Stranger Who Knows All My Secrets [A Marvel FanFic]

Chapter 42: A Shining Affliction

Dying is one of the few things a person can do that everyone they know will hate them for no matter the circumstances in which it happened. A child could lose a parent in a car crash at the age of thirty-six and that child would hurt, ache and wonder how could you leave me? A boy could lose his girlfriend to suicide at the age of seventeen and that boy would hurt, ache and wonder why would you leave me? A family could lose their patriarch to natural causes at the age of ninety-eight and they would still hurt, ache and wonder but why'd you have to go so soon? 

Death has a million different configurations but no matter how it happens, the living are always left harboring a small amount of resentment, even if they claim they don't.

Bucky admitted to Elena that he was upset with his sister Elizabeth when she passed away, sure she was ninety-one and had lived a full, long life but that didn't mean crap to him the first few weeks. He was pissed, furious that she didn't hold out for him a little longer. If she had just waited a little longer before kicking the bucket he knew he would have worked up the courage to go and see her! He was angry with her, angry for leaving him as the last member of the  Barnes family but really, he was just using it to cover up his own damn guilt.

Guilt that he hadn't been a stronger person, guilt that he left her waiting for him to come home, that he hadn't been a better brother to her. Bucky admitted to Elena that he actually prayed a lot in weeks after Izzy died, he had never believed in God and he sure as hell didn't now with multi-verses, wizards, aliens, inhumans, and mutants but damn, he hoped there was one some nights. He wanted there to be a God because he needed to believe that there was someone out there listening to him begging to bring his baby sister back, to bring all his sisters back, his mom and dad too, hell Bucky would have given up everything, the remainder of his days just to be able to hold one of them again.

He missed them, he missed Izzy, and after the bargaining was over, he found himself in a pit of despair he was still struggling to escape from. 

It had been months and Bucky still hadn't gone back to his childhood home, the one his parents bought together, the one he and his sisters were raised in, the one which Izzy had willed to him. He kept telling himself he'd get around to selling it, Steve had taken care of the cleanup, moving out the furniture and other miscellaneous things, and for the most part, the house was just an empty shell ready to hit the market.

The damn real estate agent Steve referred Bucky to kept calling him, trying to get inside the door so she could properly price the home. She was annoying if he was being honest because he didn't give a shit about the money, he just wanted to get rid of his heartache but maybe that was also why he kept finding himself unwilling to let the brownstone go. Bucky wasn't ready to accept that his family was gone, he wasn't sure when he'd be ready to accept it but that was okay, he'd do it in his own time, and in time, Elena would be ready to accept that, just like Izzy, Dr Lawrence Feldman was gone and he wasn't coming back.

To say she was a mess in the days following the wedding would have been an understatement, Elena had turned into nothing. A ghost of herself, one who barely had the strength to leave a California beach after crying on it for several hours, he practically had to drag her back to the hotel room where all of their friends took turns letting her weep in their arms. Elena cried in the airport, she cried on the plane and she cried when Dr Feldman's secretary called her again with information about the funeral on Wednesday.

Natasha actually cursed Rhodey out when he told her he couldn't dismiss her from her next assignment to take Elena to the service. To be fair, he wasn't trying to be the bad guy but with Elena in the state that she was in and Sam just having gotten bailed out of a Bolivian prison, she and Steve were the only ones who could actually head out to Croatia.