From Darkness

We finished the rest of our meager meal in silence. Bucky brought clothes with him, but after I was done eating, I just wanted to see Russell. He told me that Dana and her mother were still with him, and he thought it would be best if I got some rest. I was too weak and shaky to be of any help, so I curled up on the chair with my back to him and didn’t move. I knew he got restless when he was idle, but he didn’t say anything to me. I ended up falling asleep.

I regretted sleeping with him close by. The nightmares started almost instantly, but they weren’t cohesive enough for me to make sense of them. Flashes of him killing everyone I loved. Images of flesh and bone. The gun in my hands shaking as I stuck it between my teeth.

“Jo?” he said quietly, and I felt his hand on my shoulder.

I reacted by smacking him away from me and grabbing him by the wrist. By the time the cloudiness faded, I had my elbow pressed against the hollow of his throat and my fingers digging into his skin like claws. He kept his expression calm. His blue eyes held mine until the panic faded. Then he gently moved my arm away from his throat and placed my hand over his heart.

“This is real,” he said.

“Where are we?” I asked, still breathing hard.

“Belarus.”

“Belarus?”

“I drove us here, remember? Russell is downstairs. We’re staying with a woman named Dana and her mother.” I dropped my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I said. He took a step back.

“Russell is still asleep, but Dana said you can see him.” He turned and collected the pile of clothes he’d set on the bed while I was sleeping. His hair was pulled back out of his face now. He looked cleaner and more comfortable than he did earlier.

“Yeah, okay.” I stretched my legs out from under the shirt.

“They want us to have dinner with them.”

“I’m not hungry.” He turned back to me and took a deep breath. His lips were pinched again.

“You have to eat, Jo,” he said, handing the folded clothes out to me. My hands weren’t shaking anymore. But they still felt weak and loose. “I brought you a brush too. I know you didn’t have one earlier.”

“That bad, huh?”

“You’ve been through a lot.”

“I didn’t look. When I was in the bathroom. I don’t know if I’m ready to see just yet.”

“I understand.”

I knew that he did. And I had a distinct memory of a shattered mirror.

He set the brush down on the table and then knelt down in front of the chair. He reached out and touched his fingers to my chin. He did it cautiously, giving me enough time to move away before his skin touched mine. I didn’t move away. A strand of brown hair had fallen in his face, and I wanted to reach out and tuck it behind his ear, but my fingers were locked on the clothes on my lap. I couldn’t get them to move.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to anymore,” he told me. His voice was as calm and careful as his movements. Like the way someone talks to a scared child. “We don’t have to eat dinner with them. But you do have to eat. You won’t start to feel better until you do.” I nodded slowly, and he took his hand back, draping it over his knee. He was waiting for me to say something.

“Are these Dana’s clothes?” I asked.

“They’re yours.” The shirt was long-sleeved—light gray. The pants were jeans, and the socks were thick to keep out the cold. I was pretty sure I wasn’t just forgetting. I had no memory of these clothes.

“I don’t remember them,” I stated.

“I meant to get some of your things when I went back to your house. But I knew someone might go looking for me there. So I got some things for you when I got here. Something you can blend in with.” I sighed in relief.

“How did you figure out which sizes to get?” I lifted the shirt to examine it. His eyebrows rose, and that almost smile returned.

“I’ve taken your clothes off enough to know what size to get you. American to European conversions are easy. It was just a matter of finding something you’d actually want to wear.” I blinked a few times. I was startled by his bluntness. Of course, I had a decent grip on those memories, but he still caught me by surprise.

“You really took style choices into consideration?” I asked.

“People stand out when they’re uncomfortable.” I nodded slowly.

“Right. I just didn’t think you paid attention to things like that.”

“I’m always paying attention.” Then he shrugged. “Most of the time. You’ve been known to distract me.”

I looked back at him, even more confused. But he was smiling now, and it was definitely real. Not the half-smile or the one that masked his pain. He was teasing me. And before I knew it, I was smiling back.

“Was that a real smile?” he asked when I turned back to the clothes.

“It was real. You got me underwear?”

“They might not fit.” I glanced at him.

“Why not?” He took a deep breath.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight. You can’t be more than a hundred pounds now.”

“Right. I forgot.” He stood back up.

“It’ll take time to build back up. And that means you’ll have to eat. Even if you don’t want to eat with them. Do you want me to leave so you can get dressed?” I shook my head. The anxiety wasn’t as bad when he was around. It felt real when there was someone familiar close by.

“You just reminded me of all the times you’ve taken my clothes off. I don’t think it really matters.”

“It does if it matters to you.”

“It doesn’t. Just—don’t say anything.”

He nodded and then turned his back on me anyway. I stood to get dressed, and my feet weren’t hurting as much as before. He was right. The clothes didn’t fit, and I was sure it had nothing to do with his choices. My hip bones were sharp, and the jeans hung low on them. The shirt was loose, and the bra just hung on me. My ribs were too pronounced. My body was emaciated. I went without. Even the sleeves were loose around my wrists. But I still felt more human just wearing regular clothes again, less like a test subject or a blood cow.

“I don’t really know if having dinner with these people is a good idea,” I said as I pulled my tangled hair out from under the shirt.

“We don’t have to eat with them,” he reminded me.

“I’m done. You can turn back around.”

He did and immediately held my arms in his hands. I got the feeling he was noticing exactly how loose the clothes fit on me, but he was trying not to make it so obvious that he was sizing me up. And not with pleasure, either. He was trying to mask something again. Concern. Maybe even anger.

“You’re not going to hurt anyone,” he assured me.

“How do you know for sure?”

“I always have a hunch, remember?”

“Right—I remember.”

“They wouldn’t gain anything by turning you into a biological weapon unless they had a way to control it.”

“They couldn’t control it. It’s the whole reason they were sending me to quarantine.” He shook his head.

“They couldn’t control it. But you can. Their goal was to use it against a specific threat. Not a few people at a dinner table.”

“They had no problem coming up with a plan to murder eleven million people. I don’t think they care about a few strange women in Belarus.”

“Threats,” he reminded me.

“You really think that matters to them? Maybe they were working on a way to control it when I got out.”

“Their goal is the Avengers. I’m sure they knew it was a risk you’d get out prematurely. They knew I’d be looking for you. The Avengers too. They would have to act as quickly as possible.”

“They wanted me to kill you too,” I reminded him. He moved his hands up and down my arms like he was getting frustrated with me. But the feel of his hands on me was warming and grounding all at once.

“They didn’t want you to use it on me,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Because if they thought you could kill me by having dinner with me, they wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of making you afraid of me. They didn’t think I’d live long enough. You could have killed me with it before, but you went with physical violence. That’s what they wanted.”

I nodded. It made me feel a little better, but it was hard to say with Hydra. They always seemed to have a plan for every possible outcome. Maybe they had a backup plan for if I didn’t kill him. Maybe they intended for this to happen from the start. They always did seem to be one step ahead. But he was right. I’d be useless if I destroyed myself before getting to the Avengers.

“Will you be alright?” he asked.

“It just feels pointless. There’s something wrong with me and—they did things to me—unspeakable things. My father is lying downstairs, bleeding to death from a gunshot wound that I put in him. And I’m just supposed to eat dinner with a couple of strangers like everything is fine?”

He chewed the inside of his lip as if he was waiting for me to continue ranting. But I bit my lip before it could all come spilling out.

“I don’t think anyone expects you to act like everything is okay. And I think—there’s more to this than Russell is letting on. I don’t think these are old friends he knew from his time in the military. They’re something more.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The younger woman. Dana. Her accent isn’t Belarusian. It’s Sokovian. And the older woman—she won’t tell me her name—but it seemed important to her that we had dinner with her. And she knew who you were before we told her.”

I looked down at the floor between us. The wood was dusty and unpolished. Old. Unused. A forgotten bedroom in a house that never had guests. He still had his hands on my arms, and as terrified as I’d been before, I didn’t want him to let go now. I felt like I’d fade away into the darkness the moment he let go.

I wanted to sleep. But I wanted to hear his heart beating. I wanted to feel something real. The knowledge that he’d never hurt anyone. But I didn’t want to lose control again.

“You have another hunch, don’t you?” I asked.

“You know I do,” he agreed. I nodded. “I’m sure they’ll understand if you don’t want to eat with them tonight. But they’re giving us a place to stay and food to eat.”

“You’re very polite.”

“It’s not about being polite. It’s about blending in. When in Rome and all that.”

“I’ll eat with them. Just—let me see him first. Give me some time.”

“Of course.”