✔𝚨 𝚸𝛐𝐞𝐭'𝐬 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞 ➳ 𝚩𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐲 𝚩𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬

Chapter 32

If I can stop one heart
from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,
Or coll one pain,

Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain

Melora felt so very angry. She had never felt so deeply bloody angry with the universe, with whatever god might be out there. Everything she had struggled for, doing exactly as she should. All she wanted was to do good, help people.

The pain that had come with it, the brutal, brutal suffering of her soul. There was no other way to learn what she had learned apparently. Yet, all of it, every single bit of it was something she would have left behind if she knew.

The anger was because of grief, knowing it could have been so different. If only she had gone to look for him. If only she had gone after the Winter Soldier and not stopped. If only she had investigated the strange deaths and assassinations.

Bucky had changed. Had she not seen him so up close, felt it whenever they met, she would have denied it completely. What was once a handsome face, chiselled and always springing with life, was now more machine than man.

There was a true horror in it. He was not whole, there was something missing from what Bucky was. And yet, after all this time. She was sure she was going to die if she did not see him again.

She needed him. There was joy without him, laughs without him, and life without him, but nothing felt like it did with him. She could survive without him but living only felt true with him, and now, more than ever before, did he need her. She and Steve.

She was disappointed in herself for giving up, for thinking he couldn't be out there, for just silently dreaming he would come floating down from the sky when he had been out there for all of this time.

Only the constellations could know what he had been through in the meantime.

Steve nudged her foot as they sat cuffed in the back of the car, seeing as her face was tensing and knuckles turning white from the pressure. He caught her eyes, staring straight into them to tell her once again to calm down.

Melora simply averted his gaze, not wanting to even think about calming down, not now.

"It was him," Steve instead said to Sam and Natasha, the two of them sitting on the other side. "He looked right at us like he didn't even know us."

"How is that even possible?" Sam asked. "It was, like, 70 years ago."

"Zola," Steve replied.

"I'm going to kill every single one of them," Melora muttered, her nails digging into her palms while Steve's eyed her, deciding to turn back to Sam and continue speaking.

"Bucky's unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall," Steve said as realisation hit him with his words. "They must have found him and..."

"None of that's your fault, Steve," Natasha spoke, dozing off because of her blood loss.

"It's mine," Melora sniffled, anger fading, and the tears were pressing on her instead. Never before had she wanted to go back in time as badly as right now.

"You didn't know, Mel," Steve said, looking at her knees. He knew she was right, that was why he couldn't look her in the eyes.

"I met the Winter Soldier plenty of times," she puffed out, pure disbelief at her own actions. "To think I even dared blame you back then." She spat, disgusted with herself. Steve didn't say anything, too lost in his own thoughts while tears silently fell down Melora's cheeks, not even sobs able to leave her.