𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐍𝐄𝐘

LINKS!!!!

pairing: new avengers!bucky barnes x oc!asgardian goddess!jörð

summary: After becoming an Avenger, he didn’t expected to see one particular face again.

word count: 3576

warning(s): light cursing, age gap, mention of war, mention of death, nordic gods mention, major thunderbolts spoilers!!

a/n: first fanfic here since ages, it’s time to start again so enjoy! I might start writing y/n soon, but promises, promises, i need to find time for this hh and yeah, English is not my first language TT TT

A day like this was almost unheard of—quiet, calm, almost unreal. The harmony of these two phenomena, intertwined in a peaceful dance, spread throughout the New Avengers quarters like fog in the morning. No shouting, no laughter, no sound of smashing plates, which were usually caused by Bob's clumsiness. Pure, unspoiled silence—the kind a man with a metal hand could only dream of. He was sitting on the couch in his new uniform, his fingers buried in his surprisingly long hair, his gaze searching the floor as if he was trying to find something on it that could make sense of his thoughts. But what he was looking for was nowhere in sight.

Barnes couldn't understand why he had agreed to this in the first place. They were a group of outcasts—people who had been brought together by fate for a common purpose. And now they were to replace those he had previously called friends. He couldn't understand why he hadn't spoken up then, why he hadn't told the truth. Valentina had made them media stars, but she was also behind that day. She had sent them after each other, to get rid of them once and for all. And now? Now they were adored. Not everyone was happy about that, although it was hard not to notice that Alexei had settled into the spotlight quite well, successfully monetizing the team's new brand.

But even the most beautiful silence didn’t last forever. Though the only people in the building—outside of it—were the security guards and a handful of office workers who worked behind the scenes, people no one knew by name. Their existence was obvious—the Avengers couldn’t operate without them—and yet they were invisible, like ghosts. Even if their names occasionally appeared behind closed doors, the audience never paid them any attention. Only those who shone—the new Avengers—were important.

He frowned, feeling a sudden tension. Something in his head told him to stop, to focus. Was there something missing in this world? Yes, many things. Steve, Sam– although the relationship with him was exceptionally complicated. And someone else… A face whose eye color he couldn't assign. Lips whose voice sound had escaped his memory. A silhouette whose meaning had slipped away into the past. As if the memory had been brutally torn from him, leaving a wound that would never heal. He only covered it with a thick bandage, throwing it off the list of worries, believing that it would be enough to stop the bleeding. He didn't think about the scars. And yet, those were the most durable.

"James?" – A soft, feminine voice echoed in his ears, causing a sudden, piercing headache. The tone was unfamiliar, yet so painfully familiar and longed for that the man involuntarily tightened his fingers on the dark strands of his hair, closing his eyes with force as if to block out the entire world.

He didn't turn around right away. A shiver ran through him, as if someone had just injected something into his veins that his body had been unconsciously craving. Something that stirred forgotten memories and opened old wounds. But as the silence that followed that single word became even more unbearable than the sound of the voice itself, he slowly turned his gaze toward the source of that signal. That gesture.

And what did he see? Nothing. Emptiness.

Was he starting to lose his mind? Was his mind, overloaded with ponderings about meaning, motives, his own morality, beginning to betray him? Was it all starting to overwhelm him?

And yet… when the voice spoke a second time - just as softly, just as heartbreakingly - he turned around immediately, without a moment's hesitation, and this time, he couldn't escape it.

A woman stood on the stairs.

Her dress, light as morning mist, wrapped around her body with such natural grace, like a stream flowing over stones at the bottom of a stream. The material seemed to live with her, breathing with her every movement. Light, long cascades of hair flowed down her shoulders, shining like freshly harvested grain in the light coming through the window. Here and there, among the golden strands, small braids were woven, decorated with bright flowers - they made her hair resemble a wild, summer meadow. Her skin was fair, but not pale - it had warmth, a slight blush, as if someone had given her a bit of life with a touch of fresh petals. Her face radiated peace, and her delicate features concealed a surprising strength. Large green eyes hidden under long lashes seemed to look deeply, penetratingly. Her lips were full, soft, and on her cheeks there were streaks of green - shining in the light in an almost unnatural way, as if the laws of this world did not apply to them

She tilted her head slightly to the side as their gazes met — a shy gesture, perhaps even a little uncertain. It was obvious that she hesitated. And yet the man jumped up from the couch, as if ready to defend everyone present… even though he was the only one in the entire room. He wanted to ask who he was, but he knew who he was— though in his mind he couldn’t match the familiar face to the familiar names — as if he knew both options but couldn’t put them together.

“Forgive my intrusion,” – she said quietly, her voice still hanging in the air like a mystical echo, though it sounded softer, less invasive than before. – “I couldn’t stay away any longer…”

As she took the first step down, his body tensed instinctively. It was enough to stop her in her tracks.

“I’m sorry…” – she added, almost in a whisper. – “Maybe I should tell you who I am before I take another step.”

She hesitated, as if giving him space, and then, as she lifted her foot and placed it on the lower step, everything changed.

The dress of light mist began to shimmer with a golden light, and her ethereal aura evaporated like a dream at dawn. She no longer looked like a nymph. Now she was… human. More real than before. As if taken straight from a faded photograph from a century ago.

Her hair was shorter now, styled in soft curls that flowed down her shoulders. Her bangs subtly covered her eyebrows, and the golden feather attached to her headband gave her a touch of a bygone era. Each step she took made her dress rustle, and the sound of her heels hitting the freshly polished stairs echoed in the empty interior.

Her body was gleaming with jewelry — a multitude of small, shiny ornaments that moved with her every move. As the old saying goes: if an outfit doesn’t ring, it’s not worth the attention.

.“We knew each other once,” – she said again, her voice breaking under the weight of memories. – “My name was Delia then… I didn’t think I’d see you again. Because you know… the war…”

Her eyes smoldered with longing and pain, carefully hidden for years. But he looked at her with disbelief. Not fear, not relief — only amazement, slowly taking the form of understanding. Two and two were starting to make four again, not five. He was starting to remember. Before the war… there was Delia. But who was the woman before she became Delia again? And why had she returned now?

“Delia’s probably dead now. I won’t fall for that,” – he said coldly, frowning. Memories began to smolder in his mind, images from a brief fling with a dancer whose face he knew better than he cared to admit. Something throbbed in his subconscious, but he wouldn’t allow himself to be sentimental. Not now. That was all it took for the ghost of the past to become another one of his problems. Someone had dug too deep, someone who had learned too much and was now trying to exploit it.

“James, please… Let me explain,” – she pleaded.

She knew it wouldn't be easy. The evidence was thin and the past murky. One of her old informants, a beloved cousin, had stopped drinking for a long time, and as a result, he had stopped telling her about his former lover. Ah, New Asgard. A place even more beautiful than her family home, which she had been forced to leave long ago. She regretted missing Ragnarok. They could have at least invited her.

"I'm the same Delia you knew," – she added slowly, trying not to scare the man. – "The one you loved watching on stage, when I still pretended not to know you were there. It's just… Delia never had the courage to show you who she really was. Until now."

As she said this, she raised her hands in a reassuring, almost defensive gesture. She didn't intend to fight. She didn't come here as an enemy.

Bucky looked at her hard, suspiciously. His gaze was still sharp, but somewhere deep down there was a shadow of hesitation. He no longer looked as if he was about to attack at any moment - but there was still no trust in that gaze. Quite the opposite. He didn't trust her for a second.

"My real name is Jörð," – she said quietly, and each word seemed to settle in the air with the weight of centuries. – "Aeons ago I was banished from Asgard and sentenced to eternal life among humans…" – She paused, searching his eyes for anything - understanding, anger, maybe disbelief.

"Once I could call myself the goddess of life and nature. A breath of wind, a touch of earth, a breath among flowering meadows… But today… I am just a shadow of my former self. A coward who for hundreds of years hid among the likes of you." – She smiled bitterly, with bitterness that she could no longer suppress. – "Delia… Delia was created so that I could continue to exist in hiding. To live among people without being one of them."

When she said the name, her gaze darted away. She reached for the rustling fringes of her dress, right next to her heart—a tender, almost childlike gesture. Carrying more regret than words.

She wasn’t proud. For hundreds of years she had lived a lie, hiding behind names, faces, masks. Never showing anyone who she really was. Until now.

Because in that moment, standing before him — not as Delia, not as a dancer, not as a mirage — but as Jörð, a goddess banished, forgotten, fallen — she was naked. Not in body, but in truth. Exposed. And for once — true.

Bucky was silent for a moment, his eyes still fixed on her face, as if he was trying to swallow the words that were falling from her lips. Jörð. A goddess. Banished from Asgard. It sounded like a story from another world, something completely incomprehensible, but that weight in her voice, that shadow in her eyes… It wasn’t another fairy tale, another mask. Although he himself had already had the opportunity to meet someone of her caliber, because once that someone had walked around that building wielding his noble hammer.

His hands were still shaking, although he tried not to show it. He swallowed hard, as if those words had been driven into his throat like splinters. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering everything they had been through together – Delia. A dancer, a woman he had known, admired, who… whose loss he had carried inside him for so many years, while not realizing who he missed so much. And now it was all turning to dust.

"This is too much Delia, or is it Jörð," – he said quietly, with concern in his voice. His tone was not hostile, more confused, as if he was trying to grasp what was before him. – "If this is true… If what you say is true… then I don't know what to think."

Delia, or now Jörð, stood before him like a figure from a dream, like a being he could only see in his deepest dreams. Her aura shone like the morning sun, but that only emphasized the emptiness he felt within him.

"This is the hard truth that human poets write about…" – he heard her voice, which sounded like the rustling of leaves in the wind, as if she herself were a shade of something that had once been full of life. – "There is nothing I can do to make what I say sound better…"

It was a truth he could not deny. Her words were not only filled with her grief, but also with the same fear she had always carried within her. Fear of what she had lost, of what had been locked inside her all these years.

His fingers tightened on the back of the couch, as if he wanted to dig them into the material, to feel that he still had something under control, something that wasn't slipping away from his grasp. Of course, it was all too much. Too much information at once. Too many emotions that were gathering inside him, crowding and pressing. And even though he said it with distance, inside he felt as if the whole situation was tearing a piece of his soul out.

"As soon as I saw you again, as soon as Thor blabbed too much about you…" - her words penetrated him again, as if they were pulling out more layers of uncertainty from him. When he saw her, it was like a stab to the heart - only now the pain that he had kept inside for so many years was coming to the surface, and not because of the war, not because of her disappearance, but because of her herself. She was here. Now. And she was saying what he didn't want to hear.

"I felt inside that it was now or never…" - she added, and Bucky felt the pressure in his chest grow. “All these years I regretted not telling you the truth, I punished myself for it to this day…” – The words went through him like they were trying to destroy everything he had ever known about this woman he had once loved. She was no longer the Delia he had known – but she was also her. And now that she was in front of him, he once again didn’t know what to do.

He caught his breath, closed his eyes, as if trying to rest from himself.

"But… now I don't feel relief… I don't know what I was thinking, saying all that…" - her voice sounded full of uncertainty again. Bucky opened his eyes and looked at her. She was the same distance as before, but now she was more real, more down-to-earth, as if the shadow that had covered her for years was starting to dissolve.

"Don't say anything more," – he said quietly, barely audible, before turning his back to her. He rubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to wipe the weight of this conversation from it, to wash away the past that had just hit him with all its force. Even though everything made sense. Even though her presence glued old memories into a logical whole. It was too much. Too sudden. Too deep.

He clenched his jaw, breathing heavily, as if he was fighting something that didn't let him breathe from the inside.

“Please… don’t say anything more,” – he repeated, a little stronger this time, firm, but without anger. His voice was tired. Broken. Because it wasn’t anger. He wasn’t angry that he saw her. He wasn’t angry that she had appeared now, when he was barely holding himself together. But time… time sucked. This wasn’t the time for someone to pull his heart out and say, – “Hey, I suffered too.” Because he wasn’t ready to share his pain with anyone yet.

It was her. It really was her. And that was exactly why it hurt so damn much.

And just as he asked, she fell silent, turning her gaze to the side, not wanting to meet his gaze again at that moment, even though he wasn't even looking her way. She didn't know what to do, at all. Her hands nervously clasped behind her back, and her fingers seemed to have a life of their own, uncontrollable.

He stood with his back to her, silent, too silent. In that moment, even his breathing seemed stifled, as if he was afraid that if he made one careless move, reality would fall apart.

Delia – no, Jörð – didn't dare move. There was a weight hanging in the air. One that couldn't be cut with words.

Bucky put his hand on the back of his neck, as if he wanted to stop the pain that was climbing up his spine. He rubbed his face, as if the fatigue could disappear if he just rubbed it off his skin.

“I thought that… you disappeared. Simply. Like everything else from that life. That everyone and everything from that period would never return, that it was simply buried… figuratively and literally.” – His voice was stern, without emotion. But the silence after those words gave everything away.

He wanted her to disappear again. And at the same time, to stay.

He closed his eyes. Images were coming back, unbidden. Her laughter. Dancing. The warmth of her hands. And that emptiness that owed him nothing.

“Maybe… maybe it was better when you were gone.” – he said quietly, without strength. – “At least then I was aware that I had lost everything in one moment, that there was no point in returning to the past.”

He didn’t turn around. Not yet. Maybe never.

But his posture – though still closed – was like a door ajar. It didn’t invite. But it didn’t push away so firmly.

Jörð didn’t move an inch for a long moment, as if his words had pinned her to the ground. The air between them thickened, she felt every breath become a fight, not with him – but with herself.

She didn’t try to defend herself. She didn’t deny it. And maybe that was what was most human about her.

“I know,” – she said quietly, calmly. Without trying to save the situation, without drama. – “I know it wasn’t the time or the place. That it was too late. That maybe I shouldn’t be here.”

Her voice was soft, but there was a strength in that softness that she hadn’t shown before. No longer as a goddess, no longer as Delia. Now she spoke like someone who had been made up of regret for centuries.

“But I didn’t leave you because I wanted to forget you,” – she added after a moment. – “I didn’t look for you because I had to. Because no one would have let me stay if I had thrown myself into the war then. Not the world. Not you. Back then you told me that if you didn’t come back you wanted me to live happily.. I didn’t know I could look for you.. I thought you were gone.”

She said it with such simplicity that it was impossible to argue with her. Tiredness and truth mingled in her like two winds that no longer fought each other, but simply flowed in the same direction.

“And yes, maybe it was better when I wasn’t there,” – she admitted. – “But even so… you’re still really there. And you’re alone. And I…” – she hesitated, looking away – “…I just didn’t want to pretend I didn’t care anymore.”

She didn’t expect him to hug her. She didn’t count on forgiveness. She didn’t come for him — but for herself. So that she could finally stop hiding. And even though he was still standing with his back turned, something in his shoulders seemed to relax. Gently. Almost imperceptibly.

As if for the first time in a long time — someone had actually heard him.

He squeezed his eyelids shut, as if he wanted to hide in the darkness, but instead — he took a slow, deep breath. Like a man who had not had the strength to swim to the surface for years, and now he was finally taking a breath.

He turned around.

Slowly. As if every movement weighed more than it should. His gaze, when it finally fell on her, was no longer sharp or cold. It was tired. Real.

He looked at her for a long time, in silence. As if he was trying to remember every detail. Not her new face, not this divine version. But the one he knew. The one he loved.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” – he said finally. – “I really am confused.” He ran his hand over his metal arm—unconsciously, nervously, as if he was still trying to come to terms with her, after all these years.

"But I know one thing." – His voice didn't break, though it was barely audible. – "You can't just come back and disappear again. Since you've awakened something in my memory that I couldn't fucking remember." He took a step toward her. Not much. Not in a tender way. But enough to make it clear that he hadn't closed the door.

"If you really came without masks… then stay. And don't try to pretend again that I died back then."

He fell silent. His eyes were still fixed on her face. And maybe he wasn't ready to let anyone in again. But for the first time in years… he wasn't ready to keep everyone away either. to be continued.... ______________________________________________________