WHO: Bucky Barnes 616, Natasha Romanoff MCU WHEN: Saturday, October 12 WHERE: Outside a spa WHAT: Barnes needs a new shirt, Romanoff convinces him to get a pedicure. TRIGGERS: Talk of character death in detail
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The automatic door closed behind Bucky as he stepped back out into the evening sun over Tumbleweed. The days were getting shorter now, which meant his daylight hours would wane -- truthfully, that didn’t matter a whole lot for a guy who kept an odd schedule anyway, but it was something you noticed with the changing seasons.
He gripped the one plain black t-shirt in his hand and wedged the receipt into his jeans pocket. Three shirts had been mostly getting him by in a week, provided he kept up on laundry, but there was a line being toed with clean clothing. So, four shirts it was. All the same damn shirt because who was there to impress? This was function, not fashion. Done deal.
As for carrying the shirt out in his hand? The cashier had reached for a bag, only to discover that a suitable size had run out. The offering was something that looked like it could bag roughly half a sofa. Best to save that for someone who planned to bag roughly half a sofa, Bucky felt.
He reached for the cheap pair of aviators (again: fashion, not function) dangling off his shirt collar and popped them on to offset some of the stronger rays of sun bouncing off cars in the street. One glance up the street before turning to walk down it was given, but he stalled before making that about-turn to start off. The red hair caught his eye, and that in turn caught his fuller focus before outsourcing to his feet, which were put into motion towards a familiar presence down the block.
Tumbleweed's spa limitations were fine. She'd enjoyed a manicure or a pedicure, the occasional massage. Today, she was just hoping not to run into someone's nightmare while she was sitting in a chair with cotton stuffed between her toes. The last thing she wanted was to have to run after some damn clowns to see if Tony or Alice could determine how to get rid of them.
Natasha was determined to stay away from the haunted house herself. She couldn't imagine how a giant cliff on a strange planet would appear here. If maybe the weather would change, or that creepy guy who guarded it would appear, floating on what seemed to be simply robes and the breeze. For a flash, she wondered exactly what happened in the moment when she died and Clint got the Stone. Did the Stonekeeper hand it over? Why hadn't they just ransacked him for it?
The closer it was to Blip Day, the more Natasha thought about these things. When she'd taken off from the compound, she'd been excited and buzzing with energy. She remembered smiling at Steve, telling him that she'd see him later, and she had completely expected to. Her mind was wandering too much, and she needed something to calm her nerves so spa day.
From the back, it looked like she was taking her time, which didn’t seem totally characteristic of the Natasha that Bucky had come a little closer to knowing in the last few weeks -- it seemed like perhaps she was on a different thought path than where her feet were moving, even if Bucky knew that such a thing was also an easy disguise for a trained spy. You could watch the world without the world knowing if you were good at acting. Maybe that was just something that bridged across the Multi-Verse when it came to Black Widows.
At any rate, her slow pace made it easy to chew up the distance until he was just a step behind. He announced himself first by voice, rather than jumping right into her space.
“Errand day?”
It was easy to pretend that she hadn't been caught in a more melancholy moment, but the man attached to the voice wasn't one she particularly cared to play spy games with. At least not with the details of her life. The rest of the Avengers knew what was coming up, someone was bound to mention Blip Day.
"Something like that." Natasha pointed to the tiny spa a few shops down. "Every once in a while, you've got to work out the kinks." She glanced down at the shirt in his hands. "Don't you have enough black shirts?"
He followed her gesture to the spa sign, then nodded a small understanding. Another thing that carried over, then. Bucky had to push aside a prying memory of someone who wasn’t here away before his mind started to compare again. It wasn’t fair. He had to stop doing that. Just because Natalia had been sent back without a chance to really talk with her didn’t mean someone else could be fitted into that empty spot left behind. Besides, that was his fault. He waited too long, and then she was gone all over again.
He shook himself back to the present.
“I do now.” The shirt was lifted, and Bucky considered it for a second. “Have to keep one nice and clean in case I need to impress someone, after all.” He glanced towards the spa again. “But don’t let me keep you. Just figured I’d say hi.”
Natasha frowned just the slightest. Now that someone was around, she wasn't sure she wanted to be left to her own thoughts. "Don't suppose you'd do a manicure with me?"
The instant response was a mild look of confusion, if only because he wasn't sure if she was kidding. His gut was telling him no. There's wasn't any science to it, just a feeling.
"Couldn't talk Steve into it, huh?" That wasn't a 'no.' The offer on the table didn't scream Bucky Barnes in any way, but he could see something more beneath that top layer now. A small frown on her face -- he hadn't seen one of those before.
"You're already here," she quipped, but the tepid frown was still there.
How did you explain to someone from another dimension that your counterpart was super close to that you died to save the world? That you were and you weren't ready. That you were just desperate to bring your family back? "Just a lot on my mind, and I'd rather not think about it. Blip Day coming up and all."
She made a hard argument to counter. Unprompted, he had come over with the end goal of talking to Natasha. And now a door was opened about something seemingly personal, which meant him cutting and running would the choice of a double jackass.
"This where I ask what Blip Day is, or where I shut up about that and see what kinda stories I got from the couple dozen times I got put in time out at Camp Lehigh? Some of 'em are funny, even if command didn't think so." He leveled a shrug. Natasha had her pick.
Guess no one had filled him in on the goings on of their world. Natasha's frown deepened as she gestured for him to walk alongside her. "Thanos." He likely knew who that was; Sam Wilson seemed to know him and understand the kind of things he'd do. "He got a hold of all the Infinity Stones. Snapped his fingers." She demonstrated with her own fingers. "Killed half the population of the universe. Some of the Avengers survived. Five years later, the Blip happened."
Natasha flexed her fingers. "At least, that's what they tell me." She looked up at him. "I wasn't around for it. There's a price to be paid for the Soul Stone. A soul for a soul."
He’d heard enough about Thanos to know the context overall, but ‘Blip Day’ was a new entry into everything. Bucky kept listening as he fell into step at her side; it was Natasha’s glance up at him that made him return the gesture. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but, somehow, this wasn’t shocking. A common thread across Avengers-populated universes was sacrifice. He could wager a few guesses about what Natasha meant without any further explanation.
“Don’t tell me you knew that and ran head first towards making sure it was yours,” Bucky replied, although his expression had softened.
"There was a lot of pondering and hemming and hawing. Clint had been doing his Ronin thing through gang members, so he thought he should jump." Natasha paused her walk. "But he has a family. A wife, three kids." She shrugged with one shoulder. "It's not like I wanted to do it, but my family was ripped apart. We had a chance to bring them back. To put it all back together again. I couldn't break up anymore families, and Barton never stood a chance against me."
The final fall. Natasha had jumped a lot. Her backup plans had backup plans. There was just no way around it this time. You couldn't trick the cosmos that way. "They tell me Bruce wore the gauntlet they made. He brought everyone back. Blip."
Bucky's brow furrowed. He didn't mean to get hung up on the wording, but something made him backtrack.
"You said he thought he should jump." No offense to Bruce, but whatever the guy did didn't seem to rank right now. There was an ugly twisting feeling in Bucky's stomach. That didn't sound like going out fighting, not entirely. "...you remember falling?"
"We fought. A lot. He wouldn't let me do it, I wouldn't let him. Eventually, he jumped, and I jumped after him. Caught him just as he was going over and hooked my grappling hook to his uniform." Anything to talk about the sensation of falling to her death, the realization of what she was doing for those agonizingly long seconds as she waited, braced for the impact of those cold rocks below. It was good she couldn't see them.
"Yeah," she finally answered. "I remember falling. I remember everything until it stops."
He could nod, take all that in, let her say everything on her mind and then offer a hollow condolence, but he knew that wouldn’t do anything. ‘Sorry about what happened to you’ meant jackshit.
“Felt like a million years, didn’t it? The split second you know what’s coming, everything slows.” They were at least standing offsides on the sidewalk now. Despite the words carrying out into the open streets of Tumbleweed, no one was listening in. “I remember things getting patchy before hitting the water, but I remember enough to know that I fucking hate heights for a reason. My father died -- parachute training accident -- when I was a kid. I wasn’t after perspective, but...” There was a shrug offered. “I get it.”
"I kept my eyes on Clint's face for as long as I could. Until he became a slightly different colored spec on the side of that cliffside. Clouds went past, and I remember the sky being so blue and pink. I wanted to take everything in. I remember thinking that Steve would have to get a life without me. I just knew that everything was going to be okay for them. Things would get fixed." She hadn't really talked to anyone about this, not this particular feeling. She blinked her eyes too much, swallowed hard, and then tried to shake it off with a smile. "From what I hear, he did. Handed the shield off to Sam."
She was painting a picture for Bucky, who kept focused on her expression for the moment. He caught the blinking. No wonder she was asking for company; it had to have taken a lot to admit to that. Part of being a spy was being trained to not let people in, not let people know what you were thinking or feeling. He was often a dismal failure at checking his emotions at the door, but Black Widows were professionals at it.
“Sure, everyone gets on alright, but that doesn’t mean you were ready to go.” What now? Give her a pat on the shoulder? Nah. “You still talk to your Barton?”
"Yeah. Still talk to Barton. He's got the best friend part sealed." This Natasha had gotten used to letting down her barriers with her friends. She could still play whatever part she needed, and she occasionally played the spy prank, but ever since she and Steve discovered what was growing inside of SHIELD together, she'd been a much more open person. "He lost his family in the Snap. All of them. Wife. Three kids. Couldn't let them come back to find their dad gone."
That wasn't to say that Natasha valued her life less than his, or that just because Clint had a family, he should fling himself off that cliff. But when it came to the suffering of his family, Natasha couldn't do it. She loved Laura and those kids. There was no way she could even look at them if she let him jump. "I wasn't ready, but are we ever? Were you?"
“Nope.” It was an easy answer. “I thought I had it. Steve was yelling at me to let go of the plane, but I always got away with crazy, half-baked plans and didn’t give it a second thought. By the time I realized the thing was rigged to blow up, my arm was caught. Saved the day, sure, but those final moments weren’t anything like a hero’s graceful sacrifice.”
The fingers of Bucky’s cybernetic arm flexed slightly. The memories of that day were tied to loss across the board, even if the good guys technically won. “It was the right thing to do. Don’t gotta be ready for it, but you gotta be able to do it anyway. Only thing no one warns you about is what happens when you wake up after and remember it all.”
"Whatever it takes," Natasha echoed. She wasn't supposed to keep going. Maybe there was some wiggle room with other deaths or Snaps, but there was no going back on the Soul Stone. Not the way the Stonekeeper talked about it. She wasn't sure if her memories stopped because she was dead or because she'd been taken out of time. She tried not to think about.
She started to walk again on the sidewalk. "Guess if there's anyone who could understand that, it's a Barnes."
That response pulled a mild brow raise from Bucky, who decided after a quiet second to let it lie. Doing whatever it took, sure, but his was a world of impulsive decisions more than carefully weighing the outcome. Was that something the other Bucky shared? It sounded like she knew…
“How about we just do whatever I’m being roped into before my better judgement kicks back in?” He asked, nodding towards her destination.
"If we're going against your better judgment, mani-pedis are actually cheaper if you get them together." Natasha grinned, a laugh escaping where there was melancholy before. "My treat even. I just have to see the look on your face."