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.

Over the next year, as I stayed there with him, he began to forego waking up in the middle of the night with nightmares. He'd caught on; wherever I was, his nightmares weren't. So we started going to bed together, though my sleep habits stayed the same. Each night, around midnight, I'd wake up expecting to hear his terrified whispers as a result of the cruelties that haunted his dreams. 

But he was silent. He slept through the night. And I had the utmost privilege to watch him. To see the crease between his eyebrows fade, to see him mold back into a younger version of himself before all of this shit was laid on him. I could watch his chest rise and fall. After awhile, he began reaching out for me, pulling me into his body and trapping me there for the rest of the night. But I didn't mind. In fact, that was the exact moment when I knew.

When I knew that I had utterly and completely fallen in love with Bucky Barnes.

But now, I saw that the crease in his forehead remained, and his lips were pursed, even in sleep. He wasn't calm, not like he was with me. His fists—both flesh and metal—clenched handfuls of his bloodied shirt, reminding me of an easier time, that first time he slept in my bed. 

I felt the urge to reach out and touch him. To lay my hand on the back of his, releasing the tension in his muscles. It worked last time, and we ended up holding hands. 

A breathy, wistful chuckle left my lips in a rush as I reminisced on the trivial things I focused on in those earlier days. Holding hands. 

My hand left my side and I hovered it over his, but a deep breath from him had me jerking my hand back to my side, taking a stumbling step back. I knew what happened after that, I hadn't forgotten. 

Morning, Soldier.

Those two words, however accidental, had risen in him something that he didn't want found nor roused. And that was when he was himself. I had no way of knowing just what would happen if I made the same mistake in the middle of this underground compound with the shell of a man that called himself "the Soldier."

So I refrained from embracing him, though I wanted to. If I couldn't use my actions to bring Bucky back to me, then I would use my words, I decided.

"Your name," I whispered, so softly that I could hardly hear it myself. "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. But you let me call you Bucky." Clasping my hands tightly in front of me, I inhaled a shaky breath and gazed at the man I loved, keeping the tears at bay. "Your best friends are Steve and Sam. They brought you to me, remember? I thought you were drunk off your ass, but it turns out you were just out of it. From the cryo."

He shifted in his state of not-sleep, causing me to lift my eyes quickly to him. But he didn't wake up. 

"My name is Elda," I whispered. "My name is Elda, and you love me."

The words didn't come for another long while, so I knelt down and rested my arms beside him on the cot. Once in awhile I would hum another memory, about the times when I smiled so hard it hurt, and how many times I cried so hard it pained me to take another breath. "You were there through it all, Buck. I relied on you as much as you relied on me." I took a shaky breath. "I'm not leaving. You can't make me. I'm staying here, until you wake up and look at me like you used to, or until I'm dead."

"I'm prepared to die here with you, Bucky Barnes. So don't think that I'm running out of here. Absolutely not."

Some time later, I must have fallen asleep on my arms, both of us just sitting there in silence. One of us sleeping, the other rolling around in a sleep-like state. If I'd have woken up by myself, the disoriented feeling would have made me think I was back in my house, watching over Bucky like I did so often. 

But the words out of Bucky's mouth was the thing that woke me up. 

At first it started as a mumble, a muffled noise in my ears. Then, as I rose to awareness, the noises formed words, words that he kept repeating. I jerked away from the cot when I noticed his eyes were open, open and staring at me. 

My feet shuffled against the cold concrete floor, but he didn't make any hostile movements towards me. He was staring at me, but his eyes were unseeing. It was like he was trapped in his own head. Literally, this time.

"Everything is for the cause."

I swallowed roughly. "What? What is?"

I was the only one in the room, but he wasn't talking to me. "Everything is for the cause," he repeated. Then, "I understand, 53. I will do it for the cause."

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this kind of feels like a shorter chapter and like nothing happened, but i hope you enjoyed it anyway!

thanks so much for reading, you guys. love love LOVE you all :)

october 8, 2019