Nightmares
Day 13 at the Retreat
Taylar woke with a start, gasping for air as her heart pounded in her chest. It took precious moments to get her bearings, to focus on the dark shadows that made the ceiling. She knew where she was: the small cabin in the Catskills, a place that was feeling less like a safehouse and more like house arrest with every passing day.
She lay in bed, panting, fighting to catch her breath, willing the tightness in her chest to go away. The darkness above was unforgiving. The moon and stars outside the window were blotted out by dark storm clouds. The brewing storm would be a big one, the first major snow of the winter season was expected to fall that night.
Forcing herself to breathe through it, she began to sort herself out. She didn't remember dreaming, but the familiar miasma of bewilderment and confusion clung stubbornly to her mind. She loathed reaching for the lamp at the bedside. She didn't want to see if those feels were manifesting outwardly. She forced herself to stay calm, to really examine what was happening to her.
The last few days had been heavy on self-reflection.
Examining the feelings she realized they weren't hers. It was a shroud; a proverbial curtain hanging around her thoughts. Beneath the layer of fear and confusion, lay her own feelings, and her own mind: mostly she was annoyed at being woken. Learning to tell the difference between her own feelings and another person's emotions was a cliff she was still beginning to climb.
The slamming of her heart began to slow; it's painful crash against her ribs no longer distracting her. Just as she was about ready to roll over again, and try to get back to sleep, a secondary surge nearly overwhelmed her again: fear, grief, rage and shame all steamrolled through her, leaving her gasping from the intensity.
Then there was a crash: the sound of shattering glass, and the sudden, groaning protest of the pipes in the walls. Kicking off the blankets, Taylar jumped out of bed, and grabbed the nearest potential weapon: a book. Eyeing the book, she huffed and tossed it onto the bed, before venturing carefully out into the cabin itself. There was only supposed to be one other person there.
The Retreat was purposefully small and cozy. The main layout was open and free-flowing, with no delineation between a kitchen-space and a living-space. Only two rooms were segregated: the bedroom she occupied, and the washroom. Bucky's own sleeping arrangement on the couch had been unceremoniously dumped to the floor: the blankets a mess of tangles in the space between the couch and the coffee table.
Curious, she padded over to the windows, touching first one pane, then another. Taylar was relieved to find them all intact. But that didn't leave many other options. Moving towards the washroom door, Taylar called out for Bucky quietly. That combination of fear and rage that greeted her was almost intoxicating in it's potency. Swaying on her feet for a moment, she paused to catch both her breath and her bearings. The bathroom door swung open easily when she pushed it with her fingertips.
The sound of running water dominated the room. The pipes protesting being emptied out so violently because the showerhead had been busted off. It lay amid the frosted pieces of shattered glass all over the tiled floor, a twisted hunk of metal. Reaching inside, she found the light switch, needing to see the destruction better. Light hit the room, and Taylar almost reeled from the surge of fear that accompanied it.
She knew the cause before she could focus on him. Bucky was huddled in the corner of the shower stall, drenched from the cascade of cold water out of the broken pipe above him. Shattered glass glittered all around him; splintered tile beside him showed that he'd lashed out multiple times, at nothing, or perhaps at something only he could see. In his right hand, he held a lethal K-bar combat knife in a reverse grip, the thick spine of the blade resting against his forearm in a ready position.
Fear-filled blue eyes watched her every move, as Taylar began to pick her way across the field of glass. She took care with placing her bare feet, toeing aside larger pieces of glass so she wouldn't step on them.
"Bucky? Hey, it's me. It's Tay." She started to kneel before him, but stopped as he raised the K-bar menacingly.
Disbelief crossed his features for a moment, his brow beetling in a worried sort of recognition. His dark hair was plastered to his scalp, partly obscuring one eye. Shaking his head, he scrubbed the metal fist of his left hand across his eyes, with such force that anyone else would have been left bruised and marred. He didn't lower the knife.
Lowering her hand to the floor of the shower stall, she brushed some glass away, before sitting down in the icy water. Gooseflesh crawled up her back and raised the fine hairs on her forearms, but she felt no fear. She held her hand out expectantly.
"Give me the knife, Bucky. I know you aren't going to hurt me. Just, give me the knife please?"
He didn't budge an inch, staring at her. His lips were moving, in a repetitive series of sounds. Tay recognized the sound of Russian, but didn't know the words. She only knew that they weren't the same ones she'd gleaned from his personal fears.
"I don't speak Russian; you've gotta give me more to work with than that."
His fingers adjusted slightly on the K-bar, his knuckles turning white as he gripped it even tighter. The lance of his fear plunged through her, no less painful than she imagined that knife would really be. Maybe it was the shock of being addressed directly, but for a moment, Bucky switched to English.
"This isn't real. This isn't real. You're not real." The mantra was muttered, as he hunched his shoulders deeper, the ice cold water obviously not doing what it was meant to do. It wasn't bringing him back to reality from the depths of the night-terror.
She had to take a chance. If this went south, he would be able to easily overpower her and do whatever he wanted. But he was in pain, the likes of which Taylar hadn't experienced around him before. She knew enough to understand that Bucky Barnes was a good man, beneath it all. She was hoping his better nature wouldn't allow her to come to any harm. Reaching out with both hands, she clasped his right hand between hers. His skin was ice cold; just like hers would be within minutes beneath the freezing deluge of the busted shower pipe.
"I am very much real, thank you very much, James Barnes." Taylar didn't sound cross, but she managed to sneak in a teasing tone. "And you're awake.. and you're safe. You're here at the cabin. It's just us."
Names were power of a sort. Hearing his given name made his eyes widen, and for a second, he shook his hair out of his face. Beneath her hand, she felt his fingers loosen, and she simply took the K-bar out of his lax fingers. The knife was slid across the shattered glass, out of reach of the both of them. Bucky winced at the sound it made as it skittered over the cluttered surface.
"Tay?" She actually smiled when he shortened her name, dimples appearing in her cheeks as she graced him with the expression. "But... but-"
"But nothing," she countered when he couldn't formulate the right words. "Whatever it was, it was a dream, Bucky. A nightmare." Taylar leaned forward, shifting up to her knees so she could reach out and push Bucky's hair back from his face, tucking it behind his ear. "See, I'm really real."
Something broke through in that moment, as Taylar's fingers grazed along his cheek, stuttering slightly over the scratchy stubble. A sudden sense of relief exploded from beneath the fear, and Bucky acted impulsively. In one smooth motion, he uncurled himself, grabbed Taylar's arms, and bodily pulled her into his lap. She grabbed his shoulders, bracing to protect herself, even as his arms wrapped around her waist. The split second of her own panic was squashed by how much she sense he needed the contact. Even if he did startle her the way he went about it.
She relaxed by bits as he did nothing but hold on. And eventually, Taylar ran her fingers through his hair, eliciting a soft sound as he buried his face in her shoulder. She was determined to stay there as long as she could, but the cold water cascading over her shoulders, was making her shiver.
Bucky picked his head up after a particularly violent shiver. For the first time since she'd come into the shower with him, he appeared to actually see her. His wounded expression softened and he very carefully returned the earlier gesture, capturing some of her hair and sliding it back away from her face. There was hesitance, and fragility in his movement, the back of his knuckles brushing against her cheek almost too gently to feel.
Hypothermia was a bigger risk than breaking the tension of the moment. She could risk him backsliding into a defensive state. She already had confidence she could talk him out of that. But she really didn't want to die from something as mundane as untreated hypothermia.
"C'mon, let's go get a fire going, dry off, warm up. Okay? You and me, together. I'm gonna be right with you." It took more coaxing, repeating the promise that she wouldn't leave him, before Bucky was willing to let himself be pulled out of the grounding effects of the shower. He moved like a man in a trance, following Taylar's lead as she twined her hand into his and carefully picked her way through the shattered glass.
Bucky didn't take any care where he stepped, but the cuts opened up on his feet quickly healed, and he left little behind as evidence of the damage. He stood where she released his hand, dripping water on the hearth, while she piled logs into the fireplace. His thousand-yard stare was fixed dead-eyed on a random spot on the wall; Taylar wasn't sure what he was seeing. Dry tinder and the fire sparked up quickly, and soon the little fireplace was roaring with a warm orange glow.
Bucky only managed to focus when Taylar touched him, her fingers resting lightly on his arm when she wanted his attention. "I'm gonna grab us some towels. You sit... I'll be right back."
As she started to move away, Bucky came to life, panic rising in his chest as he grabbed her wrist before she was more than a step or two away. "No.. don't.." He was choked up, his voice scrubbed raw, and hoarse. "If you're here.. I'm not dreaming."
She covered his hand on her arm, gently removing his fingers from her wrist. It took a few tries to get him to actually let go. But instead of telling him to stay put, she laced their fingers together and drew him with her. Bucky followed like a beaten puppy, to afraid to admit more, too fearful that he was still dreaming. Taylar didn't judge him at all. Instead, she adapted.
Releasing his hand at the linen closet, Taylar retrieved a few towels for each of them, unfolding the first and draping it around Bucky's neck. With other towels tucked under her arm, she paused long enough to use one end of his towel to dry his face off for him, trying even to sop up some water from his lank hair. He continued to stare at her, or rather through her, until she slid her fingers down his metal arm, twining those artificial fingers into her petite ones.
The process repeated, as she guided him back to the hearth. Laying out one towel for them to sit on, she deftly wrapped her drenched hair with another. She knew she should probably change out of the wet clothes, but she didn't think Bucky would do well left alone just yet. Tugging his hand, she drew him down to sit with her.
For long silent minutes, he just sat, staring in the fire. Taylar could feel him slipping away, his inner anxiety building. But as soon as she reached out, sliding her hand over his back, he snapped back to the present. Tearing his eyes away from the fire, he focused on the pretty blonde beside him.
"Tay, I..." He faltered as she rubbed her palm in small circles against his back.
"You don't need to explain, Bucky. Not if you don't want to. Not now, not ever. But if you want to, I'm here." The glance she passed him told her a lot. He was lost, and didn't know what to do, how to react or what to think. So Taylar just kept rubbing his back, even as they both looked back into the fire. Silence gathered around them, tense at first, full of the weight of his unfinished confession, but eventually it felt comfortable, and companionable.
He leaned toward her, resting his shoulder against hers. After a while, she unwrapped the towel from her hair, the movement causing both of them to adjust to a more comfortable arrangement. As they resettled, Taylar patted her lap invitingly. Bucky remained clueless until she tugged his shoulder and guided him into position, curled on his side.
Pillowing his head in her lap, Bucky could feel her breathe; he reveled in the way her hand toyed with his hair, keeping it back from his face, running her fingers through it. For a few moments, he let his eyes close, but the familiar twist and tightness in his chest began again, and he had to open them with a gasp. Sleeping wasn't in the cards just yet.
He took a few minutes to steady himself. "Promise me something." His rough voice strained from trying to speak softly. When Taylar didn't answer him immediately, he rolled to his back, looking up at her earnestly. "If I lose it, if I'm too far gone, don't hesitate. Just-"
Taylar laid her fingers right against his lips, shutting him up. "Nope. We're not even discussing this. Because it's not going to happen. You could have hurt me today; you could have at any point in the last couple weeks, but you didn't. And you haven't. So cut yourself some slack, give yourself some credit, and try to trust me?"
She lifted her fingers from his lips, ready and poised to replace them if he decided to counter her. But Bucky wisely kept his mouth shut. This earned him a tap on the nose, light and playful, to match the momentary bright smile she flashed him. Bucky decided this view was far better than watching the fire, and if he were going to doze off, he'd prefer his vision filled with her. She laid her hand on his chest, and idly traced circles in the damp fabric of his shirt, until his breathing evened out, deepening as he drifted away into sleep.
