mystery girl chic with natasha

"I'm sorry for," Barnes says, and waves their hand. Their intention is clear enough.

"No harm done," Bruce assures them, a crooked smile returning.

Barnes is standing in the doorway, the sleeve of their sweatshirt still pushed up past their elbow, their arms curled across his body. "I asked Natalia," they say, "but she said to ask you, instead."

"That was nice of her," Bruce replies, shaking his head as he looks back at the monitor. "Come in and have a seat if you like."

He hears Barnes move; when he looks up it's to see them standing behind him, a few feet away, still looking awkward and out of place.

"I suppose for someone who doesn't know I probably don't come across as the intimidating type," he admits. "I understand."

"I thought - " Barnes begins, and hesitates. Their face is closed, but their eyes are dark. They swallow. "I thought they were scared of me."

They speak in fragments, uncertain, faltering. Bruce thinks there is something familiar about it, suspects that between words Barnes is struggling to find the next ones.

"Why?" Barnes asks again.

Bruce looks down, shakes his head, smiling faintly. "I was a researcher," he says. "Biochemistry at Culver University. I was working on a project intended to replicate the results of the supersoldier serum given to Captain Rogers."

He's aware that Barnes is watching him closely. He doesn't meet their gaze, just looks back at the monitor again and studies the results.

"I was the subject for our test," he says after a moment. "An experiment involving gamma radiation. Something went wrong, and the results were...unpleasant."

Barnes doesn't so much as twitch, and doesn't ask for further clarification.

"It takes the form of an alternate personality," Bruce says. "And an alternate - well, everything. A defense mechanism for when I'm threatened." He laughs wearily. "Some might call it a monster."

"It's dangerous," they say.

"More dangerous than you," Bruce agrees. 

The way Barnes laughs is bitter. "You sound awful sure of that," they say.

"The army," she says, her gaze fixed intently on his face.

He blinks at her, a little annoyed and kind of a lot unnerved by her stare but unwilling to be the one to break contact. "Find out what?" he asks slowly.

Her face shifts subtly, but whatever's there he can't read before it's gone. "That you're..." she begins, and hesitates, dropping her eyes at last. "Atypical."

"Atypical," he echoes, feeling that something has somehow missed him.

"I don't know what word you like," she says. "And believe me, I have no intention of ascribing an identity on you that you don't want - I know how that goes."

"I think we've got a miscommunication somewhere," he says dryly.

She laughs softly, though thought furrows the space between her brows. Then she lifts her head, and he's worked with her long enough by now to recognize when she's put the pieces to a puzzle in place. 

"Hang on," she says, and pulls out her phone, her fingers flying across the screen.

"What are you--" he begins.

"Hang on," she repeats, no change in her voice. A moment passes, and she nods. "Of course. Forty-three - you never had a name for it." She looks up at him and there's startling softness in her eyes, a look he's seen only rarely. 

He still isn't sure what she's talking about.

"Not different enough for anyone to call you crazy, right?" she says in Russian, a bitter half-smile drawing up the corner of her mouth. "So no one looked closer. But you must have been different enough to feel it. Different enough that it was hell."

That he understands, and it feels like getting punched in the chest, like all the air is gone from his lungs. "How..." he manages, his voice not his own.

She glances around, mouth tight, and is very quiet for a moment. "It was the same for me," she says at last. "For a long time."

She blinks and lowers her head, running her tongue over her lips and taking a sip of her coffee. He doesn't know what to say.

"I mean," she adds after a pause, "for different reasons." She swallows. "They must have noticed, when I was a little girl. I don't remember it, and if anyone told me I don't recall it."

He watches her, the way she shifts her shoulders so that they appear relaxed even with defensive tension running all the way down her body, the way she trembles without moving like a live wire. 

"When the Department came, the papers were lost." she says. "By then I'd learned to behave better. Whether they caught on, I don't know." She laughs and shakes her head. "I'm very good. I don't know if I was better than them, then, a child and a blade they were tempering."

"Of course," he says, and clenches his jaw against the half-formed thoughts that come seething to the surface of his mind in response to her metaphor.

"But I walked that line," she murmurs, speaking softly even in her mother tongue. "Barely good enough to outweigh my disadvantages."

It's him that rises in his head at that, echoes of someone he was and would be.

autistic!Bucky showing up at Steve's apartment as his memories start to return

Steve and Bucky getting a PTSD service dog

the two of them, and possibly Sam as well, moving around a lot to stay under the radar and encountering various other superheroes

supervillain prison breakouts that ultimately result in the Avengers getting back together & assembling for good