Honesty ♧ Bucky Barnes

Epilogue

Erin felt ridiculous.

She hated wearing dresses, full stop, but she particularly hated wearing long dresses. Especially long dresses with sleeves. Specifically long dresses with sleeves that had cost more than she made in three months as a Biochemistry Lecturer. So what if Tony had been the one to buy the dress for her out of his apparently limitless pot of money? It didn't make her feel any less of a prick wearing it.

"Oh, you look so beautiful..." The thick Mancunian accent came from Erin's mother, who was dabbing tears from her face behind the navy blue mesh veil of a wonkily clipped-on fascinator behind her, "My baby girl."

"Mum. I look like a bloody meringue, you can say it."

Erin's mother rolled her eyes at her daughter's quick, sassy response. She brushed a stray curl, once a deep honey, the same colour as Erin's, but now beginning to grey out of the way of her dark brown eyes and looked down at her with amusement. Even sat down in the thick wooden chair in front of the mirror, Erin was nearly as tall as her mother, whose short stature had left her the butt of many jokes from her children as they had grown up. 

Victoria Jefferson had had children young. Younger than most mothers of her generation. She'd had the twins, Erin and Will, at twenty-two after a whirlwind romance with a European up-and-coming bass player who had disappeared to go on tour with his band and never came back. She didn't even remember his name.

Vic didn't hate him, though, as many people assumed. Exactly the opposite, in fact. He had given her the best present that she could have ever hoped for; two blonde haired, deep brown eyed children with brains like engines and mouths like sewer pipes. Bringing up twins as a single parent posed difficulties, especially when both children decided they wanted to study at university and she had had to take out a second mortgage to pay the fees, but she wouldn't change a second of it for the world. 

"Yes, but a beautiful meringue," Vic replied, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

Erin snorted out a guffaw that her mother rolled her eyes at, dreadfully unladylike, but said nothing about. This was Erin's special day after all.

Well, Erin and that odd man she had decided to marry.

When Victoria had first been introduced to James Barnes, she had been taken aback slightly. Not by his incredible good looks, although that was certainly a notable feature, and not by the way he held himself, ramrod straight, a military stance. No, she was taken aback by the effect he had on her daughter.

Vic had known something had happened to Erin last year. She had known after a few short phone calls with her daughter where she had insisted that she was 'absolutely fine' and 'completely over it'. These phone calls had told Vic that Erin was not only as far away from 'fine' as she could possibly be, but she desperately needed her mother. Victoria Jefferson had even gone to the trouble of flying over to Washington on a whim to see her daughter a few weeks after what she had taken to calling 'the incident' in her mind. Erin had refused to talk about it, but in some ways she didn't need to. She had jumped every time her phone went off in her bag, or whenever the front doorbell of her little apartment rang. There had been a twitch in the fourth finger of her left hand that had seemed to get progressively worse as time went on instead of better.

That had all changed when she was with James. The two of them had sat together on her sofa in Manchester, and she could hardly believe the change in Erin since the last time she had seen her. Her face was brighter somehow. Her smile wider, actually real this time, crinkling at the corner of those deep, dark eyes. She didn't jump, she wasn't looking over her shoulder all the time. Her hand, entwined within the constantly gloved hand of her partner, had stayed completely still.