fic: Revenant (9/?)

[domarzione]

Revenant: Chapter Nine
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.

---

"When you said a friend, I was expecting someone a little shorter and carrying a bow," Sonia said with a laugh as she greeted Natasha and James. "Maybe someone with an eyepatch if I were a very good girl. But this? This is a true surprise. And a good one. Welcome to my home, James..." she trailed off, a prompt for the patronymic.

"Georgievich," he supplied.

"Georgievich," she repeated with a nod, clasping his shoulders to kiss his cheeks and then looking down at his left arm, which was not confusable with flesh and blood in such a context despite its appearance.

"But call me Bucky, please."

Sonia led them through the house and up the stairs, pausing to delicately verify that they wanted separate bedrooms before exhorting them to refresh themselves and join her on the back balcony when they were ready.

James had been surprised when she'd asked if he wanted to go to Croatia; he remembered Sonia from their Red Room days, but hadn't realized she'd become an intelligence broker. "Probably for the best," he'd said. "What Lukin doesn't know doesn't hurt her."

Natasha took her time in the shower washing the journey from her skin before changing into a long, flowing sundress and draping herself in a light shawl. When she went back downstairs, James was already there; she could hear him and Sonia chatting politely about the villa and life in Croatia and how the Slavs did things differently -- and generally better -- when it came to living a relaxed life. It was odd to hear him speaking Russian and then she wondered why that was and when that had happened.

James stood when she came out on to the balcony, waiting for her to sit before he did. He had the same old-fashioned manners as Steve did and, she was noticing, applied them with the same casual grace that made it charming and not artful or pretentious in modern times. But, unlike Steve, his gentlemanly efforts came with a side order of straight-up male; she could see his appreciation of her choice of dress because he wasn't hiding it. It was, however, discreet enough to be well on the good side of flattering.

Over wine and mezze and fresh breads, they talk about current events, mostly Putin's efforts to get Russia's fat out of the fryer. Sonia took it as a given that the Russians were being set up and that Lukin was behind it.

"Actually, that is what I asked you here to talk about," Sonia said, passing around a plate of grape leaves stuffed with rice and mint and meat. "I was planning to save it until tomorrow because you've traveled all day and it's a conversation that can't be shortened to a few hours. But here is the tease: Lukin's ties to HYDRA go deeper than anyone realizes."

Natasha thought back to the secret slush fund SHIELD had found, the one he'd been siphoning money to HYDRA with. "We're already aware that it goes further than buying up their surplus AIM stock."

James had been swirling a piece of pita through the bowl of muhammara, but froze. "He's running the whole damned thing, isn't he?"

Sonia laughed delightedly as Natasha just tilted her head in question. "How would he manage to be the Supreme HYDRA from the outskirts of Doomstadt?"

"He doesn't run everything past the Baron," James pointed out, "What Doom does know about his dealings with HYDRA is sanctioned by him. He'd never think that Lukin would do more behind his back. It would be a violation of the good manners a guest shows his host."

From his tone, Natasha guessed that that kind of courtliness was important to Doom, but she'd seen a different side of it as his prisoner. "I only saw how Latveria treats their guests," she said, stabbing a lamb kibbeh with her fork. "I'd probably run HYDRA, too, after that."

"You weren't a guest," Sonia chided lightly with a smile. "You were a spy."

Sonia explained that she had no way of knowing when Lukin had first decided to take over HYDRA for himself, but he most certainly had plans to use them against Putin well before Schmidt was captured at Minyar.

"HYDRA was making great inroads into Russia, especially in the Urals and points east," Sonia reminded them. "They were already destabilizing Putin without him needing to do a thing. Putin gave them Minyar, the Monster Factory itself, to keep them from toppling him entirely. Sending you in, Bucky, was always about determining HYDRA's strength. Lukin initially just wanted your assessment of their organization and its capacity, especially inside Russia."

James nodded. Natasha knew he'd told SHIELD this, that he'd been sent to the vor in St. Petersburg because Lukin knew that that would give James a good vantage point to observe. And he did, sending back reports to Lukin, who presumably gave updates to Doom.

"What I didn't understand until I found out who you really were, what I don't think anyone in Moscow understands yet, is what else Lukin had in mind," Sonia went on, pausing to refresh everyone's wine glass. "He wanted you discovered."

James sat back a little. His reaction to people mentioning his actions as the Winter Soldier tended to vary, but on the whole he handled them with equanimity; he had had a part in those actions and owned them, more than he should. Reactions to incidents that were clear manipulations of his true identity, people playing on the knowledge that he'd really been James Barnes, never went well because that meant he'd been an ignorant party, a victim, and he didn't want to be that at all. No matter what the truth actually was. "By whom?"

"I had thought it was Moscow," Sonia answered, sipping from her glass. "But I now think it was SHIELD."

Natasha stopped chasing the chick peas on her plate. "To what end?"

Sonia picked up a stuffed olive and popped it into her mouth. "To rid himself of a future problem: Victor von Doom."

When both Natasha and James reacted with surprise, she explained. Doom had indeed been nothing but helpful, but he had been helpful with conditions and within boundaries that Lukin was going to have to push past to have success in Russia.

"He can't become the new Tsar without HYDRA, he can't use HYDRA without incurring Doom's wrath, and he can't afford to have Latveria as an enemy. Latveria is too important financially to Lukin personally and will only be more so when he's Tsar Aleksander, since he won't be able to use London the way Putin is."

"And killing Doom won't turn Latveria into an enemy?" Natasha asked skeptically.

"It depends on how Doom dies," James, master of the murder-by-misadventure-and-natural-causes answered sourly.

Sonia nodded. "Done properly, the grieving Valeria will turn to the most powerful man left in Latveria, her son's godfather, Aleksander Lukin, for protection and advice while she is Baroness Regent. Sasha can continue his program for Russia with impunity and without the subterfuge of hiding his HYDRA connections from Victor. He can then return to Russia as the prodigal son, leaving a grateful young Baron Ondrej on the throne in Doomstadt and securing Russia's favor in Latveria."

Which made its own beautiful sense, Natasha had to admit.

"How does this tie in to exposing me?" James asked. He sounded like he thought he had the answer, but wanted verification. Natasha knew he'd been working with the SHIELD analysts to gain a better context for his actions as the Winter Soldier -- it wasn't as if Lukin had explained things to him beyond what was task-essential, which had rarely been the bigger picture. But Sonia had a different frame of reference than the SHIELD analysts, had firsthand knowledge of some things and excellent resources for the rest.

"SHIELD already wanted to talk to you," Sonia reminded him. "Even before they realized that you were the Winter Soldier, before they accepted that the Winter Soldier was real, let alone that you are who who are. Nicholas Fury does not like being taken for a fool and you did that, quite completely."

Sonia gestured to Natasha with a hand flourish. James had convinced SHIELD she'd betrayed them, destroying months of work, years of interagency and international relations, and the Avengers as a bonus.

"SHIELD finding out who you really were would have drawn their undivided attention," Sonia went on. "And all roads would have led, sooner or later, to Doomstadt. As they did."

Natasha thought back to those months after Minyar, after Schmidt gave them the rest of the story, the missing pieces that traced the Winter Soldier back to a valley in Occupied Europe and the heart of the Howling Commandos. It was hard to imagine that as being part of a plan, or at least part of Lukin's plan, since Schmidt had clearly been hoping to hurt Steve, which he did, very deeply. There had been no way for Lukin to know that Schmidt would get captured at Minyar, that he would survive the assault at all. But it might not have mattered if Schmidt had survived if they had gotten those missing pieces from somewhere else; Natasha would have been able to give them enough to start the dominoes falling. Steve, when confronted by those images of Yasha Yachmenev wearing Bucky Barnes's face, would have been goaded into action just the same even if he hadn't known that Yasha really was Bucky and not a clone.

"Everything that did happen, Lukin wanted to happen," Sonia continued. "Or at least was content to let happen. Right up until Captain America used the alien device to restore your memories. That he hadn't planned for; he had much more use of you."

James's expression was blank, but Natasha could see the anger he was trying so hard to keep inside.

"What about his control of HYDRA?" Natasha asked, hoping it wasn't too obvious a change of topic.

Sonia smiled to indicate that it had been, but she was willing to go with it.

SHIELD had been playing whack-a-mole with HYDRA since Minyar. Like al-Qaeda, just because the boss wasn't in a position to be issuing orders didn't mean they were not a threat and not still well-organized and funded. It was still like trying to nail jello to the wall, as it had been when Schmidt had been in control. Lukin wouldn't be the first pretender to the throne since Schmidt, but they had mostly been regional and occasionally factional, not unlike the Roman Empire at various points and very much like HYDRA after the '51 raids, just with bigger stakes. There had been no one who could reasonably claim global command and control of HYDRA until now, although Sonia was not ready to say that Lukin was in fact in such a position now.

Lukin definitely had the Russian elements lined up, which wasn't that much of a surprise, although Sonia warned them that it was probably a little better armed than either SHIELD or Putin thought because SHIELD had not picked up HYDRA's toys fast enough after the battle.

"Believe me, we are well aware," Natasha assured sourly. The warehouse James had used to bring her to Romania was only one of many. Steve had and Clint still occasionally was dragooned into staging raids on depots throughout the world.

"They're also far better politically and socially connected than Putin thinks," Sonia went on, acknowledging Natasha with a nod. HYDRA had become the alternate of choice to Putin's authoritarianism, despite the fact that HYDRA was itself an authoritarian entity. "Some people think they'll be part of the ruling class because HYDRA preaches meritocracy, but most of them understand it's the Soviets with a new uniform and we're far enough from the fall of the Wall that the Communists don't seem so bad in hindsight."

Lukin also had most of Europe's HYDRA elements in part or in whole as well as some of the key African locations, including Guinea-Bissau, which had recovered completely from SHIELD's razing of it after the extraction of their mole, Miranda Tung. Sonia explained that Lukin was using his old network of protégés and contacts to serve as lieutenants, putting them in "advisory" positions in the regional power centers and then turning that power from advisory to real.

"You would have been the regional director for Russia, the most important position," Sonia told James.

"Not the US?" he asked, surprised.

Natasha was curious, too, because the Winter Soldier's whole raison d'etre had been his ability to pass as American.

No, Sonia confirmed. Definitely Russia.

"Afraid I'd go native?" James asked. Apparently that had been a real concern in the early days, during his first missions on US soil, and there had been one incident that had justified the fear, but James only remembered bits and pieces of it and, since he'd never been discovered by American authorities, there were no records to provide details.

"Afraid you couldn't pass as native," Sonia replied and James reacted almost as if slapped. If Sonia saw it, she pretended not to. "And very afraid to put you so close to Fury, who wanted you strung up by your intestines. They're using an unknown face for North America."

There was more, including some speculation about other possible candidates for these directorships and who might have taken James's place as the Russian representative. but it was late, even if Natasha and James were still on North American time, and Sonia promised that they'd resume the discussion tomorrow. James was gracious and mannered as he thanked Sonia for the evening and gestured for Natasha to precede him upstairs, but he was quiet the following morning, letting Natasha ask most of the questions when they resumed their intelligence summit.

Natasha passed on the important parts to Hill, since Fury was off in meetings, and suggested that rather than be sent back to New York directly, she and James get a couple of days in Paris. Hill thought she was angling for a paid vacation, but Natasha maintained that there was a likelihood that she, at least, was only going to be sent back to Europe to follow up on what Sonia had told them and, besides, both of them had a lot of contacts in town and it would provide easy access to London, which was crawling with useful Russians.

"I think James can miss a playdate or two with the analysts," she said. Hill agreed, although she wasn't sure he should be missing too many playdates with his shrink. Nonetheless, they were given an itinerary that put them in Paris for four days.

They left Croatia after another day with Sonia, whose hospitality seemed to stalemate against James's growing withdrawal. He was still sociable and even charming, but Natasha could see how much of an effort it was and how much of a shadow was growing over him once he thought nobody was looking. Maybe Hill had been right and keeping James away from his therapist an extra few days was not such a great plan, but she also wasn't sure that bringing him right back to New York was a good idea, either. She suspected that he was still upset about Sonia's unintentional confirmation of his worst fear: that he was too far gone, too damaged, to recover. How could he no longer pass as American unless there wasn't enough left of Bucky Barnes to save?

That this was a fear of his was no secret and he didn't try to hide it. He hid behind it instead, forcing the people who cared about him -- and that included people like Fury who were acting for more impersonal reasons -- to drag him out from behind that rock. And the combined effort seemed to have been working; he had been getting more comfortable in Bucky's skin. But he'd also spent the last couple of months largely surrounded by people who saw the progress and had faith in its continuance. Sonia was someone outside that bubble, an informed observer whose knowledge of James's past as the Winter Soldier was more complete than his had been and she spoke with authority about Lukin and the Red Room in ways that he could not. Her casual comment -- and Natasha did not think that Sonia would ever intentionally wound him like that -- had been the damning he'd been waiting for. Because he didn't share anyone's faith in his ability to reclaim the life that had been taken away from him.

Natasha couldn't give him that faith, could only show her own and hoped he recognized it as genuine and not a show for his benefit. He forgot her own past when it suited him, choosing to pretend that she didn't know from what she spoke of or that they weren't comparable at all. They weren't the same, she knew that, but the parts of them that were similar, she recognized those in him and that was what she spoke to, what she tried to reach. But the parts that weren't the same mattered, too. She'd dove into the pool of insecurity and doubt of her own volition when she'd defected and, even if she'd been unpleasantly surprised by the depth, she'd known what she was doing and why. James had been pushed in by Steve with the best of intentions but without checking to see if he still knew how to swim.

Paris was busy, which she'd thought might have been a blessing, forcing James out of his head. They had a suite in Paris, two bedrooms and a living room, although it also came with angry phone calls from Fury. Fury wasn't pissed at them per se, more that they were the messengers of news he did not want to hear, and so Natasha let it roll off her back.

They both had contacts in Paris, some of the same contacts even. But it would not be good to be seen together by them since nobody knew who the Winter Soldier was allied with these days, so they made their rounds separately during the day and night. Going back to being the Winter Soldier was not helping James's mood, although Natasha didn't realize to what degree (beyond being occasionally cranky and distant with her) until she got a call from an annoyed Peggy, who told her that James wasn't answering her calls. Which in turn meant that he hadn't spoken to Steve and, since there were more signs that he was responding to external stimuli, it was very important for Steve to hear Jame's voice right now. Natasha agreed and apologized to Peggy ("Tosh," was the sharp reply. "You are not his nursemaid.") and explained what she thought the problem was.

Peggy didn't scoff at the notion that James was reeling from another "proof" that he was really just the Winter Soldier with a new name, thought it plausible and even likely, but she was still exasperated that he might actually believe it despite the evidence to the contrary. Natasha felt no shame in suggesting that Peggy might have more sway in convincing him, although Peggy had the grace to tell her that James had only listened to about a third of what she'd said back in the day and the ratio hadn't improved with time.

They agreed that Peggy would call Natasha and she would do her best to get James on the line, but when it happened, it was not when or why either of them expected.

After a morning of separate appointments, James and Natasha were in the Tuileries for a stroll and an exchange of notes when her phone rang. It was Peggy.

"He opened his eyes," Peggy told her before she could offer to pass the phone over. "Just for a few minutes and he was never fully awake, but they were open."

Natasha felt her own eyes prick with tears. "That's..." she trailed off, unable to continue past the lump in her throat.

"Indeed," Peggy agreed, sounding not unmoved herself.

Natasha cleared her throat and called over to James, who'd put some distance between them once he'd realized who she was talking to. When he shook his head no, she repeated the request, and when he refused her a second time, she switched over to Russian and used much stronger language, drawing the attention of a passing tourist child whose mother dragged him away, aghast.

Rather than cause more of a scene, James came over and took the phone, a belligerent expression on his face and looking like he was about to tell Peggy off and hang up. But he didn't because Peggy didn't let him get a cross word in edgewise.

Natasha could see his face and posture completely change the moment her words registered. He ended up not saying a word to Peggy until the end, when he got out a "yes, ma'am," in barely a whisper, and terminated the call, handing the phone back to Natasha and going to sit on a nearby bench, elbows on his knees and his head hanging down.

Natasha followed him over, giving him a moment before reaching out to touch his hair, lightly enough that he could ignore it if he wanted to. But he didn't, instead raising his head and looking up, and she let her hand slide down to the side of his face. His eyes were wet, but he wasn't crying. He was smiling.

"It's time to go home," she told him, rubbing his cheekbone with her thumb. He nodded.

There wasn't a commercial flight to Denver before tomorrow, so the options were to wait in Paris or return to New York. Natasha chose to wait until tomorrow morning's flight, since going to New York would increase the likelihood of her getting sidetracked or shanghaied by SHIELD through simple proximity. And, more importantly, she didn't want anyone to have a chance to tell James no, he couldn't go directly to Wyoming without spending time in New York first.

Bruce, Tony, and Clint -- who was still in Nebraska but would be heading over to the house shortly because it was still early morning there -- sent texts confirming they'd gotten the news. With nothing scheduled now that they were leaving, Natasha and James went out to dinner and if it wasn't quite celebratory, it was far less tense and uncomfortable than their previous meals in Paris. James's shadow wasn't gone -- it was never gone entirely -- but it wasn't as black as it had been before the phone call.

After dinner and a last patisserie visit, they were back in their suite when James's phone rang. He looked at his watch before seeing the blocked caller ID that probably meant it was Peggy.

"I'd better take this," he said, getting up off the couch he'd been sprawled on and going into his bedroom, closing the door.

Natasha couldn't make out the words, but she could tell that he was on the phone for a while, long enough that he was probably making up for lost time with Steve.

By the time they landed in Denver, Steve had woken up again, this time for about five minutes. He was still not fully alert, nor was he trying to communicate. Peggy said that he didn't recognize his surroundings, which made sense, but he also didn't seem to recognize her or Clint as he paid them no more attention than anyone or anything else he saw. He did not seem interested in the shield, either, when Clint had gotten it down off the hook. She kept her voice steady as she reported this, but Natasha didn't have to imagine the fear that the worst had come to pass, that the Steve they were getting back was nowhere close to the one they'd lost.

"He's responding to noise and touch," Natasha told James as they drove away from the airport. "And he was tracking motion. But that's it right now. The neurologists showed up about an hour ago and then he's going to get more scans."

When they got to the house, the mood was upbeat on the whole, less than giddy but at least up to 'cautiously optimistic.' Steve was still getting the MRI done because he had moved around too much the first time.

"It's a pain in the ass because they can't tape him down tight enough that he won't move and they can't just tell him not to, although they're trying," Clint explained with a shrug, one hardly affected by the still-bandaged wound on his arm. "But it's a good problem, you know?"

With nothing to do but wait, Natasha and James sat in the backyard, which now had an umbrella-covered table and comfortable chairs, and told Clint and Peggy what they'd learned from Sonia.

"It's appropriately Byzantine for an old cold warrior like Lukin," Peggy chuckled darkly. "As an even older cold warrior, I have to appreciate it. But I really prefer the simpler approach. Fewer moving parts. Style points count for nothing if things fall through."

They were told when Steve was returned to his room. Peggy gestured for them to go ahead without her. "I've been indoors all day and now that it's not a thousand degrees out, I'm going to enjoy it for a bit."

"She's exhausted," Clint confided as they went back inside. "And we can't exactly tell her to go take a nap, not now."

Steve's room was already crowded with medical personnel, so Clint begged off and said he'd come back when he was less underfoot. Natasha was about to do so as well, but then James gave her a look that was as close to a plea for support as he was probably able to make, so she stood by the door as James pushed in past the equipment and doctors.

"Who are you?" one of them asked, not unkindly. Nobody was at the house without a reason.

"Next of kin," James answered. The doctor looked up curiously, but nodded.

From the doorway, Natasha could see that Steve looked like a passing resemblance to himself. His expression, even asleep, wasn't as slack as it had been, and his coloring was better. The halo and headwrap were gone, at least temporarily, and she could see his hair, currently in a buzz cut only a little more grown out than his beard. They had needed to keep his hair short for the halo, but shaving his face had been deemed more trouble than it was worth. When (if) Steve woke up for real, they'd have to recalculate that equation; Steve hated facial hair and would get cranky if he lost or forgot his razor in the field.

Steve roused a little, either because he was being maneuvered around or because of the noise. He didn't open his eyes or make a sound, but he tried to pull away from the nurse practitioner who'd been doing a pupil check, which made everyone laugh because it was so much more than they'd gotten out of him since any point since the shooting.

James watched carefully, standing close as he could without getting in the way. He asked questions as the examination proceeded and was occasionally asked one in return, mostly to do with Steve's medical history. James didn't know the details of Steve's health since he'd been defrosted, but SHIELD had all that. He did know Steve's entire pre-serum history, however, and the first year-plus of his time as Captain America up until James's fall. And that, it turned out, was far from irrelevant.

After the doctors were done doing whatever they were going to do, they asked James to follow them downstairs to talk to Peggy. This was the private part of the conversation and, once it became clear that Natasha would not be allowed in to the room once it was empty -- "he actually does need to rest now, as strange as it may sound" -- she went in search of Clint, was was sitting in the living room playing a video game with a couple of the off-duty agents.

She sat and watched them play for a while -- it was some adventure game with talking animals -- but eventually just leaned her head back and closed her eyes. It had been a long day of travel and then she'd been the one to drive up from Denver. She didn't think she'd fallen asleep, but maybe she had because she startled a little at the two-second scalp massage Clint gave her as he passed by.

"It's too soon for them to know anything definitively," Peggy said later as the four of them sat at the outdoor table with their dinner. "There were some responses that were excellent, some that were significantly less so. Whether this will change once he's fully alert for any real stretch of time will determine how things progress."

Steve's good responses were all related to control of the body, but the lack of verbal and non-verbal communication concerned them, as did the lack of interest in familiar objects and people.

"Him not caring about the shield at all worries them," James said, poking uselessly at a tomato in his salad. He'd been pretty even-keeled since the meeting with the doctors, subdued but not withdrawn. Resigned, Natasha suspected. "It's brightly colored, it meant a helluva lot to him, and he just looked right past it."

Clint asked Natasha if she wanted to come back with him to Nebraska for the night; with the extra doctors, space was at a premium. There would be a bed for her, but not her own room. She accepted, less for the lack of privacy than wanting a little break from the intensity. She was worried a little about James, but she also remembered most of their time in Paris, when he'd been troubled and not only unwilling to share, but resentful of her concern. He was a big boy and Peggy could handle whatever came up if he decided not to be.

James simply nodded when she told him. "You'll get a break," he said and she didn't reply because either agreement or disagreement would put her in a bad spot.

Before they left, Natasha got permission from the night nurse to say goodnight to Steve. She stood at the foot of his bed for a moment, watching him sleep -- and it did look like sleep now -- before coming over to the side of the bed and taking his hand, remembering Clint's comments about their smoothness. "I'm sorry I haven't been a better friend to you," she said in a low voice, louder than a whisper but not by much. She had thought about what to say to him, but she couldn't get the rest out without choking up, so she settled for giving his hand a gentle squeeze. A moment later, Steve's hand tightened a little around hers. She didn't know if it was an automatic reaction or if he understood her in some way, but she chose to take it as forgiveness because that was what Steve would do, even if she didn't necessarily deserve it.

If anyone noticed her damp cheeks when she bid them goodnight, nobody said anything.

Pepper called her while they were driving back to Clint's place; it was late in New York, but of course they were still up. Tony and Bruce had spent the evening on the phone poring over the medical update as if they had licenses to practice, which wasn't that surprising to Natasha because between Bruce's study of the Other Guy and Tony's work on Extremis, they knew far more about human physiology than the average engineer and physicist did.

"Tony's trying to convince Directory Fury to let us visit once Steve is more alert," Pepper went on. "He's willing to stage an event in Chicago and then have us drive west from there."

"That's a long drive," Clint warned. Natasha had put the phone on speaker so she didn't have to hold it to her ear. "Fourteen, fifteen hours assuming no traffic and Fury's not gonna let you guys use a limo or a driver."

"I know," Pepper agreed. She didn't sound exasperated the way she usually did when she realized she was about to get sucked into one of Tony's great adventures. Which Natasha took to mean that she wanted to do this, too. Both Pepper and Tony were close to Steve, as close as Steve really let anyone, and closer in almost every way than Natasha was herself. They hadn't seen him since his 'death' and that was more than four months ago. "But it's the closest airport Tony thinks Fury could let us try from. We can slip out of Chicago under cover of darkness, or whatever is required. It's a big enough city that everyone can think Tony spent the evening at some other hotspot."

Back at the start, when Tony and Pepper had tried to negotiate visitation parameters, Fury and Hill had shot down every single one because of their visibility. They couldn't use small civilian airports or even airports in modestly-sized midwestern cities like Kansas City or Salt Lake City because there was no way to get in or out unnoticed and all it took was one gossip blog wondering what Tony Stark was doing in Iowa or Nebraska to put Steve at risk of discovery. Fury had made Denver off-limits because that was what everyone else used and he wanted it kept clean.

"We'll drive from California if we have to," Pepper went on, sounding determined. "But Chicago's the shortest trip."

There was a little talk about cars and routes -- Clint knew the territory on both fronts and Natasha had little to add -- before they circled back to Steve.

"I know what the neurologists said and I know what Tony and Bruce think they said and what it might mean, but what do you think?" Pepper asked. "You were there."

The question was directed at Clint, who'd actually seen Steve with his eyes open.

"I think we might have to get used to the idea that the lights are on, but nobody's home," Clint said bluntly. "He was presented with the two things that mean the most to him in this time or his own, Peggy Carter and the shield, and he didn't recognize either of them."

Pepper's sigh was the only sound for a long moment.

"I think Tony knows that, too, but he won't say it out loud," she said softly. "He won't let Bruce say it at all. He talks about Steve's recuperative powers, how far he's come already, but..."

They agreed to speak again tomorrow, hopefully with updates on Steve.

Clint's house was modest and unpretentious, not a whole lot like his apartment in New York in terms of decoration and furnishings and probably a lot closer to what he actually liked because he had put thought into what went into these rooms and on these walls. He'd simply gone to Macy's and picked out which floor samples he liked best when it had come to the apartment in Chelsea. What was here was spare, in a decidedly masculine but not ascetic way, and comfortable. Natasha had been there before and teased him anew for failing to get a steer's head for his wall or other trappings of rural Western life. The closest he came were the horse blankets folded up on the back of the couch in the living room, but those had never been on the backs of actual horses, so it was only partial credit. Natasha dropped her things off in the spare bedroom -- already turned out for a guest, she noted -- and joined Clint out on the porch, where he sat in the swinging seat holding a beer.

"You want one, you know where the fridge is," he told her.

She slept late and woke to the smell of bacon. Clint made them both scrambled eggs and shame-inducing pile of bacon, crispy how they both liked it, that she consumed without any shame whatsoever.

When they got back to the house, it was a little after noon and Steve had apparently spent the morning getting more tests and refusing to open his eyes.

"It's like watching him when he was a kid," James said with a wry, genuine smile. "You knew he could hear you but he was still pretending to sleep. I should yell that he's late for work and see if that does anything."

James was in a good mood, not jubilant, but far better than he'd been. Even after he warned Natasha that Fury had scheduled a video conference for them with the analysts back in New York to go over in detail what Sonia had told them. It would be the price of staying here, one she was more than happy to pay on James's behalf. James, too, seemed more than content to make that exchange.

Peggy told her later, after Clint and James had gone off to examine the long-range shooting target the security detail had set up, that Fury had also made a remote appointment with his shrink another condition of James's stay and that they'd had a session that morning.

"Good," Natasha said, meaning it. Peggy nodded agreement, then suggested they go upstairs because she'd left her book by Steve's bedside.

"Also, the moment Steve decides to grace us with his presence again, there's going to be a mad stampede and I will be left far behind," she added tartly, but with a smile. A night's rest had done her good, too.

Peggy wasn't wrong; when Steve opened his eyes again, about an hour after Natasha and Clint arrived, there was indeed a race for the room. Natasha was still there, talking shop with Peggy, when Steve had started to shift on his bed, making a noise that couldn't have been interpreted as any kind of communication, and Felicity the day nurse was already summoning the medicos. Natasha texted James, who was still out on the property with Clint. Steve's eyes fluttered open, then closed, then opened again only partway, then closed again, then opened them for real when one of the doctors said his name loudly.

As with what had gone on before, Steve tracked motion with his eyes and turned toward noise and away from bright light. He might have been responding to his name or just the command tone or just the noise; it wasn't obvious to Natasha which it was. He still made no attempt to communicate, verbally or otherwise, and his expression didn't vary much -- he wasn't showing fear or frustration or happiness or, really, anything. He looked a little wary, perhaps, or a little confused. He didn't particularly mark Natasha when he looked at her, which hurt her more than she thought it would, nor Peggy.

And then James came running into the room, pulling up short at the foot of the bed with Clint hot on his heels. Steve, whose eyes had been starting to droop, was suddenly alert again, staring at James and not looking away. The wary confusion was gone, replaced by something that Natasha didn't think she was imagining was recognition.

James couldn't do anything but stare back for a long moment. Steve followed him with his eyes when he approached the bed on Peggy's side, away from the doctors. When James did try to speak, he had to clear his throat and start again. "About time, ya goober," he said roughly, the fondness still coming through even if Natasha couldn't see the smile. "What is it with you and the Rip Van Winkle stuff, hunh?"

Steve didn't try to speak, but continued to watch James like he was the best birthday present ever. James tried to get Steve to pay attention to other people, especially the doctors who wanted to do more tests, but it was a mixed success and Steve faded quickly after a while.

Natasha wasn't present for the discussion, being shooed out of the room along with everyone else not Peggy or James, but she didn't need to be to understand that Steve's reaction to James had probably saved him from a far more dismal evaluation. Steve wasn't just childlike, he was almost infantile.

She didn't see James until they were both in the secure communications room getting ready to spend the next few hours talking to the analysts. Natasha found video conferences easier to handle than in-person ones; there was an air of urgency that came with the remoteness, a bigger premium placed on using time wisely, as if her time was less valuable when she was in New York.

When it came time to relate Sonia's pronouncement that James would have been the regional commander of Russia, Natasha left out the part about James not being suited to work in North America, instead pointing out that it was the most important position as far as Lukin went. She didn't look to see if James was annoyed or relieved by her omission.

Peggy came in partway through, bringing her knitting and sitting in the back, needles clacking away until they paused and she said something insightful or filled in a relevant detail from long ago. Her memory was imperfect, but it was still prodigious and, as a Director of SHIELD and the orchestrator of the 1951 HYDRA raids, she had seen plenty that still mattered.

The New York side of the conference shared with them that there was a crisis of small proportion in Venezuela, where two Americans of Venezuelan descent had been arrested for espionage, allegedly outed by the Russians as a make-nice gesture for the loss of life and cash that had come with the heist in Caracas. The two women really were CIA assets, not agents, just regular civilians who passed on info to the CIA voluntarily, and Langley was very upset. It wasn't SHIELD's concern as far as doing anything about it, but it was something to add to the Lukin file, perhaps? Neither James nor Natasha were sold on it actually being anything other than what it was, which was the Russians using the Americans to assure the Venezuelans that all was still good between them.

Steve woke up again in the evening, although nobody but Peggy was there to see it because James had once again volunteered her for a perimeter defense probe. Clint, who was still on medical leave but had already started training on his own, asked to join them and so the three of them suited up. The security detail had been excited all day and there had apparently been bribes offered to switch duty roster spots so as to be on when two Avengers and the Winter Soldier stormed the castle. It was a treat for the detail, far from their usual routine, which generally involved monitoring fauna and checking license plates for vehicles on US-85.

Steve had performed no new tricks, Peggy reported when they returned having been caught even further out, mostly through improvements in tactics and technology made as a result of their last test. "He's clearly forgetting that he used to earn a good living as a trained seal for the USO."

Natasha went back to Clint's and they returned again the following day in time for lunch, which they did not get to eat because as soon as they got inside and said hello, they were summoned to the comms room.

"We've got something on the shooter," Hill told them. "It's a woman."

The screen was filled with grainy bad-angle video footage from a security camera in the stairwell of the building in Rosslyn that lead up to the roof. It was timestamped roughly five minutes after the shooting and showed what could have been a woman's form, but her figure was partially obscured by all that she was carrying.

The footage was then replaced by still photos of the same footage, digitally enhanced and cleaned up. It was much more obvious that the figure was a woman, but there was no clear shot of the face or any identifying features, nothing that could be used for further identification.

"It's a shitty starting point," Hill admitted. "But it's something. There aren't that many women who could pull off this shot and fewer still who'd agree to make Captain America the target."

Between Clint, James, and Natasha, they could probably name all of them and tried to. Elektra, definitely, White Tiger ("Wait, isn't White Tiger a guy?" "There's a new one, same iconography, but this one is a woman with three long distance assassinations to her record that we know about."), there were a couple of Japanese women who've been making names for themselves...

"I know who it is," James said suddenly. His voice was cold, much more Winter Soldier than James, and it drew everyone's attention. "Yelena Belova."

Belova was a Black Widow, which required Natasha explaining that it was actually a rank within Department X, one that had effectively been retired after she had obliterated all of the benchmarks and the name had become her codename out of respect. It didn't surprise Natasha at all that it had been returned to the general pool after her defection.

James didn't know too much about Belova's career with the Red Room, but he did know that that was where Lukin had found her. What he said or did or offered to get her to come to Latveria, James wasn't sure, either, but she did come and accepted a commission in Latveria's foreign intelligence service. A lot of the best of Russia's spies and soldiers did -- the pay and the working conditions were much better in Latveria.

There was clearly more to the story, Natasha wasn't the only one to see, but James avoided all chances to be asked to explain further.

"Is she Lukin's or Doom's?" Clint asked.

"She wasn't doing anything where she would have been forced to choose," James replied. "But not all of the people Lukin recruited for Latveria were his."

What were her assignments and how good was she?

"Anything Natasha can do, she can do," James said simply.

"But not as well?" Hill prompted.

"Better in most physical tasks; she's younger and stronger and isn't averse to popping amphetamines or other stimulants for the boost. But she is younger and has less experience to draw upon, so..." James trailed off with a shrug.

Natasha was bothered by this assessment, even though she understood it to be true and why. Nobody wanted to be told that there was a newer, better model. Especially by someone like James, who was in a position to fairly assess both of them. And maybe a little because James's assessment meant more to her than she would have liked to admit.

"Why is she only coming up now?" Hill asked. "We've been pumping you for months."

"Because it wasn't ever relevant," James answered, not getting defensive despite Hill's accusatory tone. "She's mostly been on foreign assignments in Africa for the last couple of years. I didn't have much to do with her and even less reason to care about her whereabouts while I was still Lukin's man."

Which was not how James normally referred to his time as the Winter Soldier, but that, too, was a fluid thing.

"And you never thought she could be the shooter, even when you thought Lukin or Doom was behind it?" Hill prompted. "Why do you think she is now?"

"I still think Lukin or Doom is behind it," James corrected sourly. "And no, I didn't. Every single time we worked together, I was the sniper. She was close-quarters work, like Natasha. She didn't show the skills for sniping then; she must have trained up for it. But if either of them was going to use a woman shooter, it would be her because she could be trained up for it."

There was more discussion, especially after SHIELD managed to pull together what little they had on Belova.

"I'm going to need you both to return to New York," Hill said, which didn't surprise Natasha.

"No," James shot back, which was even less of a surprise.

"Look, I understand," Hill began, but James cut her off.

"Do you really?"

Hill paused a beat. "No, I suppose I don't," she agreed. "But the fact remains that if the shooter is Belova -- the name you gave us -- then you two are the most essential resources we have and we need you here so we can send you somewhere else."

James didn't look wholly convinced and Natasha didn't blame him -- in his time working with SHIELD, New York has been a place of idleness, endless meetings and briefings, and other non-events that could just as easily be taken care of (and probably far more quickly) from the secure comms room here.

"You came to us looking for someone to kill," Hill pressed him when he said nothing. "While I'm glad to see that that's no longer your top priority -- and I say that seriously -- the task still remains."

There was no rebutting that. They agreed that Natasha and James could stay until tomorrow morning, although Natasha offered to come back early if it meant James could stay behind an extra day. Clint would finish his medical leave, which ended at this week anyway, before returning. In the meanwhile, he volunteered to drive back to his place and get Natasha's stuff so that she could stay here and then she and James could leave together.

Natasha might have regretted not tagging along with Clint because James was short-tempered and frustrated with everyone but Steve, who managed to stay awake for almost half an hour. Peggy, as per usual, tolerated none of James's mood and sent him outside to work off his pissiness rather than sit by Steve's bedside and stew. It seemed to do him good, however, because by the time Clint returned and everyone sat down for dinner together, he was tolerable to be around again and even joked with some of the detail agents.

The evening's planned entertainment was going to be a group showing of the first episodes of A Game of Thrones because the security detail was firm in their belief Peggy could teach the Lannisters a thing or three and they wanted to know what she thought. Natasha had read the books but had never seen the television show and Clint wanted to see Peggy's reaction, so they sat and watched while James went upstairs to stay with Steve. During an intermission between episodes so that the agents could quiz Peggy, Natasha murmured to Clint that she was going upstairs to check on the boys.

She found James sitting with his hand in Steve's and they were watching a movie on Peggy's Starkvision tablet, which was propped up on the overbed tray table.

Steve was awake, if heavy-lidded, and watching the screen. He looked up at her with interest but no recognition. The doctors were still refusing to commit to anything so soon, but between Natasha and James and Peggy and Clint, they agreed that regardless of whatever faculties he might or might not regain, it was very likely that he had no memories of anything after the serum, maybe even before then. He recognized an adult James, but nothing to do with his life after he became Captain America.

"If that young man is the best we can do," Peggy had said with what Natasha had considered remarkable aplomb, "then we will still have done very well for ourselves."

Here and now, Natasha gave Steve a little wave as he watched her cross the room to stand by James, but then he returned his attention to the movie.

"A Night at the Opera," James explained when she leaned over far enough to see the screen, balancing with a light hand on his shoulder. "We went to go see this four weekends in a row when it came out. We might have even paid for it once."

James was still in his zen state, which wasn't really anything like actual zen, but he wasn't radiating tension or grief or guilt, his posture was relaxed, and he'd smiled as he spoke. Taking care of Steve was good for him in ways she hoped he saw, too.

Natasha watched for a few minutes with them, her hand still on James's shoulder, before going back downstairs. She gave Peggy a nod before returning to her seat next to Clint.

They had to leave before dawn again. James went in to see Steve, who woke up at the kiss to his forehead. James told him to behave for everyone else and that he'd better start talking soon because otherwise, James was going to come back and start telling everyone all of his secrets. "And don't you think I won't start with the list of ladies you decided to show what the Star Spangled Man really stands up for," he warned, voice rough even though he kept his tone light. "Peggy's dying to know."

They drove to the airport in silence, the windows down.