Sleepless Nights
Sunlight beat down on her back. It dappled through the tall evergreens onto the green grass below. Softly whispering waves and laughing kids could be heard in the distance. The grass was still slightly damp on the late spring afternoon. She drank from her bottle of root beer and he was finishing his bottle of orange soda.
“You should major in Journalism,” He told her, “You love being in other people's business,”
“Excuse me?” She laughed, almost choking on her drink.
Johnny backpedaled, “You’re good at finding things out! I just think you might enjoy getting paid for it,”
“I’ll think about it,”
They snacked on the fresh donuts they’d picked up at the market, “I guess we all know what you’re going to do, something smart and sciency. You’ll probably be the next Howard Stark,”
He smiled like he liked the idea, “If that means I get my own Captain America, I’m in,”
Ren clinked their bottles together, “As long as I get my own Bucky,”
The sunlight was soft. It filtered through the gauzy white drapes that blew in the wind from the open windows. Music played softly from a record player in the living room. The couch dipped under her weight as she settled into her favorite spot. She set her hard cider on the coffee table. Johnny had a beer - he bought the cider just for her.
“It’s going well,” She said, “The article I’m working on right now is right up your alley,”
“But you can’t tell me about it,” He stated with irritation.
Ren smiled, “Nope, but you can read about it when it comes out. You know it’s bad luck to talk about my articles before I publish them,”
“Of course it is,”
He shook his head and took a long drink from his bottle and she followed suit.
“I was thinking…”
“Yeah?”
She hesitated, “Your new powerplant - once it gets up and running, it would make a great story,”
“Yeah it would,” He agreed, “How about you come by for the final tests?”
Final tests, already? “I didn’t know you guys were that far along,”
He nodded a little as he made his way to the couch, “Things are coming together faster than we anticipated. We should be able to start running tests in a few months,”
“Johnny that's amazing!”
He grinned, “Yeah it is,” She glanced out the window as she took a swig of her cider, “It’s a shame what happened,”
“What?”
Johnny wasn’t sitting on the couch anymore. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room. Ren stood to look for him, took a step toward his bedroom.
“It’s a shame you killed us all,”
Whipping around her eyes locked on to the cracked cement wall. There he was. Where he had been. Where he had died.
But he was just… No. He was dead. She knew that.
It was hard not to know that when his ashen body and empty eyes stared back at her.
A shriek split the air. At first, she thought it was her, but her foster brother's charred face contorted in pain and his body arched off the wall. He wasn’t the only one. All the bodies she could see and more that she couldn’t were screaming. Molten flame began to eat through the floor. Johnny's corpse was writhing as it was devoured by fire once again until it was nothing but ashes carried on a phantom wind.
The fire was everywhere and she could feel it. She was burning alive. Again. This time she was all too aware of the sensation. Her skin began to flake, then it began to melt. Ren could feel as her bones blackened and her lungs became too full of smoke to breathe. Her throat was too raw to scream.
Or was it? When her eyes flew open she found that her throat was still raw, but from screaming in her sleep. But everything was still on fire. Her bed, the whole thing had gone up in a blaze. She panicked and crawled to the edge of the mattress, where she fell onto the floor.
Water rained down from above. Fire sprinklers. They emerged from some hidden holes in the ceiling, she hadn’t even known they were there. The fire started to calm. So did she, especially when Ren realized she wasn’t burned. The only fire here was her own. So she attempted to steady her breathing and focused on the flames that were refusing to die out. With just a thought she managed to extinguish them.
It was a good thing it hadn’t spread, now that everything she owned was in this room.
Someone was banging on the door. They might’ve been doing that for a while. Ren shakily pushed herself to her feet and shuffled over to the door. She hesitated with her hand on the handle, did she really want someone to see her like this? Shivering, soaking wet, and terrified?
Nightmares weren’t exactly uncommon in the tower. Most of the time everyone had the decency to ignore it.
But they knocked again and Ren grudgingly opened the door. It was Bucky. He looked worried. His brow was all scrunched up and his steel blue eyes examined her. His long hair was mussed up from sleeping and he was wearing a simple pair of sweats and a black t-shirt.
“Are you ok?” He asked.
Forcing a watery smile on her face, she nodded, “I’m fine,”
Barnes unscrunched his brow to give her an ‘I know that's bullshit’ look. She tried to hold it, but she didn’t have the energy to lie right now, “It was just a dream,”
“A nightmare?”
She pressed her lips together and nodded.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep again?”
She sucked on her teeth and turned to her ruined bed. It was still smoking.
“Probably not,” She admitted.
He nodded.
…
She'd had to change out of her soaking wet pajamas. They were replaced with some loose, flowing pants and an equally loose-cropped tank top. Not her classiest outfit, but it was comfortable. And made her feel a bit like a hippie.
Apparently, there was a Chinese restaurant called the Jade Wolf near them, that was open 24 hours and did delivery. By 3:40 they had their food and were lounging on the couch. Other than figuring out what to get, they hadn’t talked much. Bucky had been the one to suggest they get takeout. Guess it was obvious that she didn’t want to talk because he didn’t ask about her nightmare. Instead, he asked how she knew about so many takeaway restaurants. She told him it was from spending too many late nights working on an article. The conversation segwayed into her old life. Barnes even contributed a few of his old memories.
So that was how they spent the night. Talking about who they were, before anything bad happened. Back when they were still regular people. Still fully human.
Eventually, the terror of her dream - of her memories - began to fade. They talked until the sun rose and Steve Rogers with it. Instead of forcing them into the gym, he joined them. Rogers added some details to Barnes’ stories, which they ended up arguing about.
Wilson joined them once he woke up. The Chinese takeout had long since been polished off, so Steve decided to make some waffles. Ren made some coffee, Sam cooked some bacon, and Barnes cleaned up the remnants of their midnight feast.
The four of them ate breakfast around the kitchen counter. Training was taken off for the day.