There was one thing James Buchanan Barnes was not, and that was a quitter.
It was bitterly cold in the room, and there was a burn off the metal against his bare skin, the only thing keeping him alive the serums in his blood and the fire in his veins.
“I can do this all day,” he said with conviction bubbling in the corner of his scarlet mouth, looking up straight into the eyes of the devil as he filled him with concoction after concoction of toxin. The scientist growled, furrowing his eyebrows together, and sent another shock through Bucky’s body.
“Fuck Hydra! Hail goddamn America!” Bucky yelled as the electricity tore through his cells, ripping through them, shredding him limb from limb until he was bleeding everywhere but the outside, seeping red so it came out of his every pore.
They talked a lot about him right in front of him, like they expected him not to listen. But he did listen, all the time, and he knew what they were saying.
He knew he was too strong for them – filled with too much good and determination to get back because goddamnit, he had unfinished business the other side of Germany he had to take care of. He knew whatever they were trying to do to him – get out war secrets he wasn’t aware existed, use him as a pawn or anything else – wasn’t working, and he felt a sick sort of pride at that.
But he also knew Hydra, knew from the way Steve – Steve, he’d almost forgot him ... wait – talked about them they weren’t going to give up either.
He had to get out. He had to try. But the more he tried, the more he chipped away at the chains binding him to mould eaten walls and damp prison cells, the more of Bucky’s blood the Soldier spilled.
*
The man who saved her was named Ivan Petrovich, and when she was a child, Natasha didn’t dare to think of him as anything other than a protector; someone to watch over her, someone who could save her.
Flames haunted her nightmares for years, and Ivan was the only one who could sooth them. People took her – bad people, who wanted to hurt her – and Ivan got her back, put her to bed with a kiss on the forehead and a promise that if someone lay a goddamn finger on her, he’d end them. It became such a comforting thing to the young child, being told that someone would kill for her. Maybe that was why she was so messed up. Maybe that was why the other girls called her odd behind her back.
Ivan was always proud of her, always cheered for her at her various athletic tryouts and ballet recitals. She became one of the distinct USSR ballerinas, something that provided her almost-father with a great deal of bragging rights, for he was the first one to introduce her to the dance – a fact that he repeated near countless times to other bored parents during the performances. He had enjoyed watching old black and white, classical movies, and when a young Natasha saw the reverence with which he watched them and the joy one of the characters – a young dance school student – gave him, she became determined to be just like her.
Natasha sat on the edge of a beat up Land Rover, picking at the corners of her painted nails. She’d followed that pattern the rest of her life too – she saw people she adored liking a specific person, she became that person. Maybe that was why she was such a good spy, or maybe it was just her penchant for small white lies that turned into a devilish ability to spin complex webs, much to the slight worriment of Ivan.
“My little spider,” he always used to purr as they walked out from her headmaster’s office. He would flick a Rouble in between his thumb and forefinger, and say to her in a low but firm voice, “You can’t be doing that to people, baby. Why do you do it?”
“It is fun, Ivan,” she used to reply without fail each time. “I’m practicing to be an actress.” A lie for a lie for a lie, but what did she have to lose but the winter?
She let out a light sigh, not that the people she was crammed into the vehicle would notice – they were all tied up with no place to go but prison, no way out other than death, maybe not even that. She was the only one who’d gotten out of the bonds, and when she’d firmly refused to help them, they’d stopped talking to her after a couple hundred threats.
Natasha didn’t care for threats, but they didn’t exactly hurt her, either. A threat was a threat was a threat. Usually, nothing came out of it for the little spider. The only thing that got through to her was the protests of one balding, wrinkly old man pulling at the chains and staring at her with big blue eyes and vodka on his breath.
“Please,” he wheezed, his chest sounding distinctly like it wanted to leave his body. “Have you never lost someone you loved?”
Ivan was dead now. She had nothing to worry about getting out of here for apart from her own devilish pride.
The man took her silence as an assent, and continued, “Natasha, my family...”
“I am a spy, Smirnov,” Natasha said coolly. The last fleck of nail polish had come off, and the Land Rover was turning a corner. “I don’t have time for sentiment.”
“But your father - I knew him.”
“My father,” Natasha replied, standing up from her seat as the car began to move more slowly. She pressed her fingers into the canvas roof and found a weakness, which she quickly started cutting at with a knife hidden in the waistband of her trousers. “Is a dead man, as is any alliances he may have had. And besides –” She paused for a brief moment. “Ivan was not my father.”
The man opened his mouth to protest, but before he could, the Rover came to an abrupt halt, throwing all of the prisoners forward, not least Natasha, who’s knife cut down her right arm and left blood on the inside of her sleeve. She let out a curse word, but it was barely out in the air before she heard the gunshots, and the scream of the drivers from the front seat.
Prisoners were criminals and criminals were prisoners, but as far as Natasha could tell, the people surrounding her weren’t very good at being either. Immediately they began letting out little yells of ‘help’ and ‘stop that’ and ‘was that a gun?’ and some rapid Russian expletives, when any godforsaken spy would know to shut up, stay down and pretend nobody was there.
Natasha glanced around the back of the Rover once more, desperately searching for a get out clause, when the back door opened.
“Get out of the car,” a frightened looking officer said. There was blood on his uniform – he’d been shot, but he wasn’t dying as far as Natasha could tell. The prisoners began to get up, before realising that they were shackled and couldn’t.
A deep voice came from behind the officer. “Unlock them,” it said in a tone that struck of patience and danger, all at the same time. “Unlock them.”
The officer let out an ‘oh yes’ and, with shaking hands, began to the process of freeing the prisoners. Natasha pursed her lips whilst he worked with the old man in front of her, and quickly began to reassemble the handcuffs around her own slender, bleeding wrists. By the time he arrived, there was no difference between her and any of the others.
A few harsh pushes and declarations of ‘hurry up’ from the unseen figure and Natasha was out on the scratching grasses of the Russian countryside, the winter wind whipping around and tangling her red hair in vicious knots she’d have to cut out. Goosebumps appeared on her skin, and she rubbed at them through the black of her shirt, wincing at the cut that seeped even more vigorously with the cold.
And then he came into view.
He was a hulking figure – strong, broad, but with the distinct aura around him of being agile enough to move silently through the night. He had brown hair hanging down over his face, the majority of which was covered by a black mask, and he was wearing a pair of glasses that probably served him well during the winter months. A rifle was settled against his shoulder, resting as comfortably as a child beside its mother, and he held it with the same sentiment Natasha had seen many caress their lovers. Perhaps the most notable feature was the shining silver wrapped around his arm, and then, as she scrutinised more closely, she realised that in fact it was an entirely new limb constructed of the metal.
She realised then that she’d heard of him – of course she had. You didn’t get around Moscow for long without hearing the stories of the Winter Solder; assassin, ghost in the night. Natasha never believed in ghost stories, and those that had an inkling of truth in their framework did nothing more but interest her. Natasha had always been drawn to the dangerous.
Another bullet ricocheted through the air, and the officer with the shaking hands dropped to the ground. The Soldier didn’t turn his gaze away to even aim whilst he shot the other prisoners, those who tried to run or beg for mercy. Instead, his head remained focused strongly on Natasha, and she stared into those black glasses, perfectly content with whatever the outcome.
The snow was stained with blood, and there was nobody but Natasha and a lone man standing with a resigned expression on his face. He dropped to the ground moments later, and Natasha vaguely remembered reading of him – he led an underground opposition group to the KGB, spreading information from inside Moscow to the CIA.
She almost spat on him. There was one thing Natasha couldn’t stand, and that was traitors. Loyalty was a virtue even the most disgusting of human beings could uphold.
“Are you going to kill me, too?” she asked casually, when the Soldier lowered his rifle slightly. He seemed to have relaxed now; the tension was out of his shoulders, he was standing more widely apart in the snow. It was as if the sight of the blood calmed him. Natasha wished she couldn’t understand that.
“You’re not my target,” the Soldier replied.
“Neither were they,” she pointed out.
“They would’ve gotten in the way.”
“And I wouldn’t have?”
“No,” the Soldier responded, with such certain authority Natasha shuffled slightly on her feet. “You’re injured.”
Natasha glanced down at her arm, as if she couldn’t feel her heartbeat pounding through it with the ferocity of Stalin’s reign. “Huh,” she said with mild amusement. “Didn’t notice. It’s just a flesh wound though. Nothing too bad.”
The Soldier paused again. “I don’t kill the injured,” he murmured, so lowly she could barely hear it over the wind. “Not unless they shoot at me first.”
“Noble,” Natasha said with a light laugh. “Now what does an assassin want with something like nobility?”
“’m not an assassin,” the Soldier replied. Natasha raised an eyebrow. “Not any more than you are.”
Natasha almost laughed at the irony.
“Do you know who I am, Soldier?” she asked, because she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to shoot her anymore, and she was losing consciousness just a tad.
“I don’t need to,” the Soldier said sharply. He sounded like a machine when he did that, and maybe that was what he was. His arm was, anyways.
“Natalia Romanova,” Natasha said regardless. She wasn’t sure why she lied; she supposed it came more naturally to her than the truth, and she said it with such ease he would believe it without question. “If you wanted to.”
The Soldier reached slowly up to his glasses and pulled them off. He was darker than the average Russian, with heavier brows, but then there were more moving here too now – it wasn’t just the Slavs that made up Moscow’s heritage. Besides, didn’t people like the Soldier usually change countries – try to make a new life for themselves being the most feared of a fearful pack?
His eyes were blue. Natasha hadn’t expected the bright shade; rather she’d imagined his irises would be black to match the colour of the trigger.
“Where are you going to now?” she asked, slightly awkwardly. She could see stars in the corner of her eyes, and she blinked a few times fast to get rid of them. It only worked for a few seconds. The Soldier was shifting out of focus.
“That’s classified,” he replied. “Are you – are you ...”
She passed out, and when she woke up, she could barely recall being carried by strong arms – one colder than the wind, one warmer than the sun – an earthy body solid and hard underneath her, protecting her.
He could’ve left her, she thought to herself as she pushed the woollen covers back on the bed. She didn’t know where she was, or how far she was from Moscow, but she was safe, and she was warm and bandaged. He could’ve left her to the Russian winter, and she’d have been dead within the hour. He could’ve, but he didn’t – the man she’d watched kill six right before her very eyes.
What made her more special, more righteous than all the rest of them? What made her worth saving?
Whilst she pondered over these so intently it made her head hurt, the door of the dim room cracked open just a smidge. The Soldier entered slightly hesitantly, and when she motioned for him to come he walked more effortlessly in, albeit with a crick to his step like a clockwork doll wound up too tightly.
“Where am I?” she asked first, because usually she would’ve been gone by now but the knife she usually carried – her good knife – was somewhere in the middle of nowhere and her gun was missing from her back pocket. She couldn’t see out the window – it was covered in grunge and even then, there was nothing but a brick wall to view, and she was still light-headed from the blood loss.
“Stalingrad,” the Soldier responded.
“Volgograd,” Natasha corrected. The Soldier murmured a ‘yes’ under his breath, like he was programming himself to remember that, and his whisper sounded a bit like a prayer. Natasha kept an eye on him, and perhaps it wasn’t all because of her training; keep an eye on the target and all that, but especially when the target seems so goddamn awkward around everything.
“You knew Ivan,” the Soldier said. Natasha paused for a moment before nodding. “I knew him as well.”
‘You did?’ hung on the tip of Natasha’s tongue, but she was never the type to pretend she didn’t know something, so she said instead, “I know.”
“You did?”
“You’re the Winter Soldier,” Natasha said, partly because she didn’t care about Ivan anymore – dead was dead was dead – but also because this whole thing was like a lucid dream, admittedly one she’d had before. She’d imagined what the Soldier would’ve been like – it was something of a childhood fantasy for her to meet him, just to get to see his prodigy up close. Now that it was actually happening, it was the usual thing associated with childhood ambitions; a disappointment.
“Yes,” the Soldier replied. “And you’re Natalia Romanova. I knew Ivan.”
“You speak very stiff, you know that?” Natasha said. He was standing rather awkwardly in the middle of the room, and she patted the bed beside her. “You can sit down, you know. I won’t bite you.”
“Aren’t you –” he broke off for a second.
“Scared?” Natasha offered. “I don’t have time for scared.”
The Soldier considered her. “You’re an interesting character, Natalia Romanova.”
“Is that why you’ve kidnapped me and brought me to your lair?”
“This isn’t my lair,” the Soldier spluttered, and Natasha couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “You were bleeding. I fixed you.”
“You can’t just fix people without their permission. It’s rude.”
“I had to.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” Natasha said. There was a little bubble of irritation welling up inside her. “I can take care of myself.”
“I knew Ivan.”
“Why do you keep saying that? Do you want me to congratulate you or something?”
“I knew you.”
That shut her right up. The Soldier still hadn’t sat down by that point, but he was inching closer to her, so if she had a metre stick she could probably reach and poke him in the chest.
“I saw you in the ballet,” he explained slowly. “I’ve never known anyone before.”
Natasha raised an eyebrow. “You’ve bound to have known someone,” she said. “People can’t not know somebody.”
“I can,” the Soldier replied instantly – so snappy it almost caught her off guard. “’Cause whenever I meet someone, I forget them. You know?”
“No,” Natasha responded, perhaps the first time she’d been honest in her life. “I don’t know. Is there a point to this? Because if you’re trying to get a bullet through my skull, I’d prefer you just to get it over with.”
“I don’t want to kill you, Natalia Romanova,” the Soldier said, furrowing his eyebrows together in frustration. “I knew you. Your name sounds different but your face – your face is the same.”
Natasha bit down on her lip so suddenly it burst open. “What else do you know about me?” she asked cautiously. She’d found her gun tucked down into the mattress, and her fingers were drifting along the familiar contours of the weapon. The Soldier watched her hands carefully, and she took them back onto her lap.
“I used to know him well, Ivan. He called you his little spider,” he responded. “I always thought you were more like a Black Widow. Good skill-set, you know.”
“Glad you noticed,” she replied sarcastically, though she didn’t think he’d be able to grasp sarcasm. She thought he might just have been two murders away from bat-shit insane. “Maybe that’s what I should be called, then - Black Widow.”
The Soldier paused. “You have a specific skill set, Miss Romanova,” he repeated.
“Natalia. And you’ve said that.”
“I could make it better,” he broke in.
“I’m already doing fine,” Natasha replied, and she was, because she got jobs easily and killed for enough cash that she could live more comfortably than ever before in her life. But the Winter Soldier was here, and he was offering her a – a job? As far as strange happenings were concerned, this was perhaps the strangest. “What else could you provide me?”
“Prestige,” he replied. He was sitting down on the bed now, and his breath was cold against her skin where it touched it. “Vengeance. Respect. Whatever you want, I can help you.”
With his words, Code Name: Black Widow was born.
*
Natasha wasn’t sure what the Soldier’s company wanted with her talents, but she had learnt early on in her spying career it was easier not to ask questions. Questions led to answers, answers led to knowledge, knowledge led to death. In these parts, death was easy to come by, but Natasha wasn’t as fond of it as the Soldier seemed to be.
The more time Natasha spent with the man, the more confused she got about him. It seemed at times that he was less than a human, more of a machine, and then at others it was almost as if he was an old fashioned gentleman, letting her go first up the stairs and opening up doors for her during raids.
Odd was a vague term she could use to describe him; he was an enigma, and Natasha didn’t particularly like people she couldn’t quite understand. At least with Ivan, she knew his emotions towards her, and how corrupted he was when he wasn’t in her sight. With the Soldier, the only thing she knew was that he was determined to protect her.
This point was proven six months into her training as they camped out around the outskirts of Volgograd. She was decked out in a skin-tight black suit with so many pockets to contain her weapons she could barely recall where everything was, and her legs were stronger than they had ever been in her life. The Soldier knew a lot of fighting techniques, and it had taken some time for them to find the right one for Natasha, but now the fast learner was quickly becoming one of the most feared female agents in the entirety of the KGB.
He had pulled out what looked like a tooth, but what Natasha immediately recognised as the suicide pill. She’d always been fascinated by this type of thing, and so she had done her research – not usual knowledge for a fourteen year old girl to have. Whilst her best friends talked about the best Pointe shoes and whether or not to attend university, she was learning how to gauge when to pop the pill and end it all.
The small pill rested in the palm of his hand, just about the size of a pea but more deadly than most bullets, and he passed it over to her. Natasha raised an eyebrow, but clasped her fist around it regardless.
“Cyanide?” she mumbled. There was nobody else with them given that this was a highly sensitive mission, and she knew that if she got captured the enemies would have a fun time torturing her for evidence, but for some reason suicide had never seemed like an option to her. Now, she was wondering how she could’ve been so blind.
The Soldier inhaled sharply and nodded. Sometimes it looked like when he breathed, it hurt.
“I don’t need it,” he said lowly. “I’ve been tortured enough in my life. They’re not going to kill me now.”
She had always supposed there was something behind the brokenness in his eyes. She wondered who he had been before, where he had come from, who he had loved, who he reached out for in the darkness of the night. But she didn’t ask him to expand, nor did she question why the enemies they were headed towards would care how much he had endured.
“They?” was what she said instead. The Soldier quickly shook his head, as if he shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“Never mind,” he said hurriedly. “Just – keep it. What they would do to you – it would be better to be dead.”
There was a locket that rested against her neck given to her by Ivan on her sixteenth birthday. She clicked it open and placed the pill inside alongside the picture of her and her biological family, before looking back up at the Soldier.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her throat closing over with the threat of tears. He too looked misty eyed. “What have they done to you, Soldier?”
“Not enough, obviously,” the Soldier replied, closing his eyes and sighing. He didn’t look angry anymore, like he usually did – just tired. Natasha was beginning to understand. She was always exhausted, and the list of people wanting her dead grew with each and every day. It got infuriating having to look over your shoulder every ten minutes and still not be sure if you were safe.
“What’s your name,” she said, more of a demand than a question. The gold of the locket was warm from the heat of her skin, and she clasped onto it with icy hands.
“Asset,” the Soldier replied. She could literally see him closing down like shutters on a pub early in the morning, and the air got so much colder. “Come on, Natalia. We better get moving.”
She didn’t ask him if he ever wanted out, if he ever got sick of tottering on the line between life and death. She wanted to ask him if he desired for it to be over, if he thought of the afterlife often as she thought he did.
She didn’t question him as he shot five people right in between the eyes and then apologised to her afterwards without even hesitating, as if he didn’t believe she should have to see that type of thing.
She didn’t do anything but shoot and strangle and make grown men cry as the Soldier purged their offices, stole their company’s secrets. She just went along with it, hoping that one day, a mission would come that would fill up the hole inside of her, that would take the vacant expression off his face and replace it with the smile she’d only seen once.
Standing in a pool of stranger’s blood, Natasha looked over at the Soldier, and he looked at her, and within moments her lips were upon his and he was lifting her up, the gun in his hand pressing into the lower of her back and she didn’t feel scared, the pounding of her heart didn’t come from the blurring of the police sirens just outside the window because she was safe.
She was safe as long as the two of them were together, as long as his lips tasted like gunpowder and lost lives, as long as these two broken people could try with all their might to fix each other with cello-tape and too-weak glue.
It wasn’t love, but it filled her half-heartedly, and so it was enough. It was enough that she didn’t question it – she had the Soldier, and he had her.
*
Sometimes she went weeks without seeing him. Other times she never saw an hour without him in it. She was constantly in a state of broken and bleeding lips or ones that craved the feel of someone else’s upon them.
It became a habit. Every kill led to a kiss. Every cell they were in lead to an embrace. Every time they hated themselves, hated their own bodies and everything they stood for, they gave themselves to each other.
And she knew the Soldier wasn’t meant to do this, knew neither of them were supposed to. She knew that the Soldier’s company – whoever they may have been – weren’t pleased with this, had heard afterwards in vague terms what they did to him every time they smelt rose perfume off his clothes. But it was a drug, in the same way as war was; neither of them could stop. Neither of them particularly wanted to.
They were on what would be their last mission together, but neither of them knew that at the time. It was in a hotel much like the one the Soldier had brought her to that fateful day, and the wallpaper peeled off the walls and there was a crack in the bathroom sink they could open up to hide bullets in. There were bombs lying around the room on the floor, against the desk, hidden amongst the ceiling lamps, but it wouldn’t really have mattered if they’d gone off; they would be together, and it would be over – finally. It would finally be over.
Natasha wondered if it was bad that at twenty-odd years old, she wanted it to be over.
She turned over in bed, fully dressed and armed because it was easier to run that way, and felt the Soldier’s light breaths across her face. His flesh hand reached up, warm and comforting, and cupped her face, pulling her in for a kiss. Their mouths drifted together lazily, like the waves lapping at the shore, and Natasha considered whether this was enough for him, if he ever wanted more than just a partner who he kissed sometimes.
“They don’t like this,” the Soldier murmured breathlessly when they broke apart. Natasha bit down on her lip and shuffled slightly amongst the covers. It was difficult to lie comfortably with a knife against your skin.
“Who are ‘they’?” she asked, knowing well that he wouldn’t answer. He pursed his lips together, and she sighed. “Do you like it?”
“I do,” the Soldier replied, almost instantaneously. “Do you?”
“I do,” Natasha responded, but she wasn’t sure if either of them were being honest. If circumstance hadn’t brought them together, they’d have never shot each other a second glance. If they weren’t the Bonnie & Clyde of Moscow, they might not have anything. “I like the kissing.”
“I like the way you make me feel human again,” he whispered, and it shook her down, right to her very core, so she was shivering even though he wasn’t touching her anymore. “They’re coming for us.”
“I know,” Natasha said. “I could tell by – by the way you kissed me.”
“Are you angry at me?” he asked, chewing on the corner of his lip. “I – I forget everything. I have to try really hard to even remember you.”
“It’s not your fault,” she comforted, pushing a stray lock of hair out of his face. “It’s what they’ve done to you. You – you’re more than that. And you know you could forget me and I’d be right there, making you remember again.”
“You are good at that,” he smirked. Natasha smiled back, and it felt foreign on her features.
“When will they arrive?” she asked, so casually, as if they were just talking about what they’d have for breakfast the next morning.
“A couple minutes, at most,” he responded, just as inconspicuously.”You should go. They won’t hurt me – I’m their Asset.”
“They hurt you all the time. And that hurts me.”
“If you die because of this, I’ll –”
“I’m not going to die. I’ve been through worse.”
“This is HYDRA we’re dealing with, Natalia.”
Natasha’s eyes suddenly widened, and she pushed herself up off her side on her elbows, so she was looking down at the Soldier.
“HYDRA,” she breathed. “You mean all this time – I’ve been working for HYDRA?”
He opened his mouth to say something, but before he had the chance gunshots rang out through the thin walls of the hotel. Screams echoed from just down the hall, and they both sprung immediately out of the bed, slowed down only minutely by the tangle of the covers.
“Out the window,” the Soldier demanded, and although Natasha was never one for following orders she did this time, because he knew them better than anyone, because it was HYDRA...
They were only on the third floor and there was a canopy on the second, so she could easily make her way down. She paused for a second on the windowsill and captured the Soldier’s lips in one final kiss.
“Stay safe,” they both whispered at the same time, their version of goodbye. The door of the hotel room opened and she dropped down onto the canopy, letting out a light gasp as she rolled over and then fell to the ground.
Thankfully, her training came into effect and she landed on her feet. After a brief moment of recollection she began charging down the street, hearing the yells of the agents from the open window.
She glanced back and saw a metal thumbs up out the window, and she grinned.
She ran forward, feet pounding against the gravel alleyway, towards the next big adventure, where she would see him once more.
But when the next big adventure came, he was nowhere to be found.
*
The Winter Soldier didn’t appear for a long time after that. All of Russia believed it was true that he was a ghost story that had survived through the war, but now the war was over, and so was what he represented. Natasha knew better, at least for a while. Before they came for her, too.
It burnt straight through her, left scars where scars had never been before, and it tore her apart inside. She tried to hold on, but there wasn’t enough to hold on to – months she’d been doubting what they had, wondering why he hadn’t returned, thinking he was dead. She had nothing – nobody – to remember but the Red Room and Moscow and – and –
“Selective memory, Miss Romanoff,” the scientist – Zola – cooed, as he stuck a needle in her arm, bursting through skin, blood gushing out and splattering against his white coat. She was struggling against the bonds, because she was nothing if not a fighter, and she was trying to scream but there was a gag in her mouth and blood in between her teeth. “Selective memory is the key.”
They kept the training, and they kept the murders, and they kept the anger and the pain and the desperation. They saw all those things, heard her calling them out, heard her begging relentlessly that if they were taking him they could at least take everything else with them, but they didn’t.
They took Ivan. They took the Soldier – James. His name was James, they told her, right before they stripped it from her, told her never to mention a soul what had happened here, as if she knew herself –
Tore her apart. Took everything away. Brainwashed her. There was no sugar-coating this, no pretending that everything would be okay, not when all she remembered was the Red Room –
Her gushing ledger –
The hospital she burnt to the ground –
The missions she carried out alone, this time –
She woke up screaming every day for six months, until she stopped sleeping entirely.
*
Screeching tires left skids on the road, the wheel spinning uncontrollably in her bloodied hands, the car heading straight for a cliff.
She didn’t die then, but she thought she was going to. She supposed that was why her life – or what she could recall of her life – flashed before her eyes in a series of sepia dipped tones.
This was what she got for turning over to the good side. At least with the villains, she knew where she stood. When you helped causes that were worth something, there was always at least one traitor. Dishonest men you could always trust to be dishonest.
It wasn’t supposed to be a difficult mission, not compared to many of those she had done before. Escorting a nuclear engineer out of the country was a piece of cake, till someone shot out the tires near Odessa. She was so close, yet so far, and as she landed abruptly on the other side of the cliff she could think of nothing else but ‘come on Natasha you can do this you’ve done worse before come on come on’.
With as much force as her broken body could muster she bust out of the window, pulling the engineer along behind her, an old be-speckled man shivering uncontrollably from the unfamiliar adrenalin pumping through his veins. Natasha pulled the gun out of the waistband of her trousers and surveyed the area. There was no one to be seen.
Then the dust cleared, and she could see him – big and broad and dangerous – amongst the shifting sands. Her heart dropped like a stone, because it felt like this had happened before, and she had the distinct impression she’d barely made it out that time.
Natasha only had so many lives left, after all, and maybe this was her ninth. She prepared for the inevitable, knew that she needed to finish the mission because she might as well there was no getting out, and moved in front of the man.
The masked soldier standing in front of her didn’t even hesitate before shooting straight through her hip. Her eyes widened, breath caught in her throat, and she looked down just underneath and to the right of her naval, where her guts were threatening to spill out over her hands...
The engineer behind her dropped to the ground, not even trying to remain upright, and she knew that he wasn’t going to make it – the bullet had went straight through an organ. Natasha looked up, but the shooter was gone.
“Agent Romanoff, what’s happening?” a static voice asked over her in-ear.
“The engineer’s down,” Natasha responded, wincing. “I’m bleeding pretty bad. Someone shot us, someone good.”
“Did you get a look at their face? I’m sending emergency out to you now.”
“They were wearing a mask, but it was a man. Big and broad. Metal arm.”
There was silence, and then Maria Hill began speaking again. “Have you ever heard of the Winter Soldier, Natasha?”
She almost felt like she had, but she mumbled, “No.”
“He’s a Russian assassin. Been around for years. Thought he was a ghost story, but now –”
“Maria?”
“Yes?”
“Do you mind if I just stop talking for a while?”
“Oh yes. Of course. I’ll stay on the line Natasha.”
“Okay. I’m just going to sleep.”
“Natasha!”
But she was already unconscious.
*
Steve Rogers was filled with goodness, and it cut like something not normal.
He walked in a way that Natasha felt she’d seen before; a swing in his hips, a determination in his eyes, the strength of his shoulders. He was so good, so beautiful, that Natasha couldn’t look at him for too long without it burning like the sun.
In her humble opinion, they should never have defrosted him. They never should have taken him out of the ice. Such a whole person should not have been exposed to this world – they should’ve left him until the world sorted itself out, whenever that might’ve been.
Steve was a soldier, and she knew that, but he didn’t have the mentality of one; the cold, broken gaze at the target that meant nothing more to him than a tick on a list.
She wouldn’t even have met Steve, if it wasn’t for that phone call she got during an interrogation. She was all for refusing without compromise; she wouldn’t even be an Avenger if it wasn’t for those three words:
“Barton’s been compromised.”
It wasn’t love. It wasn’t love. It was just – a bullet hole in her stomach, though there were no guns in sight. A boiling in her veins without a kettle. A splitting migraine without a cause. It crashed through her, taking down everything in its way, filling up every cell with ‘Clint Clint Clint Clint Clint’.
It was irritating, if nothing else, because Natasha knew one thing and one thing only from her years of training and experience; love was a messy emotion. Care was overrated and unnecessary. Clint Barton was just a friend and a partner, and the revelation that he had been – compromised – was nothing to her.
So why did it mean that she was standing in front of Loki at that moment, bargaining away her entire world for one man? Why was she pretending it was a guise, a clever ploy to find out his plan, even if this was what it was - why was she pretending as if she honestly didn’t care, that Loki’s words were rushing to her heart and crumpling what was left of it into little meaningless pieces?
Left hand–right hand. That was what everyone described Clint and Natasha as. They went together like butter on toast, like spies on a mission; they were extensions of each other, humans that were so much more when they worked co-dependently. Maybe that was why it hurt so much, why he was the only thing S.H.I.E.L.D could use to get through to her – she didn’t want to lose a highly trained partner. That was it.
When Clint asked what Loki did to her – what made her ready to wade into war which had never exactly been her forte – she couldn’t think of anything else other than those three little words back in the warehouse, the three words that got her into this thing in the first place.
“I’ve been compromised,” she answered, rather diplomatically, though she knows that he understands her more than she understands herself. And she was right. Because straight after the battle, while they were eating shawarma and listening to Tony and Steve argue until Thor screamed enough, he gave her a tiny silver necklace in the shape of the arrow.
“In case you get compromised again,” he murmured. “And I’ve got a spider tattoo on me already, so.”
“Budapest,” she said, with a small smile.
“Budapest,” he replied.
She loved him, but agents didn’t have time for love. Agents only had the shadows. And maybe that’s why he left on a mission mere hours after that, leaving Natasha to another Russian assassin (as if she hadn’t dealt with enough of those already), a rapidly adjusting Steve and a guy with wings.
Of course, a couple of months later, Steve was going on a suicide mission to find the Winter Soldier. Natasha had tried in vague terms to dissuade him from such a venture, but Steve was nothing if not stubborn – one of his better qualities, perhaps.
When he asked if she was coming, she said no. Said she had to reinvent herself. Said she needed to take some time out – find herself all over again now that S.H.I.E.L.D had gone down. She didn’t tell him that memories had started coming back to her in the middle of the night and they scared the ever-living shit out of her, but yet invigorated her – made her feel as if there was something missing in her life that would be filled if she found him.
If she found the Winter Soldier.
But she had to go alone. She couldn’t drag Steve into the thick of the Russian winter – couldn’t make him traverse the old blood-stained paths she’d came to know so well so many years ago. She couldn’t do that to him, not when – not when he was so good and pure and worth saving. And now, knowing that the Soldier meant something to Steve as well – something big, judging by the look in his eyes – she knew even more that she needed to find him, needed to prove herself to Steve, or to God, or whoever was out there not believing in her.
She began the search in Moscow, in old dingy warehouses that her old comrades used to smoke pot in. She quickly moved to Volgograd, weaving in and out of every place she could remember, every meaningless piece that appeared in her dreams. She attended memory therapy, took up yoga, did everything and anything she could because she knew what it was to lose someone, or to think you have – she knew what it was like to lose Clint, and the Soldier was Steve’s Clint. Bucky was Steve’s Clint.
Bucky might not be there anymore, and Natasha knew that better than anyone, had heard it repeated time and time again by Sam to a deafened Steve. But she also knew that if anything she knew about the Soldier was true, it was that he was loyal, and he was a protector, and he had protected Steve for so damn long – even in the Red Room, when he didn’t know who he was protecting – that he was bound to remember. He saved him, for God’s sake, when he could’ve let him drown.
A couple phone calls a month to Steve just to ask how he was getting on, tell him some bullshit story about how she was recreating herself underneath the Spanish sun and had set up residence with a sunny Hispanic family, and she was relatively pleased with herself for tying up the loose ends. If she disappeared – well, nobody would be able to find the body. Steve wouldn’t have to know what she was looking for. She’d have died in Russia, like she was supposed to.
She found him, or he found her. She imagined she’d been trailing him for months, always five steps behind the last dropped crumb, and only now he’d agreed to slow down and let her catch up.
“I knew him,” was the first words he said to her. Not “Nat”. Not “stay safe”.
His eyes were bright red and they were bloodshot. He hadn’t been sleeping – whatever experiments he’d had done to him was keeping him alive without it. He was skinny, excessively so, and when Natasha looked at him she could see ribs even through the armour. It was a skeleton standing in front of her where it had been a soldier, and she knew then she’d never loved him – it was Steve, all goodness Steve, who could bring him back.
“I know,” she responded, a small smile on her face. “He knew you, too.”
“Is he searching for me?” the Soldier asked.
“Of course,” she replied. “It’s Steve.”
Then, he did something she’d never seen even hinted at before. He laughed.
“I missed him so much and I didn’t even know it,” the Soldier said lowly. “Thank you, Natalia.”
“Natasha,” she corrected. “I’ve changed since we–”
“I don’t remember what we were,” he cut in. “Please don’t expect me to.”
“I didn’t either, for a while,” Natasha responded. “It’ll all come back.”
“Everything?”
“Everything,” she sighed. “But it’s okay. You’ll have Steve.”
The Soldier – Bucky – pursed his lips together into a thin line, leaning his shoulder against one of the trees that surrounded them.
“And you?” he asked. “Who will you have, after this is all over?”
The corner of her mouth twitched upwards, though her eyes were threatening to leak tears over porcelain skin.
“Nobody,” Natasha answered. “Just the way I like it.”
He didn’t look like he believed her, but he didn’t question it either. Just like Steve.
*
Natasha called Sam and told him to drag Steve back to Washington no matter what it took, and thankfully, the Falcon didn’t require much explanation or motivation to drag his sorry-ass best friend home and slap some sense into him. The trek from Russia to America was long and filled with waits in airport security, trying desperately to explain to the security guards that yes, his arm was made of metal and no, he couldn’t remove his fucking arm so they could check it. Natasha also had to practice her rusty persuasion techniques when the Soldier accidentally strangled one of the security guards, resulting in bruises all over his neck and a couple hours in the local A&E. She couldn’t bring him anywhere.
Both of them decked out in black hooded sweatshirts and loose fitting jeans walking along the streets of America, both looking over their shoulders every couple minutes because it was a habit that wasn’t easily broken, even if they could end whoever threatened them within minutes. Natasha spent the travel time filling Bucky in on the events that occurred in New York, the different Avengers, and provided helpful commentary on how to identify each one. Bucky seemed particularly interested in Tony, saying that he had known a Stark in his time and he was a hoot and a half, and Natasha had begrudgingly agreed that Tony wasn’t that bad. Crazy, but not that bad. Pepper grounded him.
Steve had told her about Bucky when he was half buzzed on alcohol and tiredness, when they were hanging out in Sam’s house following the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. He’d told her about the fall from the train, and their creation of the Howling Commandos, and all of these things she’d already known from the Smithsonian exhibition. But then he told her about sorting out the pillows on the floor during sleepovers, and the way they’d been sleeping in 1939 when the war started, and how Bucky had hugged him then and he was shaking, because he would be one of the first conscripted.
Steve had told Natasha in no certain terms that he’d both admired and hated Bucky, because that’s what love of someone so much greater did to people – it turned them against that person, and then it turned them against themselves. Bucky was so much stronger, smarter, more capable than Steve, so why should he have been the one to die? The one to be reborn when he didn’t even want to be?
“Bucky always wanted to die a hero’s death,” Steve mumbled pathetically one night when Natasha wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. “But they didn’t let him. I should’ve fallen. He could’ve been Captain America – a better one than me, anyways.”
She was told about the punching out of Grady Macey every Friday because he dared to threaten frail Steve. She was told about the time when Steve had a fever and was out of his mind and ended up kissing Bucky when it was borderline illegal to do so. She knew how Bucky had acted no different to him after that, but had forevermore been even more touchy feely, so Steve could basically recreate the feel of his skin in his sleep. She saw the photographs, and she saw the drawings Steve had based off of memory and Polaroid’s, and she knew more about Bucky than she did about herself, but she’d never pieced it together, never thought about the Soldier being the same as this charismatic woman-pleasing Brooklyn lad.
Sam was with Steve when they walked into the Avengers Tower arm in arm, Natasha supporting the Soldier more than the other way around. Steve had almost started crying, the Soldier had almost turned around and ran out the door, and Natasha had almost started laughing at the absurdity of the entire thing. Because really, none of her life made sense anymore, between super-heroes and master assassins and boys from 1943 in love with each other more than anyone else. Yet she was the happiest she’d ever been.
“Missed you, jerk,” Steve said finally, once he had collected himself, and they were too far apart, Natasha could tell. Both of them were swaying on the spot, silently begging the other to break the walls they’d built up over the years – the walls HYDRA had created to keep them apart and which had come crashing down.
Bucky Barnes was nothing but a fighter, nothing if not stubborn. Just like Steve.
“Wouldn’t have thought of coming to Russia, punk,” Bucky teased, and yes, it was Bucky. A slightly strained smirk was printed on his handsome features, distorted only by the dirt on his face and the long hair that hung in matted waves against his cheekbones. Natasha made a mental note to cut it herself within the next couple days, because the barber would ultimately end in the Soldier resurfacing; pointy objects near his throat wouldn’t be a good thing.
Steve smiled so easily, like he’d always done, and let out a little laugh. He moved forward, and Bucky did at the same time, until they were buried in each other’s arms and grabbing on so tightly it was like they were the only living things on earth left, the only thing that each other knew like the back of their hand. And Natasha was damn near crying, but she was determined to be bigger and stronger than Sam, who was already sniffing and wiping furiously at his eyes with the sleeve of a cream sweater.
“I love you, Buck,” Steve murmured, just loud enough that Natasha could hear. Bucky let out a slight whimper that shuddered through him, like an animal that had finally died after years of running.
Natasha understood the feeling.
“I love you too, Stevie.”
Suddenly, the feeling came pounding into her like a tsunami wave, and she had no hope of containing it this time, not when a silver arrow rested in between her chest bones and struck her with coolness every morning she put it on.
She needed to find him.
*
“Tasha.”
It was a dusty bar, one she hadn’t been in for years, but it still smelt just the same – like alcoholism and people running away from their domestic disputes. The kind of normality Natasha craved in a way. Perhaps in another life she would be married by now, have a couple kids, work an office job and walk the streets of Moscow in too high heels and too tight skirts like all the rest of the Russian women. But this wasn’t another life. This was the one she was stuck with, and the one that, if this all went well, was just about to get a whole lot better.
Wearing a short blue dress and a pair of white ballet pumps she’d bought on their last visit to the city, she felt distinctly out of place amongst the darkly dressed men and the smokiness of the cigarettes. Not that Natasha didn’t always feel out of place for her red hair and the way in which everybody in a room turned to look when she walked in – not a good trait for a spy – but this was different. She didn’t want everybody to be looking at her, she just wanted one.
Blue eyes watched her as she moved across the creaking wooden floors towards him at the bar. He was sitting beside a large, half finished glass of beer, and his arrows were resting against his legs. They fell to the floor with a crash when he turned around to greet her, and she smirked slightly.
“Be careful there,” she said lowly. “Don’t want to be compromised.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, but they both knew he already was aware of the answer. “Did you come all the way to Budapest just to see me, Natasha?”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself,” she teased. “I missed the city. It holds some good memories. I like being able to remember things – happy things. And when I’m with you –”
She paused and shrugged her shoulders.
“All the things just happen to be happy. So I hoped I’d find you.”
“You’re a complex woman, Natasha,” Clint said, but he was smiling. “One minute you’re there even when I’m brainwashed and want to kill you, the next you’re leaving the first time the ‘l’ word is even hinted at.”
“Love is for children.”
“Is that what you told Loki?”
Natasha broke off for a moment, suddenly remembering. “Yes,” she said, furrowing her eyebrows. “He thought we were – he thought I was – what did you tell him?”
“What?” Now it was Clint’s time to look confused. Natasha wasn’t buying it for a moment.
“Loki wouldn’t have come to that himself. What did you tell him about – about us?”
“I can’t remember, Tasha,” Clint answered. “I was – I wasn’t myself.”
“No, but whatever you’re thinking he must’ve heard. So what were you thinking?”
Clint let out a deep sigh. He took a few gulps out of his beer, finishing it off, and then rejected the bartender’s offer of a refill.
“I was thinking about you and me,” he replied. “Natasha and Clint. The way we’ve always been. You know you’re the biggest double agent S.H.I.E.L.D has? The one risk I’ve taken with my career? You know nobody actually expected you to go along with the Avengers?”
“But I did,” Natasha responded, slightly defensive. “I did go along with it, and I helped. You know I’d never go against –”
“Against me, I know,” Clint said. They were standing so close now she could smell the alcohol off his breath, and she knew he could smell the cigarettes off of her’s. “I just – I need to tell you something.”
“Do you, though?” Natasha asked, placing a hand on the back of Clint’s neck. His hands rested on the curve of her hips, hitching up the dress slightly. She could feel his heart pounding, or maybe it was his own, or maybe they were beating in sync because they were so close. Either way, she didn’t want to move away. “Because if you said – if you said that word, I might not be able to –”
“Okay,” Clint conceded, chewing down on the inside of his mouth. Natasha used her free hand to trace the contour of his cheek, marvelling in each part of him – he was so familiar to her, like the cracks in her own skin or the butt of a gun, and she loved him, even if she couldn’t bring herself to say it just then. “I won’t say it then. You can say it first, when you’re ready.”
“But I do,” Natasha mumbled lowly. Her throat was thick with emotion and she could hardly speak. She couldn’t believe that someone could look at her like this; like she hung the goddamn stars above them. It wasn’t that she needed anyone to save her – that was the last thing on Natasha Romanoff’s mind – but it was nice, that someone could gaze through all the awful things she had done and look at her like an actual human being. It was nice that someone could see her, and it was amazing that person was Clint.
“I know that,” Clint replied. “And you know that – that I do too.”
She thought that was the perfect time then to lean in, to press their lips together so that she was as near to him as she had ever been, and to taste the beer that lined his mouth, the sweet chapped skin that she would come to know as dearly as the rest of him.
Clint’s hands grasped even more tightly onto her hips, pulling her closer closer closer as if he couldn’t get close enough, and she was on his lap, hands caressing the back of his head and stroking against his hair, the scar on the back of his head, the person she had protected for so many years and who had protected her as well –
And Natasha thought that, in a world where two boys from 1943 could be broken down and remade and find each other again, maybe a Soviet assassin and a previous S.H.I.E.L.D agent would be able to finally win a game of Russian roulette.