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Published:Words:21814Chapters:1/1Kudos:1059Bookmarks:
“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
Wherein Natasha Romanov has a bucket list and a metaphorical feelings-cat, joins the Victoria Hand Rescue Society Inc, and is absolutely not dating either or both of her super-soldier BFFs from the 1940s, no matter what Nick Fury thinks.
I swear this is the last time I write ot3 romcom shenanigans about Natasha's issues. I think. I hope. It's more about the shenanigans than the romcom, and very much about Natasha's issues. Spent ages and ages looking for the correct and proper title for this fic, and found it of course in Joni Mitchell, because, well. Also "Buchanan" is probably Bucky's mother's maiden name and he's either half Scottish or Ulster Scots.
She was running out of time. She could cheat by a few months and pretend she wasn’t sure exactly what her birthdate was, and indeed she wasn’t, but she’d decided years ago – with a touch of adolescent melodrama – that she would celebrate on December 21st, if celebrate you wanted to call it, and she didn’t feel too good about fudging that. Strictly speaking she was already fudging it by including the year she was actually thirty in her time-limit.
Natasha suspected that six months ago she would have fudged it without a second thought if she’d had to, but on the other hand six months ago she hadn’t been running rapidly out of time and been terminally unemployable to boot. Who wanted to hire a super-spy who had a reputation for blowing up her employers and dancing (metaphorically speaking) on their graves in front of Congress, the Senate and the TV cameras of the entire world?
“Are you telling me you’re broke?” Steve asked disbelievingly.
“No,” said Natasha, “but I need to handle some issues.”
Silence on the phone line.
“…what kind of issues?”
“That I need your help with.”
Shuffle of bare feet on wooden floors. Creak of a door closing over. “If it’s a mission – Nat, anything you need, but Bucky –“
“Bring him along if he wants,” said Natasha. “I’ll text you the coordinates. Leave the shield and come in civvies.”
Three days later she met them at the Coney Island subway station, licking cotton candy off her fingertips as they came up to her. She was wearing a sundress and ballerinas and a pair of wraparound sunglasses with a pale blue frame. Never in her life had she left her apartment having willingly dressed like this. Her legs were bare, but she hadn’t been able to leave behind the knives strapped to her thigh.
“What on earth,” said Steve.
Natasha offered him some cotton candy. “I’ve never been on a rollercoaster,” she said. “Or just generally to any kind of a fun park.”
“So it’s not in fact a mission,” said Barnes.
“Not as such. Not the kind where we all run around in Kevlar and shoot at people. It’s a personal mission.”
“You’re totally confusing me,” said Steve, but he was fishing his wallet out of his pocket and eyeing up the cotton candy stand as he said it.
“I have a list,” Natasha explained. “I made it years ago after I first came to the States. A list of… stuff to do before I’m thirty.”
“Stuff that would make you a Real American Girl?” said Barnes. He was quite perceptive, wasn’t he. Natasha rather considered this the height of bad manners in a man who, up until a few months ago, had not really had an independent thought in seventy years. She glared at him, but he was immune enough that he just went on stealing her cotton candy with an expression of frankly obnoxious serenity.
“And you needed us for this how come?” Steve asked.
“What’s the point of going to an amusement park on your own?” said Natasha. Honestly. “Speaking of rollercoasters, what’s the best way to make sure you don’t throw up on them? Take tablets?”
“Don’t eat cotton candy first,” said Barnes.
Later on Natasha was forced to admit that she probably should’ve listened to him.
The next thing was working in a bookstore, which turned out to be a harder gig to get than she’d thought. Apparently they liked you to have references and stuff. Natasha had had a notion that the only things she would need were good manners and an extensive knowledge of the literary canon, but this impression had proved misleading.
In the end she resurrected the Natalie Rushman identity and asked Pepper to write her a reference. With this she charmed the socks off the owner of a place in Williamsburg that sold rows upon rows of books she’d read and even more she hadn’t and started work a week later. Natasha dyed purple streaks into her hair and wore jeans wit she organised a few readings by up-and-coming authors, helped lots of hipsters choose their hipster books, stacked the stock and dusted the shelves and counted the cash register at night and re-arranged she drank gallons of tea and talked to people endlessly about books, which was exhausting, but made her intensely happy.
Yet it was frightening to realise, in the course of an ordinary work day, how personally she took books. Clint had unloaded a pile of books on her when he had first brought her to the States that she strongly suspected had been liberated from his attic, where they had languished since he’d joined the army when he was eighteen, and in reading and re-reading them in those long first months they had become oddly entwined into her very being. It was hard, now, to recommend them to someone and explain w it was difficult to put into words why Tolstoy meant so much to her, why she loved David Gemmell, how Jane Eyre had bolstered her sense of self, how fairy tales and fantasies had given her worlds upon worlds she had never dreamt could be dreamt. There were so many colours in the world that the red rooms had not permitted her to see. There were even more in books.
And one day she was expounding on recent German authors to an interested customer, literally seconds away from making a sale, when someone came up behind her and said, “You are so wrong about everything,” and Natasha spun indignantly and found herself floundering, a little, neck cricked to stare up at Bucky Barnes. He was wearing a thin leather jacket and a dark blue shirt, there was a gun holster under his left arm, he hadn’t taken his sunglasses off when he had come inside, so when Natasha turned to face him she wound up looking at herself in the reflective lenses. His mouth was slanted in a smile, teeth catching his bottom lip.
“What the hell do you even know,” she said.
“German authors write about three things, OK, Nazis, communists, and Nazis versus communists,” said Barnes. “It’s always the same book, over and over.”
“Get your sorry ass out of my shop and go read some E.T.A. Hoffmann,” said Natasha, which was cheating really because Hoffmann had died a hundred years before anyone had thought of Nazis and forty or so before Communists had become a thing.
“Never heard of him,” said Barnes.
Natasha pursed her lips. Then she said, “Wait right here, five minutes,” and turned back to her original customer. Five minutes later she went back to B two hours later, as she was closing up, they were still arguing – but he was carrying a paper bag whose seams threatened to tear under the weight of the books she had foisted on him.
He hadn’t asked her what she was doing there. As far as she could tell, his coming into the shop had been a complete coincidence.
Item three: buying a motorcycle. She had never actually owned one.
“I drive the Corvette everywhere,” she said to Steve, “but hell if you can do that in New York.”
“I didn’t realise you’d moved here,” said Steve, bent over the magazines she’d brought.
“Eh,” said Natasha. Neither had she.
“What sort of thing would you want?” Steve asked. “I mean just manoeuvrable, or powerful, or what?”
“I don’t know,” said Natasha. “I like riding bikes and I want one and you ride that Harley thing and I thought it’d be easier to ask you.” And she had needed an excuse to come over and check on them. Men of all ages, no matter how sensible otherwise, liked it when good-looking young women with great racks asked them for help with things, especially things American society considered manly, like the purchase of fast-moving vehicles. This tendency in mind, Natasha had gathered up some magazines, prepared a cheerfully perplexed expression, and hopped on the subway.
“Sure you did,” said Steve, applying his attention to the magazines again. “I mean, is it OK if I give you a key to this place? Be good to see you more often. And – just so you know – Buck says he’s got a bone to pick about someone called Vanderbeke.”
“If he doesn’t like Vanderbeke he’s getting shot,” said Natasha. “Here” – she took the magazines off him and flipped through them – “this is the one I want.”
“Oh that’s a beauty,” said Steve. “I know a dealer, let me give you the address.”
She asked Steve for company while she sorted out the next item on the list without attempting to analyse her decision to call him.
“I thought you already had an apartment,” he said.
“No, I have a safe house,” said Natasha. “I need a place to live.”
She didn’t know if she liked his sudden smile or not. On the one hand, Steve didn’t smile properly very often, so it was rather lovely to see it. On the other hand, she had been a little sensitive to people being patronising about poor Natashenka finally making her way in the big bad real world ever since she had told Nick about the bucket list and he had told her she was being ridiculous, she didn’t have to do this just because she was still pissed at him over DC, why wouldn’t she just call Melinda May the way he had been asking her to for weeks, was this anything to do with Rogers and Barnes, because he, Nick, trusted those self-righteous Army grunts like he trusted
they were pretty enough but she could do better, Romanov, so much better.
He was lucky the Contessa said he was high on painkillers at the time or Natasha would have put Interpol on his ass without a second thought.
But all Steve said was, “Someplace near your bookstore?”
So they went apartment-hunting. The first three were way too small. Natasha intended to buy a pile of furniture: a couch, an armchair, a dining room table, bookshelves, a California king bed, a dresser she could scatter tchotchkes on when she got some, a giant wardrobe, a shoe rack for the hall. Pictures on the walls. A full-length mirror. You know. Stuff.
“You can’t buy an apartment to fit furniture you haven’t got yet,” said Steve.
“I want space for whatever furniture I decide to get, though.”
“Colour-coded, calibrated, selected by a tasteful interior decorator?”
“Interior decorators are for douchebags.” And people who weren’t normal enough to tell if they had tastes in furniture of their own.
The fourth was too dark, the fifth too bright and exposed because the windows were so big. Any half-trained dime-store merc with a rifle could’ve found a decent position on the opposite roof. The sixth was terrible for all sorts of reasons Natasha couldn’t put her finger on but Steve described as ‘feeling haunted’. The seventh was perfect. It wasn’t far from the bookstore, it was only on the fourth floor, the windows were big but not floor-to-ceiling, the balcony was tiny but adorable, the bathroom was a decent size, the kitchen was an open-plan thingy that wasn’t walled off from the dining room, there was a grocery store round one corner and a pharmacy round the other, the subway was ten minutes’ walk away, and Natasha loved it.
“Well, I’m very glad to hear it,” said the realtor, smiling, and named a sum that made Steve grimace. Natasha, resigned from the start to dipping into her Swiss accounts, shrugged and signed on the dotted line, metaphorically speaking. She didn’t quite know what she’d done to deserve the place, but she was going to hang on to it.
“I’ll send you the contract documents within the week. Thank you very much for your custom, Mr and Mrs Rushman –“
“Oh, we’re not together,” Steve said, wandering about the kitchen.
“Ohhhh,” said the realtor, and she gave him another once-over.
Natasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other and, possessed of an imp of mischief she had not known existed in her, leaned in and whispered, “Gay best friend.”
“Oh,” said the realtor gloomily.
“IKEA,” said Clint.
“IKEA?” said Natasha.
“Yeah, what, you think Bobbi and me bothered with designer furniture? We’re undercover all the damn time. The first time Bobbi’s Mom came to stay she cried at the sight of the living room.”
Bobbi’s Mom liked Clint just fine, but she absolutely did not understand him. Or Bobbi.
“Fine,” Natasha said. “IKEA it is.”
“It’s like every floor is one of Dante’s circles of hell,” said Steve, staring at the floor map with wild and horrified eyes.
“Man up, Rogers,” said Natasha, swallowing hard. The floor map was a dizzy block of primary colours, marked with icons meant to show bathrooms, restaurants, stai each section of the shop had its own little identifying icon, and there were tape measures and little pencils and paper to write down the ID number of the item you wanted hanging on the wall next to it. “It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
It really was. Thank God.
“That’s part of what’s freaking me out,” said Steve. “It’s like furniture shopping as a video game. Do we have to hit every single one of these sections in order to collect enough points so they’ll let us out?”
“Have you ever actually played a video game?” Natasha was curious.
Steve grinned. “I had a bit of a Tetris addiction for a while.”
“But that’s the only one?”
“What, like you’re a Mario Kart champion?”
She put her hands on her hips. “I might be.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Buddy, anything you can do –“
“Jump tall buildings in a single bound?”
“OK,” Natasha said. “Maybe not that.”
They set off towards the living rooms.
When they had staggered, shell-shocked, through the check-outs they found a snack bar waiting for them. Steve bought them both two hotdogs and a b after that they had ice cream. Natasha licked a wide stripe around the top of her cone straight off and then started at the top, humming a little. It was pretty good ice cream.
Steve was staring at her, lost in thought. The distant look on his face reminded her to ask:
“Hey. I keep meaning to ask – have you been OK?”
“Hmm?” He looked startled. Then he said, “Yeah, you know.” He attacked his own ice cream as little melting rivulets made their way down the cone.
“That’s why you lick round the bottom first,” Natasha said. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
Steve laughed. “Fine. We’re fine, I mean Buck’s… a lot better. It’s hard to – to tell. The worst days are when he doesn’t want me to go away but he can’t stand to be around other people, you know. And I keep – telling him about his family was rough. Sometimes I think – almost the worst.”
Natasha kept her voice even. “I wasn’t asking about Barnes.”
He had a trick sometimes of letting his mouth hang open, a parting of his lips that lasted a second before it became a jagged little smile. He looked away. “No, no you weren’t.”
It wasn’t fair to push him. They finished their ice cream in silence, wiped sticky fingers on thin paper serviettes, and gathered up the intimidating pile of Natasha’s purchases. Getting the lot into the elevator was a delicate operation, as they were far from the only people trying to take it, but as the doors slid shut and Natasha snatched up a lamp she meant for her bedside table before it hit the ground and shattered without ever having left its packaging, Steve said, “Kind of shit, to be honest, but in a completely different way to before.”
“Guilty cause you’re glad he’s back.”
An odd shiver took hold of him, a sharply-indrawn breath. “That’s about the size of it.”
And also run down to the ground and terrified you might lose him again. It seemed impolite to say that in front of an elevator full of strangers, though, so Natasha held her tongue.
“Do I speak Swedish?” said Barnes, astonished. “I don’t know. I mean I might do. Say something in Swedish.”
“I don’t fucking speak Swedish!” said Natasha, pacing around the wreckage of her new living room with the phone clamped to her ear. “How am I supposed to say something, I can’t even pronounce this, and I’m not convinced it’s actually Swedish, I think it’s mostly gibberish, like a fake language made up for marketing purposes, it’s driving me crazy, we’ve assembled this dining room table three times and every single time there’s this one little screw left over that just won’t fit and –“
“OK, OK, but the instructions –“
“THE INSTRUCTIONS ARE ALL IN FAKE FUCKING SWEDISH, THAT’S WHAT I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU!”
“OK,” said James in the most reasonable voice Natasha had ever heard him employ. “OK, Natalia, take a deep breath, all right, I’m gonna come over, I’ll bring some beer, we’ll sort it out. Have you killed Steve yet or is he still breathing?”
Natasha looked over her shoulder. Steve was lying prostrate with frustration underneath the dining room table, long legs sprawled across half the room, his hands over his face. She thought he might be laughing. Typical of Steve to hide his face and be silent about it.
“Beer would help,” she said.
By the time her furniture was assembled the entire apartment was knee-deep in ripped cardboard, Styrofoam and plastic packaging. Natasha sat slumped in the mess in the hall, hugging her knees against her chest with one arm and holding her beer in the other hand. In front of her, Barnes was lying in the same position Steve had been earlier, right arm crooked across his eyes. Beside her, Steve had closed his eyes and was resting his head against the wall. Outside the world was grey and muted, early-morning mist hanging in the streets. Natasha kept staring at Barnes’ red Chuck Taylors, a glaring spot of colour among the cardboard.
“Never have I ever wanted so badly to be attacked by megalomaniac Neo-Nazi terrorists,” said Natasha. Even to her own ears her voice sounded dull.
Nobody drank.
“Never have I ever wished I could still get wasted as badly as this,” said Barnes.
Steve swallowed half the bottle in one go. Barnes rolled his eyes at him.
“Never have I ever been to a baseball game,” Natasha said suddenly. It was the shoes that made her say it.
Barnes sat up so he could take a drink. Then he and Steve both looked at her.
“That at least is something I know I can fix,” said Steve.
Natasha stretched her legs a bit so her toes were poking James’ hip and leant sideways against Steve, yawning.
Baseball was mostly fun because James and Steve enjoyed it. The hot dogs were terrible, the crowd was pushy and loud and stank of stale beer and sweat, the sunshine beat down mercilessly on Natasha’s head and there was absolutely no way on earth she would ever understand the actual game, none, but her idiot companions laughed and whooped and cheered and ate the terrible hot dogs with relish and did their best, bless them, to explain why this game was so important to so many people, and looking at their faces gave her an idea.
One of the great things about New York was that there were hundreds of thousands of museums all over the city. Museums were the perfect set-pieces, as far as she was concerned: you had to get out of the house to go to them, it took several hours, and you always had an iron-clad excuse not to talk to each other if you needed one.
She went online and read their files again: Steve had gone to art school, James had been really good a they had both gotten top marks in history but both of them had been terrible at foreign languages before the serum and their English report cards from the Catholic school they had attended contained a note from their teacher (one Sister Mary Margaret, a woman to whom Natasha’s sympathetic imagination ascribed a patient grimace and a long-suffering aspect) to the effect that Masters Barnes and Rogers appeared to have been complicit in the acquisition, consumption and distribution of certain works of supposed literature which the discerning government of the State of New York had banned for the good of its people and the health of public morals.
Typical Steve. Tell him he wasn’t allowed to do a thing and he would nod, solemnly, and go away with an innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt expression, and ten minutes later the thing in question would be done, usually with extreme prejudice and a side-order of property damage. He was the single most contrary person Natasha had ever known.
And to think she had once assumed that James Buchanan Barnes had been the sensible one.
Anyway. Art galleries: Steve. Science museums: James. History stuff, especially dinosaurs: both of them.
“Are all the museums in the state of New York on your bucket list?” Steve asked after the third weekend on which she had arranged such an outing.
“More or less,” said Natasha unblushingly. She was developing a liking for museum cafés. They were frequently small, frequently cramped, and always overpriced, but that was part of why she liked them. They tended to smell of coffee and wet raincoats, the parents were loud and the children were louder and if you hit on a particularly bad day to come you would often find your path to the only free table in the place barred by six different buggies placed in six different by the time you had fought your way past this barricade of small-human paraphernalia the seat you had want was usually taken, and you were left standing with your cooling coffee and your perfectly gooey chocolate cake in the middle of a sea of hostiles, looking like an idiot.
But if you were able to reach that far-flung corner table museum cafés were an excellent place to sit and people-watch, or, especially, write. Keep a diary wa always before Natasha had viewed this idea (touted occasionally by the SHIELD-issue shrinks) as ridiculously unsafe, but she was beginning to enjoy the quiet routine of sitting down and scratching her day into the page. It still made her uneasy, especially the way the most innocuous observation could set off a chain of associations in her mind she had no desire to pursue, but she’d had a hidden safe installed in the apartment and had developed a fetish for pretty stationary, so whatever.
Steve said, “I’d say you’re up to something but I like hanging out with you too much to care.” He smiled at her.
Natasha smiled back. “I like it too.” What made Steve dangerous, she thought, was how quiet he was. He let you needle and flirt and tease for years with a shrug and a smile, and then, when you thought you knew how your partnership with him worked, he’d go and save your life when he shouldn’t and mock you for thinking he wouldn’t have.
Street photography was a disaster because she and James spent more time talking than taking pictures. Steve rolled his eyes so much that Natasha was glad they had left him at home: he took it way too seriously. It didn’t help that it kept raining on and off all day, irritable drizzles as if some weather-god or other was miserable and determined to make the world share in it. She and James took shelter in an endless series of coffee shops, under grocery-store awnings and thick-foliaged trees on the sidewalk, huddling in their thin jackets and watching the passing cabs kick up sprays of water under their wheels.
“I’m gonna have a cold for weeks,” Natasha predicted.
“I’m waiting for the dye to run out of your hair,” said James. “Hey, let’s go left up here. There used to be this picture palace that had just opened when I shipped out…”
“Sure.” Natasha jumped over a puddle as they set off, did a silly little hopscotch across the uneven paving stones. The rain might be cold but the wind was warm and so strong that the clouds scudded across the sky as you watched, moving off, getting thinner, pale blue and golden light coming through for a moment and then fading again.
Falling into step beside her, James said, “It’s good of you to do this.”
Natasha laughed. “What, drag you out into the wet on a Sunday to practice the pretentious hipster dark art of street photography with a StarkPhone and a dismal lack of umbrellas? Oooooo, look at that.”
Streetlights glinting off a puddle by someone’s front tire, the glitter of the raindrops on the body and windows of the car itself, the l she squatted down for a shot of the rain-drenched street stretching into the distance, smiling. When she had taken the photo she let her hands fall between her knees, still and silent. There were all sorts of beautiful things in the world if you just looked for them. If you knew to look for them, and had time… Did Nick, she wondered suddenly, see views like this? Did he notice children in art galleries, eyes glued to their favourite pictures, or the rapt faces of an audience listening to their favourite author read aloud, or know the right way to eat cheap IKEA soft ice… she stood up again, smiling, and linked her arm with James’. It was his left arm, the contours hard and heavy against her flesh.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she said.
“Thanks for asking me,” he murmured, so low she almost didn’t hear.
The picture-pa they rang Steve and got three tickets for some French arthouse comedy with dreadfully-translated subtitles. Then they went for pizza and spent the meal arguing about the greatness or otherwise of Luc Besson.
Superhero comics were not nearly as fun as the real thing. Sam could fanboy Dick Grayson as much as he wanted, Natasha refused to care.
“They killed off Batman,” said Steve. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. Even if they did bring him back. I own a copy of Detective Comics #27.”
“Yeah, but he was being an asshole for two hundred issues beforehand so I feel like he had it coming,” said James. “You still have that comic book?”
“Nah, it’s in the Smithsonian,” said Steve.
“Greg Rucka’s run on Wonder Woman,” Sam said to Natasha, leaning round the stack to flourish a trade paperback of the comic in question.
“Because I’m a girl?” Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, feeling cynical.
“Because it’s a really great run.” He thought about it. “And also a little because you’re a girl, I don’t know any girl who’s a comics fan who doesn’t like Wonder Woman. Read the Hiketeia, she punches Batman off a balcony.”
“And now I officially have a thing for Wonder Woman,” said Steve.
“You’d have a thing for any girl who can knock you on your ass,” James said, sounding fond and reminiscent.
“True,” said Steve. “I mean, like you don’t?”
Natasha refused to look at either of them.
“Don’t tell me you can sew,” said Natasha.
“I can darn my own socks if that’s what you mean,” said Steve. “Bucky can sew.”
“I can mend my stuff, there’s a difference,” said James. “Sew on buttons. Darn socks, as you’ve mentioned. Hem trousers, let out seams, that kinda thing.”
“Any idiot can let out a seam,” said Natasha. “You just rip the stiches out and re-sew it. Don’t you?”
“How am I supposed to know?” said Steve. “I only ever had the one growth spurt, and it was artificial.”
Natasha laughed. They were on her balcony, drinking beer in the early evening sunshine while kids played on the street and Sam tried to untangle himself from a phone conversation with his parents and – by the sound of it – six different cousins at once in the living room. Natasha had bought a knitting magazine from a newsstand yesterday, and Steve had found it and was flipping through it.
“But would you actually wear any of it if you made it?”
James said, “She might not, but you and I would probably have to.”
“I don’t know,” said Natasha. “It was just an idea, but I don’t think it’s really me. I’d have to sit still a lot.”
That made them both laugh.
“S’up,” said Sam, squeezing himself onto the balcony. “Oh man, don’t tell me you’re taking up knitting.”
“Why not?” Natasha started grinning.
“Single most boring hobby known to man,” said Sam. “My Granma knits, it’s for her peace of mind. Go learn to skateboard or something, seriously.”
Steve looked up from the magazine. James twisted round to look at Sam. Natasha said, “Hmmmmmmmmm.”
“Oh no,” said Sam.
Skateboarding was hilarious. Everyone but Sam messed about with glee, falling off the things left right and centre and trying kickflips long before Sam said they were allowed to. Natasha crashed into James twice before he worked out she was doing it on purpose and Steve, the bastard, turned out to be a natural at it, which just made James more determined to master a railslide.
“If I’d known they were competitive assholes I would never have agreed to this,” said Sam darkly as another aerial died the death of scraped knees and yelling.
“I am not going to beaten at a fucking kids’ game by some pissant Paddy with more balls than brains,” James grated out.
“Fuck you running, Barnes, your Da was a limey,” said Steve.
“My Da was an American, and you can scoff all you like but half of Brooklyn and all of bloody Belfast knows your Aunt Gail married a Unionist,” said James.
Steve gave him the finger and tried another kickflip. Sam and Natasha looked at each other.
“Probably better not,” said Natasha.
Sam nodded fervently.
Going to concerts was hard to figure out. James seemed to like quick, light-hearted, old-fashioned music you could dance a jig to, spin a girl across a dance floor with her skirts floating around her knees. Sam had converted Steve to Motown with vigour and glee, and then Steve started liking disco. (Even Sam thought that was a bit much.) As for Natasha… well, it was lucky for Natasha that her boys liked a challenge. They lived in the city that never slept: there was always some genre of music playing live somewhere.
To be fair, she didn’t always make them come. She was in a small bar near Christopher Street one evening, listening to a girl a few years younger than she was croon about her ultimate heartbreak and the terribleness of life – Natasha liked her voice and liked the music, slow and jazzy, but the lyrics made her roll her eyes a little – when a boy sidled up to her, smiling.
“Isn’t she great?”
He was gangly, smooth-cheeked, wearing corduroy trousers and a t-shirt, sort of… self-consciously Seventies. But he smelt nice, and he wasn’t speaking to her tits, so he met Natasha’s criteria for ‘human being’. And he must have been her own age, but everything about the way he moved made him seem very young. (Though if you believed Sam she said that about a lot of people their own age.)
“Lovely voice,” Natasha agreed.
“Lyrics kind of feel like they need ten more years life experience behind them, though.”
She laughed. That was more or less what she’d been thinking. The boy grinned like he was glad to have amused her and leaned a little closer. “I’m Finn.”
Are you really. “Natalie.”
“Hi, Natalie.” He had a nice smile, friendly, warm. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Yes, Natalie would have said, and Natasha could see the future unspooling in front of her: Natalie Rushman would have a drink with this boy, and chat and laugh and flirt with him, and go home with him, and they would meet again and again and get to know each other better – he was… what, a graphic designer? A theatre tech? A paralegal at worst. She would tell him about her job at the bookstore and he would come and see her on S they would cook together and go to bed together – the sex would be lovely – and she would introduce him to Steve and James and he would be a bit tongue-tied and awkward around a couple of ex-Army guys, that, or a little self-righteous. He wouldn’t know what to make of Clint or Bobbi or Nick at all. It would take him months to work out she was Natasha Romanov, if indeed he ever did. It would be… it would be a nice, quiet, normal life. Gentle, if that didn’t sound stupid. Slow-moving. In ten years’ time she might go for a week or more without remembering that her name was Natasha, and would not have fired a gun in years, much less killed another human being.
“It’s sweet of you, Finn,” she said, “but I’m spoken for.” His eyes were brown, that was the trouble. She preferred them blue: kind, clever, devious and dangerous, icy, sky-coloured.
“Oh well,” he said, “as a friend, then. You know, your hair is fantastic.”
Clothes had been a problem from day one. By choice Natasha dressed simply, unobtrusi all her jackets were leather, as this afforded a minimum of protection, and her boots were sturdy and well-made. This was the uniform she felt most comfortable in, but the question was: was it the uniform she liked best?
She had no idea. When she went shopping she was careful not to buy things
she dragged herself away from sleek, simple t-shirts and looked for things with prints and bows and we she bought dresses, short skirts, long skirts, hot pants, leggings and boot cut jeans and an endless series of blouses, sweaters, cardigans and scarves, blazers, ballerinas, anoraks, trench coats, sneakers, shoes, stilettos.
And for this evening, a pair of leather pants and a thin sleeveless top the colour of the summer sky, loose chiffon, cut so low between her breasts she needed to be careful choosing a bra. She slid a leather jacket over the top and buckled the tiny straps on a pair of heels that did delicious things to her ass and legs, and she did her hair up and smeared lipstick on, a tiny bit smudged, and caught a cab out to James and Steve’s place.
When Steve saw her his jaw dropped.
“I know,” said Natasha. “I look ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” Steve managed.
“Holy Mary Mother of God,” James said from the kitchen doorway.
Natasha spread her arms and did a 360 turn for them. She drew a breath. “I’m going clubbing.”
“Ooooo-kaaaaay,” Steve said slowly.
“You gonna come?”
“Uh, no.”
Natasha pouted. “Steve!”
“I really” – he kept looking at her like he couldn’t believe what she was wearing, and let’s face it, Natasha couldn’t either, missions were one thing but this! She had voluntarily dressed up like the very least convenient of all possible covers, the kind of girl men hit on as if they had a god-given right to it – “really can’t dance.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Steve, I taught you mixed martial arts in an afternoon, you think I can’t teach you to bump and grind in ten minutes? Come on, up you get.” She wandered over to the music player – thankfully futuristic – and started to scroll through their stuff.
“It took two weeks and I still have the bruises,” said Steve.
James said, “I’m pretty sure he can bump and grind just fine, Nat,” and out of the corner of her eye she saw Steve give him the finger.
“What about you?”
He laughed as he came up behind her, and his body was warm at her back when he leaned over and found the perfect song. Sharp and jangly, the Rolling Stones started up: hot stuff, can’t get enough… and Natasha shimmied her hips and smiled.
“I know a place up in Soho,” James said, moving with her like it was the easiest thing in the world. Natasha wasn’t sure if she wanted to give the girl who’d taught him this a bouquet of roses or a slap in the face, both of them swaying to the beat. He was smiling, eyes firmly on her face, but his fingertips brushed her hips and waist, over and over. She took his wrists and put his hands on her, and his eyes widened a bit, softened, merry and relaxed in a way she’d seldom seen. He had such an expressive mouth: every smile was different but captivating.
“Of course you do,” said Steve, fond and exasperated.
She beckoned to him, laughing. “Don’t be a spoilsport. We’ll find something more interesting for you to wear,” and Steve said, “It’s not gonna get more interesting than that,” and gave her and James another once-over.
“Nobody who moves the way you do in a fight is gonna be a bad dancer, Steve,” Natasha said. “Trust me.”
“I do,” he said.
Sam wouldn’t speak to her for a week when she told him she didn’t have photos.
They met in the park sometimes during her breaks – she and James – to read, or argue about books, or eat together and chat. There was one oak tree that Natasha particularly liked, an old and spreading one. At its trunk the grass had been worn away by countless children climbing it, countless picnickers serving lunch right underneath it. She and James lay side-by-side on the grass a little further out and stared up at the canopy of leaves above them, the glitter of the sunlight between the green, the high and lovely blue of the sky.
“D’you really love it?” he asked her once. “The bookstore? Or is it just something you want to do because you have to do something?”
Natasha smiled. “I really love it. It’s – everything’s so –“
“Normal?”
“Yeah. It’s like – don’t laugh at me, but sometimes it’s like I can feel my brain expanding. Like suddenly I have all this space to think, and to be.”
James didn’t laugh. “That’s what it’s like for me too.”
Suddenly she said, “What would you have done? If you’d gone home?”
He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I really don’t. I wouldn’t have known then, either. All my life people have been tellin’ me I’m my Da all over again. Well, there’s no one left to do that now.” He laughed shortly. “But I never worked out what else I could be.”
She took his hand in hers. It was the left hand, and it wasn’t as responsive to gentle touches, so three or four seconds passed before he laced his fingers carefully with her own, mindful of the rills of joints and knuckles.
“There’s time,” she said quietly.
“There is.” He turned his head to look at her, smiling. She wriggled her nose at him, grinning back, and shrieked, laughing, when his right hand flashed up and tugged on it.
“Used to drive my sisters crazy.”
“You ass!” Natasha poked him in the side, laughing helplessly. “I’m not your sister.”
“Not even a little,” James agreed.
Back at the very beginning she had decided she needed to learn to cook.
“You must be joking,” Bobbi had said.
“But you’re an adult,” Natasha had said.
“I’m a super-spy.”
“You went undercover once at a restaurant fronting for the mob!”
“As a chef de service.”
“No food at all?”
Bobbi had considered it. “Well,” she said. “I can fry bacon.”
“Any idiot can fry bacon,” said Natasha. “I want to do soufflés and coq au vin and fancy things with sauces, and – and ordinary stuff like potatoes and vegetables and stews and things.”
“Well there must be some kind of cookery class in this city that you can join.”
This was an excellent point and Natasha had seized on it with gusto. There were in fact dozens of cookery classes in New Y the tough part was finding one that did the kind of cookery she wanted. There were a few missteps, like the Ayurveda cooking class run by a lily-white girl from Iowa who talked a lot about the mysteries of the exotic east, or the one for college kids who couldn’t boil an egg. Natasha kne she could cook pasta and rice and basic tomato-based sauces, and throwing a salad together wasn’t exactly difficult. No, it was the gap between “in possession of a basic life skill” and “good cook” that she wanted to close.
When she did find a class that suited her she signed up for a lesson a week and stockpiled cookery books on a shelf in her kitchen. The class was mostly attended by people her own age, several of whom were learning to cook because they had kids, though David Sydney was fifty-four, had just been divorced by his wife, and had never cooked a meal without use of a microwave in his life (“Maybe that’s why she divorced me,” he said glumly, which was Natasha’s suspicion also), and Kendra Jones was sixteen and decidedly fed up with her parents’ cooking (“If I never have to eat another burger again it’ll be too soon.”).
They were a fun group, on the whole, and she told them about her job at the bookstore and pretended she came from a military family, casting Clint unasked as her older brother and Bobbi as her sister-in-law, and having done so spent an inordinate amount of time fretting over how to characterise Steve and James. Brothers was out of the question. Childhood friends? Friends of Clint’s? Former colleagues? But then she would have to explain what they had worked at. Or she could try just not bringing them up in casual conversation sometime, but that was proving harder than she had thought it would. Steve cooks this great stew with potatoes – James always shops at farmer’s markets – only the most inane of remarks, but a constant stream of them.
One evening she was standing out the back of the building with Jenny Morley, dragging experimentally on the first cigarette of her life when Steve called her phone. They usually texted, so she answered immediately.
“All OK?”
“Yeah, I was just about to ask you that,” he said. “You changed shifts.”
Natasha frowned at the cigarette burning between her fingers. “I changed shifts?”
“Bucky went by the shop and you weren’t there. I tried to make him call himself but he says cell phones freak him out.”
“It pisses him off that he can’t work the touchscreen with his left hand is what that means,” said Natasha, and heard James laughing in the background. “I’m at my cookery class.”
“You’re taking a cookery class? Nat’s taking a cookery class,” he said to James, and she heard him laughing even harder. He really hated cell phones and probably always would. Natasha had an idea this was because they made him feel tagged, tracked and monitored, but she had never asked.
“I’ll have you know I’m very good with a chopping knife,” said Natasha, grinning.
“I can imagine,” said Steve. “So if you haven’t eaten already, do you wanna come over and critique my casserole? Sam’s gonna be here in an hour or two.”
“Well,” said Natasha. “As long as you’re not insulted if I don’t eat much.”
“I promise,” said Steve.
“I’ll see you soon then.”
She was smiling as she hung up, and Jenny grinned at her. “Hot date?”
Natasha shook her head. “No – some friends.”
“Have fun, anyway!”
“Thanks – see you next week?”
“Yeah. Till then!”
Natasha stubbed her cigarette out and dropped it in the ashtray as Jenny headed off. Phone, handbag, keys to the shop… Metro card. Hot date? She shook her head. Sam was coming, excellent. She liked Sam. Whistling to herself, she set out down the alley to the street, turned left past the main entrance and made for the subway station. It was fall already – she needed to step up a few items on her list – the leaves on the trees shone golden in the orange street lights, bars and restaurants spilling customers onto the sidewalks. The subway was crowded but quiet, and she read du Maurier on her e-reader as she walked the few blocks to Steve and James’ building from the station. The apartment smelt of wine and casserole, warm and homey after the darkened street. The wind was picking up, pushing and rattling at the window-panes. Steve’s casserole was excellent, and when Sam arrived they ate it out of pasta bowls with heavy sage dumplings and drank red wine.
“So what do you think?” said Steve to Natasha.
“I think it’s rude to fish for compliments,” she said. “Yes, please, I’d like some more.”
“Natasha is taking a cookery class,” James said to Sam.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why is this weird?”
“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Cause you’re a super-spy? What’s next, Hell’s Kitchen?”
“I’m a well-rounded human being,” Natasha countered. “Well, I’m trying.”
Sam started laughing. “Don’t tell me cooking is on the bucket list.”
“Laugh it up, flyboy,” said Natasha, levelling her fork at him. “I only bothered to come over here because I wanted to ask you about skydiving.”
There was a short silence. Steve put his cutlery down. He had a glint in his eye Natasha thought she recognised, and it made her smirk.
“Parachuting for fun,” he said.
“Oh yes.”
“Count me in.”
“None of the history books ever said you were an adrenaline junkie,” said Sam. “Why would you ask me?”
“Right, cause the guy who voluntarily signs up for a top-secret programme using experimental military technology” – “Ding!” said James – “that allows him to fly with actual wings is obviously not any kind of a thrill-seeker.”
Sam assumed a pompous expression. “I was serving my country.”
“If there was ever any doubt about why they’re friends,” James said to Natasha. “When d’you wanna go?”
Everyone looked at him.
“You… comin’ too?” said Steve.
“Hey,” said James. “I’m not the one who has a problem with trains. Or heights of any kind.”
“I’m not afraid of heights,” said Steve indignantly.
“He really can’t handle trains though,” said Natasha. “We had to get across the Swiss Alps once two years ago for a mission, public transport in Switzerland is absolutely perfect, would’ve fit our cover – Steve wouldn’t do it. We drove.”
“Drama queen,” said James.
“I don’t have to sit here and take this from the fella who can’t even look at yoghurt,” said Steve.
“My digestive system is very delicate these days.”
“That’s why you’re having a second helping,” said Sam.
“You’re damn right.”
“How about the weekend after next?” Natasha asked.
“I’ll book it,” said Sam. “When are we gonna taste your cooking, then?”
“I’ll take you home and feed you after we’ve been parachuting,” Natasha promised.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
Sam had been skydiving before – “Once or twice,” he claimed – at a place near Niagara Falls, so Natasha took the Friday and Monday off and the four of them made a weekend of it. Early in the afternoon they lined up for the tourist boat that would take them out to the Horseshoe Falls, and it emerged that Sam was the only one who’d seen them before.
“Really, really, Captain America’s never been to Niagara Falls. What else haven’t you seen? California? Vegas? The Grand Canyon? The Alamo?”
James yanked on the glove on his left hand with a look that suggested it was a habit he had long since ceased to take notice of. “Just how much money did you think we had growing up?”
“And what the hell do you think I have to do with the Alamo,” said Steve, laughing.
“You’d look cute in a Davy Crockett hat,” said Natasha, solemn as a judge, and OK, nobody had ever seen Bucky Barnes laugh that much, she was sure.
“Have I ever told you,” Steve said, looking angelic, “just how god-awful your hair looks with those purple streaks in it?”
“That’s an unnecessarily personal kind of response,” said Natasha. “What’s your problem with my streaks?”
“They offend his artistic sensibility,” said Sam.
“They offend my artistic sensibility, let alone Steve’s,” said James.
“You don’t have any,” said Natasha.
“That is in fact my entire point,” and Natasha was gearing up for a snappy reply when Sam said, “Guys –“ and the boat was moving. Everyone
cameras and phones came out, kids
the boat horn sounded, and Natasha stepped to the side to get out of the way of the people pushing past her, her right shoulder brushing James’ chest, head tilted up to look at Steve. She had already known that James ran hotter than ordinary people, but now she realised Steve did too, and tucked between the two of them she was perfectly sheltered from the wind.
Steve looked down at her as her hair began to whip around her face, red and purple strands blowing against his chest and James’. “Are the Falls on your bucket list?” he asked.
“Actually no,” said Natasha, trying to catch her hair into a ponytail, eyes focussed on the Falls up ahead, the coast of the river sliding past as the boat ploughed through the water. “But I think they should be.”
“You can amend it,” said James. Natasha craned her head to look up at him and saw that he was smiling.
“I want you all to know that I’m very disappointed in the state of our national superheroes,” said Sam. “Never been to Niagara Falls, Christ.”
“You’ve been,” Steve pointed out, and grinned when Sam went a little red with pleasure.
“Once or twice,” Natasha said, grinning, as the owner of the parachuting company caught Sam in a bear hug.
“Fuck off,” Sam said over his shoulder. “Good to see you, Rachel. How you been?”
Rachel stepped back, delighted. “Good! Really good. What about you, you moved back to New York?”
“Yeah, it was… time,” Sam said, bland as possible. “So, uh, these guys are Steve, Nat and –“
“Bucky,” said James, holding out a hand to shake. “Hi there.”
Rachel looked him up and down and got a smile that made Natasha… kind of uncomfortable. Steve was rolling his eyes. “Hiiiiii. OK. Nice to meet you guys, I’m Rachel, any friends of Sam are totally welcome… So. To business. Have any of you been parachuting before?”
They had driven to the border, leaving so early on Thursday morning that it probably still counted as late, but on Monday they left in the midmorning and drove back in the daytime. The weather was holding, though approaching clouds suggested rain tomorrow, and they drove in shifts and talked about music, when they talked at all. Skydiving had been – Natasha wasn’t sure she had a word for it – ecstatic, perhaps. Reminiscent of the rollercoaster that had started everything, but utterly different. N no secure channels, no thigh holsters, no purpose, just the fall, the stomach-dropping freedom, the beauty of the world below, the endless blue above, the wind in her ears, stinging her face, snatching her breath. She had fallen, gravity dragging her inexorably down, and had never felt so weightless.
At a rest stop somewhere around the halfway mark she sat on a picnic bench with her back to the table, crossed her legs at the knee, and said to James, “So if not trains, what then?”
It wasn’t any of her business, but, well, when had that ever stopped her?
He looked surprised. Then he said, “Gin and tonic.”
“Noooo,” Natasha said, delighted.
“Yeah. I had to report to Pierce once unexpectedly, I think this was in the Eighties, and he’d been drinkin’ them. And I just can’t.” He shook his head. “Can’t smell it, can’t look at it, nothin’. And you know the worst thing?”
“You used to really like a gin and tonic,” said Natasha. It was a guess, but it was right.
“I used to really like a gin and tonic.”
“Ugh, that’s the worst. It’s breath mints for me. Which makes it weird because loads of people suck breath mints. It’s better now but the first few years it was like –“
“Like someone had put their hand into your torso and started squeezing your intestines?”
She laughed. “My vision would go fuzzy at the edges.” She sighed. “One of the handlers would always suck them, one of the get-right-in-your-face-and-yell ones.”
“Yablonsky,” James said. “Yellow hair, alcoholic. That’s why he was always eating them.”
They were both quiet for a few moments. Steve and Sam had probably chatting up the girl at the cash desk, Natasha thought vaguely. Then she said, “I wasn’t sure if you remembered.”
James, sitting beside her, legs flung out in front of them and spread, just short of an invitation, in a posture she was fairly sure he had cribbed from the TV, pushed his sunglasses up his nose and said, “I wasn’t sure you remembered.”
“It all came back to me,” she said dryly. “The wipe… it wore off after a few years.”
“I didn’t at first. But the more often I saw you, the more… the more it fell into place.”
“Listen, Nat –“
Close to panicked, she flung up her hand between them. “If you’re about to say what I think you’re about to say – don’t. Just – just forget it.”
“Just forget it?” He was incredulous.
“Don’t burden me with it whatever you do,” she snapped.
“OK,” he said. “OK. I didn’t actually mean to start a fight.”
“This is not what you and I would ordinarily call a fight.”
He even smiled, though it was faint, and leaned towards the bitter, if not outright self-flagellating. Natasha crossed her arms over her chest. The taste of the coffee she’d finished earlier was still in her mouth and she was squinting a little even behind her own sunglasses.
“You gonna tell Steve?”
James glanced at her. “That we loved each other?”
“Oh god!” Natasha made an impatient movement. “Aren’t we too old for that?”
He breathed in suddenly, all his relaxed calm transmuted into a stillness that set alarm bells off in her head. “What, too old for what? To call it love?”
“We were barely even human, James.”
“And that’s at the bottom of this whole runaround, isn’t it,” he said. She didn’t know what he meant, but even more than that she didn’t recognise his voice anymore. Steve maybe would have, she supposed, because this was what Bucky Barnes sounded like when he had a fight with someone he – when he had an ordinary, everyday, human fight with you. “You twisting your head around so much you don’t think you’re human.”
“I’m twisting my own head around?” Natasha felt stunned with anger. When she jumped to her feet it didn’t register that she had done so until he followed her up, face tight.
“Of course you are! Listen to yourself – bucket lists and oh we weren’t even human, James – well, I hate to have to tell you this, but we were. OK? You don’t have to fulfil a set of requirements in order to count as a real person, there’s not a checklist or a fucking exam or any kind of a time limit, you are a person, you just are, you always fucking were, and I don’t know where the hell you get the balls from to stand there and dictate to me what I am and am not allowed to feel for you.”
Natasha was clenching her fists and shaking. “Don’t you! Don’t you really!” Her voice rose so much several people looked over at them, but she was past caring. “How dare you tell me – you have no idea what you’re talking about, don’t come the fucking pathetic brainwashed POW with me, I know you inside out and backwards, don’t you dare. You shook it off and you walked back into your life – into your identity – you had a name, a mother and father, sisters, friends, Steve, for fuck’s sake, Steve above all – and I don’t even know when my real birthday is but you get to decide how I deal with this, who I make myself when you’re not around, why, because we used to fuck?”
“I love you,” he said baldly. “You can scream about it all you like but you won’t change it. I love you, and this – this bullshit that you’re doing to yourself, trying to be – trying to contort yourself out of all recognition to avoid what’s right under your nose, telling yourself you’re not a real person, that is bullshit, Natasha. Fucking bullshit. What about Fury, and Barton and his wife, and whatshername, Maria Hill? And Steve, what about Steve? All these people who think you’re amazing, but you’ve got some idea – some screwed-up manual for humanity you cribbed off of the TV or outta some shitty magazine, and you won’t be satisfied with yourself until you’ve ticked every single unnecessary box, hobbies and furniture and fuck only knows, all the – the surplus debris that doesn’t matter, compared to the people you have in your life, and I say that as someone who’s lost all of ‘em but two.”
If someone had taken a swing at her then she would not have known nor managed to defend herself. She was so angry her whole body felt tight with it, as if her skin had shrunk a size in the seconds he had been speaking. She was flushed and hot and there was a tightness in her stomach like a – a stone, red-hot, dragging at her, a tight sour line of – of something – that ran from her throat to her gut and made her feel pulled-tight and tense and small and alone.
“We’re done here,” she said. “I’m done. I’ll get the bus.”
“For god’s sake,” he said, but she was already halfway across the parking lot, back to the car. Her
she snatched it out and forced herself to turn her back on him, forced herself past the voice in her head screaming at her to hold a gun on him until he was out of sight, and he said, “Stop – Nat – Natalia –“ and that, that made her turn, made her spin back around so fast she felt dizzy.
“If you ever call me that again I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”
He’d taken his sunglasses off. Eyes grey-blue like a hazy summer evening, so wide and shocked it tore her chest open, hand outstretched to her, for her. She had always fit just right into his arms, under his chin.
She walked away.
Coulson, back in the early days when he and Nick had been her handlers direct, slowly helping her acclimate to SHIELD, had had a saying: never go to work angry. Natasha had considered it a good one: anger was detrimental to concentration, distracted from the mission object, led to slipups and sloppy work. But right now she was so furious she could’ve punched through concrete, and there was only one way to fix it.
“You’re just in time,” said Bobbi.
“The hell did you do to your hair?” said Clint, staring.
Natasha bared her teeth at them in an expression that in no way resembled a smile and flung herself into the back of the car.
Once they had stopped in Jersey she hunted up a hairdresser’s and made the woman give her a pixie cut. When she stood up to pay and leave the floor was scattered with red and purple, long straight hanks of hair she no longer had any kind of use for. The dye had grown out far enough that there was no trace of purple left.
When Bobbi was just being Bobbi Morse she wore this amazing perfume. Natasha had used to sit in her room and sniff the bottle, at the very beginning, wondering what kind of woman wore it, what sort of person would choose to live the way Natasha had been made to. It was still a smell that made her feel safe, and sitting on the bed beside her now, flipping through the file Clint had given her, some of the itching, impotent fury that had been bubbling under her skin since her fight with the Soldier at the rest stop began to subside.
“Who’s running this place?”
“We’re not sure, but a professor at MIT who goes by Vermis seems to have a connection,” said Bobbi. “My suspicion is that he’s one of those unethical science experiment types.”
“Hand was a convenient guinea pig because, being dead already, she wouldn’t be missed,” said Natasha.
“Probably. There may also be a more personal motivation – one of Victoria’s open cases before DC involved labs in Eastern E we think she was closing in on Vermis before the HYDRA reveal.”
Natasha sighed. “Lovely. Where are we meeting Nick and Maria?”
“Virginia. Um, how are the, uh, the cookery classes?”
Silence. Natasha rubbed her thumb across the page she was holding, feeling the thin texture of the paper. A list of lies presented themselves, a collection of options for deflection, evasion.
“I enjoy them a lot,” she said.
“I’m glad.”
Natasha looked up. Neither of them had never treated her like a child, but both Clint and Bobbi had a voice that – it was hard to explain – that she had come to associate with reminders of shibboleths she should not have forgotten, mantras like you don’t have to do anything you don’t want and if it makes you happy go for it that could be truth and lie at one and the same time.
Bobbi was watching her, and her face was solemn with concern. “Are you OK?” she asked.
Yes of course. Probably not. How was she supposed to tell? There’s not a checklist, or a fucking exam, or any kind of a time limit. How was she supposed to confirm mission success if she didn’t have the most basic goddamn mission parameters?
“I don’t know,” she said.
Bobbi held her arm out, offering an embrace: human touch and warmth and comfort. It was another few moments before Natasha could let herself accept it.
Nick and Maria met them in a parking lot in Virginia, dressed like hobos and looking irritated about it.
“And the band’s back together,” said Clint. “Be still my beating heart. How’s Coulson, oh glorious leader?”
Nick’s mouth got all pinched and shrivelled up.
“Aw, he thought we didn’t know,” said Natasha.
Nick said, “You know, I trusted you to –“
“No, Nick, you didn’t,” said Clint.
Nick looked at Bobbi. Bobbi crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t say anything. Natasha glanced at Maria and said, “You’re lucky I haven’t told Steve.”
“Out of the generous goodness of your heart,” said Nick sourly.
“Because he’s got enough on his plate without worrying about your lunatic vigilante spy academy for former teenage con girls,” said Natasha.
“If you’re referring to Skye,” said Nick.
“Well I’m not talking about Melinda May, am I? Though I will say, someone needs to sit that girl down sometime and explain to her just how much better she could do than Coulson.”
“Would you like to volunteer?” said Nick, getting waspish. “You’ve been hiding up in Brooklyn for months, Romanov, shacking up with Barnes and Rogers and learning to bake, or so it sounds.”
And the other shoe dropped. Natasha had felt it coming on for days, ever since the fight, and here it finally was. It was like having a lead weight dropped down her spine, like receiving a wipe: her body straightened, her shoulders fell back, her mind emptied. There was the mission, and the people in front of her to whom she owed all her oldest debts but one. Everything else went away.
It was an indescribable relief.
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said, voice wiped of inflection and accent. “Barnes is the single most dangerous asset existing, more dangerous than the Hulk, even, because he’s extremely intelligent – I shouldn’t have to tell you this, by the way – and he will never recover, Nick. He will never be predictable, or safe, or truly and only Bucky Barnes, ever again. There is no final healing for us. And Rogers has already proven that he will put Barnes above nearly every other possible priority. Do you really want those two running around one of the most densely populated areas of Earth without a specialist close to put them both down if that needs to happen?”
The silence in the parking lot was absolute and awful. You could have heard a pin drop. Nick – for an instant Nick looked surprised. Then he looked stricken.
“I thought you were friends,” said Maria.
Natasha smiled. “They’re entertaining companions, and they’re very fond of Natalie Rushman.”
Clint drew a breath in through his nose, arms clamped across his chest.
“This bucket list business,” Bobbi started.
“Men tend to like it when attractive young women ask them for their help,” said Natasha. “It affords them a chance to feel superior and knowledgeable, even when they’re not.”
Nick said quietly, “I would never have asked you –“
Natasha raised her eyebrows. “To play a part?”
“They think you’re friends.”
“They’re not the first. I’m sure they won’t be the last. Oh come on, Nick, this isn’t keeping me up at night. I’m comfortable with everything. Whatever it takes.”
“In the bunker, you said to me –“
“I said what Rogers needed me to say in order to trust me. Now are we here to rescue Agent Hand or not? Because I think she would appreciate the success of that mission coming sooner rather than later.”
Set-up and stakeout was a routine comforting in its familiarity. There w Natasha knew and understood everything that needed doing, required no advice and wanted no company. All the same she was grateful that the other people on the job with her were the same consummate professionals with whom she had worked best in the past. It made for a smoother, easier partnership.
The facility was an underground bunker that had been carved out of a long-closed mine in northern Kentucky. The woods were evergreen, still thick and dark this late in the year, damp and cool but less unpleasant than it could have been. Natasha and Clint made their way to one of the old mine shafts that had been re-purposed into part of the ventilation system for the base, silent as shadows. O a fox rustled thr other small animals as well. Nick and Maria would take the front door, Bobbi already inside, hair dyed black and playing up the HYDRA agent for all she was worth. It took seconds to get inside once they reached the shaft. Through the comms came loud and clear the noise of her companions breathing, Bobbi’s clipped voice giving orders, cowing the scientists. Sadistic fucks.
Once they were in, they killed the PA and internal comms by the relatively simple expedient of hooking up an ipod and blasting AC/DC. Natasha had got the idea from Stark, and it worked well: the entire base exploded in confusion, people running out of dorms half-naked, scientists yelling, security fighting through the mess of shouting angry bodies to shut down the noise. There was no chance of meaningful communication between them and their boss, given the sheer decibel level, and given also that Bobbi had just shot him in the back of the head.
Down, down three levels, four, finally finding abandoned corridors, labs empty at this time of night, four security guys at the end of a long hallway, two dead to Clint’s arrows, the other close enough that Natasha took care of him, the fourth yelling into his comm and trying to fire on them at the same time till another arrow sank into his throat. Clint snatched