Chapter Text
It is interesting, how things can come together and fall apart at the same time.
The weather in Wakanda is perfect, as always, and as Steve walks up a grassy hill he can’t help but marvel at the sheer beauty of the scene around him. He comes to a stop at the top, tucking his hands into his pockets.
A long, heavy sigh escapes him as he gazes out across the city. The fields and buildings are teeming with life below him, and he takes a moment to revel in the first moment of quiet and solitude he’s had in days.
Here, on top of the world, it is peaceful – but it is a peace that is tinged with a faint sadness, and perhaps a little bit of loneliness.
Footsteps rustle quietly behind him, and he turns with a slight smile to greet the man currently climbing up to meet him.
“Thanks for not sneaking up on me.”
T’Challa comes to a stop beside him, a sympathetic expression on his face. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Steve sighs again, his gaze returning to the city in front of him. “I’m doing okay, all things considered. It’s just tough – everything fell apart so quickly, and to have to say goodbye to Bucky so soon after I’d gotten him back – “
“It’s for the best,” T’Challa says softly.
“I know,” Steve says quickly. “I know, and I’m really very happy about the fact that you might be able to undo everything, but I just – I lost everything so quickly. And I don’t want to sound selfish – “
“I would tell you if you did.”
“ – but for a while I thought that it might be okay if the team broke up, if I lost all my friends, because I’d have Bucky, and now – “
“You don’t have him either.”
“Yeah.”
T’Challa inclines his head slightly, his eyes thoughtful. “Do you regret what you did?”
“No. I mean, I can’t. Not when the alternative was – well, you saw.” Steve lets out a huff. “But maybe some things along the way. I don’t know what happened to the friends who fought alongside me at the airport. I don’t know what the government is going to do to them. And whatever punishment gets inflicted on them – that’s on me.”
He sighs. “And, well, I had some friends on the opposing side, too – and I don’t know if those relationships will ever recover. If they can ever recover.”
T’Challa stays quiet.
“I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” Steve adds, trying and failing to read the king’s expression. “Because I truly am. What you’re doing for Bucky – if there is anything I can do in return, please ask.”
“It is nothing,” T’Challa says, waving a hand. “But do me one favor. When you see Miss Romanoff – please tell her that I understand her choice. I do not blame her. And I hope that someday, we may work together toward a real common goal.”
Steve lets out a derisive snort, trying to ignore the fresh pain that washes over him at the sound of her name. “I doubt I’ll ever see her again. I don’t even know where she is. But if I ever run into her, I’ll relay the message.”
T’Challa turns to him, his gaze piercing. “I was under the impression that the two of you were close.”
“We were,” Steve says bitterly. “Emphasis on were.”
T’Challa hums skeptically. “She trusted you enough to allow you to go. Enough to believe you were telling the truth. I may not know much about her, but I do know that to a woman with her background – trust does not come easily.”
“Yeah,” Steve says shortly. “Sure. If I see her, I’ll tell her. Anything else?”
“Well, since you are offering,” T’Challa says with the ghost of a smile, “My sources tell me there have been a few disturbances in Russia.”
Trauma is a funny thing.
It rears its head at the most inopportune times, rendering even the strongest people weak and incapable. It is almost never cured, only managed – and when it is unpredictable, management is difficult. The moments it comes screaming out of nowhere are the most dangerous.
This, Natasha thinks, is not one of those moments.
In retrospect, maybe coming back to the source of all of her nightmares was not the best thing to do, but she’d gotten a tip and if what she’d heard was true – well, any amount of pain was worth saving people from the things she’d gone through.
As she picks through the remnants of the Red Room, however, she feels like she may have overestimated herself.
The ghosts of her past haunt her every step, even though the building has clearly been abandoned for years. The voices of her friends fill her ears as she walks through a room full of discarded bed frames, pausing only briefly at the foot of the one that she once slept in. Her nerves shriek at her as she prowls through the library, begging at her to touch the books she used to steal off the shelves in the middle of the night. She can still hear screams of fear and pain as she tosses a cursory glance into the interrogation room, knowing from experience that there is no place to hide that is invisible from the window.
She can feel herself shrinking deeper and deeper into her body, and by the time she gets to the records room she feels strangely as if she is watching herself comb through the files.
For example, she is vaguely aware that she is pulling the folders out one by one and perusing their contents. Her mind is filing away the information, she knows that much; but everything is from at least ten years ago – in other words, whatever she is looking for is not here.
She pulls the last folder out, and the pictures that slip into her hands send her jolting back to reality.
Her fingers slide almost feverishly against the crackling, aged photographs as her eyes land on the folder tab: Romanova, Natalia Alianova.
Well.
Dread bubbles in the pit of her stomach as she looks through the pictures, and despite every piece of her screaming at her to drop them and get out she continues to flip through them, one-by-one.
She’s seen these photos before: they were taken of all the girls, snapshots of their training. They were used to improve form, to point out mistakes in posture and footwork – and now, as the images roar back into life in her mind, they are a permanent remembrance of the past.
Her eyes have just landed on a photo of her with her hand wrapped around a crowbar when she hears a distant bang. Something starts to prickle at the back of her neck.
She may be a little out of it, but she has known that feeling since she first walked these hallowed halls –
She is not alone.
Nakia drops Steve off in an empty field with food, water, and a Toyota Camry that is registered in her name.
“Good luck,” she says, handing him a backpack that somehow feels lighter than the sum of its contents. “Sorry I can’t help you – I’m on another mission in Nigeria.”
“It’s okay,” Steve says honestly. “I’m used to working alone.”
She gives him a knowing look as she tosses him the car key. “Don’t stay here too long, understand? See if the tip was real, and if it was, get those girls and get out. People are looking for you, and if you take too long, they’ll start to catch on.”
“Yeah. Thanks again – for everything.”
Nakia smiles. “Of course. And provided you find a way to get to Wakanda, you are welcome back anytime – if you want to visit Barnes, if you need a shower, anything.”
“Thank you,” Steve says, feeling suddenly undeserving of the kindness he has been shown the past few days. “Really.”
She lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, and with a few goodbyes, takes off.
Steve feels a strange relief as he starts driving, the wheels churning easily over the dead grass. It’s been a while since he’s had some time to himself, and the monotonous hum of the engine fills his brain is a welcome distraction from his thoughts. He finally has a mission, again – and with it, a purpose.
He pulls the car over around a mile from his target and gets out, leaving the backpack in the trunk and tucking the key into his suit. As he approaches the building, he wonders distantly if someone set T’Challa up – it looks completely empty, like it hasn’t been used in years. The door handles are spectacularly rusted, and a little shove tells him the doors aren’t locked.
“Well,” he mutters, pushing through them, “Guess I’d better make sure.”
The sight that greets him is something straight out of a horror movie – the lights are on, but they look like they’re hanging onto their last breaths, and a disgusting grime has started to creep into the corners. He steps forward almost gingerly, wincing as the door slams shut behind him, and starts to proceed through the building, stopping to inspect every room for signs of life. There aren’t any: a layer of dust covers everything, and whoever once used this building clearly hasn’t been back in months, at least.
The building was previously some sort of training facility, he decides, as he steps out of what he assumes is a former dormitory. There are interrogation rooms, office spaces, and what looks like a weapons storage unit. It is eerily similar to the old Avengers facility, if less high-tech – though he supposes anything used for that purpose will look largely the same.
Abandoned as it may be, something about the building still makes his skin crawl, and as he makes his way through the rooms Steve becomes more and more uneasy. The door of the last room is open, and as he steps into a room full of files he is only slightly disappointed that T’Challa’s tip was apparently unfounded.
He makes his way around the boxes, glancing in the corners as he does. When he gets to the last corner and finds it empty, he lets out a breath that he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. He picks his way gingerly around the last table, looks back one last time, and realizes –
He’d missed something. Namely, a file folder that looks like it was hastily closed, lying on top of its companions.
He stops breathing as he approaches it from the side, eyeing it as if it may explode at any time. He reaches for it carefully, peeling the front back without picking the folder up. It’s full of a stack of documents and a pile of photographs, and as he takes a step forward to look at the top picture his heart leaps into his throat.
There is a little red-headed girl whose expression looks oddly familiar, a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Ordinarily, this would be disturbing enough, but as Steve takes in the hand that apparently accidentally entered the frame, he feels his entire soul drop out of his body.
Because the hand is metal, and from what he can see, the arm it’s connected to is metal, too.
Steve flips frantically to the next photo, praying that the suspicion he has isn’t true, but what he sees next is even worse – the girl with the red hair is older, staring into the camera with a defiant look on her face, and there is no mistaking her now. Not when he’s seen that expression in person too many times to count.
He steps back abruptly as if he’s been shot at, his heart pounding. Steve hurtles out of the room and sprints towards the doors, throwing his body at them in a desperate attempt to escape. They don’t open.
In the time between his entrance and now, someone, somehow, has locked the doors.
His body jolts backwards as he stumbles, staring in frantic disbelief at the unyielding doors in front of him. There is no lock to be seen, no easy contraption to undo. He tears himself away and sprints back down the hallway. A roar starts building in his ears, growing louder and louder until he hears nothing but one thought, screaming at him above the din of his own panic –
The girl in the photograph was the woman he knows as Natasha Romanoff. And he’s trapped in the Red Room.