Elysia knew the surroundings like the back of her hand. The flashing marquee, showcasing that night's movie times. The fingers laced within her own of the smiling young man across from her, eyes full of love and laughter. The shortcut they'd always taken to get back to the subway, no longer the empty alley they'd always known it to be as the click of a safety disengaging stopped them in their tracks.
"Just leave her alone," the boy next to her had pleaded to the two men across from them, the handguns aimed between Elysia's eyebrows as she raised her hands up in surrender. "We'll go, we'll never say a word to anyone." His gaze locking with hers, now full of terror. "Just let her go."
She'd replayed the scenario in her head thousands of times, but Elysia Sparks could still never have been sure when it had all gone wrong. She'd pushed him behind her, arms aimed out towards the men with her electricity blazing. Maybe it was the need to get the men as far away from them as possible. Maybe it was the terror coursing through her veins of the boy she loved in danger, the fear mixing in with the electricity waiting to be fired.
Maybe she had just lost control.
She wasn't sure who screamed first as the lightning strikes rained down in the alley around them, mixing in with the blinding streaks of light and thunder that boomed overhead, nearly deafening.
Maybe it had been her screams.
Maybe it had been the men's.
Maybe it had been Jacob's.
The screaming echoed in Elysia's ears as she glanced around the alley, another strike of lightning emitting from her palms at the realization of the damage she'd left in her wake as the deafening silence began to cover her like a blanket. It was only after she turned around that she saw the true damage, and Elysia collapsed to her knees, pulling the now-lifeless figure in front of her into her lap as tears began to blur her vision.
"No," she murmured, cradling him closer as the tears began to spill, "No no no no no. Jake, wake up. Wake up! Wake up! Jake!"
"Wake up!" Suddenly the words were no longer Elysia's as her eyes flew open, and she darted up into a sitting position to see Bucky sitting across from her, a hand on her shoulder as he watched her with a frightened expression.
Elysia fought to catch her breath, a cold sweat clamming up her body as she curled in on herself, burying her face in her knees as she began to cry. Heaving sobs wracked her body, and as Bucky pulled her closer, she didn't fight it, allowing the man to wrap his arms around her. She buried her face in his shoulder as she clung to him, feeling the thin fabric of his t-shirt already beginning to soak through with her tears, but to Bucky's credit, he didn't move away, just letting her be.
"I-I'm sorry," she stammered after a while, pulling out of his embrace, and he watched carefully as she reached up, wiping away a stray tear with the sleeve of her pajama shirt.
"You have nothing to be sorry for." Bucky assured her. "I get them too, you know that. Now it's just my turn to help you, right?"
The two of them fell into an awkward silence as she once again wrapped her arms around her knees, bringing them up to her chest, and he looked down at the ground for a moment before his eyes found the bedroom door. His gaze flickered back and forth between her and the door for a moment before he jerked his head back in the direction of the exit.
"Do you want me to go?" he asked, and after a moment she shook her head.
"Will you stay with me?" she asked in a small voice, and he nodded, crawling closer to her until he was sitting next to her and tentatively wrapping an arm around her shoulders, waiting for her to pull away, but to his surprise, she leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder.
"Who's Jake?" Bucky asked after a few moments, and Elysia looked up at him, eyebrows pinching together in confusion.
"How did you..?" she began to ask, trailing off as the words escaped her.
"You were screaming for him." Bucky explained, causing her cheeks to turn pale as the blood leached from her face. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." he assured her. "Just... if you wanted to talk about it, you can."
"You're not the only one who knows what it's like to be a monster, Buck." Elysia said, the tears threatening to spill over once more as she reached up to wipe her eyes. "The reason I left New York, the reason I agreed to stay for this job only if Tony would take me off his reserve once we were done, it's because of me, and the things I've done."
"Ellie..." Bucky murmured.
"I was happy, back in Manhattan." Elysia continued. "I had a life there. I had my powers, a cool job working with Tony and Rhodey to help people while I went to college, thinking that once I had a degree, I could get a position working at Stark Industries. My life was planned out. I also had a boyfriend..."
"Jake," Bucky concluded, and she nodded. "Was he... like you?"
"He was normal," she explained, shaking her head. "He was also in the computer science program at NYU. He asked me one day if I wanted to get coffee, and when he offered to walk me home after, Stark Tower wasn't exactly what he was expecting. But he was sweet, he stayed. Tony used to invite him over for family dinners every now and then, even offered him an internship and a place at the company after we graduated. We were nineteen then."
"What happened?" he asked.
"Two years later, Jacob and I were on our way back from the movies late, and we took a shortcut through an alley to get to the subway. It was stupid, I know, but it was freezing out, and it wasn't anything we hadn't already done a million times before. Only this time, we weren't the only ones there." she said, an image of his sweet, smiling face echoing in her brain, the smile she hadn't seen in three years. "We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They had guns and I... I was just trying to protect him, I swear." she said, the tears free-falling now, but she didn't bother to try wiping them away as her voice grew small. "But I lost control, and he was standing too close."
"Ellie-" Bucky tried again, but she cut him off.
"The official cause of death was ruled as a lightning strike." she said solemnly. "Jacob and the two other men. An accident in a freak January storm, not unlike the one that hit me when I was eighteen. Tony protected me during the aftermath, but I couldn't take the chance of somebody else getting hurt because of me, so I wanted out. I transferred to Arizona State, and I didn't use my powers again after that day, until the day I came back to the compound."
"That's why you're afraid to actually use them." he concluded, and she nodded.
"I repressed them so much that my body's not used to having them there anymore." she confirmed. "That's why it's been so hard to summon more than just a small shock. When I take the power in, like with the generator the night we saved you, it still feels like a part of me, but using them against somebody..."
"You can't do it." he finished for her. "Ellie, it's not your fault what happened to Jacob. You didn't know that was going to happen."
"Yeah, but I'm the one who did it." she said, a pit in her stomach forming as she echoed the words he'd once said to her not so long ago. "If we hadn't taken that shortcut, if we'd just gone the long way home, then he'd still be here. I killed him, Bucky."
"You said it yourself, you'd done it a million times." he assured her. "Would you have taken the shortcut if you knew people were waiting there?"
She shook her head. "Of course not."
"Would you have used your powers if you knew Jacob was going to get hurt?" he asked then.
"No,"
"Then honey, it's not your fault." he said, his eyes staring into hers, pleading with her to believe his words. "It was an accident, and you can't blame yourself for that. They were armed, and you were defending you and Jacob. You're not a monster, Elysia."
"It's you I'm afraid to hurt now." she admitted in a small voice. "It's not that I don't want to be with you, Bucky, I'm just scared that something's going to happen and it's going to be my fault."
"You can't hurt me." Bucky reminded her, flexing his free arm, the metal glinting in the stretch of moonlight shining through the window. "Remember? You can take me out for a bit, sure, but you aren't going to hurt me." he held his arm closer to her. "You can try it again, if you really want to be sure," he offered.
Elysia fought the small chuckle that threatened to surface. "Thanks for staying with me." she said.
"Of course," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. "But I'm serious. We can give this a shot, if you want to try it. What else do we have to lose, right?"
Elysia looked up at him, his kind eyes still looking back at hers as he watched her with a nervous smile. She nodded finally, and could see the relief that began to spread across his face. "Okay," she said.
"Okay?" he repeated, and she nodded, leaning forward to catch his lips with hers.
Bucky kissed her back, surprised at first, but he soon brought his hands up to cradle her face gently, letting her remain in control. Elysia finally allowed herself to stay in the moment, to not fight the worries that it could all go wrong if they weren't careful. After all, she knew Bucky was right: neither of them had anything else to lose.
He pulled back from the kiss after a few moments, smiling before moving to lay down and holding his arms open for her. "C'mere, doll," he said. "Try to get some more sleep. I'll be right here."
Elysia nodded, laying down next to Bucky as he held her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead, every bit the gentleman he'd once been in his former life, who'd even begun to find his own way at the compound, and not one trace present of the brainwashed soldier they'd found in Siberia.
Her soldier, who she was mere hours away from saving from the codewords once and for all.
Her Bucky.