Untangling a Memory

Russian Tradecraft

Natasha headed to the kitchen in the morning to find the boys already making breakfast for the four of them. This was one of her favorite sights living in the apartment with them- watching them work, especially making her a meal, while she just got to sit back and admire. There was a lot to look at between the food and the incredibly attractive men preparing it.

Bucky saw Natasha approaching down the stairs and immediately poured her a big mug of coffee. He placed it on the counter in front of her stool with his shiny metal hand. He'd taken their talk the previous day seriously and was back in a t-shirt. They smiled at each other, a silent understanding of the meaningfulness of the small act.

Natasha sat sipping on her coffee as they finished preparing the morning meal. Steve, Sam, and Bucky seemed to move around each other in the kitchen as if in a coordinated dance. They had done this so many times by now, that they just knew each others motions. As they finished up preparing the food, Without a word, Bucky put a stack of plates, cutlery, and napkins in front of Natasha for her to bring out to the terrace. While he was always chivalrous, he made sure she did her part as well, no matter how small. An unspoken joke between them after forcing her to prepare fruit salad that one morning (which she had barely done successfully then).

Once they had begun their morning feast, Steve started in on the serious talk almost immediately. "Nat and Buck, I think it's worth you sitting in on the meeting today. It looks like we may be heading back into the field sooner than later."

"Steve, I still have no plans of going into the field any time soon." Bucky was friendly, but firm towards his friend. Steve had been encouraging him to give it some thought, thinking that working for the "good guys" might start to give Bucky some peace after all the years completing missions for HYDRA. But through conversations with Sam, Bucky had realized that he needed to get to it in his own time and that he wasn't ready yet. Sam encouraged him to voice this to Steve, reinforcing that it was important for Bucky to make decisions now, since he hadn't been allowed to for so long. In this moment, Sam nodded once towards Bucky affirming his speaking up for himself.

Steve was a little disappointed, but continued, "I know and I understand. I'd love for you to join us, but you will do so if and when you are ready. But I do think you could be helpful in the meeting."

Bucky's face was furrowed and puzzled, as he spoke through a mouth of toast. "Why do you want me there?"

Steve barely could understand Bucky through the food-talk, so Sam explained. "It looks like the mission could have something to do with HYDRA operatives looking to process or sell vibranium. Hence, T'Challa's concern. We figured you might have insight once you see the loose information we have to go off of."

Natasha looked to Bucky. She knew from talking to him a little about his bad dreams that this could be triggering. But she also knew he'd been talking to Sam. If Sam thought it was an ok idea for Bucky to participate in the meetings, she'd trust his professional opinion. But right now, she looked to see his physical reaction. His metal hand stayed relaxed on the arm of his chair and his face just seemed to show him deep in thought. She stepped in to try to reassure him.

"You can always bail and get to enjoy the alone time in the apartment. Watch TV, read, rub your bare ass on Sam's pillow... You know, whatever comes to mind." Natasha smirked and looked for Sam's reaction out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey, hey, hey. Let's not get carried away!"

Bucky laughed, "Yea, ok I'll come for a bit."

"If you leave early though, I'm switching my pillow with one of yours and you won't know whose." Sam pointed around to each of them.

"Sam, you aren't a super spy. Good luck with that," Natasha quipped.

The whole table laughed at Sam's expense and then returned to small talk.

T'Challa was sitting at the end of a long table, Okoye at his left side. The room itself was incredibly impressive in terms of it's tech. Even Tony would have been jealous. The others sat down around the table and T'Challa began.

"Okoye found that vibranium is being sold on the black market. The dealer appears to have taken over from Ulysses Klaue following his death and is funneling his transactions through Minsk. We think we have a location to infiltrate, hopefully covertly rather than by force." T'Challa pulled up location data and pictures of faces on a big screen at the end of the room.

Steve chimed in. "Here is where you may be helpful. The back channels they are using appear to be tradecraft of some kind, maybe HYDRA, but we don't have sources from inside the system to be able to speak to that. We need to decipher what they are talking about to have a better read on the situation we are getting into and to better plan the mission details. Take a look at these."

Steve pressed some things on his screen and virtual documents popped on the table in front of each of them. The conference table itself apparently was an interactive screen where they could move things around, as if having access to endless paper documents, photos, and attachments they could all pass around and share in real time.

Bucky and Natasha began to review the information shared by Steve. The others had clearly gone over some of this yesterday and were waiting for the additional input.

"What do you think?" Steve asked hopefully.

Bucky assumed that Steve had been talking to him, given the Russian documents he was looking through. But before he could jump in, Natasha spoke.

"Definitely KGB, probably a cell going back 45-ish years. The language they are using and tactics implied are ones used more during that time period than by groups now. I'd also say it is probably a group that worked in Moscow before moving further East..." Natasha traced her fingers through the documents and moved them aside to see others. She turned to Bucky, "What do you think?"

Bucky just looked back at Natasha, confused. He needed a moment before he collected himself and looked back to the documents. "Yea, I think you're right. This looks like what they were having me do at the time, as far as I can remember. But I'd say it's a rogue group rather than deep state. They are using variations in their movement patterns that HYDRA wouldn't have. It's less structured."

Natasha nodded. "Yup, I see that. Good thing we brought you along for the meeting, Barnes."

As they continued the meeting, Bucky had a terrible time focusing on the content at hand, even though he knew they were relying on him to be a key resource. He had been completely ill prepared for learning that Natasha had extensive knowledge of covert Russian tactics and it was all he could think about. Steve had told him that Natasha was from Russia and had done work there before coming to work at SHEILD. Bucky had thought he'd even heard her swear in Russian under her breath when she stubbed a toe or dropped something before. But Natasha understanding deep Russian tradecraft, to the point of being able to pinpoint a time period and location of its development and implementation, was a whole different ball of wax. He kept lingering on the same questions- how far did her history actually go in Russia and what did that have to do with her training?

"Buck, what do you think of this?" Bucky had been so deep in his thoughts that he'd heard nothing that Steve had said.

"I'm sorry. I got lost for a second. Can you go over that last part again?"

Sam looked at him, "We can take a break if you want. No problem. I can barely keep up with all of this." Bucky appreciated how Sam tried to turn the conversation, even though he knew everyone could probably see through it.

"No, no, I'm good. Just got distracted. Give it to me one more time." Bucky grabbed his bottle of water from the table and watched as Steve went over the highlights again on the big screen at the end of the room. Bucky could feel Natasha's eyes on him, but he didn't dare look back. He had too many questions and he needed to focus for now. He would get back to that later.

Listen to: "Crashing Down" - Mat Kearney