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Bucklena is the het ship between Yelena Belova and Bucky Barnes from the Marvel and Marvel Cinematic Universe fandoms.
Canon[]
Bucky and Yelena are both members of the Thunderbolts/New Avengers. Bucky had previously worked with Yelena's adoptive sister, Natasha Romanoff, as a member of the original Avengers. It is unknown if Natasha ever spoke about her sister with Bucky, or when Bucky may have learned about Yelena.
They meet officially when Bucky captures Yelena and the rest of the Thunderbolts upon their escape from O.X.E. Believing them to be complicit in Val de Fontaine's plans, he decides to try and have them testify against her. Yelena tries to explain to Bucky about Robert "Bob" Reynolds and Val's Sentry plan, but he refuses to listen. However, his tune changes when he receives a call from Val's assistant, Mel, who confirms the existence of the Sentry plan.
Bucky, Yelena, and the others head into New York. Bucky, as the hero with the most experience, takes the lead in the plan. The group infiltrates Val's headquarters, and meets with Bob again. Bucky tries to fight him, but Yelena tries to discourage this, worried about Bob's instability. Eventually Yelena is forced to fight Bob after the other Thunderbolts engage him in combat. They lose terribly, and run out of the building.
The group dissembles outside, with Yelena separating from the rest of them. Before long, Bob returns, this time as the Void, and plunges New York City into darkness. Yelena, Bucky, and the others come together to try and save bystanders. As the Void creeps towards them, Yelena decides to walk into it. Bucky tries to dissuade the other members from following her, but eventually the group agrees to head into the Void to rescue both Yelena and Bob.
Upon their success, the Void retracts and returns everyone to New York. The group heads to confront Val, but instead are met by a gathered press crew. Val introduces the team as the "New Avengers". Fourteen months later, the team is still working together and living in the old Avengers Tower. Bucky and Yelena receive word of a craft entering their atmosphere, and try and dig further into the matter while the rest of the team debate their team name and uniforms.
Fanon[]
Fans were instantly drawn to the potential of Bucklena upon hearing they would star in a new movie together. Some of these fans were shippers of Winter Widow, hoping to see a romantic relationship between Bucky and one of the Black Widows finally come to fruition in the MCU. Others just enjoyed the idea of Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh acting as romantic counterparts to each other. As both characters were brainwashed by Russian agents, fans believe they would have plenty in common. They both have very dark pasts, and are assassins who have since reformed and become heroes.
Shippers were somewhat disappointed, then, when Bucky and Yelena didn't share any significant moments in Thunderbolts* and Yelena was instead shown to have much more chemistry with new character Bob Reynolds. While they still exist on the same team and there is hope for moments between them in future installments of the series, fans will have to wait another year to receive any of this content.
There are currently over 130 works on AO3 for this ship. It is more popular as a friendship, with over 230 works for the platonic tag on AO3. There are 16 fics tagged for this ship on FFN.
Fandom[]
- FAN FICTION
- Bucky/Yelena tag on AO3
- Bucky & Yelena tag on AO3
- Bucky/Yelena (Avengers Movies) tag on FanFiction.net
