The Soldier and the Wolf

Chapter 10

        I don't think the man....I don't think James got much sleep after that nightmare episode he had last night. When I attempted to go back to sleep, I could hear him pacing in the living room, stop, then pace again. And unfortunately, I couldn't sleep much either. The entire rest of the night, my body would start to randomly ache on and off and it was just very uncomfortable to deal with. A few times it was so bad that I curled into a fetus position and lied  still until it just went away. By the time it stopped altogether, it was already almost eight and there was no reason to go to sleep. Instead I just got out of bed and went through my daily routine. I even looked at my body to see if the aching had caused my body to change at all, but it was still the "same" body I had since my mom injected that serum into me. I got dressed and left my bedroom to go to the kitchen, and that was when I caught James staring at the picture of me and my dad again for like the fifth time. It was really starting to get creepy, so I thought, why not expose him.

"You really like that picture don't you?" He quickly put it back on the shelf and stuck his hands in the pockets of the jacket he had put on.

"No...it's something else." I crossed my arms and walked over to look at it with him.

"I mean, it's fine if you like looking at the pictures. But at least try and be more subtle about it. It's creepy when you stare." I added a laugh in that sentence to make it sound a little more friendlier, but James just stared to the ground. Curious, I looked to the coffee table knowing that that was where he put his notebook last night, and to my surprise, he had already filled the book a quarter of the way.

     "Where was that again?" He didn't have to point to the picture for me to know what he was talking about.

     "The Smithsonian's Air and Space museum. Why?" I stared at him and waited for an answer while he stared at the picture.

    "Could we...go there?" He just stared at the picture. I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. I shut my mouth again and nodded.

    "Uh...I mean yeah we could. But umm...do you wanna risk getting caught? I mean we'll be in public and well...the whole Hydra thing hasn't calmed down quite yet. And it doesn't open in another two hours or so." James walked over to his notebook and picked it up from the table.

    "No one will notice. And we can wait in the car. Can we go?" I nodded again.

    "Uhh yeah. I guess. So you wanna get something to eat fir..." before I could finish, Bucky grabbed a baseball cap from the hooks hanging by the front door and walked out. "Or you know what? I'm not that hungry we can just eat something later." I grabbed my purse and car keys off the hooks on the wall as well, and left the house. I wasn't in appropriate attire because I wasn't prepared to leave so suddenly, but James was anxiously standing at the car door, constantly looking around. I went to the driver's side and unlocked the door, and we both got in. Before I left the driveway, I noticed that he was flipping through pages as if he was trying to find something. Just at a glance, his notebook looked very chaotic.

    "You know, I could give you sticky notes to help you organize a bit more." I closed his journal a bit and looked at me. "It's okay, I wasn't reading it. I am 100% respecting your privacy." I backed out of the driveway and left to the Smithsonian. On the way there, he continued skimming through his writings and even jotted downs a few more stuff as well.

   "Hey, uhh. I have a question, if you don't mind me asking." He just moaned and continued writing and skimming. "You know James, you look familiar. Which is weird because I've never seen you before and clearly no one else has either. Like you know when you see something and it's not eh tip of your tongue and you're trying so hard to remember, but it hits you after the person reveals where they've seen you from?" I realized I was rambling on, so I shut up and continued to focus on the road.  After a few silent minutes, James answered my question...sort of.