THE FADING FALLEN ● Bucky Barnes X OC ● 18+ ● ENGLISH [COMPLETE]

Chapter 79

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Somewhere in Louisana near the Mississippi border, mid-November 2025

It was already late afternoon. The sun was low, slowly darkening the incipient evening sky into a warm orange. On the horizon, the emerging onset of winter could be seen, which would settle over the country in the next few days.

Wrapped thickly in a cozy blanket, Emilia bounced in one of the white rocking chairs on the porch of her newly renovated 19th century farmhouse.

The steady dull burst as the sharp edge of an axe splintered the wood drifted clearly to her from the barn. She looked up and followed the sound.

Bucky had returned from a fairly harmless mission with Captain America just yesterday morning. It had been visibly difficult for him to leave his two most precious treasures alone for a few days.

But without his help, Sam wouldn't have been able to take out some of the safe houses of a drug ring in New Mexico so quickly. And the Colombians were a far lesser sort of evil compared to aliens.

Emilia saw the little beads of sweat shining with the gold of his vibranium arm. His dark gray Henley shirt was rolled up to his elbows as he smashed the last logs with an almost silent groan.

One of the salty drops fell down at that very moment onto a spot on his collarbone. The dark stain reminded her of the day she first lay crying in his arms.

Distraught over all she had done. At the same time, overjoyed to finally touch him again after five years of thinking he was dead.

She carried these memories with her every day, carefully protecting each one of them. They had settled in like the little silver balls of his necklace, on which he still wore one of his own dog tags, alongside one of Steve's.

A little sadness came over her as she thought back to the wedding in Wakanda. Steve would never have the chance to hold this little miracle of hers in his arms any more than Natasha would.

The soft whimpering and restless wriggling of that very same one, brought her back from the melancholy. Wrapped up like a bonbon, Emilia looked down at the face that peeked out from the bundle in her arms.

Matilda Becca Barnes came into this world safe and sound at 9:21 p.m. on Sept. 25, 2025, in New York.

From the first moment on she was pure sunshine. Having her father's eyes and with a dark blonde fuzz on her head, her mother's hair.

And the way she was stomping around now, she definitely had the stubbornness of both of them.

"Shh, it's okay. I know, Tilly. Your Dad will be ready in a minute."

Bucky was breaking up the last piece of wood as he stacked it with the other on top of the rest next to the barn wall. The rising cold November wind carried the pleasant sound of Emilia's voice to him as she tried to soothe his daughter a little.

A slight smirk flitted across his lips as she sang, calling Matilda her sunshine. It always reminded him of the moments when she called him that - even if for a completely opposite reason.

It had happened every now and then since her birth almost seven weeks ago that he felt addressed when Emilia sang Matilda her favorite song.

If he caught her looking up at him while he was just leaning against the doorframe of the baby's room listening, Bucky knew that she would always mean him, too.