Secretive - Bucky Barnes

3 || Burning

[Nova]
Never in my life have I ever slept worse. After I turned off the tracker Tony put into the suit, I tried my best finding some rest in between all the uncomfortable, hard-edged and splintering boxes. Eventually, I fell asleep despite the loud engine noises, but the dreams that haunted me this very night have been more frightening than ever, levelling my anxiety onto a whole new point.

I never was someone to dream a lot, especially not from any deaths or kills or explosions. Somehow, my brain always has been able to draw a line, like it was able to split my profession from my subconscious. Relief filled me after every bloody night. Not one single time that I had not been able to sleep properly.

Today is different.

Today is worse.

James's ghost haunts me in my sleep. Every part he played in my life in a single scene. 
I stand right on his opposite, on a battle field. I am confused, puzzled; my dream-self has lost orientation, has lost information, standing there without a single clue. Left and right, there are mountains of ashes, and in between the thick, sandy, grey layer, bones. Dozens of bones; thighs, upper arms, fingers, ankles, skulls. The sun decided not to present itself today, seemingly quit its job for at least a week. The air is so corrosive it burns my lungs with every breath, and I feel sweat dripping down my body in streams. 
And it is hot. It is so goddamn hot. It feels like this place is not my planet entirely.
I try to walk, take a step, but I stick. When I glance down in panic, I see my feet grabbed by injured hands coming out of the ground, an iron grip around my ankle. No matter what I do, I am not strong enough. I get desperate, but with every motion of a muscle of mine, the hands only grip tighter, and their skin blisters a little more like being burned without a present flame.
The moment I give up, the hands at least not seem to become tortured any longer.
Then, a step. My glance shoots forwards, and suddenly, the image has changed. Like every stack of burned bodies were come together and piled up in my front, dozens of skulls facing me directly, angrily, mad at me. I know they symbolize the people I killed. The people losing their lives because of me. The blood that sticks on my hands, never washing down, no matter how hard I scrub.
My heart skips a beat, clear fear making my veins boil just as the hands that hold me tight: my ankles feel like set on fire, but I still cannot get free. I look down once more, and my whole body jumps in shock: it are not hands anymore down there, at least no usual. It are Tony's, or rather, the ones of his suit, and they are burning indeed. My own skin etches agonizingly, and I wonder how it is possible that Tony hurts me.
The next second that I look up, I can see no more skulls. No, like they were bread, red gleaming ashes wrap around Steve's and Peter's body right on the small hill in my front, eyes in their last moments frozen, looking upwards into the sky in agony, plea, despair, shock. I try to cry out, but no sound leaves my throat. It is like I send razors up my vocal cords instead, slicing them open and making myself choke on my own blood.
Panic rises inside me like a filling cask, and once more I try to escape, get to them, make sure they are really lost by now or help with whatever I can do.
But nothing happens except the flames slowly crawling up my legs.
Suddenly, I see a foot stepping from behind the ashes, followed by thick thighs covered in black cloth. He moves forward, slowly, every step as heavy and echoing as we were in a huge, empty metal hall, and still, the hunter he has been for so many decades. His silvery shining metal arm is not needed for me to know it is James, his flesh hand clenched into a fist, the other one embracing a black gun. His face is all serious and dirty, like he just played hide and seek in this mess of a place, and I almost lose it all when he stops right in my front. I can even smell him: all sweat and frozen river.
His dark eyebrows narrow when he looks down at our feet, ignoring the corpses of his friends entirely, and dropping the weapon. He is tensed all over, and when these steal blue eyes meet mine, my heart crumples into the tiniest possible thing leaving me alive. It contracts even more agonizingly than the fire that by now reaches my hips; his whole expression is dipped in frustration and reproach, his mouth a thin line of pressed, pale lips. I try to reach out for him, try to cup his face, try to tell him it is going to be alright again. Tears running down my face in rivers of hot liquid mercury, I realize I am not able to move anymore. Neither my hands, nor my mouth listen to the orders of my brain.
James continues, his glance a little dazed. His flesh hand moves upwards, slowly, eyes never leaving mine. All of a sudden, something silver plops out of his opening fist and tangles mid-air: the necklace he gave me, with the silver star, covered in blood and ashes, touched by death itself, darkened.
Without taking his glare off of it, he opens the small hook, steps closer and hangs it around my neck, the metal burning into my skin like a mark. I try to shout once more, but still, nothing.
James stops mid-motion, head hovering right next to my ear, voice only a whisper without a tone. »You made me believe I was good.«