прирост
growth

BUCKY BARNES' APARTMENT was truly pitiful, with merely a ratty old couch to sleep on, a tiny bathroom that always smelt disgusting and a so called kitchen that had only a sink and a microwave. For the record, it was his fault for ending up with such a shitty place since he refused any money from T'Challa and Steve, but he honestly thought he could do a lot better. Obviously not.

Which was why he found comfort whenever he left his small shelter, often going to scattered coffee shops – he found that he had an unexplainable addiction to caffeine – and libraries, and the occasional movie theater, if he had enough money. It was his escape, trying to be normal and pretending that he wasn't a killer was somewhat soothing, though at the end of the day, he knew who he was and what he's done.

The aroma of coffee beans greeted him, along with a few kind workers, as he entered the small shop he usually went to. A waitress brought him his coffee – a cup of joe, as they call it. Bucky hadn't any idea what it was, but he was thrown under the bus when the person behind the cashier asked what he would like. It had been a long time since he was asked that, and he didn't have the slightest clue what he to reply.

Somehow, making a decision frightened him. It was like a sort of illusion that whoever had choices had freedom – he always had neither. And when freedom was thrust upon his hands, he didn't know what to do with it. He held it tight enough not to let the chance escape but loose enough for him not to feel different when freedom was taken away.

Freedom was often taken away from him, he learned as much.

A cup of joe was how he liked it – simple and easy – and it was the only thing he ordered. He didn't know what a New York Cheesecake was or what the Green Tea Frappe with extra whipped cream tasted like, and he gladly made the choice of not wanting to find out.

He observed his surrounding, looking around for potential threats as he sipped his coffee. He eyed the man reading the newspaper and noticed how he lingered on a page while his eyes darted around the room before settling down at another paragraph. He glanced at the woman mumbling quietly to her phone, covering her mouth with her hand as she spoke, like she didn't want her lips read. He watched the waitress look at the customers lazily, a bored expression on her face, while twirling a pen in between her fingers.

It took Bucky a minute to realize it was the girl who had attacked him a few days back – Emily. He had done research on her family, remembering the names of her parents and little brother while he looked at different atlases and autobiographies. It wasn't until a nice young man in the library introduced him to the internet did he get proper research.

It took a very long time, considering how he didn't understand just what a mouse was and why this Google is suggesting 'Olivia one direction lyrics' when he was about to type in Olivia Wright. He had reached his fifth site when he found out how to scroll down without pressing the arrows on the so called keyboard and what tabs are and how to add and exit them.

He found out why he was tasked to assassinate this family.

He couldn't stop staring at a picture he found online, one of the entire family wearing grins on their faces – like they were all laughing at something hysterical. He identified the young girl as Emily, he could tell by the way her smile was uneven and how the corner of her eyes wrinkled when she did. She was happy, and he took everything away from her in just a night.

His jaw clenched. He didn't mean to do it but he still did and it took every fiber of his being not to let out all his anger and frustrations at the people around him. He so desperately tried not to cut his metal arm off because it reminded him of what he was. A murderer. An asset. A weapon. It reminded him of how inhumane he was.

His eyes darted to the scarf he wrapped around his left wrist. It had stains of blood splattered on it but it still smelt of flowers that bloomed during spring. It was just like Emily – once innocent and pure in every form but was corrupted with the evil the world brought to her life. He was the blood that stained her and took her innocence and happiness away. The blood couldn't be washed off, and it forever tainted her and her goodness and it changed her forever. He could do nothing to change it.

Maybe going to his favorite café, knowing Emily would be there, was not his brightest idea, considering she had tried to kill him a little under twelve hours before. Her face was void of any emotions as she served coffee to her customers, which led to her getting a strict talking to from her boss.

For the record, going to work wasn't her best idea either, but she could not let failing to kill the man who murdered her family get into her head and take a toll on her life.

She avoided him like a plague. As soon as she saw the man wearing a familiar looking baseball cap sitting on one of the tables near the door of the quaint café, she told her coworker that she would be taking her lunch break. He was quick enough to notice her about to leave and quickly scooted away from the door like it was Tony Stark ready to chop his metal arm off. He avoided her eyes and she did the same; both knew that if they met, tears would fall from both sets.

The question clouded her mind like a silent storm approaching an unsuspecting town. It was like her mind was forever branded with a question she never got the answer to. Why did he do it? What did he have against her family that he killed them? Why?

He didn't bother going to the library where he usually read history books and took notes about important events. He was sure he'd see Emily there and decided he definitely did not want to see her, despite how much he liked hearing how the elderly lady talk – she had this forties slang to her kind tone that reminded him much of his past. She didn't bother staying to work in the library either, opting to just visit and tell Miss Evers that she'd be on her way after a few minutes of speaking to her.

Even though Bucky hated his apartment, he stayed there through the entire afternoon, aimlessly flipping through the channels on the television Steve had managed to knick him – it was a secondhand telly with a back; he knew that it was just as old and worn out and used as he was.

And god, he was so used to being used.

The sound was faint, but he knew he definitely heard it. He couldn't understand the words uttered and before he could even try to decipher it, loud bangs came and bullets came through the east of his apartment. He ducked to the floor, cursing in Russian as shards of glass from the window scraped his skin. His ears listened for every single word shouted and he distinctly heard the name Lewis and Voltaire being shrieked.

He grabbed the knife he always kept hidden in his boot, covered by the leg of his jeans – he found that although it was good to be ready for any and every attack, the normalcy he craved for was unreachable as long as he expected random assassinations – and gripped it tightly in his hand while crawling across the living room and to one of the kitchen cupboards where he kept all his weapons in a heavy backpack.

The first into the apartment looked strange, dressed in a sort of uniform that reminded him of the army. By his hands, he could see a light that shone in the darkness, resembling electric currents as they tingled through his fingers. A streak of silver peaked from underneath a hat that Bucky remembered resembled one he once wore, and a pair of electric blue eyes scanned the apartment before nodding his head to his companions.

"Do you see him, Voltaire?" An aura of confidence enveloped the girl as she stepped beside the man with silver hair. The rest of their team entered, Bucky guessed, one-by-one stepping onto his apartment from the broken window. He could only briefly look at them – and saw that one man had a fucking gun as a hand rather than another – before one whispered something and all eyes turned to where he was hiding.

Muttering something about how he could not catch a break, he leapt up, holding a gun in each hand, and began firing at his opponents. He was able to hit one, who fell to the floor while gasping his breaths, before all of them attacked him at once.

The air remained tight as a girl dodged all his combat attacks and retaliated with her own, punching him swiftly on the jaw before kicking his shin, sending him to the ground far too fast than he wanted to admit. He, in turn, grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the ground with him, using most of his strength to hold the girl to the ground as she thrashed around and attempted to hit him in the face. Though she had a small and fragile-looking figure, she was strong.

An electric shock was all it took for him to let go, and he gasped in pain as it hit his back and ran down his spine and throughout his entire body. It send his brain to tingles, and he could slowly feel the sanity he had just received after years of being held captive slip through his metal fingers. He shouted in pain, flailing his arms around and moving his body on the ground as he tried to hit the man. It worked well enough, distracting the man with silver hair when his metal arm hit his knee hard.

Another punch was sent to his nose, a sickening crack echoing through the room, accompanied by a sharp kick to the ribs that made him wince. He looked around, eyes wide as he tried to search for whoever was beating him up, to no avail. He could only see the man with silver hair, the small girl and another man he could not distinguish crouch down next to the man he shot earlier.

"This is for killing Lewis," he heard someone snarl quietly before he felt another kick to his face. He curled up in a ball, trying to lessen the amount of exposure he had to the person beating him up, and squinted in the dark, distracting himself from the pain and instead looking for something he could use a weapon. His eyes landed on a knife that laid less than a foot away from his face.

It only took a second for him to grab it, and another for him to blindly slash the air, smirking in satisfaction when he heard a hiss of pain. A girl slowly revealed herself, glaring at him as she tried to once again attack with her fists.

But Bucky was ready.

He got her in a headlock quicker than she could reach him, and watched as the girl's friends turned to him with a mixture of emotions in their eyes. He could see fear and he could see rage, but he could also see a tinge of longing. For vengeance, perhaps.

He sent the girl to the ground, kicked her where he had stabbed her, before he sent unrelenting hits to the people who tried to take him. His metal fist met the side of one man's head and his other hand twisted a girl's arm behind her back as she tried to punch him. He used his knife to slash one's shoulder, and it bled out defiantly, as the person groaned and clenched his jaw.

Bucky ground his teeth in frustration when he felt a tiny figure latch onto his back, pulling him away from her friends as she pulled his long hair. He drove her into a wall, feeling her let go in pain and fall to the ground with a grunt, repeatedly threw punches at the man in front of him, and doubled onto the floor when a knife was thrusted into his side. He hit the man's head with his own and sent his metal arm to hit his temple.

The man fell down to the floor and Bucky was quick to straddle him and put an arm against his throat. "Who are you working for? Are you Hydra?" His words came out fast and rugged and the man's face distorted into an expression of pain before he let out an incredulous laugh.

"Hydra? That cut off a head and two more shall grow back is complete bullshit. We work against Hydra and against SHIELD, against the Avengers – or what's left of them after you helped Zemo rip them in half," Voltaire chuckled at the sunken expression on Bucky's face. "We are something you should be afraid of, Winter Soldier. We are the Resistance."

Bucky breathed heavily, his chest heaving up and down as he stared at the mass of unconscious bodies in front of him. He clenched his hands into fists, feeling the familiar wave of regret surge through his head. He was trying to change and yet, he just killed another innocent man.

Well, not so innocent per se, but it was all the same. The blood still weighed down his shoulders, heavier than Bruce-Banner-gone-Hulk.

The pain on his side was searing but all he could think about was what he was going to do. He could hardly work one of those cellular phones Sam Wilson had given to him and he was sure he couldn't just hail a cab and head to Steve's – he'd die from the blood loss before he could even get there.

So he thought it wiser to roam around the streets of Brooklyn, keeping to the shadows and sticking to the brick walls of buildings he passed by, with barely any of his belongings and just a backpack of clothes.

As he walked, his head felt lighter and his steps got sloppier, nearly tripping a couple of times. He let out staggered breaths that he could see in the dark and quietly slipped into the only open building in sight. Palacio, it read in beautifully carved letters and he could not see a single person in the lobby as he moved around.

He barely got in the elevator before he collapsed, grasping his stab wound tightly and pressing the lowest number he could reach. It brought him up to the fourteenth floor – thirteenth, it was supposed to be but the owner of the building had triskaidekaphobia, otherwise known as the fear of the number thirteen.

Bucky crawled, it was the last thing he could do, across the hardwood floors of the hallway, tilted his head up as he saw he reached the door at the end of the hall, and knocked his head against it weakly.

It was the most dangerous thing he had done before, knocking on a stranger's door after being stabbed by an unexpected group of enhanced. But as he banged his fist against the door of the apartment of who he hoped was kind enough to help him, he couldn't give a single damn.

»»

IT WAS THE middle of the goddamned night – only a quarter after twelve in the morning, Emily saw on the clock – when she heard the knocking on her door. Armed with the first thing she grabbed, a hairbrush, and with a gun tucked into the back of her pajamas, she stalked through her large apartment and stood right in front of her door. She mentally cursed at her landlord for not having a peephole on the door as she threw the door open, her hairbrush raised ready to attack, to see nothing.

As she grumbled about stupid kids who ding-dong-ditched and readied to close the door, a hand grabbed her ankle and she instinctively kicked in surprise.

Laid before her was the man she had hunted down through the entire continent and had attempted to kill, only to fail once she saw the hint of regret and sadness on his face. He was wearing black, but Emily knew blood at first sight and she was sure that his shirt was drowned in it. His eyes were hardly open, she knew he wouldn't recognize her instantly, and she dragged his heavy body into her apartment.

She didn't know why, but there was just something about the pained expression on his face and the way he seemed so frightened and lost and unsure that made her want to help him.

So help, she did. She tended to his wounds, stitching them with a permanently disgusted face, applied cold compress to his swollen jaw, cleaned his face and body of blood stains, and set him on her couch – not without struggle.

Brewing herself a cup of hot chocolate, she watched his bare chest inflate and deflate in a steady pace, something that calmed her. At least she knew he was stable and alive. She could imagine the disappointment and revulsion on her family's faces as they stared down at her, watching how she aided a man who had killed them and so many others.

But how could she leave him there? How could she let him lose his blood and life? His death would be on her, just because she couldn't swallow her pride and her grudge and help a man who needed her. She couldn't put an innocent death on her shoulders.

Her eyebrows furrowed, her feet padding against the floors as she walked towards the Winter Soldier. "No," he moaned quietly into the pillow she set his head under. "Done. I'm done. I don't – won't be – weapon."

She reached a trembling hand to his forehead and was about to stroke it calmly when a hand gripped her wrist and a set of hard eyes stared at he own. He remained indifferent as his real arm held onto hers and his metal one wrapped itself around her neck. She didn't believe this was how she would die – in the hands of a murderer after being so pathetically weak and helping him.

"Stop!" She let out a small gasp, trying to breathe in as much air as she could and struggling against the soldier's hold. She kicked his knees and her arms stretched for her hands to touch his face and slap him, to stop him. She saw a hint of recognition flurry in his eyes as he registered what was happening before she was suddenly on the ground, desperately taking deep breaths.

"I – I'm sorry, I'm – " he couldn't even finish. His hands gripped on his hair and he tugged on the messy strands repeatedly, like removing them would remove all the guilt and pain he felt and would clear his conscience.

Emily tried to understand, she really did, but all she did was glare at the man who sat on her couch with his head buried in his hands. "You've got a lot of nerve, you know," she snapped. "Nearly killing the girl who had so graciously aided you and healed your wounds. What a fucking fantastic thank you."

His eyes gleamed annoyance and most of the regret washed away. It was hard being sorry to a girl that had too much pride that she wouldn't even listen to his part of the story. "I didn't mean to – "

"Oh, of course! You didn't mean to. Like you didn't mean to murder my family, am I correct?"

She was sarcastic, but her voice quivered as she ended her sentence and a few tears sprung to her eyes as she was once again reminded of their untimely deaths. He didn't meet her eyes as he muttered lowly, "You have to understand that I wasn't myself – I never was. Please, let me explain."

"Enlighten me then! I'm sure I'll completely understand why you suddenly decided to kill my parents and my little brother, of course – "

"They had me under their control, alright?!" Emily stared up at his figure and watched how his eyes remained conflicted as his face grimaced while he recalled everything he's done under Hydra's control. He breathed audibly through his mouth, every exhale sounding more broken than the last. His jaw was tense and he looked like he wanted for the ground to swallow him whole.

Bucky didn't want to tell the little once-upon-a-time of how his life – and his arm – got ripped away from him. He didn't want to tell the annoying girl who looked at him with such hatred but had healed him like he was worth healing. He didn't know if he should, and he hated when he didn't know because he'd been kept in the dark for so long that he just became so exhausted.

Finally, his voice quivering and his eyes trailing anywhere but at her, he spoke.

"I fell – in the forties – from a train. I was a soldier; I was good. I fought for the country in the war until I was captured and I was experimented on. And whatever they did to me – it made me survive the fall. They found me – used me – made me kill for them and I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know and I guess that was their plan after all. The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to not let him know he's in prison."

Emily's voice was caught in her throat as she felt a flurry of emotions engulf her in a wave all at once. She didn't know what to feel – sorry for what this man had supposedly gone through, angry at the people who sent him to kill her family, or disbelief at the mere fact that his story sounded far too fictional.

"They kept me in cryo – this state where they freeze you and your body slows aging but you're still somehow alive in the ice and god, I wish they'd had just killed me instead. They gave me missions, kept me under control long enough to accomplish them then – " he gave a wrangled cry and it sounded to Emily like he was so wounded and tired and on the verge of giving up. "They'd wipe everything – my memories. Leave a clean slate so there'd be nothing interfering with the mission. I wouldn't remember anything."

Perhaps Emily should have cried, to at least show emotion besides indifference to his situation, but she couldn't. She couldn't cry because all her tears had fallen seven years ago when her family died. She hadn't cried a single drop since. So instead, she only stared at him and gnawed at her lip.

A pregnant pause followed Bucky's revelation and everything just seemed so unreal – him being attacked, going to a stranger's apartment, being aided by a girl who wanted to kill him and revealing his entire past. It was only two years ago when he didn't even remember a single thing about hisself but he was telling her his whole life story – or the lack thereof after HYDRA took him – like she suddenly became his best friend.

Perhaps it was the eyes that convinced him to do so – those damn beautiful eyes that pierced into his soul and terrified him, all while making him feel like he was the luckiest man ever to see them. The green was a different hue from what Bucky was used to – he was pretty sure he was into brown eyes, not that his preferences couldn't change because god, Emily's eyes were definitely a game-changer – but he adored the way they remained focused on him, although tinged with fury.

Her eyes met his blue ones, and they looked at each other as if for the first time. She couldn't believe how sincere they looked and she couldn't help but let a part of her die a little because boy, she had always been a sucker for blue eyes.

Bucky turned his eyes to his hands, fiddling with his thumbs as he mumbled to her, "And believe me, I'm so sorry for what I'd done and – I remember every minute of it. God, I wish I didn't because it's absolutely torture."

The second word was growth – the rusted arm no longer held him back.

»»

From Gabriella—
Hello! First of all, I'm sooooo sorry this was super long but considering how this book has only 10 chapters + prologue and epilogue, I try to make the chapters longer than the standard to at least not leave you guys hanging! 😁
Fun Fact: One of Bucky's newfound enemies, Voltaire, has the power to control electricity. And what's the unit for measuring electrical units? That's right – Volts! You'll find that some of Voltaire's teammates call him Volt a little more than once.