natasha romanova | black widow (widowstings) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2014-09-04 14:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, bucky barnes / winter soldier (616), natasha romanova / black widow (616) |
Who: Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanova - both 616
When: Today before 5
Where: Somewhere in the city.
What: Bucky's got some new memories that are making him a little uneasy. Natasha tracks him down.
Rating: PG13
This wasn’t the rendezvous point, but there was a chance that was just some fabricated memory anyway. It felt wrong, and lessons learned meant trusting instinct over mind. Bucky turned a corner, keeping a steady and even pace towards the burned-out bar that he told Fury to meet him at. Out in the Bronx, it didn’t take much to come across a suitable and condemned shell of building for a little open therapy. If you knew the right areas -- specifically the ones unassuming and civil people considered wrong -- you always had a pick of venues. Besides, the memory he did have of the selected location suggested it would be empty. If it wasn’t, then it would just be proof that someone had figured out a way into his head. Again. And if that was the case, he’d move from there. Fury would probably turn up in one form or another, and that was end goal for now. A crushed and frayed fence was cleared with a running vault. As Bucky touched down, he could hear something else at his 6 o’clock blindspot. His arm moved to his gun. A leg came down, crunching his fingers beneath a long, slender boot. Natasha Romanova only used force on James Barnes when things were dire, and not meeting up at the rendezvous point and reaching for a gun when she followed behind him were two great big red flags in her book. He could handle some bruised fingers. Something had happened, she just counted on it being some one. For thirty minutes, she thought that he'd been taken by Novokov. She thought maybe this time, she'd end a Winter Soldier hunt, only to find out that Novokov had wiped her from his mind. The idea that one day she could wake up and not even know James the way she did now… It was the one thing she had, the one thing she could count on. Natasha had imagined all the ways that she would kill this world's version of Novokov. There was no SHIELD to stop her, and quite frankly, they better put her in jail if she'd been stripped from James's mind. In the here and now, she pulled back her arm to punch James in the jaw, hoping that it would give him just the sucker punch to stop him from pulling another gun or a knife. Shit. What if he's just the Winter Soldier right now? Engaging might not have been the smartest tactic. Unfortunately, when it came to James Barnes, Natasha often forewent her careful planning. His hand got knocked away, but she’d only gotten his right arm. He was already twisting into her with his shoulder a second before it clicked that this was Natasha. Hesitance played to her advantage; he didn’t want to strike her, and he wouldn’t hurt her in any frame of his right mind. If it was even right. Everything was up in the air until he got some answers. Her punch was caught in his metal fist, but there wasn’t a return of a swing. Bucky shifted his feet, using his full weight to throw her off and back. One memory was saying she knew him, and knew every last detail of their lives together. Another was painted white with a train. She had been looking at him no different than she would a stranger despite knowing his codename. His brows drew close. Neither scenario felt less true than the other, but one could have easily been made up in a lab to make him put his guard down. Bucky stared at her, not moving. His head was splitting, and it was only partly because nothing was making sense. Natasha skidded backward on the grass. She froze in place, her knees bent, arms out and ready to strike if necessary. She took in his stance, the way he moved, the look in his eyes. Something wasn't right here; she just couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Her breath slowed to normal before she ventured to say anything. "You missed the rendezvous point, James. I picked up your trail, and you're doing what?" The sloppy move would have been to cast his eyes down, as he tried to piece together her reply. The meeting arrangement matched up to one set of memories. She was calling him James. He wanted to drop this in a heartbeat and be grateful that it outwardly made one recollection resound with truth, but the last time he’d placed trust that she knew who he was, it was a play. He’d found Jasper’s body, clearly too late to have stopped what Novokov made her do. And it killed more to feel cemented to the spot, unable to move with the momentum and pull towards what felt like a happier path. Bucky shook his head. “There’s something --” She wasn’t moving. He didn’t, either. “This isn’t right. Something isn’t right, and I’m trying to figure out what.” She drew herself up, closed the distance between them so that she could get a good look at his eyes. Natasha's fingers weren't kind or gentle when she dug them into his chin to lift his face. There was something about the way he was looking at her, looking at everything, that just wasn't right. There'd been no evidence of a scuffle, not even a sign of a gun or a person around the trail. He hadn't even bothered to double back to keep anyone off his scent. Unlike him. "To, chto proizoshlo , lyubov' ?" There were no bleeding capillaries in his eyes, no signs of distress anywhere other than the strange confused look he wore. "Skazhite." He didn’t flinch as she reached out; if she was clearly working towards an answer, then he’d prefer to hear it straight. Someone had to have done something. There was an acute, physical ache deep in his skull. That didn’t just crop up at random. He wouldn’t trust that it was just an anomaly, anyway. And if she wasn’t using his lowered defenses to get an upper hand, then he had to rely on at least one fact: she knew who he was. “My byli v Prage proshloy zimoy . No ya pomnyu, kak v Brukline s vami i Rikki . .” He pulled a face, breathing out and trying to force his mind to pick one. “Two places at once. I got an idea that this happens, but if someone wanted me to think that…” "Eto ne iz nashikh sredstv." The answer was short, but that was all that needed to be said. Two sets of memories. She'd been here long enough to know that some people gained new memories and sometimes those conflicted with this world. Still, she wasn't ruling out the possibility that someone else had done this to him. Natasha pulled at his wrist and set out for his pulse. Perhaps he was drugged. It was distressing to see him… well, distressed. It wasn't often that Bucky showed confusion like this. If nothing else, they should set this mission aside for the night and get back to the hotel room. She could check on him more in depth there. To test the waters, to see what kind of memories he might have, she added, "I don't remember Prague last winter. Do I remember you when I'm in Prague?" The answer came easier than Bucky wished it would. “No.” Because Novokov had taken every last memory of him from her. That was how it went. So why was he meeting her now about Novokov? Again, conflicting thoughts. Because this was a different world with a different Novokov. It was like someone had freshly printed over an old newspaper. Focus on one line and you start veering towards what had been superimposed without intending. Bucky dug a palm into one eye. “No, you were on the same train. Wasn’t supposed to collide paths, but you were there to intercept something, and I was trying to stop someone else from robbing it. Your left leg.” He pointed. “You were hit. You don’t remember that?” She wouldn’t, his thoughts supplied. Disparities in the timeline. The Tesseract. He groaned, hunching his shoulders and trying to sift through it all. "No. James… I'm from before that. Don't you remember?" Now Natasha allowed herself the luxury of worry. If he was upgraded and didn't remember being here, then he only remembered that she didn't know him. He knew whatever was going on in their world, and that was that. She hated this. More than the emotional angst she shouldered for her own memories lost, she hated the scarring it left on him. The last thing she wanted was for James to hurt. For James to feel lost. This was the second time he'd had to deal with this. Natasha grabbed the front of his costume and yanked him to her. Only James knew that she was a sucker for romance, and it was only with him. She kissed him as if it was the last time they'd ever see each other, lingering until she was one-hundred percent certain that both of their heads were spinning. "Do you remember now? Do you remember that I remember here?" The memory of her almost coldly turning away in Prague couldn’t fend off the warmth with with she’d seized him and pulled him in. Bucky didn’t argue with the sudden turn of events. He leaned into her, noting every little detail about the moment. She was real beneath his fingers and his lips. She was in sharp focus despite the haze that lingered in his mind. As they broke away, he nodded. “Felt like the Red Room. I had…” Confusion had faded, but his brows were still drawn in frustration. “Had to make sure. Nothing was lining up right.” Natasha reached down and squeezed his hands, even if the bionic one wouldn't be squeezed. When they talked of the Red Room, when it was just them, they didn't have to hide behind their masks that what happened to them there wasn't fucked up. She cupped the side of his face and placed a kiss, just a tiny peck, on the corner of his mouth. "Tell me what happened. Do you remember how it happened? Did you wake up, by any chance?" Had he woken up? There was recollection of that much, but without remembering having drifted off. The immediate conclusion was that someone had belted him good or sedatives had been administered somehow. “I was tailing the contact after our meeting. He got in a car, and I remember waiting him out to see where he went next. Must’ve blacked out ‘cause I came to with the worst damn headache, and couldn’t get anything straight for a while. There…” Bucky stopped. Preoccupation with sorting his head made him forget the time. “Fury. Was heading to meet Fury. Nat, this is important. Something that happened back home. Can we do this later?” "No," came Natasha's curt reply. Whatever it was, it couldn't be more important than figuring out what had happened to him. Her fingers snaked over his upper arm, hard, as she shook her head. Whatever had happened in their world, they would figure it out. Just not until they'd figured out this. "You've just had some kind of head trauma, James. You're not going anywhere until I've cleared you. You got that?" A breath was released through Bucky’s nose as he felt Natasha’s fingers take hold. “Natasha,” he started, almost pushing the tone of his voice into a plea, but not quite forfeiting himself to that yet. Thinking better of it all, he started again, knowing he owed her the comfort of making sure he was fit to walk. “I’m a little foggy, but I’ve worked through worse. It’s Fury. I just need to talk to him...” |