quietus
(n.)
death; something that causes death

•••

"in a fight they are lethal. around each other, they melt."

•••

"Who are you?"

Natalia took a deep shaky breath, afraid of what's to come next.

"James," she said cautiously, her voice as smooth as freshly woven silk. She easily hid her fear. She had been taught to do that by James himself. "James, it me. Don't you remember?"

She spoke to him in English, hoping that it would approach him more familiarly. He didn't respond and she couldn't see him through the dark. He didn't loose any slack on his grip, but she could no long feel his breath. Was he afraid.

Of course he was, Natalia told herself, mentally slapping herself. How couldn't he be. She was scared out of her skin and she knew what was going on. She couldn't even imagine what was going on through his head.

"Why have you been following me? How did you know I'd be in New York? How did you know me? Why do you keep calling me James?" he trailed off. He was confused and his brain was fuzzy. She knew how hard it was to think once your brains been dug around in. She honestly didn't know how he could think. How how could form sentences. She knew how much it hurt. And his mind was so much more damaged than hers.

She reached over with her left hand and placed it on his right, and laid her other hand gingerly on the metal one that was wrapped unharmingly around her neck. He flinched back a bit.

"James I'm not going to hurt you," she said through the dark, spreading out her fingers over his hand, touching her own face. "You can let go and I'll tell you everything."

She dropped her hand from his and let it trace his arm all the way back to where the titanium fused with the burnt flesh of his shoulder. He flinched again, then squeezed her neck hard, and threw her against the wall. Natalia gagged a bit, surprised by his move.

"What should stop me from killing you right here and now," he hissed in a low voice.

"Because I know who you are," she choked. "Because I'm here to save you."

His grip tightened. "Save me from what?"

She wished she could see his face. She wished she could hold him. She wished she could give him all his memories back. That she could stroke his hair and tell him it will be okay.

"From Hydra. From Russia. From yourself," she gasped. "Please James," Natalia gagged.

Ha squeeze harder and Natalia felt tears well in her eyes as the seemed to bulge. "I-I know you know me," she gasped. "I know—I under...stand you. I still... love—you. Please. I'm here to save you."

She began to feel the last bit of life slipping away from her. Tears streamed down her face as her head began to throb.

"P-please," was all she could usher out before it seemed that her body could no longer perform.

Just as her eyelids fell closed, James let her go, letting her fall to the ground. Natalia gasped and choked for air, rolling over on  her back.

"You're not lying," was all he said. Natalia felt her throat swelled up in sadness as well as strangulations. She looked up into the darkness of the closet.

"I though you remembered, James," she confessed, her voice thick with sadness. "I came back because you remembered."

He turned on the light and looked down at Natalia whose shoulders were still heaving from the lack of air. He looked down at her with his eyes full of confusion. "I-I..." he trailed off. "I just... All I knew was that I knew you. I hoped that you didn't see. No witnesses I just had a feeling that I didn't want to kill you."

Natalia sighed, standing up and pulling out the gun he left for her, loaded and ready. He looked down at it nervously as his drew another in less than a blink of an eye.

"No," Natalia told him, taking the one he had given her by the handle and held it out to him, pushing the one he had drawn on her down.

"Let's leave," she told him, reaching up to place her hand on his jaw. But he fliched away. Natalia's mind was in all sorts of places. She never thought she'd see him again. Let alone be able to talk to him. To touch him.

She put her hand by her side. "You have a home, James. Let's go to it."

Natalia watched as his eyes became frantic, searching around the room for and answer he would not find. He shook his head. "I'm still not sure who you are. I can't trust you. And all my rules are saying that I should kill you. You've seen too much. You know too much. And I don't have a home... Siberia is where I live. All you have going for you is a feeling."

A sad smile crossed her face. "And that's not enough," she agreed knowingly. "I understand." Natalia shook her head. "I've seen everything. I know you. And deep down, you know me too. Siberia might be where you live, but it isn't your home. I've seen your home. People still remember Bucky. People with help Sergeant Barnes. I know it."

Then something flashed in his eyes... or someone did at least. "Howard," he said, shaking his head. "He was the last one," he said, dumbstruck. His eyes were full of shock and pain.

"I killed Howard Stark," he announced aloud. "He was my friend I murdered him."

"No," Natalia promised, shaking her head. "No that had nothing to do with it. You can forget about Howard."

He shook his head again. "The things you suggest would have been possible if Howard Stark wasn't dead. He's the only one who would stand up for me... for us."

Natalia searched her mind for another option.

"And You can't just forget something like that," he shuddered.

"Peggy Carter," she said. "She's on your trigger list. She's in your exhibit at the American museum. Captain America old flame. Last I heard she was still kicking."

James shook his head, leaning back on the wall. "Peggy Carter," he said slowly. Natalia could see him remembering more. "She wouldn't have wasted a breath not helping us... ten years ago."

Confusion washed over Natalia. Why wouldn't Carter help?

Then an agent walked in. Shit. He gave the two of them a strange look. They were having a closed, intimate conversation. Those were usually easy to pick up on. Was he going to turn them in? Would James turn her in.

"Go get shock discs, knives. I'll get clothes for our cover," James told Natalia, switching personalities almost instantly. Almost as well as Natalia can. But the she remembered: he was the one who taught her.

"They said rescue op? Or extraction. Who is this guy?" asked Natalia.

"Extraction. French genealogist," James said. "They need his work. Department X needs him along with the serum. That's why you're here to help me."

"Ahh," Natalia said, walking to the other side of the gear room, waiting for the agent to get what he needed and leave. James pretended to search through their clothes. Then the agent left and Natalia reapproached James.

"Like old times," she said with a sad smile. "Your not as good as I remember."

"A lot has changed," he said, his voice suddenly dark. "And whatever works, works."

"Why is Carter a dead end?"

"The old woman has Alzheimer's. It compromised a mission I had years ago. When they started letting me take assignments in America."

"So," Natalia said, he voice dropping so that they nearly couldn't hear. "You remember?"

"Yeah... something like that," he told Natalia, his eyes vacant if any emotion.

Natalia nodded, understanding. And she did understand.

She new how it felt to have her whole brain throbbing in pain, all the way down her spine and in her eyes, not knowing what to believe and what not to believe. Not being able to sort the thoughts in your head. Barely able to put sentences together. Everything. Memories, vision, thoughts. It's all blurred and unfocused. Sometimes the pain would be so bad, your vision would grow spotty and blacked out.

She knew how it felt. But she had only had her mind played with once. His was done every mission. Every op. Every time he many be exposed to a trigger. And only hours later his body is frozen so they can used him later. Like leftover. Like a living steak. She couldn't imagine functioning with these problems full time and a hundred times worse. They may have come up with a concoction or programming that helps the pain.

But she should have conveyed better. He needed help more than anyone. He was stronger than she could have ever been for not putting his own bullet in his brain. She knows that he's thought about it longer and harder than she ever did. She shuttered, just remembering the gun she pressed to her head. The gun that was in her holster this very moment.

She had the chance to understand him. To lift some of the heavy weight she already shared off his broad, yet shriveled shoulders. He looked worse now than she had ever known him to. He was big. His muscle mass was more than she'd ever have. He must be 250 pounds at only six feet tall. But his muscles mass to fat ratio was was discomforted her. It was too easy to tell that he had absolutely no healthy meat on him.

His cheeks were shallower than a puddle. His jaw jutted out like jagged rocks on a beach. His hair had completely lost any shine it had to begin with. It had thinned up a lot and reached his chin. And there were heavy, dark, purple bags under his eyes. Veins jutted out everywhere in a most unhealthy way. His neck, his arms, hands, forehead. If it weren't for his bulging muscles, he would appear anorexic.

And he was pale. God he was pale. Nearly as white as snow. Like a ghost.

He sighed, looking down at his feet, playing with his fingers. "You know how nothing feels right? You don't know what's real. All your thoughts are... cloudy? You can't focus?"

Natalia nodded, a feeling of compassion regret, pity, self-pity, and understanding washed over her. "I understand, James. I really do," Natalia promised.

He shook his head, his emotionless face sends chills down Natalia's spine.

"You don't have the voices," he said in nearly a whisper. "Their not inside your head, living, breathing, scratching and clawing, telling you what to do."

Natalia almost couldn't take it. "You remember, James. You trust me right? Come with me and I can help you." She pointes down at the briefcase in his hands. "And they can't do to anyone else what they did to us."

"I remember you," he said, his voice cracking. "I remember what we were. And I've studied and been programmed in how to read people well enough to know what you want. You can't help me. And i can't be the man you want me to be. I'm changed everything time I'm taken from that tank. I'm a hundred different men that you don't know. It's just so easy. Triggers are everywhere. And it hurts to remember... I- I don't even want to remember. I just want it to end."

Natalia was taken aback. Should she just let him go? No. He needed someone to help him. And the case did not need to got to hydra.

"James come with me and we can get you some help," she told him. "Please," she begged, putting her hand on his left shoulder. He flinched back. But not in fear. In pain.

Natalia was shocked. "Your arm?" she asked in a voice lower than a whisper. "Does it hurt. Do they use it to hurt you?"

"Not my arm," he said, trying to avoid the question.

Natalia mentally stepped back and looked. She knew he wouldn't tell her. But his was in pain. She looked him over and realized that his left arm was dragging the whole left side of his body down. And it had been for over 50 years. And then Natalia realized: it was his back. It was nearly guaranteed that he developed back problems from usage of that titanium arm.

"James," she pleaded, he voice shaking. "Come with me."

"You shouldn't be here," he said looking to the side. "I have to finish my mission."

"But the serum," she reminded. "They make more people like us. A little girl ripped from the arms of her mother. A handsome young man ready to take on the world. I was a baby. You were an American hero? Do you want more of them to have to same fate as us?" asked Natalia, finally tearing up.

He took a scared, emotional, shaky breath. "I have to finish the mission," he told her. His lower lip began to quiver. "...the voices. I have to finish the mission. They'll help me," his voice broke.

They were silent for a few moments.

"Please. I have to... the voices... the pain," he said. "Please, just let me go, solnishko."

Her eyes watered enough from a tear to drop. It hurt so good to hear his say the name he had made for her so many years ago. "I can't let you go back. I cat let them make anymore Black Widows or Winter Soldiers. I can't let them hurt you anymore. You saved me. I'm here to save you."

He shook his head. "I helped you because I knew that there was still some of you left. Natalia, there is nothing left of me. Nothing anyone wants around. You didn't even know me. You knew someone else. Even if I could heal, I still wouldn't be who you want. I will never be the same person you knew. Let me go. They are the only ones who can help."

Natalia looked at him like he just spoke a new language. "James," she said. "They was never any of me. They took me before I could be me. You saved an assassin. A spy. Why can't I? Why can't we live to way we want as who we are? Because whether either of us like it or not, you will never be Sergeant Bucky ever again. I will always be the Black Widow. There is no one else inside me. Bucky is destroyed. You are who you are," Natalia told him. She pleaded. "And I love who you are. I want to help who you are. I don't want you to hurt."

A tear of his own finally slipped down his cheek. "Then let me go, Natalia. Only they can help me."

Natalia shook her head. "You keep saying that. That they help you. How do those monsters help you?"

"The pain," he said, lips quivering. "They make it go away. My head... my back. Nothing's strong enough except what they have. And I can't...the cryo is the only way I can sleep. The voices go away. I have to go."

Natalia shook her head. "No," she said, pulling out the tranquilizer and sticking it in his neck before he couldfight back.

She was going to take him to Hank Pym and hope for the best. Maybe Peggy Carter. Last she heard, she wasn't in a home yet. Surely that meant she was still lucid most of the time.

Now she just had to find a way to get him out. She looked around the gear closet for something to use. The she saw a big, black duffel back. Maybe a scar on his masculinity, but it will have to work.

She put the duffel on the table in the middle and opened it as wide as it would go. She turned and picked him up with a bit of effort. He was definitely over 220 pounds. Her max deadlift was 600 flat. He could only fit head to glutes, so she bent his knees close to his chest. He was packed in like a fetus in a mother's womb.

While she was at it, she decided to pack in as many weapons around him and in the pockets as she could. Over the years, she had used up her fair share. Then she slung the 300 pound back over her back with a bit more effort than it took to pick James up to say the least.

She approached the door, opened it, and as soon as she took a step out the door, she felt a needle in her throat.

She felt her head go light, then everything was black.

Quietus

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