CAPTIVE [Bucky Barnes x OC] 18+

29 || Cerulean

2011
Germany

She flicks the knives between her fingers effortlessly, having done it so often it is muscle memory by now, while she looks back into the soldier's icy, cerulean eyes. They've been staring at each other for a few minutes now, she's trying to distract him with her gaze.

He stands slightly leaned to the right, counterbalancing the weight of his metal arm. His head cocked to the side, his vigilant eyes are practically glued on the teenager in front of him. He's never before met a person with a stare as intense and intimidating as hers. The quick shiver that runs down his spine makes the fine hairs on his arm and neck stand up.

She wears black jeans and a pair of heavy, military combat boots. They're new. Bucky notices it in the way she moves as she tries to get a hold of them - adjust them to what she wants and needs. M shifts the weight on her feet every few seconds; front, back, left, right. As if she's trying to break the soles like a ballet dancer. She slips often today, causing her to mumble curses under her breath so low only he can hear them. They occasionally make him smirk.

"You need to get a grip on yourself" the dark-haired soldier says from across the room, still eying her carefully. His eyes move quickly between her hands and her face. "No one's going to stop a fucking fight because you need to fix your damn shoes."

"No shit, Sherlock" M scoffs sarcastically "and here I am thinking the world revolves around me."

"You're a brat today" he answers.

Marie stills her hands as she grabs the handles of her knives. She lifts her left arm, bending it behind her shoulder as she positions her fingers around the handle like he'd shown her. Hesitation lingers in her movement.

"Am I?" Bucky notices a smirk curling up in the corners of her full, pink lips. They were still swollen. He figured she must've made out with someone while she was gone.

Keller had let her go out with the people she calls her friends last night, and when she came back this morning, Bucky could smell the alcohol wavering from her. It was bitter and sweet at the same time, a smell he couldn't quite place, but it immediately connected to her. It drew him to her and he wondered what kind of drink she had. And how she'd got it. She's not yet eighteen.

The Winter Soldier likes when he's alone with her. He's a lot clearer then. Something about her is soothing. She's got a tenderness surrounding her that seeps through his crippled mind and reaches places so dark even he doesn't want to wander into. That's how he knows who he is. She opens flood gates of memories in his brain without even trying. They just come swimming up to the surface. It's mostly small images flashing before his eyes, but sometimes it's voices, too.

The last time she had such an effect on him they were outside Keller's house, sitting by the pond on his property in the middle of the night. M had school the next morning, but she couldn't sleep. The soldier couldn't either. So she decided they'd sneak out of her window.

It was warm outside, somewhere around June or July, and as they sat on the grass and talked about school and bullies, he remembered a tiny, skinny boy covering in a corner in a dirty side street. His face was beaten up and there were several bruises forming on his cheeks and above one brow. He remembered asking him if he was too stupid to run, but the boy shook his head. "Running is for cowards, Bucky" he answered in his memory. He didn't know if they were true, the images in front of his eyes, but that name triggered something in him. It pulled at him. And when he told her about it and she repeated the name, he knew it was his.

"Maybe you shouldn't have gone out. You wouldn't be hungover and could concentrate on your trai..."

The soldier's sentence is cut short when he sees the knife's blade fly towards his face. He quickly ducks his head, looking at M with wide eyes.