armeyets | for webbs.

HYDRA had lost one of its most important assets, a prized investment —

And HYDRA didn’t ever like to lose. Their hand was chopped off at the wrist, their notorious iron fist now missing in action, gone off-grid. The Winter Soldier had vanished into the patchwork of Eastern Europe; they had trained him to do that very thing, like a ghost in the night, sliding beneath the radar and the surveillance. But there were still enough traces that their metaphorical bloodhounds could still piece together a picture of his zigzagging journey across the continent: there were whispers, glimpses, the occasional satellite footage or CCTV that he couldn’t duck. He’d kept it up for a long time — the better part of two years — but the fact remained that living successfully in permanent hiding required resources, safe houses, contacts, vehicles, money. And the former Winter Soldier had nothing.

He’d managed it so far, but it felt like a narrowing window, a shortening fuse until something finally happened, until the other shoe dropped and his old handlers caught up to him. Today, he’s in Romania. He shops for groceries, bantering fluently with the old woman at market; he lugs them back to his sorry studio apartment, paid for by the week in cash. There’s a backpack stashed under the floorboards, filled with supplies and a fake passport and liquid currency and his notebooks, always ready to seize it and go on the run again. This apartment isn’t a home, but then again, he hasn’t had a home for decades. He can’t be content so long as he’s always looking over his shoulder, always standing on the balls of his feet, ready to flee.

And at the end of the day, there are still those breadcrumbs.

Enough that Petra Bulgakova has been following him; Petra Bulgakova has been watching and surveilling, weaving a web, paid handsomely by his former masters in a cross-agency collaboration. In another time and another place, Steve Rogers and SHIELD would have tracked down James Barnes like a hammer striking an anvil, blowing through the wall of his apartment, guns blazing —

The Red Room, however, takes a subtler touch.

He’s at a dive bar on the seedier edges of Bucharest. He’s sitting at the bar counter, only half-paying attention to the soccer game on the TV. He’s nursing his drink with an eye on all the exits, tired, a little frayed around the edges, when the woman approaches.

Edited 2023-01-03 22:14 (UTC)

Mission: Recover the Winter Soldier.

In her more immature moments, the ones that training have nearly stamped out of her, Petra feels nearly giddy that she, of all of the Widows, has been given the assignment. True: the handlers have words for her like prodigy or superlative or best since Romanova. She had completed previous missions before, without hesitation, without complaint. While the other Widows must rely only on their immense, brutal training; Petra Bulgakova has more. She is stronger, she thinks and acts faster, she has no need for stairs or for grappling lines. The Red Room scientists are trying to make an invisibility suit for her, but it is slow going, and the Starr Files are long disappeared into SHIELD’s vaults.

She is Madame’s favored daughter, the rising star within the Black Widow program. She knows the honor she has received, and the burden placed upon her. And she will not fail.

Petra has been watching and waiting, secure in the center of her web, in the form of the Airbnb under an assumed name. She trails him like a ghost, peering through binoculars on the roofs of buildings three blocks away. She knows the stall at the market where he buys plums, how he checks the locks on his door three times before leaving, the dumpsters he forages his clothes from.

And she knows more in flashes - Penny Parker sits on the edge of the couch, home sick from school, and watches the 1995 Captain America action movie for the third time that day. She knows Bucky Barnes, the hero who fell, Steve Rogers’ best friend, and -

No. Weak begets weak begets weak. That was from before, before Madame found her, before she was given purpose. Petra does not think about weakness; the pills she takes every morning help.

The time has come to strike.

“Hey - hey, Engleză?”

High-waisted pants, backless halter, heels and enough bracelets and charms to distract from a slightly too-thick pleather cuff on each wrist. Petra smiles, all teeth and co-ed charm, and holds up a few banknotes.

“The bartender isn’t taking my Euro - I thought everybody in Europe did, it’s so freakin’ weird - if I give you this, could you get me a drink?”

The man swivels in his bar stool to look at her, glacier-blue eyes panning up and down the young woman’s form, taking her in with more analytical business-like interest than any real heat. (The others in the bar are looking: a few middle-aged day labourers’ gazes trailing her as she’d made her way across the dim room.) The Soldier, on the other hand, is instinctively looking for weapons or threat assessment or anything subtly out-of-place, but what he sees matches the story: a university student, maybe on her gap year or study abroad or spring break, enjoying the exchange rate and the local clubs with their cheap alcohol. He’s seen no end of them downtown at night, girls moving in packs and wobbling down the street in their heels, arms slung around each other.

(It’s an evocative picture; the Widows are good at painting it.)

“Engleză,” he echoes back, with a faint American accent which nearly matches hers, although it’s softened around the edges with years of experience. HYDRA had drummed foreign languages into them, more tools to be carefully selected from the kit, a knife in the drawer. His tone is oddly flat when he answers her:

“They haven’t switched to the euro yet. They use the leu. You’ll need lei and bani.”

There’s the faintest hesitation, the question of whether or not he’ll help — once upon a time, he wouldn’t have hesitated, would have been the first to chat up a pretty girl at the bar — but, in the end, he does start fishing in the threadbare pockets of his jacket. “What are you having?”

Petra’s careful to keep her facial expression steady: pleading, flirtation, hopeful. She doesn’t suck in a breath as she waits for the Soldier to circle her bait, she doesn’t look anxious or desperate. She is not a spy approaching the most dangerous man alive, she’s a foreigner who doesn’t know the customs, hitting up a handsome man for a drink. So when Barnes starts to reach for his wallet, her smile widens only because it’s what a girl in her position should be doing.

“You’re the best,” she says, placing the Euro on the bar in front of him. “Uh - “ she glances behind the bar, as if trying to suss out the stock, or come up with an appropriate drink.

(She has half a second to look at brands and find something cheap and with a low alcohol content. The vodka’s local, could be dangerous. The gin is imported from Britain. Beer tastes like ass. Whiskey has too much alcohol. The rum - that’ll work.)

“Think they can do a dark and stormy?” Her own accent isn’t the neutral, newscaster American English that most of the Widows favor. Petra likes a bit of panache to her aliases, and Harper Carlson speaks with shifted vowels and just a bit of vocal fry. California, maybe, or somebody who watches a lot of reality television and has picked it up. “You should get something, too. My treat.”

“Your treat on my dime?” Faintly incredulous, but amused by it. Where her voice pitches to the west coast, there’s also something indefinably old-fashioned about his turn of phrase. And there’s a crinkling at the corners of his eyes: the only hint of a smile, since his expression otherwise remains fairly stony, mouth impassive.

But the man shifts, pivoting to allow her to take up the hightop chair beside him. A small gesture, an invitation inasmuch as he’ll give one. “Vodka for me.”

Considering what she knows of his origins: the choice is typical. Unimaginative. (He’s still learning how to do something new and different, like a well-worn machine accustomed to moving in the same rut over and over, but progress is slow.)

“You got a name, Americănesc?”

“Hey, I’m giving you Euro. More than enough.”

A girl who’s either not worried about how much things cost, or more interested in a convenient, good time than stretching every last penny. Could be either one, her makeup’s just on the right side of tasteful, and while her purse isn’t designer, it’s definitely better than something fished out of the bargain bin at a department store. Finding a place to exchange her euro for leu is too much effort, not when there’s a handsome white knight who’ll take it for her.

That’s the persona, at least: wide-eyed college girl, letting her good looks and American extroversion make up for cheerful selfishness. Petra’s used it before; it’s equally good catnip for samaritans coming to a girl’s rescue as much as the ill intent on the road. There’s not much difference, having a man eating out of her palm or plucking at his strings under his grasp.

“Harper,” she says, climbing into the chair. She rests a hand on the Soldier’s arm - part as a means of supporting herself (heels only do so much for her height), part as idle, warm flirtation. “My friends are all at the soccer stadium. Oh - sorry, football. I keep forgetting it’s different here. What’s yours?”

The pause runs a little too long, the hesitant beat of someone who’s not used to coming up with names. He hasn’t had one in so long. Even the one he’d learned about via the history books — James — feels wrong and alien, like an ill-fitting suit he hasn’t fully broken in yet. The Widows might be accustomed ot this sort of deception, lying through their teeth and spinning up false identities, but the Winter Soldier never had need of one. HYDRA hadn’t used him for talk.

So he waits a little too long, masking it by summoning the bartender’s attention, putting in their orders. The dark and stormy, the straight vodka; it’s the only thing which might be able to punch through his metabolism.

“Grant,” he finally says, not even sure why he’s saying it. The name’s buried somewhere in his subconscious, some faint familiarity such that when he reaches into the void, this is what he comes out with. It’d be obvious by that pause, even to someone who’s not a trained spy, that it’s probably fake. “Nice to meet you, Harper. You not a fan of soccer?”

Soccer is a concession, a warm tip of the hat. He’s not Romanian; he’ll fall back on his own ancient habits too, some of those American mannerisms coming more to the fore again.

It takes some effort, keeping up the poker face: Harper Carlson’s sunny smile and slightly leering look. This is the best the Winter Soldier can do? Textbook hesitation, trying to hide it by ordering, practically sputtering and gaping like a fish. No wonder HYDRA couldn’t hold onto him, if they’d trained him this poorly. Petra was embarrassed on his behalf.

But Harper knows nothing about spycraft that isn’t in the movies, and has no reason to suspect anything of him. So she just smiles, maybe a little impatient that he’s taking so long to order. “You too, Grant.”

She props one arm up against the bar, chunky bracelets clicking and clacking against one another. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s just - you know, a lot of running around and kicking a ball. I’ve never been into sports.”

(A flash of a memory: sitting in the cheap seats, watching the Mets play, eating an all-beef dog and laughing at her uncle’s side. Petra ignores it, stabs it, smothers it.)

Her eyes towards the television, taking in the game. Romania verses Italy, Romania in the lead. Petra makes a show of squinting, like she’s trying to search the crowd for her friends. One second - two - three - and she gives up.

“Guess it’s cool, if you like that stuff.”

Was he into that stuff?

(A flash of memory: soccer, it was soccer, men in identical grubby army fatigues and grubby undershirts running around a field of dead grass and kicking a ball back and forth. Makeshift goals made with large rocks planted at what would’ve been the edges. The Frenchmen were like dancers, graceful and quick on their feet as they whirled across the field, but Bucky kept missing the passes, hitting the ground, groaning in mock-exasperation as he wearily climbed back to his feet, dog tags swinging. How about we play a real ball game, guys, laughing, a friend’s arm slung over his shoulder, This is a real game—)

Gone. It’s gone, like quicksilver slipping through his fingers. He’s been getting more of these memory flashes lately, but they’re always too brief.

Grant blinks. Looks at the girl. “You gonna be okay?” he asks, suddenly. It might seem like a non-sequitur out of nowhere, except he contextualises: “Without your friends, since they’re all at the game. Really shouldn’t be by yourself on the continent, out at night like this. I mean, I’m a perfect gentleman, but I can’t vouch for all of these guys.”

A slight tilt of his head, subtly indicating the others in the bar.

In all of her trailing and recon, she hasn't seen the Winter Soldier talk to many people. Mostly just grocers and bartenders, a couple of tourists (real ones) asking for directions. A cab driver, once. Conversations that have a clear and set path: how much and here's your change and thanks. Never a long conversation, never something without a transactional purpose.

So waiting for him to speak, Petra wonders what kind of a mark he'll be. She hasn't settled on a strategy yet, just sending out opening volleys, testing the waters. Will he buy her a drink (yes), look at her cleavage (barely), will he shut out conversation (not yet).

He asks about her safety, and she smiles, and barely has to make it genuine. A white knight, relic of a bygone age, like Captain America before him. A gentleman. She can work with that.

“They look alright.” She makes a show of looking around the bar, watching men destroy their livers as their jobs destroy their joints. “Like your awkward uncle, you know? And besides, I've got some pepper spray in my purse. What's wrong with tonight?”

“They get rowdy during a game,” Grant says, over another sip of his drink. “And Romania’s playing live, so that’s even more intense. If they win, the city’s gonna go haywire. If they lose, it’s gonna be even worse.”

The man can’t even explain how he knows it, but that knowledge swims up out of the depths. Years and decades of sports riots, of towns going wild for their local teams, he couldn’t tell you the year it happened but he’s certain it happens, he has a vague impression of a crowd charging onto a football field and literally picking up the goals and carrying them off down to the river—

These past few months, the instinctive muscle memory always came back easiest — how to drive, ride a bike, walk, disassemble and reassemble a gun — but sometimes these more cerebral facts materialised, too. He always grasped at them, these slivers of lost memory.

“Come on, it can’t be as bad as the Yankees.” It’s automatic, said without thinking: not one of Petra Bulgakova’s carefully rehearsed quips, but something raw, personal. A remnant of an older life, the one that the Red Room was very, very thorough in wringing out of her. They surface sometimes to talk with her handler about her pills. Clearly, they need to change the dosage.

(”If nothing else,” a man with laugh lines around his eyes and a little paunch around his belly said to her, ”you can always blame the Yankees, Pen.”)

“Besides, I bet I can be pretty sneaky.” She grins, jiggling her loud bracelets to accentuate her joke. Harper Carlson likes attention, Harper Carlson couldn’t sneak or hide if her life depended on it. But Harper Carlson knows that there’s other ways. “You’re not gonna let me out there myself, are you? Wow. Buy me a drink with your own money first.”

He hasn’t had to carry on a conversation like this in so very long. Normally exchanges are quick, brusque, to-the-point: bare logistics only, almost mechanical. His charm is atrophied, the conversational niceties are near-dead, but —

But he can feel it stirring as Harper flashes her grin at him, some long-buried part waking up, coming out of hibernation and blinking at the world through his frigid blue eyes. Some ancient thing thawing.

So that impassive expression finally cracks: a faint smile ghosting his mouth, as he drains the rest of his vodka, quick. (A sledgehammer, applied with precision to that growing fissure.) “Alright,” he says, then summons the bartender back over. “Another one for the lady,” in crisp Romanian, as he fishes in his pockets to find more loose change, leans a little forward and slides the bills across to buy them both the next round.

The ice continues cracking underfoot.

“So. Tell me about yourself, Harper From America, Who Knows the Yankees.”

"Everybody knows the Yankees."

Another woman might take note of the flicker of a smile, of the way that Grant’s eyes crinkle, at how even the bare movement of his arm seems fluid in a way it hadn’t moments before. Somebody else who knew what lay beneath the ice would be happy, thrilled to see the little glimpses of James Buchanan Barnes. (In another universe, Steve Rogers leans forwards, breathless, trying to coax out more.)

But Peltra Bulgakova, hiding behind the empty smile of her cover, takes only clinical notice of a job well done.

“I mean,” she shrugs, swirling the last of her cocktail. “There’s not a lot to say. I’m from Berkeley,”

(Lies)

“- on a gap year - “

(More lies)

“- but majoring in photography.”

(Mostly a lie, but she does have an aptitude for it. Call it fondness, or what passes for a hobby in the Red Room).

“I’m here with a bunch of my friends in sorority. I mean, I’m not part of the sorority, the application fee is like two hundred dollars, but I’m like - honorary, you know? Only I don’t have to do all the community work stuff if I’m busy, it’s great.”

“Photography?” Grant perks up in a way he hadn’t before, his genuine interest piqued. (It’s fascinating, how far photography had come in all the years he’s been awake: no longer needing to stand fidgety and still for long photos. The exposures getting faster and faster, flashes of propaganda photos during the war, quick shots, then Polaroids, handheld cameras, and now everyone’s goddamn phone can do it.)

“I had a buddy into drawing; we took a live portrait lesson together once. Not actually the same thing as photography, obviously, but—” He’s grasping for an idea, another sliver of memory. “What’s that called. En plein air and stuff? I figure there’s gotta be some overlap there. Seeing something interesting you wanna capture.”

Interesting. She wouldn’t have expected anything so mundane as photography to catch his interest. Perhaps HYDRA had him do surveillance? But no, she would have heard about that, would have been in her briefings. Maybe it’s a new interest of Grant’s, something picked up in the last two months -

But no, he mentions a buddy. Somebody from before. A puzzle, then - Petra likes puzzles.

“Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, except for all of photography needing to be en plein air” - (her French pronunciation is deliberately horrible) - “but I think I get it. Like, taking notice of things. Looking for lighting, or reflections. All of that.”

The bartender sets another drink down, and Petra flashes another, bright smile. “I like taking pictures of people more than things. People are so much more interesting, they just “ - she waves a hand, as if trying to think of the right word. “Do more.”

Warming, with the faintest ghost of humour: “Yeah. The pretty models don’t hurt, either.”

And Grant — James — not Bucky, not yet — knows that this conversation is probably a bad idea. He should cut the cord, politely disengage, let it spiral out into nothing, let the girl have her night out on the town herself. But the thing is,

he is so desperately lonely. This is the longest conversation he’s had in he doesn’t know how long. Two years alone, with only the most fleeting connections in foreign languages before he pulled up stakes and moved on, trying not to let his past catch up to him. He remains vigilant, tries to cover his tracks, but he’s starting to hunger for these small reminders of civility, personhood: the chat with the bartender, a joke exchanged with the greengrocer. English sounds better on his tongue. It’s been a while since he’s gotten to use it.

“I’m not that great with people, though,” he admits, ruminative.

She laughs – dry, amused, warm – and playfully swats his arm. “Just like a boy, only thinking about pretty girls.” Boy, not man, trying to associate him with the sort of co-eds and nerds and frat assholes that Harper would know. Keep the Soldier thinking about her as somebody young, inexperienced, too used to campus life and clubbing to recognize anything else.

Petra shifts on her stool, turning to face him more fully. She crosses her legs (practicality, not going for seduction yet), and leans her meager weight on an elbow on the bar. “You're doing alright so far,” she says, kindly. “You bought me a drink and you're asking cool questions, that's good. But hey - “

She leans forwards a little, plastic bracelets jangling, and traces the stiletto of one heel against his calf. “I can deal with people. I know all about people, I've got you.”

Well, maybe just a little seduction.

His hackles almost instantly go up at both touches (the swat of her hand, the press of her heel): with the tightening of his shoulder blades going higher, the winding of muscles, a rigidity in his neck, all incredibly apparent to a woman who has trained for so long to measure people’s body language.

And then, just as apparent, Grant consciously lets it go. Lets himself ease back like a wind-up toy soldier letting that tension subside, remembering to unclench his jaw, stop grinding his teeth, turn off that part of his brain and body and sheer animal instinct which is always looking for threats, watching for enemies, balancing on a hairtrigger to flip someone to the ground if they tried to touch him. He turns off that reflexive reaction like he’s flipping off switches, powering down the machine.

Easy. Be normal. C’mon. Just be normal.

“And I,” he says, an attempt at sounding gallant (they’re both wearing masks tonight), “promise to get in a very gentlemanly fistfight if any drunk angry football hooligans try to cause trouble for ya. I can do that, at least.”

Another wave of tittering, sparkling laughter - nothing to worry about, nothing out of the ordinary, just a young (not technically) sorority girl finding amusement in a man’s offer of (not technically) violence. And to think, people say chivalry’s dead. But Petra allows herself an extra little giggle for the sheer pleasure of it, to celebrate the Soldier continuing to let his guard down for her.

Progress. Even if it’s just a step, even if it’s only a little - she can work with a little.

“And you’re gonna like, protect me? See, Grant, you’re just way too sweet.” All smiles, all tapping her nails against the glass of her ginger beer and rum, all watching the local laborers out of the corner of her eye.

“Maybe I could take your picture sometime. Or do a sketch, but my drawing sucks ass.”

The man’s about to laugh and smile and say yes — because this is flirting, right? this is how flirting works — but realisation cuts in a moment later. The Soldier has in fact let his guard down a little too far, and gotten sloppy.

Remembering: this is a different, more modern era. Photographs cue automated facial recognition, and can be run through databases to flag his location. He’s barely been staying ahead of grainy CCTV footage, let alone proper portraiture from a girl who knows how to take good pictures. Even if it was analog, who’s to say it wouldn’t wind up online someday? He can’t exactly demand that she never post it anywhere, it’d be suspicious as hell —

But he masters his expression, that jolt of alarm, instead smoothing it over after another sip of his drink: “Maybe a sketch, yeah. And I could do just as shitty one of you in return.” The corner of his mouth ticks upward. “Could be fun.”

The buddy he’d mentioned— he can’t remember the other man’s face in specific, but he knows he would’ve been better at it, better at doodling expressions and capturing others’ personalities on the page.

“How far away’s your dorm?” Grant asks.

He doesn’t strictly mean for it to sound like it does; it’s more about how far she would’ve had to go in a strange city by herself, navigating new neighbourhoods on a late night without the protective company of her sorority sisters.

But still. It sounds how it sounds.

Now, isn’t that curious? It’s like the portcullis of a castle coming crashing down. Hackles raised, a dog picking up a scent, the Soldier stiffening into action. Petra can’t even put her finger on what changed - nothing in his posture, barely anything in his gaze, his voice is loosening up, like it has been for the last few minutes. But something changes nonetheless: Harper’s innocent offer of a photograph is deflected, so casually and carelessly that she can’t help be impressed.

Maybe the Soldier isn’t as boring as she thought.

“Of course, it’ll be fun,” she says. “Like, don’t expect much, I’m freakin’ serious - but my art prof keeps telling me that art is its own purpose. Sounds like crap, but it’s an easy grade.” A little self-centered rambling goes a long way with crafting a persona, as well as keeping it.

The question gets a pause, a tilt of the head, an inquisitive look - is he propositioning her? And Harper answers: “Grant. Babe. My dorm is in San Bernadino.” She’s being gently chiding with him, teasing. “We’re in a couple of AirBnBs. I’m sharing one with like, five other girls.”

There’s a crinkle of a smile at the corners of his eyes, a sheepish twist to his expression.

“European backpackers used to do hostel dorms in my day, not AirBnBs,” Grant says — and it sounds plausible enough, and not necessarily earmarking him as the old man he feels sometimes, trying to keep up with all the societal changes. He looks… in his thirties, maybe? It could be a remark from a waning millennial if you didn’t know the truth, the ageless exhaustion behind that blue gaze.

“Just thinking if you’ll need an escort later, since your friends are all at the game. A chaperone.”

It’s once again chivalrous, gentlemanly. Old habits.

A good-natured eyeroll, a soft groan that’s equal parts fond and exasperated. “Great, I needed some back-in-my-days lecturing, I don’t get enough of that already.” But she’s already smiling again, teasing, offering little jabs and barbs so Grant can have the pleasure of batting them away. Because she’s getting a good grasp on what sort of a man he is: not one who wants a sweet, submissive girl to play with, nor one who can only take direction. A bit of action. Some tête-à-tête. Conversation as a game, not just talking.

Well, Petra is definitely good at talking. And she’s even better at winning games.

“See, you say you’re not good with people,” Harper points out. And now she is leaning forwards a little, breathless, inviting. “And then you go and offer up something like that. You’re really sweet.” A pause, contemplative. A sip of her drink - she should probably slow down - and a shrug. “And you’re cute. And paying for drinks, the full package.”

There’s a few things which should probably raise more alarm bells for him.

Harper hasn’t yet asked what he’s even doing in Romania, and he doesn’t strictly have a good answer for it; he’s avoided casual friendly conversation long enough that no one’s really bothered asking.

But she’s not local authorities with extradition treaties knocking on his door and asking uncomfortable questions, she’s not American military-branded surveillance drones, she’s not a CCTV camera; he’s not expecting the worst from this innocuous package. Even most SHIELD agents have a particular rigidity to their bearing, the way they snap to attention. Harper looks too young to have that kind of experience. (He’s not thinking about Natasha Romanoff’s chameleonic ability to blend undercover.)

It’s a small gap, a lapse. It’s just nice to be having a normal conversation again; to smile at a pretty girl again.

“Just trying to do the right thing,” Grant says, a rueful twist to his expression. “Young girl abroad, on her own, too many drinks and trying to find her way back. I’d worry.”

for webbs.

the femme fatale.

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