moved to @ambrosiqs

You could at least recognise me.

He turns the words over in his mind –– they make no sense to him, but there’s a part of him that feels like it should mean something. He knows who she is, knows that the fight should have lasted longer, knows that there are at least a dozen methods she could have employed to get out of his chokehold. Instead, she leaves him with a riddle.

He thinks something about having her pinned beneath him feels familiar, and when he closes his eyes he sees flashes of red hair against white sheets. But they’ve tried to kill each other too many times for that to make any sense; even if he can’t remember everything he’s ever done as the Winter Soldier, he remembers shooting her twice.

(And maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to remember, because what kind of monster shoots the woman he loves?)

And then she’s there, the last thing standing between them and the quinjet. He feels Steve tense, but no weapons are raised. He doesn’t hear what they say, because her words are back and she’s right there but he can’t remember and how is he supposed to remember something he’s not entirely sure even exists to be remembered in the first place?

She covers their escape, and he tries not to think about how her eyes had locked on his as she urged them to go, or the quiet resignation in her eyes, hidden behind steely resolve.

“Romanoff,” he breaks the silence with her name, and Steve startles a little before turning to him, “I think I knew her.”

“You shot her in Odessa,” Steve says, not accusatory but he thinks maybe there’s a little bit of anger in his tone.

He remembers now, how she hadn’t been his target, but he’d shot her anyway just because she was in the way and he had seen her as acceptable collateral damage. The memory makes him feel a little sick, but he shakes his head. “No… before that.”

Surprise flashes across Steve’s face, but it disappears as a frown settles in its place. He catches Steve’s gaze flicker towards his metal arm, and a combination of shame and hurt and anger flares up in him.

“That’s possible,” Steve sighs, head tilting slightly in the direction of his metal arm, “The red star – your main handlers were Russian?”

“Yeah,” he says, confused for a moment on what that had to do with anything before it hits him. “She’s ex-KGB.”

There’s a little girl – no older than twelve – with hair as red as the star on his arm, snapping the neck of another little girl before looking to him. And then he’s sparring with the same little girl, except she’s a little older, and she actually manages to flip him onto his back. There’s a proud little smile on her face, befitting of the Red Room’s best. She’s a young woman now, and they’re no longer teacher and student. They’re partners, equals, and she’s the only one he trusts to watch his back.

And in the quiet of the night, when there’s no one around to see, they come together as man and woman. Each time he kisses her like it’s the last chance he will ever get to, until one day it actually is.

It’s a strange sensation, disjointed memories coming together. He remembers how it had taken more than twenty men to drag him from her, he remembers the way she had screamed and cried as they made her watch them wipe him. But more than that, he remembers not remembering her, and he remembers the way her face had crumpled when he had looked at her and seen a stranger.

“I shot her,” he murmurs, and he remembers pulling the trigger, he remembers her cry of pain, he remembers–– “I shot my Natalia.”

And then he leans over and throws up.

He’s shaking afterwards, and Steve cleans the mess up quietly. He wills himself not to think about how she’d been within his reach and he’d let her slip right through his fingers.

“Always had a thing for redheads, huh?” The jibe comes out of nowhere, and it startles him into laughing.

Steve disposes of the dirty towels, before placing a hand on his shoulder. “We deal with this, and then we go back for her,” he says, lips pulling into a tired smile.

He nods, and the thought of seeing her again when it’s all over is the only reason he manages to refocus on Zemo.

He knows he deserves Tony Stark’s anger, and part of him wants to let Howard’s son kill him, because then he wouldn’t have to live with the knowledge of all the things he’d done as the Winter Soldier. But he remembers the look in Natalia’s eyes, the hurt despite the casual words, and he wants to live long enough to hold her again, to tell her I remember now, I remember you, I will always remember you.

And so he fights back, fights to see her again. When the edges of his vision get go fuzzy, she is the last thing he thinks of before it goes dark.

When he opens his eyes again, he’s back in the quinjet, Steve sitting across him, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his face in his hands as the Black Panther flies. He draws Steve’s attention as he sits up, and there’s relief in his oldest friend’s face before the weariness returns.

He wants to ask if they’re going to Natalia now, but he looks at Steve again and he falters. “Where are we going?” he asks instead.

“To Wakanda,” the Blank Panther replies, and his attention turns to the man who had seemed hell bent on killing him just hours ago.

He turns sharply to Steve then, although the words still seem firmly lodged in his throat. “She called earlier,” Steve says, answering the unspoken question, “told her where we’re headed and she said she’d meet us there.”

“Did you––” he starts, but Steve shakes his head before he finishes the sentence.

“I figured she’d want to hear it from you.”

Not I figured you’d want to tell her yourself, but because it’s what she would want. “You love her,” he says, and even though Steve flinches at that, he doesn’t deny it.

Steve straightens up, and lets out a sad little laugh, but the smile he offers is genuine. “Can you blame me?” he asks, arms spread open, palms up, before dragging a hand over his face.

“No,” he says, and that’s that.

It’s another ten hours until they land in Wakanda, and his hand shakes the entire time, too acutely aware of her absence. The scientists have just finished repairs on his metal arm when Steve appears in the doorway.

“She’s here?” he asks, and his voice trembles, fear and hope swirling in the cold blue of his eyes.

Steve nods, and he smiles, still tired but not as strained as before. “I haven’t even seen her yet. Thought I’d come get you first.”

And after he puts his shirt back on, he walks up to Steve and pulls him into a hug. Even though he’s itching to see Natalia again, he knows nothing will change how important Steve is to him, that everything is easier (not easy, necessarily, but definitely easier) with Steve by his side.

“Our girl’s waiting,” Steve says, voice thick with emotion before there’s a choked laugh. “Don’t tell her I called her that.”

“Okay, but you owe me.” The retort comes easily, and when Steve beams at him, he thinks this is how he knows he’s doing good.

He lets Steve lead the way to the hangar, and hangs back as Natasha walks up to Steve and greets him with a hug. There’s a tug in his chest, watching how they come together so easily, but it’s not bitterness or jealousy, he realises with a start. He’s content, because no matter what happens between him and Natalia from now on, he knows she loves Steve too much to leave either of them, and he thinks having them in his life is more important than having them in the way he wants to.

But then she’s pulling away from the hug, and Steve is nudging her towards him and he almost forgets how to breathe when her eyes find his. She’s beautiful, he’s always known that, but he’s enamoured all the same.

“Natashenka,” he breathes, and the way her face fractures is the only way he can tell that she’s heard him.

“James,” she says, and then she’s taking one step, two step, three steps towards him and he moves to meet her halfway, the two of them colliding and holding on. “You remembered.”

“I remember it all, Natalia,” he says, hands tracing her face, and when she closes her eyes and tilts her head back, he leans down and presses kisses against the fading bruises on her throat. “You were the one good thing in it all.”

She opens her eyes then, and he can see the surprise plain in her eyes. Her expression is so unguarded, so open, so unlike the façade that she presents to the world that it almost makes him cry. It takes him back to another time, when even though everything she was ever taught told her that what they had was wrong, it never stopped her from looking at him as if he was the only good in her life.

(There were never any declarations of love back then, but he never doubted that she loved him – the way she bared her throat to him with so much trust spoke volumes.

My heart, she had whispered in the dark one night, unflinching as the cold metal of his hand brushed over creamy skin, take it – it’s yours.)

“We’re gonna be okay?” she asks, turning her head and pressing a kiss against the cold metal of his palm, and there is forgiveness for all the times he’s hurt her in the curve of her lips.

“No,” he answers honestly, and it earns him a laugh from Natalia. He smiles at her, and then looks over her shoulder at Steve, who’s smiling too. “But I’ll be damned if we don’t try.”

She turns slightly, her eyes following his gaze until they land on Steve, and she holds a hand out to him in invitation. He raises his eyebrows in response, but she only grins, fingers curling as if physically tugging him closer and it does the trick.

“People are going to think you have a thing for fucked up ex-assassins,” she says as Steve comes close enough for her to loop an arm around his waist.

Steve laughs, wrapping his arms around the both of them. His forehead is pressed against Steve’s and Natalia is firmly wedged between the two of them. He thinks he likes this – a lot.

“Let them,” he says. And even with his eyes closed he can hear the grin in Steve’s voice as he adds, “They’re probably right anyway.”

Natalia snickers at that, and manages to wiggle her way out, taking them both by the arm. “C’mon boys, time for a tour?”

They get lost wandering the hallways of the facility though because he and Steve hadn’t arrived that much earlier, and most of that head start had been spent in the medical bay. They get a few odd looks, and he understands that the sight of three of the world’s most dangerous people giggling like teenagers must be strange, but Natalia and Steve are laughing and he’s too endeared by the sight to feel self-conscious about the attention they’re getting.

He’s not the Bucky that Steve had known seventy years ago, or the James that Natalia had fallen in love with back in Russia. But the Steve and Natalia with him now are not the same Steve and Natalia he remembers either, and it’s okay because he loves them regardless. It’s almost ironic, that he’s spent so long running away, but now he doesn’t think he could bear to be apart from them.

It takes him a few moments to realise that his companions are trying to get his attention, and he blinks as his mind returns to the present.

“Oh good,” Natalia says when the faraway look in his eyes fades, “Thought I might have to administer cognitive recalibration for a moment there.”

She’s only teasing, but he winces because even with second rate super soldier serum in his system, Natalia knows how to make her blows hurt.

“Something bothering you?” Steve asks, and although he makes a show of frowning at Natalia in disapproval, the corners of his lips twitch in amusement.

He shakes his head, merely bumping his shoulder against Natalia’s and sending her crashing into Steve’s side. “No, just happy.”

“Ugh, so sappy,” Natalia retorts. Her face is scrunched up in mock disgust, and he laughs as he leans in to press a loud, sloppy, wet kiss on her cheek.

“You love it,” he quips right back, and then laughs even harder when Steve joins in the kiss attack and Natalia yells at them both to stop ruining her image.

(Two weeks later, the rest of the team walk in on them in the middle of a play fight – he has his hands under Natalia’s shirt, and she’s pressed against Steve’s back, one of her hands just barely sliding underneath the waistband of his pants. It’s a compromising position, to say the least, and even Natalia can’t come up with a believable excuse.