for repaying.

[armeyets]

the red room

pre-graduation: sparring | mess hall
post-graduation: hurt/comfort | a week at the dacha


present-day

post-civil war: domesticity

【 au 】 the americans

---

no name / margaret atwood
This is the nightmare you now have frequently:
that a man will come to your house at evening
with a hole in him — you place it
in the chest, on the left side — and blood leaking out
onto the wooden door as he leans against it.

He is a man in the act of vanishing
one way or another.
He wants you to let him in.
He is like the soul of a dead
lover, come back to the surface of the earth
because he did not have enough of it and is still hungry

but he is far from dead. Though the hair
lifts on your arms and cold
air flows over your threshold
from him, you have never
seen anyone so alive

as he touches, just touches your hand
with his left hand, the clean
one, and whispers Please
in any language.

Comments

the red room.

[armeyets]

They thaw the Winter Soldier from his slumber, hand him a mission, and put him back down once he's done.

He wakes up.
He goes to sleep.
He wakes up.
He goes to sleep.

They wipe his memories. Reset the clock. He finds that his skills don't atrophy as much as it seems they should; muscle memory still carries him through fights, through the careful eye of a sniper rifle or through the unpleasant crunch of bone shattering beneath his metal hand. Sometimes he trains the rest of his handlers' assets: batches of Russian girls file through the Red Room, with thin and narrow anonymous faces, but with room to grow into stunners when they're older. They're all capable, well-trained, well-behaved.

He goes to sleep. He wakes up. The girls look older; he doesn't age.

They put the weapon on the shelf. They take him down again. Fashions in the outside world change. The designs of the guns alter slightly over the years, although the Avtomat Kalashnikova remains a reliable standard.

She's a teenager the first time he meets her and puts her through her paces in the training room.

The next time he blinks, years have passed. And then there's a stretch of time where they let him stay awake, for a while. The Soldier doesn't need his mind scrubbed when he hasn't actually been in the field for a while; there's no sensitive names or assassination details to erase when he's merely focusing on training. (There have been side-effects. Erratic behaviour. Glitches. The doctors have quietly recommended that he have some time off ice, to thaw the neurons in his brain, to let it heal and settle from the way they're gouging into it every time, over and over and over.)

So he's an instructor now, again. He's waiting on the training mats in the gym, standing at wary rigid attention, arms crossed and surveying the doorway. Tomorrow is marksmanship. Today is hand-to-hand combat, and a redhead has just entered the room for her lesson.

Memories flicker, like a faint film skipping around on the reel.

Had he seen her last year? He thinks he might have.

As she gets closer, there's a name on the tip of his tongue. It's an irrelevant piece of information; the Winter Soldier shouldn't even have it anymore, it should have been wiped with the rest. But he knows her face, and she hasn't spoken yet but he's suddenly certain that the young woman will have a surprisingly husky voice when she opens her mouth. He remembers that she has a fierce left hook; that she can climb her opponents' bodies like a spider, and he'll need to be careful to not let her get around his shoulders, her thighs around his neck.

The soldier watches her approach, and the last piece finally falls into place like the click of a lock.

"Natalia," he says.

[repaying]

The days rise and fall with the movement of the sun in the sky she only gets to see behind dusty, shuttered windows. The sun rises on her in bed, cuffed to the wrought-iron headboard and sets on the latch of metal at her wrists, the shuffle of cotton sheets pooling at her feet, the creak of an old bed frame meant to keep her at the edge of sleep, an old spring reminding her of the lumbar vertebrae in desperate need of stretching, the curve of a pelvic bone, the boney jut of a heel.

Training. Constant awareness. Sleeping too deeply could mean death.

From restless sleep they move the recruits in orderly lines to a delicate mess hall, old fashioned in design and even more old fashioned in its limited menu. (She's lucky, they give her more protein, more fat, if only for the ability to push her harder than the rest).

Natalia attends breakfast each day to find another slender face missing from the faceless crowd she schools with. There are no girlish gigglings in the hall, no whispers or notes passed. Those are scenes from books she's all but smuggled to read, a taste of a world she will never belong to, eventually turned to ash in the fireplace of the sitting room. Evidence eradicated, threat neutralized.

From meals she goes to dance, to etiquette, to language studies, to combat. Hand-to-hand today. Right. She moves with practiced ease, the poise of a young woman all but molded into the shape of a delicate stained-glass soldier, beautiful but for her deceptively sharp edges. She walks into the gym with a quiet, easy confidence, almost an air of arrogance that her instructors chide her for, and stands opposite the rigid man.

She knows his face. She knows the outline of him, of the Soldier, and she measures him from her spot on the mat just as surely as he measures her. She was young when she trained with him last, and she remembers how quiet the room had been as her fellow recruits watched, as other handlers gaped at the way they all but grappled viciously on the mats, each strike more deadly than the last.

In the end, she lost, of course. There's no way she would win against him then. She's not sure that winning now is what she wants, either. (She doesn't know what she wants).

"Sir."

She tucks her hands behind her back, cocks her chin up just so and studies him. He looks the same, with the wild eyes and wilder hair, the strong cut of a jaw over a dark uniform, the barest glint of metal at a cuff. She'd been struck by him when she first met him, taken aback by the emptiness of him. Natalia can read even the slyest of liars, but this man? His eyes, for how deep also seemed depthless.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" There's a tiny quirk of her lips. She shouldn't toe the lines of propriety, she'll get lashings for it later. She wouldn't be their prize student if she didn't.

[armeyets]

Her question doesn't fit the formula.

The man isn't expecting it, and so she can see that stillness as he pauses, then blinks in confusion (as if there's a faint light turning on behind his eyes, a bulb now flickering in a dark room). And his head cocks, as if he's trying to parse the question. It isn't a matter of him not understanding. The girls had wondered at first if he even understood Russian — their trainer never spoke — but when he did eventually open his mouth, his Russian was textbook-perfect. Although there's a muddled undefinable accent that hasn't gotten better even in all his years; perhaps it never will.

"Training," the Soldier says, and his gaze is hard with its curiosity, boring through her. "Did they not tell you?"

No sense of humour. He would be so very boring, this clockwork automaton of a man, if he weren't also so mysterious.

But he wasn't supposed to speak at all. They're meant to launch right into it, wordlessly falling into line and beginning their training. It's the common refrain around the facility: bruised knuckles and black eyes; the smell of powdered chalk on the girls' hands from the gymnastics lessons; the brutal impact of hitting the balance beam, the impact ricocheting through their bones. Ballet lessons and legs bent and feet arched, all their weight carried on their tiptoes. Miniscule bone fractures and pulled tendons and sprained wrists. The facility is a factory, and it is turning out perfect specimens.

All of the girls would look delicate to him, if he didn't already know how deadly they can be, too.

"No monitoring today." The other handlers and instructors (eagle-eyed beldames with names like Darya or Zoya) tended to supervise the beginners' group classes, but Natalia had been here long enough to earn that small shred of freedom. The slightest loosening of the leash.

[repaying]

There's a delicate, red cross-hair laser focused on that stillness, on the slow blink, and Natasha sees the victory in her statement. The other assets might not see it, for the change is nigh imperceptible, but Natalia enjoys pressing and plucking at threads that are better left alone. That are meant to be left alone. Madame B will both scold and praise her for it; it's what sets her apart.

Her name sounds strange on his tongue, and his words even more stilted, like a valenki that doesn't quite fit, keeps slipping off the heel at inopportune moments, letting the ice and snow in to nip at the sole. Curious. They shouldn't be engaging like this, in an act that to all other handlers and monitors might seem like a form of verbal warfare when they're meant to swap blows and blocks, not stilted consonants and vowels too broad.

The curiosity behind those empty eyes captures her for a moment, even if it doesn't show in her face, and her stillness matches his own, even if the curve of her lips widens just so.

"They told me."

Something deep in the core of her chastises her for her mouth, but she's been pushing boundaries lately, fighting back against the way her mind tells her to fall in line with the others. Falling in line means you get disappeared in due time, and those anonymous faces cease to exist.

"They usually reserve you for the new recruits when you're here. They must be unhappy with me." After all, a brutal, vicious beating is one way to weed out the weak, to cull the crop before they invest too much time, money, energy in something doomed to fail. "But I don't think that will come as a surprise to either of us."

Her feet stay flat on the mat; she's shown up barefoot today, bandages and blisters wrapping her toes from years of pointe shoes and heavy, steel-toed boots. She looks nothing like the uniform, clean battalion of girls moving throughout the antique halls. Her hair falls wild around her face, braid fallen from its bun and tie in errant waves, set aflame by the hot spring sun scorching her back through the fitted jumpsuit they're made to wear for training. A silent scream of a challenge, the look of a dog waiting to bare its teeth.

[armeyets]

Natalia had stood out right from the start, even before her obvious skills turned his head for the first time during a lesson, made him take note of her. The other girls looked pale and washed-out next to her with their sallow skin (they didn't see the sun enough, nevermind the northern latitude of wherever-they-are) and white-blonde hair, or dark like a weed. Whenever they lined up in those neat tidy rows, she looked like a blazing fire amongst kindling: a crimson rose growing in a fallow field.

(Somewhere, with the distant and hazy vagueness of a dream, it stirs up an almost-memory like the silt being disturbed at the bottom of a deep, icy lake. A redhead standing on a boardwalk, laughing and leaning coquettishly against the carnival machine while he fumbles in his pockets for more money, trying to impress her. The coins in his hands are not rubles.)

"Perhaps they're measuring your improvement," he finally offers. A speculation. The Soldier uncrosses his arms and shifts his weight on the mats, leaning over to unlace his boots and then set them tidily by the side of the room. Everything in its place, regimented and orderly.

"You could win."


She likely won't, but he is curious — in a way that feels like a long-dormant machine finally humming back to life, his curiosity and interest in the outside world finally piqued again, even if it's only to see how much Natalia has improved. Which new tricks she's picked up since the last time he was thawed. What new challenges she'll throw his way during this fight.

oh, i hope some day i'll make it out of here;

[repaying]

The invisible leader board carried through word of mouth and quiet stares begins to undeniable shake. The names rearrange themselves as girls slip and rise in the rankings and today, Natalia is a name whispered in confused awe instead of reverent fear.

There's power in the whispers, where words become carefully crafted weapons aimed not at the speakers but those who created the invisible ladder to begin with. Her name usually sits at the top, brought low only by the occasional lesson Madame B insists she learns. A few slips in the rankings means less food some days, means harsher training, means crueler punishments. To be beaten harder is to be made stronger.

It starts in ballet, where, in her solo, she slips. Her footing goes awry and the fall she takes is less than graceful, planting her on her back, stunned. She needs help up, which earns her another slash, another mark on her card. But the confusion in the handler's eyes bolsters her, dials up the absolute blood lust at the power it gives her. Had they noticed the way she wormed her way in, a quiet poison forged into the shape of a star student?

She spends a week stuttering in all of her combat courses, taking hits where she would normally dodge, tripping over her feet like her heavy boots are somehow heavier. One handler takes a nasty knife to the thigh, only to strike her clean across the face with a set of brass knuckles, her cheek turned as if waiting. But they don't see the calculated movements, don't see the edge in her eyes when she bites back the pain. They're so baffled at first, that their Natalia is failing.

Nat takes to the mess hall with the ease of a woman who owns the place, but she always has that air to her. Better to walk like the ground underfoot owes her something than to fear what might be hiding beneath it. They fill her tray with lukewarm stew from the bottom of the crock, a stale end of bread, an apple lacking luster. Edible, all of it, but a pointed punishment. It's not enough to sustain the training, to fuel her until she makes it to supper she might not get.

She doesn't care if she never eats again if she succeeds. Placing herself at a table alone (all the other girls slowly shift down in their seats, away from her end of the mess hall), she stares down at her tray, her reflection in the watery stew cold and empty. Reminiscent of someone who showed her kindness, a kindness that only made the beast hunger to be freed from its cage.

[armeyets]

Failing on purpose is harder than succeeding.

You have to balance it just right. Self-sabotage enough of your performance to slip down in the standings, but not enough to tumble off the leader board entirely. Perform well enough that they'll keep you in the programme, but not enough to graduate. Planting the little seeds of failure and letting them spread like a weed. It's a delicate knife's edge balance to walk, and an even more difficult task than simply playing along. And she's good at it, like she's good at everything else.

But therein lies the problem.

She has always been good at everything else.

The Winter Soldier occasionally monitors training he isn't personally involved with, standing silently beside the handlers and behind the long stretch of one-way mirror. It's good for him to know the girls' capabilities. They never ask him for his opinion — he wasn't thawed in order to have opinions — but he's there to watch, to listen, to learn. Sifting the weak from the strong like they're separating the wheat and the chaff.

And amongst that array of well-oiled machines, girls standing en pointe and bending low at the waist, the knobs of their spines curving in a delicate arch, one figure always draws his attention more than the rest.

He should be looking at them all equally, letting his attention skim over them, but his pale blue eyes keep getting drawn back to the southeast corner of the room. He knows Natalia's performance well enough to note that there's something wrong with it, like a skip in a record (no— when would he ever have listened to a vinyl record? when has he ever?). Something is subtly off about her. It does occasionally happen with the girls. Sometimes they're ill — Siberia is not kind, nor is their diet — and sometimes they're pushing themselves to keep dancing and fighting through stomach aches, through monthly cramps, since perfection is still expected from them. But she has never let that bring her down before.

It sticks with him like there's something caught in his teeth. He carries it with him, in the back of his mind, even as the days drag on. And on this day, he files into the mess hall with a couple other soldiers, his shoulders squared and almost hunched like a dog awaiting a kick. He takes his rations. (There's more protein for the soldier programme lately; the hollow men all have that strange emptiness to them, but he is the very best of them.)

Looking into the hall, he notes the widening gyre of space around the redhead. Girls who ordinarily sat beside Natalia Romanoff without a thought are now staying away, as if it's contagious. As if failure is catching.

The Soldier's tray hits the table with a small clatter, and he swings a leg over the prison-style bench. He sits down beside her, looking straight ahead and down at his food, not looking at her. (He's already spent enough time looking at her.) He starts shoveling bites into his mouth, perfunctory, not enjoying it. It's fuel for the machine.

But then he speaks. Even if it's addressed low, under his breath and to the plate, he is of course speaking to her:

"You need to stop," the Soldier says. Not hesitating to make his point; instead, he launches right into the topic like he's a bulldozer.

[repaying]

Another week of stumbles should be the killing blow; they'll fail her, pull her from the programme and re-evaluate her, where she can, once again, fail spectacularly until they decide to terminate her. That's what happens to the girls who can't meet the standard, who can't find the bar and soar above it. Madame B hauled her by the scruff one day to watch, her face pressed against the two way mirror as they brutally cut down a girl she had trained beside for months.

Irina, perhaps? Annika? The name hadn't come to her then but the image of the girl's wide, fearful eyes remains burned against the backs of her eyelids. Let them try and do that to her. Let them.

A quiet befalls the din of the mess hall when the soldiers enter, all of them gaunt with endlessly empty eyes, faces a blank canvas awaiting the masterstroke of an artist (a killer). The quiet doesn't last, the girls begin to pick up their chatter once again, practicing different languages with one another over steaming stews and vegetables. Her eyes track the boots of one, in particular, not meeting his face, her glance fleeting so as not to draw attention.

Natalia. The bizarre Russian tilt of his words haunts her, and she's done some digging, but to no avail. The files on the soldiers are kept carefully tucked away behind many locked doors, only half of which she has successfully picked.

She stirs a spoon idly in her stew, the contents gone cold, heat run off with her train of thought twenty minutes ago. But she feels him approach long before he sits down, like the fine raise of hair on the arm, the moment before a storm crashes. Soldiers aren't meant to sit with assets, but some do, when they need to monitor conversation, when there's whispers of turncoats, failure. His place beside her is nothing more than another burn on her record, but this one she feels deep, white-hot.

"Stop what? Eating?" A huff through her nose, performatively indignant, her eyes settling on her tray. She can't help but wonder if his eyes are still a clear blue, deep and vast and empty, save for the small light someone has turned on and forgotten to turn off. Are there more switches to be flipped? Nat thinks so. "We could trade. Fair warning that the bread went stale last week."

She picks up the nub of bred, cracks the flaky crust on the table top, letting its thunk reside between them before she drops it onto his tray.

[armeyets]

The bread unexpectedly fills his vision, a projectile deposited onto his tray. There's a tension taut in the man's shoulders as he hunches over his food — does he ever relax? — but out of the corner of her eye, just at the corner of his mouth and half-averted profile, she can see a flicker of a muscle. Something that might've been a smile, once upon a time.

"It's edible if you dip it in the stew," the Soldier says. His own bowl is heartier than hers: more chunks of meat, less watered-down. There's the faintest hesitation as he looks down at the piece of stale bread, considers her jokey proposition, and then goes ahead and takes it entirely seriously.

"Fine," he says (which seems to be one of his favourite words, confirmation and agreement and disgruntlement all at once), and with a swift movement of his hands and a flash of metal fingers, he takes their two bowls and swaps them. Quick and businesslike sleight-of-hand, like a pair of orphans ducking the view of a stern matron. (In a way, that is exactly what they are.) It's likely still dangerous in case anyone starts to wonder why one of the soldiers is swapping food with a widow — but it is still less dangerous than what she's been doing.

"But I don't mean that." He isn't looking at her; his gaze is roaming everywhere but, making sure there's still a no-man's land around them. That no one can eavesdrop easily. "I mean your examinations."

Nat, he thinks, but doesn't say aloud.

[repaying]

Any other soldier would swat her across the face for her mouth. Any other soldier would drag her by the arm to her handlers and give a report of her behavior, rote and lifeless, as though the men with empty eyes were nothing but a mobile security network. Eyes unseeing but documenting every detail. But something in her gut tells her he won't.

Another smart remark waits at the tip of her tongue but it dies when a flash of hands swaps their bowls, seamless and subtle. No one bats an eye, save for Nat, who stares down at the warm broth and chunks of meat with wide, curious eyes. Curling her hands around it, she cradles it close for its warmth, like a flame in a bitter Russian winter. She hasn't had anything warm like this in weeks.

Why would he do this for someone like her?

"What about them?" There's an imperceptible softness to her words, awed briefly by the simple swap of bowls across metal trays. There are no kindnesses here, no notes or food shared under table tops, only competitors and assets and soldiers. Machines. Machines don't need kindness to operate. The gesture is so simple, but she takes the boon for what it is and begins to eat, spooning up the meat first. Savoring. Follow routine and no one knows any different. The other assets aren't as sharp-eyed or keen, and for once she's grateful for it.

"Succeeding will do nothing for me. I fail? They beat me. I do well? They beat me. It's a simple equation."

post-cw; gas up with a credit card and an alias that i learned this morning.

[armeyets]

The Avengers have split in half, and Bucky can't help but feel largely responsible.

The Winter Soldier program has been eliminated, sure, and Steve's busted the rest of their group — Sam, Wanda, Clint, Scott — out of the Raft, but so many of their lives are still left in ruin and on the run. Natasha's covers are blown, so she's gone deep underground again, and this time she's accompanying them.

Good thing Bucky's familiar with being on the run. He's already spent two years on his own holed up in Eastern Europe before being corraled by Steve, so this is the kind of life he knows: blending into the background; another small anonymous apartment, paid for with cash; fake IDs signed on the paperwork; living month-by-month, all the easier to pack up their things and disappear in the night. SHIELD's got a long reach, and the organisation isn't pleased with Steve taking the shield with him when he cut and ran.

Most of the group have gone their separate ways; they're harder to catch if they don't all stay together as one target. But Steve seems set on Bucky never being alone or unsupervised. So whenever he's temporarily off on the road meeting with contacts or gathering some supplies for them, Nat is tasked to stay with the other man and keep an eye on him — so what are you, my keeper? he'd asked once, half-joking, half-bitter. All of it would stick in Bucky's throat if it weren't such a reasonable precaution.

These days, they're living in a small apartment. He was adamant about her taking the bedroom while he slept on the sofa, and something about that arrangement felt oddly familiar, although this is the first time they're staying in a one-bedroom place with this sort of layout (isn't it?). His six-foot frame barely fits on the couch, head burrowed in the cushions and one leg half-dangling off the side. And despite everything, they've fallen into a kind of domestic routine: coffee in the mornings, a drink in the evenings, checking the news for more word on HYDRA or SHIELD or both, or the repercussions of the Sokovian Accords. Sometimes he brings back meat pies for her, still hot from the street vendors. His Russian is fluent; as is hers.

They both wake up earlier than most, but Bucky tends to be up just a hair earlier, right before dawn. She hears the creak of the floorboards as he slips out of the apartment, and he's well-aware that she notices everything. And as ever, there's always that question for her: has the Winter Soldier conditioning kicked in again; is he going to run?

But, no. This morning he comes back carrying disposable cups of black coffee, and a flaky cornulete cu gem, small powdery Romanian croissants filled with jam. He hovers by her door; raps the bedroom door with his metal knuckles.

"Natasha? You up?"

She's told him before to call her Nat. For now, it seems he's still too polite.

For a second, his tongue gets caught on the syllables of another name — Natalia — and he can't quite figure out why that one comes so automatically to mind. He doesn't know a Natalia.

( Does he? )

[repaying]

Four walls, a front door, a back door. Six windows, all bolted from the inside, and one hatch to a mold-ridden attic. Natasha knows the flat like the back of her hand, knows which floor boards creak and which don't. What sounds mean the man she keeps watch over has left, and which means he's just moving around the kitchen, aimless. Those are new sounds, brought with new terrain, but the sound of his boots on the floor aren't new. She knows them even still, like a ghost passing through the careful cage of her ribs, stirring up dust where it might have been better left undisturbed.

He looks the same: the set of his jaw stubborn and stubbled, the gray of his eyes near piercing when he sees Steve (remembering, maybe), the curve of his shoulders and the gentle flex of metal fingers every time he moves. Natasha Romanoff doesn't feel pain, doesn't let it knock on her door even once, and yet hearing him breathe in the space across from her in the morning over her coffee, makes her lungs come up short.

He looks at Steve like a beacon in the night, and when he looks at her? Emptiness. A bottomless question that she doesn't have the strength to answer, not here, not now. Once upon a time she might have coaxed him out of a brain-washed haze, beckoned her name onto his lips with her own, pressed her heart into his hand and pleaded remember me. But instead, they share a small flat, and she tries to enjoy the domestic moments.

(She does not think about a warm hearth, does not think about a plush, old bed and older quilts. She does not think about fingers on her cheek, in her hair, down the thin line of her back. Is this what grief feels like? )

The rap on the door drags her out of her reverie and she's left stood in front of a small mirror on a tall dresser. Eyes gone glassy, she blinks and sucks in a breath, tilts her head back to the ceiling where it's crackled and water-damaged. Natasha he calls, and it sounds so wrong in the honey-sweet timbre of his voice. Natasha.

"Depends on who's asking."

A curve to her lips, a warmth in her voice that should ring false, but doesn't. She reaches for the door and opens it, leaning easily into the frame, but her eyes track to the coffee, the pastry bag. The corners of her mouth tick up.

"Did you do something you shouldn't have? Forgive me if I'm skeptical of this delicious peace offering, but usually when men bring me nice things, it's because they've done something very wrong." It's just a tease, playful and meaningless, something to fill the silence and quiet the screaming static in her skull.

[armeyets]

"Not yet," he says, lightly, and there's something in this banter. He's trying his best to be affable, friendly. It had been so much easier with Steve. (And there's a lurking realisation in that, too, a splinter in her heart: the way he seemed to come alive around the other man, joked more easily, referred to old shared touchstones, Hey, do you remember that time we got in that scrap in the lower east side—?, as his memories keep coming back in sporadic fits and starts. But whenever he looks at her, it's just a polite smile. Thin at the edges. His head cocked slightly, as if there's something in the air he can't quite put his finger on.)

"Maybe it's a bribe to let us go for an actual walk in the park today. I want some exercise." James— no, Bucky, they all know him as Bucky now— is like a restless dog sometimes. She's heard it at night, measuring it in the creak of those floorboards, the way he paces the confines of their apartment.

They're both paranoid — and for good reason — and it's hard to tell which of them has the worse trust issues, checking the latches and windows whenever they return to the apartment, the booby traps and exits and second and third escape plans and fallbacks. But it means they're well-matched. Steve might not have known the full significance of what he was doing, when he placed his best friend in his other best friend's careful custody, but he did know they're two people who can take care of themselves. Watch each others' back.

"And it was that really good street vendor today, so I couldn't resist." Bucky holds out the pastry, and his gaze flits up-and-down, takes in her angle against the doorframe. Natasha always looks languid and suave and comfortable. (He can't tell that she isn't.)

[repaying]

Natasha raises her eyebrows when she turns her head toward him, almost admonishing for the mere suggestion that he might stray from Steve Rogers' careful set of rules. She presses those boundaries herself, though, and the look dissolves to something passive, neutral, thoughtful. She ignores the way something aches deep in her chest.

"A walk's a tall order for a man who threatens doing something he shouldn't yet," she shrugs a shoulder, but accepts the pastry as if they do this every morning in the doorway to her room. (Her room? No, the room Steve and Bucky both seem to have insisted she take. Chivalry isn't dead, after all, but that's not much coming from two glorified fossils, after all).

She pushes from the doorway and walks past him, shoulder almost catching his but missing at just the last moment, with the razor sharp awareness of an assassin, a spy. Never mind she plucks the pastry from its bag, taking a bite as if she is none of those things. She hums around a mouthful, turning to prop her hip against the rickety dining table with a basket of fake, dusty flowers set in the middle.

I want some exercise. Such a demand, so starkly different from the ghost that still whispers in the back of her mind, when wants and desires weren't allowed. Nat takes another bite, then gestures toward him with the pastry in question.

"But I'll give you points for the bribe. A walk it is. Can't go too far or the mother hen will come squawking. Trust me, he'll find out."

spies ➤ who is in control?

[repaying]

Natalie hates dinner parties. In many years of training, she's been scolded every time for looking overly bored with the exercises, for twiddling her thumbs when she should be lighting up the room of a particularly powerful KGB officer. Occasionally she got passes for her upturned nose, if only because the Red Room recommended her, put her forward as their best possible pupil. It hadn't spared her a harsh hand snared round her throat or wrist, though, in some occasions.

So there's something beautifully ironic that she's attending a rather upscale soiree now with waiters and little trays of food and drinks in tall glasses. Two weeks into their time in America and already Phil has cozied up to one of their assigned marks, winning the wife over first (it's the smile, she's sure) and charming the husband next. A high-ranking military General with a penchant for snooping in places that Gabriel isn't altogether fond of, but one who has loose lips around pretty women after a few glasses. A bug planted, a few house calls in the coming weeks, and they'll have him, signed, sealed, delivered.

After all, if the Americans are working on something, Russian needs to know.

It's all incredibly droll, though, with a string quartet playing in one side of the estate, the lights dimming as the evening goes on. Natalie stepped away to powder her nose, chat up the missus and a few of her over-eager girlfriends who enjoy playing shuffle board games and tanning on the yacht together. They marvel over her dress, too, the way the rich emerald fabric hugs her curves, the way it makes the waves of red framing her face even more fiery bright, accentuating her pale complexion and the deep, sweetheart neckline of her dress.

Danger, hair like that says. She'd asked if she should change it, if she should make herself as innocuous as possible as Natalie, pleasant little wife of Philip, homemaker and prim assistant for her husband's travel agency. They paint a perfect picture, together, too, and even Natalie can give the women that. Those Rushmans are cut right out of Vogue, don't you think, Suzie— Marjorie at the agency had said when she thought they were out of earshot. Philip is handsome, with dark hair and stark, icy eyes, a hard-lined jaw. She often wonders if they paired them because they look splendidly unusual together.

Convenient.

She presses her lips against his jaw fondly once she disentangles herself from the lady-folk. Kill me now, the gleam in her eyes practically begs as she tip-toes up on impossible heels. Parties. She'd think the KGB did this to her on purpose if she didn't know better. But she smiles prettily when the General waggles his eyebrows at Philip, saying something along the lines of How'd you let a piece like that out of your sight?

The alcohol's gotten to him.

"Yes, honey, why did you leave me all to my lonesome?" She curls her arms around one of his, letting a hand slide down his cuff and link their fingers. "They're playing our song and you haven't asked me to dance all evening."

No one will think twice if they disappear now, if they go snooping into bedrooms and offices where Mr. Whatley of the American military defense squad might spread her out in hopes of having his way with her. He's an easy mark, all slurring and drunk and stupidly bold. Even as he reaches to clap Phil on the shoulder in a farewell, his free hand easily palms the swell of her ass out of sight.

Moron. But at least he'll be easy.

She tips her head back then, giving the man a pretty, pretty pout with lips as deep a red as her hair. "If he won't dance with me, General, I might just have to ask your wife if I can cut in."

She hates parties.

[armeyets]

Even when they're at these endless, banal parties, and even when Philip is supposed to be paying attention to everything else — who's talking to who, which government officials are cozying up to the general, which people seem to be a little too loose with the alcohol, implying a weakness they can exploit — he still can't stop looking at her. Some part of his consciousness is always aware of where Natalie is in the room, like she's a presence pinging on his radar, a gentle pressure in the area bending his gaze towards where she picks up more hors d'oeuvres; where she chats to the other bored housewives; where she watches the doorway and counts the minutes between the caterers' rounds. He can almost see the calculations going on behind her eyes.

The red hair draws him and everyone else, of course. It always has. (That first sight of her back at the Red Room, a rose standing out in that field of weedy flowers—) He's glad, in a selfish way, that she was allowed to keep it, and didn't have to dye her trademark feature to a dull mousy brown.

As his wife approaches, he knows when she steps through his blind spot and back to his side. She takes his right hand: the one where he can actually feel the pressure when she squeezes his fingers, a little gesture, a slight and unspoken hello. Philip squeezes them back.

"I was working up the nerve to try." An apologetic smile to the people around them, one of the other knowing husbands. "I'm just terrible at dancing. She's been hounding me to take lessons for ages."

When they first picked up their assignment, he never quite expected that these were the sorts of conversations they'd have to master, and that he'd have to learn the art of small talk so well. He's always been better at the parts of the assignment that involved the clenched fist, the silenced pistol.

But he bumps his shoulder against Natalie's, and glances at her other empty hand. "Shall we go get our drink refills, darling? One more glass of white and then I think I'll be ready for that dance."

I.e.: time to go snooping. They've timed it; the waiters won't swing through the side hallway for another five minutes.

[repaying]

Natalie hadn't been sure, upon arriving in America, that being paired with Philip had been the right choice. Of course, she condemned herself for even thinking it, for even questioning her orders, but he'd taken some work. Days spent figuring one another out in the confines of their new little house and new little life, prying him with inane small talk to coax him into something more affable and warm, make all the pathetic dinner party chatter more natural and less stiff.

The first mark he'd had, though, she couldn't help but be impressed by his precision and strength, the easy way he took out a threat and disappeared the body with no more than a blink or need for her help. (She'd gone anyway, because they're supposed to work as a pair, and he'd been accommodating enough). She could do the talking, mostly, the batting of eyes and pretty smiles, make the connections and trace her webs back to him so he wouldn't have to work as hard at small talk, at feigning interest. She floats to and from him at parties, looking more like the overly enamored wife turned socialite.

It's why she leans into his shoulder and hums a laugh, fond and easy as she raises her eyebrows at a couple of the other knowing husbands. "He's really not as terrible as he thinks, but men will be men," as if she's speaking to the girls and not a group of men without their wives present. Natalie poises herself to make another cheeky comment when he bumps his shoulder with hers and she quiets, turning her eyes up to him with the anticipation of a woman just waiting to be swept out onto the dance floor.

"A glass of white for the man and a dance for me, that's a deal I can pass up, fellas. Excuse me, I'll make sure to return him with both feet in tact," she teases and gives a soft tug to Philip's hand, keeping their fingers twined delicately as they start toward the drinks table which, oh so fortunately, happens to be just near an entrance to one of the side hallways.

"We've got the General, easy, and I've got a pickleball date with the wife," she murmurs, keeping her head turned toward him, a wife murmuring gossip to her husband. "We've got about six minutes, max, to sweep the left hall. Right we can take in another twenty, when security changes shift."

Stepping into the hallway itself feels like a vacuum, the noise of the party quieting the farther they wander from the reception hall. "His office should be at the end of the hall. Unlocked. Wife used it as her powder room earlier when he upset her. She didn't have keys on her."

And she's all but forgotten to let go of his hand, even in their snooping.

[armeyets]

"No matter how many times you say the name, pickleball still sounds like a fake sport," he says; the mask dropping as quickly as hers had, but his voice remains low and his tone jokingly light.

The sport hadn't come around until 1965; he'd gone long years and decades without ever hearing about it. The pop culture references had been the other trouble with overhauling a soldier into a spy, filing down his sharper edges and repurposing the asset for more delicate undercover work. It wasn't the same as those one-off missions supporting a widow for a mere night or week or two at a time— this one, paired up with this woman for the first time, required subtlety and potentially being embedded for years, and so he had turned to his task with typically stubborn attentiveness. Long hours with Reader's Digest and Us Weekly, learning soap opera plots and memorising the faces of celebrities like he'd once memorised assassination targets. Filling his pockets with references and knowledge until Philip Rushman could, in the right light and if his wife helped steer the conversation, pass for your average American.

Here and now, though, as those doors swing shut behind them and the party fades away, the guise of the toothless Rushmans does too. Philip's steps speed up and he strides right for the office— he doesn't notice their fingers are still intertwined until they get to the door and he has to reach for it, and he glances down, a little surprised that they're still holding hands, and even more surprised that he hadn't realised either.

There's that moment of hesitation, a startled reluctant pause before they both untangle themselves and then he raps on the door, quick and curt, as if he's one of the help. When there's no response, the pair of them slip into the office and then Philip leans back against the door to gently close it behind them, gaze already darting around the room and noting items of interest. Piles of paper. The desk drawers. (Are they locked?) Likely spots on the wall for a safe. No mounted or even hidden cameras; they already knew the general didn't go in for having his activities recorded. He liked to think the inside of his house was safe, and he only had to worry about the outer walls, the wrought-iron-tipped fences, all the cameras pointed outward for intruders. Hubris.

There's the quick snap of businesslike efficiency to their movements now, but there's also an amiable camaraderie still-lingering from their personas when Philip asks:

"How did he upset her?"

dacha ii ➤ i listen to her heart - feel her pulse in her lips - and i see a different life.

[armeyets]

The week at the dacha unfurls in a dreamlike haze, punctuated by that cutting wind of Russian winter.

At first it feels like a sinfully, selfishly indulgent stretch of time — an entire week and change, initially scheduled for the heat from the assassination to die down, but now it gives them enough time for Nat's wound to start healing and for them to settle into a stolen routine. A tin soldier and a ballerina, going through the motions of a life together. Motions like:

Daylight spilling through the dusty window of the bedroom, through slightly moth-eaten curtains. Their bodies warm under the blankets despite the chill in the room. James waking first and pressing his lips against the bare skin of her shoulder, a few inches from the bandages.

Him stalking out jacketless into the bitter cold, swinging an axe and chopping more firewood, in time to that hydraulic whine of his HYDRA-branded arm.

Them sitting in front of the living room fireplace, the man bared down to a rumpled white undershirt, his head bowed while Nat digs into the crook of his elbow with a screwdriver and some engine grease, trying to locate whatever's causing that hitch in the gears.

Lying sprawled on opposite ends of the sofa, her legs tucked against his, both of them passing the time reading books that had been left behind on those bare shelves. Children's fables. Dostoyevsky. A book of poetry by Alexander Blok, which settles into James' heart like a barb. 'Go on and live another quarter century - Nothing will change. There's no way out. / You'll die, then start again from the beginning, / It will repeat, just like before.'

Whoever owned this house years ago must have liked poetry. There's another book of Akhmatova: 'Tell me how men kiss you, / tell me how you kiss.'

Her turn to sit at the kitchen table, shirtless and shivering in a bra, while he draws up a chair beside her and checks on her wound. Presses his fingers gently against the edges of the bandages; changes them to fresh ones and re-wraps them snugly against her body, and buries the bloody bandages in a pit out back along with that puckered bullet. They can't leave such obvious proof of their crimes behind when they leave, after all. He obediently buries everything like a dog burying a bone.

(When they leave. A day that keeps drawing nearer even as James counts off the sunrises and sunsets, and tries not to remember that there's a limit to their time here. That there might as well be a countdown timer mounted on the wall, ticking the hours and minutes down to when this interlude will end.)

In the meantime, they get to savour the luxury of breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. That stale instant coffee and Nat cracking eggs into a cast-iron skillet, frying them in thin oil rather than rich bacon fat, because it's what they have on hand.

They've fallen hopelessly into this, while the metaphorical door stands open. Lazy kisses in the morning and familiarising themselves with this easy intimacy, with touching each others' bodies in a way which isn't simply field triage or sparring — but there's still that unspoken line they haven't crossed yet. Somewhere smothered between him still treading so carefully around her injuries, and the fact that they're both learning and re-learning this — how to exist. How to be a person.

But herein lies that monumental change from any other assignment they've been on before, however: this time, while Nat's standing at the stove cooking their breakfast, James steps in close behind her. His right hand sweeps her tangled red hair off her shoulder, and leaning his body into hers, he presses a kiss against the nape of her neck.

"Good morning."

[repaying]

Natasha wakes and pens every detail of every chilled day in the dacha into the back of her mind. The threadbare quilts wrapped around their bodies, the gentle scratch of his jawline against her neck, the smell of burnt and stale coffee, the crackle of the fire, the sound of his breathing when he feigns sleep, and the soft little whirs in his shoulder, in the powerful bend of his elbow, in the fingers that press cool between her shoulders.

The days fill up with quiet warmth and unspoken understanding, where she cooks and he chops wood and they somehow fall together in the end of it, cocooning themselves against the bitter Russian winter (Real Life) with only their bodies and lazy, sleepy kisses to keep the chill away.

While he worries his way through trees, she plucks at every corner of the dacha, searching out for signs of life, as if she can ask the hand-milled walls who lived here. Pressing her forehead to the wood, her cheek to the cool paint, she wonders if these quiet, creaky walls might let them stay. If she and James could become the man and woman she finds smiling back at her in an old, shattered picture frame.

The wind must have knocked it loose.

She crawls out of bed in advance of her furnace of a bedmate, albeit reluctant to leave the sturdy warmth of him where she has burrowed a place for herself somewhere along his sternum, where spindly webs slip around his ribs, his lungs, his heart. Or so she pretends when she settles into him at night, his heart and his arm and his breathing the only things lulling her to fitful rest.

The woman who lived in this dacha once upon a time was sturdier, made of stronger stuff than she, and she has decided instead on a man's jumper, heavy and woolen, loose around the wispiness of her body. She wishes she could be sturdy like her, could say she has worked this land and fallen in love with it.

The eggs crackle in the old cast iron, begging to be flipped as she loses herself in her thoughts: they will have to leave this place soon. This land isn't theirs, and they walk as strangers through these little rooms. Her breath hitches in her throat when he touches her, replaces the cool air with the broad warmth of him along her back. Tension melts out of her shoulders and she leans into him with an amused little hum.

She hadn't heard him coming. She hadn't been watching. A week running out of gas and she's become softer at the edges, her guard no longer a bastion in a frightening storm. They're just people here, just a man and a woman discovering one another for the first time. It's terrifying. It's thrilling.

"Morning," her voice husky and unused. She smiles, tipping her head back against his shoulder to peer up at him and press her lips against the stubble there, nosing against it, committing it to memory. She speaks against his skin, not yet ready to pull away. "Hungry? You must be. Eggs are almost done."

[armeyets]

If it were summer, the dachas in this region would be filled with families on vacation: going on picnics, plummeting into the nearby lake, swimming then sprawling on a rock and drying off in the sunshine. But in the depths of winter, they're alone and the lake is frozen over. Sometimes James will stand outside with the wind cutting through him, looking out at the icy surface, and feeling something — some recollection — nagging at the edge of his mind but never quite coming into view.

But at least this kitchen is warm, and so is she. Nat's voice is already husky, but there's an even deeper rasp to it first thing in the morning. These little details have been a miracle to discover, these facets he hadn't ever considered before, and now gets to catalogue hour-by-hour.

His body fits against hers perfectly, has been moulding to her over the past few days. Her lips against his jaw, his cheek against hers, breathing in the scent of her hair. The shampoo in the bathroom (peeling wallpaper and uneven tiles, rundown like the rest of the abandoned cottage), has been basic, barebones, but James cherishes the scent regardless. Again: these little details.

"I'm always hungry. Metabolism." He loops his arms around her stomach and the loose knit fabric of her sweater, embracing her from behind. It's taken a while for both of them to become accustomed to casual affectionate touch; letting someone so close felt like such a betrayal at first, an opportunity that would lead to a knife between your ribs or at your throat, but they're learning how to let that guard down. They're teaching themsleves how.

"Looks better than oatmeal."

The idea of going back to the facility with those vats of sad limpid gruel— he shouldn't have brought it up. He can't imagine going back to it. Not after this.

[repaying]

James fits against her like he's always belonged there, like he's been missing every day up until the moment she discovered this. Strong arms slide around her stomach, his chest presses warm and hard against her back, and with her face tucked so closely against his jaw she hears the way his heart beats, steady and resolute. It's taken time, to view those things like a gift and not a threat, but they're learning.

"Oatmeal makes you fat," she teases, eyes dropping back to the pan where the eggs fully cook. She should plate them, dress them up and set them on a set table for him. Instead, she reaches for the dial and shuts off the burner, the flames petering out beneath the old cast iron. Turning in his arms her sweater bunches up at her waist, exposing the tops of her thighs to the cold morning air. Tucking herself against his chest she tips her head back to look at him, much as she does when she first wakes: studious, memorizing, curious, awed.

She won't get this when they return. Lazy mornings where she can commit the little ridge of his nose to memory, where she can count every little prick of stubble along his jaw, where she can remember what it feels like to be held by him in the chill of morning.

"Good morning," quiet, and a genuine, warm smile pulls at her lips. One hand slides from his chest to touch his cheek, thumb skirting the rise of his cheekbone, as if steadying herself as she rises up on her tip toes (on pointe, nearly, the muscle memory of her dances overwhelming) and presses a soft kiss against his lips. "I made you some eggs. There's bread and butter on the table. Eat before you decide to chew a hole through the wall, mister." Her delicate fingers drum softly against the hollow of his cheek, playful.

Not that she's helping things, staying wrapped up in him like this, but she can stave off physical hunger for days. The need for this? The warmth and safety of him? She's not sure it could ever be sated now that she's had but a taste. It's a terrifying thought.

and we’re gonna sing it again and again.

[armeyets]

All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.

A starving redhead wrapped in a threadbare overcoat several sizes too big for her, cocky, flirtatious; his fingertips running across the protruding accordion lines of her bare ribs. Their mouths tasting of merry moonshine. A young man walking along a lonesome railroad track as the sunset fades until it’s just a dull ember glow on the horizon, until the only light is those sickly-yellow halogen lamps swinging above in the tunnel, the smell of dust and coal thick in the back of his throat. He pulls his red kerchief higher, covering his mouth. It should be cold down here, but it simply gets hotter and hotter the closer you get to the belly of the beast, the furnace, the engines.

The walk back out is even lonelier. The ghost of her hand in his, the impression fading.

In another world and another life, this is how it happens: The boy loses the girl. The boy goes back, and he saves the girl. The boy makes a deal with a king.

The boy turns around.



And yet. And yet, today, he doesn’t. James — another starving boy who came back from war and wanted nothing more to do with war — stands on the threshold of the underworld, his shoulderblades prickling with self-consciousness. His jaw is wired so tight he can practically hear the bone crack with the yearning to turn, to look, to check. He’s not worth all this. No one would follow him anywhere. He readjusts the weight of his backpack, the guitar heavier inside than it should be. There’s a whispering susurrus on the wind, blowing up more dust until it stings his eyes, and it almost sounds like voices: it could be the Fates hissing in his ear, it could be the workers murmuring. It could be her. It could be nothing but the wind. He can’t tell.

He plants his boots in the dirt, and almost turns. But today, instead, he squares his shoulders and hunches them forward and he keeps walking to the end of the line, and walking, and walking, feet weary with the trek and boots near-worn through, until the sickly-yellow underground halogen lamps start to give way to lonely street lamps, until the railroad track starts to give way to open sky, and if you squint — if you just squint —

That might be dawn on the horizon, and the ghost of her hand in his.

[repaying]

The only thing that Natasha knows for certain is that if she keeps her chin tucked, her eyes forward and following the shape of his back in the dark, that they might make it home. She can hear his shuddering breaths among the cold whips of wind on the tracks, can feel the way anxiety claws at him in the dark. She hears the fates, too - the doubt, laughing at the tiniest glimmer of hope.

After all, she had been the one to make the first mistake, hadn't she? Accepted a stranger's bargain, leaned into the emptiness of her belly and the desperation of her body. She signed her name in crimson ink and her memory goes foggy from there.

But this boy - oh, she remembers this boy with his big, sad eyes and his tired face. The way he held her in the sooty dark, neon lights nothing for the light of his eyes and the warmth of his voice. She remembered flowers and the boy, and now with every step she takes on the run down tracks, she remembers.

Cold. Suffering. Hunger. Fear.

Those are memories, now. Memories of the girl she was, and as she climbs her way through the dark, following the silhouette of his back and encouraging him with her voice echoing all around - she knows she's not who she used to be. Maybe doesn't want to be.

He stops, at one point and she gasps, nearly bumping into him. Fear claws its way up to her throat, clogging it like the suffocating heat and the burning of coal had in Hadestown. He will fail, the Fates whisper. Oh, girl, he always does. But she can imagine the way he sets his jaw, the way his brow dips in focus, and as the lonely lamps give way to open sky, she surges forward.

No more rocks beneath her feet, no more broken, wooden slats, no chants or heavy swings of hammers or insufferable heat and blinding light. The horizon, flushing with the promise of a new day and she gasps at the brightness of it, the peek of sun over a hill. There's grass beneath her feet, the air clean and fresh, the world brought back into tune in an instant, and she reaches for his hand, holding it first and when he doesn't disappear? She molds herself against his back.

"James."

She's hoarse, for all the shouting she'd done along the journey, coaxing him to put one foot in front of the other. Had he heard her? It doesn't matter. He's warm, blissfully warm and she leans heavy into his back, one hand in his, the other arm wrapping around his middle.

"You did it."

[armeyets]

He hadn’t heard any of it — the wind and fog had swallowed her voice, turned it to only the Fates’ whispers in his ears, the living sound of his doubt, no confirmation that she was still with him.

Even as they walk out into open air and that pressure on his hand turns harder, turns into a real presence. The backpack slips off his shoulders and falls, with an unhappy thwong of guitar strings as the instrument hits the ground and Natasha collides with his back instead. Her face pressed into his shoulderblades, a hand in his, an arm wrapped around him. He exhales a shuddering breath of relief, his free hand clasping over her forearm. He’s still looking at the dawn instead of looking over his shoulder.

“Natasha,” he says, not even certain if he can hope for it. She’s warm behind him. The touch feels warm and alive. The sun above them is gentle and warm, and not in the way of the burning furnace crisping your face and sucking the moisture from your skin.

He’s still afraid to turn around, but his fingers are digging into her soot-stained arm as if he never wants to let go.

“Are you here? Are you actually here? Are we out?”