Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Connected [Chapter 27]

"We don't know who we are until we're connected to someone else. We're just better human beings when we're with the person we're supposed to be with."

-Tara Knowles in "Sons of Anarchy" 

              Ophelia was facing Bucky, the sun only an orange sliver now, she slipped her hand in his and ran the pad of her thumb over his fingertips. His skin was surprisingly soft, not calloused and hard as she had expected. She brought her green eyes up to his ocean blue ones, looking in them for answers or signs of remembrance, but saw nothing.

             As she thought about the best way to approach the mental bridge, she tried to recall the most powerful link she had with Bucky. It had  to be a the time when they were so emotionally connected to each other that all their walls had fallen down. While Ophelia knew their walls were crumbled now, both of them at their most vulnerable, she knew she had to establish an emotional connection.

                "I want to try something," she began, finally grasping how to approach this. "To create a stronger mental link."

                "Okay," he agreed, and when she paused, he added, "What is it?"

                "I want to kiss you," she told him with a blush.

                Bucky's lips crept up at the corner ever so slightly, making him look both shy about the idea and confident. Nodding, he moved towards her, as she was too bandaged up and broken to actually do what she suggested. He got onto his knees in front of her and tucked his hand underneath her brown hair, his skin touching her neck. His metal hand reached up and touched her chin. Ophelia pulled her knee up to her chest, and Bucky put one knee between her thighs, the other outside of her right thigh. 

          Looking into her eyes, his metal finger tilted her head up and he brought his soft pink lips down to hers, pressing them gently at first. 

              The kiss was so authentic, so natural between them despite how few kisses they had actually shared in their life time. She had no doubt, after seeing his image in the museum, that he was well practiced in his kissing. But in the last few decades, he had only kissed her. Ophelia nearly forgot to create the mental link, his lips feeling so familiar and yet she had not truly kissed them like this in fifty years.

                As the kiss endured, Ophelia still struggling to create the link as she was entirely swept up in the sweet passion, Bucky inched closer to the woman, his grip on her tightening. His hand wrapped around her side, fingers tickling her back, and his metal hand lifted her chin a little higher.

           Everything about the moment felt so good, attacking her senses. She could taste him, and he was delicious. She could feel him, and it gave her shivers. She could smell him and it made her euphoric. She could see Bucky through the hard shell that had formed around him. And she could hear the thoughts bouncing through his skull as she connected to him; the bridge was formed, and she could sense every neuron firing in his head. 

                Ophelia had never been told about her abilities beyond the pathfinding; she had learned on her own that she able to access more of the mind than just their location. Over time, she learned that it was a curse to be able to feel what another person felt verbatim, but once she developed the ability to understand it, it became a gift. 

              Once again the pain of what he had suffered and endured in the last while shocked her, but Ophelia held on to the bridge until he found something more than pain. As she dove deep into his mind, she could feel the happiness and the memories fighting to get out of what seemed like a cage. As she moved closer to the memories, she moved closer to him physically; her back arched. The memories of her, among others, were just aching to be released, as if they were reaching out through bars of a jail cell, screaming for their overdue freedom.