No Time to Die - Bucky Barnes

Chapter 1

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake, Op 20, Act II: No.10, Scene. Moderato

32557038 56898. The numbers repeat in your head like a mantra. Over and over and over again. It's been seven years. Seven of the most peaceful years you have ever known. Just for a slip-up to disrupt it.

32557038 56898. There was something soothing about these numbers. Something that always grounded you. Especially in situations like this. You've been in multiple rooms like this one. The dingy lighting, the metal furniture that you're handcuffed to and the classic two-way mirror.

32557038 56898. How could you have been so careless? So clumsy and messy? You were never like that before. First time in seven years you have been found.

The time ticks away but it's all the same to you. Time has lost any meaning to you, having lived so long and having the possibility to live longer than natural. For you, time is a concept much like every other thing. Something humans have defined just for it to make sense. From your experience even with a definition nothing ever makes sense.

The click of the lock vibrated through the silent room as Captain Steve Rogers and Tony Stark came strolling in. "Who are you?" The Captain asks. A simple enough question with a not-so-simple answer. You look up at the two of them as they sat down. Recognition flashes through Tony's eyes.

"Y/N Y/LN!" His eyes lit up knowing that there was something familiar about you. "But you are supposed to be dead. You died." You gave him a melancholy smile at the sparkle in his eye that reminded you of an old friend. "So did he. Yet we're both here." You point to Steve who clearly was still wary of you.

"You mind bringing everyone to the same page, Stark." Tony was still astonished. He gets to be in the same room with someone he's looked up to ever since he was a young boy. "She used to work for my father. Her mind, your mind. It's brilliant!" Steve nods his head, remembering the information.

"Now Y/N. May I call you Y/N?" He was as polite as you were told. You nodded your head in response. " Do you mind telling us what happened? The more detail the better. With no interruptions this time." He spits out the last part more for Tony who still looks like a kid in a candy shop.

It was time to tell your story. One that only one other person knows and he may be dead for all you know. "I was born in 1920 to Y/F/N and Y/M/N Y/N. My father died at war which left me with my mother." Those were hard times for both you and your mother and as a way to cope with the grief, your mother taught you how to dance. "I quickly became a prima ballerina. Which was our main source of income."

"Who cares about that, tell him how you are a mastermind." Steve glared at Tony for interrupting you. "It's a mental illness I have. Well, at least that's what it's classified as." Low latent inhibition. A condition in which your brain is more welcoming to stimuli in the surrounding environment. As a result, you process every aspect and detail of any given stimulus. People with low IQ go mentally insane but people with high IQ become geniuses.

"That's what drew Howard to me. He was so impressed with my IQ and transcripts that he gave me a paid internship right after high school." This alongside your job as a ballerina you and your mom were well off. That was until the incident.

"That still doesn't explain how you did what you did a few hours ago or how you are still alive." The incident was what happened. It was the worst day of your life that turned into a catalyst for the rest of it. "It was one of my biggest performances. Everyone who mattered to the ballet world was there." You still remember the blinding limelight and the sound of applause as you entered the stage. The gasp and horror that followed seconds later.

"It was a duet. One my partner and I have done thousands of times. But that night he messed up. Big time." He dropped you during your lift and then 'accidentally' stepped on your leg, shattering it past the ability to heal it with the medicine of the time. Your ballet career was over because your partner's girlfriend was your understudy. "Howard gave me a full-time position at Stark industries. Much to my mother's dismay." You laugh reminiscing of a time so long ago.