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John woke up aching. He was lying most likely in the infirmary, because the bed beneath him was worse than the beds he’d had in the military (and he’d slept on the ground with sand somehow getting in his boxers). He groaned softly
‘He’s awake,’ Yelena said softly.
He could tell it was her even with his eyes closed because of her very faint accent. He blinked open his eyes, finding himself in a dimly-lit white room. Yelena was sitting next to him, criss-cross-applesauce in a comfy looking chair that she had to have dragged in from the team’s living quarters.
‘Good,’ said Bucky, appearing on John’s other side. He looked pissed. ‘Now I can yell at him.’
‘Don’t yell at him without me!’ Ava called, phasing partially through the ceiling and staring down at them all with dark eyes.
John wondered how that worked. Would the blood eventually rush to her head, or did her body think it was two separate bodies? Did her lower body- which was not visible right now, as only her upper torso (chest, neck, shoulders, head) was phased through the wall- temporarily die while she was phased like this? He’d never asked, thinking it a sore subject. But now it seemed curious, though judging by the IV next to him that may have been due to a truly insane amount of drugs. Thank you, super soldier serum, for making it so difficult to take painkillers, it’s very much not appreciated.
Bucky crossed his arms. ‘Walker.’
John, startled, met the other supersoldier’s eyes. ‘Yeah?’
‘Why did you do it?’ Bucky asked, his voice deadly soft.
‘Do what?’ John frowned. ‘Wait, what happened?’
‘We were in the Gobi Gurvan Shaikan National Park in Mongolia, near Barun and Sevrei, hunting down some newly crashed alien tech, remember?’ Yelena explained, her voice as gentle as John had ever heard it.
And then John remembered. He remembered it all. And he knew what Bucky was mad about.
Earlier, in Mongolia
The group had split up into groups of two. Even Bob had come this time, given that it had a very low chance of engagement with hostiles. Alexei and Yelena, Ava and Bucky, John and Bob were the groups. And it had seemed like just a normal retrieval mission: find the crash-site, retrieve the tech (or destroy it if it seemed to be too dangerous), and then head back to the United States with notes for Valentina. But they were the New Avengers; nothing ever went to plan with them.
John and Bob were hiking through a valley, thankful to be sheltered from the raging sun. The others weren’t so lucky- Bucky and Ava were handling the grasslands, Alexei and Yelena handling the sand dunes. Honestly, a couple of hours in searching the vast expanse and it seemed like whatever action that would happen would not be near John and Bob. The most excitement they had was local wildlife- a bearded vulture, even a Gobi ibex. Everything was quiet.
But then they saw it. The glowing, unnaturally colored light, almost seeming psychedelic.
‘Walker here,’ John said over their com. ‘Bob and I have potentially located the tech. Permission to proceed?”
‘Permission granted. We will join you as soon as possible, but take caution,’ Bucky warned. ‘We will probably not be there for a while.’
‘Have fun, comrade! Back in my day, last time in Mongolia we toasted to Gorbachev!’ Alexei’s cheerful voice boomed across the com.
‘Dad, shut up. Please. You’re an old fossil, we get it,’ Yelena deadpanned. ‘Be safe, you two.’
She said that as if she were talking to both of them, but John knew she was only talking to Bob. The team pretended to include John, but he knew he wasn’t really welcome here. It was alright, even if it did sting. A fake family was better than none.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ John said. ‘We will be.’
He and Bob stared at the cave with some apprehension. Even with the crazy, hallucinogenic-like colors, the cave entrance was disturbingly creepy. It reminded him of that time in Virginia where he’d gone spelunking whilst off the base with a few friends. He had ended that adventure up to his waist in frigid cave water surrounded by blind cave fish. They had to call 9-1-1 to get his ass.
‘That looks like Smaug’s lair,’ Bob noted.
John grinned. ‘Please, this is not a dwarrow palace. This reminds me more of Smeagol’s hidey-hole, albeit with more drugs.’
Bob snorted and gave John a little mock-bow. ‘After you, my precious.’
He even did the fucking voice.
John rolled his eyes, secretly smiling to himself as the duo carefully entered the cave. The darkness was not bad, actually, and the cave was decently sized. They quickly found the tech, glowing like radioactive lava lamps in the darkness of a ghost town, but as soon as Bob picked it up (it resembled a cross between a watch and an anemone, though none of the writing was legible) it began smoking.
John’s heart sank
And
Went
Thump
Thump
In
His
Chest
As
He
Thought
‘No, Bob!’
He
Could
Tell
What
Was
Coming
Like
A
Oracle
Foreseeing
The
Death
Of
The
King.
He
Knew
What
It
Was.
Because
That
Right
There
Was
A
Timer.
It
Was
A
Grenade,
And
It
Was
Going
To
Go
Off.
Everything seemed to be in slow motion. He lunged, knocking the alien grenade out of Bob’s hands and covering the damn thing with his body, just as the thing went off. Then there was pain, and screaming, and flashing light, and John felt disconnected from his body- floating away, his senses fuzzy, as everything went dark.
Present
‘Oh, that,’ John said. ‘Honestly, why are you mad?’
‘Because you almost died!’ Bucky hissed. ‘Bob is fucking invulnerable, you are not!’
‘Yeah, but if he came back with a scratch you all would kill me,’ John said, confused.
Yelena and Bucky exchanged significant glances with each other.
Three years ago, Barnes, you wanted me to be like Rogers. He would’ve died for his friends without a thought. That’s the one thing I have in common with him. I thought you were glad I did this one thing like he did.
The room fell silent.
‘John,’ Bucky whispered, sounding like someone had punched him, and John realized he had said that aloud.
‘The world wanted me to live up to a demigod. But I’m just a man.’ John’s mouth tasted like ash. ‘And it haunts me. He haunts me. Every heartbeat reminds me of my failure. Everytime I look at my phone I see that I was never enough; that I never could have been enough.’ He took a breath. ‘And maybe, just maybe, a part of me thought death would be…’
‘...redemption?’ Yelena added. ‘Oh, I know how that feels. But it isn’t. Death isn’t redemption. It isn’t a way to get the pain to end. Got it?’
‘I know in the past we…didn’t get along,’ Bucky said carefully, ‘but that wasn’t on you. That wasn’t about you as a person. It was about me, and it was about me moving on from Steve. You could’ve been anyone, anyone other than Steve, and I would have hated you. And yeah, you fucked up. But so have we all. You have less blood on your hands than the rest of us, and yet you feel it deeply because the world is always watching you.’
Yelena nodded in agreement. ‘Bucky’s right, John. You were only a puppet. It wasn’t your fault what happened, because you were just caught in the me
John was so caught off guard he nearly choked on air. He- that was the first time anyone here had used his first time. They had all called him Walker while leaving the more intimate first name for others. His heart, broken, healed from its burns just a little bit (just a few degrees, just a few inches), warming him up. And their words were like a balm, soothing emotional wounds he’d been barely aware of.
‘We have your back,’ Bucky said. ‘From our first mission to whenever this all ends. Because we’re a team, and a team is family.’
John smiled. He knew he wasn’t healed yet, but now knowing he had people who had his six? He could finally start to heal.
‘Also, we’re going to get you a therapist, now that you’ve opened up,’ Bucky said.
‘Oh, come on! Don’t destroy the bonding by sending me to a shrink!’ John protested.
Bucky arched an eyebrow at him and John slumped down in his bed, grumbling to himself.
‘And you should probably apologize to Bob. You terrified him,’ Yelena pointed out.
‘Fuck.’
‘Aww,’ Ava cooed from the ceiling, reminding everyone that she was still there.
‘What the fuck-‘