tothefly | IC Voicemail, Driftfleet:

[There is no recording, just a few clicks and a beep.]

[Leave any IC voice messages or texts for Natasha here.]

[ His voice is uncharacteristically brusque, and even. ]

We need to talk. Where are you?

[Her own voice, by contrast, is slightly strained. Tight, even.]

A little busy right now. I should be back in my office in half an hour.

[ Mission voice. His jaw sets. ]

I'll be waiting.

[ And sure enough, he's there on the Windrose, tense and pacing. ]

[She's not sure what she's expecting from him. Probably should have expected this. She's too tired for it, and the cast on her arm is heavy and fresh, impossible to hide. So she doesn't, only walks into her occupied office, closing the door behind her.

Three guesses why he's here.]

Having an existential crisis, Captain?

[Her voice is flippant, to hide the tiredness.]

[ Things he's not in the mood for: evasive bullshit, but the anger abruptly drains from him as he looks at her cast. ]

What the hell happened to you?

[ The real question is: why wasn't he there? ]

[Yeah, well. Seems like they're both getting things they aren't in the mood for. She doesn't mind him pissed, but she minds the way he suddenly stops being angry. It's enough to bring back the faint rumblings of irritation in her own voice, an edge underneath the flippancy.]

I fell. It'll heal.

What do you want, Barnes?

[ Stops for only a bare second. It comes back when she speaks, echoes in the shoulders and the twitch of his fingers. ]

You fell.

[ He repeats it with no small amount of disbelief and frustration. This is just like Steve, oh you know, just had an argument with the radiator, Buck. It doesn't hurt that bad. He damn well hopes the Steve in that world knows how it feels now to deal with someone who has an abnormally thick skull. ]

Fine.

[ Bucky swallows down something more caustic. He can't push Natasha, she's not the same person he knows. ]

I wanted, [ he says, forcing his voice to be even, but the anger compresses, freezes; it comes out icy: ] to tell you that the Winter Soldier is here and he's probably going to try and kill you.

[The anger feels better, that she can deal with. She feels like lashing out at something herself right now, and something with his face is tempting--but he isn't the one she's mad at, and that stops her just enough.]

[At least, until he visibly reins himself in. And that just pisses her off more.]

He's already tried twice. I'm still not dead. And I'm not his primary target, anyway. But you already know that, don't you?

[The words are a shot, fired his direction as she leans against the door, frowning. She's only wearing her sleeveless tank, the arms of her jumpsuit wrapped around her waist. From here, he can see the small pink circle of scarring on her left shoulder. Obvious what it was. Who it came from could be implied.]

[ A shot that connects. He barely moves. The serum has fixed more complex wounds. ]

[ Natasha — neither this one nor the one he knows at home — doesn't bleed anger. Her heart, like his, is carefully guarded behind steel traps and reinforced doors, buried deep where no one can pierce it easily. He's no good at lying about his emotions when they're strong, even as he's come to see them as tools he can use. There's no other purpose to shattered things, except to sharpen the pieces. ]

Yeah, someone neglected to tell me that the Winter Soldier was told to kill my best friend and wouldn't hesitate to eliminate my other best friend if she got in his way! [ he exhales, his fists clenching and unclenching ] What the hell is going on here!

[She knows she's damaging the armistice they've erected between them, this fragile bridge of understanding, and right now, she doesn't care. Right now, she's pissed at herself for getting this far in the first place, pissed at Atroma for fucking with her brain, pissed at that dumbass kid for starting a fight and getting her arm broken, but god is it easy to keep being pissed at him. For being the man he is, for not being the man she'd rather have here right now.

James Barnes complicates things. The Winter Soldier is here. She can't afford to hesitate, and she can't not hesitate having met the man he could have been, could still be under all the chemicals and conditioning. She reacts the only way she can. Her tone is heated, edges pushing through her icy shell to match his own. If she's going to feel anything, so is he.]

He wasn't told to kill your anything. He was sent to kill my Steve Rogers. He tried to kill me. Not her. Because I'm not her. And if you can't understand any of that, then why don't you go try throwing yourself at the guy who looks like his intended target? I can take care of myself.

[The words are preceded by a slamming away from the door, Natasha invading his personal space, pressing the attack as she glares up into his face. Every word is brutal. It's reckless. Maybe the effects of her augment glitch have mostly worn off, but adrenaline, fear and anger are a perfectly decent substitute. Push him away now. It'll be easier, later. To do what needs to be done.]

[ Predator does not flinch from predator. He stares her down, unmoving. He usually goes to Steve for this quality, because Steve stands back straight and eyes forward and won't let the world move him for anything. This stillness is a new edge, walks on him so smoothly the transition is barely perceptible, and it belongs to only Bucky. (In another world, it belongs to the Winter Soldier.) ]

[ When he answers, his voice is low, no less icy. ]

No one knows you're not her better than me.

[ Usually he doesn't hide his emotions from her, but the grief of admitting that, he stifles, lets it collapse under the grip of his anger. ]

Your world isn't my responsibility. Fine. I can accept that. But you dare stand there and tell me that I owe nothing to any Steve Rogers or any Natasha Romanoff — that I'm not allowed to do what I can for you, no matter how damn clumsy it could be, and [ he leans in, eyes burning ] I will tell you you are lying.

[ These are his knives, clashing and scraping against hers. ]

[It's a battle of wills, and neither of them are breaking. Words thrown to wound, to drive the other person away. It's quick, and it's dirty, and for someone who doesn't know her at all he seems to know exactly what to say. It hits. It wounds.

It only makes her angrier. Chinks in her armor, tiny ones, but visible, and she knows it. Plans for it.]

Right. You just act like you know me, like she and I are the same on some fundamental level. Maybe that's true.

Does that mean I should start treating you like you're him? After all, we're all the same on the inside.

[She doesn't back down from him, head tilted upwards to look him in the eye. She might be a considerable amount shorter than him, but she's had decades of practice looking up into someone's eyes and not looking weaker for it. There's a heat in them that matches his own, sparks she can't hide. Frustration, fury, helplessness. She hates all of this.]

[ With the same ice, ]

You're both the Black Widow.

[ It's wired into her code, infused into each and every base component. Ruthlessness. Efficiency. It's in him too, enfolding him like an old uniform. He tried to deny what he was becoming in the War, but the soldier won, and the soldier sits with the rest of him in his heart. ]

And maybe we are both the Winter Soldier. The only thing stopping you from treating the two of us the same is you.

I'm sorry that he hurt you. But that's all I can be held responsible for — I'm not going to apologise for existing, or for knowing Nat. You want to be angry at me for that? Go ahead. Don't expect me to stand there and take it. I'm not that man anymore.

[And they're both Soldiers. She sees that, now, in the line of his shoulders, the calm, the control. He's not dead inside, or sleeping, not like the Soldier she knows, but he's the same in ways you can't change. And maybe that's true for her, too, maybe you can't be born Natasha Romanoff and not have some things stay the same, but she has made her choices, these choices, and no one else is getting the credit or the blame for them. She's been a lot of people. Now, she is who she chooses to be, and that woman is no one but her. She huffs, a sound that isn't laughter, nodding upwards at him.]

Black Widow's a lot of people, James. She let you see who she is. Do you know how many times I've done that? A little vulnerability goes a long way. I've gotten confessions from gods. What's another soldier?

[How well does he know the other woman? And if he knows her so damn well, why is he even here saying any of this? Why does he insist on saying she's different, except for when it's convenient for her to not be? Why is he here, trying to protect her? She isn't his to protect. She takes care of herself. Period. No one else can be trusted to do the job, not here. Maybe not even at home, anymore.]

[ He'd told her she could have any name of his but that one, and it's been loaded into the next Widow's Bite and she expects it to hurt. It's a tactic so old it makes him huff a laugh. He sees now, it's not the same monster that lives in them both but — cousins, maybe. Cut from the same war story, except everyone forgets: war stories aren't about how winter comes and chips away at innocence. They are about something far more terrifying: love. Why else would people walk to hell, through mud and rain and blood, risk life and limb for no better cause than the one beside them? ]

[ Measured, ]

I know what's real. Don't deny her the right to choose her friends.

[ He lifts his left hand — knows she's wary of it — presses the index finger lightly to her lips. (She's fast, but at this range, he's faster). Quieter, ]

That name's not yours. Don't use it again.

I don't even know you.

[The admission is different, this time. Not just a you don't know me, but an admission of her own lack of knowledge. She doesn't know the first thing about him. She doesn't know that she wants to. It'll just make all this harder. After all, love is for children. She'd told that to the wannabe god as he sat in his cell, looking at her with disdain. It's a sentiment she stands by. Of course, somewhere inside her there's the ghost of a child with dreams of its own, but...the woman she is knows better. You do what you have to, because you have to, and because you're the only one who can. Because you're strong enough to carry the weight of it. Because no one else deserves this, and no one else could bear it.

She isn't a soldier. This isn't a battlefield. The fleet isn't a grand arena, good versus evil, right versus wrong. This is life, and it's nothing but grays, and the only thing that's certain is how little either of them know.]

[He lifts that finger to her lips, and she doesn't flinch--almost hopes he hits her, it'll give her a chance to use this energy--doesn't blink, looking up at him, at that laugh, at the expression on his face that says he thinks he knows what he's doing. When she speaks, her lips brush cold steel in what's almost a whisper.]

I'm not yours.

Don't touch me again.

[ He drops his hand and takes a measured step back, not breaking her gaze. Once upon a time he'd have backed down from a small blond madman because that's what friends do, they swallow their pride and frustration at you and your damn fool ideas and they try their best to stand by you. This is not the same. This is monster to monster, teeth strip-cleaned and bared, circling. No exposed bellies or throats — both are too old and practiced. He thinks Steve would hurt to see him like this, or Steve would say it's complicated, and they're not their worst thoughts. All he has is the missing limb of a missing friend, where once something lived but is now transmuted and fused haphazardly to what else exists of James Barnes. ]

We're not so different.

[ He remembers saying, if he laid his cards on the table... but that man doesn't fit. He almost leaves it ambiguous as to whether he means him and her or him and the other Bucky, but, ]

Me and him.

[ If it's what she needs him to be. ]

[It is complicated. It's all gotten too complicated, even for her. Too many strings to keep her fingers on, too many eyes always watching. Too many hands, and too many of them made of cold, cold metal. She's formed a place that's hers, a persona she can stand, and every time she thinks she's settled there's something, someone else to throw her off-balance.]

[His hand is gone, and him with it, and she can feel the air flooding in to fill the space left behind. It was more than a step. It was a line being crossed, an offer revoked. He'll be what she needs him to be.

It's the last thing she needs.

Natasha steps forward towards him again, and past him, her shoulder brushing that left arm he thinks she's afraid of. Cautious, but not afraid. Not of him, not ever, regardless of how unknown. Circling her desk, she sits. Waits. For him to decide whatever it is he's decided, and to leave her with the aching pain in her arm and the aching in her head and a distinct sensation of something like loss in her chest. Homesickness, for a place where at least things made sense and she could run.]

I don't know him, either. But neither does he. Go make him your new project, if that's what you're looking for. I don't need your help.

[She doesn't need anyone. She'd almost forgotten that.]

[ A better man would give her her space, and leave. A better man wouldn't think that of course she's wearing her bravado and her fearlessness as her shield and armour, because a woman so ruthless that the Black Widow becomes synonymous with her own name — that kind of woman needs that. She has it all on the ropes, doesn't she? And yet, he hurts for her. She's so used to being a monster. ]

No, you don't need me to help you or shield you.

[ His palms are flat on the table, and he sits across from her, still, and composed. Hands free of weapons, but all snipers wait for the shot. She knows this truth at least: he's no shield. ]

I'm not trying to save your soul. I'm trying to say I care about you. I don't want you to hurt. You, not because you have her name and her face, or I can't separate them. I can. If you think I can't, I'll do a better job of it.

[ Soft, ]

We're not at war with each other.

[ His eyes drop to his hands, and the stoic mask cracks. She said this to him trying to convince him to join the fight against the Chitauri, when he'd rather have watched the whole world burn. We are not at war. Yet it's all he knows; it's infused with the serum in his cells. The War always needs a supersoldier, and it never ends, it just changes hands. ]

[A better man. She's only known one better man, and he pushed just like this one does. There's a lot of Steve in what he does, and that really just makes it worse. The fact that he's so unaware of it. The fact that there's more of him that's the Soldier, and still more she just doesn't know. She'd thought she was beginning to. It was almost comfortable. Or was that all just the thing in her head, screwing with her? She couldn't tell. Didn't want to know the answer, really. Not now.

So she looks at him, across the desk, looks at him while he says those things with those sad, heartfelt blue eyes, looks at him while that mask falls apart and she almost hates him a little for that, too. For reminding her that he's still a man, and that somewhere in the wreckage of the Soldier there might still be one, too.]

We aren't?

[Her voice is soft, and there's almost a laugh to it. A laugh that's no laugh at all. God, the irony.]

There's always a war on somewhere. You just can't always see it.

[The cast rests on her desk, a reminder of the evening's events. The conversation with the Soldier, the fight at the bar. A break in her ulna, near the wrist. Near the previous breaks. Her fingers ache with memory as much as current pain. She's survived wars, before. If this isn't one, why does she feel so much like she might not survive it?]

[ The laugh stings. He's not looking at her when she speaks. It's no fear of her claws, or unwillingness to meet her will with his, but it costs, to be the tireless cold thing he has living with him. They're not easily separable, and he thinks the divide might've crumbled when he was frozen in the Arctic. Sometimes, though, that winter soldier cracks and splinters away, and something of James Barnes walks out. That man still has a sliver of light left with him; Cole said it was locked away where nothing could touch it. That man can't look at her now. ]

We are more than that.

[She can't look at him anymore, either. She doesn't have the energy to keep being this angry, this bitter, and she doesn't want to see any part of him it isn't easy to be mad at. Her jaw hurts from the bruise she can feel blooming there; the two new stitches in her thigh to replace the ones she'd ripped in the brawl feel tight and raw. She feels raw, exposed, and unprepared. For this, for the Soldier, for everything.]

[Her voice, when she answers, sounds old. Tired. Exhausted. It shows in her shoulders, the set of her lips as she looks at his hands.]

What are we?

[What could they possibly be? She can't trust the Soldier to be anything like him. She can't trust him to not be the Soldier. Apparently, she can't even trust herself, and her hand lifts to her augment, rubbing the flesh around it trying not to dig her nails in and yank.]

[ He hears Nat, in that voice, when one of her capture-and-pretend-to-be-interrogated schemes went sour, and he closes his eyes. He can't overlay the two of them simply, nor decouple them in slow motion. But she deserves better — this Natasha, any Natasha. ]

[ Hoarsely, ] Trying.

[ That's all he can give her, or anyone, from the wreckage. The willingness to try, stand, and walk on. Not without you. ]

[Trying. Is that what this is? Seems pretty complicated for trying. Trying to what, she could ask, trying for what, it's an answer like one of hers. The kind of answer that's no answer at all and still one hundred percent true.]

[For once, she doesn't ask. She doesn't think he knows the answer to the question, doesn't think she could stand to hear it regardless. Not until she pieces herself back together. There's a long moment of silence before she responds, and the answer may not seem related at all.]

This wasn't him. I was down on the planet. Got into a fight. Got careless. That's all.

[It's as much of an olive branch as she can stand to offer. Trying.]

[ A jump from one line of the web to another. He knows a thing or two about spiders now. ]

Sorry.

[ Sorry she was alone when it happened. Sorry he meant to hurt her and did. Sorry he's not the kind of man who draws clear lines instead of living in the greys. ]

Nat said the Winter Soldier was fast, and strong. Spoke Russian, used Soviet rifling, untraceable rounds. That's all we know. Nobody's ever found him. I don't know anything about Project Insight — so this is either coming for me, or it's not going to happen at all.

[ He exhales, slowly. ]

Do you know how to break the programming?

[ This is desperation talking. It doesn't matter that he'd rather consign himself to disappearing, but he's rarely been able to ignore another person's wounds — and once upon a time he didn't mind standing by someone society said was not worth saving. He wants to be that man again, and this is how it will happen. ]

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Natasha Romanoff

May 2020

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said the spider to the fly...

IC Voicemail, Driftfleet:

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