Chapter Text
Beth didn’t like the basement. It wasn’t actually dark, the harsh fluorescent lights were too bright for that, but the cement floor soaked up the light enough that it felt dark. And while it was an oasis of cool in the summer, she usually ended up down here in the depths of winter, when it was bone-chillingly cold. But what bothered her the most was just the damn maze of featureless beige corridors. She always expected to take a wrong turn into a fold of space-time and end up wandering them for the rest of eternity. She wouldn’t even be downhere if her boss wasn’t a moron. She was happy enough to do the analysis, but the files she was fetching were too old to make any statistical difference to the present day, much less to the future they were supposed to be predicting, so this trip was actually a complete waste of time, and was only going to lead to an even bigger waste of time when she had to incorporate the data. If she weren’t such a stickler for detail, she could just make up the numbers and be done with it. No one was ever going to check. She was startled out of her irritated reverie by the sight of another person approaching from around the next corner. There was never anyone else down here. And how had she not heard him before she saw him? Every footstep echoed through the place so much that she had stopped on more than one occasion to let the sound die away, convinced that someone had been following her. No one ever was. A brief fantasy of someone having died here, their ghost condemned to walk the halls, passed through her mind, but was quickly dismissed. She didn’t believe in ghosts. In any case, this guy didn’t look like another office worker on a pointless errand. He was big, and dressed all in black. Security, maybe? Well, it wasn’t her problem. She didn’t want to get involved, but that was easy. Basic office worker protocol, stay on the right hand side of the corridor, locate the approaching person out of the corner of your eye, a quick glance, nod and smile as you pass. Except it didn’t go that way. He stopped right in front of her, so she had to stop too, or run into him. And, of course, look up, prepared to question his behavior with whatever level of irritation seemed appropriate. Her protest died on her lips. Mainly because he covered her lips with his, but also because in the brief glimpse she got of his face she saw that his eyes were almost completely black, with a ring of blue-grey so thin it was hard to tell the colour. His expression was unfocused, or possibly focused on something only he could see. His arms wrapped around her, very carefully, as if she were something precious he didn’t want to lose, but still immovably strong. It made her feel uncomfortably like a butterfly in a cage. And butterflies ended their days pinned to a board. She took a deep breath to combat the sudden spike of adrenaline, and smelled something incongruously floral. Honeysuckle? Iris? Something sweet, anyway. She shook away the minor distraction, but it seemed to have done the trick. Her nerves were more settled. She tried to push him away, knowing it was futile. She wasn’t strong, even for her size, and a lifetime of sitting at a desk had left her with a few extra pounds on what was admittedly a thin frame, but not a lot of muscle. She only succeeded in backing herself into the wall. And a doorknob. Ow. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I don’t know you…” He started kissing down the side of her neck, and he did a thorough job of it. By the time he worked his way down to her collarbone, she was breathing hard, and it wasn’t entirely because she was scared. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she forced out, one word at a time. “You’re going to regret it later. One way or another, you’re going to regret it.” He didn’t respond. She sighed, chilled by more than the temperature. “You can’t hear me at all, can you?” Still nothing. Not exactly surprising, but kind of disturbing. “Okay, I am officially telling you that you should stop.” The trouble was, under other circumstances, she would be more than happy to be doing this – he was devastatingly handsome. But not in the basement of her office building. With a total stranger. And no way to call a halt. “Well, if you’re a serial killer, this is a strange way to go about it.” He left off kissing to squeeze her tight enough that she could barely breathe for about ten seconds. She patted him carefully on the shoulder, like he was a large, too-friendly dog that she didn’t know very well.
She was… unnerved, but not actually scared. Which was an odd response, but he wasn’t hurting her, he was just persistently amorous. So what were her options? She could scream, and struggle, and try to get away. Which – well, there wasn’t anyone down here to hear, and she probably wasn’t going to get away, because it was obvious even through the – leather? armor? whatever the hell he was wearing – there was an awful lot of very solid muscle. She wasn’t entirely sure he would even notice. He hadn’t noticed anything else she had done. Alternatively, she could go along with the kissing agenda, which wasn’t exactly a hardship. In fact… “Oh, boy, you’re really good at that.” Her running commentary bordered on babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop. It helped keep her from panicking, for some reason. His fingers rubbed the back of her neck, then up the back of her head, which was… actually, surprisingly nice. Soothing. And gentle. He didn’t even snag her hair, which wasn’t easy, given how unruly her curls were. A minute later, his hand drifted down to her ass and pressed her closer. Given the swelling in his pants, it was pretty clear that there was more than kissing on the agenda. Which wasn’t really surprising, either. Disturbing, yes, surprising, no. The options hadn’t changed, the stakes had just gotten higher. That made her a lot more uncomfortable. But part of that was the location. Why, exactly, it would be worse if they were seen she wasn’t sure. Possibly the general (if well-founded) belief that he was far too good-looking to have sex with someone like her voluntarily, so she must be to blame for it. Or the fact that she had made what was an admittedly cold-blooded decision to forgo the panic and screaming that she really should be doing. In any case, they had to move. “I really can’t do this in the hallway. I mean, we really shouldn’t be doing this at all, but definitely not in the hallway.” Her voice sounded shrill even to herself. So far she was only hanging onto calm by her fingernails, she had/ to keep on top of her emotions, if nothing else. The doorknob, which was still digging into her side, might help with the location. She got one hand on the knob and turned it. At least it wasn’t locked, but they were still leaning up against the door. She tried shifting to the side, not expecting to get anywhere, but he spun smoothly around her, as if they were dancing, without even pausing between kisses. She pulled the door open and peeked back over her shoulder. The room was full of old desks and stacked chairs. Not ideal, but one hell of a lot better than the hallway. “I really hope you’re not a serial killer, because if you are, I’m going to wish that I’d tried a lot harder to avoid this.” She fumbled for the light switch and backed through the door. It swung shut behind them.
His left hand lightly traced down her spine. She shivered in a way that had little to do with the fact that it was much cooler than the right, even through the glove. ‘Prosthetic hand,’ the analytical part of her mind noted, in a corner that wasn’t involved with actively avoiding hysterics. His other hand ran fingers through her hair, and he buried his face in the side of her neck, breathing deeply. She knew she didn’t smell especially good – she never bothered with perfume, even when she wasn’t at work. But he sure seemed to think she did. It was… flattering? Something was inspiring a surprisingly warm reaction to this. She should be plotting her escape… but she wasn’t. He lifted her up onto a handy desk like she weighed no more than a feather. An instinctive fear of falling made her clutch at him convulsively. She wasn’t sure what it was that kept her from letting go afterwards. Since she was holding on now, it freed up one of his hands. He took the opportunity to pull her collar aside, kiss all the way across her shoulder, then lick the base of her neck, which made her draw in a sharp breath and hold on tighter. So he did it again. “Oh boy. That was… yeah.” His thumb brushed over her nipple. Even through her blouse and bra, it sent an electric thrill through her that left her gasping for breath. Her brain melted, and she started kissing him back. Or maybe it wasn’t her brain that melted. Well, however focused he was on the end result, he seemed flexible on the details, so she arranged the details as much as she could to suit herself. Which… worked out pretty well, all things considered. For someone who clearly wasn’t entirely aware of what was happening, he was a remarkably considerate lover. He kept most of his weight off of her, so that she wasn’t crushed, he was gentle, and didn’t rush. He also wasn’t the first man she’d known to fall asleep immediately after, though he was the first to wrap one arm around her and settle, apparently happily, with his face in her hair. He was too heavy to move, (seriously, that arm weighed a ton) but warm enough that she was surprisingly comfortable. And tired. As the hormone high wore off, she found herself drifting. Not exactly asleep, but dozing. Time passed, slow as molasses.
As soon as the man’s breathing changed, Beth snapped awake. A moment later, the warm weight holding her down vanished. Now that he was awake, really awake, he looked at her with utter horror. Not the kind of morning-after regret she’d half expected, but a self-loathing that was somehow worse. “Oh my god, what did I do? I am so sorry! I’m so sorry.” He sounded completely broken, almost crying. He literally flinched when she grabbed his arm, but froze immediately, eyes on the floor.
Beth put as much sincerity into her voice as she could manage. “I believe you. I’m not going to say it’s okay, because it’s really not, but I do believe that you didn’t intend to do it.” He still couldn’t look at her, but he didn’t even try to get away, even though he clearly wanted to run, and could have brushed her off with barely any effort.
“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered.
“We are going to have a discussion about what just happened. How much do you remember?”
“Not… much.”
“All right. Since my memory is more reliable than yours, if anyone wants to know what happened, they have to come to me. You are not allowed to tell them anything.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“What is your name? I can’t go on thinking of you as ‘that guy I met in the basement.’”
“James.”
She nodded. “I’m Beth.” She handed him a plain, grey card. Bethany Grace Edwards, an email address, Accountant, and a phone number. He took it strangely delicately, avoiding even touching her fingers.
“I am going to go back to work, and you are going to go tell someone that you’re still alive, because I’m sure someone is worried about you. Give me your phone number. I’ll call you tomorrow.” As soon as she let go of his arm, he was gone so quickly and quietly that Beth wondered for one moment if she had imagined him. Then she rearranged her clothes, not that they had taken off any more than the bare minimum, ran her fingers through her hair, plastered a neutral expression on her face, and went back upstairs to her desk. It was just after five o’clock, there were only a few stragglers left in the office. She was briefly grateful that she didn’t have to talk to anyone, but then she realized that even if anyone had tried, she would have ignored them anyway. Social niceties were not a priority right now. Beth wasn’t sure how she got home. It was like she just woke up standing in the doorway, keys still in her hand. When the door shut behind her, she finally felt like she could breathe. Safe. Surrounded by familiar soft blues and greens, the eclectic furniture she had spent so much time on, this space was clearly stamped as her own. She dropped the keys in the bowl by the door and kicked off her shoes. She wasn’t ready to process what had happened, but she knew she had to get through some basic self-care. She swallowed a couple of painkillers dry. A wooden desk was not the ideal place to have sex, no matter how careful you were, and she was sore in more places than she wanted to think about. Then she stripped off her clothes, threw them on the bed instead of putting them neatly away, and stood under the hottest shower she could stand until the hot water ran out. It helped a lot. She hadn’t even realized that she was chilled to the bone, her hands and feet almost numb, until the barely-warm water she started with felt like it burned her fingers. By the time she got dry and dressed in fleece pajama pants and her softest sweater, she had put a little distance between herself and the events of the day. Dinner was comfort food. Leftover baked macaroni and cheese that she usually indulged in only during her occasional bouts of depression. She turned the TV to the history channel while the tea steeped, not that there was much history on it anymore, but it was mostly for background noise while she thought things out. She didn’t think as well when it was too quiet. Today it didn’t help. She just couldn’t get any traction, her mind kept distracting itself, slipping away from facing both the past and what it meant for the future.
The one thing her mind kept snagging on was that he seemed oddly familiar. Had she seen him before? The only thing that rang a bell was something about Captain America, but he didn’t look even a little like Steve Rogers. Still, there were some advantages to the Internet. A quick search, and there he was. James Buchanan Barnes, Steve Rogers’ formerly dead best friend. No official announcement, but there were a few pictures of him in the background with some of the Avengers. Beth sat back in shock. “Oh my god, I had sex with the Winter Soldier.” It took a few minutes for that to sink in. It felt like she must be dreaming. This whole situation just did not belong in her life. She skimmed the few facts about him that were available, which were by turns improbable and horrifying. It was too much. She walked away from the computer, wrapped up in a blanket, settled on the couch, and just let her mind go blank for a while.
Some indeterminate time later, she was startled back to awareness by a knock on the door. Beth seriously considered not answering it. But that would be rude at best and pointless at worst. She sighed, and got up. When she opened the door, she wished she hadn’t. Despite the casual clothes, she easily recognized the Black Widow. “Bethany Edwards?”
Beth nodded. “Yes,” but it came out in a strangled squeak.
“I’m Natasha.”
Beth finally got her voice mostly under control, and stepped back. “Please, come in.” It wasn’t like she could stop the other woman from doing whatever she wanted, she might as well be polite about it, and maintain the illusion that she had a choice.
“You met one of my colleagues earlier today.” Her tone was almost aggressively neutral. If it was anyone else, she could have been commenting on the weather.
Beth reflexively glanced at the computer, where the web page was still open. “Yes, I… just realized that.”
“All he will say is that he’s not allowed to talk about what happened. Given his history, that is… concerning.”
It hadn’t even occurred to Beth that anyone might think she had – what, taken advantage of the Winter Soldier? It sounded ludicrous, except for the fact that a lot of very horrible people had, in fact, done exactly that. She choked back a very inappropriate laugh. “Oh! That’s not… he didn’t really remember what had happened, and I didn’t want anyone jumping to conclusions.”
“So what did happen?”
Beth had already had too many shocks today, and she really didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, there were a lot of things she didn’t know, and that knowledge might be the only bargaining point she had. She crossed her arms, her jaw set. “Why don’t you tell me?”
The Widow shrugged, apparently indifferent. “There was a lab, things got broken. The other people who were exposed were… unusually affectionate. James was the only one in the middle of it, and he vanished. Then he turned up hours later, with no explanation. We need to know what happened in that gap.” The illusion of calm wore thin at the end. One way or another, an explanation was going to be acquired.
Beth took a deep breath. It didn’t help. The thought of lying to this woman made her mouth go dry and her hands sweat, but she couldn’t think of any way to tell the truth that didn’t sound worse than what had actually happened. And she was waiting, with apparently infinite patience, which only made it worse. Beth settled on as few words as possible. “We met in the basement of the building I work in and we…. had… sex.”
The Widow had absolutely no expression. Her voice had the slightest edge to it. Impossible to tell what emotion was behind it. “Voluntarily?”
Beth winced and made a so-so gesture. “Not… exactly.” The redhead’s expression didn’t change, but her fingernails tapped on the countertop. Beth rushed on, before her reaction could go any further. “And this is why I didn’t want him to tell anyone. It’s not what it sounds like.” The Widow raised an eyebrow that spoke volumes. Beth knew she sounded defensive, but she wasn’t sure why. The memory of his horrified expression reminded her. “It’s not! He didn’t hurt me. And he didn’t mean to…” Beth trailed off, unwilling to put a label on it. “It was like he was sleepwalking, or something. Just… not all there. It was obvious something was… off. I’ve had a lifetime’s experience of being me, hot guys are not fascinated with me.” Beth couldn’t help the blush that set her cheeks on fire, but she refused to look away. The Widow let that pass without comment.
“Very well. What happened… happened. We need to know what your intentions are from here.”
Beth rubbed her hand over her face, suddenly exhausted. “Intentions, right. Look, I don’t know what to do. I wish I could just pretend it never happened. This isn’t anything I ever thought I’d have to deal with! I mean, I’m a woman, dealing with unwanted attention from men isn’t… new. But this was not that. It’s complicated.”
The Widow didn’t offer any judgment, didn’t try to defend her teammate or make even veiled threats. She seemed to have a bottomless capacity for calm that actually kept Beth from freaking out any more than she already had. And she seemed so genuinely curious when she asked, “What do you want?” that Beth blurted out an honest answer.
“I want him not to flinch every time he looks at me, because it’s horrible! It makes me feel like I just kicked a puppy.”
Natasha blinked, the closest she was going to come to surprise. “Not sure anyone’s ever called him a puppy before.”
Beth looked down. “You didn’t see him after. He wanted to run away, but as soon as I grabbed him, he just stopped. Like he couldn’t even move.” The Widow absorbed that calmly, but somehow Beth could tell that she wasn’t happy about it.
“Okay. Do you intend to talk to the police? Reporters?”
Beth glowered. “No and hell no. I may not be sure of much, but I’m damn sure this is nobody’s business but ours.”
The Widow was unmoved. “How about a doctor? You might want to get tested – STD’s? Pregnancy?”
At the last, Beth felt herself stiffen. Sooner or later, this was bound to come to something that really hurt. At least it was familiar. And she could deal with it the same way she always did. Chin up, lay it out straight. Her voice was flat. “Pregnancy is not an issue. I had ovarian cancer when I was seventeen.” Braced for pity, she was surprised by the genuine softening of the famously steely Widow.
“I’m sorry.”
Beth shrugged and looked away, not brushing off the emotion, but not willing to acknowledge it too deeply either. “Sometimes life sucks. That’s just the way it is.”
The Widow seemed equally willing to move on. “I understand if you don’t take my word for it, but James is immune to STD’s, so he won’t have passed anything on to you. In any case, if you wanted to get tested, it would not be remarkable.” Beth shrugged. It was too soon to get tested, so she had plenty of time to decide what she wanted to do. The Widow continued. “This was a traumatic experience. You should probably think about therapy.”
Beth’s expression turned sour. “I don’t trust psychiatrists. I ended up in the foster system when I was fifteen, and had mandatory counseling sessions. Never trusted the guy, I spent an hour every week writing English essays in my head instead of talking to him.” A mocking half smile flickered across her face. “Actually got an A in English out of it. Couple of years later, they found out he’d been sleeping with several of his underage patients. So psychiatrists aren’t on my list of things to do.”
Natasha gave a ghost of a shrug. “They aren’t all the same. Not that I’m saying you should, but if you do want to talk to someone, I know someone who’s a pretty decent guy. And has security clearance.”
Beth shook her head. “Maybe. Someday. So far, I’m just trying to figure out how I feel and what I should do.”
“No rush,” the other woman replied lightly, and changed the subject. “We’ll have to get you a secure phone. We can’t always communicate in person.”
Beth’s dismay showed clearly. “I… don’t know anything about that kind of thing.”
“Looks and works just like a regular phone, it’ll come pre-programmed. Just don’t ever go back to using your old phone. And no matter how tempting it is, don’t tell your friends. Especially anything on social media. There is no such thing as ‘private messaging.’ I know it’s hard, but it’s for your own safety. If this ever gets out, the press will never leave you alone, and they will not be your biggest problem.”
Beth shrugged. “Okay.”
The Widow gave Beth a measuring look. “I’m serious.”
Beth gave her a level look that absolutely dared her to show pity. “I don’t have any friends I would tell about this anyway.”
The Widow changed topics without even a flicker of change in expression. “I know something about trauma. The shock isn’t going to last long, and then you’re going to want to do something. If you have an idea what that will be, we could set things up for whenever you feel ready.”
Beth wondered if this was a test of her self-awareness as much as anything else. In any case, she did know how she would react in a crisis, sadly she’d had enough experience to know her own responses. Once she calmed down, she would approach things logically, and make far less emotional decisions than people expected of her. The trouble was, she wasn’t calm yet. She forced herself to extrapolate logically in spite of that. How was she going to feel tomorrow? Or next week? She didn’t think she would be flinching at every shadow, but there was fear there, and it wasn’t going to just go away. She pushed her hair out of her face irritably, and made a decision.
“Look, it happened, it sucks, it’s going to take a while to get over it. I know that plain old denial isn’t going to cut it. For either of us. We need to… talk.”
“So you want to meet with Barnes.”
Beth hesitated. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Somewhere on neutral ground?”
Beth shook her head more violently than she’d intended. “No. Here.”
Natasha just nodded, unsurprised that she wanted the emotional support of her own space. People either wanted all of their support mechanisms around them, or wanted the people involved in their trauma nowhere near their homes. “Do you want someone else around?”
Beth looked half puzzled and half horrified. “Why would I want someone else around? It’s going to be awkward enough as it is.”
The Widow raised an eyebrow. “You’re not… afraid of him?” Fear would be sensible. Logical, even. The Winter Soldier had killed hundreds – possibly thousands – of people. Most people were afraid of him before they even met him, much less after they had contact with him when he wasn’t in control of himself.
“Of him? No! Not… he’s not going to hurt me. I know that. If he was ever going to, it would have been then. There’s just… a part of me that’s not reacting well to what happened. But that part’s not in charge, I am, so no, I’m not scared.” That was a lie, and they both knew it, but if there was one thing she was sure of, she was not as frightened by what had happened as he was. She would cope.
“Okay. Tomorrow night, seven o’clock?”
It felt like too soon, but putting it off wouldn’t make it better. Still, her voice was a bit thin when she replied, “I’ll be here.” The Widow saw herself out. Beth decided that, early or not, her day was done, and went to bed, hoping things would look better in the morning, or at least develop a certain distance.
Sleep did not come easily. Too many thoughts kept running around in her head, like skittish cats. Why hadn’t she tried harder to get away? Was it because of the way he’d looked at her? Like she was something magical, and even though she knew it was a lie, it still felt good… Was it because he was so damned handsome it took her breath away? Or was she just that desperate for human contact? Where did that reckless feeling come from, that led to her kissing him back? Because she had. She couldn’t deny that, at least to herself. With a chance to look back on it, she had to admit that her own behavior scared her. She didn’t take chances, didn’t do new things, had never courted danger, even simple things like roller-coasters. She didn’t sleep with her boyfriends until the third date. She told them that up front, and it had ended several relationships before they started. If she was being honest, she never let them sleep in her apartment at all. The fact that the Murphy bed that came with the apartment was only a twin was a convenient excuse. She hadn’t consciously thought that out when she took the apartment, but it might have been that as much as the low rent that sealed the deal. Her subconscious could be sneaky. As if to underline that point, her dreams that night were as conflicted as her waking thoughts. She woke reluctantly, still tired and feeling half asleep. It was a good thing it was Saturday, she wouldn’t be able to go to work like this. She ate breakfast on automatic, then sat on the couch and tried to get her thoughts in order. That didn’t work any better than it had the night before, so she tried to distract herself with some television and let her subconscious do the work. It was causing enough trouble, it should be able to solve some, too. But apparently it wasn’t taking orders.
Beth spent more time than she wanted to admit staring at the television without seeing a single thing on it before she sat up and shook herself back to reality. When in doubt, do the research. Someone must have some ideas she could apply to her situation, at least in general. She headed for the library and checked out three books on dealing with traumatic events. There was undoubtedly plenty of information online, but she had a level of trust in books that had to be published. Someone was responsible for the facts laid out on paper in black and white. The first one had a preachy tone that irritated her from the beginning. After reading it for ten minutes, she gave up, paged quickly through the rest of it, then abandoned it. Given how ragged her nerves felt already, she didn’t need anything else that put her teeth on edge. She was looking for solutions, something to help her make sense of the conflicting emotions that kept her mind spinning from one thought to the next without reaching any useful conclusions. The second book was more helpful. In fact, once she got into it, it was fascinating, if a little frightening. It was hours later, and the sky outside was starting to get dark, when she finally closed the book and put it down. She was going to have to go through it again and make notes, but she understood the basic concepts. Applying them was going to take time, and a lot of effort. Reading through it, especially the examples, had brought home just how many issues she had buried or ignored. And the consequences that she hadn’t even recognized, scars that twisted her life in ways both large and small. It was going to be a lot more complicated if she was going to try to get James to work through his issues as well as her own. The prospect was almost enough to make her give up before she started. But maybe… maybe it would be better to have more problems, but not to have to deal with her own all the time. Because if she had to do this by herself, she wasn’t really sure if she could. She was used to doing things by herself, and her first impulse was always to insist that she didn’t need any help. But taking a serious look at her life and how it had gotten to be what it was, she was starting to think that might be a mistake. She really was seriously messed up. She had gotten by until now, keeping up appearances, but even she couldn’t pretend that it was a healthy way to live. Maybe it was time to make a change.
Beth got more nervous as the day wore on. She cleaned compulsively, baked cookies, did some research, did some breathing exercises. Wondered if he would even show up. Tried not to think about the fact that her nervousness was mixed with an unnerving amount of anticipation. At seven o’clock on the dot, James knocked on the window. Beth was startled, but didn’t hesitate to open the window, though she stepped back well out of the way before he climbed through. “I must admit, I didn’t expect you to come in a fourth-story window. It’s not like I have a fire escape.” She didn’t know who had been bribed to let them get away with dividing the apartments so that only half of them had access to a fire escape, but it was one of the reasons she could afford to live without a roommate.
He stayed well over arm’s length away from her, awkward as that was in the small apartment. “Might be best if your neighbors don’t know I’m here.” He was clearly skittish, unable or unwilling to meet her eyes, and if he didn’t flinch, it was only because he was in a state of permanent flinch. She couldn’t tell if it was because he expected her to hurt him, or he was afraid that he would hurt her. She wasn’t that much more comfortable herself, desperately beating back the memory of fear and loss of control with the obvious fact that he didn’t want to do any such thing now.
That was a good point. “Oh. I didn’t think of that. They might notice, it’s not like I bring a lot of men home.” That was intended ironically, but it fell flat. There was an awkward silence. Finally, Beth gestured towards the sofa. “Have a seat. Would you like tea? Or I could make coffee.”
The teapot was already on the coffee table, with a plate of homemade cookies. It brought back such a vivid sense-memory of his childhood that it almost brought tears to his eyes. It was… his mom, and Sunday afternoons, and an innocence he hadn’t known for the treasure it was. He didn’t want to change a single thing. “Tea would be fine. Thank you.” He perched on the far end of the sofa, as far from her as he could get. The routine of pouring tea smoothed over some of the immediate awkwardness. Of course, once that was done, they both started talking at once. “Whatever you want…”
“I don’t know…” And stopped. Beth held up a hand, determined to go first and get it out of the way. “I don’t know how this is supposed to go. I don’t think anyone has ever been in quite this situation before. It’s… uncomfortable. It’s going to be uncomfortable. But I think something has to happen, even if I’m not sure exactly what that is.”
He bit his lip. He’d thought about what to say, but hadn’t come up with anything that really worked. At least he knew where to start. “Whatever you want to do, I’ll do. Anything. I know it’s… ridiculous to even think about making it up to you. I would like to… not have done what I did.” The last half of the sentence came out from between teeth gritted in frustration. “I thought I was done with doing bad things to good people. I am so sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything...” He shrunk in place, expecting rebuke at best and determined to take it.
“Yes, it does,” she interrupted firmly. “It means a lot.” She could tell from his expression that he didn’t believe a word of it. “What happened was wrong. But you didn’t hurt me. And you didn’t have a choice, either.” Beth took a deep breath. “We are not enemies. We both went through something, and we are going to have to work through the rest of it together.” He nodded, but Beth still felt like she was trying to coax a wild animal out of its den. His stillness wasn’t calm, it was a barely-suppressed urge to run. Wherever they were going, she was going to have to lead the way. Blind leading the blind, but she knew at least the first steps. And speaking of first steps… “What should I call you? When we… met, you said James. Ms. Romanov called you Barnes. The computer said most people called you Bucky. I could call you any of those, or something else. I mean, I’m certainly not going to call you Winter Soldier, that’s not even a name, but almost anything else would be fine.” She watched him expectantly, but just looked down and shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Beth’s lips thinned. It clearly did matter, and letting that go would be a very bad start. “Names are important. They’re a part of who you are. That’s why it hurts when people call you names, no matter how much people tell you it shouldn’t. So right here, right now, you get to choose. Don’t just go with who other people think you should be. Be who you want to be. Don’t, for all our sakes, try to tell me what I want to hear, or lie to me, even if it’s to make me feel better. I’ve been lied to plenty, and all it does is piss me off.” This time the only answer was silence, but it was the silence of thinking hard, not of refusing to answer, and Beth was okay with that.
When his words came, they were slow. “They never called me Winter Soldier. Soldier, sometimes, or Asset. Most of them didn’t call me anything at all. I’m… still getting used to having a name.” Well, that was just about the most horrible thing ever. Beth had to clamp down hard on her urge to reach out, offer comfort. “Jarvis calls me Sergeant Barnes, even though I haven’t been a sergeant for 70 years, but from him, it’s okay. Tony calls me Frosty, or Snowflake. Nicknames, always different. He does it to everyone, though, and I’m still not sure if it’s supposed to be offensive. At least it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to make me be something. Steve calls me Bucky. But I’m not him.” He finally looked up, and there was something like desperation in his eyes. “Please don’t tell him that. He wants, so much, to have his friend back. And I’m trying, I just don’t… I can’t disappoint him.”
Beth shook her head emphatically. “I’m not going to tell anyone anything about you. It’s none of their business. You don’t have to worry about that.”
His tension came down a notch at that. “I want… I want to be James.” He didn’t sound sure, but it was taking the step that was important, not being confident. That could come later.
She smiled, gently encouraging. “James it is, then. And you can change that any time, if you want to. Now, I think we both have some issues about what happened when we met. And that’s… not exactly my only unresolved issue. Or even the worst one. I’ve been doing some research, trying to get some idea of what to do. I’m really not used to dealing with, you know, feelings. But I read one decent book, and it had some suggestions that might work. So, apparently we are supposed to explore our emotions and then figure out why we feel that way. Because emotions are like an iceberg, and there’s a bunch more of them under the obvious ones. I’m paraphrasing here. Anyhow, you’re supposed to start small, so it doesn’t get overwhelming. One true thing. So, here goes. When bad things happen, I repress my emotions. And this is going to sound like an excuse, but I got into that habit because I literally did not have time to deal with all that crap when it happened. But I never went back to it afterwards, and that was a mistake. So I’m going to try to do better. Your turn. Tell me one true thing.”
“You should hate me.”
Of course, that brought her contrary streak into play, and made her even more determined that she shouldn’t. “Yeah, I think you’re doing enough of that for both of us. Anyhow, that’s about me. It’s supposed to be about your feelings.”
“I feel like you should hate me.”
Beth huffed in irritation. Well, she’d known this would be hard. “Fine! You feel guilty, even though you had nothing to do with what happened to me.”
That finally got his attention. His gaze snapped up to glower at her. “I did it.”
That wasn’t something she could compromise on. She was sure she had a clearer idea of what had actually happened than he did. She put a scornful edge on her voice. “Oh, please, you don’t even remember it.” His blush said that might not be entirely true. “I was there. There was nobody home. Which was a little creepy, I’m not going to lie. But that’s why we’re doing this.” Her gesture took in the whole process, painful emotions and all. “So tell me one true thing. How do you feel?”
“Fine, I feel guilty. I feel like I hurt you and I can’t make it better. How could it ever be better? Damn therapy, how do you ever get over something like that?”
Beth forced herself to project calm, even though she was holding her empty teacup far too tightly in order to keep her hands from shaking. “Leaving aside the question of your responsibility, let’s say you made me do something that I didn’t want to do. Which is the real problem, isn’t it? If you’d asked, and I’d agreed, it would be fine.”
He took a deep breath. “Sure.”
It sounded more like ‘if you say so,’ but it would have to do.
“So, why does it bother you so much that you made me do something I didn’t want to do, even though you didn’t hurt me?” He just looked sick. “I don’t know a lot about your history, but it’s not hard to figure out why it would be a… problem. Your past experience is colouring how you see what happened between us. It’s totally understandable. Would be kind of surprising if it didn’t.” She waited a few seconds before continuing. He didn’t fill the silence, but she didn’t really expect him to. “The first step is to admit there’s a problem. You don’t have to say it out loud, just… think about it a little.” Finally, he nodded, with obvious reluctance. “This isn’t going to happen overnight, but we’ve made a start, so I think that’s enough feelings for today. Want to watch something mindless on TV and forget about the hard stuff for a while?”
He glanced towards the window, and she raised an admonishing finger. “No running away to brood until things settle a bit.”
He settled back down. “Okay.”
She nodded firmly. “Okay. Cooking channel, Science, or HGTV?” By the time they got through half an hour on shortbread cookies and a second episode on making croissants, both of them were, if not relaxed, at least less on edge. “I like baking, but if that’s what it takes to make a croissant, I’m never making one. They don’t cost that much.” Beth gestured to the cold cup of tea in front of James’s end of the sofa with a small smile. “You don’t really like tea, do you?”
“No, I do,” he hastened to assure her. “I like the smell. It reminds me of my ma. She always drank tea.”
“Fair enough. You could have something else to drink next time, though.” He didn’t respond to that. If he didn’t want coffee, or just wouldn’t ask for it, she could get some juice, or bottled water, at least. If she had options, he could just pick one. The circumstances might be strange, but she didn’t see that as any reason to be a bad hostess.
He slipped out the window, then turned back. “I almost forgot. I brought you a new phone.” The one he handed her was smaller and sleeker than hers. “The red circle in the middle of the screen is a panic button. If something happens, hold it for three seconds. It will recognize your fingerprints, you don’t have to worry about setting it off accidentally.”
“Okay, thanks,” she stammered, taken aback.
“Till next time.”
“Till next time.” She waved a distracted goodbye. He waited until she locked the window, then vanished. Why would she need a panic button? And now that she thought about it, how would it know what her fingerprints looked like? She turned on the phone. Aside from the big red button, the screen had all her familiar apps on it. And… they were up to date. She was even on the right level of Candy Crush. That was a little disturbing. Well, she needed a new phone anyway, and this was officially not the strangest thing to happen in the past couple of days. She decided not to worry about it.
It would be two months before she realized that she didn’t get a phone bill anymore, and her automatic payment for it had been canceled, which meant someone had access to not only her phone but also her bank account. By then, she had gotten used to weird things enough that she just sighed and decided it wasn’t worth fighting over.
Beth went back to work on Monday, and suddenly realized that she still needed to get those damn files. She stared down the basement hallway and couldn’t make her feet move. She kept thinking, not about what had actually happened, but what might happen. There was a looming sense of terrible possibilities that she knew was irrational. Telling herself that didn’t help. Finally she gave up, turned down the other corridor, and took the long way around. Nobody at work even noticed that she had been missing for a couple of hours on Friday, or that her mind kept wandering away from the project she was working on, even though it was quite abnormal for her. Usually she quite enjoyed organizing and analyzing numbers. She still got the job done, it just took longer. It was a bit dismaying that no one noticed, because of what that said about the lack of attention in general. Probably not just to her work, but to everyone’s.
That night, a file arrived on her phone from a number that was only identified with a spider icon, with a note. “You should know what you’re getting into.” It was obviously a heavily edited version of a longer document, but there was enough that it took her the entire evening to read it. She had to wait for the nausea to subside in between sessions. The list of missions was a not-so-subtle attempt to warn her off, but what affected her most was the litany of things that had been done TO him. She had no doubts about his willing participation in the missions after reading that – you don’t go to that much trouble to modify someone’s behavior if they are already willing to follow orders. It left a bitter taste in her mouth – she didn’t appreciate the heavy-handed attempt to make her choices for her – but she did understand that the Widow was, in her own way, trying to protect both her and her teammate. When she finished it, she deleted the file. She didn’t need someone else’s version of James’s story. Still, she didn’t get much sleep that night.