‘Curiosity killed the cat’... It’s an atypical idiom. I know my meddlesome tendencies have got me stitched up into all types of tribulation, including landing me in this secluded corner of hell they call the Red Room. But even Lukin’s eagle eyes hadn’t clocked the absence of the blonde; I attributed it to our new lack of numbers. One missing link in the chain, what’s one more?
It was a few reversed steps, receding as the procession crowded the claustrophobic corridor. The gap was plugged the moment I retreated. Once I was veiled by the poorly lit part of the corridor, I stalked my prey. I could see her blonde plait swinging like a pendulum ahead as she sharply turned down the intersection.
Light on my feet like a panther; my toes provided me with the springiness needed for speed. I didn’t spare a glance over my shoulder as my associates bodies were guided through. Not a single eye strayed from the corpses of our desolated youth and the sobs only got quieter as I strayed from the beaten path.
The facility didn’t lend well to snooping; the corridors were like the pipe of a trumpet, every noise travelled. The waterlogged grates they excused as floors creaked; especially the disintegrating copper coloured ones: chunks were crushed under my feet. The whisper of fabric as my thighs brushed and my arms swung seemed like the hiss of a python. My breathing sounded like the puffing of a weary dog. I was a one-man band and every move alluded to my presence.
I peered around corners, eyes scanning through the darker aisles of the base, where the lights were dim with the mildew film that was clumping around the bulbs.
She padded away, hips swaying cockily, her mucky boots undone in her hand; laces limp. With one hand she unpicked the braid, letting her war-torn hair hang free. I only saw her whip the strands between the passing flickers of bulbs; like a camera flash as they intermittently transmitted light.
I caught the profile of her visage. I needed no more than that to tell me who she was.
My toe glided out past the intersection as I made to follow her. A particularly loud clunk reverberated down the deserted corridor as I crunched the gnarly metal under foot.
Her head shot round, her ice blue eyes squinted through the half-light in my direction. Then moved on. I watched her eyes twitch narrower as she isolated the source of the sound, her eyes learning the dim environment. Even with enhanced senses, she couldn’t me detect me in the dingy surroundings.
It didn’t take her long to work out she was being followed. And as she made for her destination again, she stole glances at the reflective puddles on the floor – paying attention to her peripherals.
I followed, tracing her steps with my own footprints. At every turn, I darted to safety, pausing around corners; not making myself known. I followed her like a shadow, deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. But she was crafty. Craftier than me.
“What the hell are you doing, Natalia?” She rotated balletically, stone set face sneering with condescension.
“Good, question... But I have a better one...” I renounced my hiding place and stepped out into eyeline. “What the hell are you doing, Yelena?” Defiantly, I crossed my arms across my chest, my eyes locked with her, like two bulls locking horns, thrashing and clacking defensively.
“I’ve got better things to do than watch the bodies of failures be carried past...” She had the genuine temerity to snort. She sized me up, her lip twitching with outrage as she noted the holster still on my hip.
My eyebrow arched audaciously and I tilted my head down at her. “Is that what you call them?”
“If they were any good they’d still be alive. They let themselves die, Natalia.” She plodded forwards a few steps, the purr of a tiger in her voice.
“See, it’s odd... You’re Lukin’s golden goose, right? Respectful, dutiful, malleable... Why would you want to upset him by sneaking off? Why aren’t you there reading a eulogy and handing him tissues?” I dared meet her half way, coming face to face with Janus herself.
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to, Natalia... Curiosity killed the cat...” She twisted her foot, almost as if she was going to walk away; but then froze. “Honestly, I’m surprised you have to guts to come after me, especially after Karpov beat you senseless for disobedience, and Lukin-“ A titter arose in her throat. “Seems to be keeping an eye on you...” There was a green eyed jealousy about her. “And his lips on you...” The last part was spoke with the sting of a hornet, her nostrils flaring like a nervous tick.
I felt a new weight saddled in my intestines and a constriction around my heart. “You watched...” My palms got a little sticky and the traumatic memory replayed in my mind.
“What of it?” She cast her eyes away, almost exhibiting shame, something I’d never seen in her before. “He didn’t exactly try to keep it a secret, Tsarina...” That nickname, she spewed it with such haste, such relish in her tone. She was winding me up to watch me go like a clockwork toy. I felt my temper wind higher.
“Don’t you call me that-“
“Or what?” And she came closer; I was half convinced she was going to gnash her teeth at me like a shark. Or dig her claws into me, whichever came first. “What are you going to do? Kill me?” Her smirk made my gut coil and a vile bile rose in my throat. “Because I don’t think you have it in you, Natalia...” She inched closer, our toes centimetres apart. “I’ve seen you...” Another step, our noses centimetres from touching. “I’ve watched you...” She didn’t break eye contact, but lowered her voice. “Snivelling, shaking, disobeying. They have to beat the violence into you. You’re so weak...”
Her words branded my skin, made my blood boil, my fists clinch. “But it’s funny how Lukin would still rather kiss me than you, regardless...” I saw a murderous flash in her blue eyes. “It’s almost as if he prefers me...” I anecdoted aloofly. “Like I’m his favourite...” I shrugged it off and trudged back. “Strange...”
“Not for much longer...” She hissed under her breath. “Just remember, you don’t want to get caught by Lukin – he wouldn’t be very happy... It would be unprecedented if he got wind of being out here...” She sashayed in the opposite direction, boots still clasped in her hands.
“I think he’d be rather curious about how you got that information...” I left her to fester in her rage like a raw wound.
I was meandering back to the quarters, evading any passing patrols by squeezing into cubbyholes and blending with other drones wandering about. I didn’t look left or right, up or down. I felt my insides seize and my heart pause as I strolled past each cluster of KGB officials. No one gave me a looking. I manipulated my insignificance, but I could never help feeling belittled by it.
But then I saw the spectre, the pale face, the hallowed soulless eyes. Blank, he was like a sheet of paper ready to be written – apart from the crinkle between his brows. It seemed to me that he was wandering aimlessly; with the disapproval of everyone who he knocked shoulders with.
I took my strides fast and guided him back towards his quarters with a hand on his chest; his legs trudged as I was his rudder.
“You can’t just wander... You know that...” I gritted to him, his feet scuffing on the floor.
He caused a commotion as he wandered into people as I guided him back. He looked like a lost puppy. His lips were gaping in silent shock, his eyes glassy with tears and his mind absent.
With significant prompting I managed to get him back to his quarters and slammed the door.
“Sir...” I tried to evoke a reaction, unravel him from his daze.
His lips moved like they were forming words, but his throat disputed the matter. No sound matched the mute movements of his lips, just a clogged choke.
“Sir...” I took his hand. The contact, the sensation, it seemed to snag him back to reality. He blinked frantically, and then resumed his catatonia.
“I know what they did to me...” He murmured gormlessly, jaw still slack, eyes still vacant.
“What do you mean?” My brow scrunched with lines of concern.
“I lied...” He admitted, his mouth snapping shut again. He toddled back to the bed and lifted up the mattress with his super-strong metal arm. Beneath it was a manila file, with the soot from the fire in Budapest: grotty fingerprints on the cover. “Those files weren’t important. Just this one...” He tossed it in my general direction and I clapped it between two hands.
It only took a flip of the page to reveal all the secrets that had even been emitted from the shellshocked man gawping in front of me. Details of another life, a past life, images of him living happy and free, a biography of the torture he’d endured, a diary of the experimentation he’d undergone.
“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes...” I read off the page, steering my attention to my traumatised companion. He was perched on the bed, hunched over, head in his hands. “This... This is big... Y-you have a name! Isn’t this a breakthrough..?” I tried to encourage some positivity into him.
“Have you read the rest? My background?” He murmured into his hands, hands clawing at his scalp, itching to tear shreds of his hair out.
As my eyes trawled further down the page, I ingested more gory details, but my stomach couldn’t digest the notion – I felt my gut give a slosh of repulsion. Compelled to vomit or weep by the contents, I closed the file with a weighty clap, the pages paper-clipped into the document hefty. “It’s none of my business...” I relieved it by slipping it onto his dresser. “I’ll only look if you desperately want me to... But right now, my assessment of the situation is that you’re not even willing to look...” I sat down on the bed next to him and rested my hand on his knee.
“I had no idea how much they were hiding... How much they buried... How much they stole from me...” He lifted his teary eyes from his hands; glossy lines smudging down his cheeks. “Like what they stole from you...” He denoted comparatively, his human hand settling over my lower abdomen, fingers tracing the scar through my uniformed shirt.
“They’ve stolen things from all of us...” I laced my fingers through his. “I was born nineteen-twenty... Nineteen, that’s how old they tell me I am. I go out there, I see the newspaper headlines drifting through the towns like tumbleweed, headlines with nineteen fifty-six printed onto them. They ravaged my youth, erased days and days – I know they have...” I dabbed at my own eyes. “At least yours is there, in a file. I’d kill to find out what I’ve lost...” I felt my tear ducts prickle as tears accumulated. “I still dream from time to time – between the nightmares – I remember!” My fist clenched triumphantly, imitating my grip on the memory. “But as day breaks...” I unfurled my fingers.
“We could find it...” He prompted, head snapping in my direction. His fingers tightened around mine with reassurance.
“I don’t know if I want to know. Or risk it... Right now it’s the least of my problems... Black Widows are dying, left, right and centre; and Yelena Belova is up to something...” I tried to swish my curly fringe out of my face, the irritating rolls of hair drooping in my eyes. It sprung back and dangled level with my green eyes.
The Winter Soldier, James, fingered the dainty swirl of hair out of my face and nuzzled his face close to mine affectionately. “You think she has something to do with it?” His brows knit and a puzzled pout lingered on his lips.
“I don’t know, James...” I uttered mindlessly. “Sorry- I didn’t mean to-“ I backtracked in a flurry, feeling my arteries tighten with embarrassment and all the heat in my body rush to my cheeks. I cowered, expecting the smite of a hand or the wrath of a weapon. Breathless, I fumbled with my vocabulary to fathom words to excuse my Freudian slip. “I shouldn’t- I don’t even know if you’re okay with-“
“Natalia..!” He cupped my cheeks – metal on skin - and forced me to meet eyes with him. “Relax, it’s fine...” His sandpapery thumbs grazed over my furnace hot skin and gave a doting smile at my blush. “To be honest, I liked it...” A bemused expression of confliction came over him. “It makes me feel like more than just your senior. More than their asset. I could get used to it...” He admitted with a coyly, a softness in his smile.
“Okay, James...” My brain lagged to catch up with my mouth, finally giving him a title jarred on my ear. “James it is...” I could feel the blood draining from my face again and the furnace flush calm down.
“I like the way it sound when you say it...” He crooned, intrigue in his eyes, those blue hues darkening. His pupils were like a well of ink. “Has anyone ever told you, you have a beautiful voice?” He dampened his lips with a lap of his tongue, breathing hoarsely and hungrily.
And the moment the blush cleared, it make it’s grand re-entry. My breathing hung and I quilted my face with my hands; trying to mask my flush. I felt my heart give a flutter, like a dove caged in my chest. My skin sizzled as his eyes locked on my intensely. “Do you enjoy embarrassing me?” I peeped through my fanned out fingers.
“It puts a rather endearing rosiness in your cheeks,” he stated factually, teasing my fingertips from masking my face, slowly weaving his fingers between mine, until they were laced together in my lap.
Hands occupied, looped like links of a chain in my lap, a silence drew between us; eyes meeting like two strangers across a bar. With clunky hesitation, he tilted himself towards me, chest puffed out proudly, head cocking. I felt the rose in my cheeks swell. His lips parted with a small pop and his eyelids seemed to hood his ponderous eyes further. I felt myself tip towards him, inquisitive and hypnotised.
As his eyes traced the contours of my face to my lips, and settled lustingly there, I stumbled to my feet, jerking away urgently. My brain finally clicked back into gear, cogs cognitively turning; stopping me from being impetuous. “I should be going... The patrol will be checking our quarters soon...” His fingers, still knit between mine, kept me on a leash as I tried to escape.
“Same time tomorrow?” He cooed dejectedly from behind me, his shackling grip slipping from mine.
“Same time tomorrow, James.”
A/N - Lots of shit going on in my life, so I wrote this. Fuck you, school.
Dedication goes to Captain__Rogers! x