REVIVAL GAME ▹ parker

iv ━━ secrets and lies

"Please..." The witness' breath tumbled and trembled out of his chest as he desperately pushed his back against the wall, "I—I didn't see anything!"

The girl tilted her red head curiously at the man, watching blankly as he begged for his life.

"I didn't see anything." The man gasped, tears filling his beautiful dark eyes, stuttering out his last pleas for mercy, "I—I didn't see anything, I didn't see anything—!"

The soldier looked down at his child, standing at his side, barely tall enough to reach his hip. Morning sky eyes met ocean blues ones, wide and terribly innocent despite the murder and gore around them.

"Finish it."

The words rumbled out of him; coarse and unapologetic.

Those morning sky eyes filled with tears but his daughter said nothing. She was given no choice, no other option, no way out.

She just wanted to please him.

She just wanted to be allowed to stay.

So, she turned, she raised her gun, and she shot to kill.

And when he looked her in the eye once again, a little more of her innocence had died inside.

Bucky jolts awake to the sound of a gunshot, sweaty and breathing hard. His dog tags rattle against his heaving chest and he can feel sweat trickle down his back, slipping down the ridges of his spine.

He fell asleep on the floor in the living room again, the television still in roaring technicolor in front of him.

The beds are too soft, like falling asleep on a cloud or a... marshmallow, as Sam once described. Besides, he likes a view of the front door, likes to think he's defending their home, likes to know he can still keep them safe.

So the floor in the living room, by the front door, that's best.

Bucky tries to focus on the coping mechanisms that the doctor is always talking about. Grounding himself in the present. Taking deep breaths. Focusing on five things he can touch, five things he can smell, five things he can hear. He rubs a cool metal hand over his sweaty face, listening to the sounds filling their little house.

The soccer game on television is on low. A car rumbles by outside. The streetlights are buzzing. Upstairs Natasha's hand brushes the gun that still rests under her pillow. Finally settled in her own bedroom, Svetlana rolls over in her sleep.

It's the whimper that catches his attention though, forcing him to focus harder, listen closer.

It's not Natasha. Her breathing is always almost silent, ever the spy even in her sleep. Deadly silent and unflinchingly still. He already knows it's Svet, by gut feeling alone, as if it's this deeply rooted paternal instinct that churns his stomach and squeezes at his heart.

Bucky immediately pushes himself up, bare feet silently travelling over hard wood floor through the living room and up the stairs. He easily slips down the dark hall to find her bedroom, her door partly open because she doesn't like to feel alone.

Cautiously pushing her door open just a little wider, he leans in to get a better look at her, to focus on her.

Svetlana is still sleeping, curled into a ball with her red hair splayed out on the bed and her face buried in a pillow. Her chest rises and falls with an increasingly unsteady rhythm, her breaths coming out in sharp gasps — getting quicker and quicker with each passing second. She twitches in her sleep, hands fisting into her pillow, a quiet whimper echoing in the small room.