Work Text:
🗡The Winter Soldier🗡
Her bird-thin bones were wrapped in creamy alabaster skin which contrasted exquisitely with her fire-red hair. Her green eyes had a distant look about them but he could almost sense the alertness within her. She was not her appearance. There was something special about this one.
Her tongue darted over her full lips as she shifted her feet on the mat. The girl across from her got into position. Her blonde hair was pulled back into an impeccable braid that fell down her delicate spine.
"Goodbye, Natalia," one of the girls muttered to another next to her.
So the blonde girl must be Yelena, the insidiously gifted student that the mistress was talking about. She was known around the Room for her natural ability to kill. It seemed that this Natalia was not as known amongst the girls and would not be known better after this fight.
Yelena sprinted over to Natalia, teeth bared and eyes burning like a rabid dog released from its rope. She was almost upon her when Natalia stepped to the side, kneeing Yelena in the stomach before taking her braid in her hand and yanking her to the ground. Yelena wrapped her legs around her, pulling Natalia down as well.
The girls rolled on the mat, a blur of crimson and white-blonde, kicking, clawing and even biting as each passed the upper hand to the other. To everyone's surprise, after nearly twenty minutes of the two girls beating each other black and blue, an authoritative voice rang out for them to cease. Natalia sprang up to attention with ease as Yelena stumbled to her feet, holding her bleeding nose.
The mistress spoke to the girls but he tuned her out and as he observed the girl they called Natalia. He felt a dull sense of pleasure seeing her surprise everyone in the room as she held her own against the supposed star student.
Perhaps he just had a soft spot for the underdogs.
🗡
As the young girl called Natalia began to rise to the top, jealousy blossomed. That was to be expected. However, these were not ordinary children. They were taught to end lives, to neutralize threats, and the thin redhead was becoming one indeed.
It would not be long before simple jealousy became something lethal.
🕸Natalia🕸
The girl fell to the ground dead with a dull thump and the knife that had been clutched in her hand clattered next to her.
Natalia gasped softly as the thuds of her heart reverberated throughout her entire body. She looked from her would-be murderer, laying still in the blue light of dawn, to her retreating savior, disappearing into the darkness.
"Why did you do that, Soldier?" she heard herself calling softly to him.
She expected him to pay her no heed and continue his silent descent into the darkness until he was out of view. To her surprise however, he stopped walking and turned. His hard eyes seeming to penetrate right through her bird bone body.
"You will not die, child," he answered. "Not like this."
She was puzzled beyond belief.
"How should it matter how I die?"
This time he did not reply.
🕸
She teetered on the precipice of consciousness and dreams when a scream cut through the air. Her eyes snapped open, as did the other girls'. Some sat up in bed, their handcuffs clinking while others whispered softly to one another.
The moment of initial curiosity faded and they all lay back down one by one as the screams continued.
Natalia rolled onto her side, uneasy with how she felt inside. She knew that all of the girls were just as aware as her that it was the Soldier being punished. So why did she not feel as indifferent as they did?
The cries of pain continued for a few moments more and Natalia realized that they wanted the girls to hear. It was a warning. A lesson that they were in control—always. If they could bring down terror upon the mighty Winter Soldier then no one was the exception. There was no escape from the wrath of the Red Room.
🕸
“What do you have there?”
The shock of actually being down there in the dark with him almost caused her to forget why she had come in the first place. She looked down at the flask in her hand and then held it out in puddle of moonlight between them.
“Water,” she responded, now inclining it to him to take. His bloody, bruised face gave away nothing. His gaze on her was as impenetrable as ever.
“Don’t let them catch you being kind, child,” he finally said. “They’ll beat it out of you.” His voice was rough but she detected a real earnestness in it.
She turned his words over in her head for a moment before crouching down to put the bottle in the middle of the spot of light like an offering.
“Wipe away my fingerprints when you’re done,” she said before turning back into the embrace of the shadows.
🕸
She wiped away the blood from her lip with the back of her hand. At least he hadn’t landed that punch with his metal fist.
“Don’t cry,” he said from across the room.
She ran her tongue over the cut. If she hadn’t known better she would have thought that he was teasing her.
“I don’t remember how,” she responded with half a mind, panting slightly as her heart rate began to regulate. It always felt like a real battle whenever they sparred.
She crossed the mat to grab her water bottle and her eyes happened to fall on him as she took a swig of it. She caught him staring at her with a strange expression on his face. Pity perhaps.
Regardless of what it was, the whole situation was becoming inappropriate. He was going to get into trouble again. She put down the bottle and returned to her starting position on the mat.
“Once again?” She asked, holding her hands up defensively and sweeping away the strange feeling that had been born in the lull.
He blinked and immediately was back to his cold, hard self. She stole another covert, wary glance at him before sprinting into action. He had almost seemed...human.
🕸
If she were capable of love Natalia would have feared that she was in danger of feeling it for the Soldier someday. However, she knew this to be impossible and the thought was banished from the young girl's head.
🕸
"What we've learned," Yelena began in her attention-grabbing voice that immediately drew the eyes and ears of all to her. She was doing her stretches, legs spread apart into a split. She was doing it languidly however, her eyes hooded and her lips curved into a smile. She was practicing seduction. Natasha continued drying her hair.
"Do you think that it would work on all men?" Yelena finished.
"I don't see why not," Alyona replied. "They all are weak when it comes to sexual indulgence."
"What do you think, Natalia?" Yelena called over to her, drawing her legs to her chest with a sly smile. Everything about her seemed sly. Like her asking the question in the first place. She hadn't cared about the other girls' input. Only the quiet redhead's.
"Who did you have in mind?" Natalia replied, cutting to the chase. She feigned indifference to the whole discussion by not turning around, fixing her eyes on her own reflection instead as she ran her fingers through her curls.
Yelena's grin widened. "Let's say...the Soldier," she drawled.
This incited a quiet response of gasps and smirks amongst the girls.
Natalia made no physical response that this affected her though the very idea of it had her reeling. Instead she turned around and made her way to her bed.
"Let me know how that goes,” she replied, barely favoring the young blonde with a glance.
"You don't think I could do it?" Yelena challenged.
Natalia pulled the covers over her legs. The instructors would be here in moments and she hated being led to her bed like a prisoner. It was easier to pretend that this was all by choice. She looked at Yelena again. She was a pretty girl and would undoubtedly grow to be a stunning woman. She would have any mark wrapped around her finger before slitting its throat. But this was different.
"It's not a matter of your abilities, it's a matter of your mark."
"Tell me about my mark," Yelena said, easing up to her feet. "You've had a lot of training with him."
All of the eyes in the room were switched to her now. She maintained a bored persona.
"He's a soldier. Their soldier. He's like an automaton or a robot. He's not like the men that are our marks. He doesn't function that way."
"How do you know how he functions?" Yelena sneered, drawing out the last word so that it seemed to have a more perverse meaning.
"Perhaps you would know, Yelena if you were given the opportunity to train with him more," she replied almost pleasantly.
The room then grew completely quiet. Everyone had heard the snub and by the ill-hidden rage in Yelena's face, she especially had heard it loud and clear.
Natalia lay back in bed as soon as the doors opened and the instructors stepped in.
🕸
It wasn’t long after that conversation with Yelena that she awoke one day with a strange feeling in her stomach. The reason behind it slid into place when she lined up with the other girls in the training room.
While she stood in her full ballet attire, ready and waiting for instruction, her eyes imperceptibly glanced around the room. He was not there with the other instructors, his eyes shadowed by his hair and his arm glinting in the cold window light.
He was gone.
Emptiness, she realized as she spun across the room. The feeling in her stomach was emptiness.
🧢Bucky🧢
The air ached with something when she was around. Familiarity he finally decided but could not understand why. Every part of his being strained when she was nearby, pressing and prodding to remember. If she had known him at all before he shot her in D.C., and before that, Odessa, as Steve reminded him, she did not let on. She was not openly hostile, just cold. As cold as anyone would be after being shot twice and then strangled.
"You could at least recognize me."
The choked words that had hummed against his metal hand came to his mind one night. His eyes immediately snapped open and he ran them through his head over and over, memorizing the sound of her voice and rifling through his thin file of legible memories for another time in his life when that voice had met his ears.
He finally gave up when dawn began to emerge.
🗡
Nearly half a decade had passed before he was assigned back to the infamous Red Room. It almost surprised him that he still remembered the girl called Natalia and how he felt a semblance of pleasure in seeing that she was still alive. But not only that, but well and thriving; pulsing with energy.
By the way the instructors looked from her to each other, she was a marvel; the choice child. She was much changed since last he saw her. When she was a child it seemed like she was trying to fade away, giving the impression that she amounted to nothing. Then when they put her in the ring to let natural selection do its work she sprang to life, tearing off her disguise and becoming a whirlwind of destruction that bested her enemies in seconds.
She had been pretending to fail the whole time until she could reach the top in one foul swoop. Like the animal that pretends to be wounded before devouring it's unguarded would-be predators. Her status in the Red Room had changed dramatically since he had been here last as well as her physical appearance.
While he had not aged at all physically, she now looked like she could be about seventeen or so. She was fuller beneath her skin which had lost none of of its youthful smoothness but had some more color to it. She had the figure of a young woman now, all graceful curves that sloped and swayed and hid the ironlike sinews and muscles of her body.
Her hair was longer now but had lost none of its red vibrancy. Her face was more narrow, making her full lips and high cheekbones more prominent and her eyes had lost their distant disguise.
She had the stony and calculating gaze of a killer now.
He knew however, that the very best killers had even more enemies than victims. That would be the case with her now more than ever.
He felt himself slide back into his old role that he had assigned himself to five years ago. He hadn’t known why then and still didn’t completely know now. It hadn’t been a conscious decision; the result of earnest, drawn-out deliberation. He had simply stepped forward one day and put himself on the line to prevent her life from being cut short. It had given him purpose, purpose that he had chosen.
No one would touch her, he would make sure of that. If only one would live, it would be her.
🕸
The girls gathered around the body of their fellow classmate until they were pushed aside by the instructors and ordered to their rooms. They trickled away slowly but obediently, some casting looks over their shoulders.
Natalia was nowhere to be found when this happened.
She had already snuck away before the instructors arrived, speedily and silently following the most feared instructor of all as he disappeared. She had been too afraid to follow him as a child all those years ago but she was now no longer that. She wondered if he remembered.
She rounded a corner and came across one of the hallways that led to the courtyard. It's current emptiness magnified all sounds. He would have heard her following him by now but he did not turn around. Perhaps he knew she would follow him.
"Did you kill her?" she asked him, not needing to raise her voice. He stopped but again did not turn.
"They're calling you to your rooms, girl. Do not disobey," he replied evenly.
She ignored this. "Why?"
He paused before turning halfway and glancing at her from over his shoulder. "Should I tell you?" he said softly, almost to himself.
At first Natalia thought that he had just spoken too quietly which was why she hadn't understood his words. She then realized with a dull start that he had whispered in English instead of Russian.
She turned the words over in her head for a moment until they were translated before looking back at him hostilely.
"Yes, otherwise I will never know."
He almost smiled. "You should pay more attention, girl. It will keep you alive." With that he turned around and walked away resolutely.
This time she did not follow and instead pondered their interaction. He acted as if she were supposed to know something. But what? What clues had she missed?
"Should I tell you?"
His voice had been soft in every possible way. Quiet, gentle and untouched by a rough, Russian accent. He had sounded American.
🧢
He almost ran into her in a crowded hallway at headquarters.
She spun gracefully away to avoid him, toes pointed like a ballerina.
A vivid flash of color sprinted through his head. He planted his feet as he felt the world tilt and blinked. It steadied but the memory was there now; short but clear and unmistakably real.
He glanced over at where she stood but she had already slipped away. A ghost of her remained.
A young ghost in a black tutu with coppery curls. He was watching her from above as she spun and leaped. Watching her from a menagerie.
He came back to the present for a moment to excuse himself before starting to his room. He needed to dig deeper and uncover more alone.
It was as difficult as recalling a dream but luckily one detail seemed to lead to another. He remembered his stance while watching her as she performed. She was not a mark yet. He was standing as a sentry not an assassin.
Now he was in a hall. A dead girl lay in the blue light of dawn on a black and white checkered marble floor. He had snapped her neck like a twig before slipping away. He expected consequences without a doubt but his mind was set at ease by this girl's death and that outweighed the consequences. Why?
🕸
"I will never get what I want. They will never let me die. So I will continue to exist...forever." His steady cadence broke on the last word, instead sounding unstable and pained.
Natalia wanted to leave this place. Leave him. She wasn't supposed to hear this.
"You should not have told me this, Soldier," she said, though "Soldier" seemed inappropriate now.
The Winter Soldier was a machine whose existence depended on the orders of his masters. He had no thoughts or feelings of his own. He lived to do bidding. The person in front of her was not this. He was just a man.
"I will have no choice but to inform them," she finished.
"And I would expect nothing less."
She was taken aback by this.
"What do you want from me?" she finally asked, feeling a spark of distress within her.
"For you to live," he replied simply yet his eyes held her's seriously. "And I expect you to do everything in your power to stay that way.”
🕷Natasha🕷
A shot rang through the air and through her side before burying itself in the engineer's head.
She fell to the ground, splattered red with her blood and his. Her ears rang and the thrum of her heartbeat pulsated within her entire being, reminding her the she was alive but failing.
The world around her was muffled and blurred as she lay curled in a second reality of agony. Yet a voice reached her there and her grimace nearly became a bitter smile at the irony.
"What do you want from me?"
"For you to live. And I expect you to do everything in your power to stay that way."
The man that told you that is long gone, she reminded herself as she shakily spoke her position into her comm and dimly heard Clint's hurried reply. Long gone she thought again as she continued to fight for survival.
🕷
She was fading out of consciousness from blood loss, this time from a gunshot wound in her shoulder. Straight through, just as the one in her side had been.
How am I supposed to listen to you when you keep trying to kill me? She thought irritably.
Upon thinking that however, she knew that it was untrue. She had seen him shoot. She had been next to him in the snow as he had picked off target after target. She had been as good as those targets to him yet she was alive. A shot to the side and shoulder but never the heart or head.
🧢Bucky🧢
Red.
He was dropped back into the present as sharply as awakening from a nightmare only to see her directly in front of him. He had nearly run into her and his body tingled with awareness.
Red. Her hair personified the word. It grabbed the attention before everything about her held it fast.
He realized that he was standing silent and staring in front of her. She stared right back with her trademark look of thinly veiled displeasure that she seemed to keep just for him.
He wet his desert throat. "Excuse me," he rasped.
She held his gaze a moment more before stepping to the side and marching past him.
🕸
He broke away from those restraining him and stumbled towards her with passion and anguish in his eyes. She took a step back as if he were a rabid dog but he ignored this, chest heaving as he opened his mouth to speak.
"If you value your life in any way—run," he urged and she saw and heard sincerity in his face and in his voice. His gentle, American voice, for he had uttered English again.
He held her gaze a moment more before they grabbed ahold of him again.
He brought down several of them and Natalia thought that she might actually witness him escape. Would she allow him to?
The thunder of feet behind her announced that reinforcements had arrived. They gunned him down with tranquilizers and he fell to his hands and knees before rearing up only to be shut down again with a fresh volley.
As he lay on his back with his dark hair fanning around him like the halos of blood that were left beneath her marks' heads, his head lolled to the side his eyes seeking hers before finally closing.
She watched as they dragged him away until one of the older instructors, blocked her vision with her stern face.
"You will speak of this to no one, Natalia--"
"What will they--"
"Not a word, Natalia or you will be punished even more severely than the soldier," she hissed before turning on her heel.
"That wasn't the soldier," the young student said distantly, looking on to the doors that they had pulled him through.
The cold woman paused her retreat and looked back at Natalia.
"No," she admitted. "But it will be once again."
"It" not "he".
This sat unpleasantly with her. He was not an animal. She had spoken with him and he with her. She had grown to see him not only as an instructor but as more. An ally perhaps because thinking of him beyond that status made her stomach turn with the mere idea of being weak and emotional.
The resonating thud of a metal door somewhere echoed through the empty room. It wasn’t far or thick enough however to muffle the screaming that then started.
🕸
His face had always remained expressionless in all the time that she had known him but now it was just blank. Everything about him looked unanimated, as if he were a mannequin. A mentally damaged dog had more spark than he did now and that turned her stomach.
There was no recognition in his eyes as they passed over her. He looked at her the same way he looked at everyone else: with indifference. Everything had been wiped from his memories, including her.
🕷
“I know you.”
He would be able to see through any lie that rolled off her tongue. She decided not to insult him by trying anyway.
“Not anymore,” she responded coldly as she tried to move past him. He matched her step and blocked her way.
“Tell me. Please. How do I know you?”
She met his nearly manic stare for a long moment, studying his face, his breathing, his unsteadiness.
“Get some rest, Barnes,” she finally said, more gently before stepping around him and marching towards the dark hall.
“I can’t.”
Hearing him sound so utterly destroyed is what gave her pause. She turned back to see him staring dully at where she had just been standing, his shoulders slumped. She felt that the man that she had trained with had been stripped down to the bone and all that remained was this empty, tortured, skeleton.
“Please,” he repeated, his voice now a bitter whisper. He looked at her through his unruly hair. “There is so much missing in my head. I need to know.”
She chose her words carefully.
“Have you ever considered...that remembering the past will do you more harm than good?”
His expression had almost been hopeful upon hearing her voice but now had darkened after processing her words.
She considered his haggard appearance and tired face. Memories of his dull eyes sliding over her with not a bit of recognition in them flashed through her head. He had been a shell then, simply existing from day to day and she had been painfully aware. It had been what eventually caused her to snap.
“Look at you Barnes,” she finally said, ignoring the clench that the memory had caused in her heart. She gestured at him, “You’re barely hanging on as it is.” He met her gaze and she knew that he had caught the bitterness in her face before she could wipe it away. “I don’t want to be responsible for breaking what’s left of you,” she finished quietly.
I owe you that much.
🕸
She leapt out of the way and landed a spinning kick to his jaw as he barreled by. She half expected him to make a grab for her ankle as it made contact with his skin but his reflexes were not that quick. Instead he stumbled to a stop, panting before touching his face gently. He kept his back to her but she could tell he was probing his tongue that he had no doubt bitten before spitting out some bloody saliva.
She straightened up and observed him warily. He seemed very out of sorts today. She wondered if there were any side effects from having your mind wiped over and over again.
"Are you alright?" she asked, careful to make her voice sound as indifferent, insincere, and uncaring as one of the instructor's. But the truth was that she did care. And that was a problem.
🗡
He was back once more, observing as a sentry as he had been before as the girls ripped each other to shreds on the mat. His eyes flicked across the room, hidden behind an indifferent expression.
She was no longer there. He wondered if she was dead but that seemed unlikely. She had been the best. He had seen that in the few months that he had known—trained with her.
🧢
She stood a few feet off from him in the snow. An improvement if anything. She usually wouldn't even stay in the same room as him.
A breeze brushed through the trees, flicking the branches as it danced through. Sparkling flakes spiraled down from their shaky resting places and accumulated on the great white blanket that stretched over the entire forest floor.
Some of the glittering snow landed in her crimson shock of hair but she made no move to comb in away. She remained standing perfectly still as if she were part of the wood.
Her only movement was when her eyes met his studying ones. He stared on unapologetically and she gave no silent question. Perhaps she was just used to being looked at.
"Nearly sundown."
Her husky murmur tore him from his reverie. The cloud cover prevented him from seeing the sunless sky but he felt that she was correct.
He couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t their first time standing in the snow together.
🧢
He had known her since she was a child. He had trained her, watched over her, protected her even. The memories were faint and blurry but the timelines that he had seen were not. She had been wiped from him along with everything else but her memories had been unscathed. She had known all along.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?” He didn’t know what emotions colored his voice, there were too many.
🕷
He sounded betrayed. She felt distress cut through her unexpectedly. She tried to calm herself. She didn’t lose her composure like this.
“Because,” she began strongly, “I didn’t think that it mattered....”
Her mouth and throat were suddenly full of ashes and she felt all of her flippancy and bravado get snatched away just as his memories of her had been.
“...If you knew me or not,” she finished quietly, looking away as if it had been an unimportant afterthought when in reality she was reeling. What was happening to her? She never lost her edge.
She warily looked up at him.
Until now.
Fire was in his eyes as he stared her down.
“Of course it matters!” He exclaimed incredulously. “Every little detail matters to me! I have nothing right now and you have so much of my life in there.” He stabbed a finger in the direction of her head as if were a cabinet containing files and files of information.
“It wasn’t a life, Barnes,” she whispered, not even trying to contain the sadness and pity in her voice.
He paused to process this, pain evident in his eyes.
“But I knew you,” he pressed earnestly, composing himself. “You weren’t just a face. You were someone.”
She looked away again, shifting from one foot to the other. She wanted to fight. She wanted to flee.
He noted her discomfort. “Why do you think that that wouldn’t matter to me?”
Her eyes flicked up to him sharply.
“Because what happened to you, the things that were done to you and the things that they made you do, your entire existence, Barnes—it was wrong,” she exclaimed.
He stilled and almost seem to pull back at her outburst, but waited quietly for her to continue. And so she did. The floodgates had been opened.
“I know because I was there. I saw it, I heard it, I was—“ her voice cut off as a stone seemed to appear in her throat. She swallowed it down. “I was the cause of it,” she finished, more quietly as shame strangled her strength.
“You’ve had a long life and I was there for a couple years of it but those years were nightmarish and I didn’t want to remind you of that. I owe you that much.”
She was one of the few that could get an edge on him when he fought. And as far as she knew, he was the only one that could get an edge on her when it came to everything else.