Chapter Text
1931
Bucky comes from one of those families whose Name comes in with puberty, not when their ‘mate is born. He has to wait until fate decides to give him his Name, and only after he shoots up like a weed will it happen. Needless to say, he doesn’t like it one bit.
He finds out later that he’s lucky it happens like that. But it’s not later, so he has no idea why his Name is doing what it’s doing. He has no idea just how lucky he is.
Names are supposed to look the same for everyone. They’re supposed to loop around your wrist like a bracelet. Yeah, it hurts when they come, if you aren’t born with one. The letters are supposed to be a decent size, not too big and not too small. They aren’t thick or thin, they just are.
Which is why it’s so weird when Bucky wakes up one night at age fourteen, a searing pain on the back of his neck. His cry is loud enough to wake his parents and his sisters and his brother (and probably his grandma from the dead, God rest her soul). It’s only his Ma and Dad who sit on the bed with him, ask him what’s wrong. His siblings stand around the bed, eyeing him worriedly.
His parents touch his head where the pain is the worst and come back fingers bloody.
They tell him that fate is writing a Name on his skull and he should try to go to sleep. Ma has some sort of medicine to give him for the pain.
He takes it -- he almost throws up, it’s so gross; Alice screeches at the gagging noise he makes, making the upstairs neighbor pound on the floor, but Alice don’t care. He sleeps for two days. When he wakes up, he’s sweating like a hog.
Steve comes by and lays under the covers with him. His Ma and Dad are at work, the kids at school, so it’s just them. Steve sits on Bucky’s back -- Steve’s so small, it doesn’t hurt having him there, but he can’t exactly move around like this. Then Steve parts his hair and parses out the Name Samuel “Sam” Wilson.
“So it’s a boy,” Bucky mutters, and wonders if that’s why it came in his hair.
“‘S tiny, too,” Steve says, showing with his fingers. Bucky makes an appropriate noise -- ‘s tiny, alright. “So small I could barely see through your hair.” Probably why it took so long, then.
“That don’t make any sense,” he replies, because yeah, okay, his ‘mate is a guy. But it’s not like it’s never happened before. He knows lotsa boys with boys for ‘mates, lotsa girls with girls, too. But theirs are normal, like his Ma and Dad’s. So why’s his hidden?
1936
Steve is already in bed when Bucky gets home.
His coat goes on the rack by the door, his lunchbox on the coffee table. He kicks off his shoes -- today, his nice pair instead of his docks pair, since he had to wait tables down at the L&L Automat -- and starts unbuttoning his shirt as he moves into the bedroom.
“Stevie?”
The Steve-shaped lump on the bed mumbles something Bucky can’t make out.
“You gettin’ sleepy?” He shrugs off the over shirt and puts it on top of the pile of dirty clothes. “S’only eight.”
“Nnnn.”
“No?” Bucky chuckles, sitting by Steve’s ankles. He grabs one just to make Steve kick him away. “You sure?”
“Shove off, Buck.”
“You’re taking up the whole bed, pal, where’m I supposed to sleep, huh?” Steve scoots over a whole inch and a half, grumbling the whole way. Bucky shakes his head; Steve’s so damn stubborn. “Real generous of you.”
“Shuddup.” Steve laments, words muffled by the blanket, “I got my Name t’day, leave me be.”
“What? Your Name? What’s it say?” He tugs on the blankets, but Steve and his small fists hold a lot more power than you’d think. The blanket doesn’t budge from over his head. Bucky would pull harder, but this is the only blanket they got, and he doesn’t want it to rip. It could be sewed back up -- Steve’s real good at it, and Bucky’s not too shabby himself -- but string costs money they don’t have.
“Some Russian dame.”
“Oh, great. You got a revolutionary for a ‘mate?” He shuffles around so his head is on his pillow, laying on his side, facing Steve.
“She was just born, Buck, I don’t think she’s gone to any marches. I don’t think she’s doin’ much of anything ‘cept starving.”
“People over there are even worse off than us,” Bucky agrees, sliding a hand under the blanket. It’s warm from Steve’s body, though when Bucky’s fingers slide over his ribs, he finds that Steve’s cold like usual. The shiver he feels under his palm isn’t due to the cold, he knows. “You gonna let me in, Steve? Gonna let me see?”
“It’s not right.”
“What’s not right?”
“My Name.”
“Can’t get any worse than mine.” No, he reminds himself strongly, biting the inside of his cheek. There’s nothing wrong with his Name. He just wishes he could see it better, s’all.
A skinny arm sticks out of the same hole his arm is making. His fingers curl around Steve’s elbow, keep him still so Bucky can see. Natalia “Natasha” Romanova.
“She sounds swell,” he tries. Admittedly, it’s a little difficult to see the Name. They’ve always known that Bucky was gonna have to get with a girl with another gal for a ‘mate but he’d thought Steve would be at his side. A Russian dame will surely want him to go to her. Letters overseas take much longer than a shout across their apartment, than from the other side of the bed.
“I don’ want swell.” Way to sound petulant there, Stevie. Least you got a girl, least you can see yours.
Bucky flops on his back, letting go of Steve’s arm but not before running his fingers down it. His hands go behind his head; one finger rubs at his Name, warmth pulsing through him as always. God, he’d do anything to be able to see it. “Swell’s better’n a crumb, I would say.”
“‘Course you would, you’ve been with every crumb this town’s got to offer.”
“Now Steve, I’m sure that’s not true. There’s got to be more hiding somewhere.”
Steve pushes the blankets off his face, and the flat expression he’s got going on makes Bucky’s heart skip a beat. “That’s a horrible thing to say, Buck.”
Bucky rolls over so he’s half on top of Steve and half on the bed. “You said it too, so there.” He sticks out his tongue. “An’ anyway, I would say I’ve been with some of the swellest Brooklyn’s got, too. Not just ‘er crumbs.”
“Oh yeah? Who?” Steve’s fingers come up to caress Bucky’s Name. He shivers. Some day, it’s gonna be Sam Wilson touching him there. For now, Steve’s doing it just fine.
Bucky smiles, a little dumbly. He’s so in love with this fool. “You.”
1944
“You Nameless?” Jim asks when they’ve been locked back up for the night. The other men in their cell look over, interested. Even Monty, who doesn’t give a shit about most of their conversations, perks up.
Bucky shakes his head; the ceiling spins and makes him dizzy. “No, m’not. Just real hard to see.”
“C’est petit?” Dernier crawls closer to see.
“Yeah, oui,” Bucky stammers, pulling away from the Frenchman. The thought of skin to skin contact makes him shudder in his now-filthy uniform, and he presses back against the bars, the cold metal providing a grounding sort of comfort.
“What’s it say?” Gabe tugs Dernier closer to himself. Dernier is okay with Gabe touching him and that’s about it.
Bucky shrugs, feels no shame when he informs them, “Sam Wilson.”
“Huh,” they all say, and the group of men sit for a minute, thinking that over. They would have thought Bucky would end up with a gal, not a platonic fella for a soulmate.
“So if it’s not on your wrist, where is it?” Jim questions, looking all over his body like he’d be able to see it from a few feet away.
“Back’a my head,” Bucky touches the spot where his Name is, near the bottom of his skull. “‘S’bout this big.” He shows with his fingers how tiny the Name is, leaving little space.
“Well that don’t make any sense,” Dum Dum retorts, surly as always. He’d been beaten today, so his attitude is even worse than normal. “Tiny and hidden on the back of your head. No way he’s real.”
“Of course he’s real!”
“Come on Dum Dum, don’t be an asshole!”
“Don’t be rude.”
“Just saying,” Dum Dum shrugs, and turns away to sleep. The other men hurry to lay down; Dum Dum snores like a fog horn, so it’s best to try to fall asleep before him. Bucky doesn’t bother, knowing he won’t be getting too much sleep that night. Illness is settling in, making him hack up a lung every so often. He knows he can survive it -- if Steve can, then so can he. But sleep is difficult when laying down makes his coughs worse, and his dreams are full of the faceless men he has killed. Every night, like clockwork, he checks his last kill’s dogtags and sees the name Sam Wilson.
So, no, he doesn’t lay down to sleep.
Gabe claps Bucky on the shoulder, keeping watch for their little group alongside Bucky. He says it’s so Bucky won’t be up alone, but they all know what goes on in his mind when he sleeps. Gabe’s got a girl back home, brothers and sisters, family. For some reason, his gun, just like Bucky’s, always aims for their heads in his dreams.
Despite it all, Gabe smiles at him. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s real. Fate just knows something you don’t.”
1992
Natasha watches Clint close the door behind him, face blank. He’s changed since the last time she saw him, now wearing loose clothing she’d expect to find in a hospital. His gear is gone. He looks much better like this.
“Hiya,” he says, leaning back. His body language is very open, his voice very friendly. It’s obvious they want her to trust him. “How're you holding up?”
She crosses her legs on the cot they gave her, cold toes tucking into the fabric of her sweatpants. She wishes they’d given her socks, but she isn’t about to ask for any. Eyes staying just to the right of his, she responds as honestly and as steadily as she can. There’s no sense in lying, not to him, not to the man who saved her. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, that’s okay. I don’t know either, sometimes.” He smiles wryly. “Uh, anyway, I got sent here to see if you needed anything.”
“If I needed anything.” She’s more interested in the fact that he was sent to her room, but this is a good line to fall back on. Makes it seem like she’s in shock and in awe at every little thing they do for her. Like the KGB didn’t give her anything she ever asked for (they didn’t).
He nods, overexcited. No agent with the KGB has ever been excited like this. It’s a nice, if disconcerting, change of pace. “Yep. Anything. I mean, within reason, but, uh, yeah. Anything.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. So, yeah, you need anything?”
“Socks.”
“I didn’t know Russians got cold,” he jokes.
She blinks at him, keeping her poker face; he squirms uncomfortably but, admirably, doesn’t look away. “Well, we do. I need socks.” She hesitates with her other request, curls her fingers into the extra fabric of her pants. He saved her, he let her choose what she wanted. But she isn’t sure if she can ask this of him.
Clint crosses his arms, muscles bulging with the movement. His muscles are big but she’s taken on bigger. He’s a threat but not a serious one. The only reason he got the drop on her was because she’d been distracted by Ilya. Stupid mudak, getting himself killed right in the middle of a fight. “Got something else in mind?”
“I know you said I can trust you.”
“But,” he prompts, suddenly serious.
She says delicately, “I need help with something and I don’t want it getting out.” The threat in her words is evident. I don’t want this getting out. If it does, I’ll rip your spine out through your throat.
“Oh, hey, I can keep a secret. Not quite the best in the business, but I’m up there.” His smile turns cheeky.
She scowls at him, not amused. There’s nothing funny about this. Plus, she knows the best in the business. She is the best in the business. “Clint.”
He freezes up, rolling his lips together. “Alright, alright. What it is that you need help with?”
Unconsciously, her fingers press to just under her skull, where her Name is. She hasn’t been allowed to do this her entire life. If she’d ever made it clear that she has a Name, that it’s at this spot, it would’ve been taken away. She’s never seen it, rarely touched it.
“I need you to tell me what my Name is,” she says, voice steady and quiet.
Surprise widens his face, mouth dropping open, eyebrows raising high. He must be a terrible spy, if he lets emotions rule him like this. “Your Name.”
“Yes, my Name. I can’t see it, it’s on the back of my head.”
“Yeah, okay. How do you wanna do this?”
She scoots to sit with one leg tucked under her, one outstretched. The floor is freezing cold; her toes rest against it gently, in vain. A chill spreads through her. She’s always cold but this room is so small and dark, the cold is seeping into her deeper than it usually does. “Just...here. Like this.”
“Alright. Um.” He moves over, sitting behind her, not touching but not too far away. She can’t help but tense up immediately, all warning bells ringing. Too close, they say, too close. “Where’s it again?”
Her fingers, which had slid away, move back to her Name. “Here.” Anticipation wells in her, excitement over finally getting to know what her Name is. She’s wanted to know since it came in when she was eleven, though she’s killed every dream about it, about what it could be. Allowing herself to want it only makes the pain of not getting to have it worse. Still, she’s yearned for this for decades.
“Ahh, okay, nice.” He moves her hair around, whispering to himself so low she can barely hear him. The only thing her enhanced ears can pick up are mumbles. “It’s uh...Steven...Steve, uh Ro-- Steven “Steve” Rogers. Yeah. You got that or want me say it again?”
She whispers, “Steve Rogers. Where have I heard that name before?”
“Huh? Gotta speak up, I’m mostly deaf.” He stands, his touch leaving her. Natasha sighs, shoulders falling. Relief at being alone on the bed washes over her, followed by incredulity. Clint is too trusting -- or maybe this is another ploy to get her to trust him. There’s a small chance it’s both. Either way, admitting weakness to someone who was your enemy just yesterday? Not smart.
She moves back to the way she had been, back to the wall, legs crossed.
“I recognize the name.”
“Yeah, same. That was Captain America’s name.”
“What?” Her emotions betray her, voice coming out reedy. Captain America? Did he just say Captain America?
“His name was Captain Steve Rogers, yeah. Steven Grant Rogers. God, my handler always talks about him -- “
Natasha stands abruptly, light on her feet. Goddamn floor sends a sharp blade of ice up her spine. She moves to the door and opens it, maneuvering Clint in front of it. “Clint, that’s enough for tonight. Just go get me some socks. Thank you.” She smiles as innocently as she can, rubbing at her eyes and yawning for effect. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. Goodnight.”
He smiles back, giddy and uncaring that she’s nearly pushing him out of her room. “Yeah, ‘course. Goodnight, Natasha.”
“Goodnight,” she says again, finally getting the door closed in front of him. Her forehead rests on the door as soon as she hears him move down the hall.
Captain America is her soulmate. (It could be someone else named that, but her luck is so poor, there’s no way it’s not him.)
Her soulmate. The perfect soldier, the most American man since George fucking Washington. Most influential person of the twentieth century. And he’s ‘mated to a Russian spy for the KGB. ‘Mated to someone who isn’t patriotic, who isn’t moral, who isn’t inherently good at all. He’s ‘mated to her.
A horrible thought, worse than any other, hits her like a freight train.
Captain America is dead. Her soulmate is dead.