Secretive - Bucky Barnes

12 || Break Your Heart

It is all too much at once. All this information in this tiny piece of paper, shuddering with the tremble of both my hands, not just the flesh one. Shuddering with the tremble of my breath, spreading through my entire body, my bones, like an earthquake about the first few words I got from Nova after all these years.

What they must have done to her; written in between the lines. What has been the cost of sparing the children now sitting on my couch from the evil. Their names, Steve and Rebecca. Nova, giving me full responsibility about her possessions; houses, money, whatever else. The care of a testament I have never read or knew of before, requiring me to go to a very specific, and not just any lawyer. Asking me to declare her as death right into the face of everyone and anyone. Her even considering I could be mad at her for taking my name. Her thinking I would abandon her and the children. The mission she got onto her own shoulders.

Careful, I place the wrinkled paper onto the bar, supporting myself with both my hands left and right next to it. Why could she not come herself and tell me about this? Why would she deny me seeing her, holding her tight, securing her after all this time? Did she not miss me?

No, this message in my front certainly sounds different. She wants this family, does she? She just is not ready. She could tell me the whole day she wants to defeat Hydra and keep her promise, and it even partly is the truth. Trying to make this world a safe one for me and Steve and Rebecca.

But I know my best girl. I know her inside out and the other way around; from head to toe, left to right. She is, if she has blipped, only twenty-one now. She once told me she did not want any kids before twenty-eight at least, or thirty. I may have been a little disappointed internally to crash the age of one hundred and ten before ever having children of my own, but it is her decision after all. Her body. Her soul dedicated to someone else entirely, motherly, not just romantically. It is her choice, and I wanted to give her that. I accepted that. Whenever she would have been ready, sure as hell I would have been ready, too, but I would never ever had pushed her into any direction. Even if she told me suddenly she never wanted to have any kids, it would have been fine with me. As long as I got her, I got everything I need and seek for.

And now, both our children sit on my couch after I hallucinated Nova back to life. What a messy life did destiny choose for me?

How hard this must have been for her. Did she want them? I mean, it was her choice. And Hydra certainly could not have wanted her to carry kids. To get kids within the four walls of theirs. So, why would she risk her safety, her own happiness, to have children against her own will? I do not think she changed her mind. She could not. She was so careful to prevent conception.

So many questions, so less answers. All I know is Nova has not been ready for this life yet, for whatever reason, plus she had this stubborn and unnecessary urge to personally form the sculpture of my revenge. And that is why she left Steve and Rebecca with me. But why did she not come here herself? Has she been ashamed of this? She should know she never ever has the need to be ashamed in front of me for anything.

I register the sudden shriek of the twins before actually finding its purpose myself, cutting off my thoughts with the sharpest of blades; they felt it seconds before I did. Someone is in here.

»Stay back.« I growl automatically without even knowing, a well-meant command towards the two short people in my front.

Hoping Nova raised them well enough not to be foolish, and hearing nothing but quickened breaths – wow, God really must be kidding to give them my weakness of humanity but her increased sense-sensibility -, I walk towards my bedroom. Strange noises ring through my ears from there; shuffling, like furniture was shoved, maracas rattling. The closer I get, the more intense the foreign smell of freshly painted walls creep into my nose.