Summary: When Bucky and Natasha defected from the Red Room together, they were both at SHIELD when Steve Rogers came out of the ice.

There was very little that was keeping Natalia upright as they walked out of the hangar. After a four-day mission―two days of which were spent as an unwilling prisoner and the following day and a half of which she spent without a single minute of rest―she was ready to sleep until Fury himself dragged her from her bed. It did not help that she was also struggling with a dislocated and recently-reset ankle.

James, ever the trooper, had offered to carry her up to their shared room at HQ, but she refused. That did not, however, mean that she was not now using him as a very necessary crutch in order to keep moving.

They'd just made it out of the hangar when they were intercepted by Coulson all but running in the opposite direction. Moments after he passed them, he paused, turning to eye James in a way that made Natalia worried she was about to lose her human crutch.

"You two busy?" Coulson asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "Come with me."

James and Natalia shared a look but did as instructed. With Natalia still leaning heavily on James and both of them all but dragging their feet, they followed Coulson down a winding hallway and through a secure door. He used his badge twice, waving them through after him, and typed in a code that Natalia didn't have the energy to memorize. As they stepped through a third door, they were met by the sight of several agents hovering over a medical bed.

"We found him in the Arctic," Coulson explained, not bothering to look back at them. "While we're positive it's him, we would really appreciate personal confirmation."

His last few words were aimed toward James, much to Natalia's confusion. Whatever personal confirmation SHIELD expected James to provide, she was certain she could provide the same. After all, they'd lived through the same horrors and shared the same memories. Aside from the rumors that James had had a life before Hydra, neither of them had any recollection of it.

"Why just me, sir?" James asked. He stopped by an empty chair, forcing Natalia to take a seat and rolling his shoulder out.

"Only you knew him."

Natalia's own frown mirrored James's, but she was prevented from seeing who Coulson gestured to as James's shoulders moved to block her view. She wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.

"So is it him?" Coulson asked.

His question fell on deaf ears, but Natalia didn't miss the way James's shoulder twitched. He inhaled sharply, his eyes not leaving whatever was in front of him, and Natalia pulled herself to her feet. Limping through the pain in her ankle, she shoved her way past an agent to join him at his side. Eyes wide and brow furrowed, he was staring down at a man enshrined in ice as if he was a ghost.

"Barnes? Can you confirm?" Coulson echoed.

James's brow only furrowed deeper, his eyes darting back and forth as he looked over the man in the ice. His breathing sped up, becoming more erratic the longer he stared, and Natalia could see him withdrawing from himself. It was a defensive habit, something he hadn't done much of recently, and something she was determined not to let SHIELD see.

"James."

She stepped between him and the man, but the movement was too sudden. In a flash of light, he had a blade at her neck and his hand wrapped tightly around her arm. The agents nearest them pulled their own weapons and although her body screamed at her to retaliate―to force their weapons away from her head and off of James's back―she didn't look away from James.

"James, breathe," she ordered softly. It was a risk to use Russian, but with a familiar fog in his eyes and every breath deliberately calculated, it was the only language he would respond to.

Ever so slowly, she brought her hand up and pressed it against his cheek. His eyes tracked the movement closely, analyzing her every breath until her fingers brushed across his skin. At her soft touch, the fog faded and his brow smoothed only to immediately wrinkle yet again, deeper this time.

"What―"

His eyes caught on his blade at her neck. With a sharp gasp, he dropped it and it clattered to the floor. She didn't miss the way his eyes trailed over her neck, searching for an injury that wasn't there and still fearful that he'd find it.

"Coulson, who is that?" Natalia demanded. Her eyes never left James's as she watched the fog fight to take control again.

"We believe it's Captain Steve Rogers," Coulson answered tentatively. "We hoped Sergeant Barnes could confirm."

"I need to leave," James told her sharply. His eyes narrowed and he squeezed them shut, shaking his head with a grimace as he said, "I need out. Now."

Natalia moved on instinct. Pulling James toward the door, she blocked his view of the man in the ice and pulled his arm over her shoulders. His eyes stayed firmly shut and his free hand pulled harshly at his hair as they moved. A memory, she realized, and one he feared.

She didn't respond to Coulson's call for them to come back. She knew he spoke Russian, if only a little, and he'd worked as her handler long enough to know that in most cases, James came first.

Moving on muscle memory, she navigated them through the halls of SHIELD headquarters and into an elevator. He groaned, rubbing angrily at his head and when he gripped her shoulder too tightly, she had to wrestle his hand off of her.

"You're hurting me, James," she snapped. The eyes that met hers, however, were not his and she found her breath caught when she tried to breathe. A moment later, they were clear again and full of apology.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm―"

The elevator doors opened and Natalia pulled him through the halls, limping under his weight and gritting her teeth until they reached their room. She punched in the code and threw open the door, pushing James in first and then stumbling in after him. Twisting the deadbolt, she sank to the floor just as James collapsed in a feverish fit beside her.

It wasn't often that he struggled through a memory. There wasn't much left to forget, after all. Aside from his time before Hydra and the handful of years before he was introduced as her trainer, he had all his memories. Not wanting to cause an imbalance between the Black Widow and the Winter Soldier, Hydra hadn't wiped him since they'd been partnered.

Unfortunately, Natalia was familiar with what the process of remembering certain wiped memories was like.

Sometimes it lasted minutes, but sometimes it would take hours. James would disappear in his own head, something akin to fog taking over his eyes as he stared, unseeing, in front of him. Memories that had been wiped multiple times caused him to writhe in agony. Less important memories―missions, most of the time―would only cause a headache. Never before had he passed out.

"James?" She reached forward desperately, her fingers circling his right wrist and finding his pulse. "James, wake up!"

She shook him, perhaps a bit too harsh for the injuries he had sustained during the mission, and didn't feel guilty. He didn't respond and when she pinched his cheek, his neck, his shoulder, nothing happened.

After several more attempts to rouse him, Natalia resigned herself to the fact that he would likely stay unconscious until the attack faded. She could feel his pulse thrumming beneath her fingers and his eyes darted rapidly from under his eyelids, so she could be certain he was still alive, but it was unsettling. No matter how worried she was, however, she would not bring anyone else in unless it became absolutely necessary. SHIELD did not need to encounter the Winter Soldier as she sometimes did.

* * * * *

It was painful to watch, but Natalia didn't dare look away. Throughout the night, as James's own mind toyed with him and his body shook occasionally, she stayed by his side. Unable to move either of them to the bed, they remained on the floor.

At one point, he began to shake so violently she worried he'd hurt himself, so she looped her arms under his and pulled him up until his back was to her chest. She kept him upright, clinging to him in an attempt to prevent him from rolling or breaking something. Even when the attack subsided, she didn't let him go.

It wasn't until dawn that anything changed.

She was dead asleep by then, the exhaustion from their mission and the stress of both it and James's attack were too much to fight against. When she felt James shift carefully against her, though, she blearily blinked awake.

"James?" she moaned, rubbing at her face.

"I'm back, love." His hand found hers where it was wrapped around his stomach.

"How do you feel?" she asked, sleep pulling at her words and making them slur.

"I'm alright," he assured her. "Tell me you didn't stay awake for me."

"Tried to." She blinked, her eyes struggling to focus on his face in front of her. "Couldn't."

"You didn't need to," he argued softly. When she blinked again, the world was moving and James's face was much closer than before. "I was alright without you keeping watch."

He set her on the bed, crawling in after her, and she rolled toward him instinctively.

"You passed out," she breathed. Exhaustion was winning yet again and she knew it was a matter of seconds before she fell back asleep, so she softly asked, "We'll talk in a bit?"

He pressed a kiss to her hairline. "Yeah."

* * * * *

When she woke up hours later, it was to James's fingers gently combing through her hair and sunlight streaming in through their window. She didn't dare look at the clock, too afraid of just how late she'd slept.

"Better?" James asked upon noticing her awake.

"I should be asking you," she countered. Pushing herself up, she caught his hand and brought it to her lips. "You passed out, James," she repeated from earlier, "it scared me."

"I remembered him," he said in response. She didn't ask who. "Stevie―the man in the ice."

"What about him?"

They'd been to the museum, they knew the story, but knowing and remembering were two entirely separate things. To have Agents Barton and Coulson tell them that they believed they knew who James really was had been quite a shock, but not one they couldn't handle.

James shrugged. "Everything."

Her brow pinched together and James was quick to smooth it out with both his thumb and his words.

"We grew up together," he explained softly. A smile tugged on his lips. "We enlisted in the War together."

His smile faded and something sadder crossed his face.

"He was there when I fell," he murmured, avoiding her eyes, "and he'd tried to save me."

He told her more, recounting happier memories from his childhood: stuffing newspapers in their shoes to appear taller; sleepovers when Steve's mom worked later at the hospital; double dates that never ended in the ladies enjoying Steve's company, much to James's chagrin.

Then he told her about the mission and how it had gone all wrong. He whispered something about a man named Zola who experimented on him, but how Steve came to the rescue before he could test his work. Afterward came the fall. A train above him, the wind around him, and the ground too far below him.

"I shouldn't have survived," he told her, but Natalia had surmised as much. "Whatever Zola did―" He scoffed― "it must have saved my life. But at what cost?"

She curled around him, dragging his head to her chest and holding him tightly.

"So you really are him, then?" she asked. "James Barnes?"

If she'd had her doubts before, they were all but erased now. It had felt unfair at the time that James could have had a life before her―a happier life, one that he had enjoyed―while she had been raised in the Russian tundra. She hadn't wanted to believe it even if all the signs had been there. Even before defecting, before SHIELD, and before the museum, he'd known his name was James, and that had aligned just a little too perfectly.

James nodded but she couldn't bring herself to feel jealous.

"I'm sorry." She kissed his head. "You didn't deserve what happened to you."

"And you did?" he argued fiercely, instinctively.

She didn't respond but he didn't argue further. Instead, they let the silence surround them and not a word had to be spoken for them to agree to remain where they were.

* * * * *

It was agreed upon by Coulson and Fury that James would be the one there when Steve Rogers woke up. A room in the medbay was prepared and Rogers was left in it. Behind a one-way glass, Fury and Coulson stood beside her as they waited for the first sign of consciousness. From inside the room, James tapped his thumb and index finger together, the only sign of discomfort.

Natalia stood as near to the glass as she dared, clenching her fists anxiously in anticipation. There was little risk that James would experience an attack when Rogers awoke, but there was no telling if any more memories would surface and what they would bring. Even though Fury did not explicitly say why she was not being sent away with the rest of the agents, she could read his intent.

Five hours after he'd been moved, Steve Rogers shifted.

Natalia held her breath and James's tapping paused. As Rogers's eyes flickered, James leaned forward and Natalia mirrored him from behind the glass.

The first thing Rogers laid eyes on was the ceiling, a frown crossing his face as he stared long and hard at the smooth, white surface above him. The second thing he laid eyes on was James.

"Bucky?"

His eyes widened and even though Natalia frowned at the name―Too American, she grumbled in her head―she held her breath.

"Hey, pal. How're you feeling?"

She'd heard him speak English before now. They did so frequently when they were on missions with other agents or conversing with anyone other than each other. Something about the way the words left his mouth, though, felt different. His accent had changed. There was a bit of a drawl, each word less deliberate and more carefree. It sounded more native.

Covering a gasp, Natalia brought a hand up to her lips and bid them not to quiver.

"How are you―" Rogers hesitated, eyes darting around the room. "Where am I? What happened?"

"It's a long story," James said, a soft laugh reaching her ears through his wire. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"The tesseract," Rogers said. "There was nowhere safe to land, so I crashed the plane." With a confused frown, he asked, "Where's Peggy? What day is it?"

"Peggy?" Natalia echoed, glancing up at Fury. He shook his head, a pained look in his eyes stopping her from pushing further.

"Wednesday," James answered softly, his words more carefully spoken, "but it's not 1945 anymore."

"What?" Rogers rolled his eyes. "Quit pulling my leg, Buck. Tell me what happened."

"You crashed that plane 70 years ago," James told him, his words full of caution, "and that's only the beginning."

* * * * *

James spent several days with Rogers and Natalia spent the time buried in the observation room. Through the speaker connected to James's wire, she listened as the two talked and dozed when they grew silent. Between the doctors checking on Rogers' recovery and James trying to answer questions about the future, the topic of SHIELD didn't come up for nearly a week. If James had had his way, Natalia knew it wouldn't have come up even then.

"Look, pal," he said, scowling at the glass hiding her and Fury, "you aren't just here to recover. The people that found you, well―" He grimaced― "they've got some questions. About you, your intentions, all of it."

Rogers looked conflicted for a long minute and Natalia watched wariness and doubt skirt across his face as he stared at James. Slowly, it faded.

"You trust 'em?" he asked. James nodded. "Then I'll do it."

Natalia frowned and Fury moved toward the door, eager to convince Rogers to join SHIELD, she was certain.

"I'll join 'em," Rogers echoed. "If they're good enough for you, they're good enough for me."

She didn't miss the way James's lips thinned. A decade ago, she knew Rogers wouldn't have said so, but James had yet to tell him just who he'd been working under before SHIELD. Between questions about the future and how he'd survived the fall, James had expertly dodged talking about his time as the Winter Soldier.

Fury entered the room then, a file pressed to his chest as he reintroduced himself to Captain Rogers. When he asked James to leave them, he did so without argument. Shortly after Rogers' hospital door had shut behind him, James appeared in the observation room with her.

Her eyes tracked his movements silently: his feet dragged, his shoulders slumped, and moments before he buried his face in her neck, she caught sight of his red eyes.

"I can't do this, Natalia," he whispered, his breath warm on her neck and his arm heavy around her waist. "I can't lie to him like this."

"This isn't a lie." Her fingers tangled in his hair at the base of his neck. "This is recovery. For both of you."

"He has no idea what I've done." His arm around her waist tightened and he drew back, eyes red and watery. "If he did, he wouldn't trust me so easily. He thinks I'm the same Bucky that fell from the train all those years ago."

"And you think he's the same Steve that you left behind," she argued gently. His eyes narrowed. "You have both changed, but now is not the time to think of that." She nodded toward the observation glass. "He's in recovery, but so are you, and after recovery comes reconciliation."

* * * * *

Being a super soldier, Rogers physically recovered much sooner than anyone else could have. His mind was still scattered―she could see it in the way he eyed new things warily and stared too hard at James―but he was walking and training and laughing. It was a shame she had to ruin it.

She had kept her distance since his de-icing. Whether it was to avoid tainting a happy part of James's past or in fear of hampering his recovery, she had stayed out of sight. Even now, weeks after he'd been cleared by medical, she took great care to anticipate his schedule and avoid places he might be. Fortunately for her, he was a man of routine which made evasion easy. At least, it did until she tried to meet Barton for sparring―she needed to practice with someone since James was now preoccupied―only to find Rogers tearing through a punching bag.

She stopped short. For a breath, she just watched him―sand flying with every punch until a loud clattering signaled the end of that particular bag. In a rare moment of hesitation, she didn't turn to leave until his eyes had already found hers.

"Hello." His voice was exactly the same from across the gym as it had been through the observation room speakers.

"Hello," she echoed.

He held out a hand to her despite being too far away. "Steve Rogers."

"Natasha Romanova." She shook his hand, taking the few steps necessary to do so. She hadn't even noticed that she'd rolled her 'r' until he frowned.

"Russian?" he asked. She nodded once and he let out a short laugh, something soft and not at all scornful like she'd encountered during her first year at SHIELD. "The last time I met a Russian, they were shooting at me."

She bit her tongue, trapping the words "But James didn't shoot you" behind her teeth. James was American―that was confirmed now that Captain Rogers had returned. Even though his Russian had always been a little accented, it was still strange to think of James as being from anywhere other than the Motherland.

"Me too," she said instead. His brow rose, but she didn't go into detail.

Changing the subject, he asked, "Do you work here? For SHIELD?"

She nodded.

"Translation?"

"Strike Team," she corrected, her eyes narrowing. "Delta."

She didn't catch her mistake until he eagerly said, "Then you know Bucky. He said he was on Strike Team Delta, too." Turning toward her fully, he looked at her with hopeful eyes and asked, "Tell me about him, would you? It's been a while since I've seen him in action."

Her eyes widened, memories speckled in red and surrounded by echoes of screams and gunshots filling her head, and she knew immediately she could do no such thing. Here was Rogers, asking her to share information about his long-lost friend, and the only memories she could give him were of assassinations and missions filled with more blood than he'd probably ever seen in his life.

"Ask him yourself."

Her words were too sharp and she saw it in the way his face closed off, hope vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. Making a hasty decision, she turned on her heel, murmuring a quick "I must go," and rushing from the room.

* * * * *

She did not tell James about her meeting with Captain Rogers and she did not meet the man again for another week. This time when she did, it was for a mission that he was to accompany them on. It was the best call―of course, it was―but it still made Natalia wary and feel awkward in her own field.

It was an easy mission. It didn't need all three of them, but it was Rogers' first time on the field since the ice and James was the only one he trusted. Natalia was sent along as insurance, should anything happen to either James or Rogers during the course of the mission.

It should have been an easy mission―after all, it was just a trial run to see if Rogers was mission ready―but all of them were distracted in their own way.

James was the first to fall apart.

She'd been giving instructions, laying out their plan of attack over their comms, when a whistling overhead had caught her attention. Too late did she realize what it was.

"Missile!"

She dove for cover but knew it was a fruitless endeavor. She was too close, the missile had moved too fast, and the next thing she knew, she was airborne.

She'd taken her fair share of hits before, had even fallen from a few buildings, but she had yet to experience being thrown off a roof by a missile. The explosion was white hot, searing her tac suit and stealing the breath from her lungs as she went crashing into the building opposite of them. In her comm, she heard James's shout and Rogers echo him, but her back hit the ground before she could respond and everything went black.

It was James that reached her first, emptying his gun on his way across the open space despite strict no-kill orders. Behind him, Steve followed at a jog, shield up but no gun in hand. At least one of them would follow orders, he thought ruefully before dropping to Natalia's side.

"Natalia." He refrained from shaking her, checking her over very carefully for blood or signs of spinal damage. "Open your goddamn eyes, Nastasya, or I swear to god, I'll blow this mission."

She didn't, but it was all the same to James.

Behind him, a bullet whizzed passed his ear and James whirled, firing at the first blur of movement he saw. Steve ducked, his shield curling over Natalia as more bullets flew toward them. James counted four attackers: one from above, one around the corner, and two behind them.

Reaching for Natalia's belt, he unlocked a grenade and threw it toward the two behind them. As it detonated, he crouched down to avoid the shrapnel but kept his gun up. In the heat and smoke of the grenade, he fired once in the direction of their other attackers. Not a single bullet was returned.

Only after verifying that the area was clear, he carefully lifted Natalia into his arms and gave the order for Steve to follow him.

They slipped over the broken streets with ease, navigating their way back to the quinjet as a plane soared overhead. As they clambered into the quinjet, the plane circled back overhead and it was all James could do to get them airborne and cloaked before bullets rained down on them. As soon as they were in the air, the plane still circling to their right, he shot it down.

Natalia didn't awake until they were over the Mediterranean and when she did, her first words were in slurred French. It was enough to make James land in Berlin, ordering Fury to clear them at the SHIELD headquarters there. He did, no questions asked, and Steve followed him into the facility wordlessly.

It wasn't until after Natalia's examination―moderate concussion, but no spinal damage―that Steve spoke up.

"That was a no-kill mission," he said. His eyes didn't meet James's. "The Bucky I knew wouldn't have even known how to kill like that."

"The Bucky you knew doesn't exist anymore," James said quietly, his gaze firmly on Natalia. "Hydra made sure of it."

With a silent nod, Steve slipped out of the room, leaving James alone to his thoughts and a sleeping Natalia.

* * * * *

They left Berlin hours after Natalia awoke and was cleared to fly. Her concussion was healing quickly, a perk of the serum that James did not tell Steve she had, and although she swayed when she stood up, she walked all the way to the quinjet on her own.

Steve eyed her warily, something neither she nor James missed, but didn't verbally express his concern. They were almost to New York before he spoke at all, his words so quiet James almost didn't hear him over the hum of the engine.

"I didn't mean it how it sounded."

"Then how did you mean it?" James sighed. He kept his eyes on the panel in front of him and Natalia, bless her soul, acted as if she hadn't heard either of them.

Steve didn't answer and James didn't push him to.

"Everything was different," Steve said several minutes later, "when I woke up: the year, the hospital, the music. I had hoped that you would be the one thing that wasn't."

With a knot in his chest, James turned the jet to autopilot and turned to face Steve.

"What I lived through was hell, Steve," he said quietly. "While you were in the ice, I had to fight to survive. Unlike Captain America, the things I did aren't fit for children's bedtime stories."

"You shouldn't have had to sacrifice yourself," Steve insisted. James inhaled deeply, prepared to argue, but Steve wasn't done. "Hydra was hell, sure, but you got out. You're on the right side, now. You don't need to keep up the facade―"

"It's not a fucking facade," James snarled. From behind, Natalia's hand curled over his arm and he took another deep breath. "It's not a facade," he repeated, his voice even, if not a bit cold. "I can't just take it off, Steve, and I understand that's hard for you, but it's even harder for me. So while you have to live with the knowledge that I've changed, at least you don't have to live with knowing what I've had to do in order to survive."

Before Steve could utter another word, an argument or an apology, James stalked off. Natalia could handle the jet, concussed or not, but he would not be judged for how he chose to survive.

* * * * *

Natalia spent more time alone with Rogers in the following day than she had in the past several weeks combined. With James on edge and Steve battling through his own idea of who his old friend should be, it was Natalia who was thrust into the role of unofficial handler.

"How is he?" Rogers murmured, looking for all the world apologetic.

"Angry," she answered honestly.

Rogers nodded to himself. "That's fair."

"It is," she agreed, and then they moved on, filling out the mission report and leaving out the number of kills they'd left behind.

With James locked away in their room, it was her who gave Rogers instructions on how to fill out and file the report and it was her who followed him into the training gym. She didn't pull her punches, hitting him a little too hard and not feeling sorry about it, and walked away without a word.

Two days later, he knocked on their door.

She glanced at James, silently asking if he wanted to see Rogers and at his nod, she pulled the door open.

"Knock if you need me," she muttered in Russian, going to sit in the hallway while they talked.

He nodded, Rogers frowned, and the door shut behind her.

Waiting had always made her fidget. Even in the Red Room, where fidgeting and impatience had been punished brutally, she'd had her ticks. From picking at her nails to tapping her thumb and index finger, she'd never been perfect in that regard so while they spoke, she fidgeted.

When the door finally opened, hours had passed and her back ached.

Rogers merely nodded at her, ducking down the hall to disappear, but not before she caught sight of his red and swollen eyes. Turning to James, she found the same.

"You told him?" she asked, stepping through the doorway. He nodded. "And?"

"He understands," he replied quietly. "Neither of us is the same as before, but we'll get there."

With a soft hum, Natalia brushed her fingers through his hair and trailed a hand over his shoulder.

"It's new for both of you," she reminded him, "and new is frightening, but not bad."

It would take some time before he and Rogers settled in, both at SHIELD and in their friendship. Rogers had slept while James had survived and even though neither had a right to criticize how the other had been forced to change, both would come around. She knew it in the way she knew James had already forgiven Rogers for snapping; she saw it in the way Rogers still turned to James for input first.

"No," James agreed, "it's not bad."