Captain America and Bucky Barnes Imagines

63. Sweet Sixteen

A/N: This was a request by @hazeleyederoleplayer ! I hope it's what you wanted and I hope you like it! I got this idea after thinking about your prompt for a few hours. Reader isn't a sister, but she's younger and adored just as much as one. Hope you like it! Thank you so much for messaging me :)

-Winnie

Words: 5.5K

           

They call it the "Sweet 16". Why? Being 16 doesn't seem very sweet to you. In fact, your birthday today is anything but. It's filled with unease and misery as you sit alone in the dark in your new bedroom. The carpet beneath your feet is fluffy and unlike the cool hardwood floors you used to have at home: the very same floors you can vividly recall your mother patiently mopping—the smell of vinegar still tingles the tip of your nose if you think about the memory enough. And if you try, you can almost hear your father laughing at you for spilling your afternoon tea: knowing that you'd be getting an earful when your mother came downstairs to see you'd already spoiled her clean kitchen floors.

But that's all just a dream. It's a fabrication crafted of sad blue and black cloth that you wrap around yourself like a quilt when you get too cold and lonely. Now the room is silent. There's nothing but the sound of your desktop fan as it clunk, clunk, clunks in place with a blade slightly unscrewed. The walls peel yellowing wallpaper. There's a window that looks outside but it's raining and you'd rather not see it. It'll make you feel guilty to see the storm—knowing that your parents are out there buried under the dirt of fresh graves with no choice but to swim in the muck.

Someone knocks on your closed door. You lift your head from the pillow enough to blink at the open doorway as it opens and a sliver of light falls through. You assume it's your foster family—probably the mother. She seems like a nice woman. Not as nice as your mother was, but she has kind eyes. SHIELD tried really hard to find someone willing to take you on such short notice. Now it's been three days in her care and still no one from the world-saving agency has come to check on you.

"Y/N?"

It's a man's voice that lingers in the doorway. Part of his huge shape is revealed with the light from outside. You recognize his voice immediately from all of those safety clips they show on the rolling cart TVs at school. And then there was that time you met him over conference call when you were nine: the same age you'd been when your pain manipulation powers had been revealed after a bully dropped to the ground sobbing at the park playground.

"Is the great Captain America here to save me?" you sarcastically huff. You lug yourself off the mattress and to your feet as Steve Rogers comes nearer. He enters your room in a moist leather jacket and worn out WW2 cap. On his feet are soggy bottomed tennis shoes—the ugly Reebok ones. He looks like a fresh faced version of someone's wanna-be-hipster grandpa.

The Captain flashes a sliver of an apologetic smile. "How are you, Y/N?"

"I made it out of the Hydra assassination alive," you offer as an answer. Your legs hang off the side of the bed from where you sit.

"That's not what I meant." The Captain comes to stand over you. "May I sit?"

"Sure." Your answer is met with him taking the place at the foot of your tiny bed. "Seriously, though, why are you here? Did Fury send you? I thought he retired."

"He did." The Captain nods slowly. "But there's a new guy in charge. Good man—great one, actually." The Captain's blue eyes wander over your face for a moment before he goes on. "But that's not who sent me. I'm here on the word of someone else. And he thinks that it'd be best if we get you out of here and take you somewhere more secure."