Blue || Bucky Barnes

108. Little Duckling

Leia feels as if her heart might just beat out of her chest in that very moment. Her hands are shaking as she reads the mission report of the night's events. There's a part of her that feels some sense of relief knowing that he's long gone but it's overshadowed by the fact that Bucky was the one to do it. Bucky killed her father.
Fuelled by what can only be described as hurt and rage, Leia grips the piece of paper tight, storming out of the room. Her feet carry her all the way to the other side of the compound where Bucky's been staying. His door is slightly ajar and she pushes on through lacking the curtesy to knock. The door swings on its hinges hitting the wall behind it. Bucky's head whips up as Leia storms over slamming the piece of paper down onto the desk he sits at.
"What the hell is this?!" Leia seethes looking at the unsuspecting man before her. Bucky picks up the paper before offering an answer. He reads over the file, before looking back up at her with a hint of fear in his eyes.
"Where did you get this?" Bucky mumbles.
"I'll tell you when you tell me the truth!!!" Leia raises her voice and Bucky looks at her blankly. "You killed my father! And you didn't tell me." Her voice breaks, but she ignores it hoping he will too.
"How was I supposed to know that Leia?" Bucky matches her angst.
"'I remember all of them'." Her tone is mocking. "We have the same fucking last name!!"
"He was a bad guy, why do you care?" Bucky finally turns towards her.
"He was my father!!" Leia raises her voice again. She can't seem to understand what's not clicking for Bucky.
"And? He abused you!"
"You're not allowed to tell me how I should feel about my father! You don't know who he was before-"
"What? Before he murdered your sister? Before he kept you hostage for ten years? Before he abused you every single day until you escaped? Are you listening to yourself Leia!!" Bucky stands up. He can't understand where she's coming from.
"I can't do this." Leia turns around to walk out of the room. It was a mistake to come.
"You're telling me you still love your abuser!" Bucky yells after her. Leia stops in her tracks, her heart thumping as she turns back around slowly. Pacing quickly back over to him she lands a hard punch between his eyes knocking him backwards. The soldier stumbles back into the chair and as it tips onto its back two legs Leia grips it preventatively. Her eyes are narrowed as they bore into his soul.
"You were a monster once but I still loved you." She mutters before pulling the chair back onto all fours and storming out of the room.

Leia stumbles through the compound corridors trying to get back to her room. Her heart feels like it could quite possibly explode, she clutches her chest, fighting for her breath. She falls against the wall of the corridor struggling to keep the tears that threaten to spill at bay. Nothing makes sense in her brain, it's foggy and it takes her back to all those years ago where she couldn't remember anything. Leia pushes violently into her room falling back into the door, forcing it to close. Running her fingers through her hair she tries to grasp at anything in her mind.
'He killed my father'. She can only think about the writing on the document, the details it went into of the night in the hotel room. Truthfully, Leia doesn't know whether she's crying about her fathers death or the fact that Bucky was the one to do it. Her hands are on her temples as the uncontrollable cries leave her lips. She must look like a lunatic gasping for air between the reckless sobs. There's a tingling in her hands she hasn't felt in a while and as she pulls them away from her temples she sees the dark glow hovering in her palms.
Eyes wide and lips quivering she yells out loud throwing the dark blue current at her box on the bed. It flies across the room tumbling to the ground, its contents up in the air. The action doesn't make her feel any better despite her hopes, instead she just cries again, the contents now all out of order. Leia manages to pull herself to her feet pacing over to the mess of papers. She rips the box off the floor, shoving some of the papers back in, no care in the world for their timeline order.
Suddenly she notices something foreign on the floor. A much smaller file she hadn't noticed before now. Wiping her cheeks she drops the box to the floor, leaning down to pick up the seperate file. There seems to have been more care taken to this one. It has elastic around the corners and doesn't appear to hold many documents. Flipping it over her hand flies to her mouth as she drops to her knees, her eyes settling on a logo she hadn't seen since the forties. The Strategic Scientific Reserve. Leia plucks the elastic off and opens up the brown folder. She notices Erskine's handwriting immediately.
'Test subject number 1. Leia Callahan. Subject in early twenties. Lacking physical and mental soundness.' His writing goes on to list her details, which Leia assumes were for after the procedure to compare. She flips the page seeing the slightly crumpled pieces of paper holding some sort of code Leia can't understand. But the heavy yet delicate hand of the ink tells her it's still Erskine's writing. A small smile reaches her cheeks as she recalls her fond memories of the doctor. He had been nothing but kind to her all those years ago, offering her support and guidance where no one else would. Believing in her when everyone else, including herself, told her she couldn't do it. She sets the coded pages aside landing on the final document. The top reads 'Strategic Scientific Reserve. Camp Lehigh. New York. Particulars of Participant.'
Leia feels her whole body numb as she lands on the third line of the document, titled 'Address'. She had forgotten the details but seeing them on paper in front of her brings everything back. She remembers running down the stairs in a full sprint on the night where her father left the door open. Leia sprinted through the busy streets of Queens all the way to the Stark Expo. There she bumped into Bucky and Steve for the first time, and little did she know.