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It was Tony Stark’s idea, to find the Winter Soldier. “A potential asset,” he suggests, and Natasha’s spine of ice cracks—memory, gun to her head: the Asset. “Or a potential threat.”
It’s a good thing Steve’s not in the room. To hear of his beloved Bucky spoken of as such, a bargaining chip and not a chew toy. Sometimes Natasha thinks Tony’s no better than Fury, no better than the monsters who raised her, no better than even the Black Widow. Give him five more years in his suit of armor and he might catch up to her.
“I’ll do it,” says Nat, and the Soldat in her head sounds unimpressed: Does that really seem intelligent to you? Do you not know better?
Tony even suggests she take Wanda along, for backup. “In a pinch, she’ll do better than a sedative,” he says. Natasha knows he’s just scared of keeping the girl under his roof. Cocky and a bit suicidal like all seventeen year old girls, she’s becoming more of a liability than a tactical advantage. Lagos proved it.
Wanda never even finished secondary school or socialized outside her codependency on her brother. She’s a ticking time bomb, with or without the mutated genetic code. “He’s skittish,” says Nat.
“He’s not a cat,” says Tony.
“An unfamiliar face would cause more harm than good.”
“Are you a familiar face, then?”
Twenty, thirty years ago: Do you know I recognize your footsteps?
“I don’t have footsteps,” says Natalia, haughty.
You breathe. I can pick it up. If I focus I can even hear your heartbeat: dum—dum—dum.
“Dum dum dum?”
Steady. Like a song. I could pick you out of a crowd just by the beat of your heart.
Natasha says, “After Washington, I would be offended if he doesn’t at least recognize me.”
This is coming out all wrong. There is a story here. Natalia is sixty years old; she looks twenty-five. When she was eighteen and looked it, she met the Winter Soldier; ten years later, she was in love with him. Five years after that, the unspeakable horrors.
Seven years ago: Odessa.
The gaps in between her remembering are like exit wounds. She doesn’t want to go probing around. What she knows is this: she loved him before she knew his name. She loved him when he had only put a single bullet in her; now the third is just beginning to scar over, an ugly mess of skin that truly makes her sick to her stomach, and she wouldn’t be surprised if she loved him still.
Two years ago: Bucky leaving Steve like a corpse on the shore of the Potomac.
What she knows: there is a man of interest to her in Bucharest, Romania. She has to bring him either home or to the grave.
Natalia’s rusty. In her prime, she would have never taken a direct commercial flight from JFK to Otopeni International, in a window seat next to a middle-aged woman reading The Year of Magical Thinking. She never would’ve taken a taxi to a street over from the address Tony scrawled on the back of a D’Agostino’s receipt, then, in broad daylight, walked into the building up three flights of stairs took a left and knocked on the goddamn door.
I know I’ve taught you better, Natalia. Haven’t I?
She braces a hand on the doorframe. Get it together. This is sloppy, sloppy work; she shakes her head clear of the cobwebs and starts again, does it the proper way this time: a spider on the windowsill.
The apartment’s empty but completely furnished. Natasha stands in the middle of a kitchen, which confuses her because it’s a kitchen: there’s clean dishes stacked neatly in the drying rack. She inspects those and frowns at the IKEA logos on the back. She opens the fridge and finds 2% milk and soy sauce, apples and Lindt chocolate and peanut butter, tomato sauce for pasta—fusilli-shaped, three-quarters of a bag in the cupboard alongside Nescafé and fucking Nesquik. A whole set of utensils, like a whisk and a ladle. All the makings of the run-down middle class making ends meet for the kids. What use does the Winter Soldier have for a whisk and a ladle, or maybe she’s got the address wrong, but then she—without moving a muscle, ah, your instincts still work I suppose—hears the door open and the heavy footfall of boots and she neutrally says, “Hello.”
The man in front of her looks about ready to bolt, or burst into tears. He takes a step back.
“I haven’t done anything,” he says quietly. Skittish, like she guessed he would be.
“I know.”
“So why are you here.”
Natasha almost cracks a joke about visiting her weapons cache, thinks better of it. She takes a moment for herself, hungry eyes roving along a tired face and muscular body and wonders if he’s still doing his drills like clockwork, finally meets his sad, sad blue eyes and says, “I came for you.”
“Steve?” he guesses blithely.
“You know him, then.”
He looks wary. There’s equal odds of him bashing her skull in on his rickety little kitchen table and him offering his wrists up for handcuffs. “Read about him in a museum.”
“And?”
He has no tells. No twitching fingers, no pursing mouth. That mouth. Natalia would stroke his mouth with her thumb and he would bite it then kiss it, and Natasha nearly drops to her knees from remembering that. But he remembers nothing, only says, “And. Washington.”
“You beat him to near death then dragged him out of the river.”
He nods. “And you’re here to, what, avenge him?”
“You shot me,” says Natasha dryly. “I could be here to avenge myself.”
“All’s fair between you and me,” he says in Russian, the syllables rough. “Eh, Black Widow?”
“You read about me too?” she asks. “I’m not in any museums.”
“You’re all over the Internet,” he says, “but I recognized you. When I shot you.”
Did you recognize me by my heartbeat? she wants to ask. By my voice, my putrid longing for you? Instead she says, “Which time?”
Evenly, he responds, “I could recognize you blind, Natalia.”
The next move would be to kiss him. Natasha stalks forward and promptly punches him in the nose. He lurches back and his hands fly to his face. “God damn it,” she hisses, her voice breaking. He fucking laughs under his breath.
“I trained you well.” He sounds proud.
You trained me well, everything I am comes from you. If she were a lesser woman Natasha would crumble on the dusty floor and weep. “You missed my heart each time. Why?”
“Same reason I dragged Steve out the river.”
His honesty surprises her. She wants to touch him and make sure he’s real, but one wrong move and he’s gone again, or maybe this is still her dreams. She’ll wake up without him anyway. “Is that reason enough for you to come with me?”
Anyone else wouldn’t have caught him tensing up. “Why?”
Natasha wants to tell him about her bed: soft white sheets, and sunlight that slants in at the right angle on mornings, and enough room for him to spread out on his back at the end of long days. She doesn’t think they’ve ever had sex in a bed. “Why not?”
“I won’t let ‘em poke at me, Nat,” he says. “And I know you won’t kill me before you let ‘em lock me up again.” There’s a wry twist to his mouth, and Nat’s stomach plummets.
“I was young,” she says. “I was foolish. Try me now. I can put a bullet between your eyes no problem, Soldier.”
“Still just your Soldier, your loyal lapdog?”
“I’m not calling you Bucky.” Her throat’s dry. James—James doesn’t smile, but it’s something close to it.
“Sounds wrong coming from you anyway.” He wipes the blood under his nose with the back of his hand. You alone were my fate, I would have done anything for you. Natasha won’t kill him, but she won’t let anyone else touch him, either.
“I could keep you safe,” she says, measured. “James. I won’t let anyone get their hands on you. No one touches you. Not even Steve, if you don’t—want it. Not even me.”
His eyes close for a brief moment. “You’re the only thing I want,” he confesses, so quiet she barely hears him. “Just not enough to risk—the world.”
“I’d never do that to you.”
“I know.”
Slowly, James steps closer and his right hand sort of—hangs in the little space between them. Natasha takes it, then warily, aware of him telegraphing her every move, reaches for his left one, too. She works the glove off. She runs her fingers along the fine grooves in the metal, the scratches. He’s a bit worse for wear now that no one’s performing maintenance on him. She wonders if it hurts.
He’s the one who laces their fingers together. He brings her hands to his mouth. Kisses her knuckles, then the back of her hands, then holds those close to his chest. His heart beats, quicker than hers: dum-dum-dum. She feels it.
“I’ll be whatever you need, James,” she promises quietly. “Anything.”
James shudders. “Can we—rest? For a second?”
The sun rises. Nothing else matters for now. Nothing else is real.