The Devil's Own

Part 1: Natasha Romanova

Present Day

You rolled over and peered at the small red digits on your clock. Red like the blood flowing through your veins, red like your hair, red like the country that you hailed from. You closed your eyes, but sleep didn't come for you. It was like this every night. You would lay in bed for hours until you finally drifted off, but tonight, the comforting arms of slumber were even more elusive. You glanced back at the clock, back at the blood red numbers. It was 1:47 am.

Things had been up in the air the last few weeks at the tower. Hectic, chaotic, but mostly,complicated. You knew this was a new scenario for everyone, since the amnesiac soldier had arrived, and that things were hard. Hard for Steve and hard for Bucky, but deep down, in a place that no one knew about, things were extremely hard for yourself as well. You shook your head slightly. It was strange, how quickly you'd taken to outwardly calling him Bucky, but in your mind, that would never be his name. His name was James... You thought back to cold, dark times; cold dark nights, when he'd had no name. He'd been the Soldier, and only the Soldier, and despite all of your trained detachment, it hadn't seemed right for a man to have no name and so you'd given him one. You'd called him James.

Not in front of anyone, of course. But he'd been James to you all those years ago in Russia, in the alleys and the dark and the underground, and when he'd arrived at the tower and you'd learned his real name was James Buchanan Barnes, you'd had to hide your surprise. He didn't know you now; he hadn't known you in a long time and he didn't know that he ever had, and you thought it would be easiest if you kept it that way.

You sighed, looking back at the clock, the numbers mocking you with their existence. Only three more minutes had passed. You rolled out of bed, you knew you weren't going to get any rest at the moment. The spectre of the Winter Soldier was looming large over you right now. He wouldn't let you sleep.

Your feet found the floor, and you padded across your room, down the hall of your apartment, the carpet soft beneath your toes, and out onto the balcony. Your rooms were up high in Avenger Tower; a bit higher than most of the other apartments, but not as high as Tony and Pepper's penthouse. You craved solitude, and so Tony had given you the first new flat on the floor above Cap, Falcon, and now Bucky. You wrapped your thin robe tighter around yourself against the chilly air of the new spring, and leaned against the railing, taking in the view of the city in the early morning hours. The lights never really went out in New York. The traffic died down a bit, and the businesses closed for a while, but the lights were always there. For a creature born of shadows, you found this disconcerting.

A noise from the balcony below you and to the left took your attention, and you looked down through the darkness. James, no, Bucky, was down there. You saw the faint glow of the end of a cigarette, before his eyes travelled up to you and he cooly hid it behind him and stubbed it out into a planter. He smoked and everyone knew it but he tried to hide it all the same. When he'd come to the tower, when Steve and Sam had found him, broken and strung out from coming off of the benzos or whatever drugs Hydra had him on for so many years to keep him docile and forgetful and calm, to make him both lose his mind and keep him from losing it all at once, he'd already taken up the unfortunate habit. You knew the nicotine did nothing to him physically; it couldn't possibly, what with the serum pumping through his veins. Mentally you guessed it calmed him. It was a terrible habit and self destructive. You weren't really sure why he did it. Maybe it had a placebo effect. But it wasn't your place to judge. The man had been through a lot.

He hastily got rid of the evidence, gave you a small wave, and retreated into his apartment. You continued to watch the emptiness of his balcony. That was really all there was between you; an uncomfortable emptiness, an almost tangible wanting that you were sometimes sure he felt as well. You couldn't blame him for the lack of interaction, and to be honest, it was a lot better than him trying to kill you like he'd nearly accomplished a few times before. But, despite all the years in between when he had been James and had known you, and now that he was Bucky again and you were just a woman named Natasha and he thought he'd just met you six weeks ago... the emptiness hurt. You wondered when you'd gone soft. Emotional attachments had been drilled out of you from a very young age. You sought physical relationships when you wanted them and left feelings out of it all together and that was the way you liked it. However, the arrival of the Soldier, James, Bucky, whoever he was now, had you in a state of confusion and you didn't like that. You were a woman used to being in total control of her body and her mind. You kept everything sharp like a weapon. But lately you were feeling blurred around the edges and distorted, and you knew it had everything to do with the dark soldier living one floor beneath you and the history you shared, but only you remembered.