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capkink2014-02-11 08:29 pm
capkinkmod) wrote in capkink2014-02-11 08:29 pm
Prompt Post 1
Remember to title your comments, use appropriate warnings (or "choose not to warn"), and be civil. Embeds are not allowed.
At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.
Update, April 22, 2014:
For fills, please use the following format:
Fill: Title
Including the pairing, warnings/CNTW, and any other information after the fill and title in the subject line or in the first line of the comment.
Links:
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Fills
Discussion
Delicious Archive
At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.
Update, April 22, 2014:
For fills, please use the following format:
Fill: Title
Including the pairing, warnings/CNTW, and any other information after the fill and title in the subject line or in the first line of the comment.
Links:
Page A Mod
Fills
Discussion
Delicious Archive
Spoilers, Steve/Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier has a crush
(Anonymous) 2014-04-12 01:13 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Spoilers, Steve/Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier has a crush
In other, random news, I already have a first chapter started. So get back to me soon, OP (or not and I'll just do whatever XD)
OP here!
(Anonymous) 2014-04-20 10:13 pm (UTC)(link)Re: OP here!
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {1A}
I'm gonna be nice and start posting the first chapter. Bare with me, it's kind of long ^^; I wrote it as three separate bits before I realized it made more sense as one whole, and there's no guarantee it's finished yet either. The chapter, I mean. I might have more to add towards it.
As a note, any Russian can be read via holding your mouse over the words, it will give a translation as a tooltip.
Also SPOILERS ARE A THING. READ AT OWN RISK.
Steve waited for the other shoe to drop. He knew that no mission ever went successfully, no mission survived contact, and so he waited, crouched with his sights trained on the bridge. The receiver he pinned, unaware to Batroc and whomever else he had up there, let him know all he needed. Steve licked his lips. They should be in position now, and ready to strike at any moment.
“Natasha?” he asked into his wrist. Steve almost winced at the loud reply. Five seconds later they were on the move, plan still in play. At least until Natasha missed the rendezvous point, 'and there went the other shoe,' Steve thought with a grimace. Steve had to find her, feasibly before Batroc, or find Batroc before finding her.
“Well, this is awkward,” Natasha said.
Steve didn't expect to find one right after the other at the tail end of kicking Batroc down. Natasha glanced at him, gave a coy little smile, and the shoes kept dropping. One right after the other. Steve wanted to punch something, maybe that would make this day go a bit better. He glanced down to Batroc, out cold, and then sighed. No, punching things did not make this day go any better.
“What the hell are you doing?” Steve demanded.
“Backing up the harddrive,” Natasha replied with a smile. “It's a good habit to get into.”
“Rumlow needed your help, what the hell are you doing here?” He looked over the screen, his eyes widened in surprise. “You're saving SHIELD intel.”
“Whatever I can get my hands on,” Natasha said, gaze intent on the screen before her.
“Our mission is to rescue hostages,” Steve said sharply, a reprimand that he felt Natasha needed. He knew how loyal she was to SHIELD but to jeopardize the mission like this?
“No, that's your mission,” Natasha told him, her lips quirked up in that way they always did when she felt amused by something. Steve clenched his fist. “And you did it beautifully.”
For the first time in a while Steve actually wanted to punch a woman. Something about Natasha made his blood boil. He knew, he knew, she could be so much better than this. That Fury could be so much better than this. Did Steve not prove himself trustworthy to them? Sure he had a rather strong moral fiber but that moral fiber could be flexible as needed. Just not much.
Actually maybe Steve could understand their cards being held close to the chest. A part of himself wanted to just grab his head and stop thinking in circles, the other wanted to punch some sense into Natasha, and then into Fury. He didn't.
“You just jeopardized this whole operation,” Steve snapped, grabbing hold of her arm. He restrained himself from squeezing too hard, he didn't want to hurt her, just perhaps make his point. This doesn't fly when he's running things. At all.
“I think that's overstating things,” Natasha said calmly. Next second either of them knew Batroc was up and on his feet and Steve had his shield up to deflect a grenade. They dodged right, through some glass, then down, and then the world erupted into fire and smoke.
Steve's ears were ringing and he felt fairly assured that there was glass stabbed into him somewhere. He leaned back against the wall, tried to ignore the fire and the heat around them, the remains of the exploded grenade, and catch his breath. Natasha looked at him, turned her head, and gave him a sheepish sort of smile.
“Okay, that one's on me,” she said breathlessly. Steve scowled. He pushed himself up, using his Shield as a crutch, trying to ignore the bruises he'll probably have after all this.
“Damn right it is,” he snapped, and staggered his way out of the mainframe? Computer room? Steve couldn't be sure what this place was called, aside from that it now rested in broken bits and burned hardware. Behind him Natasha staggered along, quiet.
'Good,' Steve thought. 'I got through to her.' A small part of himself felt guilty. Natasha was just doing her job. However the hurt and betrayed part, the part that felt like Natasha didn't trust him after all they had been through felt vindictive and Steve decided to revel in that instead of the guilt. He had enough guilt to last a lifetime.
Both Natasha and Steve staggered out onto the deck and prepared to make their way towards the rendezvous point where the jet would pick them up. Their eyes both watered as the cool air hit and they passed through the smoke and fire out onto the deck. Steve raised a hand to clear his vision, and sucked in fresh breaths of air.
“ебать!”
The words rang out and echoed around the abandoned deck. Natasha paled, and Steve had to squint to see what had caught her attention at first before it became apparent that they weren't alone. Natasha hadn't been the one to swear, in fact, but rather a man with a shiny metal arm? Steve blinked.
“You know,” he said offhandedly, “the twenty-first century is just ridiculously weird.”
“Steve,” Natasha hissed, “shut up.” Steve frowned, straightened up, and tightened his grip on his shield.
“You know him?” he asked, under his breath. The stranger looked familiar, but Steve couldn't place where. Perhaps he was a SHIELD agent?
“Not in a good way,” Natasha said. “We have to run.”
“Why?”
Her face was blank, serious, as Natasha turned to look at Steve. “Because he makes me look like a wet kitten.”
Steve frowned, his grip tightened further on his shield, but he nodded. Sometimes retreat was the best option, especially when your dangerously attractive assassin coworker happens to be terrified.
“Not SHIELD then?” Steve asked as he prepared to run.
“Not by a long shot,” Natasha shook her head. She kept her gaze turned towards the man who held a gun loosely at his side. He seemed to be stuck in some sort of internal debate for a second, before his gaze sharpened on Natasha and Steve. His eyes narrowed. Steve could barely make them out through the black paint that surrounded them. Neither could see his mouth, or anything below his eyes, as it was wrapped in a mask of some sort.
One second they were staring at each other, tense, and the next Natasha was running with a sharp command from Steve and the stranger was raising his gun to fire. Steve quickly raised his shield and then tossed it. The stranger's eyes widened for a second, and then he turned, sharply to dodge the dangerous metallic frisbee, losing sight of Natasha. The shield bounced off of the wall behind the leather decked stranger and made its way back to Steve who grasped it and raised it just in time to deflect a hail of bullets.
Steve rushed forward, keeping the shield up to save himself from becoming swiss Steve ala machine gun—Gods he must be out of his mind right now if he's cracking jokes in his own head like this. Granted Bucky used to say much worse in more dire situations. Steve grimaced.
'Focus,' he told himself.
He slapped the gun away with the shield and slammed his palm out towards the strangers head, only to have it deflected by the metallic arm, and then having to block a sudden raised knee which Steve followed with a kick which was caught. He let out a grunt of pain, and then surprise as the stranger tossed him one armed by his leg. Steve barely had time to dodge as the stranger raced at him, denting the wall with his fist, followed by a swipe with a knife. Steve blocked the arm with his forearm and braced himself against the wall before slamming his foot into the others chest.
The stranger staggered back, but his eyes remained focus. He flipped the blade and darted towards Steve again, which Steve dodged left, then ducked, and then delivered an uppercut and a sharp downward kick to the others knee. He went down with a sharp yell, and Steve ran. He couldn't be sure that whosoever that was hadn't brought friends along, and while Natasha could take care of herself, her phrasing had him worried.
Steve barely registered Batroc's body as he ducked under railing, dodging bullets as best he was able—one nicked his shoulder—while cursing how south this operation went. It was only when he was safely in the plane, with Natasha beside him healthy and whole, and flying back to the Triskelion did Steve breath a sigh of relief.
He hated when the other shoe dropped, because it always dropped hard and was never alone.
The Winter Soldier stalked through the familiar halls and gates, surrounded by at least four armed men at any given time. This was a place he was most intimately familiar with, the only place in his memories that held any clarity. The men escorted him into the deepest, most secured reaches of the building that had his chair, one of the few things he could scarcely call his at least. The Soldier sat down, rested his arms on his knees, and waited.
Two scientists stepped into the room, nervous, hesitant. There was a sharp command in Russian, an order to strip off his armor. The Soldier stood and began to undo the buckles and snaps, pealing away layer by layer the protective leather and kevlar top. He sat back down onto the chair, now bare chested.
One scientist injected him with something to keep him calm, the other went about servicing his arm, making sure it was in working condition still until whomever held the Soldier's leash came in for a report. Blue-green eyes darted around the room, taking in the familiarity as his mind hazed over slightly. Soon enough they'd go through the same procedure as always and he'd be put back on ice until they needed him again. It was the same after every mission, a routine he knew by heart.
The Soldier came back to himself at the sound of a scraping chair. He glanced to his side to find the scientist checking the mechanics of his arm gone, and then looked in front to see his master before him.
“Tell me what happened,” Pierce said with a congenial smile. The Soldier frowned momentarily, he had to remember that this was how this particular one asked for a report most days. The phrasing always threw him off at first.
“Mission failed,” he said after a minute, licking his lips in (nervous?) anticipation of what would come next.
“Explain,” Pierce demanded, leaning back into his chair.
“By the time I arrived the databanks were destroyed,” the Soldier said. “Nothing could be salvaged.”
“Who destroyed them?” Pierce demanded. “How where they destroyed?”
The Soldier licked his lips again. “Pattern of debris suggests some sort of high intensive explosive device, such as a grenade. Two enemy combatants were inside.”
Pierce narrowed his eyes, “Which combatants?”
“Subject: Black Widow,” Soldier recited, then frowned, “and...some guy in...blue.”
Pierce scowled. “You didn't recognize him?”
“No.”
Pierce nodded and got to his feet. He gestured towards the chair and one of the armed men tugged it back into its original place.
“Very well then,” he said with a sigh. “You know what the price of failure is.”
“Yes.”
Pierce nodded, then motioned towards the armed men.
“I'll leave you to it, boys,” he said, and left the room.
The Soldier grimaced. He wasn't going to like this.
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {1B}
Steve and Natasha by some unspoken agreement didn't mention the stranger they encountered on their way back to the rendezvous point, or through the entire flight back to the Triskelion. Once they'd touched down Rumlow gave a nod and grin to the assassin and soldier before he and the Strike team headed off to disarm and debrief. Natasha and Steve went the opposite direction, heading for the direct elevator that lead to Fury's office.
“Director's office,” Natasha said as they stepped into the glass box. The computer chimed its agreement and she settled next to Steve, arms crossed, against the railing.
“You going to tell me who that was?” Steve asked, glancing down at her. Natasha grimaced and took a deep breath.
“The Winter Soldier,” she said. “He's a ghost story to the intelligence community. Credited with over a two dozen assassinations in the past fifty years.”
“You know him,” Steve pointed out. “He's not just a ghost story.” Natasha ducked her head. She wasn't sure what to say, exactly, before eventually she sighed.
“Five years ago I was escorting an engineer out of Ukraine when somebody shot out my tires near Odessa,” Natasha said softly. “We lost control, went straight over a cliff, I pulled us out. He was there.” Her arms tightened around her torso with a grimace. “I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me.” She raised her head to stare at Steve.
“There's something your not telling me,” Steve said, his eyes narrowed and lips pursed.
“We have to inform Fury,” Natasha said eventually. “If the Soldier is active then things are about to get a lot more lively.”
“You're dodging the question,” Steve pointed out. The elevator came to a stop, the door opened. Natasha paused on her way out, Steve on her heels.
“It's personal, Steve,” she said after a moment. “I'll tell you when I'm ready.”
Steve frowned, but nodded in acknowledgment. At least it was something more than she had given him last time. They both made their way down the short hall towards Fury's office. Steve had only been in here a handful of times, mostly to show how annoyed he was at pertinent information being kept from him in regards to a mission he'd been put on. This time things were a little different.
“Romanoff, Rogers,” Fury stood up, surprised. “To what do I owe this...visit?”
Natasha wasted no time. She walked right up to Fury and dropped the drive onto his desk. Here she leaned over, planted her hands firmly down and looked at Fury seriously.
“We have as big problem, Nick,” she said. “The Winter Soldier is active.”
Fury swiped up the drive, his gaze darting between Natasha and Steve. He frowned.
“Explain,” he said, licking his lips.
“Well, after Natasha finished her data mining for you,” Steve said, hands on his belt. Fury opened his mouth but Steve shook his head, “I'll get to that later, Fury,” he interrupted. “We were headed to the rendezvous point when we were waylaid by a man with a metal arm speaking Russian.”
Fury's frown deepened. “Was he working with Batroc?”
“Considering I stumbled across Batroc's corpse on my way out, I think that's unlikely,” Steve pointed out.
Fury looked to Natasha. “You're sure it was him, Natasha.”
Natasha backed up, crossed her arms, and stared at Fury. Steve noted how similar their gazes were, deadly serious, slightly terrified.
“Yes,” Natasha said. “I am sure.”
Fury cursed. “Fuck!” He slammed his fist down onto the table, glanced between both Natasha and Steve, and cursed again. He looked to the drive. “Did you get everything?” he asked, once more at Natasha.
“Before the room exploded, yeah,” Natasha nodded.
“Exploded?” Nick snapped.
“A calculated mistake,” Natasha said with a smile, before frowning. “Nick, whatever is on that drive, I think the Soldier wanted it.”
Steve scoffed. “You think?” he asked with a faint roll of his eyes. “Can somebody tell me what exactly is going on here? What is on that drive, Nick?” Nick grimaced. “What is so important some assassin working for who knows wanted to get it out from under your nose.”
Fury sighed. He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat down.
“I think,” Natasha said softly, “you should bring him in, Nick.” Nick glanced at her, and then down at the table, and sighed.
“Very well then,” he said. “Secure office.”
The lights dimmed, the doors locked shut, and the windows to the outside grew black. Nick looked to Steve.
“This stays between us, am I clear?” Nick said coolly. Steve looked at him, and then nodded once.
“Crystal, sir.”
Nick nodded. “Bring up files for Project Insight.”
Rogers, Steven does not have clearance for Project Insight.
“Director Override, Fury, Nicholas J,” Fury said, moving around the desk. He leaned against its edge as the files and blueprints washed across the screen. Steve looked between the files, Nick, and Natasha who was scowling.
“What the hell is this?” Steve asked. Nick sighed.
“Project Insight,” Nick said calmly. “After New York I advised the World Security Council that we needed a current insurgent threat analysis. The result was Project Insight, three next gen Hellicarriers linked to a satellite network that can read a terrorists biodata before he even steps out the door, able to eliminate a few thousand threats a minute.” Nick waved his hand and specs for the gun array made its way onto the screen.
Steve frowned. “This sounds like HYDRA.”
Nick grimaced. “I know.”
Steve turned sharply, his mouth opened to tear into Nick. Nick just raised his hand.
“I did my research, Captain, when we were thawing you out. I read what Carter had to say on HYDRA and their plans,” Nick motioned towards the screen. “Insight is right up HYDRA's ally, and the best part? It's coming from SHIELD.”
“But HYDRA's dead, destroyed,” Steve shook his head. “I utterly decimated them.”
Natasha shook her head and pursed her lips. “HYDRA had fingers in a lot more pies than just Nazi Germany,” she said, glancing to Nick. Nick sighed.
“Bring up all files flagged CA-001,” Nick said sharply, and instantly numerous files slid across the screen. Steve practically paled.
“These are all...HYDRA?” he asked, weakly.
“Suspected,” Nick groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Can you see why I hadn't said a word?”
Natasha stepped up to Steve, gnawing on her lip, “Steve...these are SHIELD ops. SHIELD ops doing work that SHIELD doesn't do. They wave SHIELD's flag, use SHIELD's name, but aren't approved through the Directors office.”
Steve shook his head. “Your saying SHIELD is HYDRA?”
Nick scoffed. “The hell it is!” he snapped. “I've put too much work into this for it to become HYDRA on my watch. Look, Rogers, the corruption goes deep, I'll give you that. It's in some of the top brass, and the worst part? It's practically got a stranglehold on us, but it does not own us. We just need to clean out the rot.”
“How long have you known?” Steve asked, turning away from the files. “How long have you suspected?”
Nick sighed. “I've suspected since New York. Known? That's what Natasha's mission was about.” He raised the thumb drive. “The Lumarian Star's job was to launch Insight's satellite network, and upload the required data to make it work. The data Natasha recovered.”
Nick moved back around his desk and plugged in the drive. He turned to face the screens at the far end of his office.
“Open Lumarian Star launch file,” he said clearly.
Natasha and Steve watched as the computer scrolled to find the launch file data, only to signal bright red Access Denied. Nick frowned.
“Run Decryption.”
A wheel spun around, words Steve couldn't understand and Natasha could barely keep up with. Seconds later it signaled Decryption Failed.
“Director Override, Fury, Nicholas J.,” Nick said sharply. He moved around his desk now, his entire framed edged in frustration and wariness. Steve swallowed reflexively as Natasha shifted from one foot to another.
Override denied, all files sealed.
Steve's brow furrowed and he glanced to Natasha. 'Sealed?' he mouthed and she grimaced and shook her head.
“On whose authority?” Nick demanded.
Fury, Nicholas J.
“Shit,” Nick cursed, moving back around his desk and removing the drive from his computer. “Shit.”
“Nick?” Natasha asked. “What the hell does that mean?”
Steve scowled, “I think it's pretty clear what that means.” He stepped up to Nick, slapped his palms onto the desk, and stared down at the other man.
“Rogers....” Nick said slowly, a warning as his hand gripped the gun hidden underneath his desk.
“HYDRA has the ability to spoof your command, and lock you out,” Steve said coldly. “You've lost control of SHIELD.”
Nick closed his eyes.
“Agent Romanoff, recall Agent Barton, deep shadow conditions,” he said sharply. He tossed the drive at her. “Get a hold of Stark and have him decrypt those files. We have a limited window in which we can act before HYDRA gets suspicious. Captain...”
Steve stepped back, sliding into attention with a blank face. “Orders, sir?”
“You are to escort me to a secure off-base location,” Nick said, breathing out slowly. “If the Winter Soldier is active, I'm going to need all the back up I can get. Is that clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
“Romanoff, join us in the parking garage as soon as you've contacted Barton and Stark,” Nick added.
“On it, sir,” Natasha nodded and slipped from the room as Nick released the security on the office. Nick sighed and slumped into his chair.
“We'll make it right, Nick,” Steve said. He didn't bother to add in the 'you should have told me's or 'I could have told you's that he wanted to. The situation made itself apparent enough, and Steve could understand in some way that Nick wanted to spare him the thought that his entire mission, his entire life's work that ended with him frozen in the Antarctic, was for nothing. Steve clenched his fist. “We'll get HYDRA out of SHIELD.”
“The problem is, Steve, we don't know who is HYDRA and who isn't,” Nick said wearily.
“Coulson's not HYDRA,” Steve pointed out.
“Yeah but Coulson's—how do you know about that?” Nick stood to his feet, eyes narrowed. Steve quirked his lips.
“While I don't know the details, Stark said something about how it'd ruin my faith in humanity, I am aware he's alive.” Steve paused, then added, “I do have level 8 clearance, Nick.” Nick scowled.
“Well I can't just recall Coulson, he's doing good work,” he said. “Although...perhaps leaving a message might be for the best. Get them to ground and working on negating as much of HYDRA's influence as they can.” He glanced to Steve and then added, “Covertly.”
Steve smiled.
The Soldier pulled himself upright, or as upright as he was able to get with a cracked femur which was honestly just sitting, leaning against the wall. His mouth was a bloodied mess, and there were one or two bruises alongside his face, a few burns to add to the multitude of scars on his torso, bruises, and sluggishly bleeding wounds. The only clothing he had on him, his dark black BDU styled pants, hung loosely at his hips with rips and tears from where a knife had been used to either stab or, supposedly, frighten.
None of that mattered, though, as Pierce stepped through the doorway with a manila folder in hand. The Soldier grimaced, or grinned, it was hard to tell on his face these days since emotions were tricky, human things that he wasn't at luxury of having much of anymore. The look about him gave mind to a feral animal of some sorts, and had Pierce smiling almost indulgently, like at a rabid dog or pet of some sort.
“Your mission,” he said, tossing the manila folder to the Soldier who grabbed it with his left hand. He thumbed through the papers. “Observe until your healed and report back everything of note.” The phrasing confused him. Was he meant to determine what was of 'note'? What even did 'note' mean? His brow furrowed. “Once you are in top condition, I want death confirmed in ten hours. Understood?”
“да,” the Soldier replied. Pierce scowled.
“English,” he chided. “Or do you need another lesson?”
The Soldier grimaced and said, “No. No lesson. I understand the parameters of the mission.” The words felt thick on his tongue, thicker than they had when he first reported in. Maybe that had to do with the side of his face swelling, though, so he put it out of mind.
“Good. Then go prep,” Pierce uttered, turning around and leaving the white washed tiled room. The Soldier grimaced and grasped the bar that ran the length of the room. He tugged himself up, biting back a scream into a groan when he placed more pressure than his fractured leg could support. He grunted, and began to hobble out of the room. He'd have to get a brace of some sort going in order to be able to work this mission. He glanced down at the photograph.
Nick Fury stared back at him. The Soldier grinned. This...should be interesting.
SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {1C}
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {1C}
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {1C}
SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {2A}
It took two days before boredom set in and the Soldier decided he'd better go and requisition a new rifle to replace the one he'd mangled. He'd put it off for two days, surveyed his target for two whole days and he felt pretty confident that even if he disappeared Nick Fury wouldn't leave his not-SHIELD base. So he slipped out of the tree, scooped his bag of supplies up, and bit back a curse when his leg throbbed furiously at him because he put too much pressure on it.
The Soldier made his way into downtown DC, searching out a phone booth of some kind to make the call to his equipment handler, another HYDRA agent he didn't know by name but by face and voice like the one who gave him missions and told which group of armed guards to punish him for whatever infraction he'd committed this time. He didn't carry any sort of communications devices on him accept for a single pager which would give him a number to call but they rarely paged him when he was on assignment. Everything HYDRA told him to do was first vetted and quadruple checked before he was sent out to work. The Soldier was their efficient killing machine, after all.
He pulled his bike up to rest next to the first phone booth he came across. Slipped off his seat and limped into the box. He didn't bother hiding himself because for some reason nobody really noticed the odd guy in leather and kevlar as long as his arm remained wrapped up, which on most missions it did. With his right hand he picked the phone off of the hook and dialed in a familiar code to bypass the need to pay, and then a familiar number.
He waited, patiently, until the familiar voice picked up. Stuffing the feeling of (awkward) standing in public for a work related call into the recesses of his mind like everything else.
“There had better be a damn good reason you are calling me.”
The Soldier licked his lips. “Мое оружие со сбоями. Я нужна замена.”
“How many times do we have to tell you to use English?”
The Soldier bit his lip but repeated himself in English. “My weapon malfunctioned. I need a replacement.”
“Which weapon? And what the hell did you do to it?”
“My rifle.”
“That thing is top of the line, what did you do, fuck it?”
“No,” the Soldier said. He grit his teeth, ground them together at the simple thought of—of—what did that even mean?
“Tell me why, exactly, your goddamn rifle doesn't work. That thing is worth more than you to replace.”
The Soldier pursed his lips, tried to find the words. “Хотите, я продемонстрировать, как я молол в металлолом? Руки бы сделать хорошую замену.” He kept his voice even, complacent, but couldn't help the sharp grin of all teeth and how his eyes narrowed, blood burning in his veins. Normally he wouldn't even dare say something like that, too familiar with his place at the bottom, as nothing more than a tool to be used. However he remembered this voice didn't known Russian, couldn't speak it, and he remembered—remembered—he didn't like this voice, this face.
He didn't like any of them. He wasn't allowed likes. The Soldier bit his lip, forced the pain to bring focus, and waited.
“English you pitiful fuck.”
“My weapon malfunctioned. I need a replacement,” the Soldier repeated.
“You know what? I don't want to know how you screwed your own rifle. A replacement will be waiting at the facility, and you better be prepared to make this up to me.”
The Soldier said nothing, waited for the tell tale click to signal the end of the line, and hung up. He stared at the phone for a minute, before with a snarl shoved his left arm straight through it like butter. He flexed his fingers, stared at the bits of the phones inner workings as they tumbled away. He scowled.
What did it mean?
It took two days before Nick felt comfortable in letting Steve go, and even then it only came about because he threw up his hands and gave the Director of SHIELD what for, tired of this overreaching paranoia. Nobody had attacked, Nick was still alive, and Steve had a life to live.
“Two days, two days Nick!” Steve snapped. “Do you think HYDRA won't notice a two day absence?”
“It's SHIELD,” Nick reminded him, weary. “And you're on assignment.”
“The hell I am!” Steve said, punching his fist into the wall. “I get that you are a paranoid bastard, but jesus fuck Nick, it's like you don't even want to try and make this work! If we want HYDRA to remain in the dark we can't let them know we're on to them!”
Nick exploded with fury, and Steve had to shove down the bad pun before it escaped his throat with a snicker.
“I don't want this to work? Of course I want it to fucking work!” Nick snapped, bursting up, arms shaking, until he was face to face with Steve and his lips pulled back into a snarl. “SHIELD is my baby, Rogers. I want nothing more than to get rid of the rot inside her!”
“Then let me do my job,” Steve spat back, brow furrowed. “Let me go home, let me act like life is normal, peachy keen, and give me an assignment, send me out to work. There's nothing more I can do, especially if I stay here.”
“And what if they come for me?” Nick demands. “I'm the most likely target standing in their way, I'm the Director of the fucking agency.”
“You're not the only one at the top,” Steve pointed out.
“You mean Secretary Pierce?” Nick scoffed and turned away. “The Security Counsel? None of them would listen to me in this matter. Hell some of them are probably HYDRA!”
“Because you don't trust anyone!” Steve pointed out. “You don't open yourself up for trust!”
Nick licked his lips as he turned around with a snarl of, “I sure as hell trust you, don't I?”
“Then trust me to do my job,” Steve said sharply. “Trust me to know what works.”
Maria and Natasha stand off to the side. They watch the match like it is a game of ping pong, heads bouncing from one combatant to the other.
“Steve's going to win this one,” Natasha pointed out calmly. Maria gave a slow, “Yup,” in reply. Even she can see when Nick is beat, and Nick is beyond beat now. He's also terrified, not that he'd admit it, and that makes Maria sigh and shake her head and want to slap him over the ear and knock sense into him.
Finally Nick yelled, “Fine! Have it your way!”
Maria and Natasha exchange a glance as Steve hollered back, already on his way out, “About damn time!”
They split up when Nick looked in their direction and scowled, “What the hell are you two lookin' at?” at them. Maria with a repressed smile and Natasha with this look that made Nick just sigh and shake his head. “Oh fuck you Maria,” he added in an undertone.
“I'm not your wife,” Maria replied.
“I don't have a wife, woman!” Nick snapped back. “And a good thing too since you nag like one!”
Natasha snickered, and then slipped out of the bunker-base that Nick wanted to use. She caught Steve standing just outside the treeline, next to the road, scowling.
“How are you going to get back, big guy?” Natasha asked, leaning against a tree. Steve glanced at her and began to stretch out his legs.
“I'll run,” he said calmly. “I could do with the exercise.”
Natasha's lips curled and she shifted her gaze up and down his form, somewhat appreciatively. “Don't wear yourself out, cowboy,” she said, pushed off from the tree, and then headed inside.
“I'll try not to,” Steve shot back, stretched his back one last time, and then took off with a breath.
It happened while he was on his way back to the facility. He sped through the lanes, curved over his bike, trying to refrain from cursing as his leg throbbed and reminded him that the vibrations were the worst thing possible for it now, but that didn't matter because he had a job to do, and further damage meant nothing because he healed far better than any other living thing ever did. The Soldier sped through the streets, so focused on his destination, that he didn't notice the familiar man in blue not in blue until he pulled right up next to him, looked over.
“So, where you headed?” the man not in blue shouted. The Soldier could see at his back rested the Shield, painted red silver and blue, and let out a curse. He swerved left, out of traffic, nearly crashed before he pulled the bike to a halt and unholstered one of the smaller guns that sat just inside his jacket. He took aim, a scowl forming beneath his mask and started to fire.
The man in blue not in blue immediately raised his shield, deflecting most of the bullets and forcing the Soldier flip backwards in order to dodge. The Soldier snarled, tossed the gun, and with his left picked up his own bike and hurled it in the others direction with a yell.
The bike, the shield, and the other went tumbling one after another. A car swerved into two others in an attempt to miss the iconic hero who pulled himself up out of the rubble with a groan. The Soldier was already moving by that point, racing in with a mechanical arm enhanced punch that was dodged. He followed it by a swipe of one of his knives, blocked by the shield. They exchanged blows, parried, got a few hits into one another.
“Is this any way to respond to a question?” the man in blue not in blue asked, dodging around another knife swipe and responding with a rather forceful shield thrust. The Soldier snarled and lashed out with a kick, not his best idea at the moment but it did its job never mind the flare of pain that tore a quick scream from him. It worked as a good distraction though, forcing the other to pause with a furrowed brow and a muttered, “You're injured.”
The Soldier backed up, licked his lips. He liked the feel of adrenaline that surged in his veins. His lips pulled into a wide grin, full of teeth, hidden underneath the mask he wore protectively around his face. He pulled out another knife, flipped it around, and stalked forward. He had the thought that this was better than sex (what?) as he dashed forwards, ignoring the throbbing pain in his leg, the way his head rang.
They were back into a series of blocks, parries, misses and hits. The other grimaced, his face pulled tight with some sort of emotion than the Soldier just didn't care about. He liked this feeling, this rush, this fire. For the first time in a long time he felt more alive than ever, more than just a weapon. For the first time he'd found his match because he knew if he was in prime condition the man in blue not in blue and he would be even, going toe to toe, instead of the other only half-focusing on the fight because the Soldier's work was sloppy.
“If you keep doing this you'll injure yourself further!” the other said.
“Shut up!” the Soldier snarled back. His eyes widened a second later when he realized he was too slow, didn't see the raised fist that knocked him flat onto his ass. He turned the blow into a backward flip, landing and then nearly collapsing when his leg started to give out under him. He settled into a half-kneel, breathing heavily.
There was wind on his cheeks. The Soldier reached a hand to touch his face, surprised to see his mask gone. His gaze darted about, and there it was just two feet to his left. He stood, slowly.
“You okay?” the other asked.
“You're good,” the Soldier said. He glanced slightly back at the man in blue not in blue. He took a deep breath but didn't move, neither did the other. “Why do you hesitate? An injury is a weakness. You could have taken me out over a dozen times.”
“Maybe I just don't like to hit a guy when he's down,” the other said with a shrug. The Soldier let out a laugh.
“That,” he said, “will get you killed.” He shifted over to his mask, bent down and picked it up, and carefully secured it back in place. He kept his face away from the other, some part of him, some part of him didn't want the man in blue not in blue to see his face.
It felt wrong somehow.
“Better men have tried,” the other pointed out.
“And failed, yes, I can see that,” the Soldier replied, turning around to look at the man in blue not in blue's face. His took in the lines of his jaw, his cheekbone, his eyes, he felt that spark of something and the fire wanted to burn. He wanted another round, but not to kill, which was wrong. A fight was always about the death of the opponent, right?
The other stared at him too, brow furrowed and lips narrowed. Confusion, the Soldier thought. That was what the emotion was, right?
“So you don't kill me here, when I've lowered my guard,” the Soldier said, raising his arms and then letting them flop to his sides. “You won't kill me when we're fighting, despite the obvious holes in my form because of an injury. What sort of enemy does that make you?”
The other pursed his lips. “The kind that doesn't want to make enemies.”
The Soldier tilted his head. “Make peace, not war?” he scoffed, looked off to the side, and then back at the man in blue not in blue. “Another time, then.”
The other stepped forward, picking up the discarded shield. “I can't let you go that easily,” he said.
The Soldier paused, mid step, and then smiled. “You won't have to.” He raised his hand, in it was a small remote. He flicked a switch and his bike, discarded with the others own, just not even a few feet away from him, exploded into a shower of debris and fire. The man in blue not in blue cursed and pulled his shield up and around himself in time to guard himself from most of the blast, giving the Soldier time to escape.
He still had a rifle to retrieve after all. A glance back at the debris, the crashed cars, and the man in blue not in blue frantically searching for him also hit home that he had another thing to discuss that his masters wouldn't like. The Soldier winced, but pressed on.
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {2B}
Somehow Steve found himself back at the bunker-base, sitting in a chair, with an ice pack held up against his face while Natasha stared at him with this look and Sam, who gave him a ride, stands awkwardly behind him as Nick glares with a scowl on his face.
“So I ran into the Winter Soldier again,” Steve finally said, if only to quit the round of awkward staring. Natasha arched her eyebrow at him.
“And how did that go?” she asked, playing along calmly.
Steve gave a wry smile. “I think I actually provoked him.”
Nick sighed and shifted his gaze from this stranger in his base without permission to Steve. “Alright Rogers, I'll bite. How the hell did you bait the worlds foremost assassin that nobody believes exists?”
Here Steve gave a sheepish grin and rubbed the back of his head. “Well...” he drew out the word. “I was on my way home when I actually pulled up right next to him. I don't think he even noticed me until I said something. Next thing I know there's a hail of bullets, then a bike, a lot of punching, kicking, and an explosion.”
Nick breathed out slowly and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Care to elaborate?” he asked, trying not to grit his teeth.
“Short end of the stick, I need a new bike,” Steve said.
“Steve....”
Steve shot a look to Natasha, who smiled and walked around to Sam.
“So, you're Sam right?” she asked, grabbing his arm lightly. “Why don't you come this way and you and I have a little chat about how you know Steve.”
“Is this like the reverse big brother act or something?” Sam asked. “Cuz I gotta tell you I don't swing that way and I have no designs on your boys purity.”
They got quieter the further away they went, which Steve was thankful for because that wasn't awkward at all. He felt rosy cheeked all of a sudden and coughed. Nick sighed.
“What happened,” he said. “From the beginning.”
Steve nodded, set the ice down, and started to talk. He explained how he was on his bike, intending to visit the Smithsonian to which Nick stared at him for a second and then shook his head with a sigh and motioned for Steve to continue. Steve explained how he literally passed the Winter Soldier by and, remembering the last time he saw the assassin, figured at least he could try and see where the other was going.
“Without back up?” Nick demanded.
“I went toe to toe with him for five minutes last time,” Steve pointed out, “half-blinded by smoke and got away relatively unscathed.”
Nick shook his head, muttered something about heroes, and motioned for Steve to continue. Steve explained that he just intended to catch the guys attention, that he hadn't planned on being recognized but then, he'd had his shield at his back because some of Nick's paranoia had rubbed off on him and he was a little leery of running into HYDRA unprepared. He gave as best a blow by blow of the action as he could, how the Winter Soldier escaped by detonating his bike, on top of Steve's, guaranteeing Steve would have to deflect the blast or get badly hurt. Not to mention the civilians who where loitering, gaping at the combat like it was a side show.
“The thing is,” Steve finished, “he was injured. His leg was at the least sprained if not outright fractured. That type of injury he shouldn't have been out and about doing anything stressful.”
Nick frowned. “Strange.”
Steve nodded, pursed his lips. “You think something might have changed?” Nick shrugged.
“I don't know. Keep an eye open just in case,” he said. “And at least return here once a day now that we have confirmation that he's active in DC.”
Steve nodded and got to his feet, intending to hunt down Sam and Natasha before permanent damage could be done to his reputation.
“Oh, and Rogers?” Nick said. Steve paused. “Next time don't bring unknowns to my base, are we clear?”
Steve nodded. “Crystal, sir.”
The Soldier stepped into the facility hours later. He limped through back roads, out of sight of people as often as he could. Sometimes he'd hear whispers about his fight with the man in blue not in blue, hear a name he can recognize, but he can't understand its meaning. The Soldier knew his face would be all over, picking a fight in a public place like that, but he doesn't care. He liked it.
The second he past the first gate in the facility, still running from a high from that fight and so unfocused on his surroundings, the but of a gun is slammed against the back of his head. He goes down, twists to kick back up at his attacker who took the second before he could raise his legs to stomp down on the one that is fractured. The Soldier screamed, eyes snapped open wide. He caught sight of one of his handlers, the one he contacted earlier.
Rumlow stepped around the Soldier until he could slam his leg down over the young man's neck with a sneer on his face. The Soldier struggled, tried to take in breath, and with his shiny, metallic arm—a gift from HYDRA to make their weapon more efficient—reaches up and grasped Rumlow's leg. The Soldier squeezed, applying enough pressure until he can tug and toss Rumlow into the far wall.
He pulled himself up, reached back into his belt for his knife and stalked forward, ready to slice into his attacker handler, master, owner or no.
“Stand down!” the words are sharp, bitten out, and instantly the Soldier went still. He licked his lips, breathed heavily through his nose. His leg throbbed something fierce as his gaze darted over to see Pierce standing there, furious.
He missed Rumlow getting up on his feet and decking the Soldier solidly across the face. He only realized it happened when he was back on the ground again. Rumlow stepped forward, ready to provide a sharp kick to the Soldier's ribs when Pierce raised a hand, frown across his lips.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded. The Soldier licked his lips.
“The pain clouded my mind,” the Soldier bit out.
“That's not what I'm talking about,” Pierce said coldly. “The fight. The one that has gone practically viral?”
The Soldier grit his teeth, ran his tongue along them in an attempt to wipe away the fresh touch of blood. He said, “He recognized me. From before.”
“From where exactly,” Pierce demanded.
“My previous mission,” the Soldier said. “He is also in the way of my current mission.” Those words were bit out, ground out sharp like shards of glass.
“And your rifle?” Pierce continued. The Soldier grit his teeth, breathed out heavily, and answered.
“I had a malfunction in my arm. Squeezed too tight, rendered the rifle into scrap metal. Left it behind, it was useless.” Pierce scowled, arched an eyebrow, and the Soldier added, “Two days ago.”
Rumlow narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth to say something but a look from Pierce quieted him immediately. “Get up,” Pierce said sharply and the Soldier pulled himself to his feet. He swayed, his leg in a much worse state now than it was before. “Go to the back, have your arm checked over. I don't want a repeat of this again.”
The Soldier nodded and hobbled his way back past the second and third gate to his chair.
Rumlow scowled, stepped forward and demanded, “You're just going to let it get away with that?” Pierce shot him another look.
“Any more damaged and he'll be of no use,” Pierce said. “Like it or not he has a job to complete, and in order to continue ahead with Insight Fury needs to be out of the picture. Permanently.”
“We should wipe it then, as a precaution,” Rumlow said.
Pierce shook his head, “No. He's shown no signs of deterioration yet. If he starts to become problematic, though, maybe.”
Rumlow scowled, looked back at the Soldier sitting in the chair, staring into nothing while the techs checked over his arm, worked through each piece with precise care.
“It attacked Rogers in the middle of the city, without orders,” Rumlow pointed out.
Pierce sighed and said, “A regrettably understandable situation that confirms what I had already thought. Nick's pulled Rogers in as protection detail for whatever he's scheming up this time.”
“That'll decrease the likelihood of success then,” Rumlow said and Pierce smiled coldly.
“Not as much as you'd think,” he said. “At least not once he's healed up enough. You're little exchange there pushed back his timetable, so any lack of success can be laid at your feet. Am I clear?”
Rumlow lowered his gaze, muttered a short, “Yes, sir.”
Pierce nodded. “Good. Make sure he's ready, provide him with whatever he needs, and then send him out. He knows what to do.”
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {2C}
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {2C}
Re: SPOILERS Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {2C}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3A}
Steve rolled his shoulders and leaned back against the building with his wrist to his mouth.
“How long is this going to take?” he asked under his breath, staying alert for any sign that they'd been made.
“Hold your horses, I'm moving as fast as I can, old man,” Natasha hissed back. Steve rolled his eyes.
“Not fast enough, apparently,” he said, shifting slightly against the wall.
“You think you can do this faster?” Natasha asked. Steve could hear the faint clack of fingers on keys.
Steve sighed and crossed one arm across his chest. “It just doesn't feel right. This is SHIELD.”
“You were calling it HYDRA just last week,” Natasha pointed out. “Change of heart?”
Steve grimaced and glanced to the unconscious agent beside him. “No,” he said shortly.
“Are you worried about Smith?”
Steve slouched further, turned his gaze out into the darkness and ground out, “She was nice.”
“Well make it up to her then,” Steve could hear the teasing in Natasha's voice. “Send her a fruit basket, ask her out.”
Steve scowled, “Can you not suggest coworkers I've rendered unconscious as prospective dating material?”
“Oh come on, she's hot,” Natasha cajoled back. “And, done. Prepare for extraction.”
Steve straightened and picked up his Shield. He looked to Smith, muttered a short, “Sorry,” and quickly scaled the wall he'd been leaning against. This was the third SHIELD data-mine they'd hit in the past week, all within DC and the surrounding area. Steve crouched low and moved quick across the roof before slipping down to the balcony just outside where Natasha stood. She tilted her head as he rolled his eyes, raised his Shield, and smashed the lock.
“You know,” Natasha said, stepping out of the room filled with computers, “Nick really should let us travel outside of the DC area.”
Steve scoffed. “He's paranoid,” he pointed out, “and considering that sniper found his 'secret base' and nearly put him down for good, with good reason. HYDRA wants him out of the picture.”
Natasha vaulted the railing with Steve following right after.
“Yeah, but think of how much more fun it'd be if we got away for a while?” Natasha pointed out. “Like the Lumerian Star, that was fun, right?”
Steve stared at her for a long moment, mid motion to straddling his motorcycle. He shook his head, settled onto the seat, and said, “You and I have two very different ideas of fun, Natasha.”
“Yeah, mine actually involves fun,” Natasha quipped back.
Steve turned on the engine, glanced at Natasha, and said, “At least we haven't run into any HYDRA agents yet. That's got to be a good sign, right?”
Natasha smiled indulgently and said back, “Don't jinx it!”
They took off.
The Soldier lowered his scope once the man in blue and Natasha left his field of vision. He looked down at the ten men that lay in various states of disrepair around him. He pursed his lips, frowned, and furrowed his brow. Carefully he toed one of them over, looked into a familiar face, one that he'd been acquainted with more than once, and crouched over the body.
He licked his lips, patted the man on the cheek with his right hand until he earned a groan and a dazed stare. The Soldier swallowed, cocked his head to the side.
“Am I denying him fun?” he asked the agent. He was (curious?) looking for an answer. The agent groaned but didn't answer. The Soldier frowned, reached out and tugged the others chin up. He narrowed his eyes. “That's not an answer,” he scolded.
The agent groaned, muttered a weak, “Hail Hydra,” and the Soldier pursed his lips, and then sighed.
“That's not an answer either,” he pointed out, and figured this one was a loss. Calmly he unclasped one of his knives and shoved it through the agent's eye. He could admit the scream felt (nice? yes) liberating before all noise cut out. The Soldier pulled the knife back, wiped it down on the agents shirt, and put it back in place. He stood, looked out at the base. It looked peaceful, quiet. The Soldier closed his eyes, took in the fresh air, and began to pack up his rifle.
With the rifle situated, he looked to the mess around him. Normally he'd have a team set to equip him with more munitions or a different tool to use in a given circumstance, and another ready to clean up whatever mess he left behind. In the past few weeks the Soldier learned how to effectively get rid of his own messes. He was used to hiding his tracks, the skill set one long ingrained into his sytem. Cleaning up bodies was just another skill he'd had to learn alongside erasing his presence ever since he'd been given this mission.
Calmly he dragged one corpse after another back into the base, made sure his little clearing where he'd observed the operation was clean, and then pulled out his own bike from under some fioliage. He looked back at the base once, a small black remote in his hand. He licked his lips, pressed down on the switch, and watched the building light on fire with several loud explosions. The Soldier grinned, and then took off.
“That's another one,” Maria said with a frown, looking over to Nick. Nick cursed.
“Who the hell is blowing up my buildings?” he demanded. Maria shook her head.
“We don't know,” she said. “Surveillance is fried every time, unrecoverable. I'd say it was Natasha or Steve except this isn't their style and you didn't give the orders, sir.”
Nick scowled and pressed his lips against his entwined fingers. He looked over at Maria, and then to the door. Natasha and Steve weren't back yet, and it made him want to curse.
“Barton?” he asked.
“He's at the Fridge, reworking protocol,” Maria stated.
“Coulson? May?”
“At the Hub, debriefing Hand,” Maria countered, paused, then added, “Again.”
Nick buried his face into his hands and asked, wearily, “Stark?”
Maria grimaced, but added, “Still working on the Lumarian Star drive with no luck. Also he had a date with Potts tonight.”
Nick muttered a short, “Fuck,” and leaned back with a sigh. Each data center he sent Natasha and Steve to, with orders to get in, copy the hard drive, and get out ended up a pile of rubble after they left. “First time's a coincidence,” he said tiredly, “second's a pattern, third is a conspiracy.”
Maria nodded calmly. “If the pattern holds, like the last two the information Rogers and Romanoff retrieved will show us that the data centers were not HYDRA.”
“Which means what?” Nick scrubbed his face. “HYDRA is blowing up our buildings?”
“We should entertain the possibility,” Maria pointed out. “Either that or there is something Romonaff and Rogers miss each time, something HYDRA doesn't want us to find.”
Nick grimaced, “And it's strange enough that Romanoff and Rogers are pulling SHIELD intel covertly. You think HYDRA has figured it out?”
“I wouldn't rule out the possibility,” Maria said. “After all, they almost got you.” Nick grimaced as his shoulder throbbed in reminder.
“When will they be back?” Nick demanded. “ETA?”
Maria clacked a few keys on the laptop before her, face pinched in concentration. “Shortly,” she said.
“Right. Same conditions as last time,” Nick sighed, scratching his cheek. “We say nothing about the explosion if they don't already know.”
Maria frowned. “We should tell them, sir,” she pointed out. “Rogers won't take this secrecy well.”
Nick stared at her, narrowed his eye, and said calmly, “I know. I'll deal with the fallout.”
Natasha worked her key into the door and stepped inside her rather shitty motel of a room. Unlike most other agents she preferred to not have a permanent address, instead moving from either safe house to safe house or in this case motel to motel. Natasha knew any of her safe houses could be compromised, any of her identities known by HYDRA, and so she chose the path much harder to track.
She dropped her bag down by the door and began to unzip her uniform as she moved back towards the bathroom.
“Могу ли я отказав ему удовольствие?”
Natasha froze for a brief second before ducking into the bathroom. She tugged one of her spare guns from underneath the sink and crouched low.
“Whose there?” she called out, shoulders tense. Her eyes darted around in the darkness, searching for the source of the voice. She heard, too late, the sound of a boot tapping on the floor behind her. The next thing she knew cold metal was wrapped around her torso, a knife at her cheek, and hot breath on her ear.
“Я вам не повредит,” he said when she went still, her breath hitching. He let her go, giving her enough space to turn around and raise the gun, ready to fire, when she caught sight of his face. He held his hands up, knife in one, and then calmly, slowly, twirled the blade and put it back into his belt. He held both hands, free, up and repeated, “увидеть?”
“Winter?” Natasha said careful. The Soldier nodded. Natasha licked her lips. “Are you here to kill me?”
“нет,” he said sharply, then paused, and asked, “Do you prefer this language?” His words were stilted, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed together.
“Русский в порядке,” Natasha said quickly, lowering her gun just a tad. The Soldier relaxed slightly. “Почему ты здесь?”
The Soldier frowned. He took a few false starts at first, before he repeated, “Могу ли я отказав ему удовольствие?”
Natasha blinked. “Кто?”
The Soldier looked down, licked his lips. His brow furrowed, his eyes narrowed in thought, before he said, “The man in...blue.” The words sounded even more stilted, as if certain he should be saying something else, but not sure what.
Natasha blinked, and then asked incredulously, “Steve?”
“да,” the Soldier nodded.
Natasha ran a hand through her hair, lowered her weapon, and said incredulously, “I can't believe I'm having this conversation.” She walked out of the bathroom, the Soldier on her heels.
“Не понимаю?” he asked.
Natasha shook her head and turned around, “You, here, not trying to kill me when I've been waiting for the day you'd show up and shoot me, expecting it even!” She shakes her head, “And instead of killing me, you're asking about Steve? Asking if you're not letting him have pleasure? What are you even—oh.”
“Не понимаю,” the Soldier repeated. His face scrunched up, he looked like a confused puppy and Natasha had to sigh. She'd never thought that she'd ever see his face so, so young and confused again. “Он выглядит скучно.”
“He is,” Natasha pointed out. She sat down on the bed and buried her face into her hands. “You've been stopping HYDRA.”
“да,” the Soldier agreed. “Они слишком слабы для него. Не стоит его время.”
Natasha let out a snort and looked up at the Soldier, mask-less, with a lost and pining expression on his face. She'd never thought she'd see the day.
“I can't believe this,” she muttered, and then, continued, “Пусть он определить, что. Он не будет ценить вас решающим для него.”
The Soldier licked his lips and looked down, then back to her. “Тогда что я должен делать?” he asked. “Это то, что я знаю.”
Natasha shook her head with a soft chuckle and said, “Почему бы вам не поговорить с ним? Может быть, вы найдете что-то делать, что он оценит?”
The Soldier licked his lips and looked off to the side, in thought. Natasha breathed out slowly, finding this entire experience surreal. Eventually he nodded, muttered a short thanks, and then walked out the door. Natasha watched him go, and, once she was alone, she burst down into hysterics, half certain she'd just imagined the whole encounter.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3A}
(Anonymous) 2014-04-19 12:27 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3A}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3A}
OHMGOD
my heart just broke into a million pieces.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3A}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3B}
The Soldier snuck his way into Nick Fury's base. He found himself standing over the man, who was fast asleep, with a knife in his hand and his face pinched in thought. He could end it here, complete his mission now as ordered and return back to the facility, return to the machine and his chair and let them put him back into the freeze. He could do all this after weeks of work, weeks of surveillance and weeks of watching the man in blue—Steve, of watching Steve because that is the name he'd been thinking of but not thinking of.
He held the knife, a thin, long, butterfly thing loosely in his left. His gaze remained focused on that slumbering face, Agent Hill unconscious with a sedative carefully slipped into her drink just down the hall. He'd made it special about a week and a half ago, intending to give it to Наталия, sneak it into her drink or food and then pull whatever answers he wanted from her, because he knows her in a way he can't describe. He can see her face when he closes his eyes, smiling, younger.
She spoke Русский to him, in a familiar cadence, the first person ever to do so since the technician who woke him up for that mission on the Lumarian Star. She was the first person not to demand English out of him when he didn't want to give it.
The Soldier backed away, slipping the knife into his belt. There was something, something about knowing Романова, Наталья Аляовна that brought to mind the familiarity of Steve. If he knew her, then could the Soldier have known him? But no, the memories there are indistinct, further back than the days of Наталья and so the Soldier pursed his lips, turned around, and pulled up the laptop that Agent Hill had been looking over before she fell asleep.
This would be the third night he'd snuck in here, slipped a drug into Agent Hill's food, and struggled against completing his mission. He struggled because he knew he wasn't fully repaired. His leg still throbbed something fierce, he still wore the brace, the splint to keep it firmly stiff, but he could place more and more pressure on it day after day. He struggled because he wanted that fight, the one he told Steve about. He wanted to feel that fire at least one last time before he completed the mission and forgot all over again.
With a single minded focus the Solider clacked on the keys, bypassing Agent Hill's required password by inputing one of HYDRA's instead. He focused on hunting down the planned mission for Steve and Наталья because of course another mission would come up soon enough. Fury wanted HYDRA out of SHIELD but the Soldier didn't think that was possible. HYDRA by this point was SHIELD only SHIELD didn't know it yet.
Once he pulled the destination and appropriate mission details the Soldier logged into HYDRA's network, a pocket of coded information within SHIELD's network. He used Rumlow's passcode and logon information. They were the same as his SHIELD passcode and logon information which the Soldier could access easily from Agent Hill's computer with a few key strokes and a simple command.
The Soldier bit his lip, scrolled through Rumlow's missions, searching. Assured that he knew all the details he could gather at this point, he quickly backtracked out and promptly erased what he'd just done from Agent Hill's computer memory. The Soldier slipped the computer back into place, double checked that Agent Hill was still breathing, and then slipped out of Fury's bunker as quiet as he came in.
Steve and Natasha blew past the front gate. Steve already had his Shield off of his back and tossed it at gate guard, knocking him out instantly. Natasha pulled out a gun that Phil had given her known as an ICER. She fired off two quick shots at the nearest outer security as Steve caught his Shield. They both skidded to a halt right before the building proper. Steve kicked down the kickstand for the bike and cut the engine.
“You ready for this?” Natasha asked, slipping off her own bike and pulling out a second gun. She double checked its ammunition before glancing back at Steve with a grin.
“There seem to be more of them this time,” Steve said, glancing at the amount of agents gathering in the foyer. “And they don't look happy to see us.”
“I wonder why,” she said with a laugh. Steve rolled his eyes, they shared a look, and then Natasha fired off two ICER rounds into the window as Steve bull rushed the other, shield held out protectively against the spray of glass.
They worked in tandem despite the fact that the agents inside began to fire live rounds at them. Natasha fought back with ICER, ducking in and delivering elbows and quick palm thrusts when that didn't work. Steve whacked agents with his Shield, ducked behind it to deflect bullets before quickly punching one after another out. They moved fast, breaking through the group who'd gathered to stop them.
It ended only when the last agent lay unconscious and Natasha and Steve surrounded by nothing more than bodies. Steve bent down to look at one, Natasha stepping over to him as she calmly replaced the ICER rounds in her guns.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
Steve frowned, staring at the Agent's collar. “I don't know,” he said. “Look at this.”
Natasha knelt down to look at what had caught Steve's attention. “It's just a pin,” she said, calmly, although her brow furrowed.
“Since when has SHIELD handed out pins?” Steve questioned. Natasha pursed her lips, but got to her feet.
“We'll look into that later, big boy. Right now we have a job to do,” she told him, and reluctantly Steve likewise got to his feet. “I take left you take right?”
Steve rolled his shoulders. “First one to the central processing room wins?” he countered. Natasha grinned.
“Deal,” she said, somewhat pleased that Steve would play with her like this. “Go!”
They both darted up the separate set of stairs. With precision Steve and Natasha checked each room they came across, working through floor after floor, knocking out any stray agents they came across as they did so. They had to be thorough, otherwise the entire mission could be jeopardized. Towards the end of the last hall, leading to the room both Natasha and Steve were after, Steve bounced across the walls, dodging desks and plants ready to knock down the single agent on his end with a quick punch to the face before the other could even realize what happened. Across from him Natasha came to a stop with a roundhouse against another agents face.
They exchanged a look and darted for the glass door to the room. Natasha beat him by half a second and shot him a victorious grin. She arched an eyebrow at him and Steve sighed.
“Alright,” he said with raised hands. “You win. Same as last time?” His tone was filled with fond exasperation, especially when she smirked so utterly pleased with herself.
“You better have it ready when we get back,” she told him as she turned around and began fiddling with the keyboard. Steve pulled out a thumb drive and plugged it in the slot next to her.
“I'll pick it up on my way,” Steve said with a shake of his head. He looked up at the screen, leaning against the desk that Natasha chose to work at, legs and arms crossed. “What have we got?”
Natasha pursed her lips, browsing through files as quick as she could while she copied them over. “It looks like just more SHIELD intel, nothing HYDRA related so far.” Steve hummed in understanding and looked around for a pad and pen.
“Same story as last time then?” he asked, moving to root through one of the drawers, and then another when he didn't find anything there.
“Yeah,” Natasha said, distracted. Some of this intel was deep, high level and shouldn't be held on servers outside the Triskelion or the Hub. Her brow furrowed as she licked her lips. Two computers down Steve let out a triumphant sound in the back of his throat having found the pen and pad he was looking for.
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3C}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3C}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3C}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {3D}
OP again.
(Anonymous) - 2014-04-20 22:38 (UTC) - ExpandRe: OP again.
Re: OP again
(Anonymous) - 2014-04-21 00:33 (UTC) - ExpandFill: Голубка [My Dove] {4A}
He stared at his face. Stared at the faint line of stubble, knife clenched in his left arm. He'd never shaved himself before this mission. His technicians normally kept up this maintenance, not him, but this was the first time he couldn't even raise the knife further than what it was. His right hand shook, clenched into a fist as he stared at himself.
Bucky.
The Soldier swallowed heavily. The name held so much meaning, yet meant nothing at all.
His name was Bucky.
He swallowed heavily, cast his gaze down in thought. The Soldier couldn't remember this Bucky, couldn't remember anything except what HYDRA wanted him to remember. Yet now, now things had come back. Things from before. Things with Наталья, with the Red Room in Russia. They were bits and pieces, scattered and broken, and brought with them feelings, memories, sights and sounds that often made no sense. He could remember vaguely, even, when HYDRA made him. Remember pain and fire and ice.
He could not remember Bucky, and for some reason that more than anything made his chest burn, made his head hurt. The Soldier sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to close his eyes, but they wouldn't listen. They darted back up to his face, traced the lines he'd seen on canvas. His right hand shook, his eyes burned.
His name was Bucky.
With a feral yell the Soldier punched the glass, he punched it repeatedly until he couldn't work up the strength to do so anymore. Until he collapsed, knife still clenched in his left hand. For the first time, for the very first time, the Soldier felt hate. Hate to HYDRA, hate towards himself, hate to this knowledge that he had a name and apparently a best friend which were all human things.
For the first time the Soldier hated that he wasn't human anymore.
Steve looked down at the drive he had in his hand, baseball cap tugged low. He couldn't walk outside without being recognized these days, and so often when he didn't want attention he took to dressing 'incognito'. He sighed, looked up and around and then back down at the drive which he shoved into his pocket. Calmly he started walking, keeping his head bowed both in thought and to quell anyone from taking notice.
He didn't know how long he walked, or where he was going. One moment he was standing outside his apartment building, and when he finally did deign to look up he found his feet had brought him to the memorial. Steve swallowed, hard. He looked over the names, skimming through them, until he caught the one he never wanted, never expected to see.
Sargent James Buchanan Barnes.
“We promised each other we'd come back,” Steve said. He didn't have to look behind him to know he had a shadow.
“You and Barnes?” Natasha asked, calmly stepping up until she was even with Steve.
“We promised each other,” Steve said, “that we'd return together. Victorious against Schmidt, against HYDRA, against the world. I'd get married to a great dame, we'd travel for maybe a year, and maybe I'd have a few kids, name him uncle after that.”
Natasha frowned. “Just you?” she asked.
“Bucky wasn't...the type to settle,” Steve admitted. “Said he'd only ever have one true love, and that was living.”
“Sounds like a great guy,” Natasha smiled. Steve shook his head.
“He was a jerk,” Steve muttered. “Half the trouble I got into as a kid was because of him.”
Natasha raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Trouble? You? America's darling sweetheart? I can't see it.”
Steve laughed, although it was a short, almost breathless sound. “Contrary to popular opinion I did not, in fact, lead a charmed life,” he pointed out. “But then you already knew that.” Natasha didn't need to reply to that. Steve sighed, glanced at her. “So, my neighbor. The Nurse. She's SHIELD.”
Beside him Natasha stiffened. It was a minute thing, combined with a slight widening of her eyes. She glanced up at Steve. She looked down, warring with what to say for a moment.
“How did you find out?” she asked eventually, choosing not to deny his accusation.
“He visited me,” Steve said. Natasha knew he could be honest to a fault, but this she did not expect.
“The Winter Soldier,” Natasha murmured. “Of course.”
“Why was SHIELD having me watched?” Steve countered, turning from the memorial to look at Natasha properly. Natasha sighed.
“Why else, Rogers?” she asked. “You're a guy whose been frozen for seventy years, in a time so very different. The All American Hero. She's there as much as for your protection as to ensure you adjust well.”
“The world hasn't changed much,” Steve pointed out. “I mean sure, the political climate is different. There's better medicine, better health care, better almost everything. And technology has changed, a lot, but it's not. Difficult to adapt to.”
Natasha pursed her lips. “You know, for a ninety-something you're surprisingly well adjusted.” Steve barked a laugh.
“I went from five foot four practically dying to six foot two practically un-killable in a few minutes,” Steve said. “You learn to adapt pretty quickly when a change like that happens.” Steve smiled at Natasha's laugh. He looked down to his feet, scuffed his shoes into the cement, and then sighed. “His visit wasn't just to inform me about my watcher.”
Natasha leaned against the memorial and crossed her arms. She gave him a look that pretty much demanded he come out with it. Steve stuck a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the drive.
“Apparently he wanted to give me a gift,” Steve said. “The information we were looking for.”
Natasha snatched the drive from him, she stared in surprise at the word etched along it, before she shot Steve a look. “How the hell did he get this?”
Steve swallowed. “You remember how you told me that most of the community who thinks he exists views him as a weapon?” Natasha nodded. “He said the same thing,” Steve said softly. “Except he tacked on HYDRA as the ones behind the trigger.”
Natasha breathed out heavily, a muffled curse under her breath that Steve didn't understand. “How long have you known?” she asked.
Steve ran his tongue over his teeth. “Since Nick got shot.”
Natasha cursed again, louder this time. She appraised him. “He's not a lost cause you can save, Rogers.”
Steve snorted. “You're the one who said he's strangely attached to me, acting more human for my benefit.” He looked at her. Really looked at her, catching how she shifted from foot to foot minutely, how her trigger finger twitched. “There's something your not telling me.”
“I don't think your—” she started, then amended, “I'm not ready to tell you yet. It's from...before.” She stuffed the drive into her pocket and crossed her arms.
“But you will tell me,” Steve said. Natasha nodded. Steve accepted that with a short breath and a brief closure of his eyes. He took in another, deeper, more solid as he returned his gaze back to her. He knew that look. “I'm not being reckless, you know.”
Natasha shook her head. “I think you know exactly what you're being,” she said. “And I don't think it's healthy.”
Steve pursed his lips. “Then we'll have to disagree.” He started to walk away, hands stuffed in his pockets, back hunched down with his head pointed to the ground.
“You can't save him, Steve!” Natasha shouted after him.
“We'll see,” Steve said back, only under his breath. He figured Natasha knew what he would say anyway.
Nick paced back and forth with a frown on his face. The arm that had been shot rested against hist stomach, still healing. He could start therapy to regain motion in about a week but the doctor they had ordered no movement otherwise.
“Sir, it just doesn't make sense. Everywhere we look its all SHIELD.”
“Maria, run the numbers again,” Nick said. Maria sighed and shook her head.
“I've run then nearly a hundred times, Nick,” she said. “They haven't changed. By all rights at least half of our buildings, our headquarters, and our network of data centers should be HYDRA. It's highly unlikely we would have hit all of the SHIELD buildings only, even.”
Nick pursed his lips. “Phil, your thoughts?”
“HYDRA knows we're coming,” Phil said, his face taking up the screen of Maria's computer. “It's the only explanation, they know and they've been cleaning house.”
“They're tryna make you look bad, boss,” Clint put in, his face overtaking Phils for a second. “Make you look crazy.”
Maria's face pinched as she added, “It makes sense, Nick. They haven't even launched Insight yet, and you know that was schedule for launch almost a month ago.”
“And there are no news on the delay?” Nick questioned.
“No,” Maria said,
“If I may, sir?” May's face appeared this time. “Maybe we should quit looking for HYDRA information within SHIELD data and instead look for HYDRA agents within SHIELD that we can exploit.”
Nick shook his head. “We have no intel with which to begin with on that front. This team was pulled together to find that intel so that we could begin purging SHIELD.”
“You mentioned Rogers and Romanoff ran into SHIELD agents wearing pins,” May pointed out. “If I remember correctly we never had a reason to hand out SHIELD styled pins. You in fact said that it would advertise our agents too easily. What if HYDRA is using that very same idea to identify their moles?”
“May's right,” Phil sighed. “We wouldn't expect HYDRA to proudly wear the SHIELD eagle.”
“It makes a sick sorta sense,” Clint agreed. “Make your agents look like they're super proud to be a part of SHIELD. Especially since y'know you think almost all of the upper levels have been infected with the HYDRA disease. This way they know one another, and yet they get away with it cuz they're strong enough to take on competition that the pins mighta been bringing.”
Nick snorted. “I hate it when you three talk sense together. Maria?”
Maria tugged the computer towards her, clacked a few keys carefully minimizing the communications program. She began to run some numbers, her gaze focused, before she nodded. “It'd make sense,” she said.
Natasha smiled, leaning against the door frame. She looked to Nick, to Maria, and decided to interrupt. She already knew Nick and caught her presence earlier, but now seemed as good a time as any to interrupt.
“Well I've got something even better than a pin equals HYDRA.”
Nick turned. “And what my that be, Natasha?”
Natasha tossed the drive Steve had given her onto the table, walking forward until she could place her hands on the surface.
“How about all the intel we were supposed to be getting?” she countered. “A little...puppy dropped something off for Steve. He in turn gave it to me.”
Maria grabbed the drive, frowned at the Russian carved into its side, as Nick demanded, “Who?”
“Winter,” Natasha answered.
Nick groaned. “Is he breaking programming?” he asked, his tone implying that he doubted it was so simple as that.
“I don't know,” Natasha said. “But he's attached to Rogers.”
Nick scowled, “Is this attachment dangerous?”
“I don't know,” Natasha replied, her hands clenching into fists. “I really don't know.” Nick nodded.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes with his fingers rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Keep an eye on him,” he said. “If it starts to look dangerous, you intervene, am I clear? We can't lose Rogers.”
Natasha nodded once. That was what she had planned on doing anyway.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4A}
(Anonymous) 2014-04-23 04:31 pm (UTC)(link)I love how you write the characters, and hope you update soon darling! Can't get enough of this <3
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4A}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4B}
Steve leaned against the wall, watched the proceedings inside the room. His gaze darted from Sam, to the veterans who shared. He stood, silent. He didn't want to intrude, didn't feel he had a right to. Steve knew he wasn't without his own baggage, but sharing wasn't a thing that had been overly encouraged in the 40's, and even now he often found himself adverse to it.
The only person he shared things with was Bucky. Steve swallowed.
Sam was a good man. He could see it in the kind way he addressed the veterans before him. Steve could see it in the way the man joked with him. Hell even the way Sam was just happy to help, this one Steve knew was a kind soul, deep down. War hadn't torn that from him, and Steve doubted it would.
When the meeting was over Steve slipped away, down the hall. These people didn't need to see him, to be reminded of what they weren't. The Super Soldier serum didn't make him remarkably well adjusted although he played at it, because the media seemed to think most days he was Super Human which, Steve knew, wasn't far off. These men and women who fought for their country would look at him, and see the pure, well adjusted soldier who didn't need help and that, Steve figured, wouldn't help them. They didn't need that reminder.
He waited until the hall fully cleared before he approached Sam. He tried to keep himself open, not slouched, with a congenial smile at his lips. Steve tried to appear happy. He knew he failed when, as he greeted Sam with a smile, Sam gave him this look. This eyebrows raised piercing look that said, I know what you're tryin' to do, pal, and it ain't workin'.
“You know I figured you'd stop by weeks ago,” Sam said, calmly folding up all the cards.
“I've been busy,” Steve shot him a wry grin.
“Sure you have,” Sam nodded. “That boss of yours keeping you on your toes I take it.”
Steve laughed, “Never a dull day.”
“Yeah,” Sam grinned. “Still working with that girl, the red head?”
Steve rubbed the back of his neck with a smile. “Natasha? Yeah.”
“Think you could hook me up?” Sam asked.
Steve looked shocked. Hook Natasha up? He could imagine the look she'd shoot him, imagine the horrifying things she'd subject him to (Clint's offbrand humor and Tony) and shook his head. “I'm pretty sure she's taken,” he said, instead of voicing the horrors that came to mind.
“You sure? Damn,” Sam sighed. “All the good looking ones.” He finished stacking up the cards and looked Steve over. “Hey, you wanna grab a bite to eat? I'm famished, and you look like you haven't had a decent meal all day.”
Steve shook his head, a grin on his face so large it almost hurt. “Is that how it is?” he asked, teasing back to their first conversation.
“That's how it is,” Sam shot back, a smile to his own face.
Steve laughed and decided why not. Sam wasn't going to try and kill him, and he could use a few minutes time just not thinking about Bucky, about the Soldier, about Natasha and the lies and HYDRA. He licked his lips, face only briefly indecisive before he said, “You know what, sounds good. Let's go.”
He watched, from a shadowed corner, ball cap down on on his head, hair in front of his face, a bandanna wrapped around the lower half of his face in a parody of his mask. He had on a hoody instead of his leather and kevlar, and jeans that were loose, looser than the BDU's he normally wore. His left arm was wrapped tight, fingers covered in gloves to hide the brilliant shine of the metal.
The Soldier had followed him from his morning walk, to his meeting with Наталья in a graveyard. He'd slipped from them then, searching for something, something, he hadn't been sure what until he found it. A single, white headstone, a single name. He licked his lips then tugged the bottom one between his teeth, turned, and walked away. The Soldier tried not to think of the second headstone, placed next to it, with another name that he recognized, understood. He headed back towards their meeting point, hands stuffed in his pockets.
He followed Steve to the building where there were men and women who had fought and come back broken.
The Soldier likened himself to being broken, too. A broken weapon because he kept ignoring orders, kept putting the mission off for this. Whatever this was. He craved, craved the silence and yet, somehow, he craved this chaos more and it hurt. He grit his teeth, hunched down, and slipped into an unused room. From here he watched, he waited. When Steve met the strange man who gave him smiles and laughter the Soldier had to look away. Had to clench one fist in his jeans and bite down on another.
The Soldier bowed, curled into a ball. His blood was on fire again, this strange encompassing feeling that made him want to step out of the room and wrap his metal fingers around and squeeze. He couldn't do that, though, it'd bring attention to his presence and he'd have trouble completing his mission and HYDRA wouldn't be pleased. When HYDRA got displeased the Soldier became useless and that, that he couldn't be.
Never again.
It took time, like the last time where he ground his gun to scrap, but the Soldier came back to himself, curbed the dangerous urge with reminders of what he was. A weapon. A tool. This, this emotional output was a malfunction. When his mission was over it'd be wiped from him, making him new again. He hissed a breath through his teeth and straightened.
He barely caught sound of the interloper getting Steve agreeing to grab a bite. His hands clenched into fists, his jaw snapped shut and his teeth ground together as his nostrils flared. The Soldier narrowed his eyes, slipped out of the room, and followed.
The hell was his punk going on a date with some, some, (lounge lizard spook who don't know when ta--) he didn't have a word for it, but he knew he didn't like it.
Natasha flopped back on her bed, phone pressed against her ear as she stared up at the ceiling.
“So, you remember when I told you about Winter?” she asked, looking over her fingers and pursing her lips. She could do with a manicure, actually.
“Yeah, why, what's he got to do with anythin' Nat?” Clint asked back. He was over in Srilanka looking down a sniper scope double checking the guard routes with the simple bluetooth device pressed into his ear. Natasha could see him with the displeased frown that half wanted to quirk up into a smile as he kept his fingers far away from the trigger of the gun he held distastefully in his arms.
“I told you he's back in town, right?” Natasha asked, instead of remarking upon what she knew Clint had to be doing. She had a small smile to her face.
“Well yeah that's why we're doin' all this clean house bullshit, right?”
Natasha hummed noncommittally and rolled over onto her stomach.
“What? Oh don't tell me he hit you on again,” Clint groaned. “Fuck don't tell me you're actually thinkin' of it!”
“No,” Natasha denied. “He's not interested. I doubt he even remembers.”
“Well good,” Clint grumbled, “because stealin' you away from him once was a pain in the ass.”
“Careful, Clint, your sounding a little possessive there,” Natasha teased, kicking her legs up behind her as she reached for the television remote.
“Oh stuff it. I have every right to be possessive and you know it.”
Natasha laughed. “That's not why I brought him up, bird boy.”
“Seriously? Fuckin' Tony,” Clint grumbled.
“It suits you,” Natasha said.
“Fuck you.”
“While the idea of phone sex is wonderfully arousing,” Natasha's voice grew a bit deeper at the thought, licking her lips at how she could make Clint come undone over the phone. Given his little hitched breath he knew exactly what she was thinking. “That's not why I called either.”
“Then get to the point!” Clint whined. “And don't tease a guy, Nat. It's cruel.”
Natasha laughed again, flicked on the tv with a press of a button. “Fine, fine. He's been stalking Steve.”
There is a pause, then a yell of, “Wait, WHAT?!” followed by cursing, the distinct sounds of a weapon being dismantled and running. “Please tell me there isn't a hit out on our All American Pie.”
“Would that make this better?” Natasha asked. She could here Clint pause to think even as he was running.
There is a rough, “No!” as Clint realized what Natasha was implying and Natasha laughed.
“You should see him speaking,” she said. “His tones gets all sappy and he turns the most horrifying of phrases into these adorable little moments.”
“What is with,” Clint pants, pauses for a breath and Natasha could hear him fire an arrow, “you Russian spies,” another arrow and an explosion, “and Captain Tight-Ass?”
“It's a fantasy, Clint,” Natasha laughed. “I doubt it would ever happen. Besides, you know I'll always come right back to you.” Clint doesn't respond but Natasha isn't worried, she can hear the combat all the way on her end and it makes her smile.
“Yeah,” Clint eventually said when it all goes quiet. “I know. Love you.”
“Ты нужен мне,” Natasha replied. She looked and sounded pained by the admission, and she knew logically she always was.
Clint murmured, “I know.”
They hung up at the same time.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4B}
OP
(Anonymous) - 2014-04-24 15:03 (UTC) - ExpandRe: OP
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4C}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {4C}
(Anonymous) - 2014-04-28 14:50 (UTC) - ExpandFill: дорогая
дорогая- “Are you goddamn kidding me?” Fury asks when Steve shows up to the rendezvous point in Fredericksberg with the Winter Soldier.
OP
(Anonymous) 2014-04-27 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: дорогая
(Anonymous) - 2014-04-27 19:51 (UTC) - ExpandRe: OP
Re: Fill: дорогая
Re: Fill: дорогая
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5A}
Sorry for taking so long with this. School is evil.
At first the Soldier didn't realize just how dangerous things for him were growing. He didn't realize how much at risk he was putting himself in for something a simple as a fight. Only now, as the days went on, he wondered if it were truly about getting another fight out of Steve or about something else that eluded him. At either way the Soldier found that it'd grown easier and easier to ignore his mission, to brush aside the parameters he'd been given. Every time he'd sneak into Fury's not-base he found it easier to ignore Fury, to ignore the urge to kill, finish it, until he wasn't slipping into Fury's room anymore. Instead he made for the computer, searched out Steve's next set of orders, and left.
The Soldier shifted, feeling an ache from being still for so long. He kept his gaze trained through his snipers scope, waiting for the moment Steve and Наталья rode in to complete the sweep of the grounds. He licked his lips underneath his mask and rolled his shoulders slightly. The vantage point he'd found was up on the top of a munitions deposit, this particular SHIELD station housing just a bit more than intelligence. The deposit was shaded by a rather large tree, providing ample cover if it were daytime, and even more cover in the dead of night.
The ground was maybe four feet away, sitting on a hill overlooking the rest of the base. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Potomac, and in the distance the Triskellion. This particular mission had a high-risk factor, being so close to SHIELD's main infrastructure, and the Soldier was worried. He nibbled at his lip, shifted lightly again just to get feeling back into his legs.
Still no sign of Steve.
“Где ты?” the Soldier hissed between his breath. He was entirely focused on finding Steve, being sure that Steve arrived safely, that the Soldier didn't even notice the booted feet on the roof of the deposit until they crunched right down by his face. His eyes widened behind his goggles, and he turned sharply to attack whoever was there.
A knee slammed down into his diaphragm, expelling any air he had the minute he moved. He swallowed and forced the reflexive follow up punch to a halt at the familiar face of his weapons handler.
“Now what do we have here?” Rumlow hissed. He reached out, pulled away the goggles and the mask, and grabbed the Soldier by the chin. “Report.”
“This is for my mission,” the Soldier said quickly.
“The mission is Nick Fury,” Rumlow said coldly. “Not them.” He gestured in the darkness.
Steve. His eyes glanced over, caught sight of the familiar blue. He's here. He's okay.
“Mission parameters state surveillance until repairs are completed,” he said monotonously. “Repairs are taking longer than expected.”
“Are they?” Rumlow questioned, reaching down to grasp his damaged leg. He squeezed and the Soldier grit his teeth. He barely let out a grunt of surprise at the sudden jolt of pain. “Seems like all I'm hearing is that HYDRA's weapon is useless.”
“I'm not!” the Soldier snarled. Rumlow gave him a look, squeezed a bit harder, and Bucky let out a sharp curse. “My mission is guarded by Subjects: Black Widow and Steve Rogers. Surveillance is necessary to uncover weakness,” he spat out quickly and Rumlow let go of his leg.
“Is that so?” Rumlow questioned.
“Yes,” the Soldier said, tense.
“So HYDRA's asset isn't malfunctioning?” Rumlow quarried. The Soldier froze.
Malfunction? Yes, there was malfunction. He knew there was malfunction. Rumlow narrowed his eyes.
“I repeat, is there any malfunction?”
The Soldier swallowed, but did not answer. If he said yes, they would drag him back, wipe him clean, and he'd forget Steve. He'd forget desires, wants. He'd forget being Bucky. He'd forget his name. If he said no, it would be a lie to the ones who hold his leash. That would invite pain, suffering, and further setbacks. Lying to his masters was not allowed, he'd had that rule beaten into him long ago, before he could even remember. Like every other parameter he's given, it's something he can't quite fight. Not yet, perhaps not ever.
“I see,” Rumlow muttered, reached out, and squeezed the Soldier's leg hard. The surprise tore a quick, short yelp out of him before Rumlow let go and left him with a burning feeling up his leg. “I can't break this leg, obviously,” Rumlow said coldly. “That would slow down the timetable. However punishment is still due for the failure of not reporting malfunction.”
Rumlow grasped the Soldier by the hair and physically dragged him off of the roof of the deposit. The fall hurt in part because the pull on his hair hurt and falling four feet without getting a chance to brace yourself just hurts period. The Soldier grunted but didn't fight back. Fighting back meant more pain and failure, and that the Soldier couldn't face. Not now, not when he was almost healed enough for that fight. Rumlow chuckled, pulled him up by his hair, and he could feel his scalp on fire, the roots threatening to give until the Soldier got his knees up under him to support his weight so it wasn't all Rumlow holding him up.
“It's time for another lesson, I think,” Rumlow said coldly. Bucky wanted to spit in his face, and he almost did until he caught sight of five other STRIKE members standing in the shadows.
Rumlow threw a punch at the Soldier's face, letting go of his hair, allowing the Soldier to fall back from the force of the blow. The Soldier pulled himself onto his hands and knees only for Rumlow's foot to connect to his face again, and then to the side of his ribs. It wasn't the side reinforced with metal and steel, but the side wholly flesh and blood. This was followed by a hard press to the Soldier's juggular with a foot and then that foot became a knee as Rumlow knelt down and smiled, coldly, face inches from the Soldier who struggled for breath.
“You follow my every command,” Rumlow hissed out, “and I'll allow you the freedom to finish the mission as you see fit in five days. Am I clear?”
“Yes,” the Soldier gasped.
“What are your new parameters?” Rumlow growled.
“Follow every command, confirm death in five days,” the Soldier said although the words were breathless and barely-there. Rumlow smiled.
“Good.” He let up, ordered the Soldier onto his knees, and said, “You know what to do.”
The Soldier did.
When they arrived at the base, mostly deserted, for a moment Steve thought he caught movement up in the corner on a hill overlooking the building. Natasha quickly drew his attention back, especially when there didn't appear to be anything else going on, with a carefully timed, “Rogers, pay attention.”
Steve turned his head back towards Natasha and gave her a grin.
“Sorry, thought I saw something up there,” he motioned towards the little stonework building on the hill. “Thought it might be a sniper, but there's nothing.”
“You mean you thought it might be your stalker,” Natasha pointed out. For a moment there was a barely there smile that Steve caught although it was quickly replaced with a frown.
“No, I mean I thought that maybe SHIELD has wised up and placed a sniper in play,” Steve shot back. A little part of him tingled though at the thought of the Winter Soldier being here, keeping watch over them. He wasn't sure why, but it made him feel safe. The thought of eyes on his back was a familiar one.
Bucky used to do that all the time, actually. Steve breathed out slow, pressed down the sudden pang of guilt and sorrow that wanted to cripple him. He breathed out slow again, killed the engine of his bike, and shifted his shield from his back onto his arm.
“Let's go,” he said, giving Natasha a nod. They started towards the building. “No multitasking this time,” Steve added as an afterthought.
Natasha rolled her eyes. She entered in an access code, then paused when it came back negative and quickly began to hack the control panel. “You need to get out more, Rogers,” she pointed out as she worked. No multitasking, he said? She could do work like this in her sleep.
“I had lunch with Sam just the other day,” Steve said, quickly swinging his shield up to knock out the first guard they'd come across. Natasha round housed the second and they dragged both into a spare room. “I get out.”
Natasha gave him a considering look, which Steve saw. He promptly shook his head, said quickly, “No, Natasha.”
“It could be cute,” Natasha murmured.
“No,” Steve said back sharp. Natasha pouted and they left the room to hunt down other guards or men around. They split up when the hall went into two different directions and systematically cleared the first floor. Occasionally Natasha would pipe up with what Steve thought she thought were coy little comments over their headsets.
“He's para-rescue right? Why don't you go skydiving together then?”
“No.”
“He's already taken you out somewhere, that means its your turn, right?”
“Natasha.”
“You know I'm sure he could teach you a thing or two, he seems pretty learned from what I saw.”
“Oh my god can you just focus on the mission!”
It went on for the five minutes it took to clear the first floor and meet up on the second. There Steve shoved Natasha into a wall, face serious as he slammed a hand over her mouth, and spoke lowly, “I am not interested in Sam. Understood?” Natasha just licked his hand, drawing a surprise and somewhat disgusted look as Steve jerked back. He quickly rubbed his hand off on his pants. “Childish,” he said.
“Child,” Natasha shot back with a wide smile, pointing at herself. It was a joke aimed towards their age gap which Steve got readily enough. She tilted her head. “You're not interested in any of the girls I offer.”
“They're not my type,” Steve pointed back. They weren't. “One of them had a lip piercing,” he added as an afterthought.
“And a tongue piercing,” Natasha said brightly. “Imagine how that would feel?”
Steve flushed bright red and just took off. “I am not having this conversation,” he said quickly and proceeded to run into five men, all of which he dispatched in a manner of seconds.
“There's no need to be a prude,” Natasha said over the comms, and Steve could hear about three men go down on her end in quick succession.
“It's not being prudish,” Steve mumbled back. “It's called decency.”
Natasha scoffed, round-housed another guy and they met at the computer room. “Decency,” she said blithely, “went out of style in the sixties.”
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5B}
He stumbled onto the railing, cursed at the noise he made. He feared being found out, being caught here with his mask off and his face bare and his breath smelling like alcohol. He feared that his injuries, healing slowly but steadily, would prevent him from leaving before he was caught. He feared those big blue eyes training on his face and feared the results of what that would do to him.
Bucky worked on the window, worked it open because he couldn't stand outside all night. Someone would see him, call the cops, and then he'd be in shittier luck that this. Or Agent 13 down the hall would realize that there's someone outside the window, someone stalking the precious dancing monkey and then he'd be in the shitter even worse.
Bucky hissed out words in Russian, Romanian, German and English until the window rose up and he could slip inside. He didn't bother with silencing the recording devices. He didn't care to anymore. HYDRA knew already about this obsession, this broken malfunction in his head so what did it matter trying to hide it from them? He stumbled his way through the kitchen, ran into the counter with a curse. It was sharp and in English and Bucky had to slap his fist into his mouth to stop from making any more noise.
Punk's a light sleeper he had to remind himself, in his head because only there was it safe. He didn't know how he knew that, exactly, just that he did. He knew a lot of stuff he didn't understand, didn't know where it came from this knowledge. He figured more and more out every day even when it hurt to do so.
He realized in mid struggle between the kitchen to the bathroom, where all the antiseptic and the med-kit were kept (always so predictable, aren't you?) that he'd been referring to himself as Bucky instead of the Solider. It came and went ever since he'd learned his name (James Buchanan Barnes, Sargent, 325575—Steve?) but now it seemed to be thoroughly stuck.
Bucky stumbled into the bathroom, knocked the soap and toothbrush off of the counter and froze. He waited for the telltale signs of someone waking up and sighed in relief when there was no change in the noise around him. He stared at his face in the mirror, didn't bother flicking on the light because he could see well enough as is. His nose was crooked, his lip swollen and bloodied. He looked like he got in the loosing end of a fistfight in a back alley of Brooklyn protecting his punk, whatever that meant.
With a grimace he straightened his nose, hissed a breath between his teeth, and pulled open the cabinet. The Soldier (no—no—James Buchanon Barnes—Bucky Barnes—I am—) rummaged for antiseptic and bandages and a little white box he knew had to be there. He found bottles of pain killers, higher strength prescription strength and he pulled those open and dried swallowed a couple. He didn't care what they were, only that he needed them.
He crouched down and rifled through under the sink before he found the med-kit burried in the back. He fished that out, set it on the counter, and then sat himself down on the toilet. He pulled out strips of gauze, tore it to shreds, and then wrapped his face and his nose. It hurt, stung like a bitch, and it brought to mine the punches and kicks and the laughing hiss of (such a good toy for HYDRA) words he couldn't comprehend, mind too fogged by pain.
Bucky pulled off his jacket and began to dabble the antiseptic on his cuts, made by a knife happy Rumlow and his pack of goons. He bound each cut with a careful strip of gauze if they were larger than an inch and deeper than half that. There wasn't any thread or needles inside the kit so he couldn't sew himself up yet. He'd get around to that later, probably after he'd stumbled back to the hotel more fuzzy headed than he was even now.
Carefully he bound and wrapped up his chest, which probably had a broken rib now considering how strong a kick Rumlow and his STRIKE team could deliver, but at least it wasn't a broken leg. He could remember clearly that he had only (no, no I can't do this, please don't make me do this) five days before he'd be extracted and punished for mission failure. Five days to complete the mission he'd be given without the repairs (healing? it's called healing, for humans its healing) necessary to do what he wanted. Bucky wanted to cry, curse HYDRA from taking away from him yet another thing, another desire only this time they didn't even know.
With a grunt he tied off the bandage around his chest and then blinked when he felt something wet dribble down his chin. He reached up, worried for a moment that he started bleeding again except he forgot, dried blood was practically caked onto his face.
“глупый,” he hissed between his teeth and got to his feet. He turned on the sink, quickly scrubbed away the crusted blood on his face, on his hands. He couldn't do anything about any other wounds, and in the grand scheme of things they didn't matter much. His face looked like a beaten mash of flesh and it made him want to laugh. He looked like himself for the first time in ages, if Bucky discounted the hair which oddly suited him.
Carefully, he turned off the sink, listened because wouldn't rushing water wake sleeping beauty? There was no change in the environment so he sighed, examined his face for any new cuts, any new bleeding spots, but everything was the same as when he came in. He poured antiseptic on the open cuts that lined his face, the ones he'd missed, and then stumbled out of the bathroom.
There was this gnawing in his gut. He didn't know what it was except this urge to look around the corners and check back alleys and be certain there wasn't a face a (a fat-head wise guy with too much guts god what's he done now) dying someone he knew deep down in his psyche. It tied to with the silence that a light sleeper should have woken up too, that is the lack of it. Bucky hadn't been quiet, and he knew it, and it churned in him but right now he didn't care.
Perhaps his brain was too broken to understand the need to keep himself hidden was a priority. He moved down the hall, into the bedroom that he'd been dragged to before, the one with the picture and his name where everything hurt and didn't make sense. He came into a room as dark as pitch, but he still caught the shadows on the walls and the lump in the bed. Bucky stumbled over, almost crashed into the wall twice and eventually chose to use it as a guide instead. He made it to the edge of the bed before he crashed to his knees and just stared.
In the dark he couldn't see much, not the darkness that permeated this room. He did catch flaxen hair and a baby face peaceful in sleep with the faint sound of snoring.
“голубка,” he breathed, reaching out his flesh and blood hand to shaking touch a face he knew better than his own. He wasn't sure how, but he did. “Моя прекрасная моя голубка, моя одна мое сердце,” he chanted to himself under his breath unsure where these words were coming from. Bucky felt shaken with all that had happened and all that was before him.
Five days. He wanted to scream, to sob, to curse, but he just kept repeating and chanting, “Моя прекрасная моя голубка, моя одна мое сердце,” over and over to himself and to this man before him. There had been something, a fire in his mind that wasn't like being wiped but more like a burn of a memory he couldn't reach. None of his memories of before were viable anymore, he could tell that with how they remained so far away form him, buried and precious and gone.
Yet something pulled him closer, something wanted him here, to do what? He didn't know, just had this need he couldn't describe. The Soldier leaned over (he was Bucky damn you Bucky) and suddenly it made a sick sort of sense, what he wanted to do. What Bucky wanted to do. He pressed a kiss to the slumbering lips and it felt like (home oh gods he was home) some indescribable thing until the sick in his stomach threatened to spill over his lips and he pulled back.
Steve breathed out a broken, “Bucky,” in his sleep and the Soldier scrambled and then bolted. He didn't care at the noise he made he just had to get out. He ran from the room and then through the kitchen until he reached the window and the fire escape. He slid down ladder after ladder and then fled into the darkness his breath on fire and his cheeks burned. There were tears in his eyes and he didn't understand any of it.
In the apartment Steve jolted upright, finally woken up by the loud crashing sounds of someone fleeing. He slipped out of his room, but by the time he found the open window whoever had been there was long gone. The only thing he could feel was lips on his and the memory of kissing Bucky back on Coney Island in a dark corner behind the concession stand in 1943.
Natasha always got back late. It wasn't because she went out to do anything other than work, more because she often stayed behind after debriefing with Fury when Steve left to give her honest assessment of his psyche. Some days were better than others, some days he responded better.
“Does he know, sir?” she asked, curious that night.
“Know what?” Nick questioned back.
“That homosexuality isn't something that most people scorn these days,” Natasha asked. “We told him about that, right? About how two men and two women are now legally able to marry in the state of New York?”
Nick sighed, pressed his face into his hands. “No, Natasha. We haven't told him.” When she opened her mouth to reply, brow furrowed and lips turned down, Nick continued, “It wasn't just not done in the 1940's. It was outright illegal to have relations with other men or other women.” He stared at Natasha long and hard. “The world was a very different place, then, and we don't need a Captain America who looks at people in disgust for who they are.”
“And not warning him does what?” Natasha questioned back.
“I have my reasons,” Nick told her, and she left it at that. Nick had a plan in play, she knew that, and yet the idea that Steve didn't know....
“What if he likes men?” she asked, quiet.
“It's highly unlikely,” Nick shot back, and that was the end of the conversation.
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5C}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5C}
(Anonymous) - 2014-05-06 04:21 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5C}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5D}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5D}
(Anonymous) - 2014-05-06 13:59 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {5D}
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {6A}
Natasha let out a slow breath as she stepped into the base. She had no doubt Fury would be pissed as hell that she'd waited this long to even so much as report this to him, but she knew she had the right idea. Beside her stood Phil, May staying on the Bus to keep an eye on the other members of Phil's team, and on her other side stood Clint. They were here for more than support, more than just back up to face what Natasha knew undoubtedly would be coming.
Together the three of them walked down the halls, into the room that Nick would be planning missions with Hill over a table, or discussing the data that the Winter Soldier had given them and its potential for being a red herring.
“Look, see, this is saying Sitwell was on the Star,” Maria said, pointing her screen. “Which doesn't make sense because this is the official data from SHIELD on Sitwell's placement. He should have been nowhere near the Star.”
“I agree, it's fishy,” Nick said back just as softly, “however he could be nothing more than a decoy. We'd have to bring him in for questioning and Sitwell is high up enough to have his presence been noticed if he's being questioned. Even if we make it look like a routine check, whoever's at the top of this chain'll know better.”
“You still don't think Pierce has anything to do with this, do you?” Maria said softly. Nick pursed his lips.
“I know that man better than I know anyone,” Nick muttered back. “I highly doubt it.”
They continued to mutter plans and thoughts back and forth to one another. Phil shifted his stance and coughed when it became obvious they weren't going to be outright noticed. Clint fiddled with one of his arrows while Natasha tried to look unassuming and failed. Nick looked up, a frown across his face.
“To what do I owe this visit?” he questioned, arching one eyebrow. “After all aren't two of you supposed to be on ops out of the country?”
Natasha fidgeted for a brief second, and then straightened her spine. “I recalled them,” she said clearly.
Nick scowled. “And why,” he said, tone pitching just enough to show how annoyed he was, “did you do that, Agent Romanoff.”
Clint scowled. “Fury Nat's got some pretty interestin' intel you might wanna listen to,” he snapped out. “Somethin' pretty damn important, actually.”
“It requires a bit of show and tell,” Phil agreed, giving Nick his patented 'I might have screwed up' smile.
Nick looked between the three of them. “Can this wait?”
“No,” Phil said, taking point from ease of long practice being Natasha and Clint's handler. “It really can't. We're already on a time crunch as it is.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Nick straightened up. Maria's lips pressed together in concern.
“It means that the Winter Soldier plans to complete his mission tomorrow,” Natasha said shortly. Nick's gaze darted to her.
“You know this how?” he asked.
Clint reached out and grabbed Natasha's hand for support when she seemed to hesitate. Phil likewise placed his hand on her shoulder. She glanced to him, and he gave her a short nod. Another glance to Clint, who looked serious with his face blank in a way only Natasha could understand, Natasha sighed and steadied her nerves.
“He told me.”
Nick didn't have anything to say. He just stared, almost uncomprehendingly, at the three before him.
“I told you he wouldn't believe it,” Clint said with a smirk, shifting enough to cross his arms. Natasha sighed.
“Why,” Nick said slowly, unable to wrap his mind around the thought that they had forewarning, “would he tell you that.”
Phil squeezed Natasha's shoulder, a gesture that Nick didn't miss. Natasha hunched slightly, and for a moment she looked physically pained. She closed her eyes.
“I was a product of the Red Room,” Natasha said, which Nick already knew. “My handler, the one unmade me and remade me into who I am, was not Red Room.” Nick frowned. “At first I didn't know his name. He was nothing more than a tool used to train us and break us....” Natasha wrapped her arms around herself, her mind casting back.
“It's okay,” Phil said, and Nick seemed to nod for her to continue. Clint brushed his hand against hers, but kept his gaze solely on Nick with narrowed eyes.
“His name was James,” Natasha said finally, looking up. “We didn't know where he came from, we didn't know who even agreed to loan him to the Red Room. I only know his name because....” She trailed off and shrugged. Nick sighed.
“What does this have to do with our supposed forewarning?” Nick questioned.
Natasha licked her lips. “James...I wasn't the first person to learn that name,” she said, haltingly. “I wasn't the first person he...” She shook her head. “He told me, once, that they liked to toy with him like this. Let him remember bits and pieces and steal it away, prove to him how utterly powerless, how much of a machine he was to them and nothing more.”
Clint thought Natasha was laying it on a bit thick. Every word was true, certainly, but they didn't need to gain Nick's pity for the guy. He fidgeted.
“Nat,” he said, lowly, “you should get to the point.”
Natasha glanced to him, and nodded. “Yes. I.” She closed her eyes. “Seeing him like that brought it all back. I'm sorry.” She opened them, and once more they were hard. Once more Natasha folded into the Black Widow. “The reason why the Winter Soldier warned me was because the Winter Soldier is James.” She licked her lips. “Sargent James Buchanan Barnes,” she added, in a whisper.
The top of the chair Nick was holding onto snapped. Even he knew what that name meant. Even he knew the implications there.
“How certain are you of this?” Nick asked, carefully.
“One hundred percent,” Natasha said. She had no proof, no sign that he wasn't Bucky Barnes. The only thing Natasha knew was how utterly broken he was at remembering even that much about himself. The strong, nameless man who taught her, who broke her down and made her strong, who loved her, had never looked so utterly destroyed as he had in that moment. That was the only proof she had, and for Natasha, that was enough.
Bucky had planned to spend the whole day running through his list of weapons and what he would need, what he might need, and what was honestly just superfluous at this time. The sheer amount of destructive power he had nestled into two duffel bags really brought home the whole 'blunt force instrument' ideal that HYDRA had been going for when they first unmade him. It left him breathless at that fact that he even knew how to handle this varied a set of weaponry.
The whole day of running through his list turned into instead several hours of running his hands over each weapon, feeling, remembering. More than once he had to stop himself from flinging a gun aside in favor of racing to the bathroom as a particularly vicious series of images bombarded him. Bucky Barnes had not been queasy by any sense of the word, but even some of what he did churned his stomach in ways he couldn't yet understand.
For a while Bucky longed to slip back into just being the Soldier, to not remembering bits and pieces of what he'd done, what had been done to him. For a while Bucky wanted the silence and the cold, to allow the fire to burn through his mind and cleanse him, wipe him back into that blank state. He gave up cataloging the munitions he had and instead turned on the television. He found the 'Real Housewives of New York' and lost himself into the monotony of it.
Bucky spent a good chunk of the day just watching episode after another, pleased to have discovered that there was some sort of marathon running as people talked about something called a season finale. It was only when the knock came at his door, followed by a slip of paper pushed through the small gap between door and floor, that Bucky even stopped watching the show in the first place.
Cautiously, because it could be a sick and twisted game his masters were choosing to play, now that they knew, Bucky approached the door and picked up the slip of paper. He unfolded it and expelled the breath he was holding.
“Natalia....” Bucky groaned, pressing his back into the door and sliding down until he was seated on the ground. He thunked his head back. “This was not what I meant.”
There was a light rap against the door next to his head.
“We can fix this,” Natalia said back, and Bucky could imagine her fingers pressed lightly right by his cheek, by his ear. “James, trust me.”
“It won't work,” Bucky said, staring down at the paper. His hand shook. “It won't work.”
“We'll make it work.”
Bucky closed his eyes. It won't work, he said in his mind. It won't and when you realize that...He wanted to save her some of the pain that would come from this. To get out, to leave. Bucky bit his lip.
“We'll do it your way,” he said, voice thick with emotion. He couldn't tell her no. He could never tell her no.
“Thank you James,” Natalia whispered, and then she was gone. He knew she was gone because if she stayed, for even a second, Bucky wasn't sure what he would do.
The Soldier got to his feet. He looked down at the note, face blank, and memorized the information. He looked up, strode over towards his pile of weapons laid out on the table, chair, dresser and in front of the television. The Soldier pulled open a drawer and tugged free a lighter, the only lighter he had in his possession, and only because he nicked it out of a gas station just down the road. He lit the flame, and then held it over the letter which he clasped in his left hand. He watched the paper burn.
For the next twenty minutes he loaded, worked over, and checked each weapon he knew he'd most likely require to complete the mission. He set each aside on the table, and put the rest away. When that was done the Soldier began to arm himself. He slipped guns into hip holsters and thigh holsters, knives into their own holsters, grenades into his belt, anything and everything he would require.
The Soldier paused only after his pants were properly equipped to stare at the simple blouse that sat draped over the back of the chair. His hand reached out to palm the fabric.
“Steve...” he breathed out, closed his eyes, and with a pained frown he picked up the shirt and stuffed it into another duffel bag with the remainder of the weapons, including the pieces for his rifle. He grabbed his mask, his goggles, and his jacket.
The Soldier left the shitty motel room with the Real Housewives of New York playing on the television.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {6B}
It was near two in the morning when he finally reached the apartment in DC. The Soldier shifted the duffel until it slung against his back and licked his lips underneath the bandanna he'd wrapped tight around the lower end of his face. The air was cold, it bit against his skin, made the scaring where metal became flesh almost burn something unholy. He didn't have a shirt on because it felt wrong to wear anything that wasn't his. Even the bandanna felt wrong. The Soldier didn't like to contemplate the wrongness more than he had to.
Flesh and blood fingers wrapped around the metal grating. They took all of his weight, pulled him up one handed. His metal and ice arm reached up for the scaffolding above him and did the rest of the work. Silent aside from forced even breaths and the sound of metal moving the Soldier climbed up the landings until he was outside the one window he couldn't seem to avoid. With careful, gentle movements the Soldier pried the window open and slipped inside. He dropped the duffel bag by the window, left it open for an easy escape route, and headed back towards the bathroom.
The leather and kevlar top was not there.
Bucky swallowed. He knew logically he shouldn't have expected Steve to have just left it there where he'd dropped it, half out of his head, but damn did it throw a wrench into everything. The Soldier wanted to complete the mission, just get it done with. Наталья had given him an out, a plan that while he knew it would go tits up, he couldn't fault her for trying. He had a place to be, memorized on the back of his eyelids, and a shot to fire, a man to kill. He couldn't afford to lose it now, here, in this place where everything and anything was Steve.
Bucky still didn't understand what Steve even was to him. He couldn't remember the past aside from fleeting glances and images, aside from emotions and sounds he couldn't place, aside from a pain and a coldness he wanted to be rid of once and for all. The Soldier swallowed and closed his eyes. He forced his breath to even, to calm. There was nothing for it, he'd have to ask Steve himself then.
Logic dictated that Steve would be in the bedroom. Bucky gripped his pants leg with his flesh and blood fingers to stop them from trembling. The Soldier remembered what the room had done to him, three times now. Remembered the portrait, the urge to do something he didn't understand. Bucky forced the even breaths this time and strode from the bathroom stiff backed.
As with before the room was dark. He could make out the shadows on the wall and Steve in the bed, lightly snoring as he slept unaware of his intruder. Bucky took a step, the Soldier took one back. He pressed his lips together, tugged his bottom between his teeth and clenched and unclenched his hand. The Soldier knew he should just walk over there and shake Steve awake. Bucky saw a man at peace, a face he hadn't seen so peaceful in such a long time. It stirred things, brought to mind things.
He stood at the edge of the bed, stared down at the face he couldn't remember but remembered all the same. His flesh and blood hand shifted and hovered over perfect cheeks. His jaw trembled and he had to swallow, heavily, to clear his throat from what felt like a grenade being lodged inside of it. Beyond his control he fell to his knees, his metal hand came up and tugged the bandanna down.
Fool. He was such a fool. Bucky breathed out.
“You goddamn punk,” he hissed between his teeth. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Steve's lips. His cheeks felt wet.
These were tears. The Soldier didn't understand how tears could come over this.
He's just a man.
But he's not, is he? He's Steve.
That was it. That was the crux of the matter at heart. He was Steve and, perhaps, that was all that mattered in the end. Not the memories, just this torrent of emotions that being Steve brought him.
Bucky didn't know when it happened, but suddenly the press of lips was something else. There was a hand in his hair, gentle but insistent, a tongue teasing his mouth open as a face pressed closer, harder, more demanding but at the same time just not. Then the pressure was gone and Bucky was opening his eyes (when did I close them?) and he could see Steve's face there, tears trailing down his own cheeks, eyes clenched shut.
“Bucky,” he breathed out and Bucky jerked back. He tumbled onto his ass, hands pressed out to stop him falling onto his back as well and quickly he turned his face away.
“I'm not,” Bucky said, throat tight. He could tell exactly when Steve opened his eyes because Steve's breath changed, hitched in a way that was telling all on its own.
There was silence between them. It was awkward. Eventually Steve sat up, Bucky could tell because he could hear the shift on the bed until bare feet press down onto the carpet. He could hear Steve's hands sliding through his hair, a nervous sort of habit that the other man had though he didn't know how he knew that.
“Why did you,” Steve started, then stopped. Bucky could see him grimace in his minds eye.
“I don't know,” Bucky said back. He didn't, it was an honest answer. “It was a lack of impulse control.”
Steve laughed, although it seemed bitter. “That was more than just a lack of impulse control,” he said wryly. Bucky could practically feel the gaze on him and he hunched his shoulders, tried to bury his face so that Steve couldn't see it.
He didn't want Steve to see this thing, this fake thing parading around in skin that wasn't his, shouldn't be his. He didn't want Steve to know the depths in which he'd forgotten and become something inhuman. He didn't want Steve to see a familiar face on a machine that soon enough wouldn't even remember his own name. He felt like an imposter in his own skin.
I don't want to lose this.
I'm going to anyway.
Bucky swallowed. “I don't,” he started, stopped, and closed his eyes for a brief second.
“You're attracted to me,” Steve said instead, cutting off whatever train of thought Bucky might have had. The Soldier stiffened. “Fuck, Natasha was right wasn't she?”
Bucky had to work his jaw with no sound for a moment before he said, hoarsely, “Да,” because it was true. He could hear Steve groan and practically fold in half. He could hear a muttered, “Shit,” of surprise.
Bucky felt like he was dying. He felt like he couldn't get any air in his lungs, that he couldn't breath or even think. There wasn't a fire in his mind, a pain throughout his limbs, a phantom ache where his flesh became metal. This wasn't like torture of any sort he could remember enduring, not like the taste of Rumlow on his lips. This felt more like the memory of Natasha fighting for him, screaming for him, the pain he felt when they grabbed her and hissed words into her ear that made her go deadly still.
This had been a bad (your takin all the stupid with you) stupid idea. Bucky got to his feet swiftly and started for the door without a word. He couldn't stay here. He had a job to to do. The Soldier stiffened and then relaxed and his mind went blank with the thought of the mission.
At least until Steve asked, “How many times?” and the Soldier froze.
“Just once,” he replied, his hand clenched into fist.
“Why?” Steve asked, and Bucky could feel that gaze at his back. Could feel something and he knew something but he couldn't place what.
He licked his lips.
“Two days ago my handlers did,” Bucky paused, “did something that broke, broke a piece away that'd been breaking for a while.”
“Since when?” Steve leaned back.
“The Lumarian Star,” Bucky said, bit his lip, added, “Seeing you. In that get up. It did something.” Steve was silent, but Bucky wasn't. “I couldn't get it out of my head,” he continued. “Star Spangled Man With A Plan,” he muttered, “dressed in red white and blue. A skinny little punk from Brooklyn. Everything being wrong and. I began to want things. I began to think. It hurt and I. Something was broken, wrong. A malfunction. I was supposed to report those, to get them fixed, but I didn't, I couldn't because something wasn't right.”
Steve got up and walked towards him. He could hear the footsteps.
“Because you kept pervading everything,” Bucky continued. “You kept making these things happen and I had no idea why. I had to know why.”
Steve stopped behind him. He asked, “What did you call me?” There was something in his voice, something that made the Soldier want to run, made Bucky want to cry. When Bucky didn't answer, Steve said, “You called me a punk.”
“Words slip out and I don't know their meaning,” Bucky said. It sounded like an excuse.
“What's your name?” Steve asked.
“I don't have one,” Bucky said back quickly.
“Your lying.” Steve stood close enough that Bucky could feel the soldier's breath against the back of his neck. “Why.”
“You don't want to know that answer,” Bucky said.
“I do. Tell me,” Steve said sharply.
“No,” Bucky said through gritted teeth. He felt his lips curl up into a snarl, his hands clenched into fists.
“Why not,” Steve demanded, voice turning towards a growl.
Bucky whirled around without conscious thought and practically screamed, “Because I refuse to be the one that finally breaks you!” A second later he seemed to realize just what he'd done exactly as his eyes snapped open wide and his face went pale.
Steve looked like he'd seen a ghost. “Bucky?” he asked.
It took exactly one second before Bucky bolted, stringing curses in his head. Steve didn't let him get even as far as the bedroom door before he tackled Bucky to the ground. Bucky quickly bucked up, tried to get Steve off of him as he twisted around. Steve jammed his knee over the metal prosthetic and then trapped it beneath his thigh as one hand wrapped fingers around Bucky's neck and the other around Bucky's wrist, pinning it down just as effectively.
Bucky tried to buck up, to toss Steve from him but Steve held his ground until they were both staring at one another, panting. The hand around Bucky's neck traced the length of Bucky's jaw.
“Oh god, Buck,” Steve muttered, as if he couldn't believe it. The next second they were in a kiss full of teeth and hot breaths. Bucky didn't even try to struggle. He couldn't. This was what he had wanted and fuck why did he even try to deny himself this? He'd forgotten perfection, he'd forgotten what home felt and tasted like.
Bucky could remember others, but they weren't right. It wasn't right like this. Natalia had been, could have been, but HYDRA stole her from him like they were going to steal Steve and yet Bucky couldn't care. He could feel a mouth on his needing, insistent. Tongue pressed past his lips as teeth clashed. He could feel when Steve shifted from kissing him to nipping at his jaw, could feel when the shift happened between getting the hell out and deciding why not just stay.
He bucked up, this time Steve let him, and shifted them both until Steve was laying flat on his back and he was on top, pressing down, kissing and nipping and biting. Bucky could taste the euphoria on Steve's lips, in his skin. He knew, logically, this was perhaps the worst idea he'd ever entertained. Steve wasn't in his right mind, Bucky knew he sure as hell wasn't in his own right mind given everything that had happened and everything he remembered and everything he didn't.
Steve's hands wrapped into his hair, he breathed, “Bucky,” on his lips. Bucky felt a thrill, a jolt of something down his spine that coiled in his gut. It was familiar, but distant. It reminded him of Наталья and Natalia reminded him of Steve which reminded him of this whatever this had been or is going to be. They didn't do anything more than touch and kiss and grasp, and then grind down and press against one another. They didn't do anything further but this because this was perfect all on its own.
Steve tensed up underneath him, and Bucky pressed his face into Steve's neck with a shuddered breath. When Steve tried to pull his face out of his neck, whispered another breathless, “Bucky,” Bucky jerked and then scrambled off and away from Steve with wide eyes. He curled his hands into his hair and drew his knees up towards his face, he tried to ignore the way his pants felt now, the way everything felt now, and focused on evening his breaths out.
“Bucky?” Steve sat up. He sounded concerned. Bucky wanted to laugh.
He didn't. Instead he took a deep shuddering breath and said, “I need my armor.” He pulled himself up. He couldn't acknowledge this because tomorrow or the day after, depending upon when Rumlow got fed up enough with waiting, Bucky would be back in HYDRA's hands and they'd break him more soundly then he'd ever been broken.
This was Steve. Of course they'd break Bucky more soundly for this.
“What?” Steve's brow furrowed. He was confused, Bucky could understand. Bucky was confused too.
“My top. The one I left,” Bucky said, voice hoarse. “I need it.”
“It's in the closet,” Steve said. Bucky strode over to the closet and yanked the door open. There, hanging up with Steve's shirts, was his armor. He quickly pulled it off of the hanger and began to strap it in place without a thought.
“Buck,” Steve said slowly. Bucky wondered if just because Steve realized who he was that meant anything was truly different between them. Bucky swallowed, closed his eyes, and uttered a sharp curse in Russian.
Bucky swallowed. “My orders changed.” Steve froze. “I can't delay completing my mission.”
“You don't have to do this,” Steve said. “Let me help you.”
Bucky pressed his head against the wall. “You don't understand,” he said, because Steve didn't. He breathed, “Вы имеете в виду для меня все и я не знаю, почему. Не дай мне разорвать вас. Моя прекрасная моя голубка,” to Steve's confusion.
Bucky pushed away from the wall and walked out of the bedroom. Steve followed on his heels, lips pressed together. By the time they reached the window Steve reached out and grasped Bucky's wrist.
“I won't let you kill him, Buck,” Steve said.
“Good,” Bucky said. “I won't stop until its done.”
“You don't have to do this,” Steve growled.
“I do,” Bucky said back. “You'll see.”
Bucky wrenched his wrist free, bent down, grasped his duffel bag and slipped out of the window. A part of him felt relieved that Steve just let him go, another felt sick. Steve should have stopped them. If he didn't bear Bucky Barnes' face Steve would have stopped him. The Soldier squared his jaw. This had been a mistake, and it would soon be one he didn't remember.
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {6B}
(Anonymous) - 2014-05-16 06:08 (UTC) - ExpandFill: Голубка [My Dove] {6C}
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {6C}
(Anonymous) - 2014-06-26 10:58 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {6C}
Re: Spoilers, Steve/Winter Soldier, Winter Soldier has a crush
Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {7A}
Steve breathed out slowly and looked up at the stars as he sat on the park bench beneath a single tree. He tried to wrap his mind around it, around the fact that Bucky was alive and, apparently, had been stalking him. That Bucky worked for HYDRA, had a mission to kill Nick Fury. That Bucky protected him, took lives for him, shielded him, threatened for him, was hurt, tortured, and remembered because of him. Steve tried to take it in, and failed.
“It’s not like I had a choice, you know?”
Steve closed his eyes, clasped his hands between his knees. He said, “I know,” back.
The Soldier swallowed. “Голубка….” Bucky breathed out a slow, measured breath. “Natasha has a plan.”
They’d been talking for hours. Steve still couldn’t process half of the things Bucky had told him, the Soldier had told him, often reiterated in cold, clinical precision of a mission report. Steve clenched his teeth, tried to push down that thought that practically everyone had known well before he found out the truth. He tried to push down that Bucky wasn’t even going to tell him if he hadn’t made that slip, if Steve hadn’t been one observant son of a bitch.
“She would,” Steve said. Steve didn’t know Natasha as well as Bucky, and he doubted he would ever know her in quite the same way as Bucky considering everything, but Steve knew that the Black Widow rarely did anything without a plan or three in the mix.
“It’s not going to work,” the Soldier said, his words practically monotone. Steve was starting to recognize the shift between pure Bucky and the Soldier which happened with glaring frequency, as if the mind of the man couldn’t make up who he was at any given moment, couldn’t parse things properly. Steve doubted Bucky would ever regain the ability to be wholly one or the other. Maybe, if they could keep him from returning to HYDRA, he’d be able to find a middle ground some day.
Steve wanted to be there, to work with him, to make sure that Bucky could at the very least be able to be a person again. He wanted to see the man come out of this at least in tact if nothing else. It’d be more than Steve could have ever hoped for when Bucky fell from the train, although Steve wasn’t sure if everything that had happened was better than the thought of Bucky dying that day.
“She doesn’t know HYDRA like we do,” Steve murmured in agreement.
Bucky licked his lips, the Soldier reported. “HYDRA within SHIELD buried half of the trigger phrases that are hidden within her mind like a minefield. The decision to reclaim Subject: Black Widow in the resulting chaos from Project Insight would be tactically ideal. Her ability to blend in as a human counteracts my inability to be so.”
“You are human,” Steve said, his words like the force of a sledgehammer enough to make Bucky stutter. Steve glanced to him, eyes almost feverish, and Bucky could believe that Steve’s words were true.
“I...don’t know human interaction very well,” Bucky mumbled. “Not. Anymore.”
Steve clenched his fists, but nodded. “I know, Buck. We’ll figure it out. We’ll...we’ll help you get there again.”
Bucky hissed a breath through his teeth. “They have words they can use on me, too, Голубка. There is no escaping that.”
“You’ve broken programming,” Steve pointed out. “You’ve been breaking it, and from what you’ve told me, far, far quicker than any time you’ve broken through before.”
Months, compared to years, and all it had taken was a man in red, white and blue. Bucky’s lips curled up, almost dangerous in the smirk that threatened to overtake his face. For a moment, a brief, inescapable moment, he felt like they could get through this. That with Steve he could finally defy HYDRA. He could finally keep the things he desired, that he wanted.
“You are,” Bucky halted, the Soldier murmured, “Голубка. Special. Known?”
Steve nodded. He reached out a hand and threaded his fingers with Bucky’s. The Soldier glanced down at them, and then at Steve who stared at him with an expression the Soldier wasn’t quite sure how to read. Steve smiled. “Yeah. You know me, Buck. You’ve always known me.”
“Mine?” the Soldier questioned. He bit his lip.
“Always yours,” Steve said back. “Now, tell me what you have in mind. We have to get our plan straightened out and in a row before he go in guns-a-blazing.”
Bucky blinked. “Taking on HYDRA by ourselves? Why is that familiar?”
Steve grinned. “Because we’ve done this before, although technically it was just me breaking out a hundred or so guys against a base full of enemy men behind enemy lines.”
Bucky stared at him. Really, really, stared at him like he was completely insane, like he had a death wish. Somehow that didn’t feel far off the mark, really. This man, this impossible man who stuck in his mind like a shining, bright light, this foolish, stupid, idiotic punk had really done something like that once. He vaguely remembered, thought he remembered, something about doing it for him except that seemed egotistical and statistically impossible even though this, all of this now, the plans and the thought of taking on HYDRA with just the two of them, was for him.
For the first time Bucky and the Soldier both felt, truly felt, like it could be possible. That he could be free.
They spent the rest of the night, until the sun began to peek up over the horizon, discussing their plan of attack on the park bench. Steve didn’t let go of his hand.
Steve hauled Natasha out of the wreckage, lips pressed together. He’d expected something like this the minute he heard that voice speaking, cold, clinical, their names, their date of birth, their alias. He knew that voice. He knew what it meant. Steve could barely contain his fury, it boiled beneath his skin, the temper he’d always had deep down that he kept on a tight leash underneath the saintly, smiling face.
Steve hauled Natasha up out of the wreckage, pushing aside the slab of concrete with lips pressed thin as Natasha wheezed. He asked, “Can you move?”
“I’m good,” Natasha coughed out. “I’m good.”
“Then we should go,” Steve said, catching sight of the lights in the distance. “We’ve got company.”
Natasha nodded and quickly the two of them scrambled through the wreck of Camp Lehigh and into the surrounding forest. They ran for what felt like hours upon hours, darting through trees, trying to avoid what they knew to be HYDRA, had to be HYDRA, sent to confirm that they were dead. Natasha tried not to think about what Lehigh meant in the scheme of things. What Lehigh would do to Steve in particular, even, because that was a can of fish that, for the moment, did not bode well.
About a mile and a half they stumbled across what was potentially a farm. Steve ducked into a barn, a honest to god barn because Natasha could hear horses and pigs and what sounded like sheep. Natasha kept a look out outside, and after a moment Steve returned.
“There’s a truck about forty yards over and what looks like a road,” he said, brushing straw off of his pants.
“HYDRA is five minutes out,” Natasha nodded towards the forest. They could catch the lights dancing above the trees. “They’ll sweep by this place. We have to move.”
“Let’s go, then,” Steve said, and they dashed for the truck. Forty yards was nothing to cover for two enhanced people. It took seconds to get from the barn to the truck, which sat at the edge of the road almost conveniently. Natasha couldn’t see anything immediately wrong with it, but she doubted it was left there, what looked like far enough away from any sort of established building, by chance.
Steve quickly smashed the drivers side window, unlocked the door, and ducked down. He fiddled around, Natasha couldn’t quite see what he was doing, but she didn’t care. They had precious little time, and she focused more or slipping into the passengers side and looked for keys or a sign of why the truck was abandoned in the first place. The engine started, and for a moment she jolted, surprised, as Steve slipped into the seat and pulled the door shut behind him.
“You know how to hotwire a car?” Natasha said.
Steve laughed as he shifted the truck into drive and pressed down on the gas pedal. The engine coughed, and Natasha could see why it’d been abandoned now. The whole thing sounded sickly and probably wouldn’t get them far, but it’d get them far enough.
“You learn things while in the middle of a war you’d never learn otherwise,” he said.
Natasha blinked, and then looked at Steve with slanted eyes. “I can’t quite see it,” she said after a minute.
Steve shot her a smile that was just Steve, it was brilliant and so sweet that Natasha really couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see Steve being anything but the upstanding citizen and, for a moment, that terrified her. She knew he’d been in war, did horrible things, fought, killed, and probably any number of actions that were morally questionable because that was what war did to a person, but she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see the man who’d knock a guy unconscious over killing him do anything remotely like what men did in war, and it terrified her.
“I left a hundred in a drawer the barn,” Steve said. “As compensation.”
Natasha blinked again, and felt her world tilt back into the realm of normal. That she could see. That felt like the Steve Rogers who would smack a guy around, maybe break a bone or two, but ultimately leave the target alive over killing them.
She shook her head, smiled, and said, “You are a strange one, Rogers.”
They took the truck into the first gas station they reached, and then ditched it for another car that Steve quickly hotwired. This car wasn’t keening and dying as it sputtered about, and they drove that back to DC. The trip took up the rest of the night, and left them in the early hours of dawn. They dropped the car in downtown and made their way to Sam’s on foot. Natasha and Steve discussed on the route back where they could go, knowing they were most likely going to be tracked from the multitude of visual information the city provided, and decided upon Sam since he had already been debriefed and pulled into Fury’s ‘seek out HYDRA’ plot.
At Sam’s they washed up, changed clothes, and Natasha tried to check in with Nick and Maria on a burner phone she had for this very reason. They got the news when Sam served up breakfast. Natasha paled quite suddenly as she listened to a message, a look Steve had seen on her only once before, when Clint attacked the Hellicarrier while under Loki’s spell.
“Natasha?” he questioned.
“Nick’s dead,” Natasha said, voice faint. “He...he actually succeeded.”
Steve closed his eyes. “He’s always been a crackshot,” he said weakly.
“I thought he could break the programming, give Nick a chance,” Natasha muttered. “I didn’t….” Steve reached over, grasped her hand, but he didn’t do anything else. Natasha wouldn’t appreciate anything else. She breathed out, hissed between her teeth.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sam said. “He seemed like a good man.”
“He was,” Natasha said.
“I know this might seem like an ass question,” Sam continued, grimacing, “but what does this mean for the plan? The guy was an integral part of it, right?”
Steve closed his eyes, breathed out, and slipped into the mindset of leader, commander. He had to make the tough decisions, and while the loss of Nick wasn’t something they’d banked on, they had to continue onward. They couldn’t stop now.
“We go through with it,” Steve said sharply. Natasha closed her eyes, nodded. She sucked in a breath, compartmentalized everything down. She was good at this.
“We grieve later,” Natasha’s voice was steel. “We finish the mission.”
Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {7A}
(Anonymous) 2014-07-27 08:04 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {7A}
(Anonymous) 2014-07-28 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)Re: Fill: Голубка [My Dove] {7A}