#websandredheads

Of all the people to have found him, Bucky shouldn't have been surprised that it was her. He would have guessed it would have been her or Steve, but Steve knew him best as he had once been, and Natalia, she knew him best as he had been trained. Who he was now was complicated, and he was still trying to sort it out. He bowed his head as he walked into the grubby apartment in the back end of Prague - just the latest in his tour of Eastern European capitals while he tried to hide from the world. He set his backpack on the uneven table after assuring the lock was secure, and breathed out. "...I don't understand why," he asked her quietly as he looked up. "I'm not worth any of that, Natalia. I know you and Steve have been looking for me...and I'm glad you got out, made changes - I wouldn't change the the choices I made to help you escape...but I don't understand why you keep fighting for me." It was the first indication that he remembered things - he remembered when she was making her escape from their mutual captivity - she would have waited for him, but he knew that it would have cost her. Remembering nothing else of his past at the time, he bought her time to escape - and paid for it with his own freedom and another trip to the chair. He set his groceries down on the table and sighed, feeling unsettled - but not because of her. He knew she hadn't come here to kill him. "...I'm not a safe person to be around, Natalia," he murmured quietly.

"You know I'm in." They should have been home by now, and Loki was as restless as Natasha. "Let me grab my scrying set, it should give us a more accurate location than the last check-in ping."

"Sorry I asked."

They were starting off with a classic: Psycho, the original one. The intro credits had begun rolling as Bucky walked into the living room with a giant bowl of popcorn and two beers. "This better be good, Nat."

                     It’s a reflex he cannot suppress, like pulling your hand away when you accidentally touched a hot stove plate; his arm comes up, fingers fishing the black box out of the air before it can hit him in the face. At least he used his prosthesis; who knows what the Black Widow might toss at you. He looks down at it, then gives her a look. “And what is this? Is it a ring, are you proposing? I expect you to go down on your knees, though, you need to do this properly.”

“Uh, I wasn’t born one no. Why do you ask?” 

Standing there in just his sweatpants he nodded his head slightly at the offer of tea and began to make his way over to pour himself a cup, glad she’d already brewed it.  “Anyone else awake?”