Chest heaving you leaned against the door in your crappy apartment, all the locks now securely in place, you finally felt somewhat at ease. This was the third time this week you thought you had seen him and probably the fifth in the last month. You thought running would be easy, get as far away as possible in the shortest time and eventually, he would just forget about you, but that thought always lingered in your head. What if he never forgot? I mean how could he, not after everything you’d been through together.
For the longest time, you and Bucky were inseparable, his dad and yours were best friends and work associates, you him and his best friend Steve went everywhere together. As teens, Bucky was always sweet on you. he was a flirt with everyone but with you he just acted differently, he treated you like a crown jewel, not just some shiny object to be admired but like you were rare and precious. Everyone in the family knew you two were destined to be together, the wedding was talked about the way someone talks about the weather, despite the fact that he hadn’t even asked officially yet, it was just known kinda like the family business.
The family business, that’s a whole other thing, and how you ended up in this mess in the first place. There are several major families in New York, the three biggest being the (y/L/n) family, the Barnes family, bucky’s and the Rogers family, Steves. A peace treaty was brokered between the three families that were conditional upon your marriage to Bucky, uniting two of the three families and securing his place at the head of the business, Steve at his side, everything was going according to plan until about a year ago, when the Stark and Potts family united making them the new third-largest family and bumping Steve’s family down. For months your dad and uncles, bucky’s family and steves scrambled to figure something out, looking at any possible option to raise the Barnes family back to the status they needed, but nothing worked and if nothing came about soon they would have to either broker and new peace deal with the Stark-Potts family or go to War.
You spent days, weeks even worrying over the outcome, Bucky assured you continuously that everything would be fine, that it would all work out that war wouldn’t break out in the Burroughs and if it did he would take care of you. Suddenly out of nowhere, after all the talks, negotiations and planning it was like a light switch flipped on and he changed, he was suddenly short with you, distant, he no longer touched you or cherished you the way you became accustomed, Steve too kept his distance from you and when he was around it was business as usual, no more pleasantries no jokes or teasing it was as if you hadn’t grown up together all your lives suddenly you were nothing there were no Wedding talks, no one even made jokes about the children you and Bucky would someday have, your mother looked on you with sorrowful eyes, something deep behind them you couldn’t place.
A run-in with Peter, an adopted member of the Stark family is what set the rest of your future into motion. He told you that a deal had been made, he wasn’t sure of the exact details, Tony wouldn’t let him in on big meetings yet, but that some kind of trade was happening or something and that it was big, whatever it was it came from the Barnes family a concession of sorts to keep the peace. That news sent your mind reeling, what could they trade that would suddenly fix everything? And if it was that simple why hadn’t they thought of it sooner? At home that night, you wanted to ask your father about the deal but stopped in your tracks upon spotting Tony Stark and his wife Pepper in your home for Sunday supper. At that moment it all made sense, the trade, Bucky and Steve’s sudden change of attitude and Bucky’s involvement, You. The trade was you. That’s the only thing that made sense, Bucky had agreed to trade you to Stark to keep the peace. You didn’t even have time to let your heartbreak as you went to your room, threw together whatever you could in a bag and snuck out the window your parents weren’t aware bucky sneaks in sometimes when it’s late.
That was almost three months ago, now here you were in a shitty apartment you rented by the week in nowheresville Montana, working under the table at a truck stop down the street. Getting out seemed easy, but it left you living in constant fear, you knew everyone would be looking for you, you had hoped they would just give up. Opening your now tear filled eyes though, thanks to memories long ago suppressed, you knew that wasn’t the case, they would never give up he would never give up.
“Hello Doll, you miss me?”