|1| Promise Me ✦ {Bucky Barnes}

Prologue: Come What May

Author's Note: Hello readers, and welcome to Promise Me. Thank you so much for choosing this story, I really hope you like it, and if you do, please like and share it with your friends! I appreciate feedback at any time!

Before this starts, I want to give credit to a friend of mine for creating the cover art for this story. If you like the cover, please go check out her other work on redbubble.com/people/crude-verbiage/shop. She's quite a talented artist, I think you guys will like her stickers, t-shirts and other products she sells on RedBubble!

Without further ado, please enjoy the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Promise Me.

- Harper E. Pierce

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BRIAR:

"The year was 1943. It was a time of war, a time of desperation for many young American girls like me. Many of us had husbands who were being conscripted now that the United States had joined the war. It affected many of my friends who had husbands and brothers who joined, both by choice and through conscription. But I was lucky. I was single, and I had two best friends, one of which had no interest in joining the war while the other was too weak and kept getting rejected at every turn.

"I met Steve Rogers when I was just a girl in middle school. Steve had always had a heart of gold and a strong sense of justice, which often got him into trouble with the local bullies in Brooklyn. I became friends with him after he tried to defend me once in elementary school, but he ended up getting beat up. I took care of him after that day, and we had been best friends ever since. Steve was a small and sickly boy, even when he grew up, which didn't help his chances of getting into the military when he tried to enlist, especially since he had asthma. I'm not going to lie, I was always grateful they never let Steve enlist, even though I told him differently. I wanted him to be safe.

"However, the two of us had another friend in our lives, named Bucky Barnes. Well, Bucky was what we called him; his full name was James Buchanan Barnes. He was Steve's best friend, whom I had been introduced too after I had met Steve. I admit, even when he was just a boy he was good looking. Besides the tall, dark and handsome kind of look he had, he was also quite the charmer, making him popular with the ladies. His styled dark brown hair and those bright blue eyes of his could capture any doll's attention- including my own. I'll admit it; from the moment I first met him, I had a bit of a crush on him, but I was also one of his best friends, so, for the most part, I kept my feelings for him a secret from everyone, especially when he brought other girls back from whatever school dance we went to growing up. But when we all grew up, he went into accounting, which seemed to be a promising career. His life was all planned out; become an accountant and make his own way before marrying a doll he could provide for. It was promising.

"But it was on my friend Dottie's twenty-third birthday when the rest of our lives would be forever changed. It started off to be a normal day for me. I would invite a couple of my girlfriends along with Steve and Bucky out for drinks at a club to surprise her, where we would drink, dance and laugh, having a good time. I dolled myself up, put on a black and white polka-dot dress, and curled my long, red hair into a curled side swoop. I put on a pair of red heels to match my red lipstick, and I went out to meet up with my two friends, Bonnie and May. We would wait on Dottie to show with her husband, Grant, who knew about the surprise.

"Bonnie, May and I met up at the club, while we waited on Steve and Bucky to arrive. I wasn't going to be surprised if they were a little late; Steve tended to take a disliking toward these kinds of events, so I didn't count on them to be there for the surprise part of it. The blonde wasn't exactly the social butterfly of the crowd. But we were going on twenty minutes after Dottie and Grant showed, and still, neither of them were there. Finally, both showed up.