[OOM] Franche-Comté

[from_the_outside]

There is a small town near the river Loue.

It is notable largely for it's museum (quite a collection of Courbet, for those who enjoy the Realist movement of the 19th century) and its situation near the river Loue: a small village, out of the way of modern-day life and all its hustle and bustle. It's a quiet town, ideal for a few days away from the city, perfect for a mini-break for any homesick American away from the ocean, kept from the slow shuffle of the ocean.

It's the eighth town like it in almost as many months. Small, quiet, out of the way. Perfect for a mini-break.

Or a hideout.

In the clear morning light, it seems impossible to think of this town as anything other than wholesome, friendly: Sharon walks through a small market and smiles at the vendor who sells her a small loaf of fresh bread and some cheese to eat it with, and imagines his stall burning, his wife screaming. She walks along the river, and pictures a town leveled, cars flung on their sides, smoking craters where the road should be.

He hasn't resurfaced. Not yet. No one has been hurt.

That doesn't mean no one will.

Her purview is not to hunt down and apprehend the Winter Soldier, of course.

But that doesn't mean she can't travel, on her free weekends. It's only natural: she's young, single, at a dream posting in Europe.

And it's only natural to ask around the towns she visits, around the museums and markets, for any other Americans who might be in town.

Ex-pats have to stick together, after all.

Comments

[from_the_outside]

"Oh, I don't think you want me dead."

There's a chilling blankness to him, but that's not what makes her eyebrows flicker into a brief frown, and her eyes narrow, curious.

"I don't think you want anyone dead."

Inasmuch as he wants anything.

Brainwashing, that was part of it. His old self stripped away, replaced by the machine. The perfect assassin.

Her lips purse in something almost like amusement. "I guess they're not such hot conversationalists, either. My turn: why are you here?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"No?"

Too much shows through these days, as he tries to find a balance between the Winter Soldier and the man who'd once been just plain Bucky Barnes. She's observant, and she's good, but that's not something he wants to talk about.

"Maybe I'm ... just out of practice."

A beat.

"I'm here to talk to you."

He's pretty damn sure she'd meant the town, or hell, maybe France itself, but why should he make this easy?

[from_the_outside]

Hey, this script got flipped somewhere along the line: Sharon Carter is the one who is the pain in the ass, okay? Call her a hypocrite, but she's never liked the flippancy of the modern day Bad Guy.

"That is so sweet."

But her gaze stays level, and, look, soldat, you may be a solid half-century older than her, but:

Never bullshit a bullshitter, son.

"You do seem a little rusty at it, so let's try this again. Why are you in Franche-Comté?"

[nerves_of_ice]

"Why not? It's as good as anywhere else."

One corner of his mouth quirks, very slightly, as he waits for her reaction. There's something about her that reminds him of Natasha, long, long ago.




(Not to mention that the region is a manufacturing center, and that there's business he needs to take care of in one of the warehouses where automotive parts aren't all that's being shipped, and the village is large enough to blend in while being small enough to evade notice ... or so he'd thought. He'll have to recalibrate, now.)

[from_the_outside]

"And you decided to finally backpack across Europe the way you never got to after college?"

Aunt Peggy always said Barnes had a saucy streak to him – currently, Sharon isn't all that sure whether the fact that he clearly still does is a good thing, or just annoying.

"Are you on an assignment here?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He shakes his head.

"If you know my old rank, agent, you know I did my share of humping it across Europe."

All signs of amusement fade at her next question, however, and a quiet tension coils back through him - even though he doesn't move from his casual slouch against the wall.

"And if I was?"

[from_the_outside]

It's her turn to crack a faint smile. "I guess I did hear something like that."

But he's shifting, slightly, in a way that pulls her spine a little straighter, makes her grip her gun a little more firmly. "If you were –



"I'd want to know who you were working for, and what they told you to do."

If he was back with his handlers, he'd have attacked by now. (She thinks.) (Probably.) But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to know exactly who's side he's on, here.

[nerves_of_ice]

Everything about him goes still, and his expression smooths into absolute blankness.



"You first."

Deadly flat.

[from_the_outside]

And here they were getting along so well.

"I'm not getting my orders from anyone."



An irritated lift of one shoulder, and a roll of her eyes. "Okay, I mean, these specific orders. I used to get them from Nick Fury."

Before the man in front of her shot him.

"And then it turned out everyone I used to get orders from was actually Hydra, which was obviously not acceptable working conditions, which brings me back to my original point: Are you working for Hydra?"

If he is, she's not sure she cares how sad it might make Steve Rogers, or how pissed off Fury would be, or how quickly the Winter Soldier could kill her: Taking him down would be the mission.

[nerves_of_ice]

Silence falls between them for several tense heartbeats, and then:




"Not any more."

He says it as flatly as before, and he doesn't look as though he expects her to believe him.

[from_the_outside]

She watches him closely, as if the lie might be written across his face in flashing neon letters, but sees nothing except her own wariness reflecting back at her.






He might be lying.



She doesn't think he's lying.


"All right."

(It's not just taking him at his word: if Hydra had the Winter Soldier, they would have used him for something big by now. They wouldn't let him simply disappear.)


"Then who are you working for?"

[nerves_of_ice]

Does she believe him?

Probably not. Why would she? Why would anyone?

(Steve would--

He manages, with grim determination, to suppress the thought before it can go any further.)

"I'm not," he says, bluntly.

Might as well see where this will go, and how it'll get there.

"Working for anyone, I mean."

[from_the_outside]

There's a pause as she waits for her internal alarms to start ringing – although, what the hell does she really know about telling whether or not someone's lying, her old boss turned out to be a Hydra goon and it's not like she saw that coming –

But they don't. Whether he's telling the truth, or just enough of it, or some of Steve Rogers' boundless and endlessly exasperating optimism rubbed off on her as she listened to his broadcast before S.H.I.E.L.D came tumbling down, she doesn't know.

It's just a feeling. (Buoyed by years of training and thorough research into his character, his history, his tactics.)

"Okay."

Another pause, considering him, before she moves for the first time since sighting him, walking to the edge of the room and laying down her handgun on a dusty side table, before turning back to him with crossed arms.

"Looks like we're both doing a little freelance."

[nerves_of_ice]

That --

-- was not what he expected.

Not even close.

He straightens, coming away from the wall with catlike grace, and takes a couple of steps in her direction before stopping, poised to react swiftly at need.

"Freelance?"

He sounds utterly disbelieving.

"You came after me as, as a freelance assignment? Are you insane?"

[from_the_outside]

She watches him, cool composure a thin and fragile veil over the aborted instinct to reach for her weapon at the second he moves.

(She can feel her heart pounding, almost as clearly as she can hear that voice of better judgment in her head that always sounds like Aunt Peggy saying well, that was stupid). "And here Cosmo's always telling me that guys like assertive women."

Her lips thin, but she stands her ground, chin tipping up stubbornly.

"I'm just an interested party. By all right's, I should call my boss and turn you in right now – so let's just say I'm invested and leave it at that."

[nerves_of_ice]

"No."

He meets her eyes with an expression that's almost mulish in its stubbornness.

"Let's not leave it at that. Why are you so invested in me? Why do you care? What the hell am I to you?"

[from_the_outside]

"To me? An internationally wanted, lethally dangerous pain in my ass."

No one out-stubborns Sharon Carter: she takes a step towards him.

"But you're something to a couple of people who mean a lot to me. Something important."

She sucks at her teeth, head tipping to one side like she's considering all the possible angles of what she's saying and how it'll come across, and whether or not she'll need to dive for her weapon and/or her gun.

"Natasha Romanoff, and..."







A swallow, a chin-tip that's maybe a little reminiscent of another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, now retired. "Peggy Carter."

A beat. "Do you know those names?"

[nerves_of_ice]

He stares at her in utter shock.

"You --"

Natasha. She knows Natasha, knows that once, long ago--

(Nataliya Alianovna)

For an instant the second name almost doesn't register, but then...

He takes another step closer, searching her face in the dim light as though he's never seen her before ... or as though he might have.

"-- who are you?"

[from_the_outside]

The similarities are there, for those with the eye for them: maybe not physical, but there all the same. Different shape of the face, of the mouth; her eyes are more hazel than brown, and she has lighter hair –

But sometimes, Sharon looks very much like her Aunt Peggy.

A muscle jumps in her jaw, the only outward sign she allows of the warring flood of adrenaline telling her to run.

"My name is Sharon Carter."

In for a penny, in for a pound. "When S.H.I.E.L.D. was still a thing that existed, they called me Agent 13."

[nerves_of_ice]

"Sharon Carter. Agent 13 is Sharon Carter."

There's disbelief in his tone, but no real doubt. He shakes his head slightly, muttering under his breath in Russian, then switches abruptly back to English.

"Я не могу в это поверить гребаный... Christ. Does Steve know?"

[from_the_outside]

Her expression flattens, and then turns irritated – her Russian isn't great, but it's good enough to catch that.

"No."

First the first time, her gaze flickers: not to the ceiling, in a lie, but to the floor, avoiding the aggravating combination of guilt and uncertainty that show up without fail whenever she thinks of how he's still in the dark about that little detail.

It's for the best. And there's no reason it should bug her, except that Steve Rogers kind of has this way of making you want to be better than you are.

"He knows I'm not a nurse named Kate Newton. You blew that cover, so thanks –"

Shaking away the thought like it's an annoying fly. "He knows my name is Sharon, and that I was Agent 13. He knows I'm working for the CIA now. He doesn't know my last name."

[nerves_of_ice]

His jaw sets at the pointed reminder of what he'd done in D.C., but he takes the hit without comment. She's right, after all; he'd blown her cover and worse, far worse.

It's just one of the many crimes he's committed as the Winter Soldier, one more debt he owes and can never repay, one more bucket of blood on his hands. Never mind that he was being used, or how - he still did it. All of it.

He watches as she looks away for the first time, and lets out a quiet breath.

"Why not?"

[from_the_outside]

"Because..."

There are so many reasons. He doesn't need to know. It shouldn't make a difference, but she knows it would. It might drive a wedge between him and Aunt Peggy. It would feel like manipulation. It would mean he'd never not compare her to Aunt Peggy. Would maybe never see her for herself.

Which shouldn't matter.

" – telling him would be for me, not him."

Hey, if she can't be honest with an ex-KGB, ex-Hydra, currently at large and extremely dangerous brainwashed assassin from World War II, who can she be honest with?

Her smile, such as it is, turns wry. "I'm not high on his list of favorite people, right now. If I told him, he'd think I was working an angle -- and he'd probably be right. So I haven't.


"Not that it's really your business."

[nerves_of_ice]

"You made it my business when you came looking for me."

It says something, he thinks, that she's not using that relationship as leverage with Steve. Lots of people wouldn't hesitate, but clearly this woman is different.

(Or lying. That's always a possibility. Still, she doesn't come across as a liar -- and he's got enough basic intel now to look into things, just to be sure.)

"So." A single heartbeat of silence. "Now what?"

[from_the_outside]

"Did I?"

She considers him, feeling tension begin to leak from the tight muscles in her back, her shoulders. Maybe they'll get out of this without a fight, after all. "Is Steve Rogers really still any of your business?"

(Of course, maybe they won't.)

"Now?" She shrugs, uncrossing her arms, and letting one hand land on a hip while the other gestures loosely at him. "Now, I ask if you're really just here to lay low, or if you have some kind of business in the area."