just had to be different now.

"James? James, please, I'm still here!" she told him, loudly, desperately, hardly even aware of Shuri on the other side of the bed, looking almost as pained over the loss of a pseudo-brother as Nat did from losing the love of her life. "I'm sorry I left you, but that place, it's not real," she insisted, close to his ear. "I'm still here and I love you. You're not alone! Do you hear me, James? You're not alone!"

They were holding on to a hand each, her and Shuri, willing him with everything they had to hold on, to come back, to fight. He had the strength, Nat knew that he did, he just had to believe there was something or someone worth fighting for.

That was all it took, in any fairytale she had ever heard or seen, that and one other thing. Figuring she had nothing to lose and everything to gain, Nat brought her hands up to James' face and made one last ditch attempt - true love's kiss.

When her lips made contact with his own, she poured into that one sweet kiss everything she felt for him, every ounce of it, desperately hoping it could really make a difference. After a few moments, she pulled back, staring down at him, not really expecting a miracle but hoping, wishing so hard.

"You did everything that you could," Shuri sniffled through the words. "If even you could not reach him..."

Before she had even finished speaking, something happened. Nat could've sworn she saw movement in James' face, his eyelids flickering, his lips parting, the tiniest little twitches, but they were there. Unless she was imagining it all. At this point, Nat wouldn't be at all surprised if she were. She looked to Shuri for confirmation that she wasn't going crazy and suddenly there was hope in the princess' eyes.

With a gasp of breath, Bucky sat up, so suddenly that Nat backed up a step with the shock. He was awake, he was looking at her, and this time around, it was real. The blue of his eyes and the curve of his lips as he reached out a shaking hand to her cheek.

"Natalia?" he checked, as if he was afraid he might be wrong, that all this was still an illusion. "You're really here?"

Bringing her hand up to cover his own at her cheek, she found she had no words to give him, tears spilling unchecked from her eyes as she nodded her head in confirmation.

"Welcome back, White Wolf," said Shuri then, catching his attention. "There was a moment there where we almost thought... But you are stronger than that. We would not give up on you," she said firmly, shaking her head.

Nat wasn't sure if he fully understood what had happened to him, what he had been through, what they had done to try to save him. She wasn't even sure if he remembered what had happened inside the castle within his mind or realised how real it had been.

It didn't really matter anyway. Bucky was back now and seemed glad to be. His hand slipped from Nat's grip as he turned to Shuri and wrapped her up in a brotherly hug that she happily returned, tears on her cheeks as she squeezed him tightly.

"Thank you," he whispered against her hair, planting a kiss there too.

She was smiling widely as they parted, then glanced past Bucky at Nat and clearly felt like a third wheel. Nat would never call her that, but she wasn't exactly sad when Shuri spoke of letting Okoye and Ayo know the worst was over. She was gone in an instant and Nat found herself alone with her James for the first time in too long, in reality, at least.

There was a kind of wonder in his eyes still as he looked her over, took her in. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached for her hands, holding them both in his own. It was so familiar, one warm hand, one cold, just as she remembered from their time in the Red Room. For all the painful memories of back then, there were a handful that included him that never failed to make her smile still.

"I thought I lost you again," he said, shaking his head. "It was hard enough when Steve... but at least I had him for a while. With you... I didn't know, and then, when I did... I missed you so much."

"It's okay," she promised him, moving closer, unable to bear even the few extra inches between them after everything they'd been through. "We have time now. Maybe we can even live happily ever after," she said with a smirk she just couldn't seem to help as she hooked her arms around his neck. "I mean, aren't you pretty much never going to age, Super Soldier? And after everything... well, ever after might actually be a possibility for me too. If we're together..."

"Then happy can't be far behind," he finished for her, before his lips met hers in a perfect kiss.

(And, reader, in case you were wondering, they did in fact go on to live happily ever after.)