A Second Chance

Chapter 13 - The Museum

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I cut it a little close, but I managed to update before the month ended, YES!! This would've been up sooner, but heaping salt on the Thunderbolts trailer distracted me, whoops. Anyways, enjoy.

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The next morning, Roxanne woke up and found Bucky already awake. He was sitting on the bedroom's couch, hunched over and looking down. He glanced up to look at Ro when he heard her stirring awake and sitting up on the bed. Something about him seemed off, but she couldn't quite tell what.

"Good morning," she greeted. "Did you sleep well?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," Bucky retorted. The truth was that he didn't sleep at all. He had forced himself to stay awake and watch her all night out of paranoia, but she had no way of knowing any of that. Or so he thought.

She slightly narrowed her eyes at him. Not only was she able to catch that the man's reply had been a lie thanks to her tingling temples telling her so, but even if she hadn't possessed that power, it wasn't hard to guess by the dark circles under Bucky's eyes that he wasn't as well-rested as he claimed to be. She briefly considered further probing him about it, but she once again decided it was best to leave it alone. After all, under their current circumstances, him being on edge was understandable. She herself had taken a pretty long while to finally fall asleep. The night before wasn't even close to being amongst her most restful ones, but she at least had managed to gather enough energy to take on a new day.

"How soon until we leave for D.C.?" Bucky demanded.

Ro rolled her eyes. Would it kill the guy to give her time to fully wake up first? She stretched her arms and her back as she stood up from the bed, loosening her locked joints.

"Well, first, I'm going to need to brush my teeth and get dressed," Ro explained. "Then, I'm going to need to pack before we grab breakfast in the lobby."

Now, it was Bucky's turn to roll his eyes.

"Everything you just said sounds like it will take at least an hour," Bucky complained. "And what do we need to get breakfast at the lobby for? It'll be a lot faster if we just eat the food I brought with me."

"What are you in such a hurry for?" Ro scolded as she walked to the bathroom. "D.C. and the museum are still going to be there an hour from now. They'll still be there two, even three, hours from now. Also, breakfast came with the price of the room. It'd be a waste not to take advantage of that."

Bucky growled in frustration as he laid back on the couch.

"You know what? Fine," he relented reluctantly. "We'll do this your way, but we better be out of here within two hours."

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45 minutes. They left the inn within 45 minutes, which was faster than Bucky's initial estimate, but this did not seem to impress him at all. In fact, Bucky spent the entire morning, including the two-hour train ride to D.C., in the same cheerless mood he had been in since last night. Roxanne had tried to converse with him to make the commute more bearable, but Bucky had been determined to remain silent and irritated. In the end, all Ro could do was put on her earbuds and listen to her music until the train reached its destination.

Once they arrived at D.C., the two continued on foot, with the young woman leading the way. Despite only previously having been there once, the years she had spent living on the street had made Ro develop a very good sense of orientation, allowing her to remember the way with a decent amount of accuracy. Ironically enough, her escape from the Winter Soldier made it even easier for her to remember how far the museum was from their current location.