With a list of names written in his little brown book, Bucky Barnes is determined to make amends for all he has done. But when he can't make amends with the man that saved the world, he has no other option but to turn to his daughter - Estella Stark.
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Estella stared at herself blankly in the ceiling to floor mirror in front of her, shaky and cold hands smoothening out the crinkles in her silky black dress. Everyone was waiting outside for the funeral for her father to begin, the quiet chatter seeping through the thin walls of the lake house. There was a quiet knock on her old bedroom door that she ignored, her puffy eyes only refocusing themselves on the picture of herself and her father at her high school graduation, the little polaroid picture being taped on the wall beside her mirror. Her heart sunk at the proud smile he expressed on his thin lips; his arm loosely wrapped around her shoulders.
Her heart sunk, but she had no tears left to cry. She almost felt numb. There was nothing more that she wanted than to crawl into her old bed and hide under the covers, wishing and praying that her dad would come back to her. But she did not, because that was childish, and she needed to stop running away from her grief like she had before the blip. She needed to face the loss of her dad head on, because to her, that was the only way to move on with her life – to accept his death.
"Stella?" Steve's soft voice bounced off the wooden walls as he entered her bedroom slowly, shutting the thick door once he was inside. She could barely make eye contact with the man as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his dress pants, a quiet sigh leaving his lips whilst his ocean eyes scanned the bedroom. "How are you holding up, kiddo?"
"Fan-fucking-tastic," Estella let out sarcastically as she teared her eyes away from the picture on the wall. "As you can expect, of course."
Steve nodded his head understandably. "Pepper's ready, but I wanted to make sure you are too."
Estella was never going to be ready to let go of her dad. She was never going to be ready to say goodbye or to accept the fact that he was never going to walk through those doors again, or that Morgan was going to be raised without him there. Her bottom lip that had been stained red with lipstick only began to tremble at the thought of Morgan completing all these milestones in her life without the dad that was there for all of Estella's. She squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a deep breath, before exhaling, hoping that all the negative energy vanished from her body just like that. That was what her therapist was telling her to do anyway, but it definitely was not working.
"He's proud of you, you know," Steve moved closer to her slowly, not wanting to overwhelm her. "He never shut up about you from the day that I met him."
"Of course he's proud to have a daughter that's me." Estella snapped her eyes open and pretended that all of the sadness she had been feeling only seconds ago was gone. "Who wouldn't be proud of a girl who is constantly on the verge of droppin' out of college."
A stifled laugh escaped his throat. "I don't know, Stella. But I know that I'm certainly proud of you. Always."
"Don't go all soft on me, old man." Estella forced a smile as she grabbed his forearm, because she darn well knew that there was no way that she was going to be able to walk out of that door without someone to keep her balanced. "I'll already have enough of that talk by literally everyone else in this entire fucking universe to tell me that after this funeral."
