Better Love || A Bucky Barnes Fanfiction

- Morgan -

The children were screaming and it made her smile. She liked to hear their joy. 

They were running around the playground, a small group of them running under the monkey bars and up the stairs, crawling through tunnels and going down slides as they attempted to avoid becoming the tagger. Elena watched as the current tagger, a small ginger haired boy who was in the class below hers, tapped his hand against the back of a taller boy, laughing as he quickly avoided the tag back. A chorus of "Daniel's in, Daniel's in!" rose across the playground as the kids were repelled away by Daniel who rushed to catch one of them.

The children were screaming and it brought her joy to hear it. Their happiness was so loud that she almost missed the sound of her phone ringing. 

"Nat? What's happening?" 

"You free tomorrow?"

//

It was because of an old familiar face that they were making that long and worrisome drive out of the city. After she had finished teaching children for the day Natasha and Steve had helped to catch her up with what was happening, newly appeared Scott Lang holding most of the conversation when it came to the Quantum Realm. Once Elena was able to wrap her head around what Scott was talking about, she realized what he was implying.

"We can go back," she had whispered, eyes passing over the three of them as she felt her heartbeat speed up. "We can do something. We can bring them home."

"With help," Steve had added.

Which was where they were driving to now. The group had been silent during the drive, even Scott picking up on the tension all of them were feeling. Sitting in the back with Elena he glanced over at her nervously.

"I'm guessing the whole Berlin thing didn't end very well once we were all released, huh?" he asked. Elena looked at him, a stiff smile on her face as she thought back to those events.

"You could say that," she murmured, looking at Steve who was sitting at the front, eyes glued forward. While Elena had not been awake when Tony had returned from Space, too busy trying to surive the serum she had injected into herself, she had heard about the confrontation between him and Steve. They hadn't seen each other since. 

Whispers still passed through though, gossip that would eventually reach back to where they were. Apparently Tony and his long time partner Pepper Potts had married not too long after his return from space. The event had been a small and private affair. They had also heard that he had basically retired from the public light, preferring to spend time in the countryside with his wife and - eventually - his child. 

Elena had almost wept when she had heard he had had a baby. It was a mix of happiness and bitterness, the hard truth that people were moving on from what had happened and getting on with their lives, creating new ones that they had the honour of loving and cherishing while she was only left with haunting memories of her own.

That was what she was thinking when they pulled up outside the house and got out of the car. Standing on the porch and holding his child close to his chest was Tony, older than the last time she had seen him, but looking relatively happier and fresh-faced in retirement. That is, until he caught sight of them all. Then she watched as his face fell slightly, a sigh seeming to escape from his lips. Without a word he started walking away and they followed.

He had - at the very least - allowed Scott to explain his plan, and he had - at the very least - come back with his own scientific rebuttals about how it would or would not work. But Elena could see the refusal in his eyes before he had even said the words, and not even Steve's quote on quote "giddy optimism" was enough to convince him of the plan's viability. While Nat and Steve tried to pander to Tony's past as Earth's best defender and Scott tried to reason with him, Elena only stood and watched in silence, eyes flickering towards the movement she saw inside. There was a woman who could only be Pepper Potts standing a distance away behind the glass doors, talking to her daughter whose back was towards Elena.