Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 9: Hands On Your Tush

The first assignment after the incident in Yemen was a fucking disaster as usual, but for once it was actually neither Bucky nor Elena's fault. After she punched him in the face, he snapped and she told him off, they managed to train together for a few hours and he tried to let her know that moving forward, he'd make a better effort to not be an asshole but that didn't exactly mean things went as smoothly as they should have. At the very least, Elena was back on her feet after having the snot beaten out of her but that was mostly because Dr Cho was a brilliant physician with a state-of-the-art medical facility capable of regenerating flesh and bone, not that Elena seemed keen on using any of it. Still, the two of them were back on the mission queue in a snap.

This time, Lieutenant Torres had been asked by the Air Force to escort a scientist and all of his very important research and equipment to a lab in Geneva. Everyone else was already occupied with other assignments so Rhodey sent Bucky and Elena to assist. It was supposed to be quick and breezy, plus non-undercover ops were always much more successful for them. Had either of them known before they left the compound that they would be thoroughly knocked on their asses and then left bleeding, broken, and stranded in the French countryside with no ride home, Bucky was positive neither one of them would have shown up for work that day.

They nodded when they saw each other as they entered the compound that morning and there was barely a sign on Elena's face that she had nearly been beaten to death. Rhodey briefed them because of course Steve was unavailable and Bucky tried really hard not to take full control of the operation like he usually did. In fact, he let Elena look at the dossier first, sliding it across the table to her only for her to slide it back to him and say she was okay with him looking at it first. Admittedly, things had been weird since he and Elena had gotten into that fight.

It was an odd and overly vulnerable moment for both of them, she berated him for treating her like a second-rate sidekick instead of an equal, and for the first time, he was realizing that he wasn't the only person walking the fine line between sanity and madness. Bucky discovered very unexpectedly that Elena participated in a cruel form of self-deprecation. Then he admitted that sometimes... Well, sometimes he did the same. Bucky actually hadn't seen her or heard from Elena since then, he'd gone back to Brooklyn the next day and spent the week trying to understand her headspace, but he ended up having a nightmare of her bleeding and on fire in his bathroom mirror instead and it so badly disturbed the hell out of him that he hadn't shaved at all that week because he covered up his mirror with newspapers in a panic.

Bucky of course managed to sort himself out before they left for their assignment and finally shaved when Stark made a joke that he looked homeless. He read the mission file while he got rid of his stubble, he was always good at multitasking and things were relatively quiet when they boarded the Quinjet and headed to the rendezvous point. He handed the file off to Elena right before they left and he was pleasantly surprised to see that she was actually taking the time to make herself familiar with it, although she seemed to have a hard time getting through it without her reading glasses which she, of course, forgot to bring.

She must have rubbed her keys a thousand times and kept squinting and rubbing the back of her neck. Regardless, she read it and they tried not to fight and instead acted like civilized human beings as they formulated a game plan. They were considering this mission a trial run as to whether or not they could actually work together without getting into a screaming match or having things go terribly wrong. The first half of the flight they laid down ground rules but not too many because rules seemed to overwhelm Elena but the terms were fairly simple:

1) Neither of them would be designated lead unless the mission specifically required someone to take charge and the person with the most experience in that particular situation would be the one to take over.