Wait, I can totally post fic here

[petronia]

I wrote 1,200 words of this today, somehow. (A later bit than this part, which has actually gone through the requisite edits. But now I'm more confident this thing will end up as a real story.)

“It was him,” Captain America insists. “He saved me. He was right here.”

“Cap,” Sitwell begins. He looks mildly discomfited, which for Sitwell is as good as a nervous breakdown. Captain America is angry -- enough to get in Sitwell’s personal space and loom, though he doesn’t usually throw his weight around like a man of his size. A flustered SHIELD medic hovers, ignored, at his elbow.

Natasha can tell from ten meters away that there’s not a bruise on the man; the bed sheet he’s clutching to his middle isn’t doing much to obstruct her view.

Black Widow got the call four hours ago, in Munich. She’s been thankful for three hours forty-five minutes that Phil Coulson is putatively dead. Bad enough to get sitreps on the order of “We lost track of Captain America in a firefight with mystery assassins,” or “We found Captain America divested of his pants in a by-the-week rental room.” Loop Coulson in and they’d never hear the end of it; it’d be worse than the aftermath of the trading cards.

“Retrieve him,” says Captain America. It sounds like an order. “I have to talk to him. Check the security cameras.” Sitwell’s face is a picture.

“Get forensics in here,” Natasha says, taking pity, and walks closer to the bed. There’s an empty biopsy kit package in the wastebasket, which is ominous, but nothing else. Except -- on the pillow, in the indent where Steve’s slumbering head would have hidden it -- a single, four-inch-long brown hair.

Natasha frowns.

***

The tally is as follows: fifty seconds of pieced-together CCTV footage, a set of partial prints, and (Hill clears her throat; Fury’s glower kicks up a notch) DNA from the room’s most recent tenant. The latter matches no one known to SHIELD. The former might be enough to convince a jury that Steve Rogers went for a walk in downtown Zurich with a dark-haired white male approximately 5ft11 in height. Steve is recognizable enough, with digital enhancement, but the other man has somehow avoided being captured head-on by any camera.

The prints ping on -- of all things -- an NYPD cold case. A well-off entrepreneur was found asphyxiated in a Midtown hotel room, surrounded by accoutrements suggesting an exotic evening with hired entertainment had gone off the rails. Cash was missing from his wallet. The motive looked cut and dry, but complications arose when it transpired the man’s company was on the eve of inking a lucrative vendor agreement with Stark Industries. Following his death, the deal was abruptly rescinded. There were allegations of industrial espionage, or perhaps outright espionage. The scandal made a splash in the business press of 1974; no less than five Wall Street Journal front page items in microfiche. No suspects were ever taken into custody.

“So basically, this guy is a ninja assassin,” says Clint. “A... sexy... geriatric... ninja assassin?” He looks at Natasha across the table, as if to say this is your field of expertise, not mine.

Natasha does, indeed, have an idea of what -- whom -- they may be dealing with. But she doesn’t want to name names yet.

“We’re not going to track him down this way,” she says. “But he’s not operating alone. What about Cap’s original informant?”

“That’s why the two of you are here,” says Hill. “We have reason to believe the real purpose of the setup—"

“Hang on,” says Clint, “why are we dancing around the obvious? Cap knows the guy, right?”

Hill raises an eyebrow at Fury. Fury casts one jaundiced eye on Clint, then on Natasha in turn, before leaning back in his chair and sighing.

"Bring up the videos," he says.

***

“I don’t know about you,” Clint says once they escape the briefing, “but I feel like Coulson should’ve covered this in one of his spiels. Not that I paid attention. But I would have remembered Captain America having a secret army boyfriend.”

Putatively dead or not, it’s the first time since New York that Clint’s dropped Coulson’s name without flinching, and Natasha does him the honour of not calling attention to the fact. “Because you’re a gossip,” she says instead. “An old woman.”

“About this information which turns out to be of major operational value.”

“Babushka.”

Clint lets it drop. Natasha recognizes it as one of his I’m waiting to get past the security perimeter before I get to the point silences. They’re well down the block and nearing the parking lot before Clint catches up a step and leans into her space, as if he wanted to companionably bump her shoulder and respect her bubble at the same time.

"In the interest of not getting us killed," he says, "would it help me to know what you didn't tell them back there?"

Clint is both utterly clueless and infuriatingly perceptive, usually whenever either trait is most inconvenient. "I know him," Natasha says.

Clint blinks. Then looks at her closely. "From before?"

Before means the Red Room. "Yes."

"Shit." Clint has stopped walking, so Natasha stops as well and turns to face him. "What needs to happen?"

"I have to assess on the ground," she says. "There are – a number of options. Depending on what he remembers. I may be able to talk to him. He won’t be heading the operation; we have to find out who his employer is."

"So not a terminate the fucker on sight kind of backstory.”

"No."

“I might run into him before you do.”

“Don’t engage at close range. Actually, don’t engage at all. He’s extremely dangerous.”

They stare at each other.

Eventually Natasha adds, slowly, “I owe him a chance, Clint.”

Clint sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “You talk to him. But if his finger moves on the trigger I’m plugging him in the eye. Deal?”

“Deal. Is that all?”

“No. Are you going to talk to Cap, or is that on me?”

“Director Fury will speak to him.”

“Director Fury will feed him a line and you know it. There’s no way Steve’ll sit this out when he was the one targeted.”

All the more reason to control what he’s told, Natasha doesn’t say. Any prediction she can make regarding Steve’s behaviour -- or, for that matter, Clint’s behaviour where Steve is concerned -- Nick Fury can. “To some degree, we have to assume Steve is compromised,” she says.

“Why -- because a bunch of terrorists drugged and manipulated him? Or because Fury and Maria Hill said so?”

“Because Steve is convinced his best friend’s come back to life.”

Clint pauses in the act of unlocking his car, which is older than Natasha and has rear-end fins and is generally ridiculous. “About that,” he says.

Natasha says nothing.

“Seriously, Nat. Give me something here. A percentage likelihood, whatever.”

“I don’t know,” she says. Then: “He told me once his name was James.”

Clint stares at her. “James Barnes?”

“Just James. He speaks American English, but that was our standard training. I don’t know where he came from or when he entered the program. Barnes -- looks like him. You’d be able to recognize him face-on from those videos, but the body language is very different. When I last saw him he looked older than that, but not by much.”

“Well, damn,” says Clint. He opens the driver’s side door and slides into the seat. Looks back up at Natasha. “If you’re telling me this, you need to tell Steve.”

“We know Barnes died, Clint. Steve knows it. Given Red Room technology... there are a number of possibilities. But he’s not likely to be the man Steve knew.”

Clint snorts. “You think it’d be less fucked if he were?”

She doesn’t.

***

The last time Natasha saw -- James, he has a name, not just a code, she has to remember that because he might not -- it was the tail end of the Nineties and the business end of his rifle. She remembers the incongruous background beauty of Causeway Bay, and poured concrete scraping her knees and palms. Remembers looking up into his cold, unblinking eyes and and begging for her life: not because she hoped he would grant it -- she was dead the moment he had her in his sights -- but because talking would buy her team time.

You know me, she said. You recognize me, I can tell. James, you cared for me. They hurt you but you refused to hurt me. You don’t remember now, but deep inside you know. You know.

He heard her out, said nothing. Didn’t react.

Didn’t shoot.

***

Remember, kids: you can't spell ASSASSIN without ASS and SIN.