Secretive - Bucky Barnes

1 || Choir

[Nova]
Deep breathes try desperately to push the smoky, ashy air into my lungs, which contract every time like being poisoned. Chloe still lays in my arms, her corpse warm against the centre of my body, her blood pouring from her freshly cut throat in quiet tearstreams.

I cannot even say a single cell in my body would have known; no small part suspected it in the least. Until Chloe Vermentro's last words slap me right into my face, as if she knew she would revenge her own death only with a few syllables.

Numbness overcomes me, a numbness I never felt so intense. My hearing is completely turned off, as my smelling sense. Eyes still inhaling the sight in my front, brain believing in my success even with people fighting me that are like Steve, heart feeling not a single bit of pride in the least. Not with these goddamn words.

And not with this goddamn air that threatens to fry my lungs.

The ability to cry must have left with my senses. Roughly, I push her corpse away from atop me, slowly cleaning my Shuriken, her death blade, stroke for stroke on my suit. It seems like the entire world is on slow-motion, lost its time feeling the second my heart shattered.

Rising, I do not take my glance off my precious weapons. The only things that never betrayed me.

Then, suddenly, I hear voices. Very distant, very faint. Like a choir, in perfect harmony. Lulling, seducing. High notes that flow through my ears in a foreign but pleasant melody. Does it sing for Chloe's death? Welcoming her to hell or heaven? Rather to hell.

Shaking my head, I try to shake them off. Am I hallucinating now?

Apparently, my plan works; it is like a bubble that pops, before surrounding my head like a helmet.

I need to get out of here. Soon. The way the rocks fall in smaller distances from ahead, all the books and shelves and bodies burning – it indicates well enough I should get myself to safety.

I turn, heading without a glance at the others, at Tony, or Vision, or Natasha, or Steve, or Wanda, not even a single one for James, towards the largest hole that is my invitation to escape.

The more I walk, the clearer their shouts get. My name, both my names, desperately, apologetically, demandingly. I ignore every single one, not hearing James's once.

As soon as I find myself right beneath the gigantic break through several metres of earth, my head tilts upwards.

Stars. Tons of stars on the night sky. Screaming for the one on my collarbone, burning into my skin.

As carefully as I moved across corpses and smaller fires and rocks and blood, tons of blood, I take step for step onto a stake of them, making my way carefully up to the ceiling. Still numb. Still not able to cry. Still not able to feel any pain, whether mentally, nor on my right upper arm, my left thigh, my temples, my lip. I can feel the hot liquid floating out of each of my injuries, the warm prickle a way too familiar reminder of my work, but I could not care less. I just need to get out of here.

One or two times I almost slip, the stones crackling underneath my feet and very soon ending in a tsunami of deathly hard chunks, but eventually, I make it to the top of the stack. How fortunate I am to have a balance like an acrobat, or even better, comes to my conscience in situations just like this one.

Lowering my head, I pull out the Shuriken that killed number Three-Hundred and Eighty-One, before taking the rope Tony put wisely onto it in my free left hand. After a second of hesitating, granting my body to find its power resources once more tonight, I look up, and see the weapon fly, reflecting the flames and dust underneath during its spin. By now, I can very well feel the heat that is embracing me into its fist, making my lungs burn like bonfire and put my skin in a state short before melting.