Monster

I was glad that Bucky was staying another night and that I had the weekend off. I had the entire weekend planned in my head. I wanted it to be as boring and normal as possible. The truth was that I didn’t know what else we could do outside of the house. I didn’t know if HYDRA was still watching me and I didn’t want to lead Bucky into a trap. Plus I figured boring and normal might be good for him. Despite what Clara said, he did need to learn how to do his own laundry.

But I couldn’t sleep. To be completely honest, I hated sleeping alone. It wasn’t that I wanted Bucky to crawl into bed with me or anything. It wasn’t even that I wanted Steve by my side. Steve came and went and I enjoyed it when he was there. But I was used to being alone and used to hating it. Clara said the only reason I ever stayed with Oscar for so long was because I didn’t like sleeping alone. She was right.

My room was always dark and there were a lot of trees in my yard and my neighbor’s yard. The only time my room ever lit up was when something tripped the motion sensor light. So I was lying in my bed on my side staring at the way the light made twisted patters on my walls. The light was bright and I couldn’t fall asleep with it on. I watched as a little fat raccoon body scaled the tree in my yard. Then I heard him thump on to the roof and scuttle into his nest in the attic.

I probably should have called someone to get Rocket out of my attic. I knew he was probably causing some damage to my house that would come back to bite me when I had to sell it. But I really had made peace with the little guy. He never bothered me except for when he got into my trash, but he rarely made messes. He usually preferred the neighbor’s trash because they had more people to feed and thus had more scraps.

It made me feel good that he liked my attic though. Sometimes I saw him when I went outside at night. He would scuttle across my yard chirping and making little noises. He would stare at me with his eyes reflecting the lights from the kitchen. And I would always say hello and let him be on his way.

Maybe Clara was right. Maybe I was too nice and I did have a mother cat instinct. I let my attic and house suffer due to a raccoon that I named and almost considered a pet. And now I was potentially putting my own health at risk by taking in a trained assassin with memory loss. Maybe my mom was even right. It was in my nature to care for things. She just said it the wrong way. Her declaration about me being destined for motherhood was probably just her way of saying I was destined to care for others.

I could live with that, but she probably could have worded it differently.

Then I heard a muffled moan from the other room and I lifted my head. The door was closed and so was the door the guest room. But I could hear Bucky’s subdued struggle even from the distance. Bucky was a quiet person. He only spoke when he needed to speak and he rarely made noises as it was. So the fact that he was groaning in the guestroom made me realize something was wrong.

I couldn’t sit there and let him go through it. I knew how much it sucked to have to fight through a nightmare just to wake up all alone. And then have to remind yourself that it wasn’t real. My nightmares weren’t as bad when Steve was with me. He was always there to wake me up before they got too far and to bring me back home. I wanted Bucky to feel that same comfort. So I climbed out of my bed and tiptoed across the hall to the guestroom.

I knocked gently on the door but Bucky didn’t respond. So I pushed it open and peeked inside. He was lying on the futon, sweating, shirtless, and seemed to be at war with the sheets.

“Bucky,” I said, stepping toward the futon. “Bucky, wake up. You’re dreaming.” I sat down on the mattress beside him and pressed my hand against his cheek.

He shot back to life in a split second. His metal hand wrapped around my wrist and yanked it tightly away from me, so that I flopped over his body. His teeth were gritted and his eyes were cold and unforgiving as he sat up. He was just like the Winter Soldier in my dream. He was breathing heavily and I cried out from the pain that cracked my wrist.

“Bucky!” I shouted. “You’re hurting me! It’s me! It’s Jo! You were dreaming! Let me go! Please, don’t hurt me?” And then his senses snapped back into place and he released my wrist. I sat back up and rubbed the pain from my bones.

“Jo,” he said as if he’d forgotten where he was and who I was. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t mean it. It’s fine.” He reached out and pulled my hand away from where I was cradling it against my body.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. It’s my fault. I should have known better than to wake someone from a nightmare.”

“I don’t know if it was a nightmare or a memory.” I let him rub his fingers over the red marks on my wrist and I looked up at his face.

“They’re both. Usually. Sometimes just dreams. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.” He sat still for a moment as he collected himself and his breathing went back to normal. I kept my eyes on where he was holding my hand much more gently and trying to rub the pain from my wrist.

“Will you tell me… what happened to you?” he asked quietly a moment later. He looked away from my wrist and down to where my bare shoulder was exposed and the scars from my wound were darkened even with the lack of light.

“I enlisted when I was eighteen,” I told him. “Fresh out of high school. I guess I did it to prove to myself and my family that I was tough. They always thought I was... weak. My dad wanted sons. He got two daughters instead. I guess I didn’t really prove them wrong. But I made it through basic training. I trained to be a medic. I was good. So good that special forces contacted me and shipped me out. It was actually a pretty easy job. For me at least. I got to help people and it made me happy. But then we got a mission to head out into enemy territory. All we had to do was guard the kids until the threat passed. I was just sent in as a precaution. Just in case anyone got injured.”

“What went wrong?”

“It was a setup. They were waiting for us. They started shooting the second we got there. We couldn’t fire back because they had the kids. It didn’t matter. The kids got hurt anyway. And no matter what I did I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. I probably could have saved their lives if I had. I just couldn’t do it. But then a little girl got shot and I tried to help her. The wound went right through her intestines. There was no exit. She was going to bleed out before I ever got her to safety. I did everything I could anyway. Until a grenade sent me flying twenty feet away. The first thing I saw when I came to was that little girl. She didn’t survive the blast.”

“And when you got shot?”

“He came around the corner. I’m pretty sure he’d been the one to throw the grenade. Trying to clear the area. He aimed his gun at me and I had mine aimed at him. But I couldn’t do it. I hesitated just one second too long and he shot me. Hit me in the shoulder to get me down. In truth he’d probably saved my life by doing that. He could have shot me in the face.”

He lifted his hand and ran his fingers over the scars. He was studying them and for a moment I was worried my story might trigger him. But he seemed more thoughtful than bothered. Then he looked back into my eyes and asked me the question I’d asked myself a million times.

“Why couldn’t you shoot him?” I shook my head as his palm rested against my scar.

“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that same question. I’ve come up with a million different answers and none of them properly explain what I was feeling. I guess I was just afraid. I didn’t want to kill anyone. And there was something my mom always said when I was growing up. She always said that it’s not our job to decide who gets to live or die. I guess I just felt that it wasn’t my place to take his life. I don’t know why. Because if I had pulled that trigger more people might have lived.”

“I think that shows bravery. Not cowardice,” he said.

“How?” I questioned.

“You knew he would shoot you. And you still decided it wasn’t your place to take his life. Do you know how hard that is for me? To suppress the urge to kill?” I shook my head and looked down at my lap.

“Why do you suppress it?”

“Because I know it’s wrong.”

“How?” I looked back up at him and he took a moment to answer.

“Something Steve said that night in the yard. Before you came.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that… whenever I want to know the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong I have to think of you.”

“Me?”

“He said to picture you in that situation. What if they took you and they took apart your head and took out everything that made you who you are and stuck something else in your place. And they sent you off to do their work without an explanation. I can tell the difference between right and wrong by imagining you in those situations. If I wouldn't want you there, or want you to get hurt... then it's wrong.” I looked down at the sheets wrapped around his legs.

“That’s what helps you? Me?”

“I told you that you helped me.” I leaned against my hand, my wrist wasn’t hurting anymore. Then I looked back up at him.

“Do you regret it?” I asked him. It took more bravery to ask that question than it did not to pull the trigger. “Do you regret what they made you do?”

“That’s why I don’t think I can ever be normal… like you want me to be. I don’t think I deserve that kind of peace.” My eyebrows furrowed and I looked down at the ridges on his metal arm.

“But you didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, I did. I was following orders. I followed them knowing I was taking lives.”

“You didn’t have a choice. They brainwashed you.”

“Maybe the man who shot you didn’t have a choice either.” I pinched my eyes shut.

“It’s different.”

“How?”

“Because they made you that way, Bucky. They stripped you of everything. They turned you into nothing but a weapon and a machine. They filled your head with their lies and they wound you up like a little toy soldier and sent you off to kill in their name. The man who shot me knew what he was doing. If he’s still alive right now he’s going to wake up every morning knowing who he is and what his name is. He knows how he became what he is, and he’s going to remember what he did to me and to everyone else he hurt. You… you were not a killer, James Barnes. You were an orphan from Brooklyn who befriended a stringy nerdy kid and joined the military to be a hero. You gave your life for your country. You didn’t do it to kill anyone.”

“How do you know?” I looked back up at him.

“Because I can see it. I can see it in you and the way Steve talks about you. You were a good person and a great man and they stole that from you. I want to help you get that back. Even if you think you don’t deserve it.”

“Why do you have so much faith in me?” he asked.

“Because I need to know that people can get better,” I admitted. He shook his head slowly and quickly as if disagreeing with me.

“Not everyone is as strong as you.”

“You think this is strength? You think I’m strong because I sat at a desk for five years and filed paper work. Because I bought a house and woke up every morning? You think that makes me strong? You think this is the life I wanted?”

“Then why do you do it?” I couldn’t find an answer. I dropped my head and fought against the heat in my eyes that threatened to fill with tears.

“Because I’m not cut out for anything else,” I finally whispered.

“Who says?” he asked.

I looked back up at him and I couldn’t think of what to say. So I put my hand against his face and ran my thumb across his cheekbone. Then I reached over and pressed my lips against his. Maybe I just did it to shut him up. But it worked. The conversation ended the second my skin touched his.

It had probably been a great deal of time since the last time Bucky had kissed anyone. I found out from Steve that Bucky had been with a girl named Connie before he got shipped off to England. I assumed she was the girl he’d told me about when he said he asked her to wait for him. I also assumed that was the last time he’d truly been kissed by a girl.

Unless he’d had a fling while based in England, which according to Steve’s description of him, was very likely.

However, with HYDRA it was unlikely Bucky ever did anything but kill and complete missions and then go back into cryo-sleep. Which meant I was probably the first girl he’d kissed in seventy years. And then of course, I remembered I was kissing a ninety-six year old man.

I almost pulled away, mostly because Bucky took a moment to react at all. But then right as I thought about pulling away and slapping myself in the face, he finally responded. His hand that had been on my shoulder went up into my hair and pulled my lips harder against his. I could feel his wrist brace rough against my skin. His metal hand went to the small of my back where he pulled me closer to his body. I found my hands on his shoulders, and then on his neck, and then in his hair.

And in seventy years of abstinence and memory loss, Bucky had not forgotten how to leave a girl breathless.

I hated the idea of it so much because more than anything I feared our attraction to each other was the result of some emotional imprinting, and thus wasn’t real. I would be a liar if I said the attraction wasn’t mutual. But I didn’t want Bucky to feel that way for me for the wrong reasons. And I didn’t want to return the affection simply because I was lonely and had a tendency to put myself in dangerous situations.

But if it was just loneliness then why didn’t I feel that way for Steve? I always knew he was handsome and kind but I never thought about him that way. Was it because he hadn’t shown an interest in me? Was it because of the girl in New York? I wasn’t sure, but now that I knew him my affection was almost brotherly. So was my reason for kissing Bucky the same as my reason for doubting him? Was it because I saw myself in him or because I saw him as a charity case? Was I using this kiss as a reward for saying exactly what I wanted to hear? Or was it because I had been too emotionally moved to say another word? Or did I just want him to stop talking?

I couldn’t be sure, but the kiss had grown far too quickly. His metal hand was cold on my back and I felt his fingers squeeze involuntarily. It made a thrill rush up my spine and I felt my fingers squeeze in his hair. But then the strap of my nightshirt snapped under the pressure of his grip and I gasped and pulled away.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“For what?” he asked.

“I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I wasn’t going to complain.”

“I know but…” I pressed my palms against his bare chest and did everything I could to stop myself from running my hands all over him. “I don’t think either of us is ready for this,” I decided. And then I stood up and left the room.

Notes

I don't know what to say now. Smoochie smoochie.