salvation ; 𝐛. 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝟐

023. midnight memories

WITH TEARS DRIED on my cheeks but not wiped away, I rose to my feet.

Night had fallen. I wasn't sure how I knew that, but with the sight of Bucky swallowing a green pill and laying on the makeshift cot he was given in this cell, I assumed that meant that things around this damned compound were finally settling down again. I realized with a weary heart that I'd been here two nights, and nothing was looking up. 

In fact, everything was looking down. Very, very, far down.

The lights in the compound didn't turn off, a fact that I assumed existed because they wanted to spy on their assets. Make sure nothing suspicious was going on under their noses. And, just from the amount of horrible things I'd read in my books, I assumed it also had to do with the fact that they just wanted to throw off their prisoners. They didn't want them knowing anything about the world around them until it was absolutely necessary. Until they had a mission. 

The thought of missions evoked flashing images of the TV screen that played the news report about the assassinations of three Australian government officials. The three people that were most probably killed by The Winter Soldier, the alter ego and brainwashed persona of my boyfriend. 

But I couldn't think about that. It would only strengthen my urge to cry. And, I decided, after this debacle was over, I would never let an unjustified, foolishly dropped tear cascade down my face. I was afraid my facial muscles would get stuck in the seemingly perpetual expression I made when those tears carved a jigsaw puzzle in my face. 

I padded across the concrete floor, having taken off my shoes when I walked closer to the figure on the bed. The bruises on my neck seemed to come alive with a tingling wave as I thought of the prospect of waking the beast, laying so peacefully on the stark white sheets. White sheets that were now probably stained with dried blood, fading into a brown-ish rust color.

It was only a few seconds later that I realized taking my shoes off was probably not my best idea, considering I would most likely be running out of this room if I did indeed "wake the beast," but no matter. I couldn't possibly have given less of a fuck about it now. 

He's not...sleeping. The thought graced my mind, fleetingly, gone before I'd hardly processed it. But it was true, and I knew this for a fact. I suppose it made me sound like a stalker, but I knew what it looked like when he slept, and this wasn't it. 

Before all this, when he began coming into my room in the middle of the night in the hopes of escaping whatever nightmares haunted him downstairs, my sleep schedule began to shift. When I would usually go to bed near midnight, my body began to shut down while the sunlight was still shining through my windows, in the early rays of the evening. At first I thought I was coming down with something, but after a week of the same thing happening, I knew it was more than just illness.

Each night, without fail, Bucky's soft knock on the door roused me from my light sleep. He would poke his head in the doorway, his messy brown locks screaming bedhead. He used to be shy about it, hesitating to ask if I minded, but after awhile, I trained my body to wake up near midnight so I'd be ready when he came in. 

The nightmares, he'd always whisper, they never leave. Then he would look at me with lidded eyes, half with wonder and half with fatigue. And he would lean down and fall on the pillow beside me, humming, They're always there. Until I see you. Then they just...disappear. 

My cheeks always blushed furiously when he whispered this in my ear in the dark hours of the night, and I was thankful that the shadows prohibited him from seeing it. I knew that had he been able to, I would never have heard the end of his flirtatious teasing.