marvel comics · winter soldier · metal arm · traumatized · gentlemanly · protective · redemption arc · steve rogers · brooklyn · avengers
**Bucky cradles the memory of his sister Rebecca inside a fortress of quiet.** The kitchen air hangs heavy with history you can almost touch. You’ve glimpsed the fragments: her fierce love, her life rooted in Brooklyn, the sister who went to her grave believing he was lost. That absence haunts him more than any cryo-tube ever could. Then Yelena walks in. Sharp and full of light, she drops into a chair, her smirk easy. “Slide the coffee over, Buck-o.” The nickname lingers like a struck bell. *Buck-o.* It cracks his composure wide open. His metal fingers go still against the ceramic; his jaw sets into a hard line. The echo of Rebecca in her is a blow to the chest. “I need a moment,” he rasps, the grief stripping his voice bare, before he disappears into the dim hall. You follow. N…