Natasha didn't even realize that she'd tensed up while she was waiting for his answer until she had it and felt her shoulders relaxing with relief. It was one thing to ask him to help her dismantle the Red Room, knowing full well that it would likely lead to him having to confront some of his own ghosts. But it would have felt like another thing entirely to bring him face to face with Alexei if any of their missions had been entangled. An unaskable thing. Her mouth curled in a half smile, though there was little humor in her eyes as she looked at him. Russia's only super-soldier indeed.
Part of her had wondered over the years, as she put together time lines for the Winter Soldier and the Red Guardian, if Alexei had served a dual purpose. He'd been the perfect propaganda package, to be sure. But his showboating also made for a mesmerizing sleight of hand trick. No one would think to look twice at the work the Winter Soldier was doing if they were preoccupied by the Red Guardian's flashy missions. A knife in the dark.
"Yeah, when Yelena and I were kids we were sent to Ohio with Alexei and an older Widow named Melina. Our cover story was a family." Her mouth pulled to the side, and she was quiet for a moment before she continued. There were ghosts in every corner of her past. Red on every page of her ledger. This one was no different. "We were there for three years. Their target was the North Institute. Part of SHIELD." Which was to say that at the time, it was probably also part of HYDRA. And whatever it was Alexei had pulled from the data banks, it had certainly gone toward improving Dreykov's control over the Black Widows. And likely HYDRA's control of the Winter Soldiers.
"I won't hold it against you if you bail," she began, her fingers tightening on the strap of her bag. Nothing in the world was more important to her than getting the antidote out to the Widows. Several floors below, she could hear a door bang open in a way that set her teeth on edge. "But if we're going to go, we should go now. If that's the guy that was chasing Yelena and I earlier, we can't fight him off with this many civilians around."
His mouth thinned upon hearing the North Institute.
One of the greatest curses about his time as the Winter Soldier was that he remembered everything. No blurry smeared glass, no convenient fog drowning out all his years under HYDRA's thumb: he remembered it with crystal-clear recollection as if it had been him doing it all, like it was his own hand on the trigger (which, yes, it was). So that name pinged some distant memory. Bucky had heard that name back in the 90s, overheard from the scientists while the Winter Soldier stood silent watchful guard in the corner. A break-in. Valuable intel, taken. Their own program compromised, but they had deemed it an acceptable loss at the time, not enough to bring the entire thing screeching to a halt.
All of which meant the connection between the Widows and the Winter Soldiers was even closer than he'd like.
That door slammed down below, and he saw the way Nat's spine stiffened. And then, like a switch had been flipped, he seemed to make up his mind. On his feet and crossing the room, a pen and a pad of paper, scribbling a coded message for Steve — analog, because they were both old-fashioned guys, and texts could be intercepted. Went out for pierogis. Back later.
And then Bucky went for the closet and grabbed a canvas backpack, and slung it over his back. The go-bag had already been packed and ready long ago (fake passport, cash, gun, spare ammunition, a burner phone). He was used to being on the move, needing to hit the road quickly. Supplies obtained, Bucky turned back to her.
"Lead the way, Romanoff," he said, and there was something brisk and quick and unthinking about it. No hesitation. Not even considering the question of bailing.
Sometimes Natasha had to wonder if the Black Widow name was a little too apt. It seemed to her that everything that happened in her life before she defected was all interconnected. Every time she tugged one strand of the web the Red Room had kept her in, she could watch the vibrations shimmer all the way down to other people, other programs. The North Institute, HYDRA, SHIELD. Shadow ops organizations circled each other for decades and chewed up everything that got in their way. And the youngest generation of Widows were next in line.
She watched as he made his way across the room to leave a note, grab a bag. A flash of relief scorched through her, followed by a hard twist of guilt. It was selfish to drag him back into the web. But she couldn't see another way out of it if she wanted to spare the Widows from Dreykov's cruelty. When he passed by her, her hand caught his right forearm and she gave it a quick squeeze as she looked up at him. If she tried to thank him, he'd just shrug it off. So for now, that fleeting touch would have to suffice.
"Do you have a ride?" she asked as she pushed the window up and went out of it onto the fire escape. She and Yelena were playing a game of keep away, desperately trying to stay at least one step ahead of Dreykov's reach. All the while they circled their way towards a method to reproduce and distribute the counter agent. The pain from her various injuries bit at her as she moved quickly down the metal steps, balancing on the ball of her foot to reduce the amount of noise the rusty framework made as she moved.
"Motorcycle," he said, as he climbed out after her and carefully eased the curtain and then window back into place behind them. A bike was more maneuverable, cheaper and easier to obtain and wrangle through those narrow streets, and not quite as noticeable as a car. Plus: he was kind of attached to them, with those sepia-toned memories of buzzing around Europe on his motorcycle with the Howling Commandos. "Next street over. Hope you don't mind sitting behind me."
Considering the way Nat was gingerly carrying herself, it would've been nice if they could've stopped in the apartment and let her rest for a little while, just for the evening — but that could come later. Maybe on that plane to Russia, depending on who was flying, or maybe they could trade off at the controls: swapping shifts where each of them could sit with arms crossed and head tipped back, catching some scant rest. They were both accustomed to having to catch whichever scraps of sleep they could get, even in a desperate situation. Lots of hurry up and wait during the war, or when watching a target for long dull days, waiting for the right opportunity to slip in for the kill.
Bucky waited until she was safely on the ground, to stop the fire escape from screeching beneath their combined weight, and then he slid down after her. Almost like he'd done this before. (He'd definitely done this before.) He was already fishing in the pocket of the duffel for the motorcycle keys as he led the way down the street, moving at a brisk walk. It was a late enough hour that hopefully people wouldn't notice them.
Natasha wasn't sure she'd be able to convince herself to sleep until she made some headway toward freeing the Widows. Not that she'd be much good if she ground herself down to nothing. But getting them to freedom and safety was more important than her feeling well rested, or a few injuries. Thanks to the Red Room, there wasn't much she couldn't fight her way through. She waited impatiently at the foot of the fire escape, poised to move the second he hit the ground next to her. Her head was tipped back to watch the window of the apartment they'd been in.
"Lead the way," she said, without missing a beat. A motorcycle was good - it was easier to get lost in the flow of traffic on a bike. Or to leave it idling between cars to make a run for it. Instinct made her glance back over her shoulder as they hastened down the alleyway, just in time to catch the brief glitter of a scope through the window. "Get down," she instructed sharply as she grabbed his arm and yanked him around the corner just in time for the shot to shatter the bricks where their heads had been.
"Shit," she muttered, letting him go as she hastened their way around the corner to his bike. As she moved, she unholstered her guns and took the safety off. The pain from her injuries surged through her in waves. "Hope you don't mind me returning fire from behind you."
"Wouldn't expect any less," Bucky said with a flicker of a grin, a startling flash of humour despite the situation; even as they heard the familiar whipcrack of a bullet, the clattering of stones and shattered brick right behind them.
This entire thing was familiar: his steady and glacial heartbeat finally kicking into gear with the old thrill of action. He shouldn't like it. It should be a terrible reminder of his past, of days and nights and years as an assassin, mired in the very worst of firefights and hails of bullets and danger—
but ugly as it was, this had been his life, and this was what he knew, and knew better than grocery shopping or paying phone bills.
So Bucky harkened to it like he was coming home. He followed that press of her hand, ducked around the corner and ran full-tilt for the bike. Already jamming in the keys, kicking it off its stand, sliding into place in the seat. He waited only long enough to feel Nat's weight settle behind him, and then he was off: the bike bouncing and rumbling along cobblestoned streets, before he hauled it onto smoother roads.
Behind them, gunfire; his shoulders tightened and he bent lower over the handlebars, making for a narrower profile, a smaller target. There wasn't anything he could do from the front; he'd just have to trust Nat to have their back, and he did.
And this, he reflected, was probably the sort of trouble Steve didn't want his friend to get involved in when they were already on the run — but Natasha had needed help, and there was a certain satisfaction in knowing they were leading their pursuers away from the apartment, away from Steve, even if it meant plunging themselves into danger.
Besides. It was Natasha, and James. They could handle it.
His quick grin was met with an answering half-smirk, her mouth pulling to the side as she reeled in her focus. What else could they do? Either you laughed in the face of danger or you gave in to the fear. Giving in was unthinkable. There was too much on the line. And there was something all too familiar about the rapport of gunfire and the answering surge of adrenaline. Natasha's skills were hard won. There was something to be said for using them to do some good in the world when she could.
There was a rhythm to every fight. Her earliest training had been in dance. It taught them grace, discipline. More than that, it taught pattern recognition. It made finding the beats and then disrupting them second nature.
She perched on the motorcycle behind him, already half twisted around as the bike shot out of the alley. Their pursuers fired - she wouldn't call it wildly, but they were definitely aiming for maximum coverage. "Try to get onto side roads, they're going to mow down pedestrians if they keep going like that," she called to him over her shoulder. When she returned fire, it was precise, searching for a weak point on a vehicle that was evidently very well armored.
Her mind clicked through their options as she turned in the other direction to fire with her second gun, re-holstering the first in the same motion. "How attached are you to this bike?"
He obeyed without question — it was an old trained instinct, the Winter Soldier responding to his handlers and following their guidance in the field, but it served him well here — veering the motorcycle onto sideroads and further away from the more trafficked thoroughfares. It was a late enough hour that thankfully the streets weren't packed, but they could still take this chase out to the edge of the city. Try to shake their pursuers.
And Bucky fell into operating on autopilot: the shift of their weight on the bike as they tilted into the turns, his hands tightening on the handlebars, the quick-snap reflexes to not slam into a billboard or fire hydrant or parked car, the concentration to ignore the patter of gunfire behind them.
The wind almost ripped Natasha's voice away from them, but his enhanced hearing caught the question. "Bikes can be replaced," he shouted back. "People can't. What d'you have in mind?"
There was something about the way he responded, effortlessly navigating them down a side road as soon as the last word left her mouth, that almost put her at ease. It was a rare thing, to find herself working with someone that she could trust instinctively. Come hell or high water, they'd have each other's backs. And if she went down, he wouldn't stop running until he completed the mission.
Natasha slid her gun away when he responded, and her free hand squeezed his shoulder. "Getting run over." Her other arm reached around to hand him the grappling device the widows used to repel on buildings. The timing would be tricky, but she was pretty sure that the reward would be worth the risk. The vehicle pursuing them was well armored, but the undersides of cars like that typically weren't. If she stuck an explosive to the side of the bike, once he pulled them up off of it, she could detonate it as it slid under the wheels of the car. They needed to buy enough space so she could patch herself up while they ran for their next destination.
sry for the delay as ever, covid knocked me over :[
Once upon a time, decades ago and before the war, hearing this plan might’ve made him blanch. Are you fucking kidding me or Have you lost your mind— except that, well, Natasha Romanoff was always in clear, complete control of her senses and she’d survived no end of batshit insane missions like he had. As time went on, he kept remembering more harebrained schemes that he’d survived with Steve and the Howling Commandos, and jumping feetfirst into the fire and always coming out of it by the skin of their teeth, so—
What was one more?
Bucky took the grappling gun with his left hand. He aimed better with the right, but he just needed to hit a building, which was a pretty big target. The more important part was not losing his grip, and that vibranium hand could hang onto the grapple and easily carry both their weights as they flew up.
“Just say when,” he called back. Not questioning the plan — not asking more clarifying questions, because he’d already pieced together as much as he needed to — just accepting the parameters and saying yes, and.
So he kept driving, and waited for that exact moment when Natasha slapped her hand against his shoulder twice; a clear signal, and he shot for the rooftops, the grappling device kicking in his hand and both of them already shifting their weight, moving upwards, getting ready to leap off the bike and to leave it behind.
If pressed, Natasha would try to claim that all of her plans were fairly straight forward and sensible. With the company she kept, somebody had to have a level head, and it might as well be her. But when push came to shove - well. It was spy work 101. People subconsciously thrived on patterns, on the expected. So when a situation was desperate, sometimes the best thing was to be unpredictable. To break the pattern. And with Taskmaster's ability to perfectly copy everything he saw, well. It was hardly the time to rely on her old tricks.
Once he took the grappling gun, she squeezed his shoulder, a silent gesture of thanks and acknowledgment. But she had to quickly get to work, and she pulled the explosive free from its holster and armed it, then leaned to the side so she could stick it under the seat. Once it was planted, she slapped his shoulder and they were off. She pushed off of the bike as her arm levered around his shoulders, her legs wrapped around him to ensure she didn't go tumbling away as she craned her neck to look over her shoulder and -
It all happened at once. Her finger pressed the button as the bike slid beneath the wheels of the Taskmaster's heavily armed car, and they swung upward with startling momentum. The car lifted below with a muffled explosion as fire blossomed beneath it, and Natasha crashed onto the roof of the building, relinquishing her hold on him as she rolled to soften the blow. She came to a stop on her back and lay stunned for just a moment before she laughed and carefully sat up, looking across at him with a grin. "That was fun. Let's never do that again." They still had a long way to go. But at least with their pursuer slowed down, they might stand a chance of making it there in one piece.
It was a chaotic landing on the rooftop, and Bucky threw himself to the side as he went rolling, in an effort to not land on Natasha or inadvertently slam into her with the weight of his vibranium arm, which was such a solid obstacle that it could break bone. The sliding impact tore at the fabric of his clothes but they held up; one of his hands was scraped raw by the cement, but he was durable enough that that small flash of pain didn’t even make him flinch. Still lying on his back, he exhaled, staring up at the sky.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you showed up, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “You liven up my days, Romanoff.”
With a grunt, he levered himself up to sitting. If he were a regular human, he’d probably be aching tomorrow, but that superhuman durability meant he’d be able to shrug this one off. Climbing back to his feet, Bucky peered over the edge of the building: the car was a tangled mess of burning metal, thrown end-over-end into an alleyway — but knowing their luck, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the Taskmaster entirely. Just buy them some time.
He readjusted his backpack, making sure he still had his equipment, and then he loped back to Nat’s side. The whole situation was insane and ridiculous, but— god, it made him feel alive, too.
"Next time I promise I'll only track you down for a light lunch," Natasha promised dryly. The idea of it amused her. She could only imagine what he would have said if he found her lounging in his safe house and asked if he felt like a pastrami and rye. Obviously the answer would have been yes but she was pretty sure he'd give her some well deserved shit first.
She didn't have any superhuman durability of her own, just an unnervingly high tolerance for pain and a single minded determination that bordered on unhealthy on her best days. It would be enough to carry her through what she had to get done, but she could definitely stand to sit still for an evening so she could patch herself up and take a staggering dose of ibuprofen. One thing at a time. She exhaled slowly and got herself onto her feet in time for him to join her.
It would be easier to get to the plane on wheels, but that was what they'd be expecting. Which meant that they'd have to hoof it for a bit. She pulled her phone out and punched in the coordinates before she handed it over to him so he could memorize the map. He wouldn't have settled down in a safe house without figuring out the best escape routes. "We should stay on foot until we're clear of the area, then we can steal a car." She tipped her head back in the direction they'd come from - it would take them back by the explosion, but doubling back was counterintuitive enough that it was the best choice at the moment. Taskmaster had her running scared. Now that she had a minute to breathe, she could make a better plan. "We'll stick to the roofs and climb down at the last building."
“Some light lunch and some light gunfire. It’s a date,” Bucky said, blue eyes practically twinkling with an edge of mischief. His idea of a date with Natasha Romanoff was largely this: staying on the run, under the radar, having each others’ backs. They were both so similar, in both this and her stubborn persistence and pushing herself through injuries — except that the woman didn’t have his durable body, his slightly augmented healing factor, which made her own feats more impressive.
As they set off across the city again, he measured his pace to hers; not handling her with kid gloves, exactly, but making sure he didn’t outpace her and her injuries. Sam had groused a few times in the past about how both Steve and Bucky could keep up with a jeep on foot, leaving everyone else in the dust.
They kept their conversation to the basics: directions, monitoring their surroundings, pinpointing the right car to steal. His metal elbow, smashing through the window so they could get in. As he drove and Nat kept watch, again, he could sense that she was carrying herself with more strung-taut tension than usual. Something about Taskmaster had her so much more rattled than any of their other pursuers; this whole time, she’d been running cheerful circles around all of SHIELD and the American government.
This was different.
It’s the Red Room that’s after me.
But the rest of the trip was thankfully quiet, and they eventually made it to the airstrip without incident; they swapped off piloting for the short flight; finally let some of their hackles drop once they were safely in the air and chewing up the rest of the distance to Russia.
Russia.
The closer they drew to her birth country and his pseudo-adopted one, the more his own tension mounted. Even after they landed and were on their way to somewhere to rest before the next day’s prison break, Bucky’s watchful gaze took in the street signs, the posters, the Cyrillic. When they let themselves into the next anonymous barebones apartment, the exhaustion seemed to finally visibly sag into his shoulderblades. It was the middle of the night by now, and they’d both been running on fumes.
“Well,” he said. “Home sweet home.”
It wasn’t. The safehouse itself was just like any other anonymous bolthole they’d holed themselves up in, and similar to the one she’d found him in, but being back in this country itself seemed to have settled under his skin again too: hunted, haunted.
"You're going to have to look a little less happy about the idea if you want me to believe you the next time you tell me my idea is crazy," Natasha pointed out with a grin. A little humor went a long way when things were grim. If she could still laugh, it meant that she still had enough in her to fight her way through the next obstacle and the next.
She was grateful for his steady presence, for the unwavering way he'd jumped on board this mission. The trip to Russia was long, made even longer by what she knew waited for her there. With the adrenaline of the fight drained from her body, all she could feel were her various bruises and scrapes. Or maybe it was just that her physical hurts were easier to focus on, because it wasn't just a mission. It was personal. It was her own past unfolding in front of her again, raw and aching. She thought she'd brought down the Red Room before. There would be no space for error this time. It had to end. It had to.
By the time they finally landed in the next safe house, she was ready to crash. And there were about a thousand things she wanted - a long hot shower, a full meal, fifteen hours of sleep. But they were going to be working on rations of everything until they managed to untangle the mess Dreykov had made of so many lives. Even so, she could hear it in his voice - the shadow that being back in Russia cast over him and she reached over to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.
And then she moved past him, into the kitchen where she knew a first aid kit would be waiting. There wasn't too much she could do for her injuries other than gulp down three ibuprofen, which was exactly what she did with a bottle of water from the fridge. As exhausted as she was, she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to sleep. Not with the way her mind kept turning over and over. So instead she moved back into the shabby little living room and dropped down onto the couch. "There will be some food in the cabinets, if you want something," she said, her elbow on the back of the couch as she propped her head up on her hand. "Nothing good, but still food." Her own little anonymous support network was reliable, but it wasn't exactly built for glamour. And with his metabolism, she knew he had to be feeling the effects of their frenzied flight out of his last hideaway.
She watched him in silence for a moment. It felt like they were surrounded by creeping darkness. Or echoes, maybe. All the long years of hurt they had both inflicted and had inflicted on them, circling tighter. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this," she commented. "But I'm glad you're here." There was a duality to the sentiment that she knew wouldn't have made sense to a lot of people. But she suspected that he'd get it.
After she squeezed his shoulder — was he so transparent? maybe just to Natasha; she was an expert reader of people, and she wasn’t always searching for some pre-war version of him in his expression — and told him about the food, then Bucky was already moving on autopilot to start rifling through the kitchen. He was quiet; there was just the small noise of cabinet doors opening and closing as he dug out some sustenance, finding some old canned soup and hardy unopened crackers. Hunger was almost always gnawing in his stomach thanks to that metabolism, and so he didn’t waste any time in making himself at home, and at home in that silence.
It was companionable. Not exactly uncomfortable. Neither of them were the type to get nervous with the quiet or start talking simply to fill it up. So when she spoke again, Bucky looked up sharply, in the middle of cracking open that can.
“I’m glad you asked for backup,” he said, because just as easily, there was another version of this story where Nat might have tried to hack it on her own. Saying she was a lone wolf was an understatement.
“And if they’re using chemical subjugation…” His voice trailed off. “Let’s just say it’s relevant to my interests, to shut this shit down with you.”
It wasn't that he was transparent, exactly. Sure, she had a literal lifetime of experience reading people. But moreover, she deeply understood what it felt like to find ghosts around every corner. They had a way of turning up when least expected, but with this mission - well. The room was crowded with them. The companionable silence was welcome. It was nice to know that there was someone else there that understood.
She inclined her head in acknowledgment when he said he was glad she asked for backup. It was easy to read between those lines. And it had been tempting. To go it alone, to keep everyone else's hands clean, to run herself down to nothing to free the rest of the women in the Red Room and take down Dreykov. But Yelena was involved. And that changed everything. She'd done ten lifetime's worth of harm to her sister. She couldn't heap on more for the sake of stubbornness.
Chemical subjugation. So much of her life seemed to circle back around to that mission in Ohio. Sometimes she wondered who she'd be if she hadn't been selected. If maybe the mission wouldn't have been successful if some other team had gone. But you could drown in those what ifs as easily as you could drown in the sea of ghosts.
"They are. It's bad." The answer was succinct, but she knew he didn't need her to draw a vivid picture to understand. With everything they'd both been through, she wouldn't call something bad lightly. She let out a sigh and her eyes closed. There was too much vying for attention in her brain. "I'm going to go sit on a beach for a week after this."
“Hey, I’ll even go with you. If you’re gonna drag me to the ass end of Russia, you can at least let me tag along on the better trips.” He emptied the soup into the pot, clicked on the gas, and then stirred the clumpy mess a little longer before looking over at her.
Natasha looked so, so tired. It wasn’t exactly something he’d point out, like You look like shit, but the truth remained that he generally healed faster than her, and he’d also never seen her quite this haggard. She rarely ever let a situation get to her this badly. Which meant this truly was personal.
So. Instead of focusing just yet on that impossible task awaiting them — a high-security jailbreak, and striving to take down a global organisation which had sunk its claws into the world, just as insidious and slippery and brutal as HYDRA — he focused on that thread of impossible daydream instead.
“At the risk of this sounding like the saddest shit ever, I haven’t been on a vacation in decades,” Bucky pointed out, after a pause. “I could probably go for a Hawaiian shirt and a piña colada on a beach.”
Her mouth curled in a half smile when he answered her, not opening her eyes at first. Part of her wasn't entirely convinced she'd make it out of this mission alive. Maybe she didn't think she deserved to. She'd been running on borrowed time for years. That was just the price of the work she did. And moreover, it was a price she'd earned a thousand times over.
It was hard not to be maudlin, in a room full of ghosts. Maybe a full night's sleep would clear some of them out from the corners.
When he continued, her head lifted so she could look at him, an amused look on her face. "Careful, Barnes, I'll hold you to that. You'd look good in a Hawaiian shirt." Which was to say he'd probably look grumpy and annoyed and she'd get a real kick out of it. It was an impossible dream, but a nice one. Neither of them could really claim that they did a good job of relaxing. So she picked up the thread of it as she mused aloud, "bet I could find a private beach somewhere."
“I’ve broken into military installations, private homes, international embassies, factories, prisons,” Bucky rattled off contemplatively, like itemising most of a century’s worth of ugly work and missions conducted in the dead of night, “and on one really bizarre occasion, a carnival after hours. A man got eaten by a tiger.”
It had been an unconventional way to see the job through, for sure.
Which might’ve been appallingly dark humour around anyone else. He couldn’t levy it around just anyone — Steve would have blanched — but now that he’s with Nat again, he gets to drop some of his hackles. Resurrecting his ability to find that absurdist, tragicomic streak in it all; peeling back one more layer, and behaving more himself. The himself that he’d become.
“So if we need to sneak onto someone’s private beach afterward, hell, that’s nothing.”
Her brow quirked as the list of places he'd broken into grew, until finally a mischievous smirk curled her lips. Eaten by a tiger indeed. "Get a lion and a bear and you've got a full theme. Oh my." That was certainly an unconventional way to see a job done. It might even have her bested for most unconventional solution. Certainly for assassinations, but maybe not for spy work. But that dark humor was a horrible necessity to the line of work they'd both been in. If you couldn't laugh about it, there weren't many other tolerable responses.
"Well, we might not even have to sneak. I've got a few favors left I haven't called in. I'm sure one of them is with someone that could land us on a private beach somewhere. Maybe even a private island." Which would be ideal. She could do with a little peace and quiet. So much of her life had been spent looking over her shoulder, and the last few months hadn't exactly been a break from that. It would be nice to plant herself in the sand for a while.
If she ever got there.
Her head leaned on her hand as she nodded over toward the kitchen. "What kind of soup did they leave this time? The last time I had to use a safe house it was all clam chowder." The sentence was punctuated with a nose scrunch to illustrate exactly what she thought of that dietary option. It was a ridiculously light hearted topic, given everything they'd face the following day, but it served the same purpose as that dark humor. They'd have plenty of time to dig into planning. This might be the last chance they had to catch their breath for a few days.
“Chicken noodle. I’m making a double batch, if you want some.”
It was something so banal: standing in a kitchen with Natasha Romanoff, cooking dinner for him-slash-them, the quiet Russian night sitting heavy outside their dark windows. He wished that was all it was, and that they could just sit tight and enjoy it properly without some masked monster blowing up the whole street to get at them. If he squinted, this could just be an evening in with a friend, with no further concerns haunting them, no complicated mission waiting for them at the end of the road.
Which, speaking of those complications.
Bucky glanced back at her. Wanted to keep the conversation light, frothy — private beaches and holidays, he wasn’t above teasing the idea of Nat in a bikini — but the curiosity was digging beneath his skin like a thorn in his paw, and so he had to ask.
“So it was a family cover story, right? But you still call him your father?”
"Yes please." It was a simple answer, but she was hungry. She couldn't remember the last time she'd stopped long enough to eat something. If the kitchen only held clam chowder again, she probably still would have bolted down a bowl.
It was nice, to let herself get lost in the tide of light conversation for a while. She could almost picture the bleached white shoreline, the warm ocean water, the sun over head. Just about as far away from a cold Russian night as you could get. When he asked about the family cover story, the fabricated beach in her mind's eye faded, replaced by that sandy landing strip in Cuba. There was a momentary pause before she said, "family's complicated." The ring of soldiers. Melina laying on a stretcher. Her last desperate attempt to protect Yelena.
It was quiet again after she said that. She'd known, she'd always known, that their lives in Ohio had been a fiction. But it had been a beautiful fiction. One that a child that grew up learning how to be a weapon couldn't help but want to believe. It had been harder for Yelena, she knew. She'd been so young.
Natasha cleared her throat and shifted forward so that she could fold her arms along the back of the couch as she looked into the kitchen at him. "My family abandoned me when I was born, so I was raised in the Red Room. Those three years we spent in Ohio were the only time I ever had a family. Even if it wasn't real." She pointed at the bag that contained the antidote, an indicator that he could get it if he wanted to look. "There's photo booth pictures in there of me and Yelena. We both had half of the strip while we were in there. Alexei let Dreykov take us back. But they're all still a part of me." Her mouth quirked into a tired little half smile. "For better or worse."
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aaayee!
Part of her had wondered over the years, as she put together time lines for the Winter Soldier and the Red Guardian, if Alexei had served a dual purpose. He'd been the perfect propaganda package, to be sure. But his showboating also made for a mesmerizing sleight of hand trick. No one would think to look twice at the work the Winter Soldier was doing if they were preoccupied by the Red Guardian's flashy missions. A knife in the dark.
"Yeah, when Yelena and I were kids we were sent to Ohio with Alexei and an older Widow named Melina. Our cover story was a family." Her mouth pulled to the side, and she was quiet for a moment before she continued. There were ghosts in every corner of her past. Red on every page of her ledger. This one was no different. "We were there for three years. Their target was the North Institute. Part of SHIELD." Which was to say that at the time, it was probably also part of HYDRA. And whatever it was Alexei had pulled from the data banks, it had certainly gone toward improving Dreykov's control over the Black Widows. And likely HYDRA's control of the Winter Soldiers.
"I won't hold it against you if you bail," she began, her fingers tightening on the strap of her bag. Nothing in the world was more important to her than getting the antidote out to the Widows. Several floors below, she could hear a door bang open in a way that set her teeth on edge. "But if we're going to go, we should go now. If that's the guy that was chasing Yelena and I earlier, we can't fight him off with this many civilians around."
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One of the greatest curses about his time as the Winter Soldier was that he remembered everything. No blurry smeared glass, no convenient fog drowning out all his years under HYDRA's thumb: he remembered it with crystal-clear recollection as if it had been him doing it all, like it was his own hand on the trigger (which, yes, it was). So that name pinged some distant memory. Bucky had heard that name back in the 90s, overheard from the scientists while the Winter Soldier stood silent watchful guard in the corner. A break-in. Valuable intel, taken. Their own program compromised, but they had deemed it an acceptable loss at the time, not enough to bring the entire thing screeching to a halt.
All of which meant the connection between the Widows and the Winter Soldiers was even closer than he'd like.
That door slammed down below, and he saw the way Nat's spine stiffened. And then, like a switch had been flipped, he seemed to make up his mind. On his feet and crossing the room, a pen and a pad of paper, scribbling a coded message for Steve — analog, because they were both old-fashioned guys, and texts could be intercepted. Went out for pierogis. Back later.
And then Bucky went for the closet and grabbed a canvas backpack, and slung it over his back. The go-bag had already been packed and ready long ago (fake passport, cash, gun, spare ammunition, a burner phone). He was used to being on the move, needing to hit the road quickly. Supplies obtained, Bucky turned back to her.
"Lead the way, Romanoff," he said, and there was something brisk and quick and unthinking about it. No hesitation. Not even considering the question of bailing.
Of course he was in.
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She watched as he made his way across the room to leave a note, grab a bag. A flash of relief scorched through her, followed by a hard twist of guilt. It was selfish to drag him back into the web. But she couldn't see another way out of it if she wanted to spare the Widows from Dreykov's cruelty. When he passed by her, her hand caught his right forearm and she gave it a quick squeeze as she looked up at him. If she tried to thank him, he'd just shrug it off. So for now, that fleeting touch would have to suffice.
"Do you have a ride?" she asked as she pushed the window up and went out of it onto the fire escape. She and Yelena were playing a game of keep away, desperately trying to stay at least one step ahead of Dreykov's reach. All the while they circled their way towards a method to reproduce and distribute the counter agent. The pain from her various injuries bit at her as she moved quickly down the metal steps, balancing on the ball of her foot to reduce the amount of noise the rusty framework made as she moved.
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Considering the way Nat was gingerly carrying herself, it would've been nice if they could've stopped in the apartment and let her rest for a little while, just for the evening — but that could come later. Maybe on that plane to Russia, depending on who was flying, or maybe they could trade off at the controls: swapping shifts where each of them could sit with arms crossed and head tipped back, catching some scant rest. They were both accustomed to having to catch whichever scraps of sleep they could get, even in a desperate situation. Lots of hurry up and wait during the war, or when watching a target for long dull days, waiting for the right opportunity to slip in for the kill.
Bucky waited until she was safely on the ground, to stop the fire escape from screeching beneath their combined weight, and then he slid down after her. Almost like he'd done this before. (He'd definitely done this before.) He was already fishing in the pocket of the duffel for the motorcycle keys as he led the way down the street, moving at a brisk walk. It was a late enough hour that hopefully people wouldn't notice them.
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"Lead the way," she said, without missing a beat. A motorcycle was good - it was easier to get lost in the flow of traffic on a bike. Or to leave it idling between cars to make a run for it. Instinct made her glance back over her shoulder as they hastened down the alleyway, just in time to catch the brief glitter of a scope through the window. "Get down," she instructed sharply as she grabbed his arm and yanked him around the corner just in time for the shot to shatter the bricks where their heads had been.
"Shit," she muttered, letting him go as she hastened their way around the corner to his bike. As she moved, she unholstered her guns and took the safety off. The pain from her injuries surged through her in waves. "Hope you don't mind me returning fire from behind you."
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This entire thing was familiar: his steady and glacial heartbeat finally kicking into gear with the old thrill of action. He shouldn't like it. It should be a terrible reminder of his past, of days and nights and years as an assassin, mired in the very worst of firefights and hails of bullets and danger—
but ugly as it was, this had been his life, and this was what he knew, and knew better than grocery shopping or paying phone bills.
So Bucky harkened to it like he was coming home. He followed that press of her hand, ducked around the corner and ran full-tilt for the bike. Already jamming in the keys, kicking it off its stand, sliding into place in the seat. He waited only long enough to feel Nat's weight settle behind him, and then he was off: the bike bouncing and rumbling along cobblestoned streets, before he hauled it onto smoother roads.
Behind them, gunfire; his shoulders tightened and he bent lower over the handlebars, making for a narrower profile, a smaller target. There wasn't anything he could do from the front; he'd just have to trust Nat to have their back, and he did.
And this, he reflected, was probably the sort of trouble Steve didn't want his friend to get involved in when they were already on the run — but Natasha had needed help, and there was a certain satisfaction in knowing they were leading their pursuers away from the apartment, away from Steve, even if it meant plunging themselves into danger.
Besides. It was Natasha, and James. They could handle it.
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There was a rhythm to every fight. Her earliest training had been in dance. It taught them grace, discipline. More than that, it taught pattern recognition. It made finding the beats and then disrupting them second nature.
She perched on the motorcycle behind him, already half twisted around as the bike shot out of the alley. Their pursuers fired - she wouldn't call it wildly, but they were definitely aiming for maximum coverage. "Try to get onto side roads, they're going to mow down pedestrians if they keep going like that," she called to him over her shoulder. When she returned fire, it was precise, searching for a weak point on a vehicle that was evidently very well armored.
Her mind clicked through their options as she turned in the other direction to fire with her second gun, re-holstering the first in the same motion. "How attached are you to this bike?"
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And Bucky fell into operating on autopilot: the shift of their weight on the bike as they tilted into the turns, his hands tightening on the handlebars, the quick-snap reflexes to not slam into a billboard or fire hydrant or parked car, the concentration to ignore the patter of gunfire behind them.
The wind almost ripped Natasha's voice away from them, but his enhanced hearing caught the question. "Bikes can be replaced," he shouted back. "People can't. What d'you have in mind?"
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Natasha slid her gun away when he responded, and her free hand squeezed his shoulder. "Getting run over." Her other arm reached around to hand him the grappling device the widows used to repel on buildings. The timing would be tricky, but she was pretty sure that the reward would be worth the risk. The vehicle pursuing them was well armored, but the undersides of cars like that typically weren't. If she stuck an explosive to the side of the bike, once he pulled them up off of it, she could detonate it as it slid under the wheels of the car. They needed to buy enough space so she could patch herself up while they ran for their next destination.
sry for the delay as ever, covid knocked me over :[
What was one more?
Bucky took the grappling gun with his left hand. He aimed better with the right, but he just needed to hit a building, which was a pretty big target. The more important part was not losing his grip, and that vibranium hand could hang onto the grapple and easily carry both their weights as they flew up.
“Just say when,” he called back. Not questioning the plan — not asking more clarifying questions, because he’d already pieced together as much as he needed to — just accepting the parameters and saying yes, and.
So he kept driving, and waited for that exact moment when Natasha slapped her hand against his shoulder twice; a clear signal, and he shot for the rooftops, the grappling device kicking in his hand and both of them already shifting their weight, moving upwards, getting ready to leap off the bike and to leave it behind.
oh no! no worries, i hope you're feeling better!
Once he took the grappling gun, she squeezed his shoulder, a silent gesture of thanks and acknowledgment. But she had to quickly get to work, and she pulled the explosive free from its holster and armed it, then leaned to the side so she could stick it under the seat. Once it was planted, she slapped his shoulder and they were off. She pushed off of the bike as her arm levered around his shoulders, her legs wrapped around him to ensure she didn't go tumbling away as she craned her neck to look over her shoulder and -
It all happened at once. Her finger pressed the button as the bike slid beneath the wheels of the Taskmaster's heavily armed car, and they swung upward with startling momentum. The car lifted below with a muffled explosion as fire blossomed beneath it, and Natasha crashed onto the roof of the building, relinquishing her hold on him as she rolled to soften the blow. She came to a stop on her back and lay stunned for just a moment before she laughed and carefully sat up, looking across at him with a grin. "That was fun. Let's never do that again." They still had a long way to go. But at least with their pursuer slowed down, they might stand a chance of making it there in one piece.
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“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when you showed up, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “You liven up my days, Romanoff.”
With a grunt, he levered himself up to sitting. If he were a regular human, he’d probably be aching tomorrow, but that superhuman durability meant he’d be able to shrug this one off. Climbing back to his feet, Bucky peered over the edge of the building: the car was a tangled mess of burning metal, thrown end-over-end into an alleyway — but knowing their luck, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the Taskmaster entirely. Just buy them some time.
He readjusted his backpack, making sure he still had his equipment, and then he loped back to Nat’s side. The whole situation was insane and ridiculous, but— god, it made him feel alive, too.
“How do we get to the plane?”
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She didn't have any superhuman durability of her own, just an unnervingly high tolerance for pain and a single minded determination that bordered on unhealthy on her best days. It would be enough to carry her through what she had to get done, but she could definitely stand to sit still for an evening so she could patch herself up and take a staggering dose of ibuprofen. One thing at a time. She exhaled slowly and got herself onto her feet in time for him to join her.
It would be easier to get to the plane on wheels, but that was what they'd be expecting. Which meant that they'd have to hoof it for a bit. She pulled her phone out and punched in the coordinates before she handed it over to him so he could memorize the map. He wouldn't have settled down in a safe house without figuring out the best escape routes. "We should stay on foot until we're clear of the area, then we can steal a car." She tipped her head back in the direction they'd come from - it would take them back by the explosion, but doubling back was counterintuitive enough that it was the best choice at the moment. Taskmaster had her running scared. Now that she had a minute to breathe, she could make a better plan. "We'll stick to the roofs and climb down at the last building."
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As they set off across the city again, he measured his pace to hers; not handling her with kid gloves, exactly, but making sure he didn’t outpace her and her injuries. Sam had groused a few times in the past about how both Steve and Bucky could keep up with a jeep on foot, leaving everyone else in the dust.
They kept their conversation to the basics: directions, monitoring their surroundings, pinpointing the right car to steal. His metal elbow, smashing through the window so they could get in. As he drove and Nat kept watch, again, he could sense that she was carrying herself with more strung-taut tension than usual. Something about Taskmaster had her so much more rattled than any of their other pursuers; this whole time, she’d been running cheerful circles around all of SHIELD and the American government.
This was different.
It’s the Red Room that’s after me.
But the rest of the trip was thankfully quiet, and they eventually made it to the airstrip without incident; they swapped off piloting for the short flight; finally let some of their hackles drop once they were safely in the air and chewing up the rest of the distance to Russia.
Russia.
The closer they drew to her birth country and his pseudo-adopted one, the more his own tension mounted. Even after they landed and were on their way to somewhere to rest before the next day’s prison break, Bucky’s watchful gaze took in the street signs, the posters, the Cyrillic. When they let themselves into the next anonymous barebones apartment, the exhaustion seemed to finally visibly sag into his shoulderblades. It was the middle of the night by now, and they’d both been running on fumes.
“Well,” he said. “Home sweet home.”
It wasn’t. The safehouse itself was just like any other anonymous bolthole they’d holed themselves up in, and similar to the one she’d found him in, but being back in this country itself seemed to have settled under his skin again too: hunted, haunted.
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She was grateful for his steady presence, for the unwavering way he'd jumped on board this mission. The trip to Russia was long, made even longer by what she knew waited for her there. With the adrenaline of the fight drained from her body, all she could feel were her various bruises and scrapes. Or maybe it was just that her physical hurts were easier to focus on, because it wasn't just a mission. It was personal. It was her own past unfolding in front of her again, raw and aching. She thought she'd brought down the Red Room before. There would be no space for error this time. It had to end. It had to.
By the time they finally landed in the next safe house, she was ready to crash. And there were about a thousand things she wanted - a long hot shower, a full meal, fifteen hours of sleep. But they were going to be working on rations of everything until they managed to untangle the mess Dreykov had made of so many lives. Even so, she could hear it in his voice - the shadow that being back in Russia cast over him and she reached over to give his shoulder a gentle squeeze.
And then she moved past him, into the kitchen where she knew a first aid kit would be waiting. There wasn't too much she could do for her injuries other than gulp down three ibuprofen, which was exactly what she did with a bottle of water from the fridge. As exhausted as she was, she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to sleep. Not with the way her mind kept turning over and over. So instead she moved back into the shabby little living room and dropped down onto the couch. "There will be some food in the cabinets, if you want something," she said, her elbow on the back of the couch as she propped her head up on her hand. "Nothing good, but still food." Her own little anonymous support network was reliable, but it wasn't exactly built for glamour. And with his metabolism, she knew he had to be feeling the effects of their frenzied flight out of his last hideaway.
She watched him in silence for a moment. It felt like they were surrounded by creeping darkness. Or echoes, maybe. All the long years of hurt they had both inflicted and had inflicted on them, circling tighter. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this," she commented. "But I'm glad you're here." There was a duality to the sentiment that she knew wouldn't have made sense to a lot of people. But she suspected that he'd get it.
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It was companionable. Not exactly uncomfortable. Neither of them were the type to get nervous with the quiet or start talking simply to fill it up. So when she spoke again, Bucky looked up sharply, in the middle of cracking open that can.
“I’m glad you asked for backup,” he said, because just as easily, there was another version of this story where Nat might have tried to hack it on her own. Saying she was a lone wolf was an understatement.
“And if they’re using chemical subjugation…” His voice trailed off. “Let’s just say it’s relevant to my interests, to shut this shit down with you.”
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She inclined her head in acknowledgment when he said he was glad she asked for backup. It was easy to read between those lines. And it had been tempting. To go it alone, to keep everyone else's hands clean, to run herself down to nothing to free the rest of the women in the Red Room and take down Dreykov. But Yelena was involved. And that changed everything. She'd done ten lifetime's worth of harm to her sister. She couldn't heap on more for the sake of stubbornness.
Chemical subjugation. So much of her life seemed to circle back around to that mission in Ohio. Sometimes she wondered who she'd be if she hadn't been selected. If maybe the mission wouldn't have been successful if some other team had gone. But you could drown in those what ifs as easily as you could drown in the sea of ghosts.
"They are. It's bad." The answer was succinct, but she knew he didn't need her to draw a vivid picture to understand. With everything they'd both been through, she wouldn't call something bad lightly. She let out a sigh and her eyes closed. There was too much vying for attention in her brain. "I'm going to go sit on a beach for a week after this."
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Natasha looked so, so tired. It wasn’t exactly something he’d point out, like You look like shit, but the truth remained that he generally healed faster than her, and he’d also never seen her quite this haggard. She rarely ever let a situation get to her this badly. Which meant this truly was personal.
So. Instead of focusing just yet on that impossible task awaiting them — a high-security jailbreak, and striving to take down a global organisation which had sunk its claws into the world, just as insidious and slippery and brutal as HYDRA — he focused on that thread of impossible daydream instead.
“At the risk of this sounding like the saddest shit ever, I haven’t been on a vacation in decades,” Bucky pointed out, after a pause. “I could probably go for a Hawaiian shirt and a piña colada on a beach.”
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It was hard not to be maudlin, in a room full of ghosts. Maybe a full night's sleep would clear some of them out from the corners.
When he continued, her head lifted so she could look at him, an amused look on her face. "Careful, Barnes, I'll hold you to that. You'd look good in a Hawaiian shirt." Which was to say he'd probably look grumpy and annoyed and she'd get a real kick out of it. It was an impossible dream, but a nice one. Neither of them could really claim that they did a good job of relaxing. So she picked up the thread of it as she mused aloud, "bet I could find a private beach somewhere."
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It had been an unconventional way to see the job through, for sure.
Which might’ve been appallingly dark humour around anyone else. He couldn’t levy it around just anyone — Steve would have blanched — but now that he’s with Nat again, he gets to drop some of his hackles. Resurrecting his ability to find that absurdist, tragicomic streak in it all; peeling back one more layer, and behaving more himself. The himself that he’d become.
“So if we need to sneak onto someone’s private beach afterward, hell, that’s nothing.”
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"Well, we might not even have to sneak. I've got a few favors left I haven't called in. I'm sure one of them is with someone that could land us on a private beach somewhere. Maybe even a private island." Which would be ideal. She could do with a little peace and quiet. So much of her life had been spent looking over her shoulder, and the last few months hadn't exactly been a break from that. It would be nice to plant herself in the sand for a while.
If she ever got there.
Her head leaned on her hand as she nodded over toward the kitchen. "What kind of soup did they leave this time? The last time I had to use a safe house it was all clam chowder." The sentence was punctuated with a nose scrunch to illustrate exactly what she thought of that dietary option. It was a ridiculously light hearted topic, given everything they'd face the following day, but it served the same purpose as that dark humor. They'd have plenty of time to dig into planning. This might be the last chance they had to catch their breath for a few days.
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It was something so banal: standing in a kitchen with Natasha Romanoff, cooking dinner for him-slash-them, the quiet Russian night sitting heavy outside their dark windows. He wished that was all it was, and that they could just sit tight and enjoy it properly without some masked monster blowing up the whole street to get at them. If he squinted, this could just be an evening in with a friend, with no further concerns haunting them, no complicated mission waiting for them at the end of the road.
Which, speaking of those complications.
Bucky glanced back at her. Wanted to keep the conversation light, frothy — private beaches and holidays, he wasn’t above teasing the idea of Nat in a bikini — but the curiosity was digging beneath his skin like a thorn in his paw, and so he had to ask.
“So it was a family cover story, right? But you still call him your father?”
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It was nice, to let herself get lost in the tide of light conversation for a while. She could almost picture the bleached white shoreline, the warm ocean water, the sun over head. Just about as far away from a cold Russian night as you could get. When he asked about the family cover story, the fabricated beach in her mind's eye faded, replaced by that sandy landing strip in Cuba. There was a momentary pause before she said, "family's complicated." The ring of soldiers. Melina laying on a stretcher. Her last desperate attempt to protect Yelena.
It was quiet again after she said that. She'd known, she'd always known, that their lives in Ohio had been a fiction. But it had been a beautiful fiction. One that a child that grew up learning how to be a weapon couldn't help but want to believe. It had been harder for Yelena, she knew. She'd been so young.
Natasha cleared her throat and shifted forward so that she could fold her arms along the back of the couch as she looked into the kitchen at him. "My family abandoned me when I was born, so I was raised in the Red Room. Those three years we spent in Ohio were the only time I ever had a family. Even if it wasn't real." She pointed at the bag that contained the antidote, an indicator that he could get it if he wanted to look. "There's photo booth pictures in there of me and Yelena. We both had half of the strip while we were in there. Alexei let Dreykov take us back. But they're all still a part of me." Her mouth quirked into a tired little half smile. "For better or worse."