Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Eighty-Seven: Alone

Alone

Freya

You are just trying to cope with breathing and walking. Nothing else. You reach your room and close the door behind you.

What Bucky has just done to you is akin to what they did to him when they took the remaining part of his left arm - but you do not know that, cannot know that. And he does not know it either; if he did, he would have been stunned.

You can't cry. You can't move. You can't do anything. You do not know how long you sit on the edge of your bed and you do not know what you were thinking because you simply weren't; your mind was and still is blank.

You hear movement out in the corridor and you come back to the land of the living. Footsteps pass your door, you know it is not him; you'd know his tread anywhere. You get up and find that you are cold, so cold that you shiver. You need only ask Jarvis to turn up the heat in your room and he will - but this isn't your room. It is merely somewhere you have been sleeping for the last few months, that is all.

Nothing here belongs to you.

You move over to the desk and sit down. Pepper had added all the things to your room that she felt you might need, including the laptop. She has shown you how to use the simple printer, and now you get your notes out of the drawer so you know what to do.

For a while you sit there looking at the empty screen and then something makes you sit up and you start to type. You finish two letters, print them out, and then in the desk drawer you find envelopes and put them in. You address them and prop them up against your library notebooks on the table.

Next you go into Google and look at times of buses and trains. You print them out even though you have no idea if you will use them, or even where you are going to head to, but it soon becomes obvious that you do not have much of a choice. Money is what rules many decisions in life, and it will dictate your life from now on.

You find a holdall from within the wardrobe. You have three pairs of jeans including the ones you are wearing, five black tee-shirts and three black polo-necks. You take them off the hangers and stuff them in the holdall, and then do the same with the underwear.

There are a few other items you take from the bathroom: shampoo, antiperspirant and your toothbrush. Whilst in there you catch sight of your reflection in the mirror. You are so pale, so lifeless.

Is this what he sees every time he looks at you? No wonder he doesn't want you.

You open the medicine cupboard and take out the scissors. Then looking in the mirror again you pull your plait around to the front. This time the scissors are sharp and do the job in mere minutes and after hacking at your hair you hold your long plait in your hand. Your head feels so light and your hair now just reaches your shoulders.

You throw the plait in the bin and walk out into the main room not caring that your hair is jagged and looks hacked, lopsided, wrong.

Lastly, from the bedside drawer you take the money Pepper gave you, $500. You had told her at the time you did not need it but she had insisted and now you are glad. It is all you have. You also take the official papers she had made for you. Your mind is still blank; you are on auto pilot. You need to leave. That is what he told you to do and that is what you are doing.

You pull your hooded jacket on and then the room is empty of everything you own. Empty of you.

You don't look back and you do not say farewell to anyone because you have no wish to. Why would you need to? No one will miss you. You use the elevator and exit the building at the back. Just before you leave for good, you post the keys Pepper gave you into the letter box on the side next to the door and then you walk away.