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7

The next day started off pretty weirdly.

Bucky had been woken up from a pretty heavy nightmare. The first nightmare he could remember having ever since they arrived at Westview. Usually, a nightmare wouldn't be something to worry about. A normal person would just fall back to sleep, but this nightmare had not only left the super soldier shaken up, but y/n too.

It had all been pretty blurry and confusing, but Bucky wasn't in his own body in the dream. He was in someone else's body, but he didn't know whose it was. They were on a debris-covered battlefield full of aliens and super-powered beings, gunshots and explosions flooded his ears, overwhelming every single sense. But that wasn't even the scariest thing about the peculiar nightmare.

In the distance, there was a purple giant, and... himself. The purple giant seemed to be fighting him for some sort of golden glove, and the giant was winning. Bucky had to watch himself get picked up by the throat. He had to watch as he was continuously punched and choked until the giant became impatient, and that was when he heard the crunch. The crunch of his own throat getting crushed at the hands of the giant.

Bucky explained every single detail of the horrifying nightmare to y/n. His head rested in her lap, enjoying the soothing feeling of her playing with his hair as he continued to talk. "It was so weirdly vivid, and I don't know why." He murmured, his eyebrows knitted together in a deep frown as he stared into the darkness of the bedroom. "I've never been in a war, and definitely not ones with aliens. We've never been around anyone else with superpowers..." The super soldier trailed off a little, trying to think of any reason why he'd get such a weird dream like that. "Why would a shoemaker get nightmares about what looks like a space war?" He chuckled, listening to his wife laugh a little in response.

Y/n was very lucky that Bucky wasn't facing her, because the laugh that she'd just let out was completely fake.

There wasn't a smile on her face, but there wasn't a frown either. She was completely blank, almost as if she was fighting her own mind to try and stop herself from disassociating. It was like she was in the room, but not at the same time. What Bucky had told her about his nightmare had triggered something in her mind. Something that her brain had obviously been trying to push down and ignore.

"Maybe it was a stress dream." Y/n murmured, trying her hardest to stay in the moment. That had to be it. Just a stress dream. It wasn't real. Bucky hadn't died at the hands of a 'purple giant'. He was in the room with her. They lived in Westview, New Jersey. They were a 'normal' couple trying to fit in. They'd never been in a war, nor had they ever interacted with any super-powered beings. They were a happily married couple living their suburban dream, and that was it. Nothing more. Nothing less.

She took a sharp breath, her throat feeling as if it could close up at any second. Bucky rambling on and on was the only thing keeping her grounded. Tears pricked at her eyes, desperate for some space, for some fresh air, but the only way she could do that was by waiting until her husband fell back to sleep. Y/n didn't want Bucky to know how she was feeling. She couldn't even describe it herself, let alone put it into words. It was just something that had caused her mind to click. A fight or flight response that she didn't know how to react to. She just had to try her hardest to stay present.

*****

By the time Bucky did fall back to sleep, y/n's lungs felt like they were on fire. She felt suffocated, like an elephant had sat on her chest. Her mind was still fighting itself - one half unearthing a horrible memory about what Bucky had said, and the other half desperately trying to suppress it again.