Secretive - Bucky Barnes

8 || Mount Fuji

[Nova]
The strong urge to do something fills me up the same way beer is filled into glasses during the October feast in Munich. I have been taking a bath in a clear lake in a close forest, and the voices came back with more pressure. Louder. More intense. Like invisible hands pushing my back to the West.

I do not really know what drives me to do it. Maybe it is the need to get away from all the betrayal. How my body physically misses James's touch, reassurance, knowing someone is in your back unconditionally. I mean, if it has been real from his side or not, what he made me feel was realer than anything I lived through to now. Or how my mind remembers the spin of the bullet, right before it smashed Jonas's skull and painted the ground in the pink slobbery mass of his brain. How my friends, altogether, like an unwritten rule, lied to me. How my parents confessed their painful treatment at Jonas.

I do not really know. And I do not want to. All I know is that the voices, their calls, are a welcome distraction. A welcome way out of the maze of my mind, pushing all the other problems and difficulties aside.

And so, I decide to follow their enchantment. Mount Fuji.

Not exactly aware of where this mountain is, or what it has to do with me, why I should head there, I know the journey will be a long one. It is a feeling in my stomach that tells me to get prepared, and when the sun breaks the dark of the night at dawn the next morning, I have everything I need.

Of course, I did not steal everything from the same shop. My bad conscience is killing me anyways for not paying, but I tell myself over and over again that Zara, Pull & Bear, Snipes and H&M will not mind all too much that there are a few less trousers, shoes, a large rucksack and underwear. If I really want to reach my destination, I need to appear differently anytime I step into a town. Tony Stark is very good at tracking, no matter of me destroying the little chip inside the suit. Plus, my ex-boyfriend is the most feared ex-assassin in the world; from what I know, James could find me if he really wanted to.

Stupid enough the other most feared ex-assassin is me, and I am on the run.

The local supermarket surely has nothing against me taking two bottles of water, and a few tins of instant meal. At least, I hope so; it is too late for them to complain. Then, I stand on the borders of Berlin city, sighing deeply, hesitating, before taking the first step and walk away without turning around. Hopefully, this is none of Tony's tricks, or any enemy's tricks. And hopefully, this is not the song of death that is played over and over in my head.

I pass my days mostly sleeping in hideouts, my nights moving, sneaking into goods trains or trucks, crossing borders of countries like my finger would across a map. Two weeks should be over now, and everything seems calm for the moment. Nobody on my heels.

It is not as difficult as I thought it would be to follow my invisible line. The choir has gotten louder and louder every time it echoes through the walls of my mind, every time a little more pressing, a little more securing I was on the right way. The high chimes would turn into lower growls whenever a train was riding into a wrong direction, guiding me like a GPS in my own head. Admittedly, it gets creepier and creepier, but the thought of concentrating on anything else is worse.

And while, at daylight, I can suppress most of the memories that nastily try to crawl up into my conscience, at night, they all come back. It probably is the melancholy, but whenever my journey requires me being awake at night, I am drowning in James's stunned face when I hit him with every syllable of my words. These storm blue eyes hunt me, and whenever his figure would appear in sight, my body instantly moves faster, pace quickening.

While James's ghost is the most torturing, now and then, others would slip through as well. The ones of Carly, of my best friend going to concerts with me, getting drunk together for the first time, getting to know a boy with whom I needed help. She has been so much more social active in that area than I was five years ago, so much more experienced. I trusted her with everything – but my dangerous part of life, of course -; she even knew I could not feel pain. I did not need to pretend in front of her. But she did. She did pretend like James was normal. Like I did not date the guy that killed Howard and Maria Stark. Like I did not date someone that easily could turn into a nightmare when spoken the right words to. Like I did not date the Winter Soldier, and gave my body to someone I did not know was older than a whole damn century.