let it hurt, let it go |Bucky Barnes|

Chapter 38

I looked down and bit my lip as I tried to stop my eyes from tearing up. I didn't want to cry. Not again.

I knew that he was going to say this but it still wasn't easy to hear, that the reason, why I even met the person I love more than anyone, is because he was supposed to kill me. It was hard to hear him confirm it. Now I wasn't able to hope that there was some other, less cruel and hurtful explanation.

This sweet mysterious guy in the corner of the diner. His beautiful eyes surrounded by horrible scars and deep wounds that hurt me just by looking at them. The way he asked me to have a cup of coffee with him ... I would've never thought that I would be here, with this same man, decade later, talking about the fact that on that day he almost ended my life.

"Why make it look like an accident? So I could match with my parents?" I said quietly and pulled my legs closer to my chest to rest my chin on my knees.

"I don't know." Bucky shrugged desperately and rubbed his forehead while looking down as well. "They spared me with details. I just had ... a mission and ... it had to be done." he responded and only looked up at me for a second, at the same time as I looked at him.

For some reason the eye contact made us both panic and we quickly looked down again.

"You came there two times. Did you ... I mean ... the second time you were beaten up pretty badly. Much more than the first time. Was it ... because ..." I didn't know how to finish my question. The pressure in my chest was making it harder to breathe. 

"... because I failed the first time." he answered. He just knew what I was trying to ask.

"Why did you fail?" I asked and quickly wiped a tear from my cheek, hoping he didn't notice it.

Goddammit I hate it when I cry. It makes me look weak and hurt. Which I am but I don't want people around me to know that.

He smiled sadly and shook his head, looking at the ground just as if he was thinking of the most beautiful yet the most painful memory he had.

"For decades I felt nothing, not knowing anything else but how to kill and fight, doing whatever they told me to do. I didn't even speak unless they told me to. Cause that's all I knew and they made me believe that I was doing the right thing. I didn't even question it since I didn't know better." he started looking up at me, clearly noticing tears that ran out of my eyes every once in a while. I was really grateful that he didn't mention it though, since as I said before, I hate it when I cry.

"When they showed me your file - ..."

"I had a file?" I asked slightly confused. A file? For what? Or better ... what even was in that file? Let's be honest, except for being a Stark, there was nothing about me that you could call ... an interesting fact or something. Well I also beat the state record of eating the biggest amount of cookies in a minute but I seriously doubt that this was something Hydra was interested in. I got into the local newspaper though.

Anyway let me stop myself before I start telling you about the time I pulled out my teacher's tooth ...

"It's like ... in your file there were two pictures, a few newspaper articles and basic information like age, where you lived ..." Bucky explained and since I didn't ask anything else, he continued, "... on both pictures you were just a kid. And I thought that it's going to be an easy job since kids were ... it was not hard to ..." he shook his head and looked away, unable to finish the sentence. 

He was suffering and I could imagine that he wanted to stop talking about it. But I wanted to know. I had to know.

"Please tell me that they didn't show you my yearbook photo from seventh grade ..." I shook my head, praying that he didn't see my tryin-to-be-the-next-Avril-Lavigne-phase. It was embarrassing. That's all I'm going to say.