Read All About It, 3/5

[mangacat201]

Chapter Two

~*~

The elevator stops on one of the communal floors that you normally avoid, but Barton said something about food. Even though your relationship to anything of nutritional value is still tenuous for various reasons, you’ve learned to listen when your body demands replacements for the calories your metabolism burns through, so you follow him in. The doors open into one big room, with a large kitchen area to the left where Stark is sitting on a bar stool at the counter, clearly completely engrossed in something playing on his tablet. Straight ahead, a sprawling set of sofas is grouped around a big entertainment center where Natalia is nestled into a loveseat on her belly with her feet up and her nose in a book, a casual pose that looks off on her, too careless, until you notice the subtle shift of her muscles when you step off the elevator that makes it into artful observation. On the big screen, you just catch the tail end of an ad proclaiming that due to continued popularity and a generous donation enabling them to acquire some new exhibits and commission a replica of the mysteriously vanished uniform (that ended in tattered strips of bloodied canvas on an emergency floor and brought tears to the eyes of the curator when it was finally returned) the Smithsonian will officially extend the Captain America Exhibition for another six months well into the coming year. You follow Barton silently towards the seating area where the man with the broken wings, Wilson, is just turning to his neighbor on the couch, ribbing him mercilessly.

“Hey Cap, I would have thought giving money to people who painted your face ten feet high onto a wall was more Stark’s style.”

An absent ‘Oi’ sounds from the left, which they ignore. The Captain manages to keep his blush from rising past his ears and deadpans instead:

“You break it, you buy it, Wilson., Far as I know that hasn’t changed in seventy years, has it?”

Wilson sputters and boxes his arm good-naturedly. You hang back a little, silent, because ordinarily you have little chance to observe him being this carefree, as he is with the others. When he’s aware of your presence, his focus tends to lie singularly with you. And there’s nothing carefree about him at all. The fact that he can joke about what happened with people who will understand makes you feel lighter, but there is a little bud of something knotted and bitter, gnawing in your stomach. If you had a way to be sure about describing emotions nowadays, you might have called it jealousy.

You are both out of time and need each other as a point of reference in a world that has become so vast and blurred around the edges, but in this moment, you realize that he has started to build a life here, where you are stranded, with people who are a match for him and have in a way become the family he has lost so long ago. You cannot help but need him, because he’s the anchor to everything you are right now, but for him, it’s different. And for the first time since you woke up to the shards of your own existence and made the decision to build your new old life back up around him, you feel like you might want to be part of something, something bigger, for the sake of yourself. That being on the team for real might be more than a stipulation to your self-appointed mission and instead a chance at camaraderie, companionship and you feel a little bit surprised at the realization. It’s not something you expected to ever want again, but the discovery that is might be in your grasp fills you with an excitement you haven’t felt in a long time. It’s not enough to overcome all the looming obstacles that still lie in your way, but it certainly makes them smaller in your mind.

The two men on the couch are engaged in a childish game of poking each other in various places, until Natalia speaks up without taking her eyes from the page she’s reading.

“Hello Clint.”

“Hi Clint, how are y… oh, hey…”

He barely looked up to greet Barton, but you know the moment he sees you half hidden behind the archer’s back and his eyes widen a little before he schools his expression into friendly calm. He is obviously trying not to let on how much your unexpected presence throws him.

“Hey guys,” Barton waves and then steps over to Natalia to hook a finger underneath the spine of her book to see what she’s reading. Every other person would have potentially faced lethal consequences, but he just gets a slap on the wrist, so he lets go. You stay where you are, quite at a loss about how to participate anymore in their social gathering and feeling increasingly awkward, while you feel his eyes shift from you to Barton and back, obviously putting together that the two of you entered the room at the same time.

“So, what have you two been up to then?”

Before either you or Barton can answer, Stark, who has wandered over in the meantime, picks the worst possible moment to jump in with his flippant response.

“Eeeh, the boys have been down the Playground this afternoon. I have to say, your target accuracy is breath-taking, as advertised. And you shoot like you mean business, I like that.”

The mystery of what Stark was so engrossed in is solved after all, and even if the notion of having been watched like that makes a bit of cold trickle down your spine, you’re really not at all surprised that he monitored the whole thing. There’s a beat of silence, and suddenly the atmosphere is charged when the Captain’s voice cuts through it with a sharp, almost frantic note.

“You did WHAT?!”

The bottom falls out of your stomach at his obvious distress, and you know you shouldn’t have gone no matter how much it turned out to help if this is his reaction. Everybody else – except maybe Natalia, who hasn’t even moved to look up – seems completely startled by the outburst, so they don’t say anything before he continues, scathing words clearly directed at Barton, cutting you out of the conversation entirely.

“So you what… took him down to the range and gave him guns to shoot at things without so much as a by your leave, because what could possibly GO WRONG?”

“Yo, hold your horses, Cap, nobody died!”

Stark’s statement clearly does nothing to diffuse the volatile tension in the room. Instead it makes him pause only for a moment before fear-colored rage flickers on in his eyes, and his voice falls to a deceptively low pitch, a sharp and dangerous contrast to the shout that elevated the end of the last sentence.

“Nobody…? Did you even stop to consider the kind of setback that could have meant? That he could have… If he fell back into…”

Confusion rattles around in your mind, mingling with cold dread. He had been supportive of your decision to go back into active duty until now, even if he was apprehensive about the publicity issue, but that has more to do with the way it affected you than anything else. You don’t know what’s changed, (except you do know.) and you are not sure if you are going to back down if it turns out he doesn’t want you to fight with him. But you’ve spent so many years being talked about, talked over, like you are not there, and it cuts to the core, that he of all people would do that to you. The knowledge that this is the tipping point you’ve waited for, proof that he doesn’t trust you to come through, to be as whole as you need to be to join the fight, causes a ringing in your head that you try to ignore by twisting your fingers into your thighs, until you feel the bruises form, and the pain grounds you. Loud voices locked in an argument pass you by as unintelligible noise while you try to brace yourself against the blank space in your mind that’s spreading, because every ounce of agency you can muster is spent on your statement.

“I am right here. And I don’t want to kill ANYONE.”

Everything stills for a moment, and people’s heads turn sharply towards you, making your skin crawl from the sudden attention. You startle yourself for a moment, because until it came out just now, you weren’t aware what a strong truth that sentiment holds for you. That literally the only thing that would ever motivate you to go back out and fight is to protect him. It’s not enough to stop him completely in his tracks though; he is breathing hard, fists balled at his side as if he’s ready to settle this argument with a physical fight; as if he’d actually prefer it that way. Just when he opens his mouth again, Wilson’s voice cuts in abruptly:

“Cap, I think you need to go take a walk, unless YOU want to be the major setback of the day.”

Wilson is obviously not at all intimidated by the considerable bulk that is Captain America in a temper, but it’s the harsh words that finally jar him out. He takes a step back, looking stricken, his eyes are flickering rapidly between you and Wilson, widening with every rapid breath, like he’s only now coming back to himself and what he’s been doing. He meets your eyes last, and you see familiar pain and fear mingle in his expression, before he turns on his heel and simply bolts towards the nearest exit. The other occupants of the room follow his retreat speechlessly for a minute until Natalia, who has been the only one conspicuously unaffected by the whole scene, closes her book with an audible thud. She unfolds from the couch with catlike grace and steps around to take both Stark and Barton by the scruff of their necks, before dragging them towards the elevator bay. Wilson lets out a startled ‘Hey!’, but she just throws him a telling look over her shoulder and he deflates.

“Oh, yeah, I see how it is.”

You really don’t, so you just stay where you are until the two of you are alone. You are completely spent of all the energy that has animated you in the past couple of hours and wait for Wilson to make the next move. The Falcon has been acting as a literal wingman to Captain America throughout most of your time here, so you have seen more of him than almost every other person since you let yourself be taken in by the Avengers, but curiously you’ve never been alone together so far. Wilson studies you for a moment before he sighs and puts his hands on his hips, muttering under his breath: “The pair of you, I swear…”

Then he seems to come to a decision and waves his hand for you to follow him to the kitchen area to the left. You kind of like Wilson – as much as you are able to parse the concept – for the way he acted like you tearing him out of the sky on the helicarrier was no big deal, (even though it clearly was!) and the amount of support he has given to the Captain trying to wrangle a wayward assassin, but your feet still feel like lead as you follow.

Everything feels too big for a moment, bits and pieces of your newfound self-confidence crumbling away, like all the ground you’ve gained today is being dragged out from under you again, clearly too good to be true. Wilson only confirms you haven’t moved by glancing over his shoulder for a second before he begins opening cabinets to get cooking ware, rummaging around in the fridge, not paying you any mind until he speaks up again.

“I figure I’m going to feed you first, before we attempt to sort through this mess with you guys and your metabolism. Believe me, I know what Cap can put away after he’s had an eventful day, and he’s never pretty to deal with on an empty stomach. Eggs and bacon sound good?”

Wilson obviously doesn’t expect an answer, because he’s already cracking the first eggshell against a bowl before getting the last sentence out and, somehow, watching the completely ordinary and menial task from afar unlocks your ability to move. You walk over, slowly, carefully, but not completely silent, because if anything, Wilson is still a soldier too, and you’ve learned to make such small gestures to put the people around you more at ease. Anti-heartstoppers, Stark calls them. When you reach the counter, you sit down on a barstool across from the one Stark vacated earlier and press your right hand on the counter top next to you to conceal that it’s started shaking. For some reason, the fact that no attention and no expectations are directed at you right now is like someone hit the pause button on all the turmoil in your head. You are thankful that focusing on Wilson’s puttering around helps keep the noise down, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

Wilson doesn’t talk while preparing the food, doesn’t seem to have the same problem with silence that the Captain sometimes gets. He has the tendency to start prattling on about everything and nothing, just to fill the space between you with sound. Instead he shuffles the eggs around in the pan, seasoning them liberally with all kinds of spices, which you secretly appreciate, because what little you can actually remember tasting has been nothing but bland. Wilson tips the eggs onto two plates after a few minutes and then turns around to slide one onto the counter right in front of you, before leaning back against the stove, grabs a fork and digs in. You look down at the food with sudden apprehension, stomach cramping, and appetite fading, and even though the sensation of hunger is right there, you are not sure anymore if you can eat anything right this moment. Then the smell of sharp pepper and salty bacon hits your nose, and you have the fork in hand, shoveling a bite into your mouth before you have any more second thoughts about it.

The first bite might have been difficult, but afterwards it is like the floodgates open, and you devour the food in front of you with a fervor born from an afternoon of physical exertion. It’s also kind of mindless, which helps to keep your thoughts away from the Talk that Wilson is undoubtedly gearing up to. You know you’d both rather avoid it as long as you can and shoveling eggs into your faces is as good an excuse as any. But then your fork is suddenly clinking against the empty plate, chasing around the last small crumbs. Wilson still has a few bits left even though he had served himself a much smaller portion. You would have felt embarrassed about that once, but the food has made you feel full and warm and …

”…everything’s easier with a full stomach, Stevie…”

You draw a deliberate breath. Sometimes your own voice drifts up in fragmented memories, clear as if you were standing right next to yourself as you uttered the words. It gives you a feeling like double vision in your mind. The voice always fades though, and the feeling recedes until you are firmly in the present again. You keep yourself from shaking your head, still wary of showing such obvious cues concerning your mental and physical state, even to the people you trust not to mean you harm. Wilson must have caught something in your expression anyway, because he just calmly finishes his food. But you know your time is up, when he sets down his plate and draws a deep breath.

“So, what you said, earlier… did you mean that?”

You don’t look up or answer, the question surprising you in this moment. You expected Wilson to circle around what he’s really going to say (…he doesn’t trust you not to crack, he doesn’t trust you at his back, you should give up on the idea and stand down already…) you were prepared to let him for as long as possible. But you didn’t expect having to contribute to the conversation. When you do look up, Wilson just meets your eyes patiently, clearly waiting for you to speak. So you nod. But feeling the need to clarify one thing, you tag on:

“I will though, …if that means keeping him safe. And I’m not sorry.”

It sounds petulant and confrontational even to your own ears, but if Wilson is playing the waiting game, you might as well give him something to work with. However, Wilson surprises you again by nodding in agreement.

“That’s good.”

“What?”

Wilson turns his head to look out of the window into the New York skyline that’s slowly lighting up in the dusk.

“You know, anyone is capable of doing of difficult, sometimes horrendous things under certain circumstances, for certain reasons. Killing someone is only one of those. Thing is, they might feel it’s necessary in the given situation, but they don’t want to do it. They take no enjoyment from it and they’re not indifferent towards it. That’s not machines, that’s people. And the fact that you’ve discovered that line for yourself? Yeah, damn right, that’s a good thing.”

You rub your fingers against the smooth granite of the countertop, trying puzzle out how Wilson labeling your stance as people behavior – which makes a ball of warmth flare in your chest – will figure into the explanation of why you shouldn’t be out fighting with them. With him.

“You know something else that people do? They see a task ahead of them that seems insurmountable and frightening, but if they feel it’s necessary for the good of others or a greater purpose, they will work past that and do it anyway. And, from what I heard, some of what you decided to do today must have been pretty scary stuff for you. Something that could have ended pretty badly if you didn’t do it right.”

You study the countertop next to your tense fingers as if it will tell you how Wilson plans to reach the point. Whether or not your excursion with Barton ended right or wrong doesn’t matter anymore.

“But you worked past those fears and did it anyway. I think that’s great.”

You look up sharply, startled, because that statement still doesn’t fit the parameters of where you expected this conversation to go at all, and from the way Wilson looks at you, he knows that too.

“Yeah, in fact, I think that was very brave.”

“But…”, the word slips out between your lips even though the rest of the sentence gets stuck in the back of your throat.

“But you think Cap was right when he said we shouldn’t be giving you guns, much less let you loose in a real fight. You’re a psychologically unstable, dangerous, brainwashed assassin after all, right?”

On the one hand, you’re glad that Wilson doesn’t let you fumble until the words come out, but on the other hand, the uncanny way he translates your thoughts makes your hackles rise. Also, the words cut you more than you are willing to acknowledge. Still, you make yourself nod curtly.

“I thought so. There’s something I want you to think about first: What made you decide you wanted to go out along with the others and fight, even though that meant facing all those obstacles?”

You draw up short, still off balance on how this talk is going and scrambling to put that moment into words.

“When… when he came back all torn up… I… I couldn’t… the chance of losing him like that…”

“… got real, didn’t it? It felt real.”

You drift back into the memory of the jet arriving, the Captain listing between his companions and the feeling that every little piece of yourself you had scraped together at that time was slipping away over torn skin, sinking into drenched fabric with every drop of his blood surfacing. You had spent a lot of your time up to that point tangled between the mindset of an indifferent killer and the wreck of a person slowly rediscovering human emotion, mostly hiding from both behind a protective layer of suspended numbness. But that… that had cut through the haze and dragged you into the present, into action. You nod once more, eyes skittering past Wilson’s face to gauge his reactions without meeting his gaze directly.

“And you knew before that he was out on missions and fighting and yeah, that might have worried you, made you anxious, but what got the ball rolling was being confronted with the evidence of what he does for a living, even if it was really only the aftermath. That’s when it hit you.”

Wilson quiets as if he’s expecting you to mull it over and figure it out for yourself. This is becoming a theme, really and a very exhausting one at that. On the other hand, you revel in the fact that there’s apparently enough of you there by now that they trust you to be able to follow complex human deliberations like that. You let it sink in, retracing your steps mentally and trying to put together why Wilson would ask you to think about that in the context of … him. You have to turn it over in your head a few times until the penny drops. Wilson is implying that the Captain had a similar epiphany to yours, and got upset, because he wants to protect you. But… from what? It doesn’t make sense at all.

You look at Wilson helplessly, trying to convey that you got what he was attempting to give you, but that you don’t understand. He’s been patiently following your process and sighs as if he can’t believe how his life has come down to being the interpreter between barely verbal ex-assassins and temperamental super-soldiers. But in the end, he is about helping people, so you know he will weather this like every other of the manifold crises you’ve had.

“You know, Cap… he likes it when everybody thinks he’s that unflappable team leader, a bed-rock that others can turn to and build on. And he is, he really is, but sometimes that makes people forget that a lot of scary stuff has happened to him too in the past couple of years. And sometimes he doesn’t deal with that as well as he’d like to believe even for himself. Instead, he compensates by being needed, with his search for a purpose and the urge to protect people. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t make the issues and the need to deal with them go away.”

Wilson pauses for a moment to check in, and you nod slightly to indicate that you’re with him. Even though there is still a lot of you that is scattered, fragmented from a harrowing past, and most of it is likely never coming back, the Captain driven and self-sacrificing to a fault is one of the very few fundamental truths you know. What you hadn’t considered up to now is how his own baggage affects him, and how he might be – no is definitely – neglecting his own peace of mind for the sake of others. It’s a humbling thought and already puts some things in perspective before Wilson continues:

“So, when you decided to go off on your own, test your skills and your endurance – which is great by the way, making decisions like that – his realized that you are one step closer to being out there, fighting again, and shit got real for him too.”

You let that settle for a moment.

“And he… doesn’t want me fighting,… because I could lose control and hurt someone?”

Wilson shakes his head emphatically.

“He doesn’t want you fighting, because you’re the one who might get hurt. And after what you did today, how well you did,… that’s not just a hypothetical anymore.”

Your first instinct is to dismiss that train of thought outright, because you are too good and too valuable to let yourself get damaged during an Op, and even if you did, what would it matter? But for once the damned barrier between you and your communication to the world acts in your favor, because it makes you go back over that thought with Wilson’s earlier question in mind and suddenly, things become clear.

“Oh….”

Wilson lets you work through it a little more before he nods, apparently satisfied that you arrived at the right conclusion.

“Yeah… our Captain makes it easy to overlook, but underneath all that extraordinary muscle and stellar attitude, he’s still human. Sometimes, he even gets scared like a normal person. And people who are scared tend to lash out at the first thing that seems to be the problem, even though that’s not actually the problem.”

Funny thing is, you do see it, (relate to it with intimate experience actually.) and even though you feel like you should have known the root of his reaction without a special play by play, there is a bone-deep sense of relief in the realization that it’s not really your actions that made him lose his cool in such a spectacular way. Still, the emotional rollercoaster of the day has just about drained all your capacity for human interaction. At least it seems to end on a hopeful note, which, considering it contains such highlights as almost taking someone’s eye out on reflex, and the only person you’ve counted on to be a calm and unrattled presence in your life blowing up at you, that’s saying something.

You look at Wilson, grudgingly impressed, because he has managed to turn what could have been carnage and mayhem into the manageable kind of mess you’re equipped to deal with by now. It’s something he’s done a lot over these past few months, and you feel like you finally can and need to acknowledge it.

“How… how did you get so good at this?”

You wave your hand around with a vague gesture that is supposed to encompass what has become commonly known as ‘superhero wrangling’. Wilson seems startled at first at such a personal and conversational question; then he laughs outright.

“It’s a gift. You know, I think by now I’m not even sure I’d be able to deal with normally troubled people instead of a bunch of batshit crazy maniacs who've adopted me into their club, so they can have free counselling without having to admit it. Well, except Stark. He loves his shtick with the couch, because he gets to talk about himself for ages without caring if anyone really wants to listen. But otherwise, yeah, don’t worry about it. I know, both you and he need some time, preferably apart from each other, preferably soon, but we’re still making this up as we go along, so… I mean, I’ll talk to him, okay? Get his head screwed on straight again, it’ll be fine.”

You look down at your hands, still a little afraid to trust that sentiment, but you also realize that you are really in no condition to contribute to a positive development there. What you can take away though, is the knowledge that nothing can really keep you from achieving your goals if you set your mind to it, not even him. Anxiety and determination are still battering away at your insides, and it’s a terrifying mix, but now at least, you have somewhere for them to go.

Wilson catches your eyes and asks: “You gonna be alright now?”

You look at your splayed hands on the countertop and think about it in earnest. There’s still a lot of turbulence in your head, and you know sleep is not going to an option with how keyed up you are, but that’s fine. You’ve become better about rest, but you don’t exactly need as much of it as people have been suggesting you get. Besides, you have plans to make now, so it’s not like you won’t have something to occupy yourself with. You look back up at Wilson and nod. He lets out an audible breath he must have been holding since he asked and leans back against the counter.

“That’s good then. Now, let me go find the other half of this dynamic duo, so we can sort this out.”

He rocks forward and makes to leave for the elevator bay, leaving you to your own devices after an eventful day. You just breathe for a moment, letting the quiet whoosh of displaced air break through the silence, while you gather your wits for the next step.

Chapter Four