Secretive - Bucky Barnes

63 || Poisoned Good || 🌤

[James]
Everything goes rigid.

Steve, Natasha, Tony, Sam, even Peter's breaths are not audible anymore.

Nova.

The moment Jonas tips over, head crashing the desk and hitting the hard ground right after, not even mice in the walls dare to give a noise. 

Immediately, I look up to the one pulling the trigger. Seeking for revenge for the pain they caused Nova, blind for every plausible reason of murdering her brother. Yes, I would have done it myself if he had hurt Nova, but by now, he did not. He has been jealous of her, but they could have talked if it was not for me, for my presence, for my effect on her. If it was not for these damned words still triggering me.

The black-haired girl with the small, black and massive gun in her hand stands close to the fencing of the smoothly shaped balcony, our eyes meeting for half a second. Hers are dark brown, almost black, but so full of emotion as I rarely saw in my life. The most prominent one seems to scream 'Protection'. 

Then, it hit me like a brick. 

It is not 'Protection'.

It is the feeling of the urge to protect.

My glance needs to mirror the recognition I drew out of hers, because her eyes travel further, locking with Nova's. Half the face of Chloe Vermentro is disfigured, something that did not occur to me in the first moment. Scars of burning and probably glass or wooden splinters deeply sunken into her cheek and temple. Half of her lips full and slightly pink, the other one colourless, barely to make out from the destroyed skin around. No lashes, no eyebrows. 

Whenever this girl looks into the mirror in her bathroom, she will be reminded of Nova.

But it is not merely her face. When I come closer, I can see her hand's skin is scarred all over, too. Her entire side must have burned as it looks. No wonder my girlfriend thought her dead; more of a wonder how she did survive such great injuries.

»What did you do?!« Her voice pulls my attention like the strongest of magnets, tearing my heart apart inside my chest. Not even the night I surprised her in her apartment, not even the look she had when I caught her in the cellar is able to top the pain that is screaming out of her, heart-shattering. Agony making my veins hurt like being frozen again, just the moment before my brain would end processing information. I feel like dying.

Picking up my pace, it does not take me any longer to reach her. Instantly, my arms wrap around her small frame, pulling her close, stopping her from moving towards the corpse of her still-warm brother, who floods the floor with thick, red liquid.

Nova punches me, hitting my stomach with a force I could never imagine inhabiting in her, pushing and scratching, struggling, kicking. She slips out of my arms shortly, but I do not let her go. I would never. She cannot even get away from me two more steps, before she crashes onto my chest again.

Her crying makes pain sheeting through me with a terrible intensity. It is not that I feel not good enough, it is more. I feel like having failed. Having failed her. If it was not for me, was not for me being secretive about who I am, she would have let me go. She would have helped me out of here. But I was selfish, too stubborn, too afraid – and now we are here, her brother dead to her feet, and his murderer escaping, the door behind Chloe a distant sound.

Nova stops her tries of hurting me, to run away from my arms. Her moves ease, her screaming turns into quiet but piercing throbs, head buried in my chest. She gives in, slowly. It is a little, but nonetheless worth-to-be-noticed relief that she still lets me care for her.