Before Dawn | MCU One-Shot

Before Dawn

Originally, this one-shot was conceived for MarvelousCommunity's 'Reindeer Games' writing contest, inspired by the song 'I'll Be Good' by Jaymes Young. Unfortunately, I did not finish in time but I still wanted to share this piece. Hope y'all enjoy it!

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He watched as steam rose from his drink, starkly pale against the night. He was clothed thinly in a tattered jacket he'd picked up in an alley and washed the best that he could in the sink of a public restroom. Once, he might have found it cold, but the Winter Soldier never felt it.

James Buchanan Barnes, he was called, but that was before the Fall. He could recall bits and pieces now, and it gave him hope that in the morning, he could find himself closer to whole than he had been the night before.

But that hope was always extinguished by one thing or another, and tonight it was his failure to feel the cold. It was human to feel cold when temperatures were low, he somehow knew, yet the thin later of frost that coated the plastic folding chair on which he sat hardly existed to him. The chilly predawn air that tended to press against one's skin was lighter than a feather.

He took a sip of the drink. It was a hot tea, a tad over-steeped for his liking. He was unsure where he got the preference from. He'd also had a sandwich earlier, from the very same stall that he currently sat behind. There was a plastic table and a set of folding chairs that were situated perfectly in the shadow of the booth, good for staying out of the sight of passerbys. Not that there were many, of course. Not even New York City was that active at three in the morning. 

He rubbed at his temple with his flesh hand, sighing. His head hurt from all the information he had tried to absorb twelve hours prior at the Smithsonian. A piece of wall from a museum knew more about him than he did about himself, and for an indescribable reason he found that both painful and infuriating. 

"Bucky," he muttered to himself. "My name is Bucky." 

That's what the museum told him, and it was also what that man, Steve Rogers, told him. Something about Steve Rogers made him feel that he could trust him, and the bewildering image of the two of them laughing together, before the Fall, kept surfacing in his mind. 

And something else seemed to echo around him constantly. 

"I'm with you 'til the end of the line."

Bucky took another sip of tea and tilted his head back to look at the empty sky. Except it wasn't quite empty. A few faint pinpricks of light were visible through the metropolitan smog, as well as a crescent moon that seemed both a smile and a leer.

He sighed. Why would the stars want to look down at someone like me?

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It was that dream again. It was one of several possibilities of late, and Anthony Edward Stark hated them all. That night, he saw the woman he loved fall, for the nth time, to a fiery death, and it was his fault.

He gasped awake, croaking Pepper's name. She responded groggily from beside him, turning onto her side and  away from him.

"What is it, Tony?" she grumbled, still mostly asleep. Seeing this, Tony was unwilling to fully rouse her. Instead, he exhaled through his nose and slid out of bed. Pepper noticed. "Tony? Where are you going?"

"Just to the washroom," he lied. "Go back to sleep."

She did as told. Tony stood in the darkness for several seconds, watching her lapse back into sleep. Her chest rose and fell evenly, while his was still heaving from what he saw.