salvation ; 𝐛. 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝟐

028. healing

ok hi hi i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry for being late but it's the last chapter and i listened to this song on repeat for three hours while writing this chapter so uhhh listen to it and you'll get all the belda feels (as well as listening to salvation by gabrielle aplin)ok bye for now!

IT WAS HARD not to smile when I woke up the next morning. We'd practically fallen asleep against each other the night before. Even crawling under the covers was done reluctantly, as we had to let go of one another in order to do so(though I would have clung to Bucky like a sloth in any other circumstance).

As I felt myself coming out of the temptations of sleep, I could feel a light pressure against my arm. Slowly, so as to not alarm Bucky beside me, I shifted toward the presence and fluttered my eyes open, finding a pair of sea-blue ones staring back at me.

The first and only thing I noticed was the lack of lines on his face. He wasn't thinking of anything in that moment, he was just staring at me as if I were the only thing he could see in the soft sunlight breaking through the windows.

"Elda?" He asked, a gentle uncertainty in his voice.

I hummed in response, trailing a finger up his flesh arm that had been draped across my body in the middle of the night. I broke eye contact with him to watch and feel his muscles tense in response to my touch, relishing the sensation of his body flush with mine. "I'm here," I whispered.

He didn't say anything in return for a few minutes, his eyes scanning my face, taking in my features, memorizing them. For as long as I live, I will never fail to blush under his intense gaze, no matter how softly his eyes shine in my direction.

I almost fell asleep again, unable to think of anything else except for just how magnificent it felt to be lying beside my salvation after so long of being deprived of his touch, his look, of him. But alas, I knew that an entire world waited outside the doors of this beautiful hotel room, and in that world were both friends and foes that were no doubt wondering where we were.

"What did I do?" were his next words, jerking me out of my thoughts. When I looked back up at his eyes, expecting to see the same beautiful blue depths clear of all harmful thoughts, I was sorely disappointed. He'd drifted his gaze from my face to my neck, where I was still healing from that day in our cell. "Why did I do this?" He asked, his voice low and broken as he traced the bruises that webbed around my neck. "H-how could I hurt you?"

My entire body physically ached with the anguish in his tone as he left feather-light touches around the spots that the Soldier had latched onto. I was surprised that I couldn't feel the ghost of his hands squeezing the life out of me. Instead, I simply reached up and held his hand against the side of my neck, the other hand going to caress his jaw. "You didn't hurt me, Buck. You never have." I slowly sat up, letting the sheets fall from my bare frame. Trying my best to suppress the angry red blush that rose to my cheeks, I let Bucky's hand fall from my neck, finding its own path down my chest to my hip. Shivering with his touch, I swallowed roughly. "See? You don't have a violent bone in your body, Bucky."

When I pulled on his arm in a signal for him to sit up, he hesitantly hid his metal arm out of view. "How can I be safe if I have this attached to me forever?" His voice had still not risen above much more than a whisper.

I made sure my movements were slow, but I successfully tangled my fingers in those of his metal hand, pulling it closer to me. Tugging him closer, I let his metal appendage get trapped between our bodies as I rested my forehead against his. "You are safe," I whispered. "It doesn't matter what you look like. The evil that did this to you is not who you are." I inhaled his musky scent with a smile on my face and asked gently, "Tell me your name?"