fic: Revenant (13/?)

[domarzione]

Revenant: Chapter Thirteen
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 flight back to New York felt twice as long as it actually was. Instead of sleeping, James spent most of it reading the updated medical files Fury had sent them. ("You couldn't have mentioned it before we left Sarajevo?" "I didn't want you distracted." "And when we checked in from Romania?" "Peggy didn't want me spoiling the surprise.") Natasha had been able to sleep for a few hours, but James's restlessness next to her was a distraction and was seriously starting to mess with her zen by the time they were over the Atlantic. She would have suffered in silence had he been giddy, but after an initial post-call high that had lasted him through the trip to the airport, he had crashed hard. And while he had testily refused to talk when she'd given up and prompted him to do so, she had a pretty good idea of what the problem was. This would be the first time since Doomstadt that Steve would see James and not only recognize his childhood friend, but also know what had become of him since. James was flying home in anticipation of rejection now that Steve had his memories back and there was nothing Natasha could do to ease that anxiety.

Steve did not have all of his memories back, although the gaps were shrinking and his problem now was with short-term memories and retaining what he'd been told since he'd woken up three days ago with Peggy's name on his lips. But he knew who Peggy was, knew who Tony was, knew when he was, even if he'd forgotten the where a few times. Natasha hadn't bothered to hold back the laugh at Steve's ever-fresh surprise and horror at finding himself so far from home.

In the most basic of layman's terms, Steve had been upgraded from infant to severe stroke patient. The improvement hadn't happened all at once, instead a series of small changes during the two weeks since they'd left Wyoming, some that James had noticed during their video chats and some that would not have presented themselves in that context and a few that had only been identified in hindsight because everyone had been hyper-aware of seeing what they wanted to see instead of what was and had been careful (too careful, it turned out) to not ascribe intent to Steve's actions where there had been none. The neurologists had been expecting a leap forward as Steve's brain continued to repair itself, but they, too, had been stunned by the rapidity.

In the files Natasha had read, which had been a summary description meant for Steve's friends and not the full treatment that James had gotten, the overriding theme was the management of expectations. Steve was himself in the sense that he knew who he was, but they were to be cognizant of the fact that he was still not the man he'd been before he'd been shot.

The man Steve was now was still one of greatly diminished capacity. Natasha had spoken to him for all of a minute on the phone and his limitations had been obvious even then. His speech was slow, slurred, and affected by an aphasia that apparently got worse as he tired; he rarely used full sentences because of that. His control over his body had not significantly improved, so his fine motor skills were poor, his balance worse, and the serum was apparently complicating things. He still needed assistance for all of the most basic personal caretaking, which in addition to everything else frustrated him profoundly, amplifying the mood swings. He'd be giddy at an accomplishment, push himself until he was unable to do something or say something, get angry and lash out, show remorse and start crying, get ashamed and withdraw, and then even out, usually after a nap. James had told Natasha that Peggy had confessed that being around Steve now was frequently exhausting.

By the time Natasha got to the house in Wyoming with James -- after a six-hour layover in New York, enough time to go home, shower, eat, dump her dirty laundry on her bed and grab clean clothes, and get back to the airport -- she was ready to compare notes because James had turned into a tightly-wound ball of tension that even strangers were steering clear of.

"We're lucky he didn't get pulled aside by TSA," she told Peggy, who was in the living room with Thor when they arrived. Steve was napping upstairs, but James went to see him anyway, promising not to wake him up and Peggy assuring him it would probably be better if he did. "I have a headache from sitting next to him and we barely spoke."

James didn't wake Steve up, but he didn't come back down, either, choosing to sit next to the bed and just watch and wait and enjoy the last few minutes of the fullness of Steve's affection and love before he woke up, recognized the Winter Soldier, and turned away. James had more or less confirmed Natasha's suspicions during the drive up from Denver, by which point she had been less than gracious about how utterly ridiculous he was being and they'd made the rest of the trip in heavy silence.

Nonetheless, Natasha was grateful for having been present when Steve did wake up, not only for the unbelievable joy of having him look at her with recognition and then smile, but also for how that smile broadened when his gaze turned to James. Her eyes were teary, but she could still bear witness to how grateful and happy Steve was to see James at his side. He reached out with one wild hand and James caught it in his own and clasped hard, bringing both to his own cheek. She left the two of them alone then to cry and laugh and be together.

She was still wiping her eyes when she ran into Thor, walked into him to be precise. He kept her from falling over with a firm grip on her upper arms, but then she had to explain why she was running off with tears in her eyes lest he think James had upset her. Good tears, she said, explaining what she'd seen.

"To see him know himself is a truly wondrous thing," Thor agreed. "To see him know me, too, filled my heart with joy. I hope it brings Bucky the peace he deserves."

Natasha sighed. "I hope he doesn't ruin it," she replied. "He will turn Steve's faith in him into a sign of weakness instead of what it is."

Thor didn't quite manage to keep the pain out of his eyes before he pushed it aside and Natasha closed hers, since it was too late to look away. "I'm sorry."

Of all of the things to forget in the moment... Thor had been so supportive of Steve with everything to do with the hunt for James after he'd disappeared from Doomstadt. The parallels had been unavoidable between Loki and James, except that one had chosen his path and the other had had it thrust upon him. But in the wake of Doomstadt, it had been Thor to sit with Steve and talk of brotherhood beyond blood and beyond death. And here, now, where James had returned from the chasm recognizable in his goodness when Loki had shown up full of hate and intent on conquering Earth to spite his brother... She couldn't feel bad for anything that happened to Loki and she had no frame of reference for losing a brother, however one defined the term, but she did feel for Thor and she should have spoken less cavalierly.

"Do not apologize," Thor assured with a gentle squeeze of her arms. She looked up to see a smile that did not quite reach his eyes. "The love between brothers is a complicated weave, knotted in many places and frayed in others, at once incomprehensible and most simple. I may no longer be able to share in it in the way that I would wish, but the memories of it remain strong and I have learned to take comfort in that when I can no longer reach for it in the present.

"Bucky does not bear the guilt that he believes himself to carry, whereas my brother bore far more guilt than he would ever accept. I, too, hope that the passage of time and the present circumstance will allow him to accept the hand offered that he rejected once before."

Natasha could only hope. And maybe a little more because the next three hours were spent in the secure comms room doing the debrief with Fury about what happened in Latveria. The first hour was her alone and Fury didn't hesitate to ask about how James had conducted himself and how he'd handled being back in Latveria.

"Like a pro," she answered honestly. "From a tradecraft perspective, it was beautiful to watch. I think I have a much better understanding of how he stayed a myth all of these years. He's much better than I remember him being and I remember him being brilliant."

Fury didn't even hint at her being biased because she and James were lovers; he respected her professional assessment and, more importantly, her professionalism.

"From every other perspective?" he prompted.

Natasha chose her next words carefully, since she'd just essentially told Fury that James would be the best SHIELD agent ever.

"He thinks he's whoring himself out to you in exchange for access to Steve," she said. Being circumspect with what she said didn't necessarily mean she had to use nice words. "He thinks he has to keep dancing for you so you don't take everything he has away from him."

Fury visibly reacted to that, leaning back as if struck and scowling.

"I didn't try to convince him otherwise," she went on. "First, he'd never believe me. Second, I'm not sure it isn't true."

Fury shook his head slowly. "He is an asset I would like to keep on the board," he allowed, which Natasha didn't think was much of an admission, but gave Fury points for not lying about it. "But he was born with the right to live here freely and this country will never be able to repay what he did for it and what was done to him because of that."

Natasha understood that Fury was trying to convince her of his intentions, since she would have more influence in James accepting them or not.

"He'll do what you ask him to," she warned. "He is carrying a guilt that I don't know that time will ever erase. But I won't let you take advantage of that. And I'm not alone."

She hadn't taken a poll of the other Avengers, but she couldn't imagine any of them not helping protect James from SHIELD and not even out of respect for Steve. Hell, Tony would do it for fun.

"Understood," Fury agreed. Once upon a time, Fury would have reacted far differently to her -- or anyone else -- openly challenging him like this. Threatening him like this. But the last few years of the Avengers Initiative had changed the dynamic considerably. They worked better under his direction than they would apart, but he needed them to protect the world in a fashion he saw fit. They were not partners, but the balance of power had shifted considerably.

"Now start at the beginning with the border crossing."

James came in during the second hour, looking drained and bloodshot and far more relaxed than he'd been since they'd been on the flight from Romania. He slid into a chair next to her and let Fury pump him for details about their adventure that Natasha hadn't been able to explain to his satisfaction. Despite all of the tension that had been between them on this long day -- days, by this point, since they'd left Romania yesterday -- they fell into an easy rhythm of explaining and theorizing and when they reached the end, the point at which all of the details were supposed to be churned into useful suggestions for future actions, they were of one mind.

"The next step is going to be Doom's," Natasha said. "His pride has been wounded too deeply to let someone else -- us -- handle this. He doesn't care who else has prior claim to Lukin's hide. He wants it. But he's not big enough to get it."

"He'll go after Kronas," James added. "It's the biggest, easiest target, but it's also the most valuable. And depending on how far Lukin is in his plans to become Supreme HYDRA, it may be the most vulnerable."

Fury nodded as he took notes. "I'll see what FININT has to say; they've been keeping tabs on Kronas since last year and we've been monitoring HYDRA-related accounts for much longer."

There was more, but at the end, Fury closed his notebook and looked at the both of them. "You two did fine work. Congratulations. But don't get too comfy on your laurels. Widow, you'll have a few days, but I'm going to need you back in New York by next week because there have been missions getting back-burnered that need to get taken care of.

"Mister Barnes, you are staying put. Until we have actual eyeballs on Belova or until Doom forces Lukin into something we can act on, there's nothing I need from you and everything Steve Rogers does. You will continue meeting with the research working groups via VTC as requested and with Doctor Soo as required. And you can tell Rogers that Doctor Soo is looking forward to renewing their acquaintance. He starts sessions next week. Any questions?"

Natasha understood what this was and why Fury had made sure she was around to witness it. She wasn't sure how much James would recognize of Fury's attempt to prove good faith; it depended on how screwed up being around Steve was making him.

When they left the comms room, Natasha gave James a long look, which he bore patiently and then shrugged. She shrugged back because, really, it was too soon to tell much of anything and if he was doing all right at the moment, then that would do.

It was roast chicken night, which made the house smell wonderful. There would be three of them, done with different seasonings, because chickens didn't come large enough to feed the entire detail. (At least on Earth; Thor assured them Vanaheim had such creatures and he would try to bring one if he could, which had prompted a debate on whether it would fit in the oven even if it were spatchcocked or whether they'd have to set up a fire pit in the backyard. Natasha suspected they'd do the firepit just because they liked the idea.) The third chicken was as yet uncooked; it would go in to the oven closer to when the current shift on duty took their dinner break.

Peggy and Steve were in the kitchen watching food be prepared. Steve was sitting in a wheelchair, pillows at his sides keeping him propped upright, next to Peggy at the table. She was trimming green beans by snapping off the tips; Steve had a lemon in his hands, turning it over and over as he once had the fuzzy blocks. But his attention wasn't on it, he was watching the agents at the kitchen island do food prep.

"Miss it?" Natasha asked, sitting down in the chair next to him. She hadn't had a chance to spend any time with him yet, to express any kind of joy or gratitude or relief at his progress, and it felt a little ridiculous for her first words to him that he could understand be something so small and banal. So much had happened, so many changes, so much everything and she was making small talk.

The look Steve gave her took her breath away because it was so him, fully and completely. She felt her eyes prick with tears, but she didn't look away because she might be a coward with her words, but she could give Steve this.

"Yeah," he agreed. He took one hand off of the lemon he was massaging and extended it toward her clumsily and she took it, interlacing her fingers with his and squeezing hard. He squeezed back more gently and held on, turning his attention back to the agents and their kitchen theater so she could wipe the tears from her eyes with her free hand without losing too much more of her dignity.

She'd long ago given up hope of preserving any kind of dignity around Peggy, who had watched them and now gave Natasha a gentle smile before returning to organizing her piles of beans and discarded tips.

"You putting the moves on my girl when my back is turned?" James asked as he came around to the table on the other side of Natasha, placing a tall glass of water in front of her. She smiled up at him gratefully.

She knew James had told Steve about them from the start, but he must have said something again upstairs earlier -- or Peggy or Thor or someone else must have said something -- because Steve wasn't surprised. She wondered what he did think about it, remembering what Peggy had said had been Steve's thoughts once upon a time. She wondered if this was something he'd have to be reminded of tomorrow because his short-term memory wasn't good.

Steve turned back to look at James, then at Natasha and she saw the twinkle in his eyes before he looked down at their hands, where he was rubbing her knuckle gently with his thumb. "Maybe."

"Maybe," James repeated sourly, then taking a long drink from his water glass before his smile gave him away. "Some gallant you are. I didn't miss that, you know. You showing up and every other guy in the room turning invisible."

"You were hardly a wallflower, Sergeant Barnes," Peggy retorted tartly. "A shrieking violet rather than a shrinking one."

James shrugged. "Someone had to console all those broken hearts after the Star Spangled Man with a Plan turned 'em down. Bad for morale."

Steve was back upstairs by the time the dining room table was being prepared for dinner; he didn't like needing to be fed and he refused to let it happen in front of so many observers. James volunteered for the task, which had been Thor's for the past few days, allowing Thor to join in the group meal for what was apparently his last night in the house.

"I am needed back in Asgard," he explained. "There is growing unrest in Nidavellir and a show of force will be required sooner than later lest the need turn from demonstration to earnest combat."

Natasha didn't ask if his promise to stay with Steve while they had been gone had conflicted with his care of his own realm; it clearly had. But Thor had just as obviously prioritized Steve and to question that would be disrespectful. So, instead, she asked how he was communicating with Asgard, since there had been no Bifrost openings near the house.

"A messenger was sent to Jane," Thor explained. "I had left instructions to preserve the secrecy of this place. I will depart from Midgard from her home."

Thor had made friends with all of the agents at the house -- of course he had -- and so his farewells were an ongoing process. He spent most of the evening with Steve, though, sitting with him and James and Natasha and, through the magic of the internet and a Starkvision tablet, Tony and Pepper. Steve was mostly quiet, sitting in what had been Peggy's chair (he wasn't allowed to get back into bed until it was time to sleep, which annoyed him a little, Natasha noticed) with the plush ball in his hands, but he was clearly following along and enjoying himself even if he couldn't get his thoughts out quickly enough to participate in the banter and bickering. It was an effort for him to get words out at all, especially now at the end of the day, and sometimes it wasn't the right word that finally did come out, but Steve was present and that made all the difference in the world.

Especially after James's and Tony's musings about further weaponizing James's arm sounded like they might be edging a little too much toward planning.

"No," Steve said firmly, interrupting Tony's working-out-the-details-out-loud monologue about laser cutters.

"No what?" James challenged him. "Why can't I have laser beams coming out of my fingertips if I want them?"

Pepper's groan was a familiar one to Natasha, part 'boys and their toys' and mostly the sort of beleaguered resignation that came with knowing that however ridiculous the question was -- and the question was utterly ridiculous -- Tony was already taking it seriously.

"Tony, no," Steve repeated.

"Ah, the return of Captain Killjoy," Tony sighed dramatically. "Fine, no laser beams."

Steve fell asleep in the chair; Thor and James woke him up after Pepper and Tony had terminated the call to get him ready for bed. Natasha said her goodnight -- and goodbye to Thor -- then, since it would mean one fewer witness to his infirmities and Steve was enough himself that her being a woman mattered now and she could not imitate Joanne and Felicity's professionally impersonal approach to intimate care.

She was already in bed asleep -- the long travel and the emotional freight of the past week had taken their toll -- when James entered their room. She woke up at the noise, but quickly fell back asleep.

She woke up again late the following morning, unsurprised to find the other side of the bed empty and cool. But James hadn't gone far and she found him where she first looked, in Steve's room. She heard Peggy and James laughing, weirdly echoing until she realized that they were in the en suite bathroom. There were plans to more fully retrofit the bathroom to accommodate Steve's disabilities, but for the time being, there were handrails and a shower chair, which a still-pajamaed Steve was sitting in, face partially covered in lather and a towel over his chest, as Peggy sat on the covered toilet and James, wielding a shaving brush, was trying to maneuver between them.

"... the drugstore. I had to go to the hipster store to get a real razor, which makes no freaking sense because none of them shave," James was saying as Natasha knocked on the door jamb to announce her presence.

Steve reached up to paw at James's face. "You either."

"I've been traveling for a week, ya bum," James replied, deftly ducking away from Steve's hand. "But that doesn't mean I want to use a flimsy piece of plastic to get rid of it."

Natasha grinned at Peggy, who rolled her eyes; they had both heard variations on this theme before from both men. Neither Steve before the shooting nor James now had any love or respect for disposable razors, even less for electrics, and their indignation was to be laughed at, not with, because they sounded like grumpy old men every time it came up. Steve had a beautiful old-fashioned double-bladed razor in Brooklyn, part of a gift set from Pepper, but here and now, James was using his own kit.

Steve noticed Natasha and lifted his head to see her better over James's shoulder, making James lather his nose at the sudden movement. "Really?" James sighed, reaching for the washcloth in the sink, squeezing it out before using it. "You had better sit still when I'm holding the razor."

Steve maybe looked a little pleased with himself, which made Natasha laugh.

James stood up once Steve's face was fully lathered, stretching his back and surprising Natasha with a quick kiss before putting down the brush and running the razor through the sink full of hot water.

"Now you remember Father Patrick's rules about talking and shaving," James warned before he leaned forward, tilting Steve's chin up. "Anything you gotta say, say it now or hold your peace."

James gave Steve a moment in case he did want to speak, but he didn't, so he took firm grip of Steve's chin, turning his head to the side, and began to work. As he did, pausing regularly to rinse the razor in the sink, he told Peggy and Natasha of how Father Patrick's shaving lessons had been a rite of passage into manhood for all of the boys in the orphanage -- "Sister Mary Francis coulda shown us, too, she had more facial hair than we did" -- and how Steve had gotten his lessons a year later than James. "And it was only because Steve was feeling low, not because he had anything that could pass for whiskers."

Steve kept his face still for the duration, but Natasha could in his eyes how happy he was. She hoped James could see it, too.

After Steve was cleanshaven -- "smooth like a baby's bottom" -- James left the rest of Steve's care to Felicity, getting a protesting noise out of Steve for warning her that Steve was "feeling frisky this morning" before escorting Peggy downstairs.

It was a good start to their time in Wyoming, which Natasha was too much the fatalist to think would last, but she could not have anticipated how quickly it would go downhill.

In hindsight, she could admit that she hadn't seen the warning signs. She wasn't spending a lot of time with James during the day -- she was catching up with her own work while he did his video sessions and had started taking part in Steve's physical therapy in addition to his own training. He was quiet in the evenings, but she'd put it down to exhaustion.

The third evening, however, James took off on a run after spending time alone with Steve and when he didn't return for three hours, Natasha was ready to send out a search party.

"What were you two talking about that set him off?" Natasha asked Steve, already guessing the answer.

"He's confessing," Steve said, working hard to get the words out because it was late and he was tired, but he wouldn't even go upstairs until James returned. "Didn't care. Still love him."

Natasha sighed. "I still love him, too. But I'm not sure that's enough anymore."

James returned four hours after he had left, in the company of the three agents who'd gone out looking for him. He had the good grace to look ashamed at the response to his disappearance and apologized to Commander Yondo for causing a disruption, but Natasha didn't think that was going to be the end of it. And it wasn't. There was no more running off, but there were plenty of other ways to run away.

"Barnes asked to be put back in the field," Fury told her the morning before she was scheduled to leave for New York. "What's going on?"

Natasha was surprised, but not shocked. "He's still adjusting to facing Steve," she settled on for an answer. It was an explanation without violating any trust.

Fury nodded. "So he needs a shrink, not a mission."

"It's going to take longer for him than it did for me," she said by way of agreement. "And it took me a long time."

Natasha said nothing to James during the day because she knew it was going to go badly and she wanted her last day with Steve to be easy. Steve knew she was leaving, although he'd needed to be reminded once which day that was going to happen, and he let her stay during his lunch.

"We've both seen Clint eat," she told him. "And he doesn't have the excuse of brain trauma."

Clint was currently somewhere near Iran, possibly in Iran, on a mission that had nothing to do with looking for Belova. He knew about Steve, but hadn't been able to do more than text anyone.

Natasha sparred with Agent Hassan in the afternoon, since she'd been promising him to do so from her prior visit. It turned into a lesson first for Hassan, who had strong foundations but poor anticipation, and then into a larger group exercise that culminated in her and James facing off. They started off slowly, talking the agents through their moves and countermoves, but it escalated and they stopped explaining and started focusing on winning. James pinned her, but she'd performed respectably.

After she showered and changed, she heard a familiar voice in Steve's room.

"Hey," Bruce greeted her once she came to stand behind Steve's chair so that she could be seen on the camera. "We were just talking about you."

"Oh?" She looked down at Steve, who looked up with innocence in his eyes that fooled no one. For all that he had trouble communicating, there was a lot going on in his head. "Only good things, I hope."

"Would we confess to anything else?" Bruce asked with a smile. "Actually, we were reminiscing about when you and Tony started reliving the French Revolution with the bottle saber on New Year's Eve."

That had been the first one after the Battle of New York, one of the first times they'd all been together again after they'd all gone their separate ways. Tony had called them all back, possibly to see if they'd all come, and they had.

"That was a good night," Natasha agreed. "And I think Steve did his fair share of decapitating that evening."

Because Steve liked champagne and he loved bottle sabers and, after a few glasses, nobody thought Tony should be near bladed weapons.

Steve shrugged. "A few." But he was smiling as he said it.

Natasha spent a few minutes chatting with Bruce, whom she hadn't seen since bringing James to Tony's that first time, but then left the two of them alone because she knew that they hadn't been just strolling down memory lane. Bruce was an expert on having to learn how to take control of his body time and again and she suspected he might have some useful counsel for Steve. Who might listen to him with more attention than he did James or Peggy.

Natasha's half-dreaded/half-anticipated conversation with James didn't happen until they were both in their bedroom for the night.

"Why did you ask to go back out?" she asked as she finished packing. Agent Claes was going to drive her to the airport tomorrow morning, the usual pre-dawn departure.

James pulled his head through the neck hole in the t-shirt he slept in and, for a moment, he looked like he might lie to her. "Fury told you."

"Of course he told me," she replied, digging out the nude bra because her traveling outfit was going to include a white shirt. "He thought something had happened here."

James stood still, hands on his hips. "What did you tell him?"

At that moment, she couldn't tell if he were more frightened that she'd gotten him sent away or that she hadn't.

"I didn't tell him that you are spending your days trying to get Steve to hate you," she replied. "If that's what you want to know."

He'd started to turn around to empty his pockets on to the night stand, but he stopped.

"He is so grateful that you're here with him," she pressed on. "It's all he's wanted since he first found out you were alive."

"He didn't know what I was when he first found out I was alive," James retorted, turning to face her again.

"Do you know remember what he told you in Doomstadt?" Natasha asked instead of replying to what they both knew wasn't true. "He told you that he knew you, that he would always know you, even if you didn't know yourself. There isn't anything you can do, anything you can tell him, that will change that. But you are trying anyway and it's so hard not to get angry at you because all you're doing is hurting yourself. And that hurts him because you're using him to do it and he can't stop you."

She took a deep breath before speaking again. James didn't move, just waited, an unreadable expression on his face.

"Please figure out how to live with other people accepting who you are. And figure out how to let yourself be loved," she said quietly. "I don't like what it says about what you must think of me when you try so hard to drive the goodness in your life away because you don't think you deserve it but you don't mind me."

They kept to their own sides of the bed that night and he pretended to sleep through her alarm and preparations for departure.

New York was in high tourist season, lit up and colorful and noisy and crowded. She was going to be in town four days before getting sent to Amsterdam to start her first pair of missions -- another AIM scientist on the loose, then a HYDRA operation -- and she was maybe a little ashamed at how relieved she was to be back. The house in Wyoming was full of people she cared about and a group of agents for whom she'd developed great respect and camaraderie, but it was also... claustrophobic. There was no privacy and she didn't have it in her to be rude to anyone to get herself any. New York City was twelve million people who would pick you up if you tripped on the sidewalk, but who otherwise were happy to pretend you were invisible. It was anonymity and solitude and a white noise of taxi horns and bus brakes and sirens. It was the first chance she'd had to be alone with her thoughts in weeks, to not have to be any more considerate than not stealing someone's seat on the subway. To not have anyone's happiness -- or mental health -- in her hands but her own.

"No face-breaking," she assured Clint when she called him that night, not expecting him to pick up. "Not that I don't want to maybe knock him around a little with a blunt object, but not for those reasons."

She'd told him about Steve, they'd talked about that first, and how, for the first time, she thought there was a real chance he could get his life back. Not get Captain America back, but a 'live on his own without nurses' life. That was maybe something possible.

And then she'd told him about James and his self-sabotage, about how they had all thought -- she had thought -- that taking care of Steve would ground him as it had earlier. But it hadn't. He started his day in Steve's bathroom with a razor and a shaving brush in his hands and did two hours of PT a day with him and instead of finding peace in the act of taking care of Steve as he once had, he spent the time trying to push Steve into rejecting him.

"He is still fucked in the head," Clint agreed. "Rome wasn't built in a day. He'll get better. Hopefully you'll still like him when he does."

Clint was coming back to the States the day after she was leaving for Europe. He was going straight out to Nebraska once he got back, "do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not stop at 44th Street so someone can see you and think you're perfect for a mission they're planning." He was looking forward to seeing Steve, with whom he still hadn't had a chance to have so much as a phone call, let alone face time, but he was also looking forward to just being alone and at rest.

"I'll keep an eye on 'em for you," he assured jokingly. Or mostly jokingly. Because Clint was maybe a little bit of a romantic at heart.

There was, as expected, a dinner invitation from Pepper and Tony, but it came in the form of a party invitation, so Natasha slipped on a little green dress, curled her hair, and was Natalie Rushman for a night. It was a surprisingly good time and a really excellent way of slipping back into a work mindset -- Natalie was a familiar cover, easily worn like a pair of old jeans.

The following morning, Natasha woke up to the news that Aleksander Lukin had been arrested for treason by Doom and Kronas Industries and all of its assets had been seized. The stock markets were going haywire.

For all that Doom had gotten played by Lukin, he was still a shrewd man. He had been the sole architect of Latveria's rise to its current status as the most important Eastern banking haven in Europe and he had, the financial experts at SHIELD assured, played his hand like a master. Kronas had been registered in Latveria and Lukin had all of his publicly held assets in Latverian banks. Of course there were slush funds elsewhere, both to hedge against something like this and then whatever he was using to fund HYDRA, but the asset seizures were comprehensive and completely legal under Latverian law.

SHIELD's financial departments could stand up and applaud, but its field operations were in high gear because nobody knew what HYDRA's reaction would be. They didn't have a clear enough picture of how much of the day-to-day operations Lukin controlled -- really controlled, not just suggested or bankrolled -- or whether he would even authorize a response. Or whether he had the power to prevent one. But SHIELD now had years of monitoring HYDRA cells and there was some sense that any reaction sufficiently large to matter would be trackable.

Natasha left for Amsterdam as scheduled.

Rogue AIM scientists, they had realized, tended to be young men and women with doctorates in an engineering discipline, a ton of cash, and who had internalized too many of the wrong lessons from the unauthorized biographies of Tony Stark. Except none of them had a Pepper, which was why they were all caught sooner or later. They either led flashy lives in places like Macao or Amsterdam, complete with gaudy bodyguards and scantily clad eye candy, or they bought gorgeous homes in remote but beautiful spots that had state-of-the-art security and enough server power to backstop Wikipedia. They had no ideology, just brains and a desire for money or recognition or both. They were amoral -- the repentant ones were already getting out on parole -- and asocial. Natasha really rather thought that the work was beneath her skill level most of the time, but it also tended to be really, really satisfying to put her knee on their backs and press their heads to the floor with the hand not holding a gun and whisper sweetly all the ways their lives were going to crumble around them.

Amsterdam took only a week because it was one of the blingy ones and the problem with new money was that it didn't come with a lot of experience spending it. If you were smart, you didn't buy the bodyguards who looked best in suits or who cost the most per week or who shot at everything first.

From Amsterdam, it was a train to Lille because HYDRA had possibly gotten around to starting to revamp their sweet talk -- meritocracy, the power of education, blahblahblah -- and Lille was exactly the kind of place to refine it and make it work.

In her hotel for the evening, she got a photo message from Peggy. It showed James and Steve sitting next to each other on the couch in the living room, presumably watching hockey because Agent Diaz's Avs jersey waspartially visible on the left side of the frame and there was a socked foot on the coffee table she knew belonged to Clint (she'd gotten him the Kermit socks as a gag gift the other year) on the right. Steve had a self-satisfied look on his face and James was laughing and there was, in that moment, nothing of their wounds and scars visible even to her trained eye.

"There's hope," was Peggy's message.

"Maybe," Natasha said out loud, then deleted the photo. It wouldn't be retrievable, no matter who had the phone -- Tony's design, not sold in any store -- which was why Peggy had risked sending it in the first place. To give her hope. She and Peggy had kept in contact as much as she was able to keep in contact with anyone not her handler while out in the field. James hadn't tried, nor had she tried to reach him. They weren't broken up, that she knew, but they were perhaps on break until James decided what to do about what she'd said. And then she would decide how she felt about his response and they would move on or they wouldn't. She'd meant it when she'd told him that she didn't like being considered tarnished enough to be an acceptable companion to a fallen man such as James considered himself. She didn't want to be on a pedestal -- and she knew how easy it was to put Steve on one -- but she couldn't let him think of her like something ruined instead. She'd fought too hard to stop thinking of herself like that and she would not let him bring her back down.

Two days later, she got a text from Clint informing her that Steve had given James the face-breaking talk. Peggy provided a fuller recap later on, saying that it had been part of a longer talk -- and this had been the most Steve had spoken yet by far -- about James's choices. "It was equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious and hopeful," Peggy reported. Not only for Steve's progress ("and yes, Steve threatening bodily harm is absolutely progress") but also for James's response. Which had not been to shut down or walk off, but instead to ask if they were back in Red Hook because Steve had just as much chance now of carrying out the threats he was making as he had in 1941. Steve's response to that had apparently been "have Hulk."

Natasha put all of those thoughts aside while she worked. She had her cover and she was living it, going to coffee houses and clubs and bars where the sorts of people who should know better than to believe HYDRA but didn't tended to congregate. Most of what she heard was the same old palaver in a new suit, justifications for HYDRA's mass murders and promises for a new world built by worthy hands that found eager ears because the present was so unsatisfying. What was different was who was doing the speaking and who was doing the listening. She was sitting in quiet restaurants and genteel clubs where MEPs and permanent EU staff congregated when they wanted a little distance from watchful eyes, which was new. During Schmidt's reign, HYDRA had been something for the government to rally against, not let it seep into the roots and branches.

It was at one of these clubs that she saw a face she thought she might recognize. Russian, which made him stand out, and schmoozing with people she'd recognized as True Believers to the HYDRA cause. She surreptitiously took a photo -- Tony's phone was brilliant for many reasons, but that it had a positionable camera so you didn't have to face your subject was definitely one of its greater charms -- and sent it to James. If this were one of Lukin's men, he'd know. He texted her back a few minutes later with a name and a simple message. "Be careful with him. He'll know who you are."

Natasha left the club a few minutes and a dozen photographs later; Bobrov was starting to circulate.

Four days in Lille was enough to reap a file's worth of names and faces and confirm more of Sonia's warning that Lukin was turning HYDRA into an oligarchy of the middle management. Any more time and her cover would get too thin for safety and would probably ruin it for future use. She hopped on a train to Paris, ready to either go back to New York or head off on another mission; she was feeling good, content with what she'd done but ready to do more if required. She didn't even feel the first tendrils of burnout that often came with back-to-back missions.

"I need you to do a favor for me," Hill said over the phone the next day. "You're free to say no."

Hill didn't ask for favors often and from Natasha hardly at all. Favors for Hill were usually like favors for Fury -- jobs that required delicacy and skill and were usually at the behest of some other country's intelligence service, small single events that would nonetheless blow up spectacularly should they be discovered and the asking nation be anywhere involved. But the payoff was always worth it, worth risking one of SHIELD's best agents, and not only for whatever would get owed in return. This was why they were usually Fury's to ask for. If Hill was asking it was either because it was too insignificant to come from Fury, in which case Natasha would not be a likely candidate, or it was on behalf of someone(s) Fury wouldn't deal with. Hill had her own responsibilities, but some of them involved handling everyone that Fury wouldn't or couldn't.

"What's the job?" Natasha asked.

The next evening, she was flying first class from Paris to St. Bart's after first going on a shopping spree on SHIELD's credit card because she hadn't brought a thing she would need. Bathing suits and wraps, clothing almost entirely from couture houses' resort collections, shoes, jewelry, makeup and perfume and other items for a certain type of toilette, a few trashy novels to read poolside, and three stiletto blades that folded into tastefully engraved sheathes and a couple of lengths of wire that coiled up into powder compact, ready to be drawn like floss. Plus a mani/pedi and a facial and haircut because she needed to look pampered and softer around the edges than she could achieve on her own.

She'd enjoyed the preparations. She didn't enjoy shopping as an exercise or as a necessity or as a hobby, but she did enjoy nice things and enjoyed knowing about nice things. And shopping at this price point, where you walked into a fashion house and sat drinking tea and eating macarons while models paraded by with 'looks' you might consider, was nothing at all like going to Lord and Taylor's for a new shirt. Natasha was a little too short and a little too buxom to wear anything off the runway without alterations or considerations in mind, but she had a body that couture houses liked to dress because she could carry herself in a way that would show off their designs. And the cash to be indifferent about it, which only made them try harder.

St. Bart's was for the wealthy, but, as with AIM scientists, there were those who knew how to look good spending their money and those who simply looked gauche no matter how nice the clothes. Natasha needed to fit in with the former, so she'd chosen with care and walked through the resort like someone who had been to one before, instead of dying her hair a dishwatery blonde and presenting herself as yet another goggle-eyed Russian bimbo enjoying a vacation with her sugardaddy while his wife and kids went skiing in St. Moritz. Which was not to say that she did not end up talking about skiing with the attractive gentleman at the bar who earned a response from her by not by ostentatiously ordering the top-shelf drinks and instead asking the bartender what he liked to drink and then asking for two, one for the lady. It was just that they spoke of skiing in the Dalmatians, which was civilized because the Italians, unlike the Americans or those who catered to them, believed that skiing should be something to do between sumptuous meals and spa treatments.

It took two days to find her mark and two more days to make her move. She and Clint had once had a serious discussion about the various advantages and disadvantages of committing murder in a multiple-stall lavatory. On the one hand, you had to deal with the fact that they were rarely occupied by just your target and they always, always had acoustics like echo chambers. On the other, it was easy to clean up afterward, both for you and the poor maid who had to wash it all down after the police were through, and you could often buy yourself some time by locking the target in a stall.

The ladies washroom between the main bar and one of the restaurants had five stalls, which meant the likelihood of a line was miniscule, but the stalls also had the floor-to-ceiling doors that locked (from the outside) merely when closed. which generally bought hours of extra time before discovery. Natasha adjusted her makeup until it was just her and the target, a North Korean honey pot who'd seduced the director of research of a prominent German electronics firm doing sensitive work for the government. The woman knew her business; Natasha had watched her in action and had been impressed at the performance.

"But what you didn't factor in, and I realize that this lesson is coming too late for you to apply," Natasha explained as she watched her target slump, taking a moment to make sure that she didn't fall over and get discovered earlier by hitting the ground, "is that you have to be situationally aware. You played your mark beautifully. I learned from watching you work. But you did not pay enough attention to your surroundings. Once you are good enough to target the big boys, you are good enough to become a target yourself. You should always be aware of that."

The kill had been easy, no blood splatter, no defensive wounds, no noise, and Natasha wouldn't even need to pretend she'd spilled something on her dress to cover stains or rips. She pulled the door to the stall closed behind her and returned to the sink to wash her hands, then went to the mirrored vanity and adjusted her hair and makeup like every other woman girding herself for the return to the mating battle. She went back to the bar and finished her drink, ordering another and a fresh glass of water. She drank the water and surreptitiously poured most of her martini into the water glass because women of her cover's status did not nurse their drinks. And then she did it with another two rounds, 'accidentally' spilling the water glass the last time because the doctored liquid hadn't looked quite right because that last martini had had too much olive juice in it. (It had had the perfect amount for the martini, but too much to look like water.)

She got rid of the knife on the way back to her room, acted more bored than curious or frightened when the news circulated the resort the next day, and stayed for the balance of the week because fleeing the scene of a crime made you look guilty.

James sent her a photo of himself and Steve at the kitchen table with what she realized was a mound of bread dough between them. Steve was happily kneading while James was looking at the camera with an expression of bemused disbelief. "Peggy is collecting blackmail material," the accompanying message said. "I miss you."

She missed him, too, which had been part of the problem because that had started while they were still sleeping in the same bed. She missed the casual affection he offered so easily, far more so than she could. and the way he mixed courtliness and consideration and appallingly bad jokes and raw hunger, She liked who she was when she was with him. She wanted all of that back, but knew she couldn't bargain to get it. But she could reward any hint of its return.

"Miss you, too."

After St. Bart's, it was back to New York. She had debriefing to do, both the two assigned missions and then a private chat with Hill about her Caribbean vacation. There were also some administrative tasks to check off -- drug test, firearms qual, why did you claim a receipt for a bakery in Tallinn? -- and while she went into them with the intention of not shooting the messenger, she came out at the end of the day with a firm plan of stopping at Zabar's for cheese and bread, opening up a bottle of côtes du Rhône, and reading the last of her trashy novels while listening to Electric Warrior and Machine Head.

While she waited for it to be decided when and where she would be sent next, she re-established contact with Wyoming. It had been three weeks since she'd left, during which much had happened. Steve had been working regularly with his new therapy team -- physical, occupational, speech -- and was showing further improvements on all fronts. He was speaking much more clearly and fluently -- there were still slurred words and the occasional wrong one, especially when tired, but he was up to complete and complex sentences -- and his balance had improved enough to make sitting in chairs possible and, as of two days ago, walking with assistance. Natasha had laughed hard enough to choke when James sent her a photo of Peggy's and Steve's canes leaning up against the wall together, with "Hers" and "His" written in block letters along the sides. Steve needed more than just the cane, but that was beside the point.

Steve had also gotten visitors for whom he could show off his expanding set of reacquired skills. Clint's vacation was over and he was back in the field, but Tony had been out to visit bearing therapy-related gifts and dragging along Bruce to help drive because Pepper couldn't get away. Bruce's restriction on visiting had been quietly lifted the other month; Natasha didn't know the details, but she suspected Pepper and Peggy were responsible.

And finally James. Natasha had spoken with him during a video chat with Steve, who in turn had expressed his frustration with the two of them. ("Aren't you so glad he's talking again?" James had asked her with mock irritation. "He starts feeding himself and suddenly he's qualified to be everyone's agony aunt.") But James had called her that evening and they'd spoken for an hour.

"I can't promise you I'm good," he'd told her. "I don't think I'll ever be good. But I'm better. Steve... he said he would forgive me until I could forgive myself. I told him that that might be forever and he said that that was fine, he was used to me being a little slow."

"You are," she agreed lightly. But there was a question in James's story, one she needed to answer, one way or another. "But you're generally worth waiting for."

Natasha's orders, when they came in, were not what she expected. Her next assignment was in two weeks, so if she wanted to go out to Wyoming, she could. So she did.

There was snow on the ground when she got there, at least two feet of it on the grass, although the roads had been clear on the way up from Denver. The snow was a week old, it was explained, two separate storms. There'd been a snowball fight in the backyard that had involved trench warfare and an improvised trebuchet and James being classified as a weapon of mass destruction because of his prosthetic arm. There was also an army of snowmen on the back deck, several of them Steve's. "Not the naughty ones," Peggy felt obligated to point out. "Although we did suggest."

Peggy was getting over a cold that had taken a lot out of her. James hadn't given details of how bad she'd been, but Natasha could tell she had been slow in her recovery and that James had been worried and Steve still was. She remembered that conversation between James and Peggy where they'd spoken of her death and suspected it was weighing on him a little, especially with Steve still so fragile despite all of his improvements.

Right now, Peggy and Steve were asleep, hand in hand, on the couch in the front room everyone used for quiet time, as opposed to the living room with the television and video games. Natasha had gone looking for Peggy to ask her a question and found them there and stayed, watching them from the doorway.

"We should wake them up and send them to bed," James said quietly as he slipped an arm around her waist from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder for a moment before letting her go. She grabbed his arm before it could withdraw and pulled him in again. She didn't want him being tentative around her; it wasn't who he was and it wasn't who they were. He followed without resistance, settling against her back and wrapping his arm tighter around her.

"We should take a picture," she replied, thinking of the awful and inevitable later.

"Not mutually exclusive," he pointed out, then his posture changed slightly. "We should go away for a day or two. Just have a little time when we're not running for borders or chasing cranky nonogenarians off to bed."

"You're a cranky nonogenarian, too," she pointed out, earning a protest squeeze of the arm snaked around her middle. "Are you sure?"

Because she was pretty sure this wasn't his idea, although she thought it might be a good one, and she wanted to know why he was agreeing to it.

"I want us to work, Natalia," he said seriously. "And I... I want to be us without any distractions, without any excuses, all of them mine. Even for a little while."

She mentally unpacked that to mean that he wanted a day away from the things that triggered his guilt and pain most easily so they could see what they had in each other. And his triggers, for better or for worse were mostly related to Steve. Steve and his incapacities, Steve and his forgiveness and faith, Steve and his ability to push past the obstacles that would stop lesser men and find his happiness, which was to hold hands with Peggy Carter as they slept.

"Your ghosts are going to follow you wherever we go," she warned. "I'm one of them, too."

"You're the good one," he said, kissing her hair behind her ear. "What we had wasn't worth this--" he held out his left arm. "Nothing could be worth that. But you are still the only good part of that life, the only part I'm glad I remember."

And then he kissed her again, in the same spot, and let her go so that he could move past her into the living room, pull out his phone, and take a picture of Steve and Peggy.

Three days later, they drove out to Clint's place in Nebraska. He'd offered the use of it, which Natasha took to mean that it had been his suggestion in the first place. She could ask, but she wouldn't; he had his own reasons and while they were probably just that he wanted her to be happy and he seemed to genuinely like James, it could well be more, nothing to do with either of them at all. Clint guarded his heart so fiercely sometimes. She knew it wasn't anything to do with wishful thinking; the two of them had never been on a course for romance. They had been opponents and then, once they hadn't been, she had been in no frame of mind to consider any such entanglement and Clint wouldn't have asked even if he'd wanted to. She didn't think he'd ever wanted to. He had thrown away his honor and his freedom for her with nothing more to go on than his belief in her and they had risked their lives for each other too many times to count. They were closer than lovers and what they needed from each other -- what they gave to each other -- would possibly be diminished by sex and she didn't think either of them would ever be willing to risk it.

She and James spent two days in Nebraska, not doing much because there wasn't much to do. They cooked for themselves, which didn't go terribly, and they sat curled up under one of the horseblankets on the couch that looked out on to the prairie vista, still snow-covered, and talked or didn't. They talked about their pasts -- their real pasts, not the ones constructed for them by Department X -- and their presents and what kind of futures were possible for people like them. Natasha didn't try to whitewash it, but she reminded James that she was much further along in the process of learning to live with oneself than he was and she did promise that it got easier. "It will never be easy," she assured. "But it eventually stops making you so eager to bleed."

She told him about being motivated by everyone's (but Clint's) lack of trust and how Fury was very open about being ready to have her put down like a rabid dog until he finally decided that she wasn't a double agent. She said that the lack of trust had gone both ways, which was why she had pulled a gun on Coulson when all he'd been doing was reaching into his desk for a stapler. And she admitted that sometimes all of it had gotten to be too much and Clint was pretty much the only reason she had never run off.

"When Steve showed up, he had no frame of reference for me, I was just Fury's favorite and then I was a teammate," she went on. "But he eventually learned all about me and that never changed anything. He never once held my past against me, never once judged me by anything other than what I showed him myself.... Let him in, James. It will do him good and it will do you even more."

James sighed and rubbed at his face with the hand that wasn't around her shoulders holding her against him. "I can't stop being afraid of what he'll see."

"He'll see you in all of your messed-up glory," she told him. "He's not going to turn away from you. And if somehow that ever happened, you'll do what I did when I lost his trust: you'll bust your ass getting it back. And then you'll take him out to dinner. He likes to eat."

On the way back to Wyoming, they stopped at the store for provisions for the house, which went through milk and butter at a prodigious rate. James found a giant can of peaches in syrup, slightly dented, and started laughing. He found a bow in the box of Christmas wrapping remainders and, when they got back to the house, presented it to Steve, whose laughter nearly brought the entire house running. Peggy, however, was probably the only other person save Natasha who got the joke.