Yelena stayed, Natalia left. That was a common reoccurring theme in their lives. The prodigal daughter had gone off in search of redemption and Yelena continued to be the Red Room’s knife. Even when she had cut ties she had still stayed in Russia and kept up her trade. It wasn’t that she had to be there or she was scared of leaving. Yelena had run missions around the globe. She just liked what she liked and knew how to be content. Unlike —
Why did every tangent lead back to Natalia? Natasha. Her sister had imprinted on her before they were sisters at all. Yelena was her replacement, the chameleon built to inhabit her skin. Love her, hate her, obsess over her. Yelena had done it all. Who looked at a child and decided the best thing to do was to strip them of their own identity and force them into someone else? The Red Room didn’t see the girls as children at all, so it was a moot point. Now, for whatever reason, Yelena was stuck like a fly in amber. Her hands were her own, not Natalia’s. They had undone the brainwashing that had been hardwired into her head. Natalia could die, Yelena could live. Natalia could – It did not matter. It did not matter. It did not matter. Her ghost had not followed Yelena into bed with Barnes. It had been Yelena’s lips and Yelena’s lips alone that had traced a path from the hollow of his neck and up his jaw, breathing in the sweet mix of sweat and whatever shampoo he had used. That pleasure had existed for Yelena and Yelena alone.
It was hard for Yelena to get lost in thought. She always felt too tense, too on edge. Her mind didn’t drift into daydreams often because her eyes needed to be trained on what was in front of her. Clarity had to be maintained even when a bottle was sweating in her hands. For some reason though, her mind was still soft from the morning and a few hours of actual, decent sleep. As James began to acquaint himself with the kitchen once more Yelena braced her forearms on the counter and leaned forward so that her body was braced against the hard ledge.
“И все же я остался.” She repeated quietly, her mind still elsewhere. Barnes knew Russian, but she wouldn’t make him speak it. It was her language of choice, her mother tongue. One day Yelena had realized Natalia had began to speak more English than Russian. She had resisted some but eventually all their conversations crossed over. The encounter from the night before had left her feeling a little more warm than when she had started. Had she infected herself like Natalia had? One little taste of the potential of something and her will would begin to cave. No. She would not be that type of woman, even if it was tempting.
“Are you a romantic?” Yelena straightened as her reverie ended. “You know, I’ve always had limited support in my life and it’s been a let down. I hate that. Being let down, disappointed. It’s why the only person I try to rely on is myself.” At least she could be harsh in her punishments that way. “I don’t think I get to have domestic. That’s now how they made me. It doesn’t matter what I want.” It was a brief moment of honesty that she hadn’t expected to admit to. Fingers clenching slightly, blue eyes hardened ever so slightly. “Black,” she confirmed. Russian style was preferable but James was encouraging her to not start her day with a numb tongue.
Very distinct? Sure. He wasn’t wrong there. “I have one that’s gotten me this far. Everything I do, everything I’ll ever be – it’s tinted. But you, you got out. And by out I mean you don’t do the same dirty дерьмо and say it’s your choice. Maybe it’s because you have people who care about you.” Didn’t Natalia care for Yelena? Did it matter anymore? “Tell me, James Buchanan Barnes. What does more look like to you?”
James took a sip of his coffee, the taste acrid and bitter on his tongue. It was almost enough to shake the hazy fog of sleep from his mind and by the time the scalding liquid hit his tongue for a third time, he felt a little more normal in his skin. He tried to settle from his place opposite Yelena, his free hand gripping the vinyl countertop that was fraying at the lip, scraping against the vibranium plates. The intricate technology that had only been updated decade after decade meant that he could feel the dig of cheap countertop into his hand as if it were his own skin, sending signals up his nerves, and yet no matter how long he lived with the prosthetic, it still felt foreign sewed into him. James rubbed absently at the scar tissue with his thumb, the coffee sloshing in its mug as he listened to Yelena and tried not to mull over the obvious. Still, he wondered what it would be like to wake up and not feel like he was dragging around a man who didn’t exist anymore. Maybe that man did still exist, and maybe that’s what crept into his nerves and frayed them at the edges.
Her question caught him off guard -- even if it shouldn’t have. They had just been talking about what it means to be domestic, but he was almost tempted to ask her to repeat herself. Instead, he cradled the half empty mug to his blue cotton shirt and felt the warmth against his skin. Pulling his brows together, he considered lying or giving half truths, but what was the point? Yelena wouldn’t care enough to do anything with it -- and yet his mouth still felt dry at every turn of this conversation. That was the rub of it though, wasn’t it. He could bed her, but morning after conversations were difficult, even if he had pushed for her to stay. “I was,” he said, his dark eyes flitting to somewhere behind Yelena for just a moment before he settled back onto her. “I was also a bit of a tool, but I used to know how to do this.” he gestured vaguely, not meaning much and yet meaning so much at the same time. He wasn’t trying to push this tepid relationship into anything deeper than what it was, but he’d felt so adrift in this reality that leaning into Yelena felt natural. Normal. Even having Steve in his reality had never felt right, not really. Steve, in all his goodness, would never understand what it felt like to be what they were. Weapons, stripped bare of their basic humanity. It was an incredibly hollow feeling.
“That can get lonely,” his words felt small, so James cleared his throat and tried to push out of the unsettled environment he’d unintentionally walked in to. He tried to focus on why he’d nudged Yelena towards staying, to having a cup of coffee, maybe a bite to eat. He just didn’t expect all the little moments they’d shared over the past few months -- the connections in their pasts, how they intersect in such a harrowing way -- and how it had been so easy to let those feelings swallow him, to open a door that would be difficult to close. He understood that there was a clear line drawn between them, nothing more than what they’d done last night -- and that cold realization made him wonder why he’d asked her to stay.
Maybe he was a bit of a romantic.
“It’s not the same,” he started, dark gaze soft as he watched her. “but when I was first coming out it, beginning to feel myself existing in my body again, I never thought I’d get used to it. If it wasn’t for all the shit they did to me, I think existing out of intermittent cryo would’ve killed me by now, considering I spent more time in ice than I did out.” his hand, the one that made odd whirring noises when his brain sent signals to it, clenched harder on the countertop, just enough that he felt the wood beneath it begin to warp. James forced himself to ease. “The memories came back slowly, getting whiffs of some restaurant beneath a location I used to stake out, and it would hit me like a truck. It took years for me to stop reacting to them so obviously, to stop getting sideways looks. The concern on their faces bothered me the most and I had to learn how to stop showing it. Now they exist mostly in my dreams,” or nightmares, really “I never thought I’d ever be more than what they made me -- the man I was before was just an echo, a ghost. He stopped existing the moment I jumped on that plane.” His goal of getting out of his own head seemed lost now, now that he was trying to give Yelena something to relate to. He hated this about them, and yet needed it at the same time. To talk about it, even if it made his skin crawl. She listened enough, always watching him carefully as he spoke, and her calm handle of his trauma had been what’d driven him into bed with her. His long talks with Steve had always been over a bottle of whiskey neither of them felt, with Steve’s bright blue eyes drowning in a mix of guilt and grief. James had hated it, hated how he felt like he had to reach out and clap Steve’s shoulder and tell him it was all going to be alright. That it wasn’t his fault -- it wasn’t, James would never put that on Steve, but Rogers was who Rogers was. Carrying the damn world and all its problems on his shoulders. It’d gotten to be too much, and James had pulled away, schooling himself to being stronger than he was.
Yelena was the first to ever see it was all a facade.
He didn’t know if that bothered him or not.
“It took everything to find my agency again. To stop wondering if the trigger in my head would go off and I’d be sucked back in.” James took a measured breath. “Basically, all you have is yourself now. All you have are your wants and your needs, and there’s no one there pulling the strings anymore. The past few months I’ve tried to focus on what this life meant to me now that I wasn’t stuck under HYDRA’s control. You have that opportunity too. Even if it is a bit of domestication.” he tried for levity at the end there, but he didn’t know if the flat tones of his voice helped. “I used to -- have people who cared. I left those people behind.” And now James existed in a two bedroom apartment with peeling wallpaper and yellow twinged linoleum under his feet in the kitchen. The rest was hardwood, but it was warped in various spots and there were more than a few that creaked beneath his heavy footsteps. The walls themselves were paper thin; he constantly heard his neighbors plumbing through the drywall, could hear their shouts and the sound of their radio and TV. It was oddly comforting at times, little bits of human contact without having to actually face anyone.
“People caring about me was half the problem,” he admitted, finally pushing himself off the counter and setting his almost empty cup down. He needed to move, he suspected, as he started to feel his nerves fire blankly under his skin. Popping open the fridge, he pulled out the All-American breakfast ingredients he clung to like a child to their blanket -- James always so desperate to find his footing in this world by going back in time. Setting the egg carton with the package of bacon balanced on top on the counter next to the stove, he occupied his movements by taking longer than needed to find a pan. Not like there were many cupboards for it to be hiding in.
“More looks like this,” he answered honestly, slightly surprising himself by it. He settled the frying pan on the burner and twisted the knob, the ancient stove giving a bit of a sound of protest as the gas went through it. “It wasn’t easy, still isn’t at times. I don’t normally talk about any of this and I haven’t, well, you know, in a while.” he didn’t know why he was getting all sheepish now, especially about this. “It was simpler to just not. I didn’t want to start anything or to let anyone into my head.” the sound of the first slice of bacon hitting the pan was a loud pop and James idly added a few more slices. As they started to cook, he prepped a bowl of pancake mix and set it aside. “You good with this?” he asked, turning just enough that his hip rested against the counter and he was half turned towards Yelena. “I don’t have much else. Day old Chinese, bagels, some fruit.” he lived mostly on take out, only cooking when he had reason. This seemed like the right way to go about the morning, even if he had been tempted to just order in. He looked back towards the cooking food, the smell starting to fill his tight kitchen. “Also some orange juice. No Vodka though - we finished that bottle last night.”
