If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see
When she came to, Aurora found herself to be in the backseat of a car with no windows and four intimidatingly large men speaking to each other in German with her hands bound behind her.
"Where are you taking me?" She asked, trying to steady her shaky voice.
The two men in the front kept their eyes forward, ignoring her words while the man to her left answered through his thick accent, "Someone has been looking for you for some time now. We are taking you to him."
Aurora furrowed her brows as she tried to think about who would be looking for her. She opened her mouth to ask, but the man on her right shoved a gag over her lips. She began to thrash, trying to free her hands until a hand clamped around her neck, squeezing hard.
"Hör auf, kleines Mädchen!" The man seethed, and though she didn't know what he said, Aurora knew what he meant.
She stilled and waited for the man to let her go, but it wasn't until black crept along her vision that he finally released her, muttering under his breath; "Dumme kleine Schlampe."
Hours later, Aurora was loaded into a plane where she was cuffed to her seat. At some point, she fell asleep for only a minute before she jerked herself awake.
After they landed, she was loaded into another car, but this time, they placed a burlap sack over her head.
The car pulled to a jolting stop, and hands yanked Aurora out of the back seat. Stepping onto solid ground, her legs gave out and she fell harshly on the gravel road until she was pulled back up.
She walked forward, stumbling every few steps while hands pushed on her back. The sound of a door creaking open and a wave of warm air told Aurora they had just entered a building.
White fluorescent lights blinded Aurora as the bag was removed from her head, she blinked against the harshness until her eyes adjusted and she was able to see the three men standing in front of her; two men wearing identical gear on either side of a disgustingly familiar little toad
"Ah, my älskling systerdotter, I have been waiting anxiously for you. I believe you are wishing to know why you are here?"
Aurora glared at the man, doctor Arnim Zola. Her uncle. Through marriage of course, what her aunt Bianca saw in a 5'3" Swiss with a receding hairline, Aurora didn't know. But of course, Bianca always was the strange one in the Matisse family. "Of course you're behind this. I haven't seen you since before my aunt 'mysteriously' disappeared along with the other half of my so-called 'gifted' family members. I believe I have you to thank for that." Aurora stepped closer to her evil uncle, getting as close as possible before the guards seized her arms, effectively stopping her from getting any closer. "Now, tell me why I'm here."
The toad-man smirked and gestured for her to follow him down endless hallways lined with steel doors lined with locks.
After an eternity, he stopped. He turned to Aurora, who, on instinct, stepped back, only to bump into the barrel-chested guards behind her.
"We have had him since he was first thought dead, we found him at the bottom of a ravine in the Alps." Zola started, pulling out a rather full keyring and looking for the right one. Aurora's brows knitted together, a leaden pit burrowing in her stomach.
"Found who?" Her voice shook and she couldn't even care.
The smirk Zola sent scared her more than anything that'd happened up to now. "We saved his life. You should be grateful." He pushed the door open and gestured for her to go inside the dark room.
Aurora felt her restraints slacken and fall from her wrists as they pushed her into the room, slamming the door shut.
She rubbed at her chapped wrists and tried to take in what she could see in the dim light.
Taking a deep breath, she almost gagged at the smell of ammonia and death that hit her like a brick wall. Nothing good happened in this room. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her and James' apartment and curl up in one of his old shirts, but she knew the only thing to do was move forward. She took another breath in– this time through her mouth– and stepped further into the room.
Looking around, she found herself squinting to see though the flickering, dim yellow lights; she could see steel tables with matching stools all around the room, most of them clear. She stepped closer to one and recognized some tools littering it, mostly medical, but the odd handy-man tool lay mixed in. She reached out a hand to touch one, but pulled herself back when she realized that most of the tools before her were coated with a suspiciously red liquid.
Her heart beat against her chest and it was all she could do to stay standing. She blinked away tears and stepped back from the table and fiddled with her wedding ring as she walked further into the room, the gesture offering her comfort. In the back of her mind, she knew that the blood on those tools were relatively fresh, and she reasoned with herself that the person they were used on must still be in this room.
When she took her next step, she heard a light splash; looking to the floor she saw a light pink puddle, a few feet from a small drain centered in the room. She swallowed hard and pressed on.
At the far end of the long room, Aurora's eyes landed on a table with a large figure laying across it. Her eyes widened and she rushed over to the man.
She held her breath as she approached, she could feel it in her bones that what she saw would haunt her for the rest of her life.
Lying there on that unforgiving metal table, littered with scars and fresh wounds, whole left arm and shoulder wrapped in gauze, the air whooshed from her lungs as she tried to take in his appearance.
How? How was this possible? He…he was dead…
And yet, here he was; skin pale and waxy and stretched tautly across his frame, hair greasy and tangled and much longer than she remembered. And altogether here. Her fingers twitched to reach out and touch him. She watched his chest move with his shallow breaths until she couldn't see through the veil of tears.
Here. He was right here. Her husband hadn't died, but looking at him now, Aurora found herself wishing that he had… She could see so much of the torture he'd been though; all the cuts and slices.
An ugly, hideous sound made Aurora jump until she realized it was her. The sob that escaped her mouth hurt her throat and shook her body. Two more identical sobs followed before she pressed her hands to her mouth to stifle the horrible noise.
Shaking her head, she pushed away the urge to crumple like a piece of scrap paper and reached a shaking hand out to touch his exposed shoulder; he was cool to the touch, but not cold.
"Ja-James?" Her voice shook terribly.
"James?" Again she tried, but still no response.
"...Bucky?" She had always preferred James over Bucky, she found it sounded more natural coming from her mouth when she first met him, her French accent made it hard for her to use his nickname and feel like she was saying it right. Any time she tried to call him Bucky, he'd just laugh and grab her hands and press a kiss to the back of each before telling her how much he loved her.
But she knew most people called him by his nickname. So, she hoped that he would respond faster to the more common name.
"Bucky." Her voice somehow managed to sound more desperate each time she spoke, but this time she was rewarded with a low, almost inaudible groan and she drank it down like it was the sweetest wine. "That's it, darling."
"...Arura…?"
She jerked her head in a nod before remembering his eyes were still closed. "Oui, mon amour, je suis ici." She reached out and cradled his pale face in her hands, rubbing her thumbs just below his sunken eyes ever so lightly. "Open your eyes, darling."
His only reaction to her words was a slight turn of the head towards her.
"Please, open them for me. Can you do that?" She asked softly, gently pushing back a strand of hair from his brow, a deep frown pulling her lips downward. She thought back to all their mornings together; of her trying to pry his arms from around her before they were late to work, of him never releasing her on the first attempt, holding out until she bribed him with a kiss or the promise of conserving water with a shared shower before work. "James…if you can open your eyes, I'll give you a kiss…" She felt tears ripple down her cheeks, her throat closing up around the familiar words that had been locked away for so long. "Please."
James groaned in pain, his sweaty forehead wrinkling before he cracked one eye open, drawing a choppy, raspy breath of relief from Aurora as she leaned closer.
As she waited for James to become cognizant, she zoned in on every cut and scrape on his face, drinking up every change, no matter how much it hurt her to see the state he was in, she almost wished she could look away… but she never could.
James' other eye fluttered open soon after, and as they gained focus, he was able to look up at Aurora, shock and relief at the sight of his wife standing before him, holding his face, shined in his blue eyes…but they gave way to anger and distrust in a blink.
Shocked, Aurora stared at him, hurt. "...James…?" She tentatively asked, gnawing her lip as he glared up at her.
With a jerk of his head, he yanked his head from in between her hands and faced away from her.
"Mon amo –"
"No, no. You're not real." He started to shake his head as he muttered delusionally to himself. "You're not real. You can't be here. I never told them."
Aurora frowned again, trying to decipher his feverish words until they made sense; "You don't think I'm really here… do you?" She raised her hands again, slowly as James' eyes followed the movement sharply, tracking her hands as she moved closer, cupping his cheek again.
Her heart fluttered as he closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, but only for a heartbeat until his eyes snapped open, glaring at her, though with less intensity now. She could see it, the distrust still clouding his gaze, but it was at war with his exhaustion… he wanted so desperately for her to be real. She needed to prove to him she was really there with him.
"James, it's me… it's your Rory–!" "Don't…Don't say that name. Not her. Not her…" His voice was hoarse and broken, but to Aurora it was like lemonade on the hottest day. "I'm here, James, you must believe me." She reached for his hand and pulled it up to her cheek, pressing it close. "Feel me, you know it's the truth." His hand curled around her cheek, thumb barely brushing back and forth as tears filled his eyes.
"Lies… not her. Liar… liar." He murmured again and again, his hand falling limp, only Aurora's own kept it pinned to her face.
"I am not lying to you, James. Please. Zola found me and brought me here…to you…" She whimpered, heart aching as James shook his head frantically, despite how painful it clearly was for him.
"Please. Please stop. I'll tell you anything. Everything!" He begged, his voice shaking. "Just leave her out of this… Please."
The sound of James begging broke Aurora's heart even more, she'd only seen him beg once before; the day he had asked her out officially when they had been fifteen and sixteen. He'd actually gone down to one knee and grasped her hands, kissing them between each sentence.
Aurora racked her brain for some way to assure James, but before she could string together a coherent train of thought, words flooded out; "It is me, James! If it wasn't me, how would I know that I'm the only person other than your parents that you let call you James? How else would I know that in the morning, you prefer sausage over bacon, but any other time you will want bacon. I know that your favorite color is yellow, like the first light of dawn. Your favorite thing to do at home is read to me, you say that you like the way I cuddle up to you and almost always fall asleep on you."
She gasped in a deep breath, pulling every minute detail about him as quickly as she could. "You hate it when another guy so much as looks at me, you always put your arm around me and glare at them until they look away. Your first words to me after I moved to the States was 'you must be an angel' and mine were 'most people say hello first'. At our wedding you forgot my middle name, you called me Aurora Jaqueline Barnes, but I was Aurora Genevieve Matisse still." She was sure her words had slurred together, even she barely knew where one ended and the next started.
"You always fall asleep touching me in some way, holding me close or touching little fingers. You adore my height because I always need you to reach the top shelf and you love being my 'knight in shining armor." In her rush to convince James of the truth, she didn't notice his eyes widening, or his breathing quicken as he realized she was telling the truth; things he'd only ever done or said when alone in their haven of bliss.
"You convinced me to teach you French so you could understand what I was saying when I'd hurt myself cleaning dishes or when I was focused on something and it just slipped out. You thought it was funny when I would scrunch my nose at your American accent desecrating the French language, even though it was adorable." Finally, she snapped her mouth shut, her cheeks red as she breathed deeply, her eyes locking on his. "...James?"
His face was utter anguish, looking more broken than when he thought her to be a trick. "Rory…?"
She gave him a watery smile, "Hello, my love." She turned her head and pressed a kiss to the palm of his hand still held to her cheek. "I'm so sorry that I wasn't here sooner. If I had known…I would have–" James cut her off, weakly pulling her towards him.
"Oh, Rory…I'm so sorry…" He rasped out, his right hand cupping her cheek without her hand holding it in place.
Aurora shook her head, eyes closed at the contact of his hand, "Don't. Don't you dare apologize. I have cried every night without you, waking up felt like fighting the tides. No matter what happens now, whatever Zola does to us… We are together. And that's all I could ever want."
James stared at her for forever in a second, pulling her closer yet, sliding his hand from her face to her neck, down her arm and around her waist, pulling with surprising strength until she was laying on his chest. He ignored her weak protests and words of concern for his state of being, didn't she know that being in his arms, he barely felt the pain?
"I've missed you, doll." He pressed his chapped lips to the top of her head, burrowing his nose in her chestnut locks, breathing in her rosy scent. As much as he hated that she was here… he was so selfishly relieved to see her, to breathe her in again.
After falling from that damned train and waking up here, James' biggest regret was not seeing Rory one last time. Their memories together gave him the strength he needed, and even as time spiraled on and thoughts of his wife moving on from him and finding another permeated his mind, he clung to the knowledge that at least she was alive and safe. Yet, he couldn't deny how good it felt to hold her again… neither of them were safe here.
His hand trailed up her back and tangled itself in her hair and he kissed her again as he fought with himself; he knew now that he truly was a selfish bastard, despite knowing that Hydra would use Rory and hurt her… the feel of her body on his soothed him in ways he hadn't known needed soothing.
James knew now that with Rory here, he could take whatever Hydra throws at them. She was his strength and he would protect her in every way he could.
"I missed you too, James… so, so very much." He felt her shift and press her sweet lips to his neck, just like she used to do every morning, and for the first time in over a year, James felt the ghost of a smile haunt his face.
Together. They could handle anything. He was sure of it.