James was nervous in a way he only got when Toni invited him over because she needed to tell him something that would make him shake his head. To which he'd responded, "Make me shake my head, or make me want to put you in a plastic bubble?" He'd been nervous the rest of the week until he managed to get out to Malibu to hear her out, and now he knew it was so much worse than he'd feared.
He'd listened with increasing horror while she explained about Winter Soldiers, S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra, and the spider he was going to have words with for dragging them both into this. Because of course they were doing this. He could already tell by Toni's face that there would be no talking her out of it, and he couldn't leave her alone with only Romanoff for backup. Not in something as twisted as this. Not in anything, ever. He was best equipped to watch her back and keep her alive, but James had a terrible feeling that this was beyond his capabilities.
His head was in his hands by the time she finished while he tried to process everything along with their imminent deaths. He didn't doubt a single word of it (some of the faces in her files he recognized from the Air Force, and damn if that didn't feel personal), but goddamn it. If Natasha Romanoff got her killed, he was going to bury her ass, and he wouldn't feel an ounce of guilt about it. When he spoke, his voice came out tight with regret. He already knew the answer, but he still had to ask. "Babygirl... Is there anything I can say that will stop you from doing this?"
he’s a ghost story | dark!winterverse nat & steve (1400 words)
tw: guns, threats
@walkitoffrogers
Natasha had a gun in her hands as she peered around the corner, and she tucked as much of herself behind the wall as she could and still aim. There was a monster in her kitchen, a man who had stepped straight out of her childhood nightmares, and she didn't understand why she wasn't dead already. She should already be shooting if she wanted to walk out of here alive. She put pressure on the trigger, but somehow, she couldn't bring herself to pull it. Deep down, where a frightened child lived in a room with walls as red as spilled blood, she didn't believe it would save her. Bullets didn't work on ghost stories.
"I'm not here to kill you, Natalia." The Russian was harsh and familiar. His back was to her, his hands already in the air, but it didn't make her feel safer. If the Captain was here, the Sergeant had a rifle trained on her somewhere. Her gaze flicked to the windows, and she hunched a little further behind the wall. She was familiar with the sightlines outside her building, and her mind picked out the most likely places for him. Beneath that, despite his assurance, it chanted at her that she was already dead, already dead, already dead. They didn't leave witnesses.
"Then you're here for information." She considered their methods of getting information and readjusted her aim. "I'd rather die." She'd make him kill her before she let him take her, if that were possible. Natasha had been through her share of torture, but she didn't fool herself that she would survive that. She'd take a quick death over an endless, painful one.
He stayed facing away from her, his head tilted down toward the counter. With a sickening lurch, she realized he'd plucked a picture of her and Clint off her refrigerator. He was supposed to be on a mission overseas. He'd just checked in with her this morning. So much could have changed in that time. There was something else on the counter too. It looked like a file.
"Where's Clint?" Her voice was calm, no trace of fear in it. She wasn't fooled, and somehow, she didn't think he was either.
"Wherever you left him." He spoke without inflection.
"Are you going to kill him?"
"I have no reason to do that. You're going to need him."
He turned slowly, and Natasha kept her eyes on his raised hands. It was supposed to make him look harmless, but nothing about this man was harmless. He was tall and carved from stone, the leather of his uniform scarred from past battles. The round silver shield was missing, but she counted at least four weapons that she could see. She was betting there were twice that many, if not more. Her gaze traveled to his face, unlined and unchanged in the past several decades, and settled last on his eyes. They were chips of ice, the blue of cold winter skies, but they weren't as empty as she remembered. Something lived in them now, and somehow that was worse. Fear slid like a cold finger down her spine. He hadn't done anything except look at her, and she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so afraid.
"Do you know who you are?" she asked, hardly believing the words were coming out of her mouth.
"Steve Rogers. Born 1918. United States Army, 107th Infantry Regiment. Died 1945 in the line of duty." He said it like he was reading it out of a textbook, and Natasha fought the urge to sway where she stood. It was possible everything he'd said was a lie, but she didn't know what there was to be gained by it. He seemed to guess her train of thought because he nodded slightly.
"If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you as you came through the door. Your keys." She flinched inwardly at the censure. He was right. She thought she was safe here, and she'd gotten sloppy. She hadn't been thinking about intruders as she walked down the hall, her keys jangling in her hand. He could have shot her before she even got the door open. He started to lower his hands, and she tightened her grip, suddenly back on high alert.
"Don't move," she warned. He paused but only for a moment, his expression unchanged.
"Shoot me if it makes you feel better." He dropped his hands and turned back to the counter, his movements slow and precise. "I have information for you."
"Why?" The word was almost a whisper. It didn't prepare her for what he said next.
"Hydra has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D."
The words fell like tossing pennies down a deep well. She didn't want to know what happened when they hit the bottom. Still, her first reaction was denial, a knee-jerk defense mechanism that she knew wouldn’t save her.
"Hydra is gone. It was mostly wiped out by the end of World War II. By you. We've been stamping out pockets of it ever since, but it's not widespread enough to be a real threat."
"Hydra is alive and well. Cut off one head--" he began, but she broke in, her voice harsh.
"Don't." He fell silent, but the silence was telling. She realized that she already believed him. Deep down, she wondered if she hadn't always feared exactly this thing. She had lied and killed for the wrong people for so long that she couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
"Why bring it to me?"
He was silent for a long moment, and she thought he might not answer. "Hydra took something from me," he said finally. "I want it back. I can burn their bases one by one, but S.H.I.E.L.D will still rot from the inside. It will take a decade or longer to dismantle it by myself. I don't have that kind of time, and I might die before I finish. You might die if you help me."
Her hand was beginning to cramp, so she lowered the gun and stepped cautiously around the corner. No shots rang out, so she took that as an encouraging sign and approached the counter. The file was thin, only a few pages, but her gaze caught on the photograph of her and Clint and stayed there.
"And if I don't?" she said quietly. The next time he came, would he be there to kill her? Would he hunt down Clint and use him to force her to help? She'd already betrayed how much he meant to her. It would be only too easy to use him as leverage.
"Then you don't see me again. It's the safer option." He moved and she tensed, the gun already pointed at him without her conscious permission. He didn't even acknowledge it as he moved toward the door. "You don't have to believe me. There's enough in that folder to verify it for yourself."
She didn't take her eyes off him to glance at the file again. "If it's true, what then?"
"You'll know what to do."
The words sent a chill through her, along with a tiny flare of anger. It felt good after all the fear. "I'm not an assassin anymore, Captain."
"Why would I need another assassin?" His gaze flicked to the window behind her, and she fought the urge to look as well. She could practically feel the rifle scope on the back of her head. She could hardly believe the Sergeant had let her hold a gun on the Captain for this long. She'd seen him break a man's arm in three places just for looking at him wrong.
"How do I contact you if I decide to help?" She still found it hard to believe she had a choice, but he'd done nothing to threaten her besides show up. If this was a trap, she had no idea what the endgame was.
"I'll know when it's done. I'll find you."
She breathed out a shaky sigh as he disappeared around the corner. After a moment, she made herself follow because she had to know if he was really gone. There was no sign that anyone else had ever been there. The door was even locked. She holstered her gun and sank down against the wall, not stopping until her butt hit the floor and her head was between her knees. The wave of fear she'd been holding back crashed over her. Her throat closed up, her breath a knife in her chest, and each tear that found its way out burned on her cheeks. She stayed like that until her breathing grew steady again, and then she picked up the phone to call Clint.
That sound triggered something fierce and possessive in him that he hadn't known existed. To be fair, there was a lot he didn't know about himself right now. He wanted to do more, wanted to fit his hand along the side of her face and see if her lips were as soft as they looked, and it was only the more visceral memory of pain and conditioning that stopped him. If he showed a preference for her, they'd both be punished.
"Someone important to SHIELD. It will take a few days of recon." The information was almost never complete when it came to them. That was what they were for, after all. Blend in anywhere, don't attract attention, get close enough to get the job done cleanly and get out with no witnesses. Or all dead witnesses. Either way.
His jaw tightened at the leers, but he knew better than to react, at least directly. That would fail the moment someone actually came at her. He wouldn't be able to stop himself from defending her, but since she was his teammate, it wouldn't set off too many warning bells. They needed to be able to rely on each other in the field, so the connection was encouraged to a point. It would be over the line to stab someone just for looking at her though. At least, that was what he told himself as he slid a knife into his palm and twirled it casually between his fingers.
[ BACK ]: sender stands behind the receiver while in the midst of battle in order to help them fight off their enemies. Sin & WS Steve, please? @pleinsdemuses
[ BACK ]: sender stands behind the receiver while in the midst of battle in order to help them fight off their enemies. Sin & WS Steve, please?
@pleinsdemuses
There was the whir and clang of the shield, silver with a bloodred star emblazoned in the middle, as it rebounded and was snatched back by expert fingers. Fresh from cryo and a wipe, the Captain’s mind was snowy white and empty, nothing but the mission filling it. Kill the targets, return to base, and protect her. Not a handler. Something more important, although he couldn’t recall exactly what. He didn’t need to in order to complete the mission.
He wasn’t supposed to feel anything, but that cold indifference flickered every time he looked at her, almost a warmth. It was as natural as breathing to cut through their targets side by side, to follow her lead without thinking, almost as though he knew exactly what she would do. It was just as natural to raise the shield to protect both of them when she ducked behind him, bullets pinging against vibranium, covering her while she took aim. Her targets never even stood a chance.
He barely felt the graze of a bullet when he lowered the shield, only to throw it at the last of their targets when her gun clicked empty. It stuck in the wall, painted in gruesome red, and more seeped through the wound in his shoulder. He felt the burn of it only belatedly, but pain didn't cut through all those layers of ice. Almost nothing did.
the world gone up in flames | dark!winterverse self-para (300 words)
tw: death, violence, guns, injury, blood
When he woke up, everyone in the room was dead. He didn't remember killing them, but it wasn't a stretch of the imagination. There was blood on his hands, his clothes, and he was the only one still standing. Some of the blood was his, still seeping from wounds that he didn't feel. He couldn't feel anything except an absence in the center of his chest. There was no wound there, but it felt realer than the others, as though something vital had been carved out of him. He drew a breath, and it ached under his rib cage. It had been missing for a while.
Empty bullet casings crunched under his boots as he walked toward the cryo tanks. One stood open, presumably the one he had come out of, and the other sat dark and empty. He could see that there was nothing inside, but still he pried it open, snarling as he ripped pieces off it with his bare hands. When the door hung wrenched half off its hinges, the inside empty and gaping, he let it be. The thing he was missing was supposed to be there, but it wasn't, and the icy landscape of his mind was clouded with rage. His hands itched to kill and keep killing until it was back, but there was nothing left in there to destroy.
There was a scrambling sound from behind the door, boots on smooth floors in hasty retreat, and it drew his attention outward. The captain picked up a rifle from one of the bodies and slung it over his shoulder, his own steps unhurried. He knew the rules of this game, even if he didn't quite know how he knew. They were as obvious as the empty space at his side, and the first was don't leave any witnesses. He was going to burn this place to the ground, and if that didn't bring back what had been taken from him, he'd burn them all, one after another, until he found it.
It was impossible to know how much time had passed. At first. He marked the decades in blood and pain and long stretches of winter, but each time, the snow cleared a little faster. The more recent memories came back first. The car, the serum, an easy hit. It became a landslide after that, fragments of events that didn't make sense without context. A dance studio that wasn't, a smiling man in a convertible, a unit insignia splattered with blood.
The people and places changed around them, but at the center of it all, there was the other soldier, the one constant. Even if everything else was gone, he thought he'd still know that face. He looked for it before he even knew where he was or what was happening. If he was awake long enough, those memories came back too, of the many times they'd found each other over the years. If he was awake long enough, he realized the sergeant didn't remember any of them, at least not with the front of his mind.
There were more of them now, but none like his soldier. They were little better than animals, easily triggered, no sense of loyalty, barely capable of following orders. His head ached faintly as he watched them fight, there to interfere if they turned on the handlers. He didn't care who died. He'd kill them himself if they looked at him wrong, but until then, he followed orders. As always, he knew exactly where the sergeant was in any room without looking for him.
Edge of the knife
We’re dancing with danger
I feel our blood collide
Electrified, my soul is rearranging
Cross my heart, hope to die
I’ll dance with you on the knife
