Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Bucky stood in the elevator, watching the numbers on the little screen above the door go up. The light in the elevator kept flickering, dimming out at odd moments. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, looking over at the hooded figure beside him.

This wasn’t the best of ideas, not by a longshot, but Sam suggested it. Plus, the kid had nowhere to go. No family, no relatives, only one remaining Flag Smasher left besides her who was halfway across the country, Bucky pitied her, almost. She kept her hood up, covering her face, quiet since the drive there.

The elevator dinged. The metal doors opened, bathing sunlight into the cramped space, like it was trying to force them out.

“You ready?” Asked Bucky, digging his hands into his pockets and gesturing with his head forward.

Karli chewed on the inside of her cheek. She wanted to say no, wanted to just slam the ground floor button and run away from all of this, but she promised Sam she’d do this. With a curt nod, she responded.

“Yeah.”

They stepped out of the elevator into Thunderbolts HQ. The team was scattered around, Ava at the mission table, professional and awaiting Bucky since he had announced something important to come. Alexei was near the communal kitchen eating a bagel, Antonia was… God knows where. Bob and Yelena were sitting at the mission table eating In-n-out. Walker was pacing near the table on his phone. When Bucky called for everyone to get to HQ, he asked specifically for everyone to come in civilian clothing so Karli wouldn’t be intimidated or anything.

He stepped forward, Karli a few steps behind like a shadow, tugging on the drawstrings of her hoodie as she felt the room’s eyes fall on her.

“So,” Bucky started. “As you can see, I brought someone with me.” He casted a sideways glance at Karli, then Alexei across the room. “Alexei, get over here, this is important.”

Alexei sat down, bagel still in hand. By that point, Antonia had materialised, and just like Walker, opted to stand, arms crossed over her chest, sharp eyes locking on the foreign figure.

“Team, I’d like you all to meet Karli. Sam asked me to bring her along, see if she’d be a fit.” He nudged Karli forward. John’s eyes widened with alarm.

The girl slowly, hesitantly lowered her hood, revealing her curly red hair, and her scarred, freckled face. Her heart thumped in her chest as everyone in the room started staring at her. And then, her eyes locked on him. John.

“Woah, woah, woah, what the hell is she doing here?!” John shouted from across the room, eyebrows pressed tightly together, already taking livid strides around the table to where the pair were standing.

Karli clenched her fists, eyes flooding with rage and alarm. “What am I doing here?! What are you?! Since when did people start putting goddamn psychos like you on superhero teams?!” She shoved John by the shoulders, unintentionally sending him tumbling onto the floor.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Bucky shouted, having to restrain Karli by this point, as she was about to start throwing punches.

Both Alexei and Ava held back John, as he had already gotten up and was a second away from charging at her. They had started shouting obscenities at each other, the whole room going into commotion. Bucky, Ava, Alexei and Yelena were shouting things too, what were supposed to be deescalating words, but they did nothing except add on to the cacophony. Bob just sat there in his chair, wide-eyed. Antonia stood there, eyes narrowed, unaffected and unamused by the altercation.

                *———— 🛡️ ————*

It took around ten minutes to get them to calm down. So much for first impressions.

Karli sat in the meeting room, tucked into the chair at the far-end corner of the table, leg bouncing. She watched through the wide gaps in the blinds as Bucky gave, supposedly, a speech to everyone. Probably trying to convince everyone she’s not an unstable, anger-issue filled teenager. God, she just wanted to go home.

She took out her phone, trying to distract herself with it. At the top of her screen sat two unread texts from her friend, the only Flag Smasher left alive, Dovich.

‘How was the meeting?’

‘Am I going to start seeing you on TV soon?’

That last message almost made her smile. She had told him about Sam coaxing her into meeting the Thunderbolts, not even to try and join or anything, just to meet them, see what a potential future as a hero could be like. Using her powers for good and all.

‘Hopefully not. Walker’s here, Barnes just conveniently forgot to mention it.’ She texted back.

It didn’t take long before Dovich replied, three little dots appearing at the bottom of the screen as he typed. They disappeared for a moment, like he was hesitating about what to say. Eventually, he replied with; ‘Oh shit’ and ‘Are you alright?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ She answered, leg bouncing a bit faster now. ‘God, I wanted to beat him up so bad.’

‘Don’t beat him up’ Dovich started, followed up by; ‘If you do you might get house arrest again and I won’t be able to see you for even longer’

‘Fair. Promise I won’t beat him up. Just for your sake, though.’ And for the first time in an hour, she smiled.

She turned off her phone, and when she looked up, Karli nearly jumped. At the end of the conference table, was Antonia, staring into her soul. She hadn’t heard her come in or even sit down. How long had she been sitting there?

The two had a type of staring contest for a moment, neither one blinking. Karli noticed Antonia’s scars. Burn scars, covering her entire face, snaking down her jaw, one eye milky white. Her black turtleneck was covering her neck, but Karli figured there were probably scars there too. Karli’s scars, although not as severe as Antonia’s, were similar. Stiff, burnt skin on her hands, running up her arms, coating the side of her face and a bit down her neck. In some odd way, she felt a kind of connection with the older woman across the table. They both suffered through the pain of fire coated against their skin, went through the awful healing process, and probably, the same humiliating stares out in public.

Neither side said anything for a few seconds. When the silence broke, surprisingly, it was Antonia that spoke.

“Good on you for pushing Walker. I wanted to do that for a while.” She commented dryly in her Russian accent.

“You hate him too?” Karli asked.

“Hate is a strong word. But yes.”

“We have something in common, then.” The redhead added.

“Besides the scars?” Commented the brunette.

Silence fell over the room. Karli’s leg bounced faster, heel of her boot thudding softly against the carpeted floor.

“That too.” Karli ended up whispering. “How did you get yours?”

“Explosion. You?”

“Me too. Someone in my team put a bomb in a building without telling me, and I was in it when it blew up.” The younger woman looked down at her scarred hands.

Things went quiet again, and when Karli looked up, those piercing eyes seemed less intimidating to her.

Chapter Text

A day later

The night felt like it swallowed her whole. A starless sky framed the cityscape outside Karli’s window. Bright city lights streamed in, accompanied by a ceaseless chill, thanks to a crack in the window she couldn’t be bothered to fix. She laid in her frameless bed, legs shifting, unrestful beneath the covers, headache pulsing. Her phone sat beside her pillow, screen side up, call still active. She turned onto her side, red curls splayed out over the pillow like snaking vines of ivy. The call had been active for around four or so hours now.

“Are you still awake?” Karli whispered, a sound so mild that she herself could barely hear it.

“Yeah. Still here.” Responded a gravelly, tired voice from the other line. Dovich’s voice.

She turned onto her back, palms exasperatedly rubbing her face. “I don’t get it,” she started. “I’ve taken melatonin pills, I’ve done all those cheap meditation techniques, I’ve been eating healthy, and I still can’t sleep.”

“Same here. Even when I come home all sore and exhausted from work, I still can’t sleep. My brain refuses to.” Dovich replied with a yawn. “It’s like a curse or something.”

“Yeah. Like that dumb horror movie you like.”

“Nightmare on Elm Street?”

Karli hummed in acknowledgement. “That’s the one.”

“I mean, in that movie, it’s not like they couldn’t fall asleep, it’s just that they’d die if they did.” Dovich commented, the sound of sheets rustling coming through the other line as he turned on his side.

“Feels like that to me,” she admitted. “The nightmares aren’t getting any better. I’m not the one dying in the dreams, but I might as well be.”

The nightmares were few and far between, but the problem wasn’t their frequency, it was their intensity. When they happened, Karli would wake up in a cold sweat, panting like she’d run a mile, confused and thrashing around her sheets, forgetting where she was. Before, when she dreamed of the day Nico died, it consisted of her walking up to the bloody steps of the fountain, and the moment of his death replaying like it always had, with a blurring sprint, a dash into the crowd, a glimpse of red, white and blue, her pushing to the front of the crowd and seeing Nico getting bludgeoned with Walker’s shield on the fountain steps. Recently, it changed. Sometimes Nico would scream out her name for help, only for her to be rooted to the ground. Sometimes, his bludgeoned corpse would weep, saying things like ‘why didn’t you help me?’ and ‘you were right there’

And as always, she’d see the face of John Walker, contorted in anger, tilting his head in her direction.

“What did your therapist say about it?” Dovich asked. They had both been issued court-mandated weekly therapy as part of their probation. Karli got assigned Dr. Raynor, the same as Bucky. Dovich got Dr. Flores. Dr. Flores was less of the ‘throw pills your way to fix you’ type of shrink and more so someone who would try to have you work through everything with talk therapy, which felt tedious at times if you really did need pills. Dr. Raynor had a more direct approach, not sugarcoating or softening anything for a minute and telling her patients things as they were. Sometimes Karli liked that about her, sometimes it annoyed her to her core.  

“She said acknowledging it and the reason they’re happening is the first step to making it better,” Karli replied with a sigh, massaging her temples. “Well, I did. They’re happening because my life is shit, now what?”

“Mine said I could take prazosin to stop the nightmares. But he said I’d need an official PTSD diagnosis, and, eh…” he paused. “That takes ages to get. And Dr. Flores said my symptoms weren’t ‘intense enough’ to need meds, and that we should ‘unpack the meaning of the dreams first and work on it’, which felt like a big fuck you in my direction.”

“He said that?” Karli scoffed.

“Yeah.” He admitted exasperatedly.

Things went quiet for a few seconds. Karli could hear every sound outside her window, thanks to her advanced hearing. Car engines, honks, planes flying above the city, a car alarm, the ambiance really didn’t help with the insomnia.

“When am I going to be able to see you again? In person?” Karli asked quietly, turning on her back.

Dovich sighed, knowing the answer and not being pleased with it. “My probation terms say I can’t leave California unless I’ve got written permission by my officer. And I don’t know how long it’ll take before I can get that.” He admitted. “I’m sorry.”

A frown tugged at her lips. It had already been a year since they saw each other in person. Thirteen months after they got out of the Raft, after Sam pulled some strings to get them out early on good behaviour. They were separated and tossed across the country, not even familiar with their environments, in a world that didn’t want them. Good thing Karli remembered his number, or else they would’ve lost contact for good.

She toyed with the tag of her pillow. Someday, she reassured herself, someday, we’ll meet again. She fantasised about what that day would be like. Maybe they’d meet somewhere sunny, a quiet place like a library or a local café.

The day I see him again, she thought, is the day my life will get better.

                                                         »»————-　☠　————-««

Tick, tick, tick…

The clock in Dr. Raynor’s office had always been so loud. It reminded Karli of every painstaking moment she had to spend in there. An hour and ten minutes, that’s 70 minutes, and that’s 4200 seconds. 4200 seconds of Raynor asking questions she didn’t want to answer.

Karli’s leg bounced. She chewed on the skin on the edge of her nail as Raynor wrote something down on her notepad, the sound of scribbling mixing with the clock’s ticking, making an irritating melody.

“Today marks our twentieth session,” Raynor announced, finally raising her eyes from her notepad. “How are you feeling so far?”

Karli didn’t look up. “Alright, I suppose.”

Raynor’s expression, as always, stayed unreadable, but she gave a small nod. She stared at Karli for a moment, before setting down her notepad on her lap and crossing her legs, fingers intertwined. “How has quitting been going?”

Karli’s leg stopped bouncing. After the night of the explosion, the one that left her scarred, she had been taking painkillers during her recovery. They worked wonders, made recovering a thousand times easier. The oxycodone numbed not only her pain, but her mind, too. Relaxed it, drove her thoughts away from the bad things in her life. Even when she recovered, and had no use for it anymore, she still took it. The numbness felt too good to give up. Plus, the withdrawals were so bad they drew her away from wanting to quit.

When she was in the Raft, she was forced to quit cold turkey, which made the withdrawals nearly unbearable. She’d have near constant aches, fevers and spells of nausea that made her throw up her guts. When she got out of the Raft, she went right back to painkillers, wanting to forget about everything that happened to her in there. It took a lot of motivation, strength, and incentive from Dr. Raynor to quit again, but she did it.

Karli’s main motivator was Dovich. If Dovich were to finally get out of California and visit, she wanted to be clean when she saw him again, not the spaced-out mess she was when she was on oxy. She wanted to be the girl he first met all those years ago, hopeful and kind, with a clear head and a clever tongue. After all, he was one of the few people left in the world who still cared about her, she couldn’t bear disappointing him.

Mama Donya was also a big part of her motivation. After all, what would she think, if she were still alive to see that her little girl became an opioid addict?

Karli quit little by little, taking smaller doses over longer periods of time, what her doctor called ‘tapering off.’ It was supposed to reduce the withdrawal symptoms, make them more tolerable. Karli still felt them, there was no doubt about that, but it felt miles more manageable than in the Raft.

“Feels like shit.” Karli admitted, looking down.

“Describe ‘shit’?” Raynor asked.

“I can’t sleep. I get muscle aches everywhere. I keep getting nauseous and throwing up…” she explained. “And I keep getting irritated easily, which, Barnes isn’t making any easier.”

“Yeah, he’s got a tendency to do that,” she commented quietly and rather unprofessionally. Raynor then straightened her shoulders, pretending she didn’t say what she just said, and moved on. “And why is that?”

“Yesterday, he brought me to headquarters to meet his team. Only, he didn’t mention that Walker would be there.” She scratched the burn scar on her hand mindlessly.

Raynor pressed her lips together, an action so mild Karli barely noticed it. “And how did that make you feel?”

The red headed woman shook her head, shrugged her shoulders. “Angry. At Barnes for not telling me and at Walker for existing. God, I would have beaten him up if I could.”

“And what did Walker do?”

“He tried to attack me,” Karli picked at her skin, still not making eye contact with her therapist. “I don’t blame him. We both…”

Raynor raised her brow slightly, indicating that she should finish her sentence.

Karli took a deep breath. “We both… killed each other’s friends.”

The younger woman’s leg started bouncing again. The sound of Nico screams from that day, and the sight of Lemar’s lifeless body against that pillar flashed in her mind.

“He did it in anger. You, it was an accident.”

Karli finally looked up. “Don’t justify it.” She countered sharply, a bit too quick.

Raynor’s expression stayed indifferent. “I’m not justifying, I’m repeating context.”

“I know the context, you don’t need to repeat it.” The redheaded woman mumbled, looking down again.

The therapist pursed her lips. “Do you think that maybe the withdrawals caused your aggression towards Mr. Walker?”

“No.” She picked at her skin again.

“And how are you so sure?”

“Because I’d want to beat him up in any state of mind.” Karli replied.

Her words hung in the air for a few moments, before Dr. Raynor spoke up.

“Okay, look. You can sit there and plan hurting him however much you want, but violence won’t solve your grief. Nor will it change what you did. And sure, maybe thinking about hurting him or even actually going through with it might feel good in the moment, but what will it solve?”

 “It’ll punish him. Punish him properly. He might’ve gotten demoted, but he never faced consequences for what he did. I was sent to the Raft, I got beaten and tased and manacled and- and Walker gets to just- just walk a free man? How is that fair?” She combatted. “We’re both killers, him and I. But he got better treatment because of who he is. Sending America’s golden boy to prison for killing an innocent man just wasn’t good for PR. But nobody had any problem putting me in the Raft.”

Raynor took a moment to take her words in. “I understand that you’re angry. You have every right to be. And, yes, our justice system is flawed, but physical violence will, not only hurt him and his family, but you as well. It’s a clear violation of your parole, and you’ll be sent back to the Raft in a day. Do you really think it’s worth it for a few minutes of satisfaction?”

The redheaded woman leaned back on the couch, the closest thing to defeat she’d ever willingly show. She started scratching her hands harder at the mention of the Raft.

She wasn’t a teenager anymore, she was twenty-two. Her twenty-third birthday was coming in a month. But in the eyes of the public, she was still that angry, radicalised eighteen-year-old she used to be. It was like her image was frozen, a captured picture. To most people, that was all she was, the terrorist that called in a bomb threat at the GRC Patch Act vote, the one who killed Battlestar, and most recently, Captain America’s redemption project. That’s all she ever felt like sometimes, just a violent amalgam of crimes and sins, bound together with tape and dried blood. Those days when she was going out to different countries and helping refugees with humanitarian aid felt so distant, so far behind her.

The rest of the session ticked by like eternity. The sage and forest-wallpaper-covered walls felt like a cage, a cell, boxing her in. As always, she’d answer questions that made her pick at her skin, fidget, and bounce her leg. Dr. Raynor most definitely noticed, which is why she kept pushing. She wanted Karli out of her comfort zone. She wanted to nudge her until she’d hit a breakthrough. But it didn’t happen, and their time was up before any breakthrough could occur. When Karli bid her goodbyes to Raynor, got up from that leather couch and left, it felt like she could breathe. The ocean-breeze-scented air freshener in that room was starting to make her dizzy.

But fleeing into the narrow, carpeted hallway beyond Raynor’s office brought little comfort, because standing there, contrasting with the cream-coloured wall, was Bucky. He stood leaning against the wall, his hands dug deep in the pockets of his black Corduroy jacket, zoned-out eyes refocusing and zeroing in on Karli as soon as she walked out.

For a couple of seconds, they just stood there, neither one speaking up or moving. Karli had her coat hung on her arm, and she pressed it closer to her chest.

“Barnes?” Karli finally asked, her voice echoing through the quiet hallway, being the only thing audible except for the distant ringing of office phones and footsteps. “What’re you doing here?”

Bucky leaned off the wall.

“I came to say sorry,” he said simply. His tone was sincere, more so than Karli had heard before. “For bringing you to HQ while Walker was there. It’s not that I forgot about what had happened, I just… I messed up. I guess it went over my head, and I completely understand if you’re mad at me. You’ve got every reason to be. But I just want you to know that I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Karli furrowed her brows. Sincerity hadn’t ever really been Bucky’s forte, she knew that, which made his apology seem all the more surprising. “Did Sam put you up to this?”

“No. I’m doing this outta free will, not because Sam said I should.” Bucky responded. “I brought you to HQ, so it’s my responsibility to say sorry. What I did, it was a dick move, and I’m sorry about it. I’ll make things up to you and get Sam to stop asking you to come to HQ, you don’t ever have to come back if you don’t want to. And if ever you do, I’ll double-check to make sure Walker isn’t there when you visit.”

The redheaded woman stood silent for a moment, taking in his words.

“I…” she mumbled. “That’s… surprisingly nice of you.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the least I can do.” Bucky added.

Karli’s gaze flickered down, and she started scratching her hand. “What you said about Sam,” she started. “I know he just wants the best for me, but… I think he sees too much in me. He thinks I can be a superhero like him and save lives, but I’m a lost cause and… I think he’s the only one that doesn’t see that.”

“I don’t think you’re a lost cause.”

Her eyes trailed back up. “That’s because he’s a hopeless optimist, and you’re always around him. When you’re near someone that long you start absorbing their beliefs.”

“So, what, I’m an optimist by osmosis?” Bucky added.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Karli’s lips. “Yeah,” she replied quietly. “Something like that.”

Things went so quiet Karli swore she could hear Raynor’s clock ticking through the wall, and the woman at the front desk’s conversation with a client. The redheaded woman started scratching her scarred hand, raking her nails against the divots between her knuckles.

“I should… be going now. I’ve got a bus to catch and Sam’s expecting me at the military base in the morning,” Karli said quietly, looking at the ground before turning heel.

“Wait,” Bucky called out.

Karli looked back over her shoulder.

“I can give you a ride home.” He offered. “I know how long it takes for you to get home, and I’m guessing you’re already tired, so,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t mind giving you a lift.”

“You really don’t have to…” she started.

Bucky shook his head. “Nah. Don’t worry about it, kid. I owe you one anyways.” he replied, walking over to catch up with her.

Karli could count the number of people still left alive that saw her, really saw her, for what she was on one hand, and when she looked up at Bucky, she felt as though she could add another name to the list. Having someone looking out for her made the burrowing hopelessness in her heart wither little by little, and she thought, maybe the speech Sam gave actually had some sense to it. Maybe she could get better. Maybe she could do some good in the world.

                                                         »»————-　☠　————-««

The drive back home was long, the late-afternoon traffic was a nightmare. Thanks to daylight savings time, the sun had already begun its slow descent down the horizon, leaving melting pinks and yellows ebbing in the sky, decorated with cotton-candy-coloured clouds. Bucky had put on a Marvin Gaye song for the road, so smooth, smoky jazz accompanied the view beyond the cityscape.

Their car pulled into an apartment complex’s parking lot. The place was dim, buzzing fluorescent lights only able to illuminate so much. Everything was quiet, every sound felt like it echoed for miles. There wasn’t anyone there except for them.

Karli and Bucky got out of the car, and Karli instinctively flipped on the hood of her jacket. As they walked toward the exit, her eyes darted to every mild noise or shadowy corner. It was a silly thought, but she felt as though anyone could be lurking around the corner, waiting to jump out.

When they both reached the door that led to the stairwell, Karli paused in her tracks. Taking a deep breath, and without looking up, she addressed Bucky.

“Hey, Barnes?” her voice echoed out through the parking lot.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for this,” she whispered. “For looking out for me.”

Bucky nodded. “No problem, kid.”

A small smile grazed her lips, before she walked to the door and pushed it open, revealing the cold, snaking stairwell.

“And, hey, kid?” He called out.

She turned her head.

“Sam isn’t crazy,” he stated. “You’ve got a lot of good in you. I mean it.”

For a second, Karli just stared, unsure of what to say. They had come a long way since they first met, in Dresden where she roundhouse-kicked him out of a moving truck. Or since he visited her in the Raft for information, sharing a conversation behind electrified bars, where every word sounded icier than the water the prison was surrounded by. Now, they were here, on the same side for once, and he was telling her he believed in her. It felt almost surreal in a way.

“Thank you.” She whispered, giving one last thankful glance, before disappearing into the stairwell.