The Marble Notebooks

Chapter 23

I heard a loud bang. My eyes shot open to look around the pitch-black room. I heard something moving in the corner of the room. I reached over to wake Bucky up but his side of the bed was empty.

The noise from the corner jumped on top of me and held me down. The cold metal of Bucky's arm wrapped around my throat tightly. My heart was racing and I tried to scream out but nothing could come out. I raised my arm and flung Bucky across the room and his body slammed against the wall, breaking a lamp in the process.

My throat was on fire and I was trying to catch my breath when my door flew open and the lights turned on. Wanda and Vision ran in, shortly after Sam and Steve joined them. Wanda came to my side and grabbed my shoulder.

"Are you ok? What happened?" She asked looking me up and down.

Steve, Vision, and Sam were sitting Bucky up off the ground. He was knocked out and had some cuts on his arms from flying into the glass lamp.

"I'm fine," I whisper hoarsely with insane pain in my throat when I tried to talk.

"What happened?" Sam said standing up from kneeling next to Bucky.

I shrugged, not wanting to speak again because of the pain.

"He must've had a nightmare," Steve sighed while going into my bathroom to get a wet towel and begin to clean the blood off Bucky's arm and back. I nodded agreeing with him. "He hasn't had a bad one in a while," Steve added. It seems like he was used to this happening before.

"Vision, come look at her neck," Wanda said backing up from me so Vision can scan my neck for injuries.

He looked at my neck and raised my chin to get a better look. I could see out of the mirror above my dresser the dark red and purple impressions from his hand.

"Multiple small contusions and lots of internal bruising," He said and used his finger to lightly wipe some blood off the side of my neck. I winced at the light touch. Wanda brought over a wet cloth to clean the little cuts from the metal fingers digging into my skin. It stung like hell but I bit my lip hard to not make it seem as bad as it was.

"Sam, go get her an ice pack please," Vision instructed.

"Is he ok?" I whispered looking over at Steve.

"Yeah," he said tossing the bloody towel to the side. "He's just unconscious now, a few cuts on his back," I nodded to show I heard. "Vision, you wanna help me get him up?"

Vision and Steve both took an arm and lifted Bucky's limp body up. His head was down with his hair covering his face so I couldn't see it.

"Let's bring him to his room," Steve said and they dragged him out. I wanted to protest and have them put him back in my bed but I knew no one would let that happen tonight so I stayed quiet.

Sam brought me back an ice pack wrapped in paper towels and Wanda held it to my neck and thanked Sam for me. He left the room and shut the door behind him so it was just Wanda and me.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, tears began forming in my eyes.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," She looked at me with sympathetic eyes.

"You just... told me to watch out for this-" I whispered before she cut me off.

"Stop talking, I know it hurts," She said. "Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, it's no one's fault," She reassured me.

I nodded agreeing.

"Are you going to be able to go back to sleep?" she asked.

I shook my head no and looked over to the clock to see it was almost 5 A.M.