Avengers/X-Men One Shots - The Blood/White Phoenix Saga

ONE-SHOT LXVI: Bachelorette Weekend (WinterPhoenix Wedding)

Set at the same time as ONE-SHOT LXXXIV: Bachelor Weekend (WinterPhoenix Wedding)

Adelaide Lehnsherr (soon-to-be-Barnes)

Pepper, Laura, Wanda and I all sat around the dinner table, the remnants of wine in our glasses and food on our plates. It had a been a fairly long day of shopping and walking around in heels that pinched my feet to no end. Totally my fault. Now we were in pyjamas and fluffy socks, having eaten dinner, the radio playing soft music.

'What on earth shall we talk about?' I asked.

'Ooh, I know,' Laura said. 'The honeymoon.'

'The honeymoon,' I replied blankly, taking another sip of white wine.

'Yeah, I mean, the honeymoon. Where are you guys going?'

'Hawaii. He's got quite a bit planned. He looked at me a bit funny when I mentioned the idea of a honeymoon. I think he's not really liking the publicity of the event.'

'It must be a bit hard for the two of you to handle.'

'Yeah, well, it's already tough for the two of us. I called him when he'd landed in Germany wth the groomsmen, and he said that it was a heap of publicity to deal with. Steve had to literally fend them off from interviewing him so much. You saw how much papparazi we had on our flight out of New York.'

'Yeah, that was hell,' Wanda said, raising her glass to her lips, taking a small sip.

'Did you call him this weekend, hon?' Laura asked, putting a hand on my arm.

'I did. He's loving hanging out, but he says he misses me.'

'I'm sure he does,' Pepper chimed in.

'I'm excited for the wedding. But what if - what if we stop loving each other?'

'You're gonna go through things like that,' Laura said. 'A dry patch. But you've gone through worse. You've been apart from each other for a while; the two of you are going to have plenty of time to adjust from what's happened before.'

'I'm just scared, Laura. Scared of the future, what it brings. The things he and I are going to have to go through just so we can hold on to each other.'

'You two love each other more than anything,' Wanda said. 'I'm fairly sure you can handle anything that comes your way, with him by your side.' I looked at Wanda.

'I wish you were happy too, Wanda.' She looked down at her plate, an unbidden tear slipping down her face. She looked up at me.

'I know. I miss Vis.'

'I know you do. That's the beauty of love, I guess.'

'It is. You missed Bucky for weeks at a time when the two of you were separated. You used to talk about him all the time - how good it felt to be by his side, to hang out with him, to just love him. And then you would annoy me about Vis.'

'You two were weird, then. It was a loveable kind of weird, though. Everyone had a strange relationship at one point or another. Steve had a crush on me, I had unresolved feelings for him, I was, and still am, in a relationship with a 90-something-year-old super soldier with a metal arm, Nat was weird around Steve, Tony was weird around her. Literally everyone was awkward around Nat. God, I miss her.'

'She'd be getting on your case about Bucky about now, Adelaide,' Wanda said.

'She would. She was like a sister to the both of us, Wands.' I raised my glass and the rest did too. 'I wanna make a toast. To sisters, bound not by blood but by love.'

'To sisters,' they all said in unison, and we clinked glasses. I turned to Wanda.

'Would you like to be my maid of honor, sis? Help me walk down that aisle?'

'Are you serious?'

'Dead serious.'

'Then I'm in.' Laura had left the room to get some more wine, and I heard her yell from the kitchen,

'You had to wait until now to ask that?!' We just burst into laughter.