Stuck at 56.7 Degrees//Chapter 10
Taglist: @darke15
Barnes couldn’t stop shaking. Chills, bone-deep and trembling, wracked his body. When he could summon the strength to open his eyes, white and grey swum in front of him, morphing away from his touch when he tried to reach out. Occasionally, there was a flash of red, a murmur of a voice.
You, he thought, allowing his eyelids to close against the light that burned his retinas. I know you.
Something touched his forehead, damp and gentle, giving him a moment of relief from the sweat rolling across his skin.
Unable to maintain his grip on consciousness, he let go. Falling, falling, falling.
James’ eyes fly open as he jerks up in bed. A thin sheet slips down his body to pool in his lap. Knife gripped in one hand, he scans the room.
Nothing. Another nightmare.
Scoffing at his own weakness, he returns the Finka combat knife to its place beneath his pillow and shoves the blankets off of him.
He moves through his morning routine without much thought. Check the door, make sure it wasn’t opened during the night. Strip off his sweat-soaked sleep clothes. Seven minute shower, cold. Scrub hard. Don’t think about the nightmares. Shave with the straight edge razor he keeps beneath the sink with his TT pistol. Dress in the tank top and loose pants provided for him. Boots on feet, another Finka in each boot. Stretch. Don’t think about the nightmares. Calibrate arm with a wide swing, listen to the plates move against each other. Be relieved when nothing sticks or grinds. Don’t think about the nightmares. Open the door, stride through the barracks. Meet no one’s eye, keep a scowl fixed to stop them from approaching. Don’t think about the nightmares. Don’t think about the n—
“Солдат!” (Soldier!)
James’ head whips towards the sound. It’s not snapped, not an order or a reprimand. It’s her .
He can’t stop a smile from spreading across his lips when he sees her, waving at him from the entrance to the restricted barracks. She’s tiny, a slip of a thing with red hair that practically glows against the grimy grey snow. He only realizes he’s standing stock still in the middle of the walkway, staring at her, when she begins to jog towards him.
The other soldiers and staff that pass occasionally flow around him, giving him a wide berth. If his intimidating height and musculature wasn’t enough to warn them away, the glinting silver arm with a bright red star on the shoulder certainly would.
She stops in front of him, looking up at him with those wide, green eyes that twinkle with warmth and mischief. Her breath puffs little clouds in front of her pert, pink lips. He can’t stop his gaze from dropping to her lips for a moment before finding her eyes again.
“Принцесса,” he murmurs for only her to hear. (Princess.)
A pink flush that wasn’t from the cold paints itself across her cheeks.
“Can we practice our English today, Soldier?” she asks, her accent almost nonexistent. He knew almost wasn’t good enough for her.
“Of course,” he replies easily. It’s almost strange to speak his native tongue again, his near-native fluency in Russian and Romanian far more useful at this snowy Soviet base tucked deep in Russian lands.
His agreement is met with a stunning smile from the girl that almost made his heart stop.
He knows he shouldn’t think of her as a girl anymore, she is a woman of twenty already, (they had celebrated her birthday last month) and she could very nearly hold her own against him in the ring now.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asks, finally tearing his eyes from hers and noting her workout gear and how unsuited it was to protect against the icy breeze and drifting snowflakes around them. She shrugs.
“Not all of us only just rolled out of bed,” she teases. “Some of us have work to do, you know. I’m warmed up.”
He rolls his eyes at her goodnatured needling.
“Good,” he replied, down to business. “We can get straight to our run, then.”
She bounces on the balls of her feet, ready to go.
“Remember, distance,” he says as he turns and begins heading for the edge of the military campus. Beyond the last low, long building, there is nothing but grey fields of snow broken up by the occasional skeletal tree.
“I know, I know,” she waves him off, easily keeping up with his long stride even if she has to take two steps for his one. “No need to expend energy on bursts of speed, humans are stamina hunters, I remember.”
“Well if you remember, show me,” he goads, breaking into a run once they clear the last building. Even though he preached stamina and distance, he is still quick, his enhanced body easily carrying him faster than most men could sprint, and he isn’t even winded. Only a moment later, she is at his side, keeping up with a loping gait. Where he pounds through the thin layer of snow over their path, driving the flakes into mud beneath his boots, she seems to float across the terrain. Her eyes sparkle as she turns gracefully mid-stride, running backwards just in front of him to shoot him a small, almost shy smile. When she turns back around in mid-air he is reminded of the rigorous dance program she was put through, and wonders for a split second if she would be happier as a simple ballerina, rather than the weapon she was becoming.
The weapon I’m helping make her into , he thinks, stomach rebelling at the thought. He shakes his head, driving that train of thought away. Almost without meaning to, he starts to pull ahead, forcing his legs faster, as if he could outrun the guilt hanging over his head.
She lets out an exclamation, speeding up to try and catch him.
“What happened to stamina and distance?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, stopping on a dime and turning directly around, facing back towards the base.
“Last one back has to do an extra twenty minutes in the ring,” he says shortly, before taking off like a shot, leaving her to scramble behind.
“I’ll kick your ass, James Barnes!” she calls behind him, the snowy air muffling her declaration from any curious ears back at base. He just chuckles, knowing that they’d end up doing the extra minutes together anyways. No one else could keep up with her. They were the only two on base who could challenge each other, always pushing, always striving to one up the other, always improving. They were a perfect match, steel sharpening steel.
A single, traitorous thought wanders into his head, almost drowned out by the rush of his pulse and the hammering of his feet against the ground.
Maybe we could make ourselves strong enough to leave this place.
As if sensing his idea, his body rebels, a stitch developing in his side and slowing his pace. She blows past him just a few feet away from the outskirts of the base, and even though she has a trained neutral expression in place for the people around them, he spots the proud lift of the corner of her lips as she keeps up her speed until she is fully past the base border.
Slowing herself down to an easy jog, she stops by the gym, waiting for him with her hands on her hips.
“Fast, Солдат,” she says, a relaxed look in her eyes. (Soldier.) He comes to a stop beside her, breath clouding in front of his face. “Not fast enough,” he jokes.
She shakes her head.
“Your heart,” she says. “It’s too fast.”
James frowns slightly.
“What do you mean—”
He’s cut off when he’s forced to gasp for breath. There’s a pounding ache in his chest, interspersed with sharp pains that make his muscles twitch.
She just stands in front of him, watching. “Too fast,” she whispers, sadly shaking her head. “Too fast.”
James’ head began to swim. When he looks down, his hand is shaking like a dead autumn leaf in a stiff breeze.
“Help me,” he chokes out, before a muscle spasm sends him slamming to his knees in the snow at her feet. His vision narrows, black edges starting to encroach on his view as she crouches smoothly beside him. Her fingers ghost through the air beside his cheek, almost touching his skin that now beads with sweat despite the freezing air.
“Fight it, my soldier,” she begs. Then the tunnel choking his vision closes and he’s falling once more.
The ground rocks beneath him as James’ eyes fly open once more. His world is painted in flashes of orange and yellow, with black smoke pouring over everything. Something moves beside him, red hair streaked with soot, a body in a formfitting black suit as she slams down next to him, taking cover against the rubble he finds digging into his back.
“This is not how I imagined spending our weekend,” the woman beside him spits, although he knew deep down that the vitriol wasn’t aimed at him. Another explosion goes off not far from them, and she steadies her arms on the collapsed structure around them to fire a few shots before ducking back into cover. She glances over, rasing an eyebrow that is half-singed off.
“You letting me do all the work, дорогой?” she asked, and he realizes he has the weight of a rifle in his hands. (Darling)
“Of course not, мое предмет любви,” he replies easily, throwing her a lopsided grin. (My flame)
She returns the expression, face softening for a moment beneath the soot and ash, and something in his chest clenches. A splitting pain cracks across his head, a memory begging to be released. The gun drops from his hands as he presses them to his skull. Someone is screaming themselves hoarse. As the woman, the one he spoke to with such ease and care, abandons her own weapon to kneel in front of him, distantly begging him to talk to her, he realizes he is the one screaming.
“Jami— please—”
Her words are disjointed, each one floating down to him as if whispered far above as the icy hot fingers of pain claw over his head. His throat burns. Snapping watery eyes up for a moment, he sees the fear behind his flame’s beautiful green eyes.
“Help me,” he mouths, vocal chords unable to produce a sound. She cradles his face gently, nodding rapidly.
“I will, I will always help you,” she stumbles over her words, a Russian accent thickening as she strokes fingers over his cheek. Her touch is blessedly cool against his stubbled skin.
“You need to fight it,” she says, but he can’t. The pain is too great, it feels like his skull is cracking beneath his hands, splintering into a thousand pieces and stabbing him everywhere they can. With a final wail of agony, he collapses towards the filthy ground, but instead of hitting the stone he is falling once more.
All is darkness around him. When he tries to open his eyes he finds just more darkness, leaving him unsure if he even raised his eyelids. A faint sound draws his attention, the only stimulation in otherwise-perfect deprivation. It’s a simple, slow melody, sung quietly, almost as if the voice wasn’t paying attention to itself.
“Спасибо вам и сердцем и рукой,
За то, что вы меня - не зная сами,
Так любите: за мой ночной покой,
За редкость встреч закатными часами.”
(I’m grateful to you with my heart and hand
For loving me, while not so realizing,
For granting me nocturnal peacetime, and
For it isn’t us, together at stars gazing,)
He can’t move, suspended in nothingness, so he just closes his eyes and listens, letting the words wash him away once more.
Natasha ached from tensing every muscle in her body at every movement Barnes made. Unable to reach out to any of her contacts for fear of bringing either the US Government, Hydra, or Dreykov’s men down on top of her, she had resigned herself to letting her partner sweat it out.
That had been three days ago.
It had been touch and go for a while, but she kept forcing broth and water down his throat at every opportunity, muttering curses to Hydra and prayers to whatever gods might be listening in the same breath. Finally, late last night, after a frightening few hours where Barnes had stilled, pale and clammy, barely breathing, his fever broke and he slipped into a semi-peaceful sleep. Natasha, who had barely left his side except to clear the burned-out husk of the wrecked cars out of sight and set up some security so she couldn’t be ambushed, fell asleep beside him only minutes later.
Now, with late morning sunlight streaming into the ranch house bedroom, she groaned as she stretched. Her legs were cramped from curling into the chair she had dragged to his bedside, and her neck had a pinched nerve from resting on the mattress beside his hand that set her eyes watering.
Barely conscious, she stood, checking Barnes’ breath and pulse. He had terrified her for a while, his pulse racing far too fast, but she had given him a risky electric shock from her Widow Bites (turned down to the lowest setting) and his heart had reset itself. She was relieved that his pulse and breathing all seemed normal. While he was still pale, some color had returned to his skin. He was on the mend.
Natasha felt like she could cry.
Dropping his wrist from where she had been monitoring his heartrate, she bent to touch her forehead to his fingers, eyes fluttering closed.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she whispered, fighting back waves of exhaustion and relief.
Beneath her touch, his finger twitched.