PRESENT DAY
She sat quietly in the corner of a small café, tucked beneath a soft yellow awning, the kind that flapped slightly with the breeze. Her coffee had gone cold. She hadn’t touched it. Instead, her eyes—half-hidden behind dark sunglasses—were locked on a table across from her. A family of four. A mother with soft laugh lines, a father with tired eyes that lit up whenever his children spoke. Twin boys, maybe six or seven, wearing matching cartoon T-shirts and trading bites of cake like it was treasure.
They were laughing. God, they were laughing.
Rani didn’t realize how long she’d been watching until the waitress passed by her table a second time, giving her a quick glance of mild concern before hurrying along. She didn’t care. She barely registered it. That strange, hollow feeling had returned—like a coil tightening in her stomach. Not hunger. Not jealousy.
Grief.
A quiet, aching grief that throbbed behind her ribs.
She thought of the facility. Of steel floors and humming lights. Of the damp air in the cell where she lived, breathed, learned pain before she learned language. She thought of her father’s back turned toward her, of the distance between them that was more than inches. He had been the closest thing she had to family in that place. And even he had been a ghost.
There were no birthdays. No cakes. No laughter that wasn't laced with fear. Her only presents had been bruises, needles, and silence. The only lullabies she knew were screams muffled through concrete walls.
And now—now she was free. At least that's what people would call it. Freedom.
But she didn’t feel free.
She didn’t know how to heal, because no one ever showed her how.
Her fingers curled lightly around the warm ceramic mug. It was chipped at the rim, stained in the center, but solid. It was real. She was real. The fire on that man’s face, the echo of his screams—it was all real too.
And yet, sitting here, watching a family share dessert like the world had never bled, Rani felt invisible again. Not gone. Not dead. But unseen. Like a shadow in sunlight. Like a scar beneath clothes.
She forced her eyes away. Focused on the street instead. A bus passed. A bike bell rang. Normal life kept moving.
And somewhere deep inside her, a voice whispered:
You’re not like them. You never will be.
She didn’t know if it was her own voice. Or Valentina’s. Or maybe even her father’s.
But it was right.
She wasn’t built for cafés and birthday candles.
She was built for silence. For fire. For disappearing before dawn.
Still, her eyes drifted once more to the table of four—just to look. Just for a moment longer.
The words on the TV inside the place hit her like a sudden gust of wind, rattling everything inside her. She hadn’t expected to hear his name, not like this, not on the screen of a small café in Singapore.
"James Buchanan Barnes, also known as Bucky Barnes, the former Winter Soldier, makes his first public debut as a congressman."
She froze. Her fingers stopped mid-motion, hovering above her cup of coffee that had long since lost its warmth. Her heart thudded against her ribcage, a painful, steady beat. The sound of the anchor's voice washed over her like cold water, but all she could focus on was the man on the screen.
Bucky.
She hadn’t seen him in three months. Three months since she slipped away from that house, leaving nothing but silence behind. The man in the suit on the screen didn’t look like the same person she had left. His hair was longer now, tousled around his shoulders in a way that seemed… softer. Less guarded. Less like the soldier who had raised her and more like a man who had found something of himself again.
Her breath caught, her chest tightening. She hadn’t expected to feel this way. There was a part of her that thought she’d be numb to him by now. After all, she had been running for three months, burying everything about him deep inside her, trying to forget the training, the love, the pain. But now, looking at him on the screen—strong, calm, with that familiar hint of vulnerability behind his eyes—she felt a longing ripple through her like a wave.
I miss him.
The thought came unbidden, raw and sharp. She couldn’t stop it, couldn’t bury it deep enough to push it out. She missed him. The way he would talk to her without words, the way he always knew when she needed space, or when she needed comfort but didn’t know how to ask and he didn't know how to offer it. He had never been a father to her in the traditional sense, not in the way the world expected, but in his own quiet, broken way, he had been everything.
And now here he was—on the news, standing tall in a suit, wearing the weight of a new life that wasn’t supposed to include her.
He was moving on.
And she? She was here, watching him from a distance, disconnected from everything. From him. From the life she could have had. A life that, deep down, she realized she wanted but was too terrified to claim because she didn't know how to live.
His voice echoed in her mind, the soft, almost pleading tone he had used when he last saw her. "I'm trying to do this right, and I can’t if you won’t let me in.” She had ignored it, shoved it away. But now, seeing him in the light of this new chapter, she wondered—had he ever meant it? Or had he only said it because it was what she needed to hear?
The moment on the screen lasted only a few seconds, but for Rani, it felt like hours. She couldn’t look away. His eyes, those blue eyes, seemed to reach through the screen, pulling her into the past, into a time when she wasn’t running, when she wasn’t hiding from everything that had happened.
A small pang of guilt twisted in her gut. She had hurt him. She had left him, without a word, without a goodbye. And now, here he was—doing what she had never been able to do.
Moving on.
The anchor’s voice faded back into the background, but Rani could still see him, still see Bucky Barnes standing on that stage, looking like a man reborn. And a part of her, the part she could never fully silence, wanted to reach through time and space and ask him—Why didn’t you come after me?
She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been searching for her. The thought of Bucky scouring every corner of the world, trying to track her down, almost made her laugh. Almost. It was a strange feeling—part of her hoped he was. But another part of her, the part that had been hurt too many times, the part that had learned to distrust and resent anyone who tried to care for her, wanted to be angry at him. Angry for the way he raised her, angry for how he had never truly seen her. She could feel the familiar bitterness bubbling inside, an old instinct, but it twisted in a way she wasn’t used to.
She thought of how he had tried—tried to fix things, tried to get close, tried to be the father she didn’t know how to let him be. But every time, something inside her broke. It wasn't just the pain of what he’d done, it was the weight of what they both couldn’t fix—the silence, the years of brokenness, of things unsaid, of trauma that had twisted their bond into something unnatural.
And now, as she sat there, trying to drink her coffee while a sense of longing gnawed at her gut, she couldn’t help but feel both sorry for him and furious with him. He had his own wounds, his own demons. She had learned to live with the ugly parts of herself, but in him, they were still raw. Still bleeding. Still unresolved. The man who had raised her to be a soldier, not a daughter.
So why did the thought of him trying to find her make her feel something so soft? Why did it make her want to curl into the corner of the café and cry, even though she hated herself for feeling that way?
Her fingers gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white. The childish part of her—the part she kept locked away in the deepest corners of her heart—wanted to be angry at him. She wanted to resent him for making it so difficult for her to escape. For always thinking he knew what was best, when what she needed was to get away. Get away from everything. From him. From Hydra. From the years of training, the blood, and the scars.
But then there was that other part of her—the part that had been a little girl once, still clinging to memories of a time when he had held her, even if it was only for a fleeting moment. The part of her that had wanted nothing more than to be loved, to be held, to be seen for more than just the weapon she was trained to be.
She hated that part of herself. And yet, it lingered. It haunted her. The war between her anger and her aching need for connection was always at the surface, never fully settling.
Instead of showing how hurt she was, she took a slow breath, pushing the feeling down again, as she always did. She finished her coffee in one bitter gulp and stood up, her movements mechanical, as if her body were already prepared to leave this moment behind.
But as she stepped out of the café, the image of him lingered—his eyes, his hair, his presence—haunting her in a way she couldn't escape.
For the first time in months, Rani realized she wasn’t just running from the world.
She was running from him. From the man who had tried to be her father, in a way no one else ever had.
She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the gathered tears swim in her eyes but never come down. Never show weakness, never cry. She took a deep breath. This was the life she had chosen. This was the price of freedom.
She would keep moving.
But the ache in her chest, the longing for him, was something she knew she’d never escape.
°•☆☆•°
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