Laughing, Bucky opened the door to the little apartment and pulled the girl in after him. She giggled as he lifted a finger to his lips and mouthed,
pointing at the lump on one of the beds and cocking an eyebrow in his signature smirk.
The apartment was tiny: a bedroom, kitchen, and dining room all in one, with a door to the bathroom to the right. Decorated sparsely, the beds were more like cots than real beds, the furniture was limited to a rickety table, and the only image decorating the wall was a painting of a lighthouse by a stormy sea that Steve had chosen. But Bucky was used to it, and the girl didn't seem to mind. She bounced on her heels, looking around the room excitedly.
And then she screamed.
Bucky's first move was to quiet her. Steve had gotten in a fistfight that day and needed to sleep. But when his eyes fell where the girl's trembling finger was pointing, he too jerked back as the world spun out from beneath him.
The quilt covering Steve's sleeping form was soaked through with blood.
Instantly, Bucky was at his best friend's side, kneeling, pulling back the quilt to inspect the damage as uncontrollable fear rose in his chest. Lifeless blue eyes stared back at him.
While the world crumbled and spun and blackened around him and a scream threatened to burst out of his throat, Bucky dragged his eyes upwards to gaze at the figure that he knew was standing there.
The man with the metal arm looked back at him.
It was like this every night.
That man plagued his dreams: a scrawny blond kid with a narrow nose and sky blue eyes. And the other one, the taller one. Both so achingly familiar, like distant memories long put out of reach, both so far away. The blond one always died, in the dreams. And he was always the killer. He was always the one standing there, like some vengeful god, gazing over the dead body with no qualms, no guilt. He was always the one who had spilt that blood, who caused the despair of the other man, of Bucky. It was all his fault, and it happened every night.
The nightmares had started coming the night he ran. Put on a sweatshirt and a ball cap and gloves to cover his metal hand, and walked and walked until somehow he had ended up at a museum exhibit for a man called Captain America. The man whom he had tried to kill. The man who hadn't fought back. The man whose words... well, he was certain that it was those words that had started the dreams.
When the man had said that, an image clear as day, of a stick-thin boy in too-large clothes, his expression intent, with the same face as this Captain America, had flashed in front of his eyes, and with it a shock of emotion, unplaceable and startling. Both were gone as soon as they had come.
But nothing had been quite the same after that. For the first time in his life, he hadn't destroyed- he had saved. For the first time, he hadn't killed- he had dragged someone away from death.
This was what he knew, from the exhibit and the nightmares:
The scrawny boy- Steve, the nightmares called him- was Captain America, a genetically engineered super soldier who had been frozen for seventy years and only recently rescued.
His best friend was named James Buchanan Barnes. The dreams called him Bucky. He died during World War Two (whatever that was) by falling off a train.
That was all.
This particular nightmare was no different from the rest- they all followed the same vein- but he still woke breathing heavily, drenched with cold sweat, his hands in fists.
These days he had been sleeping wherever he could, away from people- today it was a wide alleyway that smelled of garbage; he was using sheets of cardboard as a sort of protection from the rain-sodden ground. This caused his whole body to ache, but this was another sensation that he was used to, and it didn't bother him. He could see that the sun was starting to rise, painting the sky in vibrant shades of orange and pink. He tilted his head up to look at it while he tried desperately to steady his pounding heart.
Then he heard the voice.
"Come on, I'll show you where you can find the best coffee in the city." The voice was female, the words said in a light and cheerful tone. The sound of footsteps stopped right at the mouth of the alleyway.
His heart jolting again, he scrambled backwards, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt down over his eyes, desperate not to be caught. In his haste, he hit his elbow against a metal trash can, producing a loud clang. The voice paused.
Another voice spoke up. "It's just a raccoon, Nat." This voice was male and... horrible. He heard this voice every night in his nightmares, and it flooded his body with ice.
"No, I thought I saw..." The first voice, Nat, trailed off, while he huddled, immobile, folding in on himself, wishing he could fold himself up forever and disappear. "I could've sworn-"
"Coffee," said Steve Rogers pointedly. "Best in the city."
"Right." The discomfort in Nat's voice was still clear, but she seemed to shake it off. "Anyway, this shop's been around since dinosaur times, it's almost as old as you are, Rogers."
"Okay, okay..."
The voices faded away.
He couldn't move.
He couldn't breathe.
But he couldn't stay here.
So he ran.