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( CHAPTER EIGHT )
IT WAS A TESTAMENT to their time spent together that Arden didn't even try to get behind the wheel the next day. She let James drive: he didn't want to stretch it out like they had before and she had agreed on the one-day trip, even if reluctantly so.
She negotiated a few bathroom breaks and lunch, but that was it. James wanted her back at the safe house by night, like a stereotypical overprotective dad with their precious daughter. Arden snickered a bit at the thought, but also felt irrationally prickled at the way he wanted to get rid of her. She tried to distract herself.
"Why D.C.? Isn't that a bit too close...?" Too close to what was left of the Triskelion, too close to Captain America.
Arden had always thought she wasn't much of a noisy person, but she had to admit that James— the Winter Soldier's history, was something that inexplicably drew her in. How had he ended up into HYDRA's hands? Who was he before? What was he going to do now that he was on the run? Now that their lives had somehow interlaced, she was having a hard time pretending she wasn't curious about the man's past, his motives.
"The Smithsonian." She was surprised he had bothered to answer her, and a little pleased too.
Speaking to James seemed like a gamble, a shot in the dark: she never knew if she would hit the target, if he would actively share something or opt for keeping quiet. It weirdly felt like she was trying to get a moody kid to open up, and every word felt like a step forward in the right direction. Except for the fact that the moody kid was a highly trained assassin who had abducted her, kind of.
"Can't say I ever pegged you for a nerd," she quipped. He gave her an unimpressed side-glance, clearly detecting the sarcasm in her voice. Arden blinked innocently.
"So, which is your favorite? The Museum of Natural History? Or are you a space geek?"
No reply this time, of course. She wouldn't be so lucky as to get two full answers in rapid succession, she thought. Arden gave him a scathing glance.
"Can you even walk through the metal detector with that arm of yours?"
James looked deeply unamused, so Arden considered it a win.
"It's titanium, right?" He didn't reply again and this time Arden was sure he was doing it on purpose, just for the sake of ignoring her. She almost grinned.
"You know, metal detectors don't actually detect metal, but the magnetic field it produces. Titanium has a low magnetic field, so it shouldn't set them off, but that's a lot of titanium you got there," she explained, eyes fixed on his gloved hand. She saw his fingers twitch on the wheel like a by-product of her staring. Arden wondered if the metal arm ever made him feel self-conscious: it seemed like a stupid thought to have about The Winter Soldier, but it was still a prosthesis. She knew very well that some people had a hard time coming to terms with missing a limb and living with the replacement of it. Not her sister though.
