Who Am I? » [Stucky]

90. Contemplation and Realisation

Alone. Bucky was so alone. The only company he had was the small smelly family of mice that frequented the rotten darkness beneath the stove in the kitchen and the spiders that lurked in every corner. Sometimes the mice would peep out, their tiny black noses sticking out of the darkness and sniffing the air before retreating again, and seldom would they ever make a full appearance into the daylight that poured in through the gaping hole in the roof. But they could almost always be heard, scuffling about on the wooden floor with their clawed feet, scratching at the wall and squeaking in their tiny voices. The spiders paid him no such companionship, merely hanging about in their intricate gossamer webs, perched in their nest awaiting an unfortunate bug to come flying be to devour. Nasty things, with too many legs, too many eyes and hair on their back - Bucky tried to avoid them if he could.

He quaked like a mental patient at a lunatic asylum as he hid. He had his knees bent up against his chest and his arms secured around them like a noose around a neck. He clutched his trembling frame, trying to supply himself with heat, with his teeth chattering in his skull. Januaries in New York City were freezing cold, it didn't help that he was sleeping rough in a broken building.

With every gust of blustery wind the structure seemed to shudder with him, it creaked and swayed around him. The roof above him would croak under the burden of trying to hold itself up: the eaves were unsecure in their rotting foundations. Small amounts of sawdust would spill down the walls as it moved, as the eaves chafed in their frames, moved and eroded. He didn't entirely trust the building to stay grounded.

Bucky was rife with paranoia, at every timid unwarranted sound he would snap his head around, and listen. He questioned every unusual shadow, ones that he was certain weren't there before, ones that didn't appear to have a source. The neighbourhood in Brooklyn in which Steve and he used to reside was a rough one, worn down with lowlife people: down on their luck, unemployed and desperate; they weren't afraid of using a knife and a few threatening words to get their hands on things. He pitied them of course, but he was afraid in equal measure.

He feared it would only be a matter of time before a neighbour would smash the door down and assault him, and he was in no fit shape to fight back; his body had diminished with starvation: he was frail, bony and pale. He had managed to pilfer a bottle of water from a nearby convenience store along with a sandwich, but that was all he had to live on.

He could hear the children in the street playing below, and wondered if any of them were ever going to come up there to explore, or to beat him, like those adolescents had done before. The laughter and joy of the children was mixed with the whines of stray dogs, howling in their dingy alleys and the hisses of stray cats who chanced upon their company.

He had remembered his home fondly, but right now it seemed nightmarish, uninviting and foreboding. Memories of him and Steve haunted him as he looked around: ghostly images sometimes danced before him of times before, flashbacks replaying through his mind. Every object seemed to carry a memory, something to taunt him with how it could've been; flaunting the good days and reminding him of the hell he was living.

He needed a saviour. He needed someone to rescue him from his suffering, to stop the pain and as time drew by suicide seemed more and more appealing; it would be something to end it. He wouldn't be scared any more, he wouldn't be starving anymore, he wouldn't be tired anymore or sad. But then his mind went back to Steve; his suicide would slaughter Steve, it would slay him if he was ever to find his body. It would be one more selfish act of defiance that might strike Steve in a way that he couldn't recover from. He wasn't willing to hurt Steve; that was all that was holding him back.

He was questioning his decision to leave Steve every second. He wished he hadn't, but he also wished there was another way. He couldn't cope with seeing tears running down Steve's face again, tears caused by him.