Belonging - A Bucky Love Story (Marvel/Avengers)

21

Brenna whipped around. Behind her, near the outskirts of her room, stood a tall figure. She wasted no time in attacking. She lunged at the intruder, pinning them to the wall. But this quickly proved to be bad choice, as Brenna found her own body being turned and slammed into the wall. There was a harsh grip on both of her arms, keeping her in place.

But Brenna stopped struggling at this touch. One of the hands holding her was hard and icy; metal. She looked up to meet the intuder's eyes. They stared down at her with a familiar blue gaze of confusion. "Why did you do that?" The Winter Soldier asked inquisitively.

Brenna felt her body relax, but Bucky's grip remained strong. "I didn't know it was you," she admitted, then asked in her own confusion, "how the hell did you get in here?"

Bucky finally released Brenna, realizing it was all a misunderstanding. "The window was unlocked," he explained with little emotion.

Raising an eyebrow at the bizzare entrance point, Brenna added, "yeah, it's also sixy stories off the ground."

Bucky shrugged as if it were no big deal, then walked back over to the window he'd entered from. Brenna followed him curiously, trying to contain the joy she felt from seeing him again. "What are you doing here?" She asked, coming up on his left side.

The Winter Soldier set down the bookbag that had been slung over his flesh shoulder. Rumaging around in it, he pulled out what looked to be an article of clothing. He then held it out to Brenna and told her, "thought you'd want this back."

It was Sam's leather jacket. A light laugh escaped Brenna's lips as she took the jacket and examined it. It was torn in the shoulder from when she'd been shot wearing it, and blood was crusted all down the sleeve. She set it down on the desk to her left and looked up at Bucky with glittering eyes. "Thank you."

He was wearing different clothes than usual. Instead of bulletproof vests and belts full of ammunition, he wore dark jeans and a black T-shirt under a faded, dark red hoodie. And before Brenna could stop herself, she muttered, "you look nice."

Bucky's face went red. She couldn't believe her eyes. Cheeks flushed with pink, the ex-assassin searched his mind for the correct response. Looking at the young woman's outfit of powder blue, he responded, "you look..comfortable."

A giggle slipped past Brenna's lips. "I am," she confirmed. Looking down at her cloud printed sweater she sighed. "Sometimes I feel like I'm still fourteen," she admitted, "or eleven, or eight."

Bucky furrowed his eyebrows, taking a seat on the edge of the open window. His eyes were level with hers as he asked, "why?"

Brenna was surprised that he cared to know. The man had obviously gotten at least a bit of his humanity back in the past few weeks. "Because everything runs together," Brenna explained with a small smile, "I didn't get to measures my life in years; instead, I counted the surgeries and procedures. So age..never really gave it much thought."

A look of empathy entered Bucky's eyes. "'Cause of your heart," he observed, eyebrows drawn inward and down. Now that he was on the run from HYDRA, Bucky spent as much time as possible learning about the present world. And he couldn't help being drawn in to Brenna Stark's case. He'd read every news story about her that there was. The slow fading of her senses and strength, the loss of her ability to walk, the coma. And then, the arc reactor. Though he wasn't sure what powered it, since that was never made public.

Just then Brenna's TV turned on, and the movie she'd been watching in the Avengers living room began to play right where she left off. Bucky's head whipped toward the sound. He watched the screen from where he sat, a look of awe on his face.

Brenna smirked. "You've seen films before, right?" She wondered.

Bucky thought for a long time, digging through his still-unstable mind. But he found it; a memory of him going to a theatre with a skinny blonde boy. "Yeah..." he muttered, "I remember.."

Hand diving back into his bookbag, Bucky fished out a thick spiral notebook and a pencil. He opened up the cover, flipping past a few pages that were filled already with words and doodles. Brenna watched as he began to jot something down about a film he'd seen in the 1940's. He was writing down his memories as they came back.

Heart clenching at the bittersweet moment, Brenna smiled sweetly and offered, "do you wanna watch one?"

Bucky's eyes flashed with nervousness when he looked up from his notebook. The last thing he wanted was to let his gaurd down just to watch a movie. But looking down at Brenna, he found himself unable to refuse. Her golden eyes were practically begging him. With a small sigh, he tucked his notebook and pencil back away. He felt his lips curl up slightly into a smile. "Okay."