𝔹𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕋𝕠 𝔹𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕝𝕪𝕟 | Bucky Barnes (ON HOLD)

24 | December 16th

December 16th, 1991 - Long Island: New York

This road was almost always silent. The dirt lay undisturbed by even the strongest of winds, stones and sticks moving only when a critter scurried by. The trees rustled, their dry leaves barely clinging to the branches that moved in the night.

The forests either side of the road, despite their silence, were not peaceful. To look out the car window would be a foolish move made only by characters in horror movies, following a script to investigate a noise anyone in real life would sprint away from. And the darkness only worsened the view. The night was a bleak one, clouds growing thicker by the minute, until they were blocking out the moon. The stars hid themselves well, too. As if they knew there was something down on the ground they wouldn't be able to bear watching, even from their safe distance away in the sky.

Lucky for one man, he had the road ahead to focus on, his hands clutching the steering wheel so tight, the golden wedding band on his finger was starting to dig into his skin. It hurt, or course, but it was something for him to think about besides the endless mountain of worries building in his head. The tension in the car had grown heavier as the minutes ticked on by. Miles and miles they had been driving, and barely ten words had been uttered since they left home.

And there were so many reasons why speech was so tough – the importance of where they were going, the weight of what was strapped into the trunk of the vehicle, the underwhelming goodbye their son had given them when they left the house. All of it and more just seemed to fill the empty space in the car, leaving the couple trapped in the front seats with their minds elsewhere.

With his mind so preoccupied, a small flash in the sky took a second for him to register. It was bright, yet distant, like a shooting star.

Except... blue?

A familiar blue. One that he still thought about, when he was left with his thoughts, his memories. Almost 50 years had passed since he'd seen that blue with his own eyes – not from its original source, but in the form of small tendrils that danced in her hands. All that time, and he could still picture it. He still dreamt of her. Remembered her.

And sometimes, those dreams bled into his waking hours. When his mind drifted far enough away, and his thoughts became too much, the memories of her magic flashed before his eyes.

Still, in the pitch black, even the memory of a light seemed too real to put down to his hallucinations. He leaned forward a little in the driver's seat, trying to get a better view of the midnight sky whilst watching the road.

In the passenger seat, his wife frowned, "What is it?"

"Did you see that?" Howard asked, eyes flitting to the road as they went around a shallow bend. "It was like a light, or something. In the sky, just for a second."

Maria's eyes squinted as she glanced out of the window, seeing nothing but the dark forest's treeline. "I didn't see anything."

He looked up once more, only to lean back in the seat, and sigh silently from his nose. Only one hand rested on the steering wheel as his free one ran down his face, his vision growing misty as he tiredly rubbed his eyes.

His eyes... which went wide when a bright light came charging toward the front of his car, blinding him as he spun the wheel violently, the car crashing and rolling into the solid bases of the trees.

Maria screamed in panic as her seatbelt kept her glued to the seat, forcing her to feel every bump, every scrape of the car as it went flying. The loud roar of an engine seemed to follow the Stark car as it finally slammed to a stop, the tires making loud bang sounds as they burst with the damage.