Whilst Steven Rogers was fixated on finding his best friend, he had overlooked the signs to find his sister.
Amara had spent decades confined to darkness, lost in time. Now she must find her footing in the light and hope not to be left blinded.
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"Are you okay?" A soft voice whispered out into the car as they pulled up by a pristine white building. Amara hadn't spoken for most of the ride, too obsessed with the way the outside world looked. So many shapes, so many colours, so many noises. If she had actually been outside and not cooped up within the safety of the car, Amara was sure she would've passed out from the sheer amount of things she had seen.
"Mari." She turned at her name being called, humming in response as she noticed a pair of deep blue eyes scrutinising her in concern. Mari tasted sweet on her tongue as she whispered it back to him. Names were meant to be familiar, to cause a sense of belonging. She wanted to cherish her name as if it were sanctum, as if it truly meant something to her. Instead, it was simply the name of a stranger she had yet to know.
"Is everything always so bright?" Amara asked, glancing back to the towering house they were seemingly waiting to walk in to. Her name may be a crypt yet to be pilfered, so Amara chose to focus on a mystery she could solve.
"Except when it's night." Steve joked, chuckling to himself before he noticed the slackened expression on his old friends face. She hadn't noticed the humour laced within his tone, nodding along to his comment as if it were scripture.
"I like the night." She smiled back, already waiting for the sun to finally set and for the safety net of darkness to sink back in.
➿➿➿
Amara Barnes was a victim of abuse for almost a century. Taken from her family whilst her brother was off fighting in the war, many assumed she had run away to find him. An insolent girl who couldn't handle her brother leaving, of course few people took notice to her disappearance.
Beatrice Barnes, a woman who would later lose both of her children to the same terrorist organisation, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital after she became fixated on the idea that her two children were still somehow alive. How was she meant to grieve when their bodies were supposedly lost in the pits of the trenches, too disfigured to recognise?
No, she demanded more. She knew there was more. There had to be. Because otherwise everything would be too unbearable. Of course, she was right. But her life had faded long before the Barnes siblings arose from the ashes, forever changed from their time captured by HYDRA.
➿➿➿
It had been two hours since Steve had left her to debrief his colleagues. Apparently the avengers were not prepared to find yet another lost soul from the 1930s. Nor for them to find the sibling of one of the worlds most infamous assassins. Especially when they noticed how naive she seemed, the polar opposite to their winter soldier.
"I heard there was a new fossil around." A new voice shocked Amara from her spot beside one of the many windows, laced with a thick foreign accent the girl couldn't quite place. The boy stood a few metres to her side, fingers raking through his weirdly coloured hair. Amara hadn't see anything quite like it, a mixture of silver and dark brown blending together into a unique tone. She couldn't help but stare, had the world she walked back out into changed so drastically even hair colours seemed obscure to her?
"Is that meant to be funny?" Amara questioned curiously, no malicious intent meant behind her genuine comment. Would people really consider her a fossil after so long frozen out of time? She didn't even know the year she walked into, Steve too dismissive every time she asked.
"I thought old people were meant to be nice, no?" The boy muttered with a smirk, eyebrow quirked as she shrugged in response.
"I thought men were meant to be charming." Amara shot back, her small smile tipping up the corner of her lips. It took a moment for him to react, disorientated from a response he hadn't expected. After all, he had just spent the good part of an hour listening to Steve talk of her sweet 1930s innocence.
"Ah that is where your age shows, most men are stupid. I am not most men." His thick accent laced every word with a sense of curiosity, the smug tone matched with his seemingly annoying smirk.
"Are you calling me old?" Mari retaliated, eyebrow arched at the thought. how could she be old when she hadn't any memories of her life? If she hadn't truly lived through her years, then surely she was still as young as when she left?
"I did call you a fossil."
"Pietro leave the poor girl alone!"
A girl with light red hair had slipped into the room without either noticing, both instead jumping from surprise as she stopped a mere feet from them.
"I wanted to see what all of the fuss was about." The boy, Pietro, retaliated before he could be reprimanded further. He turned back to Amara with questioning eyes, leaning an inch or so closer as if coming closer would aid his 'investigation'.
"You know, they wonder why HYDRA kept you around for so long. That is why the adults are still yapping. Tell me, Bunica, what are you hiding?" Pietros tone had lowered into a whisper, his breath fanning gently across her ear as Amara leaned away from his supposedly intimidating stance.
"Hard to hide something you can't remember." She shrugged with a grin, playing into the trope she had been given. Secretive wasn't a trait she could easily pull off, her skin burning red whenever she tried. At the sight of Steve Rogers awkwardly standing to one side, waiting for a time to interrupt, Mari slid off of her place beside the window to find what the righteous man wanted.
Without a word, Steve rested a hand on her shoulder and began directing back to where he had been hiding. Mari didn't mind. He had saved her from what she was told was a Terrorist organisation, surely he had gained her trust amidst the war it took to get her back. Glancing behind to see Pietros gaze still fixated on the retreating pair, a sudden wave of confidence forced an unexpected comment out of the 1930s sweethearts mouth.
"data viitoare când mă spui bunică, nu voi fi atât de dulce" 'next time you call me grandma, I won't be so sweet'. Pietro froze from shock, eyes almost as wide as his sisters as they watched the girl leave without questioning. Albeit they hadn't noticed Steve's equally as frozen stare. When the hell had she learnt to speak Romanian?
•••
Translation is from Google so if anyone can help me correct it when needed it'll be much appreciated!
