Butterflies (Bucky Barnes Daughter)

SEVEN

TW- Mentions of Sexual Assault

"Mila, what wakes you up at night?" she asked quietly. Mila paused to think, then she lifted her head up to face her.

"The faces."

Mila often dreamt of the faces of the men who used to watch over her. At first the nightmares were bearable. Nothing terrible ever happened in them. After her papa came back, after she had killed those men the nightmares got worse. She would see them touching her, moving their hands up and down her legs and arms.

Their hands were always hot, unusually warm. They always stung against her frigid skin. Those men used the fact that she didn't know right from wrong to their advantage. Mila didn't know that what they were doing to her was wrong. She didn't know that they weren't allowed to touch her until her papa told her one night.

It was a pattern. Every night one of them would wake up from a nightmare. One after the other, every day. He would wake up yelling names in his sleep, she would wake up drenched in sweat and tears. The father and daughter did their best to comfort one another. Mila would curl up into her papa's lap and play with his fingers. He would bring her into his chest and rock her back and forth to calm her breathing. Cold, damp towels would be pressed against her forehead in an attempt to cool her down. He would hold her hands to stop her from biting at them.

Neither of them told the other what the nightmares were about, they didn't have to. One night it got too much. Mila awoke screaming, tears streaming down her face. She would let her papa touch her. He could hold her hands or hug her. She hit him and tried to punch him a couple times. He finally got her to stop shaking and figure out where she was. He scooped her into his arms and moved to the other end of the room. They sat together on the cold cement floor.

Mila leaned her head into the crook of his neck and silently cried. "Mila, do you want to tell me what that one was about?"

She shook her head. Mila started to hyperventilate, her breathing became erratic. Her vision blurred from the tears. "Hey, just look at me" he gently put his finger under her chin and made her look up at him. "Mila breathe, I need you to breathe".

Her chest felt like it was about to cave in. She could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. "It hurts papa" she cried.

He could feel his heart breaking. Mila turned her head away from him, she looked ahead at an empty wall. Mila let out a scream. "Go away! Go away!" she was throwing her arms around in the air. "Make him go away papa, please".

There was no one else in the room but them. "Mila, nobody is here, no one is going to hurt you" he pleaded. Her eyes were squeezed shut. One at a time she opened them, revealing the truth. There was no one else in the room with them.

"Mila, please tell me what happened" he begged.

"Okay" she mumbled. Her palms were shut tightly, no doubt drawing blood from her palms. He held onto one of her hands and with the other she began to rub her nose. "I keep seeing them, the men who watched over me at night". Even being wiped he still knew where this story was headed. "I keep waking up to them on top of me. They tell me to shut up, not to make any noise. I can still feel their hands on me" she hiccupped from all the crying.

He wanted to kill them. His body was overcome with rage. Every instinct he had to kill was being dialed up by ten, but he had to contain himself. For Mila.

He cupped her face with both his hands. Forgetting about the fear he had of his metal hand. Mila wanted to sob, her brain was on fire and body was frozen. She was shaking from the cold and her face was burning up. "You're safe now Mila, you're okay".