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“Look. You know I’m all for second chances…"
Natasha would have bet good money Tony had meant to add a ‘but’ to that sentence. Only the sight of the storm clouds gathering over Steve’s head had stopped him.
“It’s not about second chances,” Steve said, calm and measured and in complete contrast to his white knuckles. “It’s about helping. Doing what’s right.”
This wasn’t her fight. The guy had shot her twice and she still bore the scars as proof. She should just wait out the discussion like the others and let Steve and Tony reach an agreement. They were, after all, the ones with the biggest stakes in it.
But.
She’d been given a chance once. And Barnes’ situation was uncomfortably similar to how hers had been.
“What does Bucky say to all this? Does he want it, or is it just because you want him to?” Natasha kept her voice low, but it caught their attention easily.
Steve shifted, looked down at the table for several long seconds before he reluctantly met her gaze. “He thinks it’s stupid to even ask.”
“Okay,” said Natasha. “I’m in.”
An hour later, so was the rest of the team.
It took all of thirty minutes into the first mission with Barnes tagging along as support for Tony to admit that he made an excellent addition to the team.
Natasha hadn’t even needed to see Barnes fight on their side to be convinced. She already knew how good he was. What she hadn’t expected was how easy it was to work with him.
However, after more than seven months, Sam still claimed that it had been the single most stupid decision any Avenger had ever made. But since he and Barnes seemed to have a competition about who could make the other person laugh harder during inappropriate situations, no one took this seriously.
There weren’t a lot of places at the New Avengers Facility where someone could be alone for any length of time. There were the small, but luxuriously outfitted sleeping quarters that Natasha rarely spent any time in except to change her clothes. And there were other spots, like the lounge that only a handful of people used since Clint made a ‘Private’ sign for it as an April Fool’s prank and never bothered to take it down. But those locations were far from the building that housed the annual Winter’s Ball, and therefore not suitable for a quick breather.
There was, however, a balcony along the less scenic north side of the building. Only a quick walk along a couple of corridors and there it was, one floor off the ground, overlooking a strip of grass between this and the next building. Boring as hell, but perfect for a breath of fresh air and a time-out from a bustling party.
At least, that was why she had sought it out. But she clearly hadn’t been the only one with that bright idea. A man in a black suit leaned against the railing, smoke curling up into the night sky over his head. Long legs, wide shoulders, and wavy dark hair; even with his tell-tale left arm hidden from view, she recognized him easily. Natasha rapped her knuckles lightly against the doorframe, announcing her presence, and Barnes half turned, revealing the cigarette trapped between long fingers.
“I’ll trade you a week’s worth of paperwork for a smoke,” she said and pointed at his hand.
He smirked, put the cigarette between his lips, and dug in an inner pocket of his suit jacket for the packet. “How about you don’t tell Steve I snuck off and we’ll call it even.”
“Deal.” She stepped out onto the balcony and joined him by the railing. He shook out a cigarette and handed it to her. She cupped a hand while he held a Zippo steady for her.
"Didn't know you smoked."
"I don't." She took a deep drag of the cigarette. The smoke curled in her lungs, scratching like an acrylic sweater on bare skin. She really shouldn’t be smoking unfiltered when it had been months since her last one. "Not regularly at least."
Barnes shook his head. “You think you know someone…” His one-handed gesture encompassed her from top to toe, ending back up at the cigarette.
“You don’t exactly advertise your habit either,” she countered.
“Well, apparently, I’m a bad role model for the kids.” He sounded like he was quoting someone, but she couldn’t tell who.
Natasha tried not to laugh. She didn’t succeed.
“Yeah, that was my reaction, too. Except with more swear words.”
Tension drained from her as the nicotine worked its magic. Made her feel a little lightheaded, but more relaxed than she had in weeks. She took another deep drag and stared out over the dark field below them. A solitary snowflake drifted into the light streaming through the open door behind them. No wonder she felt cold. If not for the company and the need to not have to smile and small-talk for at least five consecutive minutes, she probably wouldn’t have stayed. Far too cold a night to stand outside in a sleeveless dress that seemed to consist of sparkles and no warmth whatsoever. She rubbed her hands over her arms to warm up, but a huff from Barnes interrupted her. Looking over at him, she found him unbuttoning his suit jacket. She raised an eyebrow and he met her with an expression of equal derision.
He did, however, wait for her to pull her hair forward before he draped the jacket over her shoulders.
“So, you don’t want to be a role model, but have no problem with being a gentleman?” she said, looking up at him. Even in heels, she’d be staring right at his ridiculous cleft chin if she didn’t tilt her head back. How he managed to be that tall and not make her feel small standing so close was nothing short of a mystery. And Natasha had never liked mysteries much. At least, not until she’d solved them.
“This has nothing to do with being a gentleman. This is just having been raised right.” He adjusted the jacket over her shoulders and stepped back.
“Thank you, though,” she offered.
He didn’t answer. Just nodded and looked out over the field. Companionable silence at its best.
The jacket smelled faintly of cigarettes and a cologne she hadn’t noticed him wearing until he had reached around her. It shouldn’t have surprised her, but some small part of her had expected him to smell differently. It was ridiculous, of course, yet she couldn’t shake it. But the coat was warm and long enough to cover her down to mid-thigh, and that was all that mattered. Comfortable and warm, she looked out over the field again. The snow fell steadily now, dotting the green with crisp white.
“Of all the things I thought I’d never miss when I left Russia, long winters has to be in the top five.”
Barnes hummed in agreement. “Seemed to stay white longer. Pretty. Impossible to move around in, but pretty.”
Snowflakes continued to tumble out of the sky. If it kept up, there’d be at least a few inches by the morning, if not more. “Beats gray slush covering everything.”
He looked at her like she had sprouted a second head. “Are you kidding me? I’ll take gray slush any day of the week over not being able to move without involving snowshoes, and skis, and tank-sized snow plows at best or just plain staying inside for the next several months at worst.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘had to walk uphill to school both ways’ kinds of people.”
“Lady, you know the kind of winters we had. If I wanna complain, I’m gonna.”
Natasha laughed, helplessly. Maybe she was more than a little lightheaded. “Didn’t know you remembered that much from your time there,” she said when she recovered. “I hope it’s not all snowmageddon and doom.”
When he didn't reply, she looked over to find him staring out at nothing, his expression—sad, maybe. Pensive.
“Hey. Are you…?”
He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Got lost on memory lane.” He raised his arm and looked at his watch, almost demonstrably. “I should be getting back. Don’t want Steve to notice I’m gone.” Caught off guard, he was about as bad a liar as Steve.
This was why she never brought up Russia around him. It was too much of a minefield to risk it. She still got nauseated by certain brands of antiseptics. Better just to leave the subject alone. Kinder than reminding him of the chair, of how much it had taken from him, and all the other horrors they had put him though. “Listen—”
“It’s was good talking with you.” He faced her, but his eyes never really settled on hers.
Yeah, good. Or at least it had been until she’d reminisced about the country that had cut him into tiny bits and built a killer robot from the remains.
Barnes had already turned away when she interrupted him. “Wait, your jacket.” She slipped it off and held it out for him. He took it gingerly, like she was handing him a grenade with the pin pulled.
Natasha waited a few minutes before following him, taking the long way around to use another entrance. It was bad enough she’d hurt him, she wasn’t going to add rumors about them fooling around at a party to the list of wrongs.
The snow didn’t become grey slush the next day after all, because the downfall turned to sleet by midnight and was gone by the morning. That just made Natasha miss the Russian winters more.
The thing about letting work become your life was that there were days, weeks, when Natasha spent all her time either in the gym or hunched over a computer. Today had been one such day. And it had all been for nothing as the encrypted message sent from the guy suspected of being a Hydra ringleader turned out to be a particularly graphic love letter to his mistress.
She was on her way home when she saw light spilling out from the lounge into the hallway. Most sane people had gone home by 3AM. Or, failing that, to bed. She deviated from her path, peering in to see who it was, half expecting Tony. It wasn’t. Barnes stood in profile, holding something in his hands, watching one of the news channels on the TV. He didn’t even react to the thump of her boots against the floor.
“What are you—”
He jerked his head to look at her and the pain etched in his lines cut through her like a hot knife through butter. “Can you…” He held out his right hand and the remote clutched in it. “It’s about to loop. I need to record it, but it keeps saying the disc is full.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll see what I can do.” The segment ended and a new began, she glanced up at Barnes, but he shook his head. Not that one. Small mercies. She switched on the list of recordings while the news reporter droned on about the annual rising sales of diet books. Two recordings of It’s a Wonderful Life within the first few scrolls, so she deleted the older one.
The report ended, and the newsreader introduced the next one by announcing, “Great news for opera enthusiasts everywhere.”
“This one,” said Barnes and she pressed record.
They watched in silence as a cheerful correspondent interviewed a red-faced man inside an opulent theater, all reds and golds, only labeled ‘Prague’ by the station instead of the name of the theater. It had been a while since she had been in Prague, but there were at least two or three theaters with that kind of decor. People walked by behind them in full length evening gowns and suits and Natasha was about to ask what he was looking for when Barnes stepped closer to the TV, staring hard at the edge of the screen. A gray-haired man entered the image, straight back and head held high, probably military, definitely used to be obeyed from the way he didn’t wait for people to get out of his way.
“I see you, you bastard, I see you.” His voice was barely audible over the drone of the TV.
The segment ended, and she stopped the recording, pressing the mute button when the reporter came back on. “Who was that?”
“Used to be my handler back in the 70’s and most of the 80’s.” He kept his back to her, but she didn’t need to see his face to tell how upset he was.
Comforting words about events she couldn’t change were useless right now and she focused on the task at hand, instead. “I’ll see if I can get it to send you the file.” It took a few tries to find the correct menu. Having everything customized by Stark Industries gave them tech with more possibilities than usually available, but it also meant she had to scroll through a lot of options, most of them unfamiliar. Barnes had wandered off to pick up his abandoned coffee cup before she found the right setting. “And, send.”
He pulled his phone out of a pocket and checked it. “Thank you,” he said, his voice soft.
She waved him off. “I still owe you for that cigarette.” She was only half joking. While she hadn’t meant to, she had still hurt him at the party and she owed him for that, at least. And maybe for giving Steve his old file.
He looked up from his phone, nailing her to the floor with eyes ice blue in the light from the screen. “No, you don’t.” It could be a trick of the light, but he seemed sad.
“Do you have any contacts in Prague?” Natasha said, ignoring his dismissal and the knot in the pit of her stomach.
“One or two.”
“Let me know if you need more.”
That earned her a wry smile. “Okay. I will.”
She nodded and left.
Barnes wasn’t in the lounge when she returned the next morning. Nor in the canteen eating breakfast. She even tried his sleeping quarters before going to the gym where she found him working over a heavy bag.
“Why don’t you pick on someone your own size,” she said as greeting.
“Funny.” He stopped boxing, a little out of breath and wet with sweat, steadied the bag, and bent to pick up a water bottle. He had wrapped both hands and she wondered idly, and not for the first time, if he wrapped the left one to protect the bag.
“You find anything yet?”
He downed half the bottle before he answered. “It’s barely been six hours and most people sleep at night.”
“Yeah, most do.” Natasha shrugged and put her hands on the bag, stabilizing it, nodding for him to continue.
He did, if a little reluctantly. “Is this an elaborate scheme to bum more cigarettes off me?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, her voice dripping with mock derision. “Blackmailing you would be easier.”
“That it would be,” Barnes agreed.
She let him get into a steady rhythm before asking again, “So, what did you find?”
“Nothing much. Yet.” He looked around at the other people in the gym, then back at her rather pointedly. He didn’t want to share with the class. That was okay, she could work around it.
“Send me what you have when you’re done here. I might be able to find something you haven’t.”
The corners of his lips twitched in a smile. “There really is no way I’m getting you off my back, is there?”
“Nope,” she said cheerfully and walked over to the treadmills before he had a chance to argue.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re cancelling sushi night and you’re not even going to tell me why?” Maria’s attempt at stern professional would probably have worked better if she hadn’t been holding a bright red cup smelling more of gingerbread cookies than coffee.
“I stood in line in four different Starbucks to find one that still had any of that wretched stuff left,” Natasha pointed out.
“And I’m very grateful, but you still haven’t answered my question.”
She ran a finger along the rim of her own cup of mostly coffee. “The thing is, it’s not my story to tell.”
“You’re serious about this.” Maria leaned forward in her chair. “Okay, fine. What do you need?”
“A Quinjet and some equipment. I have a list.”
“Of course, you do.”
“Is it weird that I wanted to be wrong?” Barnes said when she locked the door to the dingy apartment they used as a safehouse. He said it casually, like it was something that had just occurred to him, but it was the longest sentence he’d strung together since they had spotted his former handler coming out of the house to which they had tracked his current identity.
Not that she blamed him. It couldn’t be easy to see his old tormenter going about his life like he was a perfectly normal man and not the sadistic asshole who deserved to pay for every crime he had committed. Natasha had never wanted more blood on her hands as much as she had when Barnes had told her about how they had doubled his time in the chair just to see if the effect would last longer that way. It hadn’t worked, but that hadn’t stopped them from trying again.
She turned before she answered, watching him shrug out of his leather jacket and unclip the shoulder holster. “About him being your handler?”
“I mean, after all that digging and coming all the way here, I still wanted him to be a different guy all together.”
She shrugged and kicked her boots off. “If he was, it would be easier to deal with. We’d just go back home, for one.”
“You wouldn’t mind having wasted all that time?” He leaned against the doorframe leading from the entranceway, trapping her in the tiny corridor.
“I’ve travelled further for less. And the rest was just research. The real work begins now. Despite what the internet tells you, it’s not that easy to frame a man and make it stick.”
Barnes sighed and toed the fringe of the worn rug covering the even more worn linoleum. “It sure was easier when you could just shoot a guy and have Hydra worry about the cleanup.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. But that’s what you get for allying yourself with Captain America. His disappointed gaze is an effective deterrent to torturing and murdering your enemies.”
“And if that doesn’t work, I have you to keep me in line.” His tone was even and his gaze level and that stung most of all.
Natasha walked over to him, not stopping till they would be touching if either took a deep breath, and she had to crane her head to look him in his eyes. “I’m not here to keep you from killing a man. I’m here because I want you to come out the other side without adding to the red in your ledger.” She didn’t thump his chest with a finger, but she badly wanted to.
“Okay.” His expression softened. His eyes were closer to gray than blue in the daylight, surrounded by tiny wrinkles that looked like laugh lines. At least at some point of his life, he’d been happy. He held her gaze for several heartbeats before he nodded once and turned away.
“And Barnes?” she called after him.
He turned and looked back at her. “Yeah?”
“If you ever question my motives again, I’m telling Sam you ate his Christmas cookies.”
He laughed, harder than she had expected, but only briefly. “I knew there was a reason I liked you, Romanoff.”
Natasha didn’t know what had woken her up, at first. There were cars passing in the street below, somewhere far off a door banging shut and what could either be a dog barking or people having loud sex. Then it came again, a strangled sound, low but loud enough to register. At least for people trained to react to such noises.
She reached the door to Barnes’ room in only a few strides, pausing with her hand on the handle before she entered. The room was pitch black. The only light available came from behind her and it took a few seconds before she located the bed and Barnes in it. He was sprawled across it, the duvet half on the floor.
“Barnes,” she said, but it sounded wrong. Too formal to call him by his last name when she was standing in his bedroom, watching him sleep. “Bucky,” she tried and that was just as wrong.
He made another strangled sound, low in his throat, like someone was hurting him and he was fighting not to cry out.
“Hey,” she knelt next to the bed, her hands on the mattress but out of his reach. “Wake up.” She punctuated her words by pushing down on the mattress. Clint had woken her up from a nightmare once and she had rewarded him with a knife to his throat. She didn’t want Barnes to wake up like that, too. She pushed the mattress again, harder this time. “Wake up.”
He finally did. He turned his head, blinking against the light at her back. “<Natalia. What are you doing here?>” he said, and she probably wouldn’t even have noticed that he was speaking Russian if not for the distinct lack of an accent catching her attention. He sounded like a weatherman.
“There you are,” she said, relieved.
He blinked again, reached for the bedside lamp, flicking it on. “What are you— Why—” He cut himself off and didn’t continue.
Natasha stood. “You were dreaming. It didn’t sound like a good dream.” He had called her Natalia. A name she hadn’t heard since her time in the Red Room and she was sure he hadn’t mistaken her for someone else. She turned around and left. “I’m making coffee. You’re welcome to join me if you want.”
He did. Following her into the kitchen, silent as a shadow. “Did I wake you?”
“I wasn’t sleeping anyway,” she lied.
He clearly didn’t buy it, but he didn’t call her on it, just plonked down onto the plastic-covered chair by the kitchen table.
The kettle wheezed, and she took it off the heat to forestall the piercing whistle, poured the water into the two cups with instant coffee already measured out, plopped a spoon in each, and brought them with her to the table.
“I usually work out after. Or go for a run,” she told her coffee cup. “Burn off the excess energy, clear the head. Not much room for that here.”
“Does it get any better? You’ve been out longer…”
She met his eyes under the harsh fluorescent light. “I wish I could say yes. They become less frequent. It’s been almost a month since my last nightmare.”
“Got that to look forward to, then.” Steam rose as he stirred his coffee. “You know, I almost miss regular dreams. It’s always either full on unconsciousness or reliving the absolute worst parts of my life. Like I’m just a passenger again, unable to stop what’s happening.”
“You only dream about things that have happened to you?” The coffee tasted flat, dusty. She hadn’t checked its expiration date as she needed the focal point more than the caffeine. Needed to decide her next move.
“Yeah, you don’t?”
“No. They’re mostly dream logic nightmares. One time I dreamt about this–don’t laugh—this giant orange chasing me. Trying to kill me. Then I woke up with my heart in my throat and realized I had been chased by a goddamn orange.”
To his credit, he did try not to laugh. “I would give my left arm to only dream about being chased by an orange,” he said when he could speak without sniggering. “Oh, wait.”
She didn’t know when she’d get another chance like this, with him still a little sleepy and more open than she’d ever seen him. And she couldn’t let go of how natural her old name had sounded coming from his lips. Carefully watching his reaction, Natasha asked, “You remember your time as the Winter Soldier?”
His expression changed so slightly she probably wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t been looking for it. “Most, yeah. But not all.”
“You’re lucky,” she said and raised a hand when he opened his mouth to argue. “I know for a fact that I wasn't born in 1984. Despite what my official papers say, despite what I remember. I even let Wanda rummage around to see if she could shake something loose." Natasha could lie better than most, without remorse or regret, but she also knew when to avoid it. When truths would do the work lies couldn’t. She shook her head. “There’s nothing left of that other life. I don’t have the super soldier serum like you do to counteract the chair. Whatever they gave me doesn’t work like that.”
His fingers twitched around his coffee mug, and a vein on his neck pulsed so hard she could almost hear his heartbeat. “I don’t know if that’s a blessing or a curse. Not remembering.”
“I do. Despite what they say, what you don’t know can hurt you.” Clint had been with her when she had found what was left of her Red Room files. Had helped her copy them and destroy the originals. She had revealed enough to Wanda to give her something to dig for, but both only knew what Natasha had chosen to share with them. It had never left her feeling as exposed as she did now.
He pretended to stir his coffee for several long seconds. “I trained you,” he finally said. “That’s what you want to know isn’t it? You were the best Black Widow the Red Room had ever produced and they sent me to make you even better.”
He wouldn’t - or couldn’t - look at her and she wanted to grip his head, force him to meet her eyes, but she didn’t dare interrupt him.
“You were… you were exceptional, and I couldn’t look away. You made me remember what it was like to feel human. And they punished us both for that, in different ways.”
The very worst part of his raw, vulnerable confession was that she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt he was telling the truth. He had loved her and he was sure she’d loved him back. It wasn’t just from reading the twitches in his face or the slight tremor in his right hand when he laid his mismatched hands out on the table between them. Something deep inside her relaxed. Like a breath she had been holding for far too long.
So, she didn’t hear the footsteps in the hall outside because she was so caught up in her own little world of might-have-beens. Didn’t even see him look towards the entrance. But they both heard the door being kicked in and, thankfully, finely honed instincts didn’t wait for the brain to catch up, they just forced the body to react.
The sound of his grunt when the bullet tore through him still echoed in Natasha’s ears hours later. Even with Steve doing his best to drown it out.
“Maybe, just maybe, you could inform the people around you the next time you decide to go off on some harebrained revenge trip, so we won’t be four thousand miles away when you need help.” Steve had his hands in fists on his hips and that was never a good sign.
“We only needed help with the cleanup. Already taken care of them.” Not a lot of people could sound dismissive about help while laid out on a hospital bed with more bandages than clothes on and no less than three different drips attached to their arm. But he managed well enough.
“Your guts were hanging out!”
“Don’t be so dramatic, Steve. Natasha would have stitched me up fine if you hadn’t sent a team.”
Her head was pounding, and it was probably lack of sleep or low blood sugar or something, but all she wanted was to curl up next to—next to James on the hospital bed and sleep for a year. She reached out for his hand where the cuts on his knuckles were barely even visible now. Only reddened skin showed where he had been pounding the kill team sent after them into so much minced beef. Her hands as well as knees were covered in bruises and still smarted, but that was what she got for fighting armed soldiers dressed in an oversized tee and what more or less amounted to booty shorts. At least James had had the sense to put on jeans before he had followed her into the kitchen all those hours ago. On a different continent.
Maybe she should begin sleeping with her stingers on while away on missions, and maybe a Glock or two strapped to her thighs. In case she was ever stupid enough to be distracted by a pair of pretty blue eyes.
That made her grin.
“What.” Steve’s voice was flat, his indignation forgotten.
“Be a pal and kindly leave us the fuck alone, Steve. Me and Natasha need to talk.”
He did. Without another word and quicker than she had expected.
And then it was just the two of them.
She turned James’ hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, and he curled long fingers around her own.
There were a million questions she wanted to ask him, but what she said was, “What did I call you?”
“I didn’t have a name back then, so mostly nicknames. Milii moi, lyubimyi. You used to love calling me Little Star,” he said fondly. “Winter Soldier or just Soldier when in public.”
“And you called me Natalia.” She had to lean forward to hold his hands while still seated in the chair by his bed and her back didn’t like that much. Probably because of how hard she’d been slammed into a wall earlier. Easier just to move. Natasha got up and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed, careful not to disturb James.
He shifted and pressed his thigh against her hip, grunting as he strained muscles that really should have more than a few hours of rest. “Names are important.”
“Yes, they are.” She finally gathered the courage to look at his face. His bottom lip had split and he was paler than she liked, but he was clean again, more or less whole.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” It was his turn to look away, at their hands as he stroked his thumb over the back of hers.
“Don’t be.”
“I didn’t know you couldn’t remember. I thought— I thought you just didn’t— Maybe it hadn’t meant the same to you. But then you said…at the Winter whatever, and I couldn’t tell if you were lying. And after, I thought, maybe it was for the best. Better not to remember at all.” He looked exhausted. Like fighting an entire team of trained killers and getting shot in the stomach was a walk in the park, but baring his soul took all he had to give.
“No, it’s not.” All she wanted was to curl up next to him, dig her fingers in and never let go. And there was nothing stopping her now. “So, you’d better tell me everything.”
Natasha’s hospital slippers fell to the floor with barely a sound as she swung her legs up to settle next to him, her head on his shoulder. She tried not to jostle him as she lay down, but it was in vain as James wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer, drips be damned, pressing his lips to her forehead. He was so warm, she didn’t know if it was because of his injuries or if he was always this warm, and she made a mental note to ask him about that, too. “James,” she said, because names were important, and stretched to kiss him, softly to not reopen the cut.
He leaned his head against hers, breathing in whatever scent left behind by the caustic shampoo she had used to clean sweat and someone else’s blood out of her hair, and mumbled, “God, I’ve missed you.”
Stubble scratched her palm as she cupped his jaw. “I’m here now.”
Remembering would be better, but she loved him all the same.