Possibility of Tomorrow - 24

 

Cont...

Waking up tied to a chair bolted to the group and gagged was high on Bucky's short list of things that could make him mad. Getting pummeled without an explanation was also on said list. He vaguely remembered someone taking a picture of him after they'd beat the living daylights out of him, and maybe talking, but the whole ordeal was a bit fuzzy. 

One minute he was walking out of a bakery with some treats; he'd gotten to surprise the team the next he was here. He had no clue where he was, and by the way his brain felt floaty and detached from his body, they had the drugs designed to knock him out. They finally wore off maybe two days after the beating, and he'd been able to take stock of his surroundings.

 He guessed it was an old factory by the layout and huge tanks with orange gas in them. There was a table to the left of him that had suspicious bulges under the table cloth on top of it that didn't inspire hope. He was in front of what looked like a testing room. It was a bright white airtight room with an entrance on both sides and a large viewing window facing him. To the right of him was a TV on a rolling stand which also made him uncomfortable. He couldn't see any cameras, but then again, no one had come in or out of the rather large room he was in. But he had a feeling the facility was much bigger than he could tell. 

Hours passed, and no one came, so he entertained himself by examining the counsel that looked like it controlled the testing room. There were many controls, but the only one he could clearly see was the red button (so cliche) the read RELEASE. The TV was plugged in, but the cords went off into the darkness, so there weren't any clues there. The ominous table wasn't giving away any hints either. So really, Bucky was just left in a really boring room. 

He tried getting out, but the chair was bolted to the ground, making breaking it impossible. They had EMP jammers which they'd somehow gotten into his prosthetic, making it deadweight. They'd also somehow gotten ahold of enough old Hydra-age restraints for him, which made him more nervous than anything else combined. 

Sure, Hydra was gone, and their stuff was circulating the black market, but one doesn't simply write off the possibilities, and they weren't good. Both the drugs and the restraints spoke to the notion this was premeditated. And Bucky really didn't like premeditated. 

About three hours after he woke up, he heard footsteps. A group of men came in from behind him. Their military boots hit the floor solidly. They were definitely trained. He was careful not to move as they came into his peripheral. Four of them were armed to the teeth while one was dressed casually. 

The causal man turned and glanced at Bucky and then took a double-take, "Would you look at that. We were under the impression you would take longer to wake up. My apologies for the wait." 

Bucky raised an eyebrow at the guy. 

"Right! My bad." The man pulled out the gag. 

Bucky gave him a skeptical look, "What do you want?"

 "Well, not you, that's for sure." The guy turned and grabbed a chair to sit across from Bucky, "I want something you took from me." 

Bucky resisted rolling his eyes, "Which is?" 

"The Girl." Bucky's blood went cold.

The man leaned back, observing him, "Funny thing, I sent my best operative to kill you and your little vigilante friends two years ago. You threw her out of a building. I thought you killed her. Then, to my everlasting surprise, she pops up in one of my safe houses. And then another and then another. She kept looting houses but never coming home. And then I realized you stole her from me." 

Bucky leveled the man with a seething look, "You can't steal what no one owns."

 "That's where you're wrong. She's mine. But I suppose at the end of the day it doesn't matter. She's coming home soon enough." The man shrugged.

 "She's not anyone's!" Bucky snapped. 

"And she's definitely not yours." The man countered. 

That stung. Bucky glared at the man, trying not to think of how he'd left things with Darling the last time they'd been together.

 The man chuckled, watching him with an eagle eye, "You thought I didn't know? I knew from the beginning who she was—the potential in her blood. The scientists were looking for results then and now, immediate gratification. They had no patience. But I did, I raised her, I taught her, I know her better than you ever will. And frankly, it's just icing on the cake that you're her biological donor." 

Bucky was seething, "What do you want to gloat?" 

"Oh no," the man smiled and shook his head, "I can do that with you dead just fine. What I want is to prove myself right. I want to be able to say that the goal set all those years ago is accomplished. I want to see if all my work has paid off."

 "How?" Bucky was fishing for information, and he had a feeling this guy was the type to talk. 

"I want her to finish the job she failed in Istanbul." The man shrugged, "Simple enough."

 "She's not going to do it." Bucky retorted. 

The man chuckled, "Are you sure? The world balances on a knife's edge. It all comes crashing down in a second."

 "I know what you did to her. She's not going to be willing to work with you or kill me." Bucky shook his head, "She might not even show up."

 "Oh, she will." The man smiled, getting up, "She will. You're her Achilles heel. She'll always come for you. But then again," the man turned back to him after putting the chair back by the table, smiling smugly, "you knew that too." 

Bucky's gut sank. He did know that. The same way he always knew she'd get them out of trouble.

 The man pulled his phone out of his back pocket for a moment before smiling widely, "Right on schedule." He turned to Bucky with a worrisome glint in his eyes that was pure anticipation, "Shall we watch some entertainment?" 

The TV to Bucky's right flicked on, and Bucky's gut sank farther. It showed a security video in suspiciously good quality. He watched with a sinking feeling as the door to what he guessed was the outside eased open, and Darling slid in. She closed the door silently and looked around before crossing the room again and exiting the camera view. The display switched in time for her to enter the next camera, which covered a hall. 

"Well, there she is. Finally home. Let's see how much she's learned." The man texted something into his phone, and the TV split its image to show a STRIKE team deploying as Darling kept going down the hall clueless of the danger. 

"No! You'll kill her!" Bucky snapped, horrified at the man.

 "Only if she learned nothing in her seventeen years." The man said nonchalantly.

 Bucky watched, horrified as the STRIKE team began clearing rooms coming towards her as Darling passed from one hall to another. They met in the third hall, and Bucky's heart was in his throat as they clashed.

 "Isn't she perfect?" The man said softly in awe like one would with a pet or a car to show it off, "Deadly and precise. The perfect combination." 

Bucky watched, riveted to the screen as she almost gracefully cut through the team. She found a handgun in one of them and looked around before finding the camera. She shot it out, making the screen go dark. 

The man sighed behind Bucky, "She's my perfect creation." 

"You're sick." Bucky breathed as the camera feed switched again to watch her go through another STRIKE team.

 "No, I am a genius. There is a fine line in between." The man corrected as the screen went dark again, "The Red Room was too harsh, the labs of Hydra too slow. No, you needed a mix of only the good and none of the bad." 

Darling maneuvered through a laser grid with ease next exiting out the other door without breaking a sweat. 

"You're blood, my teaching; she's unstoppable." 

Darling took out another guard and blacked out the camera. 

"Let's see how she deals with this." The man swiped on his phone, and it showed two men waiting on the other side of the door. 

The door opened, and the instant it did, one of them grabbed Darling's hair and threw her across the room. She let out a cry of surprise as she slammed into the wall. She sounded madder than in pain as the two men advanced in her. She'd lost her gun, and they were both armed. Bucky could see her calculating how fast they both would be and if she could disarm one of them as she hopped up into a fighting stance. She was brutal as she lunged at them. She strangled one with her bare hands before beating the other. 

"It's like watching you, except younger fast and better." The man observed as she shot out the camera in the next hall.

Bucky couldn't help but flinch at the force she used. The man wasn't wrong; that was the worse part. He knew that deadly force; it was the same he used. Everything she did, down to the way she stalked down the hall, was him. It was painfully obvious. "She's better than I ever will be. She'll kill you." Bucky warned.

 The man chuckled, "How naive are you? She won't get the chance." He came out from behind Bucky and tapped the tanks with the swirling orange gas in them, "This, my friend, is dream serum. It combines the best parts of scopolamine, desomorphine, and SCRAs. It sharpens a person's focus and attention while ridding them of imperfections like inquires and personality. We call it the Haze." 

They call it the Haze, Darling's timid voice echoed through his head, Once they hook you on the drug, you're theirs. If you try and rebel, they let you withdraw—everyone who has died. Bucky began furiously cursing the man out and trying desperately to get out. 

The man sighed like one would with a stubborn child and shoved the gag back in, muffing the stream of curses still spewing from Bucky's mouth, "For an American hero, you have quite the mouth." 

Bucky glared and just kept cursing at the miserable excuse of a human. The man frowned and flicked through his phone, "There she is." 

The TV showed Darling easing through a bright hall gun first at the ready. She shot out the camera, and a moment later, she showed up in the next camera. She shot that one out too. Then to Bucky's horror, the door on the other side of the testing room opened. 

Darling stepped through, slowly taking in the scene before crossing the room and trying the door handle. Bucky tried to get the point across that it was all a trap, but she didn't see. She was in an intense staring match with the casual man as she stepped back and double-tapped the door handle. It fell off, and she slammed her weight into it, but it didn't give. She looked down at it in surprise and then back at the man. 

He smiled, "You didn't think I'd make it that easy, did you?" 

Darling's eyes got wide, and she whipped around in time to see the other door close and seal. She turned back to the viewing window slowly. Her trigger finger taped on the barrel of the gun as she considered her predicament. She proceeded to empty the rest of her magazine into the viewing glass window right where the man was standing. After emptying it, the glass was marked but not cracked at all. 

The man grinned and leaned forward towards her, "Bulletproof glass, a safety precaution." He reached forwards and pressed the red button Bucky had noticed earlier, and there was a loud hissing sound. 

Darling's eyes went wide as she rushed forward using the barrel of the gun to try and beat the door latch into giving as the strange orange gas, the Haze, began leaking into the room.

 "Ah, my darling, always so predictable. But then again, that a good thing now and then." The man chuckled almost fondly as he leaned against the glass viewing wall arching her struggle to get the door open. 

Bucky was still struggling to get out of his own predicament but had a clear view through the door of Darling's face as she frantically tried to get the door open. The clear air was rapidly disappearing, replaced with a sickening orange filling the room. It was terrifyingly obvious that the door wouldn't open before the Haze became all you could breathe. Darling seemed to realize this because as it rose to her waist, she stopped banging on the door. Instead, she pressed her hand against the window and looked right at Bucky.

I'm sorry. She mouthed silently. 

Bucky's heart broke, and he tried to explain his feelings through his eyes. He was sorry too for many things.

 The Haze swirled up to her chest as she began throwing her body into the door in a vain effort to get out. Darling started coughing as she inhaled the Haze, gagging as her lungs burned for oxygen. She slid to the floor, wheezing and struggling to breathe anything else forgotten. The man pushed off the wall and looked down at his watch, timing something. Bucky screaming in frustration and anger. He had them where he wanted them; couldn't he see he was suffocating her? 

After a good minute, the man flipped the release valve off, and the Haze drained out of the room. Once the Haze was gone, the door unsealed with a hiss. The man pulled it open, and Darling fell out of the room like a rag doll. She was unconscious as the man dragged her out and laid her down on the ground. Bucky watched for the rise and fall of her chest, which came much slower than it should have. The man checked her pulse before grabbing an oxygen mask and securing it to her face. A few nerve-wracking seconds later and she woke up. 

Darling's eyes flew open as she gasped in the oxygen. Her eyes were cloudy and hazy and unfocused. 

"Deep breath, my dear." The man said, helping Darling sit up. 

Darling blinked bleary up at him trying to connect words with sounds. She finally cleared up enough for her to make eye contact with the man. 

He smiled, turning off the air and pulling it off her face, "Welcome home, my dear."

 Darling smiled dopey and sighed, leaning into the man's hand as he brushed the hair out of her face, "Home." 

"Yeah, little one. You're home." The man helped Darling up and pulled her into his side in a possessive way, "you still feel loopy?" 

Darling nodded, looking unfocused again. 

"Okay. Here you go." The man handed her a bottle of water, "Drink." She did, and after downing the whole bottle, she was steady on her feet. "Better?" The man ran his hand through her hair that had been pulled loose. 

Darling nodded once, "Yeah."

 "Yeah? No double vision, no uneasiness, no nausea?" The man pulled her closer to him.

"No." Darling shook her head.

 "Good. We do have matters to discuss." The man nodded. 

Bucky hadn't wanted to kill anyone in a long time, but at that moment, he had never wanted to kill someone more. The man was vile. 

"The Istanbul matter?" The man finished ignoring Bucky, glaring a hole in his head. 

"Oh." Darling deflated a bit a and Bucky's heart went straight to his throat. 

"Yeah, 'oh.' You didn't do too well there. You lost your perfect record. What was up with that?"

The man asked softly. 

Darling shrugged, "He caught me."

 "He caught you? Well, we'll have to work on that. But you can redeem yourself here." The man reached over and grabbed one of the handguns from the table and handed it to Darling, "All you have to do is kill him." 

Darling looked over at Bucky for the first time since the Haze, and all he saw was a hazy observation, no recognition, no feeling, "Okay." She took the gun and stepped away from the man, coming towards Bucky. The man watched with rapt attention and motioned for one of his men to remove the gag. 

Bucky didn't scream or beg; that would be fairly useless. He'd come to terms with the fact that he couldn't get out of his predicament without much more time and effort. He was going to die, and Darling was going to kill him. He knew what she was going through, the inability to choose what to do, the inability to think or act outside of the perimeters given—the lack of control. But one day, she would wake up, one day she would regain control, and she would remember. And the guilt would eat her like it had almost devoured him. Bucky couldn't let that happen, couldn't let it destroy her. He couldn't change the past, but maybe his words could change the future, "It's okay. It won't hurt. Everything will be okay. You'll be okay. I'll be fine."

 Darling didn't react to his words, so he could only hope they would be seeds that she would one day remember. She raised her right hand and supported it with her left, leveling the barrel with Bucky's head, perfect form. Bucky closed his eyes to spare them both from staring into each other's eyes when it would happen. He'd missed his chance at family; he'd missed his chance at so much. He could only wish now that his daughter somehow did not. 

Two shots rang out, and Bucky's eyes flew open because he knew what getting shot felt like, and that wasn't it. He opened his eyes in time to see Darling shoot the other two guards. The man dove for the guns on the table as his plan fell to shambles around him. Darling pivoted and shot his hand before he could get ahold of a weapon.

 The man screamed and curled around his injured hand, weapon forgotten. Darling lowered the gun and looked around at her work like she always did when assessing a situation. She seemed satisfied with the outcome and turned back to Bucky. With a playful grin that assured him it was the Darling he knew and not some robot, she pulled a knife out of her boot and carefully pried out the EMP jammers in his arm.

 Once they were out, she handed him the knife and turned back to the man withering on the ground. Darling smirked and reached up into her mouth, and tossed out a retainer device. "You know, you're whole dream drug really hits a brick wall when you know a genius in chemical nerve toxins." Darling chuckled, grabbing the man's collar and dragging him out from under the table. 

The man glared, sitting up, "What? Are you going to kill me?" 

Darling laughed, "No. That would make us no different. No, you're going to tell me what I want to know, and if I ever see you again after leaving, I will kill you." 

"And here I thought you only cared about him." The man laughed harshly, standing.

 "Matter of opinion." Darling shrugged, pulling the table cloth off the table, "October 2000, you transferred 100 grand to an unmarked account. What was it for?" 

"You- you- wanna-" the man burst out laughing, "You wanna know that? You already know."

 "Maybe. But I want to hear it from your mouth." Darling grabbed a syringe from the table and crossed the room back to the tanks. 

"It was for you. But you know that." The man chuckled. 

"And the Haze? Where'd you get that?" Darling asked, messing with one of the tanks. 

"That was a hybrid from everything between opioids to ripoff super serums. My own concoction." The man sounded downright smug. Bucky unconsciously stepped forward, now armed with one of the guns from the table. 

Darling gave him a warning look, "Well, I suppose that covers everything." 

"So now you know what you want to know. So, now what, you have him kill me?" The man spat, gesturing to Bucky. 

Darling snorted, "Why does everyone expect me to kill them?"

"You said he would." The man pointed out dryly. 

"You know, when I said, 'he,' I didn't specify who 'he' was." Darling turned around with an equally smug look.

 The man had about ten seconds to look super confused before 200 lbs of man collided with his sending him careening into the viewing window. 

"Look who finally made it." Darling teased as Steve hauled the man up by his collar and dragged him towards Darling.

 "What took you so long?" Bucky chuckled. 

"Securing our exit. What are you doing, sitting around?" Steve retorted. 

"Punk." Bucky grinned. 

"What, are you all going to kill me?" The man spat, struggling in Steve's grip. 

"See!" Darling gestured with one hand to him.

 "No, we're not going to kill you. We're just going to give you some of your medicine." Steve grinned, tightening his grip. 

Darling jabbed the syringe into his neck and pushed the plunger in. "He's good." Darling nodded, putting the syringe down.

 Steve released the man with a shove, "If by good you mean an idiot, then yeah, he's good."

 "That's a taste of your 'concoction.' Enough to hurt. You should be fine, give or take four or five days." Darling grinned, "Come at me again; you'll enter a whole new world of pain." The man fell back, twitching as the drug took hold. "Let's go." Darling turned and jogged off.

 "Where are we going?" Bucky asked, jogging to keep up. 

"The other kids, we're not leaving without the others. Parker figured out a way to stall the withdraw. Then we can get them somewhere they can rehabilitate safely." Darling explained, jogging down the halls. 

"Can we do that?" Steve asked, "Do we have the time?" 

"We'll make time." Darling punched in a code and opened a door and froze, "Oh my-" 

The two men stepped in and gasp. About a dozen kids ranging from under ten to their elder teens were all lying on the ground, dead. 

"They're all- oh my-" Darling's breathing began to get erratic as she looked around at the carnage. She couldn't even bring herself to cry the shock was too great. These were her friends, her family. She'd grown up with these kids. Practically raised some of them. And now they were all, gone.  

Bucky pulled her into a tight embrace as she began to shake, "Shhhh, you're alright. It's okay. It'll all be okay. I know."

 "We need to go," Steve said quietly and urgently. 

Bucky nodded and guided her out of the room, "Come on. We need to leave, okay?" 

Darling nodded, numb, "Okay." 

Steve lead the way, this time up countless flights of stairs towards the roof. They made it to the top floor of the factory floor they had been in earlier and had to cross the catwalk since the last flight of stairs was on the other side of the room. 

"Wait." Darling left Bucky's side and grabbed the release valve for one of the tanks. She released each tank so that the floor was covered in gas and slowly rising. "There, no one should have it." 

"Alright, come on." Steve nodded. The air outside was cold, and the jet was coming in slowly on the other end of the building. 

"This is really inconvenient," Bucky muttered. 

"Yeah, well, you try evading the shifting satellite grids, and we'll see what you come up with." Steve laughed back, "Sam's our pilot. Nat and Wanda have our contingency on the ground."

 "That's not the quinjet." Bucky noticed.

 "No. It's on loan from the Jordanian government. We needed to cover our tracks. I called in a favor." Darling explained automatically.

 "How diplomatic of you." Bucky smiled, pulling her closer.

 "I also grabbed these." Darling produced a vial of Haze and a thumb drive, "Here. For safekeeping."

 Bucky placed them into a compartment in his arm as they got to the other end of the building. Two shots rang out, and they whipped around to find the man they had injected with the Haze stumbling towards them, gun in hand. 

"Seriously?" Steve groaned. 

Bucky returned fire. 

"No!" Darling grabbed him. 

Before he could ask why the warehouse exploded. The force threw them back as the building fell apart. Darling screeched. 

Bucky rolled over to see why and found he couldn't see her, "Darling!" 

"HELP!" Darling screamed. 

Bucky realized what had happened; she'd fallen through the glass ceiling and was holding on beyond where he could see. "I'm coming!" 

Bucky laid down and crawled out to where her trajectory took her. He finally spotted her holding onto the metal skylight opening that was collapsing in but currently not moving. The groaning of metal told him that would change.

It was burning. Everything was burning. The metal under his chest hurt as it burned under him. Ignoring the heat and pain, Bucky slid out as far as he could on his stomach and reached. "Take my hand!" 

Darling stared up at him with absolute terror, "I'll fall!" 

That was true; if she slipped or missed even a little, she would fall to a fiery, painful death. If she didn't try, she'd fall too. She had to grab on before what she was holding onto gave way.

 "No, you won't; I'll catch you, I promise. Now swing up with your left hand and reach with your right. You got it." Bucky directed, trying to sound calm as he heard the metal under her groan in protest. 

Darling nodded, "Okay." 

She began generating momentum with her hips back and forth. One, two, three! She pushed up, and Bucky strained. Reaching, reaching, reaching.

 Then the handhold she was holding gave out. She let out a shriek of shock and fear. And they missed, barely. There was screaming. 

Her wide eyes were completely terrified as she fell, still reaching for him. She smacked against some wreckage, and then she was gone. Fallen into the imploding structure of metal and fire. 

And then it was quiet all too quickly. No Darling screaming. No fire crackling. No groaning metal. Nothing. Bucky couldn't breathe all of a sudden maybe it was the smoke, but he couldn't breathe as he stared down at the fire and debris, looking for anything.

 Suddenly someone was shaking him, "We have to go." Bucky blinked, wondering when Steve had shown up. "Buck, we need to go." Steve grabbed him, pulling him up. 

Go? Didn't he know she was down there? They couldn't go! 

"Come on!" Steve was pulling him towards the jet, and for some reason, Bucky's mouth and limbs wouldn't work. He wanted to scream and yank back. They couldn't leave Darling behind! Not when- They couldn't! 

They were a few feet from the jet when his limbs finally obeyed him, stopping and pulling back from Steve, "No!" 

Steve turned and looked back at him with gravity in his stance, "We have to, come on."

 "Darling-" Bucky choked then. Darling had fallen, and it was all his fault.

 "I know." Steve's quiet admission shocked Bucky still. 

Then he was on the jet, Steve had pulled him on, the door was closing, "No!" 

"I know, Buck." Steve's voice fell on void ears. 

"No, we have to go get her." Bucky strained against Steve's hold like sheer will alone could overcome Steve Rogers and an airborne aircraft, "No!" 

"Buck-"

 "No!" 

"Bucky."

 "No!" 

"She's gone, Buck." 

Bucky stopped straining, "No." The quiet words knocked everything out of him, "She was right there."

 "I know." The restraining arms turned into a gentle embrace. 

"I almost had her." 

"Shhhh."

 "I-" I could have reached farther. I could have been faster. I could have saved her. I could have told her I accepted her. I could have told her I loved her. I could have had a daughter. 

Bucky sobbed. 

It slipped out, and it surprised him. The dam burst, and he sat on the floor of the jet covered in burns and soot tear tracked evident down his dirty face and shook as he sobbed. Steve was there, his only link to sanity, holding onto him lest he drifted away. 

When they landed, he had no more tears to shed, not from lack of trying. He'd emptied everything out on the jet; now he was just numb. 

If his mind had been working at all, he'd be frightened how Winter like he was then. But he wasn't all there; he was just a numb shell, part of him waiting for Darling to come on smirk on her face asking what went wrong this time. But she didn't. She would never. 

He tried not to think about it as Shuri kicked the other nurses out to tend to him. She was gentle and quiet but insistent like she expected resistance even though he followed her directions methodically. He didn't think about how she acted like his little sister in the way she scolded as she fixed him up, darling Rebecca. Which only reminded him of Darling. He sobbed again. There were no tears. He just curled up in a ball on the bed and shook. 

The burns healed before the end of the week, as did any of the other numerous wounds from the debacle. He did not.

 Bucky drifted from one thing to another, numb, halfway there. More a ghost now than he had ever been. Barely eating, barely sleeping. Barely there. 

Part of him wished he had died in that warehouse Darling had broken him out of. Then at least he wouldn't feel like the in-between. Then at least she wouldn't be gone. 

Steve worried. Steve always worried. What was new? 

Steve visited more often now. Once a week. Sometimes twice. Bucky couldn't muster up the will to care. 

They were sitting outside his hut staring at the little lake as twilight came, almost time for Steve to leave. Both were quiet as they sat on the grass. Steve had tried and failed to get Bucky to talk or eat or interact or anything. He'd given up but figured the company would not be objected to. So they sat and watched color fade from the sky to black. 

"Is this what you felt like?" 

Steve looked over in surprise at Bucky's hoarse question. The man looked nothing like the man Steve had gotten used to.  His face was pale, his eyes were dimmed red, and his voice sounded strained. His hair was a mess and the bags under his eyes attested to the sleepless nights. He was thin, he was numb, he was lost. 

"Is this what you felt like when I fell? Knowing you could have fixed it if only you could have done more?" 

"Buck," Steve should have seen that this was where his friend's mind would go, "This isn't your fault." 

"But it is! I could have reached her. I could have been faster. I could-" Bucky broke off after his voice broke and stopped talking. I could have saved her.

It didn't need to be said for Steve to hear it. "The what-ifs won't help you, Buck. You can't change the past." 

Bucky didn't say anything for a long time, "Does it get better?" 

Steve put his arm around his best friend's shoulders, "Eventually, a little bit." In the blackness of grief that suffocated him, Bucky wasn't so sure. 

Time passed, but Bucky was so lost he didn't know how much or when it was. But it was too darn nice outside. Some days he relished the quiet. Some days he cured the happiness the world seemed to give. Every day he was reminded how his once-perfect world was incomplete. The field she'd told him who she really was, blooming now with wildflowers (goodness how she'd love them), empty without her there. His dining room where they'd held family dinners, where healing had begun with her bright grin and teasing laughter, desolate without her light. The world seemed grey. 

Please tell me what you think in the comments!

Follow if you like it!