WinterWitch: Control

Chapter 5

Bucky POV

"Um..." I hadn't really planned on what to say to her, but now that I was standing in front of her, acting a little speechless, I felt stupid for not preparing something on the way. "I...brought you your cereal." Seriously, Barnes? That's the best you could come up with?

She smiled sweetly at me, but shook her head, blinking her eyes a little to try and clear the tears in her eyelashes. "That's very sweet of you, James, but I've sort of lost my appetite." She began to close the door, but I put my foot in it.

"Are you going against your trainer's advice?" I asked, turning my head slightly, a small smile etched on my face as I hoped that she would understand what I was implying. Smiling felt...odd. I didn't do it very often, but something about our repartee warmed my heart slightly. It was an odd feeling that I wanted to push to the furthest corners of the Earth to protect her, but also be selfish and keep it close. Pushing it away would probably be the best option.

Her eyebrow was furrowed and her face went through stages of realisation. Confusion, surprise, disbelief and then happiness. "They agreed?" she asked, taking the bowl from me. Her smile could light up a whole room and my smile dropped slightly as I realised that I shouldn't be tarnishing someone who could be so heart-warming. I wasn't good enough to be her...anything, not that I thought of her as anything more than a friend. She was hardly that, merely an acquaintance. Maybe it was better if it stayed that way.

She sniffled slightly, her nose being slightly runny from the crying. I frowned slightly. "Yeah, they did." She sighed with relief slightly with a smile. I stared at a corner on the floor asking myself why I didn't ask why she was crying in the first place. Of course I knew why she was crying, but I wanted to make sure that she was okay.

She tilted her head, a curious expression on her face. "What is it?"

I looked back to her face, her cheeks still red, and noticed that she had put the...collar back around her neck. "I was meant to..." I frowned at my own foolishness for not checking on her like I was supposed to do. "Are...are you okay?" She bit her lip and looked at the ground. Was I asking the wrong thing? Was this the right thing to be doing? I hadn't talked to someone like this in so long.

She opened the door and gestured for me to come in. I'd been in before and didn't bother to double check if it was alright with her as it clearly was. Wanda's room felt out of my comfort zone. It was all...homely. Books and photographs and drawings and pillows. My brain didn't want to accept that I would be permanently staying in one place, not after HYDRA. It was a simple cell, not duvet or pillow, nothing but a slab on which to sleep. I had gotten used to it. I stood in the centre of the room, looking back on her as she shut the door and walked over.

She sat on the wooden swing thing again, the seat that had rope attaching it to the ceiling. As I predicted, it supported her perfectly fine. She sat on the bed, but I stayed standing up. She rolled her eyes at me and sniffled again, beckoning me over. "You don't have to ask permission or ask where to sit in my room, you know? You can just come and sit...wherever..."

I frowned as I tentatively walked over to her. I'd sat on her bed before, the one time she entered my mind, but recognising all the homely things around her room made me feel a more discomforted than last time. "I'd prefer asking permission if that's alright."

"Well you don't need to with me," she replied, smiling slightly as she tried to keep down the tears that were forming from her thinking about all the things that I still hadn't started talking with her about yet. Idiot. Before we talked about what was wrong, I realised that she was the only person that had said I didn't need to ask permission. I think Steve assumed that I knew how to do things, sit without needing someone telling me where or when. It was foreign to me in a way. Not her.