Secretive - Bucky Barnes

15 || Strength

[Nova]
Two entire weeks pass since my breakdown. Two weeks that are longer, more exhausting, and containing more training than I ever had during my whole life.

My path has been clear in the beginning; Tokyo. I need to get back to Stark's Tower, whether I want to or not. All my belongings are in there, everything that I own after the mess my mocking destiny dragged me through, and I promised Peter to train him. He is just a kid, I cannot let him down. False hopes do so much to me already; what will they do to someone even younger?

But, admittedly, this is not my main reason.

I cannot change my feelings for James. This is an impossible request. After four long weeks, thirty long days, Seven-Hundred and Twenty long hours, my heart is still bleeding. Bleeding from what he did to me, how he lied during all situations of a common life like he just smeared butter onto his breath, like he never did anything else. Hid his persona that is such a huge part of his life then and now, hid the danger that goes with dating him, the danger for my body and for my heart. I never could have been sure of him coming home the next day safely, and I did not even know.

But that is not the only reason for my heart still being cut, golden liquid streaming through the cracks that pathetically are only held by a few weak plasters. I know I have not been nice to him, neither. And whether he really loved me or not, something I want to know so urgently I would catch a grenade for it, and do not want to know so urgently I feel the need to vomit every time I think about it; what I said to him, about being paedophile and whatever else, really must have stung. It was immature, and whether my pride stands against it strongly, the wind, no, the storm of regret and guilt is too heavy to be able to still stand on my feet. I need to apologize. Even if I cannot forgive him, I owe him that.

During the last fourteen days, I learned a lot. First thing was getting back my sense of orientation; with all the intensified processing in every imaginable way, it had been hard to walk along a street straight. All the colours, like I just jumped into a paint box. All the smells, like I fell on the shelf with all the herbs and perfumes and broke them, combined with the taste of hormones and sweat. All the people around me, and the strong and present sentiment that tells me they are all weak, easy to kill if I had to. That no one of them had a chance against me in a fight, not even for a second. 

It took me three days without sleep to finally get onto the right way with it, not getting distracted anymore, or scared to death by the sound of a mouse tapping along the canalization meters below my feet and the concrete surface.

But when I did, I started my next try: figuring out how to use the new abilities. I swam in a river in the middle of nowhere at night, only fields and trees around me, not a single soul. I needed the calmness for concentrating; every breath was distracting like someone held up an alarm right next to my ear.

Apparently, I need to breathe firstly after a period of two hours. My skin does not even wrinkle anymore by the oxygen usually being sucked out of it by the water, and my sense for temperature? Unavailable. I barely noticed the coolness of the water in a way that would give me shivers; I knew it was cold, but my heart did not skip a single beat when I jumped right into it. It is like my brain registering the difference of heat in numbers and pleasant sentiments, but there is nothing that would make me feel a piercing ice. Once, when I broke into an uninhabited flat in one of the few cities that crossed my path – a dirty place with lots of skyscrapers and steaming cars, the air absolutely polluted -, I put my hand on a plate and turned the heat up to the highest. My skin did not even start blistering after I held it above it, onto it, for forty minutes, and the temperature showed Six-Hundred degrees. There was not even a single burned spot.

The thing with the strange fire has been a little harder to train. I tried hours, night for night after the fourth one, but at first, it did not even erupt. I concentrated so much, I started sweating in the stand, unmoving. But nothing had happened. I tried evoking it with anger, rage, like it happened the first time – again, nothing. Not a single flicker. So, I decided to change methods in night number Ten; why would I try the negative emotions, if the good perhaps would be the key? I started thinking about James. About him holding my hand. About his lips greeting me whenever he saw me. Them finding my neck every now and then, in an admiring manner. Whether I wanted it or not, my instinct told me James was the flame in my life. The essence of my being. So, without any counter, I kept holding on to these thoughts. They hurt like hell, like I just was ripped in between the teeth of Lucifer's guard dogs, but I kept holding onto the good feeling of it. The tingle in my chest.