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Nighttime was still the hardest for me.
It was in the silence that my mind was at its cruelest. Tantalizing me with flashbacks and painfully vivid memories of the monstrosities committed by my hands my mind tricked me to believe we're permanently stained a crimson red. A stain that no amount of scrubbing with any cloth or sponge could seem to remove no matter how hard I tried, and damn did I try. It wasn't the same as blood after a surgery, no, it was far more disturbing, because I knew that the stains followed brutally stealing an innocent life rather than preserving it. It wasn't a sign of victory or the pursuit of something bigger than myself; instead, a haunting image that preyed on my wandering thoughts well after hours.
The moon cast her light in a cream, flickering glow through the trees swaying in the gentle breeze whistling through the starry midnight sky. Painting dancing shapes across the ceiling dripping down onto the walls acting as a blank canvas for her art. Amidst the stale silence, only contrasted by the faint ticking of an analog clock hung on the adjacent wall, I exhaled a shallow breath and instantaneously feared it would awake my parter; yet no stirring came from beside me which temporarily put my anxiously tensed muscles to rest. I laid stiff as a plank of wood beneath the emerald sheets sticking to my body dampened with cold sweats, making me feel as though I were being suffocated within its coiling grasp; claiming me it's victim. In the attempt to break the stagnant position, allowing me to feel every perfectly rounded drop of sweat rolling down my neck and pooling in my tensed collarbone, I rolled my figure over onto it's side to face the man beside me. Bucky's broad backside, every relaxed muscle, softly falling and rising with each inhale and exhale, stealing my attentive gaze eager to be occupied by anything other than my screaming thoughts.
Oh to return to the nights when we'd sit up for hours just talking. Not about my trauma. Not about me. Not about how I was doing. But the frivolous things of life and the simplest joys.
Strategically maneuvering beneath the sheets, I cautiously swung my legs over the bedside, careful to heed to the sleeping soldier, and briefly glanced over my bare shoulder at his resting figure. Remembering a time when something as simple as being in a state of pure stillness seemed unattainable. With a small smile resting on my lips, I made contact with the crisp wooden floors sending chills clawing up my legs at the stark contrast of temperature. Inhaling a sharp breath, I reached for the black bath robe strewn across the chair within arms reach and strode swiftly across the bedroom careful not to disturb the stillness. Padding down the familiar winding halls of the compound, brief flashbacks of now bitter sweet memories from this same hallway playing on a reel, phasing in and out of focus, it was almost as if I was reliving the same moments all over again. The smiles, the laughs, the feelings, the tender kisses.
"Kate?" Sam's curious voice echoed in the back of my thoughts and eventually shook me from my peaceful daydream and cruelly settled me back into the dim reality. As my senses gradually returned, my ears caught my heart thumping against my rib cage, my skin felt the brisk change in temperature as the air conditioning brushed against my bare skin, and my eyes flickered open and focused on the figure standing an arms length away from me. The distorted, blurry image becoming more clear with each blink.
