December // A Winter Soldier Story

17

She rubs her arms to keep warm, and thinks about Bucky's actual name. James Buchanan Barnes. It sounds steady and strong. "His real name is James?" She asks in the middle of thinking, just to confirm that what she heard was correct. Steve nods.

"James Buchanan Barnes, born March 10th, 1917."

The more Lea learns about Bucky, the more she is enamored by him. She is fascinated by his past like nothing else. She knows that he was cryogenically frozen while in Hydra's grasp -- which explains how he's aged so slowly -- but actually hearing the year he was born in, 1917, is shocking. It's both difficult and easy to imagine him existing in another time, another world. Maybe that's why she's so dazzled by him -- he is absolutely nothing like anyone she's ever met before, which makes sense considering he belongs to an entirely different world.

"What are you thinking about?" Steve asks after a long pause of silence. Lea makes eye contact with those honest blue eyes of his, and, reluctant to discuss her daydreaming about his best friend, decides to change the subject.

"I'm thinking that I didn't ever answer your question," she deflects, covering her deceit a bit with a grin. If Steve catches her white lie, he doesn't let on. Instead he shrugs and nods for her to go on.

Lea sets her eyes forward. "Truth be told, there's not all that much to tell," she begins. "I'm twenty four years old. Recent college graduate, majored in accounting. Raised in upstate New York, moved to New Hampshire after college because of a job offer, been living on my own since. I don't have many friends, and my family lives pretty far away, so my life is pretty slow and quiet." She pauses. "Well, at least it was, until Bucky came crashing into it."

Steve nods and makes another turn. Lea follows him.

"Do you like accounting?" He then questions unexpectedly, and Lea frowns. She'd never really thought about it all that much, so his question trips her up.

"I guess?" She answers, her reply sounding more like a question than a statement. "I mean, I'm good at it."

"That's not the same thing as liking it."

She pauses, then shrugs. "I don't know. I guess I like it. Gives me a purpose, which is enough for me."

Steve gives her a look after she says this, as if he understands her feelings of not loving something she does everyday but continuing to do it nonetheless. After this short look, Lea begins to wonder just how much she doesn't know about the man beside her. She knows that she's only known him for a short while, so she doesn't exactly expect to be well versed in all things Steve, but she finds herself convinced that there is an immeasurable amount of emotions and stories and thoughts inside of him that no one has ever rooted through.

Again, she feels the need to help him. To listen. She wonders if people ever listen to his stories, if they ever pay attention to his hopes and his fears and everything else inside his head. She wonders the same of Bucky.

Sometimes all anybody needs is just someone to listen.

And that's just what Steve does for her for the next half hour; he listens to her stories, as they walk along the road searching for the one armed man that's haunting them both. Steve asks her as many questions as he can, and though she starts out reluctant, Lea begins opening up to the stranger beside her, telling him stories of her childhood and of her days in college and of the very few friends she has left and everything in between. She stops holding back and allows herself to be excited and happy and a little bit loud. And as she becomes more and more herself, she begins asking Steve some questions, and he gets into it a little bit too.

Maybe it's because it's the middle of the night and they are both delirious with sleep deprivation and cold, but they  end up spilling a lot more information than they probably would otherwise. They revel in the strange feeling of timelessness that nighttime and being around new people often bring.

That is, until a heart-wrenching scream breaks through the otherwise quiet air, instantly freezing them in their tracks.

Lea and Steve hurriedly look around just as the scream fades into the air. It sounded as though it was both close and far away, and unless Lea was mistaken, it sounded like it could've been Bucky.

She looks to Steve for confirmation, and when she sees his frantic, energized expression, her heart begins beating rapidly. Had that been the scream of the man they've been searching for?

Steve takes off not a moment later, leaving her in the dust as he makes a hard left towards where he thinks the scream originated from. Lea hurries to follow, pumping her arms and legs faster than she ever has before with a new, powerful energy that is flooding through her body. Adrenaline brings new life to her veins as she fights to keep up with Steve and battle the frigid air that is paradoxically setting her lungs on fire.

Steve dashes through alleys, searching intently as his eyes scan every nook and cranny he can find. Lea does the same. Each shadow looks like a soldier, each shimmer in the light of the moon appears to be the gleam of a familiar metal arm. But despite all the intuitive leaps her brain makes in its own confirmation bias, the actual man they wish to find is nowhere to be seen.

Steve eventually slows his pace, and Lea follows suit. Both are breathing heavily and are disappointed and frustrated all at once that nothing is working in their favor. In anger, Steve clenches his fists, unable to stop himself from continuing to look around.

"The sound must have bounced off all of the buildings, made it hard to locate where it came from," Lea suggests between pants. "Was it even him? Or was it someone else?"

"I don't know," Steve replies, venom lacing his words. The venom isn't directed at her, however; it is very clearly directed at something or someone else, perhaps even towards the universe in general for being so cruel.

Lea isn't sure what she should do to comfort him. She isn't sure if they are even close enough for her to comfort him without it being strange. But before she can decide what to do, he pushes off of the wall he had been leaning on, and begins walking again.

"We need to keep looking," he calls behind him, and Lea demonstrates her agreement by rising tirelessly to join him.

They are disheartened as they continue on; desperate to achieve their goal, desperate to save a man who cannot save himself. They search until Washington is lit up by the first rays of sun on the morning of Christmas Eve, and still, they don't find a trace of Bucky. All they leave with is a screaming ghost and an empty feeling.

They are unaware at the time that the scream they'd heard had, in fact, been Bucky's.