(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 3 - 5th May 2015
Natasha had learned a long time ago that, whenever one part of life was going well, another part was always bound and determined to fall to pieces. Three nights ago, she and her team/family had been enjoying a party, celebrating the destruction of the final HYDRA base, the return of Loki's sceptre, and a good time was being had by all. She and James had plans to escape the party early to come up to his place and spend the night alone together. They figured nobody would really miss them, not even Yelena or Steve, who had found they enjoyed each other's company well enough, spurred on by a little of Thor's Asgardian liquor, which was strong enough that it could put a warm feeling into even the toughest super soldier or vodka-hardened Widow. Of course, a night that was going that well had to come apart at the seams, somewhere along the line.
"That looks better," said James as he walked back into the bedroom and found Natasha with her pant leg rolled up yet.
"Practically healed," she said of the graze she had below her knee after the fight that erupted at the celebrations three nights ago. "How's the shoulder?" she asked him, straightening up at last.
"Good as new," he assured her, swinging his arm all the way around to prove the point. "You know how fast I heal."
"You know how glad I am about that," she countered, putting her own arms up around his neck the moment he got close and kissing him firmly on the lips. "I still feel weird about having those two locked up at the new facility. Locked up anywhere feels wrong, even though I know we don't have a choice right now."
James was visibly trying not to smile too much as he moved her hair back behind her ear, his hand lingering at her cheek. "You're turning into a real softy, Natalia."
"If I am, then it's probably your fault," she countered, smirking some. "But seriously, they're just kids. Whatever Strucker did to them... You know as well as I do, they may have signed up for his experiments, but he took advantage."
She didn't want to have to be so serious or even depressing-sounding about it all, but Natasha couldn't quite help it. When she looked at Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, she saw innocent children, like herself and Yelena had been, once upon a time.
"Hey, it's okay," James assured her, pulling her closer, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. "Tony already said he only wants to help them, which is pretty magnanimous for the guy they came here to kill three days ago."
He made a good point, Natasha couldn't deny it, but it still made her all kinds of uncomfortable to think too much about the Maximoffs. True enough, they had been pretty threatening when they crashed the party, him superspeeding around the room, wreaking havoc, and her plying some kind of mind-controlling magic that scared the living crap out of Stark and Thor before they finally subdued her.
From what her team-mates had described about the nightmare scenarios that appeared in their heads, courtesy of the little witch, Natasha was only glad she hadn't been subject to that kind of sorcery herself. After all the Red Room had done to her, she really didn't ever want anyone in her head that way ever again, and would rather die than see it happen to Yelena or anyone else she loved either.
"I'm fine," Natasha said then, seeing the look of genuine concern on James' face. "Ignore me," she insisted, forcing a smile.
"Don't ask me to do that, because I couldn't, not from the first day I met you," he reminded her, with a more genuine grin, which helped her find a real smile too.
"Milli moi..." she said softly, reaching up to kiss him.
It would have been so easy to fall into the moment then. They certainly made a good effort at doing so, but two minutes in, before they hardly got started on anything worthwhile, his cell and hers both started to make noise.
"No rest for the wicked," she muttered, forced to pull away.
"Even less for superheroes, apparently," said James, the both of them checking for whatever message or alert was incoming. "Team meeting."
"Apparently." Natasha sighed. "I don't recognise the co-ordinates. We're going, right?"
"I guess so." James nodded, pushing his cell back into his pocket. "But when we're done..."
"We'll come right back here, pick up where we left off," Natasha assured him, stealing one more quick kiss before they knew they really should leave.
From the night of the party, Tony seemed to have started counting Yelena as a real part of the team. The fact that she was the one to snap him out of whatever trance Wanda Maximoff had put him into seemed to score her a lot of points, plus her insistence on sharing everything she could about her own mind-control experiences in hopes of figuring out how to crack the code of the witch-girl's powers seemed to make her teacher's pet, as far as Stark was concerned.
It was why Bucky wasn't at all surprised to find she was around the table in the conference room at the latest Avengers team meeting. What had him staring a little wide-eyed was the realisation that it was more than just the core seven and Yelena present. Rhodey, Sam, Hill, and even Pepper had been drafted in too. That meant something very serious was going on. Not just regular Avengers business, but something bigger, that might even involve Stark Industries too, perhaps. Maybe they were going to find out more about this Avengers branded building they had all been summoned to.
"So, first order of business," said Tony, jumping right in just as soon as everyone was settled, "Thor is headed back to Asgard. He'll be taking the sceptre, locking it safe and sound in the vault, far, far away from any nefarious people who might want to use it for a variety of wacky purposes."
"It shall be secure with the All Father," Thor confirmed, nodding his head. "He will allow none to take it again. You have my word."
"Works for me," Tony told him easily, before his gaze moved once again around the over-sized table and all the assembled people there. "What we have to deal with, in the meantime, is what some crazy-ass Nazi-type already created with the sceptre, or more specifically, the stone in the sceptre. Those kids that came looking for my blood? They're altered, changed by Strucker into something beyond human. Now, I know that's not exactly a stretch for some amongst us," he said, looking pointedly from Banner to Steve and Bucky, "but these two are kind of an unknown quantity. Trust me when I tell you, it's as much for their protection as for mine and ours that we have them locked up and under constant supervision."
"We are working on ways to help them," Bruce supplied. "I don't know if we can, but we're trying."
"I have talked with them," said Yelena then, all the usual sparkle and energy seemingly gone from her voice as she said so. "Mostly her. They were... desperate. They have been used. It's not a nice feeling," she said knowingly.
"Which is why we're helping as much as holding," Tony agreed, nodding his head. "For now, we're limiting contact, trying best as we can to let these kids know we're not the enemy. I don't know how successful we'll be, but it's what we're trying to do."
"At the end of the day, they are just kids," said Pepper softly. "They need our help. Of course, there's no keeping this kind of thing from the public, even if we wanted to."
"Which is why we're not trying," said Tony, picking up where she left off. "The Stark Foundation is putting out a statement, letting the world know we have taken in two Sokovian refugees who have suffered at the hands of HYDRA. The public are going to know that we have this new facility, location undisclosed, but a safe place, where we can help people like the Maximoffs. Where we're hoping to start something that the whole planet can be proud of. Maybe even more proud than it's been so far of The Avengers..."
"The New Avengers. It's... catchy," James tried, though he looked unconvinced even then.
"It's not the worst plan Stark ever came up with," Natasha told him, knowing that for sure, at least. "I think he means well."
"What else can we do?" said Clint, walking close behind them down the corridor towards the exit. "They need help, and even if they give up their quest for vengeance on Stark, turn over a new leaf, they're still going to need support. They're just kids."
It hit him a different way, Natasha knew. Having children of his own, it made a big difference. When the rest of them looked at Wanda and Pietro, even Yelena, they saw troubled young people who were angry with the world, a danger to it, perhaps. Clint looked into the faces of young people like that and saw his own children's faces reflected there. Cooper and Lila were young and innocent right now, but then, Natasha supposed, that was exactly how the Maximoffs and Yelena had been once. Even Natasha herself perhaps, a really long time ago.
"You, okay?" James asked her then, nudging her shoulder with his own.
"I'm fine," she told him, putting on her best smile.
The look on his face let her know he saw straight through the disguise. Knowing her as well as he did, at this point, she wasn't sure why she was surprised. Usually, it was only Clint who could read her through the mask, but he had wandered off before James ever asked her if she was feeling okay, distracted by his cell - no doubt his wife calling because he didn't check in yet.
"Natalia..." said James, softly, reaching to take her hand into his own. "What is it?"
She shook her head, not so much to tell him it was nothing, because they both knew by now that it wasn't true. It was more that this wasn't the time or the place. Thankfully, he seemed to get it, not pushing anymore, just letting her lead the way back home where they could be alone and safe to talk more freely about whatever was on her mind. In the sanctuary that was his bedroom, a place that was more or less their bedroom these days, he asked her again what was wrong.
"The New Avengers" she said, smiling slightly because she knew how stupid it sounded when said aloud. "Strange to think we're already the old models. It's only been three years since we officially started."
"It's been a long three years." James rolled his eyes. "Not that I regret a second of it. You don't think..."
"I don't think anything bad about you or what we have together," she assured him fast, determined he shouldn't worry about that, not for a moment. "How could I?" she added, her hand briefly at his cheek.
"Then what's the problem? You're not feeling old yourself, are you? Because I hate to tell you this, doll, but I'm always going to have you beat on that one."
He smiled when he said it, that smart alec, disarming, sexy smile that could even weaken the knees of a former Russian assassin like her. Such was the power of the newly-christened Winter Soldier, who forever wore the face of one James 'Bucky' Barnes, charmer of women since long before Natasha was ever born.
"Some days I feel old," she told him anyway, "and some days I feel like there's so much I didn't get to do yet."
She stopped, shook her head, almost laughed at herself, because she knew she wasn't making any sense. What was in her head was such a jumble, it was hardly any surprise that what was coming out of her mouth was equally indecipherable.
"James, do you remember when we talked about the future?" she asked him then, tilting her head and looking up at him through her lashes and from behind a curtain of her own hair.
"We've talked about the future a lot, at different times," he recalled.
"At Clint's place, when I was in recovery," she confirmed, swallowing hard the moment she was done saying it.
She described it in the best way she could, mindful to not mention HYDRA or any injuries she had suffered too specifically. It still sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine to consider how that whole situation could have been a hundred times worse and in a hundred different ways. She knew James felt it even more keenly than she did sometimes.
"I remember," he said, nodding his head.
"You said you loved me no matter what and that you were more interested in our present than our future," she reminded him, moving across the bed to sit close by him, leaning into his embrace the moment he opened his arms to her. "I appreciated that, more than you could possibly know, but the present has a habit of becoming the future, eventually. Don't get me wrong, for a long time, I never thought about having a future at all. People like me... we have a pretty short expiration date, most of the time. It never bothered me before, not really. If I died, there wasn't really anybody to miss me, at least, nobody that didn't have plenty else to live for."
"Clint," Bucky said softly, knowing that was what she meant.
"Right," she confirmed anyway, her head tucked under his chin, fingers drawing absent patterns on his shirt, as she continued. "And then, there was this team, and obviously, there was you. Now, I feel like I have something worth losing, something that's really mine to lose. It terrifies me sometimes. Not that I would tell anybody else that, but it does. I keep wondering how much longer I want to go on like this. Fighting the good fight. I know I still have things to atone for, but maybe there are other ways..."
She trailed off when the tears started to prick her eyes, so unexpected it actually startled her. Talking about her feelings, it wasn't something a Black Widow was ever supposed to do. Truth be told, they really weren't supposed to have any feelings in the first place. Natasha had come a long way from the Red Room. If nothing else told her that, then the strong arms around her did. The tears on her own cheeks told her too, not to mention the kiss that James planted in her hair as he held her tight.
"I don't know what the future holds, Nat. Nobody can," he told her softly, "but I do know that wherever I'm going next, I want you to be there. If that's what you want too..."
"You know it is," she said, moving to look up at him, finding him a watery smile. "That's the one thing I am so sure of. I don't think anything has ever been as certain in my life as what we have."
That made him smile too, and then he was wiping the tears gently from her cheeks, and kissing her softly, promising her it was all going to be alright. It meant the world to have somebody she loved and trusted to tell her problems to. Someone that was hers alone. Someone who cared about her as much as she cared about him. The kind of bond she never saw herself having with anyone, but that she truly had with James Barnes.
Maybe she hadn't said everything that she wanted to, she didn't have the words yet, but one day, they would come. Someday, they were going to figure out what their lives were supposed to be, and no matter what else happened, just like James said, they would be headed that way together. There didn't seem to be an option on that anymore, and Natasha liked knowing it, as she kissed him back with everything she had to give and let the rest of the world fade away for a while.
To Be Continued...