Secretive - Bucky Barnes

12 || Rough

The flight from Romania to New Orleans was almost undoable. Fingers never stopping to tap on my black-covered thigh, my thoughts spun never-ending loops of possible outcomes, none of them ending with something not making me flinch internally. Steele could have gotten to them before I did, and I needed to bite my tongue whenever my head created pictures of James, Steve and Rebecca being slaughtered. The tightness in the heck of the storage-transporting airplane did no good to ease me, either.

But as fast as the devil rapped his curses in my head, as high is the amount of weight dropping off my conscience and my heart when I finally stand in front of the light bluish-grey house in the middle of the night in Delacroix. A gentle breeze drifts by, and like a baseball, the curve of my emotions changes direction in an instant from the possibilty of them being hurt to getting my family is safe.

One more step further, and I will introduce myself to the Barnes's family-home. 
I will see how much the children have grown within my absence.
And I will face James for the first time in years.

Lights off, everything seems quiet. The longer alley to the entrance is clean from snow, as is the rest. I had no chance paying all too much attention on anything else, not even the rough coldness sneaking around the place, but a flash of sadness, of pity for the twins immediately drives through my veins. I imagine they would blossom within the flakes, building snowmen and throwing snowballs. I can only hope James baked some biscuits with them.

The thought is brushed off rather quickly when I get to the security system, turning it off just as long as I would need to get inside. It is familiar; the technology must be some developed form of Stark's, probably with Fury's hands in them. Internally, I thank James a thousand times for being so foresighted.

Soundlessly, I move into the house, eyes closed. The door falls into the lock again behind me with not much more noise than a bird's wings flapping, and I hold my lids down. Of course, it would be much more logical to actually see, and not fully concentrate and let myself be guided by my other senses, but something simply knocks out the bare thought of glancing around immediately. I am the intruder in this house, and I believe James would want to see my first reaction – if he plans on me staying with him, which I doubt. Plus, regardless of me hearing the faint breaths from upstairs, some quicker and lighter, some longer and heavier, more distant, it is a huge help finding the right path directly nonetheless. Vision of my environment would threaten to distract me.

I stand it all. At least in times in which I delay my first sight of James, and deny myself any sight of the kids. They are my weak spot; my enemies know that, and this does not come from nowhere. I fear I would change my mind, fear I would travel with them instead of guarding their home and be a distraction, buying them enough time to get away. It was not all too easy packing their cloths with my back turned on them, and with every shirt and pants that I stuffed into the small suitcase I found atop their wardrobe, the limb in my throat threatened to choke me a little more, grew a little tighter.

But I made it, and now, I stand with my eyes still closed in between James's window and his surprisingly calmly sleeping body, not daring to get to know his first impression of me, the first emotions roaming inside him more than fearing Steele incoming. Because opening my eyes would surely trigger a reaction, and this reaction would trigger James to wake up.

It feels like nothing I ever did before. Like climbing the ten meters high plank in the swimming pool, but you do not know what is awaiting you. You just cannot say whether it is water, fire, or even an abyss far greater than the fall you decided to jump into. It could be anything, a paradise made of marshmallows, or hell coming upon Earth, landing right in razor sharp blades.

Not exactly knowing what I am so afraid of, I bite my lower lip, still standing there in utter quietness. Is he mad at me? Sad? Believes me dead? The letter should have proven otherwise, but nevertheless, my mission very well could have been the death of mine. Furious, perhaps? Well, that, very probably. Maybe it is the spark that I fear is lost, the kindness of his steel blue eyes as soon as I wake him up, gone. Maybe it is that I fear there is no tingling inside him, no pupil delating when he gets my sight, his soul long promised to another. Maybe it is sadness and anger I fear having contorted his face, seeing him in a form that assures me this man never gained happiness, and will never gain it, because he survived so much grief and agony, so much suffer that it turned his colorful world now utterly into nothing but blackness, whatever light having been left long dying.