Her Prisoner

Chapter 5

Sitting on the edge of his bed in the penumbra, Steve is pensively gazing out of the window. It is one of those nights he cannot find sleep. He wonders when he will ever be free to leave and how long he will be used for. Beyond the change of millennium, he suffers from the burdening impression that he does not belong there. He is not really sure to know where he belongs anymore, but he knows for with certainty that this is the last place on Earth where he should be.

The quiet sound of the door opening behind him pulls him of his swarming thoughts. He frowns at the unexpected sight in the room. Romanoff is watching him intently.

"I suspected you wouldn't be asleep," she says.

"Did you get from the security camera?" he asks half-bitterly.

She doesn't glance at it. "I don't need to take a look at a monitor to know how you'd feel tonight."

"How am I feeling tonight?" he questions.

Her expression is calm. "You fought for people you know nothing about and you don't trust — it's unsettling."

She opens the door and slightly tilts her head. "Come on," she calls gently. "Let's get some fresh air."

He is both hopeful and dubious. "What are they gonna say?" he trails off.

"It was my call," she affirms and reaches for the door handle.

He gets up, his feet answering to the call of some stretching, and grabs his hoodie as he heads towards the door.

Romanoff takes him to the lift, all the way up to the rooftop — the very rooftop where he first attempted to escape from before she stopped him. It is a starry night. He hasn't seen so many stars since his last hike with Bucky in 1939.

Romanoff goes to lean on the ledge; he doesn't, immediately. First, he takes a few steps around. She takes a look at her surroundings, as a way of allowing him some privacy.

It doesn't take him long to realize that this rooftop is a dead end and gives him confirmation that the building is completely secluded him. He could be many days away from the nearest village.

She probably knows that and he reckons this is why she took him up here without any fear of him trying to run away.

"Why did you take me up here?" he asks, anger rising. "Is it my reward for complying today?"

"Is that what you think it is?" she says.

He shakes his head — he finds the whole situation very confusing. "I don't know what to think. I don't know anything about you. And the little I know might as well be a lie. How do I know this little jailbreak isn't an umpteenth ploy to make me yield more?"

She gazes without a word and this silence pulls him further down the quicksand he is trapped in.

"I'd like to tell you that it isn't a ploy but you wouldn't believe me."

"Then help me believe you," he says. "Tell me something about you. Something true."

She looks at him in slight bewilderment. "I haven't been asked this for so long that I forgot how to talk about me."

He reiterates his request with a nod.

A gust of wind barges in on them. She squeezes the collar of her coat tight between her thing fingers then turns around to prop her elbows on the ledge. "Would you believe it if I said that I hate the cold?" she begins musingly. "It's kind of ironic for a Russian."

He comes to lean on the ledge too and he looks at her. She's staring into the night but her eyes seem to have traveled miles from here. "The cold is particularly vicious in the tundra. They have the roughest winter there. It falls quick and hard and settles in for what seems an eternity. My parents...well, let's say that the years that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union were particularly bloody. Criminals took advantage of the political and social instability to create havoc. One of them made it to our house. That's how my parents died. I escaped, running as fast as I could. I roamed across the tundra for days." She pauses and bits her bottom lip. "And then the cold came on. Like I said, quick and hard. But I kept walking in the snow. It took nearly three more days before I was found."