When You Were Never Mine

Be Careful What You Wish For

Ok, so I guess I need one more chapter after this to finish...

"Buck?"

"Bucky, please...come on..."

"I'm sorry...just, please...talk to me."

You had been trying for hours to get him to hear you, when your calls and texts were left unanswered, and your sanity was on the brink of crumbling around you. You decided that you couldn't blame him, because this was what you had wanted and he was merely giving it to you, but it wasn't until you actually felt the loss that you realized how wrong you were. The darkness in the room was nothing; your soul felt so much darker, so much colder than the winds that were howling and pushing into the windows of your room.

Once you had gathered yourself after the disconnect during your date with Tony, he brought you home thinking that the familiarity was what you needed, but this was a nightmare to you, a prison that you saw no way of escaping from. He had left you alone just as you had asked him to, but you knew the man too well; the silence allowed you to hear him just outside of your bedroom door, likely sitting on the floor and waiting for you to call him back in.

If only you had the strength to tell him that the call would never come. Not when you were like this, anyway. You had put Tony through enough, and you refused to add to the torture he had already endured by your hand. You wanted him with you, to be the support that you had always relied on, and had always felt from him, but you had yet to realize it. You were blinded by the emptiness that just wouldn't stop.

"Bucky, please, don't do this. I...I was wrong. Okay? Just please, come back."

~~~

"Nat? Um...Natasha? Can you hear me? I'm not really sure how all of this works..."

Tony was sitting on the other side of the door, as you had predicted he would be, and he was in much of the same dilemma as you were. He hadn't gone through the excruciating loss of his soulmate as you had, but he certainly wasn't having any luck in connecting to her. He had tried to call and text too, but had the same result, leaving him feeling abandoned by both of you.

"Red?"

With a frustrated, heavy sigh, he took his phone in hand again and found her name, closing his eyes to pray to whichever deity would listen that she would answer him. He rested it to his ear and waited, each unanswered ring echoing in his mind like the drill at the dentist, painful and shrill until he could barely stand it for even one more.

"Tony?" she answered, her voice filled with concern. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

"No, I'm not okay," he snapped, "and thank you for finally answering your damn phone!"

"I was asleep, Stark. There's a time difference between us, you know?"

"Oh, shit, right...I'm sorry."

"It's okay, it's almost time to wake up anyway. You sound terrible. What's going on?"

Tony pushed himself back against the wall, finding that he needed the support for what he was about to ask. He knew his goal with every time that he had tried to call her, but now that he finally had her attention, he was feeling a lack of confidence that shook him to his core. "Nat, have you talked to Barnes lately?"

"Not for a few days, no. He's kept to himself other than when he's with Steve. Why?"

"He's pushed her out," he answered in barely a whisper. "Out of nowhere, it looked like she was getting her heart ripped out of her chest. She couldn't breathe, and she could barely put words together. She said he was gone, and I've been listening to her try to connect with him for the past three hours now. Don't get me wrong, Nat, I still can't stand the guy, but I hope that nothing bad happened to him. More for her sake than his."