Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time;

[grimvisaged]

There are things which he knows, and things which he remembers, but they are seldom both at once. This is the way that it has always been

(no)

understanding kicking up sparks in the empty corners of his brain, woven with instinct to inform him what's true and what isn't

(wrong)

memories distant and unformed, hazy smeared images, impulses that pop and fade like a flashbulb, leaving him dazed, spots in his eyes.

This place he doesn't remember, but he remembers her in it. A cockeyed smile across a tabletop, perfect teeth skimming against a plush bottom lip. When he first sees her here, that shock of fiery red hair brushing a pale cheek, he remembers her through the sight of a rifle and isn't sure why.

He knows who she is, in the obtuse sense: Romanoff, Natasha. Colleague of Rogers, Steve. She's changed her name, and he isn't certain why he knows that, either.

He thinks, maybe, she knows he's there the second before his left forearm presses against her larynx; she's that good. Silently, swiftly, he pulls her from the carpeted hall and into the shadows of an alcove, dragging her back against his chest, arm firm across collar and throat, the soft scrape of metal plate beneath the soft fabric of his hoodie. She could break free if she wanted, and he thinks he'd let her.

She's that good.

"Explain," he says against the warm shell of her ear, voice low and velvet-rough from disuse.

He can smell her shampoo.

He's been here before.

Comments

[regimes_fall]

There was an air of comfort about Natasha as she made her way through the halls of the hotel that even she would've considered bloated and lazy as an outside observer, an ease in her walk that indicated anything she'd had to be afraid of was left far, far behind. It wasn't just lazy for her to be so carefree after the events in Washington, but cocky, stupid, and presumptuous. It was a lesson she'd learned time and time again, and it was a fact driven home once more in the second she felt air stir her hair and there was no time to do anything other than brace herself for what was coming.

She knew who it was as soon she felt him at her back, as the silence and strength of him would've been a dead giveaway even if she hadn't already had some vague sort of sensory memory as to how his body fit against hers. Fighting back was an option, she knew that, just as she knew she could probably get away if she applied the pressure in all the right places and was quick about it. What she also knew was this: if he wanted her dead, she would've been dead long before his arm locked around her neck and she was dragged into a dark alcove. He could've made it hurt. She knew he could, because she could've made it hurt, and somewhere way deep down, she knew that all that she had been had been crafted in his image. Whatever he wanted of her, it wasn't her death or her suffering. Anything else she would willingly abide, at least for the time being.

She had hoped, also quite stupidly, that he might've still been loafing about the hotel as the man she'd met in the lobby as opposed to the weaponized memory from her youth. She'd hoped that when/if she saw the Winter Soldier in the halls of the hotel he might've grinned and flirted, might've come at her in a way that was as obvious as a peacock showing its feathers, because she could avoid that. She could resist that. That was not a man she had known, though the man currently cutting off her air supply wasn't either. He'd likely been rewritten multiple times since the time in which she had first known him, and in all of those new stories she knew she would not have been included. He would not know her now as she suspected she knew him, but he might if he were given time. Attempting to strategize, she went lax and giving in his arms, hoping to negate whatever threat he might perceive her to be with her surrender.

"Let me go," she said through a hoarse voice starved for air. "Let me go and we can talk." She both did and did not want to look at his face, but the compulsion was too strong to ignore in favor of talking this way.

[grimvisaged]

This dance is familiar, the steps ingrained in some buried part of his brain, the instinct of a motion repeated again and again. She knows he won't hurt her, and he knows the same of her, and the fact that he's aware of these truths is more distressing than the physical threat of Romanoff, Natasha could ever be.

His cool, smooth fingertips twitch once against the slender column of her neck, and then his arm falls away. His back is to the wall; he waits for her to move, her warm body notched in against his far too easily. He wants to touch her again and wishes he didn't.

"Explain," he repeats.

[regimes_fall]

The release of his arm where it'd locked like a band around her neck was an expected result, but she found herself no less relieved for it. Air was sweet and cool as it rushed into her lungs, and for the first time since he'd dragged her into the alcove, she could smell him. It was a clean scent, a familiar scent, and it was enough to have her turning away from the heat of his body against her back to look up at his face without the benefit of a weapon or his mask between them.

She thinks about how he's shot her twice, but hasn't killed her despite how easy it would've been for him. She thinks about how he has the face of the man she met in the lobby two years ago, and still somehow looks nothing like him. She wants to touch him, to run her thumb along his bottom lip to soften his mouth, but she keeps her hands relaxed at her sides.

"This is the Nexus hotel," she said, deciding to opt for the most generalized of explanations. She wasn't sure what, exactly, he wanted her to explain, but somehow a hotel with doors that inexplicably lead to other universes and places in time seemed less daunting of an explanation compared to what she had floating around in her head where he was concerned. "We were here once before at the same time, you and I. Do you remember the Nexus?"

She thinks he must on some level if he's found his way here again, but if it's been two years for her, how long has it been for him?

[grimvisaged]

There is no shot of recognition, no long-buried shard of memory dragged sharply to the surface; the name means as little as the setting. What snags his attention instead is the pronoun: Such a small thing, only two letters, yet as intimate a word as was ever made. He blinks twice, as if dust were blown in his eyes.

"We," he repeats, and then steps abruptly forward into her space, energy humming tangibly beneath his skin but carefully controlled. He doesn't touch her, only nearly. "We were here."

He sounds— How does he sound? To his own ears, there's a rough and bitter thread underpinning the soft rasp of his voice. He sounds menacing; he sounds vulnerable. Or does he?

So many lies for so long. She wasn't supposed to lie, not to him.

He doesn't know how he knows that.

[regimes_fall]

Natasha breathed in sharply through her nose when he was suddenly in her space once more, his face close enough that she could've counted every follicle of hair on his chin had she wanted to, but she did not. It was hard to look away from his eyes, hard to stop searching for something in there that she recognized when every part of him was utterly familiar to her, and somehow foreign. She understood how he felt then, understood how confused, how desperate he must be, and the swelling of gentleness and empathy within her was as tangible as it was alien to her nature.

"We," she said, softer. "You and I."

She felt an urge then to take the hand made of flesh and blood and bring it to her cheek, knowing instinctively that sensation of his single, human hand on her skin was something they'd both loved once upon a time, but forcing those memories of intimacy on him was not her right. Love was something to be endured, and he'd endured enough for the time being.

"James," she said after a moment, unknowing what it would trigger within him, but knowing that the first step of getting anywhere was the courage required to step off of neutral ground. "James Buchanan Barnes. That's who you were. Natalia Romanova is who I used to be." She bit down on her bottom lip, scraping it through her teeth in a rare display of nerves, then said "I could help you. You could trust me enough for that."

He could trust her. Natasha's history ran red with bloodshed and lies and betrayal, but there was no lying to him.

[grimvisaged]

His reaction is immediate, visceral, eyes widening and darting briefly away and down, body swaying as if the names dealt him a physical blow when they fell from her lips.

James Buchanan Barnes. He's heard it so many times now, from Rogers, from the narration in the Smithsonian, an unassailable mantra in his own head, yet the smokey timbre of her voice makes the words foreign again, as if they have no place living in her mouth.

"Don't," he warns, but it's ineffectual, his focus scattered until it hooks on the rise and fall of Natalia Romanova. Unaware of himself, he echoes it back in a whisper, the syllables like music when he rolls them around on his tongue.

She's been tugging at him this entire time, the faintest wisp of a memory lost in the flood unleashed by Steve Rogers. Ever since Washington he's been searching, preparing for the inevitability of James Buchanan Barnes, but he'd not known to prepare for her.

There's no thought when he reaches for her, only instinct, fingers of his right hand splayed against the column of her neck, the barest threat, his thumb nudging up under her chin.

"Tell me," he says, wild-eyed but unflinching.

[regimes_fall]

The look that splashed onto his face like a spilled inkwell onto paper was expected, but no more satisfying for that fact. She had never wanted to hurt him, though she knew well enough that sometimes pain was more than necessary. Sometimes pain was a kindness, or at the very least not the worst card two people of their sort could deal each other. They had hurt each other, the both of them, on more than one occasion and had been more than kind to each other too, once upon a time. It was hard to recall all the details, but the underlying fact was there.

Even knowing all of this, she felt no better for confounding his situation, for coming to him with a truth that would do neither of them any favors. Her truth was a commodity now for the most part, the majority of her life no more than the flick of a page for some people, and that was fine. She was coming to terms with that. There were, however, no mentions of how she'd once childishly, foolishly, and deeply loved the man that was currently winding his hand around her throat in those reports. No details on how they'd been torn apart, then punished for feelings she hadn't known how to help circulating on the internet somewhere. It wasn't a pleasant truth, but it was one of her last remaining secrets, and one she would share only with him.

"We met when I was young," she breathed, her chin lifting as his thumb nudged under it, her eyes dry. If she triggered something in him and her death came, at last, at his hands, she figured it was only her due. "In Russia. I was working for something called the Red Room, and you trained me. Taught me how to be like you. To fight like you." She watched his face, feeling the mental sting of attempting to access those memories that had been all but cut out of her. "We- We knew each other intimately, I believe," she added, because for all that it felt real, she did not know that it hadn't been a memory that had been planted, wiped, and was now resurfacing at the sight of his face. "But we were punished for it and separated."

[grimvisaged]

Dealing in subtleties has never been his style nor his forte. James Buchanan Barnes had an easy smile and natural rapport with people, but James Buchanan Barnes was gone long ago, and blunt instruments are not known for their nuance. He'd hardly needed it, before now.

Despite this, he can look at Romanoff, Natasha, and know that she isn't lying. The thrum of her pulse is steady beneath his fingers, but more than that, he simply knows. He is picking her out in pieces and can't see the whole of her her yet, but he knows. His body is a well-honed instrument, instinctive, and it betrays him.

He hadn't intended to touch her.

He remembers none of it, but he knows.

It's a very long moment before his hand falls away from her neck, and he can't keep the confusion and frustration from twisting his face.

"I don't remember," he says, looking down and away, straining with the effort to prove himself wrong. Understatement of the century.

[regimes_fall]

The hand falling from her neck distressed her, but she did not move to halt its descent as she wanted to.The familiarity of his touch was enough to drown in, and Natasha had been swimming with her head above water for too long to let it all go without thought, but the temptation was surely there. It was no longer her right to want anything from him or to need him, though it was hard to remember either of those things when he was close enough to feel the warmth of his chest and her body seemed to remember exactly how it would feel to step into his body and feel both arms wind around her, even if her brain could not process the details. Indulgence was not an option, so she did as she'd done for years instead, biting back the childish, vulnerable urges that could all too easily take the place of her well-honed survival instincts if she'd let them, and watched the display of his obvious confusion and upset play across his face with a calm reservation that she did not feel.

"That's okay," she said softly. "I don't remember everything yet, either." There were holes and glitches in her memories, trap doors that lead to fantasy lands built by the hands of her enemies, and she did not think it was ever something that could be undone entirely. She could only imagine what it felt like inside his brain just then, even to him, and her fingers curled once into her palms on the urge to reach out to him, to encourage his body closer and closer until she could hold him as she'd done so rarely in their time before.

"Can I help you?" She finally asked. "I don't know what you need, but I have a room here. I could get you some food, if you need that. A shower. A safe place to sleep." She was sure he could acquire all of those things, likely already had, but she needed to offer it. Needed an excuse to draw him closer, for all that she knew she shouldn't. She was where she was because a long time ago Clint Barton had opted to show her kindness instead of serving her death, and a kind hand may not be something he wanted, but she would offer it anyway "Please. Let me help you if I can."

[grimvisaged]

Spider though she is, this isn't a trap—No hastily-knit web to be lured into—and he knows it. What it is, however, is preposterous, a natural courtesy that is anything but natural for him. Still shaken by her new revelations, it takes him a moment to pull free from the tangled mire of his memories, but when he does, it's to regard her with a tilted head and squinted eyes, as human a gesture as he's managed yet.

(You've got to be kidding me, doll.)

No other answer is forthcoming, save for the way he swiftly and efficiently steps away. He needs answers, but more than anything right now, he needs to be less close to her, this human trip switch who has veered him so far from his original mission. From a safe distance, he watches her from the corner of his eye.

"One thing," he softly says at length, reconsidering. "Tell him to stop looking."

[regimes_fall]

The distance between them was tangible, breathable. In the absence of his warmth she found her feet once more, and she took a long, deep breath through her nostrils to steady the wayward descent of her heart, which had always been all too eager to throw itself at his feet. She could look at him and tell he was preparing to go, tell that he would disappear and she would not see him again until he willed it, and that she could live with. It had always been the way of things.

His one request was one she could easily grant, though he was fooling himself if he thought it would serve him in any way. She knew he knew that, and looked at him then in a way that someone who truly knew her would've recognized as soft and bordering on gentle.

"I'll tell him," she said, then added frankly, "it won't work, but you know that already. I'll tell him, though."