Welcome! This story takes place during Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Rating is subject to change.
Please review :) and don't forget to be kind. To others. To yourself.
Enjoy!
Bucky walked down the street with no intended purpose. Brooklyn at night wasn't really different from Brooklyn in the day. It was raining. He didn't feel it. It was dark. He didn't notice. It was late. He didn't care. He had just finished another session with the doc, and it left him feeling...numb. Nothing new, really. He spent most days feeling either numb, or like a raw nerve. He was attempting to put the past behind him, but it was haunting.
Oh, how it was haunting.
Over the sound of the driving rain hitting the pavement he heard a commotion down an upcoming alley. He gave it no notice. He had no desire to get involved in anything. Not tonight.
He didn't even look into the alley as he passed, but that didn't stop his ears from hearing a woman's desperate cry for help. Bucky groaned, and turned on his heel back to the alley.
"I said no charge, right?" A man snickered as he held the woman by her hair.
Her face was bloody, and she was on her knees. Clearly a prostitute, and no more than twenty.
"No charge, no charge!" she answered, pleadingly.
Bucky cleared his throat as his heavy footfalls signaled his approach.
"Beat it," the man said.
The woman's eyes locked onto Bucky's. He was surprised at what he saw in them. Doubt. Like she'd been let down before. She didn't want to get her hopes up. Almost like his presence didn't affect her. Sad.
Bucky shook his head, exasperated. "Just let her go, and we can all go home." The weariness in his voice took even him by surprise.
"Mind your own business," The man never let go of the woman's hair.
Bucky sighed, and took two steps towards the man before he realized he was holding a gun in his other hand. That changed things. Not much, but some. Bucky didn't even slow his steps. His eyes fixed on his target. The gun went off.
Loud.
Close.
Vibrations.
The woman let out an involuntary shriek.
He felt the bullet deflect off of his arm, and into the brick wall. The look on the man's face almost, almost made Bucky smile. It never got old. The look on people's faces when they realized what they didn't already know.
That he was the Winter Solider.
Before the man knew what happened, Bucky had disarmed him and was holding him, by his neck against the wall. Without a word he dropped the man, and he ran away down the alley. Bucky turned his attention to the woman who was slowly making her way back to her feet.
"Thank you," she said with a shaky voice.
"No problem," Bucky nodded and started walking away.
"What are you? Some kind of hero?" she asked as she leaned against the wall.
"No,"
"What's your name?" she called after him.
"Bucky," he said over his shoulder.
"Thank-" she started to say again but he was gone. Disappeared around the corner and out of her sight.
That night Annie ran home. She left her heels in the alley where her life had almost been ended and she ran. She didn't stop until she was inside of her apartment and had locked the door. She'd come close before, but never that close. Her heart refused to beat normally. She turned her shower on and stripped and stepped inside. No matter how hard she scrubbed though, once again and just like always she couldn't wash away the filth she felt.
What she didn't know was that tonight she could sleep peacefully because there was a 106 year old man outside her building. He couldn't sleep and seeing her home was better than having hellish nightmares anyway.