Ava
She'd avoided him for hours. She had gone running with Steve - an event she had decided could and would kill her if she ever had the chance to do it again - and cooked with Talia. She'd helped Jamie with an English essay and played race cars and dinosaurs with Nathaniel. She'd watched a movie with Peter. And now, as she slipped into the bedroom she was sharing with the man she could no longer look at, she sighed with relief.
His back was turned to the door, the muscles relaxed, as he breathed deeply.
Bucky was asleep.
She lay herself down, pulling the pillow from the edge of the bed and placing it down on the floor for herself slowly, and turned to look at him. While she could.
For hours, she traced the line of freckles that were barely visible down the back of his neck, and the broad shoulders that she had clung to not a full day ago. She wanted him to turn in his sleep so that she could commit the softness of his features to memory. She wanted him to wake up and talk to her. She wanted to talk to him. To tell him everything. But that couldn't happen.
And so she let her mind drift into a restless sleep.
Screaming.
Screaming and the crunch of gravel beneath heavy shoes.
And whirring machinery. Fire that engulfed her and blue eyes coaxing her away from the flames.
Words shouted in a language she barely understood anymore and her team missing.
Most of her men. Missing.
*
Screeching tires.
Screaming and crying.
Her mother's voice.
His voice.
Her brother's voice.
"I miss you, A." He was laughing to hide his tears. "When are you coming home?"
"Soon," she promised.
Dust. Dust and nothingness and pain. A lifetime of pain.
*
"I think you need a friend." Green eyes danced with understanding.
"We won't make you do anything."
Soft smiles and an aching emptiness.
Loneliness.
Kindness.
Hands that soothed her as they ran over her skin. A voice that caressed her as it whispered words of concern.
"They're just memories, дорогой." Fingers in her hair. "They can't hurt you."
"It's not your fault."
*
She woke with a start.
2 a.m.
YOU ARE READING
Do You Trust Me? // Bucky Barnes
FanfictionWhen the snap happened, Ava Hall was living the life she had always known she would live: a Sergeant called to serve, a loving sister, an attentive daughter. Ava knew her place. But when she reappears five years later, and the abandoned village she...
