The chill in my bones

She watched the scenery zoom by, she loved the way that Europe looked when you were traveling around by train. He had wanted to get a car or something and travel in a purely anonymous way, she hadn't been so keen on the idea and she'd told him that she hated the idea of being that cooped up for any length of time. He'd admitted to her he wasn't keen on the idea either and that had just made her all the more certain that her way was better.

Besides - as she'd reminded him - he'd always promised her that they'd take a trip like this someday though this may not have been what they had in mind when he'd made that promise she'd grinned and told him that she'd count it as him fulfilling it anyway. 

She was impossible sometimes, still he couldn't fight the smile and he rolled his eyes. He hadn't remembered of course but then he was still trying to piece everything together in his head, Natalia - to her credit - didn't mind talking him through things which was good. He knew her well enough even subconsciously to know how to get this far though so he supposed that was something. 

"So, are you sure this is the right play?" He raised a brow as he studied her.

His tone was even, measured. She nodded her head though and popped her finger on a map on the table in front of them.

"They're still training girls like me and they're doing it here. If I wanna hit 'em where it hurts their future I hit there." She replied with an almost arrogant tone.

He gave her a scornful look.

"We hit them there. You're not doing this alone remember?" See? Impossible. "Will two facilities even be close to enough?"

He wasn't sure why he was asking, he knew the answer already: It'd mean she was just getting started. There were a lot of people connected to what had happened to both of them, a lot of people that she'd want to put an end to for their parts in all of this. She had decades of anger to work through. 

"It'll get their attention." She shrugged. She looked at him almost like he should've known that was an obvious answer.

"There's something I need to ask you." He sighed then, he wouldn't be surprised if she avoided the question completely but he hoped she wouldn't.

He wasn't going to judge anything she was doing or anything she felt like she had to do bar perhaps holding a gun on Steve after beating the shit out of him and Clint (Okay that one he wasn't so bothered about, he was irritating anyway) but she hadn't exactly been thinking clearly, the trouble was that she still wasn't and that could make her dangerous not that she wasn't already. It could make her more dangerous and that? That was a scary thought even for him.

"Sure, why not." She rolled her eyes as she leaned back against her seat and she turned her gaze to the window again.

He could tell she wasn't keen on the idea but he still shook his head almost like he was silently telling her to stop acting like a pain in the ass, she was acting very much like the girl he'd trained once and while he appreciated a little nostalgia, it wasn't the time for it.

"The shot back in New York..." He looked at her properly then. He was trying to read her and she could tell.

"What about it?" She didn't bother to look at him, her eyes remained on the scenery outside.

"Why? What was it about him?" He knew that she already knew what he was asking, she was just screwing with him for the hell of it.

She'd always enjoyed turning things into a game when she could, especially when she was bored. Especially when she sought something to amuse herself with like now. She was bored and he couldn't blame her in the slightest but he didn't need her playing games. He tapped her foot with his.

"Enough of the games."

She turned to him and laughed before she shook her head.

"Don't get grumpy on me, you know I find that sexy..." Still, she rolled her eyes. "He deserved it don't worry. I didn't shoot some poor innocent man."

Okay so she wasn't that far gone but she was still trying to push his buttons for the hell of it which wasn't good. She was pushing him - he supposed - to see how long it'd be before he ended up cracking, she wanted to see for sure that he really was on her side and that she wasn't being played to get her to go back to the Avengers facility like a good little girl and make nice with Natasha's friends. 

She wasn't going to do that. He should know she wasn't going to do that. He'd been happy enough to surrender but she wasn't, or at least that's what she thought. She thought he'd been happy enough to submit to what they thought he ought to do but she wasn't about to make the same mistake he was and she did think it was a mistake. She knew that he was struggling with things, he was fighting hard against what they'd done to him but in her opinion that wasn't the way to handle it.

"Why don't you just stop tiptoeing around and ask me what you're really asking: Did I murder an innocent man in cold blood? The answer is No, by the way. He deserved it I just wish I could've made it slower." She rolled her eyes at him again before she turned her head to look at the window; she noted that it was starting to rain now.

She was playing with her gun removing the clip and putting it back in over and over again to keep herself busy, she was restless and he knew it and that was in and of itself concerning. She never did well when she was bored. Her mind tended to race in a thousand different directions all at once like his did and that never ended well for anyone. She breathed out an irate sigh and he looked curiously toward her.

"Y'know once upon a time for both of us there was no such thing as innocent or not, we had orders and we carried it out without question because we know what'd happen if we didn't. This wasn't a mission and I know that before you get all whatever about that. I'm choosing what I do now. Me. Not them, not you or anyone else. You're not going to call the shots and make me fall in line, I'm not your second anymore. I'm not your trainee." She turned back to face him and glared.

"I don't know what's going on in your head right now, I don't know where you are and that scares me. I'm worried about you..." He tried to keep his tone as even as he could.

He failed and he knew it. She let out a short bitter laugh and rolled her eyes. 

"You're worried about me?" She sounded so cold as she spoke, she put the clip back in her gun with far more force than she needed to; he threw his hand up to stop her talking.

"Don't go there." He sounded genuinely hurt as he spoke, his blue eyes flicked to the table.

That was cold even for her. He knew exactly what she was going to say. She closed her eyes, her chest rose and fell as she inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, her eyes opened and she turned back to face him with lashes brimmed with tears that she was fighting hard not to let fall. He'd only ever seen her cry twice in all of the time that he'd known her and he could see she was fighting damn hard not to make it three times. She never did like it when people saw her cry he could tell even now she saw it as a weakness she couldn't afford to have.

"I'm sorry, you're right that was cold." She sounded quiet and sad.

He reached out to brush his hand over hers before he twined their fingers and squeezed her hand in an effort to show her that it was okay, he was there and he wasn't going to turn and go just because she'd said something that had hurt. He'd known that she'd throw something at him sooner or later and while he hated the fact that he didn't remember while she had to live with everything and he didn't have to, he was glad that now he got the chance to figure it out away from everyone else doing what he should've been doing all along: Fighting at her side.

He supposed she was still testing him in her own way to decide whether or not she could trust him and if he really was on her side or if he thought he could honestly play her and make her go back and figure out how to get back to the person she was before; James Barnes knew that she had so many people out there that loved her and cared for her but she didn't seem to believe it when he'd tried to tell her that.

She told him she'd rather stay a fugitive if she had a choice. Natasha wouldn't, she'd rather go and fight with her friends and she knew that but this wasn't a fight her friends could take on, this was a fight that darkness had to take on because light meeting dark in a situation like this would mean light would be snuffed out.

Darkness could destroy the darkness from within.

"Why did you put yourself through that back there, Nat? Why did you stay? Why did you let anyone talk you into seeing that when you remembered the first time..." He spoke with a gentle curiosity in his voice.

She knew exactly what he was talking about, why had she been there to watch him be put under again when he was right and she remembered the first time and she knew just how much it hurt the first time around. It wasn't like that this time but it was still enough for her to break... It was still painful enough to activate latent programming.

"Because Rogers wanted me to be there." She admitted. "I didn't wanna be but I couldn't think of a decent reason why I couldn't be. He needed support and I was - she was - trying to be a decent person and be there for a friend. Really bit me in the ass though. Turns out being a good person does that a lot."

She was still putting on her bravado.

"I didn't wanna see it again. I knew it'd hurt but I didn't think it'd do this. I didn't think it'd make me snap like this." She held to his hand like her life depended on it.

"Why did you agree to it? Why didn't you fight, James?" She had to know why he'd surrendered to it so easily.

"I thought it was the only way anyone could fix me. If I went under they could figure out a way to make it all go away, the triggers, the programming, all of it." It all sounded so simple at the time.

It wasn't simple, it was never going to be simple. When he came around sooner or later he was going to remember her, he'd remember them and he'd hate himself for her seeing that. He wished like hell he'd remembered sooner so that he could've asked her not to do it to herself, to promise herself that he'd come back to her but he didn't want her seeing that, she didn't deserve to go through all of that again. She didn't deserve to be broken like that again.

"You were stupid." She spoke so bluntly that he laughed. 

"Oh yeah?" He rose a brow as he spoke.

"Yeah." She replied simply. "Going under again was never the answer, what were you gonna do? Trust Shuri and T'Challa to pull apart your brain and hope that they could fix you? We don't know them well enough and he wanted to kill you what, a week before that? Put your life into the hands of a man that wanted to rip you apart, great plan."

He winced. She sounded cold again.

"You're being cold, love." He reminded her gently. "I thought I was doing the right thing."

"Right." She had to remember to regulate emotions.

Emotions were harder than she remembered them being. She huffed out an irritated sigh and wrapped one arm around her abdomen while her other hand still held to his. She really, truly was not used to actually being human while she was like this. Natasha was better with emotions, she was better with being a person  but she was fighting so hard against that side of her.

"I just think it was a crappy idea." She admitted. "There could've been a better way."

"Like there was for you?" He was curious again, she frowned at him.

"You think that the way I did it was easy? I let SHIELD psych teams pull me apart mentally for weeks while I had nightmares that had me literally screaming until my throat was so bad that I couldn't talk for days, nightmares that had me waking up in cold sweats scared of every goddamn thing around me and dreading sleeping again. I lashed out, beat the crap out of anyone that got anywhere near me; SHIELD would've been smart to lock me up and throw me in a deep dark hole but Barton was so intent on playing the hero that he took everything I had to throw at him and he didn't back down, he refused to let them lock me up even if it meant he had to put his own ass on the line for me."

She still thought Clint was stupid for that to this day. Noble but stupid.

"I lashed out, screamed, fought... I worked through all of it painstakingly and slowly and what I couldn't deal with around them I found ways to do it alone. I didn't have it easy."

She was never planning to tell SHIELD or Barton everything. No one got to know anything about her that she didn't want them to know.

"I didn't get to do it easy. I wasn't asleep through any of it. I didn't get put out. I was awake the whole time and I fought like hell not to lose myself again because I had that pain in the ass jerk telling me he'd come down the rabbit hole right after me if I did. He's a jackass but he saved my life. He brought me out of it with sheer determination and blind luck. I could've killed him but he didn't care. I owe Barton a lot..." Her. Natalia. Not Natasha.

"I'm not saying your way is the easy way, I'm saying that I wish you'd known me because I could've helped you like he helped me."

"I wish I had too." He spoke quietly and squeezed her hand again. He hated that he'd lost her for so long.

Still, the way she spoke about Clint bothered him in ways that he didn't like; he found himself wondering if there had ever been more to it with them and that was why he was so intent on coming along to save her like that...

"Barton is-" Bucky flexed his other hand. "Obviously he cares a lot about you."

Natalia laughed. She laughed and she shook her head at him and tried her best to fight to keep a straight face so that she could talk to him. She took in several deep breaths to fight and stop herself from laughing all over again.

"You think he and I-" She burst out laughing all over again. "Okay, okay I'm sorry. I'm good."

She inhaled more deep breaths to steady herself and then looked back at him.

"Barton isn't in love with me or with my lovely hero counterpart. He's my best friend but he's not in love with me. He's married. Happily." She ran her thumb over James's hand.

He looked embarrassed but he still breathed out a relieved sigh. He was glad to hear that. Undeniably he felt like an idiot for any jealousy momentary or otherwise but still. Emotions and dealing with them was just as new to him as it was to Natalia. Natasha had a decent handle on it all but this side to her did not. James noted though that she didn't make the distinction between the two sides when she'd referred to Barton as her best friend. It was a good thing, she was still connecting with the life that she had.

That was a good sign.

"I think we should get back to work." Now he was the one deflecting, she smirked like she wanted to point that out but she fought against it which he was glad for.

It was still her game no matter what he thought, all of this was - and would be - her game until the end. She wasn't going to allow herself to be told she could or couldn't do anything she felt like she needed to do. She wasn't going to let him hold her back, that wasn't what she was doing out here. She could quite easily screw with the 'friends' she'd made over the years but she was choosing not to for now.

For now.

She drummed her finger against the top of the table. They'd be there soon, it wouldn't be too long; she'd never been particularly fond of Bosnia but for some reason or another that was where their facility was based. She supposed it made sense, there were secluded areas and the baltic regions didn't tend to attract a lot of visitors most of the time. Most people didn't like the cold. She didn't care about it though, she'd been raised in the cold.

The cold was normal for her, she actually hated summer for years after she'd defected. She found the heat suffocating but she'd sort of become used to it over the years through sheer lack of choice in the matter. She did still love Winter though, the double meaning was hers and hers alone. No one else knew about it.

"It's fitting they choose regions like this." She commented offhandedly. "Cold and remote, icy and empty just like they are."

It was poetic, she'd have appreciated the ironic poetry behind it if she weren't so intent on destroying them the way they had so many others over the years. They'd find out just what cold was from one of their most prized possessions once upon a time. They'd regret using the poor innocent child she'd been once. She'd made the choice once to be there but she'd been young, scared and alone. They'd taken advantage of her and she had no idea what they'd come to make of her.

It'd been a long journey with changes in both Paris and Munich but she didn't mind so much. She quite liked the scenery and it gave her a sense of nostalgia that she didn't tell him about but it still made her smile. She remembered many a good time that at least brought her a sense of peace here.

They'd have to acquire a car to get where they really needed to be so she supposed he still got what he'd wanted. 

"The railway will only take us so far so it looks like you're right: We'll need a car but my way was still better." She smirked. She wasn't about to admit that he was right without pointing out that she was too.

"You just can't help yourself can you?" He commented with a raised brow. "Always liked to be right, some things never change."

"You wouldn't like it if I changed. You hate that you don't know me anymore as it is. If I stop being the person you're starting to remember you'd hate it." She shrugged. 

His look told her that again she was right. He sighed though but nodded his head anyway.

"Yeah, you're right." He hadn't told her any of that but of course she knew.

She could read people better than almost anyone else he knew could. She'd made a life out of reading people both for SHIELD and for her previous... Employers. Her captors if he was to be honest about it. Employers meant that she was treat with some level of respect but neither of them were, they were treat like property. They didn't matter. They were just assets, no one cared if they lived or died out in the field because they could be replaced.

There were others just like them that could be used in their stead. Both of them.

"We're here." She spoke with a happy tone as the train slowly stopped. She stood up and glanced toward him.

"Just how exactly do you propose we procure a car?" 

"Well I do have the ability to hotwire one and so do you but I think attracting attention from local law wouldn't be ideal..." He shook his head at her.

He was wondering - naturally - when she was planning to stop her games but then he supposed he still had a hell of a long way to go. She needed to prove to herself that she could trust him and she could only do that by seeing just how far she could push him just to see if he did break and admit that he was here to talk her around.

He wasn't.

"Fine, we'll buy one." She grinned. 

Exiting the train into the cold air was a shock to both of them. She stood for a moment and her nose wrinkled in displeasure. She might like the cold but getting smacked in the face with it after hours and hours and hours in the warmth? That she did not like. He didn't seem to either because he let out a groan. She reached beside her to hold his hand again.

"Hotel first, car later." She wasn't giving him a choice.

She was tired, she needed a shower and she was hungry. A hotel was her best bet - their best bet - and it'd give her the chance she needed to either let him come along with her or dose him and leave him behind. She was still in two minds on which one she wanted to do. She wanted to trust him but his allegiances had laid elsewhere before now and she didn't need his loyalty to Steve Rogers overshadowing the promises he'd made to her.

She didn't need a hero. She didn't need saving and she wasn't going to surrender her quest just because his do-gooder best friend had his pride wounded when she'd taken him down twice. He shouldn't have crossed someone he didn't understand and he should've done better research on who he worked with, he'd asked for it really. A part of her knew that wasn't true, a part of her knew that Steve just wanted to protect her but she couldn't let that stop her.

She couldn't let anything stop her, this was too important and if he proved to be a liability to her she'd leave him behind and make sure that not even he could follow her this time. This was something she had to do and anyone that didn't understand that was a problem she didn't need. If he wasn't going to do this with her then she'd do it without him. 

This was always her game and she'd keep it that way.