Leave Me Behind [Winter Soldier] III

Not Tonight [Chapter 11]

"Kept your beauty whole

Don't need my help to grow

But I can show that you, babe

Slow down"

"Slow Down" - Jesper Munk

Bucky had no idea how Ophelia could sleep.

Okoye, T'Challa and Shuri were up at the front of the Wakandan ship, while Bucky and Ophelia sat in the comfortable and spacious back. After having finally come to terms with the fact Steve was gone, and O was back, Bucky introduced Ophelia to the others. Of course, she had known T'Challa, but had not seen his shift in attitude towards Bucky. Ophelia had already been near deaths door when T'Challa had a change of heart.

But all of that was in the past now.

A smile traced his lips as he looked at Ophelia, curled up on her side on the bench-seat. There were televisions on the futuristic jet, but none of them were on. The news would be ravaged with good things, for the first time ever. People brought back, half the universe brought back. He hoped that serenity would last, he hoped that the world would have a new appreciation for one another, that he would not have to face another fight again.

He wouldn't. Not now that he had Ophelia back.

When Bucky introduced O to T'Challa, she had been skeptical. The last memory she had of him was him walking away in Siberia, not willing to lay his life on the line to protect the people she loved. To protect her. But if anyone was forgiving, it was Ophelia. She had no idea what Wakanda was really like, though she had been there, she had never seen the place, experienced its beauty.

Bucky ran his hand over his face- he needed to shave. But that was the least of his worries. A paranoia built up in his chest that none of this was real. When he had been in a cryogenic chamber, he had seen Ophelia in his dreams every day. He remembered reliving the pain of losing her when he woke up from that chamber. He remembered longing to sleep just to see her face, and yet it was never real. He looked at Ophelia, asleep before him, and remembered taking control of his dreams and telling her goodbye.

He had sent her away so that he could live in real life, not in his dreams.

It was a silly thing to feel guilty about, and yet, he did.

Glad that she wouldn't ever get into his head and see everything, the warzone that was his brain, he breathed out in relief. Bucky rose from his seat and went to the bench that Ophelia was resting on. Carefully, he sat down beside her, and lifted her head into his lap. His hand rested on her shoulder; he just needed the physical contact to believe that any of this was real.

She had haunted him in his dreams, and when Thanos arrived in Wakanda, he abused that.

He made Bucky think he had lived a year with Ophelia in Wakanda -that she had woken up from her comatose state, that she had survived the head injury caused by Tony Stark in Siberia. The whole time, he knew it couldn't have been real, and yet he clutched onto it. It was the last thing he remembered before he turned to dust -a false life with Ophelia.

Now his head battled what was real and what was fake. He was terrified to open up, to let her in, knowing that she might disappear again.

He wondered, was this how she felt when they were prisoners in Siberia? When she saw him over the years knowing who he was and wondering if The Winter Soldier would ever be Bucky again? She suffered through it, and never made a fuss about it. Why couldn't he come to terms with the fact he was given yet another chance to live his life with her?