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who: Bucky and Natasha (616)
what: Catching up after Natasha's arrival.
when: After the acid rain escort mission.
where: In the city
warnings: Will update if needed.

[The mission is over. The payloads are up in the sky to- clean the atmosphere, or whatever, and the rain will stop now. The teams were protected, monsters were taken care of. Bucky still has a lot on his mind, though, as he and Natasha get a ride back to the city in one of the transport trucks. He's changed into a black tee-shirt and his Perimeter Guard uniform pants, the suit and shield tucked into a new bag. It's good to be out of the yellow beekeper suits, at least.

He keeps glancing over at her. His expression would be considered well-hidden to anyone else, but she can probably see the way he tries to puzzle it all out in his head. There's a distance between them that he doesn't remember (hasn't experienced); he's smart enough to at least figure some of it out. She must be from a different point in the timeline. It happens. Tony is from later on too.

He promised her dinner, though, and it's as good a time as any to talk. The driver pulls up next to a nicer restaurant, and he gets out first, shouldering his bag, holding open the truck door for her.]

I think I owe you dinner.

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[Natasha's skin is fair enough, and he knows her expressions well enough, that he can tell when some of the color bleeds from her cheeks as she pales. The furrow between his eyes only deepens.]

Yeah. There are two of 'em. [He says, distracted and unwilling to get into that whole weird mess right now, how he's worried about Steve shacking up with a trickster god of lies.

After a moment, searching her face for clues, he tilts forward just slightly, brown eyes intent and voice a little quieter. Drawing things out won't bring back the sense of ease between them, and he won't be able to sleep tonight with all these unanswered questions rattling around in his head.] Natalia. I'll fill you in on this place, the situation here, everything you want to know, but-

[He takes a breath, and he's proud of how even his voice is when he asks,] Something's changed. What aren't you telling me?

[ This was a terrible idea, she thinks. Coming here, with him. She wants to reach out, to run her hands along his face, to make sure he was real. But she can't. Doesn't. One of the two. ]

I'm from the future, James. It's against the rules. [ This is true: she isn't keeping secrets for her own sake. Natalia he says, like a ticket taker reading her passport.

Then a waiter comes, a different one, with bread to place on the table, saving Natasha momentarily from her own coursing thoughts. He says he'll be back shortly, to get them more water.

It strikes her how white the tablecloth is, how it makes the space between them look bigger. ]

[The corners of his lips turn down in frustration. It's hard not being on the same page as her, wondering what went wrong, wondering what she's been through. It's going to keep him up at night, it's going to drive him crazy. Against the rules, she says, and his eyes narrow slightly.] Tasha, c'mon. [Granted, there is the worry about changing up the future and it having disastrous results, but...

The waiter brings bread, and Bucky doesn't even look at the poor guy. He has some timing. He waits until the waiter leaves again, and lets the silence stretch on for another beat. This is going to hurt, he knows it's coming, but he's a bit of a masochist, always throwing himself into the hurt.] You can't keep me in the dark about everything. We could both be stuck here for months. Are we even still...? [Together. Dating. Whatever it was between them. He has to know that, at least.]

[ She'll say it if he won't. ]

You want to know why I haven't kissed you yet. Now that you're not drenched in acid rain.

[ She tries to put herself in his place: she'd go mad, she's sure. That was another infuriating thing about time-travel, that it had made her into a close lipped soothsayer. Natasha preferred her own organic pessimism. It was against the rules, to tell him the future. It might ruin the time they did have.

But they'd never followed the rules, not when they were together. So she says, carefully, without looking at him. ]

Do you remember Leo Novokov?

[ He hadn't, originally, not until they brought him to Siberia and tried there to unlock his mind. But maybe saying the name would bring it back. It brought something back in her: a black lurching in the pit of her stomach. ]

[There's a slumping to his shoulders when she voices what he's been thinking, blunt and to the point. It says yes, her assumption was accurate, and it's been eating at him since they finished up the mission, filling him with that vague and directionless sense of dread. He hates it. Hates the uncertainty.]

Novokov? [His brow furrows as he thinks, trying to recall. There are so many memories from Russia tucked away in his head, drowned out by more recent people and happenings. If he had to think about that period of his life all the time he would go crazy; it's a blessing that, while his head is still a mess, it's not as bad as it was when Steve first used the Cube on him. But he doesn't remember anything about any Leo Novokov.] I don't. Should I?

Leonid Novokov. Project Zephyr. [ She can elaborate on it, if she has to, but she knows sometimes names and places start to fill in the gaps. That's why she stops, to give the names a chance to breathe.

But the other reason is, she remembers Leo now, how he tried to put his hands around her, the texture of his hands— it turns her stomach bright, nauseous colors. She takes another sip of water, to swallow that stain, and hopes James notices something other than her pauses. She never told him about that, never had the cha nce to.

He never forced her, at least. But he could have. ]

Project Zephyr... [He murmurs, repeating, frowning down at the tablecloth as he tries to place the names. It's buried deep, whatever it is, and the twinge in his head makes him wince slightly with the pain of trying to call it up. Could it be that there are things still locked into his head that he doesn't know about, that SHIELD didn't remove when he picked up the shield?

He feels vaguely nauseous thinking about it, touches two fingers to his temple to try and stave off a headache.] I assume it involved the Winter Soldier and I ain't gonna like hearing about it.

[ It's hard for her, to see him like this, and not let her face soften, not put a hand on his shoulder. What they did to him… ]

I'm sorry, James. I'm always the bearer of bad news.

[ She doesn't say more than that, not right away. It's taking her a moment to fit the words together. The water the waiter's just poured doesn't make her insides feel clean. ]

It's- [It's not okay, not really. Nothing about today so far has been okay.] It's not your fault. [That, at least, he can say with sincerity. It isn't her fault that everything is always so fucked for them. What they've come out of, how can they expect anything else?]

Sometimes it is.

[ She used to think she was cursed. Cursed to bring pain and death to everyone she cared for. These days, she's less melodramatic, but she still knows how her actions are weighted. ]

Project Zephyr was an old program, mostly forgotten now. Deep cover Soviet agents, shipped to the west and left in the cold. Literally. Trained specially by the Winter Soldier. Leo Novokov was one of those agents.

Let's not play the blame game right now. [He's pretty sure it's the same for him, a lot of the time these things are his fault somehow.

Like this. Sleepers trained by the Winter Soldier and left in the cold, definitely his fault, and he looks down at the table with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, a lead ball of dread. He says slowly,] He got out, or someone let him out. What did he do?

He escaped, after an earthquake. Probably didn't know who he was— the effects of being woken from stasis, without the normal protocol. [ Natasha had seen it once, the ritual of chemical injections and brain scans. It turned her stomach. She should've gotten out then, but she didn't. ]

But he started to remember some things, and then he found out you were alive. [ Trickier than James knew, but that was another long story. Her voice breaks out of the matter-of-fact tone she uses for mission reports. ] He was insane, James.

Shit. [There was a specific procedure to follow after waking a sleeper from cryo. Bucky knows it all too well; suffered through it many, many times over the years. But to be woken without it, suddenly and jarringly... It turns his stomach, a little. His appetite is gone. He just stares into his water glass, curling his fingers around it.

When he hears the crack in her mask, though, he wants to reach out and take her hand. His flesh fingers make it only a quarter of the way across the table, though, before his hand falls to the surface again, limp.] I can imagine. It- He blamed me, didn't he? Or I was the easiest target. The only target left alive.

After he was done with his handler, yes.

[ Her eyes slide across the table. Natasha wants to reach out, take his hand, and also wants to plunge herself deep into the ocean, where things are dark and quiet. She feels cold. ]

They should have brought us food by now.

[His gaze follows hers for a moment, fingers curling under his palm on the table, trying to play the aborted gesture off. He looks back toward the kitchen instead.]

Kitchen looks backed up. [Or maybe the waiter can see the tension thick enough to be cut with a knife and is giving them a few minutes.] How much damage did he do? Novokov.

[ This was it, then. Sometimes, the quickest escape is through the thickest part of the forest. Her voice is steady, like hoofbeats, like the thump of her own heart. ]

He kidnapped me, erased you from my mind, and tried to make me his.

[ An absurd concept. She had never been anyone's girl. ]

[Those words, blunt and direct, bring with them a wave of nausea, the desire to recoil from the truth, to go back two minutes and never ask that question.

So how hard must it be for Natasha, to give voice to it, to live with what happened? Other than the tightening of his expression, the agony in his eyes, his only outward reaction is metal fingers gripping the edge of the table with a soft, tell-tale crack.]

Tell me he's dead. [He says, voice a thready whisper. Suddenly, everything makes so much sense. It would take something this horrible, this huge, to finally push them away from each other.] If he- You remember me again?

He's dead. [ Her mouth twists into something less than a smile. It's a lie that doesn't deserve the art of her lying. She retreats, and it's cowardice, but she doesn't particularly care. She doesn't want him to hurt more, and never has. ]

I do. [ Remember him, that is. ] The programming couldn't hold forever. [ Though some memories still make her nauseous, when she concentrates on their detail— a failsafe. That's what it has to be. ] The red things tend to stay.

[His mouth curls in something like grief, recognizing the lie for what it is. Leo Novokov ruined their lives and he isn't even dead for it. It shouldn't come as a surprise, really. Nothing in life is fair.]

Seems like I bring you nothing but trouble.

No. [ There is force in the word, like a river frozen over. She wants to hold his hand. He's also being stupid. ]

Don't talk like that, James. I won't allow it.

[This guilt complex goes on for miles and miles.]

You can't tell me it isn't true.

[ She doesn't move. ]

It isn't about you. [ Maybe it was to Novokov. Maybe it even was to James. But for Natasha, it was about her— those are the parts of the story she always remembered. ]

[It isn't about you. His lips press together tightly, and he can't meet her eyes. It's not, is it? She's the one who got hurt.]

I'm sorry. [He starts quietly, eyes flickering the door like he wants to make an exit. It's a lot to think about, to take in.] I'm sorry how things ended up between us.

Well, you know. [ A pause. ] I'm cursed.

[ She tries to make it a joke, but Natasha was never very funny. ]

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