ʜɪꜱ ꜱᴀᴠɪᴏʀ ━ Bucky Barnes/Avengers

36: farewell to our buried pasts

Another long chapter as an apology for my inactivity :')

I have work and school so it's hard to find time to update. But anyways, enjoy and stay safe!

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The last time I saw my father happy was the day we moved out of Brooklyn. Maybe not truly, but at least sane in some sense. His bright complexion disappeared and turned dull, along with the rest of our family's joy.

And my final sightings of him, was in his daily white coat and spectacles, breaking through the almost unbreachable door. A few feet was the only thing that separated us. Ever since we moved, that was the closest I've ever felt to him throughout his deteriorating mental health.

I could never have reconciled with him. Emotionally, I didn't want to. Even if I did, physically I couldn't make amends. Though now my bare feet stood here on the cold floor in the shadows of a young girl, attached to me like strings on a puppet. Except there was no puppeteer, just the realization of history playing over again right before my eyes.

There he stood again, expression mixed with unexplainable emotions. Shocked. Devastated. Or accomplished by the success of his life's work. Perhaps a tint of pain.

"Diana!" he shouted repeatedly.

I cringe at the sound of my name slipping out his lips. His mouth was the only one I couldn't accept with the mention of it. I close my eyes in an attempt to block any visual of him, hoping it would also block his weary voice.

"Open your eyes, Diana!"

You would think the voice of your father coming to save you would bring relief and take away your fears, but what I felt was betrayal, anger, and no sense of protection whatsoever. That is not how a child should've felt when they went through what I did.

"Diana..." his next words came in softer, a whisper. "Open your eyes, Diana..." I refused to believe it was his voice, but when he kept going, my eyes opened slowly to meet his.

He remained painfully familiar. He looked exactly the way I remembered him. Drained, lifeless skin, brown messy short-cut hair, old-looking for such a young age. My mother always told me before how much I resembled him, even after his death. Nothing like her. And that was the worst part. How I looked so much like him. But how did I know this was actually him?

Because he didn't smile. My father never smiled.

"You're alive." he breathed. In shock almost, as if he was still alive and capable of feeling. "How?"

Part of me refused to converse with him. But this could be the only chance I could ever get, and even the closest. The moment he started talking, bitterness started filling my own throat.

"I don't know, father. You tell me." I retorted, "Tell me how you worked behind your family's backs, how you breed chaos and destruction through your cruel works, and how we had to stop all of that from happening. Can you also tell me, how you let your own daughter be a part of it?  How instead of owning up to your own guilt you let yourself drown in it, leaving your wife and children to suffer the mess you left behind?"

He didn't speak a word when I finished. 

Maybe it was because he couldn't physically utter a word, for he was only a personal envision or a fragment of my remaining memories of him. He couldn't say or do anything I haven't already witnessed. But all that goes away when his mouth opens.

The shock on his face subsides, "Diana..."

"No, don't." I cut him off, afraid whatever he said next would break me, "Just don't say anything. You're not even real, you-you're just a shadow, a ghost of my past. You're incapable of feeling anything."