Life was beautiful. But it was also fragile and ever-changing. That was something that
Aubree had learned at a very young age. Things could be perfectly fine one second, and the next, everything could be in shambles. One day had changed her life completely. It was a day that she could remember quite clearly too. It was a beautiful afternoon in mid-May. It was a Friday too. She knew that because she was supposed to sleep over her friend's house that afternoon, and at the age of seven, she was only allowed to have sleepovers on Fridays and Saturdays. She had gotten off the bus, expecting her mother to be there waiting for her at the bus stop. All the other parents were there, but neither of hers were. She figured that her mother had lost track of time, so she walked the short distance back to her family's home. But that wasn't the case. Things were anything but how she had expected them to be because she hadn't expected to find her parents murdered, and seemingly in cold blood too. And by a man she had never seen before in her entire life. A man who she'd vowed, if she ever saw him again, to kill.
Steve knew that Bucky wasn't the same man he'd been nearly seventy years ago. He knew that the man he was best friends with for most of his life might not be there anymore. But it wasn't Bucky's fault. It wasn't Bucky's fault that he was the way he was now. It was Steve's. And he knew that if anyone knew that he was blaming himself, they would tell him he was wrong. They would tell him that it wasn't his fault at all. None of what had happened, from Bucky to Hydra still existing, was his fault. And that was why he didn't tell anyone how he saw any of it. He didn't want to hear what everyone else thought or believed. Letting out a sigh, he stood, closing the folder that Natasha had given him with all of Bucky's information in it. He needed to clear his head, and the best way he could think of doing so was by going for a run.