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I'm not exactly sure of what I was expecting to happen when we finally found him. I mean, I only thought of every possible scenario over and over again in my head since the moment that he left me in that cell that night. But I didn't think of this. I didn't ever, for one second, think that I would become a wanted fugitive; on the run from the law with Captain America, Sam Wilson, and an assassin.
My heart aches for him, though…
He's so broken, I couldn't even begin to explain it.
Emma looked up from her journal, her eyes focusing on the man in front of her. He had been unconscious for a while now. Every police car that passed by, every helicopter that flew over the abandoned warehouse they were holed up in, she thought to herself, this is it. And they would be caught, only she doubted that there'd be a cozy, government office waiting for them.
She didn't have her Polaroid, so instead she sketched a quick drawing of Bucky Barnes; his long sleeved red shirt, chestnut colored hair, and his metallic arm which was currently caught in a vice. Steve was so afraid of him running, or waking up and still wanting to kill everyone in his sight. Emma felt so terrible having helped plucked him out of the life that he was trying to build.
"Cap," Sam called to his friend. She was so busy with her nose stuck in her journal that she didn't see Bucky beginning to come to.
His dark blue eyes looked around, noticing her for a brief moment before Steve jogged into the room. "Steve," he muttered.
"Which Bucky am I talking to?" Her friend asked, just to be sure.
"Your mom's name was Sarah." Bucky replied, and then he began to chuckle. His perfectly white teeth shining against his rugged tan skin. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."
"You can't read that in a museum." Steve stated.
"Just like that we're supposed to be cool?" Sam asked, interrupting the two old friends, not sure if he should be buying Bucky's words or not.
"What did I do?" Barnes asked, his face was haunted.
"Enough," Emma answered as she stuck her pen in the middle of her journal and threw it back in her bag. Bucky's eyes moved back to her, a pained expression on his face.
Bucky sighed, rolling his head backwards. "Oh God, I knew this would happen." He said. "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words."
"Who was he?" Steve asked.
"I don't know."
"People are dead," Steve replied. "The bombing, the set-up. The doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than 'I don't know'."
Bucky thought for a moment, his thick brows coming together as he racked his memories. "He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where."
"Why would he need to know that?" Steve asked again.
"Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier," his friend replied with disdain.
Emma's ears perked up as Bucky recalled his time in Siberia. The experiments HYDRA carried out on prisoners of war, just like himself. With each word, she found herself not wanting to hear anymore. How he was used to train these super-assassins, and how he was beaten every day just so that they would become stronger. She felt her heart begin to constrict again.
And then she remembered the time that she, herself, was kept and experimented on. Enduring the same electroshock treatment in order to erase her memories, day in and day out. Being locked in a cell, not allowed to even use a restroom; slowly dying from starvation and dehydration as her body gave out from underneath her. She wondered how proud Dr. Bösch would be to find out that his experiment became a success.
"Who are they?" Steve interrupted.
"Their most elite death squad," Bucky returned. "More kills than anyone in HYDRA history, and that was before the serum."
"They all turn out like you?" Sam asked.
"Worse."
"The doctor," Emma added. "Could he control them?"
"Enough." His eyes didn't meet hers, and she almost felt disappointed as he looked down to the ground.
"He said he wanted to see an empire fall," Steve stated.
"With these guys he could do it." Bucky replied. "They speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight. Infiltrate, assassinate, destabilize. They could take a whole country down in one night, you'd never see them coming." She could hear her heart beating vigorously in her chest, and wondered if anyone else could.
Sam crossed the room to speak with Steve, their voices lowered, no doubt making plans. Emma stood and crossed the room to Barnes and knelt before him. His forehead was covered in blood and dirt. He flinched when she moved her hand up to his face and brushed the hair from his eyes. It was the first time she had actually seen them up close. My God, they're so blue.
"Does it hurt?" She muttered in an almost inaudible whisper. He shook his head, casting his gaze back down to the dirty concrete floor. She, of course, didn't believe him. With a glance over her shoulder to see both Steve and Sam on their phones with their backs towards her, Emma lifted her hand back up to Bucky's face and smoothed it over the bruised skin; instantly healing him of his already-formed concussion.
She knew that his body would have been able to heal it eventually, but she couldn't help but take the opportunity to be close to him. "What'd you do?" He asked her.
Emma stood back on her feet, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. "I just have a gentle touch." An obvious lie. "I'll go see if I can find something to get you out of this thing." She motioned to the vice that was keeping him prisoner and gave him a smile before walking off through the warehouse.
The plan was simple enough. Steve had made some calls, Sam had made some calls, and suddenly the group were stuffed in an old, blue Volkswagen beetle. The car wouldn't have been Emma's first choice, but it was Steve who made the ultimate decision on the getaway car. Before she even thought to, Sam blurted out the word 'shotgun' as soon as Steve drove the bug into the warehouse; and Emma nervously ended up having to climb in the backseat alongside Bucky, which Sam thought was hilarious.
She wasn't going to lie, witnessing the mass of a man try to squeeze into the backseat made a small smile form on her lips. But it was quickly replaced by a hard, thin line when she noticed that there was hardly any room for the both of them, and that his thigh had been touching her's for the majority of the ride; despite the fact that he was trying his absolute hardest to scoot as close to the window as possible.
"We've got to make a stop before we get going," Steve mentioned. "I called Sharon, she's going to bring us our gear."
"Thank God," Emma and Sam said in unison. Though, she hardly needed her handguns anymore, as the bullets could easily be replaced by her abilities; she wouldn't have to worry about the trouble of reloading when she could just suck the life out of her opponent.
They met her on the edge of the city. Her black Audi was already waiting for them when they arrived. Emma was scribbling in her journal, trying to avoid the prying eyes that sat next to her. Her new entries included a list of different shades of blue that could be used to describe those eyes; indigo, azure, cobalt, sky blue, cerulean, sapphire, lapis, arctic, denim. She also added the way her fingers sparked as she touched his skin, and that was before she began to heal him.
"Can you move your seat up?" The man next to her asked Sam. His husky voice pulled her from her from the sketch she was drawing of the metal hand that sat on his thigh. She drew every line, every curve, every indention.
"No." Sam replied dully. Emma shot him a glare, knowing that with just one push of Bucky's left arm, and Sam wouldn't have a choice but to move his seat up.
Bucky shifted in his seat, obviously uncomfortable, and Emma scooted a little bit more to the left in order to give him more room. He took advantage of the two inches she had given him and also moved his body to the left, and without thinking draped his metal appendage over the back of the bench seat. Her entire body froze, even her lungs as she held her breath. The heat that radiated off of this man made her own temperature rise in a way that she didn't think was possible.
His thigh continued to rest against her own, his arm still draped over the back of her seat. Her mind was a frenzy, her insides were reacting, and suddenly she felt her palms begin to tingle. She clenched her fists as tight as she could, digging her fingernails into the flesh as she willed her mind to get itself together. Not now, she thought. Focus, Emma!
Her fists began to shake, wanting desperately to release the energy that she was pulling from Bucky. Her eyes shifted towards him to see if he noticed anything, but his stare remained focused on Steve and Sharon outside of the car. But looking at him was only a mistake, as she was so suddenly aware of how handsome he was; the slight stubble of his cheeks, his jawline, the outline his muscles made in that shirt. She had to forcibly remove her eyes from him and focus elsewhere. The two hour drive to Leipzig would be torture if this is what she had to look forward to.
Maybe she could ask Sam to trade places.
Suddenly, she heard the slamming of the trunk and Steve was sliding back into the driver's seat. The tingling in her fingertips had dispersed, and she no longer felt the need to keep her fists balled. Her knuckles were sore as she straightened out her fingers and wiped her clammy hands on her jeans. Bucky pulled his arm out from behind her, and she had to stifle the whine that tried to escape her throat.
"Everything good?" Sam asked as Steve started up the old vehicle.
Her answer would have been 'absolutely not'. But instead Steve nodded his head, adjusting the rear view mirror. "I got everything," He replied. "She found a place for us to lay-low for the night. We'll head to Leipzig in the morning."
"Sounds great!" Emma stated, garnering a look from both Steve and Sam who turned his head to face her. She dare not look to the man at her left, or she might blow the entire car up. But, that'd probably be better than having to endure another second of this. "I'm just tired," she then replied. "It's been a long day and a bed would be great right about now."
She couldn't wait to be out of this car, away from Bucky Barnes and his stupid thighs, and his unrealistically warm body temperature. Her hands opened her journal, and she flipped back to the page with the list of blues, and then decided to make a list of things that could compare to the heat radiating off him; the very obvious one was a furnace, a wood-burning stove, a light that had been left on too long, space heater, the sun, the fires of Hell. If Steve didn't have his window open as he drove, she was sure that she would have melted right there.
The hour long drive to Wittenberg felt like a year; with Sam's playlists, and Steve's incessant need to drive right at the speed limit. They played game after game of 'I Spy', only when Emma said she spied something beautiful, she wasn't talking about Germany's vast landscapes and architecture. Sam even suggested they play a game of 'Never-Have-I-Ever', but the two senior citizens in the car had no idea what that was or how to play, and Emma made the comment that it wasn't fun without alcohol; which prompted a steely stare from Bucky that she could feel without looking at him.
"Who wants snacks?" Sam asked as they pulled up to a Petrol station not far from the motel Sharon had set up for them. She was so thankful Steve needed gas because the tension in the air was thick, and she was sure that she was the only one who could feel it.
"Can you please get me honey bun!?" She begged.
"Oh, I'll get you a honey bun, alright." Sam wagged his eyebrows at her before giving Bucky a cold glance. "How about you, old man?"
"I'm fine." He muttered in response.
Sam didn't ask again and stalked off towards the convenience store. Emma pushed the driver seat upwards and knocked on the window for Steve to open the door. He did so, and she squeezed out, stretching immediately as she sprung free. "Oh, it feels so good!" She moaned as she lifted her arms over her head and twisted until her back cracked.
"You mind pumping this?" Steve asked. "I've got to go to the men's room."
She took the pump from him, filling the car up until the handle clicked to signal that the tank was full. After replacing the gas cap, Emma climbed back into the backseat with Bucky, who's eyes were fixed elsewhere. Her mouth opened to say something, but she couldn't think of anything that she could possibly say that would spark any kind of interest in him.
"I remember."
Emma snapped her eyes up from the chipped nail polish on her fingernails to the man on her right. She wasn't sure if he was speaking to her, or to himself, or perhaps if he had just muttered a thought out loud on accident. "What?" She asked, just in case.
"You said," he began. "You said, 'you could at least recognize me'."
Her heart began to beat wildly once more. She had avoided asking him again, already accepting in her mind that he had no idea who she was. "Do you?" She asked, swallowing down the invisible rock in her throat.
"You were in Brotterode," he recalled. "At the HYDRA compound. That was you in that cell. You asked if I was going to kill you." Bucky still hadn't looked at her, but she kept her stare fixed on him.
She blinked a few times, surprised by his answer. "Why didn't you?" It was the only thing she wanted to know. The burning question that she had been dying to ask him since that night.
It was his turn to be surprised now. Almost turning completely in his seat, he looked her right in the eye. Her fingers began to itch once more as she all but drowned in his oceanic eyes. "I saw that look in your eyes," he told her. His voice was almost a whisper, as if it was a secret. "And I have seen that look before."
Of course he had. He had seen that same lost, and hopeless look in his own eyes every time he got the displeasure of looking into a mirror. She could feel her heart breaking as her mind began to ruminate over his words. He turned his head back to the sound of Steve and Sam approaching the car, and cleared his throat as he shifted back in his seat.
As Emma tried to get a reign on her feelings, she realized that her little personal mission- that saving Bucky Barnes- was going to be a lot harder than she had originally planned.
This is almost 100% original content, which makes me so happy. It's so hard to write original content when you have a timeline to stick to. But I hop you liked it because you'll be getting some more of their little road trip in the next chapter.
I'd like to point out that, for being a story about Bucky Barnes, my most used word is Steve according to my word-counter website. I don't know what to think about that.
Musical inspiration is brought to you by:
1. Sad Boy - Laila**
2. I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) - Four Tops
3. Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours) - Stevie Wonders
4. I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You - Tom Waits
Reviews would be great, guys! I know it's been slow, but I promise you it's so worth it. I have so much planned for this story, and I thrive on reviews. They motivate me so much more than no reviews. I'm so thankful for the ones I have, but a few more would be lovely. (Not begging).