Summary: When James Barnes appears on her doorstep after the fall of SHIELD, there's really nothing else for her to do except help him work through his memories. She's a prominent feature in many of them, after all, and perhaps the best person for the job. She probably could have anticipated Hydra coming after her for it, but she would never have hoped Barnes would come to her aid.

It was hardly three days after she sent Rogers on a wild goose chase when Barnes showed up at her door with a ghost of a smile and a soft, "Hi, Natalia". Everything after that was simple.

She'd known he would show up on her doorstep one day, but she'd expected him to be a bit more brainwashed and much more inclined to kill her. Instead, there had been bags under his eyes and he'd been hunched in on himself until he looked hardly more threatening than a wet dog. She'd let him inside, of course, and locked the door behind him.

It took several days for her to realize he wasn't going to kill her and almost a week for her to realize he remembered more than he was letting on. He slept on her couch and she woke up to him crying. He spoke Russian and she pretended that her heart didn't stutter at the sound. When he did finally admit it, it was almost a relief.

"I remember who you were to me," he had muttered, not quite meeting her eyes, "but there're still a lot of gaps."

She could work with that, though, and so she did.

* * * * *

Four weeks after Barnes appeared on her doorstep, he started sleeping in her room and neither of them mentioned it. She bought their groceries, he cooked their meals, and they both worked through the jumbled mess of memories that were trapped in his head. One thread often led to another and neither of them would sleep until they were too drained to think on it more.

Six weeks after he appeared, she woke up crying from a nightmare and something between them changed. Barnes became James and Natalia would sometimes be Nata or―when he thought she wouldn't notice―lyubov. From there, it was only a matter of time before they returned to each other.

On the morning when Rogers called, officially requesting her to join him and Wilson on their hunt, she'd still been tangled in James's arms despite noon drawing nearer.

"We got a lead, Nat," Steve's voice said through her phone. "Hydra's been searching for him and Sam tagged their team a while ago. They think he's hiding out somewhere in Maine."

"As much as I'd love to join the fun," Natalia said, "I've got my hands full. Personal project."

Her eyes flickered over James as he laid beside her, arm thrown over her waist as he laid on his stomach. His eyes were closed, but his hold on her was a little too firm to fool her into thinking he was asleep.

"Personal project?" Steve echoed. Natalia hummed. "I thought you said you were lying low."

"I am," Natalia replied. "Espionage isn't my only hobby, Rogers."

Steve's laugh echoed through the receiver.

"Call me if you get another lead," Natalia instructed, "and keep me updated about Hydra."

"Yes, ma'am," Steve promised. After a reminder that she was always welcome to join him and Sam, Steve let her go.

"We're in Maine," James muttered, eyes still closed.

"You eavesdropped?" Natalia's fingers combed through his hair, entirely unsurprised James had been listening, but still wanting to tease him for it.

"That runt has a voice that carries a mile over," James grumbled. He poked one eye open. "It hardly counts as eavesdropping."

Natalia let out a huff of a laugh. "Don't worry," she told him softly. "If Hydra gets too close, we'll know."

As they both pulled themselves from the bed, they switched from talking about Hydra to talking about breakfast. After a bit of bickering, a deal was struck: if Natalia made their coffees, James would make french toast instead of pancakes.

Despite Steve's call, it was still easy to fall into their routine once they reached the kitchen.

"Beijing, 1978," James murmured, dropping a plate in front of her. "Were you there?"

With a hum, Natalia passed him his cup of coffee and nodded. "I got shot, too. You killed everyone in sight and stitched me up before they extracted us."

"I was sort of hoping that was just a bad dream."

For her part, Natalia didn't grimace. It was, all things considered, not her worst memory with James and not one that she thought of often. For James, however, it very well might have been brand new.

"Do you remember when we went back?" Natalia asked softly. She kept her eyes trained on the coffee in front of her. "In '82?"

At James's confused frown, she took his answer to be no. Rather than shake her head and brush it off like she had during the first few weeks, though, she tried to remember it herself.

Sometimes the memories they spoke of were blurry for her, either too long ago or altered in a way Natalia couldn't remember. The first time they'd encountered this problem, they'd spent an entire evening running through their shared memories and searching for discrepancies. It was the first time Natalia had realized that, like James, the Red Room could very well have messed with her mind and made her forget.

"We were sent to kill a diplomat," Natalia explained. "He'd backed out of an agreement and Andropov wanted him dead. He was a liability to the State."

She watched James nod slowly. They'd worked together on his memories long enough now that she could recognize his expression for what it was. He had the memory, but he was trying to put it together. He'd mentioned once that it felt like lining up puzzles pieces, but not knowing how the puzzle was supposed to look in the end. Anything seemed possible until someone showed him the picture.

"We were delayed," James said carefully. At Natalia's nod, he continued. "There was a blizzard. We spent four days waiting for extraction."

"We went dancing," Natalia told him with a smile. "It was in the safe house, but it counted. For me, it did."

"Counted for me too."

* * * * *

There were no further warnings about Hydra from Steve, though Natalia didn't let her guard down. She kept an ear to the ground, listening for rumors of either Steve's travels or Hydra's movement. Though Steve was easier to track and louder to follow across the underground rumor mill, Hydra was not invisible. They kept their eyes on Maine and although it made Natalia wary, she didn't move camp. Their safe house was secure and well hidden. She wasn't going to give it up that easily.

They were careful, though. James never went out in public and on the two occasions that he did, it was with a cybernetic face mask and gloves. He was unrecognizable and she was good at escaping notice.

They were so careful, in fact, that it was entirely unexpected when she finally did stumble into Hydra.

She'd noticed them following her; she would have had to be blind not to. They'd been obvious in the supermarket and they had parked close enough to her car that she knew they'd placed a tracker on it. Unfortunately, by the time she was far enough out of town to do something about it, they were a step ahead of her.

Her tire blew out a second before she reached for the glovebox. With a loud curse, Natalia lunged for the wheel, but it was too late to keep the car from swerving off the road. The airbag went off as the car slammed into the guardrail and Natalia struggled to reach the gun in the glovebox. Her seatbelt locked, pinning her in place and not relenting no matter how many times she pressed the release. It had been jammed, she realized, and the blade she kept in the side-door compartment had been stolen.

She tugged on the seatbelt, but it didn't budge. Glancing quickly in the rearview mirror, Natalia cursed at the sight of several armed men making their way toward her car. If they started shooting, she was a sitting duck.

Reaching under her seat, she found the lever to lay the seat back and pushed it as far back as she could. There wasn't much room, but she was able to scramble out from under the seatbelt and lunge for the glovebox. When she opened it, it was empty.

They'd searched and emptied her car, not just placed a tracker on it. And somehow, the most frustrating thing of it all, she hadn't noticed.

They were all but surrounding her now, guns trained on the vehicle as Natalia cursed for the third time in as many minutes. They'd be on her in a minute and she had yet to find a suitable weapon. The closer they crept, though, the higher their advantage would be in what was sure to become a fight.

Growling, Natalia pushed open her car door and threw herself at the nearest gunman.

Several weapons went off at once and while Natalia had anticipated being hit by at least one bullet, she did not expect the guns to be filled with darts instead. One embedded itself in her thigh and another in her shoulder before she'd snapped the neck of her first victim. When she landed on top of him as they both went crashing to the ground, she found, not blood, but the red feather of an unfortunately familiar dart.

"What..." She trailed off, plucking the dart from her thigh first and then her shoulder. Turning back to face the surrounding Hydra agents, she was struck with a fear she hadn't felt in years.

"That's right, Widow." One of the agents crouched down in front of her as her vision began to blur his face. "It's time for a nice nap."

She was out before he'd stood back up.

* * * * *

Although he'd arrived with large holes in his memory and hardly anything to hold onto, James hadn't had any trouble falling into a routine with Natalia. He knew her name and he knew what she meant to him―even before knocking on her door―and everything after that was easy. It was easy to convince himself he was where he belonged when he woke up in bed beside her. Even when he'd been sleeping on the couch, his dreams had been plagued by her and the perfume that lingered on her blankets had been his only comfort. It was easy to fall into a routine with her and it was even easier to trust her.

After two months of living with her, it was only natural that he grew worried when she never returned from the grocery store. They had a routine, after all, and that meant he knew that she was three hours and thirty-two minutes late. When the clock reached the five-hour mark, he stuffed a handgun in his waistband and left the house.

He didn't get very far. He'd hardly taken more than a step out of the door when he almost tripped over a box that had been set on their doormat. It was unaddressed, but James's gut clenched at the sight of it and he immediately withdrew into the house, box in hand.

Twisting the bolt in the door, James dropped the box on the kitchen table and ripped it open in one breath.

A fistful of red hair and a folded note.

His only condolence was that her hair had clearly been cut, not pulled, as the ends were clean and straight, not twisted and mangled. Just like the note: clean, crisp, and clearly part of a well-followed plan.

There wasn't more than an address on the card, but James knew who it was from. Natalia may have put out feelers to listen to Hydra's rumors, but there was a black market within the black market and there was every possibility that Hydra had known she was waiting.

He didn't have a jet and he was, for all intents and purposes, an internationally wanted fugitive, but Hydra had gotten their hands on Natalia and James would be damned before he let something as insignificant as a jet stop him. He'd drive to the base—as far north in Canada as it was—and burn it down himself with or without a jet.

* * * * *

There was not a moment of reprieve from the moment after Natalia first opened her eyes. She'd been forced awake, shaking in frozen water and handcuffed to a cot in a way she hadn't been for years.

"Oh hell no," she grumbled in Russian, tugging on the cuffs. The biting of the cuffs around her wrist, although not painful, sent a shiver down her spine and she stopped abruptly.

In front of her, a man wearing a Hydra armband waited as another man lowered the bucket that, Natalia assumed, had held the water now drenching her and her cot. Neither of them made a move forward, though she didn't miss the way the second man's hand paused near his hip.

"It's come to our attention that you've been helping James Barnes recover his memories."

The man's English was accented but smooth. Not smooth enough to hide his foreign roots, but enough that Natalia was not confident enough in her guess to switch languages. If he wanted to speak in English, she would.

"Is 'our' the KGB or Hydra?" Natalia asked. While the armband would lead her to believe it was Hydra, the fact that she had been handcuffed to a cot was enough to make her believe the Red Room was involved. However, the Red Room, to the best of her knowledge, was supposed to be destroyed.

"Would it be so farfetched to say both?" the man replied and, unfortunately, no, it would not be. It was simply something Natalia hadn't wanted to consider.

"So I'm helping Barnes." Natalia echoed his accusation from earlier. "What is it to you?"

A sly grin slipped across the man's face and with a hum, he said, "You'll just have to find out, won't you, Widow?"

* * * * *

He'd never been above stealing, though perhaps that wasn't true before the War. Back then, Bucky Barnes probably would have thought twice before breaking onto a private airfield and taking the first plane he saw. As James tossed his weapons bag in the backseat and started the engine, though, the thought didn't even cross his mind.

It was a small plane which meant he'd need to stop two or three times on his way up north, but it was faster than hotwiring and driving a car. Even if it would take him nearly a day to travel the same distance that Hydra's jet had traveled in mere hours, he wouldn't be crossing borders and in need of a physical ID.

The problem with spending hours upon hours alone in a plane, however, was that the only company James had was his thoughts. In the months since he'd knocked on Natalia's door, this was the first time he'd been left at the mercy of his own mind. If he had not been gifted a box with such a clear threat to Natalia's life, it might not have been a bad thing.

Channeling both his anger and growing fear, he resorted to searching his memory for any hint as to what he could be walking into when he reached the base. It would not do to be unprepared.

* * * * *

When Natalia had opened her front door to find James on her doorstep, she had known she'd get pulled into something eventually. She'd anticipated a gunfight; she'd been fully prepared to burn her last safe house and go underground with only James for company. It was amateur of her not to consider Hydra returning to their KGB ties and hunting them both.

It had been years―decades―since she'd last been amongst them, but her nightmares hadn't had the decency to fade over time, leaving her with a very real, very valid reason to feel afraid.

She was not left alone. While they didn't touch her, her captors did not give her a moment of peace. She was left to shiver in her wet clothes and scowl at the cuff around her wrist as someone stood guard in her open cell door. It was never shut; just left tauntingly open with a single armed guard between her and escape. It was a mind game that she knew how to play, but with hours of no rest, it was all becoming much more exhausting than she'd first expected. She never had been good at playing the victim, after all. Sitting and waiting were not her style.

In the hours since she'd been pulled awake, she'd learned two things. One: she was there as bait. Hydra wanted their asset back and as she had been responsible for helping him regain his memories, she would be the one to bring him back to them. And two: the Red Room had not burned her file or blotted out James's history from her own. Whoever had her now knew exactly what had transpired between them so many years ago in Russia.

She was never told as much in words, but the way she was watched and the murmured threats she overheard were enough to draw conclusions from. It was only too bad that she didn't catch on soon enough to realize when James reached the compound.

Half of her did not truly believe the man when he stepped into her cell, holding a screenshot from their security footage that showed James marching toward the base. It was hardly the morning after her capture and she knew all too well that James had no connections to get a jet.

Minutes later, alarms sounded and a security alert in English, followed by Canadian French, announced an intruder. Instead of leaving her cell or locking the door, another man stepped inside with a bucket and a hand towel.

"They trained you well, Romanova," the first man said, taking the hand towel from the second man, "but we need our asset back and we've read your files. Your suffering will be his downfall."

She still had one arm free, something the man seemed to realize a moment too late. As he stepped forward, she leapt to her feet and wrapped her hand around his neck, slamming him into the wall beside her cot. With a snarl, she pulled against the handcuff holding her other hand back, fighting both the sharp metal and the memories.

"You will have to try harder to take us back," she sneered, pressing on the man's windpipe. "You may have our files, but we―"

Her words were cut off as a crippling wave of electricity coursed through her. Her hold on the man loosened and she dropped to her knees, shaking as the wave raced through her unrelentingly. The smell of burning flesh singed her nose and, when the shock finally let up, she glanced at her cuffed wrist to find it burned red and purple. Her other wrist was chained to the foot of the cot in the time it took her to draw her next breath and scowl.

"As I said," the man wheezed above her, picking up the dropped rag. "We read―" Wheeze― "your files."

He dropped the hand towel in the bucket of water, wheezing two more times before pulling it out.

"It will be just like old times," he hissed before smothering her face with the rag and draining the bucket on top.

She was drowning. Her lungs spluttered and her chest ached as, involuntarily, she choked on the fabric covering her mouth and nose. Above her, the water was a neverending stream and her burned wrist screamed as she tried to pull free.

The man didn't let up. The water streamed on steadily and although she lashed out with her legs, hitting him once judging by his grunt, he did not stop. There was no demand for an answer or explanation; no offer of rest if only she did one thing. There was only water and fabric and an ache in her chest that made her body scream. When the water did stop pouring over her, it took her a moment to register the change.

The hand towel was still covering her face and it was still preventing her from breathing clean air, but something had changed. When she choked again, attempting to breathe through the rag despite it being heavy with water, something ripped across her face and the rag went flying.

She gasped then coughed, covering her own lap in water as she emptied her lungs of liquid and tried to regain her bearings. The man was no longer above her and the guard in the door was dead, but she couldn't find the energy to move her gaze further for at least two more breaths.

When she did look up, it was to see James with his fist around the man's neck, muttering something she couldn't hear. A second later, the sound of a snapping neck echoed through the room and James let the body crumple to the floor. He was at her side in the next moment, breaking the handcuffs around her wrists gently.

"Natalia," he breathed. His hand―warm and shaking―threaded through her hair―shorter than she remembered, she realized.

"Hey," she gasped out. Her hand wrapped around his wrist, holding onto the warm flesh that, despite it being less than twenty-four hours, she had missed.

"Can you walk?" he asked, his eyes flitting over her. "There's a plane just outside but you'll have to―"

"Yeah." She nodded, coughing up some more water in the process. "Yeah. Just might be a little wobbly."

With James's arm wrapped under her shoulders, she got to her feet. He pressed a gun to her palm, pulling another from his waistband, and together they made their way through the base. They encountered very little resistance, though Natalia did not miss the many, many bodies that dotted their exit path. James, it seemed, had been a little trigger happy on his way in.

"You still have ammo left?" she muttered, glancing at a body that had been riddled with bullets.

James grunted in the affirmative, not stopping to so much as glance at those lying around them as he hurried them out of the base.

The base was much like her cell, Natalia realized once they were airborne. It was small and unassuming. There wasn't even an anti-aircraft system in place to shoot them down, though Natalia assumed there would have been at least one shooter had James left anyone alive. Despite Hydra having the advantage when they first cornered her in the supermarket, they had not been prepared to take on their old asset. Their takedown of Hydra—and subsequently SHIELD—seemed to have had at least some success.

Part of Natalia wondered why they had allowed themselves to be outgunned. The other part of her was too afraid to learn the answer.

"They weren't prepared for you," she said, turning to face James in her seat. "You got in too easily. That isn't the least bit suspicious to you?"

"They tried my words," James muttered and Natalia's blood ran cold. "Soon as I entered the base, they tried those words."

That would explain the lack of firepower even with Hydra's recent collapse. They'd expected to overtake him easily. Murmur some words and recapture their most powerful asset, perhaps even get their hands on a Widow in the process. This, however, was the first instance she knew of where the words had not fulfilled their purpose.

"They didn't work." It wasn't a question, but James still nodded once.

"You untangled my mind, Natalia," he said softly. He took his eyes off the sky in front of them to glance at her. "Gave me back some semblance of control over my own head."

"No, I was just there while you worked through it," Natalia argued, though the reassurance that the words had less power over him now was more than she could have asked for.

"Couldn't have done it without you, lyubov moya," James murmured.

His hand reached for hers and she clutched it a little tighter than she usually would have. He was there, she was breathing, and they were on their way to the next safe house. If their next biggest problem was about who had done the most to help untangle James's mind, she'd consider them lucky.