widows_kiss | Appointments Post

[Bucky steps inside, silent as she gets her thoughts together. The last thing he expected was for this to shake Clint and Natasha. Whatever they have between them runs deeper than he could hope to guess, and while a part of him is admittedly jealous, he understands being so close to someone that you practically live under their skin.

He also understands how things can get... messy, when new feelings come into play. He's never seen her so out of sorts, and it's no wonder. He shakes his head.]

Sounds like a rough morning. Do you want to talk about it, or hole up for the day and watch some movies? I can leave, too, if you're not up for the company.

[Her smile turns a little warmer, a little more real and her and she shakes her head as she motions him in, heading for her couch.]

No. I don't want you to leave. Come on in, get comfortable. I should probably just apologize ahead of time in case I'm terrible company, since I might be. Certainly less entertaining than... well. Last time. Although that started out a bit less than typical anyway.

[Mostly because she'd been dosed on milk chocolate and... yeah, she'd rather not think about that, because she could feel heat creeping up the back of her neck at the remembrance of it. The following memories, with a different chocolate, were much easier to dwell on, and not quite so mortifying.]

I wouldn't mind the company, to be honest. It might keep me from slowly driving myself mad, locked in here with just my thoughts. [She confesses this with a self-depreciating smile as she sinks down on the sofa.] I'm not sure talking will do much good. I... can't change things. He said he needed space, so he was going somewhere he could find some. He needed to clear his head. [She shakes her head, lifting one shoulder in a shrug, doing her best to hide how that had stung.]

Maybe a movie would be best. Or... we can talk. I know last week was... [She pauses, searching for the right words, because she still didn't know what last week was. How much had been real and how much had been a game and now she was coming out of it feeling... bruised. It had felt so real. So right. Now she didn't know how much of it she could trust anymore.]

...It was complicated.

[Bucky's lips quirk up into a small smile. She's almost babbling; it's cute, though he wouldn't dare say that out loud. It's not like he's doing much better. He can feel the warmth at his collar when she mentions the last time they were together. It's not like him to blush like a schoolboy, but that was... generally more adventurous than he's accustomed to.

He settles on the couch beside her. She's trying to play it off, but he doesn't see how it couldn't hurt to be shut out.]

Well, while we're being honest, I could use some company too. I can't believe that jerk was actually dumb enough to spend any time away from the most gorgeous dame I've ever laid eyes on. [He winks at her. Though the words are meant sincerely, he plays it up in hopes of lightening the mood. He catches her eye before he reaches over to put an arm around her shoulders - honestly, she just looks like she could use a hug.]

It was complicated. [It's still complicated, but where do they even begin to talk about that?] What do you think, is it a Die Hard kinda day?

Edited 2013-03-08 01:39 (UTC)

[She manages a small laugh at his teasing compliment, shaking her head because she couldn't blame Clint. He did see better from a distance, it was the things up close that gave him trouble now and then, went completely unseen. She was only worried about what he would see when he found his aim again, and if this manipulation had... changed things. Possibly permanently. And not for the better.

...Maybe she should have lied to him after all.]

Honesty's not serving me very well today, I'm afraid. Although the flattery helps. [She has a moment of surprise when he wraps his arm around her, but she pushes it away, sinking against him, because that... feels exactly like what she needs actually, and she curls closer, soaking up the warm solid heat of him, the comfort it offers.

She glances up at him, searching his face intently a moment.] So. Do I owe you an apology? For what happened, I mean.

[When he brings up that movie, she cocks her head to the side, considering for a moment before she smiles and shakes her head again.] No. Not today. But I think I might have something else you might like better. [Because this is something she can cheat at a little, a knowledge of him beyond what she should have, and something she collected on a whim, because it reminded her of him.]

[Bucky chuckles.] Does it? I can keep going.

[He keeps his hold on her light, easy to shake off even after she sinks against him. He can feel the warmth of her through his shirt, and he's grateful for the ease of it, soaking up as much comfort as he tries to give.

When she asks if she owes an apology, he shakes his head.] Not a chance. I think... I think we ought to sort all of this out, but I don't have any regrets if you don't. [He pauses, drops a light kiss against the crown of her head.] I mean, aside from the obvious, we also broke your lamp, and that one chair, and the, ah, your unmentionables ended up on the ceiling fan...

[Bucky clears his throat. Getting them down had been pretty entertaining too. When she mentions the movie he raises an eyebrow, curious.] Yeah? Alright, hit me.

[She laughs at that, casting him a crooked smile as she meets his gaze.] I think you made your point.

[She can feel the heated press of his lips atop her head, and the feel of it sends a rush or warmth through her, allowing her to relax a little more against him, the tension slowly bleeding out of her. His words have her laughing again and the sound is a bit freer this time, warmer. She didn't even have to look to know that he was starting to blush. She liked that it came so easily on him.]

Definitely no regrets. It was worth every piece of broken furniture. If you decide you feel like breaking some more, all you have to do is say the word. [She's teasing him, but that doesn't make her words any less true as she glances up once more, green eyes dancing as she meets his gaze.] We could get yours stuck up there next time. We'll start a new decorating trend.

[She slides off the couch then, padding across the room to retrieve the movie in question, popping it in the player. It wasn't high-tech, wasn't anywhere close, but she didn't care. She didn't think he would either. She came back to settle in with him on the couch as the introductory strains of music from "The King And I" started to play.]

Edited 2013-03-08 22:09 (UTC)

You'll have to get 'em off me first. [Bucky winks at her, but neither of them are really up for anything right now, and he's happy to cuddle up with her and watch the movie. Partway through he coaxes her into a dance, and as much as he was enjoying the movie, he can't say it has his full attention just then.]

This is gonna sound... so ridiculous, but sometimes it's like you knew me since before we met, and I'm still trying to figure out how I got so lucky you decided to stick around anyway.

Was that a challenge, Barnes? [She says it laughingly, but she's as content as he is to curl up on the couch, forgetting everything for a while as the movie plays. Something she's seen him watch before, and she's not at all surprised when halfway through he starts mimicking Yul Brynner or when he coaxes her up to spin her about the room to Shall We Dance? which has them both laughing and breathless by the end of it. Though he'd known all the steps and so had she, and she's missed this feeling, this exhilaration, this utter enjoyment of just being ridiculous and carefree and she revels in it.

She's so caught up in it that his words catch her off guard, her feet fumbling in the steps and she catches herself against his chest. She remembers herself an instant too late, her green eyes flying to his face in surprise, breath catching in her throat, knowing that there is guilt written on her face before she can wipe it away.]

[When she stumbles he automatically reaches to catch her, letting her steady herself against him, though he's clearly surprised. He wonders if she was hurt and he didn't notice somehow, or if he said too much, or just the wrong thing at the wrong time. There's an apology on the tip of his tongue but the look on her face forestalls it.

He lets her go - slowly, though she doesn't seem unsteady anymore.] Natasha what... Are you alright? What was that about?

[She shakes her head and backs away when he releases her, silently cursing her fumble, her carelessness. Maybe she should have expected that, especially after everything, but she'd forgotten, gotten lost in the moment and his words had brought her up short. An abrupt and dangerous end. He's watching her, she can feel it, and there's suspicion there. Confusion.

It's far too late to try and salvage this, but she tries anyway, because this was the last conversation she'd wanted to have today.] Nothing. I... I just stumbled. It's been a long time since I've danced like that.

[He doesn't know exactly what it was, but that wasn't just a random accident. Not with that look on her face after, and the way she's trying to play it off now. But at the same time, he's not sure what it's supposed to mean. She can't possibly... They couldn't have met. He died. He fell from a train into water so cold it burned, and he died.]

That's not the best lie you've ever told me.

[She sinks down on the end of the sofa, a sick feeling knotting in her stomach. She can't lie to him. Not about this. Not when he's looking at her like that. She should. He shouldn't know... He doesn't need to know... But this... it's not entirely her secret to keep. And this internal debate she's had going from the moment she laid eyes on him is no easier to solve now than it was back after she arrived.

So instead she gives a soft laugh, the sound strained, folding her hands in her lap to hide the slight tremble in them. And said the words that would have all this unraveling.]

You always did have a knack for catching me at it. Even when it was a convincing one.

[He almost wants her to laugh in his face and tease him, like this is all some big joke, and he's the world's biggest sucker for falling for it. He watches her sit, sees the way her hands shake, and he knows it's not.

He's been making excuses since the day they met, since he saw her fight and dance and made love to her - they move like mirrors, and her hands know his skin like the lines of map.

A part of him wants to sit with her and take her hands in his, but he feels like he's frozen where he is.]

I -- I died years before you could have even been born.

[That draws a strained laugh from her and she lifts a hand, brushing her hair back from her face as she lifts her eyes to meet his gaze.] You have no idea when I was born.

[She fidgets, giving herself a moment to carefully choose the words in how she would begin this. She'd practiced it a thousand times in her head over the past few months but all her careful words had fled her now.]

Actually, I don't even know the exact date I was born. Spring, probably. Maybe late winter. But the year was 1928.

[Bucky is silent for a long moment, and then he sits down slowly.]

Jesus.

I think you'd better start from the beginning.

There's more of a beginning than that? [Her tone is wry but she stares at her hands now, as if having her gaze focused there instead of him will make this somehow easier to tell.]

I... don't know how to tell you any of it, except through what happened to me. And what I'm about to tell you... let's just say that "classified" is a severe understatement.

I don't remember my parents. I was young when they died. There was a fire, I'm told. I was found by a man who pulled me from the snow and rubble. He was a soldier and he handed me over to the government, leaving my upraising to Mother Russia, along with many other young orphaned girls. I was brought up by an organization known as Department X, at a facility called the Red Room. There were many of these, all over the country. They took in children at a young age. Ones no one would miss or ask questions about. Ones that had nowhere else to go.

They trained us, conditioned us, raised us to be the perfect soldiers for our country. [Her voice had gone quiet, her gaze distant, recalling the story with an emotional detachment, as if it had happened to someone else and was nothing more than a just that. A story.] I was part of a training regime that was known as the Black Widow Ops. We were supposed to be the best. They... enhanced us. There was experimentation - similar, I later discovered, to what the Red Skull and Hydra tried in duplicating the serum of your Captain. As you can see, it had some affect, if not in the same way.

[She glances over at him then, her green gaze steady on his face as she paused and licked her lips, trying to find the words for this next part.] When I was older, I was among the most promising in the program. It qualified me for more specialized and intensive training and I was given a mentor to train under. He was... he was an assassin for the Red Room, one only whispered about, because his reputation was so secret and terrifying. No one knew his real identity. He was only known as the Winter Soldier.

He's the one who taught me how to fight. How to survive. Almost every trick I know, I learned from him, or the basis of it. I've had a long time to build off them, make them my own, but at the core... At the core, they're all him. He was the most important person in my world. One of the only ones I trusted in those days, because trust was seen as a weakness. Any emotion was. I was designed to be a killer. Emotionless, detached, deadly. He'd had the same training. Worse, maybe. I don't know what he endured before I met him. I don't know how much he knew either. The Red Room was... fond of mental manipulation. Brainwashing. Implanting memories or orders in your subconscious so you didn't know what was real or what wasn't.

He didn't know who he was. He had no memory of a life before the Red Room. They'd created him, pieced him together and started him as a blank slate. But even then he wasn't perfect. He'd have dreams sometimes. Flashbacks. And even physically... He was a deadly assassin, but he had scars. Many scars. And his arm, his left arm. It was bionic, something the Red Room had created for him, supposedly to replace the one he had lost.

[He nods at the very beginning. He doesn't expect to like what he's about to hear, but he can respect her privacy, and whatever official red tape there is keeping her past under lock and key.

It starts off familiar enough. Lost parents, lost children... but then it becomes so much worse. One of his hands is balled into a fist in his lap, and he curls the fingers of his other hand over it, feeling the pressure of them tense and release as she speaks. He's looking at his hands but not seeing them at all. He thought Hydra was a nasty piece of work, indiscriminate as they were, but this Red Room had deliberately used children as lab rats and tried to mold them into killers. And in a horrible way this, too, is a part of the legacy Steve left. People think men like him can be made, then made into weapons. They experimented on children. On Natasha.

He doesn't know how she speaks so calmly, because he's not sure he can speak at all at the moment. He's caught somewhere between anger and a hollow kind of grief for what was done, and what wasn't. What can't be changed.

He feels her gaze on him and looks up to meet her eyes, nodding just slightly for her to continue. He realizes as soon as she says he's the one who taught me how to fight that this where he comes into the story. It feels like all the air has been punched out of his lungs. It can't be true. He wants to argue, but he can't bring himself to, right at that moment. There's something in the quiet cadence of Natasha's voice that rings too true.

He helped them do whatever it was they did to her, and who knows how many other people like her. He doesn't know how or why in God's name he lived for that, but suddenly it seems like death was easy.

His arm seems like a small thing to lose in comparison, and he thinks dully of when Steve had scolded him for joking about just that. He can't decide if it's less funny or more now.]

I don't... I don't know how to... [He swallows, and makes himself look at her, at least.] I'm sorry. For everything.

Edited 2013-03-16 02:14 (UTC)

You don't have to apologize to me, James. You never did. Not for anything.

[Her voice is soft as she shakes her head, watches him, her gaze steady and serious. She wasn't sure what he was thinking - he'd never been so easy to read and Bucky was just enough different to throw her off even further. Then again, everything she'd just told him... that was a lot to take in. A lot to even believe, considering he'd known her so short a time. Had little reason to trust she was telling him the truth. She meets his gaze, her expression calm, because she hadn't told him this for him to feel guilty, even though she knew he would. Still, she tries to explain that part a little more clearly for him.]

I don't want your apologies. I didn't tell you this so you could blame yourself for things that haven't happened yet, and that you had no choice in. You followed orders, but you weren't like them. Before I met you... I followed orders and I was. I didn't know anything differently, didn't think for myself. I only obeyed. They'd made me a weapon and I was one of the best. You... you changed that. You taught me to think. To reason. To feel.

I know this is a horrible fate for you to contemplate. Completely different than everything you struggled and fought for, believed in. I didn't want to tell you for precisely that reason. But I don't want your apologies, James, because if it weren't for you... I wouldn't be alive right now. I might never have been alive, never been more than a weapon aimed at a world I've come to love. I owe you... everything.

[He can read between the lines enough to hear what Natasha's talking around. They got involved, maybe they fell in love, and maybe they found something human in each other, there's no way for him to know. It hasn't happened yet. But either way he thinks Natasha is giving him too much credit for some things, and not enough blame for others, if everything she says is true.]

No. The only thing you could possibly owe me was the truth about what happened between us, and that's out now.

[There's a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He needs to get out of here and sort all this out. He cards his fingers through his hair.]

I think I should go.

[She doesn't visibly flinch at his words, but she feels it all the same, her hands tightening for the briefest moment in her lap, knuckles white, before she forces them to relax again. The movie's still playing on in the background, but now its just noise and she pays it no attention as she gets to her feet. She feels numb.]

Alright.

[There's something telling about her stillness, and the near total lack of reaction. He realizes too late that his first instinct has been to run, and it's going to hurt her, but it's too much.

He can't make himself stay, and he can't just leave things like this between them.]

Natasha... [When they get to the door he starts to reach for her hand but stops himself short, fingers closing on air before returning to his side.] We'll talk later.

[She meets his gaze for the briefest of moments before giving him a nod, her expression carefully blank and controlled. She opens the door and steps back to give him room. She almost feels like she should apologize, but... she doesn't even know where to start. She doesn't have any words that will make this any better. Instead, she just falls back on the same answer, because she doesn't know what else to say.

She can't make this right. She's not sure anything can.]

Alright.

[He can't read her expression or the response after it. He doesn't know what else to say either, or if he wants anything like an apology from her. On the one hand, he wishes she'd told him from the start, but on the other, some small cowardly part of him wishes she'd never told him at all, and it's just enough for him to understand.

He nods in return and steps out. He doesn't look back as he heads back down the hallway. Faint notes of music from the movie follow him until she finally shuts the door.]

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