WHO: Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanoff WHEN: Yesterday WHERE: Outdoors. WHAT: Natasha gives Bucky a lesson in not underestimating the Black Widow. He calls her out on calling him James. Awkwardness ensues. WARNINGS: It's kind of sad.
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There was a learning curve with that new arm of his. His predecessors, who were his future self, already had a handle on its weight, the calibrations it could do in a second, how to use it to its fullest advantages. But there was a fine point between a love tap with a tire iron and splitting open someone's skull because you weren't quite sure of the mechanics of the arm. Natasha learned over the years to stay away from that arm. It was the basic principle he'd taught her: whatever their strength is, use it against them without compromising yourself to it.
She was like a ballerina when she fought, and sometimes it was hard to forget the conditioning when she was in this mode. The only difference was that she'd learned to improvise where most dancers had a set routine. Yes, there were certain moves that had a set-execute-follow-up procedure to them, but they were rapid and so precise given the moment that they may as well have been improvised.
There were movements that people — and men in particular — were accustomed to. They used their size and brute strength, particularly when it came to women. Natasha used that to her advantage. Face to face, arm to arm, she may not have what it took to take down Steve Rogers, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in how she used that improv. She had studied fighting techniques for longer than most of the people on her team had been alive (or out of the ice). She'd seen the styles change and morph, and she'd been able to use her previous knowledge and bring it forward along with those changes.
That's what she did now, as Bucky circled her once more. He was quick, quicker than Sam Wilson, but Sam had height on him. Always slowed an opponent down. Natasha ducked and danced in a spin to remove herself from the direct hit from the arm. He was pulling punches, of course, but every time she could see that, she made sure to make it hurt when she jabbed a fist into his side.
For the first ten minutes, there wasn’t much worth writing home about. Doctor Banner worked a miracle on getting the arm attached, let alone to get it responding to every thought,which had to be some grade A science fiction. It didn’t look much like flesh and bone, but the smallest mental command triggered movement. He’d gotten it down to a natural rhythm, but that was small stuff: holding a fork, tying his shoe, writing with a pen.
This was different. Natasha was casual but lethal grace, and every time Bucky thought he had her cornered, she would twirl out of his reach and cut him short with a warning jab. Or, at least, he’d thought it was a warning jab, but his bruises were starting to say otherwise. He’d slowed himself down, trying to process his timing, how strong to swing without risking real injury -- inside his head was a myriad of checks that were more than likely the reason why he was getting absolutely wrecked at every turn.
He straightened up, metal arm raised to plead a quick second’s break. His head was already shaking as he told her, “Hit the left side, too. At least let me walk outta here with some symmetry in my bruising.”
"You're overthinking." She came around his right side, lifting his flesh and bone arm so that the elbow was in perfect jabbing position. "When you fought before, did you worry about killing someone with this arm?"
Sweat beaded and rolled down the side of Bucky’s face. They’d been at this for a while now, and he’d been out of practice enough that his stamina wasn’t up to par. Never mind that overthinking and trying too hard to stop his own throws was working against him. He knew that. And Natasha seemed pretty aware, as well.
“‘Course not,” he answered, corner of his mouth turning downward. “If I was close quarters, my hardest hit wouldn’t do half the damage. I’m not -- I’m not that guy who doesn’t worry about it.”
"You might have to have a little of that in you here, Bucky." She didn't want to force him to become the Winter Soldier. Some memory update in the middle of the night might do that, but she wanted him to be able to take care of himself and not get jabbed in the side over and over again because he was pulling back when he didn't need to. "We've had werewolves, Bloody Mary, anybody that the White Queen could pull to her side, a dragon, and a lot more. All of those things could snap you like that."
There were ways around using the arm for full force, but most of them included already knowing how that arm worked in every situation. "What if I decided to do more than jab you in the side? What if I used lethal force?"
“Hold on, hold up.” Bucky dropped both arms, taking a step back so he could fix Natasha squarely within his focus. “Are we sparring, or are you tryin’ to teach me how to survive a war? Hate to break it to you, but I took that class already.”
He gave her a grin. “And unless I missed something, you’re not gonna use lethal force,” he continued, feeling perhaps too smug in the assumption.
She narrowed her eyes. He'd fallen into the older trick in the book: underestimating his opponent.
Natasha was utterly silent as she used the arm in her grasp to flip herself up and around his back, putting all of her weight in the trajectory (and using him for leverage) so that when her legs came down over his shoulders, so would Bucky. If she'd used just a little more strength she could have forced him around enough that he could land just wrong on his neck and that would be it. Luckily, Natasha was well versed in the math that it would take to merely wind someone.
Bucky flipped into a roll which ended with him on his back. The metal arm came down hard. Natasha was on top of him before he could catch a breath, her garotte wire at his neck. "War's changed a lot in seventy years, James, and your first lesson is to never underestimate someone whose code name is Black Widow."
The contact with ground was more than enough to force the air from his lungs, but being laid out wasn’t anything new, either. She might have him for a second, but that didn’t mean he was planning to stay put. In fact, Bucky only paused for a short recovery -- and to give her a mild grimace -- before he pulled his metal arm off the ground and latched her wire in its grip. He swung his legs up, using the counterweight to break her stability. From there, it was pure momentum that helped flip her down into the spot he’d just been; his metal arm pinned the wire to the ground while he hovered just above her.
In his hand was a sheathed knife, which had been an easy grab in the middle of the motion. He held it in front of her face, vindication shining through even his struggle to get his breath back. “James, huh?”
The ache in her back wasn't wholly unpleasant, and she attributed that to the familiarity of the scene. Her hand dropped the wire; that metal arm was unrelenting and she knew when to give up on a certain trick. Instead, she fired up Widow's Sting, just enough to alert him it was there, before she rested the edge of the weapon against his side. It was akin to holding a gun against someone's head; the threat loomed.
"It bothers you, doesn't it? Me calling you James." He'd been known simply as the asset back in those days, the Russian days. As the Winter Soldier. It was hazy, but there were some very distinct memories of him. "Why?"
Bucky titled his head at the sound, noting the pulsating light as the Widow Sting activated. He looked back to Natasha, but didn’t relent his hold just yet. There was this inexplicable trust, even beyond the fact that they’d been sharing a room for weeks now. She wouldn’t discharge that weapon.
“It means either you don’t know me at all,” Bucky started, his eyes slipping downwards to her lips for a second. “Or you know me better than you’re letting on,” he finished, turning his gaze back up to her eyes.
"I don't know you."
It wasn't a lie. She didn't know Bucky Barnes. She knew the Winter Soldier, and while there were times she saw that man in his eyes — particularly when he was haunted — she didn't know this man. It stung more than those damn EMPs of hers, and she hated herself for it.
Especially with everything that had gone on with Bruce.
Still, it felt disingenuous to say without some sort of explanation. Natasha couldn't help wanting. "I knew someone who wanted me to call him James a long time ago."
For a few slow-ticking seconds, Bucky let his mind wander down all the possibilities. They all seemed to lead to the same place, though. He ducked his head, his breathing now returned to its normal rhythm.
His voice was quiet, almost hesitant. “So… you cared about him.”
"Caring was forbidden." They still did it anyway.
She frowned all of a sudden. These were things she did not want to burden him with, a shared history he didn't know. She should be happy that he wasn't bogged down with all the death and mental torture that plagued him in the future. That still shadowed her. "And that's all that I'm going to tell you."
There wasn’t much more to do than nod. There was a wall that stood in the way, and as it usually happened, Bucky could only stand in front of it. He’d given up the thought of beating it down. What was on the other side for him just wasn’t worth trying to capture. He knew that.
His movement was quick: from crouched to standing, then extending his bionic arm to her to grab and hoist herself up. It did enough to shrug off a feeling of… disappointment, maybe. Exclusion. She had a right to not say anything, and it wasn’t like he had any moral high ground.