Inheritance of ash

Improvise

Heyy dear reader, just wanted to wish you a good day and have fun reading this next chapter! Please comment as much as you'd like, it motivates me a lot <3

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The fluorescent lights above Natasha buzzed faintly, a high-pitched drone that mixed with the hum of the old SHIELD servers deep inside the underground building. She swiped her card again, the green light flickering before granting access. The door gave a reluctant click, opening into the cold archive room. Dust hung in the air, stirred up by her sharp movements. She moved with purpose, but her hands were trembling, her stomach twisted with something she refused to name.

The words looped in her skull like a broken record:

"Russia. 1968. Pierce."

Bucky's fragmented whisper through Steve's lips. Vague. Maddeningly vague. Natasha wanted to grab him by the shoulders and demand why he couldn't have been clearer. Why leave breadcrumbs instead of a map? But she knew the answer. He probably wasn't really himself anymore. HYDRA never let you be yourself.

Her mind flashed to his face—the quiet way he carried his guilt, the way he looked at her with the wary recognition of someone who knew what it meant to be broken and stitched back together with someone else's thread. Bucky Barnes, the boy Steve had died for, the man HYDRA had destroyed, and the weapon they were trying to drag back into the darkness.

She clenched her fists.

Steve.

The thought was acid in her chest. His face, his voice, his desperate, stubborn "I had to, Nat. It was the only way."

Dragging a seventeen-year-old into the nightmare of Bucky's mind. A girl who already carried too many scars—some on her skin, most buried deeper. And he hadn't told her. Hadn't told them. Hadn't told her.

The betrayal sat heavy, suffocating. She could forgive him for a lot—his blind faith, his naivety, his tendency to think with his heart before his head. But this...

This was something else.

Her hands slammed the laptop shut. The crack of plastic on metal echoed too loud in the empty space. She pressed her palms to her eyes and bent forward, her breath catching. For a moment, her whole body folded inward, like if she got small enough the anger and grief wouldn't eat her alive.

Bucky wouldn't recover from this. She knew it. The Winter Soldier had been a scar across his soul, but if HYDRA forced his hands again—made him kill again—he wouldn't come back. He wouldn't let himself. She could already see the way his conscience would devour him alive.

Her jaw clenched, her breathing unsteady.

"Romanoff."

The voice came from the doorway. Calm. Even. The kind of tone that slipped through defenses because it didn't try to force its way in.

Natasha turned slowly, half-ready to snap, half-ready to tell whoever it was to get out. But she froze when she saw her.

Maria Hill.

SHIELD's steel spine. Fury's right hand. The one who had been there at the beginning—her beginning, when she'd defected, when Clint had stayed his arrow, and Fury had brought her in from the cold. Maria hadn't trusted her then, not for a long time. But over the years, slowly, painfully, they had carved out something that resembled trust. Something that sometimes even resembled friendship.

Maria didn't move closer. She just watched Natasha with sharp, steady eyes.

"It's okay to fall apart," Maria said softly, firmly. "Even when you've been taught not to."