From Darkness

The meal was a lot less somber than the night before. We were all squished up together at the table, handing out dishes of food and serving ourselves. Bucky kept his leg against mine but otherwise didn't touch me. Dana didn't seem as bothered. I felt more comfortable eating with them and with Bucky so close I could feel him every time he moved.

"Johanna," Dana started as she stabbed her plate with a fork. "How did you meet your husband?"

Bucky and I both paused in the middle of serving ourselves. We hadn't really come up with a story about that lie. He'd seemed more comfortable with them than I'd ever seen him with anyone else. He had no problem showing his arm when he was doing yard work and leaving the bathroom in nothing but a towel. But I didn't think he wanted her to know the truth. At least not all of it. And the older woman definitely struck me as the type to force us to sleep in separate rooms.

The worst part is that I couldn't even answer that question even if I could tell the truth. My sharpest memory of meeting Bucky was when he showed up in my kitchen unexpectedly, dripping blood onto the linoleum. But if I dug through the remains of my scattered memories, there were other meetings. His face across a broken courtyard right before he fired the rifle that killed my friends and permanently damaged my shoulder. The shimmer of his arm through rusted cell doors. Or his face above me as he held my head underwater.

I cleared my throat and glanced at him. He was looking down at his plate, obviously trying to figure out how to answer.

"She helped me," he finally said. Then he bit into a draniki, not wanting to elaborate but not lying either. "I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"What happened?" He chewed for a moment.

"It's a long story. Not very romantic."

"I'm just curious about what brought you together. How you managed to fall in love in all this—chaos." I flinched at the word, and he took a deep breath. His expression had gone cold and blank again.

"She's not my wife," he said in a flat tone. "I know that's what you're trying to get at. Ivan told me that your mother wouldn't let us share a room otherwise, and I wasn't going to leave her on her own after everything she's been through. It seemed easier to lie than to argue." She nodded slowly.

"I kind of guessed," she said. Then she went back to her food. But something about how she said it grated my nerves.

"How so?" I questioned. She looked back up at me. Her eyebrows were raised innocently, widening her light gray eyes. They were startlingly similar to mine, aside from the color.

"I don't mean to offend," she told me. "It's just that you don't act like you're in love or have spent much time with each other. You don't act like a couple would after being together so long."

"You've known us for two days. How exactly are we supposed to act in love when I was just being tortured by fucking Nazis not three days ago?"

"Because people who love each other usually look like they enjoy being in the same room."

I was suddenly not hungry anymore. I didn't know what I was feeling now. It wasn't anger, I don't think, or irritation for that matter. But it was something. I didn't have a reason to be angry. But it bothered me anyway. And I didn't know how to express that. I put my napkin down on the table, and she glanced at me, finally realizing that what she'd said had an effect. She opened her mouth to speak, but I jumped in before she could get anything out.

"And how exactly would you know what people act like when they're in love?" I questioned. I didn't know what made me say it. The instinct to lash out when I felt backed into a corner. The drive to take out what I was feeling on the person who'd caused it. Even when she hadn't meant to hurt me. But I could see immediately that I'd struck a chord.

"I don't," she said, her voice going lower and colder. "I never got the chance to fall in love because my sister made stupid mistakes, and my family had to go into hiding for over thirty years."

"Well, I hope it makes you happy," I said, getting to my feet. "You got us to admit what you wanted to hear."

"Jo," Bucky murmured. He took my hand, hoping to stop me before I stalked away or said anything else I might regret. But my chest was heavy, and I realized the feeling wasn't anger or irritation. It was just pain. It hurt that she'd pointed it out. That she made me see that Bucky didn't really want to be around me. And I didn't know how to deal with that. I wanted to figure it out alone.

So I pulled away and hurried up the stairs to the bedroom. I wanted to be mad at her for saying hurtful things and making assumptions, but I couldn't blame her for it. I couldn't even blame her for not liking me. I tried to put myself in her place. How would I feel to lose Clara the way she'd lost Beata? And I'd probably hate me too.

Maybe my anger was just misplaced. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been allowed to think about that kind of rage. All the pain that had been deliberately directed toward me in the past two months had been met with violence. I remembered. I remembered the glass. The way my body shook when I swung toward the ceiling and shattered the fluorescent bulbs in my cell. The way it felt to dig through the glass looking for the one piece that would cause the most damage. I wanted to kill. I even remembered the way it felt when it sliced through my palm as I shoved it into a guard's eye socket.

He'd hurt me. And I'd lashed out. It was all I knew how to do. That's what happened when you locked an animal in a cage, tortured and starved. They snarled and scratched and ripped you apart.

I knew Bucky would come, and I didn't want to talk to him. I wanted to be angry at him too, I realized. I was overthinking it now. She could sense that he didn't want to be near me, and I was too stupid to notice. Just so glad to be away from that place, so caught up in my own mind-numbing problems to realize he wouldn't even stay in the same room with me for very long. Two months had passed. I couldn't begin to imagine what he'd gone through during that time. I hadn't even asked. People change, and so do their feelings. And I was never quite sure his feelings lined up with mine at all. He was always trying to get away. To put distance between us.

It wasn't anger. Disappointment. He lied to me. Let me believe he wanted us to stick together because he genuinely wanted me. And I'd been so desperate to feel it that I hadn't even questioned it. Of course, he was just with me out of obligation. After everything he'd gone through and everything he'd done, I was just a burden. And he would never allow himself to open up to someone.

My hands were shaking when he finally walked in through the door. He had both our plates in his hands, but I turned my back on him and paced back to the window. He set them down, and then he was beside me again.

"Hey," he said quietly. I turned to face him, pinching my lips in defiance and hoping I didn't lash out again. I couldn't lose control. I could really hurt someone now.

"Hmm?" I replied. Then he put his hand on my face and pulled me to his lips.

It wasn't like the last time when it had been quick and to the point. I was angry about that, too, because I was the one who initiated it and not the other way around. But now, he was leading. It was deeper and harder than before, and even though I'd been so upset a moment ago, I felt something ignite in my chest. Not the Darkness that was always swirling around the edges of my consciousness, but a bright burning light. My fingers gripped his shirt, and my heart jumped. When he pulled away, I felt stupid and lightheaded and suddenly wasn't as upset anymore.

"What was that for?" I asked as he scooped my hands in his and held them still.

"She was wrong," he told me.

He let me go and went back for the plates. Then he handed mine over and nodded his head to the chair. So I sat down with the plate on my lap. He took his and sat down on the floor at my side. Close enough so that his shoulder touched my knee, and I no longer felt like I was sliding into the Darkness again.

"It's not that I don't want to be in the same room as you," he continued, picking through his plate, perfectly content sitting on the floor. "It's that I know you need time to process what happened to you. I'm trying to give you space. And honestly—I just—I don't know how to help."

"Buck, I…." I couldn't find the words, and he gave me a moment to come up with something before filling the void my unfinished sentence had left behind.

"It's okay. You don't need to say anything."

"I don't know why I was so upset. I just—don't know how to deal with things anymore."

"I know."

We ate in silence, but it didn't feel awkward. It felt like the times we'd order pizza, perfectly fine not forcing a conversation just to feign normality. He said I needed to let myself feel, so I dug into the darkness, searching for something to explain why my chest felt so constricted. I leaned my elbow on the arm of the chair.

"I only ever wanted a purpose," I explained. "Never had big dreams. Just wanted to have something to strive for. A goal, at least. But—now it feels like that's never going to happen. My future is uncertain. And if I don't have a purpose, then what's the point?"

"The point of what?" he prodded.

"Being alive." He nodded, and I quickly bottled those emotions back up and shoved them away before I could cry. It was hard to breathe, but I wasn't ready to deal with it yet.

"I feel that way sometimes too," he admitted. He had his back to me, so I couldn't read his expressions. "And to be honest, I still don't really know what my purpose or goals are. Or if I'll ever even find one. But I have—things I care about. And Steve is looking for me. Which means he still cares. And I think I still do too. I know you do. So as long as there are things you care about and people who care about you—then even if you haven't found a purpose—you have a reason to keep looking for one. The future is always uncertain. But I think—there are things worth staying alive for. Even if it doesn't feel that way right now."

He stood up and then reached down to get my plate. I hadn't finished, but it was obvious I wasn't going to keep going. So I let him take it, avoiding his eyes. I stared at the jeans that were too big for my twig-like legs.

"Don't give up hope yet," he told me. "I'll be here as long as you want me." Then he turned toward the door. I chewed on my thumbnail and focused on breathing through the tightness in my throat.

"I do," I admitted quietly. He paused by the door. "I do want you with me. I just want you to want it too."

"I do," he said.

"And I'm afraid."

"Well—you know what they say about fear. You can't have one without the other."

Then he slipped out of the room to take our plates back downstairs. He hadn't said the other word, the one that came along with fear, but I knew what he meant. Fear is a good thing—a side effect of love.