fic: Revenant (6/?)
7 Nov 2013 09:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
domarzioneRevenant: Chapter Six
PG-13-ish ; Black Widow/The Avengers/Captain America
summary: Six months after being freed from the Winter Soldier conditioning, James Barnes has been presumed dead until a series of fatal accidents and outright murders makes it clear how he's been planning on spending his time. Natasha understands why she's been sent to track him down, even if she's not sure how she'll feel once he's found. Unfortunately, he's not the only one with revenge in mind.
Part of the Freezer Burn series. Prior reading not required.
The first morning in Wyoming began with the scent of baking bread and a clatter in the hallway outside Natasha's bedroom door that woke her up, but didn't escalate into anything that required her half-alert attention. She'd slept very late according to the bedroom clock, not surprising considering how busy she'd been for the last few days and that before that she'd spent the last few weeks nine time zones away.
Two hours later, she was exercised, showered, and gulping down enough coffee to offset the jetlag and saying yes, please, to the offer of another fresh-from-the-oven roll because there were two bakers among the security detail and Agents Gruning and Foss were competitive.
James had been and gone, she had been told by Peggy, and was now trapped in the secure communications room beginning what would be a days-long discussion about Latveria, Russia, Doom, Lukin, Putin, and what James had seen and done as the Winter Soldier. He'd understood this to be the cost for access to Steve and had shrugged it off last night as a price he was willing to pay when they'd had to discuss details. Nonetheless, Natasha wrapped up the butter-slathered roll in a napkin, refilled her coffee cup, and went to check on him.
"... my goal really wasn't long term surveillance," James was telling a plasma screen full of analysts split between 44th Street and the Helicarrier and then Nick Fury when she arrived. "I was looking to kill them, not study them."
Natasha sat at a table in the back to eat and listen. James didn't turn around to look at her, but she knew he was aware of her presence. She'd missed the first few hours of the session judging by how the questions were follow-ups about specifics and not big picture fill-ins, but there would be summaries generated later and, she suspected, she already knew those parts of the story. Right now, the analysts were asking him the organizational trees of Lukin's various networks, which was why they'd been frustrated by his aggressive pruning of those branches, especially because he could only make informed guesses about their replacements.
He reported on his past deeds in a clinical tone, making clear distinctions between what he'd been told as part of his orders, what he'd observed firsthand, and what he'd only figured out after the fact once his mind had been his own. He didn't sound either proud or ashamed of what he'd done, although he never diminished the difficulty or importance of his actions, and never made himself out to be more than what he had been to Lukin. Which was more or less what he'd been to Department X and the Red Room: a tactical asset, not a right-hand man. The analysts wished he'd been more involved with operational and strategic design because it would have answered more questions, but there was nothing to be done for that and James refused to try anyway.
The session ended about twenty minutes after Natasha arrived, but only for the group of analysts on the screen. James was told he had fifteen minutes before the next session began and he nodded, getting up and leaving the room without comment. He gave her a wry smirk and a "whattya gonna do?" shrug when he passed, but his eyes were still shadowed and he didn't pause to either speak to her or let her speak.
Fury pushed the two analyst room feeds off the screen so that he could talk to Natasha directly and without witnesses. He asked how things had gone since their arrival.
"You've got him," she told him without making it sound like a victory. "For as long as Steve's alive. That is precisely the length of your leash, so I suggest you don't yank on it."
Fury frowned. "I don't want him on a leash," he said and Natasha gave him a look that clearly expressed how little she thought of that statement. "But I understand if he feels the need to be on one right now."
The next session was a thematic break from the earlier one because it was led by Erik Selvig, who visibly startled at seeing James, and dealt with the Tesseract. Natasha had things she could be doing, but she stayed because she knew that at some point Selvig or one of his team was going to ask about James's personal experiences with it and she didn't want him alone and unprotected from that. They could ask their questions and she was pretty sure James would answer them, but both events had been either the cause or effect of intense emotional trauma and he needed the support, whether he wanted it or not. Peggy's story of him being asked to relive his experiences at the hands of Zola and Schmidt had not been idly told, but it had also been an unnecessary prompt. Natasha already knew.
First, however, were the easier questions about what Lukin and Doom intended to do with the Tesseract and how they knew to steal it from Jarno Ahtola in Haifa. SHIELD already knew why and how the Tesseract had returned to Earth and wound up in Ahtola's hands, but they hadn't been sure how Lukin did. The prevailing theory had been Latverian surveillance on Jane Foster, but the actual answer turned out to be Darcy Lewis, who'd been the courier. Much more surprising, however, was the revelation that Lukin had had no idea what he'd sent James to steal, just that it was probably important and would further provoke a SHIELD response.
"There wasn't a connection between the raid at the SHIELD facility in Powell or the retrieval in Haifa until the box was opened," James told them, which shocked everyone, including Natasha. From SHIELD's perspective, it had looked like Doom and Lukin had known what they were after all along, but instead it turned out to be blind luck. "If I'd known what I was going for in Haifa, I would have gone alone."
James had recognized the Tesseract immediately because he'd been the one to photograph Selvig's notes in Powell -- Selvig said something that was probably impolite to that, but it was in Swedish and Natasha couldn't even curse in that language -- and had brought it to Lukin alone first, who in turn brought it to Doom.
The rest of the details from their adventures in Latveria were more or less known and so James was asked to fill in events from the other side, which he did. But then Selvig asked about what had happened when Steve used the Tesseract on him and James paused, then asked for a moment. He turned the volume on the microphone off and turned to Natasha so that his face wasn't visible to the cameras and the group on the other end couldn't read his lips.
"I don't want you here for this part," he said to her. It wasn't an order and it wasn't unkindly said, but it was very firmly meant.
"James," she began, but he cut her off.
"Please, Natalia." He wasn't begging, but he wasn't hiding the plea, either. "This will be a lot easier if it's just a report to the scientists. I'm sure you will be able to read about it later if you're that interested."
"I don't care about the details," she spat back, sharper than she meant to. But she was frustrated; she had gone through this with Clint after the business with Loki and she'd let him push her away, thinking she was letting him salvage his pride, and she'd watched him suffer as a consequence. She wasn't going to do it again. "You shouldn't have to do this alone. You aren't alone."
James smiled sadly. "Right now, it will be better for me if I am. I'm not trying to punish myself. I'm... trying to protect myself. And I can't from you."
You shouldn't have to, she didn't shout at him, but she knew better. She couldn't protect herself from him, either, and they were too deadly and too damaged to not accidentally wound the other.
"It's not a secret, it's a scar," James said when she kept her silence. "It's not going anywhere."
Accepting that this was not a fight she could win -- or maybe one she shouldn't win -- right now, she exhaled through her nose and nodded, gathering up her bunched-up napkin and her coffee cup and standing. She left and he waited for her to close the door behind her before turning back to the inquisitors on the video screen.
Back in the bustle of the house, Natasha spent the afternoon tending to her own garden of contacts and ongoing SHIELD projects -- constant secure internet and intranet access meant that she could start grinding through the impressive (to Tapper) backlog of reports and notes on her work -- and breaking that up with visits to Steve and Peggy. Peggy didn't spend all day in Steve's room, but she did have her own 'station' set up there with her knitting and her book and the Starkvision tablet upon which she watched movies and television. The security detail agents treated Peggy like the World's Hippest Nonogenarian and provided suggestions accordingly, which probably explained why she was currently mainlining Breaking Bad.
The day was hot, but it got cool enough in the early evening that Natasha was comfortable in the shade of the wrap-around porch with a glass of iced tea; she had one of the laptops and was typing up her notes from the visit to the warehouse full of HYDRA weapons, since that was the most recent and yet the most overdue because even if she'd sent the pictures in immediately, she hadn't done anything else.
She heard the door open, but didn't look to see who'd come outside and so she was mildly surprised to see James, beer bottle loosely in hand, standing before her. He gave her a look that was part asking for permission and part apology, so she gestured with her head and he sat down next to her. He didn't say anything, letting his body language show his fatigue, and she returned to her paperwork. They sat in companionable silence, her typing and his attempting to relax, as the rhythm of the house continued around them.
"Was the warehouse in Cluj Lukin's or Doom's?" she asked casually. She hadn't called him on that particular deception, but there was no reason to maintain it.
James didn't answer right away and she looked over because she wondered if he'd fallen asleep -- he was just as jetlagged as she was. But if he had, he was awake again and he smiled at her mischievously. "Lukin's."
She and James didn't spend a lot of time together over the next two days, except they sort of did. Natasha sat in on some of James's sessions with SHIELD, absenting herself by choice when necessary, and they had lunch together. But she didn't see him in the evenings after the first one; James's preferred method of decompressing from a day of reliving his past was to borrow Agent Hochimura's sneakers and exhaust himself as physically as the questioning had mentally. He was gone for three hours one night, long enough for Natasha and Peggy to both get concerned, but a discreet inquiry to the outside patrol told them that James had in fact returned an hour ago and was going over the particulars of the house's security setup.
On the fourth day, Natasha found out that James had apparently volunteered the two of them to be the OPFOR to test the security detail's responses. The questioning in the comms room was ended early and they changed into work clothes, accepted a packed dinner of meatloaf sandwiches, carrot sticks, and cherry handpies, and spent a few hours plotting mayhem a hundred meters outside the boundary of the outer circle of the house's defenses. They made full use of Natasha's having been one of the architects of those defenses, assuming that anyone who really wanted to get to Steve would take the time to get these details for themselves (which was not necessarily a valid assumption, but the numbers for and against were so lopsided that it was a mutually agreed-upon ground rule).
Natasha was caught on final approach to the house, vaporized into "a fine red mist" by an in-ground explosive; James was terminated with extreme prejudice hanging on to the ledge of the second-floor window of the room two down from Steve's. The after-action debriefing was upbeat in tone, but also serious -- yes, the detail had caught the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, but they'd also known that the attackers were coming and, ideally, should have been stopped further out than they were.
The next day, Clint showed up in time for lunch from his place in Nebraska, which he'd arrived at last night for what he hoped would be three weeks of downtime but expected to be closer to two.
Clint and James greeted each other with wary good manners and a little awkwardness; James had come very close to killing Clint in Italy last year and while that hadn't been him, they both remembered it clearly. At least that's what Natasha thought it was; Peggy apparently had a different theory and told the two of them to stop sniffing around each other like dogs.
"They're both trying to figure out the other's intentions toward you," Peggy told Natasha when both Clint and James had fled in not-entirely-mock terror, the tension between them seemingly broken. Natasha didn't know what to make of that, although her first reaction was definitely anger. It was only later that she allowed herself to think about why James cared.
Clint was easy with Steve in a way that Natasha still was not and she envied him for it. He just sat down next to the bed, put his booted feet up where they shouldn't be, and started talking to Steve like he was going to answer. He updated Steve on baseball standings, asked him if he were listening to the Mets (he was; James had started putting the games on for him the first night), and generally prattled on about things that Steve might or might not have cared about were he able to respond. He passed on greetings from Tony and Pepper, who were still not allowed to visit; they were too visible and the probability of their movements being tracked was too high. "And Tony's actually listening instead of doing whatever the fuck he wants, so take that as a mark of respect for you, yeah?"
He stayed until the evening, then headed off, promising to come back tomorrow. Which was why he was around in the afternoon when Agent Durant came running in to Steve's room and said that SHIELD wanted both Clint and Natasha in the comms room right away.
Natasha, who'd been feeling a restless itch under her skin for last day or so, hid her relief. Especially because Clint looked so frustrated.
"I think my vacation just got canceled," he sighed as he stood up. He turned to Steve. "This had better not be your doing, Buster."
It wasn't. HYDRA had apparently launched a full-scale attack on a bank in Caracas, killing the employees and making off with more than fifty million dollars in gold and bearer bonds.
SHIELD was mystified because Venezuela had been one of HYDRA's most hospitable hosts, even with Chavez dead, and they hadn't been prone to so viciously biting the hand that fed them before this.
"Venezuela was collateral damage," James said and that stopped conversation. "Follow the money and that trail will lead you right back to Moscow."
The bank in Caracas was a Russian money laundry, he explained. The Cold War might be over, but the Russians still spent a lot of time and effort and money to make a mockery of the Monroe Doctrine. Chavez and Castro, among others, had accepted millions in cash and materials to spite the Americans.
A quick check with the relevant American agencies confirmed his story. But that still left the question of why go after Russia, another HYDRA ally, even if Minyar hadn't exactly gone as either side would have wished. Putin had become a strong anti-HYDRA advocate after Minyar, so it could have been revenge, but this didn't quite fit.
"Maybe HYDRA just needs the cash," Clint pointed out. "Fifty mil in completely liquid assets is worth three times that in funds on a computer somewhere."
While they were pondering that, there was a separate news blast, this time from both China and Moscow. The border crossings with Russia at Manzhouli, Heihi, and Suifenhe had just been bombed along with the train station in Harbin during the morning rush (the Harbin-Khabarovsk train, just in from Russia and unloaded and now full of Chinese citizens, exploded before it departed), and the Chinese embassy in Moscow and the consulate in St. Petersburg were also victims. Nobody was taking credit for it yet, which left everyone to think that it wasn't HYDRA because HYDRA was generally on top of the self-promotion and branding opportunities, plus the targets didn't fit HYDRA's admittedly hypocritical anticapitalist agenda. The Chinese didn't seem to think it was HYDRA, either, because they were already starting to move PLA units to the border regions.
The bombings were very clearly an attempt to make Russia look like it was picking a fight with China, but taken with the bank job in Caracas and it looked much more like someone was setting Moscow up for a fall. Who would throw the gauntlet down like this?
"You," Clint told James sourly. "Simultaneous bombs in separate countries ring a bell?"
"This is much bigger than I could pull off," James dismissed, unoffended. "Too expensive, too much manpower, and too much carnage. The train station was a soft target; it was chosen to get a reaction from the world media, not send a specific message."
Natasha tamped down on the bile rising in her throat. "It was Lukin," she said. "All of this was Lukin."
She'd thrown the first punch in the fight between Lukin and Putin over Russia by revealing the fate of the Winter Soldier. This was the result.
"Why would Lukin target Russia like this?" Clint asked, skeptical. He knew what she'd done, but he wasn't seeing the causal relationship. "And why would he use HYDRA to do it?"
"We don't know if it's a legitimate HYDRA action," Peggy pointed out. She'd come in to the room during the discussion about the money laundering. "They were wearing HYDRA costumes and someone called in to a Caracas television station saying it was HYDRA, but that means nothing, really. It could be a splinter group, but it would also be a perfect false flag operation."
Like al-Qaeda, HYDRA had affiliated groups and splinter groups of varying legitimacy and there was widespread disagreement and confusion about who was actually acting in the name of the actual organization. Or it could simply be a mercenary team dressed up in HYDRA clothes; it wasn't as if Lukin wouldn't know where to find them.
"This is just going to get messier," Clint groused.
Natasha was maybe a little quick to volunteer to go back to New York when Hill called in, emphasizing that James should stay behind with Steve and Clint continue his vacation, but Hill was having none of it and said that all three of them were expected back as quickly as could be managed.
"Am I a SHIELD agent now?" James asked pointedly, although Natasha knew that there had already been discussions between him and either Fury or Hill or both about what he might consider doing on the agency's behalf.
"You can be if you want," Hill replied easily, unfazed. "But in the meanwhile, even consultants ask how high when Director Fury says 'jump.' Talk to Tony Stark if you don't believe me."
"I don't think she really wants you to talk to Stark about that," Clint said sagely after Hill had terminated the call with an assurance that travel details would be forthcoming. "He's about as obedient as a feral cat and she knows it."
Clint left to go back to his house and close it up again once they got their travel details -- morning flight out of Denver -- and James seemed willing to go along with things, at least for now. But that didn't mean he was prepared to drop everything.
"Why do you think it's Lukin?" he asked after he'd suggested they go outside to talk for a moment. "It wasn't a wild guess."
Natasha took a moment before she answered, letting the sun beat down on her skin and seeing fire behind her eyelids when she tilted her head back with her eyes closed. She'd been restless the last couple of days and it had been easy to pin the cause on her being in a ranch house in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but catch up on paperwork, exercise, and poke at her own emotional bruises by sitting with Steve and chastising herself for all that she couldn't give him even now. But there'd been another cause, one that was currently watching her carefully. In the week since Romania, time spent with James had become less about obligation and responsibility, had instead taken on the distinct characteristics of the beginnings of friendship -- and maybe more. And she knew he looked at her with something other than nostalgia in his eyes. And it had scared her because it made her feel vulnerable.
But the next wound wouldn't be hers. "I burned you when I was looking for Steve's shooter," she said, forcing herself to look him in the eye. "I told the Russians you were at large."
James could connect the dots from there and she could see when he did by the change in expression on his face. But she'd also seen the surprise and the hurt first, despite him knowing damned well that a week ago, before he'd come to her and she'd allowed herself to become his safety buoy in this strange sea, they had been operating at cross purposes and she'd had no reason to be loyal to him. He'd accept it -- or he wouldn't -- eventually. She didn't know this new man well enough to know if or when. But it wasn't going to be right now because he nodded at her once, sharply, and turned and went back into the house.
She followed after a moment, entirely because she didn't want to get sunburned.
James spent the rest of the evening with Steve -- Natasha wasn't sure because it was where he most wanted to be with time dwindling down or because he was calling out her cowardice by daring her to follow. She had to go in there eventually, though, to discuss what time they were leaving the following morning; it would have to be by 5 AM at the latest.
When she did venture upstairs, she could hear Peggy and James having a testy conversation before she could make out the words. James was different with Peggy than he was with everyone else, Natasha included. It was a relationship clearly reliant on what they'd had in the 1940s; Peggy gave him no quarter and he took it without protest. She called him Bucky, the only one to do so with the agents still sticking with 'Mister Barnes' even if they were beginning to mean it affectionately. And while she was quick to call him on his moodiness and attempts to assume guilt, her interactions with him were also the most normal he had because while they had history, they didn't have weight. At least until now.
"I want you to promise me something," Peggy was saying as Natasha approached in the hallway and she could hear James sigh loudly in protest. "I want you to promise me that when this is all over, when you have chased down Steve's would-be assassin and paid back the insult with interest, you come back to him. No more running away."
Natasha stopped walking and stood still. She was close enough to see into the room and couldn't turn around and leave without drawing attention, but this wasn't a conversation she was meant to hear.
"Peggy..."
"Don't Peggy me," Peggy snapped. "You had six months to find your courage and face him and you wasted it. I will not see you waste any more time. Both of you have been granted something extraordinary and now it's time to see past the terrible cost of what can be a wonderful gift if you'd just let it."
Natasha didn't think she was imagining that Peggy is talking to both James and Steve at this moment.
"I can't see any kind of gift," James said. "I see blood and death and betrayal and a joke everyone was in on but me. I can't be anything for anyone right now. Steve has you and--"
"Not for much longer," Peggy cut him off, a wobble in her voice. "I'm ninety-seven and have already been granted as much extra time as I could hope for and I have less every day. I can do less every day. I won't be here for him for as long as he needs me."
She stopped to wipe her eyes and regain her composure.
"I need you to be there for him when I can't," Peggy continued after a moment. "I say this without any ego, but my death is going to destroy him. Don't ask him to lose both of us again."
Natasha didn't understand the 'again' at first, since Steve hadn't lost Peggy the first time, rather the other way around. And then she got it: their future together.
James said nothing, just hung his head.
"You have a little time to get used to the idea," Peggy continued with bravado when he didn't look up. "I'm still kicking hard enough. But when it's time, I'd like to know that you'll be there for him."
James still said nothing, but Natasha could see him nod.
"Thank you," Peggy said quietly and James got up to leave the room. He met Natasha's eyes as he passed her in the doorway and the look in his was raw and defenseless and too much like that flash from earlier and she looked away, letting him pass. She waited a few beats before going in to the room, enough time for Peggy to dab at her eyes again and put on her brightest smile. Natasha didn't think for a moment that she was expected to buy it.
She found James later and they had a quick, awkward conversation about departure times. They slept for a few hours, at least Natasha did, and a quiet knock on her bedroom door at 0330 woke her. The night duty nurse stepped out to give them a moment to say goodbye to Steve and Natasha wondered if she should go, too, because James was speaking quietly in the Brooklyn accent that gets thicker when he talks to Steve. He caressed Steve's cheek with the back of his right hand and didn't look at Natasha as he left to get his things.
"I'll do my best," she told Steve from the foot of his bed. "I'm sorry."
PG-13-ish ; Black Widow/The Avengers/Captain America
summary: Six months after being freed from the Winter Soldier conditioning, James Barnes has been presumed dead until a series of fatal accidents and outright murders makes it clear how he's been planning on spending his time. Natasha understands why she's been sent to track him down, even if she's not sure how she'll feel once he's found. Unfortunately, he's not the only one with revenge in mind.
Part of the Freezer Burn series. Prior reading not required.
The first morning in Wyoming began with the scent of baking bread and a clatter in the hallway outside Natasha's bedroom door that woke her up, but didn't escalate into anything that required her half-alert attention. She'd slept very late according to the bedroom clock, not surprising considering how busy she'd been for the last few days and that before that she'd spent the last few weeks nine time zones away.
Two hours later, she was exercised, showered, and gulping down enough coffee to offset the jetlag and saying yes, please, to the offer of another fresh-from-the-oven roll because there were two bakers among the security detail and Agents Gruning and Foss were competitive.
James had been and gone, she had been told by Peggy, and was now trapped in the secure communications room beginning what would be a days-long discussion about Latveria, Russia, Doom, Lukin, Putin, and what James had seen and done as the Winter Soldier. He'd understood this to be the cost for access to Steve and had shrugged it off last night as a price he was willing to pay when they'd had to discuss details. Nonetheless, Natasha wrapped up the butter-slathered roll in a napkin, refilled her coffee cup, and went to check on him.
"... my goal really wasn't long term surveillance," James was telling a plasma screen full of analysts split between 44th Street and the Helicarrier and then Nick Fury when she arrived. "I was looking to kill them, not study them."
Natasha sat at a table in the back to eat and listen. James didn't turn around to look at her, but she knew he was aware of her presence. She'd missed the first few hours of the session judging by how the questions were follow-ups about specifics and not big picture fill-ins, but there would be summaries generated later and, she suspected, she already knew those parts of the story. Right now, the analysts were asking him the organizational trees of Lukin's various networks, which was why they'd been frustrated by his aggressive pruning of those branches, especially because he could only make informed guesses about their replacements.
He reported on his past deeds in a clinical tone, making clear distinctions between what he'd been told as part of his orders, what he'd observed firsthand, and what he'd only figured out after the fact once his mind had been his own. He didn't sound either proud or ashamed of what he'd done, although he never diminished the difficulty or importance of his actions, and never made himself out to be more than what he had been to Lukin. Which was more or less what he'd been to Department X and the Red Room: a tactical asset, not a right-hand man. The analysts wished he'd been more involved with operational and strategic design because it would have answered more questions, but there was nothing to be done for that and James refused to try anyway.
The session ended about twenty minutes after Natasha arrived, but only for the group of analysts on the screen. James was told he had fifteen minutes before the next session began and he nodded, getting up and leaving the room without comment. He gave her a wry smirk and a "whattya gonna do?" shrug when he passed, but his eyes were still shadowed and he didn't pause to either speak to her or let her speak.
Fury pushed the two analyst room feeds off the screen so that he could talk to Natasha directly and without witnesses. He asked how things had gone since their arrival.
"You've got him," she told him without making it sound like a victory. "For as long as Steve's alive. That is precisely the length of your leash, so I suggest you don't yank on it."
Fury frowned. "I don't want him on a leash," he said and Natasha gave him a look that clearly expressed how little she thought of that statement. "But I understand if he feels the need to be on one right now."
The next session was a thematic break from the earlier one because it was led by Erik Selvig, who visibly startled at seeing James, and dealt with the Tesseract. Natasha had things she could be doing, but she stayed because she knew that at some point Selvig or one of his team was going to ask about James's personal experiences with it and she didn't want him alone and unprotected from that. They could ask their questions and she was pretty sure James would answer them, but both events had been either the cause or effect of intense emotional trauma and he needed the support, whether he wanted it or not. Peggy's story of him being asked to relive his experiences at the hands of Zola and Schmidt had not been idly told, but it had also been an unnecessary prompt. Natasha already knew.
First, however, were the easier questions about what Lukin and Doom intended to do with the Tesseract and how they knew to steal it from Jarno Ahtola in Haifa. SHIELD already knew why and how the Tesseract had returned to Earth and wound up in Ahtola's hands, but they hadn't been sure how Lukin did. The prevailing theory had been Latverian surveillance on Jane Foster, but the actual answer turned out to be Darcy Lewis, who'd been the courier. Much more surprising, however, was the revelation that Lukin had had no idea what he'd sent James to steal, just that it was probably important and would further provoke a SHIELD response.
"There wasn't a connection between the raid at the SHIELD facility in Powell or the retrieval in Haifa until the box was opened," James told them, which shocked everyone, including Natasha. From SHIELD's perspective, it had looked like Doom and Lukin had known what they were after all along, but instead it turned out to be blind luck. "If I'd known what I was going for in Haifa, I would have gone alone."
James had recognized the Tesseract immediately because he'd been the one to photograph Selvig's notes in Powell -- Selvig said something that was probably impolite to that, but it was in Swedish and Natasha couldn't even curse in that language -- and had brought it to Lukin alone first, who in turn brought it to Doom.
The rest of the details from their adventures in Latveria were more or less known and so James was asked to fill in events from the other side, which he did. But then Selvig asked about what had happened when Steve used the Tesseract on him and James paused, then asked for a moment. He turned the volume on the microphone off and turned to Natasha so that his face wasn't visible to the cameras and the group on the other end couldn't read his lips.
"I don't want you here for this part," he said to her. It wasn't an order and it wasn't unkindly said, but it was very firmly meant.
"James," she began, but he cut her off.
"Please, Natalia." He wasn't begging, but he wasn't hiding the plea, either. "This will be a lot easier if it's just a report to the scientists. I'm sure you will be able to read about it later if you're that interested."
"I don't care about the details," she spat back, sharper than she meant to. But she was frustrated; she had gone through this with Clint after the business with Loki and she'd let him push her away, thinking she was letting him salvage his pride, and she'd watched him suffer as a consequence. She wasn't going to do it again. "You shouldn't have to do this alone. You aren't alone."
James smiled sadly. "Right now, it will be better for me if I am. I'm not trying to punish myself. I'm... trying to protect myself. And I can't from you."
You shouldn't have to, she didn't shout at him, but she knew better. She couldn't protect herself from him, either, and they were too deadly and too damaged to not accidentally wound the other.
"It's not a secret, it's a scar," James said when she kept her silence. "It's not going anywhere."
Accepting that this was not a fight she could win -- or maybe one she shouldn't win -- right now, she exhaled through her nose and nodded, gathering up her bunched-up napkin and her coffee cup and standing. She left and he waited for her to close the door behind her before turning back to the inquisitors on the video screen.
Back in the bustle of the house, Natasha spent the afternoon tending to her own garden of contacts and ongoing SHIELD projects -- constant secure internet and intranet access meant that she could start grinding through the impressive (to Tapper) backlog of reports and notes on her work -- and breaking that up with visits to Steve and Peggy. Peggy didn't spend all day in Steve's room, but she did have her own 'station' set up there with her knitting and her book and the Starkvision tablet upon which she watched movies and television. The security detail agents treated Peggy like the World's Hippest Nonogenarian and provided suggestions accordingly, which probably explained why she was currently mainlining Breaking Bad.
The day was hot, but it got cool enough in the early evening that Natasha was comfortable in the shade of the wrap-around porch with a glass of iced tea; she had one of the laptops and was typing up her notes from the visit to the warehouse full of HYDRA weapons, since that was the most recent and yet the most overdue because even if she'd sent the pictures in immediately, she hadn't done anything else.
She heard the door open, but didn't look to see who'd come outside and so she was mildly surprised to see James, beer bottle loosely in hand, standing before her. He gave her a look that was part asking for permission and part apology, so she gestured with her head and he sat down next to her. He didn't say anything, letting his body language show his fatigue, and she returned to her paperwork. They sat in companionable silence, her typing and his attempting to relax, as the rhythm of the house continued around them.
"Was the warehouse in Cluj Lukin's or Doom's?" she asked casually. She hadn't called him on that particular deception, but there was no reason to maintain it.
James didn't answer right away and she looked over because she wondered if he'd fallen asleep -- he was just as jetlagged as she was. But if he had, he was awake again and he smiled at her mischievously. "Lukin's."
She and James didn't spend a lot of time together over the next two days, except they sort of did. Natasha sat in on some of James's sessions with SHIELD, absenting herself by choice when necessary, and they had lunch together. But she didn't see him in the evenings after the first one; James's preferred method of decompressing from a day of reliving his past was to borrow Agent Hochimura's sneakers and exhaust himself as physically as the questioning had mentally. He was gone for three hours one night, long enough for Natasha and Peggy to both get concerned, but a discreet inquiry to the outside patrol told them that James had in fact returned an hour ago and was going over the particulars of the house's security setup.
On the fourth day, Natasha found out that James had apparently volunteered the two of them to be the OPFOR to test the security detail's responses. The questioning in the comms room was ended early and they changed into work clothes, accepted a packed dinner of meatloaf sandwiches, carrot sticks, and cherry handpies, and spent a few hours plotting mayhem a hundred meters outside the boundary of the outer circle of the house's defenses. They made full use of Natasha's having been one of the architects of those defenses, assuming that anyone who really wanted to get to Steve would take the time to get these details for themselves (which was not necessarily a valid assumption, but the numbers for and against were so lopsided that it was a mutually agreed-upon ground rule).
Natasha was caught on final approach to the house, vaporized into "a fine red mist" by an in-ground explosive; James was terminated with extreme prejudice hanging on to the ledge of the second-floor window of the room two down from Steve's. The after-action debriefing was upbeat in tone, but also serious -- yes, the detail had caught the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, but they'd also known that the attackers were coming and, ideally, should have been stopped further out than they were.
The next day, Clint showed up in time for lunch from his place in Nebraska, which he'd arrived at last night for what he hoped would be three weeks of downtime but expected to be closer to two.
Clint and James greeted each other with wary good manners and a little awkwardness; James had come very close to killing Clint in Italy last year and while that hadn't been him, they both remembered it clearly. At least that's what Natasha thought it was; Peggy apparently had a different theory and told the two of them to stop sniffing around each other like dogs.
"They're both trying to figure out the other's intentions toward you," Peggy told Natasha when both Clint and James had fled in not-entirely-mock terror, the tension between them seemingly broken. Natasha didn't know what to make of that, although her first reaction was definitely anger. It was only later that she allowed herself to think about why James cared.
Clint was easy with Steve in a way that Natasha still was not and she envied him for it. He just sat down next to the bed, put his booted feet up where they shouldn't be, and started talking to Steve like he was going to answer. He updated Steve on baseball standings, asked him if he were listening to the Mets (he was; James had started putting the games on for him the first night), and generally prattled on about things that Steve might or might not have cared about were he able to respond. He passed on greetings from Tony and Pepper, who were still not allowed to visit; they were too visible and the probability of their movements being tracked was too high. "And Tony's actually listening instead of doing whatever the fuck he wants, so take that as a mark of respect for you, yeah?"
He stayed until the evening, then headed off, promising to come back tomorrow. Which was why he was around in the afternoon when Agent Durant came running in to Steve's room and said that SHIELD wanted both Clint and Natasha in the comms room right away.
Natasha, who'd been feeling a restless itch under her skin for last day or so, hid her relief. Especially because Clint looked so frustrated.
"I think my vacation just got canceled," he sighed as he stood up. He turned to Steve. "This had better not be your doing, Buster."
It wasn't. HYDRA had apparently launched a full-scale attack on a bank in Caracas, killing the employees and making off with more than fifty million dollars in gold and bearer bonds.
SHIELD was mystified because Venezuela had been one of HYDRA's most hospitable hosts, even with Chavez dead, and they hadn't been prone to so viciously biting the hand that fed them before this.
"Venezuela was collateral damage," James said and that stopped conversation. "Follow the money and that trail will lead you right back to Moscow."
The bank in Caracas was a Russian money laundry, he explained. The Cold War might be over, but the Russians still spent a lot of time and effort and money to make a mockery of the Monroe Doctrine. Chavez and Castro, among others, had accepted millions in cash and materials to spite the Americans.
A quick check with the relevant American agencies confirmed his story. But that still left the question of why go after Russia, another HYDRA ally, even if Minyar hadn't exactly gone as either side would have wished. Putin had become a strong anti-HYDRA advocate after Minyar, so it could have been revenge, but this didn't quite fit.
"Maybe HYDRA just needs the cash," Clint pointed out. "Fifty mil in completely liquid assets is worth three times that in funds on a computer somewhere."
While they were pondering that, there was a separate news blast, this time from both China and Moscow. The border crossings with Russia at Manzhouli, Heihi, and Suifenhe had just been bombed along with the train station in Harbin during the morning rush (the Harbin-Khabarovsk train, just in from Russia and unloaded and now full of Chinese citizens, exploded before it departed), and the Chinese embassy in Moscow and the consulate in St. Petersburg were also victims. Nobody was taking credit for it yet, which left everyone to think that it wasn't HYDRA because HYDRA was generally on top of the self-promotion and branding opportunities, plus the targets didn't fit HYDRA's admittedly hypocritical anticapitalist agenda. The Chinese didn't seem to think it was HYDRA, either, because they were already starting to move PLA units to the border regions.
The bombings were very clearly an attempt to make Russia look like it was picking a fight with China, but taken with the bank job in Caracas and it looked much more like someone was setting Moscow up for a fall. Who would throw the gauntlet down like this?
"You," Clint told James sourly. "Simultaneous bombs in separate countries ring a bell?"
"This is much bigger than I could pull off," James dismissed, unoffended. "Too expensive, too much manpower, and too much carnage. The train station was a soft target; it was chosen to get a reaction from the world media, not send a specific message."
Natasha tamped down on the bile rising in her throat. "It was Lukin," she said. "All of this was Lukin."
She'd thrown the first punch in the fight between Lukin and Putin over Russia by revealing the fate of the Winter Soldier. This was the result.
"Why would Lukin target Russia like this?" Clint asked, skeptical. He knew what she'd done, but he wasn't seeing the causal relationship. "And why would he use HYDRA to do it?"
"We don't know if it's a legitimate HYDRA action," Peggy pointed out. She'd come in to the room during the discussion about the money laundering. "They were wearing HYDRA costumes and someone called in to a Caracas television station saying it was HYDRA, but that means nothing, really. It could be a splinter group, but it would also be a perfect false flag operation."
Like al-Qaeda, HYDRA had affiliated groups and splinter groups of varying legitimacy and there was widespread disagreement and confusion about who was actually acting in the name of the actual organization. Or it could simply be a mercenary team dressed up in HYDRA clothes; it wasn't as if Lukin wouldn't know where to find them.
"This is just going to get messier," Clint groused.
Natasha was maybe a little quick to volunteer to go back to New York when Hill called in, emphasizing that James should stay behind with Steve and Clint continue his vacation, but Hill was having none of it and said that all three of them were expected back as quickly as could be managed.
"Am I a SHIELD agent now?" James asked pointedly, although Natasha knew that there had already been discussions between him and either Fury or Hill or both about what he might consider doing on the agency's behalf.
"You can be if you want," Hill replied easily, unfazed. "But in the meanwhile, even consultants ask how high when Director Fury says 'jump.' Talk to Tony Stark if you don't believe me."
"I don't think she really wants you to talk to Stark about that," Clint said sagely after Hill had terminated the call with an assurance that travel details would be forthcoming. "He's about as obedient as a feral cat and she knows it."
Clint left to go back to his house and close it up again once they got their travel details -- morning flight out of Denver -- and James seemed willing to go along with things, at least for now. But that didn't mean he was prepared to drop everything.
"Why do you think it's Lukin?" he asked after he'd suggested they go outside to talk for a moment. "It wasn't a wild guess."
Natasha took a moment before she answered, letting the sun beat down on her skin and seeing fire behind her eyelids when she tilted her head back with her eyes closed. She'd been restless the last couple of days and it had been easy to pin the cause on her being in a ranch house in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but catch up on paperwork, exercise, and poke at her own emotional bruises by sitting with Steve and chastising herself for all that she couldn't give him even now. But there'd been another cause, one that was currently watching her carefully. In the week since Romania, time spent with James had become less about obligation and responsibility, had instead taken on the distinct characteristics of the beginnings of friendship -- and maybe more. And she knew he looked at her with something other than nostalgia in his eyes. And it had scared her because it made her feel vulnerable.
But the next wound wouldn't be hers. "I burned you when I was looking for Steve's shooter," she said, forcing herself to look him in the eye. "I told the Russians you were at large."
James could connect the dots from there and she could see when he did by the change in expression on his face. But she'd also seen the surprise and the hurt first, despite him knowing damned well that a week ago, before he'd come to her and she'd allowed herself to become his safety buoy in this strange sea, they had been operating at cross purposes and she'd had no reason to be loyal to him. He'd accept it -- or he wouldn't -- eventually. She didn't know this new man well enough to know if or when. But it wasn't going to be right now because he nodded at her once, sharply, and turned and went back into the house.
She followed after a moment, entirely because she didn't want to get sunburned.
James spent the rest of the evening with Steve -- Natasha wasn't sure because it was where he most wanted to be with time dwindling down or because he was calling out her cowardice by daring her to follow. She had to go in there eventually, though, to discuss what time they were leaving the following morning; it would have to be by 5 AM at the latest.
When she did venture upstairs, she could hear Peggy and James having a testy conversation before she could make out the words. James was different with Peggy than he was with everyone else, Natasha included. It was a relationship clearly reliant on what they'd had in the 1940s; Peggy gave him no quarter and he took it without protest. She called him Bucky, the only one to do so with the agents still sticking with 'Mister Barnes' even if they were beginning to mean it affectionately. And while she was quick to call him on his moodiness and attempts to assume guilt, her interactions with him were also the most normal he had because while they had history, they didn't have weight. At least until now.
"I want you to promise me something," Peggy was saying as Natasha approached in the hallway and she could hear James sigh loudly in protest. "I want you to promise me that when this is all over, when you have chased down Steve's would-be assassin and paid back the insult with interest, you come back to him. No more running away."
Natasha stopped walking and stood still. She was close enough to see into the room and couldn't turn around and leave without drawing attention, but this wasn't a conversation she was meant to hear.
"Peggy..."
"Don't Peggy me," Peggy snapped. "You had six months to find your courage and face him and you wasted it. I will not see you waste any more time. Both of you have been granted something extraordinary and now it's time to see past the terrible cost of what can be a wonderful gift if you'd just let it."
Natasha didn't think she was imagining that Peggy is talking to both James and Steve at this moment.
"I can't see any kind of gift," James said. "I see blood and death and betrayal and a joke everyone was in on but me. I can't be anything for anyone right now. Steve has you and--"
"Not for much longer," Peggy cut him off, a wobble in her voice. "I'm ninety-seven and have already been granted as much extra time as I could hope for and I have less every day. I can do less every day. I won't be here for him for as long as he needs me."
She stopped to wipe her eyes and regain her composure.
"I need you to be there for him when I can't," Peggy continued after a moment. "I say this without any ego, but my death is going to destroy him. Don't ask him to lose both of us again."
Natasha didn't understand the 'again' at first, since Steve hadn't lost Peggy the first time, rather the other way around. And then she got it: their future together.
James said nothing, just hung his head.
"You have a little time to get used to the idea," Peggy continued with bravado when he didn't look up. "I'm still kicking hard enough. But when it's time, I'd like to know that you'll be there for him."
James still said nothing, but Natasha could see him nod.
"Thank you," Peggy said quietly and James got up to leave the room. He met Natasha's eyes as he passed her in the doorway and the look in his was raw and defenseless and too much like that flash from earlier and she looked away, letting him pass. She waited a few beats before going in to the room, enough time for Peggy to dab at her eyes again and put on her brightest smile. Natasha didn't think for a moment that she was expected to buy it.
She found James later and they had a quick, awkward conversation about departure times. They slept for a few hours, at least Natasha did, and a quiet knock on her bedroom door at 0330 woke her. The night duty nurse stepped out to give them a moment to say goodbye to Steve and Natasha wondered if she should go, too, because James was speaking quietly in the Brooklyn accent that gets thicker when he talks to Steve. He caressed Steve's cheek with the back of his right hand and didn't look at Natasha as he left to get his things.
"I'll do my best," she told Steve from the foot of his bed. "I'm sorry."
