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Here is how it happens.
She kicks the gun out of his hands and jumps onto his shoulders, with him bucking like a wild bull (“this ain’t my first rodeo,” she thinks as Fury flashes before her eyes, strangely two-dimensional in death). She manages to get her garrotte up and tight around his throat, and she twists and drops to the ground, and he’s twitching, twitching and clawing for breath, until he isn’t.
Natasha feels the satisfaction of the kill, because this is for that Soviet slug, this is for Fury; she got the son of a bitch. She bends down to take off his mask and fling it aside. His blue eyes are open wide and his face looks vaguely familiar, but she doesn’t have time to linger on it as Hydra agents pour out of a black van. They have more machine guns. Great.
She rolls and picks the Winter Soldier’s gun off of the ground and gets in a few good shots. Steve, hurtling into the fight without any regard for his own safety (as usual) fells a couple more guys with his shield, until it’s down to him and that bastard Rumlow. “Put down the shield,” Rumlow shouts, and then one of the Hydra agents conks him on the back of his head with their gun.
+
“Agh,” Maria Hill says as she takes off her helmet, “that thing was squeezing my brain.” She gives Natasha a tired smile, and then Sam comes jogging up to them. “Who is this guy?” Maria asks.
“I think the far more interesting question right now is,” Natasha says, “who is this guy?” She nudges the Winter Soldier’s body with her foot, and his head lolls to the side. She can hear a sharp intake of breath and looks up to see Steve’s shocked face.
“Bucky,” Steve says.
“Who the hell is Bucky?” Sam asks, but Natasha already knows, of course she knows. She has read Steve’s file, that’s why the face looked familiar. And there is one more thing Natasha knows, and even if she didn’t know she would see it on Steve’s face: things have just gone horribly, horribly wrong.
+
They take the body. Steve doesn’t say a thing. His face is immobile and while he is still moving, all of his movements are mechanical. Which is so ironic, considering he is the one supersoldier who is actually one hundred percent human. Natasha gets a sinking feeling in her gut that she is watching Steve’s world crumble from a first-row-seat right now. Waking up in the wrong century is nothing compared to this.
“Steve,” she says, but he interrupts her.
“Not now,” he says, and his voice is also crumbling. And Natasha is so very, very sorry.
And then she sees Fury, who is very much alive, and very much a liar, and she feels her own world crumble as well.
+
It’s the job, she knows this. You choose who to trust. You calculate the risks, and you don’t take any that aren’t necessary. You pick your lies, and you pick your allies. There is no room for sensitivities. She knows all of this, but what she didn’t know is how ground-shaking of an effect Nick’s death would have on her, and how much worse it would sting to find out he wasn’t actually dead. He’s not dead, she thinks, he just abandoned me. He didn’t trust me enough to tell me. It’s irrational, it’s stupid; there are no questions on the job. No why her, why not me. The only question that matters is, “was it the safest thing, the smartest thing to do?” The answer is yes. And that should settle it.
She doesn’t understand it. But she doesn’t resent it either. It’s the job.
+
Here is what she says to Steve.
I’m sorry.
I should have known.
This shouldn’t have happened.
Here is what Steve doesn’t say to her.
It’s alright.
You couldn’t have known.
It wasn’t your fault. He was trying to kill us.
Here is what Steve does say to her.
You don’t know everything, remember.
Here is what Natasha says to the Winter Soldier.
I hate you.
And here’s what she says to Bucky, who was so important to Steve and who is so, so dead, and it’s all her fault. Only it’s not, because it’s the job.
I’m sorry, she says.
Bucky doesn’t say anything.
+
Natasha reads Steve’s file again and again. She procures the file on the Winter Soldier, and she reads that too. It gives her a panic attack that she rides out on her own because no one can see her like this. This is where she is vulnerable.
She passes the file on to Steve. The next day, the set of his jaw is even more tense than it was before.
+
When she starts to think that he is possibly never going to properly talk to her again, he does.
“Bucky always protected me,” Steve says. “And when it was my turn, I couldn’t do the same for him.”
“It’s not your fault,” Natasha says. Steve looks at her like he wants to argue. “I’ve read the files. It’s not your fault.”
“It’s no one’s fault,” Steve says. “But it’s not how it was supposed to go.”
+
Here is how it was supposed to happen.
She kicks the gun out of his hands and jumps onto his shoulders, with him bucking like a wild bull (“this ain’t my first rodeo,” she thinks as Fury flashes before her eyes, strangely two-dimensional in death). He manages to get his human hand up just in time, in between her garrotte and his vulnerable, human throat. She doesn’t kill him; Steve gets to save him. Steve saves him and he makes everything alright: the brainwashing, the torture. Steve gets to save him, he gets to protect him, he gets him back.
Here is how it was supposed to happen.
No one dies.
But in their line of work, that’s not how it happens. And Natasha can’t help but think how profoundly unfair it is that the one exception was wasted on her.