Relapse ★ Bucky Barnes

Feeling of Betrayal

The quinjet was quiet for the most part. The three occupants were more or less pondering over the numerous thoughts running through their heads, Marlena more-so than the two men.

She sat quietly in a corner at the cockpit, her knees to her chest and her fingernails sitting nervously between her teeth. Her thoughts and emotions were torturing her, almost to the point of conjuring up a migraine. She couldn't seem to think straight, as the day's events had left her mind in a foggy haze, one she couldn't seem to find her way out of.

All she could see as she sat in her seat, staring out into the vast blue of the sky, was Pietro's face. It was still very difficult for her to grasp the fact that he was alive, but he was, and there was no denying it on Marlena's part. She couldn't understand how, though—she couldn't understand how Tony had brought him back, how Tony had healed him. Pietro had died in Sokovia; Marlena had never been so sure of anything in her life. She had watched it happen; she had felt the pain he felt from his wounds dissipate to nothing; she had felt the pain consume every aspect of her body as the very essence of his mind—of his being—was slowly ripped from the grasp of her psyche.

Now, as Marlena sat, as the heart wrenching reveal of Pietro's aliveness began to find its home inside her jumbled mind, she found herself growing angrier. She had spent a year believing Pietro to be dead; she had spent a year living in constant pain and regret due to the fact she could not save him, when in reality he hadn't needed saving at all. She had spent a year blaming herself for Pietro's death, despite Wanda's daily reassurance that it was not Marlena who was at fault, but it was Ultron.

Tony Stark knew this; he knew just how deep Marlena had allowed herself to sink. He watched her emotional downfall for a year when he knew the reason for it was being kept in a location that only he knew about. Tony had allowed Marlena to believe that her cousin was dead; he had allowed her to believe that she had failed in trying to save him, and in doing so he let her guilt consume her, he let her regret consume her, and he let her pain consume her. Tony could have prevented it simply by telling her about Pietro, but he didn't, and because of that Marlena was livid. She didn't understand how someone could keep such a crucial piece of information from the person they claimed to see as their daughter.

Marlena squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to stop the tears from escaping. She felt so angry, so betrayed; she had been lied to by one of the most important people in her life, and she wasn't sure how she was supposed to handle it. She wanted to fight Tony—she wanted to slam his thick skull into a wall in order to make him feel the pain she had felt because of Pietro's death—but she also wanted to hug him and thank him for saving Pietro's life, though the first option seemed to make more sense to her.

"Marlena?" Bucky's voice sounded.

She opened her eyes to look at him, a single tear falling from her right one before she whisked it away. "What?"

"Are you okay?" he asked with furrowed brows. He couldn't begin to understand why she was so upset. He assumed it to be because of the fight, but the pain in her eyes seemed to have no correlation whatsoever with the incident. Regardless of whatever it was that was bothering her, however, Bucky hated the mere sight of seeing her beautiful eyes so filled with sadness.

Marlena sniffed and wiped her face again, though as she continued to think about the situation, more and more tears threatened to fall from her eyes. "No, I'm not okay."

"What's the matter?" Steve asked from his spot in the pilot's seat. "Is it the fight?"

Marlena eyed Steve suspiciously, wondering whether or not he had known about Pietro. Surely he would've told her, right? "Did you know, Steve?"

He switched the quinjet over to autopilot and he turned around to face her, his brows furrowing in confusion. "Did I know what?"

"Pietro," she answered, her voice cracking ever so slightly. "He's alive; I'm asking if you knew that he was alive."