Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 12: Left-Handed, Sleeps With a Knife

You learn a lot of things about a person when you aren't ignoring them and ever since Bucky had decided to actually try working with Elena instead of against her, he learned many things about her, some of which he already knew and other things which he hadn't expected. Sometimes he found out casually, other times he found out when she was having a mental nervous breakdown in India or when she was drunkenly making out with a go-go dancer. 

Of course, he knew that she was born in Symkaria but grew up in a Romanian orphanage, had a strange relationship with her faith because of her fucked up upbringing, thought she killed her mother by losing her shoes as an infant, was an emotionally stunted child and that she had actually done prison time. However, Bucky didn't know that Elena had spent her entire prison sentence in solitary confinement. She mentioned it in a very laid-back manner while they were in Estonia and he couldn't help but stare at her like she had one too many screws loose, which she did but he was trying to be nice.

"Um, why is that relevant?" Bucky asked as he sat on the coffee table in their motel room.

"Well, one of us needs to hide in this chest for several hours to record the Moldovan and you don't like small spaces." Elena pointed out, tapping the old trunk laid out in front of them.

"What the fuck does solitary have to do with that though?" He questioned, trying to understand her thought process.

"It means I'm used to being in small dark places by myself for a really long time so I have no problem with it. This is me being nice and offering to sit in a damn box so you don't have to." She explained like it was nothing.

"... Okay." He said a little confused.

"Wait, so you were in solitary the entire time?" Bucky asked almost immediately after, watching her climb into the wooden chest so she could figure out which way would be the best to squeeze herself inside comfortably.

"Which time?" Elena questioned back, standing up to reevaluate the size of the container.

"... The last time?" He posed, not fully remembering exactly how many stints behind bars the woman in front of him had under her belt.

"Uhh, yeah, for about five years or so." She told him nonchalantly.

"So you spent that entire prison sentence in solitary? Starting from the age of... Seventeen?" Bucky questioned because even for a lunatic like her, that seemed excessive.

"Yes." Elena answered matter-of-factly, laying on her back and curling her legs into her chest.

"Why?" Bucky asked, getting answers out of her was like pulling teeth.

"Because I didn't play well with others." She huffed as she fumbled around in the trunk.

"That's it? You didn't play well with others?" He scoffed and she glared at him sharply from the container before getting back to her task.

"What do you want me to say? That I stabbed another inmate? I didn't by the way." She noted firmly, flailing about as she contorted herself which was hardly at all.

Elena was like that, always spurting out random details but never going in-depth about them unless she was having an emotional fit and she always left Bucky with a million more questions than he started out with.

"I'm just trying to make conversation." Bucky sighed and he really hated getting to know people.

"I went in for my own protection. I was hurting myself..." Elena admitted after she had stopped rolling around.

"Like... Cutting?" He practically mumbled.

"It was in a supermax, they wouldn't even give me shoelaces. What would I have cut myself with?" She questioned and in retrospect, it was a stupid question on his part.