Alive

Chapter 20 - Nightmare night

Bucky POV

My muscles flex as I bring the weight up and down, sweat covers my body due to the number of hours I have been in this gym.

I'm going to collapse if I continue doing this.

I am tired but won't sleep, I reject it.

Every time I sleep I see her, but I don't know what she looks like.

I don't know what my wife looks like, I know her personality and I know I loved her.

Love her.

I still love her.

I can't stop loving her.

Hydra wiped everything about her from my mind, because thinking of her got me through the torture, she made me fight back against the organisation that murdered her.

But over time my memories of her came back, but not her face.

God, I wish I had a picture of her but she hated getting her picture taken, she only allowed drawings made by Steve.

And I look at them every day.

Sometimes I see her on other people, women who share the same features, I see her face.

I feel haunted, I should have ran into the fire, let it burn off my skin just so she wouldn't have been alone.

She was screaming out for me, she wanted me to save her but I was held back.

Aria, my love, my doll.

I know I cry out for her in my sleep, Steve tries to protect me from her memory, but not even a knife to my brain could make me forget my wife.

I know Steve feels guilty for stopping me from running into the fire, or maybe guilt that he didn't do it himself.

So he makes up for it by making me happy and trying to forget the past, he says we need to focus on our lives now, and not ruin them by thinking of the people we lost.

But I call him a hypocrite because he still sees Peggy, he doesn't understand my pain because he can still see the one he loves, he can talk to her and be with her during her final moments.

He can make new memories with her, while I am stuck grasping onto whatever memories I can find of Aria.

Whenever I see a woman that I find attractive or who flirts with me, I walk away and find a secluded place to cry, because I cannot be with another woman, ever.

Aria was it for me, she was my endgame, and she died a hundred years ago.

In a way, I died with her.

Or at least I tried to, the train seemed like the perfect chance to end my suffering, Steve had Peggy and Howard so I knew he wouldn't be alone.

But all I lost was my arm, the same arm that holds a scar of Aria's teeth on my skin, I loved how she fought dirty, never one to give up even when she had no more moves left to play.

When she has no more moves to play, she creates more.

"Bucky?" I am shocked out of my thoughts when a small figure walks into the room.

"Oh, hey Wanda, why aren't you asleep?" I put down the weights and wipe the sweat off with a small towel.

"Nightmares. You still having yours?" She comes and sits next to me on the bench and hands me some water.

"Every single night." I say before chugging the bottle.

"Wanna have a nightmare night?" I smile because it has been a long time since we've had one of those.