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It went like this—
The knocking became pounding. The door rattled.
“Check the feed,” she told him.
“It’s dead. Both of them. The alarms too.”
Natasha, gun in hand, crouched by the doorframe. Steve stood firmly in front of the door with the shield raised.
What came through it was more a bleeding mass of limbs than a man. He whimpered and screamed in Czech, his words rendered nearly unintelligible by a smashed jaw. Natasha recognized him underneath all the blood: Kosarek, one of her informants.
Steve was already out the open door while she clutched at the dying body, demanding that he use his final breaths to tell her exactly what was going on, who had brought him there. She could barely hear him. “Soldier,” he said over and over again. And then “welcome back.”
A shot landed squarely between the eyes of the man in her arms. Kosarek dead. The sound of a great explosion in the distance. An ashy taste in her mouth. Natasha rushed out into the snow, her eyes searching for Steve, for the shooter, but unavoidably drawn to the flames and smoke surging up the mountainside. Their target’s great complex destroyed.
Through it all she heard the sound of the shield being thrown and caught and thrown and caught. The gunman on the ridge, Steve below him.
The Red Room had all kinds of assassins with all kinds of abilities. There is only one they ever equipped with a metal arm.
Black Widow and Captain America chased the Winter Soldier for two miles through the frozen night until the dark forest swallowed him up.
Steve said, “Natasha, I know him.”
“I do too. We’re fortunate he’s decided not to kill us.”
--
The city is a jewel. They walk across its facets, glide along empty alleys gleaming in the winter sunlight. Steve’s experience with old world architecture does not extend beyond a few abandoned cathedrals they encountered while hunting HYDRA’s footsoldiers, and she does not begrudge him his sense of awe. Occasionally he pauses to study the angles of a building, the red and brown patchwork of Prague’s ice-slicked rooftops. Natasha knows he’s seeing them with an artist’s eye, and every part of her wishes they were here under different circumstances.
She still has an old Czech identity from ten years ago—another form of armor, one more suited to the situation in which they now find themselves. She does not take him to the SHIELD safehouse. When he asks, she tells him the location’s been compromised. Steve will not allow his anger to fully bloom yet, but she can feel the tension of his unanswered questions, the suspicion and hurt inexorably growing within him. Belka and the last of his collaborators who escaped the flames are still at large, and they have a job to finish. Steve does his duty. The reappearance of a long dead best friend must wait.
A few of the group’s members have fled the country, but the ones stupid enough to have crawled back to Prague go to ground in all the usual places. Natasha takes a serviceable room in an old, decidedly un-tourist friendly hotel; the two of them work from there. The others are easy enough to track, but Belka has more connections. They eventually find him in the backroom of a Žižkov bar owned by one of his former mistresses. Steve kicks down the door and shoulders his way into the small room, taking out two bouncers who picked the wrong day to change careers. The old commander spits out a curse and raises his hands.
“Do you know the man with—” He can’t say it. He reformulates. “There was an assassin. Did you send him?”
Belka doesn’t say anything.
Steve nods and Natasha puts a bullet in the back of Belka’s head. The report she writes for Fury will be just as concise.
--
For three days the hotel room has been a pause between the spaces of action. An emptiness with two people living inside it. But Steve can’t help who he is—he has to fill it—and he finally does the night after Belka dies.
“I woke up, and Bucky was still gone. Who was that?”
The reply catches like a knife in her throat. “The Winter Soldier. His Red Room code name. He’s been working freelance since 1989, but I haven’t seen him since '93.”
“I got him away from HYDRA. From Schmidt. But he fell. I couldn’t save him.”
She moves to sit next to him on the bed. He stares at her; she can see the distrust lurking behind his eyes. She hates it.
“Why didn’t you say?”
“I was ordered not to. But it’s better that you know. You deserve to.”
When Fury first explained to her the connection between Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers, the uncanny correlation between the activities of the Winter Soldier and the fate of Captain America’s former brother-in-arms, her initial reaction was not disbelief. It was recognition. James once told her about his boyhood friend. It was an anecdote meant to teach her a lesson: My friend had more courage than sense. He was not strong but he would fight others two, three times his size. Then one day he became strong. He became so strong that nobody else could best him, but he still had more courage than sense. He lacked self-preservation, Natasha, and it killed him. It killed the strongest man in the world. It will kill you quicker.
She had told Fury yes, Sir and meant it. But hadn’t her sabotage of that directive started the first moment she called Steve?
Their faces are very close. This time, he is the one who moves for her, his hand reaching behind her neck and tilting her head up so that her open mouth meets his.
By the way he had responded before, Natasha had known he didn’t have much experience with this kind of entanglement. Something's changed, anger and desperation have given him the confidence he needs, his kiss hard enough to bruise, his tongue pushing against hers furiously. She grabs a fistful of hair and yanks his head back violently enough that it would snap a weaker man’s neck.
“I’ve known him for decades, Steve. He’s not the same person to me as he is to you.”
He glares up at her, a mixture of doubt and yearning clouding his face. Natasha knows it can’t be much of a negotiation when one party doesn’t even know the terms. She unzips his pants and pushes him back against the mattress. He does not fight her.
She wraps her fingers around his cock and closes her eyes as she leans over him. His hot breath gusts in her ear.
He comes into her hand.
“I—”
She shakes her head. “Don’t.”
She kisses him slowly, deepening it when he sighs into her mouth.
“I’ll take you to see him tomorrow. Go to sleep.”
--
It’s a little past midday. The Charles Bridge is packed with tourists and vendors, groups of schoolchildren, ordinary workers out to stretch their legs before returning to their offices. Steve’s bulk helps them move through the multitude, but it still takes a long time for them to advance to the center.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Crowds of innocent people make threats easier. It’s one of the first lessons they teach.”
He waits for them in a long wool coat that covers the metal arm, gazing at one of the vendor’s paintings of the city landmarks. When they approach, he turns very deliberately to Steve and says, “As I recall, yours were better.”
Natasha has not laid eyes on him in nearly twenty years. There are gray streaks in his dark hair, and his flesh is drawn tighter around his jaw. The beginnings of crow’s feet mark the corners of his eyes. The Red Room gave all the Widows a serum to prevent cellular breakdown that kept them young, beautiful. Viable assets. They gave the Winter Soldier the cryogenic chamber. The commanders were endlessly creative, but they saw no reason to be wasteful. James has met time at last. She won’t allow herself to acknowledge how unsettling she finds the change.
Steve’s face is pale. She has never seen him look ill before.
“I thought you were—”
“Yes. I was dead. They found me at the bottom of the gorge. HYDRA had a unique process for recovering assets. Why do you think we never saw their faces?”
Steve can’t even look at him. He braces himself against the wide stone ledge and stares out at the frozen river beneath. Natasha takes two steps towards the man in the long coat, every bit of her coiled and ready to spring.
She says to him in Russian, “Look, you and I have unfinished business that has nothing to do with SHIELD’s operation. I’ll meet you, wherever you like.”
He replies, pointedly, in English. “Natasha, I could have found you any time I wanted. I’m here for him.”
“So you got rid of the distraction?”
“You were always so good at cleaning up messes. I hear you’ve already got it in hand, so what’s to worry about?”
Steve has walked a few feet down the bridge. Natasha watches him out of the corner of her eye—she’s distracted, she knows James can see it.
“Let me guess. You’ve decided to take him under your wing. You were always so protective of the other girls, the young ones. He’s still very young.”
“You can’t blame him for what they stole from you. He’s a good man.”
She narrows her gaze. “I could have found you at any time too. I chose not to.”
“You were safe and sound with all your good men. They’re forgiving types.”
He breaks away and moves down the bridge to stand next to Steve. Steve's hands are rosy from the cold but the knuckles are white from where he’s clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly.
James says, “It’s a beautiful place, don’t you think? The first time Natasha and I came to Prague we were to send a message to Dubček. I shot a man down from that bridge tower. I killed another in a back alley. Natasha gunned down three in Malá Strana. He lost ten of his staff in a week.”
“You’re not Bucky. You haven’t been for a very long time.”
“How long do you think, Steve? You would never have let Bucky fall.”
--
Natasha sends a transmission to Maria Hill and lets her know they’ve completed the assignment and will be returning on the next secure flight.
“The clean-up crew had a hell of a time. The Council had to kiss every ass in the Czech government to keep it under wraps, but it helps that the explosives were not our tech. You and the Captain could be up for temporary suspension.”
“Fury?”
“Breathing fire down my neck. I had to install a new security protocol to keep him from logging in to this call. He keeps going on about how you two weren’t ready to work without the team. What’s been taking you so long?”
“Loose ends.”
“Well, there’s always those. Take care of them and get back.” Maria terminates the transmission.
Silence again. Steve hasn’t spoken to her since they left the bridge. James had slipped away into the crowd, drawing anonymity around him like a cloak. Steve had, of course, wanted to follow. “Not here,” she urged him. “You’ll see him again.”
“I know,” he said.
The hours pass slowly, the two of them tangled up in their own thoughts. Eventually Steve rips out a sheet from the legal pad where he’s been idly sketching and writes EAT? in large block letters. They go to the café around the corner for beer and sandwiches. She orders a cup of coffee and drinks half of it before either of them speaks.
“I’m not a fool.” He rubs a hand back and forth over his face. She can see the exhaustion beginning to creep in.
“No. I can guarantee you Belka had no idea who he was actually dealing with.”
“How did they do it? How did they change him?”
“Some of it was HYDRA tech mixed with KGB programming. Most of it was their own invention. The Red Room ran its own show in the end.”
--
He’s waiting for them when they return to the hotel room.
Natasha draws her gun immediately, blocking Steve with her body. Ridiculous, she knows, she barely comes up to his shoulder. Steve gently pushes her out of the way and moves toward the man leaning against the window frame.
“The drafts in here are pretty bad,” he says. “How did you two keep warm?”
“What do want, Bucky? If it’s a fight, you’ll have it. If not, get out.”
Their gazes are locked on each other. Natasha has a good idea of what comes next. Old tactics. Old games.
“No, Steve. He’s not here for that.” She puts her gun back in the concealed holster, unstraps and tosses it along with her coat onto the windowseat. She walks over to Steve, helps him out of his coat, begins unbuttoning his shirt.
He grips her by the shoulders and pulls her back. “Natasha, what are you doing?”
“Who do you think taught the Black Widow how to fuck?” she says succinctly.
James lets out a low laugh, more of an audible smirk really. Natasha walks over to him and takes him in her arms. Her mouth fits against his the same way it always did. Funny. The Winter Soldier breaks off the kiss and turns to Steve.
“Don’t you remember that time I let you watch? It’s time for you to return the favor.”
Steve does his best not to look utterly mortified. Natasha lets James undress her and lead her over to the bed. She lies back against the pillows and watches as Steve, face set with determination, unbuckles his belt and slides his pants down over his hips. His hand moves to his cock.
“I know you know what to do, Steve. Get on with it,” James says.
James—Bucky—bites the inside of her thigh near where her leg joins the pelvis. Not quite hard enough to draw blood but it will be swollen and tender for days, a reminder every time she takes a step. Then there’s his tongue, moving in long, slow strokes against that same crease, inching closer. Now it’s inside her. She takes his skull in both hands to pull him further in, jutting her hips to provide anchors for his hands. She glances over at Steve where he sits sliding one hand up and down the length of his cock, his mouth open and emitting audible pants. He’s slow at first but then begins working more furiously, his pace seeming to match the tongue still fervently building the heat somewhere deep under her belly. Things are edging on delirium when suddenly James lifts his head and pushes himself off the bed. He turns to Steve.
“Your turn.”
Does Steve hesitate? Maybe just for half a moment, but he approaches the bed dutifully and lowers himself onto her. There’s no need for subtlety, especially not now, so she takes hold of him roughly and guides him into her. Steve, ever considerate, is trying so hard to be quiet, but he can’t stop a long groan from escaping his lips. Natasha lifts one leg and hooks it around his thigh, pushing him in deeper. She can’t believe the weight of him. There’s a tightness in her chest she doesn’t quite like.
She smells a cigarette being lit. James now sits in the chair smoking, watching the collision of their bodies, watching Steve slide his hands over her thighs, her stomach, her breasts.
“Use your mouth,” she tells him, and he obeys. Steve’s lips and teeth graze her collarbone. His tongue darts across her left nipple. He’s thrusting faster, so she rolls her hips to match him. His face is almost a stranger’s now, and for a brief flash she recalls how unrecognizable the eyes watching them now would sometimes become. How they almost seemed to burn.
It’s over too quickly. She rolls over and works her clit with her fingers until she’s done.
“You didn’t make her come, Steve. You’ll have to work on that.”
Natasha says nothing but pulls herself towards Steve lying on the right side of the bed breathing heavily, utterly spent. She rests her chin on his lower stomach where it is still slick with sweat and semen and stares across at James.
“He was lovely,” she says. Steve brings his hand up and rests it her hair, his index finger twisting the strands near her earlobe. James rises from his seat and stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand. He hits Steve hard in the face.
Natasha is on her feet in an instant. Steve, still lying down, grabs the nightstand with both hands and throws it across the room at him. It smashes on impact with the metal arm and shoulder, but the Winter Soldier is unfazed. She moves for the window, but he swings for her, the metal fist catching her right side. She nearly hits the floor, but by that point Steve’s up and throttling him. Somehow, he’s able to get sufficient leverage to get a few blows to the head in, and Steve loosens his grip just enough for James to force his way upright. Natasha sends the Winter Soldier toppling down once more with a solid kick.
He’s up again and grappling with the man he once fought beside, his fists knocking into Steve’s ribs with a horrible crunching sound. But Natasha’s got her gun again.
She grabs James viciously around the throat and presses the weapon against his temple. “We’re done here. You should leave now.”
He does not struggle.
--
The next day, one of the SHIELD transporters asks them about their injuries while they stand around in the sleet waiting for the plane to land.
“How’d you get that one, Cap?” He gestures to side of Steve’s face where it is shaded a purplish red, a small gash etched across his forehead.
“I had a disagreement with a friend.”
--
When Fury enters the room for their debriefing, Steve rises from his seat before Natasha has the chance to say a word.
“Sit down, Rogers,” Fury barks.
Steve doesn’t blink. “The Winter Soldier is still active. I’m going to bring him in.”