Ghost of You

t w e n t y - s e v e n

The first five minutes of my "interrogation" were completely silent. Each of those seconds were spent with him staring angrily at me and me staring blankly back at him. I'm not sure which of us was more unhappy about being here.

 He was completely restrained in a clear box, restraints tying him to his chair. Every once in a while his long brown hair would sweep in front of his face, and he would sigh bitterly and tilt his head so that it would fall back behind his shoulder. 

I was uncuffed but felt equally trapped. 

I'd been experiencing that feeling a lot recently. He may be the one in a cell, but I was equally restrained all the same. My father, Steve, and now Ross, for so long I'd let myself be pushed around by the decisions of other men. So long I'd been living only by following orders, doing someone else's bidding without thought of what I wanted. And I had a pretty good feeling that the man sitting across from me had a pretty good feeling of what that felt like. Actually he probably had a much better understanding of what that was like, if what Steve had told me about him was true.

He was still glaring at me. It was an uninterested, and exhausted kind of glare. The kind that told me he really couldn't be bothered to deal with whatever questions I was surely about to ask him. The kind that told me he was not going to be the first to break the silence in the room. I let my stare stray away from his. There were small cameras in every corner of the room, reminding me that this interaction was being watched by over half the employees in the building. If I didn't say something soon, someone would probably come back to get me. I'd be the pain of the entire task force and earn a earful from Ross for sure.   

"As much as I love this whole meditating thing we've got going on, I'm on a tight schedule." I said, crossing my arms and slinking into the back of my chair.

He continued to stare at me unwaveringly, now with a slight glint in his eyes. If his hands hadn't been bound I had a feeling he would have crossed his arms too, just to mimick me.

"Can you tell me your name?"

It was a simple question, but it seemed like a good place to start. Depending on how he answered or didn't answer the question in and of itself could give me valuable information on what sort of mental state he was in. After all, when Steve had first encountered him, he hadn't even remembered his own name. This answer might help me to determine if there was any truth in Steve's insistence that his mind was no longer completely controllable to the people who had stolen it.

"Can you tell me your name?" He responded, looking annoyed. I guess I had been on the right track with that whole mimicking thing.

"My name's (Y/n) (L/n)." I answered, trying to match his bored and unaffected tone. It wasn't that hard for me to do. I had been talking in that tone for months without even trying.

"No Dr. or Agent in front of it?" He clarified, giving me a confused look. "I was sure they would have sent a psychologist or someone from the bureau at least."

"No." I shook my head dismissively. "I'm not either of those things."

There was a look on his face as he processed this information, one that was hard to read. It looked something an awful lot like disappointment, a look that I was all too familiar with having it pointed me way.

"You're dissatisfied by my lack of title?" I questioned. "You wish they had given you someone more important to talk to?"

He looked slightly surprised at my response. When his eyes widened slightly, I could see they were also blue like Steve's. But where Steve's were bright and piercing, his were alluringly deep. It was the color of that spot in the ocean where the shallow water meets the deeper water right after the drop-off. Steve's were the eyes that froze you in place, Barnes's the kind that sucked you in.