Secretive - Bucky Barnes

8 || The Brightest Star || 🔪

[James]
Upstairs, a huge chaos gets into picture. People are running from side to side, searching for their kids or friends or family members. It would remind me of the drowning of the Wilhelm Gustloff, if it were not for the four huge and well secured rescue boats in the four points of the compass. The screams by now leave me alone, only a sad but familiar melody in the back of my brain.

I stand stock-still. The ship tilts further, but it does not bother me in the least. I look up in the sky instead, the stars shining, but not as brightly as they should. It seems like the darkness, after all, starts to consume them one by one. Maybe I should just stand here and watch them. There is nothing I can do about it anyways. In the end, we are all doomed anyways. What is the point in living? To be used, to have others control you?
I never could do anything about it. There only needs to come someone, someone knowing the words, knowing how to pronounce them. I may walk straight every day, but I am carrying more weight than I let on, and it starts pulling me downwards heavier and heavier each day, like the sinking ship I stand on.

Perhaps, I really should not move at all. I often thought about it, often let my thoughts travel to a world that does not contain the Winter Soldier.
It would be a better world.
Less dangerous.
Less intrigued.
Less people would have died, important people.
Tony's parents would still be alive.
It is not fair of me in the least to live. To live and to know I could become a killer machine every second again, could be someone's dirty hands, someone's doll to play around with. Could murder good people, could cause destruction and death and suffering.

There is not one single star on the sky left, and I close my eyes again. Below my feet, the feeling of water rushing into the ship's metal, into its insides, filling it up with dark liquid - it feels like my heart choking on its own blood.

For good.

When I slowly blink and look up again, water having splashed into my face and causing my reflexes to act, every noise and smell and sentiment gone from my knowledge, I almost get in shock when I see one star brighter than the rest of them. One star that stubbornly shines in the darkness, pushes back every threat, every bit of poison. One star that seems stupid enough not to move, although everything else is turning into disaster, not letting itself be consumed by the monsterous threat around it.

I really get shocked when someone pushes me hardly and I fall to the ground. »Bucky, there is no time for stargazing now. You fucking drowned the ship, now get your ass off of it.« Natasha screams, and when I look at her, she already jumped of the now almost forty-five degrees tilted heck. I roll off against the metallic wall, another time my back aches. That is going to be a hell of a bruise. Groaning, I stand up and jump without any further thought into the ocean. Have I not been supposed to drown it?

Arriving back at home, I suppose I am even quieter than on the ships deck. It already is five in the morning, and I do not want to wake up Nova early on her free day. Plus, I would have a lot to explain, standing blood-stained and besmeared with oil in my corridor. After taking off my shoes and hiding them in the drawer, I slowly walk through the apartment. There is no light but in the living room, it shining dimly through the open door. I breathe in deeply, calming down entirely and letting the warmth embrace me. Now that I think about it, it had been pretty cold in the sea and on the liner, but I guess my feelings were strong enough to let me forget about temperature. But for the moment, I feel as exhausted at always. Not physically, but mentally, and I cannot wait to wrap myself into a blanket. Hoping that perhaps, God has mercy and lets me not face another day.

But no, I cannot do it.
I could not do that to Nova. Not to my girl.
She would freak out if she woke up to a corpse, and even the pure thought of her crying for me is more agonizing than everything else the world has put me through.
No, I cannot die.
Not as long as she loves me.