Archive of Our Own ^beta

If Natasha Romanoff had ever known what people meant when they talked about a good night’s sleep, she’d long since forgotten it. She slept too lightly for that, too vigilantly. She was forever attuned to the noises of the night, to the shadows passing over her eyelids. Anything that suggested a threat roused her in an instant.

Of course, she had an especially compelling reason to be on the alert tonight. SHIELD had exploded, and the wounds from the resulting shrapnel had spilled its secrets and hers onto the pavement, into the open. With a terrified public, a severely pissed-off administration, and HYDRA agents slithering out of the woodwork, there was bound to be heat from any number of channels.

So when she heard the footsteps outside her door, her hand was on her nearest gun and she was springing noiselessly to her feet before her eyes had a chance to open. She approached the door without fear but with pragmatic caution, in her head making a quick rundown of all possible exits and scenarios that would render each the most desirable.

She was maybe four feet from the door when the knock came—hard but not emphatic, almost sluggish. This threw her, but only for a moment. In a flash, she pulled her phone out of her pocket to consult the video feed from the hidden camera she’d set up in the hall (peepholes were for people who wanted to get shot through their own front door.) She had to admit, she wasn’t expecting what she saw.

Letting out a slow, silent breath, Natasha eased the door open, gun at the ready. She met the unblinking eyes of the Winter Soldier.

Bucky—that was what Steve had called him. But Natasha had yet to reconcile this name with the man she’d known. For a long moment, neither spoke. Neither moved. The Soldier had the muted, unfocused look born of decades of memory wipes. So far, all that suggested he recognized Natasha was the fact that her door was still on its hinges.

“You know me?” she asked evenly.

There was a pause. Natasha didn’t know how the Soldier remained so sharp and lethal in the field when he was in this state. He could take out six agents single-handed (literally) without breaking stride, but try to talk to him, and it was like he was just coming out of sedation. It was as if his world fuzzed at the edges and he needed to wait until it resolved into something he could make sense of.

“Natalia,” he finally replied.

Wordlessly, Natasha held the door open. The Soldier stepped inside, looking vaguely around her apartment. She supposed he still did the same thing he’d always done when he entered a room: located all possible exits, hazards, and anything that might be used to gain the upper hand. Old habits die hard. She would know.

“You’re not here to kill me, aren’t you?” she asked. “It’s late; the neighbors will complain.”

His eyes kept roving over the apartment. “I’m disappearing,” he told her, “tomorrow.”

It made sense. Natasha was making plans to disappear himself, and as someone who was evidently HYDRA’s property, the Soldier had as much reason as she did to make himself scarce.

“You need a bed,” she said. A comment, not a question.

The Soldier turned to her. It took a moment for his eyes to focus. “I thought I…it’d be safe,” he explained.

Natasha nodded. He remembered that much, anyway. She wondered how much else he remembered, and how much had been yanked out. She took a step closer to him and reached a hand up to slip it behind his neck. He didn’t physically step away, but he did draw back, just a little. Natasha stopped. She waited, tensed slightly. It was as though she’d been surreptitiously following a wolf and had just stepped on a twig.

But the Soldier didn’t retaliate. Instead, he brought his right hand to his face, sniffling quietly as he rubbed his nose with his knuckles.

He didn’t have to explain; Natasha understood. “Bedroom’s this way,” she told him, walking a trifle ahead but warily keeping him in her eye line. He followed with heavy, almost trudging footfalls.

He took a seat on the edge of the bed and undressed without preamble, shucking all the holsters and black leather. He used his bionic left hand a bit, gingerly, but for the most part, his right did all the work. Before long, he was down to a close-fitting white T-shirt and a pair of boxers.

Natasha pulled the covers back and let him lie down before climbing in beside him. She didn’t need her training to know this could all be a pretense to gain entrance and slit her throat while she slept, but her instincts told her not to worry. The Soldier didn’t need a pretense to hold his own against her, and to the extent that he could be known, Natasha felt like she knew him.

He lay on his stomach, like he always had—it was the position that made it easiest to sleep with his bionic arm. He faced away from her, and she listened to his soft, persistent sniffles in the darkness. The mattress shook fractionally as he coughed.

She was about to speak when he beat her to it. “The man on—” he began. A long break. Then, low, “…There was a man.”

“Steve,” Natasha supplied. “Do you remember him?”

“…I don’t know,” the Soldier admitted. “My head doesn’t, but…I think I might.”

Natasha didn’t reply to this. Her fingers were light on his right shoulder. She felt it tense as he drew in a hitching breath. “Ehhhhh-hihhhhhh…tschiuhhhhhh!” he sneezed.

Typical. Sick, and he’d still given Captain American a run for his money. “When did you get that cold?” she asked, offhanded.

“2008—I think,” he replied distantly. He sniffled.

Natasha’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Even for you, that’s a long time,” she observed.

“They don’t bring me out as often as they used to,” he said, by way of explanation.

No, she supposed not. There hadn’t been much sign of him in recent years; even rumors had been thin on the ground. A question struck her. “How did you end up with HYDRA?” she asked. “I always thought you were a Leviathan asset.”

“And you thought you were a SHIELD asset,” the Soldier said.

Natasha understood. If HYDRA could infiltrate SHIELD, why couldn’t they have done the same to Leviathan? To the Red Room, to the Ten Rings, to every clandestine group and intelligence agency Natasha had ever clashed with, first as a Russian assassin and later as an American spy? How deep did the rot go, and how many of these groups were even aware of the cracks in their foundations?

“Fair enough,” she conceded.

The Soldier stifled a cough in the back of his throat, shifting in the bed to press his right hand to his nose. “Hehhhhhh-uhhhhh-SHOOOOOOO!”

“Bood’ zdorov,” Natasha told him. The Soldier made no reply, just rubbed his nose with his knuckles. “2008—that means you had it the last time we met.”

The Soldier shifted again, this time to turn his head toward her. He didn’t need to ask. His expression told her he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Ukraine,” Natasha explained. “Nuclear scientist. I was protecting him, you weren’t.”

“I don’t remember that,” the Soldier said.

“Not surprising,” Natasha replied, “but that makes it twice that you’ve nearly killed me while you’ve had that cold. I must be slipping.”

At the question in his eyes, she added, “You shot through me to get to the scientist.” She took his hand and brought it to her stomach. “Here.”

I’m sorry,” the Soldier replied. She didn’t doubt that he meant it, but the words sounded so removed as he spoke them. She supposed it was strange to apologize for things that had been removed from your memory.

“It’s all right,” she told him. “They’d probably erased me, or you couldn’t tell who I was.”

“Maybe I could,” the Soldier said, and it was Natasha’s turn to look puzzled. He gave he the closest thing he had to a smile. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“And I’d like to credit myself for that, if you don’t mind,” Natasha retorted lightly.

“Hihhhhh-kknnhhhhhhh!” he sneezed into his hand, pinching his nose. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” he told her.

The ghost of a smirk stole across Natasha’s face. “Get some sleep,” she replied.

The Soldier nodded. “Dobroy nochi,” he mumbled.

“Right back at you,” Natasha replied. It was strange. They could cross each other’s paths after years and spend all their time trying to kill each other—with the Soldier’s mental conditioning an ever-present factor, Natasha knew better than to hold back—and then fall right back into their old routines as if no time had passed at all.

*           *           *

The Soldier stood before a counter, blinking wearily as he buttered thick slices of bread. The Red Room wasn’t the sort of place that one would imagine as having a kitchen, but even trafficked assassins needed to eat. He paused, then tossed his knife to his bionic hand so he could rub his itching nose with his finger.

“You look the same.”

The Soldier tensed at the sound of the voice behind him. He wasn’t at his best right when he was brought out, and his senses were further dulled by a cold. His ears were plugged, his head was groggy, and a persistent ache in his temple divided his focus; he’d had no idea he wasn’t alone.

Flipping the knife into a more defensive angle, the Soldier turned and found one of the Widows leaning against the doorway. He relaxed, somewhat. “You don’t,” he answered.

The girl stepped into the kitchen. She was one of the older ones, had been here longer. Maybe 18. She had vivid red hair that had been pulled back into a ponytail. “Do you know who I am?” she asked, mildly intrigued.

He looked her over, sifted through his jumbled snatches of memory. He remembered her from the last time they’d brought him out—they’d had him training pupils—but did he know her name? “Natalia,” he finally said.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I heard they erase all your memories,” she told him.

“Not all of them,” he replied. He stacked wedges of meat and cheese on top of his bread. “I need to know who my comrades are.”

“And that’s me?” Natalia asked.

“If you graduate,” he said.

“I did,” she told him. “Five months ago.”

“Then I guess we’re comrades,” the Soldier replied. He completed his sandwich and took a large bite. “Don’t mind me,” he added. “I haven’t eaten in two years.” Sniffling quietly, he stifled a cough.

Natalia appraised him, like she’d been trained to, searching out vulnerabilities. “Either the cryo gives you a runny nose, or you’re coming down with something,” she noted.

“I have a cold,” the Soldier replied.

“You seem to do that a lot,” Natalia observed. “If you were my asset, I might be concerned.”

The Soldier gave her a questioning look. “Last time I saw you,” she explained. “Two years ago—you were getting a cold then, too. I remember because I almost got the jump on you once during training, and when I realized you weren’t feeling well, I was a little less proud.”

She wore a checkmate expression. “Cold then. Cold again now, already. They can’t have woken you up more than a few hours ago. Like I said, I wouldn’t want an asset who was so sickly.”

“I’m not sickly,” the Soldier told her. Not defensively, not argumentatively. Just a statement of fact. “It’s the…hihhhhhhhh…ihhhhh-SHIUHHHHHH!” He turned, sneezing into the crook of his living arm. “It’s the same cold,” he said, sniffling. “I haven’t gotten over it yet.”

“I guess they do play with your head,” Natalia decided. “You remember the part where I said two years ago, right?”

“I do,” the Soldier replied.

“You’ve had the same cold for two years?” she prodded. “First, I’d say that’s impossible, and second, if it were true, you think it proves you’re not sickly? Especially since you’ve been asleep most of that time.”

“Not asleep,” the Soldier corrected. “When they—when I’m on ice, it’s not that I’m sleeping. I don’t sleep. I just stop. Paused, right where they left me. Nothing changes.”

He sniffed, rubbing his nose. “If they shelve me after I come back from 20 hours in the field, the next time they bring me out, I’ll feel like I’ve spent the last 20 hours in the field. If I haven’t slept, I’ll be tired. If I haven’t eaten, I’ll be hungry. And if I have a cold….” His nose itched. He scrubbed it with his finger and a “hehhhhhh-ehhhh-SHUHHHHHH!” burst from him.

“…You’ll still have a cold,” Natalia finished. “I get it.”

The Soldier nodded. “The virus freezes along with the rest of me. Paused, waiting to come back out.”

“So why don’t they account for that?” Natalia asked. “You’re most useful to them fed, rested, and healthy, so why not make sure you’re always in peak form before they freeze you?”

“It’s not something they think of,” the Soldier told her. “They don’t like to keep me out longer than necessary, and they seem to forget that cryostasis doesn’t count as sleep.”

“In that case, their assent is fine,” Natalia decided. “They just don’t maintain it like they ought to.” Instantly, she looked warily about her. With ears everywhere, it wasn’t good to be too forthright.

“Yes,” the Soldier agreed. He took another lethargic bite of his sandwich, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand as he chewed.

“What do they have you doing?” Natalia asked. “They obviously woke y-- brought you out,” she corrected, adopting his phrase, “for a reason.”

“Need to know,” the Soldier replied. He stifled a light cough.

Natalia frowned. “You don’t know?”

“I know,” the Soldier clarified. “You don’t need to.”

“Well, I hope it’s not too dangerous and it takes a long time,” Natalia told him. The Soldier looked questioningly toward her, sniffling. “At least a week, but sporadically, so there’s plenty of time in between to sleep and recuperate. Better to be over that cold before they freeze you again.”

Somewhere, behind all the static in the Soldier’s head, he was smiling. “I appreciate the sentiment.” He turned away to sneeze a “hhhhhh-sshhhuhhhhh!” into his shoulder.

Natalia shrugged. Care was in short supply in the Red Room, and the girl probably didn’t like having it acknowledged. “I’ll leave you to it,” she said shortly, grabbing a leftover slice of cheese before silently exiting the kitchen.

*           *           *

If Natasha remembered correctly, that mission hadn’t been a long one and the Soldier had been back on ice inside of 48 hours. She was pretty sure it had taken another six months and at least two more thawings before he’d been out long enough to actually get rid of his cold. Obviously, there had been far worse things done to him, but there was a certain indignity about this one that she disliked. As much as he was able, she imagined he felt the same way.

He murmured a little as he slept, sniffling into the pillow. Natasha lay awake, her eyes lightly following the line of his muscles through his T-shirt. It was the lack of power over something so basic; that’s what she didn’t like about it. Needing years to get over a cold because you’re not allowed to be present for more than a few days at a time. They’d kept him frozen to preserve the longevity of their weapon, and they’d wiped his mind to control him. But this? It was simply because they hadn’t known or given enough of a damn to do anything different.

“Hehhhh-IHHHH-chiuhhhh!” he sneezed, his body tensing and even the fingers of his bionic arm twitching.

“Shhhh,” Natasha mumbled—she couldn’t have explained why—as she gently pushed his long brown hair off his forehead. Who knew what the future brought for either of them. But tonight, at least, he could sleep.