Work Text:
A long time ago
He knew he hadn't much time to write the letter. By next week he'd either be dead or on a beach with Natalia.
She hated being left in the dark but if even half of what he found was true, her ignorance might well be the only thing that kept her alive. He wasn't entirely sure what Department X suspected about them or what they suspected he might know but he was damn well sure that if he went down, he would do it alone.
Dear Nat,
If you're reading this then I'm probably already dead. I hope to leave this where you'll find it before they can come after you. Dept. X has lied and manipulated both of us. Our lives aren't even our own. I'm writing this as I wait for the last piece of proof I need.
If I've failed, you must run. Don't take anything, just burn and run. If I live, I will find you. Trust no one.
If I don't make it
He had to stop and control his breathing. The Winter Soldier may believe that love is a lie made up for bed time stories but James Barnes knew no such thing.
If I don't make it, just know that I love you. Always will. No matter what happens or what you find out, know that it was always real. You're the best thing that ever happened to me and I'm sorry that I failed you - that you're reading this letter.
Yours,
-B
He folded it up and put it away before he could burn it like the others. He let out a sort of half-sob, half-cough and dropped his head into his hands. He had to see her. Now.
He pulled the antenna on his KGB-issued, Natalia-modified cellular phone and dialled her number. When she answered, he spoke only their personal code.
"Is this the cinema?" (This is not an emergency.)
"No, I'm afraid you have the wrong number. Maybe I can help you find what you were looking for?" (Acknowledged. I am free at the moment.)
"I heard there was a cinema playing a revival of Casablanca. Do you know the one I mean?" (Come over immediately.)
"No, sorry. I can try to find the number if you like?" (I'll be right over.)
"That's okay. Thank you for your help." (Goodbye.)
He paced with a nervous energy for the entire eighteen minutes it took her to arrive. He saw her walking up the pavement and took a moment to just enjoy her. Her red hair was longer than it ever had been. As usual, she was dressed mostly in black but she had a long grey scarf tied around her neck. It meant that she wasn't being followed.
He met her at the door before she could knock. For her part, she was astonished at how obviously upset he was. His lashes, so dark they seemed made-up, didn't distract from his bloodshot eyes. He had dark circles under them and a couple days worth of facial hair.
He clasped her face in his hands and stared intently at her. His gaze was so piercing that she sometimes blushed under his scrutiny, even during briefings. Then he kissed her and it was so needy, so hungry that she was already unbuttoning her jacket and tearing off her scarf by the time he closed the door behind her.
He stilled her hands and clasped them behind her back in one of his own. His eyes never left hers as he used his free hand to pull her closer. He smiled that crooked half-smile that made her heart pound and kissed her again, this time softly.
"[I've got you and I am never letting go]," he said in Russian and though it was a silly turn of phrase, he fairly burned with intensity.
"[You only caught me because I let you]," she replied.
Before he could brace himself for the inevitable, he found himself flat on his back on the floor of the entry hall to his apartment. She peered down at him and then climbed on top of him to deliver a kiss of her own. He sat up with her still straddling his lap and kissed her again. She pulled away.
"I told you to speak English, James," she scolded him. "I need to work on my accent and idiots."
"Idioms," he said and his laugh earned him a kick.
"Hey, watch it. You're very precariously situated here," he said and adjusted himself under her. She moved to get up but he held her closer. The moment stretched in silence until she took his face into her hands.
"What is wrong, my love?" she asked and kissed his forehead, his cheeks and mouth again. She saw him blinking away a tear.
"I just," he said and coughed to clear his throat. He started again. "I just don't want to lose you."
"Have you been having the nightmares again, James?" she asked, a troubled look on her face.
"I…yeah," he said, not meeting her gaze. She frowned. He wasn't one to overflow with words or explanations. He was upset; he reached out to her. So, she decided, she would reach back.
"I can take your mind off of it," she said and shifted her weight against him in a way that made him gasp.
"Yes," he said roughly, "I think you can." And in spite of their best intentions, they made it no further than the living room.
__________
A few hours and as many cigarettes later, she was falling in and out of sleep on his chest. Always on his right side, away from the cold metal. Not, he knew, because it bothered her. It was just another of the thousand tiny ways that she understood him. He thought again about just leaving right then and explaining it all on the way out of the country.
"Did you get that American passport we talked about?" he asked, bringing her rather abruptly to the land of the waking.
"Hmm, yes," she said, closing her eyes again.
"What name did you pick?" he said, partly out of curiosity and partly to disguise his real anxiety.
"Natalie Romanoff," she answered.
"What? What about Barnes?" he said, a little surprised.
She sat up and wrapped the sheet around her chest.
"Since when are we married?" she asked, a dangerous look on her face.
"Well, I just thought that if we ever did go to America it would be, you know, together," he said, fighting the urge to fidget.
"And we have to be married for that?" she asked, one eyebrow cocked in mock outrage.
"It would draw less attention," he said and trailed off. She glared at him but he saw amusement in her eyes.
"James Fucking Barnes, this had better not be some half-assed, ill-advised, poorly-planned, extremely inelegant marriage proposal," she said, and he couldn't help being impressed with her ability to so exactly express her outrage in a foreign language.
She threw a pillow at his face.
He laughed and it was one of those perfect, uncontrolled laughs that were so rare in his life.
"You should see your face! No, it's just, well, you know, Sao Paolo wasn't so bad. We were married for that op," he said.
"Oh," she said, suppressing a laugh herself, "and that turned out so well."
"Well, we survived, didn't we?"
"James, we were the only ones who survived that mess."
"Well," he said dismissively, "that was because of bad intel, not because we were married."
"True," she said, "but it does seem like kind of a bad omen. I guess you'll have to find some other way to be my ball and chain."
She scooted next to him again and snuggled back to her spot on his chest.
"Did I get that right?" she asked, "It seems so silly. Am I the ball or the chain?"
He squeezed her close and turned off the bedside lamp with his other hand.
"You can be whatever you want," he whispered into her hair. If I can manage to survive the next week.
The next morning, she slipped out before he woke up. He had a fuzzy idea of being kissed and smelling her perfume. He packed the letter into the inside pocket of his pea coat and set out to meet his source with more hope in his heart than he'd felt in months.
Six days later, he did not see the red dot on his chest and he did not see what followed.
__________
The deputy director of Department X and his favourite lackey sat on a cold park bench.
"Did you intercept the letter?" asked Drakov.
"Of course," answered Tuganov, "I did it myself."
"Was there anything else? Did he have any other documents?"
"No, just the letter. I guess he thought she would take it on faith," he said and they shared a cruel laugh.
"The reprogramming?" asked Drakov.
"All as planned. He's in cold storage now, waiting for the big show."
__________
She didn't even get a real phone call. She got a message on her answering machine. She rewound the tape and listened four times before she could comprehend the contents.
Agent Romanova, there's been an accident. The Winter Soldier is dead. It was a weapons malfunction, a single gunshot wound. He died instantly. We're sorry and will reassign you in a matter of days. Any questions should be directed to your immediate superior.
She tried to believe that it was a trick, a ruse to uncover their relationship. So she stayed quiet. She turned off her emotions and took refuge in being the Black Widow. It wasn't until they showed her his body, wheeled out from the cold mortuary and shown to younger agents as an abject lesson in weapons safety, that she really believed he was gone.
She held her tears for another day, just in case she was being watched. Then she went, methodically and with an increasing weight in her chest, to all seventeen of their drops, meeting places and hidden spots. She gathered all of the pictures, mementos and letters - all the proof that James Barnes had lived and that he'd loved her - and burnt them. The last to go on the pile was her brand-new American passport, issued to Natasha Barnes of Brooklyn, New York.
As the fire burnt, she remembered the words of her very first trainer. Love is for children. It was a damn lie. What he should have taught her at that young age was that love fucking hurt. That it couldn't last forever and was therefore doomed to be painful.
Never again, she thought. I am an assassin and a spy and I am damn good at my job. These things I can control so these things I will do. Then she turned to walk away and never looked back.
And so it was that the Black Widow didn't speak a word of English and didn't hold the gaze of any man until the day that Clint Barton walked into the remains of her burning life and helped her up.
__________
Present day
"I'll be the chain," she murmured in her medically-induced sleep.
"Coulson, does that mean something to you?" asked Nick Fury from the opposite side of her hospital bed.
"No, sir, just gibberish, I think," the worried Agent Coulson replied. He obviously hadn't yet gone to sleep but Fury wouldn't tell him to go home. Phil would do what he wanted in this circumstance, anyway. No point in fighting him.
"And she's out of danger?" he asked and Coulson nodded his reply.
"And Barton?" he asked. The blood drained from Coulson's face.
"He's on his way, sir," Coulson said, "it's going to be hard on him."
He met Fury's eye and an unspoken conversation let him know Fury was of the same opinion.
"Look after him, okay?" Fury said and left the hospital room.