Retrograde▸bucky barnes

14. Civilian

A missed call. No text messages.

It had been three days and Lena had not returned the call from Bucky, nor did she want to. She was still reeling, so much so that she had not even taken precautions of leaving her home and hiding from him. Maybe a part of her trusted that he would not dissolve into a murderous Winter Soldier. Or maybe another part hoped he would and put her out of her misery of having to live in this century where everything always went awry.

It was late, darkness having fallen hours earlier, when she heard the sound of Bucky's motorcycle on the street below. She did not think he would come here. She had hoped he would not. But it immediately illuminated her fight or flight response, invoking the feeling that she needed to be on the next plane out of the country.

Would I even be able to cover my tracks enough to escape him? He is an assassin after all.

The engine shut off and there were footsteps up her front stoop. There was silence for a moment before a knock at the door. Lena did not move from her position at her kitchen table, hands firmly locked around a steaming cup of coffee in tense anticipation. There was another knock and a continued silence.

"Lena if you're there, can we please talk? I don't want- I just-." There was silence again. "I don't want to lose you Lena," he said in a barely audible voice, perhaps he only said it to himself, but Lena heard it.

She sat rooted in her seat unable to move. She told herself could not trust this man. He was not the man who had taken her on outings in the city while shooting her joyous, almost adoring smiles. He was an assassin, an old nightmare that had come to plague her. If she could not fully trust herself, she certainly could not trust him.

"I'm leaving the country for a while," he continued, as if he knew she was there, "something came up and I don't know how long I'll be gone, or to where. But I'm going."

The silence went on for so long Lena had begun to think he had walked away.

"I don't trust myself either Lena," he said, again barely audible, "And so I don't even know if I should trust you. But I want to. I don't know why, but I want to."

There was another long silence.

"And here I am standing talking to a door, not even knowing if you're there," he said finally as his voice receded and footsteps descended down the stoop.

The motorcycle roared to life again and Lena vacated her position and moved to the window to watch him go down her street. No helmet as always, just the aged leather jacket.

Lena watched until he was no longer visible and retreated to the living room. She pawed through a drawer, extracted a pack of cigarettes, selected one, and slipped outside to her front steps where Bucky's boots had rested only moments earlier. She lit the cigarette, taking a long drag, holding the feeling in her lungs for a long moment before exhaling. She coughed as she exhaled, her body's steady reminder that smoking was not good for her, regardless of how infrequently she did so. Coffee still in hand, she gripped the cigarette between her index and middle finger.

If he's leaving, that gives me time to pack up my life. To pick up my life and disappear without a trace. He'll come back from wherever he's gone and never know what happened to me. A ghost. Just like Lilith. Just like him.

But there was another voice that nagged.

Can't you trust yourself? And if you can trust yourself, can't you trust him? Are you not free from your brainwashing? Didn't Shuri assure you that you were free?

Lena considered and started connecting the dots.

Bucky's friend by the name of "Shuri" could only be Shuri herself, and Bucky was likely just as free as Lena, but she couldn't be sure, especially knowing that the Winter Soldier's brainwashing was inherently different from her own. All the little pieces of him started to fall together. A quick internet search on her phone of "James Buchanan, Winter Soldier" brought up the recent couple years worth of headlines, "Bucky Barnes, childhood friend of Captain America granted parole" being the first.

She clicked on the article, remembering back a decade earlier when she had met the famous Steve Rogers himself, and had worked alongside him in the Battle of New York. She shook the memory from her head, one of her near death experiences at the hands of a Norse god not being her favorite event to relive. None of them had known much of the Winter Soldier then, much less known it was Bucky Barnes.

Scanning the article it all made sense, why he was elusive with his past, his existing connections to the remaining Avengers, his intimate knowledge of history.

"Sergeant Barnes now lives his life as a civilian," the article concluded.

Civilian with a history of assassination, Lena thought as she turned back inside to ready herself for bed.