Better Love || A Bucky Barnes Fanfiction

- The Entire History Of You -

Like rain cleanses the city, time heals the body. The wounds Thomas had gifted Elena all those months ago had healed and now only small scars remained, something she could handle with the help of friends. Without them, she was sure that those hard months would have shattered whatever was left of her.

The trial had been long and tough, with arguments and evidence being thrown back and forth between each side. Some supported Thomas, pushing his career as a well-respected surgeon as evidence enough that he would never hurt a person, let alone the fiancee he treated so well. Others rejected this, stating that it didn't matter that he was a surgeon, he still abused his partner and had been for many years now, as Delilah had testified. The remaining few sat on the fence: While it seemed true that he had been hurting Elena, it also looked as though Elena had already gotten her vengence on him in her own way. The identity of Thomas' attacker was unknown to both Thomas and Elena, Thomas siting his memory loss of the situation, Elena swearing by the book. However, whispers of "hired force" and "assasian for hire" circulated throughout the courtroom. 

Elena did not let those whispers get to her. Bucky had protected her from Thomas then, she would protect him from the law now. In truth, she didn't know why he was so fearful of the trial and the possibility of being called to the stand (he never was). But she respected his privacy to never bring him up, as did Delilah when asked. To the court, Bucky Georgeson did not exist.

Whether or not his testimony would've helped the case or just caused it more harm, they would never know. After hours of deliberating, the jury found Thomas guilty of physical and emotional abuse towards Elena that had begun in California and had stretched across all of Elena's early adulthood. However, his prison sentence of three years was reduced to just one due to the injuries he sustained that fateful day. While Elena admitted her disappointment at this sentence, it wasn't all bad. She was free.

And this freeness meant she had a new lease on life. Everything that had belonged to her when she had lived with Thomas had been sold, the money she saved in her now seperate bank account for when she was ready to leave the shelter. She had made contact with her family again, even going down to California to visit them one weekend. And now, she was preparing to leave the library and start the career she had always wanted. Teaching jobs were sparse at the moment, but they were there, and she wanted whatever one she could get her hands on. 

So, for the past week now, her time had been spent training up new staff member Gideon Jones. Around the same age as Bucky, Elena had been pleasantly surprised when it was announced that he would be taking over her job once she had left. She hadn't thought that he would have been the type to work in a library. A model agency, perhaps. However, she had learnt in recent months that one could not judge a book by its cover, a thought she would have whenever she looked at Bucky. 

She had been looking at him more often than usual.

Not just because they were spending almost every hour of the day with one another, although that was definitely a reason. How could she not look at him when he would walk into the shelter at breakfast, or walk with her to the library? How could she not look his way when she would come onto his level of the building, or when they made their way back to the shelter? He sat across from her at dinner, would walk beside her along the waterfront, and sometimes... 

Sometimes he would be in her arms. Or her in his. Accidentally. They would talk in the evenings, huddled up on the floor or bed of one person's room, and eventually the pair would fall asleep and find each other locked in a warm embrace. Elena was sure that there was nothing to it, that they just liked each other's company, and yet...

But she was looking at him more and thinking about him more. There were things she was beginning to realize that she didn't actually know about him, like where he had been before Seattle, or how he had become homeless in the first place. She had tried to make conversation with him once about his interest in World War Two and Captain America, attempting to dig further into that solid piece of information she had about him. His answer had been short, though.

"I'm just interested in the subject. No other reason than that, really."

But she saw something in his eyes when he said that that made her believe it wasn't quite true. So one night when Bucky had already gone to his room for the evening, Elena saying that she would pop in as she made her way to bed later, she had gone to Delilah.

"What do you know about Bucky, Dee?" She had asked, sitting at a table with her old friend over two cups of hot chocolate.

"Well, not a lot. He keeps to himself, that boy does" Dee had admitted, tilting her head to the side, eyebrows furrowed. "Why? What's wrong, honey?"

"I'm just worried," Elena had replied, biting her lip.

"About Bucky?"

"About me and Bucky," Elena clarified. "Our... friendship. I feel like he knows so much about me but I've barely scratched the surface with him. I'm scared that I'm just repeating the same pattern that I had with Thomas where I got attached to a man I didn't know a thing about."

"Bucky would never hurt you like Thomas, baby," Delilah replied softly, reaching across and grabbing the younger woman's hands in hers. Elena smiled gratefully, squeezing them gently.

"Yeah, I know. He's good. He feels good, better than Thomas ever felt," Elena admitted, almost breathless at the thought of Bucky. It was true. He made her feel so safe, so good, so at home. She let out a soft sigh, though. "But I'm still nervous. I want to know that I've learnt from my past mistakes. I want to know more about Bucky before..."

"Before...?"

"Before anything... happens," Elena had finished, allowing her words time to wash over Delilah who eventually picked up on what her friend was implying.

"Oh," Delilah had giggled, then, face bright with mischief that made Elena smile bashfully, swatting away at the woman.

"But it's like you said: he keeps to himself," Elena had interrupted, shaking her head as though she could get the image of what she had been implying out of it.

"Well, you say he's always researching Captain America. Why don't you start there?" Delilah had suggested simply. "Find a familiar ground with him. Then you two can talk about that common interest and then from that he might start opening up a little bit more. Takes time with a man like him, I think."

As it turns out, though, it didn't take much time at all. On a particularly busy night at the shelter where Bucky had to leave the libary early and Elena had to stay late to train Gideon, Elena had taken the time to research Captain America. At first, she didn't find anything that was new or surprising to her. As she followed link after link to different articles, videos, and photos, however, she found one that caught her interest. Bucky had brought it up once before, had asked her what she had thought of this man. When his name flashed across the screen in front of her, she moved her mouse towards it, hovering over the words: Winter Soldier.  When she clicked it, she felt her heart stop beating. 

Seconds. Minutes. Maybe hours. Elena wasn't sure how long she had been frozen for, staring at a face she knew so well but at the same time didn't know at all. Because she had never seen his face so distraught, had never seen his eyes so hollow. She had seen it close to that once, but that memory was one of violence and she didn't like thinking about him like that. But here he was in front of her, and here was the information that went with it. As she read, she felt as though the air around her was becoming thin. She couldn't believe it, and yet there was the truth. She had wanted to know who he was and now she had her answer. And what an answer it was. Terrible, horrifying, tragic. So tragic. She felt a tear spill down the side of her cheek.

"Oh, my God," she breathed, and Bucky's eyes stared back into her own.

a/n: The truth revealed. 

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