Relapse ★ Bucky Barnes

Epilogue

OCTOBER 2018

★ ★ ★

Marlena rushed around the house picking up clothes and toys that her very ornery one year olds had decided to leave scattered throughout the house. She thought her life working with the Avengers had been exhausting, but being a full-time mother, wife, and sister proved to be much worse. She loved being a mother, though, and she loved even more that she was a mother to twins. Becoming a mother at the age of twenty-three wasn't exactly what she had planned for her or even Bucky for that matter, but she managed to make it work, even now as a twenty-four year old.

What Marlena didn't like about motherhood, though, was continuously bending over in order to pick a stuffed animal, a rattle, or another one of their various toys off of the floor. She could have very easily cleaned up the many messes by using her abilities, but she refrained from ever using her abilities around the twins. She was more in control than she had ever been, but she was also much more powerful than she had ever been, and she refused to risk hurting either of them for the sake of not wanting to bend over.

Marlena let out a sigh of relief as she threw the final stuffed animal into the basket in her hold and she hurried up the stairs, strolling down the hall towards the twins' shared bedroom so she could put the toys away.

The moment she stepped into the bedroom, though, she was met with a sight that had become one of her favorites since the twins had been born. Bucky lay fast asleep on the small couch inside the room with both twins resting soundly on his chest. It had been a thing for him to fall asleep with them at least once a day, and Marlena never got tired of it. Bucky loved them so much and the sight made Marlena burst with happiness.

Marlena could remember a time in which she could see the pain and brokenness in Bucky's eyes even through what little happiness he felt; now that pain and that brokenness was hardly there, if at all. She hadn't been sure what it would take to completely rid him of that pain and brokenness; she feared there was nothing that could, not even Marlena herself. Then the twins were born and Marlena found a certain light in Bucky's blue eyes she had never seen before. They loved him unconditionally, just as Marlena did, and that made Bucky feel whole again.

With a warm smile, Marlena padded across the carpet and towards the bin in which she kept the twins toys. She began placing them in one by one, careful not to wake the three sleeping on the couch, but one had managed to awaken anyway.

"Mar," Bucky's groggy voice could be heard behind her.

"Hmm?"

"I think Charlie peed," he muttered sleepily.

Marlena chuckled and finished putting the toys away before turning to face where her husband lay on the couch. "What makes you so sure of that? She's wearing a diaper."

"Dribble," Bucky replied with a yawn. "Come get her and change her."

"Why can't you change her?"

"Because then I would disturb JJ, and that's rude," Bucky answered her as he very absentmindedly tightened his grip around the twins.

Marlena sighed and shook her head before walking over to retrieve her daughter—Charlotte Elisabeth—from her father. Bucky smiled up at Marlena as she removed the small girl from his arms, and Marlena delivered a swift flick to his forehead before heading to change Charlie.

Bucky watched her work with a smile on his face and glistening blue eyes, his thoughts drifting to just how insanely lucky he was to have found her in the museum that day back in 2014. Marlena could only smile as she listened to his thoughts; she, too, felt lucky to have found Bucky in the museum. He was her everything, and it scared her to think of what her life could have been like without him. She had been through so much pain and so much suffering since she had met Bucky, but she would experience it all one hundred times over if it meant the outcome of it all was him.