Chapter 10.
"Water?" He asked when he'd turned to face me. I instantly began comparing him to how I had seen him whilst I was unconscious. His face was covered by exhaustion. He wore a frown that I could only guess was permanent. Stubble covered his face, softening his features and his jaw line. When I looked into his bright blue eyes, they looked less frightening than they had in my dreams but they still left me feeling unsettled. They still made me feel cold and alone. I had a feeling that he had been through a lot. If I didn't think he was a monster, I might have thought he was beautiful.
"No." I said. "Thanks."
"It's not poisoned I swear." He said, confirming he knew that I saw him as a threat.
"I don't like water." I said truthfully.
He nodded and walked over to the giant refrigerator and opened one of the double doors.
"We have juice? Apple, Orange or Grape?" He offered.
"Um, orange please." I replied, I was thirsty after all and I could see him pour it from where I was stood, to make sure it definitely wasn't poisoned. I figured that I couldn't be too careful right now.
He walked over to the sofas and set the two drinks down on the low table in the middle, before sitting down, crossing one leg over the other. I slowly followed and sat on the sofa opposite, the farthest away from him I could get. I was still lost in his appearance, trying to find something that would warn me if he was a danger to me. That was when I noticed the bright shine of metal, in the place where his left hand should have been. My eye's widened and I instantly thought of the damage he could do to someone with a metal fist. I felt myself begin to shake and he caught me off guard.
"It's vibranium." He said.
"What?" I mumbled, trying to make out as though I hadn't been staring at it. I hadn't wanted to come across as rude, despite the first impression he had given me of himself.
"The arm." He confirmed, stretching his fingers out in front of him. "It's made from a metal called Vibranium."
"Did you.. Um, what happened to.. how did.." I tried but I couldn't think of any none-offensive way to ask how he had come about having a metal arm, as appose to a fleshy one.
"Everyone has scars Melissa. This is just one of mine." He said. I had a feeling it brought back memories he would like to avoid, so I just nodded in agreement. I had scars myself so I knew that feeling well.
We sat in silence for what seemed like an age, neither of us wanting to make the first move by bringing up the conversation we couldn't avoid. I was half relieved when he took charge.
"You don't need to be afraid of me Melissa, but I can understand why you are." He said. My heart rate started to pick up at the acknowledgment he'd made. "You can ask me any question and I will be 100% honest with you."
"I.. I don't know where to start." I said honestly. I'd had so many questions going through my mind about him but now, in the moment, it was blank.
"How about with the dreams?" He prompted. Okay, fair place to start.
"Why were you there? In my dreams? Why couldn't you come find me and talk to me in person? I saw you enough times, stalking me." I said.
"Yeah, I guess you could count that as stalking, but in my defense I was under orders from Shield." He said. "I tried to get to you in person, so I could explain the situation face to face, but every time I did someone would be with you or close by and it wouldn't have been an option to discuss this in front of anyone else."
"Why? It seems to me that the everyone knows all about Shield and the Avengers. It's just me that got left out of the club." I said, my annoyance clear.
"How would you feel if I'd come up to you that day you were getting coffee, and told you you had mysterious super powers, in front of your roommate? Or how about if I told you we needed your help because someone or something was coming to attack New York? Or how about the little fact that someone tried to kill you once? " He asked, his eyebrow slightly raised. It was the first real expression I'd seen pass his face.
"Fair point." I said with a sigh, hating that he was right. "Okay, so you had to come to me in my dreams. I get that, I get that the message was important. But why that dream specifically?"
" I couldn't see what dream you were in. If it was a specific dream or an important one then I couldn't have known that. When I saw you, I only saw you." He said. I was so torn on whether I could believe him.
"Why was the message broken up the first few times?" I asked. I recalled how many times I got bits of a message, broken up into meaningless words.
"Our unconscious states were connected by a psychic link. Initially that link was weak, because it was hard to locate you. It got stronger with every re-attempt, because you got easier to locate." He said.
"Locate?" I questioned in response.
"Think of the unconscious as another realm. Just like I had to 'stalk' you in reality, as you so kindly put it, I had to do the same in this alternate realm. That's a lot harder when you're not familiar with that method of.. travel." He said, obviously struggling to find the words.
"Wait, so, are you psychic or not?" I asked, confused.
"Not." He confirmed with a small laugh.
"Then how did you get in my head to begin with?" I questioned. He was becoming less believable as the conversation went on and I was in turn getting less patient.
"That one isn't for me to say. But I believe that's a conversation you'll be having later today when your training starts." He said.
"Convenient that you can't tell me." I said, sarcastically.
"Not particularly." He replied, matching my own attitude.
"Why should I trust you?" I asked.
"Why shouldn't you trust me?" He asked back.
"No! You can't do that. You can't answer my question with another question. You said you'd tell me the truth!" I snapped.
"And I will. But it is a valid question Melissa. What reason do you have to not trust me?" He said.
"How long do you have?!" I said, my voice growing louder as my anger increased.
"You know there's an easy way to find out whether you can trust me, don't you? So why don't you just do it?" He said, with full confidence that I knew he was referring to my ability.
"I can't." I said.
"Why?" He was getting on my last nerve. Why did I have to explain this to him? They were my powers. He'd already invaded my dreams, couldn't he let me have anything left just for myself? "Come on Melissa, why?"
"I'm too tired." I said.
"Bullshit!" He exclaimed, taking me aback.
"Excuse me?!" I was so stunned. My eyes were wide with surprise at the audacity he had. How dare he?
"I'm calling bullshit. You just don't want to try because you're scared of what you'll see." He said. I really really really hated how right he was.
In that moment I decided I wouldn't let him be right. I couldn't. I changed my position so that I was sitting directly across from him, looking straight into those ridiculously blue eyes. I let out a sigh, before shifting my focus on him to search for his aura. My concentration was at a peak, and I was searching all around him for any kind of color to show but nothing did. I tried to pull some instincts from within myself but nothing helped there either. I just felt a massive sense of conflict about him. I must have let on that something wasn't right.
"What is it? What do you see?" He asked, snapping me out of the concentration I was in. He looked genuinely concerned, like I'd just seen into his soul or something and had learnt his biggest secrets.
"Nothing. I see nothing. I told you I'm too tired." I said, leaning forward and putting my head into my hands.
"Okay, so we try again once you've had some sleep." He said.
I leant back into the sofa and rolled my eyes. Even though all of this only started a week ago, I felt like I had been stressed out about it for my entire life. Like I'd never be able to recover from the exhaustion of it all. As I sat there thinking about everything that had happened in the last 7 days, I started to cry unwillingly. Tears ran down my face and I couldn't control them.
"Hey. Don't cry Melissa. You'll get used to your powers. You'll get better at controlling them. It might take some time but you just need to practice. Soon you'll be able to do this in your sleep." He said.
I was surprised that he was trying to reassure me. I'd gone into this conversation thinking he was the ultimate enemy. Thinking he wanted to hurt me. Maybe he did and this was all some sort of ruse to get me to lower my guard so he could strike easier. Maybe he genuinely did care. Maybe he was like everyone else I had met today, who had nothing but good intentions for me. Maybe he too wanted to protect me and be my friend and help me find my way back to myself. But without his aura I couldn't know for sure and that terrified me.
"It isn't that." I said, a half truth.
"Then what?" He asked.
"I'm just.. I don't know why I'm here. Why does it have to be me? You need my help but I can't even help myself. I'm useless Bucky! How am I supposed to help you? Why can't anyone else do it?" I asked, his name sounding strange the first time I said it aloud. I looked him in his eyes through my tears, pleading for the truth. For some answers. For some kind of relief from the mental anguish I was in.
"You are far from useless." He said, his words oozing with confidence.
"No, I am. I can't get anything right. I haven't made a good choice in my life. Ever! I've always been a monumental fuck up!" I said, believing every word whole heartedly.
"Melissa, listen to me. You are none of those things!" He said, as he leaned closer to me.
"How would you know? You don't even know me!" I replied, still sobbing.
He reached out and took my hand into his own, none-vibranium hand. "You'd be surprised how much you can learn about someone when you stalk them for a week." He said, a soft smile on his face.
That small action had made the moment so intense and intimate. I'd never had an experience like this before and I didn't know what to do with myself or how to react. Physical contact wasn't something I was used to. Erica wasn't a big hugger, and I didn't have any real friends that I was close enough to feel comfortable with like that. I hadn't even had a real relationship, just a couple of one night stands and flings.
I looked down at our hands, making sure the warmth I felt from him was real. As he ran his thumb gently back and forth over my hand, my heart was pounding in my chest once again and I couldn't look away from him. The positive, however, was that the shock of his touch had stopped my tears and given me enough distraction to calm down.
"We should go back to bed." He said, and I laughed internally at myself, as for the briefest moment I wondered whether he meant together. My mind truly was a mess. "I'll walk you to your room, come on."
I grabbed the juice I hadn't touched off the coffee table and waited for him to turn out all the lights, before walking with him up the hall towards the bedrooms. We walked side by side in complete silence until we got to my bedroom door.
"This is me." I said in a whisper, making sure to not wake anyone up.
"Goodnight." He whispered back to me, pulling on the handle of my bedroom door, opening it for me. I started to walk in to my room, but he caught my attention again.
"Melissa?" He said and I turned back to face him. "I'm truly sorry for everything. I hope that one day you'll be able to believe that."
I gave him a smile and he walked off down the hall to the next room. I heard his door open and then close again, before I closed my own. I leant back against it and sighed.