Chapter 1

Lately, I hadn't really been able to catch a break.

After the hospital I was working at shut down, I got a call from my stepmother in DC.

And it was terminal.

She was my last close relative, seeing her go broke me.

My mother had left my father before I was two, leaving us both in a difficult financial situation I could never understand growing up. My father tried so hard to keep our lives together without her, I typically hardly noticed the situation at all. I only started to realize when I noticed that all of my school supplies were used donations made to the school, and that he would never let me grocery shop with him because he was heading to the food pantry.

My step mother helped though, they were married by the time I was 12. The next two years were some of the best in my life. We were like a normal family, and with two incomes we could do normal things. Like go out to eat, and do fun things on the weekend.

My father passed when I was 14, nearly 15. A freak car accident that broke both my step mother and I.

We made the best of it, and we were a wonderful, little family for quite a while.

She watched me go to college, and then medical school, all on scholarships and loans of course. But I finally became the doctor I wanted to be.

My step mother, Karyn, had gotten herself involved in politics in the recent years. It was good for her, she could do both of the things she loved the most; travel around the country and argue about something she was passionate about. She was only visiting DC to go to a conference when she got sick enough to be sent to the hospital suddenly. It quickly became too dangerous to bring her back to Chicago. And within a month of me losing my job, and a week of me getting to DC, she passed in her sleep.

My whole life had slowly unraveled for the last 26 years, and completely fell apart in the last month.

I couldn't really find a reason to return to Chicago.

I got in touch with an old college friend and crashed in their apartment until I found a new job at a new hospital. And finally, a new apartment.

It wasn't much, and I didn't have much, but I was still better than what I started out with. I was living out of just a suitcase for so long I forgot that I would eventually have to buy more clothes, and furniture. Coincidentally, my one bedroom apartment was furnished with mismatched and cheap furniture, nothing I would be proud to show friends. It was a good thing I had so few.

I had just stopped to get coffee, It wasn't I use to do, but the insomnia had been getting so bad that I couldn't really function without it. That's when I saw it on tv; A helicarrier- whatever the hell that was- had crashed into the Triskelion building, there are expected casualties, and every hospital in the city was gearing up to take in the injured. Evacuations were done, but the damage was so severe it was unknown as to how helpful they were.

That would include mine as well, The Georgetown university hospital. I skipped out of line for the coffee and caught a cab straight to work, knowing I would regret the lack of caffeine later. But chaos would be in full force at the hospital, and I needed to be there to help.

Almost immediately upon arrival, I was instructed by my frantic manager to join some of the other doctors visiting the building for on site medical care for the injured.

I joined 4 other doctors in an ambulance, and left the hospital within 5 minutes of getting there.

One of them cried. The mascara she had put on this morning with effort and care was streaming down her face as she tried to conceal the pain that her makeup could not. She cried silently, her shoulders shaking every few minutes when she attempted to catch her break, but ultimately she was still the majority of the ride. She just stared into the area next to my feet as I stared at her.

No one wanted to ask.

"Is everything okay?" I finally said. The gaze of the two other doctors, both men I had never met before, snap to me, but both the other woman and I stayed firm.

They had been sitting uncomfortably, wringing their hands, coughing occasionally, and looking anywhere but her. Her emotion made them so uneasy that they could even bring themselves to look at her, let alone talk to her. They see blood and gore every day, but the moment they see tears, they can't bare to witness.

It took her a moment to look up at me, her eyes slowly shifted up, until her blue eyes mirrored mine. They were red around the edges, and only starting to get swollen.

"Yes?" Her voice wavered, breaking off at the end so the word wasn't quite complete. Her lip quivered.

I felt my body sway with the turn of the ambulance, I debated my next words.

Maybe it was because we all felt emotions to be a weakness, a fatal flaw in all things human that can't be fixed. When we are shot or stabbed, there are stitches and procedures, there are answers and medicine. We get pushed down, and we stand back up- physically. But so many people are told to stop crying and to get over it that we only see emotion as an inconvenience, something that just gets in the way when we have to be adults. We must be the bigger and stronger person. Emotions only interfere with the job, make us unstable.

"It's alright, you know," I told her, letting her absorb the words for a moment before continuing, "you can cry, It's okay."

She nodded, pressing her lips together and squeezing her eyes shut. There was a long pause of silence before she opened her mouth wide, breathing in air that she had been missing the whole ride, and out a single sob. She pressed her face into her hands.

Her body and voice shook, "My husband works there."

"It's okay to cry," I repeated, but we had arrived.

Once the doors were thrown open we really knew the extent to the chaos. Our first task was to find out where the other doctors had set up and get integrated into the system they set up. This wasn't hard to do when the system was just to put the critically wounded that we found on an ambulance and treat the less serious injuries on site.

But there were just so many people, some were more seriously mentally injured from the experience than physically, but others wouldn't even make the ambulance ride to the nearest hospital.

Luckily the latter were fewer.

But it was still hard, to just stitch people up and tell them to go home, tell them to go about their normal day even though they just experienced a freak accident. Most people's faces were just blank as they pulled out cell phones or walked to where they hoped their car would still be.

I started losing count of the people, and the injuries. And when they stopped seeking us, we started seeking them.

Another doctor and I wandered about the area in search for lost and injured people who didn't know where to go. I encountered a few confused office workers and even a man with blood pouring down the side of his head that insisted on driving himself home. But I found the most concerning person when I started wandering just a bit too far.

I wasn't even sure why I was still walking. At some point I was so far away that no one injured was around, I was starting to see more healthy people than hurt. And then no people at all, I wasn't even on a street any more, just some park. But I just kept walking, it felt like I was put on autopilot. I didn't want to turn around and face the reality of the situation any more, I didn't want to see the blood of the injured or the red faces of those who lost. I just didn't want feel it any more.

I noticed him in the direction I was heading in, just a bit in the distance. I had to pick up speed to even come close to catching up.

He was big, bigger than me and I thought I was tall. Muscular and clad in ripped up clothes with cuts along his face. More like cuts that we commonly saw in fights, bruising from punches. There was metal covering the whole of his left arm, like some armour that I had never seen before.

He was facing away, so he didn't see me approach, but I could tell he heard. He tensed and slowed, and so did I.

We walked at the same pace for a few steps before he turned around and let me catch up.

"Are you injured? Do you need medical attention?" I asked. He just stood, like a statue not reacting. I took a second to study him while I waited, his scraggly brown hair was wet and sticking to his face, he looked like he needed to shave. He just looked tired, the area under his eyes were occupied by deep bags and his eye brown were pull down.

I suppose we both looked like we had been through hell in that moment.

"We have doctors back closer to the building, we can help you out with those cuts and," I stopped talking when he started reaching towards me, and specifically my neck.

I tried to back away and push at his hand, but he was too fast and too strong.

A hand wrapped around my elbow, and cold metal pressed down on my neck.

And I was out in seconds.

In hindsight, it wasn't too hard to be too fast or too strong for me. I don't sleep, and I don't know if I even eat half the time. I just forget. That hardly allows you to build up strength to fend off an attacker.

So, waking up in the middle of the park in the dark wasn't all too shocking. I could have just passed out from exhaustion and I wouldn't have known the difference. He could have been a hallucination and I wouldn't have known the difference.

The only reason I knew he was real were the five fingerprint bruises mapped across my neck that I could see in the mirror. Maybe that's why the taxi driver looked like he felt bad for me. He still didn't say anything though.

But either way, the next day started the same as the last; getting out of bed with little to no sleep and leaving the apartment for work. Though I did add the extra step of applying makeup to my neck to hopefully cover the bruising.

Once I left the apartment, it was directly to the same coffee shop as the day before, hopefully to carry through with the plans this time.

Today, the news was focused on the aftermath and the coping of yesterday's events. They replayed interviews with witnesses and family members of the injured. They had started to discuss blame to the incident, but I didn't care enough to really stick around. I headed out, this time with a coffee in hand, and walked to work; without a real emergency present I could show up at my normal time, so I didn't need a taxi.

In fact, I was early and slightly ahead of schedule, so I decided to take the long way to work. I walked around blocks I had never been on before and glanced into shops I would never need to go to. Along with the new route, came new people. Being in the city, I saw new faces I didn't recognize on the daily. On my usual route I would see a few people regularly, we just happened to have the same route to work, but on the new route I recognize no one.

I casually people watched on the walk, noting specifically the people that didn't want to be seen. Mainly because I was one of them; I walked fast, and stayed on the edge of the crowds with my head down. I didn't wear flashy or noticeable clothing. I just didn't want people to see me. So, I looked for people who felt the same, and tried to figure- with one glance- why they felt this way. I never really could.

That's when I saw him again; the same man who knocked me out yesterday, who gave me bruises on my neck. I knew it was him, I could never forget that face, I studied it in the moment when I was standing in front of him. And seeing it again made me more terrified than I ever had been.

But I walked towards him anyway, because he was just like the others; he was trying not to be seen.

He didn't look much different, just wearing a sweatshirt and jeans now, with the same scraggly hair and unshaven face as before.

I walked right up to him, blocking his path and forcing him to stop in front of me. My feet just walked without my brain, I knew it was dangerous but I didn't really care. He could kill me and I didn't really care.

Somehow I felt that he had to have recognized me, even though his facial expression didn't change. He did stop though, he didn't just continue and ignore me, so that had to mean something.

"Why'd you do that yesterday?" I questioned.

He justed looked around for a moment, keeping his head ducked down under his baseball cap. He looked back down at me, taking in my features before answering, "I don't know what you're talking about."

He tried to walk around me, but I moved to block his path, "Yes you do, and what was on your arm? Who are you?"

His eyes snapped up on my first question, and he bent down lower to get closer to me, "Look, you don't who I am, you're going to want to stay the hell away from me."

I looked down and waited, waiting for him to push around me, to leave.

But he didn't, he stood and waited for a response. He cared enough about what I had to say to wait for me.

"If you really thought that," I looked back up, "you would have left by now."

He didn't really seem to know what to say, he fidgeted with his hands and I took the opportunity to continue, " Can you tell me what your name is?"

With hesitation, he responded, "Bucky,"

"I'm Rosalia," I held out my right hand, and after a pause he shook it.

"So, why did you knock me out yesterday, Bucky?"

(A/N) Hi,

So i was just trying out a new writing style for myself and decided to write this, it was kind of a one sitting no edit thing for me, so sorry if there are any grammatical mistakes that I didn't catch. Please review and follow if you would be interested in seeing more of this, I know its just and intro sort of chapter and isn't too in depth but I had some plans for this character, I just need to know if any one is even interested.

But any way hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!