Chapter 3: You know why
The quiet in Joseph’s room was absolute. The kind of silence that feels heavier than noise. Natasha had left three hours ago, the door sealing behind her with a final, soft sigh. He’d lain in the dark, listening to the throb of his own body, a percussion of pain from ribs, back, temple. The bindings were tight. The bed was too soft.
Sleep, when it came, wasn’t a choice. It was an ambush.
It began with the smell. Cold stone. The coppery tang of old pipes and fear-sweat. The sterile white room dissolved into concrete grey. A hallway. Narrow. Flickering fluorescent tubes casting a sick, jumpy light.
He was walking. Not Joseph. The Asset. The mission parameters were clear in his skull, a cold, recited stream: Terminate. Secure. Erase.
A door. Wood, painted a grimy green. He didn’t knock. The vibranium arm came up, fist clenched. It wasn’t a punch. It was a piston strike. The door didn’t just break; it exploded inward, splinters and shattered frame. A man was on the other side, reaching for a coat rack. The metal arm didn’t stop. It went through the plaster and lath of the wall beside the door, grabbed, and pulled.
There was a wet, crumpling sound. Like a cardboard box full of wet leaves being crushed. The man came through the wall in a shower of dust and broken timber, his neck at an impossible angle. He hit the floor and didn’t move.
Joseph watched from somewhere deep inside, a prisoner behind his own eyes.
Another man, younger, at a small table. A startled cry. He fumbled a pistol from a drawer. The shot was deafening in the small space, a flat crack. The bullet gouged a chunk of concrete from the wall by Joseph’s head. He didn’t flinch. He ducked, a smooth, mechanized drop, came up inside the man’s reach, and took the gun. A single, efficient motion. He pressed the muzzle under the man’s chin and pulled the trigger. The back of the man’s head painted the wallpaper.
A third man was in the corner, scrambling toward an old army cot, hand diving under a thin mattress. Joseph was on him before his fingers closed on the hidden weapon. A silver flick in the bad light. The ceramic knife from his boot. A clean, deep draw across the throat. The man made a gurgling sigh, hands flying to his neck, eyes wide with surprise before they glazed.
The silence after the gunshot rang. Blood dripped from the knife. His boots made sticky prints on the cheap linoleum.
Another door at the back of the room opened. A fourth man, older, face lined with sleep and terror. He saw the scene. He turned to run, fumbling with a deadbolt on a rear exit.
Joseph walked. There was no hurry. The man’s hands shook, the key scratching against metal.
He reached him. The metal hand closed around the back of the man’s neck, spun him, and pinned him against the door. The other hand, the human one, came up and clamped over his mouth and nose. He stared into the man’s eyes as he struggled. The kicks grew weaker. The muffled pleas softened. The light in the man’s brown eyes faded, dimmed, and went out. Joseph held him there for a three-count after the body went limp. Then he let go. The corpse slid down the door into a heap.
He looked at his own hands. One blood-smeared, one clean metal. A voice, his own but not his own, flat and empty, echoed in the stone room.
“Hail Hydra.”
In her own room down the hall, Natasha’s eyes snapped open.
She wasn’t sure what woke her. A sound. Not loud. A sharp, distressed exhale that wasn’t quite a word. She lay still, her body tuned to the compound’s nocturnal hum. The vents. The distant, sub-audible thrum of the reactors.
There. Again.
A low, pained “No.”
It was strangled. Private. It came from the direction of Joseph’s room.
She was moving before the thought fully formed, throwing back the sheets. She wore only a thin tank top and shorts. The floor was cool under her bare feet. She didn’t turn on a light. She slid out her door and into the corridor, a shadow in the dim safety-lighting.
She heard it clearly now. Through his door. The rustle of sheets, violent and frantic. A gasp. The solid thump of a body hitting something.
Not a fight. A thrashing.
Natasha’s hand hovered over the keypad beside his door. His birthday. She punched it in. The lock disengaged with a soft click.
Inside, the room was dark except for the amber glow from the floor lamp. It cast long, dancing shadows from the thrashing figure on the bed. Joseph was entangled in the sheets, his body rigid, muscles corded with tension.
A low, continuous groan escaped his lips. “No, stop.” The words were slurred, desperate.
She took a step into the room, the cool air raising goosebumps on her arms. She knew the protocol. Never startle a soldier from a nightmare, especially not him. But seeing him like this, after the plaza, after the bandages, made something tight and painful cinch around her ribs.
The bloodstained hallway morphed into something sterile. White walls, polished floors. A man in a lab coat fumbled with a keycard at a reinforced door. The card reader flashed red. Access denied.
Joseph walked towards him. Each step echoed. The man turned, his face pale under the fluorescent lights. “No, please.” His voice was thin, cracking.
Joseph looked at him for a moment. There was no anger, no hate. Just a void. Then he brought his arm up. The metal fingers closed around the man’s throat, not to crush, but to hold.
He put the man on his knees. He removed his hand from his throat and put his foot on his chest. He pushed, slowly, steadily, until the man was flat on his back on the cold floor. He removed his foot from his chest and stopped. On his head.
He just stood there, looking down, until the scene dissolved into static.
Joseph woke up. “No!” The yell tore from his throat, raw and ragged. He bolted upright in bed, panting desperately, sheets pooled around his waist. His chest heaved, the bindings straining with each gasp. Sweat plastered his black hair to his forehead.
His eyes were open but unseeing, wide and fixed on some phantom in the far corner of the room. The brutal gasp of his breathing was the only sound. He was still back there, in the grey place.
Natasha looked at him and walked over.
Her bare feet were silent on the floor. She kept her movements smooth, predictable. “Joseph.” Her voice was low, a flat calm she didn’t feel. “Look at me.”
He flinched at the sound, his head snapping toward her. For a fraction of a second, the look in his blue eyes was pure, feral kill-order. His metal arm twitched, fingers curling. Then recognition flooded in, dousing the fire. The tension left his shoulders in a violent shudder.
He shook his head, hard, as if trying to dislodge water from his ears. Images flashed in his mind—splintered wood, a key scratching metal, the empty gaze of brown eyes going flat.
Natasha sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped under her weight. She moved slowly, telegraphing every action, her own heart knocking against her ribs. She reached out, her hands cool in the warm, sweat-damp air of the room. She grabbed his face, her palms against his stubbled jaw, her thumbs on the sharp planes of his cheekbones.
“Look at me,” she whispered, her voice firmer now. “Just me. It’s okay. You’re here.”
He flinched at the initial contact, a full-body recoil. His eyes, wide and lost, snapped open and found hers. The blue was fractured, glistening. His hands came up, wrapping around her wrists. His grip wasn’t restraining; it was anchoring, his fingers holding onto her like she was the only solid thing in a tilting room.
He breathed out. It was a long, broken sound that dissolved into a choked inhale. He looked at her, and the last wall came down.
He let go of her wrists. His hands slid down, around her waist. He pulled her closer with a sudden, desperate strength that made her breath catch. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his nose pressing against her skin, his mouth a hot, trembling line against her collarbone.
And he cried.
It wasn’t loud. It was a silent, shuddering convulsion that ripped through him. She felt the hot tears against her skin. She felt the muffled, agonized sob he tried to trap in his chest. His arms locked around her, binding her to him, as his whole body shook with the force of it.
She didn’t say anything else. Words were useless now. She brought one hand up to cradle the back of his head, her fingers sliding into his damp, messy hair. Her other arm wrapped around his broad back, her hand splayed between his shoulder blades. She held on.
He cried for the man whose neck he’d broken. He cried for the one he’d suffocated against a door. He cried for the cold, procedural voice that said “Hail Hydra” with his mouth.
Her fingers played with his hair soothing him. She moved her legs around him, shifting on the twisted sheets until she could properly hold him, what she knew calmed him. She pulled him closer, one hand a steady pressure on the back of his skull, the other tracing slow, firm circles on his back between the edges of the sterile pad.
The shuddering began to ease. The clenched fists against her hips slowly uncurled, his palms flattening against her. The awful, silent heaving of his chest softened into something more like exhaustion.
He let out a shaky breath against her skin. “I’m sorry.” He whispered.
The words were wrecked. Hollowed out.
“Stop.” Her voice was firm, but her hand in his hair was gentle. “Don’t apologise for this. Not to me.”
He shook his head, the motion small against her. “I saw… I felt it all. It was…”
“It wasn’t you.”
“It was my hands.” The statement was flat, factual. It hung between them. The ceramic knife. The crushing weight.
She didn’t argue. She knew better. Instead, she leaned back just enough to look at his face. In the low amber light, his skin was pale, tear tracks cutting through the residual dust from the plaza. His eyes were red-rimmed, shattered. She wiped his cheek with her thumb.
“These are your hands now,” she said, taking one and pressing his palm flat against her own chest. It was a strong, steady rhythm. “This is here. Now. That’s a then. It’s a then that they put inside your head.”
He looked at his hand on her chest, her hand on top of his. He looked up at her.
Her heartbeat was a steady, living rhythm against his palm. His own was a frantic, retreating echo. The warmth of her skin seeped through the thin cotton of her tank top. He could feel the slight, raised line of a scar just below his thumb—a souvenir from Belgrade, a fight she never talked about.
“This is real,” she whispered. Her green eyes held his, refusing to let him look away from the present.
He swallowed, his throat tight. “It feels more real than this, sometimes.”
“I know.” Her thumb stroked the back of his knuckles.
He closed his eyes. Images flashed—the man’s hands going to his throat, the limp feeling of another man’s body. He opened them, looking at her, taking a breath. Feeling the steady rhythm of her heart, his other hand was steady at her hip.
She looked at him, the feeling of his hand on her chest, on her hip she tried to ignore. It was a failing effort. The warmth of his palm bled through her top, a precise point of contact that short-circuited her usual calculus of risk and restraint.
“Talk,” she said, her voice barely audible. “Or don’t. But don’t go back there alone.”
His thumb moved, a slight, unconscious shift against her ribs. “It was a safehouse. Budapest, I think. The layout… the damp smell.” He swallowed.
“You’re not there.”
Natasha shifted her weight, her thigh pressing against his under the tangled sheets. The physical contact was a deliberate tether. “What does this room smell like right now?”
He blinked, drawn back. He inhaled slowly. “Soap. The perfume on your shirt. That Vanilla candle you gave me.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips. “See? Present tense.”
His hand on her hip flexed gently. “They were just men. Scared. One of them begged.” He let out a shaky breath. “The Asset didn’t care.”
She leaned forward, her forehead nearly touching his. “You care now. It’s eating you alive. That’s the difference.”
“It doesn’t bring them back.”
“No.” Her agreement was swift, unforgiving. “It doesn’t. But you’re not their instrument anymore.”
He nodded, looking at her. His hands rubbed slow circles into her hips through the thin fabric of her shorts. The motion was hesitant at first, then more certain, a silent language of gratitude and need. Her hands went to his head, her fingers threading through his hair, nails scraping gently against his scalp.
The rain started then, a sudden, soft patter against the high window. It was the only sound beyond their shared stillness.
He rested his forehead against hers closing his eyes. His metal hand, which had been a steady, warm pressure on her hip, slid slowly up the curve of her side, over the thin cotton of her tank. The cool, textured plates skimmed her ribs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake. The sensation sent a shiver through her, a sharp, involuntary intake of breath that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
His eyes opened, his gaze searching hers from that intimate distance. “Cold?” he murmured, his voice gravelly.
“No.” The word came out too fast. She didn’t elaborate.
He didn’t move the arm. His thumb, this time the vibranium one, traced the line of her bottom rib through the fabric. It was an exploratory touch, questioning. She held very still, her own hands now resting on his shoulders.
“Nat.” He whispered.
She looked at him. Her name like that—she hadn’t heard it in forever. A shudder went through her, deeper than the one his touch had caused.
“You can’t say my name like that,” she said. Her voice was low, a strained thread of sound.
His hands slightly tightened around her hips, still gentle. A silent question. “Why not?” he asked.
Her fingers tugged his hair softly, a counterpoint to the tension in her words. “You know why.”
They looked at each other. The air vanished. The rain blurred the window into a streaked, silver painting, isolating them in the amber glow. His eyes were clear now, all the shattered glass swept away, leaving only a blue so deep it felt bottomless. He saw the same conflict in her—the flicker of fear, the fierce, undeniable pull.
He leaned in slowly, giving her every chance to pull away, to re-erect the wall. She didn’t move. Her gaze dropped to his mouth. His breath warmed her lips. The space between them hummed.