fic: Revenant (14/?)

[miss_porcupine]

Revenant: Chapter Fourteen
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.



Natasha was startled awake by banging on the bedroom door. Next to her, James was already moving to sit up.

"Condition Charlie," a voice announced loudly. "We are at Condition Charlie. This is not a drill."

"Solid copy," James called back as Natasha threw back the blankets and reached for the bedside lamp, turning it on to the dimmest setting despite the curtains being closed and the shade down.

On the threat scale applied to the defense of the house, Charlie equated out to someone definitely on approach with hostile intent. They were about to be under attack.

They got dressed in their uniforms, James armoring up his prosthetic and donning the Winter Soldier's gear, and checked their personal weapons before dousing the light and leaving the room.

In the hallway, Steve was being assisted down the stairs by Claes and Hochimura, the two burliest of the security detail. This was protocol -- Steve and Peggy and the medical staff were to be rushed to the panic room in the basement. The detail agents had drilled this regularly, even before Steve had regained consciousness and they'd had to practice transferring a body to an ambulance stretcher. There was no question what happened now and Steve went along unresistingly, if unhappily.

Natasha took the shield from Hochimura, since it was bumping into the banister on every step and presented a tripping hazard. At the bottom of the stairs, she tried to give to Steve, who would have been able to hold it himself.

"Give it t'Bucky," Steve told him as he was half-dragged down the hallway to the basement steps.

"What am I going to do with it?" James asked from behind. The detail agents were moving around them, going to their assigned posts. Natasha and James would be stringers, moving where Commander Yondo wanted them.

"Use it," Steve replied. There was a pause in their progress as the agents carrying Peggy down the basement stairs weren't clear yet. "You have before."

James made a miserable face. "And that turned out so well."

"You're here, aren't you?" Natasha pointed out, but to her left, Steve was also looking like whatever had happened the last time James had used the shield wasn't something he'd wanted to relive, either.

"Exactly," James agreed easily and Natasha felt her anger rise because he meant it. He grimaced at her almost apologetically. "Giving it back to Steve was the last thing I did before I fell."

This wasn't the first time James had expressed the regret that he hadn't been killed before he could become the Winter Soldier and a part of Natasha understood that he would likely always have that regret. But she hated to hear it nonetheless. She shoved the shield into his hands.

"You won't fall again," she told him fiercely. "I won't let you."

And then she turned away to go find Yondo because neither she nor James had radios. She found Yondo in the kitchen with Hostetler, the latter holding up a tablet that showed three clusters of dots approaching from the north, east, and south; the west had a rock formation within the trees that was good for training but bad for infiltration. Someone had done their homework; these were not amateurs.

Hostetler gave Natasha and James, who had followed behind her, radios and earpieces. If anyone thought anything of James wearing the shield on his back, they kept it to themselves. Hostetler was the detail RTO and he did radio checks with all positions and then let Yondo start passing on intel and issuing orders.

The conversion of the house from residence to fortress was quick and thorough and almost entirely complete. SHIELD had been notified, but the QRF was a half-hour out, Yondo warned them, and they would need to hold on that long.

The QRF had no idea what they were flying into. Natasha knew the protocols for this, too; the Wyoming house didn't exist on any official SHIELD holdings, not even the list of black sites that was very unofficial. If additional support were ever required, as it was now, then a cover for the house existed, one that had been updated as Steve's condition had changed. The current one said that this was the retirement home for Peggy Carter, former SHIELD director, and she was entitled to her own security detail. In exchange for allowing SHIELD to use her home as a base of operations, that detail had been increased. Steve Rogers was nowhere involved; he was dead and had been for the better part of a year. At least until circumstances dictated admitting otherwise.

"Both of you need to draw rifles and night optics," Yondo said when he was done on the radio. "Widow, I'd like you to join Gruning's unit, you'll be starting on the east side of the house. We'll thin the crowd before they get here, but we can expect contact up close. Mister Barnes, I'd like you to take command of the attic element."

The attic was a fortified weapons platform; there were heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, and James had helped refine the sniping positions.

The armory was down in the basement; Natasha could see that the panic room was closed and secured as she picked up a rifle (FN SCAR, not her favorite, but the rifle of choice for SHIELD's Direct Action Service these days) and James found the XM2010 he used when he practiced here. Natasha also picked up a couple of extra clips for her pistols when she got the rifle; if she was going to be infantry, she wanted firepower.

Diaz was coming out of the secure comms room as they re-locked the armory doors; he had been rigging the sensitive equipment and the computers to fry should the house be seriously compromised.

The three of them were going up the stairs to the main level when the lights went out.

"Right on time," Diaz sighed with false drama. "Now I'm never gonna be able to DVR The Carrie Diaries."

The backup generator kicked in before they had gotten all the way up the stairs.

Natasha parted from James with a nod; they weren't that kind of romantic. He went upstairs at a run, she went outside with Diaz, finding Gruning near the barricades that ringed the house, and putting on the NODs, which would be unneeded during the fight because there were floodlights, but might be helpful while they were waiting. They would at least allow her to see into the trees and fields, which was better than waiting in the dark not knowing what was coming.

She didn't like this, standing as a soldier. It wasn't that she thought the work beneath her, just that it wasn't what she was trained to do and she felt uncomfortable because of her inexperience. There was more to infantry work than standing in a line and shooting toward the enemy; fighting in a group required training and skills that Natasha did not possess commensurately with the ones she used on a regular basis. Or much at all, since even the Avengers's activities were not a useful practice for this kind of combat. She was a soloist by practice, although she could work easily enough with one or two others if she was familiar with them. But infantry work didn't rely on knowledge of her colleagues' particular specialties or skill sets; it relied on training that reinforced set responses to particular situations. Natasha did not have all of those responses ingrained, which could make her a liability to her own side -- or in danger herself -- if she chose the wrong response. She understood why Yondo had put her out here and put James, who had been an infantryman once upon a time, up top, but it was up to her to be more than just another body between the bad guys and Steve and Peggy.

In her earpiece, she heard Hostetler report that the tangos were holding a hundred meters from the red zone, which was the outermost ring of their defense systems.

"Eagle's Nest, feel free to prod them into action," Yondo said over the radio. Eagle's Nest was the attic position. Yondo wanted James and Lopresti, the other sniper, to force their attackers into moving before they were ready -- if they were waiting where they were, it was for a reason.

James confirmed over the radio and in the quiet below, Natasha could hear the reports of two rifles, irregular but frequent, both men changing window positions because there were two of them and three angles of attack.

Hostetler reported that the sniping was doing what it was supposed to, forcing the masses of assault troops into action, sending them forward toward the waiting defenses. But then he reported that more dots were appearing -- a second wave.

"This has got to be fucking HYDRA," someone said to Natasha's left. "How the hell did they find us here?"

It was a mostly rhetorical question. With so much traffic to the house -- Avengers, doctors, food and supply runs -- there were any number of possible methods of discovery.

Hostetler warned that the first wave of assaulters were entering the minefield. The landmines weren't always armed -- nobody wanted to draw attention by blowing a deer or an elk sky high -- but they were now and they'd been thickly emplaced and when the first one went off, the next ones were quick to follow.

The explosions were too far away to be clearly seen; they were bright flares behind the trees through the night optics, but not bright enough to blitz the goggles into resetting. The noise of the detonations and the screams of pain and the shouts of the attackers were audible, but still too far away to be anything but a general chaos, dimly echoed in her earpiece as Hostetler passed on positional updates and Yondo's orders. The wind had not yet blown the smoke toward them, but the fog of war was descending.

Natasha got rid of the night optics, closing her eyes to regain her night vision. The house had flood lighting that would be turned on once it became necessary and the goggles were starting to give her a little bit of a headache.

Hostetler reported that the surviving assaulters were now entering the white zone, the second level of their defenses. The mines had taken out most of the first wave, but the second could proceed almost unimpeded -- there were still a few mines that were probably undetonated.

"Ground teams, you might want to take a step back," James said over the radio. "Gunners, on my mark. Wachenauer, you fire before I tell you to, I am going to throw you off the roof."

It wasn't the Winter Soldier making the threat, Natasha heard. There was too much humor in the command voice. This might have been what Sergeant Barnes had sounded like once upon a time.

Natasha knew what was coming, but she was still unprepared for the incredible racket of multiple heavy machine guns opening up at once. The low, growling rrrippp was loud over her head, like standing next to an entire motorcycle gang revving up, and the tinkle of hot brass cartridges as they fell to the ground behind her was quieter but no less uncomfortable. She presumed the grenades were getting fired off as well, but those would have been a quiet shoomp unnoticed under the greater noise. Around her, some of the other agents, military veteran almost to a man, joked about being back in Iraq or Afghanistan or Minyar or somewhere else where this had been the default state of things. They were comfortably antsy. Anticipatory. Natasha was probably a little closer to edgy.

The white zone was on the near side of the trees that surrounded the property and the carnage the machine guns were inflicting was audible and, in some spots, visible, especially where the grenades landed. The dead lay where they fell, but the wounded and the untouched pressed forward and Gruning ordered them into firing lines behind the bulletproof barricades, reminded them to stay in their sectors, keep their eyes on their own business, and everything would turn out fine.

Yondo ordered the floodlights on in three, two, one and anyone who hadn't already removed their night optics did so now. Natasha raised her rifle, bringing the butt of the stock to her shoulder and finding a comfortable position for it, and waited.

The blue zone was the house and the area immediately surrounding it and this was where the battle had to end, one way or the other. Natasha waited for Gruning to give the command to fire before doing so, having to adjust her positioning because the recoil was manageable for a few rounds but harder to overcome with sustained firing.

The roar from above grew quieter as the noise around her grew louder. They fired at everything that moved, be it wounded straggler stumbling forward from one kill zone into another or a charging assaulter in HYDRA tactical gear. But there were too many to be mowed down even by the fusillade from the ground teams and Natasha knew that they would be overrun shortly. When her rifle clip emptied, she didn't bother changing it out, just dropped it and pulled out a pistol; she'd be switching over to a knife soon enough.

Their attackers, as they get close enough to be heard, were wearing HYDRA gear, but they were speaking Russian to each other, which was important. HYDRA had been too multinational to do anything but use English as their lingua franca, so that they weren't, that they were using Russian, was meaningful indeed.

"These are Lukin's people," Natasha said into her mic as she fired the last bullet from the pistol's clip, dropping it and slamming home a new one in a smooth motion.

As the HYDRA assaulters cleared the barricades, Natasha pulled out her knives and went to work, letting her training and her instincts take over. She was in her element here, a melee where nobody could use firearms because everyone was too close together and her agility and her experience could overcome numbers and strength in her opponents and pain in her own body. She'd been grazed at the hip with a bullet and had taken a more direct shot to the back that had knocked her flat but not broken anything because the kevlar had held. It would still be a nasty bruise, possibly worse, but that was not a concern right now.

She kicked a face, feeling the crunch of a nose even though the rubber sole of her boot, and felt her right arm being grabbed and yanked as someone else grabbed at her middle. She fired off one of the rounds on her right bracelet, getting her arm back as the grip on it disappeared, and went limp to twist in her other attacker's grasp, jamming her knife into his kidney as she felt a pistol barrel against her temple. She twisted the knife, shook her head violently, and kicked out with all of her strength, desperate to pull away from the gun at her head. She found herself on the ground, landing on the bullet wound but not feeling a thing except alive as she stumbled back to her feet with a discarded HYDRA blaster in her hand, using it to end the wrestling match.

"The Winter Soldier's here!" she heard shouted by someone in Ukrainian accent. "He's here!"

Natasha was too busy to look for where James was; it made sense that he would come downstairs. This close to the house, neither the machine gunners nor snipers would be helpful and the SHIELD detail had undoubtedly suffered casualties and would need reinforcements. She reclaimed her knife from the side of one of the men she'd just killed and used the blaster to shoot the back of a HYDRA soldier getting the upper edge on Fallows.

"The Winter Soldier is here," someone else called out. "Tell the Widow!"

Natasha looked around sharply at that because she was sure that they hadn't meant her. Which in turn they meant the other Black Widow.

Belova. Belova was here.

Natasha reported it on the radio, getting an acknowledgment from Yondo and permission from him to hunt her down. Which was something she wouldn't be able to do immediately because she was still going to have to fight her way clear to the house. Belova wasn't going to be in the mosh pit; she hadn't been leading the assault. She had come as a supernumerary, same as Natasha and James.

"Is that Captain America's shield?"

"Why the fuck would he have that?"

The first time James flung the shield, everyone on both sides was temporarily frozen in surprise and maybe awe. Most of the SHIELD agents and none of the HYDRA assaulters would have ever seen the shield in motion, the flash of metal as it screamed past. It didn't soar like a frisbee; it moved like a missile. People thought "shield" and figured it was for defense and that's usually how Steve had been depicted using it, but he'd turned it into an awesome and terrifying offensive weapon as well.

And James, who would have known that better than anyone, had just upped the ante because he had clearly thrown it with his prosthetic -- Natasha knew how hard it was to throw with any power or accuracy and the speed at which it had moved was not something that human strength could have authored -- and he had thrown it at neck height, which was guaranteed to be fatal with even the most glancing contact. Crushed windpipes, severed arteries, a direct shot was a decapitation waiting to happen. Steve had usually aimed higher or lower, but the Winter Soldier was nothing if not efficient when to came to killing.

The shield must have taken out at least half a dozen before it ricocheted off a tree and James, running from the moment he had loosed it, leaped up to catch it in his left hand and pivoted in the air to deflect the bullets that came toward him because the moment of shock had passed and Captain America's shield was doing what it had always done and drawn attention.

The shift in focus allowed Natasha to make a break for the house, the battle picking up with a different beat to the drum of war behind her because she could hear the whap-whap-whap of the SHIELD helicopters as she ran up the stairs to the front porch.

"Get out of my way!" she yelled in Russian to the pair of HYDRA troops on the porch. They were momentarily confused -- a woman ordering them around in their native tongue demanded obedience, but then they realized it was Natasha and not Belova. But it was too late for them and she shot them both in the face with her pistols as she ran past.

The house had already been breached; the front door was off its hinges and Dunbar and Park were down, condition unknown beyond 'not good,' as Natasha passed them. She didn't bother doing a proper room-to-room, instead going straight for the basement steps because that's where anyone would know the important business was being conducted.

She had a flashbang grenade on her, an impulse grab when she'd been in the armory earlier and she tossed it down the basement stairs, hoping the distraction was enough to get her down without getting killed.

It was. Barely.

Natasha shot the three HYDRA soldiers near the foot of the stairs before they'd recovered, bringing Belova and another soldier out from the secure comms room. Without giving anything away by turning her head, Natasha could see that the panic room had been unnoticed; the bookcase that slid in front of its entrance was entirely undisturbed.

"Oh, good," Belova said happily when she saw Natasha. "I can take care of this, too."

And then she turned to her compatriot and shot him in the forehead.

"I want this to be just between us," Belova explained, coming fully into the main room. "I don't like to share. Not glory, not lovers, and not my name."

Natasha relaxed her muscles group by group, trying to speed up her recovery from her exertions. Belova still had a pistol in her hand, so Natasha didn't holster hers, but she was pretty sure Belova wasn't going to shoot her. This wasn't going to be about efficiency; this was going to be about enjoying what Belova seemed sure was going to be an inevitable victory. Belova was close enough that Natasha could tell that she was on something, some kind of upper -- amphetamines, some kind of custom cocktail, something that made her eyes a little too bright.

"You're just the latest Black Widow," Natasha said calmly, hoping to draw Belova out until reinforcements arrived for either side -- the distraction and confusion would be an advantage and Natasha would need every one she could get. She hadn't liked James's assessment of Belova's abilities compared to her own, but she wouldn't dismiss them, certainly not when seeing Belova in person. Natasha was sore, she was wounded, she was tired, and Belova was rested and high enough not to care about pain. "You're not the original, you're not even the best. You're just the latest. Soon enough, they'll find someone else."

Belova laughed, like she could clearly see what Natasha was doing and was amused at its desperation. Fair enough. But Natasha was still not going to make the first move.

Belova did, coming at her with a shocking burst of speed that had Natasha turning into a defensive position because there was no way to bring the pistol in her hand up fast enough. They went to the carpeted ground hard and immediately started grappling for the upper hand. Natasha was smaller, she weighed less, and she was exhausted going against Belova's drug-assisted power. But Natasha was not helpless. She had had years of learning how to fight hand-to-hand against all kinds of opponents, male and female, bigger and smaller, stronger and not. She had broken bones and torn muscles and ligaments learning lessons that she now employed here, letting Belova think she was getting her way while Natasha maneuvered herself out of the most dangerous positions.

Natasha still had a small dagger in her boot, not long enough to get Belova in the heart and she didn't think she still had the strength to go through any kind of bone, but any soft spot would do and if Belova wasn't going to be stopped by pain, then Natasha could still render her ineffective by cutting tendons and arteries.

"Lukin's going to laugh," Belova said as she slipped free of Natasha's grapple, pinning Natasha in turn and grabbed Natasha by the hair, slamming her head hard enough on the floor to see stars. "We came here for Peggy Carter hoping she'd lead us to the Winter Soldier, but he's already here. Bastard's going to think it's part of his divine plan, but we both know better than that, don't we, Natasha."

Natasha kept her eyes closed and reached down her own body. Belova had left her right leg free and if she could bring it up enough, she could get the dagger handle with a reach.

Belova shifted, bringing her knee down hard on Natasha's pelvis. Natasha cried out, but fought through the pain and the urge to vomit to grab the hilt and pull, bringing it up and then down hard into the back of Belova's left knee.

Belova grunted, then laughed. "It's all right. I was going to kill you now anyway."

Natasha couldn't get the dagger free again and had to fight for her life empty-handed and with blood pouring into her right eye and a right arm that didn't want to cooperate. Belova had been toying with her, she realized, because all of a sudden, Belova was moving quickly, confidently, and with so much strength and Natasha knew that she was in very deep trouble.

The fight felt like it was going on forever, but it was probably only a couple of minutes before she was pinned again, Belova's knee on her chest and her hand around her throat squeezing tight. Belova's other hand came over her face, pinching close her nose and covering her mouth. Natasha shook her head as hard as she could to break the strangulation hold because she couldn't breathe. She had the surge of adrenaline from panic and desperation, enough for one last push, the rush of blood in her ears drowning out Belova's laughter, but it wasn't enough and the world through her one good eye was starting to gray out until it went black.

It took her a heartbeat to realize that she wasn't dead -- that she had a heartbeat -- and that she could breathe, barely and badly because she was being smothered and didn't have the strength to push her way free to more air. Until suddenly she could breathe, great gasping lungs of still-smoky air, as the weight was lifted off of her.

Belova's body, sans most of her head, lay off to the side, flung by James's left arm, the right still holding the .45 he'd shot her with. Natasha lay there, gasping and choking and trying not to breathe in the gore that was all over her face as she looked up at him, too exhausted and too high on the adrenaline spike to even feel relieved. To feel anything, really, which was why she allowed James to pull her up with her right arm despite the shoulder being dislocated.

She stood on unsteady legs as James wiped her face with his hand, then wiped his own hand on his pants and looked her over. "Let's get that shoulder in before it starts to swell," he said softly and Natasha understood the words, but they didn't seem to penetrate because James had to pull her in, bringing her head to the crook of his neck and holding her tight with one arm as he positioned her to pop the joint back into place. He did it without warning and she bit back a grunt, but then it was done and the pain of it changed to something less acute, but it still all didn't quite register.

"I think I'm in shock," she said against his neck.

He chuckled. "No kidding. Let's get you sitting down before the shakes start."

But he didn't move, instead put his other arm around her and held on tightly, kissing her forehead.

"They wanted you," she said, shifting so that her words weren't lost against his chest. "They wanted to get Peggy to get to you."

She felt him sigh more than she heard him. "I know," he said softly. "Come on, let's go upstairs."

Steve and Peggy and the others were a few feet away and Natasha wanted to go to them, but she knew it wasn't a clear thought or a good idea; they were safe and would remain so. Instead, she let James guide her toward the stairs, going up first himself in case there was trouble but holding her her hand in his.

There wasn't trouble. The house itself was secure, although there was still action going on outside, just skirmishes to round up the prisoners; the triage of the wounded was already underway. James left her at the kitchen table banquette with a wounded Snyder, guarded by Diaz, who was sporting a shallow gash across his face but seemed otherwise okay. Natasha closed her eyes and leaned back as the first tremors hit, doing what she could to fight off the worst of the shakes and chills by focusing on listening to what was going on around her. Diaz was helping Snyder make coffee and tea and dig up food for people to eat; he was talking on the radio; Hostetler had been killed and his duties had been transferred to Diaz. Outside of the kitchen, she could hear discussions about medevacs and prisoner transport and the ETA of the clean-up crew because the house would have to be evacuated and then sanitized.

Natasha focused on the counts of the wounded and killed; the SHIELD detail had done remarkably well considering that they'd been up against a force that was turning out to be at least five times its size. They would have to wait for full daylight -- it was still barely dawn -- before getting a full sense of the carnage in the red and white zones.

In the dining room, QRF commander was talking to Yondo, offering to stay longer despite orders to leave as soon as the site was secure. Yondo was clearly torn -- he wanted the extra manpower, but he knew that the QRF team wasn't cleared to know what was really going on here.

"We'll be okay," Yondo finally told the commander, whose name Natasha had never caught. "This was intended to be a one-shot assault; if there's another, it won't be until after we're long gone."

Natasha didn't realize she'd dozed off until she was being woken up by James with a hand on her shoulder. She startled and then was fine, feeling refreshed for however long she'd been asleep, which hadn't been that long if the still-warm cup of coffee in front of her was any indication.

"We have work to do," James told her, no trace of a smile on his face or warmth in his voice. The Winter Soldier was very near the surface and she reached out for him, wincing at the reminder that her shoulder had been out of its socket so very recently. Either the motion or her reaction to it seemed to jar him loose a little and when she met his eyes, she saw James.

She drank the coffee, pausing to add some milk and accept a few naproxen tablets, and stood up, following James into the living room, where three HYDRA-clad operatives, bloodied but not seriously wounded, were sitting bound to dining room chairs at wrists and ankles. The QRF commander, whose name tape said Steiglitz, was questioning the first of the three, who was clearly feeling the effects of a painkilling injection -- he had a bullet wound in his thigh, Natasha could see as she came closer. James had stopped by the entry, not letting himself be seen.

".... the old woman, Winter Soldier come for her," the prisoner was saying in barely understandable English, his accent made even worse by slurring words. The painkillers were kicking in hard and they'd be lucky to get anything else out of him. "Worked before."

Steiglitz tried to do what he could, even asking Natasha to repeat his questions in Russian, but the prisoner's eyelids drooped and there was nothing else intelligible to be gotten in any language. She shrugged at Steiglitz, who shrugged back and turned to look at James, who nodded and stepped forward.

"You wanted the Winter Soldier," he told the other two in a quiet, bloodless voice. "You have him."

He was speaking Russian, but Natasha didn't think Steiglitz needed to understand the words to realize that he'd gotten perhaps more than he'd bargained for by asking James to help. This wasn't James. He'd been speaking the truth. This was the Winter Soldier.

The two remaining prisoners had the look of combat veterans, but of different stripes. Natasha would bet that the one on the left was career mafiya before he'd found his way to either HYDRA or Lukin; he had that hard look about him. The other had the delicate odor of a true believer, someone whose survival skills had probably surprised everyone including himself; he looked like the easier nut to crack and Natasha wasn't surprised that James stopped in front of him.

"What does Lukin want with me?" James asked in that same low voice.

"He wants to cleanse Russia of all that ails her," the true believer announced, like he was speaking to a crowd. Except he was speaking in Russian and there were precisely three people in the room who understood him and none of them cared.

James unholstered his .45, pressed the muzzle to the guy's knee, and fired all in one motion. The entire room exploded -- SHIELD didn't shoot prisoners -- but James held everyone off with a single look. He wasn't SHIELD and he would do what he needed and there wasn't anyone in the room who was going to stop him.

Natasha felt everyone's eyes on her, expecting her to do something and silently imploring her when she did not, but she ignored them. Ignored James, who had shot her a quick look, a challenge, before reaching down to pick up the prisoner, whose chair had been knocked over backward as he'd tried to get away. James pulled him up by his uniform top, setting the chair upright.

And then he put the .45 to the guy's forehead. "Talk."

The words flowed freely, a babbling stream of how Lukin wanted Peggy to get James back. But instead of saying why, he started telling them about how they'd found the house through trying to track Peggy, who was not at the assisted living facility she'd claimed to have moved to. He was in the middle of explaining how that had worked when all of a sudden, his eyes rolled back and he passed out.

James tipped the chair back over with a kick and turned his attention to the third prisoner, who had remained unfazed by what had happened to his comrades. Natasha thought he looked like the third little piggy, with the house made of brick, as he faced down the wolf blowing at his door.

Off to the side, QRF agents dragged away the second prisoner and started treating his wound and unbinding his wrists and ankles. Natasha could hear someone muttering about lawsuits, which was both ridiculous and not and completely irrelevant.

"Why does Lukin want me?" James asked again, not bothering to move the pistol from where it hung loosely in his hand at his side. The threat was no less valid and this one, the third little piggy, was smart enough to appreciate that. But he didn't look worried and that, in turn, made Natasha nervous.

The third little piggy smiled. "Sputnik," he said and then James was falling, dead weight, and Natasha was in motion before Steiglitz could regain control of the room, ordering the remaining prisoner gagged and all three bound and prepped for transit.

James was breathing easily, slowly and deeply, but he was out cold and Natasha couldn't rouse him. Claes helped her move him to one of the couches.

"What happened?" Claes asked as she rearranged James's arm so that it wasn't pinned against the couch cushion; if he woke up feeling restrained, that could make things very bad indeed.

"Trigger word," Natasha answered. "He didn't get his memories back by breaking his conditioning."

The true meaning of what she'd said hit her a moment before it hit Claes.

"So he could..." Claes trailed off, professional concern warring with the memories of the guy who'd almost singlehandedly won a snowball fight only a couple of weeks ago.

"He could," Natasha agreed as she stood up. "Stay with him and call me the minute he so much as twitches."

She went looking for Yondo, finding him with Steiglitz on the back deck. further out in the yard, the QRF personnel were loading up the helicopters in preparation for departure.

"You have an extra prisoner stretcher?" she asked Steiglitz, who looked confused for half a beat, then nodded.

"You think you're gonna need it?" he asked. "Should I leave a couple guys behind?"

Natasha shook her head. "I don't know if we're going to need it, but we're going to use it just in case," she said. Steiglitz was a commander; technically he outranked Natasha, but most of the best QRF commanders gave the Avengers leeway when it came to being out in the field. The Direct Action Service hated working with the Avengers, but they respected them. "And I don't think a couple of extra men is going to make a difference. The Winter Soldier wakes up, we're in trouble."

Steiglitz chuffed out a humorless laugh. He'd just seen the Winter Soldier in action, or so he thought. None of them had any idea of what James was truly capable of in a fight.

"I'm going to take the ambulance," she told Yondo. The detail had an armored ambulance in a building on the property, fully functional, in case they'd ever had to move Steve or Peggy to a hospital. "I'm going to take him out to someplace quiet and wait to see who wakes up."

Until they knew what -- or who -- they were dealing with, they had to keep James as far away from Steve as possible. If he woke up as the Winter Soldier once more, they couldn't put Steve in immediate physical danger. If he woke up as the Winter Soldier with James's memories and knew that Steve was alive, then Natasha was going to have to know in advance what she was going to have to do: if she killed the Winter Soldier to protect Steve, Steve would never forgive her, but if she let him live and he came back to kill Steve or Peggy, she'd never forgive herself.

Steiglitz would think that she was protecting Peggy and the detail, but Yondo understood what the real purpose was and what, potentially, was at stake. He looked at her with such compassion in his eyes that Natasha had force herself not to look away.

"Tell me what you need," he told her. She nodded, then excused herself and ran to where the helos were already starting to spin up so that she could get a prisoner stretcher.

Hochimura helped her get it up the steps and then carried it into the living room. He and Claes got James transferred to the stretcher, but before they started in on the restraints, Natasha had to strip James of weapons, which required rolling him from side to side to remove belt and boot knives and his tactical gear and the dozen other weapons of various obviousness that James kept on his person. And then she took off his arm, which visibly disturbed Claes, and opened up the hidden panel on the interface where the power supply was and pulled that out, too, because while she'd never seen it in action, she knew Tony had given James some kind of remote control access over the arm and she didn't know the range.

"Store them carefully and keep them safe," she told Hassan, who'd come over to help and was shifting the weapons into bags. "He can be fussy about his toys."

By the time they were done strapping James down with all of the restraints, the QRF team was gone and Yondo was back inside.

"Fallows is getting the ambo," he told her. "Now that it's just us again, would you like to go open up the panic room? I think Captain Rogers and Ms. Carter would appreciate a familiar face as the first they see."

Natasha smiled as best she could because he was doing her a kindness, especially because she was going to have to tell them about James -- and Belova -- and doing that in front of witnesses, even friendly witnesses, would be uncomfortable for her and for Steve.

The procedure to open up the panic room was complicated to make sure that it was not being done under false pretenses, but once all of the steps and confirmations had taken place, the bookcase was shifted and then there was the quiet hiss of the security doors.

The panic room was large enough that the half-dozen people who'd been in it hadn't been cramped or claustrophobic. It was well-lit, comfortable, and smelled faintly of chamomile because the occupants had been drinking tea as part of their breakfast.

"Don't you look a fright," Peggy said, but gently because she could tell that Natasha was exhausted, injured, and something had gone wrong.

"You okay?" Steve asked as Natasha stepped aside so that Felicity could pass. He was sitting in the armchair next to Peggy's, still in his pajamas and bare feet, but he was looking her over as critically as he ever had in the field while wearing his uniform. "Under the circumstances."

Natasha was careful not to shrug because naproxen was better than tylenol, but it only did so much. "I'm beat to hell and was about three seconds from being suffocated to death," she said, surprisingly herself with the honesty and then feeling embarrassed for it. "It'll heal."

Steve made a face that she translated into him deciding not to press her on the lie -- they both knew that coming so close to death didn't fade as quickly as a bruise.

"What won't?" he asked gently. Warily. Because Steve knew that James would be here checking on him if he could, even if he was supposed to be doing something else.

Peggy reached over and put her hand on his and he turned his wrist so he could hold on, too.

"Our visitors were from Lukin," Natasha began. "They were wearing HYDRA gear, but whether they were HYDRA-HYDRA or Lukin's new HYDRA, we don't know and I'm not even sure it makes a difference. They came here looking for you, Peggy. They came here hoping to grab you to flush out James so Lukin could get his favorite toy back."

Both of them looked stricken for a moment, but Peggy's look quickly turned into anger, then concern as she glanced back at Steve, who was now clearly expecting to hear the worst.

"He's here and he's alive," Natasha hurriedly assured him, waiting for him to exhale and relax a little before she said anything more. He was still holding Peggy's hand tightly.

"But," Steve prompted.

"But one of the prisoners used a trigger word on him during the interrogation," Natasha continued. "Knocked him out cold. His vitals are fine, but we can't rouse him yet."

Steve absorbed this, then furrowed his brow. "So what's the problem?"

Natasha thought, from the look on Peggy's face, that she might have already realized what it was. "We don't know if the trigger did anything other than knock him out. We don't know who wakes up, Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier."

Steve looked like he was about to protest, but then he looked over at Peggy and didn't. He deflated instead, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes, leaving Peggy and Natasha to exchange worried and rueful looks.

Without waiting for Steve to open his eyes, Natasha explained what they were doing for and to James, how she would take him somewhere isolated and hope for the best and prepare for the worst. She was vague about that last part, but she had no misconceptions that Steve understood every single word she wasn't saying.

"I want to see him before you go," Steve said, almost challengingly.

"Of course," Natasha agreed easily. "I'll go grab Hochimura and we'll get you upstairs right away."

Right away was closer to twenty minutes, but James wasn't moving even a little, so there was no hurry.

Belova's body had been removed earlier, but there was still blood and gore all over and it would have been obvious what had happened in the space. Steve, of course, made the connection between Natasha's confession and the scene and he gave her a look that Natasha knew to translate into "I'm glad you're alive."

"It was Belova," she said, which surprised Steve and Peggy, who was right behind him with Joanne helping her out. "James killed her."

That Steve's 'assassination' had been avenged had turned out to be almost a minor detail on the morning's activities. It had been anticlimactic and, if she'd had had a chance to ask James, he probably would have agreed that he felt no better for having done what he'd promised to do.

"Good," Peggy said firmly.

The house was chaotic in a less frantic way by the time Peggy and Steve got up to the main level. The remaining agents were in the process of stripping the place down, everyone's personal effects being packed, all of the food, even the video game consoles were being boxed and prepped for transport. In addition to the ambulance and other vehicles, the detail had tractor trailers on call because moving -- and possibly moving quickly -- had always been a probability. SHIELD had a lot of experience evacuating facilities, safehouses and publicly known properties both, and once Steve and all evidence of his existence was removed, the professional cleaning crews would come through. Natasha suspected that the final steps might involve setting the entire place on fire -- fingerprints and DNA couldn't be left to risk discovery -- but didn't know the details.

Steve, with Hochimura helping him on the other side from his cane, walked slowly into the living room and action there quieted to a halt. Claes, who'd been sitting next to James's gurney, stood almost to attention. Natasha noticed that Steve's shield was on the other couch, next to the box with James's weapons, atop which sat his arm.

"At ease, soldier," Steve told him with a smile that Natasha could tell was fake but didn't think Claes could.

Steve steered himself and Hochimura over to the opposite side of James's gurney from Claes, who backed up to give Steve some privacy. Hochimura did the same as soon as Steve was balanced by leaning on the locked gurney. Steve shuffled forward until he could turn James's head toward him and lean forward until their faces were only inches apart. He said something to James, but Natasha wasn't close enough to make out the words and, besides, they weren't for anyone to overhear. And then he leaned forward and kissed James's forehead and then stood up. He looked over at Natasha.

"You'll bring him back," he said, not making it a question.

Hochimura and Claes moved the gurney out to the ambulance and secured it in the rear while Natasha met with Yondo, who asked her if she wanted anyone along and then, when she said no, handed her a paper map with a point circled and coordinates and directions written on the side.

"It makes Yoder look like Manhattan," he explained, referring to the nearest town, which wasn't exactly near or much of a town. "You'll have space."

Then he gave her the protocols for contact, when he would call if she didn't, what would happen if they needed to be retrieved, which Natasha was grateful for because he meant the plural when they both knew it could very likely be just her. Then he wished her godspeed and let her go.

She went upstairs to change into civilian clothes and to pack her things and James's things, leaving the bags in Steve's room so that they'd be collected.

Diaz stopped her on the way out, holding up a shopping bag. "Thermos of hot cocoa with a couple of shots of espresso," he said. "Some fruit and sandwiches and stuff we're packing up out of the fridge. And the last of Gruning's cranberry handpies, since Mister Barnes likes those."

She smiled, because the alternative was to start crying, and thanked him.

Once in the driver's seat of the ambulance, she studied the map directions for a few minutes before turning the key in the ignition. She drove quickly but carefully, not wanting to draw attention -- or more attention than a private ambulance would. The trip took a little more than three hours, during which there wasn't anything coming out of the monitor from the rear. She pulled over off the road, which by this point was an unpaved local route, and waited a few minutes before getting out.

She walked around the ambulance, looking around with her naked eyes and then with binoculars, and decided that this place would do. She unlocked the rear and checked on James, whose pulse and breathing were still normal and he was showing no signs of being close to waking. She'd seen him sleep and she'd watched him wake, both as Bucky-James and Winter Soldier-James, and she didn't think he could fool her. He twitched in his sleep right before he woke, sometimes strongly enough to wake her if she was close enough, and she didn't think he even knew that he did it, let alone that he'd be able to control it.

It was freezing cold again after a 'warm' spell that had been enough to get rid of the snow, but she wasn't ready to sit watch over James just yet, so she took another brisk march up to the road and back again, then again, then checked on James, covering him with the blankets she'd been given so she could leave the door ajar as she sat on the rear bumper and pulled out her phone.

"Hey," Clint answered, loud music in the background. He was out, wherever he was. She didn't even know what continent he was on. "I thought you weren't back in New York until Monday."

"I'm not," she said, realizing her voice would give her away only after she spoke.

Clint said something in Hebrew to someone else, not bothering to cover the phone, then: "Give me two minutes and I'll call you back. Is that okay?"

He was asking as much about her as whether it would be safe for her phone to ring. She agreed, then spent the time until her phone vibrated in her hand walking loops around the ambulance.

There was no background noise when Clint called back. "What happened?"

She told him about the assault on the house, about what James had done and then what had been done to him, what she was doing now and the various expectations for what would happen next. Her voice didn't break, but it came close a few times and she paused to regain control, Clint waiting her out patiently.

"Do you know what you're going to do?" Clint asked after she was done explaining how she was sitting in the middle of nowhere watching over her lover to see if he woke up as friend or foe.

If James became the Winter Soldier again, then he'd be Lukin's to command and Lukin, even with his eyes on Russia, wouldn't leave such an opportunity to waste. James knew about Steve, knew about what SHIELD was up to, knew everything about the Avengers and Doom, and Lukin would take all of it and use it against them without hesitation. He would be able to do what Schmidt never could. If she let the Winter Soldier go -- if she even died in the attempt to stop him -- then all was lost. So she had to be prepared to act first and quickly.

"I'm going to kill him," she said. "If he wakes up as the Winter Soldier, we're never getting him back."

Steve might never forgive her, but he'd also never believe the truth, which was that even if the conditioning was broken for good, even if James knew himself again, he'd never recover from it. If James did something while under the Winter Soldier spell, to Steve, to Peggy, to her, to America, he'd be lost forever. He wouldn't let them try to save him again and he'd take care of the 'problem' by himself, as he had very probably intended to do last time. Except that this time there would be no revenge spree first.

Clint didn't try to give her hope or assure her that things would never come to that, nor did he tell her that she was brave or a good soldier or a good anything else. They'd never really spoken much about his time under Loki's control, about what she might have had to do, what she had been prepared to do when they'd finally met if simply knocking him on the head hadn't worked. He understood, probably better than anyone, what was going on in James's head and why it was both similar and so very different to what had gone on in his own. He wouldn't give her his blessing to kill James if she had to because she didn't need one, but he understood why it would be necessary here and he would be one less pair of judging eyes for her to face later.

Instead, he started telling her a story from his time in the Army, some tale that got more byzantine and ridiculous as it progressed, until he finally got to the punchline, which involved a camel wearing bells. There was no point to it, it had no relevancy to anything that had happened today, but Clint knew that there was nothing to say about what was going on, no right words, so instead of choosing wrong ones, he went off on his own tangent because silent support didn't work well over the phone.

"You call me when this is over, Natochka," he said before hanging up. "Even if Bucky wakes up and wants to know what's for lunch. I don't care what time it is or if you don't have anything to say. Promise me."

She did, then tucked her phone in her coat pocket and got into the ambulance to wait.

James didn't stir until late afternoon, the twitches she'd been waiting for starting and then stopping and then starting again. She was almost relieved by that point; the tension and the anticipation and the dread had become unbearable. She'd been trapped in the ambulance's rear compartment with nothing but her hopes and fears, watching James, who had been her past, was her present, and could be her future, and wondering if she was always destined to destroy her own happiness. She was exhausted from the pre-dawn raid and from fighting for her life and the emotional stress of what had happened afterward and it was wearing away at her defenses.

She'd spoken to Yondo at the prescribed times and Fury, who'd called her already knowing what was going on and hadn't pretended like he didn't know what she was going to do. She'd eaten lunch and had some of the cocoa and gone for quick walks to keep from getting sleepy or when her head got too full. But now she sat watching and waiting, a tranquilizer gun in her hand because if she had to use it, she could hit James anywhere and it would work while a bullet would have to hit something important to matter and might not be enough. If she had to kill him, it would be easier for her and kinder to both of them if he was unconscious.

James came awake slowly at first, then suddenly and completely and in a panic because he sensed the restraints and the missing arm. He tried to fight his way free, rocking the gurney.

"James, stop it!" she barked out in English and he turned his head, wild-eyed and then seeing her and stilling.

"Why?" he asked hoarsely, confusion on his face.

"What's the last thing you remember?" she asked instead.

James furrowed his brow, like he was trying to chase thoughts. He had relaxed his body as if he were satisfied with his own safety, even under restraint, but she couldn't rely on that.

"The house getting attacked," he began, then his eyes grew wide. "Steve?"

"Do you remember who you killed?" Natasha asked rather than answer anything about Steve. If James were himself, he'd understand later even if he was still looking frantic now.

He stared at her for a long moment, then his face cleared. "Belova," he answered. "She was killing you."

She'd had all afternoon to come up with ways to try to prove that James was himself and not the Winter Soldier pretending to be James. The best she'd been able to come up with was simply to get him to talk and gauge his responses and his patience. The Winter Soldier was arguably the world's most lethal assassin, but his covers, in as much as he had ever used them, had been simple. He had never been trained to pretend to be someone else for an extended time, to have to convince other people that he was someone other than who he was. For the Winter Soldier, being Bucky Barnes again would be difficult to sustain, especially up against Natasha, who knew him so well.

So they talked about inconsequential things that still required details and reactions from him, moving from topic to topic and she watched and he was letting her, not pressing for information about Steve or what had become of the safehouse or its survivors.

"Natasha," he finally said. "I gotta pee, so either you make your call on me or grab a cup."

The look on his face was pure James, unapologetic and amused and wry and expectant and a little bit of a dare.

She'd already seen enough to be as convinced as she could be without any way to know for sure, but his expression helped a little nonetheless. Which did not mean that she wasn't still holding the tranquilizer gun after she undid the restraints and told him to go water a nearby tree.

He wasn't very graceful or quick about it because he had to do everything one-handed, but she didn't offer to help and he didn't ask for any. When he came back, he asked for something to clean himself up with, holding out his arm. "I think I still have Belova's brains under my fingernails."

She found antibacterial soap and a water bottle, which meant putting down the tranquilizer gun, but she was comfortable enough to do that. James was being docile under care in a way that had been one of the earliest things she'd noticed as a difference between the version she'd known in her youth and the one she'd met again.

She had to wash his hand and forearm for him, massaging in the soap and getting rid of the layers of grime. It was intimate and vulnerable for both of them, but it was also an act of faith, a re-establishment of trust, and more effective than any words could have been.

James accepted a wet cloth and wiped his own face before letting her dry his arm. He closed his hand around her wrist gently and she stilled but didn't otherwise react. She wasn't scared of him, even though she possibly should have been. She met his gaze and waited.

"You would have," he asked, although it wasn't really a question.

"Yes," she confirmed.

He nodded, then pulled her in and rested his forehead against hers. "Thank you."

They stood there like that for a long moment before she tilted her head up and kissed him, wanting the comfort for herself as much, if not more, than she wanted to offer it to James. When they broke apart, he was smiling at her.

"There's cocoa?"

She punched him in the kidney, not hard enough to hurt, but she was smiling, too.

As James ate -- he might've had a moment at Diaz's gift of Gruning's handpies, but Natasha pretended not to notice -- she contacted Yondo, who did not hide his relief at the happy resolution and promised to pass word on to Steve. The detail had already relocated to a temporary safehouse in North Dakota and Natasha got directions to proceed directly there.

Natasha was exhausted on many levels, but while James could have driven if it had been really necessary, she took the wheel. It was gong to be a few hours of driving and they spent the first hour discussing the details of the evacuation and the temporary safe house as Yondo had described them. They would be there for at least twenty-four hours and possibly as long as a week while Fury and Hill tried to find a new location. There were two full Direct Action Teams -- one of them Corrales's -- being flown in to nearby military bases to serve as QRF response units in case the evacuation had been observed and the safehouse compromised.

But after that, they were mostly just quiet. Natasha suggested James call Steve, but he demurred, saying it would be better to talk in person.

They arrived at the safehouse after night fell, driving slowly past rifle-bearing agents too bundled up against the cold to identify in the dark.

Steve and Peggy were asleep in the master bedroom, prompting James to joke about it being a shame that they had a house full of chaperones.

James was received more warmly than warily, but he still told Hassan to hold on to the box of his weapons for the time being, claiming he wouldn't need them in the shower. "I do want my arm back, though," he said. "I feel like a fucking slot machine."

Natasha put the battery pack back in and followed him into the bathroom so she could help him put it back on after he took his shirt off, but left him alone then, going into the kitchen where there was a big pot of soup on the stove.

When a half hour had passed and James still hadn't returned, she went to go look for him and found the bathroom door still closed. She knocked -- someone else could have been using it by now -- but the door opened to reveal James sitting on the side of the tub with a towel wrapped around his waist and Steve sitting on the toilet seat cover, leaning on his cane. They both looked up at her with near-matching looks of naughty boys caught at mischief and she had to cover up the way her heart caught by pretending to be annoyed at the both of them for commandeering the bathroom when there was only the one for so many.

James came into the kitchen five minutes later, clean, dressed, and looking far more relaxed than he had been at any point since he'd woken up.

"You two are good?" she asked as she handed him a bowl and spoon.

"Always," he replied with a smile.

The next few days were largely a blur for Natasha. Without any electronic surveillance and a reduced amount of available agents, everyone except Peggy and Steve and the medical personnel rotated through perimeter guard shifts, interior guard shifts, and sleeping. Natasha and James were on separate schedules because she'd crashed hard once they were fed and fell asleep curled up on a loveseat while James, who'd slept all day, had gone out for perimeter duty. But on the fourth day, Natasha came inside from perimeter duty to a buzz of excitement and people packing up once more.

Their next location had been decided: they were going to New York.

Also posted at DW.