Buzzkill [Winter Soldier]

Chapter 42

When Ruth woke up, the first thing she noticed was her pounding headache. The ringing in her ears consumed her mind. After only a brief moment the ringing stopped, and she looked at the room around her. It was the same apartment, still daylight out, but where was she? Finally getting out of her dissociative state, Ruth realized she was on the bed, tucked into her sleeping bag. Looking across the room, she spotted James standing at the door to the balcony doing something to the windows. Newspaper. He's putting newspaper on the windows? I guess it's cheaper than blinds.

Ruth sat up on the mattress, her head still throbbing. James turned around after finishing the window,

    "You're awake," He acknowledged with a pleasant voice.

    Ruth felt awful. She never liked naps, much less liked it when her brain give her a mandatory nap.

    "Yeah," she muttered, voice groggy.

    James moved on to the next window.

    "What happened?" Ruth asked him.

    "What's the last thing you remember?"

    Ruth paused and thought for a moment, "Passing out on the couch."

    James gave a small laugh.

    "What?"

    "You don't remember cussing me out?" He asked.

    "I remember our conversation before passing out but I don't remember cussing," Ruth was perplexed.

    "After you passed out, I tried to help you lie down and every minute or so you would sort of wake back up and then try to fight me from helping you and then you would pass out again."

    "I'm sorry."

    "Don't be, it was entertaining."

    Ruth sighed and stared over at him. He was smirking, purposefully not looking at her.

    "Well I'm glad I could provide some entertainment," she said to him trying to stand up. "How long was I out for?"

    "Not long, couple of hours."

    Ruth walked to the kitchen to get some water, James was at the kitchen window putting up the newspapers.

    "It won't happen again," she spoke up, standing a couple feet behind him.

    James turned around, confused, "I think you were just instinctively trying to squirm away from me helping you, it's not a problem."

    "No, not that. The arguing, and that episode I had. I won't do it again, I promise." The regret filled up inside her, she hated feeling this way.

    James brows furrowed, "Did you think you were being abrasive? And wait, that 'episode' you had, can you control those?"

    "Well, no...but-"

    "How long have you been having them?"

    Ruth paused, she was talking about herself again, "Since about a month after the last injection I had."

    "So that's what's been happening to you since then? The nightmares, the shaking, the aggravation, you're having withdrawals?"

    "Maybe? It doesn't matter." Ruth was done talking about herself.

    "Yes it does."

    Ruth just shrugged and grabbed a granola bar before sitting down on the couch.

    "Ruth," James said, trying to get her attention.

    She turned around to face him.

    He just looked at her, waiting for her to say something more.

    "I guess we're similar in that way. We both just got out of something and we're both too stubborn to admit we need help," Ruth said. It wasn't the answer James was expecting, but he knew she was right.

    After finishing the window, James walked across the room, grabbed his notebook and pen and sat down on the mattress. "Can you please tell me the next time you start hearing voices and having nightmares?"

    "How do you know about the voices?"

    "I recognize the look you get when they start talking," James said simply before opening the notebook and starting to write.

    Ruth could see he was already quite a few pages in, but she never asked to read any of it. The best part about him writing his memories and his thoughts was that he wrote them in a way where he wouldn't have to filter anything for other people to read.

James got very diligent at writing any thoughts or small fragments of memories that came to his mind down in his notebook. Not even knowing he was doing so, some of the entries would be in English, and some in Russian. Sometimes an entry would have a mixture of both languages across the page. The hardest things to write were the names of the people he'd killed. With each name he would write, the memory of how he killed them would follow. At night, just before falling asleep, multiple names would even jump out in his mind and fill him with guilt.

There were a few words that seemed to be by themselves but still stick out until he finally wrote them down: Longing. Longing for what? A life? A family?

    After the first two weeks of both Ruth and James staying in the small studio apartment in Bucharest, a routine and even a normalcy began. After a month, James had gone through two more notebooks of memories. Ruth found a way to get cord and beads for cheap, make simple bracelets, and sell them to a stand at the farmer's market for some money to add to the reserve. She even made one for James, and one for herself which James insisted would be like a "token of friendship". To further aid in creating normalcy in their life here, Ruth and James slowly added more furniture to the apartment.

Once the notebooks began to develop into a collection, James wanted to keep them safe by hiding the completed ones in his backpack and secured under a floorboard just behind the balcony door. Tucked away beneath the floor, no one walking in would be able to find something so precious to him.

    In that past month, Ruth didn't have another episode where her mind took over her body, causing her to pass out. Her hands didn't shake, her head didn't swell with pain, and the voices didn't fill the silence when she ate breakfast in the mornings. Instead, the voices would only appear in her nightmares. The longing to be around someone and always having them close by was still something she couldn't control, but it didn't seem bad because she wasn't alone. When Ruth would have nightmares, James would be right there beside her to talk about them and dull the pain.

Many times throughout that month and the next, James himself would wake up in the middle of the night startled from a nightmare. Unlike before, he wouldn't wake up inside of another dream still needing to be woken up, instead he would wake up covered in a cold sweat wondering if he were still in the horrible torture chambers at Hydra. Being a light sleeper, Ruth would wake up every time James would stir and would stay awake with him until he talked about the dream, wrote about it, and eventually fell asleep. Even if it was for only another hour. 

Ruth knew that everyday she spent in Romania with James meant it would be that much more difficult to let go and eventually leave for Sweden. But for the first time she finally felt like she had a chance at starting a life without having to kill for someone.

    She still hadn't told James about her plan to leave. It was hard for her to think he would even care. Dr. Mage's voice still haunted her memory as he told her that she found another weakness. If she did, she couldn't stay here. Having a weakness meant that eventually the weakness would be eradicated and that meant another life ceasing to exist because of her. Even though the Woman was dead, and Hydra seemed to be erased from existence, Ruth felt that there would always be someone in the world who could take her and use her for their own benefit.