Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Not Ready [Chapter 29]

"Together we stand; Divided we fall."

"Hey You" -Pink Floyd

                Only three days slipped through Ophelia's fingers, though she was beginning to feel the walls of the motel pressing in against her. That, and her stomach began to churn with a hunger for another dose of a drug that had its talons latched into her.

             The TV still went on and on about the events that had occurred; more and more casualties had been found. After the first few days, she had stopped watching the TV because Bucky could hear it, and she knew that it was painful for him. The inconsistent memories were hard enough for him to write down and process, so Ophelia had found herself going to the front desk and grabbing the local paper. No one seemed to speak to her, and half the time the person at the front desk was occupied or asleep.

              She came back up to the room, and heard the shower running in the bathroom. She flipped through the newspaper while Bucky was still in the shower. Running her fingers through her brown hair, she read the small headline on the front page of the paper.

                "Captain America put in hospital; awakens today!

                "In recent alarming events, the agency that had only just exposed itself to the world after the Incident that happened in New York only a few years ago has crumbled. Along with the fall of SHIELD, agent Natasha Romanoff has released all of the files to the public. (details page two). Captain America has been put in the hospital, and his condition is unknown at this time. It still remains unknown what led to these tragic events of putting our favourite superhero in such a terrible position, but eye witnesses claim to have seen SHIELD turn against their poster boy. Some claim that a man with a metal arm was the one to ultimately put him in the hospital.

                "Police are searching for the one-armed suspect, but no one knows his whereabouts nor who he is. 

                "Are we safe? The people we looked up at, with hopes that they would protect us, have failed! How can we trust anyone?

                "We are hoping that the police will catch the suspect and get answers. The public demands answers; we need to know if we are safe. Too many causalities, both innocent civilians and not-so-innocent SHIELD employees, have been killed in the events of the last few days."

                Ophelia threw the paper aside and grumbled; they were making Bucky out to be this monster, when he wasn't. Not anymore. They knew nothing about what had really happened. It was true that there had been many casualties, but not all of them had been caused by The Winter Soldier. HYDRA was to blame, but people would rather point their fingers at one person than a thousand. It was easier to hate one recognizable face than that many; they would want to see Bucky behind bars, and would be satisfied. She wanted to scream at them, to tell them how he was not what they saw, he was not what the TV and newspaper depicted. Unfortunately, despite her lack of knowledge of the world, Ophelia knew that they couldn't simply stand in front of the world and tell them the truth; no one would listen.

                She sighed, rolling onto her back slowly and staring at the stained ceiling; she would never lead a normal life. Even though her name or description had not been put in the paper, she wouldn't simply leave Bucky. He had a better understanding of the world than her, and she had the trust of a few SHIELD agents. Together, they would be a team that might survive the world that would try to take them down. Divided, they would not make it more than a few days without hiding away. She couldn't live hidden forever. Not after nearly a century of doing so. Bucky had promised her a safe place, and she knew that he was someone to carry through on their promises. She had come to accept that they would have to go far, probably adapt to another culture and even language. There was something she had to do before they left, though.