(and this is a jump off from a post I just saw @mcgregorswench reblog, but it was a Supernatural lean and I didn’t want to sway their post with a different fandom)
but
The People vs Bucky Barnes … Legal Defence … Elle Woods.
Bucky chokes on his own tongue – You’re not serious right? They could actually sentence me to death here and you’re pinning this all on a girl I think I saw in the June issue of Playboy?
Elle – Wrong on both counts, Mr. Barnes. The state of New York abolished the death penalty in 2007, and it was the July edition. Fourth of July edition, actually. She pauses to wink at Steve, who flushes hard. Turning back to the man sat incredulously in front of her, she assesses him with a quick once over, top to toe. Believe me, you have nothing to worry about. Apart from that hair. What, do they not have conditioner in Russia?
Okay so this might not be really coherent or sensible but I think I figured out why this idea grabbed me so hard. It’s because Bucky doesn’t want to fight, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he wants the chance to be gentle, to be kind. He wants to be, in a sort of way, harmless (witness me resisting the obvious pun here), which he can never be and which no one, I mean no one, will ever see him as. Not even those who love him best are ever going to look at him, no matter what the future holds, and see him as someone who’s harmless, because he can never be that, no matter how much he might want to be. He’s always going to be dangerous, even if he gets the triggers out of his head. People who don’t love him, who don’t trust him, are going to look at him and see a weapon. They don’t know what’s inside.
People (those who love her excepted, obviously) look at Elle and see someone who’s pretty much harmless, fluffy, the very opposite of dangerous (unless someone’s seeing her as a passive danger, an object lesson of privilege). They don’t see what’s inside: the strength, the steel, the smarts (hell, at first neither did she). Like Bucky, what the world sees from the outside is not what is at their core. What people see when they look at Elle, Bucky would maybe like a little bit of that. And maybe Elle would like a little bit of what people see when they look at Bucky, because
on her chosen battlefield
she’s just as dangerous as Bucky can be on his, although it wasn’t Bucky’s choice (but maybe not; the element of surprise and all that). Sure, she’s also kind and silly and gentle, but when it’s time for war? She’s the Soldier and she will lay waste to Bucky’s enemies.
So in many ways they’re the same, but imagine them in the court room, Elle defending Bucky. Imagine everyone watching the two of them, being afraid of Bucky, not having any idea that the one they should be looking out for, the one who was going to burn their world down around their ears, was Elle. And god, imagine how damned protective she’d be of Bucky as she came to know everything he’d been through. Everything that had been done to him. Because she’d have to know. Your lawyer can’t defend you if they’d don’t know everything. Privilege exists for a reason.
Imagine her giving him Bruiser to hold when he started to get too stressed, started to shut down, in their pre-trial prep: “Because Bruiser scares easily and he needs someone he knows will protect him.” Bucky staring down at this tiny, tiny dog sitting in his metal hand, looking up at him fearlessly, and then staring across at this tiny blonde woman, who should be afraid of him and isn’t, who looks like she should be modelling or something somewhere, but he knows that look in her eye. That’s a look that says she’s not going to stop fighting for him. That says she believes him. That she believes in him. And she’s rattling off case law, at least he thinks it’s case law, and Latin like it’s going out of style and something in him starts to ease and he scratches the dog behind the ears and starts telling her everything he can remember. Things he can barely handle thinking about some days.
Because Elle is a warrior. She’s fierce. She’ll fight for him and she’s not going to stop. Remember, trial by lawyer is a just a prettied up version of trial by combat. Elle Woods is amazing and she and Bucky Barnes would be an unstoppable combination.
Imagine how great it would be if they’d ever made a sequel to Legally Blonde. What a shame they never did that.
Esp. If she had to deal directly with Hydra (see her Congressional experience – I never watched the sequel. Probably should fix that).
The ‘well, I thought Sen. Stern was just a regular misogynistic asshole creep, but the Hydra revelation certainly explained a lot, and created a basis for a kick-ass class action suit’ plot-line alone would make for awesomeness.
The Winter Soldier is called to account for his crimes. He needs a miracle. He needs a decent lawyer. He needs Elle Woods. He just doesn’t know it yet.
“You have amazing bone structure. Very classic. Very James Dean.” Elle said, settling into the chair next to him with a magazine, her blonde hair twisted into little bright blue rollers. “Did you ever consider modelling?”
“Between the Depression, the war and then brainwashing, no, it never came up.” Bucky answered, staring at himself in the mirror.
They move out of Avengers Tower, back to Brooklyn, and it’s the best damn decision they’ve made in a while. This Brooklyn is a world away from the one they grew up in, but it still feels like home to Bucky in a way that loosens something in his chest, makes his days easier in the same way that sleeping beside Steve makes his nights easier. Even on his worst days, when Steve is away on Avengers business and he sleeps the morning away because the dark is filled with nightmares, Bucky can make it as far as the front stoop, spending the afternoons watching ebb and flow of people, and it helps.
The first time he’d shown his hand — literally — one hot summer afternoon, he’d attracted a gaggle of kids pretty rapidly.
“Can you crush a car?” one had asked, transfixed by the sight of Bucky sipping his coffee. Bucky had considered that. It’d take a while, but, “Yes.”
“Could you take on the Hulk?” That’s not something he and Bruce ever wanted to test. Bucky would lose, for a start. “No one can take on the Hulk.”
“Is it bullet proof?” “Sort of. Enough.”
“How much can you lift?” HYDRA had forced him to test that until the plates had warped and his shoulder had been a hot ball of agony. They hadn’t deigned to show him the exact results. “A lot.”
It was the adults who had asked the more pertinent questions: “You live with Steve, don’t you?” asked the young mom — Louise, building across the street, second floor — who came to drag her children home.
“Yes, ma’am,” he’d said. He’d received a firm, decisive nod. He’d not been sure what to make of it at the time, but it’s been months now, and the press still haven’t found their way to the front door. He can’t help wondering if the determination behind that nod had anything to do with it.
Today, she comes past with her dog on the way to the park. “Steve away again?” He nods, letting her puppy enthusiastically snuffle his hands. “You okay for food?” He is, and he says so, but she grins knowingly. “You want more lasagne?” He grins back. “That’d be wonderful, thank you.”
A little later, the after-school crowd swarms past, and he trades greetings and the occasional fist bump.
Monique is at the tail end of the crowd, later than usual. One pigtail has come loose, which is normal enough, but she’s also walking carefully enough for Bucky to take a second glance. She’s deliberately walking along a sidewalk crack, he realizes and supresses a childhood wince.
She reaches the end of the crack, hops from there to a tree shadow, balances her way down a line between the paving stones, makes a last precarious leap to an ice-cream wrapper, and finally lunges to the apparent safety of Bucky’s stoop.
“Can’t go any further,” she announces, panting dramatically.
“No?” He raises an eyebrow at her.
“Sidewalk’s lava,” she says. “It’s getting worse.”
He assesses the pavement. It’s another hundred yards between their stoops and the lunging distances between cracks, shadows, and litter are daunting for short legs. “That’s a lot of lava.”
“You’ve got super-everything, you can survive lava,” she says, pointedly. “And you can jump further.” Her face is deadly serious, so he bites the inside of his mouth to hide his smile.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, and she scrambles up the steps, miraculously no longer winded. He shifts up into a crouch and she clambers aboard, grabbing her own arms rather than his throat, which he rather appreciates. He hitches her up to his waist, securing her under the knees.
“We good?” he asks. She nods against his neck, and he picks his way down to the bottom step. “Right,” he says. “I need some rock outcrops, here. Give me a terrain report.”
She rests her chin on his shoulder, radiating intensity as she assesses. “That leaf, before it gets away.”
Rocket Raccoon: “I need that guy’s arm.”
Bucky Barnes: “Wha- Steve?”
Star Lord: “He doesn’t need your arm, don’t worry.”
Rocket Raccoon: “Yes, I do. It’s important.”
Bucky Barnes: “Will I get it back?”
Star Lord: “Do not give him your arm.”
Bucky Barnes: “But he needs it!”
Rocket Raccoon: “Yeah, Quill. The world’s gonna end if I don’t get his arm!”
Star Lord: “Rocket-”
Bucky Barnes: “The world’s going to end?!”
Steve Rogers: “What? Whose ending the world now?”
Star Lord: “Nobody. Rocket-”
Rocket Raccoon: “Yo, grandpa, get me your boyfriend’s arm. I need it.”
Steve Rogers: “Buck-”
Star Lord: “He doesn’t need his arm.”
Steve Rogers: “But he said-”
Star Lord: “My buddy Rocket here is a filthy whore liar. Please do not give him the arm.”
shealwaysreads 