That I would be your Girl - A Marvel Story

Chapter 9. Chop Suey!

A/N: Happy Star Wars month folks! I'm super jazzed for the upcoming Kessel run, sounds like it will be extra fun this year! Also pretty pleased with this chapter. As you can tell I was able to get it out pretty quick it was a fun one to write.

**TW** Blood, violence, gore. (dun dun dun)

My lungs burned my muscles felt like fire but the wind in my hair and the pounding of my heart gave me life. While I was running, I could forget everything and anything else even existed except for this. I could forget that all of the world felt filled with the same burning as my lungs. Nothing else could beat the feeling of freedom as I did it and there was nothing else that I would rather be feeling at this moment. Even if everything else in my life felt crazed and raw like an open wound to the air. Maybe it was especially because of that. This was the first time in so long that I had run for the joy of it rather than merely running for my life and I gulped down the sensations that it brought. Good and bad.

I easily kept pace with Steve as his feet pounded against the pavement, as each foot hit the hard ground, I felt the jolt of it through my entire body and I bathed in the sensation. Steve too seemed to be running through his emotions just as much as I was. Neither of us spoke, there was no need to. We just worked out our issues in our own heads beside one another. We would either work them out or steep ourselves in them, which one was still undetermined. I was, however, a mixture of both.

The minutes dragged and turned into an hour on and neither of us yielded, neither of us spoke, we didn't even look at each other we just existed, and we ran.

We ran.

And ran.

And ran.

And I would have kept on running if Steve hadn't of stopped.

"You've got great endurance." He said as he slowed to a stop stepping onto the grass of some small park, he had steered us towards.

If only he knew.

I bent over my knees taking deep breaths my lungs starving. My muscles ached already I would be sore later. "It's been a long time since I've run for anything other than my life." I admitted looking up at him from my position.

He appraised me for a moment and everywhere his eyes touched suddenly felt as though it had caught on fire.

He continued on his eyes met daringly with mine, "I'm glad you came with me. Bucky doesn't like to run like this. I think it reminds him too much of the training Hydra put him through. But I find running helps me organize my thoughts."

I straightened putting my hands on my hips looking up at him my breath calming, "I get it. It was not a very fun place to be, they didn't treat us like we were humans. I know why he doesn't talk about it, why he won't... It was more than just psychological torture there- It was very much physical torture too, once they had us run to see how long we could run for before we couldn't anymore." I sat down on a nearby bench my legs beginning to shake, "it was different for the both of us there. But he took the brunt of it, if only to save me from it."

I was having a difficult time differentiating between my world and this one. My exhaustion was making it harder to decide what belonged where. Who belonged where? As I looked up at Steve, I swallowed thickly trying not to ogle him.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that." Steve said the apology in his tone genuine, "I'm glad you had someone to lean on, Bucky didn't have that here but I'm glad that you are here for him now."

I rested my elbows on my knees letting my head hang looking at my boots, cleaner now than they were when I fell through the portal, and I felt a little ridiculous wearing them to run now but what choice did I have it wasn't like I had options, I was lucky enough to have what James had brought me.