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The Winter Soldier is there, but he is not. James Buchanan Barnes is there, but he is not. Bucky is there, but he is not.
He flutters in and out of rooms like a ghost and sometimes he takes things—from the kitchen or from the living room, little things like a cup of tea or a newspaper or a history book—never anything important, never anything unique like a photograph—and it irks her, that he won’t talk to them, but at the same time she is thankful, because if he talked to her she doesn’t know how she would take it.
Steve says he talks to him, sometimes. That Bucky will ask him things as if he is ensuring he remembers them correctly. I’m Bucky… right? We met when we were young, Steve claims Bucky asks. When’s my birth date? When did I join the army? You used to be much smaller… but they’re always simple things, nothing extraordinary. That makes sense, Natasha thinks, because if you’re rebuilding your whole memory you have to start with the little things. Just as if you were building anything else.
Natasha doesn’t live with Steve. She has an apartment of her own, but she visits Steve so often that it’s practically her own home. She claims she is here to keep an eye on Steve, because living with the Winter Soldier is dangerous (—it’s not the Soldier, Nat, it’s Bucky—), and while that’s partly true, it’s not the whole truth. She is also there to keep an eye on the Soldier for her own sake. Perhaps even for the Soldier’s sake. (Scratch that. Almost definitely for the Soldier’s sake.)
One day, Steve has to leave for a while to run an errand, and Natasha stays because the soldier can’t be left alone. She’s there, doing nothing noteworthy for thirty minutes or so when something snaps inside her because she can’t stand the horrible void of a place that is empty but at the same time is not, especially when the person that is (and isn’t) there is somebody she used to know. So she stands up and she goes looking for the Winter Soldier.
She finds him in the guest room, next to Steve’s room; he’s sitting on the bed, looking out the window, lost in thought. As expected. Natasha stands there, doing nothing, not moving, barely breathing, surprised that she's gotten good enough to sneak up on him without him noticing; that didn’t used to happen—but he’s not who he used to be, is he? No, he’s not the man she used to know. She doesn’t know whether she should be sad or angry or grateful or what but what sticks out the most is some sort of rage. It overcomes her, and before she knows what she’s doing she’s pinning him to the bed, her arm at his throat; and while he fights back on instinct, the most horrifying thing is that she knows she’s not stronger than him. He’s letting her do this.
She feels like she should ask something—what did they do to you? Who are you now?—but somehow those don’t feel like the sort of questions that would get an answer, so she settles for another one:
“What do you remember?” she spits out, and the words taste like acid and she can’t believe she’s asking him this.
His eyes look dead and empty and she can’t bear it, but she can’t stop herself from asking once more. She’s not sure if it’s for her sake or for his sake or for Steve’s sake or anything, really, and she’s not even sure what she’s doing and maybe she’s not even sure of who she is and maybe the answer to that question could fix all that for her.
What do you remember? The phrase repeats itself over and over in her brain.
His dead eyes fix on her, she’s still pinning him down and it feels like eternities have passed when he asks her, “Remember about what?”
Is her heart breaking? She has had her heart broken before, she should know what it feels like, and yet she doesn’t know if that’s what she’s feeling or if it’s something else but she feels empty and hollow except she feels full of fire, too, and—
“I remember some things. Scattered things. About everything. But you’re not asking me about everything, are you?” He blinks, his head goes to the side a bit, and her hold on him loosens, but only a bit. “What do you want me to remember?”
She makes herself stand up and wonders what she's even doing, because couldn’t she have just asked? Without doing this? Asking didn’t seem like the right thing, she supposes, but neither does this. He sits up, and she nods absently, but never takes her eyes off his. It’s like they’re not blinking, or maybe time is passing too slowly for any blinking to happen.
And for the first time in a long time, Natasha is completely, totally, one hundred percent honest with someone.
(Funny, though, isn’t it, that the person is the Winter Soldier?)
“I want—I need to know what you remember… about the Red Room. I don’t really know anything else about you, and right now, I’m not asking for Steve’s sake.”
The Winter Soldier responds in a childlike voice that sounds like it hasn’t been used in a million years— “you’re Natalia.”
Nobody calls her Natalia anymore. Natalia is dead, buried, forgotten. She hates Natalia—or at least that’s what she would tell you if you asked—but there’s a part of Natalia she likes. Loves, even.
The list of terrible things about the Red Room is too long to handle, starting—of course—with the fact that their goal was to make perfect weapons out of people. The list of good things she remembers from her time there is much, much shorter—those things, she can count on her fingers. But the first thing on that list—the best, by far—is him.
“James,” she says. It’s not a question. It’s not a loving memory. It’s a ghost, slipping away from her lips without permission like a shadow in the night, and she says it so softly that she thinks he might not hear her, but he does. He hears everything.
“James,” he says, but for him, it’s different. It’s like trying on a new pair of shoes for the first time, when you can’t decide if you like them and you aren’t sure you’ve made the right choice. He says the name in a low, cautious voice, as if someone could kill him for using it.
He nods. “I remember some things. A flash of red hair — I taught you English — we were always in the shadows — but I don’t remember everything, Natalia.”
She could tell him so many things, all that she remembered, because at some point she had forgotten too, but she wants to tell him about the night they spent slow-dancing in Moscow, and all their sneaking around in the showers, and the roses that he left her, and how they knew every scar on each other’s bodies, and how he teased her when she told him she loved the sound of the rain, and how in the middle of the night they would make up stories about how their life could be if it was different, if they were like other people…
She wants to tell him, but she doesn’t. She’s kept it to herself all her life. What would happen if she didn’t say anything now? Perhaps she would implode. But she needs to tell him something, so she settles for something somewhat safer. “You always said my eyes were your favorite shade of green.”
He smiles but it’s not a real smile, it’s sad and it only lasts half a millisecond, but what it tells her is that he does remember. “I called you ‘darling.’”
She nods. It’s not a lie. He remembers. He used to call her darling and she used to laugh and tell him it was the most ridiculous name anyone had ever given her. (And she had so many names). But she always loved it. She always loved him.
Their past is stuck in her mind like an old sepia movie — it’s missing bits and pieces and sometimes it’s fuzzy and other times it just doesn’t seem like it could have ever been real — but it’s there.
“You did,” she says, and sits down beside him. He doesn’t look at her, he looks at his feet. He holds his arms in his lap like a well-behaved child, and for some reason this almost breaks her. She feels selfish, because, well, he’s not only her James. He’s Steve’s Bucky, too, and now she feels guilty because she’d ignored that fact. “Steve, then. What do you remember about him?”
He looks up to her, an unreadable expression on his face. “I thought you said you weren’t doing this for Steve.”
“Well, I thought I wasn’t. I guess things change.”
“In ten minutes?”
“Anything can change in ten minutes. From an opinion to a king. Steve. What do you remember about him?”
“I remember us as children. I remember he kept getting into trouble. Sometimes I remember more, sometimes I remember less. Natalia, I—sometimes I don’t even know what’s real and what’s not anymore.”
She reaches out to hold his hand. (It happens to be his right hand. That’s better, it means he’ll be able to feel it, really feel it.) “I know how that feels.”
“I killed so many people. I heard them beg for mercy and I told them I didn’t give a fuck. They told me they had families and I sent bullets through their brain. I broke their necks and I shot at their hearts. I—” He stops, like he can’t breathe.
She knows he wants to cry, but she also knows he won’t. Not here, not now. Not when she’s next to him. Not because it’s her, but because the Soldier doesn’t cry. (James might, though. Bucky might. She’s not sure who he is right now, though, so he’s the Soldier. By default.)
But she understands. The Widow doesn’t cry, either.
“It wasn’t your fault. They made you into a weapon,” she says, squeezing his hand.
“It was me. I am the Winter Soldier. It’s my fault.”
Don’t do this to yourself, James— “It’s not. I can assure you, it’s not.”
She wants to tell him, James, you are not the Soldier, you are so much more than that. The Soldier is a weapon—you’re not. You’re a person. But she knows he won’t listen. Not yet. They sit in silence for a while, just holding hands, until he speaks up. His voice is small, distant; lost in thought.
“I... don’t know who I am.”
“I don’t know who I am, either,” she half-smiles, “but maybe I can help you figure out who you are.”