The Marble Notebooks

Chapter 44

I walked down the familiar dark hallway of the compound to the locker room.

"Julia!?" I shouted out. No response.

I continued through the locker room to the pool. The lights were off and nothing was visible. The sound of the pool jets was the only thing I could hear.

"Julia!?" I repeated. I found the light switch on the wall and the massive lights hanging from the ceiling turned on one by one illuminating the area.

There she was standing at the other edge of the pool. She was glowing her beautiful green and smiling at me with soft eyes.

"What're you doing in the dark?" I asked as I slowly made my way around the pool to approach her.

Her smile instantly fell and she raised her hand toward me.

"What're you doing?" I asked stopping in my tracks.

She levitated off the ground and landed right in front of me. I wanted to reach out and caress her cheek. I wanted to wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into a tight hug. But my arms wouldn't move.

I looked up to meet with her eyes and they were different. They weren't looking at me with the love they used to have, but a glossed over distant glare. I wanted to back up and run out of here but I couldn't move. I couldn't leave her.

Suddenly, I was flung into the pool. I opened my eyes under the water and saw her blurry outline through the top of the water. She was pushing me lower and lower. My head hit the bottom of the pool. I couldn't swim up to her.

I sat up gasping for air. This was one of the countless nightmares I've had since I saw Julia's face on the news. One glimpse of her feeble body and glassy eyes caused me to lose the little progress I made on keeping my mind busy. The nightmares came back faster and faster as the weeks without her passed by. I had vivid visions of me as The Winter Solider completing the missions that I regret the most. New nightmares began playing out in my head where I would see Julia be taken by the Brotherhood over and over again. I'd wake up in a cold sweat wrapped up in the sheet or on the hardwood floor. I got up from the bed to use the bathroom and Pietro sat up from the couch.

"Shit!" I jumped back and hit the wall.

"Sorry, man," He yawned. "Bad dream?"

"Yeah," I groaned and rubbed my eyes.

"I'll go back to my room," Pietro said as he began to get off the couch.

"No, no," I said and opened the bathroom door. "Stay, it's cool."

I went into the bathroom to pee and came back out to see Pietro had fallen back asleep. I'm pretty sure Wanda and Pietro come into the room most nights, I was always passed out pretty early though. I went down to the bar and restocked Julia's room with liquor bottles again. Each night I chugged a bottle till I passed out. I'd wake up the next morning dehydrated and hungover. To keep everyone off my back I would show my face in the kitchen for breakfast, then retreat back to the room to blackout. But some mornings I would wake up with the T.V blasting and the blue and purple blanket would be balled up in the corner of the couch from Wanda or Pietro using it.

Steve came to the room every morning after breakfast to talk to me for a bit. He would tell me about the plans that Bruce, Vision, and Tony were working on. They were using the tesseract to try and trace the device that was controlling Julia. Considering the device was created using the power from the tesseract, they believe there can be some way to link the two. Every day they would test different equations and plans and each one failed. Steve reminded me it's only been four weeks, then it's only been five weeks, then six weeks, and we need to give them more time. He was right. But the longer she was gone the more I worried about her. My guilt of letting this happen to her grew with each passing day.

The Professor and Tony talked every day. They didn't have any breaking news to share, but they just kept each other updated on their ideas. The Professor has this contraption called Cerebro that expands his telepathy powers to reach mutants across the globe. But just like at the warehouse, he couldn't pick up on any of the Brotherhood's thoughts. He explained that Magneto wears this helmet made out of an ancient metal that his powers can't penetrate and he believes that the Brotherhood must've gotten more and created a sort of headpiece that they all are wearing to shield themselves from Cerebro. Since the news broke of Polaris being spotted with the Brotherhood in London, the Professor has been communicating with London government officials setting up a search for the group's hideout. I wondered how Storm and the Professor were doing. Storm couldn't even speak a word to me when we got back from Germany. I hoped she was doing better than me.

One night, after another nightmare, I decided to take a walk around the compound. I don't know what possessed me to do it. But I was out of liquor and Pietro's snoring on the couch definitely wasn't helping me sleep. I decided to head to the gym, maybe a light workout would help ease my mind. I walked past the lab and to my surprise, the lights were still on. I opened the doors and walked into the bright lab with all the beeping computers and monitors. Each computer glowed with diagrams and numbers. None of it made sense to me. Not only do I not understand all this science stuff, but all this modern technology still makes little to no sense to me.

"What're you doing up, Barnes?" Tony asked from the back of the lab.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't know you were in here," I said and walked over to his desk where he was sitting. "Just... can't sleep,"

"Same here," He sighed took his glasses off to rub his eyes. "This shit is killing me. Each plan we map out doesn't compute,"

I nodded and leaned against his desk to look over the plans he had pulled up on the computer screen. I was taken back that Tony cared this much to stay up late and work on finding Julia.

"Bruce and I run a bunch of different equations a day and nothing," He groaned. "The Professor thinks that something is bound to come from the searches in London, I hope he's right,"

"Tony, I... I just wanted to say thanks," I said looking over to him from the computer screen. "I know you have a million other things to do, and you taking time to help track her down... it means a lot to me,"

Tony was silent for a moment and moved his swivel chair back to face me.

"Well, you're not the only one I'm doing this for," He joked. "I can't have half my team in a depression,"

He made me chuckle a bit with that one.

"But in all seriousness," He started over. "She's one of us now. She sacrificed her safety to help us... this is the least I could do,"

"Thanks, man,"

"Alright, Barnes. Don't get all mushy with me," He said rolling his eyes. "Go try to get sleep,"

I sighed and stood up from leaning on the desk. "You too, geniuses need sleep too, ya know?" I said while heading back towards the door.

"I'm an above-average genius! It's different!" He shouted as I shut the lab door behind me.

While I have been hiding out in Julia's room for the past two months, I didn't realize how much effort everyone was putting into finding her. It almost made me want to hang out with everyone again. But as I walked through the third floor, I saw the bar has been restocked and the liquor bottles were calling my name