Work Text:
It goes like this.
The shawarma is good shit. New York is a smoking ruin, the blocks around them are covered in dust and the streets are littered with the remains of Chitauri fleet, which has scattered amongst the buildings but on the bright side, and the tabbouleh has just the right amount of garlic in it.
They think they’ve made it. Clint’s feet are swung over Natasha’s chair, Thor is tucking in with gusto that only a God can ever really have, Tony looks like he’s contemplating something momentous, Bruce eats like there’s two men in him (oh, irony, thou art a bitch) and Steve gazes at the wall. The place is old and there are posters of him, back in the day when he punched Hitler in every state and wore that ridiculous hat. It’s like a mirror into the past and it’s deeply unsettling.
There is a whosh in the air and Tony slumps. Maybe the adrenaline has worn off, maybe flying into deep space has had a greater affect on him than previously expected.
It isn’t until Bruce yells that he’s been shot that the other’s register that something has happened. Whilst the others frantically call for help, looking around the immediate area for this gunman, Natasha—well, Natasha looks to the skies.
This assassin is good. Afterall, it takes a one to know one.
Stark’s fine. The bullet was two centimeters above his heart—a debilitating shot, yes, but not deadly. SHIELD has access to some of the best doctors in the States, and that’s not including Stark and his company. Pepper sits by his beside and holds his hand, the heart monitor beating slowly and steadily.
She wants to tell him that they caught the fucker, that he’s safe now, but she knows that would be a lie. Pepper Potts won't ever lie to her boss, even when it would make herself and Tony himself feel better.
(They correlate every living person that may have issue to assassinate Tony Stark. The list has over ten thousand names on it.)
Fury calls a team meeting after Thor and Loki return to Asgard. Tony attends via Skype, of course, because, you can’t have a super secret boyband meeting without me.
“We believe that the person who tried to assassinate the illustrious Mr Stark was a former Soviet operative known only as ‘The Winter Soldier’.” Fury announces, chucking a file on the desk that’s an inch thick and bulging at the seams. A profile appears on the screen behind him—there’s no photograph, no confirmed name or date of birth, just a list of names, victims. It scrolls on; there is no clear pattern, some are American, British, French, Russian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, German. A few famous ones stick out, like Alexander Litvinyenko, among others.
Stark raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, but the Soviet State hasn’t existed since 1991.” his voice takes a mocking tilt, “Remember? The Berlin Wall fell? The Cold War ended? Gorbachev?”
A noise escapes from the back of Natasha’s throat, something between a laugh and a sigh. “Yes, and the KGB was dissolved and that was the end of that.”
Tony splutters and Natasha simply raises an eyebrow. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Fury grunts and the backchat ceases.
“Agent Romanoff has had dealings with this operative.” and all the eyes in the room slide towards and all she can think is how do you think I earned the title Black Widow?
“Myself, The Winter Soldier and a few other operatives were created as their retaliation to the Super Soldier Serum.” she glances at Steve, who is staring at her. There’s something in his eyes she can’t quite put her finger on, but it unnerves her. She’s always been good at reading people and she doesn’t like not understanding. “In an operation known as The Red Room, the authorities experimented on us, trying to create the ultimate spy, an elite force. The Winter Soldier was one of their successes—he was an established agent by the time I," she pauses, looking for the right word for her beginning, "arrived.”
Natasha pauses and her voice remains impassive. “He was placed in cyro sleep between in operations and his memory was wiped. Because of this, he barely aged and his work was never interfered with by weaknesses like emotion, compassion and empathy.” the room is transfixed—Natasha doesn’t talk about her past. It’s a thing. This is a rare insight into the most dangerous woman alive. “He’s closer in age to Steve, I’d expect.”
There's a silence, and it's uneasy. Nobody quite knows what to say and no one is making eye contact.
"No name. No date of birth. No known alias. A goddamned one man army and we have nothing to go on, at all?" Tony says, staring at the folder which supposedly holds the key to his would-be assassin but only is his track record. The only residue of this invisible operative. "There must be something, someone somewhere who knows what the fuck this guy is up to. No one man can be like that."
Natasha's eye could turn a man to stone, Clint thinks idly as she looks for a long moment into webcam.
(Natasha is old, much older than the others understand, apart from Fury and possibly Hill. The Black Widow Serum fucked her up, in its own way. It's not going to delay her death by any means, but it makes her just that little bit harder, just that little bit stronger, her cells just that little bit more resilient. Let it never be said that Natalia Romanova is a man-made creation, though. Her strength, agility and skill are all her, as is her strength of spirit. All the Serum did was give her a push.)
"There are many men like that, Stark." she says, her voice like liquid steel and her hand unconsciously curls into a fist. "It would do you go to come to terms with this before we hunt him." Natasha's eyes glide around the room now, taking in the men who fight on her back. "Forget everything you've ever learnt about combat and a single enemy because he will not stop. He will never stop until the job is done and the target is dead, it's that simple."
Bruce speaks for the first time. "Why?" he questions, simply. "Why won't he stop?"
"It's the way we were programmed." she says simply, before she realises her slip of the tongue. No one else in the room misses it.
The meeting ends quickly after that.
A fountain of blood, Yasha whispered, his metal arm wiping at the blood splattered on her back, a fountain of blood in the shape of a woman.
Natalia presses her face into the pillow and tries not to the think about the screaming. Why wouldn't they stop screaming?
If I'm a fountain of blood, what are you? she replies, twisting her head around to meet those dark eyes.
I'm a ghost in the machine. he says, throwing the towel down onto the floor. It's 1969, Paris, outside the streets are ablaze with sirens and smoke, people clambering around to see what has disturbing the peace in such a fashion so early in the morning. At this time the bakeries should be warming up their ovens, the day's first croissants being baked. Instead, people scramble through the dusty air to pick at survivors.
She burned down a hospital to kill one man and lacerated her back on a bent piece of metal, slicing open her skin from shoulder to shoulder.
Yasha stitches with careful practised ease. She wonders an arm created to do nothing but destroy can heal with such careful ease. Natalia is sure there's a brilliant metaphor in there, but she can't be bothered to think it through. Her entire back is throbbing, her skin burns with a ferocity that could have equalled the fire which they are only just beginning putting out.
It will be a national tragedy, not forgotten for many years to come. Whatever message the KGB wanted to send to Paris is sent, the job is done.
(It seems this city will implode before it stops screaming, but isn't that the nature of Paris? The city for lovers, for murderers, for everything in-between. Maybe in another life, this would be a place of peace for her, of mind and soul.
Tonight Paris burns and the two greatest assassins who ever lived stare at each other in the dark, damaged irreparably.)
"Does he miss?" Steve asks suddenly, as they pull off their dusty kits after another skirmish with Loki, who seems to have grown madder since his latest adjournment in Asgard's dungeons. Everyone notices but pointedly does not mention how some the blood and grime on Thor's face has been washed away by tear tracks.
(None of them understand. None of them want to understand.)
Natasha doesn't need to be prompted about who he's talking about. It's almost funny how well they get along, the figurehead of 'Golden Age' America (with its homophobia, racism, jingoism and poverty) and the Russian super-assassin. Steve thinks that if he'd met her before the serum, she was the type of girl Bucky would have liked—he always liked the ones who looked like they could take him in a fight, and Black Widow kills men with her thighs, breaks necks with her ankles. Steve thinks Bucky would have liked a lot of things about this new world he'd awoken to; the fast food, the faster cars and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. They key word, obviously, is would have liked as Bucky died in an icy gorge and Peggy fades in a nursing home. He doesn't think too hard about what they would have liked about this new world.
"He never misses. Not by a inch." Natalia had seen bullets slide into bodies at lethal accuracy far too many times to doubt Yasha.
"And yet." Steve continues, laden with emphasis. He's pulling at his gauntlets, the clasps are laden with some sticky residue that has clogged the hinges. A pale hand nudges his out of the way, and Natasha unfastens them with a click. Her knuckles are bloody and he is suddenly encompassed with the urge to lick away the red from the skin. Instead, swallowing and pushing down the images, he allows her to work off the other one before he finds his voice again. "And yet, Tony is alive. It was a brilliant shot, but centimetres out. How can a man who never misses be centimetres out?" he asks, more to the air than her.
Her hands close around his wrist. "Glad I'm not the only one who's thinking that." and Steve thinks that maybe, behind the grim reality that seems to be their life, that there was a ghost of a smile somewhere.
Tonight Steve has smoked his first cigarette (a bad idea for someone whose lungs are so weakened by asthma) and kissed his first girl. She was beautiful and her name was Polly, with blonde hair that fell in those perfect waves that seemed to be terribly in fashion these days. Polly has lips painted the colour of peonies and eyes that seem impossibly green, even under the dark moonlight. Her mouth had tasted like cotton candy and his hands had clasped into little fists at the waist of her silk dress, the fine material runching perfectly under his fingertips. They'd gone to go and grab some candy from round the back of the funfair and Polly had stolen the kiss from him; surprising him so much he'd forgotten all about the stall and concentrated on the sensation of the material under his fingers, the smell of her perfume wafting into his nose, how her tongue licked the inside of his mouth.
Then she pulls away and she's laughing, but it's not a cruel laugh like some of others from before, it's full of love and life and pure joy. Behind her, Bucky grins with a cigarette falling out the corner of his mouth and the brown haired girl with a dress an inch too short to be proper hanging off his arm is laughing too. Steve feels perfect, infinite, and Polly grabs his hand, pulling him towards their friends.
They live because they're young, the world is beautiful, and so are they. Steve doesn't care that he's asthmatic, or that he's more than a few pounds lighter than he should be; all that matters is that there's a beautiful girl holding his hand, and his best friend is holding his other hand and nothing is more perfect than this.
(Later, much later that night when their friends have gone home, Bucky kisses him too. On the cheeks, the eyelids, the nose, the lips, the mouth--and other places too.
Oh, thinks Steve as his best friend looks at him in a way he never understood before this moment, oh.
There really is nothing more beautiful than this.)
Natasha slides out of their bed like a thief in the night, careful to leave Steve peaceful in his slumber, a sheet wrapped around his knees and a hand sprawled across a pillow. She takes a moment to consider him, and decides if she's going to die today, she will die with an image of something on the edge of perfect in her mind. She grabs her suit from the heap in the floor and slips into the bathroom, careful to avoid that creaking floorboard.
Before she sets to work with the razor, she looks at herself in the mirror. The cold, hard eyes. The red hair ruffled by sex and sleep. A body littered in marks, great and small, from a life time with a very specific skillset to what they'd been doing mere hours before (her hips are indented with purple fingertip bruises and her neck has a flushing red mark developing). (Natasha knows what she should look like at her age. The sag of age, the line of wrinkles, a more circular stomach. Natalia would have been in her early 60s, she imagines, and might be glorying in post-Communism Russia. Maybe all roads led to this moment. It's never good to dwell on the maybes, she's learnt that by now.)
First, she grabs her suit, slicing through the supple leather to find the electronic tags she knows are hidden under its tough outer layer. She removes the tracker and the microchip in her Widow's Sting that they think she doesn't know about. She throws the metal into sink, watching them land above the plug, before turning around, breathing deeply and slicing through the skin of a very old scar that marks her from shoulder to shoulder. The serum had made it fainter, and S.H.I.E.L.D. had done a very good job of hiding a tracking device there, but she is Natalia Romonova, Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, a child of the Red Room and the finest student of Yasha, the Winter Soldier. It will take more than a very good job to beat her
Natasha's fingers find it easily, and she pulls it from her skin, flicking it into the sink with the others, turning on the tap to flush away her cage, as well as the blood that's staining Steve's sink. She efficiently stitches herself up and slides into her suit, the familiar warmth of the leather clearing her mind for the task ahead.
There is a creak, and Steve is behind her, his hand resting on her waist, his head pressed into her shoulder.
(She should have known. He's the only one who can ever creep up on her.)
"Are you going to kill him?" he murmurs into her hair, suddenly keenly aware that he may be robbed of doing this again.
"I--" Natasha starts, before stopping, before catching herself. I don't think I can is implicit, but unspoken. Maybe it's not without you.
"I understand." he says and she believes him because he does, and she's squeezing his hand which is either an invitation or a goodbye, neither can quite say.
Maria Hill takes off her glasses, eyes widening. She bangs that ridiculous red button Stark had insisted on and speaks straight into the Avenger's comms.
"Black Widow and Captain America are off grid." she says, fingers already moving rapidly across three keyboards, already knowing she's going to have to call in the fucking calvary for this one and she hasn't even had her first coffee. "Do you hear me? They are gone."
A man with a bionic arm stands on the edge of a rooftop, his sniper rifle slung around his shoulders.
The Winter Soldier isn't quite sure what he thinks of New York City yet. He's been here before, of course, but not, at least from his recollections, since 1991 when he'd been paraded to the President--some sort of agreement between the Americans and the new government, a kind of sharing is caring bullshit that seemed to extend to secret agents. This city is a different creature now, though. He'd watched the fight between these 'Avengers' and aliens led by a God from a rackety old TV set in Brooklyn (the place stirs--), before he'd set out to put a bullet next to Tony Stark's heart. Yasha has realised, slowly, that this city is its own creature, a sprawling mass of hard as brass men and woman. He likes it; the dirt, the anonymity of the faceless city which suits the man with no face.
When Natalia glides across the rooftop, she's quiet enough that an untrained man would have a gun between the ribs before he can think. The Winter Soldier, however, isn't any man and she is his greatest student, the only one he's ever contented as a sort of friend between the freezes. Before she can blink, he's already got a knife pressed where her ribs meet her spine, his hand wrapping around her waist, like an embrace between lovers. She looks at him with those cold eyes and he remembers something terrible and red, the screams of the dying in a burning hospital. Her gun is pointed delicately at the juncture between his legs and his torso--if she shoots, he will be crippled and at her mercy. The Winter Soldier doesn't say anything for a long time, simply stares at the woman who defected. The Black Widow.
Did you come alone? he asks tersely, his Russian mother tongue sliding through his mouth like a snake and she smiles, smiles like the predator she is, his beautiful deadly spider.
When did you ever teach me to come alone? she replies, Russian almost feeling like a second language, so long it had been since it had passed her lips.
He watched her face twist with a sudden, indescribable emotions before she shuts it down. Whoever her partner may be, he knows she has faith in him. High praise indeed, and a deadly enemy will come. the Black Widow doesn't trust anyone lightly. "Steve!" Natalia murmurs (why does she only murmur it? Can this man hear?), and something jars in his stomach. Images storm through his consciousness faster than a speeding train. A shared apartment, a kiss, a touch, a fuck, I had him on the ropes, and he is falling falling falling into an abyss, into the dark. Then, it is gone as quickly as it came (this happens a lot. No one had ever explained what the images meant, and he'd never asked. They might wipe his mind and he enjoys the ownership of this mystery, one of the few things he owns). His name is Yasha, he is the Winter Soldier. Nothing is more important to him than Russia and his gun. He is not scared.
The first thing he sees is a shield, held taught above a head as a man climbs the fire escape. It's very American, is all he can think, those stars and stripes and then the man follows, a handsome face with a stupid outfit and suddenly his head is aching like it's going to explode, he wants to claw away the skin of his skull the pain is so immense. All Yasha can think of is--
I thought you were smaller.
Then?
Black.
Steve holds his shield up, but all he really cares about is making sure that this son-of-a-bitch doesn't kill Tasha, before raising his head over the fire exit and being faced with--
"Bucky?" he says, watching as the man with a metal arm who's wearing his friend's (friend, best friend, lover, everything face go very white, before the Winter Soldier (Bucky, Bucky, Bucky) faints straight into Natasha's waiting arms.
She holds him, cradles him, in her arms, looking at at Steve's face which has streamed with tears without him even noticing, and realises that she's crying too. Natasha looks up at him with wide eyes, which normally burn with a dull intensity, but currently defrosted, gaze into him, through him, beyond him.
"Yasha." she murmurs, as the helicopters land around them.
His eyes seem unwilling to open but Bucky's always been a master of his own body, and he braces the blinding white pain so he can find out where the fuck he is and why he feels like he's been run over by a train--his head, especially, and his arm aches like he's been sleeping on it too long.
By the time they adjust, Bucky feels a faint pressure on his non-aching arm. Turning, he sees a man and a woman holding his hand, their own hands brushing. The man has hair the colour of the sun and he's looking at Bucky like he is the sun--Steve. His name is Steve Rogers and he's Captain fucking America and possibly the love of his life. The woman has a mane of red hair which crawls down her back like a trickle of blood--Blood, a fountain of blood, Natalia Romanova, Natasha Romanoff, and he knows he loves her too.
"привет" he says, before catching himself. Since when did James Barnes speak Russian? he wonders, before a relay of images spiral through his head and he wonders whether he's going to vomit.
They burned down a hospital to kill one man.
Steve is still looking at him like he's the sun, though. "Hey--," he says, his voice exactly the same since the last time he heard it. "Hey." There's concern in his eyes, deep set, but it doesn't push back the hope shining in there too. Bucky wants to mock his friend for being a sentimental motherfucker, but he can't quite find it in himself to do it. Steve's eyes stop him.
"Hey to you too." Bucky says, and for a moment nothing matters, not a single drop of blood, or the fact that he's missing an arm. Nothing matters because Steve and Natasha are smiling, and they are holding his hand.
Maybe things will turn out okay, in the end.