Chapter Text
She's not as surprised when he finds her as she probably should be.
She's going about her life – or as Stark likes to put it: “being good, keeping a straight record, avenging stuff” - and one day, three months after Washington, there he is. In front of her apartment building, staring down the barrel of her gun.
“I'm not armed”, he tells her in fluent Russian.
“We both know that's never completely true with you”, she answers with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes.
“If I had wanted to kill you, you wouldn't have seen me coming”, he tells her. She believes him.
“We're drawing attention. Let's get inside”, she says and puts her gun away. “I like living here. I'd like to keep it that way.”
He's different, Natasha thinks as she watches him pacing her apartment.
More man now than machine. Less empty. If anything, there is too much going on behind those gray eyes. He seems restless. Tense. Haunted.
This isn't the same man who has tried to kill her. Not quite yet Bucky Barnes, but in no way still the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier has been a ghost story. The man standing in her tiny kitchen-come-living room now is very much flesh and blood. Natasha isn't sure if this makes him less dangerous or even more so.
“How did you find me?” she asks.
“The Avengers are famous”, he answers. “And predictable. I waited by Stark Tower. Today you came.”
“If you ever wanna quit the assassination business, you would make a decent spy.” Her tone is light, but this time her facade doesn't hold up. She is scared of him. “Why?”
“I need help.” Another tight lipped answer. “I have nowhere to go.”
Natasha's head is spinning. Every last bit of experience tells her that this is wrong, that every single step she's made in the past thirty minutes has been a terrible mistake. And still...
She has wasted years of her life thinking she was doing the right thing when she wasn't. That's why three months ago she has let go of her past, blown all her covers and decided to try and trust – truly trust – her instincts. So she swallows her fear and does just that.
“There's a bag of men's clothes in my closet. Clean towels, too. I'll make some sandwiches while you're in the shower. Then we'll talk.”
The difference is startling.
The arms of Clint's hooded jacket are slightly too short, the shirt he's wearing underneath is slightly too tight and without any gloves his metal hand is plain to see. Other than that there's little to nothing left of the man standing in her bedroom door that reminds her of the ghostly assassin that has put a bullet through her. Twice.
Showered and clean shaven, with his hair pulled back with one of her elastics, he rather resembles the picture Steve had once drawn of the young man who ventured into war like it was one big adventure just to both lose and find much more than he had bargained for.
“He always had this stupid, cocky grin on his face. Girls loved it. You could give me hours and I still wouldn't get my hair right and he woke up looking like a movie star. It was annoying how much I wanted to be like him. Sometimes I wasn't sure why he even wanted to be friends with someone like me. But he was. Always. No questions asked. He was my best friend.”
There's nothing cocky about him now, but Natasha can still see the shadow of that young man, hiding right behind his eyes, waiting to finally break the surface. To come home.
The plate with sandwiches is sitting on the kitchen counter and he doesn't even wait for her invitation before he grabs it and starts to eat. The first one is gone in seconds. So is the second one. He's barely chewing and Natasha realizes that this is probably the first proper meal he's had in quite a while.
She moves to sit on the couch to give him a little space. Looking out the window she notices it's already getting dark. This evening isn't exactly turning out the way she planned. Housing a 'Most Wanted' who might or might not want to try and make three times a charm is a far cry from red wine, police procedurals and her weekly “yes, I am alive and eating regularly” call to Laura. She sends her a short message instead. “Too busy to call tonight. I'm fine.” She can do without Clint breaking down her apartment door just because she forgot to check in with his wife. It still feels weird, having someone look out for her like that.
The sound of shattering glass pulls her from her thoughts. It takes all her willpower to not jump off the couch with her gun drawn. Instead she turns away from the window and finds Barnes staring, brows furrowed, at what is left of the plate he had been holding just a moment ago. His metal hand is balled into a tight fist.
“It got damaged when I fell”, he says and Natasha wonders if he too is aware of the irony in that. “Sometimes I can't control it.”
“Now that is reassuring”, she comments dryly as Barnes moves to sit down across from her. She can't help but notice how huge he is while he semi-awkwardly tries to fold his broad frame into her favorite armchair. For a second she almost feels like grinning. Almost.
The silence stretches between them as they sit across from each other, skipping uneasy and going straight for uncomfortable as they sit and wordlessly scrutinize each other.
She is the first one to break eye-contact. Not because she has to, not because she can't stand the unblinking gaze. She does it, because she realizes that he can't. “You should have gone to Rogers. I don't know how to help you, Barnes.”
More silence. Anyone else might find him stoic, but she can see the wheels turning behind that steely gaze. He shakes his head. “No, I couldn't.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Because I don't remember”, he says and he probably doesn't realize there's a pained little smile tugging at his lips. But she notices and she feels her heart hurt with sympathy. She still remembers well how it feels. To feel the human stir inside the beast.
He's a victim, not a villain, she tells herself. It's a fact worth remembering, but all too easy to forget, when the mementos of their past encounters are staring back at her from the mirror every morning.
“I've seen the Exhibition. I went there every day for weeks. I've seen the video footage dozens of times. I spent hours staring at pictures of myself, thinking it must trigger something. But it never did. And I can't ask Rogers... Steve... him for help when I don't even remember what I used to call him.”
“I think it was Punk. Or Jerk”, she replies and chuckles lightly when she sees the puzzled expression on his face. “Is this what you want? To remember?”
“I want to...” he pauses, struggling for words. “I want to exist. I feel like a ghost. Or maybe I don't feel at all. I'm... empty. You are the Black Widow, but beneath all that you are also Natasha Romanoff. I cannot be more than the Winter Soldier when I don't remember what it was like to be James Buchanan Barnes.”
This time Natasha finds it's she, who is at a loss for words. Because she badly wants to help him. She wants it with a certainty that surprises herself. And not just for Steve. Not for the man sitting in front of her, who doesn't even know her, but still decided to place his life in her hands.
The truth is, she feels like she needs to do this for herself. To prove to herself that she can save a single soul. That it doesn't have to be the planet while the whole world watches her. Just one man. A whisper in the dark. After everything that happened – S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra and her role in it all – she needs to reassure herself that this is the kind of person she is now. The other truth is, she has no idea how she's supposed to do it. If she wants to help him, she won't be able to do it alone.
“Stay here tonight”, she finally tells him. “You can sleep on the couch. Get some rest. Tomorrow we'll go to someone who might be able to help. With your arm and maybe with whatever Hydra has done to your head.”
He nods slowly. “Thank you.”
He doesn't ask who it is they are going to see. She guesses that's because even for him, even after seventy years on the ice, there probably is only one person known on the planet who might be able to help them now. Funny enough the answer to this question is still the same it probably would have been seventy years ago.
Stark.
It ends up being a short night.
After all, two highly trained assassins don't exactly make for the most relaxing sleeping situation. Even if Natasha had somehow found it in her to settle enough to get at least a few hours worth of sleep – her gun under her pillow hasn't been as comforting as she's initially thought – the sound of Barnes restlessly pacing the living-room would've been enough to keep her up all night.
She gives up when the first light of day peaks through closed shutters and she hears a lonely bird start to sing somewhere outside her window. As she fishes her phone from the nightstand, she thinks how it's funny everyone wouldn't miss a beat and swear they didn't hear any birds in the cities anymore – unless it's five minutes to dawn and they're dead tired.
Naturally Jarvis takes the call at the first ring. He tells her to wait while he tries to get Tony on the phone. Then there's nothing but not-really-at-all soothing elevator music for what feels like forever. She gets out of bed. Nothing. She picks out fresh clothes. Nothing. She is standing in the bathroom with her teeth half brushed, when the music suddenly stops and she is greeted by a series of guttural grunting noises. She rolls her eyes at her reflection in the mirror. This feels like an awful Natalie Rushman throwback.
“I need a car to pick me up at my apartment ASAP. The more inconspicuous the better. Are you coherent enough to do that?”
“I might be sleepy, but I'm still a genius”, Tony scoffs. “Be down in thirty. Branson is gonna pick you up.”
“Thanks.”
“You better have a very good reason to chase me out of bed at such an ungodly hour. I'll accept nothing less than another alien invasion.”
“There is no one driving this car”, Bucky states matter-of-factly. “There is no steering-wheel.”
His pokerface holds a lot better than Steve's in similar situations, but Natasha still recognizes the same mixture of awe and mild terror at certain modern oddities. And to be fair, this one is particularly odd, which is why she generously passes up on a snide remark about missing steering-wheels and the ways in which they happen to go missing.
“Last year around Christmas, Stark's driver got injured and couldn't work for a few months. For some reason he thought inventing a car that drives itself was the appropriate way to handle the situation.”
A quick look at the small touchscreen in the middle of the console tells her their destination is already locked. When she leans back in her seat she finds Barnes covertly fastening his seat-belt.
“Don't worry, it's perfectly safe”, she tells him.
“I'm not worried”, he says.
“That's good. Because I might be”, she replies with a smile. She's not talking about the car. He knows.
He doesn't smile back.
They have barely passed the secret gate to the underground garage about three blocks from Stark Tower when suddenly the engine dies. Next thing they know the doors lock themselves and two impressive security doors fall shut on either sides of the car, trapping it in a small concrete corridor.
“Oh come on”, Natasha groans as the touchscreen turns itself on and she and Barnes find themselves face to face with Tony Stark. And he's not amused.
“No”, he says shaking his head, looking at Barnes. “No. Nononononono. No. Absolutely not.”