Everything the Light Touches

Chapter Twelve

a/n: i'm baaaaaaack frieeeeeeeends <3 just wanna say i love y'all and i hope you enjoy the chapter. i'm trying to update when i can, promise! i apologize about it being another shorter chapter, i'm hoping the next will be longer!

It's hard. It is so damn hard. To avoid an absolute wall of a man for any period of time when you live within the same four walls. You had only been living with Bucky for a week. One. Fucking. Week. It seemed like he was doing whatever he could to avoid you. Bucky was usually gone before you left for work in the morning, and he often arrived later in the evening, offering a grumbled hello in your direction before slinking off to his room.

At first you weren't certain if you were happy about that. Happy that he was avoiding you. You also couldn't tell if he was doing it to respect you and give you space or doing it because he genuinely didn't want to be around you. You couldn't lie, when you thought about the latter it had stung a little bit. But then reality had set in. You thought to yourself long and hard about what you'd done to piss him off or push him away, besides reacting to his actions, and you knew your actions had been sound and what any sane person would do in your place.

Over the last week you'd noticed some slight changes. You noticed the way Pepper looked at you carefully when you were in the office. The way Tony was acting more grouchy yet a little more touchy. The way he'd give you a hug just because behind closed doors. The light touches Pepper would give you when you ordered lunch in. You felt their apologies in their silence. Apologies for things outside of their control. Apologies for your shitty parents. Apologies for the mess that landed you from one arranged marriage to another. Apologies for withholding information that maybe would have made you think twice about returning to New York. That apology was said in person. Over dinner. As Tony and Pepper apologized profusely and begged for your forgiveness for leaving out the fact that Tony worked closely with the Barnes family. You'd forgiven them. Easier than you'd ever forgiven anyone. Because you knew that Tony and Pepper hadn't done it to hurt you. They'd done it to protect you. And they were the closest damn things to parents who loved you that you would ever get. So with a tight squeeze and a kiss on the cheek you'd forgiven them...and then promptly asked Tony if he'd give you away at the wedding.

Until that day. You'd never seen Tony Stark cry. And he'd tell anyone that you tried to tell that he hadn't cried, he'd merely walked through a construction site a little while earlier and gotten dust in his eyes. But you knew the truth. You knew that Anthony Edward Stark had cried because he saw you as his daughter and this was your way of showing that you saw him as a father. After making Tony cry you'd decided it was Pepper's turn as you asked her to go wedding dress shopping with you, Winnie and Natasha. She was stronger than Tony though. Pepper wasn't afraid to be emotional, and she wasn't afraid of letting people know that.

So that's how you ended up in Winnifred Barnes' guest suite with Pepper, Winnie and Natasha sitting on a couch as a wedding dress designer from one of the many upscale bridal boutiques in Manhattan brought rack after rack of dresses in for you to try on. There was an obvious avoidance of the elephant in the room, i.e the reason that you were trying on dresses here rather than at the boutique itself. There had been a concentrated effort to make sure that you stayed off Pierce's turf. Which meant if a store you needed items from was located there, then someone undercover went or you shifted to get something on the Barnes turf instead. That included wedding dresses apparently, which meant that your appointment was taking place at the Barnes house instead.

Things with Natasha had been a little frosty in the beginning. But after she'd chased you out the door of The Underworld you thought maybe something could be resurrected from the ashes of your former friendship. You'd found out that for years she'd tried to discover what made Bucky pretend like you didn't exists.You'd learned that at one point she'd even threatened Steve to give up the reason or she'd sic Alpine on him. And then you'd learned about when she'd threatened to castrate him and Bucky. That's when you'd opened up to the redhead just the tiniest bit. You weren't ready to fully accept her back into your life, hell the two of you hadn't even really talked it out, but you knew you needed allies in this life. And Natasha Romanoff was the best damn ally anyone could ask for. So now she was sitting on the couch, with a glass of champagne in one hand and your phone in the other, talking to your best friend living almost 3,000 miles away and forcing a smile onto your face as Wanda tried her best to remain neutral.