Zhelaniye

The sunset turned the yellow stone walls of their farm into molten gold. It was always beautiful, but tonight the light was exceptional, and Steve told the others he was going to take a picture.

After a playful back-and-forth about avoiding the dishes, they let him walk down into the gardens—so he could slip into the shade and try to have his panic attack as quietly as possible.

Wanda was coming with him to Wakanda in a week, and the pressure around his chest was increasing every day. He hadn’t really slept in forty-eight hours. So much could go wrong for the people left behind, unprotected, while she was gone. And what if she couldn’t do anything to help Bucky?

Steve heard someone making their way through the garden and forced himself to pay attention. They weren’t exaggeratedly discreet, but he couldn’t identify who it was right away—and that alone was enough to make him go silent, forcefully bringing his erratic breaths under control.

For a moment there was nothing. Then:

“Is Clint the one taking care of the rose bushes?”

Steve froze.

When he came out of the shadows, Natasha did her best to smile at him.

He looked at her for a long minute.

“How did you know where to find us?”

“Clint told me,” she said frankly. She was pale and stood stiffly. “Steve, if I’m not welcome—”

He’d wrapped her in his arms before she could finish her sentence. She let out a breath—not even a noise—then relief loosened her body and she hugged him back.

He remembered what she’d told him in DC. When I joined SHIELD I thought I was going straight. Despite herself, a rift had severed her family again, and in her attempts to keep the Avengers together she’d ended up betraying both sides—the very thing she’d wanted so desperately to avoid.

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured in her hair.

She let out a shaky laugh. “Me too.”

Steve released her. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. You were trying to limit the damage.”

“And what a stellar job I did.”

“Nobody died,” Steve said softly.

That made her look away. For a second, she just watched the roses.

“How’s Barnes?” she asked.

Horrifyingly, Steve felt his face crumple down. Natasha looked at him like she’d looked at him at Peggy’s funeral.

“No, it’s… it’s not even that bad,” he said, struggling to get a hold of himself. “We have options. He’s holding up. It’s just that—”

“—getting rid of the triggers is just the beginning,” she finished.

He stared at her.

Her smile was sad. “I wondered if you’d realized that.”

Steve remembered something then. “Bucky said… he said to ask you about him.”

Something indecipherable passed on Natasha’s face. Then she gave a strange little smile. “Did he?”

*

They needed a drink for this conversation, Natasha decided. Not even alcohol—just something to do with their hands. The sun was setting for good, embers glittering just above the horizon. Steve was making tea; just as planned, it let them look away from each other until she was ready to talk.

The first floor of the house was empty. Evidently someone—probably Clint—had instructed everyone to give them space.

Eventually, he heard her voice, soft and slow.

“I was born in 1944.”

Steve’s hands stopped moving.

“James started training me when I was six years old. At the time they weren’t wiping him whole; they just replaced his memories. He thought he was Russian.”

Steve realized he’d stopped breathing. The world was reshaping itself around him, shifting under his feet.

“He taught me everything I know. He was,” something rueful twisted into her voice, “my hero.”

Steve forced himself to pour the tea. Bring it to the table. Sit down. He couldn’t look at her, so he looked at the dancing lights in his cup instead, his heart hammering in his ears.

“When I met him again I was seventeen, and he didn’t know me. But I remembered him. I’d worshipped him for so long. I wanted him—and he let me have him.”

Now Steve was glad he’d sat down. It was almost too big to comprehend; and yet it was oddly easy to imagine them together. Bucky and Nat, bloodied and sweaty from battle, pressing against each other for a few stolen moments.

“Then our handlers found out.”

His blood went cold again. When he dared to glance up, she wasn’t looking at him; her eyes were deep in memory.

“For the longest time I thought they’d killed him. Until I met him again in Odessa, and he almost killed me.”

She smiled, a private smile he’d never seen on her face before. “I thought he didn’t remember.”

“He remembers everything,” Steve managed.

“Of course he would.” Now her smile was wry and directed inwards. “We always did in the end.”

*

“Did I hurt you?”

Steve looked up from the dark depths of his tea. They’d stayed silent for a long while, but it hadn’t gone cold yet.

“What?”

“By telling you this.”

“No,” he said. “Nat—on the contrary. I always pictured him alone. All these years. Alone and… in a cage. I’m glad to hear it wasn’t always hell.”

The clock on the wall ticked down the seconds until he spoke again. He knew what he had to ask. It was the reason Bucky had told him to speak to her about this.

“Did you have trigger words as well?”

“Oh yes.” Her smile got sharp. “Expectation. Scarlet. Forty-four. Midnight. Glacier. Nine. Faithful. Opera. One. Spider.”

Steve’s throat was dry.

“How did you…?”

“I escaped my handlers in 1981 when the KGB fell—took advantage of the confusion.” She drank a bit of tea. “You have to understand that I’d tried running before. He did, too.”

Steve absorbed that information like a punch to the stomach.

“It never worked. They always caught us eventually—we just had to get within earshot to be theirs again. So this time, I decided to try and stand my ground instead.”

She paused, then suddenly, grinned. “It sounds almost silly now, but—I wore earplugs.”

“You—” Steve blinked. “What?”

“It was insanely dangerous. I couldn’t hear anyone coming at me, and it forced me to work completely alone—that’s when I started getting a reputation.”

“Didn’t they send anyone after you?”

“Oh yes.” Another sip of tea. “A handful of men. I took them down, and there was never another attempt. They thought the words didn’t work anymore. They were terrified of me.”

Steve huffed a disbelieving laugh, shaking his head. “That’s…”

“I know.” She was still grinning like the cat who got the cream. “Clint laughed his ass off when I told him.”

“Clint,” Steve said. “Wasn’t he the one to bring you in?”

“That was much later,” she said. “It took me almost thirty years to really break free, and I did it just by waiting it out. Everything fades with time. I tamed the words one by one. I'd repeat one until I’d separated it from any context, then I'd move on to the next one. When I could say the whole sequence out loud, I knew I was done.”

Steve let himself understand what it meant. “If Bucky stays in cryo…”

“It’ll stay fresh. The body and the mind.” Natasha paused. “He can’t just sleep it off, Steve.”

Steve just nodded, because if he opened his mouth he would throw up.

Bucky knew about this; he knew the ice actually prevented what little healing he could achieve by himself; and yet he still chose it every time. Because it was all he wanted anymore.

Steve forced himself to breathe slowly. He couldn’t break down. He could never break down. What happened to Bucky if he did?

He took a deep breath, let it out. Then he looked up at Nat and said in the steadiest voice he could manage, “You’re seventy-two?”

He could tell she wasn’t fooled, but she was also kind, and so she indulged him—raised her eyebrows at him over the rim of her cup. “Still younger than you, Rogers.”

*

They moved on to vodka, because people seemed intent on making Steve drink lately, even though it still had no effect whatsoever on him. The burn did feel good. It occurred to him it probably had no effect on Natasha, either.

“It’s really good to see you,” he said. “I was worried.”

“You always are.”

He huffed an insubstantial laugh, then went on, “You know you’re welcome here. If you want. We’re starting to get a bit cramped, so you might have to share your room, but…”

“Well, I’m moving around a lot,” she said. “But—I could use a house in the country.”

They smiled at each other for a moment.

“So.” Steve cleared his throat. “Clint told you about our arrangement with T’Challa, huh?”

“He gave me the cliff notes. It’s a good thing,” she said. “That way you have time to think.”

“Maybe too much of it,” Steve said wryly. Then without any warning the dreadful panic was threatening again, sinking its claws in his sides. “I don’t know how long I can keep—”

Someone was coming down the stairs. Steve turned around to look at the doorframe; the next second, Scott wandered in with a deep yawn.

He was wearing nothing but grey pouch-front briefs, and made a groggy beeline for the fridge. He pulled out the milk carton and drank three long gulps straight from it before he noticed them sitting there and staring at him.

“Oh. Hi.” He wiped his mouth. “Ant-Man.”

“Who?” said Natasha.

Scott looked demoralized. “C’mon, dude, not you too. Little guy? You zapped me into a wall?”

Steve was too busy choking on his vodka to tell Scott that he was probably the only man on Earth to have ever called Natasha “dude”.

“Right,” Natasha said flatly.

“And then I got like crazy big?”

“Yes.”

“Red-and-black suit? Weird helmet?”

“Yes.”

“Scott, the milk,” Steve said before Scott could go on.

“Whoops.” Scott straightened up the dripping carton. He blinked at them both and finally appeared to realize he was missing something.

“Oh—did you… did you want some?”

“We’re fine,” Steve said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Okay.” He stared at them uncertainly. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

Scott made finger guns at him. “Got it. Good night.”

“Night, Scott.”

After he was gone, Natasha turned to Steve and just looked at him. He took a sip of vodka and said, “Yeah, that’s your bunkmate, by the way.”

“I’m surrendering to Ross.”

*

Later still, Natasha considered her glass and said, “The thing was—I never had time to think. Not until after I’d met Clint. In a way, I was lucky to have people out for my blood. It gave me something to do. I was fighting for my life. It saved me from realizing I had nothing to live for.”

Steve didn’t have to say anything; they both heard it anyway.

“You’re wrong,” Natasha murmured. “He has you.”

“I’m not enough,” he said, almost inaudible.