The chill in my bones

Steve was dumbstruck, that was the only way he could have possibly put it. He stood there and watched his friend turn from someone he knew to someone he couldn't even begin to comprehend and as he watched her walk out he could do nothing but stand there and wonder what the hell had happened and how any of this had even come to pass.

He didn't even notice at first when Barton appeared at his side and he placed his hand on his shoulder, it took him a good long moment before he registered it. He was that transfixed by trying to figure out the strange situation he'd found himself in just moments before that nothing immediately registered.

"You okay?" Clint spoke, Steve shook his head.

It was the answer Clint has expected if he was going to be honest with himself because there was no way Steve could understand what was going on with Natasha. It was something no one should've had to deal with and Clint had gone to a lot of effort years ago to try and ensure that it didn't happen again, not on his watch.

"What happened to her?" Steve Rogers sounded like a lost child.

Clint Barton offered him a sympathetic look before he breathed out a sigh and ran his hand through his hair and he shook his head. He knew exactly what had happened to her and it was something that he never wanted to see again. It was years ago, years ago when he'd brought in an out of control assassin who was resistant to pretty much every bit of help he'd offered her even if eventually she'd given up and accepted it.

This wasn't Natasha.

This wasn't the person that Steve or anyone else knew, this was the side to her that he'd met a long time ago and he had hoped it was a side to her that he'd never see again. He hadn't known that she had any deeply embedded programming, hell he doubted she was even aware of it herself after all these years, no one else knew Natasha's history well enough to know she'd ever even had any to begin with and the trigger for the programming this time was... Interesting.

He wondered what it was about what she'd just witnessed that had made her flip the way it did. It wasn't like anything particularly horrifying had unfolded and there was no blood or conflict or anything that appeared obviously terrible to Clint but he didn't live in Natasha's mind so even hazarding a guess was foolish at best.

He hadn't known any of that was a part of her history but then she kept secrets even to this day about her time back there. She didn't like to talk about it and he'd never pressed her on it because it wasn't anything to do with him. She'd changed a whole hell of a lot from those days and who she was now was all he cared about. It didn't matter to him who she'd been before he met her that night and he'd told her that.

Who she was didn't have to dictate who she became.

He'd spent weeks if not months making sure she knew that. She'd learned to trust him because he'd been adamant about the fact that he didn't care who she was before and what she'd done was none of his damn business. He wasn't innocent himself so he was in no position to pass judgment on her and that was how they'd become so close, he'd never pressed her and he accepted her for the good and the bad.

He hoped he'd never have to see that side to her again though because she was freaking terrifying. He'd never been afraid of all that much but that girl didn't have a conscience. He knew that she'd been planning to kill him the second she got a chance but somehow he'd managed to persuade her not to. Turns out he could be quite charming even to assassins intent on murdering him, go figure. 

"That wasn't Natasha." He sighed as he addressed Steve's question. "How much do you know about her past?"

Steve looked at him with a frown and shook his head. He didn't know a great deal but then he'd never thought to ask her about it. As far as he knew, she'd been somewhere else before she'd joined SHIELD and it was thanks to Clint that she had but he didn't know all that much else beyond the fact that she was trained by a Russian program that she wanted to stay as far away from as possible.

"Not much honestly." Steve admitted with a furrowed brow. Maybe he should've asked more questions... 

Even if he had asked questions though there was no guarantee that Natasha would've told him anything about it. She didn't like to let people get close to her, she'd told him that spies lied for a living and that she'd always keep secrets if she felt like it was too dangerous to tell the truth... She'd have only told him what she wanted him to know.

"That person is who she was before." Clint explained sounding altogether pained. "Natalia, that was who she was before all of this. Who she was born, the girl that was raised in hell."

The girl that was raised a killer. He didn't need to say it because they both knew it. Who she was before all of this wasn't anything close to who she was now, she'd become better over the years but that side to her still existed inside of her evidently.

"I've seen it before, that was the girl I met." The one that had threatened to kill him. The one he'd spared. "I didn't even know that side to her was still in there... She fought so hard to move on."

Natasha had fought fiercely to escape from her past and become something far better than what she'd been before. She'd fought hard to build a new life for herself and move as far away from who she was back then because she wanted to prove to herself that they were wrong, she wouldn't be their perfect little weapon for the rest of her life. She'd fought and she never stopped fighting and he couldn't stand to see her lose that battle.

"This side of her isn't Natasha it's Natalia, that's the girl I met way back when I first encountered her. That's the girl I was sent to kill for who and what she was and the one I brought in that night because I chose differently." She'd become his best friend and he felt like he'd just failed her.

"Nat wasn't the same person then as she is now, she was the girl I knew damn well was planning to kill me if she ever got the chance to do it but she didn't. That wayward assassin was awakened when something inside of her snapped now and made the woman we know revert back to that and that's something we should all be worried about. She doesn't care, not when she's like that. There's no moral compass, you get in her way she will shoot you. That's what she was trained to do." She was trained to shoot to kill.

Clint sounded saddened as he spoke, almost devastated in truth; he'd lost his best friend tonight to her own darkness and all he could do was hope he was lucky enough to bring her around a second time. He'd saved her once already and if he got the chance he'd do it twice if she didn't follow through with what it was he knew she wanted to do last time, hell if he had to put himself in her crosshares for her to realise that she didn't have to be that person again he'd do it. Tasha already knew that, he kept telling himself that she already knew that.

She'd always come for him when it was his ass in the fire, there was no way in hell he was leaving her out there in the cold on her own no matter which side of her it was he was dealing with now.

"What happened to her? Why did she break like that?" Steve didn't understand. It was clear from the worry in his tone that he didn't understand.

The problem was that Clint didn't have any goddamn idea. He had no idea what it was that was embedded in her brain that had broken when she'd watched what she had tonight. She'd been there for moral support and he had no idea at all what it was that they'd put inside of her that had clawed its way to the surface tonight or even how it'd happened.

"Honestly I have no idea." Clint admitted.

"We knew she had triggers not unlike Bucky's but we thought - I thought - I'd helped her work through them all years ago but I guess I was wrong, I guess she was wrong and this one must've been buried real deep inside of her." But he had no idea what it was.

"There's something about tonight that made her break inside and the sooner we figure out what that is the sooner we stand a chance of bringing her home before she slips more than she already has." It was clear from Clints tone that the thought of losing her to this was agonising.

"How do we figure this out, Clint? Her files?" That was Steve's first suggestion but Clint shook his head.

"Nat never let them put anything in her files, most of what we know we know because she told us so long as we agreed there'd never be any record of it. There's nothing to check back through and even if there was there's no guarantee whatever pain this has kicked up would even be in there. There's a lot she never wanted to talk about." Even he was starting to question how well he knew his best friend now.

"So what do we do?" Steve was just as frustrated as he was. 

He wished he had answers, a sigh broke his lips as he looked around. Think. Think, c'mon Barton you're not an idiot there has to be something here you're missing. He doubted she'd said anything to Steve that would have given him a clue as to what was going on, that side to her loved to toy with people. She'd have had way more fun trying to manipulate him and no reason at all to help him figure anything out. 

"The CCTV footage. If we go over that we might be able to see something, watch her line of sight. I know Tasha, I know what to look for." Did he though? Did he really know her as well as he thought he did?

It was the best plan they had and so, that was their best bet. Sitting down at the computer, Clint slowed it frame by frame and watched everything she did; Natasha's body language for the most part was protective, she was purposely distancing herself which was a curious thing. She kept purposely avoiding looking at anyone which again was curious but when she did look up right before she started screaming her eyes fell on Steve and Bucky, the only time her eyes had moved from the floor for more than a moment was when she watched him get strapped in and he'd nodded his head to let them know he was ready.

Then she'd started screaming. 

Clint's brow furrowed as he switched the feed to the lobby with Steve, the first part was her normal, freaked out but normal enough. Her emotions were all over the place but it was instantaneous, the way that she flipped and changed was instantaneous and there didn't seem to be anything obvious between the two of them that would explain why which meant that she'd lost her fight for control, the fight that had started in that chamber. Ah hell.

"There was something about watching what happened to Barnes that did it. That was- something happened to her then. Right before she started screaming was the first time she'd looked up the whole time. She watched him and her entire body language shifted. Something about what happened with him is what made her snap." Clint sounded bemused as he spoke.

Even he knew what he was saying made no sense but that was the moment where she'd stopped being herself and when she'd shifted. He turned to look at Steve as he straightened up. It was clear Steve understood it no better than he did... Why the heck would watching anything to do with Barnes bother her so bad? Maybe she'd had to watch it with someone else back when she'd been with the Red Room? 

None of this made sense.

"Did she ever say anything about even knowing him?" Steve questioned.

Clint offered him a look that quite literally said seriously? 

"No, she didn't say anything at all but then even if she did know him she probably wouldn't have said anything about it. Natasha didn't exactly do heartfelt confessions. She mentioned that he'd shot her a couple times but that was all she told me." That didn't exactly constitute an emotional connection though.

"Yeah, she told me the same..." Steve sounded just as confused as Clint was.

None of this made any sense, none of it at all. 

"Tasha might've seen something back in the place she was raised that was similar to what she saw tonight and maybe it was someone she was close to that got put into one of those things, I don't know. She never mentioned really having anyone back in that place that she really gave a damn about. She told me they weren't allowed to care, they weren't allowed to be human at all because human wasn't useful to them. They were just weapons." 

The more Steve listened to Clint talk, the more he understood why Natasha's past was as closely guarded secret as it was. It sounded like a horrible, painful thing to discuss and he could see why she'd want to distance herself as much as she had from all of that. No one should have had to go through the things that she and Bucky had. They'd been used and manipulated and told they weren't allowed to think or feel for themselves. They weren't allowed to be anything but what they'd been told to be.

There were similarities in all of it and he had no doubt Clint had noticed it too but he still looked at him in that moment and sighed.

"I hate to point out the obvious but their stuff sounds similar don't you think? I mean, both of them used and turned into something else and-" He felt bad for even saying anything. It wasn't his place to discuss Natasha's past.

Clint nodded his head though.

"Yeah, had noticed it was kinda alike. Maybe one got the idea from the other I don't know. You never know with evil shadowy organisations honestly. It's not like they patent their way to torture people. They probably traded notes for all we know. Maybe some of the same scientists worked both programs..." Clint rubbed the back of his neck as he spoke.

None of them could know for sure, it was nothing but speculation at this point and he honestly hated all of this. He walked toward the door and he looked back at Steve, it was clear he was frustrated.

"We're wasting time, we need to find her." But that was not going to be easy, the tone of Clint's voice was obvious.

He was frustrated, worried, scared... He didn't know what the heck was going to happen from here and he had no idea how to find his best friend because he didn't know where she'd go without knowing what had happened to her it wasn't easy to figure it out. Clint's hand connected with the wall and he rested his head against the door.

"We gotta wake your boy up. If there's any connection at all we have to ask him. If we don't know we're playing blind and you have no idea what she's capable of. I've seen this side to her before but then she was programmed and she had a mission, this time she's flying on her own and we have no idea what she's going to do without anything holding her back. If this was Natasha being herself I could probably figure it out but she ain't. Natalia ain't got the direction she had back then and I don't know who she'd go after now."

Clint could practically feel Steve's reluctance radiate off of him and so the archer rolled his eyes as he turned back to face him and fell against the door behind him with folded arms as he regarded Rogers with a somewhat irate look.

"Yeah yeah your bestie has a busted brain but so does mine. If he can save her or tell us something that can we need to do it. I won't leave her out there, I honestly don't need your permission I'm just asking to be nice." Clint shrugged as he spoke. 

Steve could try to stop him. Try. Barton never missed a shot and he had more in his arsenal than simple arrows. He could stun him, knock him out... Oh, he had plenty of toys to choose from. He really was just asking him to be nice. Clint Barton was a huge pain in the ass at the best of times, if he felt like someone he cared about was in danger he'd do whatever he needed to do to make sure they were okay and he really didn't care who he had to piss off in the process. 

That was another problem he could deal with later when he'd saved the day, at least that was the way he thought and for the most part it worked out. He knew that Natasha would put her ass on the line and break whatever rules she had to break for his sake so he was more than willing to do the same for her. He was her best friend, that was what they did for each other. They fought for one another even when everyone else had given up.

He wasn't willing to let anyone give up on Natasha though and he was willing to go to whatever extremes he had to in order to bring her home, so screw the rules, screw the whole damn thing if Mr. assassin could give them any answers at all he was damn well willing to wake his ass up to work him.

Steve - he noticed - didn't look remotely amused but he didn't care.

"I don't care about whatever spiel you're about to give me about dangerous whatever, this is Tasha. If he has any answers at all then we're gonna wake up sleeping beauty and ask him because this is Tasha. I will not leave her out there alone. I need to know if he knows anything that could help me find her and bring her home safe." Barton shrugged away from the wall then.

"It's gonna be less of a blow if you come with me and do it, I don't know this guy and honestly aside from fighting for whatever the hell it was you were trying to do out there by your side I have no idea who or what he is and I don't care. If there's even the slightest chance he can help Natasha, I'll take it. Your best friend is dangerous and whatever and that's fine by me but if he can help Tasha? We need to take that chance." Clint was willing to take the chance even if Steve wasn't.

Steve exhaled a sigh though and nodded his head, he knew that if he didn't concede Barton would go right ahead and do it anyway and it wouldn't end well, Bucky had no reason at all to trust Clint much less answer any questions he had. If Steve was there at least there was a buffer... Or at least he hoped. He really had no idea with Bucky's mind being as fragmented as it was, he had no idea what help he might be able to offer if any at all.

Maybe Clint had read the situation wrong, he had no idea.

Still, the two of them set off back to at least attempt to bring Bucky out of the deep freeze which - it seemed - was something that Helen wasn't too thrilled about but Clint had explained to her it was for Natasha's sake and so, sitting around for a good two hours while he was brought around was starting to make Clint stir crazy and he'd asked about twelve times if they couldn't just shock his ass back to the waking world.

He was impatient.

Barnes awoke eventually and he looked less than pleased as he looked at both of them and he sat up slowly.

"What the he-" He started to speak, Clint cut him off.

"We need you to help us." Clint was straight to the point. "The girl that was in here earlier? The redhead? She's in trouble and we need you to answer some questions."

Bucky's eyes moved to Steve.

"Your friend? Natasha? Was that her name?" He looked confused. "How can I help? I didn't do anything to her I was in here..." 

He looked worried as he glanced between Steve and Barton, whatever the hell it was they thought that he'd done they were wrong, they were very, very wrong. He hadn't done anything at yes, he'd shot her a couple of times but that wasn't today. That wasn't recently... 

"Natalia." Clint amended. "Her name before all this crap was Natalia. We need to ask you about her, not Natasha."

You could at least recognise me. Barnes looked like he'd just been kicked in the stomach.

"Do you know her?" Clint spoke noting his reaction. Bucky shook his head though.

"No." The word was spoken automatically.

"Look now is Not the time for lying and trust me when I tell you you do not wanna piss me off. She's my best friend, you think I won't throw down with you to get whatever I need to know outta you? Bring it on big guy." Clint gestured for him to stand up. He wasn't the first Super person Clint would've gotten into it with.

"Clint..." Steve looked at him.

"No, no 'Clint'. Do not give me 'Clint'. He's not telling us something and her life is on the line." He was trained to read people.

"You don't know that..." Steve tried to reason.

"Uh yeah, I do." Clint turned back to Bucky. "Spit it out already! She's been gone over three hours and I don't know where to start looking so whatever it is you know? Now's the time to start talking."

"Natalia, the name is- There was a girl once. I trained her, we were close and I- It was years ago. I don't know when exactly, my grip on time is relative at best but it isn't possible, it can't be..." Bucky sighed.

"You could at least recognise me." He repeated her words. Steve and Clint shot him at confused look.

"That was what she said to me. Natasha. You could at least recognise me." Bucky shook his head with a humorless laugh.

"The little Ballerina, now I know." Or at least he knew something. He sighed and pushed himself to stand up.

"I know her, or at least I knew her once. It was a hell of a long time ago or maybe just a few years, who knows anymore. What happened? I don't remember a lot about my past but maybe I can figure something out." He sounded reluctant at best but Clint seemed relieved he was at least willing to talk a little bit.

"What happened to her? Why did seeing you go under hurt her so much? What happened to make her break?" Clint spoke urgently.

"She saw it once before." Bucky cast his eyes to the side, he'd heard her scream he just thought it was a dream.

He'd thought it was a trick of his mind.

"She was screaming, wasn't she?" He looked at Clint who nodded at his question.

He thought she was screaming but he thought it was just something he was imagining all over again. He couldn't trust his mind.

"Yeah, she did then too. They made her watch, it was how they punished her. They made her watch and made sure she couldn't do anything to stop it." That memory was one that he didn't want to dig up.

Bucky sat back down again, his legs felt unsteady. He'd thought it was all tricks, his mind just being that jumbled up that he was putting people in places they couldn't have been but it seemed as though that was no trick at all. He looked between Steve and Clint and his brow furrowed, he wanted to apologise to them but he wasn't even sure he could explain just what it was he was sorry for.

"Natalia..." He smiled, just a fraction. "I haven't said her name in years. When they made her watch what happened to me it was my fault. I should've known better but I didn't. I let my guard down and they punished us both for it in different ways." His smile faded then.

He shook his head.

"If she's flipped back to that and she's not programmed, she's a loose cannon and there's no way of knowing what she's going to do but I might be able to help you find her. There were ways we used to communicate when-" When they had to be careful about it.

"So I was right, you do know her. You were lying." Clint stated flatly.

"You were right, but you don't know the half of it. The story you're about to unravel will change everything for all of you." Especially for Natalia.

"You can hate me later, you wanted my help you've got it. I agreed to help you not tell you anything that isn't directly relevant to finding her." He didn't want to talk about it honestly.

It was too painful. His mind was scrambled but the realisation that his mind hadn't been playing tricks on him and that there was something good buried in there hurt like hell. He should've done something or said something. He should've tried harder to remember for her sake, at least then he could've asked for her not to be there and then they wouldn't be in this mess.

Now wasn't the time to regale anyone with painful stories, now was the time to see if he could figure out enough of a past he wanted to run from to figure out where his tied with hers and what parts of that he could use to track her and save her. Ah, Natalia... What trouble have you gotten yourself into this time? 

I'm sorry Natalia, I never meant to get you into trouble...