Recovery || Bucky Barnes

03 | Seventeen

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"the truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance." – W. Clement Stone

★★★

Tess could see him.

A lonely figure clad in black. His back facing her as he stood at an unreachable distance. Flames, which erupted from her hands, danced around him as she watched paralysed. He couldn't hear her screaming for him to escape, to run from the inferno she had created. Her attempts to warn him only fuelled the fires and she watched on hopelessly as he turned to look at her. His face detailed and unequivocally rememberable as the orange light of the fire flickered on his body.

The torture her lungs had endured from her screaming, had awoken her. Her hands found themselves wrapped around the loaded pistol beneath her bed, aiming it at the door. Tears formed in her eyes as she stood there staring, flooded with fear at the thought of something behind it. She broke out in a cold sweat as the dream continued to replay in her mind. A part of her couldn't help but hope it was something to put her out of her misery. The number of countless nights she had spent breaking down until she was nothing but a trembling train wreck, was nothing to how she felt standing there with a gun aimed at the door.

Tess loved this man. There was no doubt in her mind that she hadn't, and to see him standing in the fires that she caused... She selfishly prayed that this man didn't exist, only so that she didn't have to carry the guilt of his murder for the rest of her life. She prayed that the people that kept her in that place made her do it, begging in some sort of higher power to be saved from herself. When she couldn't stand there any longer, drowning in that deafening silence of shame, she put the gun down. Her hand steadied herself against the bare wall behind her before she slid down against it, the gun still in her hand. Her forehead leaned against the tip of the muzzle as the barrel rested against her nose.

"Bailey, Sanderson, Thompson, Guerra, Hernandez." She whispered as she knocked the gun against her forehead.

She was doing this for them, and she was doing this for her. So that she could finally get some answers about what happened in the gaps of her memory and who was behind it all. If that man was still out there, she would find him after all this. She wasn't sure what she would say or do but, she knew it was something that would have to be done. Even if he killed her, it would a debt settled for the pain she had caused him.

Tess glanced at the clock, it was four am. She had slept for three restless hours after looking over the other mission files that Steve had done for SHIELD. But nothing had caught her eye as much the Lemurian Star. She sighed heavily as she put the gun beside her. There was something about this mission she was given, like she was only given a piece of a much bigger puzzle. She knew that there was something that connected her to Steve Rogers, his name seemed so familiar in her ear. But she could confirm that he wasn't the man in her dream. She was certain that she would know him if he saw him. She slid the gun back into the holster underneath the bed when she was positive that she was safe.

She went to the bathroom and washed herself up, wanting to remove the remnants of her breakdown. After she was done she cooked herself breakfast, the bland taste of eggs and toast told her that she had no appetite. She forced it down her throat, reminding herself that she hadn't eaten since the day before and she would regret it later on. She flushed it all down with a beer before throwing it in the trash.

Tess left her apartment and circled back to check the perimeter before she took a car heading to her safe house. It was one of two that she had set up in D.C. because she knew that high profile case like this would probably cause a lot more trouble than she could handle if she failed. She had secured a few out of the country and new covers set in place for her in case things turned sideways. She preferred the safehouse in Delaware because it had the best set-up for all the hardware she needed to get into SHIELD. She cleared the area before she got inside, pulling out her gun to search each room before she could somewhat relax.