Flatline {Bucky Barnes}

28

Ana spent the next few weeks holed up in her apartment, watching crappy daytime television. That day after Barnes had appeared in her living room —no, appeared in her dream— she'd gotten a call from the hospital letting her know that she'd been granted indefinite leave off work, given her circumstances. They'd been kind enough to also let her know that Van Helbrick had been sacked, seeing as she'd failed to show up to work for a week and didn't answer any of their calls; interviews for a replacement were still underway. Ana supposed that the hospital hadn't been reading Natasha's lists of Hydra associates, or were (more likely) tiptoeing around the fact that they'd had an actual nazi working for them. Still, even a days later, it set Ana's mind to wondering what had happened to Barbara Van Helbrick. She wondered if the woman had ever made it out of the Hydra facility, if perhaps she were still there, buried in the rubble, cold and decaying. That image didn't make Ana shudder the same way she did when she thought of they boy she'd helped in the hospital. When she thought of the gruesome bullet hole in his forehead, like a third eye gawking at her, weeping, for Hydra.

A laugh track on the tv shook Ana from the gore that haunted her. A character on the sitcom she was watching had struck out with the leading lady, and while it didn't make Ana laugh, it was enough to bring her back into the present moment. The following days were spent similarly, floating between memory and present trying to make sense of it all and move on. Natasha visited regularly, making Ana's palms sweat when she noticed that a glass was missing from her set.

"I think I must have started sleep walking, I found it shattered on the floor one morning,"

Ana admitted, still convincing herself that this was a more plausible explanation than the Winter Soldier having been in her living room. It felt real, she had felt the coolness of the gun in her hands, but it couldn't have been. He'd been there one second and disappeared the next, and for what felt like no good reason. It was easier for her to believe she'd began somnambulating and destroying her kitchenware in the process, than to admit that Barnes had broken in just to thank her. Perhaps he'd planned to kill her, she thought, another hit on a long list of lives snuffed out too soon. But the breath still filling her lungs meant that he hesitated, or decided against it, spared her... sleep walking made more sense when she thought of the horror stories she'd heard about the soldier.

Natasha still looked skeptical when she said,

"You ought to see someone for that before you get yourself into trouble,"

She left it at that, but Ana saw her eyeing the open windows in the living room when they ate the sad looking chicken dinner Nat had made. The spy had also taken extra care to fiddle absently with the deadbolt on the front door as the women exchanged their farewells for the evening.

"I can stay the night, make sure you don't text your ex in your sleep... or something,"

Natasha tried to joke, but it fell flat. Texting an ex seemed trivial given all the things Ana had seen, and the bodies that had littered the hallway in the compound flashed in her mind again. Though she was still doubtful both of whether Barnes had actually broken in, and her own safety in general, the past few uneventful nights had Ana convincing herself that she didn't need Natasha to stay over.

"I think even sleep walking me knows I don't need more drama in my life. See you later, Nat."

Natasha took the hint, nodding in silent agreement before echoing a farewell and slipping out the door. Alone, Ana savoured the silence of her apartment. Nat had been right, of course. The whisperings were already beginning to fade from Ana's mind, and she could now get at least a few moments of precious silence throughout the day. She listened to the hum of the telephone wires outside her window, buzzing along with the cicadas that basked in the thick heat. Spring had quickly turned into a summer heat that coated Ana with a thin layer of sticky sweat, cocooning her in a familiar and welcoming warmth. She could hear the traffic passing by, slower somehow now too, than in the cooler months. Ana savoured the sweetly cascading song of a bird, followed by the beat of its wings as it left its nearby perch.

Ana sat there a long while, gratefully uninterrupted by her own mind. She sat until the traffic slowed to a meandering halt, and until the crickets and distant highway were the only sounds left. The fan in the corner of her living room ruffled her hair lightly, her breath even and shallow. And then suddenly it was sharp, thundering in her chest and coming out in uneven puffs that threatened to stop altogether. There had been a thump by her window, where her fire escape was, and before the doctor even had time to theorize about what the noise could have been a body had half-hurled itself through her open window with a shuddering crack as it hit the floor. The person—definitely a man, Ana decided—had landed belly down next to her dining table with a groan. A mop of dark hair obscured his face, but as soon as his head turned to look at Ana, she recognized his steely gaze. She stared in shock at the steady stream of thick, dark liquid dripping from his head onto the floor below. An equally dark patch formed on the hardwood by his abdomen where his hand clutched at his shirt, a poor attempt at stopping the bleeding.

"Ana,"

He groaned halfheartedly, and that was all it took for her to spring up from the couch.

~A