Dear Everyone I Have Killed [Part One]
She knows she is caught in a dream. Everything around her is bathed in a haze, like she has been rubbing her eyes too much. Colours are muted. Sounds are muffled. Still, she is terrified. She knows enough to be scared.
He stands in front of her, enraged. How did she not see him before?
His eyes are filled with blood. There is a darkness to his features. He looks like a vampire—like he could bite down on her jugular vein and suck the life from her without any hesitation.
Drip, drip drip. The blood from his eyes run down his cheeks like tears. She wants to wipe them away, but she can't move. She tries and tries to no avail. She has been chained to the ground like an animal. Cuffs encircle her wrists and ankles. It is as if she is the monster and not him.
"Let me go!" she demands, shrieking at the top of her lungs. "Let me go, let me go, let me go!"
He snarls, and in one moment he becomes the rightful animal. "You have betrayed the secrets of HYDRA," he says lowly. His voice sounds distorted, as though it is coming through a static airway. "Are you ready to receive your punishment?"
He leaps—an animal indeed—towards her. She screams, despite everything inside of her telling her this is a bad move. Her throat is dry, nothing is coming out, but she keeps her mouth open, rasps of air falling upon deaf ears.
The Winter Soldier is going to kill her.
Darcy wakes shaking and sweaty. Muted light filters through her blinds, signalling another grey day in Washington DC. Her heart pounds as she attempts to recall the dream so frightening it brought her out of unconsciousness. She remembers being terrified. She remembers a beast cloaked in shadows, his eyes bloody and cold. She wanted to help him, tried to help him, but he only wanted to hurt her. Kill her.
A dream. It was a dream, she tells herself, remembering a face—which just so happens to belong to the man crashing on her couch—streaked red with blood. A dream based on fact and accurate accounts from his time as a murder-for-hire, but a dream nonetheless.
Staring up at the ceiling, Darcy wills her legs to move. Today is the day. She needs to get up and prepare for this interview. The Post already knows she won't be in for the rest of the week. According to them, she's off on assignment. Essentially, she has been confined to her apartment for the duration of this exposé. She can't really imagine leaving anyway. Not with Bucky here. God knows what dark thoughts roam his mind. She would rather not leave him on his own until she's managed to momentarily act like his therapist and suck some of that darkness out of him.
That dream, though. It's plaguing her. A sudden thought enters Darcy's head—she is subconsciously afraid of him. Understandable, yes. She has, after all, skimmed through top secret files dedicated to how evil he is. But this isn't good for the exposé. They need to trust each other for this to work. She needs to trust him. After all, he didn't burst through her door in the middle of the night and slaughter her then—that's a good sign, she thinks.
Darcy turns herself over on her bed. Body now facing her bedside table, she reaches out for her phone. The electronic glow burns her tired eyes as she takes in the time. 7:17. Time to get up. With great difficulty, all while her heart is pounding erratically, a warning, telling her there's a serial killer on her couch—provided he hasn't bolted in the night—Darcy climbs out of bed. She goes up to the mirror hanging on her door and inspects her bed hair. Not bad, but she still frantically brushes through before reaching for the door knob.
Her body freezes as she exits her room. Comically, like this is some great farcical sitcom and not real life, she stands with one foot extended out. Bucky Barnes is still here—he is sitting at the edge of the sofa, staring directly at her. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't register that she is even there. She would conclude he was dead, but dead people are not efficient at sitting upright.
Darcy gently puts her foot down and tilts her head very slightly, observing the creature a few feet in front of her. She watches for any sign of movement. Any breath. Any blink of the eyes. Nothing. He is completely still, like a human statue. Maybe he started playing a game of Freeze Dance in the night and hasn't been able to turn the music back on? More likely this is a side effect of the years of mind control. He's probably lost in some trance. Sleeping with his eyes wide open.
She read somewhere that waking up a sleepwalker could be dangerous, but then she also read somewhere that it didn't matter. Bucky is not sleepwalking—this feels much more serious—but she will treat it as though he is, and she doesn't have time for him to wake up on his own. Carefully, slowly, Darcy walks deliberately forward, inching closer and closer to the Winter Soldier.
He definitely isn't dead. The moment she reaches him, she is washed in the heat radiating from his body.
Darcy holds in a breath and reaches out her hand. Her fingers curl around Bucky's right shoulder. Through the fabric of his long sleeves her hand burns like she has pressed a stovetop.
The moment she touches him, Darcy watches him come alive. Bucky snaps his head up in a jerky fashion. He glares at her, no emotion in his dark eyes, and his hand comes up suddenly to wrap around her wrist. He holds her tight, squeezing. Cutting off the blood supply to her hand in a heartbeat.
She draws in a piercing breath and allows her big eyes to widen with shock. Her dream is coming true. The Winter Soldier is going to kill her.
And then, in an instant, it's over. His face relaxes and he drops her wrist, his arm falling limply in his lap.
"Darcy . . ." he says, and in her name is a thousand apologies.
Rubbing her wrist reflexively—it hurts and at a glance she can see the outline of his fingers marked in a soft pink—Darcy shakes her head. "No, don't . . . don't worry. I shouldn't have touched you."
"Don't make excuses for my behaviour," he implores. He sounds tired. As if responding to her thought, he rubs his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says, looking up at her with eyes that match hers in size.
How old was he when they took him? If she remembers correctly, he was only a few years older than her. His face is weary and aged, but she sees that youthfulness in his gaze at this very moment. A man ripped from time for the sole purpose of playing hitman for a group of super villains.
He wouldn't like it—she isn't sure, but she has a feeling—but pity races through her. Poor, poor Bucky. Forced to fight, to kill, for the other side.
"Hey," she says, soft, "don't worry about it. In fact, let's forget it happened. You probably need some food." Darcy steps away from the sad looking boy and goes to the kitchen. She opens the fridge to find she has barely any food. Scowling, she thinks briefly of what she can make. "Do you like egg? I can put in some deli meat and cheese, and I think this is a green pepper . . . nope, it's a former yellow pepper, never mind. Either way, scrambled egg? I make a mean scrambled egg."
She turns around wearing an exhausted smile. Bucky has come over from the sofa and is standing so close to her she almost falls into the open refrigerator. Thankfully, unlike the day they met, he is no hero today; he keeps his hands by his sides as she rights herself. "Wow," she says, "you are really good at sneaking up on people." She winces, realising she probably should have kept that observation to herself. One needs to be stealthy to kill unsuspecting targets.
"Eggs," he says, ignoring her careless remark, "sound like a good idea. Do you need help?"
She wags her head sideways a couple of times. Her tangled hair pulls across her shoulders. "Nope. No. You probably need a shower, so while I cook these eggs up, you can, you know, have a shower. Do you have a change of clothes in that backpack?"
Bucky glances behind him at said backpack. "No," he admits. "I didn't think I would be staying in town."
Ducking out from the fridge, Darcy shuts the door and heads for the closet. "No worries. I have some clothes from an ex that should fit." Bucky's eyes instantly go to his left arm. The metal hand clenches. "He wore mostly muscle tees," she says.
"What's a muscle tee?"
Bucky's voice is nearby. Ignoring him for a second, Darcy quickly opens the closet door and prepares for a mountain of mess. She scrambles for a moment, trying to find John's bag of clothes. She sees it poking through a pile of creased washing and grabs for it, slamming the door before anything can fall on her. She spins around, coming face to face with the Winter Soldier yet again.
Walking over to the sofa, she pours out the contents of the bin bag and finds one of John's many muscle tees. She holds it up for Bucky to see. It has an obscure death metal band logo on the front. Skulls and fire and illegible text.
"This is a muscle tee," she says. "Called as such because it shows off your muscles. Guys tend to look like assholes when they wear them, but that doesn't matter. They'll fit you, and that is what counts at the moment. I washed them when he left me a little while ago thinking I'd give them back, so they're clean."
He takes it from her and observes the logo. His face pulls in uncertainty. "Why didn't you end up giving them back?"
"Um . . . not important."
"He isn't still looking for them, is he?"
"No, nothing like that. He sort of . . ." Darcy pauses, unsure of how to explain it to this ancient creature still unfamiliar with the modern world. "Well, it's called ghosting."
"Ghosting?"
"Yeah. Ghosting. It's when you're dating someone and suddenly they drop off the map. So, one day John and I were fine, the next he didn't show up for our movie date. He blocked me on social media, refused to pick up his phone when I called. All of his friends said they didn't know where he was," Darcy says incredulously. She watches the floor, remembering how much it hurt. "He became a ghost."
"People do that? Is that a thing people do on a regular basis?" Bucky asks, sounding almost angry. "That's horrible."
Darcy glances up at him. His eyebrows are scrunched. His nose is crinkled. Adorable. "That, my friend, is dating in the age of social media. Welcome to hell. Come on, you need that shower."
Darcy directs her guest towards the bathroom, explaining that he should have no issue switching the shower head on. She hands him a towel and some of John's clothes before he goes into the bathroom and shuts the door. The second he is out of sight, Darcy runs desperate hands through her hair. What is she doing? Other than nonchalantly harbouring a fugitive.
She goes to the window that looks over the city and wonders how many people inside just DC know about the half-man, half-machine. She wonders how many of those people would come at her with pitchforks—and by pitchforks she means crazy and outrageous military weapons designed to blow up the entirety of North Korea in one blast—if they knew he was having a shower in her apartment. A high number, she assumes. Based on the information she remembers from his file. Extremely Dangerous. Shoot on sight.
As soon as she hears the shower start up, Darcy pushes all of the negative thoughts out of her brain with great difficulty and starts clearing up the clothes she dumped on the sofa. When they are all packed away in the closet, she begins preparing breakfast. She tears up the honey-glazed ham in the meat drawer into smaller pieces and grates the remaining cheese before cracking open ten eggs of one dozen. Two for herself, eight for the man she assumes requires heaps upon heaps of protein.
The eggs are just fluffy enough when the shower shuts off. Darcy quickly gets the servings on plates and places them on the kitchen counter alongside two glasses of water. She comes out of the kitchen and waits for Bucky. A few seconds pass. The door to the bathroom swings. A waft of steam, humid and wet, tumbles out as Bucky exits. He spots her and comes to a halt.
He looks lost. Cornered. Like a wild animal who has been running rampant through an industrialised city coming face to face with animal control. His long hair is wet. It sticks to his stubble like woollen string. Darcy wants to move it behind his ear, just to make him feel more comfortable, but he would probably run for the hills if she touched him now.
"I'll go out today when we're done and pick you up some things," she says, noticing that he smells like her fruity Dove shower gel. He was born in the early 20th century. His masculinity is probably dependent on smelling like pine needles and dirt. "How do the clothes fit?"
Darcy surveys his clothed body. If it wasn't for the metal arm, she would almost believe he was a normal human being with no traumatic past of which to speak.
Bucky looks himself over. "They're okay. The muscle tee is weird," he says, stretching his arms out. The fabric waves and Darcy sees the skin of his sides. There are thin stripes over his ribs. Scars. His eyes find her and she looks up, pretending she wasn't staring. "I'm missing fabric."
"I don't understand them," she says. "They're alright for working out, but other than that they make no sense. Not that I work out. Anyway." Darcy claps, reaching over and taking Bucky's helping of scrambled egg. She offers it to him and points to the sofa. "We can eat and watch something if you like. I'll bet you've not seen a lot of great movies."
Another mention of his time with HYDRA. Vague, but enough to make Darcy kick herself. Either Bucky does not pick up on her slip, or he isn't up for glaring that morning—either way, he sits on the sofa with his plate and asks Darcy to pick something for them to watch. She decides on Ghostbusters. Amazing movie with the added benefit of also being harmless.
Look at her eating breakfast and watching a movie with the Winter Soldier. What the hell has her life come to?
The Winter Soldier Session I:
Darcy sits across from him on the floor in front of the TV. He is rigid atop the sofa—his shoulders are up by his ears, his breathing is ragged and random. He's scared. That much is obvious. She doesn't want him to be, but she knows no amount of reassurance from her will help soothe his anxieties. They are vast and nearly a century old.
"Okay," she says, readjusting her legs and laying her notepad flat in the coffee table. She clicks her pen a few times; she is nervous too. "Let's begin."
Looking over her writing, Darcy searches for an appropriate first question. She has spent the days since Bucky arrived generating points she wants to cover for the article.
Some are fluffy: Your favourite meal? What was your mom like?
Others are dark and will take enormous amounts of time to cover: Can you describe to me how your first kill felt? What was it like not having any control? The serum they injected in you—did it hurt?
She goes for an easy one first. To be honest, all she wants to do is cover the easy ones. Damn her boss. Let the world see the tape. Darcy Lewis cannot torture the mind of the Winter Soldier.
Flicking her eyes to Bucky's, she notices how intently he is watching her. She swallows and opens her mouth, "This is an exposé. I want to know everything there is to know about you," she says. "I want to start with your first kiss. Tell me about it."
Bucky's eyebrows furrow. "Why do you want to know about that?"
"So people will understand that before HYDRA took you, you were just a boy from New York," she explains. "It's not subtle. It's a technique used in a lot of articles to humanise controversial figures. But it helps. Trust me."
He still doesn't look sure. His forehead is still creased and his eyes are thin, but he complies. "I don't even know if I can remember my first kiss," he says, and for the second time that day Darcy feels a sharp pang of sorrow for Bucky Barnes.
"Try," she says softly. "I can give you some exercises to help with memory recollection if you like."
Bucky shakes his head. "No, I can do it on my own," he says. He closes his eyes. She sees them moving beneath their lids. Swerving, trying to go back in time. "Anne Coleman," he says suddenly. His eyes fly open. "I was twelve, she was thirteen. She liked walking home with me after school whenever Steve was sick."
There is a wistful look upon his face as he tells her this story, and she wishes more than anything she could place herself inside of his mind and see this memory in living colour.
"That was very kind of her." Darcy writes down the name 'Anne Coleman' without looking away from Bucky. "Did you like her?"
"Everyone did," he says. "She was from a wealthier family. Short, blond hair—I remember that. Nobody could understand why she would want to hang around with me, least of all myself. But she kept offering to walk home with me. One day, right outside my door, she bent down and kissed me."
"What was it like?" Darcy asks, scribbling down the information as discreetly as possible.
"Dry," he says, and that smile she thinks suits him so well winks at her. He is lost down memory lane. "I was so nervous my mouth went completely dry."
"What happened after that?"
Pausing, Bucky sucks in a breath. "She . . . well, she died."
Darcy's hand stops moving. "What? How?"
"Thugs," he says monotonously with a slight lift of his shoulders. "She was at a store when it got robbed the following weekend and got caught up in the crossfire."
So much for a fluffy beginning question. "Bucky, I'm so sorry," Darcy utters.
"It was a long time ago," he says. "It's okay now."
But it wasn't such a long time ago for someone like Bucky who probably still wakes up expecting it to be 1945.
"What did you do after it happened?" she asks after gathering herself.
Their gazes meet. He holds her there as if his hand is cupping her chin, keeping her in place. "I walked home alone," he says.