teeth ➻ marvel x supernatural

02.

now

"Maybe we should turn the television off?" Dean suggested from inside the kitchen somewhere behind me. I sank further into the couch, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them as I watched the news. It was the same thing that was being played on all of the channels, as if it were the only thing going on in the world.

"I want to see it," I replied, resting my chin on my knees. I heard Dean make a noise that I wasn't supposed to hear accompanied by a swear word, but I ignored him. I wanted to know all I could about the situation without actually getting myself involved. It had been seventy years.

"You'll just want to get involved, Addy," Dean said with a sigh. I glanced at him over my shoulder and huffed.

"That isn't fair." The news played on. "I only went back once and you cannot hold that against me."

"I don't hold it against you," He said and there was a loud noise from him dropping something metal on the floor. I didn't turn around to see what it was. "This time won't be like back then, though. He's back now." My nostrils flared as I huffed again, wishing he was anywhere else so I could watch the broadcast in peace.

"I'm not trying to sneak around with him behind your back, Dean," I snapped. "I just want to see what the outcome of the trial is." Silence followed. The eerie kind of silence where I knew Dean was thinking things through his favourite glasses: hunting.

"It will just hurt you more if it isn't a happy ending." I turned to glare at him now, watching as he stood against the kitchen bench with his hands braced in front of him. I felt the tip of my fang extend and poke into my lip and turned back quickly before he could see and give me that look like he thought I just might be a wild animal.

"Then I'll fight until there's a recall," I muttered. I heard his exasperated sigh even if he tried to do it under his breath.

"See," He stated. "Getting yourself involved." I was going to snap back and tell him if he couldn't accept my past then he may as well not bother to be part of my future even though I knew I would regret it later when there was a shift in the footage and a reporter stepped into frame, taking away from the background of the courthouse

"A decision has finally come to air in the trial of James Bucky Barnes, AKA the Winter Soldier. After days and weeks of appeals, the judge has finally ruled..." The words from the reporter fell to silence as the cameraman panned back to the entrance of the courthouse as he exited, Steve by his side. My breath caught. Steve seemed to be on his phone as they descended the steps but my attention was on him. He'd started to grow a beard. He'd cut his hair. He looked a million times different than when I'd seen him after he had first escaped Hydra. My phone buzzed and I glanced down at it.

Steve: he's a free man - pardoned of all crimes.

My face broke into a face-splitting grin. The Winter Soldier - pardoned of all crimes. Back on the television screen, it had panned back to the reporter with the boys nowhere in sight. I looked back down at my phone, going against all of my instincts and dared to text Steve back for maybe the first time since I'd sent don't contact me again, even if that hadn't worked, when another text came through.

Steve: we are going to celebrate... please join us - he's been asking for you.

I threw the phone against the couch and pulled my knees up tight to my chest. No. Steve didn't get to do that now. Not after I'd told him I couldn't live in the past anymore. I had moved on with my life and it had taken a near lifetime to do it. Now things were going okay again, I had Dean and I had a life I enjoyed living. I was happy for James, I really was, and he would always be my first love. My husband. But that had been so long ago and neither of us were the people we had been back then; bright-eyed and innocent. There was too much blood on both our hands now.

I understood that he would be asking for me, or at least about me. Steve would have told him I was still here, alive but a still heart, and he would want the closure I never had. And yet as I sat on my couch in the home Dean and I lived in together, I still thought about what it would be like to go back to that life. To see him again and have him remember my name. To remember my love.

When my phone went off with a third message, details from Steve about the celebration they were having, I switched it off. Dean was right, I just wanted to get involved even when I knew it was a bad idea.