Winter's Sunshine

12. Personal Trainer

Bucky felt anxious, guilty and pathetic all at once. He kept digging in shield files, discovering more and more kills he was responsible for.

He felt tears building up in his eyes, watching those numbers grow. He regretted his past and hated the fact that he couldn't change it. He knew it wasn't him, he knew that everyone around him thought the same, but he just couldn't make peace with it. He felt worthless like he was living in vain.

He sat alone in his room, covering his face with his hands, roughly rubbing all the tears away. He looked at his reflection on the screen, which merged with his winter soldier form. He felt ashamed of himself, and was desperate to find a way out.

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"Check for all the parameters, Alex."

"Backup scheduled for server with low priority, starting now.", Alex entered the command line code and started the backup process.

"Disable compression", Jen notified Alex and Alex checked for it.

"Done."

"Ok, now we wait.", Jen sat on the chair, head resting on the headrest.

An hour passed by as Jen kept glancing at the screen intermittently. Alex was on her phone scrolling through social media passing her time.

"Whose turn is it next?", Alex asked without taking her attention off her phone.

"Not mine", Jen replied, bored.

Alex nodded and both went back minding their business, Jen staring blankly at the screen and Alex scrolling her phone. Alex bobbed her head, once in a while to the music she was listening to.

"Hey, Jen. Why don't you go and talk to Sam or maybe Bucky about the test?"

"Right now?", Jen asked facing her.

"Yes, go and talk to them, see if you can find anything useful, I will take care of this."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I will be fine. Now go!"

Jen nodded at Alex as she thought who she should meet, Sam or Bucky?

She got in the elevator and simply made her way to Bucky's room thinking, Bucky it is.

She walked down the long corridor, passing by an open kitchen. On reaching his room, she tried knocking on the door but instead, it was swung open by her force. She cautiously peeped in and entered the room.

"Bucky?", she called out as she saw him walk out of his bathroom, rubbing his face with a towel.

Bucky smiled at her glancing at the digital clock on his side.

"Hey, Jen. What are you doing here?"

She looked at his laptop, which flashed Shield's logo on its screen.
"Are you busy?", she asked pointing to  it.

"Not really, no", he said as he picked it up and closed it, placing it back at his place.

"I wanted to ask you something.", Jen spoke hesitantly.

"Sure I am all ears.", Bucky said sitting on his bed.

"The thing is, I have a physical test after two weeks, and I wanted to know if you know anything about it"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I have only 2 weeks and it would be nice if you let me know what exactly the test is, so I can focus on it and nail it."

"Won't that be cheating?", he asked, sounding amused.

"Well, yes, but I want to pass this test and I don't know what exactly to do.", Jen reasoned out.

"To be honest Jen, I don't know what the test is, I wasn't even aware of these tests in the first place. They just called me that day and asked me to do it, I never heard about it before."

Bucky then noticed Jen's face falling as he spoke to her, "Sorry Jen, Can't help you.", he added.

"Would Sam know?", she asked.

"I don't think so."

On hearing this, Jen let out a heavy sigh and nodded, disappointedly.

"It's okay Buck, I will do something about it.", she said, turning to leave.

"Jen wait.", Bucky called out, abruptly. He looked at her, and she seemed upset. He didn't like it. He wanted to help her in some way.  What can I do? Hmm. I know!

"I could train you.", Bucky declared. "I mean if you want me to, I exactly am not busy, as you can see.", He explained. Nice save

"You will train me?", Jen asked making sure she had heard him correctly.

"Yes, I could train you. If we train daily, you will definitely nail the test."

Jen's face lit up and she was more than happy. "OMG, that would be great. Thank you so much Buck!"

Bucky just smiled looking at how happy Jen had got. He felt happy that he could help her. And maybe spend some time with her.

"Thank me when you win the test, okay?"

"Okay!", she said smiling brightly at him.

"When will you be free?"

"In an hour"

"Okay. Will meet you at the gym then."

"Sure.", Jen said walking excitedly from his room.