a lion among wolves, bucky barnes (hiatus)

seventeen.

WASHINGTON D.C.
2014

JUNE could barely grasp what happened between her and Bucky in the bathroom.

Her skin still buzzed where he had touched her along her scar, and she felt his gaze continue to burn into her even after he left. The whole thing was ridiculous. When June checked her reflection in the small bathroom mirror, she saw that her cheeks blushed a bright red.

She stood there, motionless, everything too quiet, even with the blood roaring in her ears. Bucky was just in the next room, and June was all-too aware of it. Not knowing what else to do, she quietly shut the door. She replaced the rag against her brow, for it had begun to bleed again and in her distraction June had not noticed the trickle of blood snaking down to her eye. With the other hand she rummaged through Steve's medicine cabinet, pushing aside various pain medications and sleeping pills until she found a box of butterfly bandages. Carefully, June disinfected and dressed the cut (she thought back to her days in Hydra's labs, where they had grilled the basics of first aid into her brain like a brand) and drew in a deep breath. Time to face the giant.

June pushed the door open a few inches. Her eyes scanned the living room and kitchen—they were deserted. Despite her racing heart and upswinging anxiety, she stepped out into the hall, moving on cat's feet in a very Romanoff-esque manner, until a sharp noise interrupted her prowl. June's head snapped to the left, and she saw that Bucky had come out of his room and shut the door behind him, looking just as alarmed as she felt. June's stomach flipped. She opened her mouth to say something, (she did not know what) but Bucky was quicker.

"Tell me what happened," he said in a nervous rush. "With you. When you were with Hydra. What they did."

It was quite possibly the worst thing Bucky could have said. June's mouth hung open for a long time, closed, and fell agape again. Bucky's eyes softened.

"Please," he said. "I think it would help me know . . . know what to talk about."

June crossed her arms over her chest. "I wouldn't know where to start."

Bucky shrugged loosely. "Try the beginning."

June shifted. "Moscow," she said in a voice that did not surpass a whisper. "Everything starts in goddamn Moscow."

"You're tellin' me." Bucky cracked a shy smile.

June chuckled weakly. "Yeah. Well . . . life before Hydra wasn't so glamorous either, if I'm honest."

Bucky frowned. "What do you mean?"

"We were poor," June sighed, shuffling towards the living room. "We were so poor. My father would come home worked half to death, and my mother right after him. They could barely feed us some days." She sank into an armchair, watching Bucky from across the room. "But they always found time to love us."

"Us?"

"My siblings and I," June explained. "Odessa is the oldest—she's married with a baby, now. Nikolai and Samuel are my younger brothers. Probably in their twenties by now . . ." Tears began to mist her eyes. "But it doesn't matter. They don't know I exist."

Bucky's face screwed up in puzzlement. "What do you mean?" he said again.

June tasted bile in her throat. "Hydra let me go because I failed. I didn't kill enough, or didn't kill the right way, and all the experiments screwed up my neuro-chemical balance . . . I wasn't able to complete missions. So they let me go. Didn't even see the use in killing me. But they made damn sure I had nothing to go back to."

"They got to your family," Bucky muttered.

"Erased their memories," June said. "Wiped them of every recollection of who I was—and it didn't stop there. Hydra found every single person I had ever known or interacted with and wiped me from their minds. Demolished my records, birth certificate, social security—everything. I don't exist. It's like I never did."