The Silent Shadow || marvel

12- in the belly of the empty night

Steve Rogers sat on a park bench with Sam Wilson at his side. The streets of New York were as crowded as ever due to the summer season of tourists and he could see storm clouds that began to roll in from the North.

He held his sandwich weakly, not bothering to take a bite. He couldn't eat. Not after his thoughts completely shattered any form of emotion or actions he could do or feel. To his right, Sam dug into his sandwich mercilessly as if he had never eaten before this moment.

Steve just sat and stared.

He felt sweat roll down his neck from the sun's heat and the moisture that rested on his brow from the stuffy humidity caused by the upcoming storm. It would usually bother him, but now he couldn't think of anything else.

Just him and her.

Him being his former best friend Bucky Barnes, who Steve knew to have died mid-war. He saw it, he saw him fall with his own eyes. Yet there he was, alive and fighting for the enemy. But one thing Steve fought to come to terms with was her. Who was she? He'd never seen her before, and if his memory served him right, she seemed to be a child.

Whoever she was, she came to him in his dreams last night.

Steve had been struggling to remember anything after he fell into the water two weeks ago. He tried and tried for days with no luck. It was easy to say he was desperate to know the look on Bucky's face when he pulled him from the river.

Had he remembered him? Was he not brainwashed anymore? Steve had so many questions that his brain simply denied him the answers to. What it did grant him access to was a memory of a little girl in a bloody dress and short pigtails tied in ribbons pointing a gun at him.

He only caught a glimpse, a flash to put it in better words as it was no more than a second long. But that sight that lasted for only a fraction of a second stuck with him.

Steve was sure if he were to describe her to a sketch artist or even to Maria Hill, he couldn't tell them any more than the description of a short pale girl with dark hair in a dress. Not very helpful.

He let a frustrated breath out as he struggled to piece together what he had seen the night prior. The man questioned why a child, would be with the deadliest assassin of all time and the fact that she held the gun like she knew how to use it.

Something didn't sit right with him.

Steve's sigh caught the attention of a ravenous Sam who took the last bite of his once very large sandwich.

He took a look at Steve's concentrated yet angry face and raised an eyebrow. "What's up with you Cap? You're pouting like a kid who didn't get what they wanted." He asked.

Without receiving a reply, he took a look at his untouched sandwich. "Did they not give you what you want? Cuz I'll eat it if you don't want it. "

Steve stayed silent for a moment more until he snapped out of his trance. "What? Oh, no I was just thinking." He answered, clearly not focused.

"About what?"

He didn't answer. At least, not immediately. Would Sam think he was crazy? He thought he was crazy himself. There was no evidence of a girl even being in the vicinity of the area, what if he simply made it up in his head?

"When I was on the river bank," Steve started, staring longingly at the park before them. "There was this little girl that I saw for a second maybe even less, and she was holding a gun pointed at my head."

Sam's face fell as his eyebrows furrowed at Steve's recollection.

"Are you sure you weren't hallucinating? You were in pretty bad shape." Sam put forth.