Soul Stealer ~ (A Bucky Barnes Love Story)

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Exactly 10-minutes after his watched started beeping my adrenaline high abruptly ended. I sagged against him, his metal arm around my waist the only thing keeping me from face planting on the sidewalk. He quickened his pace, both of us careful to keep our heads down to avoid any cameras while we navigated through the crowded streets of D.C. 

The streets were jammed full of bodies, cars lined up bumper to bumper in the street. I suppose we had the SHIELD versus HYDRA showdown to thank for the chaos consuming D.C. The mass of bodies made it easy to blend in, but it would also make it nearly impossible to see a threat coming.  It was a classic good news, bad news situation.  

"You're beep...ing," I slurred, struggling to keep myself upright.

My body felt sluggish and unresponsive, my limbs refusing to obey even simple commands, and it was getting harder and harder to keep my eyes open. Bucky muttered something in clipped Russian, ordering me to keep going, stay awake, blah, blah, blah.

Adjusting me in his arms he said, "The epinephrine is wearing off."

He set a timer, smart. I would have told him as much but talking was too hard so walking and talking wasn't going to happen.

Thankfully, Bucky had no trouble navigating the throngs of people, in fact, the pedestrians lining the sidewalk parted like Moses and the Red Sea for him. He didn't even have to bark at anyone. He simply pinned them with a cold look, his eyes deadly, and they couldn't scamper away fast enough. I'd have found the whole thing amusing if I wasn't a bumbling, drooling mess at the moment. Finally, he ducked into a rundown building with a questionable smell permeating the air, banging on a plexiglass window.

"What the hell you want?" an old man asked, eyeing us both suspiciously while he hobbled over using a cane.

"A room." Bucky pulled a wad of cash from his pocket, shoving it under the plexiglass. "And no questions."

The old man simply shrugged, plucking a key off the wall and handing it over. I guess this was a part of town where a man covered in blood who was carrying a half-conscious woman was commonplace. America really had gone to Hell in a handbasket.

I groaned when I saw the winding staircase leading to our room. Of course, this place didn't have an elevator. Bucky abandoned any pretense of helping me walk and swept me into his arms like I weighed nothing at all. I would have complained but my body felt boneless. My head lulled to the side, connecting with his shoulder. He smelled like gunpowder and sweat, and the fact I found that comforting was something I decided to examine at a later date. A much later date, like never.

"Hold on little soul stealer," he mumbled in Russian.

"Mmm...not little."

I was tall for a woman. Hell, I was tall for a man. When I finally stopped growing at six-feet before my fifteenth birthday I'd been elated. The last thing I needed was another reason to be different.

Thankfully other than my height the serum's affects had been subtle. I was deceptively strong, but I wasn't bulky like Bucky who was a walking wall of solid muscle. My frame was slender, slight even after years of malnourishment at the hands of HYDRA which was something they adored. No one worried about a woman who looked like she might break in a stiff breeze. It made me more dangerous and HYDRA loved things that were dangerous.

He laid me down on a lumpy mattress, and my eyes fluttered open. He quickly cleared the small apartment which was nothing more than a single room with a kitchen tucked in one corner, a bed in the other, and a tiny bathroom on the other side of the room. The only other furniture was a single chair with a rickety folding table next to it no doubt left behind by the previous tenant. It smelled like mildew and there were some questionable stains on the floor that looked a lot like dried blood.