Title: Remembrance
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanoff
Rating: R
Author's Note: Not mine! Characters you recognize belong to other people, and I am just playing in their sandbox for fun.
Summary: "You could at least remember me."
Everything was hazy and cold, moving with the sluggish speed that Bucky associated with being on deep freeze. It was actually a relief, and a decision he was sorry that pained Steve. But he couldn't be out in the open, not if the trigger words were out there, not if he could be easily found and then turned to do things against his will. He was in an altered state of consciousness, and his thoughts tangled with memories and fragments of past events.
You could at least remember me.
Red hair, green eyes, porcelain pale skin, strong hands and thighs, acting despite a deep seated fear rising in her clear eyes. They were all hauntingly familiar, though the features had been softer and rounder, with bangs and wavy hair. It had taken place long ago, long before he slammed her down into a table and choked her, long before the overpass in DC, long before he had shot her in Odessa.
You could at least remember me.
Oh, dear God, he remembered. It clicked, why he had to let her survive and why he overrode the unspoken parts of his directives.
Bucky remembered the soft strains of music, the training of the girls to give them a lithe grace and fluid movements. It added to the overlays in memory that the girls would have, that they were training for the Bolshoi, that they were merely dancers. But there were the flashes of hand to hand training, of his arm around slender necks, of girls tapping out and giving up, failing when they shouldn't have-
Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
He remembered the name, the way her lips parted when she looked at him expectantly. He could feel the blow when she kicked him in the head, when she struck him in the chest. The strength behind those little fists had been surprising, and he had underestimated her when he had first seen her. She was little then, and later on not so little. No, she was all luscious curves, sultry smiles, horrid knowledge in her eyes and bad jokes meant to disarm him.
It must have been a fantasy, that he had used his flesh and blood hand to caress her cheek, thumb on her chin. He must have dreamed that he kissed her mouth, traced the curve of her shoulder with his lips, that his fingers knew the slope of her breasts. It was merely a daydream, because her trainers never would have allowed it. She would have been a trained agent, an assassin with a deadly skill set, and they would have watched her closely until let loose on a target of their choosing. They wouldn't have left her alone with him, wouldn't have given him opportunity to push her against the wall, attacking her mouth with his. There wouldn't have been the chance to fondle her, to plunge his fingers into her sticky wetness, to bring her off quickly, swallowing her cries with his tongue pressed against hers. He wouldn't have been allowed to lick into her, tasting her, savoring the cries she muffled with her clenched fist.
Bucky had been viewed as a thing, as a mindless creature to direct however his handlers wished. He had no actions of his own, no thoughts, no dreams. The directives shut him away behind a layer of compliance. It was like screaming in a locked room, no windows or vents, only a screen to see where the body went and what it did.
Oh, yes, he remembered everything. In this dream state, he couldn't help but remember.
But he must have dreamed her. He must have, because to have had her love and then lost it because of trigger words would cut him to the core. It was bad enough he had no control over himself, but to know that they had erased it all, that the very fabric of who he had been was rewritten and removed would shatter him. Bucky barely had remembered Steve when in DC, with all of the wipes from the machines, and it was only distance and exposure to things outside of Hydra's purview that allowed his memories to filter back in.
You could at least remember me.
Her voice haunted him, laced through his thoughts. He remembered her, absolutely. Did she remember? Because he wasn't the only one that had been placed in the chair. He knew that the girls he had mentored and trained also had their turns. Muscle memory would be intact, but not the personal memory. That let the girls be docile, and they could be overwritten as many times as the handlers needed.
Natalia, he would have told her if he could, I do remember you. I do.
If only he could tell her. If only he could make her understand. She was better off without him weighing her down. All he did was hurt the ones he cared about, and he was unable to stop himself from doing it. Whatever she remembered of their past, it would be better if she didn't act on it or bring it back up. It would be best if she moved on, found someone worthy of her. She could find someone that could appreciate all of her, could bring out the best in her.
Natasha was amazing, and transcended the life that had been designed for her. If she could do it, maybe he could do the same.
The End