Captured // A Winter Soldier Story

chapter twenty eight // epilogue

✮✮

"I've got scars, even though they can't always be seen. And pain gets hard, but now you're here, and I don't feel a thing."
-If I Could Fly by One Direction

✮✮

EPILOGUE

third person point of view

It was just past five in the morning when terror broke through his otherwise peaceful sleep.

His lips parted to let out a scream, the sound piercing through the silence of the night and disrupting everyone in the vicinity. He thrashed in his nightmare, his muscles clenching and contracting and convulsing, his brow already starting to break a sweat. He was fighting invisible demons, a whole army of horrors that lay deep inside his mind where no one could see them except him. I'm telling you- you couldn't even begin to imagine what he see when he closes his eyes. And at night, those hellish images on the back of his eyelids twist into something straight out of his days of torture, creating a hallucination so strong that hardly anyone can break him of its spell. This man has been through more torment than any soul should ever have to endure. He's survived it, but the price he had to pay....well, the price he had to pay came in the form of his sanity. He paid it in full, upfront, and with no returns offered.

You can imagine what that might do to a man over time.

His scream echoed off of the walls of the bedroom again. The woman beside him jolted awake at the start of the second scream, her eyes shooting open as the tiredness left her body in an instant. Her attention was immediately drawn to the man convulsing beside her.

This, sadly, was not a new development. He was a tortured soul, and she was his lover, the one who made the agreement to be there for him in every instance he needed her. Now was one of those times.

Her expression turned into one of pain as she recognized the all too familiar sight of his innate struggle, and she got ahold of his flailing arms and pinned them to his side as best she could, straddling his waist as she called his name.

"Bucky!" She called, trying desperately to get his attention, to pull him from the dark recesses of his mind and save him from his demons.

The first call didn't break through. He kept thrashing, bucking wildly in an effort to get her off of him, his distorted brain believing that she was another danger. He began mumbling to himself.

"I..I didn't do it! I didn't....they made me....I wish I hadn't, but....no choice..." he whimpered, his screams dying down to sobs. His mood changed in a second, from blood curdling screams to heart wrenching pleas for forgiveness. The guilt on his shoulders was too much for him to handle, even while unconscious, and his deepest, darkest thoughts often revealed themselves while he dreamt. He wanted people to know that he didn't have a choice in the sins he committed, that he didn't want to do any of it, that it wasn't fair that he received the blame for being a monster even though others had made him that way. But in his nightmares, no one listened to these cries, because no one cared. They just pointed their accusatory fingers at him and screamed monster.

"Bucky, I'm here! Listen to my voice! Snap out of it!" The woman tried again, her voice tense and her eyes full of worry. She loved him, she did, and it hurt her to see his suffer like this. He was broken, and she wanted nothing more than to fix him.

But this was the reality they were forced to live with: nightmares, screams, black dread, guilt. Prescription medication for mental disorders. Too many weapons, not enough blankets. Scars lining skin. Cries for help rather than cries of passion.

It was a hard life, but it was their burden to bear, so they tried to fight through the bad stuff and focus on the good.

The good. Like the feeling she got when he finally opened his eyes and awoke from his nightmare, his eyes at first wild and scared but then filled with relief when he saw that she was there. His desperate, shaky arms reaching for her shoulders, in an attempt to cling to his last shred of humanity. Her skin touching his. Their bodies intertwined on the mattress in a way that meant more than sex ever could.

Some days, like today, were hard. Some days, all the anxiety and depression and leftover trauma were more prevalent, and getting up from the warm bed seemed completely pointless. Some days, all they craved was each other's embrace.

She was laying on her stomach, pressed against his chest. She rose and fell slightly every time he breathed. His arms were wrapped tightly around her, one arm around her waist, clutching her hip bone; another resting against the back of her head. Her fingertips softly grazed his cheeks, her nose brushing against his.

"I'm sorry," he muttered, uttering the only words that ever seemed to roll off his tongue naturally. I love you was a struggle, I'm happy was hard to spit out. But I'm sorry was always sitting on his lips, just waiting to be spoken.

"We talked about this," she replied, pulling her nose away from his so she could look him in the eyes. "Don't apologize for things you aren't responsible for."

He stared at her for a moment, his lips set in a remorseful grimace- but before he could say something probably derogatory to himself, she leaned down and pressed her own lips to his. She stole his response right out of his mouth as they moved their lips in sync, her efforts drawing his attention away from his clammy hands and shuddering muscles until the only thing he could focus on was the way she made him feel. The way she managed to somehow make every one of his fears and worries evaporate into thin air just by being near him.

His eyes were closed, but he could still see her, in the same way a blind man is still able to create an image of the world by sensing things around him. He could feel the thick scars on her skin, could map out every wound she'd ever gotten. Little pockets of tissue stuck up in places she'd been stabbed or shot, but he marveled at them like they were diamonds rather than signs of war. Her flesh told a story, a story that he, alone, could understand. They were a piece of her, so he could never find them ugly. Nothing about her was ugly. She was flawless, she was smiling, and she was his. She was one of the very few things in his life that he was proud of.

They had been through a lot together. War had carved out their innocence and let them feeling hollow, but they had turned around and filled their emptiness with love, finding forgiveness in each other.

Perhaps they'll never be able to scrub their hands clean from the red they're stained with, or be able to sleep without nightmares. Maybe they'll never be able to get into a car again without shaking a little. Maybe the familiar, cold metal of a gun will always make their mind go towards a dark place for a second. Perhaps they'll always need antidepressant pills in the morning just to keep their head up during the day.

But they'd made it this far. They have each other. There's no sounds of gunfire echoing in the distance. There's no blood, at least not at the moment. There's reason to have hope that things will get better.

And maybe it's not the life they imagined- maybe they're a little messier, a little more broken, than they'd hoped, but it's who they are. It's what they know. And they are happy to keep fighting for their place in this world.

Because after all, they are heroes. And that's what heroes do.

✮✮

"I'll show you my heart, for when you're lonely, and forget who you are."

✮✮