Backhistory: Black Widow & Winter Soldier #2 WHO: James & Natalia. WHEN: A few days after this, and some time after. WHERE: All over. WHAT: The end. STATUS: Some nudity, but mostly it's just severe beatings and horrendous outcomes.
______________
Two days later saw plans changing once more. They were going inside the embassy. To do that, they had to be presentable and with a good cover. That meant getting James up to par for a night with fancy diplomats. The hair could be dealt with. With a good wash and condition, she could make his hair really stunning.
Currently, however, she was clad in a matching bra and underwear. Her hair was in curlers. It might be some guy's fantasy somewhere, but Natalia doubted it. The illusion was broken with the image. She was just another girl who had to spend time to look the way she did. She placed a bowl of hot water and a straight razor on a table near the chair she'd sat James down in. The seat was an old recliner, but it would suit its purpose to allow her access to his neck and face.
The hot towel was removed from his face. She thumbed his jawline to see how much softer the course hair was. This needed to be believable and cutting corners wasn't going to, well, cut it. Natalia dabbed his face with the towel as she set it near the razor on the table.
"Let's practice our English." Her accent was very nearly perfect, but had a classic film feel about it. "What say you?"
In the limited scope of his memory, prepping for missions didn't usually involve attention spared to his appearance. The tactical suit, the functionality of the arm and any peripheral weapons, yes; but cleaning and trimming stopped at the point of utilitarianism. Infiltration under this sort of cover was best left to assets like Natalia, which was why the orders were initially met by his blank confusion.
Personal bodyguards, however, had to be presentable. Her curls and immaculate makeup and the sheen of her dress would have to be matched in a carefully cut suit rather than kevlar and the gleam of metal. And a close shave. Alien ideas, these.
"English isn't a problem." Nothing classic film about his pronunciation, though he didn't know to qualify their accents as such. But it was unmistakably fluent, the broad vowels and occasionally dropped r's. James leaned into her touch, waiting for her to continue. Implicit trust, despite the razor. "Anyway, they should be doing most of the talking by the end of the night."
"No, it would seem you speak it with ease," she said with the quirk of her lips. Another thing to add to the list of mysterious things about the Winter Soldier.
Another bowl was procured. This one foamed when she swirled a small brush around inside it. She dabbed the fluffy foam onto the side of his face, tenderly but firmly to make sure that all the nooks and crannies of his face would be covered. Once that was done, she sat down on the arm of the chair and tilting his chin upward. She'd start with his throat. "I could spike their gin easily, just something to loosen their tongues a little quicker if it becomes a problem."
Black Widows were, after all, highly skilled at making things look accidental.
“Are you asking or telling?” Like many things in the past weeks -- months -- engaging in a discussion of tactics that didn’t involve him simply accepting a set of orders was strange; as was this. With his head tilted back like this, he left himself exposed, and not even his own abilities would be enough to stop her should she decide to pass the razor clean across his jugular or his carotid.
The fingers of his metal arm pulsed tight against the armrest, but his head was rolled a degree further back, allowing her the room she needed to scrape his neck clean.
After a moment of silence: “I don’t remember learning it. Not with films, at least, like you.”
"Plan B, if Plan A takes too long." Plan B would give them some time after in which they wouldn't have to return to base so quickly. Time was winding down, and Natalia did not want to be parted from him. Funny how fast attachments could grow.
She made careful but quick work of his neck. The bowl of clean water was rapidly clouding with the remnants of stubble and lather. Not a single nick on his neck, though, but then she never expected anything else. Her fingers were adept in many ways. She moved onto his cheek. "Do you remember anything from before?"
“From before what?” A tilt of his head to better accommodate her. “From before five months ago? There’s nothing.” Because while the thing that owned him, the thing that had made him, seemed integral, somehow -- HYDRA, Control; voices he knew, names he did not -- five months ago, orders were issued, and the Red Room was the mission. Natalia was the mission. Natalia… was something else. Natalia was what he remembered.
“Plan B, then.” There was only the left side of his cheek left, and he studied her as she applied the blade once more to his skin. Plan B was quicker. Plan B gave them something beyond the reach of their handlers’ timetable.
"I'll plant it in the dinner drinks, but not before. We don't want them or the other guards getting suspicious." The other guards were expendable.
But her mind was not on the embassy, the diplomats, or the games she'd love to play with those expendable guards. They were on James and nothing before five months ago. She paused. She'd heard about the wiping, knew that some of it had been done on her. She couldn't tell what was falsified and what was her own, sometimes. "They don't give you a fake background or anything?"
Something in his expression contracted as she spoke, as though he wished to shut himself off from the turn the conversation had taken. “It’s not needed,” he said after a long stretch of quiet, catching her hand as she scraped off the last bit of stubble. Of course there had to be something beyond the five months -- the nightmares were every bit the evidence of that -- but it wasn’t something that needed to explored. Not now. Not before a mission. Not ever, came the reflex thought, but perhaps that was the training speaking, not James.
“Do you remember anything from before?” Anything real?
"I remember the Red Room. I remember training, but it's bits and pieces. It's interspersed with memories of intense ballet recitals that I know never happened. I remember fighting a girl, much younger than me, and being told to kill her. That she was weak. She would break. There was no future for her." Natalia was lost in her memories. The most recent, though, was the graduation ceremony. The final test to move on to become a Black Widow. She passed. She didn't need to talk about that one, it was evident.
Her hand was still in his. She wasn't sure whose memories were easier to handle. Hers, with their double quality, or his where he couldn't regret anything.
Natalia looked at him, with growing fondness, even if it was as subtle as she'd ever been. "I remember you now." They can't take that from her.
And that was something important, wasn’t it? I remember you now. James wondered if he would be able to say the same in a day, a week; five months. If he’d remember the way her hand felt in his, the deceptively slender wrist and pale skin; the way a lock of her hair had escaped the grip of the curler. The carefully placed surgical scars. The way something inside ached when he thought of her nameless and elsewhere.
“Me too.”
Despite the remnants of lather on his face, she gave him a lingering kiss. The razor was deposited in the bowl, and Natalia stood up only to reach for both of his hands. She pulled him with her into the bathroom where a large, clawed-foot tub was already prepared. The water was steaming. She instructed him to strip and head into the water. That limp hair was not going to work.
"Do you need me to turn around?" she asked, the corner of her mouth quirking upward. She set a stood at the end of the tub and sat down. "Should I cover my eyes?"
“You’re enjoying this.” Not so much an accusation as an observation, dryly uttered as James moved to obey her. His handlers had watched him before he’d been assigned out, but remaining under the weight of her gaze felt different. Better. He decided he liked it. Their prolonged isolation meant that they had taken to spending the hours only half uniformed, so there wasn’t much for him to remove, a shapeless t-shirt and heavily wrought trousers, the holster from between his shoulders and little else besides.
Soon, he was naked and stepping into the water as instructed, the steam rising as the temperature -- hot; good -- bit at his skin as he sunk into it without waiting to acclimatize. The hair was the issue, and so he slid all the way down, submerging his head for a full fifteen seconds before reappearing.
"Who wouldn't?" she teased when he was back up for air. She reached across the length of the tub to retrieve the shampoo, and on the way back, kissed the corner of his mouth. She could get used to missions with a little fun before them. A little something to relax her. She found herself much more at ease with him now that -- well, they'd slept together. Cliche as it was.
With a handful of shampoo, she began by moving her fingers through his hair, massaging as she went. Again, her hands were more than skilled at this, knowing where to pressure and where to go softer to alleviate stress and put someone into a much more tranquil state. "Should I feel bad for enjoying you?"
More than skilled. As she lathered and pressed, James felt a ribbon of tension simply give along the course of his spine. He relaxed against the hard porcelain of the tub, letting his head roll forward under the push of Natalia’s fingers. The water was still clear, throwing back a faint reflection of the woman behind him.
“You feel...” he finally said, speaking quietly. Enjoyment was not for them. It was getting progressively easier to forget that. And the consequences? He felt -- fear. Or what he supposed must be fear. “-- don’t let them know,” he added, reverting back to Russian as he glanced back over his shoulder at her. Reflections were imperfect; he wanted her.
He couldn't disguise his fear. She leaned down and rested her cheek against the top of his head. Her hands slipping down the front of his chest. She slipped into her own mother tongue to speak. "We won't let them know. We're the best they've got, remember? We can fool even then."
* * *
The success of Plan B was illustrated in the aftermath of a mission accomplished: chaos.
Information obtained and a tidy few diplomats feeling the effects of a certain concoction of gin, the two Americans had been able to leave the party in the hours after midnight. Though there was no tail, a car switch ensured a certain level of misstep for anyone who thought to follow them, and the property was given two loop-arounds before James was satisfied. Everything was where they’d left it, their possessions meagre in number and utilitarian in nature, stored neatly away. Stored so that they would be in easy reach.
Natalia’s dress was a tool of the trade. With the assignment over, James found it a jarring reminder of what they’d just done; of what, not a few hours ago, they’d been talking about. He’d not been graceful in the removing of it, and had left it pinned beneath the sidearm he’d carried holstered by his side, beneath his dinner jacket. Out of sight was not out of mind -- how could it be, when their very bodies were those selfsame tools? -- but there was a certain sort of pleasure in stripping each other bare.
“Leave separately, rendezvous later.” He was speaking into the soft curve of her neck, voice pitched low.
Natalia was all tangled up in him in every way she could possibly be. Limbs and hair and heart entwined with him. Every touch, every breath, every word was savored and stored in a place deep inside to keep with her for the moments they'd be parted. If there plans went through -- and there was no reason they shouldn't -- they'd be free, and they'd have one another.
"I don't want to leave you." Her lips ghosted over his ear lobe. The more time they spent together, the more open and honest she'd become with her feelings for him. They'd come swiftly, and looking back, she could see the beginnings of it building over the long months. Now it seemed like there was no time. "Promise me."
“Just until we’re clear.” Tactically, it was better if they split. People alone covered more ground, and their handlers knew they were together -- teacher and pupil. James knew Natalia understood the reasoning behind his plan for all that it was difficult for her to agree -- just as it was difficult to think of anything but her mouth on his skin.
The delicate bones along the back of her neck were given the sweep of his fingertips as he continued to speak. “We’ll drop the data. Then leave.”
The shudder that ran through her was pure reaction. Her teeth nipped at that earlobe, eager to continue for just a little bit longer. Natalia had never felt more like herself than when she was disobeying her orders. She'd often thought of the other girls who had gone off book. They seemed foolish, selfish, but now… There was no other choice. She understood that now.
"Where do we rendezvous?" She coiled her fingers through his hair, but didn't wait for an answer. Natalia gave his hair a tug and jerked his head back so that she could kiss him deeply, a moan escaping into his mouth.
And it was in that moment of distraction -- that moment when James determined if he could have one thing, one person, even if it was for only a little while, it would be her; the moment where he reached for her hips even as she pulled at him -- that it happened.
The Red Room had more than one dancer, and they were all silent until they weren’t. James missed the quiet creak, Natalia’s voice almost drowning out the world, but there was a pressure change in the floor beneath him. And then the voice.
“Girl.” Thin steel, Russian, slicing the air as James reached reflexively for the gun he’d set down. “You are a disgrace.”
Tatiana. This was not the way this should have gone, everything bared and exposed. This was the end, and Natalia knew it.
Natalia drew in a breath that was like cinders in her chest, but as soon as she saw James reach for his gun, she swooped around, kicking out her leg to the first agent she saw. He came down hard. She reached for the gun when there was a sudden crack against her temple. She went down to the ground, warm blood trickling from her hairline. It was too late by then. Her vision was blurry, off, and sets of hands grabbed arms, legs, hair and pulled her to her knees.
It was a quick, nasty scuffle that left Natalia subdued and still in their hands. The Soldier would require slightly more time -- and the people who knew how to do it. HYDRA had come with the Red Room, three men for every one of theirs.
Tatiana, tall and unmoved by the close quarter combat, stood behind the fallen Widow, her hand a heavy claw within the red hair, nails close at the scalp to direct the angle of her head. Once Natalia regained a measure of consciousness, her gaze would be angled to see what was panning out even now, a brutal display of discipline being mete out by HYDRA handlers clubbing their asset with electrified staves. Two lay dead on the floor, pierced by the bullets he’d fired; two others now approached with a large hulk of metal -- a contraption meant to shackle his arms.
Natalia remembered the first few weeks of her time in the Red Room. She'd spent the first moments in tears, terrified of everyone around her. What was this place? Where was her mama and papa? Where had they gone after the fire? The kind soldier who brought her to the Red Room had abandoned her too. She was all alone. Over the course of a few weeks, the tears had been mocked and brutalized from her, and those were the last tears that Natalia Romanova would shed.
Until this evening.
Though she struggled the entire time, the hand in her hair tightened. Her limbs felt pulled taunt, spreading her wider in some terribly display of power over her. It was working, god help her. She pleaded, tears streaming down her face in a broken, raspy voice. "It was me. I seduced him. It was all me. Please don't hurt him!"
Natalia’s voice cut through the silent haze that had enveloped James as he fought. For every blow he delivered, he received two more. And yet he powered through, smashing in the face of one man, the windpipe of another. A prod to the centre of his chest delivered a shock, but this didn’t arrest the heart -- no, only the machine could do that, and the machine was not here. But the shocks kept coming, and he stumbled and would have collapsed beneath the weight of his attackers if he hadn’t heard her then. It was me. It was me.
A wordless roar escaped him and he charged.
"Please, stop!" The tears were like fire in her lungs. They burned everything in sight until she wasn't sure she had anything more to give. Over and over, she begged, calling out his name. "I'll do anything, just make it stop!"
The second the asset began to roar, Tatiana's patience wore thin. She grabbed a baton at her own waist and went straight for the Soldier's balls. That should put him down, and if that didn't, another handler pressed a button on yet another contraption, and James's arm -- the metal one -- dropped limp at his side. A pair of handlers, fresh from another room, took up the ridiculously overbearing set of shackles.
Everything contracted into one agonizing knot. Was this hatred? -- yes, this must be it, an emotion that tasted strangely familiar, choking him as the dead weight of his arm, combined with Tatiana’s savagely efficient blow, dropped him to the ground. And Natalia was still screaming.
As the asset was levelled into the shackles, Tatiana turned in one gracefully sharp movement. The weeping girl before her was studied for a further moment before she cracked the end of the baton against her cheek -- not hard enough to knock her out, but hard enough to hurt.
“Enough.”
Natalia's silence was swift. Not even a snivel. She prodded her cheek with her tongue. Nothing broken, but she could feel it begin to thicken. She wished that she could taste blood, something, anything other than bile. The revenge she wished upon Tatiana was clear on her face, and they'd made the mistake of sending her to train with the Winter Soldier. She'd learned all kinds of new ways to torture.
Tatiana crouched in her tight skirt and dug the baton under Natalia's chin, forcing her head up. "Take one last look, my dear." There was nothing tender about her voice. "This will be the last time he will see you."
Natalia's jaw tightened, her throat dry, as she did as she was told.
* * *
HYDRA had sent a plane to retrieve the Winter Soldier. Soft-spoken German guided James' return to consciousness. ... often in the past. Five months is a long time without treatment. Even the best gun needs cleaning, Fraulein, else they jam! Laughter, humourless, followed by the cool silence of that woman, whose silhouette came into slow focus as James finally opened his eyes.
In the half-dark, the bowels of the military aircraft were lit by eerie green from various screens. There was Tatiana, stood in conference with a pale-haired man in a bowtie and thick glasses. And... Natalia; there. The centrepiece of the montage, set in a chair, in shapeless grey clothes and bruised. He wanted to say something, call her name, reach for her... but no. There was something in his mouth. His limbs were in heavy fetters. And he realised.
He was in the machine. No. No no no.
This was it, the last thing they could take from her. She'd found a place in the world, and it was with him. They could have done so much together. Hired assassins. Spies. They really could have rocked the entire world with their skills. Together, they should have been unstoppable, names to be feared, except from each other.
Natalia could take the beatings, physical and mental, with barely a flinch. But here, now, this was going to be her breaking point. There were still so many things she wanted to know about him, wanted to tell him. There was no time, but some part of her believed that maybe, if they both wanted it badly enough, he could shrug off the mind wiping and remember her.
She wasn't supposed to talk, though they hadn't restrained her in any way. They wanted her to prove that she was a good little soldier. Why they hadn't killed her, it would take her a few months to figure out (She was their most valued operative. You didn't throw away a perfectly good knife when it just needed a sharpening.) Natalia couldn't tell you what the anguish of seeing him like that had done to her. That part of her that wanted something for herself, something for him, it was screaming and pleading like it had done that night. Silent tears leaked from the corner of her eyes as she stared at him.
Unbidden, the words, "I love you, James," came out. Then the sucker punch doubled her over.
HYDRA was furious with the way their asset had malfunctioned, but this? A look of blatant disgust crossed Tatiana's typically fixed expression as Natalia attempted another outburst. This was humiliating. She would have to be broken down all over again, and this? This was only the first step.
There was a rattle as James' arm strained against its bond, fingers clenching. Iron could be torn apart. He knew this. He'd done it. It would just require continued pressure, pushing, pulling. If he reached for her, he could break free. She could break free -- run, go, don't wait, he wanted to say, but the words were naught but a wet groan in the back of his throat, rubber filling his mouth and choking him. The sound became a growl as the sound of impact -- fist, Natalia -- reverberated around the close space; he jerked again, staring at her through the effort of this. Go.
"Don't…" she whispered, knowing it was hopeless. Telling them to stop would only make them turn the machine on faster. She knew their games because she played the, she cut her teeth on them. Everything was a game within a game. They had a plan for her, and she knew this was the beginning. She had to win this. She had to be better than they were.
The metal restraints that held her in place were tight, but no tighter than she'd been trained to release herself from. She slept with tighter restraints than this. Every time she attempted to extract her hands, a baton came down on her knuckles. She'd been taught to withstand pain. This might even help her. Years of learning to dislocate fingers silently and quickly saw her out of her bonds. Natalia's hand angled sharply at the guard's throat, crushing his windpipe in the process. Tatiana was shoved aside and into the metal wall and then the ground. The ankle restraints required finesse, but she had the memories of a ballet dancer, and contorting her feet was standard.
Finally free, she jumped onto his chair. There had to be a mechanism. She just needed to find it. "Don't let them take me from you," she told him, an edge to her voice. Her eyes were wild. "Hold on. I'm going to get you out of here.”
James locked his gaze onto hers. She was crazy. She was capable. The low-grade grinding sound thickened as his arm strained, as he wrenched himself against everything they’d clapped down on him, deaf to the sound of chaos Natalia’s display had thrown across the compartment they found themselves in.
“Enough of this,” snarled Tatiana, briefly winded by her contact against the wall, fury rippling in her voice. As she reached for her baton, she directed her anger at the German, whose glasses had fallen askew on his face. “Do it now!”
"No!" Natalia became frantic, fumbling with the restraints and realizing that she needed to get to the geek at the machines. There was no time to make a choice between James and the egghead as the machine clicked and whirred and began its horror-making. She forgot about Tatiana and the dead guard. Everything was screams and the unbearable sound that came from the back of his throat.
He was strong. She knew that. He could withstand anything, she'd seen it. Her fingers dug into flesh as she sobbed what would be her last tears. "James. James, don't let them do this. You have a name. You have a place. Come back to me."
His hands became fists and his eyes widened and he stared and stared until everything collapsed into harsh white light. Don’t let them. He wanted to say her name. Don’t let them. He wanted… nothing.
There was nothing.
“Fraulein, compose yourself!” The German, calling out as two handlers, waved on by Tatiana, came up to peel the stricken young woman off the Soldier, dragging her off him and back into the centre of the room, holding her up. A baton to the solar plexus would stun her into brief compliance.
A push of a button and the power intensified, the screams eventually gurgling into silence as the uncoordinated jerks of an unwilling subject became wave after wave of fine twitches as the machine clicked through its different modes.
Hours passed. Or minutes. Time was suddenly meaningless. The implantation of memory was a fine art which required endless days of treatment. This was not that. This was a crude obliteration of memory, a quelling of resistance, breaking the links between emotion and remembrance, with only a looped message of obedience fed into the circuit.
Winded and limp, Natalia couldn't tear her eyes from the sight of him. Please don't let him be gone. He was the only person who had ever cared about her. Take that away, and she really had no place in the world. That was they wanted, after all, wasn't it? Her complete removal from anything that might compromise the mission. What they didn't know was that what they were doing, right now, was the worst compromise of all. This would follow her, no matter how many times they gave her memories, no matter how many times they moved her. This had become part of her core.
The machine stopped finally, at last, and Natalia jerked forward in the handlers' grasp, only to get another stun to the abdomen. Frothing and angry, she tried once more, this time the stun came from behind, right at the base of her spine. A yelp of surprise and then her knees gave out beneath her. She croaked, "James."
The baton levelled at the centre of Natalia’s nape was still hot from the shocks it delivered. The promise of further pain was blatant, but Tatiana knew her girls well. They’d been taught to move past that which was physical. Further blows from her hand were not going to be enough to bring Natalia stillness.
As the machine revved down, its hum fading into silence, the German sprang forward, worrying over the asset which lay still and quiet in its grip. The contraption around his head was pried open and pushed aside, the mouth guard removed. He reached to pull apart his eyelids to check for a pupillary response, but stepped back with a nervous “Oh!” when the Soldier’s eyes sprang open, gaze falling flat upon him.
In German, the HYDRA handler began to speak to him, eliciting no response as the straps were undone. “The student has failed. She needs to be taught. Obedience. Obey.” The man sprang back as the asset sat up -- then stood, the muscle in his shoulder rolling as the many intricate layers of the metal arm rippled into activity.
His gaze lowered. The student.
There was no recognition in those eyes of his.
Natalia felt like she was sinking into quicksand that would very soon cover her completely. The panic inside only made her slip further and faster to her doom. Her red hair was in stark contrast with her pale face and even paler eyes. What little fight was left within her vanished at his coldness. She pleaded, silently, with him. Remember me. Please remember me.
Tatiana's lips twisted into a smirk; she'd won and she knew it.
She was so slight it didn’t even require the power of the metal arm to lift her by the throat. Up, higher, until his other arm was outstretched and steady, his focus flatly on her. Waiting for her to display the failure. The student has failed. She needs to be taught.
Her hands, which had been freed when he'd taken her throat, reached up and around his wrist. She almost wanted him to crush her throat, get this nightmare over with, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? Natalia was not going to get away so easily, not when they still had uses for her. After all, as devastating a blow as this nonsense, that she could compromise the Winter Soldier made them want to know what else she was capable of.
"Please…" she choked out, devoid of air, "James."
Metal balled into a fist. Struck her stomach. The ground met her in its uncompromising grip as he dropped her, limbs smacking heavy as he stepped around to reach for her hair.
“Who?”
It wasn't the metal to the gut that winded her. He was gone. The iron voice was enough to do that on its own. She remembered the last time his hands were in her hair; they were just as strong, but soothing. She wanted to keep those memories in a hidden place in her mind. When this was done, and she knew it would be soon because pain and punishment could only last so long, she'd tuck him away and only bring him out when she was truly alone.
"Your name…" she managed one last time, and just as defiant but quietly. "...is James."
Repetition would not move him. The Soldier hauled her to her feet, her hair the only leverage he required, and struck her again. Again. Slammed the air out of her. The defiance was there for Tatiana to judge, and there was enough of it still to keep the beating going for the next few minutes.
The Soldier was tireless. Nameless. He hit her again.