Work Text:
It isn’t a luxury anymore, but James still relishes every night he can watch Natalia fall asleep.
She curls against his side, her cheek warm against the metal seam of his shoulder and as her breaths slow, James watches her body relax. He lets his eyes travel over her face, the tiny lines around her eyes disappearing in sleep, and commits every one of her smooth-porcelain features to memory. He watches the crimson waves of her hair twine around his fingers and as his own eyes droop closed, he holds her tight to his chest, matching their breathing together.
Sleep comes slowly, then all at once – one last deep breath and he’s falling.
+
He’s a shadow, a whisper. He’s a broken window and a smear of blood, a large-caliber bullet that cuts a silent path through night air and leaves nothing but an empty ribcage behind.
His dreams are nothing but cold metal and calculation, drained of all color but red. They’re silver fingers tightening around throats and scarlet blood spilling warm over shaky hands. They’re muffled screams that echo inside his mind, reverberating around the steel walls and driving him half-mad with rage.
Every night, James is trapped inside his head, and he watches. That’s all he ever does. Watches the replays of all his crimes run never-ending like film reels, the double-feature of his depravity; watches himself bathe in the blood of every mark and watches himself willingly bring back proof of every kill to his masters.
The part of him that knows it’s wrong, the part of him that never let go – that part of him screams in his sleep, just like it screamed then. Pounding two flesh-covered fists against the walls caging him in, the part of James Barnes that never wants to pull the trigger screams until it feels like his throat will tear, screams until he feels like he’ll choke on his own blood and grief. And all the while, the Winter Soldier is lining up his shot.
Sometimes it’s the Red Skull, or any other of the hundreds of marks he’d taken in his time.
But sometimes, it’s Steve.
Sometimes, it’s Natalia.
James is never sure, when he wakes, which nights are worse – the nights where he relieves the kills he was programmed to make, or the nights where his mind tortures him with just what he could do with the kills he hasn’t yet made. When he’s painfully, brutally reminded what he’s capable of, the creativity and talent for destruction he’s not sure was implanted. When he’s forced to confront the part of himself that he’s always hated, the part of himself that was an accomplice to crimes he could have never dreamed of.
And tonight, there’s a second pair of screams inside his head. As he watches himself take aim at the back of the woman he loves – as he lets fly a bullet that will not miss its mark in her throat – James’ screams wake him in concert with Natalia’s strangled, dying cry.
+
Grieving men are like animals; wild and broken in equal measure, and James can’t decide if he wants his heart to speed so fast it bursts from his chest or stop dead in its tracks and take his breath with it.
Before he can stop himself, before he can still the shaking of his shoulders, he’s reaching out for Natalia. Two green eyes snap open to meet his, and he turns away again before his eyes or his trembling hands give him away. Not that she needs to see him to know. She’s the only one who knows, really.
Her hands find his shoulders, stilling the tremor and holding him together, gently, as he leans his head into his hands. In times like this, when one or both of them is having a hard time fighting back the darkness for much longer, there is no need for words between them. Instead, Natalia pulls him back, resting his head against her chest and running a steady hand through his sweat-darkened hair.
After a long moment, James brings cautious fingers to her face. Tracing the slopes of her cheekbones, the dip of her chin, he takes his time memorizing again, refusing to believe that the twisted expressions of agony he sees in his mind will ever cross her face. Refusing to believe that her dear face will know anything but safety and joy under his protection. Taking his time, James slides still-trembling fingers through crimson waves and presses a hesitant kiss against her forehead.
Natalia leans into him, solid and warm, raising her hand to meet his, tangled in her hair. It’s silent, again, nothing but the rhythm of their breaths and their hearts between them, and soon James notices that the trembling’s stopped.
Eventually, half-lidded green eyes meet his, and sleep takes them both slowly. And this time, when they fall, they fall together.