Ochre57 and FireandBlood, thank you so much for leaving reviews on the last chapter! Sorry for the wait, I was in a bit of a slump from a string of less reviews on another story that don't love my writing. Which is fine! But it made me question EVERY single thing I wrote so I went in circles with this chapter before deleting and writing what I wanted (thanks to FireandBlood's help! This chapter brought to you entirely by FireandBlood)
Ochre57- I'm really looking forward to getting more of Elia's character in the story! She's spent most/all the story drugged, so I feel like we still don't really know her. I can't wait to have her personality start showing up more. Thanks for reading and thank you so much (again) for the comment. And I'm glad you're liking Natasha's pov- I plan to keep her very much in the story.
Chapter 11
Elia tried to open her eyes.
She blinked.
Tried again.
Her eyes were open. But she couldn't see.
Her breath caught in her throat. She almost choked.
Where was she? What was happening?
She struggled to move.
She blinked her eyes more frantically, struggled to move muscles that weren't cooperating.
She was captive. They were drugging her. Again.
She fought harder then realized she could see. But the room was dark. She paused, waiting for eyes to adjust to the room. The familiar room. She was…home?
She managed to get her arms and legs moving in an uncoordinated fashion. She half dragged herself to the edge of her bed, then couldn't work out how to get out of the bed.
Was she home? Or imagining this? She still felt drugged. Had they given her something different? Something making her hallucinate?
She tried to grip the blanket with her fingers, but they were numb. She couldn't even feel the blanket, even as she watched her fingers brush against it with movements she could barely control.
Her breath came with more force, panic pushing air from her lungs. She couldn't get a full breath.
She looked around, trying to make sense of the dark surroundings.
A shadow filled the doorway.
Rumlow. He was going to inject her again.
"No," she said. "No." She couldn't do this anymore. She needed to get away.
"I…no." She tried to get some firmness behind the refusal, but it sounded like nothing more than a whisper in her ears. She struggled towards the edge of the bed. Why weren't her arms working? She started to tumble headfirst, and then strong hands had her.
"Let me go," she insisted. "I'm not fighting. Not for Hydra." Why were her words slurring? She hadn't even been injected yet.
The hands got her back on the bed with little gentleness. She looked up, but the face in front of her blurred.
Whatever Hydra operative this was, he wasn't taking her to the gym to force her to learn to be a combatant.
He quickly released her and backed away.
Elia looked around. The room around her was blurry, but she thought it was her room. In her own apartment. Right? Not a hallucination. She looked again to the Hydra agent, but the room started spinning and she closed her eyes.
Then the darkness was tugging at her, pulling her back under.
#
Steve tried to move.
Everything hurt. Violently.
"He looks awful."
"You fight your best friend who's been freakishly enhanced and see how you look."
"He looks like he's going to die."
"He's not going to die."
Steve didn't know what was happening, but he was glad to hear Sam didn't think he was going to die. He tried to ask Sam about that, but his muscles weren't cooperating.
"He's almost died how many times, Sam? He's going to die at some point."
In spite of the pain, he could feel his lips threatening to curve in a smile at Natasha's dour tone. This got his muscles to actually move. Or at least until it pulled at the cut he could feel on his lip. He stopped, then tried to speak.
"But not today," he croaked out. He managed to open his eyes. Natasha was leaning over him, a frown on her face.
He didn't think he imagined the sheer relief that crossed her face when he spoke. But then she schooled her expression. "You look like crap."
"That's about how I feel," he groaned out, his words muffled to his ears.
His vision started to clear and he looked around, cautiously moving his head. He was in a hospital room.
"Morning, Sleeping Beauty," Sam said from his seat in a chair.
He struggled to turn his head in the direction he had heard Sam's voice. He hurt everywhere. He wasn't sure there was any inch of him not covered in bruises.
He tried to speak again, ask them what had happened, but the murky darkness was falling over him again and he was taken under before he could.
#
Bucky could hear her moving again. He felt his hands curl into fists. The last time he had gone in there, he had to half carry her to the bathroom so she could be sick. Again. She had been frail in his arms, and all he could think of was how easily he could have hurt her—killed her—even a few days ago if that had been his mission. He had deposited her back on her bed. She still didn't seem to know who he was. She alternated between thinking he was a handler from Hydra or someone at the hospital she apparently worked at. Either way, he was much worse than anything she was hallucinating.
He needed to get out of here. Out of the city. Get moving.
There was a thud. She had fallen off the bed again. He couldn't leave her just flailing around. Especially if she was going to have another seizure.
"You can't keep a girl waiting," he had said, exasperation blowing the words out on a sigh.
"Buck, I don't need a girl. I need to serve my country."
Bucky had looked at his friend, too scrawny to serve, but too stubborn to accept that.
"The medical board will still be ready to crush your hopes tomorrow, Steve. Right now, we've got two dames expecting us to show them a good time."
Not Steve. He wasn't in Brooklyn. It wasn't 1942. It was…he didn't know what year it was. But not 1942.
His head was speared with pain.
Were they putting the plates on him, ready to wipe his memories?
No. He wasn't with Hydra. His arms were free, not strapped to the chair. He moved his arms, clutched his pounding head with his hands. Squeezing, digging his fingers against his skull.
"Is your head hurting?"
The quiet voice was barely audible over the screams in his head. Bucky looked up. The girl was standing there, weaving on her feet, eyes bleary, but concern clear on her face.
He didn't answer.
"I can call the on call doctor, get something for the pain."
She thought she was at work again. Better than dry heaving on the bathroom floor at least.
He tried to shake his head, send her away, but then there was a light brush against his forehead. He jerked away.
She paused, fingers still outstretched like she was planning to soothe his pain with a touch.
"There's Tylenol in the med room." She turned away and Bucky's chest hollowed out with relief to have some distance.
He forced himself to stand from the couch. He was here. In her apartment. His mission was to keep them safe.
The overwhelming noise in his head started to quiet. The pain ebbed.
There was a thud in the kitchen. He looked over there.
She was struggling with a cabinet. Bucky watched as she attempted to get hold of the handle, missing, her fingers not moving with the attempt. She tried again and then her hand seized up, fingers curling into claws.
She let out a small cry of pain and drew her hands in closer to her chest. Her hands trembled, the movement spreading to her arms, then her entire body started to shake.
Bucky moved.
He caught her before she landed on the floor. The violent jerking built, fighting against the hold he had on her.
Noise started again, but this time it wasn't in his head. It was outside. The helicopters were back. He needed to get out of here. It wouldn't take much for S.H.I.E.L.D. to link this girl to Hydra, then search out her apartment.
She was limp. He carried her to the couch, dumped her there. He stepped back, rolling his shoulders slightly with the relief of breaking contact with her.
He started holstering his weapons again, not the same places as he had on missions. These jeans and his newly acquired jacket didn't allow for that. He listened to the helicopter come closer. It hovered nearby.
He went to the closet in the hall. He needed a bag. He rummaged through. Nothing but linens. He glanced back. The girl was unconscious on the couch, she wasn't about to move.
He went to her room. There was a small prick at a long suppressed conscience when he opened the closet in there. Did he want to ignore the hint of guilt, however small, at invading her privacy? Claiming that emotion would bring him a step closer to the humanity Hydra had ripped from him. But that emotion would interfere with getting out of here.
The screams started in a distant corner of his mind again. The pain intruded with them.
He yanked the closet door open. It broke free from the hinges.
He didn't have time for this. He had already spent too long in one place. He wasn't going into captivity again. Ever.
The top shelf of the closet had a black backpack. He grabbed that. He would get whatever supplies he could find in the apartment and clear out. Food, cash, anything that would get him out of the city. He grabbed his discarded black fatigues and shoved them to the bottom of the bag.
He went to the cabinets, not sure what she would have in there, and what would be edible after months away. There was a box of granola bars, he tossed that into the bag. A water bottle he filled at the tap.
"Did Grandma forget to get groceries?"
Bucky swung around, hand raised against the threat.
The girl swayed unsteadily on her feet. She looked at his titanium arm, the hand open and ready to grab her throat.
Bucky froze.
What was he doing?
The noise in his head grew louder. It had already drowned out her approach, now he couldn't hear the helicopter outside.
She blinked and slumped over toward the counter next to her, catching herself on it for a minute before she slid to the floor.
Bucky turned his back on her. He would have killed her. Reacted to her as a threat. Everything was a threat.
He needed to get out of here.
He went back to the cabinets, added a few more food items.
He stepped around her. How many seizures had she had? What would happen if she was left alone in the apartment?
Not his problem. He told himself that. Fought through the pain making him want to close his eyes and kept moving.
But he went to the dresser in her room and grabbed a change of clothes for her. Found a jewelry box and dumped the contents into the bag. She could pawn them for cash. There was purse on the floor next to the dresser. He opened it and found a wallet. There was at least some cash. He tossed it into the bag.
Back in the hallway, he paused by the pictures he had knocked off the wall when they first made it to the apartment. He picked up the one of her with the two elderly people. He took the back off the frame and removed the picture. Memories mattered.
He zipped the bag up and strode to the kitchen. Slinging the bag over his shoulders he hesitated before getting his hands under her and getting her to her feet.
"You need to walk." He pulled away from her as soon as she was stable.
She didn't argue; he hadn't expected her to. She started to put one foot in front of the other. Steady enough, but not fast.
Abruptly, Bucky blocked her forward path with his arm in front of her. Footsteps. But they weren't the footsteps of someone coming home from work. It was boots. Lots of them.
"This way," Bucky said.
She followed along willingly.
At the window, Bucky risked moving the shade for the first time. The helicopter was circling on the other side of the building. He didn't see any sort of perimeter set up on this side. No doubt they didn't consider her much of a flight risk.
He unlocked the window and shoved the sash up. He looked again. No movement below. He got out onto the fire escape and turned back to her.
She didn't ask questions. Just clumsily made her way out the window, falling to her knees with a dull clang on the iron landing.
Bucky reached inside to pull the shade closed, then the window, covering their exit. He started down the ladder.
The girl tried. But her hands wouldn't grip the rungs and she fell, her knee banging against the rung before Bucky caught her.
This wasn't going to work. She couldn't climb down four stories. Not quickly enough. And not safely.
Bucky heard the muffled sounds from inside the apartment building. They were at her door.
He looked at the parking lot below. There were a couple dumpsters below the fire escape on one side, nothing but pavement on the other.
They didn't have a lot of options.
Gritting his teeth, he got a firm hold of her.
"That's a long way down."
"You scared?"
Bucky gave Dum Dum Dugan a look that said he wasn't scared of anything. But he wasn't stupid.
Dugan grinned under his wide mustache. "Then you better not fall."
Bucky grunted and set out across the precarious bridge. The Howling Commandos needed him to get across and to the higher elevation to take his sniper position. It would be the only cover fire the other men would have. They were depending on Bucky.
Bucky squeezed his eyes closed. He didn't have a sniper rifle. That wasn't real. Not anymore.
He opened them to see the nondescript parking lot below. Hear the door to the apartment inside opening.
With one arm, he tightened his hold around the girl. He made sure she was secure against him. With his free arm, he levered them over the railing.
He got his other arm around her as they plummeted through the air. The ground approached quickly. He braced himself, making sure she was held against his chest, shielded from the coming landing.
He landed on his feet, bending his knees to take the jolt. He felt, as much as he heard, the air escape her lungs at the impact. He didn't have time to make sure she was ok. They had to move.
He kept close to the side of the building until the last minute. Then they went through the parking lot. He chose a nondescript silver sedan. A broken window would draw too much attention so he curled his fingers around the handle and pried to the door open, bending any lock out of the way with a creak of metal.
He pushed the button to release the rest of the locks and shuffled her around to the passenger seat. He half shoved the girl into the car, where she slumped over.
He closed the door on her and took the driver's seat. He and Steve had learned to hotwire cars in Nazi Germany. The movements were as familiar as if he had done it last week.
The car came to life and Bucky pulled out slowly. Every move was calculated to avoid attention. He glanced in the passenger seat. She didn't move.
A plain black ball cap was tossed on the dash. He grabbed it and yanked it low over his face.
They pulled out the back entrance of the parking lot without fanfare and turned onto the streets of DC.
Bucky didn't know where to go. But he wasn't stopping. He wasn't surrendering.
#
"On your left."
Steve got the words out past the ache in his ribs. He watched Sam look up from his magazine.
There was that relief on Sam's face again. Same as when he had managed to regain consciousness before. That told him how serious his injuries were.
"That bad, huh?" Steve asked, his words rasping past a dry throat.
"You've looked better," Sam said.
Steve looked around the room.
"Natasha went to connect with Fury. I think the walls were starting to close in on her."
Steve could imagine. He didn't think keeping vigil at someone's bedside was on her list of favorite activities.
"How…" Steve licked dry lips and tried again. "How long…"
"Three days," Sam answered.
Steve took that in. Three days. He shifted experimentally. Everything hurt. He didn't feel like there was an inch of him not covered with bruises.
Bucky had done a number on him.
Bucky.
Had Bucky survived the helicarrier crashing into the river? Had they found Bucky yet? He looked at Sam.
"They didn't find a body," Sam said, clearly anticipating the question.
That was good. It meant Bucky was alive.
"That's all we know," Sam said.
Steve's mind was sluggish, the wheels turning slowly. Bucky wasn't dead. "We have to find him," he said.
Sam stood and picked up a cup on the table next to the bed. "You need to rest." He held the cup toward Steve.
Steve tried lifting a hand. The pain in his ribs was nothing compared to the pain across his abdomen.
He paused. He had seen them working on him—during surgery. His abdomen had been cut open. The memory turned his stomach, set his heart to pounding a little faster. He swallowed hard against his dry throat and turned his attention back to the cup.
He managed to hold it weakly and spoon a couple ice chips into his mouth. The cold brought him away from the memories. Back to the here and now.
"I saw him," Steve said, letting Sam take the cup back from his hands. "The real him. He's in there. Under whatever Hydra did to him."
Sam didn't say anything right away. He set the cup aside. "He still managed to almost kill you."
Steve looked up at the ceiling. Bucky had shot him. Beat him. Fought against him and tried to kill him. But he had seen the break. Seen the confusion and terror in Bucky's eyes when he started remembering.
"Yeah, well he didn't." Steve moved his arm again, ready for the pain this time and prodded at his tender side.
"Broken ribs, collapsed lung, internal bleeding, facial fractures, concussion… You want the rest of the list?"
"I get the picture," Steve said. He wondered how long it would take him to heal. "S.H.I.E.L.D.?" he asked next.
"Another casualty," Sam answered. "Hydra was inside, S.H.I.E.L.D. went down with it."
"Good," Steve said under his breath. But it didn't feel good. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been the legacy of Peggy and Howard. But not what S.H.I.E.L.D. had become. That wouldn't have been what they wanted. "Anything else I missed?" he asked.
Sam moved over to his phone, playing music quietly. "I think it's time we covered Marvin Gaye."
#
North. Bucky kept the car heading north. He didn't know why north, but the internal pressure to move, to escape, kept him heading in that direction.
The beltway was busy. He had seen it like that before, hadn't he? On a mission? The one that was supposed to neutralize Captain Am—Steve.
He hissed out a breath at the way the memories threatened to overwhelm his brain with that name. He looked around again. On missions he hadn't looked—hadn't really seen anything. The traffic heading out of the city, the advertisments on huge billboards, the people talking on phones in their cars…It wasn't the world he had known. Something the car kept pointing out to him.
"In 200 feet, turn left."
The car wouldn't stop talking to him.
The computer screen on the dash of the car insisted on giving him directions to some fish market they had long since passed, and had been trying to get him to turn around for the last hundred miles. He jabbed at some buttons again, but all it did was change the voice to a British male instructing him.
The girl was in the passenger seat, slumped against the door and sleeping. At least she had started taking regular breaths, no longer going lengthy seconds without breathing.
She stirred slightly when the British voice insisted again that he take the next left to turn around.
She blinked. Her skin was almost golden with the light the setting sun cast across it. This was the first time since they had left her apartment that she was actually lifting her head. She blinked again at him. Bucky braced himself for whatever was coming.
Her head thunked back against the window and her eyes closed, but she spoke, her voice groggy. "Are we going back to Hydra? Are we helping them some more?"
It was the most coherent thing she had said since the Triskelion fell, and the most alarming.
"I'm done with Hydra," he said in a low voice. The steering wheel started to bend under his grip and he forced his hands to ease up.
"Good," she breathed. "You…they…they were cruel. Cruel to you."
He cut his eyes to her. Hydra hadn't done anything worse than the acts he himself had performed. There was no cruelty he hadn't ended up deserving.
Her breathing slowed to even breaths again and he thought she was asleep. But then she spoke. "I don't want to…to help them anymore."
Bucky's gut clenched at the thought of what they had done to her. The drugs were clearly still causing damage. Not to mention how they had used her to eliminate targets. Targets who had been people she knew. He had killed people she knew and cared about.
"They're not getting you," he said, surprised at the venom in his voice as much as the promise as it came out. But he meant it. He would get her somewhere safe. Somewhere Hydra, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or government agencies couldn't reach her.
She didn't show any sign she heard, her eyelashes fluttering slightly and the fine tremor in her hands growing to spasms, her hands clenching with a gasp for breath, then easing and her breathing evening out again.
Bucky turned his eyes back to the road. The highway signs were announcing another hundred and twelve miles to New York City. Hopefully she would be alert enough by then, because him lugging her around everywhere was going to draw attention.
He didn't have a plan, or destination. Just the driving force somewhere under the memories. New York would be crowded, easier for them to blend into a crowd.
He winced as the vise that never fully released its grip on his head pinched tighter. He flexed and released his metal fingers, eyeing them. The girl gasped again and her hands curled into claws. She twitched in her sleep.
Sure. They'd blend right in.
A sound came from the passenger seat again. He looked over and saw her hands clenching again. They were held rigidly for at least a minute until they finally fell limp in her lap. It was better than a seizure at least. She let out a low sound, like she was in pain, and opened her eyes again.
"At the next turn, reverse direction," the British voice came through the speakers.
"Please turn the car around. Please turn the car around."
The girl's eyes fluttered open. "Do you need to turn around?" she mumbled.
Bucky felt his lips press into a thin line. "The car wants us to." He had started hating this car talking to him over a lifetime ago.
The girl pushed herself up from the door she was leaning against. She half lurched forward, nearly bashing her face into the dash, but caught herself before Bucky had to grab the back of her shirt and hold her back. She awkwardly poked at the screen in front of them. Her fingers were mostly useless. She squinted, lifted her hand with a parody of extreme control and moved the tremulous fingers toward the screen again. This time she must have hit the right place on the screen because the screen went black and the car blissfully silent.
She looked to him questioningly.
"That's better," he said gruffly.
She gave a nod and fell back in her seat. But she didn't close her eyes again. She looked out the window in confusion. She didn't ask any questions and he wondered how much she understood of what was going on. However little she understood, she was at least out of it enough to not seem too concerned about it. As long as she knew she wasn't going back to Hydra.
She stayed awake and Bucky found it easy enough to ignore her. She didn't say anything. Just looked. Watched. Sometimes stared blankly at him. That was unnerving.
Without the car barking orders at him, his thoughts slowed. He guided the car east. Towards the river.
Without reaction, his silent passenger looked out the window as they crossed the bridge.
Welcome to Brooklyn.
He slowed, driving through crowded streets, slowing when he saw a parking lot. He turned in.
He made sure his sleeves were down over his arms, his hat low over his eyes. He opened the back door and got the backpack out. With that on his back, he opened the passenger door, carefully since she was leaning against it again.
She tumbled out, but again caught herself before landing face first. She stood unsteadily, blinking at their surroundings. She looked like an ungainly fawn facing the world for the first time.
Vulnerable and waiting for a predator.
He had been a predator. Hunting targets and eliminating them. Killing them.
Blood was warm. Whether it splattered back from a gunshot, or flowed from a knife wound, it was warm when it flowed from his prey. Until there was no more to seep from a wound. Then the body would grow cold. But he would be long gone by then. Back to his handlers. Getting his muzzle back in place and loaded into the cryo chamber. The door sealing on him, everything fading away—
A car alarm sounded, jolting him.
Bucky looked around at the parking lot. In a city. In the US. He wasn't going into suspension in Siberia. He was—he was…he struggled to connect his thoughts.
Getting to safety. He was getting away.
He saw a couple security cameras, but they were trained on the entrances to the building at the far end of the lot. It was ingrained in him to clock any presence of security guards or police, blind spots to get around the cameras in the lot.
Memories roared in his ears and he fought to hear what was actually around him. Determine the threat. Who was around him.
Someone was missing.
He kept his hands tucked in his pockets, his metallic hand out of sight, but they fisted. He was missing someone.
Steve?
He started to look behind him, see how they had got separated, before he saw her. Not Steve.
She was staggering slightly.
The girl. She was supposed to be with him.
Bucky quickly crossed the three rows of cars in time to grab her arm as she started to collapse toward the ground.
She didn't fight against him. She didn't even react when his hand wrapped around her arm.
Bucky was ready this time for the flood of memories—of missions—that came roaring over his vision as soon as he made contact with her. Disjointed sights and sounds—the war, a home with laughing sisters, a best friend he always counted on, torture, pain…
He kept walking. Kept pulling her along with him. Three blocks. Cross the street. Turn left. Two more blocks. He had to get home before dark or his mom would be furious.
"I'm going to be late for class," the girl mumbled next to him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. She wasn't going to class. And he…he wasn't going home. He opened them again.
They were standing in front of a five story brick building. Bucky stared at it.
This was home. It had been.
"Is this the dorm?" the girl asked.
"No," he rasped out. And it wasn't home, either. This was where he had lived with his mom, his sisters. It was where Bucky had lived. But he wasn't Bucky anymore. He was someone else. Something else.
Staring at the building that was entirely different, but still looked like one of his sisters would come skipping out the door any minute, had him reeling. Movement to his left had him turning quickly, a hand going for where a knife should be. But his jeans didn't have the same pockets as his Hydra fatigues.
The elderly woman didn't glance at him or the girl, just kept walking, leaning heavily on a cane.
Bucky sucked in a breath. He avoided looking at the building again.
"Did you buy the meal tickets this semester?" the girl asked. "The food's not bad."
What were they doing? Neither one of them had any sort of grip on reality.
His stomach turned violently at the thought of that building filled with people he didn't know. His family gone.
He started moving again. The girl followed along without him having to drag her. She couldn't keep up with her sluggish movements and he slowed enough so she didn't get lost.
He scanned buildings that were too familiar for comfort. He could see the ghosts of people he knew in them.
He felt, more than saw, when the girl left his side. He stopped abruptly and turned back.
She sank onto a crumbling concrete stoop.
"I hope we get paid overtime for this," she said, sounding winded.
He looked at her for the first time. Her face was ashen, dark shadows under her eyes, stringy hair hanging under her souvenir baseball hat. Her hands were shaking again.
Bucky scanned the street. It was mostly empty. He looked at the building she sat in front of. This one he didn't recognize. There was a notice posted on the door, warning that the building had been condemned.
Perfect.
"Come on," he said gruffly. He tried to ignore the way her face pinched in pain when she moved. But she got obediently to her feet and followed after him.
He led her around the corner of the building. The ground floor windows were boarded up. He found one that didn't have any sight lines to the buildings around it and pulled at the plywood. It gave way with a creak.
Bucky held it aside and jerked his head for her to go through the window. Her eyes were closed and she was murmuring to herself.
"Get inside," he said.
"Yeah, we should get out of this rain," she agreed.
The sky above them was clear.
"Sure," he said. "Get out of the rain."
She finally moved toward the window. She stumbled, her shoulder knocking into his stomach. She managed to awkwardly slide in and drop the to the floor. He grimaced at the grunt of pain when she landed. He went in after her, sliding the wood back in place over the window.
Without a light, they had to feel their way through the ground floor. Well, he did. He moved, trying to find a stairway. She followed, an occasional thud when she walked into a wall, followed by a mumbled apology to the wall. He'd double back, get her on track again, and keep moving. She'd crash again, and he'd get her again. It was the most tedious progress he'd ever made.
Finally a sliver of light ahead had him making a more determined path. She managed to follow without incident.
The light was from an unbroken window near the front door. It cast light down the stairs into the basement level they were in. He started up the stairs. Then paused to wait for the girl. She was staring at her hand. With a look of confusion, she set her hand on the railing and watched it rest there. She looked like she was trying to grip the railing, but her fingers weren't cooperating. Then down at her feet. Her legs were starting to shake.
Bucky cast an uneasy look toward that window facing the street. They didn't have time for this.
He swept her up in his arms. She flailed, clipping him on the chin with her arm.
"Stop moving," he commanded.
She didn't, but it was a short walk and only two more hits to his face before they got to the second floor. This would give them better coverage. And a better vantage point to survey any approach.
He dumped her on the floor and dropped the backpack next to her. She slid over, resting her head on the bag. Then closed her eyes and apparently fell asleep. Or passed out.
Either way, it had Bucky finally releasing a breath. They were safe. For now.
He needed food, but exhaustion was setting in. He had been awake for…two…three?...days straight? He positioned himself between the window and the girl, leaning back against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him. He heard a scurrying in the far corner. Hopefully she wasn't scared of rats.
He let his eyes close and finally slept. And the nightmares came.
#
