A/N: I think I re-wrote this one about six times. I hope the final product is pleasing. Feel free to shoot me a review! Bon apétit!
"We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease."
~N.K. Jemisin
She knew she had just been deeply asleep when she opened her eyes. The momentary pounding of a headache left her disoriented as she raised her head from the pillow.
It was still pitch-black outside. The tepid night air wafted in through the window hole, carrying with it the distant sound of a barking dog. She shifted, mattress creaking, and craned her neck to glimpse the alarm clock at her bedside. It was 3:30 in the morning. She stilled, drawing in one slow, thorough breath, and cursing whatever had made her wake up.
On the gentle wind, Avery picked up the sound of a voice.
It was close. A man's voice.
The Soldier.
It sounded like he was talking to someone, but there was an odd quality in his tone. Her stomach plunged at the memory of their recent conversation. Had his employers- the people who wiped his memory, tortured him and froze him again and again- finally caught up with him?
She eased up carefully from the bed and waited, hoping that maybe she had just been hearing the tail end of a dream.
It didn't stop.
It took all her concentration to avoid stepping on loose floorboards as she made her way to the window. When she stepped out onto the fire escape, she stopped, trying to assess ways to make it up without alerting anyone to her presence.
She strained to hear more. Whoever the Soldier was speaking to, they weren't responding.
The snatches of his voice dropped out. She paused on the steps. The wind tickled her lashes in the quiet, and she debated whether she should go back inside.
All at once, he cried out, his pleas desperate and muffled like those of a tortured animal. Avery's blood surged- they were hurting him. She was already halfway up the ladder; it was too late to go back for her pocketknife. Maybe if she could just get up there, she could distract them long enough for the Soldier to gain the upper hand-
She forgot about trying to be quiet and clambered up the rusty steps as fast as she could, metal slamming against the brick façade. She hoisted herself up and searched wildly for the attackers, getting ready to throw herself at whoever was closest-
She stopped. Took a gulp air. Swept her eyes over the surface of the roof.
There was no one there. The gray expanse of the roof was calm and uninterrupted.
Uninterrupted, that is, except for the Soldier, who was curled up in a ball on the sleeping bag, twitching violently and giving out strangled cries in his sleep.
Her shoulders fell. Relief practically made her tipsy.
It seemed she no longer needed to remind herself of her vow of friendship in order to protect him. It came naturally now.
Without stopping to think about how badly it could have gone if there had been attackers on the roof, she hastened over, kneeling down beside him.
His jaw was pulled tight, teeth clenched, and his eyes moved rapidly back and forth beneath his lids. Another fragment of garbled speech escaped his lips and his arms covered his chest defensively as she watched.
"Bucky," she said insistently, reaching for his arm, "Wake up. You're dreaming." She grabbed his wrist and squeezed. "B-"
It happened so fast, there was a few-second delay where she had to piece it together.
A white-hot flash of pain exploded behind her eyes as the back of her head hit the concrete. All the wind rushed clean out of her lungs. Instinctively, she tried to move, but her body was pinned beneath her. She blinked rapidly, trying to see what was happening, and trying to focus on anything but the pain of icy metal crushing her windpipe.
He had flipped her. He was holding her down in a vice grip by the neck. Through her tunnel vision, she could just make out his face- and it was unrecognizable.
If his mask of indifference had ever faltered in her presence before, it was completely gone now. His eyes were wild, his features contorted in what she could only recognize as his 'going in for the kill' face. He looked like he was shaking, but the resolute chokehold around her neck could've fooled her.
This was nothing like the day he'd pinned her in the alley. Then, he had been cool, controlled, detached. Now, it was like he was having one of his episodes, but he was acting out defensively.
And now he didn't recognize her.
He was blind to anything other than whatever dream he had just resurfaced from. She scratched feebly at his palm around her throat. Tears blurred her vision. His grasp only tightened in response.
She'd been in this spot with him before, and she sure as hell wasn't going to die this way now.
"Stop, it's me!" She tried to gasp, but couldn't. Through a painful coughing fit, she tried again, "It's just me! You're safe!"
The last bit only came out as a faint squeak. His hand stopped squeezing. He froze.
Trying to comprehend what she said, he twitched once, bearing his teeth. He was a portrait of uncertainty.
Avery knew she couldn't hold on to consciousness much longer. A few tears leaked out. In a last-ditch effort, she reached for any bare portion of his skin- the closest thing just happened to be his cheek- and grazed it with her fingers.
"Please," she rasped.
His pupils dilated at the contact. He blinked once.
There. A flicker.
His entire body gave one spasm, and he leapt back like he had been burned, tripping over himself to get away from her. She immediately doubled over and began coughing harder than she ever had in her life. She was on her knees for about fifteen seconds before she could get a full breath. He throat felt like an iron had passed through it, and the ground swung back and forth beneath her from the forced lack of oxygen.
His boots scraped the concrete to her right. Through the hair hanging in her face, she could see that he was moving toward her.
To do what, she had no idea.
"No!" she said louder and harsher than she meant to, throwing up a warning hand. Using her voice sent her into more coughing, through which she managed, "No. Stay over there."
Her head throbbed in time with the pounding of her injured pride. He had promised never to hurt her. Like the naïve girl she was, she had believed him.
A part of her knew that wasn't fair to him, though. It was obvious he hadn't done it on purpose. She'd heard of soldiers and PTSD victims having similar reactions to people who woke them from their nightmares. The only difference between him and them was that this soldier had an arm that could break a car in half.
She was lucky he'd hesitated. She was lucky he'd remembered her. If he had killed her in a spell of amnesia and then woken up to see what he had done...
While she struggled to breathe in the corner of the roof, a sinking feeling suggested this was exactly what she had told herself not to do: to forget what he was capable of. She had mistaken the glimpses of his gentleness and humor as safety, and this was how she was paying for it.
Avery straightened from her point on the ground, brushing away her dark curls to risk a glance at him.
He had the forlorn look of someone who'd been told that they had ten minutes to live- shock, regret, and fear of the inevitable.
He breathed rapidly. "I didn't mean-"
His adam's apple bobbed up and down; he looked like he was trying not to choke.
Both his hands flew up and grabbed fistfuls of his hair. He stumbled further back like his thoughts were bullets bombarding him in a war zone. With a heart-wrenching scream of rage let loose to echo in the still air, he spun, taking one wild swing at the concrete wall around the roof. His vibranium-enforced fist connected with it, chunks of stone flying with the crunch of a wrecking ball smashing a building. A massive indent was left in the wall.
Her heart constricted. Unbidden, tears that had nothing to do with being choked gathered in her eyes. It was so violent, so unexpected, and so revealing of the unspoken hell he'd been living in, that every part of her retaining the sting of betrayal instantly crumbled.
He stayed facing away from her. The sinews of his neck were pulled so tight that they looked on the verge of ripping.
Avery's lip quivered- the frustration and self-hatred that she had just glimpsed spoke of a pain that had been festering for quite a while.
She made her movements purposefully noisy as she got to her feet. He needed to know she was coming. Every step she took seemed to span a thousand miles.
She came to a stop behind him. With a burdensomely slow, deliberate movement, she laid a feather-light hand on his back, just below the space between his shoulder blades.
He convulsed. Quickly, before he could pull away, she looped her arms around his middle in a gentle embrace from behind.
He gasped for air like someone had stabbed him. She had the advantage; he was too afraid of hurting her again to move at all.
The muscles of his back were firm and defined as she held him. Her head just barely came up to his shoulders. In any other situation, she would have blushed beet-red at being in a position like this with someone that looked like him.
Not now, though. This was too important.
"...What are you doing?" he asked numbly.
His voice shook when he spoke. He was still unstable. It was a testament to his trust in her that he hadn't snapped her neck on reflex the minute she touched him.
"I know you didn't mean to," came her hoarse whisper of a reply.
Even the black fabric of his undershirt carried his scent of bitter metal and acrid gunpowder. She became aware of his shallow breaths- and became aware that she wasn't breathing at all. Consciously inhaling, she pushed the thought toward him to calm down.
In, out.
I must have one heck of a deep-seated death wish, she reflected with a detached serenity.
In, out.
His muscles stayed knotted for a long time. Only when her arms were getting tired did his frame finally relax a fraction of a centimeter.
In, out.
His arms lowered from his surprised stance, and the chill of the bionic arm that had carried out countless murders sapped the warmth from her left elbow.
In, out. They were breathing in time now.
She knew he wouldn't reciprocate the embrace, but for that heartbeat, it was enough that he didn't pull away. It may have been that she was clinging to him, but he was the one that needed her. And they both knew it.
When she felt that her point had been made clear enough, she stepped to his side, sensing that he wasn't quite ready to look her in the face. She had to tread carefully now more than ever.
"I almost killed you," he said. The truth struck a painful chord in the air, like the feeling of metal on teeth.
She stopped herself from refuting it, realizing it would sound inauthentic, and said the only thing she could muster.
"It was an accident. You didn't know what you were doing." She coughed again, trying hard to make it quiet.
He turned, his attention dropping to her neck. The bruises burned as he beheld them.
He began reaching out to touch her. When his arm entered his line of vision, he stopped and quickly pulled back, a flicker of livid disgust flashing briefly across his face. Darkness clouded his features as he stood, looking once from her back to the arm.
"I'm leaving in the morning," he said somberly, resolutely.
Her mouth fell open the same moment her heart plummeted.
"What?"
His subdued monotone was cruelly similar to how he had spoken when they first met, carefully calculated to betray nothing.
"You should go back inside."
His words shocked her almost as much as the choking had. The speed with which he returned to 'factory settings' was neck breaking. Even more astonishing, he was doing it on purpose this time. She could tell—he was shutting her out.
She stood mute for a full minute.
"Look," she finally said, "Just because I get a little bruised is no reason for you to lose it and run off." Uneasiness was audible in her tone, a result of his emotional retreat.
He stared at her blankly, the visage of frigid intensity staying stubbornly put. She took a step closer, looking him dead in the face, although the emptiness that looked back at her hurt.
Her voice dropped an octave. "I can't help you if you leave."
His jaw worked. He was visibly losing the calculated mask. Through gritted teeth, he said, "You can't help anyone if you're dead."
"I don't look dead to you, do I?"
He snapped. "I'm a weapon, Avery!" She flinched, startled.
He remembered himself and straightened, running his eyes coldly up and down her form.
"I look at you right now and see twenty different ways to kill you. To stop your heart. To sever your spinal cord. To crush your trachea, or cut off blood supply to your brain." His gaze burned a hole in her. "The next time I forget you may be the last time you remember anything."
She knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to scare her away. She was afraid, but not for her own sake- for his.
"You think I don't know that you're dangerous?" she demanded furtively, bending to look him in the eye. "You think I don't know the risks I'm taking by having you here?" She felt her own anger build as she spoke. "If you want to go, then by all means, leave. But if you're going because you're afraid of what you'll do to me— you need to understand that I chose this. I did. I chose to risk my life, and I chose to make you a promise. Don't try to stop me from keeping my promises, Bucky. Don't."
It frustrated her to no end, but in the silence that followed, she still couldn't tell what he was thinking as he impassively swept his eyes over her hair, her face.
She was thankful for the darkness that shrouded both of them; she could feel the residual angry blush heating her cheeks. Simultaneously, she dreaded with surprising fervor that he would ignore her and leave anyway. She dreaded even more that he would do so in his typical fashion and disappear without a word the minute she turned her back.
The full extent of the damage had been laid bare in his outburst, and now she worried at the prospect of him being on his own.
"What?" she challenged unsteadily, wishing he would stop examining her like a frog on the dissection table and give her a straight answer.
His stare refocused. The Soldier opened his mouth, but something passed across his face and silenced him. When he spoke, she had the feeling it wasn't what he had originally intended to say.
"Captain America was in my dream."
She watched him, afraid to speak further, and afraid to hope that this meant he was staying.
His countenance was muted, but not empty. "I think it was a memory." He was clearly having trouble biting out the words. "We seemed to be...friends."
She tightened her jacket around her. Tentatively, she asked, "Why do you say that?"
"We were on a street corner. New York, a long time ago. We had just left a bar. I was calling him 'Captain Chrome Dome.'"
They met each other's eyes. Avery sniggered, the tension that had been building in her releasing unsteadily. He smirked distantly, but sobered.
"Then... we were in the snow. On a train, I think. I don't know why we were there, but- I fell. I fell a long way. There was a lot of pain. I should have died."
She swallowed. That part in the dream was probably around the time she had woken him.
"Why didn't you?"
He was looking at her, but he wasn't seeing her.
"They found me."
His inflection silenced her. He was talking about his employers. He never looked like that unless he was talking about them.
She couldn't think of anything to say. She backed up until her bottom bumped the wall, then slid down to sit on the concrete. Peeking up at him, she noted that he was still staring vacantly where she had been standing.
Avery closed her eyes and tilted her head back to rest on the wall. Maybe, in this case, silence was the best thing she could give. She wasn't sure she wanted to leave him alone just yet with the ghosts of his past closing in, anyway.
As she hugged herself for warmth, she waited for him to speak again.
The next thing she knew, she was waking up to a face full of padded blue nylon.
She bolted upright.
The sun had risen. She was lying on the Soldier's unoccupied sleeping bag on the other side of the roof. She must have fallen asleep while she was waiting for him to talk, although she definitely didn't remember putting herself on the sleeping bag.
A curious warm feeling spread through her.
She turned, surveying the whole of the roof, warmth sapping out of her in an instant.
It was truly empty now. He was gone.