True North [Stucky Fanfiction - IN PROGRESS]

19 - When You Were Gone

Bucky needed to go for a run.

He was sick of being cooped up in the tower, with lights that turned on wherever he walked and that talkative teenager and two widows that could kill him at a moments notice. He was sick of how soft the twin bed felt whenever he laid down to rest, too soft like he hadn't been used to comfort before. He didn't like having to tell himself when to wake up and why as though he needed a reason to have a good night's sleep. He didn't like being trapped inside his own head while he slept, his body unresponsive and not under his control.

Bucky felt alone, and even though he was familiar with it, doesn't mean he has to like it.

So he does a little bit of hunting for what he deems appropriate running gear; flexible, loose shorts and a compression top that makes his chest feel a little tight with anticipation and his fingers twitch as though he should have a knife in his fingers. He doesn't know why these feelings were drilled into him. He guesses it probably has something to do with his incredible spatial awareness.

Fortunately, the Parker kid seems to be in his room across the hall when Bucky is ready to go. If he hears Bucky leave, he doesn't say anything. The ex-assassin takes the stairs because the guest rooms aren't too far up from the ground floor and he doesn't feel like entering the weird talking elevator. The stairwell is mostly concrete, save for the metal stairs and rails, each floor marked with a spray-painted number identifying it. Even though it's twenty flights, he's barely flustered when he gets to the bottom. He strides across the empty lobby, blue-tinted fluorescent lights illuminating the expansive space.

He pushes straight out the door and onto the street, breaking out into a jog. After a few minutes of jogging, he realizes it's not even a real workout for him, so he speeds up, listening to his feet pound on the pavement and his heart beat faster in his ears. The ache of his bullet wound starts to fade into the background, hardly noticeable anymore. He focuses on his surroundings more so than his feet. Running is easy. He's been running his whole life, legs trained to push off the ground and launch him forward like pistons. Last time he was out, he was attacked, so he pays better attention to his environment. He reaches an intersection where his path is blocked by the twisted metal of a car crash, parts of the vehicles blackened into skeletal husks from a fire. He speeds up and plants his flesh hand on the hood of a vehicle, pushing his body up and over to the other side so he can keep running. He leaps over the warped pieces of a bumper, tennis shoes crunching over the red plastic of someone's tail light. He keeps going, evening out his breathing and pumping his arms in time with his feet.

Further up ahead, he spots more vehicles midway through changing lanes. He growls and decides to change course, shoving off the back of a car and turning right.

The cars disappear, and Bucky skids to a stop.

He spins around. The car crash he just vaulted over is gone. The bright orange stripe on his shorts marks the only splash of color in the area, the faded neon signs labeling storefronts replaced with more muted tones. Metal scaffolding that sheltered the sidewalks melt into the buildings which are now all sun-faded brick. There's no one around except for a few curvy white mannequins displaying various styles of hats and dresses in the window of a nearby store. Bucky rubs his eyes and looks up again. A sign is pasted on the window now, declaring the store to have 'the finest fabrics in all of Brooklyn!'

Another hallucination, this one much more remarkable than the last. Bucky feels a certain amount of nostalgia as he looks around at all the stores. Some remain nameless, others with blurry signs that Bucky imagines he can't quite remember the names enough for them to actually manifest in this unusual alternate reality. He takes a step forward. Steve has to be in this somewhere.