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Ava can’t recall the last time she picked up a pencil and paper and began doing something as leisurely as drawing.
Okay, so that was a lie. She can remember doing it as often as she could, back when she was a child thrown into an orphanage in Argentina. It was one of the things she did to cope and pretend everything was all right, even if half the time the pencil fell through her grip, or her entire hand phased through both paper and table. Concentrating on keeping her fingers stable and solid was one of her earliest attempts at controlling the quantum anomaly that had destroyed her life - even before Bill Foster had come to take her away.
Later, she can recall drawing to distract herself from both the pain in her body and the endless, deadly assignments she’d been given as a SHIELD assassin - all while waiting for a cure that never came.
Then SHIELD was disbanded, and she found herself working for Valentina. In those years, she’d never thought about drawing again. Valentina made sure to work her to the bone to have time for it.
Nowadays, though, Ava has been trying to relearn what it feels like to exist without bracing for the next wave of pain, the next command, or the next mission. As a result, everything just feels louder inside her head. Too many ugly memories stacking on top of each other, too many nights where sleep just won’t stick, no matter what she does.
And in one of those pockets of downtime, she finds a dull pencil and a half-used sketchbook while cleaning out a drawer in a small room she’d claimed as hers.
The sight of it makes something twist in her chest. Ava doesn’t sit down right away. She just stands there, staring at it, until eventually she realizes her hand has actually picked the pencil up, gripping it in a familiar, almost comforting way.
She tells herself it’s just to see if she still can. Just to keep her fingers busy tonight. But when the pencil touches the paper, the motion comes easier than she expected. She draws the vault, then Bob shooting up to the sky, then the reporters’ faces when Valentina had called them her New Avengers. Every scene she renders, no matter how bare, helps calm the noise in her brain, too.
Soon, it’s like she never grew out of being that little kid hunched over some scrap paper in the orphanage, trying to make a tiny thing hers in a world that thought of her as nothing more than a living, disposable weapon.
And for the first time in a long while, that feels like it’s enough.
Ava keeps her hobby a secret from the others.
Not that she was ashamed of it. But sometimes, it feels good to keep something of hers still private, particularly when so much of her life already feels so exposed - like it’s a price she has to pay for playing a “hero”.
Drawing is one corner of her life that hasn’t been touched by handlers or teammates or anyone with a fucking agenda. It’s not a skill she’s expected to sharpen, justify, or utilize in the field. It’s just hers the way she wants it: quiet, unobserved, and safe from comments and expectations.
Until December rolls around, and she quickly realizes three things:
One, she might actually be expected to spend Christmas with her fellow disposable delinquents.
Two, she might be expected to give them… things. Holiday presents, to be exact. Because people tend to do that around this time of the year.
And three–
–She absolutely, positively sucks at giving gifts.
In her defense, she hasn’t had a ton of experience in the area. For so long, it had just been Bill and her, and gift-giving wasn’t exactly in her list of priorities, not when she was too focused on surviving her quantum sickness to think of other, less frivolous things.
But the one time she did remember to give Bill a gift, it had been a hand-drawn portrait of him. Ava had tried capturing the Bill Foster she knew in her head and heart - his kindness, his compassion, his care. That Christmas, he’d stared at her present like it was the best thing he’d ever seen, kissed her on the top of her head, and repaid her efforts by setting it on his desk, where it sat, untouched and revered, for years.
And so Ava’s decided:
She’s going to draw these fucking idiots to the very best of her abilities.
Not because she cares. She absolutely doesn’t. But because she figures she has to give them… something.
Drawing them individually was meant to be easy.
And it is.
At least, at first.
It isn’t any surprise that Yelena’s the most uncomplicated of the lot.
Ava sketches her from memory one late night. She doesn’t even need to use a picture as a reference; Yelena has always lived loudly and laughed freely, both in real life and in Ava’s head. So much so that her hand moves confidently across the page, recreating the Russian with almost embarrassing ease.
She draws Yelena cross-legged on the couch, hair slick and half-pulled back, expression sharp and amused like she knows something no one else does. And when she finishes, the image of Yelena she has in her hands just feels… right. Breathing.
Alive.
Drawing Alexei? Isn’t that hard, either.
Well, she could draw him with a puffed-out chest while clutching his beloved Wheaties box, but that feels too… impersonal. Almost like a caricature of some sort. Really not something she’d like to give him as a somewhat thoughtful present.
So Ava draws him the way she sees him on some days: laughing, head thrown back, cheeks crinkling at something John had said. She gives him softness and kindness - layers most people don’t expect to see in someone as obnoxious and larger than life as the Red Guardian.
Bob’s a bit… quieter to draw.
There’s just no other word for it.
Ava sketches him sitting with one leg tucked under the other, hand holding a mug of tea, sweatshirt swallowing his frame like he’s permanently caught in cold weather.
But his expression? That, she renders with utmost care. Ava likes his face best whenever he’s looking at Yelena, because he always appears soft, fond, and earnest with her. By the last pencil stroke, she’s almost proud of how she’d managed to capture his gentle and unassuming nature. It was just so very… Bob.
Walker takes a bit longer than the others, not because he’s closed off - fuck, no - but because he just seems like he’s perpetually… on.
Always with that annoying straight posture, chin up, soldier first attitude that still drives her to the wall sometimes. Or all the time, actually. Ava makes several false starts trying to sketch him as she usually sees him: brash, annoying, commanding - and every time, her drawing comes out too stiff and overworked.
In other words, wrong.
It isn’t until she actually spots him sprawled on the floor of the common room one night, playing cards with Alexei, Yelena, and Bob, and loudly complaining about losing to all of them, that something clicks in her brain. So she draws him like that: leaning back, stiff uniform swapped for an old, comfy sweatshirt. Relaxed and deeply human first, stiff soldier persona never.
And when she finishes, she has to sit back and breathe through the strange warmth in her chest. This Walker was someone she could actually stand to be in the same room with without wanting to claw his eyes out. This version, she could see herself not wanting to throw out the building - even if given a free pass to do so.
Then she gets to Bucky - and everything in her stops.
Like her entire being simply went “Full system error. Abort. Abort. ABORT!” at the very thought of drawing him.
She just… couldn’t.
It isn’t even like she dislikes him.
It’s just that, every time she opens her sketchbook with him in mind, her hand hesitates. Every time she thinks of him, Ava’s thoughts scatter in a way they don’t with the others. As a result, certain details of his face slip through her mind, no matter how hard she wants or tries to pin them down.
And the annoying thing is that it isn’t even that difficult to conjure an image of him in her head. He’s all about that heavy presence and annoyingly chiseled jaw, anyway. Broad shoulders. Blue eyes. Restrained, guarded expression. Really, she can easily picture how she’d draw him, if she could: Bucky sitting comfortably on a couch, reading The Hobbit by lamplight, Alpine perched on his lap.
By all accounts, he was a real treat to depict on paper.
But every time she tries to capture that version, she realizes that she might actually be way over her head with this one.
Because Bucky Barnes is simply just too… layered. Has too many lines of history and trauma written on his skin. And her trying to catch all that in a single image? Might be impossible. Something beyond her abilities.
She still tries, though.
Ava starts with his metal arm. Immediately hates how simple she made such an advanced artificial limb look. Tears the page out as a result.
Then she draws his profile and begins regretting her choices, because ew. Too harsh. What is even that nose? Does his jaw actually look as square as that? Obviously not.
On the next page, she tries sketching his smile. To be fair, it was a very rare thing to witness, let alone remember correctly. No wonder she did it wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Borderline insultingly wrong, because god, Bucky in person looks so much better than whatever shitty thing it is she’s trying to produce here.
So, into the trash the sheet goes.
At some point, she realizes she has more ruined Bucky pages than literally everyone else combined. Even Walker wasn’t this difficult - and Walker was innately a difficult man.
It’s bloody ridiculous.
He’s bloody ridiculous.
Unfair it may be, but Ava starts blaming Bucky personally for her many failures.
So much so that she begins wondering if she should just get him a fucking coffee mug instead. Something with Alpine’s image on it. Or one that says “World’s Most Difficult Super Soldier to Draw.”
Less effort and frustration for all involved.
Well, mostly her.
Except Ava knows the team - actually, Yelena - will treat her giving Bucky a different gift from the rest of them like it’s a meaningful thing. And it isn’t, obviously, but Ava can almost see the raised eyebrow, the smug expression, the quiet ‘you like him, don’t you? I knew it!’ accusation that will sit on Ava’s chest like lead for months.
So, she tries a different approach. Less trying to draw him from memory.
More actively watching him for reference.
Bucky tends to sit near the kitchen counter in the mornings, nursing black coffee and pretending he’d slept well even when she fully knows he hasn’t. Ava chooses to settle across from him one day, a cup of tea in hand. They don’t talk to one another, not really. It’s like they both know how useless and uncomfortable small talk can be, so they don’t even bother trying.
She likes that about him.
Still, she takes that opportunity to appreciate - er, observe - the angle of his nose, the faint crease between his brows, and the way his hair falls forward no matter how often he pushes it back with his fingers.
All while he’s reading the morning paper. The real one, not the digital kind. Such an old man.
She nods to herself and looks down at her cup, fairly certain she’s committed the images to memory. Fairly confident she can translate those to lines later that day.
Then she looks at him again. Just to be absolutely, completely sure.
Except—
“Uh,” Bucky says suddenly. “Hey. So.”
Ava freezes.
He’s looking directly at her now, one eyebrow raised. Not suspicious, no. Just entirely curious. Gentle, even. “You good?”
She blinks, realizing she’s been staring directly at his face for a mortifying amount of time already.
“Yeah,” she says quickly. Too quickly. “Um. Just… thinking. Things. Morning– morning ones.”
His mouth twitches, like he’s fighting off a smile. “Right. Well, let me know how that goes.”
Fuck. Fuck. Bloody fuck fuck.
He holds her gaze for three seconds more before going back to his morning coffee and reading, and Ava very deliberately stares at her tea until her pulse stops trying to break through her veins.
Suffice to say, she was too mortified to draw anything that night.
Her next attempt to observe him doesn’t go so well, either.
This time, she catches Bucky in a quieter moment: him seated by the window in the common room, light slanting across his features as he cleans his metal arm with methodical care.
She keeps herself invisible this time. Just watching him. Not in a creepy way, more… observant.
Except he stills his movements suddenly and looks around the room, like he knows he isn’t alone. Like he can sense her presence but can’t actually prove she’s there with him.
Ava disappears into the walls before her minute of intangibility was even up.
In the next few days, she finds herself staring at him more than is socially appropriate.
She pretends she’s looking past him. Or at the wall behind his head. Or at literally anything else on earth that isn’t his face.
It doesn’t matter. It just keeps happening, anyway.
Especially when he’s sitting still. Especially when he’s relaxed. She takes note of everything about him: the softness at the corner of his eyes, the crease in his brow that dulls whenever he listens, the way he sits on a chair slightly angled, like he’s positioning himself where he can see everyone, protect everyone, even when he was supposed to be comfortable and resting.
It occurs so often that a part of her feels like she should apologize for violating his peace.
But then she tries drawing him again - or at least, her favorite version of him. The one who’s comfortable with coffee and newspapers in the mornings. The one with the almost smile tugging on his lips. The one who’d gently asked her, “You good?” despite him undoubtedly thinking her to be a fucking weirdo.
Inexplicably, Ava spends an inordinate amount of time drawing his mouth until it - and his entire face - looked just about right. And when she finished, the whole thing felt like it leapt out of her chest, not produced by her hand.
And that page?
She wraps last. Carefully. Thoughtfully.
All while thinking, yep. I am, now.
Christmas morning is chaotic in the way Ava is very slowly learning to expect, even tolerate - at least from this group.
She’d imagined the holiday to be somewhat uncomfortable for her - something about too much noise, too many people in one place, too many emotions flying around - but somehow, it is not.
And she likes it.
Truly.
Soon, Ava finds herself at the receiving end of five gifts of varying sizes. When it’s her turn, she steels herself and begins handing out her drawings quietly, already bracing for reactions she doesn’t quite know how to handle.
Upon opening her gift, Yelena’s eyes light up before she begins yelling about how beautiful and smart Ava had made her look. John stares at his drawing - then at Ava - for a long, long while before laughing softly and nudging her shoulder with his. Alexei makes a dramatic show of clutching the page to his chest before pulling Ava into a bone-crushing hug, crying, “You’ve been holding out on us, little ghost!” Meanwhile, Bob looks like he might actually cry at his present. He stares at her, eyes luminous, before uttering a brief, yet raw-sounding, “Wow. This is… wow, Ava.”
So far, their reactions have been… uplifting.
Then Bucky opens his.
And he doesn’t move or say anything.
At least, at first.
Ava watches him from the corner of her eye, muscles tense, already preparing herself for discomfort. For questions, for scrutiny, and for however Bucky chooses to react to her gift.
Instead, he swallows. “This is…” he starts, before glancing at her, face careful, almost deliberately neutral. “You did this?”
She nods.
“It’s–” He hesitates. “It’s really good.” Then Bucky clears his throat and adds, “Thank you, Ava.”
Something in her chest loosens at that, and she shifts a bit closer to him now. “It’s why I’ve been weird around you lately, you know,” she explains, even when she knows she doesn’t have to. “I wanted to capture–” Ava gestures at his face, “All that. But correctly.”
“And this is how you see me?” he asks, something uncertain on his expression.
She’s not sure how to interpret the way he said the word ‘this’, exactly. But, so long as he doesn’t look properly insulted, then she’ll take it to mean like it’s a good thing.
“I think you’re a good man, Bucky. So I only depicted what I see in you every day.” She pats his arm and smiles at him. “Happy Holidays.”
And he looks at her with so much warmth and softness that she decides this might be her newest, most favorite version of him yet.
Much later, when all the noise - and people - have finally calmed down, Ava catches Bucky studying her drawing again, his thumb brushing the edge of the paper like it’s something to be revered. Something beautifully, wonderfully fragile.
His expression is soft. Very warm, again.
She smiles to herself before disappearing into her room for the night.
Bucky Barnes is sure as hell hard to draw. Maybe he’ll forever be.
But, she thinks he’ll always be worth every ruined page, anyway.