medicine | bucky barnes

ten

10 | ten

I AM MY OWN ANTI-THESIS. Aurora blinked, tried to clear a hint of blurriness from her eyes, and felt her chest throb with a dullness that mirrored a drum. She had no recollection for what prompted her blunt thought, but it fitted perfectly; she was, after all, an anomaly fit for the pages of a tragic novel.

Or a comedic one. She wasn't too sure.

With a slight huff and the letters of her thoughts melting to the corners of her mind, Aurora lifted her stiff arms in a long stretch, before letting them fall once more to her sides on the soft duvet of the bed. The room was ink, save for the gentle glow of her clock illuminating numbers of a time she did not want to know. While she did feel the familiar weight of sleep betraying her tired limbs, this time her mind was not preoccupied with dizzying worry of insomnia draining the digits on her nightstand, but the way James had stiffly accepted a pillow and comforter from her hands after she had pulled out the cot from her couch.

"I'm sorry about the mattress, it's a bit worn," she had explained with a hind of embarrassment.

"I won't notice." He said. She studied him vaguely, seemingly unable to hear him as she offered a small smile and made her way towards her room.

But the soft "thank you," that followed her after she retreated down the hall nearly made her skin crawl. Aurora had to refrain from stopping in her tracks when she called out a soft "you're welcome."

Aurora had encountered numerous versions of people who were textbook-examples of PTSD, GAD, or even social anxiety, but the blend of reservation and downright ghost-like tendencies of James struck a gray area in her head that made it difficult to pin his case. Taken, he was not her patient, nor somebody who was anywhere close to a case study written on paper, but something about him did not make sense. There was a omnipresent pin that was waiting to be pulled by her curiosities. She wanted to know what hid behind the startling blue eyes of her newfound neighbor, and she could not explain why on earth the inclination was there in the first place.

As the time switched to 1:36 a.m. and a thin blanket of sleep finally began to settle in her room, Aurora heard a dull clatter sound from the other side of her door. The mist immediately dissipated and she jolted slightly from her place, head lifting from her pillow to get a better input of the noise. Though the initial sound appeared to have been the rattling of a pot, the second noise that followed resembled something falling onto the rug in the living room. Confusion sparked, and it wasn't long before Aurora was wrapping a small sweater around herself and making her way out of the bedroom, arms around her sides.

She did not know what she was expecting when the living came into view, but it definitely was not the sight of a t-shirt-clad James who stood in the middle of her small apartment with shoulder-length locks ruffled and a mug in his hands. Or should she say—hand. Aurora had to hold in an audible inhale of air as she saw the metal alloy of where his left arm should have been. In the absence of shirt sleeves, the slightly tilted stance of the man in her home was traveled to be due to a very unusual makeup of a prosthetic. The silver took the place of flesh and bone, while still molding in the shape of what defined muscle would have looked like. She had to peel her eyes away from the glint of the metal plates—which hinted possible movement—as his gaze flashed to hers in the dim lighting. Aurora felt her pulse in her throat when she saw his entire body tense, seemingly as if a second away from pouncing.