Secretive - Bucky Barnes

9 || Climb

[Nova]
I do not hesitate. Why would I? I sat for more than a day, got my time to rest - if one could call split hours of horrible scenes made up by my subconscious that. I think I got enough water supplies and another can of ravioli. It simply has to be enough.

Stalking through high grass, the mountain in my front becomes taller and taller by the hour. Ironically, the voices are faded completely, and I am left alone with my thoughts. And the adrenaline.

I do not know what is incoming for me, or why I am even called to be here. But the fear of an enemy maybe leading me into their trap is gone, puffed into dust; whatever my parents told me, I do not think they lied about heritage. About the Oniwaban coming from Japan. And, when I crossed the streets of the small village during the first thirty minutes, the mixture of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana cannot lie. I may never learned the language, but I learned to name its composition. So, it really is Japan.

And it indeed is beautiful, if we ignore the run-down and worn houses, the non-emotional faces of the people I cross and the dirt on the streets. Seems like the village has been poor, but the landscape I pass definitely is not.

My whole way is drawn by grass and trees and fields. It would not wonder me if Mount Fuji is a volcano, explaining all the agriculture around it with the soil being extremely fruitily. The sky is completely blue above me, not a single cloud cracking the image. Birds and bees and other small creatures chirp and buzz and hum all around me, like this was the perfect spring day, and all the blossoms of cherry trees and ground-flowers are spread wide invitingly.

James would like the calmness in here. He would name it a paradise, and would suggest a vacation after the mission with his favour for mountains and hills.

Hopefully, he found the silver flask graved with his name in lovely swung letters and the tickets for Canada. I do not want to have spent so much money for nothing, if we are together, or not. The letter could be embarrassing regarding our current situation, though.

Thinking of him still hurts. Like someone put a nasty wound in my heart, and whenever I think of him, presses its hand right onto it, causing it to bleed all over again like someone pressed water out of a swamp. Admittedly, I failed myself in my promise not to cry anymore. Repeatedly. And only when my mind travelled back to the man with the metal arm.

Sniffing, I fasten my pace. Running away from him, the first thing in my life I am not willing to be confronted with, yet, even after two weeks of separation.

Soon enough, I reach the base of the Mount Fuji. There is no wind in here, and everything I smell is dust and ash mixed with the grass behind me. In my front, there is nothing but brown stacked earth, the tip of the mountain invisible from my current point of view. It is too high.

Glancing around, I wonder what I am supposed to do now. I am where the hand in my back had lead me to, where the voices in my head called me to, but it does not feel like success yet. It does not feel like the end of the journey, and that makes me nervous. Even when I glance around in Three-Hundred and Sixty degrees, I cannot see anything that would help me, indicate to where to go next. Only farm houses in the distance, the small town and any civilization long behind me. Nature everywhere but my front, which seems like a Forty-Five degrees angled wall.

Just when I am about to turn around and go search the area for hints, the invisible, huge hand in my back appears again, pushing me closer to the mountain. I turn, as so often, trying to figure out where that feeling came from or if I was hallucinating, though I cannot see anything there but green and blue. Nobody laid a hand on me, sneaked on me without my knowing. It is like a ghost would lead me up there.

And because I did not want to have done the enitre journey for nothing, I start to climb.

The way is longer than I thought.
Heavier.
Lonelier.
Nothing up here but my unregular breaths, a wind that becomes rougher by minute, air that becomes thinner the higher I get.