Winter Soldier (Book One)

Chapter: 1

DAY: 4

Lark

I stood in the kitchen, glaring through the darkness as he came in through the front door. From where I stood by the doorway I could see him nursing a wound at his waist and testing a bad limp. He sat down on the chair in the kitchen, I heard him groan in pain and I flinched. I reached my hand up the wall, sliding up until I found the light switch and flicked it up. The light came on and he jumped in surprise.

"Been there this whole time?" he asked. "Stop waiting up."

"I was expecting you to come back here like this." I answered him as I moved from the doorway. I bent over and picked up the handle of the first-aid kit from around the corner and set it on the table beside him. "I let you stay here as protection, not to break in and trek blood all over my floor."

"Sorry," he almost whispered. In the light you could see the dark circles under his eyes and the sweat beading down from his brow, his hair clung to his forehead and the back of his neck.

"So, are you going to let me help you or do you want to bleed out?" I asked him. With his free arm, he reached over his chest and pulled the harness of his suit up and over his head, tossed it to the side and then pulled against the bottom of the shirt of his suit. I took a hold of the shirt and pulled it up over his chest, over his head and pulled his free arm through. Now, he had abs; and I mean abs. I caught myself wondering if my brain had a photoshop feature I didn't know about, they were too good looking to be true. Focus. The wound was a small slice, not too deep, but there was a lot of blood. "I have to sew it up, can't just lay a bandage over it and hope it stops bleeding." I told him quickly as I reached into the kit for the antiseptic. Once cleaning it was checked off the list, I took out a needle and the special thread.

Sewing his wound was fairly easy, he didn't really make any sounds besides quick intakes of breath and a flinch here and there. After I had finished sewing up the wound, I placed a thick bandage over it, smoothed it out to fight snuggly.

"My leg is fine," he said as soon as I stepped back from him. He slipped on his shirt and harness and tried to stand, but quickly leaned back to sit down. There was pain in his eyes and I knew well that he was trying to keep it hidden from me, as if he were trying to tough it out.

"Yeah, you're staying off your feet." I said to him, and he nodded. For the first time since I met him he agreed with me. The soldier actually agreed with me. It felt weird. I grabbed the kit off the table and set it aside for later.

After I helped him move from the table to the couch, I left him alone and sat in the kitchen; keeping an eye on him as he drifted to sleep. He was dangerous, I knew that from the obvious way he always comes back bloody. He's been through hell, his exhausted eyes and nightmares made that apparent. His arm failed to allude to the fact that he's the Winter Soldier; a deadly assassin with an ever growing hit list. If I wanted to keep my name off that list I had to do what was needed to get by. If that meant helping him, a wanted fugitive, then I'd do it to keep my head.

DAY:5

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of something moving about in the house, the trudge of footsteps made my entire body stiffen. I sat up from the bed and looked around my room, then stood and tip-toed out into the hallway, keeping everything about me still and quiet so I could hear.

The floorboards creaked and my heart began pumping faster in my chest. The hallway was dark, but moonlight lit it just enough to see the front door, bathroom door and the doorway into the kitchen.

More shuffling sounds came from somewhere in the kitchen. But I was caught off guard when I heard it right behind me. A hand clamped over my mouth, an arm wrapped over my chest and dragged me back into my room, forcing me to my knees.