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HYDRA were, perhaps unsurprisingly, fucking idiots.
When Rouben finally told Natasha about the takeover--
"Nothing has been taken over. It's merely a name change; a transfer," he'd said. "The NKVD is the KGB which is the FSB, and now our division has been placed under HYDRA. Nothing will change." As if she hadn't seen the uniforms changing to suits and all the Germans and white South Africans and Americans. As if they weren’t being moved wholesale to Virginia.
--she'd expected to be put under cover for travel, embedded with a reconnaissance detail, or even sedated and crated, but she was placed in the executive convoy with Rouben. In business casual clothing. Like some Take Your Daughter To Work Day bullshit. They didn't assign her any weapons. Not even a knife. It was fine, she had her own everything ready to go in a kevlar bodysuit, but Jesus.
Also: executive convoy.
The best part was that they'd decided to unthaw the Soldier for the trip from Siberia to Virginia. So they could walk him around various bases and shit, like a show dog. March him into some vast underground bunker like parading war bounty into Rome.
Natasha laughed in Rouben's face when she got to that part of the brief.
"I knew it had to be a joke. You had me up until this--" She tapped the bullet point, still giggling. "--but even Americans wouldn't be this fucking stupid. Can I have my actual assignment now? Please?"
Rouben shrugged, hands palm up. "What can I say? You're not wrong about Americans, Natalia."
Natasha slipped into the silo during a lunchtime shift change and crouched behind some liquid nitrogen canisters, picking at a pressed ham and processed cheese sandwich from the cafeteria (Americans), until everyone had left for the night. The tanks looked like cartoon vats of nuclear waste; their sickly chartreuse light mixed with the ambient doomy gloom to emit a glow that made her head hurt if she stayed down there too long.
Passing between the tank support structures and the wall, she didn't "accidentally" unplug any of the Five. She never wanted to deal with science experiments gone wrong ever again, and boy would those bodies be a mess unthawed and left floating.
She fit the fingers of her right hand into a green slider on the side of the Soldier's tank and moved it two notches to the left. After a minute, a startled breath heaved through the speaker on the front control console. She crawled underneath it and pulled the headset and microphone down to her lap and plugged them in.
"Hey buddy," she said.
A hoarse yell, and then coughing loud enough to send a screech of feedback through her ears. She slapped the volume button. Who could possibly have wanted to listen to him like that? That loudly? She grimaced. That’s why she was there. Never again.
"Are you here, Soldier?" she asked, quietly. "Can I talk to you?"
"Natka," he whispered, matching her volume like he always did. No one had even programmed him to do it. She didn't think so, anyway. "Spider. What now."
"I have a mission."
"Not alone."
"No. Together."
A pinpoint of green light as she woke, and then a supernova inside her eyes and a splitting headache.
"Romanov, Natalia Alianovna," a voice said.
She made a pitiful moaning noise. Alcohol and peroxide smells so strong she must have been sweating them. Too many stimuli. Quiet, quiet.
"Mission 92 was successful. Post-debrief in 45 minutes."
Quiet. The lights out. She was melting into a harsh chemical-scented puddle of agony, reflecting: a man on his knees at her feet, telling her all his secrets. All of the best secrets. Her own hand wiping the tears from his soft, pallid skin before adjusting the belt around his neck. No, that was 71.
92. A man at a desk, and then his head was in wet pieces across it and she was stripping his computer of all of its zeroes and all of its ones.
After she rolled over and retched, her head hurt so much worse, she wished she'd just swallowed the bile back down. Or choked on it.
He didn’t understand why she wasn’t taking him with her right away, nor why none of the handlers or technicians were there, if they were going on a mission. She tried to explain that this was deep cover, but he had no concept of Winter Soldier Does Cover, never mind the depth. She tried to say she was giving a pre-pre-briefing, but he stuttered into a weird time loop rut or something and she had to do some wind speed problems and paced breathing with him to get him back on track.
Finally:
She leaned back against the tank and looked up at him looking down at her; their eyes somehow meeting through the layers of glass and cryo slush and communication technology. “Soldier,” she said, “we’re not going to Virginia with them.”
If the respirator could have made a facial expression, it would have been frowning. “The others are going. Not us.”
“Yeah, we’re going somewhere else.”
“Where.”
She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Need-to-know.”
“No such protocol.”
For fuck’s sake. “You’re guarding me, okay, so you’re just tagging me. You go where I go, wherever I go. Understand?” Those were complex sentences for him while he was in the tank, but maybe--
“We’ve done that.” He sounded thoughtful; remembering, maybe, hopefully. She swallowed hard.
“That’s what we always do, Soldier.” She reached and touched the glass--clammy, running with thick condensation--as far up as she could, which was around his knee. His metal fingers twitched and flexed towards hers.
A few hundred base staff were lined up in the giant transportation bay to see them off. Natasha was with Rouben at the bottom of the cargo plane stairs. She scanned the incoming assets and materiel for a tank-sized crate or whatever they were bringing on the plane, because surely they weren't going to fly him awake--but no, there he was. Why he got to be in head-to-toe inch-thick black tac gear when she was wearing something from the Young Republicans spring collection was not a mystery at all, and therefore extra fucking annoying.
She ran the welt pocket seam of her blazer under her thumbnail and stared at him, hoping he would look over and she could tell if they’d wiped him and she’d have to start over. Again.
As the guards in front of and behind him passed her standing with all of the suits and brass on the red carpet, they all turned their heads and saluted. The Soldier didn’t turn his head or salute, but he made the checkpoint sign against his thigh and she exhaled. He remembered. At least he remembered that was the mission codename, which was something.
“If you get there first, you can deploy the--”
“No.”
“They’ll follow you if you lead them off!” They'd swarm her if he left her behind and he could get away, would have a better chance to escape. “It’ll give me a chance to--”
“No. You said together.” A cold metal hand nudged hers on the floor of their secret hideout; between two containers in the belly of the ship there was a space big enough for them to sit with their legs out and avoid unnecessary physical contact.
“Now I’m saying you should run as fast as you can.”
“Wherever you go, spider,” he said, repeating her stated mission parameters. She pursed her lips at him, knowing he could see her in the dark.
“I just want you to--” get out.
“You take point. Better sightline.”
“You’re really interrupty today,” she said, annoyed, but also: “I’m proud of you. And can you please not step on my martyrdom moment?”
“It’s your op.” He nudged her hand again and she pushed back. “Not alone.”
“I’m not fast enough,” she admitted, a hard lump lodging between her esophagus and her windpipe at the end of the sentence. “I can’t outrun them. I don’t know why I even thought--you can do it, though, please--”
“Natka,” he interrupted again. “Your plan is executable.” After a second, he added, “We can do it.”
She sniffled loudly and groused, “Your optimism is executable.”
“Invalid search term: optimism.” He moved his elbow against her arm. Ah, yes. Joint Mission 7’s recreational activity: joke protocol.
She pulled her knees up to her wet face and laughed into them. “Yeah, you’re hilarious.”
Their feet hit the ground and push them into a sprint at the same time. Natasha becomes a system providing oxygen to the automatic process of running as fast as she can towards the invisible point 500 yards away and up a tree. The only other thing her brain is allowed to do is notice the Soldier beside her, keeping her pace, disgustingly. Fucking asshole.
The hatch a hundred feet down the wall screamed open while she was waiting in the hold for their 0100 rendezvous; when she'd been waiting for almost two hours. Two hulking silhouettes dragged something heavy down the ramp, unlocked a container, and threw it in, banging the door shut as they walked away. They didn't relock it, because fucking HYDRA. Fucking idiots.
She'd seen the flash of the Soldier's arm as they dumped him, so after the hatch wailed and thunked closed, she crouched and ran to the gap in the container door.
"Soldier?" she whispered.
There was a long silence, and then the scrape of his arm on the floor. "Report complete," he mumbled.
"I know," she said. She slipped inside.
"Report complete," he repeated, louder.
She almost fell neck-first into his outstretched, grasping hand, tripping over one of his legs in the dark. "It's me!" she hissed, his meat arm twisted between her elbows and her knees in just such a way she could dislocate his shoulder, if she needed to. If that could buy her time to get out of his metal reach. "It's me."
"Spider," he gasped, and rolled away from her. She dropped his arm when he tugged it.
They sat there panting at each other for a few minutes, until Natasha got herself together and asked, "They deployed you while we're moving?" That just seemed like an Incredible Journey waiting to happen.
A rustling thump, and he said, "Debrief complete?" in a pleading tone she'd never heard before.
"Yeah, okay, okay," she whispered, and left.
She crouched silent, waiting, outside the vent she used for egress from the cargo hold, until his ragged breath went too quiet for her to hear.
When they go together, at least they can remember and forget for each other. Or neither of them remembers and they can pretend nothing even happened.
A bank of blinding white lights turns the grass in front of them ghostly, and then sweeps up to terrify the tree line. Ten seconds early. She feels her breath catch, and is scrambling to keep the oxygenation machine on track when the Soldier says, “Spider, run.”
Run, and he disappears from her side. The lights sweep to her left and she can’t look because she’s running to darkness again. Run, so she pushes harder for the tree line. Coming up as if it’s approaching her; as if her specific tree is running to meet her in the middle; she rolls and jumps at the last second for momentum to swing herself up to the lowest limb, and then past it, into the waiting branches, opening for her like arms.
Two backpacks from the base lost and found, stripped of all their padding and concealed in the lining of her carry-on.
(Rouben looked at her luggage and raised his eyebrows. “You’re packing light.”
She shrugged. “I don’t need to bring my entire Barbie collection, I guess.”)
Scrounged from the ship, the plane, and the two other bases they’ve stopped at: two collapsible plastic water bottles, two miniature first aid kits, two blister packs of water purification tablets, two half-kilogram pouches of nutritional slurry--just add water!; two foil blankets and rain ponchos, stealth-equipped; two bundles of waterproof matches, two compasses, two laminated topographical grid maps of their escape location. All tucked into corners of the container maze in the plane’s cargo hold, ready for strategic retrieval.
“Noah’s ark,” Natasha said under her breath to the Soldier while they stood in parade rest beside a fucking breakfast buffet in Omaha.
“Redundant,” he said, crackling in her comms earpiece.
She tilted her head slightly to look up at him in her peripheral and murmured back, “Tactical.”
“Double allotment. For you.” Above his mask, he was staring terrifyingly into nothing. Bland fascist operatives eating corn flakes and omelettes, drinking coffee and bloody marys, talking about golf and eugenics.
“Together,” she hissed.
“Two blankets, Natka. You get cold.”
Abruptly, all the tension went out of her. “Are you making fun of me for needing a blanket? Outdoors? At night?” she hissed. They were definitely in shit if someone saw her talking to him this much, but how very dare he.
He shrugged, a miniscule shifting of the seams on his shoulders.
"I cannot believe you," she said. She stepped on his toe with the heel of her pump, as if it would register at all as pain or rebuke.
"Two compasses for one spider.”
"Jesus Christ, shut up."
The stealth poncho is immediately humid; speed of movement was supposed to help with the discomfort, but she has to wait.
The Soldier’s tree is empty. The lights from the base are sweeping in grid patterns across the clear buffer zone and into the trees. She can see matte black figures snaking into the forest at the other end of the compound. Coming her way.
She didn’t see vehicles or gunfire or hear dogs from that direction: the direction the Soldier took. So he must be coming. Probably in the shadows that seem to thicken ahead of the tac team, outpacing them. She’ll just wait a minute, backpack clutched in sweaty, shaking fingers.
In the Nebraska base’s “not an interrogation" room, Rouben spread his hands on the table, palms up. "Natalia."
"He started it."
Rouben closed his eyes and breathed slowly through his nose. He was probably counting to ten. Natasha leaned back in her chair, waiting, wishing she’d brought a magazine or some gum.
“This is not a vacation,” Rouben said finally. “This series of events, culminating in our installation at the HYDRA facility in Virginia, will determine the future of our covert operative programs. HYDRA have--pre-existing models they wish to continue developing.” He wove his fingers together and rested his wrists on the table. “We offer access to proven methods and technology, but only so many extant subjects will be required.”
It took her a second to decode what he’d said. “They’re going to kill me for talking to a colleague at a work event?”
He stared at her. “Regardless of the apparent root malfunction in your operation, no. They will kill him for interfering in your current assigned objectives."
She snapped straight-backed in her chair. She wasn't fucking malfunctioning, but that was beside the point. “What? Why?”
“The Soldier is fast approaching obsolescence,” he said gently. “HYDRA is more interested in our recent advancements in his area of utility. Unless something can be done regarding the persistent degradation of his conditioning during extended deployments--”
“They built him,” she cut in, mouth going dry. “It’s not his fault they fucked up his brain before we stole him--”
Rouben slammed his open hand down on the table and she went silent, clenched teeth. “You will cease communications with the Soldier until otherwise instructed. Confinement remains an option for both of you, although obviously undesirable for all parties.”
She nodded, and said calmly, “Understood.” Heart racing, mind a vast, colourless void echoing: obsolesence degradation malfunction confinement.
There's sweat dripping into her eyes, stinging and merging with the tears she is absolutely not crying.
The HYDRA units draw closer, boots rustling in the undergrowth. Natasha grips the grappling gun to her chest, breathing hard through her nose.
A low, harsh voice says something she can't make out, and everything stops. Her heart stops.
One pair of boots moving closer to her perch. A bright, cold white light floods out into the dark, illuminating a surgically sharp swath of trees and the barrel of a rifle.
The light sweeps up, and then away from her, to the Soldier's tree. In the backwash of light, she sees the pale stripe of his forehead. She wants to scream, but she bites the sound in half and swallows the pieces instead.
Should she wait until he turns fully away to blow the grapple to her next perch? Or go now. He's probably already heard her. There will be no turned back for her to sneak behind.
He takes two more steps, away from her, and in one blink, they are making eye contact. Familiar, cold, dread, in the greasepaint she smeared over his eyes an hour ago. It's her job, when they're deployed together.
They stare at each other. Natasha tries to exhale herself into a vacuum-sealed, invisible shard of silence.
His eyes narrow, and then he tilts his chin to the south.
She stops breathing. He fucking winks at her and turns away.
The light goes out and leaves her a blue-green afterimage of his profile in silhouette. He grunts something at the team behind him and they move off, northbound. Their steps fade, eventually, and she's free.