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( CHAPTER SEVEN )
HE WOKE UP WITH A GASP, sweat beaded at his temples. Another dream, made of blurry flashes of faces he didn't know, places he couldn't recognize, but that still left him with an uncomfortable buzz right under his skin, as if his own flesh and bone were trying to leave him behind. James checked the time on the clock placed on the nightstand and saw he had barely slept through an hour, but reckoned it was the most he would get away with for the rest of the day, so he sat up.
He looked to his left and found Arden sound asleep in her bed. He was glad he hadn't woken her up: she had worked non-stop on his arm, he had seen the bone-tired look on her face right before he had...
"Don't... don't touch me."
He wasn't talking about that moment, when she had pressed a hand on his chest, touch warm, as she guided him to bed. It was meant for the night, if a fit of nightmares knocked him loose again, if she got the misguided idea of waking him up to stop it, to help him. He didn't want to hurt her like he already had, but from the look on her face after he said those words, he had managed to do so anyways.
He fisted the metal hand on the sheets beneath him, wrung the cloth between his fingers: the arm responded well to his commands. Arden had done a great job on it, with her limited resources. That brought him back to what she had asked him the other night: what was he going to do, now?
Harming her was out of the question. It was clear he wasn't ready to deal with the consequences, if it came down to a fight, to spilled blood. He had to leave her behind, leave her alone, now that their deal was over. If he wanted to to lay low though, but still be able to move around, he needed Arden and what she could provide: a car, money, a place to hide. He didn't even have a fake document on him, wouldn't last a few days like that unless he resorted to... other ways.
After the fight at the Triskelion he had spent the first days just hiding. He had gotten as far as his injured body managed to take him and collapsed in some abandoned building, his wounds slowly but surely healing themselves: when all the muscles in his body had stopped hurting, his mind had decided to play him a few tricks of its own. Suddenly he was hyper-aware of everything around him: he couldn't sleep, couldn't even close his eyes, didn't trust his own shadow. Paranoia had wrapped its gritty, cold fingers around his throat and he had stayed with bathed breath hidden in the dark for days, visions plaguing his mind, almost delirious. The scraps of memories that resurfaced were a jumble of voices, images and feelings he had a hard time recognizing.
He had emptied the entirety of his gun on a rat scuffling down a corner. Hadn't even hit the animal, but the accident had been enough of a wake-up call to get him to move. He had stolen some clothes and decided to risk a visit to the HYDRA base in D.C. It had been almost empty and he had dealt with what— who was left.
