Come back, I still need you
Everyone had agreed it was best for Bucky to stay in Cryostasis until someone could figure out what to do and how to fix the programming in his brain and she'd kept a casual indifference about it. Bucky was starting to remember Steve but he'd said absolutely nothing about her which was fine, she had told herself over and over again that it was fine; Bucky Barnes might never remember her and maybe - for him - that was a good thing. She'd lived this long with it she could live with it forever if she had no choice.
Eventually she'd have to put a hell of a lot of distance between herself and these people anyway because eventually they'd start to ask questions about why she wasn't aging. She was surprised that Clint hadn't already but she knew Barton, he'd just think it was down to a good skincare routine or something as normal as that, he didn't tend to overthink anything and that was why she loved him so much. It was easy to be around Clint because he tried to keep his world as simple as possible.
He'd learned quick that it didn't always work like that. It had been hard as hell pretending to be on opposite sides to her best friend during the whole battle-thing but she'd promised him that everything she'd done would be for a good reason and to her it was.
I said I'd help you find him not catch him, there's a difference.
She had indeed told T'Challa that she'd help him find Bucky Barnes but never in all of that had she said she'd allow him to capture him. She wanted to know for herself if there was anything still in there of the man she'd known all those years ago and she still wasn't certain about it to this day but a part of her still hoped and she chastised herself for that. She'd never been naive, she'd never wasted much time hoping anything and she chose not to for a damn good reason.
She wasn't foolish, she wasn't some little girl that believed good always prevailed over evil in the world because she already knew that wasn't true, she was living, breathing proof that good did not always prevail over evil and so was Bucky. If good prevailed over evil all of the time neither of them would've been through what they had.
She promised she'd be there for Steve and so she stood away from everyone else with her arms folded, her feet slightly parted and her hair hanging loose around her shoulders and so far she managed to look casual. She inhaled a deep breath as she watched Steve and Barnes talk, she paid no particular attention to what they were saying to one another and her eyes roamed around the room. This place was almost too much like the facility she'd grown up in and she hated it.
Barnes stepped inside of the cryotube and he spoke a final reassurance to Steve as she kept a safe distance away and she glanced down at the floor. He was strapped in and she flicked her eyes to him for a moment and she remained rooted to the spot, she couldn't move in that moment even if she had wanted to. She watched as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes and she could feel the lump in her throat and the quickening of her breathing but she remained there.
She remained unable to move and she remained quiet watching the whole thing unfolding before her because she could do little else but that, she couldn't intervene or try to stop what was about to happen even if a part of her wanted to do exactly that and so Natasha remained quiet...
Only she wasn't quiet at all. She might have had no awareness of what was happening but she wasn't quiet at all.
She was screaming. She was screaming No over and over again with such pain lacing her voice and she had tears pouring down her cheeks without her even realising what was going on or that she was doing it. Not one part of her registered that she was doing anything but what she thought she was doing: Standing there quietly just allowing what was happening to happen without question but that wasn't true at all.
Natasha Romanov was screaming loudly and fighting against a pain that she'd been running from for over fifty years.
Someone stepped toward her and she felt their hand touch her shoulder and in that moment she spun, her hand closed around their wrist and she kicked out with a straight hit to the stomach that rocked her leg, she released their wrist as they folded from the blow and her knee came up to meet their nose before she spun once more and her foot connected with the side of their head knocking them down to the floor.
Adrenaline raced through her system and she fought to breathe. Everything around her was foggy and it felt distant like she was underwater and it was miles and miles away and it wasn't here. It wasn't now. She was no longer here and she was no longer in that moment. She had traveled back over fifty years ago to one of the most painful memories that she had locked inside of that mind of hers.
She remembered being held back, the two men stood on either side of her with such tight grips on the top of her arms that if she were human it'd bruise and she fought. She fought like hell and she cried out his name over and over, she watched as two other men threw him back into the tube with enough force to knock the wind out of him and his eyes met hers and she could read the apology, the regret and the desperation as his hand reached out for her but she couldn't move.
She tried again to move, to break free of the grip but she couldn't. The next thing she remembered was the flash as his body was frozen and it almost seemed instantaneous. A cruel smile spread across the lips of the man that stepped in front of her and he told her that he'd warned her against acting out and she'd been too stupid to listen to him. He had his hand on her chin gripping it tightly as he spoke before he jammed a needle into her neck, she could feel the liquid burning through her for just a brief, fleeting moment and then there was nothing.
Nothing... Just blackness.
She'd have been more aware of what was going on around her if the memory wasn't so real and vivid in her mind. She didn't register who it was she'd hurt nor did she register the second person that moved to her side, to her she couldn't see their faces clearly all she could think about was the men that had held her place all those years ago and they took a fist to the nose that had her pull her hand back with blood staining her knuckles and then from behind her, someone closed their arms around her body.
"Natasha, Natasha what's going on?" Natasha... No. The name did nothing.
It provoked nothing but anger and she swung her head back. She didn't know whether or not she connected with anything but they dropped their arms from her body and she bolted, running for the door as she threw it open and she ran, she ran and ran until she physically couldn't anymore, until she fell to the ground and she screamed all over again though this time she was aware that she was doing it. Her hands flew to her head as she rested there in the grass and she could feel tears streaming hot and fast down her cheeks.
She shook her head so fiercely as she fought to steady her breathing. She danced a fine line between who she was and who she'd spent years fighting to be. The words that monster has spoken to her that day felt as fresh in her mind as if he'd just said them to her now: You're ours, Little Spider and don't you ever forget it.
She wasn't her own, she wasn't his, she didn't get to choose she was their toy and they turned her into whatever they wanted her to be. Natasha wasn't - and would never - be free. She was their tool to be used and manipulated until there was no longer a use for her and then she'd meet a bullet to the brain and that was that.
They'd made her watch because they wanted her to suffer, they wanted to remind her just how easy they could take away everything she cared about and how easily they'd destroy her if she ever thought to act out again. This was to get her to comply. This was to make her realise they were still in control and there was nothing she could ever do to change that. She belonged to them. She was a tool, a toy and nothing more. They'd made her watch every second of it to prove to her that she'd never be free.
They'd made her watch every second of it to prove to him that they weren't afraid to hurt her to prove a point to him. He'd been fighting just as hard for her as she had for him that day and neither of them had won their battles and each had lost the other.
She heaved in several deep breaths as she fought to steady herself not that it was working. She couldn't breathe. Her mind was tearing itself apart going back and forth between her old life and the one that she'd created for herself since Clint had brought her into SHIELD all those years ago. There was a break there, a hole so deeply hidden and buried, a trigger inside of her brain that she hadn't even known existed until today.
A trigger that'd torn her apart then and there and destroyed years and years of building walls, working through her pain and building a new life for herself in one split second.
Repeating that very same thing and losing him all over again to what they'd done to him was all it had taken to break her all over again, that scene was never supposed to repeat itself but then the two of them were never supposed to be in the same place again. She was never supposed to come across James Barnes while he had any semblance of self, she wondered if it had been intentional and they'd put it inside of her just in case it ever happened but not even they could've predicted that.
Maybe it was in case the two of them ever had to work together again and they'd cross lines. It was likely. What better way to punish her than to have her mind fragment if she dared to defy them by recreating one of the most painful experiences she'd ever had? They were certainly cruel and callous enough to do it.
She picked herself up and she wiped away the tears as she made her way back toward the facility, she looked altogether worse for the wear with puffy red eyes, one hand covered in blood and a shaky body as she walked inside barely able to keep herself on her feet. She was flashing between two conflicting sides of one mind and she hated it. She didn't know who she was from one moment to the next but she knew that she probably shouldn't be here right now but she needed to figure out what had happened between then and being here now.
Steve walked toward her with his hands held out in front of him and she stopped moving altogether.
"Nat, it's okay. I'm not gonna hurt you." Steve sounded strained as he fought to reassure her.
Hurt her? Natasha's expression became confused and she shook her head to tell him that she didn't understand. What was he talking about? She knew Steve wouldn't hurt her, he was her friend... He'd proven that to her a thousand times over the last few years and not for one second had she feared he'd hurt her... What...
What happened?
"I don't- I don't understand What..." She spoke with a shaky voice. "Steve, what are you talking about?"
She managed some strength this time. Just a little, just a little and she knew it'd fade soon enough but for now it was all she had and all she had to hold to.
"You were screaming, you were screaming when we put Bucky into the cryotube and then you flipped. You beat the heck out of me, out of Clint... Do you remember any of this?" He spoke softly almost like he was afraid to spook her.
She noted the safe distance he kept but she shook her head at his question.
"No." She replied uncertainly. "I wasn't screaming. I- I don't-"
No, that wasn't possible. She stepped back and wrapped her arms around herself though this time it wasn't defensive, it was sheer protection. She was trying to keep herself safe from whatever it was that right now had her shaken in a way she hadn't ever thought was possible. Natasha Romanov didn't break. She didn't falter. She was one of the worlds best spies and most deadly assassins and she did not falter. She was human granted, or at least to a degree but she was more composed than that.
Her eyes flicked around as she fought to distract herself. She noted that it was dark outside and that the stars were obscured by clouds; it was going to rain tonight and she could tell by the odd sort of scent in the air that most people couldn't even smell but her acute senses meant that she could. She'd always quite liked it if she was going to be honest, it was something that reminded her that there was some normalcy in the world and not everything could be controlled.
She loved the rain, she'd always loved the rain.
The floor beneath her was muddied from her shoes and she felt momentarily bad for that, she hadn't even noticed the grass dotted in various places on her legs and she leaned down to pluck a leaf from just below her knee and she twirled the stork between her finger and her thumb to give her something to focus on in that moment. Steve seemed to be trying to find the gentlest way possible to speak to her, he was obviously worried about something.
What had she done? She hadn't hurt anyone, that wasn't possible and she definitely wasn't screaming.
"Natasha, what happened?" Steve sounded like a worried father. "Do you remember anything?"
It was slightly amusing to her considering the fact that they were the same age, Steve wasn't aware of that of course but Natasha let out an almost maniacal laugh, she felt like she really, truly was losing her mind because he seemed to think that she'd done something but she had no recollection of it. He was wrong, he had to be wrong... She hadn't done anything to anyone and she certainly hadn't lost it the way he seemed to be implying she had.
"Nothing-" She cut off then. She knew that wasn't true. "I don't remember anything. I don't know how I got outside or what happened after I watched him talk to you."
That, that was true. She didn't remember absolutely anything after standing there and watching James walk into that cryotube. The thought had her drop to her knees again and she began to cry all over again as silent sobs shook her body. Once again her hands moved to her head and she could feel the throbbing in her head, the old familiar headaches that she'd long since thought she'd gotten over and it was agonising. She curled up into a ball and shook her head profusely.
This couldn't be happening. This wasn't happening.
This was just a bad dream, this had to be a bad dream. She didn't still have any residual programming in her and she'd thought she'd made sure of it but now she was starting to believe she didn't know her mind as well as she thought she did. She wasn't there anymore. She wasn't under their control anymore. They couldn't hurt her anymore... That was the beautiful little lie that she'd told herself over the years but it seemed now like that was all it was: A beautiful lie.
"It's okay, you're safe." He stepped toward her. Big mistake.
Click. It was like a switch inside of her and everything had changed all over again.
Her hand shot out to his ankle and she yanked him to the floor before she sprang to her feet and looked down at him with empty eyes and she shook her head. He had no idea. He had no clue who or what she was and what damage watching all of that had done to her. He couldn't even comprehend what she'd been before or what damage that girl was capable of unleashing on the world but he was about to goddamn find out.
"You're wrong." She replied coolly. "None of us are, not even you."
With that, she turned on her heel and walked toward the door before she looked back over her shoulder with a smirk as she heard him pull himself to his feet and shout Natasha like it'd make any difference at all.
"Don't come after me." She warned. "I won't hold back next time."
She'd shoot and she'd shoot to kill because after all wasn't that what they'd taught her to be, their perfect little killer? James Barnes had been a danger to everyone when he was triggered and Natalia Romanova was no different. The Winter Soldier and the Black Widow had both earned their reputations through destruction and blood and now while one might have very well been subdued, subduing one had unleashed the other...
What a cruel sort of irony that was, trying to save one person had broken something in someone else that may never be able to be repaired again and now they were facing a threat from someone who knew them from the inside, weaknesses and strengths alike... Not a single one of them was aware of what had just been unleashed on them but she swore that they sure as hell soon would.