fic: with your pockets full of rain (Avengers; Steve/Bucky/Natasha; adult)
with your pockets full of rain
Avengers (2012); Steve/Natasha/Bucky; adult; no Cap 2 spoilers; 9,650 words
In which Steve loves puppies and freedom and Russian assassins. Not necessarily in that order.
Notes at the end.
~*~
with your pockets full of rain
Natasha knows better than to even think about being bored on a mission, even one as uneventful as this one has been, so while she waits for their ride, she refamiliarizes herself with the Port of Vladivostok. She hasn't been there in years.
"Did you hear that?" Steve asks softly, straightening up from where he's leaning against the wall of the warehouse.
She shakes her head.
"Be right back."
For a big man, he moves quietly, but she feels him leave as much as she sees it, feels cool air in the space warmed by his body, hears the silence replace the soft sound of his breath.
She waits, patient until his silence stretches for a little longer than he usually lets it. "Cap?"
"Be with you in a minute." He doesn't sound worried or use a code word to indicate danger of any sort.
Natasha bites back a sigh. "If you're rescuing a kitten in a tree--"
"It's a dog, actually, and there's a litter of puppies," Steve says, amusement in his voice. "I just want to make sure they're o--Shit."
Natasha is already on the move, though she can hear Steve muttering more curses beneath the sounds of high-pitched barking and the floor collapsing. Then she hears Steve's gasp as he gets the wind knocked out of him.
There are six tiny balls of fur barking furiously at a hole in the warehouse floor. Natasha lowers herself carefully through the hole and is about to say something mocking about not being able to rescue puppies on his own when she notices that Steve is staring, slack-jawed, at a cryostasis tube.
Natasha suppresses an instinctive shudder and forces herself to examine it. A low greenish light emanates from the tube, throwing a sickly cast over Steve's skin. The tube hums softly and steadily. The glass is clear, and she takes a couple of steps towards it, her mind refusing to accept what she's seeing.
Steve's expression has gone from shock to horror, and he raises the shield, obviously planning to smash the glass. Natasha grabs his arm, feeling the muscles and tendons shift under her fingers, like he's thinking of throwing her off, but she holds on.
"Wait," she says, her voice sharp. "You'll kill him." She takes short shallow breaths through her nose and clamps down on the feelings that want to escape her iron control. She looks over the console attached to the tube, dials and gauges and blinking lights, all labeled neatly in Russian. She doesn't know what to do, but knows she has to do something to calm Steve down.
"I watched him die," Steve says. He's wild-eyed and she can feel him trembling. "How is he still alive?"
So apparently that rumor was true. Natasha had never quite believed it herself, though his English had had a hint of Brooklyn in it she didn't recognize until years later, and even then dismissed the story as a fairy tale. She doesn't let herself react to the news beyond a small, tight smile, as genuine as she can make it. "You think you're the only person who got frozen in the Forties?"
He huffs in disbelief but lowers his shield. "Is he--Is he really still alive?"
"I don't know," Natasha says, unwilling to offer him a comforting lie. "I never worked with this equipment." She taps a monitor. "But the power is still on and his vital signs appear stable."
One of the puppies comes tumbling down through the hole then. Steve catches it absently, most of his attention still focused on her and the tube, and it wriggles in his palm, barking excitedly.
"Hey, little fella, it's okay," he murmurs, brushing a finger through its fur. Natasha has never been one to be charmed by small animals, but there's something very charming about this, or there would be, if they didn't currently have the Winter Soldier frozen in a tube behind them.
Natasha breathes in deeply and exhales slowly. "You look after the puppies. I'll make sure we get him out of here." She turns away and starts snapping orders into her comm so she doesn't have to see the unguarded look of hope on his face, and the mulishness that overtakes it when he realizes she's shutting him out of the action, such as it is. She needs to be calm and clear-headed about this, and Steve looks like he's seen a ghost. The puppies can offer him comfort she can't. Not here. Not now.
Once she's communicated the change in plans for their extraction, she takes a fortifying breath and makes another call.
"Tony, how soon can you be in Vladivostok?"
"And a good afternoon to you, too, Agent Romanoff."
"Tony."
He hears her impatience, maybe, or the seriousness of the situation in her voice because his answer is devoid of sarcasm. "Four hours. Three if it's urgent. Is it urgent?"
"It's urgent."
"Do you need a favor, Natasha?" he asks slyly.
"Do you hate puppies and freedom?" Steve glances up at her from where he's gathering the litter on his shield, eyebrows raised curiously. She gives him another small smile. "Because unless you do, you will do what I'm telling you right now."
"I guess since it's for your boyfriend..."
Steve's head jerks up again, a concerned look on his face this time, but she shakes him off. She'll deal with Tony's insinuations later. "Tony, I'm not kidding around."
"Okay. Okay. I'm on my way."
"I'm uploading the coordinates to Jarvis now."
Her next call is to Coulson, on a private channel Steve can't listen in on. "You know that op you're running at the Russian-Chinese border? I need your cache of Stark weapons."
"We've spent months putting this together."
"And having your cache destroyed by Iron Man will cement the cover. He's not going to be happy about you using them without telling him, you know, even if it is to track down arms dealers."
"Agent Romanoff," Coulson chides.
"He's on his way."
"Natasha, you know you can't just destroy months of careful work for--"
"Do you want the matched set?"
Coulson pauses; she can practically hear him shift gears as her meaning sinks in. "Excuse me?"
"The piece you're missing from your collection. I can't guarantee mint condition--best case might be some slight foxing at the edges, and that's only if we're very lucky--but if you don't do this..." She lets it trail off into silence.
Coulson sucks in a surprised breath and she feels a small pang of triumph; he's usually so unflappable. She almost can't bear the hope in his voice when he asks, "The rumors were true?"
"Yes, according to the one person who'd know."
Coulson huffs softly. "Fine. How soon should we expect the pyrotechnics?"
"Three hours or so."
*
The freighter carrying the quinjet that's going to fly them home docks about an hour later. Natasha explains only that the plan has been changed and Iron Man will be joining them to help them load highly classified cargo onto the jet.
"What cargo is that?" one of the agents asks.
"We'll brief you all when Iron Man gets here," she says. That doesn't satisfy them.
"It's above your pay grade, agent," Steve says when they press her for answers. That shuts down any backchat. Which is good, because Natasha is going to have to do some very fast talking, and she doesn't want to have to do it twice.
The agents are too busy teasing Steve about his new pets to fuss. Natasha makes a note of it. The puppies have been a useful distraction more than once already; such knowledge could be useful someday.
Tony arrives a while later. "Two hours and fifty-five minutes for you, Natasha. That's got to be a record."
"Too bad you can't ever tell anyone about it," she answers, unimpressed. It doesn't do to give him too much positive reinforcement; he's the poster child for taking a mile when given an inch.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." He waves her off. "I'll have the satisfaction of knowing." He pops up his faceplate. "So what's cooking? Needed my brilliance to liven up this little party?"
Natasha leads him into the warehouse and down to the lower level where the tube sits, the unexploded bombshell that is the Winter Soldier resting inside. "What do you know about cryonics?"
"Are we thawing out the frozen head of Walt Disney? Is that why it's all so hush-hush?"
"You told me that was a myth," Steve says wryly.
Tony grins at him and then blinks as if he doesn't believe what he's seeing, which is Steve sitting on the floor with six puppies asleep in his shield and their mother curled up at his side, all of them vaguely greenish in the eerie glow of the tube. "Am I really seeing this or have I finally lost all connection to reality?"
Steve gives him a tired grin in return. "I don't think you ever had a strong connection to reality, Tony, but yes. We rescued some puppies."
"You brought me here--I was scheduled to have lunch with Pepper at one and we haven't seen each other in almost a week, so if you brought me here to rescue puppies, she is going to be pretty pissed, even after I send her this picture and offer a puppy as a peacekeeping gesture. I'd sleep with one eye open, is what I'm saying." He jerks his chin at Natasha. "Even you. You wouldn't like to meet Pepper when she's angry."
"No," Steve says, and his voice is soft, and just a little wondering. "We have a very good reason for dragging you away from your lunch with Pepper. The puppies are just an added bonus. And Pepper can have one if she wants."
"Of course. Captain America saves the world and a basket of puppies, all before breakfast." He heaves a sigh. "Okay, kids, what's going on?"
Natasha bites back a sigh of her own, but she'd known what she was getting into when she called him, and points to the cryostasis tube. "Can you keep him alive during a transfer to a quinjet, and then from the jet to," she glances over at Steve, "a secure lab in New York?"
Tony looks at the console, not the tube, and his brow furrows.
"I can translate," Natasha offers.
Tony shakes his head. "No, it's fine. It's just been a while since I had to read Russian. Yeah, as long as you've got a stable power source, this shouldn't be a problem."
"And you'll be able to wake him when we get to New York?" That's Steve, sounding incredibly young and hopeful in a way that makes Natasha's heart break.
"Maybe," Tony says, tapping a couple of the gauges on the console lightly. "Cyronics was one of dad's hobbies." He turns to look at Steve. "He was more interested in the thawing than the freezing, obviously. He never put any of that tech on the market, though, at least that I'm aware of. So this isn't exactly up to Stark standards." Tony walks a slow circle around the tube now, like he's figuring out how it all fits together in his head. "Who is this guy?"
Natasha says, "The Winter Soldier."
At the same time, Steve says, "It's Bucky." Natasha squeezes his shoulder but he doesn't flinch.
Tony swings around to look at them. "So while you were a Capsicle, the Russians had themselves a Barnesicle?" Natasha glares at him. "What? Just because I wasn't a fan doesn't mean I don't know the story. Though not the whole story, obviously." He does another circle around the tube. "Yeah, okay, I know how to do this, but we have to do it fast. The battery's old and probably can't sustain life support for very long."
Natasha doesn't understand much of what comes out of Tony's mouth as he barks orders at various SHIELD operatives to load the apparatus onto the quinjet while he removes panels and plugs in cables. She spends most of that time asking Deputy Director Hill to start looking into the ownership of the warehouse, because somebody had to know he was here, and she wants to know who's going to come looking once they realize he's gone.
Once the whole thing has disappeared into the quinjet, she sends Tony off to the border; having him make a show of destroying Coulson's weapons cache will cover their presence in Russian airspace--they'll play it like they've been sent to rein him in--in addition to solidifying Coulson's cover story with the Chinese gunrunners his team is trying to infiltrate.
Fury's waiting for them at the tower, arms crossed over his chest and frown on his face. "This belongs in a secure SHIELD facility," he says before any of them can say anything. "We can set up a lab to your specifications, Stark," he continues, "but there's no way you can keep him here."
"This is one of the most secure buildings in the country," Tony says. "In the world, even."
"Do you know who the Winter Soldier is?" Fury counters.
"It's Bucky," Steve says before Tony can answer. "And I'd feel better knowing that he wasn't going to disappear into SHIELD custody like, like..."
"Like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark," Tony supplies.
"Like that," Steve agrees, nodding.
"This is not the movies and this is not open to debate. The Winter Soldier is--" He's interrupted by the high-pitched yips of the puppies and louder barks from their mother, which Steve had insisted on befriending and bringing along, because the puppies need their mother, and Natasha needs to work on her defenses against Steve's face when he wants something, because she'd found herself agreeing after only about five minutes of arguing instead of at least thirty. "What the hell is that?"
"I think they're a shepherd-husky mix," Steve says. "There are six puppies, and we'll have to find homes for them. I'd offer you one, but I don't know if I trust you with a puppy."
Fury opens his mouth and then snaps it shut again. Natasha hopes Tony's recording this because it's only the third time she's ever seen him speechless.
Tony's grin is wild and genuine. "Do you need some aloe for that burn, Nick? Because you just got told by Captain America." Fury is still chewing over his response when Bruce and Thor arrive on the roof. Tony turns to them. "Bruce, do you think Betty would be willing to come in and help out on this?"
"What is this?" Bruce asks.
"It's better than the frozen head of Walt Disney," Tony says.
At the same time, Steve says, "It's Bucky."
Bruce looks at Natasha, who shrugs. "It's a long story." She puts a hand on Steve's arm, pulls him away from the others for a private conference. "I know you don't want to hear this, but Fury's right." She hates that he looks so betrayed, and she holds up a hand to stop him from arguing. "When I tell you that the Winter Soldier is the most dangerous operative Department X ever produced, I'm not exaggerating. He trained me, and even I was only able to fight him to a draw most of the time. Do you really want to wake him up in the midst of a vulnerable civilian population? When there's no guarantee we can deprogram him?"
Steve's face crumples for a moment, he closes his eyes and lowers his head, and she tightens her grip on his forearm. He takes two ragged breaths and then straightens, squaring his shoulders, setting his jaw and wiping any expression off his face. "If that's your recommendation, Agent Romanoff, then that's what we'll do."
Still, he looks like something's broken inside of him when they all climb back into the quinjet for the brief cross-town trip to SHIELD.
*
Tony and Bruce quickly get the cryostasis chamber set up in one of the labs at SHIELD. Steve sits in a corner of the room, surrounded by his new pets (even Tony had known better than to argue at that point) and watching everything carefully. He's already refused to attend the debriefing about their assigned mission and Fury's let him, but Natasha doesn't know how far this leniency will extend. If he were anyone else, she doesn't think it would have stretched this far, even if they've brought Fury a major coup in a career full of them.
"As soon as we figure out the best protocols for easing him out of stasis, we'll have SHIELD send in a deprogrammer," Bruce says.
"He's not a computer," Steve says hotly.
"He's been brainwashed," Natasha says before Steve can get going. "Over and over again. For years. We don't know what's left of the man you knew."
"He's in there," Steve insists.
Natasha gives a noncommittal bob of her head. She's seen crazier things, but she knows better than to hope. Especially since she knows firsthand what the Department X doctors were capable of.
"Everyone will do their best to bring him back," she says. Bruce and Tony nod and say some nonsense that Steve will hopefully find reassuring.
Steve looks down at his hands. "I know." He sniffs, shakes his head, and stands up. "I know you will." He looks around, like he's just become aware of the lab, and says, "I can't be here right now."
Natasha slides her hand into his and twines their fingers. "Come on."
"Call me as soon as you know anything," he says as they leave the lab.
Bruce nods and Tony says, "Of course." Well, he says more than that, but the door is already swinging shut behind her, and she can't hear it.
She takes Steve back to his suite in the tower, neither of them up for the long ride back to Brooklyn, and instead of leaving him at his door, she follows him inside. There are some things more important than the secrecy of their relationship at this point (especially if Tony's already figured it out), and she doesn't want to leave Steve alone, not when he looks like his whole world has come crashing down around his ears yet again. It's a feeling Natasha is all too familiar with herself.
She leads him into the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as they go. When she turns to face him under the fluorescent light, he's already stepping out of his pants. She likes how easily he follows her lead, how he doesn't need to always be in charge. They're both naked now, and she takes a moment to appreciate the perfection of him, the broad shoulders and firmly sculpted chest, the ridged muscles of his abdominals, the heavy power of his thighs and the hard length of his cock between them, curving up towards his belly. Natasha feels the hot clutch of desire in her cunt, the reminder that this is real, not just work, and she smiles. She steps into the tub--it's large enough for an orgy--and Steve follows. She wraps herself around him and combs her fingers through the hair on the nape of his neck before she tugs him down into a kiss.
He sighs into her mouth, and she can feel some of the tension he's been carrying ease, replaced by something better, if more fleeting. She likes that he kisses with his whole body, fully present in the moment the way she has so rarely had the luxury to be. She nips his lip and tugs at his hair, communicating the urgency of her desire to him, and he breathes a soft laugh against her wet skin. He presses her to the tile, cool against her back, and she reaches down to guide him inside her, already wet and aching for him.
She arches into his thrusts and allows herself to be noisy with him, not just because he likes it (he'd blushed the first time he'd admitted it), but because she does. She likes that he can draw her out of herself, remind her that her body can be used for pleasure in addition to work. She thinks briefly of the Winter Soldier, the first man who taught her this, and wonders if he'd taught Steve as well. Imagining that sparks another wave of heat in her veins, and she clenches tightly around Steve, her orgasm tantalizingly within reach.
He slides a hand over her hip and then down between them to rub her clit with his thumb, and she moans as pleasure cascades through her. He fucks her through it, hard and fast, and then he comes, pouring himself into her with a low, rough noise. He buries his face in the crook of her neck, and she imagines she can feel his tears, hot against her skin, even under the spray of the shower. She holds him close as he shakes apart again, this time for far less pleasant reasons.
She admires how easily he makes himself vulnerable to her, even though she's not sure it's a good idea, and she wants to return the favor, though she's definitely sure that's not a good idea. It's necessary now, though. Truth has a way of making itself known around Steve, and there are many truths she'd prefer he found out from her rather than SHIELD.
"Come on," she finally says, after the shower has rinsed it all away.
They wrap themselves in fluffy robes and curl up together on the oversized bed. Steve lays his head on her chest and she rests her chin on it, stroking a hand through the soft, wet brush of his hair.
"When I was a child," she begins, "I was taken from the only home I'd ever known and brought to the Red Room. I don't remember why or how, just that it was snowing, and there was blood on the snow. My parents were dead." At least, she thinks they were her parents; the memories are hazy and washed out now, like a watercolor left out in the rain. "A man with a very large gun offered me his hand and I took it." She closes her eyes, the scene still as vivid in her mind as it was the day it happened: the bright white of freshly fallen snow, the shock of red staining it, trailing from the dead body on the ground, the sinister grey of the man's gun and the black wool of his glove as he held his hand out to her. She banishes it by opening her eyes again. "We were countless girls, removed from orphanages or abandoned by our parents, only to be taken in by the state and trained to be weapons." She takes a deep breath and Steve presses a kiss above her heart, comforting her as much as she's comforting him.
"I've read your file but I didn't know you'd started so young," he says, his arms tightening around her.
"Yeah." She drops a kiss on the top of his head. "Not everything is in the file." She can feel him nod. Clint knows as much of it as she's ever been able to tell and Coulson knows almost as much. Who can say what Fury knows? She'd given him the official story and then the unofficial story, but never the personal story, and now she has to steel herself to tell it again.
She keeps to the simple unadorned truth as she remembers it, which may or may not be the way things actually happened. If truth has a way of coming out around Steve, it has a way of twisting in on itself around her. Perhaps she has a superpower after all. Or perhaps it's just the transitory nature of memory, especially when one that's been rewritten as many times as hers has been.
"They brought in the best of their spies and soldiers to train us and they taught us to fight, to spy, and to seduce." Steve makes a small, distressed noise and Natasha scratches her nails against his scalp in reassurance. "He was not my trainer for that," she says. "He taught me how to speak English like an American, how to kill efficiently from a distance and silently up close, and how to make myself disappear into a panicked crowd afterwards. The other was--we were partnered in training and in the field for several missions. We were young--at least, he never appeared to be more than twenty-five, no matter how much time passed between our meetings, and the rumor was they kept him in stasis between missions--and we spent a lot of time together. He was a hero to us, and what we all aspired to be--the perfect assassin, his only loyalty to the Motherland. I know it's hard to believe, but he could be surprisingly charming."
"No," Steve says, tilting his head up to meet her gaze, "that's not surprising at all. Bucky got all the dames. Even the ones he was supposed to be setting up with me." He smiles wistfully.
"Did you mind terribly?"
"Occasionally. But he was--" Steve huffs softly in amusement.
"Surprisingly charming," Natasha finishes, nodding. "He was the first person I ever kissed because I wanted to, rather than because I was ordered to."
Steve looks down, his eyes fluttering closed, long lashes fanned out against his fair skin. "He was the first person I ever wanted to kiss."
Natasha breathes that confession in and locks it tightly away before exhaling softly. "And did you?"
He takes her free hand, twines his fingers with hers, and presses it to his lips. "Once. We were fifteen and drunk. Prohibition had just been repealed." He laughs again. "I'd never kissed anyone but my mother before."
He shares it like a secret and she knows how to keep those. Steve has more secrets than she'd expected, and it pleases her to learn them and hold them close. "Well, maybe you'll get the chance again someday, hmm?" She blinks away the image again, tries to ignore the flush of heat it ignites within her.
"You really think so?"
"I don't know, but Tony and Bruce have a way of doing the impossible, so anything could happen." That's probably not as comforting as Steve would like, but Natasha has never been much good at comforting.
"Will he--Do you think he'll remember me?"
"I don't think he'll even remember me," she says, squeezing his hand. "When our masters discovered our...affair, they were not pleased. We were separated, punished. The next time I saw him, he didn't know who I was."
Steve rubs his cheek against her breast and kisses her again. "Natasha--"
"It's what they do, Steve. What they did." She's made a hobby of tracking down anyone associated with Department X and the Red Room. There aren't many left now, but she'll go on the hunt again soon, and this time, she doesn't think she'll have to go alone. "They programmed him over and over, erasing his memories and implanting new ones like he was a fucking robot." She doesn't know how to explain that even when they'd implanted new memories in her mind, she'd always known herself at the deepest level; sometimes she still can't tell the difference between the fake memories and the real ones, even when she knows which ones are fake, but she's never forgotten being that little girl in the snow, or the man with the gun who took her away. The Winter Soldier had been stripped of his memories and identity so often that there might not be a person left under all the programming.
"Not anymore, though," Steve says, breaking into her thoughts.
"No," she says, rolling them over and straddling him. "Not anymore."
He opens his mouth to ask another question, but she stops him with a kiss. She reaches between them and wraps a hand around his cock--it's already half-hard, and with a stroke or two, he's ready for her to sink down onto him. She closes her eyes and arches her back as she rolls her hips, slow and hard. She shrugs her robe off her shoulders, cups her breasts, and plays with her nipples, enjoying the jolts of pleasure that make her cunt tighten around him. His fingers dig into her hips and he moans, meeting her thrusts with his own. She comes when he rubs her clit, pleasure rolling through her in fierce waves, and she keeps moving, clenching around him until he comes, too, another low moan that might be her name escaping his lips.
She lets herself fall forward onto his chest, and falls asleep sprawled on top of him, the tight circle of his arms making her feel almost safe.
She wakes to the sound of Jarvis's voice. "Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner request your presence at SHIELD," he says.
"So soon?" she asks, sitting up. Steve presses his chest to her back, and she lets herself lean against him for a moment. Only for a moment.
"They must have worked for hours," Steve says. He kisses her cheek, the nape of her neck, and then he's up and getting dressed. Her back feels cold and she suppresses a shiver before she rises to do the same.
*
Betty is curled up asleep in an arm chair, Bruce is rumpled and sleepy-eyed, and Tony won't stop talking, wired from too many Red Bulls, the empty cans scattered around the lab a testament to their all-nighter.
"You left your pets," Tony says, pointing with a screwdriver to the corner of the lab where the husky and her puppies are sleeping. There's a water bowl and a large food dish surrounded by several smaller ones, as well as a couple of already chewed on toys and rawhides. "Luckily, Foster's assistant likes dogs." He gestures vaguely. "It helped that she had my credit card, though."
"I owe you," Steve says solemnly, but Tony waves him off.
"You brought me an interesting piece of tech here, so we'll call it even."
"And?"
"And can we defrost your friend? Yeah. I think so. And he'll even live through the process."
"Probably," Bruce adds.
"It's what comes after that's the problem," Natasha says.
"Yeah. That part I'm not so good with," Tony says. "They keep you in one of these things, too?"
Natasha suppresses a shudder. "No."
"But you underwent similar deprogramming when you came to SHIELD?" Bruce asks. She looks for pity on his face but sees only sympathy.
"Similar, but not the same." Natasha squares her shoulders. "Director Fury is already assembling a team of experts."
"Good," Steve says before Tony can say anything.
"What can you tell us about him?" Bruce asks.
Steve's whole face lights up. "Bucky was my best friend. We were in the orphanage together. He was always looking out for me."
Tony jerks his head at Natasha and she follows him into a corner of the lab, away from where Steve is gesticulating animatedly at Bruce. "What can you tell me about his arm?" he asks in an undertone. "Is it going to come out firing or does he need time to boot up?"
"There were no weapons in it," she says. "At least not as of the last time I saw him. It doesn't appear to have been upgraded since then, but I can't be sure. Surely you've run diagnostics."
"Yeah, but it's always nice to have firsthand confirmation. He had it as long as you knew him?"
"Yeah. He'd always had it, as far as he knew."
"Huh. I wonder how they got around the heavy metal poisoning." Something must show on her face, because he says, "Don't worry, I'll share my secret cure with him."
"That was SHIELD's secret cure, Tony."
"That was SHIELD's secret stopgap measure." He holds up a hand. "And I bet he wouldn't respond any better than I did to being jabbed by surprise."
She laughs. "No, no, he wouldn't." Tony watches her, quiet for once, as if waiting for something more. "He'll be disoriented when he wakes. Once he realizes this is not Department X, there could be trouble, and I want him asleep before someone else decides to be a hero. You'll supply me with tranquilizers, the strongest you've got."
Tony nods. "How's Cap holding up?"
"You know how he is," she says, shrugging a shoulder. "He's determined to get his friend back, and he'll move heaven and earth to make it happen."
"I wouldn't bet against him."
"No," Natasha says, even though she knows the kinds of odds he and Bucky both face. "I wouldn't either."
*
Clint is lounging in her living room when she gets home. "Sorry," he says, though he doesn't look apologetic. "I just got back and it seemed quicker than playing phone tag." He takes his feet off the coffee table and leans forward. "The Winter Soldier, huh? The real deal?"
Natasha unzips her jacket and hangs it up before she answers. "Yeah." She drops onto the couch next to him. "Not just the Winter Soldier, though."
"No," Clint says, leaning back with her. He takes her hand and twines their fingers together and she lets him. "I get it. He was your sensei, your Yoda. Your first love."
"No," she says. "I mean, yes, though that's not how I would phrase it, but no." She sinks into the cushions, tipping her head back against the top of the sofa and closing her eyes. "The rumors were true."
Clint nudges her gently with his shoulder. "That he's not as great a marksman as me?"
"That before he was the Winter Soldier, he was Bucky Barnes."
"You mean, Bucky Barnes as in Cap and Bucky?" Clint tilts his head. "Wait, that was a rumor?"
"In the Red Room it was, and it's true, apparently. At least according to the person who claims to have known him best."
"Huh." Clint gives her a sympathetic look and squeezes her hand. "Awkward."
She raises an eyebrow but he just keeps looking at her kindly. After a long moment, she huffs a soft laugh. "You don't know the half of it."
"You know you can always tell me."
"I know." She squeezes his hand this time, and lets her head rest on his shoulder. "I've already done too much talking today."
"Ah, but that was explanations to the boyfriend."
"You know I don't like that term."
Clint ignores the interruption. "This is commiserating with the BFF."
"And I'm not all that fond of that term either."
"Your objections are duly noted." He doesn't push. It's one reason their friendship has lasted as long as it has. Clint knows more about her than anyone, and he's never used it against her. Though there are now suddenly two other people who know nearly as much as he does. It's disconcerting. She doesn't like it. "So when is the defrosting?" She jabs him in the ribs and he yelps. "Ow. Why are your elbows so pointy?"
"The better to nudge you with," she answers. "And tomorrow, I think. Tony and Bruce have worked out the technical aspects, but Fury wants to have a full complement from PsyOps on hand."
"Ugh, PsyOps."
"Amen to that." She lets herself have this, soaks in Clint's comforting solidity and warmth for a few minutes. Then she gets up and says, "I need you to do me a favor tomorrow. And I need a drink."
"I'll get the glasses," he says as she pulls the bottle of vodka from the back of her freezer instead of the beer they usually drink.
They don't get drunk, but it's easier to talk after a couple of shots, the cold burn of expensive vodka sliding smoothly down her throat. Clint makes sympathetic noises and orders in sushi and accepts two of the tranquilizer darts Tony gave her. By the time he leaves, Natasha is convinced that there is a possibility everything won't end in tragedy. A slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.
She goes to bed early and alone. She's going to need all her strength for what's next.
*
Steve is already in the lab when Natasha and Clint arrive in the morning.
"I think he spent the night here," Bruce murmurs.
"Sounds about right," she answers.
Thor is helping Darcy gather up the puppies while Tony explains to Jane what they're going to be doing, when rows of SHIELD Special Response Team agents in riot gear start filing in, followed by doctors in lab coats. Natasha recognizes a few of them from her own time in the infirmary, and also one or two psychiatrists she spent time with during her own deprogramming.
All in all, it's probably not that different from how he'd have been awakened by Department X. Still, she keeps a hand on her gun.
For once, Tony doesn't make a huge production out of things; he and Bruce murmur softly together and then they start flipping switches on the console. Steve stands at attention next to her; she can feel him practically vibrating with tension.
"It's not so different from when I took the serum," he says softly to her. "Hopefully, there are no HYDRA agents in disguise in here, though."
"We'll take care of them if there are," she answers, touching his elbow lightly.
He gives her a half-smile in response, and then all their attention is drawn to the cryo tube, from which has begun draining through lengths of tubing along the floor. The metal arm is visible now, in a way it wasn't before unless you were looking for it or already knew it was there, and Steve sucks in a surprised breath. Natasha squeezes his elbow again, but doesn't take her eyes off the tube. It opens slowly, the glass front sliding down like an automatic window in a car, releasing a burst of humid, chemical-sweet smelling air. Bruce starts removing the straps holding the Winter Soldier in place while Tony continues to adjust dials at the console--Natasha doesn't know what they're pumping into him, but his color is slowly coming back and his muscles twitch like he's waking up from a dream. Bruce removes the oxygen mask last, and the Winter Soldier's body teeters towards him.
Steve surges forward, catching him and lowering him to the ground like some weird live-action reenactment of Michelangelo's pieta. Natasha glances at Clint, who's still on alert, and then back to Steve, who's whispering, "Bucky? Come on, Buck, you've been sleeping long enough."
The Winter Soldier's--Bucky's--eyes flutter open and the tension in the room ratchets up another notch as everyone seems to draw in a deep breath at the same time.
And then one of the puppies comes rushing in, yapping loudly. The SRT agents raise their guns and Natasha unholsters her weapon.
"A wily pup has escaped," Thor hollers, chasing after it as it skids to a halt in front of Steve and Bucky, but nobody lowers their guns.
"Okay," Steve says, but he doesn't have a hand free to pet it, and it starts licking Bucky's fingers.
Bucky makes a low, curious noise and opens his eyes. Natasha can't see anything of the soldier's cold intent in them, but she doesn't see much else either, beyond puzzlement. He looks around the room in confusion and picks up the puppy, which fits into the palm of his hand. "You're a brave little one, aren't you?" he asks, his voice rusty with disuse. Then he looks around again, his gaze passing over her as if they'd never met and lighting on Fury. "Sir," he says, instinctively knowing who's in charge. He struggles awkwardly out of Steve's arms to stand at attention, apparently unaware or uncaring of his nakedness or the fact that he's trembling visibly. "You have a mission for me?"
The strangest part--to Natasha, anyway--is that he says it all in English.
There's a curious flicker of expression across Fury's face, one Natasha's only seen briefly and rarely, something like gentleness. "No, soldier. At ease."
And like a puppet whose strings have been cut, the Winter Soldier collapses back into Steve's arms.
There's a lot of yelling from the lab coats as they converge on him with stethoscopes and sensors. Steve shoves the puppy at Thor and lays the Winter Soldier down on a gurney, but Natasha can tell by the set of his jaw and the furrow in his brow that he's not pleased to relinquish him. He throws Natasha a pleading glance over his shoulder and then trails after the doctors as they wheel their way out of the lab.
Natasha looks at Fury as Clint slips into place beside her, and Bruce, Tony, and Thor form up behind her. He meets her gaze squarely and his mouth twitches in the briefest of half-smiles before it turns into his usual intimidating scowl. "What are you all looking at me for? Don't you have jobs to do?"
Natasha eyes him for a moment longer, then nods once, satisfied.
*
For the next week, Steve hovers outside the exam rooms and the interrogation rooms where the Winter Soldier is being deprogrammed, his whole body vibrating with impatience when the psychiatrists and doctors won't let him in. He reminds Natasha of nothing so much as one of his puppies, and he uses one--the one who crashed the lab the day they woke the Winter Soldier up--to bribe his way into the infirmary after another long session with the PsyOps team. Natasha notes that even SHIELD issue shrinks and nurses aren't immune to cuteness. She hopes no mad scientist ever figures it out or they'll be knee-deep in tribbles.
"What are you gonna call her?" Steve asks as the puppy leaps and frolics around the Winter Soldier's feet.
"I don't even have my own name," he says. "How can I name something else?"
"You do," Steve insists. "You're James Buchanan Barnes. You're Bucky."
He looks at Natasha. "What do you think?"
"What do you want to be called?" She had kept her name but she also chose a new variation on it when she joined SHIELD. It was the first of many such choices.
He bites his lip as if he's thinking deeply about it; he's much more thoughtful, this man, than the one she remembers. Or perhaps it's just that he's allowed to think now, and has the time to do it. "James," he says, hesitantly, and then more confidently, "Please call me James."
Steve looks stricken, but he nods. "Whatever you want. And the puppy?"
James grins, and it lights all three of them up. "She's brave and strong for such a little thing. She should have a strong name, I think." He leans down to pick the excited puppy up. It licks happily at his metal hand. "Isn't that right, Begimot?" The puppy barks in agreement and they all laugh.
That's a good day, and Natasha is glad James has them, not just for his own sake but for Steve's, even if sometimes she thinks the cold rage or the indomitable will of the Winter Soldier would be better than this malleable blandness, and the possibility that SHIELD will just make him over into what they want him to be. But even if she were unable to prevent it, Steve won't allow that to happen.
Despite recommendations from the doctors to the contrary, Steve pushes him, telling stories about their childhood in Brooklyn or their days with the Howling Commandos, and it backfires spectacularly. The doctors say James has had some sort of breakthrough in his memory, but though Steve's allowed to see him now, James refuses him access.
He'll still see her, though, and he looks terrible when she visits, curled up with his knees to his chest on his bunk, his hair lank and unwashed and his eyes underlined by dark smudges. The metal bracket in his shoulder where his arm should be stands out starkly against the scarred skin surrounding it.
"You look terrible," she says, leaning against the door and crossing her arms over her chest. "Have you been eating?"
He shoots her a disdainful look but doesn't answer.
She considers him for a minute, then sits down beside him, nudging him a little with her hip so she can sit on his right side. "Hey," she says. "They have sedatives that will work, even with your revved up metabolism. You need to sleep."
"I can't," he says, and this time his look is haunted, anguished. "All I can see are the people I've killed."
"I know." She rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. "It gets better."
"Does it?"
"They'll never go away," she says, "but you learn to live with it. You might even find a way to atone."
"And if I don't?"
She shakes her head. "You know what the alternatives are."
"You should have just let me die."
"Had Steve not been with me, I would have considered it," she says truthfully. "But I'm glad I didn't have to."
"Is he mad?" The sudden vulnerability on his face is stunning. Natasha finds her chest aches a little from seeing it.
"That you won't see him?" James nods. "No. He's hurt, and he's concerned, but he's not angry." She reconsiders. "He's not angry at you."
"I still don't really remember him," he says. "I'm not that guy, the one he thinks I am. I don't think I ever was, or ever could be. And the way he looks at me--I can't--I can't be what he wants."
"You might be surprised at what you could be, with Steve pulling for you," she says. "But he only wants you to be well, and to be yourself."
"Whoever that is."
She dips her head in acknowledgement. "Yes."
"If you say so." He sounds skeptical, though. "You love him, don't you."
Natasha holds very still; she'd forgotten that he'd been almost as good at reading her as she had at reading him. "I care very much for him, yes. But love is for children."
He takes her hand and raises it to his lips. "Oh, Natashenka, they really fucked us up, didn't they?"
She touches his cheek gently. "Yes, James. They really did."
*
"Deprogramming's a slow process," she tells Steve that night when they're done eating dinner and she's curled up next to him on the couch, having a glass of wine. "I don't remember much of it, and what I do remember isn't pleasant. But it will eventually get better."
"Okay," he says, his hand tightening on her shoulder as he drains his glass. "Even if he won't let me help, he has you." He brightens a little. "And Begimot."
Natasha can't help but smile. "Yes."
But Steve has a tendency to fixate--if James could remember, she'd ask him if Steve used to pick his scabs, because he seems like the type--and a few days later, after James has once again refused Steve access after an intense session with the deprogrammer, he asks, "Did he say why he won't see me?"
"He's ashamed."
"He has nothing to be ashamed of." Steve is vehement on this and has said it to everyone from Fury on down, repeatedly.
"He needs time to work through it all."
"Still, he knows I don't care about all that, right?" His forehead is furrowed in concern and it makes Natasha want to smooth it out with kisses.
"Steve, listen to me." She takes his chin in her hands and meets his gaze squarely. "He cares about it. And he's made a decision about it. Do you know how long it's been since he's been able to care about anything, or make a decision about it?"
"Okay," Steve says. "I get it. I didn't think--But you're right."
She grins and presses a quick kiss to his lips. "I usually am."
He still looks like some combination of frantic and fragile, though, and there's a wildness to him that night as he fucks her. Afterwards, he kisses the bruises on her skin, but when he tries to apologize she stops him. "You may be super strong," she says, "but you're not going to break me."
"I know," he says. "That's why I love you."
She swallows hard and locks the words away with all his other secrets. He doesn't expect an answer, and she hasn't yet figured out how to give him one, at least not in words.
*
It's the puppies that bring Steve and James back together. Natasha should have expected it. James's recovery is going better than she--or anyone but Steve, really--had hoped, and he attributes a lot of it to the puppy that adopted him.
"I was talking to the headshrinkers, and they said that therapy dogs are a thing now," he tells her one morning over breakfast. His quarters are Spartan and they can be locked down by SHIELD at any moment, but he has a window overlooking Times Square, and Tony Stark made him a new prosthetic arm (no less lethal than the previous one, but it, too, can be shut down with a command to Jarvis at any time), so it seems less like a prison and more like a hospital room. "So I was thinking--aside from Begemosha," the puppy barks upon hearing her name so James reaches down to scratch behind her ears and she wriggles in ecstasy, "and the one Stark took for his lady friend, the others still need homes, right?"
"Dr. Foster's intern took one," Natasha says. "We tried to convince Clint, but he already has a dog he's barely able to look after."
James laughs. "That still leaves three, though. They're already taking Begemosha away for training in the K9 program every morning, though what a spy organization needs with puppies is beyond me."
"Do you have any idea how many missions require us to go undercover at a dog park?" Natasha grins. "And Clint's getting really cranky about always having to use his own dog."
James's mouth quirks in a half-grin. "I'm about eighty percent sure you're fucking with me, but that twenty percent is really disquieting."
She laughs and touches his hand. "But yes, there are still three puppies available to good homes."
"Do you think Steve would be willing to have them trained as therapy dogs, then?"
He would. Of course he would. There's no doubt in Natasha's mind. But she says, "You should ask him yourself."
James's laugh is rueful this time. "I had a feeling you were going to say that." He nods. "Okay. I'll see him."
"He loves you very much," she says softly, "and he's missed you for a very long time."
"But no pressure or anything, right?"
"No, not really. I'll make sure of that."
And she does. She tries, anyway, to manage Steve's expectations. James has become cagier lately about what he's remembering, what he's feeling, which is only fair, even if it's frustrating.
Steve beams when she tells him the news, and he hums all morning, which really freaks the analysts out during the nine a.m. briefing.
He takes Dodger, the puppies' mother, with him when they go (Natasha rolls her eyes at him; men and their dogs), and she plays with Begimot while James lays out his proposal.
"So they would help vets with PTSD in therapy," James finishes, and almost before he's done speaking Steve says, "Of course. Yes, of course. That's a great idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself."
"Well, one of us has to be the brains of the operation, pal, and it isn't you."
Steve goes utterly still for a moment. Natasha glances between them, but her concern is ameliorated by the easy grin on James's face.
"Bucky," Steve says softly.
"Yeah," James answers, and lets Steve pull him into a bear hug.
"You can't be the brains of the operation," Steve says, his face in the crook of James's throat. "You took all the stupid with you."
Natasha blinks back tears she'll never admit to, and looks away from the naked joy on their faces. It makes her heart clench, and she promises herself that she'll enjoy whatever happiness they bring her for however long it lasts.
*
It takes another few weeks for SHIELD to release James into Steve's custody (and he still has to report in for twice-weekly therapy sessions), but he slots into their lives like he's always been there, like a puzzle piece neither of them had admitted to missing.
It's not quite right, though. During the first two months James lives with them, he still goes to his own room at the end of their evenings together, even though Natasha would rather he sleep in Steve's giant bed with them. She's pretty sure he feels the same way but won't ever presume to ask, and Steve--Steve's the bravest man she's ever known, but not when it comes to relationships. So if she wants this to happen, she's going to have to do the heavy lifting herself.
She hasn't quite worked out how to bring it up, though. They've both acclimated well to the twenty-first century, but it's still the kind of change that requires forethought and careful negotiation.
Before she can figure out the best way to ask, though, Steve does it for her. They're lying in bed, curled together half-asleep after some truly excellent sex, and he says, "When you said I might get the chance to kiss Bucky again, did you mean it?"
"I--" Natasha isn't usually caught off guard, but Steve has a way of doing it to her. "I did." She licks her lips and gathers her thoughts. "Is that something you're interested in doing?"
"Not without you," he answers without hesitation, and it warms her all the way through. "Is that something you're interested in doing?"
"I think so," she says, and then, more decisively (more honestly), "Yes. I've thought about it a bit."
Steve gives her a roguish half-grin. "So have I." His face goes pensive, then. "Do you think he--I would be okay if he just wanted you. I would understand that."
She kisses his nose. "You, Cap, are an idiot."
He huffs softly. "It's been said."
"Don't worry about it. I've got it all under control," she says, half-formed plans suddenly coalescing in her head. "Just follow my lead."
"Okay," he says, and gives her a heated kiss that leads to a slow and satisfying round three.
The next day is Sunday. They sleep in and have a late breakfast, and Natasha lets her hands linger on James's shoulders and slide across his back as she passes him in the kitchen. She brushes up against him in the hallway between their bedrooms, and curls up next to him on the couch when he puts the ballgame on.
Steve sits down on her other side, and she can feel the tension in him. She rests a hand on his thigh, and lays her head on James's shoulder.
"So," she says. He turns to look at her, his face close enough that they're breathing the same air, which practically crackles with the electricity between them. "Steve and I have been talking."
James draws back immediately. "If you want me to leave, I can be out of your hair in twenty minutes."
Natasha opens her mouth to tell him he's wrong but Steve bursts out with, "And you call me an idiot," and then he's reaching across her to haul James into a rough kiss.
James stiffens, and she wonders if she's read the situation completely wrong, but then he relaxes into the kiss, one hand coming up to cup Steve's face and the other to touch her cheek.
The dogs start barking, and Begimot jumps up into James's lap, so he pulls away from Steve and laughs.
"I think she's jealous," he says delightedly.
"Now she knows how I feel," Steve answers. "You okay with this, Buck?"
"I am if you are. Natasha?"
"Yes," she says. She reaches out and palms the napes of their necks, running her fingers through the short hair there. They respond with the same shivers of bliss the puppies do, and she smiles. "Take me to bed, boys. I'm all yours."
"We're all each other's," Steve insists, and she and James hum in agreement.
*
A few days later, Begimot goes on her first mission with a SHIELD task force looking into weapons being smuggled into Russia over the Chinese border. Natasha made Coulson promise to look out for her during any firefights, and he reluctantly agreed, not wanting to be the man who let Bucky Barnes's dog get killed in action.
She and James have a joyous reunion when she returns, made even better when Maria Hill calls them all into her office and says, "The guns were being run by mercenaries we've traced back through numerous shell corporations to the Kronas Corporation."
James sits up straight then, his hand stilling on Begimot's belly.
Hill nods. "They also owned the warehouse where you were found, Sergeant Barnes. You'll be happy to know that Alexander Lukin is in SHIELD custody. He hasn't admitted to anything, of course, but we've found a paper trail from Department X to Kronas." She gives them a satisfied smile. "I don't think he'll be coming for you any time soon."
"Thank you," he says, squeezing Natasha's hand gently.
"Thank Agent Hippo," she says, nodding at Begimot, who's lolling on her back and whining for belly rubs. "She's the one who sniffed him out."
That's twice the dogs have saved him, Natasha thinks. Maybe next time Steve rescues a kitten from a tree, she won't make fun of him. Much.
end
~*~
Notes: Title from Thea Gilmore, sort of. Thanks to
snacky and
laurificus, who helped when I was stuck, to caughtinanocean, who named Bucky's puppy*, and to
fox1013 for SPY PUPPIES. <3
* she said: "Бегемот" (Begimot), which means hippo, would be a pretty cute name for a dog along those lines. It would probably get called things like "Бегемоша" (Begemosha).
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
Now it's off to the Cap marathon! Squee!
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/652426.html.
people have commented there.
Avengers (2012); Steve/Natasha/Bucky; adult; no Cap 2 spoilers; 9,650 words
In which Steve loves puppies and freedom and Russian assassins. Not necessarily in that order.
Notes at the end.
~*~
with your pockets full of rain
Natasha knows better than to even think about being bored on a mission, even one as uneventful as this one has been, so while she waits for their ride, she refamiliarizes herself with the Port of Vladivostok. She hasn't been there in years.
"Did you hear that?" Steve asks softly, straightening up from where he's leaning against the wall of the warehouse.
She shakes her head.
"Be right back."
For a big man, he moves quietly, but she feels him leave as much as she sees it, feels cool air in the space warmed by his body, hears the silence replace the soft sound of his breath.
She waits, patient until his silence stretches for a little longer than he usually lets it. "Cap?"
"Be with you in a minute." He doesn't sound worried or use a code word to indicate danger of any sort.
Natasha bites back a sigh. "If you're rescuing a kitten in a tree--"
"It's a dog, actually, and there's a litter of puppies," Steve says, amusement in his voice. "I just want to make sure they're o--Shit."
Natasha is already on the move, though she can hear Steve muttering more curses beneath the sounds of high-pitched barking and the floor collapsing. Then she hears Steve's gasp as he gets the wind knocked out of him.
There are six tiny balls of fur barking furiously at a hole in the warehouse floor. Natasha lowers herself carefully through the hole and is about to say something mocking about not being able to rescue puppies on his own when she notices that Steve is staring, slack-jawed, at a cryostasis tube.
Natasha suppresses an instinctive shudder and forces herself to examine it. A low greenish light emanates from the tube, throwing a sickly cast over Steve's skin. The tube hums softly and steadily. The glass is clear, and she takes a couple of steps towards it, her mind refusing to accept what she's seeing.
Steve's expression has gone from shock to horror, and he raises the shield, obviously planning to smash the glass. Natasha grabs his arm, feeling the muscles and tendons shift under her fingers, like he's thinking of throwing her off, but she holds on.
"Wait," she says, her voice sharp. "You'll kill him." She takes short shallow breaths through her nose and clamps down on the feelings that want to escape her iron control. She looks over the console attached to the tube, dials and gauges and blinking lights, all labeled neatly in Russian. She doesn't know what to do, but knows she has to do something to calm Steve down.
"I watched him die," Steve says. He's wild-eyed and she can feel him trembling. "How is he still alive?"
So apparently that rumor was true. Natasha had never quite believed it herself, though his English had had a hint of Brooklyn in it she didn't recognize until years later, and even then dismissed the story as a fairy tale. She doesn't let herself react to the news beyond a small, tight smile, as genuine as she can make it. "You think you're the only person who got frozen in the Forties?"
He huffs in disbelief but lowers his shield. "Is he--Is he really still alive?"
"I don't know," Natasha says, unwilling to offer him a comforting lie. "I never worked with this equipment." She taps a monitor. "But the power is still on and his vital signs appear stable."
One of the puppies comes tumbling down through the hole then. Steve catches it absently, most of his attention still focused on her and the tube, and it wriggles in his palm, barking excitedly.
"Hey, little fella, it's okay," he murmurs, brushing a finger through its fur. Natasha has never been one to be charmed by small animals, but there's something very charming about this, or there would be, if they didn't currently have the Winter Soldier frozen in a tube behind them.
Natasha breathes in deeply and exhales slowly. "You look after the puppies. I'll make sure we get him out of here." She turns away and starts snapping orders into her comm so she doesn't have to see the unguarded look of hope on his face, and the mulishness that overtakes it when he realizes she's shutting him out of the action, such as it is. She needs to be calm and clear-headed about this, and Steve looks like he's seen a ghost. The puppies can offer him comfort she can't. Not here. Not now.
Once she's communicated the change in plans for their extraction, she takes a fortifying breath and makes another call.
"Tony, how soon can you be in Vladivostok?"
"And a good afternoon to you, too, Agent Romanoff."
"Tony."
He hears her impatience, maybe, or the seriousness of the situation in her voice because his answer is devoid of sarcasm. "Four hours. Three if it's urgent. Is it urgent?"
"It's urgent."
"Do you need a favor, Natasha?" he asks slyly.
"Do you hate puppies and freedom?" Steve glances up at her from where he's gathering the litter on his shield, eyebrows raised curiously. She gives him another small smile. "Because unless you do, you will do what I'm telling you right now."
"I guess since it's for your boyfriend..."
Steve's head jerks up again, a concerned look on his face this time, but she shakes him off. She'll deal with Tony's insinuations later. "Tony, I'm not kidding around."
"Okay. Okay. I'm on my way."
"I'm uploading the coordinates to Jarvis now."
Her next call is to Coulson, on a private channel Steve can't listen in on. "You know that op you're running at the Russian-Chinese border? I need your cache of Stark weapons."
"We've spent months putting this together."
"And having your cache destroyed by Iron Man will cement the cover. He's not going to be happy about you using them without telling him, you know, even if it is to track down arms dealers."
"Agent Romanoff," Coulson chides.
"He's on his way."
"Natasha, you know you can't just destroy months of careful work for--"
"Do you want the matched set?"
Coulson pauses; she can practically hear him shift gears as her meaning sinks in. "Excuse me?"
"The piece you're missing from your collection. I can't guarantee mint condition--best case might be some slight foxing at the edges, and that's only if we're very lucky--but if you don't do this..." She lets it trail off into silence.
Coulson sucks in a surprised breath and she feels a small pang of triumph; he's usually so unflappable. She almost can't bear the hope in his voice when he asks, "The rumors were true?"
"Yes, according to the one person who'd know."
Coulson huffs softly. "Fine. How soon should we expect the pyrotechnics?"
"Three hours or so."
*
The freighter carrying the quinjet that's going to fly them home docks about an hour later. Natasha explains only that the plan has been changed and Iron Man will be joining them to help them load highly classified cargo onto the jet.
"What cargo is that?" one of the agents asks.
"We'll brief you all when Iron Man gets here," she says. That doesn't satisfy them.
"It's above your pay grade, agent," Steve says when they press her for answers. That shuts down any backchat. Which is good, because Natasha is going to have to do some very fast talking, and she doesn't want to have to do it twice.
The agents are too busy teasing Steve about his new pets to fuss. Natasha makes a note of it. The puppies have been a useful distraction more than once already; such knowledge could be useful someday.
Tony arrives a while later. "Two hours and fifty-five minutes for you, Natasha. That's got to be a record."
"Too bad you can't ever tell anyone about it," she answers, unimpressed. It doesn't do to give him too much positive reinforcement; he's the poster child for taking a mile when given an inch.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." He waves her off. "I'll have the satisfaction of knowing." He pops up his faceplate. "So what's cooking? Needed my brilliance to liven up this little party?"
Natasha leads him into the warehouse and down to the lower level where the tube sits, the unexploded bombshell that is the Winter Soldier resting inside. "What do you know about cryonics?"
"Are we thawing out the frozen head of Walt Disney? Is that why it's all so hush-hush?"
"You told me that was a myth," Steve says wryly.
Tony grins at him and then blinks as if he doesn't believe what he's seeing, which is Steve sitting on the floor with six puppies asleep in his shield and their mother curled up at his side, all of them vaguely greenish in the eerie glow of the tube. "Am I really seeing this or have I finally lost all connection to reality?"
Steve gives him a tired grin in return. "I don't think you ever had a strong connection to reality, Tony, but yes. We rescued some puppies."
"You brought me here--I was scheduled to have lunch with Pepper at one and we haven't seen each other in almost a week, so if you brought me here to rescue puppies, she is going to be pretty pissed, even after I send her this picture and offer a puppy as a peacekeeping gesture. I'd sleep with one eye open, is what I'm saying." He jerks his chin at Natasha. "Even you. You wouldn't like to meet Pepper when she's angry."
"No," Steve says, and his voice is soft, and just a little wondering. "We have a very good reason for dragging you away from your lunch with Pepper. The puppies are just an added bonus. And Pepper can have one if she wants."
"Of course. Captain America saves the world and a basket of puppies, all before breakfast." He heaves a sigh. "Okay, kids, what's going on?"
Natasha bites back a sigh of her own, but she'd known what she was getting into when she called him, and points to the cryostasis tube. "Can you keep him alive during a transfer to a quinjet, and then from the jet to," she glances over at Steve, "a secure lab in New York?"
Tony looks at the console, not the tube, and his brow furrows.
"I can translate," Natasha offers.
Tony shakes his head. "No, it's fine. It's just been a while since I had to read Russian. Yeah, as long as you've got a stable power source, this shouldn't be a problem."
"And you'll be able to wake him when we get to New York?" That's Steve, sounding incredibly young and hopeful in a way that makes Natasha's heart break.
"Maybe," Tony says, tapping a couple of the gauges on the console lightly. "Cyronics was one of dad's hobbies." He turns to look at Steve. "He was more interested in the thawing than the freezing, obviously. He never put any of that tech on the market, though, at least that I'm aware of. So this isn't exactly up to Stark standards." Tony walks a slow circle around the tube now, like he's figuring out how it all fits together in his head. "Who is this guy?"
Natasha says, "The Winter Soldier."
At the same time, Steve says, "It's Bucky." Natasha squeezes his shoulder but he doesn't flinch.
Tony swings around to look at them. "So while you were a Capsicle, the Russians had themselves a Barnesicle?" Natasha glares at him. "What? Just because I wasn't a fan doesn't mean I don't know the story. Though not the whole story, obviously." He does another circle around the tube. "Yeah, okay, I know how to do this, but we have to do it fast. The battery's old and probably can't sustain life support for very long."
Natasha doesn't understand much of what comes out of Tony's mouth as he barks orders at various SHIELD operatives to load the apparatus onto the quinjet while he removes panels and plugs in cables. She spends most of that time asking Deputy Director Hill to start looking into the ownership of the warehouse, because somebody had to know he was here, and she wants to know who's going to come looking once they realize he's gone.
Once the whole thing has disappeared into the quinjet, she sends Tony off to the border; having him make a show of destroying Coulson's weapons cache will cover their presence in Russian airspace--they'll play it like they've been sent to rein him in--in addition to solidifying Coulson's cover story with the Chinese gunrunners his team is trying to infiltrate.
Fury's waiting for them at the tower, arms crossed over his chest and frown on his face. "This belongs in a secure SHIELD facility," he says before any of them can say anything. "We can set up a lab to your specifications, Stark," he continues, "but there's no way you can keep him here."
"This is one of the most secure buildings in the country," Tony says. "In the world, even."
"Do you know who the Winter Soldier is?" Fury counters.
"It's Bucky," Steve says before Tony can answer. "And I'd feel better knowing that he wasn't going to disappear into SHIELD custody like, like..."
"Like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark," Tony supplies.
"Like that," Steve agrees, nodding.
"This is not the movies and this is not open to debate. The Winter Soldier is--" He's interrupted by the high-pitched yips of the puppies and louder barks from their mother, which Steve had insisted on befriending and bringing along, because the puppies need their mother, and Natasha needs to work on her defenses against Steve's face when he wants something, because she'd found herself agreeing after only about five minutes of arguing instead of at least thirty. "What the hell is that?"
"I think they're a shepherd-husky mix," Steve says. "There are six puppies, and we'll have to find homes for them. I'd offer you one, but I don't know if I trust you with a puppy."
Fury opens his mouth and then snaps it shut again. Natasha hopes Tony's recording this because it's only the third time she's ever seen him speechless.
Tony's grin is wild and genuine. "Do you need some aloe for that burn, Nick? Because you just got told by Captain America." Fury is still chewing over his response when Bruce and Thor arrive on the roof. Tony turns to them. "Bruce, do you think Betty would be willing to come in and help out on this?"
"What is this?" Bruce asks.
"It's better than the frozen head of Walt Disney," Tony says.
At the same time, Steve says, "It's Bucky."
Bruce looks at Natasha, who shrugs. "It's a long story." She puts a hand on Steve's arm, pulls him away from the others for a private conference. "I know you don't want to hear this, but Fury's right." She hates that he looks so betrayed, and she holds up a hand to stop him from arguing. "When I tell you that the Winter Soldier is the most dangerous operative Department X ever produced, I'm not exaggerating. He trained me, and even I was only able to fight him to a draw most of the time. Do you really want to wake him up in the midst of a vulnerable civilian population? When there's no guarantee we can deprogram him?"
Steve's face crumples for a moment, he closes his eyes and lowers his head, and she tightens her grip on his forearm. He takes two ragged breaths and then straightens, squaring his shoulders, setting his jaw and wiping any expression off his face. "If that's your recommendation, Agent Romanoff, then that's what we'll do."
Still, he looks like something's broken inside of him when they all climb back into the quinjet for the brief cross-town trip to SHIELD.
*
Tony and Bruce quickly get the cryostasis chamber set up in one of the labs at SHIELD. Steve sits in a corner of the room, surrounded by his new pets (even Tony had known better than to argue at that point) and watching everything carefully. He's already refused to attend the debriefing about their assigned mission and Fury's let him, but Natasha doesn't know how far this leniency will extend. If he were anyone else, she doesn't think it would have stretched this far, even if they've brought Fury a major coup in a career full of them.
"As soon as we figure out the best protocols for easing him out of stasis, we'll have SHIELD send in a deprogrammer," Bruce says.
"He's not a computer," Steve says hotly.
"He's been brainwashed," Natasha says before Steve can get going. "Over and over again. For years. We don't know what's left of the man you knew."
"He's in there," Steve insists.
Natasha gives a noncommittal bob of her head. She's seen crazier things, but she knows better than to hope. Especially since she knows firsthand what the Department X doctors were capable of.
"Everyone will do their best to bring him back," she says. Bruce and Tony nod and say some nonsense that Steve will hopefully find reassuring.
Steve looks down at his hands. "I know." He sniffs, shakes his head, and stands up. "I know you will." He looks around, like he's just become aware of the lab, and says, "I can't be here right now."
Natasha slides her hand into his and twines their fingers. "Come on."
"Call me as soon as you know anything," he says as they leave the lab.
Bruce nods and Tony says, "Of course." Well, he says more than that, but the door is already swinging shut behind her, and she can't hear it.
She takes Steve back to his suite in the tower, neither of them up for the long ride back to Brooklyn, and instead of leaving him at his door, she follows him inside. There are some things more important than the secrecy of their relationship at this point (especially if Tony's already figured it out), and she doesn't want to leave Steve alone, not when he looks like his whole world has come crashing down around his ears yet again. It's a feeling Natasha is all too familiar with herself.
She leads him into the bathroom, stripping off her clothes as they go. When she turns to face him under the fluorescent light, he's already stepping out of his pants. She likes how easily he follows her lead, how he doesn't need to always be in charge. They're both naked now, and she takes a moment to appreciate the perfection of him, the broad shoulders and firmly sculpted chest, the ridged muscles of his abdominals, the heavy power of his thighs and the hard length of his cock between them, curving up towards his belly. Natasha feels the hot clutch of desire in her cunt, the reminder that this is real, not just work, and she smiles. She steps into the tub--it's large enough for an orgy--and Steve follows. She wraps herself around him and combs her fingers through the hair on the nape of his neck before she tugs him down into a kiss.
He sighs into her mouth, and she can feel some of the tension he's been carrying ease, replaced by something better, if more fleeting. She likes that he kisses with his whole body, fully present in the moment the way she has so rarely had the luxury to be. She nips his lip and tugs at his hair, communicating the urgency of her desire to him, and he breathes a soft laugh against her wet skin. He presses her to the tile, cool against her back, and she reaches down to guide him inside her, already wet and aching for him.
She arches into his thrusts and allows herself to be noisy with him, not just because he likes it (he'd blushed the first time he'd admitted it), but because she does. She likes that he can draw her out of herself, remind her that her body can be used for pleasure in addition to work. She thinks briefly of the Winter Soldier, the first man who taught her this, and wonders if he'd taught Steve as well. Imagining that sparks another wave of heat in her veins, and she clenches tightly around Steve, her orgasm tantalizingly within reach.
He slides a hand over her hip and then down between them to rub her clit with his thumb, and she moans as pleasure cascades through her. He fucks her through it, hard and fast, and then he comes, pouring himself into her with a low, rough noise. He buries his face in the crook of her neck, and she imagines she can feel his tears, hot against her skin, even under the spray of the shower. She holds him close as he shakes apart again, this time for far less pleasant reasons.
She admires how easily he makes himself vulnerable to her, even though she's not sure it's a good idea, and she wants to return the favor, though she's definitely sure that's not a good idea. It's necessary now, though. Truth has a way of making itself known around Steve, and there are many truths she'd prefer he found out from her rather than SHIELD.
"Come on," she finally says, after the shower has rinsed it all away.
They wrap themselves in fluffy robes and curl up together on the oversized bed. Steve lays his head on her chest and she rests her chin on it, stroking a hand through the soft, wet brush of his hair.
"When I was a child," she begins, "I was taken from the only home I'd ever known and brought to the Red Room. I don't remember why or how, just that it was snowing, and there was blood on the snow. My parents were dead." At least, she thinks they were her parents; the memories are hazy and washed out now, like a watercolor left out in the rain. "A man with a very large gun offered me his hand and I took it." She closes her eyes, the scene still as vivid in her mind as it was the day it happened: the bright white of freshly fallen snow, the shock of red staining it, trailing from the dead body on the ground, the sinister grey of the man's gun and the black wool of his glove as he held his hand out to her. She banishes it by opening her eyes again. "We were countless girls, removed from orphanages or abandoned by our parents, only to be taken in by the state and trained to be weapons." She takes a deep breath and Steve presses a kiss above her heart, comforting her as much as she's comforting him.
"I've read your file but I didn't know you'd started so young," he says, his arms tightening around her.
"Yeah." She drops a kiss on the top of his head. "Not everything is in the file." She can feel him nod. Clint knows as much of it as she's ever been able to tell and Coulson knows almost as much. Who can say what Fury knows? She'd given him the official story and then the unofficial story, but never the personal story, and now she has to steel herself to tell it again.
She keeps to the simple unadorned truth as she remembers it, which may or may not be the way things actually happened. If truth has a way of coming out around Steve, it has a way of twisting in on itself around her. Perhaps she has a superpower after all. Or perhaps it's just the transitory nature of memory, especially when one that's been rewritten as many times as hers has been.
"They brought in the best of their spies and soldiers to train us and they taught us to fight, to spy, and to seduce." Steve makes a small, distressed noise and Natasha scratches her nails against his scalp in reassurance. "He was not my trainer for that," she says. "He taught me how to speak English like an American, how to kill efficiently from a distance and silently up close, and how to make myself disappear into a panicked crowd afterwards. The other was--we were partnered in training and in the field for several missions. We were young--at least, he never appeared to be more than twenty-five, no matter how much time passed between our meetings, and the rumor was they kept him in stasis between missions--and we spent a lot of time together. He was a hero to us, and what we all aspired to be--the perfect assassin, his only loyalty to the Motherland. I know it's hard to believe, but he could be surprisingly charming."
"No," Steve says, tilting his head up to meet her gaze, "that's not surprising at all. Bucky got all the dames. Even the ones he was supposed to be setting up with me." He smiles wistfully.
"Did you mind terribly?"
"Occasionally. But he was--" Steve huffs softly in amusement.
"Surprisingly charming," Natasha finishes, nodding. "He was the first person I ever kissed because I wanted to, rather than because I was ordered to."
Steve looks down, his eyes fluttering closed, long lashes fanned out against his fair skin. "He was the first person I ever wanted to kiss."
Natasha breathes that confession in and locks it tightly away before exhaling softly. "And did you?"
He takes her free hand, twines his fingers with hers, and presses it to his lips. "Once. We were fifteen and drunk. Prohibition had just been repealed." He laughs again. "I'd never kissed anyone but my mother before."
He shares it like a secret and she knows how to keep those. Steve has more secrets than she'd expected, and it pleases her to learn them and hold them close. "Well, maybe you'll get the chance again someday, hmm?" She blinks away the image again, tries to ignore the flush of heat it ignites within her.
"You really think so?"
"I don't know, but Tony and Bruce have a way of doing the impossible, so anything could happen." That's probably not as comforting as Steve would like, but Natasha has never been much good at comforting.
"Will he--Do you think he'll remember me?"
"I don't think he'll even remember me," she says, squeezing his hand. "When our masters discovered our...affair, they were not pleased. We were separated, punished. The next time I saw him, he didn't know who I was."
Steve rubs his cheek against her breast and kisses her again. "Natasha--"
"It's what they do, Steve. What they did." She's made a hobby of tracking down anyone associated with Department X and the Red Room. There aren't many left now, but she'll go on the hunt again soon, and this time, she doesn't think she'll have to go alone. "They programmed him over and over, erasing his memories and implanting new ones like he was a fucking robot." She doesn't know how to explain that even when they'd implanted new memories in her mind, she'd always known herself at the deepest level; sometimes she still can't tell the difference between the fake memories and the real ones, even when she knows which ones are fake, but she's never forgotten being that little girl in the snow, or the man with the gun who took her away. The Winter Soldier had been stripped of his memories and identity so often that there might not be a person left under all the programming.
"Not anymore, though," Steve says, breaking into her thoughts.
"No," she says, rolling them over and straddling him. "Not anymore."
He opens his mouth to ask another question, but she stops him with a kiss. She reaches between them and wraps a hand around his cock--it's already half-hard, and with a stroke or two, he's ready for her to sink down onto him. She closes her eyes and arches her back as she rolls her hips, slow and hard. She shrugs her robe off her shoulders, cups her breasts, and plays with her nipples, enjoying the jolts of pleasure that make her cunt tighten around him. His fingers dig into her hips and he moans, meeting her thrusts with his own. She comes when he rubs her clit, pleasure rolling through her in fierce waves, and she keeps moving, clenching around him until he comes, too, another low moan that might be her name escaping his lips.
She lets herself fall forward onto his chest, and falls asleep sprawled on top of him, the tight circle of his arms making her feel almost safe.
She wakes to the sound of Jarvis's voice. "Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner request your presence at SHIELD," he says.
"So soon?" she asks, sitting up. Steve presses his chest to her back, and she lets herself lean against him for a moment. Only for a moment.
"They must have worked for hours," Steve says. He kisses her cheek, the nape of her neck, and then he's up and getting dressed. Her back feels cold and she suppresses a shiver before she rises to do the same.
*
Betty is curled up asleep in an arm chair, Bruce is rumpled and sleepy-eyed, and Tony won't stop talking, wired from too many Red Bulls, the empty cans scattered around the lab a testament to their all-nighter.
"You left your pets," Tony says, pointing with a screwdriver to the corner of the lab where the husky and her puppies are sleeping. There's a water bowl and a large food dish surrounded by several smaller ones, as well as a couple of already chewed on toys and rawhides. "Luckily, Foster's assistant likes dogs." He gestures vaguely. "It helped that she had my credit card, though."
"I owe you," Steve says solemnly, but Tony waves him off.
"You brought me an interesting piece of tech here, so we'll call it even."
"And?"
"And can we defrost your friend? Yeah. I think so. And he'll even live through the process."
"Probably," Bruce adds.
"It's what comes after that's the problem," Natasha says.
"Yeah. That part I'm not so good with," Tony says. "They keep you in one of these things, too?"
Natasha suppresses a shudder. "No."
"But you underwent similar deprogramming when you came to SHIELD?" Bruce asks. She looks for pity on his face but sees only sympathy.
"Similar, but not the same." Natasha squares her shoulders. "Director Fury is already assembling a team of experts."
"Good," Steve says before Tony can say anything.
"What can you tell us about him?" Bruce asks.
Steve's whole face lights up. "Bucky was my best friend. We were in the orphanage together. He was always looking out for me."
Tony jerks his head at Natasha and she follows him into a corner of the lab, away from where Steve is gesticulating animatedly at Bruce. "What can you tell me about his arm?" he asks in an undertone. "Is it going to come out firing or does he need time to boot up?"
"There were no weapons in it," she says. "At least not as of the last time I saw him. It doesn't appear to have been upgraded since then, but I can't be sure. Surely you've run diagnostics."
"Yeah, but it's always nice to have firsthand confirmation. He had it as long as you knew him?"
"Yeah. He'd always had it, as far as he knew."
"Huh. I wonder how they got around the heavy metal poisoning." Something must show on her face, because he says, "Don't worry, I'll share my secret cure with him."
"That was SHIELD's secret cure, Tony."
"That was SHIELD's secret stopgap measure." He holds up a hand. "And I bet he wouldn't respond any better than I did to being jabbed by surprise."
She laughs. "No, no, he wouldn't." Tony watches her, quiet for once, as if waiting for something more. "He'll be disoriented when he wakes. Once he realizes this is not Department X, there could be trouble, and I want him asleep before someone else decides to be a hero. You'll supply me with tranquilizers, the strongest you've got."
Tony nods. "How's Cap holding up?"
"You know how he is," she says, shrugging a shoulder. "He's determined to get his friend back, and he'll move heaven and earth to make it happen."
"I wouldn't bet against him."
"No," Natasha says, even though she knows the kinds of odds he and Bucky both face. "I wouldn't either."
*
Clint is lounging in her living room when she gets home. "Sorry," he says, though he doesn't look apologetic. "I just got back and it seemed quicker than playing phone tag." He takes his feet off the coffee table and leans forward. "The Winter Soldier, huh? The real deal?"
Natasha unzips her jacket and hangs it up before she answers. "Yeah." She drops onto the couch next to him. "Not just the Winter Soldier, though."
"No," Clint says, leaning back with her. He takes her hand and twines their fingers together and she lets him. "I get it. He was your sensei, your Yoda. Your first love."
"No," she says. "I mean, yes, though that's not how I would phrase it, but no." She sinks into the cushions, tipping her head back against the top of the sofa and closing her eyes. "The rumors were true."
Clint nudges her gently with his shoulder. "That he's not as great a marksman as me?"
"That before he was the Winter Soldier, he was Bucky Barnes."
"You mean, Bucky Barnes as in Cap and Bucky?" Clint tilts his head. "Wait, that was a rumor?"
"In the Red Room it was, and it's true, apparently. At least according to the person who claims to have known him best."
"Huh." Clint gives her a sympathetic look and squeezes her hand. "Awkward."
She raises an eyebrow but he just keeps looking at her kindly. After a long moment, she huffs a soft laugh. "You don't know the half of it."
"You know you can always tell me."
"I know." She squeezes his hand this time, and lets her head rest on his shoulder. "I've already done too much talking today."
"Ah, but that was explanations to the boyfriend."
"You know I don't like that term."
Clint ignores the interruption. "This is commiserating with the BFF."
"And I'm not all that fond of that term either."
"Your objections are duly noted." He doesn't push. It's one reason their friendship has lasted as long as it has. Clint knows more about her than anyone, and he's never used it against her. Though there are now suddenly two other people who know nearly as much as he does. It's disconcerting. She doesn't like it. "So when is the defrosting?" She jabs him in the ribs and he yelps. "Ow. Why are your elbows so pointy?"
"The better to nudge you with," she answers. "And tomorrow, I think. Tony and Bruce have worked out the technical aspects, but Fury wants to have a full complement from PsyOps on hand."
"Ugh, PsyOps."
"Amen to that." She lets herself have this, soaks in Clint's comforting solidity and warmth for a few minutes. Then she gets up and says, "I need you to do me a favor tomorrow. And I need a drink."
"I'll get the glasses," he says as she pulls the bottle of vodka from the back of her freezer instead of the beer they usually drink.
They don't get drunk, but it's easier to talk after a couple of shots, the cold burn of expensive vodka sliding smoothly down her throat. Clint makes sympathetic noises and orders in sushi and accepts two of the tranquilizer darts Tony gave her. By the time he leaves, Natasha is convinced that there is a possibility everything won't end in tragedy. A slim possibility, but a possibility nonetheless.
She goes to bed early and alone. She's going to need all her strength for what's next.
*
Steve is already in the lab when Natasha and Clint arrive in the morning.
"I think he spent the night here," Bruce murmurs.
"Sounds about right," she answers.
Thor is helping Darcy gather up the puppies while Tony explains to Jane what they're going to be doing, when rows of SHIELD Special Response Team agents in riot gear start filing in, followed by doctors in lab coats. Natasha recognizes a few of them from her own time in the infirmary, and also one or two psychiatrists she spent time with during her own deprogramming.
All in all, it's probably not that different from how he'd have been awakened by Department X. Still, she keeps a hand on her gun.
For once, Tony doesn't make a huge production out of things; he and Bruce murmur softly together and then they start flipping switches on the console. Steve stands at attention next to her; she can feel him practically vibrating with tension.
"It's not so different from when I took the serum," he says softly to her. "Hopefully, there are no HYDRA agents in disguise in here, though."
"We'll take care of them if there are," she answers, touching his elbow lightly.
He gives her a half-smile in response, and then all their attention is drawn to the cryo tube, from which has begun draining through lengths of tubing along the floor. The metal arm is visible now, in a way it wasn't before unless you were looking for it or already knew it was there, and Steve sucks in a surprised breath. Natasha squeezes his elbow again, but doesn't take her eyes off the tube. It opens slowly, the glass front sliding down like an automatic window in a car, releasing a burst of humid, chemical-sweet smelling air. Bruce starts removing the straps holding the Winter Soldier in place while Tony continues to adjust dials at the console--Natasha doesn't know what they're pumping into him, but his color is slowly coming back and his muscles twitch like he's waking up from a dream. Bruce removes the oxygen mask last, and the Winter Soldier's body teeters towards him.
Steve surges forward, catching him and lowering him to the ground like some weird live-action reenactment of Michelangelo's pieta. Natasha glances at Clint, who's still on alert, and then back to Steve, who's whispering, "Bucky? Come on, Buck, you've been sleeping long enough."
The Winter Soldier's--Bucky's--eyes flutter open and the tension in the room ratchets up another notch as everyone seems to draw in a deep breath at the same time.
And then one of the puppies comes rushing in, yapping loudly. The SRT agents raise their guns and Natasha unholsters her weapon.
"A wily pup has escaped," Thor hollers, chasing after it as it skids to a halt in front of Steve and Bucky, but nobody lowers their guns.
"Okay," Steve says, but he doesn't have a hand free to pet it, and it starts licking Bucky's fingers.
Bucky makes a low, curious noise and opens his eyes. Natasha can't see anything of the soldier's cold intent in them, but she doesn't see much else either, beyond puzzlement. He looks around the room in confusion and picks up the puppy, which fits into the palm of his hand. "You're a brave little one, aren't you?" he asks, his voice rusty with disuse. Then he looks around again, his gaze passing over her as if they'd never met and lighting on Fury. "Sir," he says, instinctively knowing who's in charge. He struggles awkwardly out of Steve's arms to stand at attention, apparently unaware or uncaring of his nakedness or the fact that he's trembling visibly. "You have a mission for me?"
The strangest part--to Natasha, anyway--is that he says it all in English.
There's a curious flicker of expression across Fury's face, one Natasha's only seen briefly and rarely, something like gentleness. "No, soldier. At ease."
And like a puppet whose strings have been cut, the Winter Soldier collapses back into Steve's arms.
There's a lot of yelling from the lab coats as they converge on him with stethoscopes and sensors. Steve shoves the puppy at Thor and lays the Winter Soldier down on a gurney, but Natasha can tell by the set of his jaw and the furrow in his brow that he's not pleased to relinquish him. He throws Natasha a pleading glance over his shoulder and then trails after the doctors as they wheel their way out of the lab.
Natasha looks at Fury as Clint slips into place beside her, and Bruce, Tony, and Thor form up behind her. He meets her gaze squarely and his mouth twitches in the briefest of half-smiles before it turns into his usual intimidating scowl. "What are you all looking at me for? Don't you have jobs to do?"
Natasha eyes him for a moment longer, then nods once, satisfied.
*
For the next week, Steve hovers outside the exam rooms and the interrogation rooms where the Winter Soldier is being deprogrammed, his whole body vibrating with impatience when the psychiatrists and doctors won't let him in. He reminds Natasha of nothing so much as one of his puppies, and he uses one--the one who crashed the lab the day they woke the Winter Soldier up--to bribe his way into the infirmary after another long session with the PsyOps team. Natasha notes that even SHIELD issue shrinks and nurses aren't immune to cuteness. She hopes no mad scientist ever figures it out or they'll be knee-deep in tribbles.
"What are you gonna call her?" Steve asks as the puppy leaps and frolics around the Winter Soldier's feet.
"I don't even have my own name," he says. "How can I name something else?"
"You do," Steve insists. "You're James Buchanan Barnes. You're Bucky."
He looks at Natasha. "What do you think?"
"What do you want to be called?" She had kept her name but she also chose a new variation on it when she joined SHIELD. It was the first of many such choices.
He bites his lip as if he's thinking deeply about it; he's much more thoughtful, this man, than the one she remembers. Or perhaps it's just that he's allowed to think now, and has the time to do it. "James," he says, hesitantly, and then more confidently, "Please call me James."
Steve looks stricken, but he nods. "Whatever you want. And the puppy?"
James grins, and it lights all three of them up. "She's brave and strong for such a little thing. She should have a strong name, I think." He leans down to pick the excited puppy up. It licks happily at his metal hand. "Isn't that right, Begimot?" The puppy barks in agreement and they all laugh.
That's a good day, and Natasha is glad James has them, not just for his own sake but for Steve's, even if sometimes she thinks the cold rage or the indomitable will of the Winter Soldier would be better than this malleable blandness, and the possibility that SHIELD will just make him over into what they want him to be. But even if she were unable to prevent it, Steve won't allow that to happen.
Despite recommendations from the doctors to the contrary, Steve pushes him, telling stories about their childhood in Brooklyn or their days with the Howling Commandos, and it backfires spectacularly. The doctors say James has had some sort of breakthrough in his memory, but though Steve's allowed to see him now, James refuses him access.
He'll still see her, though, and he looks terrible when she visits, curled up with his knees to his chest on his bunk, his hair lank and unwashed and his eyes underlined by dark smudges. The metal bracket in his shoulder where his arm should be stands out starkly against the scarred skin surrounding it.
"You look terrible," she says, leaning against the door and crossing her arms over her chest. "Have you been eating?"
He shoots her a disdainful look but doesn't answer.
She considers him for a minute, then sits down beside him, nudging him a little with her hip so she can sit on his right side. "Hey," she says. "They have sedatives that will work, even with your revved up metabolism. You need to sleep."
"I can't," he says, and this time his look is haunted, anguished. "All I can see are the people I've killed."
"I know." She rests a hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. "It gets better."
"Does it?"
"They'll never go away," she says, "but you learn to live with it. You might even find a way to atone."
"And if I don't?"
She shakes her head. "You know what the alternatives are."
"You should have just let me die."
"Had Steve not been with me, I would have considered it," she says truthfully. "But I'm glad I didn't have to."
"Is he mad?" The sudden vulnerability on his face is stunning. Natasha finds her chest aches a little from seeing it.
"That you won't see him?" James nods. "No. He's hurt, and he's concerned, but he's not angry." She reconsiders. "He's not angry at you."
"I still don't really remember him," he says. "I'm not that guy, the one he thinks I am. I don't think I ever was, or ever could be. And the way he looks at me--I can't--I can't be what he wants."
"You might be surprised at what you could be, with Steve pulling for you," she says. "But he only wants you to be well, and to be yourself."
"Whoever that is."
She dips her head in acknowledgement. "Yes."
"If you say so." He sounds skeptical, though. "You love him, don't you."
Natasha holds very still; she'd forgotten that he'd been almost as good at reading her as she had at reading him. "I care very much for him, yes. But love is for children."
He takes her hand and raises it to his lips. "Oh, Natashenka, they really fucked us up, didn't they?"
She touches his cheek gently. "Yes, James. They really did."
*
"Deprogramming's a slow process," she tells Steve that night when they're done eating dinner and she's curled up next to him on the couch, having a glass of wine. "I don't remember much of it, and what I do remember isn't pleasant. But it will eventually get better."
"Okay," he says, his hand tightening on her shoulder as he drains his glass. "Even if he won't let me help, he has you." He brightens a little. "And Begimot."
Natasha can't help but smile. "Yes."
But Steve has a tendency to fixate--if James could remember, she'd ask him if Steve used to pick his scabs, because he seems like the type--and a few days later, after James has once again refused Steve access after an intense session with the deprogrammer, he asks, "Did he say why he won't see me?"
"He's ashamed."
"He has nothing to be ashamed of." Steve is vehement on this and has said it to everyone from Fury on down, repeatedly.
"He needs time to work through it all."
"Still, he knows I don't care about all that, right?" His forehead is furrowed in concern and it makes Natasha want to smooth it out with kisses.
"Steve, listen to me." She takes his chin in her hands and meets his gaze squarely. "He cares about it. And he's made a decision about it. Do you know how long it's been since he's been able to care about anything, or make a decision about it?"
"Okay," Steve says. "I get it. I didn't think--But you're right."
She grins and presses a quick kiss to his lips. "I usually am."
He still looks like some combination of frantic and fragile, though, and there's a wildness to him that night as he fucks her. Afterwards, he kisses the bruises on her skin, but when he tries to apologize she stops him. "You may be super strong," she says, "but you're not going to break me."
"I know," he says. "That's why I love you."
She swallows hard and locks the words away with all his other secrets. He doesn't expect an answer, and she hasn't yet figured out how to give him one, at least not in words.
*
It's the puppies that bring Steve and James back together. Natasha should have expected it. James's recovery is going better than she--or anyone but Steve, really--had hoped, and he attributes a lot of it to the puppy that adopted him.
"I was talking to the headshrinkers, and they said that therapy dogs are a thing now," he tells her one morning over breakfast. His quarters are Spartan and they can be locked down by SHIELD at any moment, but he has a window overlooking Times Square, and Tony Stark made him a new prosthetic arm (no less lethal than the previous one, but it, too, can be shut down with a command to Jarvis at any time), so it seems less like a prison and more like a hospital room. "So I was thinking--aside from Begemosha," the puppy barks upon hearing her name so James reaches down to scratch behind her ears and she wriggles in ecstasy, "and the one Stark took for his lady friend, the others still need homes, right?"
"Dr. Foster's intern took one," Natasha says. "We tried to convince Clint, but he already has a dog he's barely able to look after."
James laughs. "That still leaves three, though. They're already taking Begemosha away for training in the K9 program every morning, though what a spy organization needs with puppies is beyond me."
"Do you have any idea how many missions require us to go undercover at a dog park?" Natasha grins. "And Clint's getting really cranky about always having to use his own dog."
James's mouth quirks in a half-grin. "I'm about eighty percent sure you're fucking with me, but that twenty percent is really disquieting."
She laughs and touches his hand. "But yes, there are still three puppies available to good homes."
"Do you think Steve would be willing to have them trained as therapy dogs, then?"
He would. Of course he would. There's no doubt in Natasha's mind. But she says, "You should ask him yourself."
James's laugh is rueful this time. "I had a feeling you were going to say that." He nods. "Okay. I'll see him."
"He loves you very much," she says softly, "and he's missed you for a very long time."
"But no pressure or anything, right?"
"No, not really. I'll make sure of that."
And she does. She tries, anyway, to manage Steve's expectations. James has become cagier lately about what he's remembering, what he's feeling, which is only fair, even if it's frustrating.
Steve beams when she tells him the news, and he hums all morning, which really freaks the analysts out during the nine a.m. briefing.
He takes Dodger, the puppies' mother, with him when they go (Natasha rolls her eyes at him; men and their dogs), and she plays with Begimot while James lays out his proposal.
"So they would help vets with PTSD in therapy," James finishes, and almost before he's done speaking Steve says, "Of course. Yes, of course. That's a great idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself."
"Well, one of us has to be the brains of the operation, pal, and it isn't you."
Steve goes utterly still for a moment. Natasha glances between them, but her concern is ameliorated by the easy grin on James's face.
"Bucky," Steve says softly.
"Yeah," James answers, and lets Steve pull him into a bear hug.
"You can't be the brains of the operation," Steve says, his face in the crook of James's throat. "You took all the stupid with you."
Natasha blinks back tears she'll never admit to, and looks away from the naked joy on their faces. It makes her heart clench, and she promises herself that she'll enjoy whatever happiness they bring her for however long it lasts.
*
It takes another few weeks for SHIELD to release James into Steve's custody (and he still has to report in for twice-weekly therapy sessions), but he slots into their lives like he's always been there, like a puzzle piece neither of them had admitted to missing.
It's not quite right, though. During the first two months James lives with them, he still goes to his own room at the end of their evenings together, even though Natasha would rather he sleep in Steve's giant bed with them. She's pretty sure he feels the same way but won't ever presume to ask, and Steve--Steve's the bravest man she's ever known, but not when it comes to relationships. So if she wants this to happen, she's going to have to do the heavy lifting herself.
She hasn't quite worked out how to bring it up, though. They've both acclimated well to the twenty-first century, but it's still the kind of change that requires forethought and careful negotiation.
Before she can figure out the best way to ask, though, Steve does it for her. They're lying in bed, curled together half-asleep after some truly excellent sex, and he says, "When you said I might get the chance to kiss Bucky again, did you mean it?"
"I--" Natasha isn't usually caught off guard, but Steve has a way of doing it to her. "I did." She licks her lips and gathers her thoughts. "Is that something you're interested in doing?"
"Not without you," he answers without hesitation, and it warms her all the way through. "Is that something you're interested in doing?"
"I think so," she says, and then, more decisively (more honestly), "Yes. I've thought about it a bit."
Steve gives her a roguish half-grin. "So have I." His face goes pensive, then. "Do you think he--I would be okay if he just wanted you. I would understand that."
She kisses his nose. "You, Cap, are an idiot."
He huffs softly. "It's been said."
"Don't worry about it. I've got it all under control," she says, half-formed plans suddenly coalescing in her head. "Just follow my lead."
"Okay," he says, and gives her a heated kiss that leads to a slow and satisfying round three.
The next day is Sunday. They sleep in and have a late breakfast, and Natasha lets her hands linger on James's shoulders and slide across his back as she passes him in the kitchen. She brushes up against him in the hallway between their bedrooms, and curls up next to him on the couch when he puts the ballgame on.
Steve sits down on her other side, and she can feel the tension in him. She rests a hand on his thigh, and lays her head on James's shoulder.
"So," she says. He turns to look at her, his face close enough that they're breathing the same air, which practically crackles with the electricity between them. "Steve and I have been talking."
James draws back immediately. "If you want me to leave, I can be out of your hair in twenty minutes."
Natasha opens her mouth to tell him he's wrong but Steve bursts out with, "And you call me an idiot," and then he's reaching across her to haul James into a rough kiss.
James stiffens, and she wonders if she's read the situation completely wrong, but then he relaxes into the kiss, one hand coming up to cup Steve's face and the other to touch her cheek.
The dogs start barking, and Begimot jumps up into James's lap, so he pulls away from Steve and laughs.
"I think she's jealous," he says delightedly.
"Now she knows how I feel," Steve answers. "You okay with this, Buck?"
"I am if you are. Natasha?"
"Yes," she says. She reaches out and palms the napes of their necks, running her fingers through the short hair there. They respond with the same shivers of bliss the puppies do, and she smiles. "Take me to bed, boys. I'm all yours."
"We're all each other's," Steve insists, and she and James hum in agreement.
*
A few days later, Begimot goes on her first mission with a SHIELD task force looking into weapons being smuggled into Russia over the Chinese border. Natasha made Coulson promise to look out for her during any firefights, and he reluctantly agreed, not wanting to be the man who let Bucky Barnes's dog get killed in action.
She and James have a joyous reunion when she returns, made even better when Maria Hill calls them all into her office and says, "The guns were being run by mercenaries we've traced back through numerous shell corporations to the Kronas Corporation."
James sits up straight then, his hand stilling on Begimot's belly.
Hill nods. "They also owned the warehouse where you were found, Sergeant Barnes. You'll be happy to know that Alexander Lukin is in SHIELD custody. He hasn't admitted to anything, of course, but we've found a paper trail from Department X to Kronas." She gives them a satisfied smile. "I don't think he'll be coming for you any time soon."
"Thank you," he says, squeezing Natasha's hand gently.
"Thank Agent Hippo," she says, nodding at Begimot, who's lolling on her back and whining for belly rubs. "She's the one who sniffed him out."
That's twice the dogs have saved him, Natasha thinks. Maybe next time Steve rescues a kitten from a tree, she won't make fun of him. Much.
end
~*~
Notes: Title from Thea Gilmore, sort of. Thanks to
snacky and
laurificus, who helped when I was stuck, to caughtinanocean, who named Bucky's puppy*, and to
fox1013 for SPY PUPPIES. <3
* she said: "Бегемот" (Begimot), which means hippo, would be a pretty cute name for a dog along those lines. It would probably get called things like "Бегемоша" (Begemosha).
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
Now it's off to the Cap marathon! Squee!
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/652426.html.
people have commented there.