[ 1x1 with BrokenEcho ]

[rentropy]

Bucky was staring off into space when she first sat down, and was so lost in thought he didn't notice the captain america insignia on her shirt until she was more than halfway done with her meal. when he did notice them he stopped. he remembered it well, bu5 he hadn't seen anything like it for a long, long time. he had, well, died for that symbol. he had died looking at it, holding it. and after all these year he still didn't know what happened to his best friend. didn't even know if they had won the war. after hydra's failure to make him comply, they locked him here, in his home country, to live forever because he couldn't die. while lost in his thought he was staring at her, which was probably weird but he was so far down the rabbit hole he couldn't stop himself.

[~BrokenEcho~]

zelda caught bucky staring at her and she looked at him questioningly for a moment before swallowing the bite of food in her mouth and speaking, "bucky? are you alright?" she asked in a soft voice not wanting to startle him. she set her fork down on her plate and set her hands in her lap. was this the moment when he was going to snap and decide to kill her or lock her back up?

[rentropy]

at his name, Bucky snapped from his trance and moved his gaze to make eye contact with her. he ran through her words and realized she had asked him a question. 'Bucky? are you alright?' the words ran through his head on repeat in a voice that wasn't actually hers until he managed to get out a response, "yeah... yeah im fine." he told her with even less conviction than he had said his name with

[~BrokenEcho~]

zelda didn't want to press him even though she could tell that he was lying so she nodded. "oh, alright." she said going back to her food even though everything tasted kind of bland now, she kept eating as something to do until all of her food was gone.

[rentropy]

Bucky turned his gaze back to the fire place and lost himself in thought again. two thousand and seventeen. how much was different? what had changed? the last time he had seen the outside world was 1944, and he hadn't even been in the united states. no, he had been on a train in europe. he had fallen off the train and europe and into a ravine, and he will never stop wishing he had lost more than his arm. losing his life would've been nice. would've saved him pain.

[~BrokenEcho~]

zelda took the moment that bucky was lost in thought to get a really good look at him. she couldn't deny to herself that she found bucky attractive. she was curious about him, what his past was like and who he really was as a person. after staring at him for a few moments her gaze wandered around the room where it landed upon a bookshelf full of old books. quietly, she stood up from the table and walked over to the shelf and ran her fingers along the spines of the books.

[rentropy]

Bucky was drawn back out when zelda stood and walked to the bookshelf. he had read every book in the mansion more than once, some of the best ones he's probably read more than ten times. he knew for a fact that the majority of the books in this room were in russian and arabic. years spent with nothing to do led him to doing boring, meaningless tasks like organizing books by language and then by authors within each language, and then titles for the same authors or authors with the same names. there were a few books in english but that was only because he had brought them into the room to read and left them there when he was distracted by something, usually a bird, or occasionally a very, very lost weasel or fox

[~BrokenEcho~]

zelda stared at the books in wonder, "have you read all of these?" she asked carefully sliding on of the books in russian off the shelves. she carefully flipped through its old pages looking at some of the photos of old houses, she ran her fingers carefully over the page almost like she was trying to absorb the words through her skin. her hair had fallen in her face so she carefully moved it out of the way and behind her ear.

[rentropy]

for a moment, Bucky considered just replying with 'yes' and that would be the end of it, but he hadn't spoken in so long that he chose to take the opportunity for longer responses when they presented themselves. "yeah," he started at she eyed the book she was looking at, "I've read every one."

[~BrokenEcho~]

zelda looked up at him with a slight tilt to the right, almost like a puppy. "oh? do you have a favorite?" she had already planned on reading through the books that were in english and maybe asking him to teach him one of the other languages, especially russian since what she had heard of the language she thought that it was beautiful.