Secretive - Bucky Barnes

33 || Awareness

[Nova]
»Steve, calm down. I've never seen you so stiffened, not even in all your anger.« I try, sitting down on the edge of my bed, where, seconds ago, four of my friends had found a seat.

With a fast motion, I wipe away my tears completely, the liquor goldenly colouring the tips of my fingers. Soon enough, I find a handkerchief to clean them. Steve, for his part, is now the one leaning to my opposite on my dark desk, arms crossed and biceps flexing. With his jawline tensed to a point sharper than a blade, nostrils flattering, he is the figure of stress coming alive. »I just spoke to him. No sign of him knowing. But I can't not tell him. I can't. You were right; it was wrong. We cannot keep such a secret from him.«

Narrowing my eyebrows, I tilt my head, the ends of the raven hair of mine tickling the skin of my collarbone. If only Steve knew. »What makes you think he doesn't know already?«

»You told him?« he muffles, shock written all over his face, arms hanging lose from the sudden new thought in his mind. His pink lips form an 'O', while eyes travelling all over my small frame in order to figure out whether I was serious, and this a possibility.

»No, I didn't. I've been evasive the past hours, if this didn't come to your attention. But James always knows. He reads me like a book without me giving a syllable. I don't know what I thought could be, that we stood a chance at him not knowing, but now that we're here, it's like a curtain falling down. In no version of reality we could keep it from him.« And I need to confess this to myself. The thought came with Steve bursting into the room, and did not dissolve ever since. How come I did not think about that strange connection James has regarding to me beforehand?

In fact, we keep it for two days from him. At least, I think so. Steve did not say a single word about it, and with me avoiding my ex-boyfriend best I can, always busying myself with Peter's training and studying the last pages of neuroscience available to me, there was no chance for me to find out what was going on inside James's head; what he was aware of, and what he was not.

Not that this would be any good. If I want to succeed in curing James the fast I can, I need to start as fast I can. Being everywhere he is not is not really the key to the solution.

I probably never have been as strained as the last days. The guilt became worse, completely without any sense, the cask filling drop by drop; I mean, I could do whatever I want to, and I still can. Nonetheless, instead of reaching the goal of reducing the James's sized hole in my heart, the guilt only let it swell. Barely having time for properly thanking my friends, I did not even eat the cake, giving it to all the others for their sake because I had no appetite in the least.

And now that Steve, Natasha, Tony and basically everyone but James and I are gone, I have no choice but to face him. Especially with my plan still in mind, there is no chance to keep on avoiding him.

By now, I am standing in the kitchen, leaning on the bar with half of a sandwich in between my fingers. Hair in a bun, my glance is fixed to the panorama window, the stars blinking from above in all their might to fight back the darkness of the night. Thoughts roaming in my head about the absence of Jonas.

When I was small, a child, really, my parents use to say that every time someone dies, he turns into a star to brighten the night for me. To be there for me, make the darkness vanish for me to see beyond. I know it is a fairytale, and I do not think of the two of them being up there, but I like the thought of a Jonas-star somewhere in between the chaos of the universe.

I did it a lot, while I have been on the way to Japan, back, in here, with Steve on the mission. Whenever I had the chance to, I would star-gaze as much as I could, until I finally found a light dot in the sky that seemed fitting to me. That seemed to live up to the kind of Jonas I liked to remember; the older brother that always has been there for me, took pain and torture for me, still making me laugh every single day, probably raising me more than my parents.