𝗚𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗘𝗟𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗢𝗢 - 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗹

𝟭𝟭: 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗬 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛 𝗠𝗘

AEI: i've got many mixed feelings about this chapter, and it's skim-read bc i need to go take a shower and this took me literal years to write. everyone say bye-bye to ca:tws gracie!!! there's a little bonus chapter after this, but it's not connected to official marvel canon so i don't think it counts.

They don't let me stay with Bucky. I knew they wouldn't - 'cause they're mean, and 'cause nothing's fair anymore, but it still makes me sad when I have to go. I focus really hard on being brave, making sure I keep my eyes up and my face all stiff and still, but my chest hurts when they take me away. The worst sort of hurt in the world.

Who's going to look after him now?

I try not to think about anything at all. Not even Bucky. Not even my dad. I just sit there while they scrub out all the dirt from my cut-up legs, even though they don't do it gentle like Nat would, and then they put the blindfold back on me. It's harder not to think about anything with the blindfold. The dark just swallows you right up, and it feels like you're inside your own head.

When I'm at home, I only ever sleep with my nightlight on. I know I'm too old to believe in monsters, and it's totally not a cool, grown-up, Rogers thing to believe, but I do anyway. When my nightlight's on – the one shaped like the owl – the monsters can't get me. I wish I had it with me right now, but I can't even focus on that, 'cause it will just make me miss home, and then I'll start crying all over again.

It's hard to be brave when you're just doing it for yourself. At least when I was with Bucky, I had someone else to try and make OK.

Even though I don't want to, I start thinking about Bucky.

He still looks like he did in my Captain America book, but he's different too, in a weird way. Like, when God was drawing him, he was pressing too hard with his pencil. There are all these lines on his face. Too much shadow. On his forehead, by his mouth, everywhere, like the bad stuff is eating him from the inside out.

Even his eyes look dark, even though I know for an actual fact that they're blue.

HYDRA's turned him into a scribbly, charcoal-y picture. His brain, too. In my head, I imagine a big, angry cloud instead of his mind; letting out all this thunder and lightning and rain, but when the storm's over, it's just empty.

If Bucky's a cloud, I guess that means my dad is the sun. I don't really know what I am. Probably one of those earthquakes that nobody counts 'cause they're only a two on the Richter Scale. A really boring disaster.

I'm still thinking about earthquakes and hurricanes and all that sort of stuff when they put me in the car. It helps at the beginning. I get travel sick sometimes, so thinking about tornados instead of puking is good. But then, when we've been driving for a little bit, two of the soldiers start talking in Russian, and I get distracted by trying to understand what they're saying.

I speak OKish Russian, but understanding it from someone new is harder. I only know Nat's Russian. She talks slow when she talks to me, so the words all make sense, and she's got a different accent to these guys. I think it's 'cause she's been living in America so long. Her accents are all melted together like those cheese slices you put on burgers.

These guys are definitely not American, so it's a whole lot harder to try and make out what they're saying. I only get little bits of it.

"...could take her out of country immediately... don't know why we have to wait..."

"...he wanted her to meet the Asset... plans for later... wouldn't explain..."

"...kill her?"

"...if it fails again... they'll have him do it..."