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‘John Walker’ and ‘medbay’ don’t really go together. Not really. This place was more of Ava’s domain when she was glitching, or Yelena’s during the rare moments she could be dragged to get her wounds checked out, kicking and screaming all the while.
And yet, here he was now. The lone occupier of the facility.
He hates it immediately.
His injury had been stupid, in a way mission injuries often were. This one he sustained from a blast door coming down way too fast while they were trying to evacuate the outer floor. Alexei and Bucky had managed to escape, but the girls had been slowed down by the smoke rapidly filling the area and clogging their senses. John had to shove Yelena to the right direction with one shoulder while dragging Ava by the scruff of her suit, pushing them both clean through the lone exit. Except, somehow, the hydraulic latch had caught his wrist as it cycled back down while he was the one escaping, pinning him in place.
John remembered the white-hot, excruciating pain as the door basically tried to amputate his hand. Him trying to pull away on instinct, with Ava yelling frantically behind him to stop. Bucky coming back to check on them all, despite the urgent need for everyone to leave immediately due to an imminent explosion.
And then–
–nothing.
Next thing he knows, he’s waking up on a cot back at the Watchtower to the scent of bleach, beeping sounds, and a dull headache - like someone repeatedly tapping the side of his skull with a wrench.
Oh, and a cast and sling pinning his injured hand to his chest.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
John groans. As far as injuries go, this one could have been worse. However, he isn’t looking forward to the downtime his hand needs to heal, which could take days, even with the serum in his system. And of course, the therapy that might come during and after, if he were unlucky enough to need it.
He turns his head, fighting the fuzziness that clung to the edges of his vision - when something small, metallic, and misshapen on the bedside tray catches his attention.
His stomach drops. Despite his current discomfort, he’d recognize that thing from anywhere.
It was his wedding ring.
Or, more accurately, what’s left of it.
He pushes himself up, fighting the wave of nausea as he does, and grabs the remnants with his good hand. The ring was cut clean on two sides, though one was slightly bent. Most likely from the pressure of the door as it caught his hand earlier.
And John thinks: he doesn’t remember taking the ring off himself.
Which meant someone else did.
Obviously.
A sharp ache pulses somewhere behind his eyes, welling from something deeper - like a small living thing twisting inside his chest. Because he knows the drill about crush injuries. The swelling. Circulation issues. How anything harmless - even a ring - can become a fucking tourniquet if you choose to leave it on a rapidly ballooning hand. And how a limb can easily be lost over something that stupid and small, regardless of its emotional weight.
Now the cut ring gleams dully under the medbay lights, with two halves of something that was once whole. Something that had survived a marriage that ultimately didn’t - at first. Something he kept wearing anyway because… well. It just felt wrong not to.
Especially since in the months that followed their divorce, he’d kept hoping that maybe, once everything settles down, once he’s proven himself worthy of Liv again–
Except you’ll never be again.
He twists the pieces this way and that with his thumb. It’s almost surreal seeing it off his finger, let alone in separate pieces. He remembers buying their rings with everything he had, years ago, the seller assuring him of their quality and calling the pair practically “indestructible.” And John had bought the pitch hook, line, and sinker, because he thought it was very appropriate. Indestructible - just like his love for Liv, then. Just like their entire relationship had been, then.
Well.
Guess some parts of that are no longer true.
He expects the flash of pain to deepen, to rip him open and expose him fully. He’d welcome it, to be honest. But there’s… nothing. Just an ugly hollowness, a neutrality that feels as out of place as a super soldier inside a medical facility.
John rubs his face with his good hand.
Maybe it’s just the pain meds.
Maybe the fallout will still happen hours later, when he least expects it to.
Or maybe–
The medbay door on the side hisses open softly, and he closes his fist around the pieces protectively before looking up.
Ava comes in first, seemingly tired and pale around the edges. Then Yelena strides in behind her, shoulders squared and eyes unreadable. And finally, there’s Bob, who walks in like he’s fully expecting the room to be filled with armed terrorists.
“Look who’s finally decided to join the land of the living,” Ava says, smiling a bit once she spots him and coming to stop by the bedside. She reaches to touch the edges of the bandage near his elbow. “How are you feeling?”
“Like death warmed over,” he replies honestly.
“Well, you’re not wrong. You do look like it,” Yelena tells him, arms crossed in front of her.
“Awesome. Great. Thanks.” John rolls his eyes at her.
Bob fishes something from his pocket - a foil-wrapped sandwich, from the looks of it - and holds it out to John. “I know you guys aren’t allowed to eat here, but–” He shrugs. “Thought you might be hungry.”
“I made it, by the way,” Ava pipes up, sounding suspiciously chipper. “Should be good.”
John’s about to take the sandwich, but at Ava’s announcement, he pauses to look at her, then at Bob. “Yeah, I’m… going to have to pass on that.” He still remembers her making that boiled chicken and mayo disaster for herself. It was fucking disgusting, to say the least, so he’d have to be dead before even willingly thinking about consuming that shit.
Bob laughs. “She’s kidding, Walker. I made it, so it’s better than hers.”
“Not by a lot,” Ava shoots back.
“But still better,” Yelena says, backing Bob up because of course she is, “which is what is important here.”
John shakes his head. Eating is definitely the last thing currently on his mind, so– “I’m not really hungry right now. You can just leave it by the table, Bob.” And then, afterward, “Thanks.”
“No problem, man.” And Bob does just that.
Yelena keeps staring at him - particularly at his closed fist. It discomfited John enough to ask, “What?”
“I take it you saw?” she asks. “What happened to your ring?”
Beside her, Ava inhales sharply. Even Bob looks surprised at the question.
That was the thing about Yelena, John had learned months ago - she’s about as subtle as a fucking sledgehammer to the throat.
Silence pools around them for a second, tight and uncomfortable. And then, because there’s no reason to keep his hand closed anymore, he opens it - as if showing the others what was left of his ring. “Yeah,” he replies lightly. “Someone cut it while I was out, then left it here for me to see.”
“It had to come off,” Yelena tells him, point-blank. Just an honest fact shared among the four of them. “You understand that, right?”
At first, John had wanted to ask her why none of them tried waking him up just so he could make the decision. Instead, he hears himself say, “You made the call.”
She meets his eyes without flinching. “Yes.”
“Lena,” Bob mutters softly. Like a very gentle reprimand, a reminder for her to be… well. Softer.
Yelena looks at him, nods, then turns her attention back to John. “Your finger was turning purple. Medics say if circulation doesn’t return, there would be necrosis, and then–” She exhales loudly. “It was either save your ring or save your hand. Figured you’d want to wake up with your limbs intact, so. I told them to cut it.”
She doesn’t say it like an excuse or apology. And, all things considered, there is really no need for either one, anyway.
For a moment, John waits for the anger. The rage. The fury that should come at the realization that Yelena’s the sole reason why the last reminder of his happier days now lies broken on his palm.
Instead, there is just… a certain quietness.
Acceptance.
Misinterpreting his silence, Yelena continues, almost belligerent, “Understand this, Walker. If it’s between some meaningful jewelry or you, I will always choose you. Or any of you idiots, for that matter. Okay?”
As if to soften things, Ava touches his arm again and says, “We did tell them to be careful about cutting it up, though. So you can have it reforged whenever you want. I might know a guy who can do the job well. We can take the ring to him as soon as you’re able.”
“We can chip in,” Bob offers, sounding eager. “For the expenses. Though not a lot since I really don’t have that kind of money. But-”
That actually gets John to laugh. Which does wonders in easing the unspoken tension surrounding them.
“Yeah, no, I’m–” He turns the ring pieces in his palm again. “I guess I still have to think about what to do with these.”
Yelena stares at him again, brows furrowed. “You’re not mad?”
He looks at her and asks, “You expecting me to be?”
She blinks at him. “Well–”
“We know how important your ring is to you, Walker,” Ava cuts in. “So you don’t really need to do that thing like you did in the desert–”
“What thing?” Bob inquires.
“Pretend,” Yelena says quietly, still holding John’s gaze. “That everything is okay in his life. Only for Bucky to tell us it’s as shitty as ours had been all along.”
John exhales. Later, he’d chalk up his openness to the meds in his system. But, for now– “I’m not pretending,” he says, voice low. “I’m done pretending.”
The others stay quiet for now.
He looks at Ava and adds, “I should be mad about this. Right? I mean. I guess I am. But–” He rubs his brow. “It’s just… I don’t know.” He huffs, just a sound, not quite humor. “For so long I’ve worn this ring, even if what it symbolizes no longer exists. Today I keep expecting that seeing it broken would break me too, but–”
–it doesn’t.
John shrugs, gives them a half-hearted smile. “Guess it’s another proof of how much a shitty person I am, huh? That I’m not as angry as I ought to be right now.”
Yelena and Ava exchange meaningful looks.
“Or,” Bob says after a few seconds, “maybe it’s proof that you’ve… I don’t know. Moved on? Without realizing it?”
John looks at Bob then, who, to his credit, doesn’t shrink back. Him? Move on from Liv?
It sounded impossible.
And yet–
“I think Bob has a point,” Ava says, gentler than he’s ever heard her. “You’re allowed to let go, you know. There’s no prize for clinging to broken things.”
“Or relationships. Or people,” Yelena adds, nodding. “Who knows. Maybe you’re just realizing now that you’re no longer carrying something already long gone.”
He plays with the ring pieces again, not really saying anything. John doesn’t even know what to say to that, at any rate.
“Hey, man, if it helps? I don’t think any of that makes you in any way or form a ‘shitty’ person,” Bob continues.
“Yeah, well,” John mutters, “you haven’t really known me that long.”
“Now that sounds like something I should be saying to you,” Ava teases. “After all, isn’t making you feel bad about yourself part of my job description?”
“Y’know, I was wondering why you’re acting suspiciously nice,” John tells her. “Beginning to think you’re the injured one here, not me.”
She sits on the cot beside him, nudges his shoulder with her own. “Don’t get used to it. You did save my life back there, at the facility. Figured that earns you a day or two of niceness in return.”
“Is that right?”
“Mm-hmm. Then it’s right back to shitty behavior between the two of us.”
Despite himself, John laughs.
“And for the record, I do not see anything wrong about you being a shitty person,” Yelena tells him. “For as long as you’re surrounded by other shitty persons, like us. Then we all can be shitty together. Like shitty family.”
Bob openly frowns at her. “That’s… I don’t think that’s right.”
“Pretty sure it is.”
“No, Lena, that’s–”
While the two of them continue to bicker, Ava nudges him again and asks, softly, “Hey. Are you really okay?”
He shifts the ring pieces in his palm. “I don’t know if ‘okay’ is the word.” He smirks faintly at her. “But I’m not yet falling apart, so. There’s that.”
She quietly studies his face. Ava must have seen something there that satisfied her, because she nods and tells him, “Good.”
"We should go,” Yelena cuts in suddenly. “Leave you to rest so you’ll get better sooner.” Pause. “And if by then you feel you need to punch me for the ring, then come at me anytime you want, for as often as you want. I could use the practice.”
John nods at her. “Give me a day or two, tops,” he says. “Feel like this should heal relatively quicker than that time Bucky and Sam broke my arm for the shield.”
Ava and Yelena’s mouths drop open. Meanwhile, Bob’s eyes go huge as he asks, “Bucky and Sam did what?”
John waves his good hand. “I’ll tell you guys another time.”
“You'd better. That’s too good an info not to share with the rest of us,” Ava says, going to her feet. She pats his arm. “Rest well.”
“Yell if you need any help, man,” Bob tells him, waving at him as he drifts to the door.
The three of them move to leave.
And then–
“Yelena.”
She looks back at him.
“Thanks.” He lifts his sling a fraction. “For saving the hand.”
Something in her expression softens, just the tiniest bit. Her gaze flicks to the limb in question, then back to his face - and nods. “Anytime.”
And then, they were gone.
Leaving John alone again in the medbay.
He shifts on the cot, the ache in his wrist pulsing slow and dull, like his body reminding him of all the ways today could have ended differently.
Then he opens his hand again, just enough to look at the two small, broken pieces of metal in it. The remnants of a promise broken long ago.
Only to set them on the tray right next to Bob’s sandwich, lean back, and let his eyes fall shut.
Later. He’d deal with the ring later.
For now, he’ll just rest.