Archive of Our Own

The mission was fairly straightforward. Or at least Bucky thought so until he was standing there, staring at the papers in the safe. Fury had said he needed shipping manifests to crosscheck, figure out where this operation buried its illegal holdings. But the ledger he’d just flipped open didn’t contain shipping manifests.  He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, but it wasn’t in English, and the Russian words jumped out at him.  Assets. Program. 

The program.  Training program for the Bolshoi.  R. Winter.  Petrovich, Karpov. 

Never mind.  He knew what this was.  His stomach twisted, wrenched, cold settling through his body, into his bones. But what was it doing here? How could it be here?

The spiders.  Паутина.  Pautina.

He lingered over that name.  It sounded familiar, lingering at the edges of his mind, just out of sight, as if when he turned to look at the memories they disappeared.

Spiderweb.  A woman with dark hair, severely pulled back, frowning at him.  “There will be no training today, the girls have . . . treatments to be administered.”  Snapping at her, chill going through him, down his spine, pooling at the base of it, and he didn’t know why, just that it was wrong, it shouldn’t be like that, that word meant—

Stalking away.

When he looked down at the ledger, his hands were shaking.  Hell. He felt the same chill he had then. Natasha’s name jumped out at him. Natalia Alianovna Romanova.  There was a picture of her.  One he’d never seen.  A child with red hair and icy determination in her eyes and a blank, set face. He recognized that blank, set look. He’d felt it.

Bucky slammed the ledger closed. He slid the slim volume into his jacket, tucking it under his vest, against his shirt, and zipped it back up, then reached back into the safe for the other ledger.

This one looked like the shipping manifests.

“What is it, James?”  Natasha was taking her teabag out, standing at the counter, dressed in her usual post workout clothes, pink tank top, loose grey sweatshirt and yoga pants, and fluffy socks.

Bucky realized he’d been staring at his plate blankly for the last couple of minutes.  He blew his breath out, ran a hand back through his hair, still damp from the shower. “Who says it’s anything?” he asked, picking his fork up again.

“You’re usually a little more enthusiastic about pancakes,” Natasha said.  She brought her tea over to the table and sat down across from him, stealing one of his pieces of bacon as she went.

“Hey,” he said, smiling at her. “That was mine.”

“And now it’s not,” she told him, biting a substantial piece off as she sat down.  Her eyes fixed on him.  “Come on, now,” she said, shaking her head at him as she chewed.

He sighed.  “I can’t hide anything from you, can I?” he asked.

She smiled a little.  “No,” she said.

He just hadn’t wanted to bring it up until he was more certain of what it meant—but she deserved to know. It was her file, after all, and besides, she would probably be able to make better sense of it than he could in the first place.  “On the mission for Fury,” he said, slowly.  “I found something.”

“I’m assuming by the look on your face you don’t mean a stray kitten or a vintage hat shop,” Natasha said. “Sadly.”  When Bucky didn’t respond right away, her eyes sharpened. “James,” she said. “What is it?”

He got up, crossed the room to where he’d slid the ledger into the bottom of his bag, beneath his ammunition. He swallowed, and brought it back, set it down in front of her.  “I’m not sure yet,” he admitted.  He sat down, blew out his breath, and ran his hands back into his hair. He still couldn’t get it out of his head, the neat Cyrillic letters burning into his skull.  R. Spiders.  Her picture.  The neat facts and details, laid out in lines.  “It’s in the old code, the one they stopped using in the 1970s.” He took a deep breath. “It’s about—”

But Natasha had already flipped it open. He saw her face go still, heard the way her intake of breath stilled in her throat.  Her face went a shade paler and hardened, the way that made her jaw and cheekbones look defined, sharp, shadowed her throat. “The Red Room,” she said, her voice low and flat.

“Yeah,” he heard himself breathe, and it came out choked, strangled.  He stared down at the table again, trying to push the memories back, but they came on, hard and fast. The smell of snow and ice and concrete, the way the gun felt under his gloves as he sighted, the chalk and wood smell of the old training facility, her eyes on him, so sharply intent she would see right through him if she could. 

Past the page that mentioned Паутина.  Spiderweb, he told himself, firmly. There were files and files on Natasha. He’d looked through them, scanning the ledger desperately as soon as he’d got back to their secure apartment. The Black Widow. Details, her service record. Training.  Cover identities.  And then pages and pages in a code he’d never been trained in.  Still about Natasha.  He could tell that much.

He had thought, even back then, that she was smarter than he was.  Faster, better. He still remembered the quirk of her lips, not quite a smile, when his words had just that slight twang of accent to them, and how self-conscious he’d become, not understanding, not able to hear the wrongness himself and yet suddenly too aware of the way he spoke, his heart beating faster without knowing why, the way it always did when something was wrong—and all through it, just wanting to look at her, the way she looked at him in return.  The way they played off each other.  The way they always had.

He took a deep breath.  “There are files on you,” he said.  “Some of them are double encrypted.  It’s not a combination I know how to break. At least not while I was there,” he shrugged.  “I didn’t give myself much time, and I was never as good at codebreaking as you.”

“Well, it’s not exactly your area of expertise,” Natasha said wryly, but her eyes didn’t waver from the ledger, didn’t move. “Does Fury know you have these?” she said after another moment.  She still didn’t look up.  Her hands weren’t visible, but he had a feeling they were digging into her own thighs. “Did you report this?”

“I didn’t tell him,” Bucky said, and his voice came out hoarse.  He shook himself and forced himself to cut off a piece of his pancakes, spear it on his fork, and put it in his mouth.  “He asked what I found, and I gave him the shipping manifests he sent me to get.”

“Do you think he expected you to find these?” Natasha said.

“Who knows?” Bucky asked her, feeling a bit of wryness returning.  “It’s Fury.”

“True enough,” Natasha said, with a brief quirk of her own lips.  She opened the file, ran her fingers down the page, turned to the next.  “This,” she swallowed.  “James, do you know what this is?”

At the look in her eyes, he stilled, put his fork down again, and swallowed a large chunk of pancakes all at once. “It’s a Soviet file on the Red Room,” he said, even though it was more than that, he knew it, and he knew she was about to tell him exactly how much more.  His voice dropped, and he couldn’t make it go any louder. “And on you.”

“It’s my file.  My classified, complete file.”  Natasha’s voice was equally quiet, but flat, hard.  “From the Kremlin.  This should never have made it out of Russia.  I’ve looked for this file before, but I’ve never been able to find it.  This is everything Russia has on me.  And my part in the program.  It seems to be complete, or as complete as it can be.” She flipped to the back, and her throat worked.  “It has Russian intelligence reports incorporated up until last year.”

Bucky stared at her, unable to fully process that for long moments.  In his time there, in what he could remember clearly, in all of it, even the misty half-coherent pictures and images he hadn’t been able to quite slot into place properly, half information, need to know, classified missions, and flat out lies had been the order of the day.  Knowledge was power, especially in what they did.  And especially in the Red Room.  He couldn’t even imagine how closely such a file would have been guarded.  It would no doubt have gaps in it, from when information would have been too sensitive to disclose even in a highly classified file, or when someone had deliberately obscured it to hide the truth or cover their tracks, but the thought of what someone would have to be able to do to get such a file out of the country—

It was mind-boggling.  And he’d found it in a safe in an American munitions plant.

“What the hell,” he breathed.

“I have no idea,” Natasha said. Her jaw set, sharpened. “Did you find anything else?”

Bucky dug in his pocket and slid the device across to her, wordlessly.  He had kept it on him ever since he’d found it in a secret drawer in the desk, not quite willing to trust it anywhere else.  It was a keycard, blank and featureless, with the symbol of a spiderweb on it.

Pautina, he thought, and wondered why that still made him feel cold down to his bones, made his hand want to shake.

“Fuck,” Natasha said in a violent tone of voice.

Pautina, Natasha told him, was one of her chief programmers, her chief trainers. Much of what was in the encrypted files was her notes.  Natasha held them up to the light to break the encryption, looking for numbers etched into the paper itself, and Bucky felt a little less stupid for not having been able to figure it out.  Natasha’s face went white and began to tremble, her jaw working, as she translated them, and Bucky, piecing it together more slowly from what she wrote down, understood why. Details of Natasha’s progress, detailed psychological analysis, notes on how her desire to prove herself could be manipulated (desire for a family, he read, admiration of the ballet, she has always wanted to be a dancer, a strong loyalty for others that could prove problematic but could be used against her—and then he stopped looking, Natasha deserved that much privacy from him).

“It was pretty sloppy of Petrov to leave that keycard in the desk,” Bucky observed, shifting the card beneath his fingers, bracing his chin on his arm, folded over the back of the chair.  “Even if it was his secured, private office. I’m not saying it was easy to get into. Just that . . . back there, we always were expected to do better.”

“They,” Natasha murmured without looking up from the ledger.

“What?” Bucky asked, looking up at her again across the table.

“You said they earlier, when talking about the Red Room, James,” Natasha replied.  “Don’t backslide now.”

Bucky felt his cheeks heat.  “They,” he agreed.  Natasha nodded slightly, smiled at him, then looked back down at the ledger.

“You’re right, though,” Natasha said. “It is sloppy. Though it’s probably overly paranoid to assume it was bait for us, or for SHIELD.  Petrov is a black marketeer.  This kind of high level intrigue probably isn’t his typical game.”

Bucky swallowed.  “It could be bait, though,” he pointed out.  “What if someone’s gunning for you?  After the . . . trial, a lot of people know we’re connected, they might think to lay a trap for you, using me—”

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Natasha broke in with a smile.  “I think your cover is still fairly sound in that regard, too. Despite your best efforts.”

Bucky frowned.  “Hey,” he said.  “I’ve been discreet.”

Natasha’s smile widened slightly. “Discreet for you,” she said.

“No respect,” Bucky said, grinning back at her, more because of her smile than any other reason.

“In some things,” Natasha replied wryly, “not in others.”  She reached out, let their fingers curl together, before she tapped the ledger with the other hand. “I had heard Pautina retired,” she said.  “Many of those in the Red Room have.  Their old projects were no longer so attractive to new leadership, after the Wall came down.”  She squeezed his hand, lightly.  “That is when you were removed from Russia.  It was no longer politically . . . wise to be connected to the program in the same way.”

Bucky swallowed, looked down. Even now, he barely remembered his time in Afghanistan, as Karpov’s pet dog.  Part of him wondered if that was because he didn’t want to remember. The rest of him suggested that it had maybe simply been that dull, featureless, with so little to latch onto, endless days of watchfulness and training and little else.  It was humiliating to think of, either way. He scrubbed one hand across his face. “Why now?” he asked, and was embarrassed anew by how hoarse his voice sounded.  Natasha was looking at her own file and holding it together better than he was, whatever the tick in her jaw.  “Why here?”

“That is the operative question, isn’t it?” Natasha said.  She sighed, heavily, swallowed, let go of his hand to look down at the file before her again. “The worst thing,” she said, her throat working, “is that she was proud.  She says it so many times.  Her best work. Her best pupil. ‘She will be the greatest product of the program.  A masterwork, for Mother Russia.’”  Natasha took a deep breath, and her mouth twitched painfully.  “I looked up to her,” she said, and blew out the breath again.

“She wanted you to,” Bucky said, quickly. It was one of their tools, one of the many tricks in their repertoire, and the young woman Natasha had been, brittle and proud, wanting so badly to prove herself, determined to excel, of course it would be the path she would have taken.

“Of course she did,” Natasha said. “But that doesn’t make me any less angry at myself for falling for it.”

She shoved the chair back from the table, stood up, and her shoulders were rigid, angry.  Bucky stood up as well, skirted the table, reached out—hesitated, but let his hand fall on her shoulder.  “It’s not your fault, Natalia,” he said, quietly.  “You know that better than I do.”

“It still feels like my fault, though, James,” Natasha said, her voice rigid and cold.

“I know,” Bucky said, ruefully, and squeezed her shoulder, let his knuckles brush against her neck, his hand uncurl to curve gently there along her nape, beneath her hair.  They stood there like that, for a moment, then Natasha turned to him in one graceful movement, rested both hands on his chest.

“It makes me angry she’s out there, somewhere,” Natasha said.  “Or that someone using her identity is.  She must have contacted Petrov to move the files out of Russia.  Why?  What is she planning? There must be a reason. Why now?”  Her mouth turned grave.  “Because of you?  Because of your supposed death?”

Bucky winced.  “I sure hope not,” he said.  “That would turn into a headache real fast.”

“Someone who wanted good connections with the Kremlin wouldn’t have had these files stolen,” Natasha mused, “so I guess we can rule that out.  Unless she was getting the files for Petrov himself.”

“It all has to do with you, somehow,” Bucky said, giving voice to the fear that had been rising within him ever since he’d seen the files in the safe.  “Someone’s targeting you, again.  Be careful—”

Natasha reached up, pressed a quick kiss into his lips. “I am careful, James,” she said. “I think it’s time I paid a visit to Petrov.  You’ll back me up, won’t you?”

“Of course,” he said.  “I just think—maybe I should go, I won’t be recognized, and if this is all a plot to target you, maybe it’s a trap.”

“That’s always a possibility,” Natasha said, “true. But one of us is in deep cover at the moment, and one of us is not.  Besides, I’ll know what I’m looking for better than you would.”

Bucky sighed.  He couldn’t deny that.  “Natasha—” he said, and she looked up into his eyes for a long moment.

“I know,” she said.  “But this is my mission, I think, James.  Back me up.”

“Of course,” he said.  “Always.  Glad to.”

“Good,” she said, and kissed him again. “I’m going to take a shower,” she whispered in his ear as she pulled away, and turned on her heel again, looking back at him as she started toward the bathroom.  “Are you going to come along, or what?” she asked, with the tiniest hint of a smile.

“If I’m invited?” he said, smiling back. “Do you even have to ask?” He reached out and grabbed her hand, let her pull him along.

The water was hot enough, pounding on her skin, the back of her shoulders, to chase some of the ghosts out of Natasha’s head. One thing she demanded from anywhere she was choosing to live for a significant length of time was a good shower, with the perfect spray level, sensitive temperature control, and enough room that she didn’t feel cramped.  As it happened, that left plenty of room for James in it with her, which was an added bonus.  She put her head down, rested it in the strong slope of his shoulder, pressing her lips against the seam of the metal, feeling him shiver against her as she ran her fingers along his sides beneath the water.  His own hands settled at the small of her back in response, skimmed up along her spine, and it was her turn to shiver lightly at the touch.  She shifted, leaned up to press their lips together, holding tightly to his sides.

His lips parted willingly beneath hers, and he leaned into the kiss, and she was suddenly reminded of sneaking up on the Winter Soldier in the shower, him grabbing her wrist, pulling her in, the way he’d kissed her but melted against the wall, feet almost sliding under him, as soon as she’d leaned into it, into him, as if staggered.  She hadn’t known his name then.  For years she’d thought of him as the identity they’d given him. The Winter Soldier. It had struck her, when she’d discovered his name.  She’d never known, laughed at the idea that he could be Captain America’s sidekick Bucky. She should have known, she thought. It was just the sort of thing that would have given their handlers endless satisfaction, their own part of Captain America to twist and turn for their own purposes.  She frowned, winced away from the idea of how they would have thought of her, she didn’t want to dwell on it now, in the shower with him, with them together.  But now, now it was so important to her, to think of him as who he was. As James.  Not Steve’s Bucky, a cocky smile and a tommy gun in a newsreel, but also not the soldier they would have made of him.  James was the man she knew.

“What’s wrong?” he murmured, voice hoarse and low, as she pulled away from the kiss, and she shook her head, brushed her lips against his neck, ran her fingertips up and down his sides.

“Just thinking,” she replied, “but I’d rather focus on something else.”  She smiled, dug her fingers in just enough to scratch her nails lightly along his sides, and brushed another kiss over his neck.  He gave a low sound in response and tipped his head back, letting her press kisses down his throat, over his collarbone, and she closed her lips there over his skin and sucked there, making him gasp.  His hands slid up over her back, closed against her shoulders, as she nipped lightly at his skin.  He tasted mostly of soap, still, from his own shower earlier—he hadn’t really needed another one, but she was glad he hadn’t passed up the chance to join her in hers.  She wanted to do this, something to remind her of the here and now, not her past, and things she only half remembered, or remembered far too well.

She scratched her fingers down over his back and kissed down the center of his chest and he blew out a breath, fingers kneading gently at her shoulders.  His skin was heating up under the touch of her lips, and she smiled, rubbing them across his chest to lick teasingly over one nipple.  She could hear the harsh way he sucked in his breath, and dug her nails into the small of his back, right above the swell of his backside, teasing his nipple gently with her lips and tongue.

“Ah, Natasha,” he groaned.  “Can I—what do you want me to—”

“Shh,” she murmured, dragging her nails up his back and stretching up to press another kiss in beside his ear, beneath the wet tangle of his short hair.  “What do you want to do?”

He laughed, ducked down to nuzzle his face in against her neck, laying gentle kisses there, just under her ear, too, his breath hot against her skin even under the warmth of the spray as his hands fell to press gently at her hips.  “I think you have a pretty good idea,” he muttered, low, into her ear, and she could feel the curve of his grin against her skin.

“Hmm,” she said.  “I might, at that.”  She reached up, curled the fingers of one hand into his wet hair, scratched lightly at his scalp, as his lips lingered soft over her skin.  He brought his flesh hand up, skimmed it lightly along her side, over her stomach, just brushing gently, and she reached out, took it into hers, and guided it between her legs.  “Please,” she breathed into his ear.

“Yes, ma’am,” James grinned against her neck, and Natasha smiled over his head, letting her head fall back against the wall.  He was right here, and safe, and they were miles away from how it had been, and this, this normality, his gentle, eager fingers between her legs, the pleasure as she rocked down onto his strong hands (just as knowing as they were with a trigger or a knife, but so much softer inside of her), his hot, loving mouth on her neck, was exactly what she’d needed to feel centered again, to feel all the pieces settle back into place.  She curled her fingers into his hair more tightly, turned her head and pressed a firm kiss into his hair, then did it again, again, as he coaxed her pleasure from her and she gasped and groaned and rocked down into it, into him.

She didn’t want to waste time, but they both slept before she went out after Petrov.  They both knew better than to go out on an op exhausted, and James had been out all the night before on his mission.  So they slept, sharing a bed, Natasha comfortable resting her head on James’ shoulder, letting sleep overtake her despite the gray haze in the back of her mind, the tension thrumming through her muscles that would ordinarily make it hard for her to relax enough to sleep, fearing her dreams. With his body beneath her, his hand curled sleepily at the back of her neck, it wasn’t nearly as hard to get to sleep, or to stay there.  Still, there were too many unknowns for her to feel comfortable leaving it for long, that tension still coiling in her muscles.  The delay made uncertainty and a strange feeling of nervousness tighten under her skin, prickle at the back of her neck and roll uncomfortably down her spine. Intuition, one part of her said, but the other part of her claimed it was nerves, that she was doing it to herself, because seeing the ledger, thinking Pautina might be involved in this somehow, had rattled her.  That bothered her, how much it had, the tension in the pit of her stomach, the way it flipped and roiled, the bile in the back of her throat.  She was letting this get to her far too much for a threat that might not even be real.

Find the truth first, Natasha, she told herself wryly, though it wasn’t as if losing her tightly held control would be an option then, either, would it? But at least then she would know if the fears skittering in the back of her mind, phantom twinges of ice trembling up and down her spine and sickness twisting in her belly, were based on reality or just old nightmares.

She could tell James still didn’t want to see her go after Petrov on her own—he’d been shaken too, his face tight and grim as he handed her the pieces of her kit.  He handed her her gun, then sighed, his mouth set.  “Natasha,” he said, “you know there’s something up here.”

“Yes,” she told him, grave, because he deserved to know she was taking this seriously, and it would set his mind at ease, at least, “I know.”

“You . . . just keep your eyes open,” he said, finally, and let his breath out.  “Be careful,” he murmured, then, in Russian, not looking away from her face.  It was the same thing he’d used to say, back then, before she went out on an op, a good luck and a warning not from the Soldier, but from her secret lover, the man who cared for her.  She knew how he meant it, what he wanted to say—the emotion behind it, the warning that they were treading on unsteady ground here, the memory of their past, their shared past, reaching out to tug at them from the shadows, all the strings they’d cut quivering as if they were still being pulled. It was a warning, and his voice was thick with it, all the old emotions, the old dangers, of people watching, that people would see them and pull them apart.

She reached out and pressed her gloved hand against his cheek, and he turned his head into it, left a soft kiss against the heel of her palm.  “I’ll be careful,” she responded in the same language, and holstered the gun.

Petrov had the secret office in his main facility, the one that James had raided the night before, but men like him always had a secret hideout. Natasha had gone through his accounts (she’d never actually given up the backdoor access she’d had when Stark was Director and had given it to her, and as good as SHIELD was, Stark’s backdoors were better—they’d still yet to find them) and found it, the lump sum payout to a real estate agent.  It didn’t take her long over the course of the day to find the address and case the place as thoroughly as she could, remotely.  They waited until he left his office, just to see where he was going, but it was the secret place (she suspected he’d originally bought it to keep a mistress, it was the sort of posh little apartment you’d want as a love nest, and kept it for his illegal activities) he headed to.  James dropped her off, gave her a salute with two fingers, his eyes solemn despite the jauntiness of it, several blocks away, and Natasha set about breaking in.

She came in through the roof, climbed up two buildings over, where there was a sturdy fire escape.  The buildings were close together, and it wasn’t hard to clear them, but Petrov had probably felt secure because there was a bigger gap between his buildings and the others than anywhere else on the street. But Natasha had her grabbling hooks and ropes, and it was easy enough to swing across to one of the decorative cornices and make her way over to the window to his little jewel-box of a place. She was pleased with the quietness of the landing and the easy way her hook came free, even as she checked the window for booby traps.  She disabled three—Petrov was a Russian, all right—and the lock on the window was a tricky one. It was concentrating on that, and keeping a look out for more traps just inside, that kept Natasha from realizing the state of the room until she was just inside the window.

It wasn’t that it had been ransacked or anything. Quite the opposite, in fact. The soft, plush carpet was clean beneath her boots, the room dark.  Everything was dark, but she could hear running water in the bathtub, and the door was hanging open, and creaking on its hinges.  One of them had nearly been pulled out of the wall.  It was the only thing out of place.  There was something wrong.

If someone else had been there—if it had been Pautina—or an agent of hers, she would be so very old by now—Natasha swallowed, hard, took a breath and let it out, very softly, through her mouth, the way she’d trained herself long ago to deal with her tension without giving it away. She would have to be doubly on her guard. The water running, it might be a lure, to draw an investigator in that direction.  But it might not be.  She drew her gun, slid her penlight into her other hand and flicked it on, then off again.  Nothing changed at the flicker of light, so she risked turning it on for good and carefully scanning the room she was in.

It was a study, neat desk and bookshelves on the walls, and as it turned out, there was something out of place. The safe was open, just barely. She crossed the room to it and tilted it open further with the gun.  It was filled with papers, and nothing else.  She rifled through them, but they were nothing but records of Petrov’s black market deals, coded numbers.  Not surprising, if whoever they were pursuing, whatever was going on, had already had someone here.  She doubted she’d find Petrov alive here, and if so, her opponent had worked faster. Natasha had been right to be anxious to get started.  She edged out of the room, scanned the corridor.

A bedroom and a bathroom, and an open room with a wooden floor.  She checked the other room first (it was set up as a sort of sitting room, with extra space on the floor for exercise equipment, an interesting choice), then the bedroom, which was in pastel tones.  Definitely for a lover, then.  There was nothing.

Bathroom, then.  There was only one door to the place, and Natasha was certain no one had entered or left, either by it or any of the windows, since she had been there. Especially since Petrov was paranoid enough that the only windows were in the study and the sitting room. She eased her hand out around the knob of the door, then pulled it open cautiously.

Hot, warm steam immediately hit her like a shock, the fragrant smell of bath oil, and under it, cloying and unmistakable, the scent of blood.  Petrov was in the bath, his throat unmistakably slit, the water of the shower quickly washing his blood down the drain.  He was naked, but there was something pinned to his chest, a note, in neat, blocky handwriting Natasha recognized all too well.  The Cyrillic letters seemed to jump out at her.  Well done, Black Widow. You should be proud of your work.

It was the same thing Pautina had always said to her, when she completed a task, her training, a mission, when she had done well, and—

Natasha took a deep breath, the damp warmth of the steam filling up her lungs, making her feel almost dizzy. It was Pautina’s handwriting, that was certain, but she would be so old, by now, surely she wouldn’t be physically capable of breaking into a second-story apartment in the middle of the night and overpowering, murdering a strong, healthy man, not to mention one as muscular and physically imposing as Ivan Petrov. Did she have an accomplice? Or was there something else going on? Natasha started forward—she needed a closer look at how Petrov had died.

She ended up on her knees with more force than she had expected and winced at herself—was the floor wet? Had she slipped? It was wet, but she hadn’t felt like she was slipping.  Warm water bled through the knees and legs of her jumpsuit as she reached out and carefully tilted Petrov’s head back.

He had been killed with two straight slashes to the throat, one almost directly on top of the other, and both going deep, almost to his spine.  There was no unsteadiness in the hands, and it would take a lot of strength to inflict those wounds. And he had clearly fought back—there was blood under his nails, and his body was bruised, and badly.

She felt so warm.  Was it really that warm in here?  Her head felt heavy and thick.  The room swam in front of her.

Natasha swore under her breath and jumped to her feet, turning on the water in the sink and splashing it into her face without regard for the leather of her gloves.  The wet chill hit her like a shock, piercing and bright, but she heard her breath heavy in her throat as if from far away, even as she blinked, clearing her mind.

The steam, she thought, disjointedly. It was in the steam.

She turned back and grabbed at the note attached to Petrov’s body, yanking at it despite how it was wet and still stained with blood. It came free easily enough, and then she whirled on her heel and slammed the door shut behind her.

She had wanted to interrogate Petrov, but it was clear she was too late.  Someone had already been here, and while she could investigate this apartment for more insight, it wasn’t as pressing as it might be.  She wanted to examine his body in more detail, but it was clear she was already compromised, this site was compromised, and who knew what Pautina—or whoever it was—had planned for whoever came to investigate (it couldn’t be her, Pautina couldn’t have known it would be her, this couldn’t be a set up, not like that, it had happened too quickly, Pautina couldn’t have known it would be her—Natasha took a deep breath, swallowed against her rising panic, pushing it down, her body felt too hot, her heart beating double time in her chest, like she couldn’t breathe)—it could all too easily be a trap.  She needed to get out of there, that was, above all, the priority.

She’d already scouted the way she’d come in, and it was too much risk to use another way.  Natasha holstered her gun, double—no, triple-checking, her hands were shaking, and she could feel panic rising in her throat that made no sense, adrenaline burning through her, whether the result of the drug or in response to how it was affecting her already, and so quickly, she wasn’t sure—to be certain the safety was on, then started for the window.

Her hands were shaking even worse by the time she got there, and she saw not the window, but another window, on another mission, and was afraid to look, afraid she would see death on the other side—Matt, dying against the asphalt in the alley but—but that didn’t make sense, that had never happened, this was—

She was straddling the window, back in Russia, there was a weight of a gun at her back, and she couldn’t look back, not at the carnage she had left inside, she had thought she might feel proud, the mission had gone so well, but she just felt heavy, the information she carried like a stone in the inner lining of her coat, knowing the secretary, the capitalist sympathizer in the man’s office, would take the blame, and—

Natasha tightened her hands on the windowsill, drew in a heavy breath of the chill, bracing night air outside. She was hallucinating. It wasn’t real. The drug she had breathed in, somehow (it was a trap, had been a trap, but for who, how had Pautina known, she couldn’t have known—)—she had to fight it, to remember what she was doing and get out of here.

She used the side of this building to descend this time, not bothering with the others, dropping from window ledge to window ledge until her boots were brushing against the ground—

She has to hurry, she’s on a timetable, she has to get back to her handler and deliver the information and then return to SHIELD, she has plenty of work still to do, after all, they trust her, have for years, can’t do anything to jeopardize that—

No, she tells herself, breaths coming short and heavy in her throat, and stops short, pressing herself against the wall of the building, that isn’t what happened, she’s not on assignment with SHIELD, with the Avengers, she is an Avenger, she is an agent of SHIELD, this is—this is a fear, a nightmare, it’s not—it’s not real.  She drags in a breath, but it catches in her throat, because for a moment she doesn’t trust herself—

She has to report, Pautina will be waiting, and she wants to impress her, wants her to be pleased with her work, her progress.  But first she’ll meet up with the Winter Soldier, the way they agreed, then she can let Pautina know how it went, how much of his programming is under question, as well—

No, Natasha told herself, shaking her head violently. That wasn’t how it was, that wasn’t how it had been, it never was, she had chosen it, for herself, she had, it had been her choice, because of his careful hands and his cocky smile and the way he held himself, and she would have never told them about the pieces of himself he kept inside, back from them, the boyish laugh or the reckless grin or the quiet way he smiled up at her and gasped so softly when she touched him, the surprised little way he groaned or his back arched for her, or the look in his eyes that was just for her, when they were just a man and a woman together, not—

—agents, she’s used to deep cover, she’s done it before, plenty of times, this is the longest mission she’s ever been on but it’s nothing she can’t handle, she knows what she’s doing, all the files she keeps, and she’ll send them along soon enough, it’s not for her, not for—

all for the mission, for what they ask of her, it is better not to ask too many questions—

Alexei, her parents, dying in front of her, Alexei crying out her name as they put a bullet in his head, this—this didn’t happen, it never happened—

Steve looking at her with that disappointment in his eyes, agony as the drug turns the serum in his blood to poison that will tear him apart, but he’s still fighting, struggling to his feet, I thought better of you, reaching out for James, blank-eyed and twitching on the table behind her while the machine works on him, programming him back to what he was, the others will follow soon after but she knows how to handle them, too—

No.  She is running along black streets, there are shells going off, it is the war, and her feet are numb in her boots, the lights are off because there is a blackout, but there is a light coming, no, no, turn it off, turn it off, little one, you must not, you will be shelled, the Germans, the Germans are here, go, go—

Another light coming, this is a car?  A tank? No, a motorcycle, she shoos the child away, looks for cover, she ducks behind a nearby building, but the motorcycle slows to a stop, she isn’t meant to make a rendezvous, not here, she reaches for her gun, but her hand slows, confused, when her hand doesn’t encounter her rifle slung across her back—

Strong hands curled around her wrists, and a soft, low male voice, urgent, concerned, said her name, Natasha, Natalia, Natasha, what’s wrong, ‘Tasha, look at me, can you look at me—

Dark eyes and a sweet mouth, strong jaw, it was James, and he smiled, side of his mouth wobbling, reached out to press a gloved hand against her jaw, steadying her, and she pressed into it, closed her eyes and pressed her mouth in against his palm, but then she was twisting again, shuddering, things sliding away.

“Drugged,” she managed to get out. “Hallucinogen. Trap.”  She realized that she was still clutching the note, soggy and crumpled, in her hand, and pulled away from his palm, reached up and shoved it into his, feeling, hearing her own breaths rasping heavily in her chest, ringing in her ears.

“Nat—” he said, sounding startled, alarmed, “but they couldn’t have—”

She opened her eyes, looked into his face, and immediately regretted it as his features seemed to swell before her eyes, horribly, burst, then melt, dripping off his face, the black shapes of the mask around his eyes—mask, she told herself, it’s just his mask—but they melted into his face, hollowing out his eyes, burning deep darkness into his face and her stomach twisted even as she fought it, lurched forward despite herself, her hand slid across the leather at his chest and it felt like acid, like she was burning.

He was pulling her onto the motorcycle, she realized, talking to her, but she couldn’t process the words. He tugged her arms around his waist, slid a belt off and then looped it around them, lightly, pulling it tight. She didn’t argue, relieved that he was thinking so clearly, securing her like that, in a moment of clarity, then took a deep breath and buried her face against the place between his shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut and trying hard not to think about anything. She felt it as he patted her arm, once, twice, squeezed, then let go of her.

She fuzzed out into blackness there, the steps of the ballet, Swan Lake, Siegfried dances with the black swan, the strain in her legs as she lifted, the stretch, the twirl, the pain, the weightlessness—they said she would never dance it, she would never be the one, but she could be—another stretch, she would—

—prove them wrong—

She pulled at her muscles, blocked the hit, straining, twirling, the spin, sweep with her leg, duck down to avoid the blow, hit with her elbow, up with her palm—

Victor of the bout, applause, applause as she finishes the last fouette, her back arches and she knows they see she can do it, they will let her be the one on stage—on the mission—and she will be—

She opened her eyes, staring up at the ceiling. It was oddly familiar. Her back hurt, and she felt sweaty all over, weak.  It—

It was familiar because it was her ceiling.  She sucked in a breath, pushed herself up, and immediately was overtaken with a wash of dizziness.  The drug, of course. The room spun around her. Her room.  Their room.  James, where was—

“Hey, hey, hey,” and it was James’ voice. “’Tasha?”  His hand closed around hers, the metal one landing loosely beneath her arm, then going to her back, eyes seeking hers as he sank to his knees beside the bed.

She took a deep breath, pushed the conflicting images to the back of her mind, squeezed his hand in hers.  Gloves off, now, she noticed, his skin was bare against her own. “We’re back?” she asked, looking up at him, breathed, really, to keep it from rasping in her throat. Her throat hurt, felt so raw.

“Yeah,” he said, and swallowed, looked down, then back at her, his face so expressive in its concern, so earnest. “We’re back, we’re good, safe now.”

“Good,” she said, and smiled up at him, even though the room was still spinning, reached up, pressed her hand against his cheek before she let it fall back, away, let herself lie back against the bed. Her mouth felt dry and tasted acrid. The drug.  She licked her lips and frowned.  It tasted disgusting.  “How long was I out?” she asked.  The dancing. The drug had made her think she was dancing.  Twirling, twirling, flying in her dreams.  Her ankles ached, with a phantom pressure.  She closed her eyes, pressed one hand over them.  Her arms felt weak and heavy.  Breath lumped up thickly in her throat.  It was stupid, but made it hard to breathe.  She tried to keep the frustration from welling up hot and burning against her skin from the inside.  Her emotions were still scattered from the drug, but—having to abort, like that, drugged—and that note—she didn’t like failing, not like this, but she liked it even less when this was personal, somehow, as it clearly was.

“About two hours,” James said, voice quiet, still low. “I made you some tea.” He came back over, stockinged feet, she thought, soft on the floorboards, helped her sit up with one hand at her back, then was picking the mug up off the nightstand and pressing it into her hands.  She accepted it gratefully, with a sigh, and looked down at it, then took a sip.

“Thank you,” she sighed, and breathed in the steam, the fragrance.  Her body wanted to jump at the steam in her nostrils at first, still running on adrenaline response from before, but she breathed out, then took another deep breath in of it, let it settle into her lungs, the sweet-bitter fragrance of it, softened with a little milk.

“Of course,” he said, low.  “Natasha, what—”

She took a sip, let it settle in her mouth, over her tongue, washing away the acrid remnants of the drug, then swallowed. It went easily down her throat, settled in her stomach—good, she had been afraid there might be nausea. The milk probably helped with that, she thought.  She still felt so weak, so tired.  Her head felt heavy and sore, her body ached, and she felt as if she’d been running for miles. “You saw the note,” she said.

“I did see it,” he said.  “What—do you think they knew you would be there?”

Natasha sighed, trying to think through the thick heaviness in her head, the ache.  She didn’t want to think about what the hallucinations had made her envision—betraying the Avengers—betraying James like that.  She knew she wouldn’t do that, it wasn’t real—

But it could have been real, and that made it sting. She took a deep breath, blew it out, and another sip of the tea.

“No,” she said, finally.  “I don’t think she—they did.  I think they heard from Petrov that a raid had taken place and assumed another agent would be coming from SHIELD, and that whatever happened to that agent with the drug, I would hear of the note and blame myself.”

And it was true.  She would have felt responsible.  So they—Pautina, she thought bitterly—hadn’t been wrong.  Not that she would be. She knew Natasha too well to read her incorrectly about something like that.

James sat down on the bed beside, her, hesitantly, she thought, and covered her knee with one hand.  She smiled at him to encourage him, and his hand rubbed gently against her thigh.  “That makes sense,” he said, and reached out, cupped his hand against her jaw, sliding it back along into her hair, curling his fingers into the sweaty strands. Natasha smiled at him, let the rub of his thumb against her jaw relax her.  “What happened?”

“Petrov was dead,” she said, sighing, tilting her head back and closing her eyes, letting her mind play back over the events. “He was in the bathroom, with the water on.  There must have been a drug on his body, or in the bath, because by the time I opened the door it was in the steam.”  It had to be, she decided, it was the only way it could have been delivered to her that quickly after opening the door.  She hadn’t touched anything in the apartment with her gloves off.  “And that note was on his body,” she added.

“Right,” James sighed.  “Did you recognize the drug?  It looked like—” he hesitated.  “You were hallucinating?”

“I was,” Natasha said, with a sigh, and he cupped his hand more solidly against her jaw, without a word.  She was grateful for that, turned her head to press her cheek into his hand without opening her eyes and breathed out slowly. It was . . . unsettling, unpleasant, and above all, it was disappointing, because they still had so few solid leads.

And it just . . . had been rather unpleasant to experience.  She blew her breath out.  She knew it hadn’t been real, that wasn’t the problem, it was the way having the images in her head, the thoughts, made her feel.  She’d been affected too much by things that had never really happened to dismiss them entirely, the roiling in her gut or the way she felt sick and tired, and that made her feel ill. And the memories the experience had brought back in the first place . . . .

She’d had a drug like that one before, after all. They had given it to them, in training. To help them learn to resist drugs, they had said, to focus the mind—but then again, sometimes, without warning, in the water, and they would never know when, would just have to struggle through it—

She wondered if they’d done the same to James, or if they had used less subtle methods on him, always, so that when he awoke, he was already theirs.  Or so they had thought.  “It was a Soviet drug,” she said, heavily.  “Called praloxin, I think.  They gave it to us in the Red Room.  It came up later, on a mission for SHIELD.  SHIELD, the CIA, they feel it’s too unstable.  They’ve never used it.  It was mostly used in the Soviet bloc, and even there not very often, anymore.”

“Praloxin,” James said, slowly. “Yeah, I—I’ve heard of it.” His metal hand clenched into a fist, and he looked down at it, took a deep breath, and smoothed it out again. “I think I can use some old connections to hunt it down,” he said.  “You’re right, it’s not very common in the States.  There has to be a source—it's probably an import. I think I know some people who could give me answers about any super specific jobs like that.” He looked up at her again. “It shouldn’t even be too hard,” he said.  “The reputation’s still good for something.”

“You don’t have to do that on your own,” Natasha sighed, closing her eyes again and tilting her head back against the headboard. “It might be dangerous.”

“It should be fine,” James said. “I’ll even be careful. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You should take backup,” she told him.

“Hey, I’m the one who’s dead, remember?” he told her. “And involving more people just runs a bigger risk of tipping them off.  What if they’re working through SHIELD?  It’s not impossible.”

He wasn’t wrong.  Natasha sighed and took another swallow of her tea. “I should go with you,” she insisted.

“No, you shouldn’t,” James said, brushing his knuckles gently along her cheekbone.  “You’ll have to handle this sooner or later, after all.  Might as well take the chance to rest up while I follow this lead. That way neither of us has to waste time just sitting around.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, at that. Natasha wondered if her reluctance was due to being shaken from the hallucinations.  And he was right, she could use the rest. “All right,” she said, slowly.

“I’ll be all right, Natalia,” he said with a wry grin, and leaned forward to kiss her.

Natasha spent most of the time after James left sleeping.  She dreamed, of a field of sunflowers and chamomile that tasted like tea on her tongue, of twirling and leaping and dancing, of darkness and snow and blood and the spaces in between her memories, blurry and unsure, of a tune someone had used to hum, something about sunshine.  She remembered something, the ticking of a watch, glass, opening it and looking into the workings of it.

Pautina had used to talk about legacy. About the girls, her girls, her legacy to mother Russia, about her own mother, her grandmother. Killed by the Germans, she’d said. They must never forget how only Russia truly cared for the women of Russia, only Russia would keep her daughters safe. The watch had been her mother’s.

Like a spiderweb, she’d said, gesturing at the gears. What lies on top is nothing but a pretty face, but what makes it work is underneath.  They should all be like that, their spiderweb under the surface, ticking and ticking.

When Natasha woke up, things seemed much clearer, as if the world had come back into focus.  Her apartment was quiet, and she was obviously alone. She got up out of bed, checked the time—not long, it made sense that James wouldn’t be back yet, then, showered, changed into her pajamas, and went back to bed.  She slept deeply this time, as if the dreams had worked something out of her.

The next time she woke up it was to the sense that something was wrong.  She sat up immediately, fully awake, feeling the hair on the back of her neck prickle. It was dark, and at first she thought it must be early evening, but then she looked at the time. It had been the middle of the day when she went back to bed, but now it was nearly four o’clock in the morning.

James should have been back by now.

There was nothing she liked about that.

Natasha pushed herself up and started to get ready.

Logan wasn’t exactly happy to be woken up at four thirty in the morning, but he also didn’t find it easy to refuse her favors, which Natasha wasn’t above preying on shamelessly if James was in danger. He grumbled, but she knew he probably would have wanted to help, anyway.  He was like that, a big softy even when he pretended not to care. It didn’t take long to track down the places James had gone—she at least knew the people he probably would have gone to first, where to start.  They hit nothing but dead ends for a while, which was enough to solidify in her mind that something was wrong.  It was too suspicious to have found nothing.  Eventually, though, they ran across someone who looked nervous enough to look away from her while he said that of course the Winter Soldier hadn’t been by, wasn’t he dead?  She didn’t even need Logan’s grunt and tap of his arm to tell her he was lying, though she of course appreciated it.

“You know,” she said.  “I don’t really appreciate it when people lie to me, Rimkus, I think you’ve heard that.  And I think you’re lying to me now.”

The way he swallowed was a dead giveaway, even if nothing else had been.  Natasha sighed impatiently, and let her fingers linger over the knife strapped to her forearm.  “There are benefits to working with me, you know,” she said.  “Even for people like you.”

“Like he’s really gonna listen,” Logan muttered. “They never do. You’ve always gotta fight before they see reason.”  He shrugged. “Knock it into ‘em.”

Rimkus’s eyes were growing shiftier and shiftier. “He didn’t stay here,” he said, finally. “He left.  I couldn’t tell him what he was looking for.”

“But he did come here,” Natasha said. “So.  You were lying.”  She let herself smile a little more—Rimkus was a coward, and it was clear he wasn’t telling them everything.  “I don’t really like liars very much.  Do you, Logan?”

“Er,” Rimkus said.  “Look, the thing is, I don’t want any trouble.”

“You don’t think I can make a deal for you?” Natasha asked.  “Make the trouble go away? I’m almost insulted.”

“They’re looking for you, though,” Rimkus said, then swallowed, looked alarmed.

“Are they,” Natasha said, her focus sharpening. “And why might they be doing that, do you suppose?”

“Heard they wanted to take you out,” Rimkus said. “Word was, you were going to be disappearing, and that they could do that.  I don’t want to mess with anyone people think can take out the Black Widow, you feel me?”

“So, how does this have to do with the Winter Soldier?” Natasha asked, frowning.

“Anyone who came around, asking about that drug. Praloxin?  Unstable stuff, used it back in the Soviet days—”

“Yes, all right,” Natasha said, “I know. And?”

“I heard I was supposed to send him on, say I didn’t know anything about it,” Rimkus said.  “And I don’t!  So it’s the truth—I’ve never carried that stuff for anybody.”

But his eyes were still darting around the inside of the room.  “You never would, no,” Natasha said, slowly, smiling at him.  “Your line is more illegal carbines and flame throwers, isn’t it, Rimkus? The odd AK-47.   But you know everyone who makes a deal in this business.”

Rimkus raised his chin and squared his shoulders at that—he probably hadn’t even realized he’d done it, but Natasha caught it.

“I’m sure you know someone who’s been dealing in praloxin lately,” she said.

“Well, maybe,” Rimkus said, and crossed his arms across his chest.  “But . . . look, you can’t tell anyone I told you about it.”

“I’m not exactly renowned for spreading other people’s secrets,” Natasha pointed out dryly.  “Or any secrets.  More for the opposite.”

“Well, lady who goes by Dior down on the west side,” Rimkus said, finally.  “Dior, get it? Poison?  Like that perfume?”

It was moderately clever, Natasha had to allow; she liked a woman who could make a perfume reference.

“Anyway,” he said, “she made a deal with it lately, supplying.  Seemed shady to me, dangerous, but she’s always into that stuff.  The Winter Soldier went to see her.”

“Thank you,” Natasha told him. “And watch your back. If I’m right, the people we’re after—they don’t much like loose ends.”

“I never told you anything,” Rimkus said. “Just like the Winter Soldier.”

“Right,” Natasha said.  “Of course.  I will remember this, you know.”  She smiled, and Logan followed her outside.

They took a circuitous route to Dior’s place. It wasn’t hard to ask around for people who dealt in poisons and lay another trail.  Just in case, Natasha figured.  Rimkus was not a particularly upstanding individual, but she was tired of leaving a trail of bodies, even of black marketeers and gun runners.

Logan responded before they even got to the office where Dior was rumored to work out of, frowning and sniffing the air. Natasha looked at him, and he grunted. “It’s him,” he said. “I can smell ‘im. He came this way, and not all that long ago, even.”

Getting closer, then.  Natasha swallowed.  James, she thought to herself, where have you gone? What have you gotten yourself into this time? “Then we’re on the right track,” she said out loud.

Dior’s place was deserted.  Importantly, there was no sign of the woman herself—no clothing in the back room, no toiletries in the bathroom, and the desk showed signs of having been cleared out.  And Logan’s nostrils flared as soon as they got inside.  “Blood,” he said.  “Barnes. He was hurt.”  Natasha sucked in her breath, swallowed, steeled herself not to react.  She had expected something like this, after all.  Logan stepped forward, turned in a slow circle inside the room.  “A fight,” he said.  “Smells like a couple people.  Two. He got the worst of it. Drugged, too.” He sniffed suspiciously. “Same thing, and a lot of it. He probably went down like a herd of elephants.”  He knelt, touched a knuckle to a dent in the desk, splintery and smeared with blood. “This is his,” he said. “Hit his head.”

“Can you track them?” Natasha asked, tense. That was the important part. James was tough, but this was serious—if Pautina had him—she knew how James felt about what had been done to him, about brainwashing, it was a terror for him in a way it wasn’t for Natasha, and Pautina had been—

Everyone knew what he was to her now, everyone who had been paying attention.  The fiction of his death protected him from people who wanted to get to her, of course, but if Pautina had him, she would know how false that was. And Pautina had known, about her and the Winter Soldier, she had known, Natasha had always suspected she had been one of the first to discover it.  She had certainly recommended the course of action that had been followed. After.

She had a great deal to answer for in Natasha’s life, lies and twists and manipulations lying on top of others, and Natasha found herself gritting her teeth.

She wanted this to be finished. She wanted this to be over.

“’Course I can,” Logan said.  “C’mon, Nat.”

“Then we’d better get started,” Natasha told him. She didn’t want to waste time on this. James didn’t have much time to waste. Every second they wasted was another moment who knew what could be happening to him.  His worst nightmare.  She knew it was.  Or it could be. Being used to get to her would just make it even worse.  Her fingers tightened on her own arms, above her elbows, but she refused to dwell on how she had been sleeping when this had happened, when he had been hurt—out here with no backup, like she had warned him.  He had been right, and she’d needed the rest.  But it had enabled Pautina to force her along in this, toward a confrontation, Natasha knew where this was going, even though she didn’t know why now, and she was tired of dancing on another spider’s web.

He hurts, all over, but he’s used to hurting, by now, the ache in his bones, the pull on his shoulder, even the sharper sting of more immediate wounds. He feels cold, the way he always does at first, and it makes it hard for his eyes to focus and track, for his muscles to clench and move and work, for him to do anything other than breathe—

But no, he doesn’t always do anything at first, not anymore, there isn’t an at first anymore, he’s not the Winter Soldier, and this is wrong, this is wrong—

Pain, it shocks him, enough that a sound escapes between his teeth even as he clamps down on the back ones, grits his teeth.  Electricity, through the arm and up into his body, he can feel it as it shivers through his chest, arcing, painful, what’s happening—a cattle prod to his arm, he realizes through bleary eyes, tries to reach out to catch it, to pull it away, but his hands are bound, how did he miss that, chained, he can’t get them loose, he’s held down, this is—

Not good, where is he—

How long as he been here—

All he manages is a snarl at the one who has the prod to his arm, and they switch over, press it to the vulnerable small of his back, and he tries to twist back, get his foot under them, or up into their belly, but they’ve got his feet, too—

No one says anything, and the pain goes on for a long time, but Bucky can deal with pain, he grits his teeth and closes his eyes and bears it, but when he closes his eyes he sees things, sees blood on the snow and the sight of a rifle under his hands, his own hands squeezing the trigger to take the shot, a little girl crying—

Natalia being pulled away from him as electricity crackles through him again, the pain in its wake, her face twisted, agonized, as she reaches out to him, fought them as they held her back, and he’d never known, never known she cared so much, never even dared to hope, it’s his last thought as he falls into the darkness—

They’d taunted him with that, that he’d never remember, his love, how he loved her, until there were tears on his face, before they’d taken him back for what they’d called maintenance, but now he remembered, he remembered it all, and he never wanted to—

Forget her—the voice of his handler in his ear, you can’t afford this, I can’t afford this, I don’t want to lose you, Soldier, you’re too useful, and you know they’ll never allow it, stop being a cocky sonuvabitch and listen to me—

The flag ripples in front of his eyes, it’s Steve, Steve!  Captain America, red white and blue and a shield, fire, Toro and Jim and it’s the Invaders again, of course it is, what’s he doing laid out here for, he needs to get up and join them, to fight too—

The images slip away, he doesn’t know where they’ve gone, the gun is in his hands again, and he’s squeezing the trigger, and he feels odd, lost, silence echoing in his head like in the aftermath of an explosion, too quiet, and he heaves and heaves for breath until he puts one mittened hand over his own mouth to quiet it. 

“I’m going to need you,” Natasha said, deliberately, not looking at Logan as she got her kit in order, “to get in touch with Nick Fury and SHIELD.  Call them in for backup.  Update them on the situation.  Give them this—” she pulled the ledger out of her pack, handed it to Logan.  He took it without a word, though his nostrils flared, his eyes dark.  He didn’t like it. Well, Natasha didn’t really like this situation much, either.  She didn’t like anything about it, but there it was, and she didn’t have to accept it just like that.  She could try to play it, to make sure that no matter what happened, the situation wasn’t entirely lost. She’d rather deal with Pautina herself, but even in a best case scenario, it would be good to have someone to bring her in.

Natasha ignored the part of herself that whispered that there would never be any need to bring anyone else in if she killed her herself.  She knew she wanted revenge, she could feel it, hot and thrumming in every part of her, hot under her sternum, boiling in her throat and in her stomach, but what she wanted and what Pautina needed were two different things.

Pautina would take too much pleasure from watching her kill.  If it was her. Part of Natasha wondered if this wasn’t all just some elaborate scheme, some other entity using the name and semblance of a nightmare from her past to rattle her.  Or perhaps it was simply a different nightmare from her past, or James’, playing a game.  Either way.

The gears behind the watch face. It was Pautina’s type of game.

They had followed the trail of James’ scent to one warehouse, then another.  Out of the city, into upstate New York.  They were standing some distance from an old farmhouse, now. He’d been thrown into the back of a truck, chained, Logan thought, and drugged further. He’d named at least four drugs that would now be swirling around in James’s body, and Natasha didn’t like the thought of any of them.  The praloxin was bad enough, but sodium pentothal, a heavy tranquilizer, and another old Soviet drug to induce mental malleability and docility?  James was strong, but it would be a nightmare for him.

Natasha knew how it would have felt for her, and she hated the thought of it.

The truck in question was parked outside the house.

“Leave you on your own to go after them?” Logan asked, sticking one thumb through his belt loop.  He didn’t sound overly impressed with the idea. Natasha wasn’t, either, if she was honest—James going off alone hadn’t turned out very well, after all, but she wasn’t willing to risk any more time.

And some things were her secrets. She’d rather not share them if she didn’t have to.  She’d rather deal with this herself.  “I know,” she said. “That’s the plan.”

“And what if Barnes ain’t exactly himself?” Logan asked, gruffly, but he wasn’t looking at her now, instead off to one side, into the middle distance.  “What about then?”

“Then I’ll just have to see about getting him back,” Natasha said grimly.  She didn’t like to think of James that drugged, suffering under it.  What they’d injected him with was a brainwasher’s kit. James had held up under brainwashing, even broken through it, and Pautina, or whoever it was, wouldn’t have had him very long, but she wasn’t going into this with any assumptions. She owed that to James, at least. She wasn’t leaving him with them.

Not when this was so obviously really about her. Not ever, but especially not then. He was mixed up in this because of her, because he was her best friend and her lover, because he’d been trying to help her, and for no other reason.  It left a sour, angry taste in the back of her throat.

“Because it’s always that easy,” Logan said.

“Of course it isn’t,” Natasha agreed. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Don’t go making this personal and doing anything stupid,” Logan said.  “You could use the backup.”

“That’s why I want you to inform SHIELD,” Natasha reminded him.  “Whatever happens to me, someone needs to take care of this mess.  They’re the perfect candidates. At least that way, someone will be coming after James and me, however this works out.”  Fury would be annoyed they hadn’t shared this with him and brought him in on it in the first place, but a little annoyance wouldn’t kill him, that was for sure.

“If you’re sure,” Logan said, after a long moment, straightening up.  “But I still don’t like it.”

Natasha shrugged.  “Neither do I,” she told him.  “But we work with what we have.”

“It’s gotta be a trap,” Logan said, after another moment, even as he turned to go.

“I know,” Natasha said, with a bit of a smile, though it wasn’t a very lighthearted one.  “I’m counting on it.”

The farmhouse wasn’t dilapidated, and she noticed that it was registered to a Jane Paul when she’d used her phone to look up the details.  It looked furnished. She wondered if this was where Pautina had been living, or if this was an additional location, a safehouse. If she knew anything about Pautina, she was betting it was the second.  Either way, it would be secured in every way the other woman could think of and then some, so Natasha approached it with caution, especially since according to Logan and what they already knew, they could expect at least three people. Assuming, of course, more hadn’t joined them since they’d reached the farmhouse—and not taking James into account. Since Natasha wasn’t sure how mobile or even cognizant of his surroundings James would be, she wasn’t about to make that mistake.  He was a possible combatant, and she wasn’t going to kid herself on that front. The goal was to get him out of here, and that was more likely to happen if she went into this aware of the worst possible scenario.

There were a few traps on the way to the back door, an alarm system that was obviously redundant, but Natasha had learned a few tricks the Red Room had never taught her about alarm systems. It was still too easy, she reflected as she slid in through the window and pressed her back against a wall, far too easy.

The room was large, with carpet and curtains in the windows and a decorative sideboard covered in blue willow china. It was also pitch dark, except for the light coming in from the night outside.  Natasha had only a breath of warning before he was there on top of her.

She knew immediately that it was James, she’d know him and his fighting style anywhere, the weight of his body against hers, even the quick harsh intake of his breath before the impact. Of course, it would be James. That was Pautina’s style all over. Some part of Natasha had known it, ever since they’d taken him.  It was what she had been counting on, once she’d realized what they’d given him, that Pautina wouldn’t be able to resist.  She fell back, let him bear her to the floor—he had his full weight on her, but when he pulled back, raised his fist, it was the flesh one; he was still holding back. She rolled to the side so that her back was to him and elbowed him in the gut, reached up and sank her hand into his hair to dig in and yank hard, lifting her other hand to grab at his jaw. His lips parted on a groan at the hit to his solar plexus and she used the opportunity to dig her fingers into the soft flesh of his cheek and pull.

It only got him off-balance for a moment, but that was all she needed.  She ducked out from under him, flipped her leg over his back and grabbed for his hands, using her own weight to bear him to the floor as she got the metal one up behind him and twisted hard enough for servos to whir and begin to give. He gasped, groaned, other hand reached back, scrabbling for her, and she activated the charge in her Widow’s Bite, twisting his arm even further.  There was a sharp give beneath her hands, and he went still, gasping into the carpet.

She seized her chance, got her arm under his neck and put him in a chokehold, even while she kept an eye out as best she could, despite the struggle, for other movement in the room.  There were at least three others, after all, she couldn’t forget that. She could feel James struggling, feel the way he pulled at his arms under her hold, shoulders bucking against the carpet, back against her, and he slammed his head back, trying to get her, but she reared back, not letting go of him, and his head fell back against her shoulder.  She slammed his head back down against the floor and risked letting go of him.  He didn’t struggle.

She immediately pulled off her glove and checked for his pulse, but it was strong and even in his neck.  Her heart slowly stopped thumping in her throat, seizing tightly in her chest, settled back into a more normal position, and she hurried to dig the cuffs she had brought out of her pocket, linking them around his wrists. They’d had them made to hold the arm, because, well, there were times a person wanted that. She pulled him up and slid him along the floor to lie under the sideboard, tugging the tablecloth down to hide him. It wasn’t an ideal hiding place, to say the least, but it was better than nothing.

She couldn’t resist going back for one last quick check of his pulse before she moved away, running her fingers briefly over his forehead.  But he was breathing steadily, just fine, pulse standard and normal, and that was the best she could do for him right then.  She had a job to do there.  And it was turning out to be one hell of a personal one.  She wouldn’t even know what had really been done to James until they got him back to SHIELD.  He might not even know, himself.  Who knew what he’d been picturing, just then, what he thought he’d been doing? He’d hate himself for it either way, and that was bad enough.

Natasha straightened up, pressed herself back into the shadows against the wall.  Three more people, but where?  Natasha would have expected to have them coming after her already.  Had James noticed her presence before the others? Shouldn’t the noise of their fight have drawn their attention?  Was there a reason none of them were responding?

Or was she just paranoid, convincing herself there was a danger there that didn’t exist?  She remembered Pautina as all powerful, in control, but Natasha had been a girl then.  Maybe that was it. Maybe that was all there was to it.

She shifted along the wall.  Movement there, in the shadows, in the kitchen. One person, not big enough for two. She broke into a run, swung herself up by their shoulders—broad, square, masculine—wrapped her thighs around the man’s neck.  He dropped before he could call out, and she patted him down, looking for a radio, a gun—her hand closed around a cattle prod, and she frowned, yanked it off his belt.

The house had two stories, and the only light was on the second floor.  It was so obvious. As obvious as the trap with Petrov, as taking James had been.  This was no subtle game Pautina was playing.

She ran into the other—big, just as well-muscled, a woman—on the stairs, and used the same chokehold as before. Part of Natasha wanted to use the cattle prod, just in case they had used it on James, but she’d learned a long time ago that revenge didn’t get a person very far.  Instead she used the woman’s holster to tie her hands to the railing and took her gun.

She stayed there, on the stairs, for a moment. She had checked the rest of the house, the downstairs bathrooms, the mudroom, the downstairs bedroom, and there was nothing.  Though they’d definitely hurt James in the mud room, and—thinking of that, him lost in the past and thinking it was a punishment from those days—oh, James.  It hurt.  But he would come back to her; he always did.

But if Pautina was up there—Natasha had never even known her real name.  She had just been Pautina, a woman with dark hair and a severe face and spectacles and a voice that could go the coldest, the most chilling, that Natasha had ever heard. The slightest warming of her tone had felt like a victory.

This didn’t seem real, it seemed like a dream, something that would happen in her dreams.  Facing her past.  Symbols and watches and sunflowers.

Natasha frowned.  Who was she to be worrying about symbolism, anyway?  Fuck symbolism.  SHIELD would be here soon, and she wanted this to be over by then. She wasn’t going to crouch here like a scared little girl on the stairs and not finish this.  She wasn’t that person anymore.

Whatever Pautina had wanted, had seen in her, she never had been.  Hadn’t that been the problem?

She tightened her fingers around the cattle prod, then stood up and walked up the stairs.

It was set up to be a sick room. It was the first thing she noticed, and she immediately thought, of course. The one thing that would make all this make sense.  The answer to that persistent question, why now? If Pautina was dying, there would never be another chance.  Was that what this was all about?

“Hello,” Natasha said to the woman in the bed. She recognized her, even after all these years.  Her hair had gone gray, and her face was lined, her hands spidery and twisted.  Now she looked like the spider.  “It’s been a long time.”

The watch was lying on the side of the bed. The old woman smiled. “Your boy,” she said, in Russian. “How is he?”

Natasha set her back teeth.  “He’s been better,” she said, in English. “Been worse.”

“I don’t doubt that,” the old woman said. Her voice was scratchy, hoarse, like it scraped the inside of her throat.  “The Winter Soldier, after all this time, Natalia, really? Sentiment.  I always warned you about that.”

“I thought the message that I hadn’t cared for the lessons you taught me had been made fairly clearly,” Natasha said. The old woman was too calm, too pleased. There was something else going on here.

“I did wonder,” Pautina said, “how you had managed to keep him alive.  But he doesn’t seem very clear on that himself.  A pity. One doesn’t like to die with unanswered questions.”

“Is that what I am?” Natasha asked. “An unanswered question?”

“Of a sort,” Pautina said, and sighed. “The plan was rushed,” she said, finally.  “You weren’t supposed to stumble on it like this.  Of course. You were always doing that. Unruly.  Hard to control . . . .”

“What did you do to James?” Natasha broke in. Whatever Pautina said, it might give them some clues on how to help him.

“I should think you’d be rather familiar by now,” Pautina said with a papery smile.  “Nothing that hadn’t been done already, I assure you.”

She was too pleased with herself, too chatty. She’d never exchanged this many words with Natasha all at once before, even when she spoke about the daughters of the country.  Natasha looked at the watch.  Time, she thought.

It was all about time.  Pautina was nearly out of it, that was clear from the setup of the room.  So this would be about time as well, somehow.  Wasting time. Taking her time.

“I think,” Natasha said, “that you’re nothing but a tired old woman without much time left.  I hope you have a good life, grandmother.”

She turned and went back down the stairs. She could hear Pautina choke behind her, her gasp of shock, the things she called out after her—promises, threats, insults, more abusive descriptions of what she’d done to James, his history, things he’d said—

You’ll never know what I know about you if you leave now—what happened to your parents—who you really are—

Natasha ran down the stairs and found him. He had managed to get free of where she had left him, and was sprawled, groggy, against the wall, curled with his face against his knees and gasping for air.  She knelt by him and his eyes followed her, barely tracking. “’Talia,” he slurred, in Russian. “Mission—what?”

She knelt by his side, got her hand under his biceps, though she didn’t trust what she’d done enough to unbind his hands. “Compromised,” she said in the same language.  “Can you stand? Run.”

She heard the police sirens about the same time they reached the copse of trees where she’d hidden with Logan, James stumbling beside her, leaning on her heavily, his head lolling on her shoulder. She pulled him down beside her and he collapsed like a limp sack of grain onto his knees, and she pushed his head down against a fallen log, laid her hand on the top of his head and watched the police through the trees.  She wished she could warn them, but they were clearly there for her.

They had clearly been alerted something was up, they moved in with a SWAT team, swarming the house.  She had just heard their first shouts of discovery when she saw the other car, black, government issue, draw up.  Fury got out, followed by Maria, much to Natasha’s honest surprise. She hadn’t thought Logan would go to the more official branch of the organization.  Maybe Maria had just been present for some reason and insisted on coming along.  It sounded like her. She spoke to the officer in charge, while Fury looked lazily around.  She saw his gaze resting on the lighted windows on the top floor, then he said something short, abrupt, to the officer in charge.  James groaned, lifted his head.  One of his eyes was swollen, she noticed. “Shh,” she told him, in Russian, still, and pushed his head back down.  “Be still for me, love.”

Fury was waving at the house now, and as Natasha watched, the officer became more animated, shouting into his radio. Policeman piled out of the house, dragging the two thugs between them.  The last one was leaving when it happened.  The house exploded in a shower of flames and debris, a hot roil of heat washing over them in a wave.  Natasha leaned forward over James’ head, his back, to cover him.

She’d thought it might be that. Control, after all, in the end. The nefarious Black Widow, responsible for the deaths of how many fine police officers?  Her file no doubt released to the public in a few days, once ire was at a height.  She would have SHIELD look into it.

She supposed she’d never discover why it was Pautina had targeted her, and her alone, at the end of her life. Her protégé who had turned against her—betrayal?  Pride? Despair?

Natasha found she didn’t care. She had been a suicidal old woman who’d wanted to die on her own terms.  Natasha saw nothing wrong with that.  It had been when that necessitated the deaths of Petrov, threats on so many others, torturing James just to get to Natasha—the need to bring her down with her—that was when she had begun to spin out.

“I told ya he wouldn’t be himself,” Logan grunted from behind her.

“And I told you it would be all right,” Natasha returned.  “Come on.” She pulled James’s arm, got him to stagger to his feet.  He mumbled something, swayed, but didn’t fall.  “We should get him to Fury,” she said.

“’Tasha,” James mumbled.  “Knew you’d—” he blew out his breath, heavily. “’m sorry.  Knew you’d come.”

“Of course I would,” Natasha said with a smile, ignoring that apology completely. She leaned in, pressed a kiss to his temple.  “I always turn up.”

“Red menace,” Logan said with a grunt, but he was smiling, and James laughed, with the soft slurring easiness of someone very, very loose with drugs.  They started back out of the trees.

The explosive, Fury told her later, had been in the watch.  He’d looked at her as if he was concerned, chewing with frustrated energy on his cigar, while she turned the ruined remains of it over in her hands.  The face was cracked and shattered, glass melted and fused, the cogs broken.

She thought she might keep it.

“How’s Buck?” he asked, finally.

Not Barnes, he was worried, then. “Just fine,” she told him, and smiled at the news.  “We’re going out to a show later tonight.”

“What’s that?” Fury asked, but his face relaxed, and there was a warmth in his eyes that you’d hardly know to look for, if you didn’t know him.

“Swan Lake,” Natasha said with a smile. “I hear a very great Russian ballerina will dance the part of Odette.  And there is no ballet like the Russian ballet.”

“Are you playing with me, Nat, I swear,” Fury started.

“No,” Natasha smiled, slipping the watch into her pocket. “No games, not this time.”

She was going to enjoy watching the talented woman dance, with all her skill and training, and not dreaming it herself.

James met her with a red rose and a smile. “You are feeling better, then,” she said, inhaling the scent of the flower, twirling it in her fingers as she smiled up at him, then reached up to adjust the fit of his bow tie. “You clean up awfully nicely.”

“All for you,” he said, and winked. “You said the lovers die in this show? What is it with the ballet, anyway?”

“Not this production,” Natasha told him, sliding her arm through his, warm and strong, and hugging it close. “I read the playbill. They rewrote the ending. This time, they live. It’s very American.”

“Well, hurrah,” James said, and nudged her in the side with his elbow.  “There’s too much dying in these things as it is.”

It was very American, Natasha reflected as the dancers twirled and leapt across the stage.  The Americans liked their heroes to live.  But danced by a Russian ballerina.  She liked it.

So did James, if the way he jumped to his feet at the end was any indication, clapping wildly.

“You’d still have done it better,” he told her on the way home on his bike.

Natasha laughed.  “You might be a little biased,” she told him.

“A little,” he said.  “But only a little.”

She laughed and slid her arms around his waist, letting her hair come free of her hat and whip around them.