IVANOV ~ yelena belova

𝟎𝟐𝟔

𝐁𝐔𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐓, 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐀

The apartment was as familiar as the palm of her hand. She could trace the cracks in the walls like the scars on her skin. The green door in front of Karina had been chipped as the paint peeled away from the surface.

Her hands shook painfully as she raised her fist to the door, but she quickly lowered it to her side. Did Bucky really mean what he said in that letter? In his fragile mind, she had betrayed his trust by helping Steve, so why would he want her to stay with him?

Karina took the crumpled letter from her bag, the familiar weight of the paper like comfort in her palm. The ink was smudged from the tears she reluctantly admitted to crying while reading the letter, but the words were still legible. She couldn't say the same for Bucky's familiar scrawl, which brought her comfort.

The suffocating sensation in her chest was aggravated by the Romanian summer air, as were the spirals of dust that seemed to cover every surface of the old apartment complex. The dust tickled her nose, causing it to twitch as if a feather was being brushed beneath her nose.

She did everything she could to avoid sneezing, but a short burst of air audibly travelled through her nose until she violently sneezed into her sleeve. Karina froze and looked up at the door in front of her as she heard movement stop on the other side of the wall.

Bucky's expression could easily be pictured; she could almost see his brow twitch and his metal hand reaching for his gun through the door. They didn't move, and Karina decided it was either now or never, so she raised her fist to the door and knocked three times.

"Hey, it's uh, it's Karina," she said awkwardly before sighing to herself; she was an assassin, for fucks sake, she should've just barged into the apartment. But, out of habit, Karina squeezed the strap of her duffel bag and waited to hear Bucky's foot shuffle across the floor towards the door.

Karina was growing impatient as she wondered why it was taking him so long to answer the door, so she shuffled closer to it until she was directly in front of it, listening for any telltale signs of Bucky actually answering the door.

Bucky came to a halt in front of the door and peered through the peep hole to ensure that it was only Karina who was there. He chuckled when he saw her, her face pressed up against the dusty door, before she huffed and moved her face up to the peep hole, trying to see through the other side.

Bucky swung the door open, and Karina looked up as if she were a child caught stealing candy. She moved her face away from the door as if she wasn't just squashed up against it.

"About time, Jesus, I thought I'd be out there all day," she joked as she closed the door behind her and locked the multiple locks. She turned to face Bucky, whose hair had grown longer, but he appeared healthier and happier.

"Maybe if you'd knocked sooner and not stood outside like a pussy for twenty minutes, I would've let you in," Bucky retorted, smiling at Karina's offended expression.

"Whatever. God, this place hasn't changed at all," she observed, changing the subject as she looked around the mouldy apartment. And she was correct; the bullet holes, which she traced with her finger, were still opposite the door, and the water-damaged cabinets still hung off the hinges.

But she liked it. It gave her a sense of warmth and comfort to know that she and Bucky were free, and even if the shithole of an apartment would be their temporary home, she still felt giddy with freedom.

Karina heard a rustle come from the window and she quickly withdrew her gun from the waist band of her jeans. She moved closer to the window, quickly opening it and pointing her gun at the perpetrator, but she was met with a white cat.