Steve entered Alexia's apartment complex later that morning, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder as he carried three takeout boxes of Chinese food. "Good morning Captain!" Maggie, the apartment clerk, called happily from the front desk. "You here to see Lex again? Are you sure you're not dating?"
The blonde super soldier nodded. "Positive, Miss Love." Maggie pulled her blonde curls behind her shoulders and smiled brightly up at him.
"Please, call me Maggie or Mags. I don't like to be called 'Miss' because it makes me sound old." Her nose wrinkled and he laughed. "Listen, Steve. I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go grab a coffee sometime?" Steve stared at her in amazement but managed a small nod as he exchanged his phone number with Maggie before heading up to Alexia's apartment.
He had a date. With a real woman who was pretty.
"Alexia! I caught the delivery guy on my way up here. Did you seriously order Buck Chinese food, of all the things to try first?" He stopped in his tracks as a familiar swing tune filled his ears accompanied by hysterical laughter of both males and females. "Oh my goodness."
Alexia turned her head slightly and grinned at the shocked super-soldier standing in her doorway. "And good morning to you too, Steven!" Bucky twirled her faster that time as they continued dancing. "Come on Gramps. Surely you can twirl better thenthan that." Steve rose an eyebrow at the dancing duo as Bucky stared at her with mock shock written all over his face.
"I'm offended." He replied. "I haven't done this in seventy years. That has to count for something, Lex." The brunette grinned wryly at him and collapsed on the sofa as the song slowly came to a resounding conclusion. "Wow. What a rush."
"You're telling me! I can't feel my thighs!" Steve and Bucky laughed in unison as Alexia began massaging her legs. Through her peripheral vision, she saw Steve inch his hands towards her Chinese food. "Steven Grant Rogers, you so much as touch my food I'll kick you out of my apartment for a month." Bucky laughed as he took a plastic fork and peered into the box curiously. "Go ahead Barnes, try it."
As Bucky dug into the best meal he'd had in years, Steve turned to talk to his blushing friend. "How long have you two been dancing?"
"An hour. Maybe more. It was well worth it though." She met her soldier's electric blue eyes and smiled softly. "It sparked a memory for him. Go on James, tell him."
"It was the late 1940s, I think... and I was standing in a swing club dressed in uniform with a pretty brunette girl at my side." Steve grinned widely and tapped his fingers on the island in deep thought. "There was some sort of a.. convention going on outside the club?"
"You must be remembering the night I attempted to get drafted again and finally met Doctor Erskine. Pre-serum. That was after Howard Stark's expo. You loved to dance Buck. It was practically what you did every chance you got." He opened his mouth to continue but stopped as Alexia laid a warning hand on his arm.
Bucky's eyes had gone dark with the renewed memory. "What is my mission?" The terrified woman behind Steve held a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries. Please God no, not him. Not again. "Termination of Howard and Maria Stark successful." Steve couldn't get to his shield over by the sofa, and Lex didn't have her suit on.
They were defenseless.
"Bucky, you're at Lex's apartment. We've been here two days now. You are not The Winter Soldier. You're James Buchanan Barnes. You're safe." Steve gently tucked Alexia behind him and held up his hands in surrender. "Friends. Not enemies."
"Winter." There it was again. The voice of an angel. The Winter Soldier glanced up at the petite brunette girl who was haphazardly wiping her eyes from where she hid behind Steve. "You're not an animal. You're Bucky. My veteran. My soldier. Please, sweetheart. Just see me." His eyes softened and snapped up to look between the both of them.
All it took was her voice to draw him out.
"Steve? Lex?" The two sighed in relief. "Did I hurt you? Please tell me I didn't." He was so terrified of hurting one of them. People who cared about him. He didn't want to hurt anyone anymore.
"No. I'm alright." Alexia smiled sadly and leaned against Steve, resting her head on his shoulder. "Alright, Buck. Let's try to see if we can get any of your memories back."
***
"So, Mr. Carver. What do we do of the girl?" A lead scientist for HYDRA, Jonathan Carver wanted nothing more than for his daughter to be with him, fighting where she belonged. Away from The Soldier. Away from him.
"What of her?" He spoke, turning to his assistant Roman Lourde standing behind him.
"She's helping The Soldier get his memories back sir. She seems to have developed feelings for him as well." He cringed at the thought of his daughter dating a freak like him but shook it off. She'd be with him soon enough. Jonathan ran a hand over his face and scrolled down further through the HYDRA footage he'd been given of her time there.
"Nothing yet Roman. She doesn't need to be aware at the moment."
***
Alexia leaned back into the sofa and stared at Bucky with sad eyes after recanting her story of their time in HYDRA together. "Zola... He froze me?" Bucky said quietly, almost as if he was unsure whether or not he wanted to drudge up the memories again. "Is that why I'm so open to the cold? Why do I hate it so much?" His eyes were so haunted, so broken. So sad.
"Most likely, yes. When you did something they didn't approve of, they tended to slap you around a lot. That's why whenever I do this," She reached out a tentative hand towards him, and just like she said, he flinched. "You flinch."
"What happened when we were in HYDRA, Lex? There's something else that you're not telling me." Her body instantly stiffened and she gripped Steve's leg so hard that her knuckles began to turn white. "Alexia?" She glanced up briefly at Steve as he laid a hand over her lower back and smiled sympathetically.
"They brought me as bait to get him to go on missions and kill important people. He killed to keep me alive. After about a week, I was taken into a lab and experimented on. I was supposed to be his new sidekick. They tried to see if I could obtain the power of telepathy. It worked. I have that and the ability to manipulate lightning to my advantage." Alexia turned her wrists outward to show him the lightning scars she had obtained. "The Soldier.." Steve noticed her chest begin to heave and cleared his throat.
"Tell him, Alexia. He deserves to know." Bucky looked between the two of them with confusion on his face until he met the teary eyes of the woman before him.
"I made a mistake. I fell in love with him. I fell in love with you." The super soldier's blood ran cold as Alexia struggled to contain the tears that were threatening to spill from her eyes. She leaned forward on her elbows and locked eyes with him. A beautiful girl like that shouldn't look so sad.
"Did he fall in love with you?" She pressed her lips in a firm line and nodded weakly. "What happened then?"
"We loved each other. Did everything to protect the other. I usually got hit whenever I tried to keep him from getting wiped." Alexia pulled up her sweatshirt to reveal a rigid stab wound scar on her abdomen. "One time, I got stabbed." She laughed weakly and grabbed a tissue from the box on the table. "I kept telling him we were going to escape together. I ran while he was getting his memories of me wiped." She hiccuped as she began to cry hysterically.
"You-You left him?!" James shot up from his seat, nostrils flaring and eyes alit with rage as he glowered at his best friend and the woman he had once loved. "How-How could you do something like that? He- I needed you!"
Alexia cleared her throat and began to recite something from her tattoo that ran up the length of her right arm. He hadn't noticed it until now, but it looked like something she had said that she never wanted to forget.
Boy with a broken soul.
Broken dreams,
Silent screams...
Heart with a gaping hole.
"Why did you run? Why run when everything you ever loved was sitting inside hell enduring torture?"
"They were going to kill me, Bucky!" Alexia snapped. She opened her mouth to continue but instead found herself paralyzed at his response.
"Your life is not more important-" Deadly silence filled the room as a sickening slap echoed, leaving a red mark on the super soldier's pale face. Alexia pulled her hand back as she fumed and stormed off to her room, leaving the two of them standing alone. "What did I say, Steve? I didn't want to hurt her. I don't want to hurt her."
"She was forced to give up her whole life. Lost her dad, mom, and baby sister because of HYDRA. When you try to tell her her life isn't more important than saving him, saving you? That kind of re-opens wounds, Buck." He sighed and motioned to the door. "I'm gonna go home, shower, and get some sleep. You should try too. She's not going to be coming out for a while."
Steve hugged his paralyzed best friend and left the apartment without another word. Through the walls, Bucky could hear Lex's hysterical sobbing inside her bedroom. "I'm sorry Lex. I'm so sorry.."
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
My Heart's A Wall of Stone
एक्शन"I made you a promise a long time ago. I don't care if you don't remember it, or me, or how we saved each other. You can be sure I'm going to make you forget the person you were, and become the person that I know. That Steve Rogers knows. Your true...
