ostavil | open post

"Questions later." Or, never, if she had her preference. She held out a handgun, its magazine fully loaded, and stated, "Take it if you feel you can use it. Dugan and several others are two levels down, being held in the containment cells. We can get them out, but only if we move quickly and quietly. Focus, James." She glanced at the machines behind her.

"I don't know what they dosed you with, but it doesn't look like vitamins. Clear it out of your head and let's go."

Then she took him by the hand and all but melted into the long shadows near the door. Once she'd cleared the hallway, she flowed into the corridor and ghosted along its dark edge until she reached the stairwell. At that door, she halted, squeezing Bucky's hand in warning to be silent as slow steps echoed down the empty hallway.

One heartbeat, two, then Natalia struck, taking down the roving sentry with two precise blows, dragging him out of sight and confiscating his weapons. "Stay here," she instructed, handing over the machine gun and the additional ammunition. "I'll send them up to you. The exit is just down this hallway, an access door on the left." She paused long enough to kiss his cheek, then she vanished once again.

When the gun gets pressed into his hand, Bucky shakes his head and tries to get back into the game. Shit is getting real now and no matter what those goons dosed him with, he's got to get out of it and save his own ass or anything that Natalie's done so far is going to be useless.

When she says the others are two floors down, he gives a quick nod. "If we get them out, they can help us." He barely gets it out of his mouth before they're faced with a sentry and Natalie takes him down faster than any SS or Commando he's seen. Who the hell had trained her for this shit? Was she a spy or something? Russian spy?

She presses a gun into his hand and kisses him before leaving and it's not long before he's busy leading the rest of the men out of the damn place and doesn't have time to puzzle out exactly who his girlfriend actually is.

There was a cabbage truck waiting for the Americans at the end of the service road leading up to the facility. The last POW had just clambered into the bed amid the vegetables when the night sky suddenly lit up with a massive explosion, the compound going up in a wild ball of fire, sending debris raining out over the countryside for nearly half a mile.

The driver wasted little time in getting the hell out of Dodge, the men in the back jounced around amid the cargo. Gabe Jones reached over and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Good one, Barnes! Hotdamn!"

Dugan chortled, grinning despite his bedraggled appearance. "How the hell did you get that guard to let us out, Barnes? Short little fucker just showed up and opened the door, pointed at the stairs, then we see you up there waitin' on us. Goddamn, man!" The others joined in the chorus, needing something to lift their spirits, after two weeks in hell.

"How'd you get away?" "What did they do when they dragged you out?" "Did you see anyone else?" "What the hell was that place, some sort of freak-weapons factory?"

"Whatever it was, Barnes blew the fucker right off the map, goddamn!" "And saved our sorry asses, ain't that right?" "Hell yeah! Let's hear it for Bucky Barnes!"

"Look, we blew it up and we're fucking out, aren't we? We're all goddamned heroes, not just me!" Bucky wants to deflect because he can't take credit for this, not when Natalie had broken him out and he still didn't know how she'd gotten in or how she knew he was there. Didn't the Army have him listed as KIA or MIA? Surely they had already. Maybe she had connections through Stark and got training from Carter or something. There's a way it all fits together even if he can't figure out exactly what it is.

"Don't be slapping medals on me just yet, boys. Still gotta live through the rest of this war." He doesn't have any illusions that they won't be shipped back out once they're cleared by medical but he hopes he gets a chance to see Natalie again before he does. He gets back to the Allied Base and sent straight to triage to be looked over. Other than exhaustion and starvation, there's nothing wrong with him, and he's cleared to go to the mess with everyone else. When he's there, he sees Steve, but he keeps the greeting short. He's looking for Stark.

He finds where Stark and Carter are holed up and sticks his head in the door. "Natalie anywhere around here?"

Peggy and Howard looked up with a bit of surprise at the intrusion. "Sergeant Barnes," Peggy said, rising from her chair and giving him a polite nod. "Welcome back. My commendations, on your exceptional bravery and courage under such drastic conditions." Howard eagerly seconded her sentiments.

Then his brows furrowed when Barnes asked about Natalie.

"Err, no, actually. She's not. I sent her and Jarvis into town with a shopping list, they should be back later this afternoon." Stark drummed his pencil on the table. "Something wrong, Sergeant?" That Rogers' best friend had a "thing" for Stark's pretty little secretary wasn't exactly the best kept secret on base, but no one had bothered to make an issue of it.

"I'll let her know you're looking for her, if you like."

"Uh, yeah. Just let her know I came by."

Bucky has the sense that Natalie's still out cleaning up the mess of the HYDRA base but he doesn't want to breathe a word of it to Stark. Something tells him that Stark doesn't know about it and it seems like Natalie knew too much about the way HYDRA worked for her to be someone who came from Carter's office. It's a little disconcerting, honestly, to think about Natalie being wrapped up in HYDRA shit. Does he know her at all? There's been things all along that indicated that she was smarter than she tried to let on in public but Bucky had chalked that up to wanting to keep herself at arms' length of most men. Most people were going to see her as a pretty face and slide by but he hadn't and he wonders if she'd had some ulterior motive or if he'd been an accident.

He also doesn't know if this relationship is as real for her as it is for him. Those things haunt him as he goes back to bunk down and get some rest. It's not good sleep, punctuated with nightmares, but it's still sleep and he's not locked up anymore.

The following morning started off as per the usual; Howard was in his laboratory, muttering to himself over coffee, and Natalie was sitting at her smaller desk adjacent, taking running notes of his solitary kibitzing. One of the techs had brought breakfast, and a half-eaten box of donuts sat on the edge of Stark's large, cluttered desk.

It was only when Peggy came in that things began to slant sideways, and it started with Agent Carter's casual observation of, "Oh, Natalie, Sergeant Barnes asked after you yesterday. He and the others were cleared by medical, and out of quarantine, if you want to step over later and say hello."

Smile frozen, Natalie thanked her for the message, but managed to find enough to do to keep her firmly busy in the armory until the sun was heading for the western horizon. There'd be questions, and she didn't have any satisfactory answers.

Bucky had thought Natalie would come see him after she got his message but she hadn't come all day so he figured that either she wasn't back yet (plausible) or that she didn't want anything to do with him now because he knew her secret (more plausible).

It makes him wonder if any of it had been real. It had felt real for him, those feelings, and he hopes she returned them. She'd called him moya zvezda and looked at him tenderly when they were together. His mind is reeling about what he'd seen her do and his heart is questioning if the sex and the connection had been real or some kind of cover.

He's not hopeful.

Once she made up her mind, Natalia left Stark and Carter to their work - it was well after dark by now, and the workday was over - and headed off across the base in search of her particular Sergeant. During the trek, she went over exactly what she was going to tell him, and worked herself into an appropriately girlish level of emotional upset, so that her eyes were bright and glassy, and she was sniffling just the right amount by the time she found Bucky in the mess with Captain Rogers and a few of the other Commandos, and didn't hesitate to hurl herself right into his arms, sobbing quietly against his chest.

The onlookers hesitated, shuffled their feet, and one by one melted away, leaving Natalia to cling to her soldier and cry, eventually lifting her head to gaze up at him with wide eyes, and throw her arms around his neck and pull him down to her for a trembling kiss.

"...thank God you're back and safe," she finally managed to whisper in the small space between them. "James, I was so scared when we found out what happened--! I thought you were never coming back--!" She clutched him tight, hanging on for what seemed to be dear life.

Bucky frowns deeply; why would she be worried when she'd been there to get him out herself? This isn't a conversation for eavesdroppers, though, so he drops his arm around her shoulder and guides her outside. It's cold enough that there's no one hanging around and he looks down at her.

"It's a good show for everyone but you were there," Bucky says, voice low and rough in the dark. "You're the one who came in and got me out of there. You killed a guard, set an explosive, told me where to go. I couldn't do shit but what you told me to do and they're callin' me a hero. I'm gonna get a medal or something because you waltzed into that base like you owned it. So tell me the truth."

Green eyes blinked up at him, puzzled. "...what? No. No, I wasn't. James..." Natalia shook her head, chilly fingers clutching the lapels of his jacket. "How could I have been there?" She bit her lip, contrite and confused. "...Agent Carter said they'd dosed you with some sort of drug... You were hallucinating, or something."

She placed a hand to his cheek, rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone. "I was so worried," she said, voice catching. "I wanted to come sooner, but Howard sent me into town for supplies, and I wasn't able to get away until just now." Heaving a huge sigh of relief, Natalia wrapped her arms around Bucky's waist again, dropping her head to his chest.

"...you have no idea how scared I was...thinking that I was going to lose you, James..." That, at least, was the truth.

"You were there," Bucky says, though it isn't with as much conviction as before. He had been drugged over and over, tortured - it's a miracle he came out with most of his brains intact. Does it make sense that he'd think about his best girl? Maybe? But she'd killed those soldiers when Stark's plane crashed, too, and Bucky isn't sure what's going on.

"I remember you helping me because you knew where to go. You knew the base and I didn't know it. I remember that."

"No..." She shook her head, placing her fingers over his lips. "No, I wasn't. You were dreaming, James. They gave you something...some sort of drug. And it made you see things that weren't there." Peggy had said that; she'd overheard it when Agent Carter and Captain Rogers had been discussing the medical debriefing yesterday.

"You escaped," Natalia reminded him, "and helped the others break out, too. You're a hero, James Barnes. And I'm so, so glad you came back to me. I didn't know what I was going to do, if you never came back..."

"I don't know what's real."

It's something that's never happened to him before and he's never felt vulnerable the way he does now. He'd left for war as a man with self-confidence and assurance that he was going to be someone someday. He'd do his bit in the Army, come home, get a job and marry a nice girl and end up having a good life. This...this is different. This is having the stark memory of something but not being able to trust it, being told it wasn't real by the one person he knows would never lie to him.

"Are you telling the truth? That you weren't there?"

Although it made her writhe inside, Natalia nodded without hesitation. "I wasn't, James. I swear to you, I wasn't." It seemed to her that the entire universe stopped for a split second, so enormous was the gravity of that lie. But it was necessary, and the ends always justified the means, didn't they? Didn't they?

But thank God that the door not far away opened, spilling soldiers and light out into the darkened courtyard. Natalia suddenly shivered, realizing that it was quite cold outside, although it wasn't snowing. Yet. She tugged her coat tighter around herself, unconsciously burrowing into Bucky's side.

"...it's freezing out here," she noted. "Want to go inside? Before my fingers and toes fall off?"

Bucky brings her back inside and spends a little bit of time taking each one of her small hands between his bigger ones to help warm them. He's got a whole mountain kit, actually, but he's not wearing it right now so he can't give her the gloves; he's just in his regular fatigues today.

"Any way I can come and sleep in your room tonight? I'd invite you to my place but there's about six other loud guys snoring. Not a place to bring a lady."

That image actually made her giggle, though she couldn't keep the tinge of sadness out of her tone. "Of course, as long as you don't get in trouble. My place, as you call it, isn't much bigger than a broom closet, but at least it's across the compound, and more or less quiet."

Howard would be working in his laboratory most of the night, she knew, and Jarvis with him. So there was only a small chance of any disturbance, if all went well.

"Come on, let's go."

"I apparently saved the entire 107th. I think they'll let me go have a night with my girlfriend," Bucky says. His voice is a little rough around the edges and he still feels tender and raw but maybe a night with Natalia will help him. He knows it's Natalie in front of everyone else but it's gotten real hard for him to remember that just now.

"I'm sorry you had to worry about me. I told you I was just a pain in the ass from Brooklyn. Classy girl like you should be with someone who figured out a way to not fight in this war."

"Well," Natalia said as she took his hand and led him across the compound, "there's always Howard, if you change your mind." But she smiled as she said it, a gentle tease. Her assigned quarters were, alas, quite small; a chest-of-drawers in one corner, a closet in the other, and a single bed against the far wall, beneath the window.

"There's not a lot of room," she told him, peeling off her coat once the door closed behind them. "But at least it's warm." And she spent most of her time over in the lab or the armory, anyway. She even had a cot behind her desk, where she could catch a nap, at least.

"We're gonna be real close friends before the night's over," Bucky says, eyeing the bed. "One day, I'm going to have to get a base pass so I can come into some swanky place in Switzerland with you and Stark. I might get a bed that my feet don't hang off the end of. You're lucky, being so tiny. You can tuck in anywhere."

Bucky strips out of his coat and hangs it up in the closet along with hers. Once that's done, he draws her into his arms. He can't shake the feeling of his memories being off but he'll just try to forget with her for now.

Natalia let him pull her close, sliding into his arms with a warm sigh. She hadn't been lying when she'd told him how afraid she'd been; she, better than anyone else in a thousand mile radius, knew just how dangerous HYDRA actually was, and how ruthless they could be with their 'vision'. She didn't know what they'd been dosing their captured POW's with, but she knew it couldn't be anything good.

But apparently Medical had cleared him, otherwise he'd still be stuck in the clinic and not here, with her. Although things between them now felt...strained, however. And she wasn't at all surprised. But she could pretend, couldn't she?

Natalia tucked her head beneath Bucky's chin, nuzzling at him softly. "...I've missed you, James," she whispered into the warm quiet, gently toying with the buttons on his presses shirt. "So, so much."

"I missed you too, doll," Bucky says, sliding his hands down her back and cupping her hips in his hands. He had missed her when they were out on duty and he'd damned sure missed her when he was being tortured by those HYDRA goons. He didn't know what was real and what was a dream, really, but he hoped this part was real.

"I wanted to be with you the whole time," he says. "I wanted to love you and hold you and not have to worry about what they were doing to me. Can you help me forget for a little while? I really just want to forget about it."

"I can do that," she whispered, rising up on her toes to kiss him soundly, more than willing for him to just forget everything that happened back in Italy. Especially his memories of her there. But there'd been no way she'd have been able to just leave him and the others there; Natalia knew her handlers were going to be furious, if they ever discovered the truth. To say nothing of the man in her arms, a fear which gnawed at her even more than the former.

But all of that was for later; right now, she focused on unbuttoning her lover's shirt and gently drawing it down his arms before flattening her hands to his warm chest, needing his skin beneath her hands. She kissed him as she touched, moaning softly into his sweet, sweet mouth. "...this is real," she assured him in a heated whisper, nuzzling her way down the length of his throat. "...this is real, we're here together, and no one will take you away from me, James..."

Natalia slipped small arms around Bucky's waist, sliding her body against his, a sensual tease. "No one."

"Not letting anyone between us," Bucky agrees. Natalia is tiny in his arms and he just tries to think about this instead of what he'd gone through when he was held captive by HYDRA. His fellow captives didn't have a beautiful woman waiting for them like he did and he's not going to waste it; he slides his hands between them to work on the buttons on her blouse with some urgency.

He's always loved to kiss and even though he's not seen Natalia in a while, he tries to take his time kissing her. He tugs at her lower lip with his teeth lightly before pressing his tongue in against hers. He loves kissing so much, loves being intimate with his hands in Natalia's hair and his lips pressed up against hers, and he tries to let this consume his mind and not the phantom things that had been forced in by HYDRA.

This is real. That wasn't real.

Natalia was deft enough to get both of their shirts off without breaking their lips apart. She loved kissing him; James's mouth was sweet, soft, and delicious all at the same time, and she honestly thought she'd never get enough of it. The moment his uniform hit the floor, her hands were all over him, as if reassuring herself that he was indeed alive and real in her arms. She'd been terrified, reading that telegram just a few short days ago.

But he was a good bit taller than she was, so standing up on her tiptoes was getting a little cumbersome, so Natalia regretfully eased out of her soldier's possessive hold, only to coax him down on the small bed with her, immediately pulling him back into her arms and winding a smooth, stocking-clad leg around his hips, her skirt riding up around her waist but she gave absolutely no care. All of their clothing would be gone soon, and she shivered in anticipation of skin sliding against skin.

"...stay all night," she breathed into his mouth, the air heated and moist between them. "Don't leave me alone, James...please..."

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