Do You Trust Me? // Bucky Barnes

16

Bucky

It had been two hours since he had overheard Ava's story. Two hours of imagining how it would have felt to come home to no Steve. No Talia. No Jamie or Nathaniel. He had spent two agonising hours, one hundred and twenty heart breaking minutes, clawing away at that emptiness he carried with him all the time now and letting it fester until it consumed him and Bucky Barnes could only come to one conclusion: the Ava Hall Torres kept talking about was dead and gone. She died the minute she learnt her family was gone. And in her place was someone broken and lonely and so scared she made a stupid deal with someone who now wanted her dead.

Bucky hated it.

"Have you considered -" Steve's voice pulled him from the dark spiral of pain he seemed to slip into when he thought about what Ava had spoken about and back to his current setting: the Rogers family kitchen. "-that maybe there is more to her than you know Buck?"

He furrowed his brow as he watched Steve cook. Yes. "No." 

"Because maybe," Steve continued, "this whole family thing is the very tip of the iceberg with her. Maybe she needs you to help her."

Steve moved from one end of the counter to another, grabbing a roll of paper towels and tearing one off before shoving it towards Jamie, who was sitting with her face buried in a book and her spoon dangling about three inches away from her face. A small puddle of milk had formed on the table.

"All I know," Bucky said, running a hand over his face as he leant back in his chair and tried to clear his mind of all confusion surrounding Ava Hall, "is that she's hiding something big, Steve."

A small scoff pulled both super soldier's attention to the teenager now closing her book. "Uncle Bucky, I love you but you're so stupid sometimes."

"What?" Bucky half laughed as Jamie raised an eyebrow at him, daring him to challenge her.

"Of course she's hiding something." She spoke slowly, deliberately, as if Bucky was too dense to follow her train of thought if she didn't slow it down for him. "She works for a bad person. She's probably done quite a few questionable things - and I'm not talking about her wardrobe choices."

"Jamie -" Bucky sat a little straighter at the insult.

"Yeah, I know. They're Mom's old jeans and your t-shirts. Get the girl some clothes, Barnes. She needs her own stuff." Jamie stood, moving to the sink to deposit her bowl and Bucky glanced to Steve. Steve was definitely trying not to laugh. "But, as I was saying: she's not a bad person at all. In fact, I kind of like her. And I think she's hiding the bad things from you because she doesn't want us all to hate her. I think that maybe, just maybe, you've found someone who is scared and alone and made the wrong choice when she came back from wherever you all were. And I think you need to lay off of her, Uncle Bucky. Because despite the fact you seem to want to make her miserable every time you see her, I don't think you actually like seeing her upset."

Bucky couldn't help the chuckle that lodged in his throat as he stared at the young woman now standing in front of him. Her arms were folded over her chest and her face was contorted into a Talia-esque scowl and Bucky was so proud of her that his chest hurt. "When did you get so wise, Baby Widow?"

"Definitely during that whole 'five years without Uncle Bucky' thing," Steve laughed as he grabbed a pile of books from the table and held them out to his daughter. She took them with a sigh.

"Listen," she said, "I'm not expecting you to get all soft on her. Even if you do insist on calling her дорогой every five minutes. But, just try to remember that when you came back after the blip, you got to come home to us Uncle B; to family. She came back to no one."  She shoved her books into her back pack before looking up at Bucky with honest eyes. "Besides, sometimes people end up doing bad things because they don't have a choice, remember?"