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7: growing pains

     I found out something I never thought I would. I found out the hard way. I found out something I never thought I would in a very hard way.

I was a loud person. I was loud and I knew what I wanted and I had hardly a filter. I let things out, I let people know what I was feeling. Of course, this all changed over a year prior, when he came into my life and every word I triple-checked like a college essay I never had to write, but that's nothing compared to holding in extreme anger. Like, Hulk-without-the-green-level anger.

But I found out one night I-don't-know-how-many days after the run-in with the Hydra agent. I-don't-know-how-many days since we tried to figure out where to run. I-don't-know-how-many days since we had stayed inside the house and refused to go outside in the snow and drink coffee and steal kisses like we had tried to do the first following days, like a newlywed couple.

I found out somewhere in the middle of the night as I sat on the bathroom floor clutching the toilet in the dark in the most incredible pain I've ever experienced. The door was shut and I was alone.

It started only a few hours after the encounter. Bucky clutched me as tight as he could. I cried, he shook, and neither of us got any sleep. Within me, extreme terror turned into anxiety, and with anxiety came adrenaline, and with adrenaline came heightened awareness, and constant switching between Maisie and what Hydra turned me into as it all built into anger. I was crying quietly and suddenly switched to screaming and digging my nails into Bucky's bicep. I had to fight to even stay conscious during the episodes, however long they lasted. And oh how they lasted.

The first episode was a few seconds, the next was a minute, the following was five. They built and built until I was convulsing and eventually passed out from exhaustion. I woke up with Bucky's entire body holding mine from behind, arms and legs twisted around my unscathed ones to pin me down. He had scratches, blood under one eye and the other bruised. I bore nothing.

As I tried to help Bucky clean his cuts, as I tried to calm my shaking muscles and twitching hands, as I gripped doorframes to keep from falling, as I watched a light in Bucky's eyes die when I failed, I knew I couldn't let it happen again. Had I wanted it to happen in the first place? Not even a little, and it took every ounce of strength to stay "awake" while it did, but I had to try harder. I had to hold it in.

So as Bucky slept through the day following, after a very cold hug and dead expression in my direction, I sat in a corner of the small closet and tried to ignore the purple swimming in my vision, threatening to take over. I hyperventilated and wheezed and tightened every muscle to make myself stay put. Twitching meant banging my head on the wall, smacking a knee on one of the weapon bags, smashing a fist into my stomach. But I succeeded. When Bucky woke up just to lay there, I was outside in the snow, trying to numb away the adrenaline fall, but I hadn't hurt him, and I had stayed in control.

 We both tried to pretend we were okay. Like I wasn't slowly dying off to what I'd been turned into, like we weren't being hunted, like the worlds biggest powers weren't out to kill us both, like we had no plan. We did newlywed things through the stiffness and fog of wanting to die. We kissed and said flirtatious things and linked our ring fingers and smiled faintly at each other over coffee in the snow. We talked about children and big houses and my parents and his favorite shoes when he was younger, but none of it meant anything. It was awkward and fake and there was never anything but a solid tone between the both of us. No dilated pupils, no heated cheeks, nothing.

If going through hell on earth wasn't bad enough, you get to do it alongside someone just as numb and dead inside as you are.

Eventually, there was nothing said, nothing done. I grew less and less like myself every day, the episodes grew more frequent. Bucky slept more, or stared out the small window by the door for hours on end, mumbling to himself.