Haunted By Him

Chapter Eleven

He dreams again of the things he’s learned about Bucky Barnes. He thinks it’s maybe because he can’t forget what happened in the bathroom, the gentle way she’d touched him and how much he’d wanted her to stay and he feels nauseous.

He dreams of waking up next to her in the morning and laughing with her because her hair is in his mouth and her legs are tangled in the sheets, but neither of them care. The Winter Soldier could almost call it a memory because it’s so crisp and clear in his mind when he wakes. He remembers her kissing his cheek, and the smell of her skin. He remembers feeling happy, but now, awake, he only feels guilty for having imagined these things in the first place. He is an intruder in imagined scenes of Natalia Romanova’s happiness and he wishes for half a second that he could be happy too.

He wishes that he could be happy with her.

He rolls over in his bunk and looks at her in hers. She’s slowly waking up, but not like she had in his dream. She’s yawning and she doesn’t look happy. She doesn’t look over at him and smile like sunshine.

“Natalia,” he says to her quietly and she sighs exhaustedly.

“What,” she says.

“What happened to Bucky Barnes?” He asks and then she’s looking at him and her face is unreadable. “What really happened to him?”

She sits up a little on her elbows and frowns down at her pillow.

“He fell off a cliff,” she says.

“You were with him?” He asks and she nods and swallows audibly.

“I was on the enemy side,” she whispers. “But I fell in love with him. I would have followed him anywhere.” When she looks up and over and the Soldier, the meager light from their small window illuminates her, the rising of the sun behind a curtain making her skin glow. “I would have loved him forever.”

“Did you look for his body?” The Soldier asks and she nods and then turns her face away. He watches her wipe her eyes with her hands where he can’t quite see her do it.

“I looked for him for a long time,” she says. “If I’d had the money, I would have been the one putting up a reward.”

Part of the Winter Soldier resents Bucky Barnes. He’s loved by everyone, so loved in fact that people cry about him years after his death and offer to pay money if anyone could possibly bring him home. The Soldier can hardly imagine that much love. He’s envious.

I’m alive! He thinks. I’m the one living! And this dead man has more love in one person than I’ve had my whole life! He can’t even appreciate it anymore and he still has more than me.

“I feel as though I’m haunted by him,” the Winter Soldier whispers and he doesn’t mean for Natalia to hear, but he knows she does because she responds.

“Me too,” she says.