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Bob was observant. He spent much of his time in the tower watching others, not in a creepy way, he’d be quick to correct, but to gain understanding. Not that most of them noticed, anyway. The life of the New Avengers was a constant state of motion: missions, press junkets, photoshoots, training… He didn’t think most of them had enough time to breathe, let alone see how he would watch them flit about the tower with wide eyes dipped in curiosity.
He’d discerned a lot this way; how Bucky would hang back watching over the group with sharp eyes, almost as though he was afraid they’d disappear right in front of him, how quick Ava was to disappear when a conversation dipped too far into uncomfortable territory, how Walker carried himself with a self-absorbed pride, but couldn’t manage to look himself in the mirror most days, how Alexei tried so hard to pull everyone together into bonding activities like they were a real family, how Yelena wielded her quick wit as precisely as any gun she used.
Mostly, though, he noticed how sad Lucy Jean looked when she thought no one was looking, how she would stare at a spot with such an absolute look of sorrow that he felt his own heart constrict in his chest, then the moment would pass, and she’d snap to like she didn’t just get lost in her head.
He’d asked Bucky about it once. Gathering up enough courage to talk to the man when it was early in the morning, and it was just the two of them milling about in the kitchen. “Lucy Jean gets really sad sometimes,” he said, almost fearing he’d said it too quietly because there was a long silence from Bucky, who had paused shoveling oatmeal, which looked more like gruel, into his mouth.
Bob knew that Lucy Jean was close with the Winter Soldier, the pair having a history that ran deeper than he could probably understand. That thought caused something dark and ugly to crawl up his throat, which he forced down. He did not want to put a name to the feeling because placing a name on it would mean acknowledging it and having to confront it.
Bob didn’t think he was ready for that.
He heard Bucky let out a sigh. “She’s lost a lot,” he explained, finally looking up at Bob, brow heavy and mouth a straight line. “Grief is… hard enough as it is. Harder when you feel like you’re alone, drowning in it.”
Bob knew that feeling. He knew that feeling so intimately that he thought it might have settled into his bones, infecting the marrow, rewriting his DNA. “But she’s not alone,” he whispered more to himself than Bucky.
Bucky gave a tight smile, leaning over to clap a firm hand onto Bob’s shoulder. “She’s not, but it can be hard to remember that when you’re so used to dealing with those feelings on your own.” There’s something akin to guilt in his eyes when he says this, but Bob won’t comment on it, not now. “If you’re worried, you should talk to her.” Bob stuttered out some sounds of alarm, unable to form a coherent word at Bucky’s suggestion. “She won’t be mad if you ask her about it,” he assured.
Bob knew that. He’d not seen Lucy Jean mad. He couldn’t imagine it if he were being frank. When he thought of Lucy Jean, he thought of her clear green eyes and the way she’d look up at him with a small smile itching at her lips whenever he’d say something funny under his breath that he thought no one else heard. Or the way she’d quietly set a plate of food down next to him when he’d get too drawn into whatever book he was currently reading, a hand on his shoulder and an expectant look reminding him to eat.
Over the last few months, he felt himself drawn to her, like she was a planet and he was just a stray asteroid that got caught in the pull of her gravity. She was a beacon for him, calling him home when he was too far out to sea. He wanted to be that for her, too. To be someone she could look to for comfort, to be the shoulder she could lean on when the world's weight felt too much.
Bob ruminated on Bucky’s advice for a while. It took him nearly a week to work up the courage to approach Lucy Jean, and he found himself pacing outside her door late one night, softly murmuring to himself words of encouragement, building himself up to just knock on her door. He’d gotten lost in the pep talk he gave himself; he didn’t even notice her door open.
“Bob?” He jumped at the sudden intrusion of her voice in the silent air of the hall. When he looked down at her, the positive affirmations he’d been whispering to himself moments ago seemed to have just evaporated from his mind. He wanted to hate how her eyes gazed up at him as if he mattered, like the rest of the world fell away and it was just the two of them. But he didn’t. He loved liked the way she looked at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he stuttered out, fidgeting with his hands. “I, uh- I had a question for you, if it’s okay, if it’s a good time.”
She laughed disarmingly, and Bob felt his stomach churn at her crooked grin. “I always have time for you, Bob.”
She held the door wider to allow him in, and he hesitated at the threshold of her room, realizing it was the first time he’d ever been in her room. It was undoubtedly Lucy Jean. The warmth of the lights, the mish-mash of patterns and textures that generally wouldn’t go together, and the smell of incense burning that permeated throughout the room. It was the feel of her skin against his that brought him back as she guided him by the hand into the room, leading him to her bed.
She plopped down, grabbing one of the fuzzy, decorative pillows to place in her lap. He noticed that it was something she did often. When they were out in the common area, she’d latch onto one of the pillows on the couch just to hold on to it, like it grounded her.
He looked unsure even as she patted the bed next to her, but her insistent nodding had him timidly sitting down. When he started to wring his hands together, she handed him his own pillow to hold onto.
“So, what did you wanna ask me?” she questioned, looking at him expectantly. His eye traces the gentle slope of her nose down to her mouth, entranced by the scar that mottled her upper lip but did nothing to detract from how lovely she was.
He bites his lip, wondering if this was a bad idea. He could still leave, just tell her never mind, and walk out, but a part of him wants to stay, to know Lucy Jean, and truly know her. He couldn’t do that if he left.
“You look sad a lot of the time,” he starts, and he hears her exhale sharply as though she’d just had the wind knocked out of her. Silence envelops them like a blanket, and Bob is fighting everything in him not just to bolt away from the awkwardness he’d created.
“Oh,” she finally mumbled softly. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Why?” The question was so direct and invasive. He wants to hit himself for the continual act of putting his foot in his mouth. Anyone else might have scowled at him, told him to mind his business, but the corner of Lucy’s mouth just quirked up.
“Because I had people worth losing and lost them,” she explained, and hearing her say it out loud made his chest ache. “My powers started to manifest when I was young. Moving things, hearing things… My mother didn’t know how to deal with it, didn’t even really think it was happening. She thought she was going crazy, but really it was just me projecting until she… did. There was an incident, and I got on the radar of some really bad people…”
She grasped the pillow tightly, holding it to her stomach as she looked down and away from him. “I don’t remember much of my time with Hydra, I think it’s probably for the better, but it is where I first met Bucky.”
This information causes Bob’s brows to raise on his forehead. “You’ve known each other a long time, then?”
She nodded, full lips forming a frown that didn’t quite look right on her face. “They were interested in my ability to delve into people’s minds. They wanted to see how far I could go with it and Bucky…” A shaky breath escapes her. “... Bucky was the best test subject for that. We’ve never really had it out, him and I.” There’s a ghost of a laugh, but it has no heart. “All these years and we’ve not talked about it… I think it’s ‘cause I’m scared to find out he hates me for it.”
“He doesn’t,” Bob said before he even had the chance to stop himself, because he knows Bucky could never hate Lucy Jean. He’d seen it in the way Lucy Jean was the first person Bucky looked for in a room, the person he gravitated towards, who he allowed into the quiet, intimate moments of his day.
She just gives him a watery smile. “He should… He took me with him. When Hydra was exposed, they were scrambling, and in the confusion, he took me. We spent two years just… running, and learning how to live. I think Bucharest was the first time I’d ever felt normal, and then… well, the bombing in Vienna happened, and that little life came crumbling down.” The smile on her face turns warm as if she remembers something fond. “That’s where I met Wanda, though.”
“Wanda Maximoff?” Bob asked. He’d heard of her, of course. She was an Avenger. The way Lucy Jean’s eyes light up means she was more than that, at least to Lucy Jean.
“I’d never met anyone who had abilities like mine. I was so enamored with her, right from the start. She was so powerful and… kind. She understood me in a way no one ever had before, sometimes it felt like I was looking in a mirror…” She paused. “After we fought Stark, Steve broke us out of prison. Wakanda was wary of someone like me, with powers they couldn’t quantify with a mathematical formula, so while they offered asylum to Steve and Bucky, T’Challa would not do the same for me. I went with Wanda instead.
“We lived in Scotland for some time. She taught me more about my powers than I had learned after nearly a decade under Hydra, and she helped me to understand myself in ways I’d never thought possible.” Bob watches the wistful look Lucy Jean gets, and his heart skips a beat. “And… we used to stay up late watching old shows… You know, like ‘I Love Lucy’, ‘The Honeymooners’, ‘Bewitched’. We would just… talk… about nothing and everything. It was something I never had before… something I don’t think Wanda had either.” She clenches the pillow tighter to her chest as a large, giddy smile stretches across her face, and she looks up at him. “We were girls together.”
That sentence hangs in the air for a moment, and he watches as the smile fades from her face. She blinked, glancing away again. “But then… the snap happened and I lost her… and Bucky… and it was hard learning to live without them… It was harder learning to live without her the second time.” Tears gather at the corners of her eyes. “After we defeated Thanos, I… didn’t know what to do. Everyone… everyone who was left moved on. I didn’t, though. I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. Bucky had found a place for himself with Sam and Wanda… Wanda just disappeared.”
She meets his gaze, and he instinctively reaches out to her, thumb brushing away the tear that slipped out, though he doesn’t draw his hand away, instead caressing her cheek. “I found out later that something happened in New Jersey; it was all hush-hush, and no one would tell me about it, but whatever it was, Wanda was at the center. She was dealing with something so immeasurable, and I was stuck in my apartment, consumed by my own grief. I should’ve found her. I should’ve been there for her, and I wasn’t…” Eyebrows pull together, and her lip trembles.
“I could always feel her before. Even when she was far, I felt her deep in my soul like a steady thrum, until one day I didn’t.” She looks at him, and he can see himself reflected in her eyes as they glitter with unshed tears. “It was horrible, to just not feel her. For her to be there one moment and gone the next. To know that I could’ve done something.”
He shakes his head. “Lucy Jean, no,” he murmured. “You couldn’t have known-”
“But I could have!” She leans towards him, nostrils flaring as her throat clenches painfully. “I could have known if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in myself. I would have noticed. A good friend would have noticed.”
Words escaped him, and all he could do was watch as the tears began to stream down her flushed cheeks freely. His mind scrambled as he searched for the right thing to say, desperately ignoring the dark thoughts that crept into his mind. ‘You can’t help her,’ the voice crooned. ‘You can’t even help yourself.’
Then, something odd happened. A large wall of red crashed around his mind briefly, cutting off the steady spread of the darkness that had begun to crawl out of the deep recesses, stopping the heartless whispers of The Void. Instead, another voice echoed in his head, one he’d never heard before, calm and steady, words spoken with fondness.
“What is grief, if not love persevering?” he whispers, and Lucy Jean’s eyes snap to his.
“What did you say?” Her voice cracks.
“I-I, y’know, that’s just something I heard…” he stammers, trying to avert his gaze, but Lucy Jean wouldn’t let him, her eyes searching his almost frantically. He doesn’t know what she finds, but her lips quirked up into a shaky smile, and she nods.
She leans forward, and the first thing he feels is the warmth of her body before he notices that she’s hugging him. Her face is buried in the crook of his neck, and the feel of her is overwhelming, but not unwelcome. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her closer, tighter.
The world can be cruel and deeply unfair. Some days, just getting out of bed is hard enough. We can never know what turn the day might take, never know the suffering that could be waiting just outside our bedroom door.
But to feel pain is to be alive.
To know grief is to know love.