Secretive - Bucky Barnes

44 || Take The Weight

[Nova]
»What has happened? Did you know them? What did they want from you?« Sam asks, instead of answering my mocking announcement, without even taken a breath in between his words.

Steve, his blond hair shining golden underneath the warm light of the lantern, walks towards me and offers his hand for support. Smiling thankfully and quick, I shake my head and bend down. »Got an idea« my hands stroke down my thighs, »but I am not entirely sure yet.«

Stroking and glancing over my legs, I realized I must have pushed the kneecaps to hard before. Now, they were not too far up but an inch too far down. Sighing, I cup my kneecap with one hand, steady my leg with the other; when I push the first back completely in position, another loud creak echoes from it. Carelessly, I move on to the second, and do the same. Not a surprise: although my hands are red with my own blood, as a special exception from my open knees , there is no pain to register.

Walking as if nothing has been wrong, I pass Steve and Sam, both looking confused and somewhat concerned. »I don't think it was Vermentro. I got more enemies than that Italian one.« I explain, crouching next to the first corpse; the one with the snapped skull.

It takes only one vibration for Steve to pick up his phone. His voice is tired; James must have woken him up, »Yes, she is fine.«, and probably is on the line right now again. »No, I don't see no more danger around.« As if to underline, he scrutinizes every direction once.

Slightly smiling but still having an unwell feeling, because it really is cute how much James worries but he really becomes overprotective now, although everything is perfectly fine, I start searching the dead man's pockets. While Steve mumbles calming voices into his mobile phone, walking a few metres away from us to not disturb our work, Sam joins me. »Did you... Did she get control again?« he whispers, as if afraid of me lurching onto him next for the question.

Sighing, I open the fourth pocket on the man's suit. »Why's that so important?«

»Because the person in front of me wouldn't be able to leave a mess like this, or murder like what I witnessed today, and laugh like a lunatic about it.« He does not look me in the eye, but I think he still is not entirely sure about these words. About what he stated as a fact.

Taking my time for an answer, I go over to the man with the axe in his chest, the bloody river pouring from the wound subsided already, only leaving the street underneath covered in the warm liquid. »It's not that simple. Sometimes, there is only me. Then, like back in the cave, she joins me in some weird way, causing me to feel nothing but satisfaction. Not pride, simply the feeling you have when people get what they deserve. She only steals my body in moments of real danger.«

»Do you feel well, or at least better, splitting your personality like that?«

I shake my head as a response. Not as the answer to the question, but to all questions; this is nothing I want to talk with anyone about, especially not someone I barely know. Why has he so many questions, anyway?

A few moments pass in silence, and then, his fingers pull a small piece of paper out of the left front pocket of one of the dead that he checked through. He frowns, then hands it over to me.

Via Mulina a Ventro 206

»What does that mean?« he asks, probably noticing the recognition mirroring in my eyes, and the long stare of mine onto the worn paper. I could barely read it in the first place, the bad lighting conditions inopportune, but concentrating, I am able to make it out.

»It means they got some help.« I pull out the dagger of the man, still sunken into his pocket. Then, I finally look towards Sam, and hand it over to him. »The men have been sent by the Chinese. I will spare you from further details, but they aren't really happy about my existence.«