Summary: the 3 times James and Natalia were reckless for the other, plus the one time they were reckless together. Takes place in an AU where Bucky and Natasha defected together

Sentences in italics represent Russian; paragraphs in italics represent a flashback.

one

The worst part about it, Natalia imagines, is that she would do it again in a heartbeat if she had to. She hadn't needed to think about the consequences before making up her mind this time, but even knowing the threats that Fury held over her head, should she be presented with the chance to repeat such an incident, she still thinks she'd do it again.

It was worth it. Anything that could save James's life was worth it.

In all her decades of receiving punishment and bearing the consequences for her actions, a six-week probation was not the worst. Part of her wondered if Fury knew this; part of her didn't care to ask.

There's a bullet lodged in her arm, but there's a hole in James's chest that echoes in her mind whenever she closes her eyes, so she doesn't. Instead, she sits with him in silence, eyes peeled open as she listens to his heart monitor beep softly. There's an ache in her arm and a bandage across James's chest, but there are thirteen fewer mercenaries in this world and she won't apologize for it.

She blinks.

"Take cover!" James shouts, shoving her to the ground in front of him.

They'd been compromised, their hiding place spotted before they'd even inched their way out, and she knows it's because of a double agent. She's been in this business long enough to know the signs and their contact had been just a bit too fidgety, a little too eager.

The bullets rage over them and Natalia―Natalia cowers because, for a moment, her own mind fights her. It's only a moment of inaction, but it nearly costs James his life.

"James!"

Blood covers her face as a bullet tears through his tactical vest, something that shouldn't have ever been possible. He splutters, spewing more blood across her face as he drops to the ground in front of her.

There's no bandage to cover the wound, no material to wrap it with, so she tears apart her own suit and uses it to stem the blood flow. It isn't enough and blood soaks her hands even as she presses the entire top half of her suit to his chest, but she's desperate.

"James, look at me."

He blinks and it's too slow.

"Nastasya."

His smile is soft―Too soft, her brain supplies―and it's all she can do not to cry at the name. He rarely ever calls her Nastasya; it's a name that's reserved for times when he needs the extra reassurance that she's there, she's with him, and she's okay.

She doesn't want to think about what that means for him now.

"Hold this."

She forces his hand to press on the makeshift bandage across his chest. He grimaces, but his metal arm is heavy enough to slow the blood flow and there are at least eight different people still shooting at them. She's furious and even though Fury insisted―made them both swear up and down to heed his order―that this was a no-kill mission, she's going off book.

She calls for backup, desperate and pleading into her comm as she snags James's handgun and checks his ammo. Full. Just like hers.

She doesn't wait for confirmation from the extraction team before flying into the fray, guns raised and firing in the time it takes their attackers to reload. Eight shots, one through each helmet, and the world goes silent for a second.

It doesn't last long and in addition to the sound of the jet nearing, five more guns take aim and fire in her direction. She flies through the dust, twisting and dodging and not even stumbling when a bullet finds her arm and doesn't leave. Another grazes her calf, but one of her guns is empty and there are only two more people shooting at her. A well-aimed knife and a single shot later, she's finally alone.

Dropping back to James's side, she inspects his chest, grimacing at the sight of still-oozing blood and demanding extraction. She ignores whatever response she gets, hauling James to his feet and all but dragging him out of the alley that had quickly become a hell hole. By the time she collapses, fear and pain and exhaustion taking over her body, the extraction team has arrived and the rest is a blur.

She shivers, shaking the images from her head and reaching for James's hand in an attempt to remind herself that he's alive. His skin is warm, he's still breathing, and aside from a new scar, there won't be lasting damage.

"Natalia?"

Her eyes shoot up to his at the murmur. She hadn't even noticed him wake up.

"James."

At her relieved gasp, a small smile tugs at his lips, and even though it's weak, it makes her smile in return.

"How are you feeling?" she asks in soft Russian. She moves one hand up to comb through his hair. The other stays firmly in his.

"I've felt better." At her frown, he follows it up with, "But I've also felt worse."

"You took quite a hit. "

She can't stop the guilt from coloring her face and she knows James sees it. With finite movements, he pats the bed beside him and she doesn't need to be asked twice before she's moving to his side. Although hesitant to lay on the medical cot with him, one look from him convinces her and she makes her own space next to him.

"What did you do?" he asks her, metal fingers trailing gently over her bandaged shoulder.

She knows what he means without needing to clarify. "I killed them all. Nearly hit one of the extraction agents too."

"And?"

"And," she breathes, "received a six-week probation."

He almost chuckles. His chest raises just a little higher and a puff of warm air hits the top of her head, but his chest must still hurt because he doesn't move more than that.

They lapse into silence, neither one needing to speak what's on their mind for the moment. James is in a hospital bed, something he knows terrifies her, and she's refusing to close her eyes, something she knows will tell him of her fear. Still, no words pass between them and when the sedative finally sends James back to sleep, Natalia tries to do the same.

two

He could just take the shot. He's in the perfect position, undisturbed and unspotted, and even though Agent Rumlow is between him and the target, it would still be easy. With the right timing, he could take the guy out without so much as ruffling the hair on Rumlow's head.

Here's the thing, though: He doesn't want to.

He doesn't want to miss―whether it's Rumlow or the target―and he knows Fury will bench him if he so much as breaks the man's wrist, but Rumlow's run his mouth just a bit too much during this mission and James is feeling a little immune to whatever punishment Fury will inevitably give him.

"God, she's a bitch."

James's attention is pulled away from his gun at Rumlow's muttering, an incessant sound that grates on James's ears if he's honest. He hadn't slept well last night―Natalia's nightmares keeping them both awake―and unfortunately, Fury saw fit to team him up with Rumlow for the next 48 hours.

"You ever get sick of her?" Rumlow turns to him, a brow raised and a coy smirk across his lips. "Or is the sex worth the attitude?"

"Not sure what you're talking about," James drawls. He returns his eyes to his gun as Rumlow moves closer.

"Romanoff."

James frowns at the Anglicized version of Natalia's name, but Rumlow doesn't seem to notice. He's too busy scowling at her retreating back. For both of their sakes, James sets aside his gun and forces his hands not to reach for Rumlow's neck. He's only a little on edge, really.

"I guess with an ass like that," Rumlow muses angrily, "she thinks she owns the place."

"What did you say?"

The demand falls from his lips dripping in venom but Rumlow isn't listening. He's still watching Natalia from across the hangar and James knows she'll feel his stare even from there.

"Fucks her way to the top, I'll bet." Rumlow is dangerously unaware of who he's addressing, it seems. "They say it was Barton that arranged immunity for you two―" Rumlow scoffs in amusement― "but we all know the truth. Who'd listen to words when they could put their hands on that?"

James doesn't roar and he doesn't snarl, but he does stand and pin Rumlow to the quinjet wall in one swift move. Rumlow, the bastard, only snickers.

"You don't scare me, Barnes," he says lowly. The way he claws at James's metal arm says otherwise. "One word from me and you're both out. Imprisoned. Killed." He grins. "Separated."

He's right and James curses him in three different languages for it, but he lets him go.

As he takes in a gulping breath, Rumlow rubs at his neck and doesn't quite grimace, but James can see that he wants to. He's putting on a brave face, but it's not well-made and James's responding glare shatters it further.

"That's right, Barnes," he sneers patronizingly. "You're at my mercy now. You and your redheaded bitch. Better fall in line or you'll be gone before you can even swing that metal arm of yours."

If they hadn't had a mission, James would have stalked off right then and pulled Natalia into a sparring ring. She would be the only one who could keep up with him; the only one that could calm his fury and anticipate his hits soon enough not to be hurt.

But the rest of the team arrives then and Natalia disappears from his sight, so James is left to brood in the back of the quinjet.

Rumlow is right: They are at his mercy and there's nothing either of them could do about it. It's so unfair, yet such a familiar power play.

They may have left the Red Room, James realizes, but they did not escape their cage.

It's just the American government that has the key now―Rumlow with the guilty ruling in his hand―and James will never regret a realization more than the one that even here, at SHIELD, he can't protect Natalia from their words and slurs.

Thirty-six hours later and James is still itching for revenge―a way to show Rumlow that he doesn't need to see the whites of his eyes in order to defend Natalia from Rumlow's filthy tongue and greedy thoughts.

So he takes the shot.

It doesn't miss, but he'll tell Rumlow and Fury and anyone else who asks that he did. The first bullet grazes Rumlow's shoulder, after all, and shooting an agent intentionally will send him straight into the hands of the World Security Council. It doesn't matter if the bullet ends up lodged in the target's shoulder too.

His second shot lands where his first shot was―officially―supposed to, taking the man down quickly and silently even as Rumlow curses and whines about the graze in his own arm.

By the time James is on the ground, their target's body has been taken care of by the extraction team and Rumlow is waiting angrily with a pair of cuffs and a bloodied tourniquet around his arm. It's unnecessary, both the cuffs and the tourniquet.

"I hope you like prison, Soldat," Rumlow spits at him.

James almost smiles because at least Rumlow managed to correctly pronounce Soldat, even if it was accented. He accepts the cuffs, flimsy metal things that he can break right through, and lets an agent lead him aboard the quinjet. Once the rest of the team joins them, they return to New York.

Predictably, he's taken straight to Fury when they land. Or rather, he's taken to a holding cell, and Fury is sent to him. James doesn't really care about semantics, though. When asked for a report of what happened, James happily obliges.

He was positioned on the sixth floor, his target located across the street on the fifth, and Rumlow decided to stand near the window.

"I believe he was worried that I hadn't made it to my position," James says which, yeah, he's pretty sure Rumlow had been itching to file a complaint about him. Too bad he'd been in position before Rumlow's face appeared in the window.

"So you shot him?" Fury raises an unimpressed eyebrow and James shakes his head.

"I shot the target, sir," he corrects evenly. "Agent Rumlow was in my way and the first shot missed."

It'd missed Rumlow's heart or any artery that would have left him bleeding out before extraction arrived, so he isn't exactly lying. However, Fury does not need to know the thought had crossed his mind, even though he can see suspicion and doubt mirrored in his eye.

It's just as well; Fury won't tell the Council unless he comes right out and admits it―which he won't―so he knows they have an understanding of sorts when Fury says, "Probation. Six-weeks―"

That seems to be the standard for him and Natalia, he thinks.

"―and you'll spend that time refining your aim."

He's released from holding and as soon as he steps out of his cell, he's met by Natalia. Her knuckles are bandaged and he raises a brow, but neither say a word until they are securely locked away in their room and all bugs have been expertly muted.

"I heard Rumlow's in the medbay and you're on probation." She eyes him, both with worry and suspicion. "What happened?"

He echoes his lie again, even to her, but he knows she'll recognize it for what it is.

"I missed," he says in simple Russian. "Needed two shots."

"Bullshit." The word tugs a smile across her face and he knows she understands. "You never miss."

"No," he agrees, reaching forward to gently brush her bangs from her face, "but this time I did."

three

The thing about growing up in the Red Room is that, from an early age, she learned how to be tortured. She learned how to hide her pain and use it, how to bear the marks and bruises, and how to never, under any circumstance, give her abusers what they want. It was one of the first things she learned, yet remains the most common skill set that she depends upon.

What she did not learn in the Red Room, however, was to handle the mental scars. She does not know how to sleep at night, how to blink past the memories, and how to move past it steadily and without looking back.

In the end, it's always what she didn't learn that becomes her unraveling.

She's had solo missions like this before, both in the Red Room and for SHIELD. This isn't even the first time things have turned sour during said mission, but for some reason, the panic that's slowly building in her chest doesn't seem to understand that she knows how to do this: how to be tortured.

They've beaten her, drowned her, and locked her in a dark and silent room until her own thoughts echoed against the walls.

It isn't until they pull her out and a ghost appears before her that it becomes even worse.

She knows it isn't Dreykov in front of her: She and James killed him in an explosion in a city she refuses to remember the name of. Besides, his voice sounds wrong and he's towering too high above her, but her mind mistakes the wrinkled, pale face in front of her for his and the panic in her chest becomes too much.

She gasps and then cries, wild and panicked, and he hasn't said more than a handful of words to her. It's only when she blinks that she catches a glimpse of his real face―tanned and freckled with age―but even then, it's just a blur before her eyes reopen and her mind betrays her again.

It was the waterboarding. She knows that's what is causing her mind to shatter right now, but it still hurts that such a simple thing is what inevitably breaks her mind.

Dreykov's own form of torture. The kind he'd saved for when the girls failed him personally or he wanted to make a point. To this day, she can hardly stand to be near running water and swimming is an absolute no-go. The feeling of water on her face, even if she knows she's safe, is enough to create cracks and chasms in her mind. Some days, when her mind is particularly fragile after a night of terrors, even showering is almost too much.

They don't even have to touch her before she's sobbing, terrified tears rolling down her cheeks, and even though she has no control over her body at this point, she can't help but be ashamed of herself. The great Black Widow: brought to tears by a single touch.

The hand on her jaw, bruising and harsh, only moves away when her vision is too blurred to continue mistaking her captor for her old abuser. She doesn't even realize that the owner of the hand has been shot into a wall until she chokes on a gasp and James is in front of her.

"Natalia?" His voice is frantic. Into his comm, he says, "I've found her, but I'll need medical―"

He's cut off by a sound from behind him, but it doesn't last long.

She's seen fury in his eyes before, but it's nothing like this. Then, his fury came in the form of the Winter Soldier. Now that they work for SHIELD, it's entirely him―fully James―that acts in his anger.

He whirls and pure rage rolls off of him in waves. It's breathtaking and, through her tears, Natalia watches in awe as he lifts the man with a single hand and throws him through a wall. It crumbles and the man does not groan.

When he returns to her, there isn't so much as a drop of blood on the hand that he gently brushes under her eye, but she wouldn't have flinched from him even if there had been.

"Nastasya, can you hear me?" His whispered Russian is desperate and she wonders just how bad she looks if he's this worried.

She nods weakly and it's all the encouragement he needs.

"Come, love," he says, lifting her into his arms.

Somehow, they make it to the quinjet in the time it takes for Natalia to stop crying. Her eyes are still itchy and her nose is full of snot, but the tears aren't streaming down her cheeks and she decides that's as good as anything.

James set her on a seat in the back of the jet and takes the smallest step back. She clings to his hand desperately, but he doesn't leave her sight. Naively, she asks why he moved away as another agent steps forward.

"The medic needs to―"

She lashes out before the man has even opened his medical kit.

It takes James's metal arm to restrain her, holding her against his chest and forcing her eyes to meet his. In the background, she can hear the agent murmur something to another, but it's in English and her frantic, shattered mind can't handle that right now.

"No medics," she snarls. James nods in perfect understanding.

"Alright." He forces her to sit back in the seat. "Talk to me, Nastasya," he says, reaching for the medical kit the previous agent had held. "What do I need to do?"

She runs him through her injuries, but only the ones she can feel. He can't do anything about the ache in her lungs, but his eyes do cloud over in realization when she brings up the waterboarding. Next, she whispers a single sentence about the locked room, silent and dark and entirely too much to handle. It isn't until she mentions the wound in her thigh that he's able to start patching her up.

For the rest of the trip back to New York, she recounts her mission solely to James. She doesn't listen to the other agents and she doesn't speak English, but there seems to be an understanding that James will be the one filling out her report when they get back to headquarters. One look from Fury and they're both put on leave.

It's nearly 36 hours before she feels like she won't fall apart if she steps out of bed.

James showers with her because the waterboarding incident is still too fresh in her mind, and together they remind each other that Dreykov is dead. They'd killed him. He'll never touch her again.

It isn't quite enough, but when Natalia finally reports to Fury to finish filing her mission report, the image of her captor doesn't change in his photo and it isn't Dreykov that stares back at her. It's not much, but it's a step and James has personally assured her that even if the man had survived the bullet to his chest, he had died when James smashed his head through a two-foot thick wall.

plus one

Natalia has lived for decades. She's seen regimes rise and fall, governments come and go, and people live and die. It doesn't surprise her anymore, but it never really had before. She's seen it happen to nearly everyone in her life, yet Fury's death seems to kill something inside of her and SHIELD's fall leaves her grasping for even the smallest sliver of hope. It's no surprise she finds it in Captain America.

"We thought we were finally going straight," she murmurs, eyes glancing toward Sam Wilson's bathroom where James is still showering. "Guess we just traded the Red Room for Hydra."

"You couldn't have known," Steve says, his own eyes open and honest.

She doesn't quite scoff. "I should have."

By now, Steve knows her well enough to know better than to argue, so he doesn't. He joins her silently on the bed and they both wait for James. When he steps out of the bathroom, rubbing at his head a bit too viciously with the towel, he pauses at the sight of them.

"Don't tell me you're here for a pep talk," he mutters. He drops the towel but doesn't join them on the bed, choosing instead to cross his arms and not-quite scowl at Steve.

"No," Steve says, "I'm here to tell you about the plan."

As far as plans go, it isn't the worst one she's followed. Unfortunately, Hydra is still hot on their tails and there are a lot more of them than they had accounted for. She gets shot, Steve loses his SHIELD, and then they're in cuffs that even James can't break.

It's Rumlow that shoves them in the back of a detainment van and if her head wasn't already starting to spin, she would have wrung his neck.

"Hey," Sam snaps, five minutes into their trip, "if we don't get pressure on that―" He nods at her shoulder― "she's gonna bleed out in here."

An agent across from her lights their baton, electricity buzzing violently, and Sam backs down with a scowl. The next moment, however, the agent turns the baton on their companions and when Natalia blinks―slow and bleary―Maria Hill is brushing her hair from her face.

"You won't believe how that thing squeezes your head," she tells her with a worried smile. Facing Steve, she nods at Sam and asks, "Who's this guy?"

With a steady trickle of blood running down her arm, Natalia doesn't remember much from their escape. She only remembers bits and pieces, most of them filled with worried glances and painful pressure on her shoulder. When they make it to the designated safe house, her mind clears.

James is holding her up and pressing firmly on her wound, but the pain slips from her mind as Nick Fury steps in front of her. Undead.

She's forced to talk to the doctor before he tells her just what really happened. By then, Natalia is fairly certain that she's seen it all, given that James and Steve are the only other undead people she knows and, unlike Fury, they both have a super soldier serum running through their veins like her.

Once her shoulder has been taken care of and the doctor has murmured, a little suspiciously, about how she was already starting to heal, Fury tells them what Hydra's planning.

The Triskelion in Washington. Millions of people. A new world order.

She's ready for the fight before it even starts.

The unfortunate thing is that the fight is also ready for her before she even arrives.

She and James wear photostatic veils to infiltrate Alexander Pierce's little Council club, but even she knows it's a bit of a stretch. James is much broader than the Council member he takes the face of, but he hunches his shoulders to make up for it and they're careful to cover his metal arm. It doesn't seem to be enough, though, because Pierce figures them out too quickly.

He's monologuing, talking about the Taliban dragging children to be executed and asking them―

"If you had the opportunity to stop it, with just a flick of a switch, wouldn't you?"

He presses a glass into James's hand and Natalia eyes him closely. The photostatic veil remains in place, covering James's entire left arm even as he reaches for the champagne, but she still feels adrenaline pooling in her gut.

"Not if it was your switch," James sneers, his voice just a little too harsh to belong to the Council member he supposedly is.

As James casts aside the champagne glass, shaking his fingers free of the moisture that had begun to soak through the veil, Pierce turns to one of the agents beside him. A gun is pressed into his hand and as he smiles, he raises it to James's head.

She moves on instinct, kicking him in the gut and stealing the gun from his hand. Tossing a disk at the nearest agent, she sends him to the ground in a shaking, electrocuted mess. In the same movement, she knocks down another agent and snaps the neck of the one who had given Pierce the gun. He crumples and the last agent takes a wild step backward, hands up.

She turns to Pierce, his own gun in her hand, and says, "I'm sorry." Pulling off the veil, she gives him a thin-lipped smile. "Did I step on your moment?"

Over the comms, she hears Sam curse wildly shortly after clambering aboard a helicarrier. Steve's still on his way and Maria is handling a situation that Agent Carter may or may not have created in the launch room. No one has actually bothered to clarify for her and James what, exactly, that means.

She tosses James the gun and he catches it without turning away from Pierce. His brow raises and he stares a little too long at James, but the photostatic veil is in place and she's confident James can handle Pierce on his own. Unfortunately, Pierce is quicker than she thought.

"I'll be honest," he says, "I never thought I'd have the chance to meet the Winter Soldier in person. Hydra's greatest creation," he muses, looking at James with awe, "ruined by his own free will."

Beside him, a Council member scoffs, starting to correct Pierce by saying "That is not the Winter Soldier, that is Councilman Singh," but James has already pulled off the veil. Pierce grins, James scowls, and Natalia moves toward the computer to begin the actual work.

She lets James handle Pierce―there are some things she needs to take care of before Maria gives her the all-clear to drop Hydra's files―so she tunes out whatever the man says next, only to be brutally pulled back to reality by murmured Russian.

Her eyes snap up. James still has a gun in his hand and a scowl on his face, but she hadn't been mistaken: Pierce is whispering his trigger words.

"James, look at me," she snaps sharply in Russian, hoping to drown out Pierce's utterances. He hesitates and she snaps again. "Eyes on me, Soldat."

She says the words as well, louder than Pierce, and his eyes shoot up to hers. He looks horrified to hear her saying the words aloud as well, but as soon as his eyes meet hers, she intentionally screws up the order. His eyes cloud over as Pierce continues to echo the words, but her voice is louder and his eyes are on hers and she's praying to god this works. She's never had to do it before.

When he realizes his words aren't working, Pierce gets frustrated. He's nearly shouting the words in James's face when they're interrupted by the slamming of a door.

Fury.

Her eyes land on him only when Pierce whirls to face the newcomer, words stopping abruptly.

As soon as Pierce's eyes are no longer on him, James takes two steps back, breathing heavily. He sheds his suit jacket, tugging off the photostatic veil around his arm, and she knows he's trying to rid himself of a cage that is no longer there. She doesn't speak up, but she does keep him in her peripheral vision just in case he needs her.

With Pierce's attention now on Fury, Natalia hastily returns to the computer and redirects her plans. It would be nice if she had more time, but Tony has promised to have her back even though he's all the way in Malibu.

She moves quickly, bringing up every file that lists any of James's names, codenames, or aliases. Using a pin code she should not know, she gives the command to permanently delete them all and watches as every last trace of James and his connection to the past is wiped from the most secure database in the world. For all intents and purposes, the Winter Soldier no longer exists except as a faceless, nameless ghost that worked for Hydra and the KGB. There's no connection to trace him to James, though, and she verifies it using Fury's pin code again before returning to her official task.

When Maria gives her the all-clear through the comm, she's only just finished. Security is disabled, files are loose, and with a click of a button, she releases both SHIELD's and Hydra's files. She can only hope Tony's filter works and Pierce's name is attached to the biggest ones.

"Done," she announces, glancing up at Fury. "Stark even has it trending."

He doesn't. Not yet. There will be a couple of seconds delay between the actual release and when the files hit the internet, but that's only because Tony is a good enough friend to help her pin the fall of SHIELD on Alexander Pierce and have JARVIS rewrite James's past crimes.

She doesn't even see Pierce reach for his phone until there's a hole burning in the chests of the three Council members that remain.

She and Fury both reach for their guns, pointing them at Pierce's head, only for him to make them pause.

"Unless you want a two-inch hole in your sternum," he taunts, nodding at the pin on her chest, "put the gun down."

Her eyes find Fury's.

"It was armed the moment you put it on."

She lowers the gun, her eyes trailing over to James only to find his suit jacket on the ground, the pin well away from him. Good, she thinks. He doesn't seem to think the same, though.

Swatting the gun from her hand, Pierce grabs hold of her upper arm―Ow, she grumbles to herself as he jostles her still-healing shoulder.

"Time to go, Councilwoman," he announces, his lip curling ruefully. "You're going to fly me out of here."

He turns to the door―his back toward James―and she can't even count to three before James strikes.

It's almost timed perfectly because she pinches a disk between her fingers and the resulting shock sends her tumbling to the floor. For a second, she only sees black, and then, with a groan, she blinks up to see Fury hovering over her.

"Natasha, come on," he hisses.

She groans again, forcing her eyes open, and mutters a weak, "Ow."

Fury smiles, pulling her to her feet and allowing her to get just a glimpse of James as he stands over Pierce with a gun. His lips are curled back and he radiates both anger and power as he towers over the man and snarls.

There are two gunshots and Pierce's body goes limp.

James rounds on her, eyes wide, and snaps, "What the hell was that?"

"Widow's bite," she answers, her words slurring just a little bit. "They really do sting."

Fury huffs out a laugh beside her and James rolls his eyes. With Maria still in their ears, they clamber into Fury's helicopter and make it just in time to catch Sam as he goes flying off the 41st floor of the Triskelion. Steve meets them on the ground, battered and bruised but successful.

It isn't until after a very long nap and a day buried in their apartment that she realizes Tony had done more than she'd asked him to, erasing both of their names from any files that also listed Pierce or any other known Hydra operative. The Black Widow and all her crimes are still Natalia's―in files both before and after the Avengers, unlike James―but her file ends in the 80s just like the lie she had listed when they first defected and James is clean.

He erupts when he sees what she'd done and he calls her out for being reckless.

"You shouldn't have spent all that time―"

"I couldn't let them blame you," she interrupts. "After all we've done for them, they're still eager to lock you in a cage and I won't have it."

She almost stomps her foot, but she refrains. Just barely. Wiping tears across her face, she scowls fiercely at him in hopes that he'll finally understand the fact that she couldn't―wouldn't―risk the Americans using this against him. They liked to play with fire when it came to him, so she took away their ammunition. If it was at the cost of her own freedom, so be it.

Pulling her to him, he curls an arm around her back and presses his lips to hers.

He understands, she realizes, even if he's still scolding her for it.

"I love you," he murmurs against her lips, "but that was reckless."

She bites back the same.

"You could have let him live through the consequences of his decisions," she snaps, arms folded across her chest. "He didn't need to die."

"He did," James argues in return, just as fiercely, "as soon as he threatened to kill you. No one who holds that power should be left with the chance to use it against you a second time."

And it's only then that she understands where James is coming from. He'd seen Pierce's thumb hover over a button that could end her life and he'd seen red. She's done the same for less, so she can't fault him for it and the argument ends there.

Between the two of them, they'd both toed the line during that fateful day in Washington.

Killing Pierce had been a mistake, yes, but if James had made a different call, Pierce could also have unraveled Natalia's work.

Pierce had been a government official, someone the Supreme Court would believe even without documents to back him up, and she has no doubt he would have turned the narrative on them. He would have given her and James up in the blink of an eye and despite James's name not appearing in reports, his connection to her would have been enough to be his downfall.

However, take Pierce out of the picture and the government needs a new scapegoat. They would have a list, Natalia was sure of it, and due to the nature of their contract at SHIELD, she and James would have been their first two picks. There would be holes to fill in and James would be their perfect solution.

Instead, Alexander Pierce is dead and the American government is scrambling; scrambling to hide confidential SHIELD documents and scrambling to reassure the public that all is well, they have the culprit in custody.

(They don't. It's a lie, but Natalia can live with it because James isn't one they can blame.)

Instead, he only exists as the White Wolf, an Avenger without a known name, and he doesn't think it's fair that the internet can hate her for her past sins but continue to love him as an Avenger.

She doesn't care. She'd done it once and she'd do it again because it means people no longer fear him. There is no more threat of deportation or arrest hanging over his head because there's no more connection between him and his past crimes, so she'll take the brunt of the criticism and rest peacefully knowing that Pierce and all of his other Hydra cronies are being found guilty in his place.