Haunted By Him

Chapter Seven

Natalia hates him. She decided it the second she realized how much he looked like James. He has his face, his shoulders, his thin, waspish waist. Looking at him breaks her heart and it's all she can do not to throw her arms around him and beg him to actually be James, beg him to come back to her.

She thought she was over him. It'd almost been a decade and she'd certainly had lovers since, but seeing this man brought everything back to her in an instant. The love, the kisses, the pain, the loss. All of it.

And certainly, she'd considered that it might be him. After all, he has no memory and he looks so remarkably like her lost James, but she stopped her hope in it's tracks. James is dead. There's no getting around that. And she isn't going to let some stupid man with his stupid face and his beautiful stupid lips break her heart again eight years later.

And there's more too, because this man has been through things in his lifetime. He's done things, seen things, and Natalia can tell even just by the heaviness in his shoulders and the emptiness in his eyes that it had broken him inside. There was a point in this man's life where he'd had the very soul beaten out of his body and she could not believe that this might be her sweet, perfect James. She'd rather James be dead than be him. Death was a kinder fate than whatever details lie in this man's past.

Hours later, she brought him, in pain and hobbling, to the station. His ankle was swollen and red and she could tell he was trying not to look at it when she finally sat him down on the train station bench.

"I'll get us another train," she tells him. "I'll get us a doctor."

"No, not another train," the man begs. "They'll be there. They'll be there, they'll find me."

"They won't," Natalia says. "I took care of you the first time, didn't I?" He doesn't answer. He does that a lot. She wonders what he thinks when he falls silent, wonders what he sees when he avoids her eyes. But she doesn't want to know. She doesn't want to know. "Well, fine, how do you propose we get to the airport? I have specific tickets for the one in Magadan." He lets out a shaky breath through his nose and shakes his head, but he still doesn't answer.

Natalia stands from where she'd been kneeling and holding his foot.

"We're taking the train," she says sternly. "And you're gonna keep your trap shut about it." He looks up at her and he looks like he did when she first found him in St Petersburg, horrified and all fear. But she doesn't know what else to do, so she keeps her stern face on and marches over to the ticket office. When she returns, he's leaning his head against the wall wearily. His dead eyes follow her as she sits back down next to him. After a while, he speaks.

"What do you even need with the reward money anyway?" He asks.

"Don't ask stupid questions," Natalia responds and he looks at her.

"I'm serious," he says and she avoids looking down to see her clothes. She doesn't own many nice things, surely he's noticed. She dresses worse than he does, which is saying something, because he really does look like he's escaped prison. They haven't talked about it, but he only owns one outfit, which is a pair of cloth pants and a shirt. Natalia's got one dress. One. And it's falling apart. She would have bought herself more, but she used every last penny to buy those tickets to America. At least he's got a jacket to pull over himself and those leather gloves, which are perpetually on his being. She thinks there must be something strange about his hands, maybe birthmarks or scars, because she's never seen them even once and he didn't seem eager to tell her when she asked.

But, one dress or not, that's not the only reason she needs the money. He doesn't need to know, though. That's not part of their deal.

"Everyone needs money, Barnes," she says.

She hates giving him James' name. But he won't give her any other and logic tells her it's for the best if he's going to get used to it. Her heart screams at her, though. It screams and screams and screams.

She swallows back the pain.

"Fair enough," he says quietly.