A/N Hey! I know it's been pretty far between new chapters and I apologize for that! Writer's block is SO. REAL. Anyways, this chapter is a bit long and it is mostly some back story on our lovely Kit, there is a bit of blood and gore, just so you're aware before reading. I'm happy to be back and hopefully the writing bug will stick with me for a little while!
...Kit...
I decided to head back to the main house shortly after over hearing Steve and Bucky talking in the gym, but I wasn't quite ready to face them so I took the long way back. I drag out the time it takes me to get back to the front door until I don't think I can put it off any longer. I stomp back through the woods, crunch over the gravel of the jet's landing zone, and pass the gymnasium. The lights in the gym are now off and a tiny, hopeful voice in my head whispers that maybe Bucky is already asleep.
But if I learned anything rooming with him for the last few months I know that Bucky, on average, only sleeps about three hours a night and it is still early in his books. I quiet the hopeful voice as it tells me to creep by his door and head into my room. Crawl under the covers and force yourself to fall asleep, it says. I hesitate as I stare at the door, my hand raised in mid air balled up to knock when it swings open from the inside. Bucky is looking down at his hands and neither of us have time to react before he barrels into me and almost knocks us both to the ground. "Sorry!" He says, as he grabs me by the shoulders to steady me. "Oh," his tone drops into neutrality as he registers who he just ran head first into.
"Hey, Barnes. Got a minute?" I motion back towards his bedroom. I feel heat rise through my body as he squints his eyes and looks me up and down; sizing me up I suppose. I make an effort to begin to remove some of the emotional barricades I have set up within myself so that I can attempt to have an open conversation with him. After an uncomfortable silence, and an even more uncomfortable amount of time, he steps backwards and pushes the door open with his back. He gestures in a sweeping motion with his left arm for me to enter his room. I side step around him through the narrow doorway and he flips the lights back on before closing the door behind us.
"Sorry I don't have more furniture," he shrugs as he approaches his bed and sits facing me at the head of the mattress. His posture is casual, with his left leg folded under him on the bed and his right foot just barely touching the floor as he leans back against the headboard. As casual as he presents outwardly, his expression is guarded and suspicious. I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. When is he not suspicious? But then I consider the reason I'm here and I have to concede that if the positions were reversed, I'd be unsure and suspicious of him as well.
"Don't worry about it," I say. I pace across the small space at the foot of his bed frame and scratch the back of my neck. I'd kill to get rid of some of the awkward energy flowing through this god forsaken bedroom. Shaking out my hands, I decide to emulate his faux relaxed state and lean back against the wall facing him and press my foot against the white drywall. "How... are things?" I start lamely.
"How are things..." he quirks an eyebrow at me. "Things are fine. What do you want, Evans?" The muscle in his jaw ticks three times in quick succession as he clenches and unclenches his jaw grasping at maintaining his calm exterior.
"I just wanted to talk," I shrug and pick at my finger nails, anything to avoid looking directly at his face. Why must he insist on staring directly at every single person he speaks to?
"You haven't spoken to me in weeks," I can hear the beginning of anger slipping into his tone and I can feel my walls going back up. This is exactly why I didn't want to talk to him. He's so quick to anger and I don't need to be yelled at by anyone, least of all him. "You suddenly want to talk to me? Why? What do you want?" Using my foot I push myself away from the wall.
"Never mind," I stomp across his room and barely hear the squeak of his bed as he stands quickly and grabs me by the arm just as my hand closes around the doorknob.
"Wait, I'm sorry." He's standing so close to me that I can feel the heat of his breath as he speaks. I tap my thumb on the doorknob as I try to decide whether I want to stay or if I want to take the easy route and leave. "I'm sorry," he repeats, softer this time. His hand slides down my arm and rests over my hand still on the knob. I can feel his eyes on me. Always with the staring. I let him pull my hand away from the door and he leads me back towards the bed.
This time when he sits, I follow his lead and sit cross legged in front of him. At the end of the bed so that I can flee if I get too uncomfortable. His bed is unkempt with the blankets disheveled and pillows thrown haphazardly across the mattress. I reach for one of the pillows and pull it onto my lap, hugging it to my chest for comfort. For a long time we stay like this, with me staring down at the pillow and picking at the fabric of it's case and with Bucky staring at me, waiting.
"This isn't easy for me," I say finally.
"Me neither." I shake my head.
"No, I mean.. any of this." I finally look up from the pillow and gesture vaguely around us. "This team work thing. The whole... being a part of something bigger than myself. I don't know how to do this. How to cohabitate and build relationships."
"Yeah," he speaks slowly, as if talking to a child. "Me neither. None of this has been easy or natural for me either. It still doesn't feel right. It feels like my skin is crawling any time I'm with more than two of them for longer than a few minutes." I scoff at this. Socializing always came easy to James Barnes. He was always the life of the party and made quick friends with everyone he came into contact with.
"You don't get it," I shake my head.
"If you say that to me one more time I'm going to lose my mind. Apart from Wanda and Natasha, I'm the only person in this entire compound that knows anything about how you are feeling. Did you forget that Hydra had a hold on me for seventy years." He pauses and narrows his eyes at me. "I'm not the same person you grew up with, you know that right?"
"None of us are."
"Right, but as much as you've changed, I've done just as much changing. Hydra destroyed me. While you were in the Red Room being trained to be a Widow, they had me locked away. Frozen. And when I wasn't in a cryogenic sleep chamber they were torturing me. Brainwashing me into being their absolute slave. Using me to demolish cities, break apart governments, murder innocent people and help evil people into positions of power." For the first time tonight, he looks away from me as he relives his story. He rubs a point right above his left eyebrow as if remembering something that happened within Hydra's walls. "I lost myself within Hydra and most of who I was never came back. I know you've been through a lot too. I obviously wasn't privvy to what went on in the Widow Program, just as you weren't aware of what happened to me. I don't know what happened after you left Hydra, or what has happened to you since you're weird relationship with Reed. But I'm here, and I'm willing to listen."
So I talk. I tell him about the Red Room and the practices we were put through. Every day we were subjected to propaganda and videos telling us what to believe and who to trust. The training was rigorous and hard on every one of us, as we got older, we got meaner. Girls would often disappear in the middle of the night and we would never hear from them again. I kept my head down and got through it with the help of Natasha. She left before me and for a long time I was extremely bitter towards her. I felt abandoned by the one person I trusted with my life. I eventually made peace with it as I grew to understand her need to get away. Because the need grew within me and I eventually made my way out.
I migrate to the head of his bed to sit next to him and lean my head back against the bed frame so I can focus my eyes on the ceiling instead of facing him, it's easier to talk to the ceiling than to a sentient being I guess.
I had nowhere to go after escaping the Red Room and no living family to seek out. I had briefly considered finding Natasha, but I knew I could never join up with her and her new friends. They were too good for me, their missions above my pay grade. So instead I went to Madripoor, where all the down on their luck misfits that aren't afraid of getting their hands dirty go.
I fell into a rough crowd and eventually began my career as a bounty hunter. It was easy for me, I didn't ever hurt anyone that was a good person so I justified it to myself as bettering the world. I don't detail my return to the States, or the things I did once I got here. The secrets I stole from the government and sold to the highest bidder in Madripoor, or any country that wanted them. I gloss over the abuse I suffered at the hands of Keiran Reed and Co., and the tricky details of our relationship. I do tell him the moment I realized I had to get away from Keiran was when he attempted to kill me for what he felt was a betrayal.
"He thought I was selling him out to the government back in the early 2000's," I scoff and shake my head slightly, remembering the paranoia that seemed to ooze from Keiran. "Up until then we had been considered a 'power couple' of sorts. Except what power couple do you know where the man sells his girlfriend off to his business associates in exchange for high dollar favors? I doubt Sonny would've sold Cher down the line. Anyways," I wave a hand to breeze past this tidbit of information as he runs his hand over the stubble on his chin that is now bordering on a full beard. He's been a good audience for the entire time I've been speaking and this is the first sign of unease he's shown. "We appeared unstoppable to everyone else. I obviously was using a pseudonym since I technically wasn't allowed in the country, but being Reed's partner offered me quite a bit of protection from the government. So he thinks I'm a double agent, working for the government to get pardoned." I stop talking for a moment and let the fact that up until he caught me snooping through John's office, this is exactly what I was doing this time around. The weight of that presses down on me and my chest gives an uncomfortable squeeze. "I came home from lunch with some 'friends' one afternoon and Keiran was waiting for me. He was never home so it immediately set me on edge, right? He seemed erratic, moreso than usual. Pacing through the kitchen with this crazy look in his eyes. As soon as I walked into the room he started screaming at me, he didn't even give me a chance to respond before-" I break off, my voice shakey and betraying me as I relive one of the worst days of my life. My hand subconsciously cradles my ribcage as phantom pain twinges between them. I clear my throat and continue my story. "He took a serrated bread knife from the knife block and stabbed me six times in a straight line down my side. And then as I lay bleeding on the floor, he kneeled over me and for good measure drove the knife into my chest, just under my collar bone."
Imagined heat spreads across the scar on my chest as I remember the explosive pain the filled my entire body that day. I was so caught off guard that I didn't even have the forethought to stop him. Thinking back on it now, I could've easily overtaken him. But I neer expected him to turn on me the way he did. It happened so fast... He thought that he had done enough, since I had a version of the super soldier serum in the Red Room, he assumed that one of the wounds would be deep enough or bad enough that I wouldn't have time to heal before I bled out on the kitchen floor. He left me there for dead and I really thought that was the end of my life. I somehow managed to find the strength to crawl to the living room where I had dropped my purse and dug my phone out to dial my emergency contact.
"He was an underground doctor," I explain to Bucky. "Someone within the community that works with criminals. No questions asked sort of thing, you know? He patched me up and sent me out of the country. Where I worked happily as a bounty hunter again for just about anyone that would pay. I wound up getting wind that you were looking for me. Well, more specifically that the Avengers were looking for me and had sent you. So I went into hiding. That's when you caught up to me in Istanbul and ruined my perfectly good apartment and dragged me back to this hellscape." I try to end it with a lighter tone, but the joke falls flat.
"You weren't hiding very well," Bucky finally says. "And your friend was basically a homing beacon for you, by the way. That guy I blew up."
"You didn't blow him up," I say thankful for the slight veer in conversation. "Just the wall in front of him. He's fine now though."
Silence falls over us like a heavy blanket and I notice for the first time that soft light is beginning to peak through the bottom of Bucky's blinds. "Is it your turn?" I ask softly.
"My turn for what?" I turn to look at him for the first time in what is most likely hours.
"Your turn to bare your soul to me. Tell me all about your trauma, you know that kind of turn." He smiles softly at me and reaches for my hand. With a soft squeeze, he offers a little bit of comfort.
"Maybe another night, Kit. Thank you for sharing with me though."
"Thanks for listening," I shrug. "I guess I had some things to get off my chest." With my words his eyes fly to my collar bone where my shirt has slid just enough to reveal the very corner of my scar. Something lights up in his eyes and I'm not sure how to read it, but it doesn't look great from where I sit. In a single blink, the look is gone just as fast as it comes though so I don't get a chance to over analyze it. Instead of dwelling on it, he releases my hand and hesitates just briefly before pulling the shoulder of my shirt to the side and running his thumb over the scar. His palm is warm against the soft skin on my chest and the contact sends a shiver down my spine. When he finally looks away from the scar and makes eye contact with me I note how dilated his pupils are. I lean away from him, wanting to get away from this weird charged energy between us and whatever spell put on me when he placed his hand against my skin is broken. He mimics me and leans back slightly with a toothy grin.
"Have you ever considered therapy, Kit?"