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Summary:

After months of experimentation, Lucy Del Mar escapes captivity from one of OXE's undisclosed labs, miles away from home. Left with nothing but abilities that she can hardly explain, she has only one goal: kill Valentina Allegra de Fontaine for destroying her life.

When Lucy finally gets a shot at it, in a vault in the middle of nowhere, she doesn't find Valentina, but a group of trained OXE Shadow Ops and a very confusing civilian named Bob. When no other option of escape presents itself, Lucy falls into a begrudging alliance with her adversaries. The closer they get to freedom, however, it's clear there is something much more sinister happening behind the curtain. Something connected to Lucy herself.

Lucy is then thrown into a fight she once had no intention of being a part of, alongside her complicated allies - who, slowly, grow closer as they delve deeper into Valentina's lies. With the world at stake, Lucy has to choose between her own plans for vengeance or this new, fragile team - and maybe, discovering which of the two will heal the emptiness within her.

Notes:

okay, so. this is so insanely self indulgent but i just couldn't get this idea out of my head. i think Thunderbolts* was incredible, and i made this for no other reason but the fact that i've been obsessed with it since i watched it for the first time.

basically a what if thunderbolts had a seventh member who was a young, eighteen year old girl - who's sarcastic, snarky, and quick to anger - that had a very strenuous past with Valentina. this is mainly stemming from the fact that i think the adopted-daughter adoptive-father trope would have fit so well with john walker. (can you tell that i love his character?)

anyway, here is Lucy Del Mar. be kind to her world.

chapters will be updated fairly close to one another since i have it all done.

title and epigraph are from Powers by boygenius

bonus! some songs that remind me of Lucy:

-Not Strong Enough by boygenius
-Girl With One Eye by Florence & The Machine
-Eat Your Young by Hozier
-the grudge by Olivia Rodrigo

please, enjoy!!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: the tail of a comet

Chapter Text

 

how did it start? did i fall into a nuclear reactor?

or am i simply another of the universe's failed experiments?

 

 

*

 

 

It was only supposed to be a routine experiment, a way to make this month’s rent.

 

The flier was posted up against the bungalow outside of the grocery store she’d just been fired from. Lucy had frozen midway through tugging on her jacket, eyes catching on that beautiful, bolded number: $10,000. 

 

Half of her jacket hanging off of her arm, she didn’t bother reading the rest as she tore the flier from the posting and stuffed it in her bag.

 

The next morning, she was walking through an unlabeled alley, to an equally unlabeled door. The number she’d called, the one on the flier, gave her the address. 

 

And maybe she should have listened to that telltale pulling at her gut. She should have reminded herself that no amount of money was worth whatever might be on the other side of this door.

 

But she was also starving, and it was the middle of August. Winter was coming, and soon. Her mom was gone – off on another one of her benders – and no other establishment within a ten mile radius was willing to hire her again, thanks to her quick mouth and even quicker fist.

 

Her knuckles were still mottled blue and purple, like a galaxy, from the day before. As inexperienced as she was in the realm of fist fighting, it was the only reaction her brain could come up with after the man, checking out nothing but a pack of cigarettes and case of beer, leered at her over the counter and asked what she was wearing under her uniform.

 

Her jacket had holes in it and Lucy was beginning to feel that familiar ache at the base of her throat - scratchy and sore. Medicine alone would cost her, and without insurance she couldn’t risk catching anything.

 

The woman on the phone – a voice that was familiar, but Lucy wasn’t sure how or where she’d heard it before – had explained what it entailed. Just some blood drawn and skin cells harvested, and it’d be over. Then Lucy could buy a new coat, pay the rent for the next three months, and actually have a meal that was more than just bread and cheese.

 

She entered the door without knocking, the way the woman on the phone had told her. It was dark and cold, and it reminded her of the apartment on chilly winter nights. For a moment, Lucy’s guard dropped, the same way it did when she crossed her own familiar threshold.

 

Until a piercing, paralyzing pain traveled from the base of her neck down to the rest of her body, and all Lucy saw were stars.




*




She comes to in increments, glimpses of life here and there.

 

There are bright lights above her, clinical and blinding. Like the hospital lights after her mother’s first overdose. But this time, Lucy is the one laying on her back, gasping up at the ceiling, coughing and choking.

 

Something restricts her movements as she struggles against the metal at her back, until there’s another prick in her arm and she falls into the darkness once more.

 

Some time later, she hears voices as she drifts through a sea of stars. 

 

Too young and just a kid call out to her, along with perfect donor and she’ll have to do.

 

Another flash in her vision, her eyes opening to a blinding supernova of light, stars and galaxies and universes colliding into one another again and again. Beautiful and terrifying all at once. Lucy wants nothing more than to escape into it, to feel nothing and everything at the same time. 

 

She reaches out and touches that bundle of light. 

 

For just a second, Lucy feels as if everything will be okay.

 

And then the stars begin to burn. Lucy can only scream.




*




Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is not a good person, no matter how hard she pretends to be.

 

And yet, for some reason, Lucy wants to trust her.

 

In the beginning, she does. She listens to Val’s explanation of the trials, the experiments. She gives into the story of the girl with the power to create stars, whole galaxies and universes with a simple flick of her fingers.

 

She believes in it so much that  she allows for the scientists to pick at her bone marrow and probe her brain. The experiments that leave pain lancing through her as the stardust in her veins flows faster than blood. She wakes up more often than not with bruises on her inner elbows and her lips bleeding from where she’d bitten into them too hard.

 

And still, she allows it. Because Valentina believes in her. She tells her, for the first time in her life, that she’s worthy of greatness. Of being saved, and of saving others. 

 

You can be a hero, Valentina declares one day, after Lucy collapses in on herself, her mind pulled apart like the universe before the big bang. 

 

You’re a supernova, she coos, pushing Lucy’s sweaty hair back.

 

You’re worth something , she promises, and the light inside Lucy glows so bright she feels it might burn her up, and she’d let it.

 

She tells Valentina the truth – about everything. Her childhood. Her dad, gone before she was even born. Her mother, drinking, drinking, always drinking; the nights spent cooking for herself while her mother lay passed out in their bathtub. Nights spent in the hospital after her mother mixed too many pills with bottles of alcohol. Foster care, and the scars that came from that. Dropping out of school once she was back with her mom, working up to ten hour days to cover the cost of living. 

 

Not being enough. Never being enough.

 

And still, for the first time in Lucy’s entire life, Valentina stays. Valentina believes in her.

 

And Lucy finally feels good enough.

 

Once Lucy deems herself ready, the first test run of Project Nova begins. Valentina is there to see Lucy’s rise – and she’s there to watch as Lucy inevitably falls.

 

Stars and light gather at Lucy’s fingertips, so strong she’s lifted off of her feet, floating as the world around her bent to the power surging off of her. But then it began to burn. Everywhere. Heat licked up her spine and Lucy started to scream, begging for it to stop.

 

She broke through three of the five barriers between herself and Valentina.

 

After Lucy came back to, half a dozen scientists lay at her feet, burnt to a crisp. And Valentina was already gone.

 

They locked her up after that, in a fireproof room with sprinklers that went off every half hour to keep Lucy cool – or rather, to keep her from destroying herself.

 

On one of the glass panes outside her cell, she read the word stamped in red ink: FAIL.

 

Valentina returns to visit Lucy once, and she begs to be released. 

 

Valentina only narrows her eyes.

 

“You’re not worth the trouble you would bring,” she states, voice devoid of any emotion.

 

Valentina leaves and Lucy burns so bright her cell grows black with ash.

 

Everything within is destroyed. Everything except for Lucy.




*




Lucy doesn’t know how long she’s been locked up for before she makes her escape.

 

The scientists come and go, drawing blood and tracking the racing of her heart. There’s starstuff in her veins and atoms, she can feel them within her, growing and multiplying. Sometimes the rage within her quiets to a lull, a grief so deep she’s pulled down beneath the current. Other times, it comes crashing through her, burning and blazing, a celestial force that scorches the earth where she stands.

 

Most times the scientists don’t make it out of her cell.

 

Still, they keep her locked away, and Lucy remains curled in on herself in nothing but a pair of scrubs and too long hair. They feed her, let her bathe semi-regularly. She stares and stares at the burnt walls and wonders if her mother is worried about her. She doesn’t think about the fact that she knows her mother hasn’t even realized Lucy is gone.

 

This goes on for minutes, hours, months and years, maybe. Until it doesn’t.

 

There’s a breach in the system, something Lucy gathers from the way every electrical port and bulb, the light in her cell and the datapad beside the door, flicker off. There’s nothing but darkness and the startled yells of the guards outside her cell. 

 

Before Lucy can even react, she hears footsteps pounding toward her and hands grip her upper forearms, coaxing her up and away. She struggles, fights against the forces binding her. Anger courses across her spine, up from her chest to her fingertips and toes. She’s burning, light flickers from the palms of her hands, stars gathering around her.

 

She screams; in pain, in rage, in terror. The light is only bright enough for her to watch as the guards surrounding her are slammed into the walls of her cell and their lifeless bodies slide to the floor with a resounding crack.

 

Lucy is left, trembling, body still lit up from the inside – and this is when she knows for certain. No one is coming to save her. 

 

With only the light emanating off her skin to guide her, Lucy runs.





*




She runs for days, breathing in the open air for the first time since that morning in the alley.

 

The sun pierces through her skull, but she doesn’t let it slow her down.

 

Eventually, she comes upon a gas station in the middle of miles of desert and flat terrain. It’s hot, though not in the way it was before. The heat from the cell, from herself, was like that of space – below freezing to the point of burning. This heat makes Lucy feel as if she will melt, like the ice in her veins is quickly turning to liquid once more.

 

She pushes through doors to the convenience store, bare feet blistering against the sticky tile. A man behind the counter glances up from his magazine and blinks at Lucy. He seems uninterested, despite her lack of real clothes and the crazed look in her eyes.

 

“Where am I?” Lucy asks.

 

The man informs her that they’re in Oregon, some town in the middle of the desert, though Lucy knows her cell must have been even farther from here. Lucy glances up at the TV stationed above the man’s head, the news broadcasted proudly, displaying the time and date.

 

April 3rd, 2027.

 

Eight months. Over eight months have passed since that fateful morning and Lucy has lost two thirds of an entire year.

 

Before the man can question her further, Lucy stumbles out of the gas station and continues to run.




*




She stows away on a train, headed from Portland to Lancaster; back to California. Back home.

 

She finds clothes in the carry-on train car, where larger suitcases are stored.

 

A pair of jeans and a white tank top. A pair of sneakers. Then, nestled in with the rest, a leather jacket dyed a gorgeous dark blue. The color of the sky at night. Lucy slips the jacket on just as she slips out of the train.

 

She walks from the station to her apartment – her mother’s apartment. There’s a sinking, knowing feeling in her chest, telling her it's already over. Her life is already gone. It’s only confirmed once she knocks on her landlord’s door and sees the haunted look on his face.

 

“We thought you were dead, Lucy,” he tells her, alongside the fact that everything she has ever owned – every photo, every piece of clothing, every reminder of life – was packed away and shipped off to who knows where. Lucy only nods down at the cup of tea he placed in front of her, watching as it grows cold.

 

“Where’s my mom?” she asks, just before she leaves, the landlord halfway to closing the door on her. He only shakes his head.

 

“Haven’t seen her since before you went missing,” he says. And that’s that.

 

He’s kind enough to send her off with a hundred dollar bill, which she splits in half to pay for a cheap motel room and a meal from the nearest fast food establishment. Lucy eats only to quell the aching, starving feeling in her stomach. But once she's finished, she finds the pain does not end. Neither does the hunger – but this hunger is for something different. 

 

There’s a mantra in Lucy’s head now, a voice that was once low and simmering, turned to a burning, scorching, screeching ringing in Lucy’s skull. 

 

Noise slowly taking form, until all she can hear is the repetition of a name: Valentina, Valentina, Valentina.

 

De Fontaine had abandoned her. Left her alone, terrified and trembling, as galaxies split apart and reformed within her mind again and again. Lucy’s life was gone because of Valentina; and in her terrified and raging mind, Valentina was the only person who deserved to hurt because of it.

 

That night, Lucy lies awake, body in tremors, white bed sheets turned black from where her fingers have scorched through them, and a plan begins to form.




*




It takes six months to find the vault.

 

Lucy scours dark webs, breaks into unlabeled labs and burns through walls to steal files, all containing just a hint of Valentina’s next moves. Lucy knows she’s making the woman’s life harder – ridding her of top secret information before it can reach her, destroying power plants and any other OXE establishments. But she’d sworn, months ago, trapped in her cell, that if she had the chance to ruin Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, she would.

 

The vault was the quickest way to do that, preferably with Valentina inside.

 

When she arrives, skin heated beneath her navy jacket, breathing through the cloth wrapped around the bottom half of her face, she burns through the datapad needed to open the door, and when that doesn’t work, she burns through the door itself. Her boots echo down the metal halls as she reins in the power surging to her fingertips. 

 

Over the last six months, she’s learned to control the supernova within her, like a star bright and burning in her chest, like an ebbing tide that is at Lucy’s own mercy. She gains control through regulating the rage and anguish that sparks through her – and by regulating, she means snuffing it out before it can reach the surface.

 

Now, though, with Valentina so close, she’s finding it more difficult to keep the nebula at bay.

 

She has her so close, just a few steps away. The mantra in her head repeating over and over. It’s deafening. For half a year, the path to vengeance has plagued her, and it was finally coming to a head. Here. Now.

 

But what she finds in the vault isn’t Valentina or her hoard of OXE soldiers.

 

It’s a man in kevlar, knife poised above the throat of a woman with bleach blonde hair, her arms crossed protectively over her neck. On the far end of the vault, there are two masked figures, almost mirroring each other with their white faces and dark clothed bodies. Each of them, respectively, look up at the final clang of Lucy’s boot on the metal floor. For a long moment, no one does anything.

 

Until one of the masked figures slides out a long blade and sends it hurling her way. Lucy’s arms come up immediately, and power surges through her palms to the blade, stopping it an inch from Lucy’s forehead. With a tilt of her head, the blade spirals back the way it came, red from where the heat has touched it, and both masked figures duck to avoid the weapon, until it lodges itself into the wall behind them.

 

The blonde woman has fully incapacitated the other man, now heading toward one of the other masked figures, staff in hand. The man in the kevlar armor plants his feet, growling, eyes catching on the way Lucy stands between him and the short haired woman. He pulls the disk from his arm and flings it at her. The energy radiating from Lucy only sends it whirling back, but the man catches it without blinking. Sliding it onto his arm, he swipes down at Lucy in an attempt to push her to the floor. 

 

Light and darkness all at once, crackling from Lucy’s hands as she pushes back against the shield, sweat beading on her brow. The man’s eyes grow wide at the power, the sparks and stars, emanating off of Lucy’s palms; and then they light up in pain, as the heat begins to travel across the metal to his arm on the other side. 

 

A loud, deafening shot echoes across the vault and they both turn their heads simultaneously to watch as one of the white masked figures drops, a hole in her head. The blonde woman is on fours, choking out a cough, eyes trained on the body.

 

Stupidly, Lucy allows the sight to distract her for a moment longer than necessary, as something hard and sharp rams into the side of her head and she falls, power flickering off in the shock of the hit. 

 

She blinks the stars away from her eyes, just as the man in kevlar kneels, metal shield slowly cooling and gun in hand, down beside Lucy’s face. Sliding the gun away, he places his knee against her arm, pinning her down, as he reaches over to pull away the cloth covering her face.

 

His angered expression instantly turns to one of shock as he stares down at her.

 

“What the hell?” he chokes out, standing. Lucy winces at the lights above her, head pounding. “You’re just a – ”

 

The sound of retching cuts him off. 

 

The man above her spins, gun facing out toward the rest of their adversaries. Avoiding the splitting pain in her skull, Lucy pulls herself up, too, forces the power back into her palms until she stands at a corner, one of four, each holding up a weapon. The others hold guns while Lucy only has, as always, herself. Still, from the look in the other’s eyes, the slight fear in them, she knows it's enough.

 

A second passes at a standstill, each of them simply waiting for the first shot, until a large body comes tumbling out of a crate at the end of the vault, and their unanimous animosity turns toward it simultaneously. 

 

A man clad in scrubs, with shaggy brown curls, coughs something out, muttering to himself until he catches sight of his four companions. He wrenches himself up and books it to the vault’s exit – only just stopping in time to avoid being crushed by the vault’s door as it falls shut.

 

They can only watch as each vault door closes sequentially, locking them all in with one another.

 

As Lucy stands between three guns and one Bob, confusion ripples through her, even as a knowing feeling sinks to the pit of her stomach – a feeling like this was meant to happen.




*




A trap. Of course it was a fucking trap.

 

The file Lucy had stolen had purposefully given her the wrong date for Valentina’s visit to the vault. Valentina must have known Lucy was going to show up, ready to destroy it all – including herself. Stopping at nothing to end the hurt, to quell the emptiness.

 

She must have been delighted in realizing that, along with the rest of her collateral adversaries, her biggest failure would be shredded right alongside them.

 

There’s another debilitating wave of rage that pours over her, but still Lucy pushes it down, clenching her fingers into her palms, breathing shallowly.

 

Even with the anger roiling through her, though, she can’t help the short laugh that falls out of her mouth at the Ghost’s comment about a dime store Captain America.

 

Walker – because after a short assessment, she finally recognizes who this man is, remembers his face and name plastered all over the news, a hero one week, a murderer the next – turns his attention on her and Lucy only grins menacingly back.

 

“Now, you,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “aren’t anybody I’ve ever heard of. What the hell are you doing here, kid?”

 

Irritation flares up in Lucy’s chest. She leans back against an OXE crate and glares at Walker.

 

“Not a kid,” she states, berating herself for the comment once it's out of her mouth. Could she sound more like a kid at that moment? Clearing her throat, she continues, “I’m here for Valentina.”

 

“For what?” the blonde haired woman asks. “A job?”

 

“I’m here to kill her,” Lucy shoots back. The woman only blinks at her silently. After a moment, Walker barks out a laugh.

 

“Yeah, well, get in line, kid,” he says. Lucy clenches her jaw.

 

“Don’t call me kid.”

 

“Anyways, look, you’re obviously out of your depth here,” he states, and Lucy opens her mouth to argue, but Walker only continues, “and have no idea what you’re doing. The rest of you are just cheap mercenaries, while I have an actual life – including a loving wife and son at home. So, clearly, I’m supposed to bring you all in.” 

 

A pause.

 

Then, Ghost, the Red Room assassin, and Lucy all begin to laugh.

 

“That was funny. We needed that, thank you,” the assassin says, to which Lucy adds, “If the Captain America job doesn’t pan out, you should become a comedian.” That only makes Ghost laugh harder.

 

A quiet chortle causes them to turn toward Bob, smiling sheepishly, commenting at the prior tension in the room.

 

Walker’s hackles rise immediately and he turns his animosity toward Bob. Lucy only observes as the man tries and fails to intimidate each of them into giving themselves up.

 

Ghost shuts it down immediately, phasing out in a split second, headed toward the vault door. Just as Lucy gears herself up to follow, light sparking in her hands, ready to melt away at the metal, a piercing shrill rings through the room and they all cover their ears in pain, wincing at the noise.

 

For a long moment, there is only noise. Then, abruptly, it stops, and Lucy looks around the room, panting.

 

“You guys hear that?” Bob asks, excitedly.

 

“What the hell was that?” Lucy doesn’t bother responding to Bob.

 

“A way to keep me in,” Ghost bites out.

 

“Kid,” Walker says suddenly, a comment Lucy rolls her eyes at. It does the job though, as she turns her attention to the masked man. “Can you try, I don’t know, doing the light-thingy at that?” He points to the vault door.

 

Lucy scoffs, “Light thingy.”  Still, she heads to the direction of the door, letting the energy flow through her. Light sparks from her fingertips as stars gather around her. Just as she reaches the metal of the door, to burn through it, she’s pushed back, something of a forcefield causing her to ricochet, tumbling onto the floor. God, if she falls one more time.

 

Wincing at the pain in her left shoulder, she begins to pull herself up; until she feels a steady pressure around her upper arm and she’s hoisted upward. Her eyes catch on Walker’s masked face, the seriousness lining his eyes.

 

“Thanks,” she grounds out. She pulls her arm from his hand quickly, suddenly terrified she might burn him. After a few rapid blinks, he nods.

 

“Guess we’re stuck here until they come get me,” he states, to which Lucy’s guard immediately rises back up and she glares at him once more. 

 

She’s not sure how much time passes in the vault as they simply sit around, ducks waiting for slaughter. Walker and Ghost scavenge the body at their feet, which Yelena – the blonde woman’s name, Lucy learns – chastises them for. 

 

“That is incredibly rude,” Lucy agrees alongside the assassin, though she’s hardly paying attention to anything but the dirt that has gathered beneath her fingernails.

 

Then, the alarms begin to blare, the light within the vault dimming down to a hellish red.

 

Lucy springs up alongside Yelena as it all becomes clear – this vault wasn’t a shredder. It was an incinerator. With only two minutes left before total destruction.

 

Yelena, quick on her feet, immediately calls to Ghost – Ava, Lucy notes – and they each begin scouring for an isolated power source.

 

Throughout it all, Bob asks continuous questions about what they’re looking for and Walker responds more than unkindly. After the third slight comment, Lucy snaps, “Leave Bob alone.”

 

Walker glares at her and Lucy only narrows her eyes back. They’re both standing across from each other over a crate, and when Lucy’s eyes catch on it, she notices the outline of a man, built to cradle a human body. Not unlike the ones she saw in her own lab, so long ago. She catches Walker’s gaze again and a silent word travels between them.

 

Bob.

 

“I think I found it,” Yelena announces across the room. Walker and Lucy hurry over immediately and are met with a wall of wires and buttons. Walker wastes no time in smashing into it with his shield.

 

Ava runs toward the vault door and nothing stops her as she phases out of it. They stand – all failed OXE projects to some capacity – and wait with bated breath as the clock ticks lower and lower, without any sign of the vault door opening.

 

Lucy berates herself for letting any kind of hope spring forth, but she can’t help it. It’s the one thing the burning force within her can’t destroy. 

 

Then, she begins to wonder. If this fire will burn her, or if she might survive the heat. If she can withstand the burning force of a star, what is a fire? 

 

If she can protect herself, can she protect them?

 

You can be a hero, she hears Valentina’s voice urge in her mind, and she allows herself to believe it.

 

Fifteen seconds left.

 

“Everyone grab onto me,” she says suddenly. As the rest of her companions simply look at her, she shouts, “Now!”

 

Ten seconds.

 

They all hurry forward to do so. Lucy allows for the light within her to begin burning, pushing it outward until a glowing orb begins to grow, encasing them within.

 

“Kid,” Walker warns, heat surrounding them.

 

“Shut up,” she chokes out, voice hard and strained.

 

Five.

 

Four.

 

She hopes this works. God, she hopes –

 

The vault door opens and with a cry, the energy surrounding them pushes them up and out of the vault, stars surrounding them, blocking even the brightest of flames from touching their skin. 

 

They crash onto the floor beyond the vault and Lucy allows the power to dissipate. The hands around her arms let go and they’re all left splayed on the floor beyond the vault.

 

Lucy pants up at the ceiling, gasping at the way the stars within her explode and reform again. She blinks away the galaxies behind her eyes and sits up slowly. As her vision clears, boots appear in her field of view as a hand is thrust toward her face. She’s too disoriented to do much else but reach out and allow herself to be pulled up.

 

Ava watches her carefully as she stands, helping her up. Lucy blinks over at her.

 

“Thought you left,” Lucy tells her. Something flashes across Ghost’s face, something like hurt, before it’s neutral once more.

 

“Elevator wasn’t working,” she shrugs, and Lucy only coughs out a laugh. Ava smirks, then heads over to Yelena and Bob where they’ve begun to sit up slowly, looking at one another. Walker stands, stretching out his shoulders.

 

“You okay?” he asks her, voice rough, but there’s an underlying softness to it. It surprises Lucy more than anything and she’s too shocked to do much else but nod again.

 

“How’d you do that?” he continues as the two of them fall into step toward the rest of their group.

 

Lucy doesn’t look at him, doesn’t show any sign of fear even though that’s all she’s feeling, as she shakes her head and says, “I don’t know.”

 

They regroup with more than a little hostile fanfare. Walker directs more than enough toxic masculinity toward Bob to power a freight ship. When Bob finally does react, calling Walker what they’ve all been thinking – You’re an asshole, you know? – Walker rushes toward him. Before he reaches the other man, Lucy thrusts a hand out and Walker slides back a good five feet, confusion etched on his face. The two men look toward her and she tilts her head in exasperation.

 

“We done measuring our equally tiny dicks?” she asks, and Yelena wheezes out a laugh as she pulls Bob away gently. 

 

Lucy notices the way his eyes glint beneath the light, blue ringed in silver. Between one blink and the next, it's gone.




*




As if it couldn’t possibly get any worse, the elevator shaft is broken.

 

“Can’t you just fly us up there?” Walker asks Lucy after his very embarrassing and very funny attempt at jumping to the top floor of the shaft. “Like you flew us out of the incinerator?”

 

Lucy only shakes her head. “Not what I did. And also, no. I can’t fly us up there. You can definitely try again, though.”

 

Which is what leads them here: arms hooked around each other, arguing back and forth as they climb up the empty shaft, feet planted against the wall and panting between insults.

 

“How is this even working?” Lucy finds herself asking.

 

Behind her, Bob speaks up, “Physics, I guess. I remember learning about it in high school.”

 

Without thinking, she blurts out, “I dropped out before I could take it.”

 

“Oh, me too,” Bob responds. “Well, not high school, but college.”

 

“At least you got there,” Lucy mutters, focusing on her feet. Right, left, right, left.

 

“How could you have dropped out of high school?” Walker asks, to her right. “Aren’t you, like, twelve?”

 

Lucy manages to elbow him in the ribs.

 

“Eighteen,” she corrects as he yelps. “And I had to. Someone had to pay rent.”

 

She’s unsure why she’s letting so much slip out. She blames it on the way her mind is focused on maintaining her balance, and making sure she doesn’t burn through both Walker and Yelena where they’re hooked around her arms.

 

“What about your parents?” Walker asks, voice undefinable. Lucy scoffs, pushes down the pain that springs up in her chest at the reminder of her mother.

 

“This isn’t really the time for sob stories, Captain,” she hisses out, to which Walker’s shoulders immediately tense. It’s a low blow, and Lucy feels a little bad, but she’s always been too defensive for her own good.

 

Ava and Yelena go back and forth about their own certified sob stories . Lucy glances down at the floor of the shaft before looking up at the trek ahead. She sighs.

 

This is gonna take a while.




*




By some miracle, they make it to the top, sweating and trembling, but still connected. 

 

Lucy turns to face the opening.

 

“Now what?”

 

“One of us should go first,” Ava trails off, as they all glance down at the arms hooked around theirs.

 

“Then the other four immediately fall,” Yelena protests.

 

More arguing about what to do. Lucy feels her boots begin to slip as urgency spikes in the air. More yelling. Something about a cucumber. And then the weight shifts as Walker reaches for Yelena’s baton with one hand and latches it onto the lip of the opening. Before Lucy can fall, a hand grabs hers, and she looks up at Walker’s barely strained face as she hangs. 

 

Eyes wide, Lucy can only allow herself to be pulled up through the door and into the opening of the top floor. Once she’s stable, she glances down at the rest of the team. Ava and Yelena cling to the wall, while Bob hangs below them precariously, foot wrapped in wire.

 

Walker has begun to pull himself up.

 

“Hand me that hose,” he tells Lucy. She only blinks over at him, confusion clouding her mind. Until Walker impatiently gestures to the wall, snapping her out of – whatever she’d been thinking. She threads the hose over, keeping it steady while Walker pulls the rest of them up.

 

Ava and Yelena each insult him as they reach the floor with Lucy, but Bob remains silent as always, eyes boring into Walker’s as he’s hoisted onto the top floor.

 

“Finally got that sneeze out?” Lucy asks him, patting his shoulder. Bob only snorts, some of the hostility in his frame lessening. Lucy begins to pull the hose back from the edge and comes up short.

 

Walker is standing at the ledge, staring down the elevator shaft, swaying.

 

“Walker?” she calls. When there’s no answer, she reaches out, hesitates, then touches his shoulder. He gasps and whirls toward her.

 

She holds up her hands in a gesture of surrender.

 

“Dude, what are you doing?” she asks, brows furrowed. Walker only stares at her, before glancing over her shoulder at the rest of their companions. He blinks rapidly as his gaze lands on Lucy again.

 

“I’m fine,” he gets out, to which Lucy nods slowly.

 

“Never said you weren’t,” she responds. There’s a haunted look in Walker’s eyes, a look Lucy is all too familiar with. When he says nothing else, she drops her hands and nods over to the other end of the room. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

 

Walker glances back at the shaft once before nodding.




*




They decide to split up.

 

Between childhood stories about thunderbolts and horrible soccer teams, lab grown children, meth addicted chickens, and Lucy’s own mention of alcoholic mothers and years spent in foster care, they agree on a plan.

 

Ignoring Walker’s every man for himself charade, they agree the best way out and past the OXE guards is together. Ava phases out on her own with the task of returning with a means of escape. Yelena and Bob go off to enact an explosion, leaving Lucy with Walker and the task of getting rid of the first wave – with specific instructions to wait for Yelena.

 

Instructions Walker can’t get over.

 

“Wait for Yelena,” he keeps muttering, irritatedly. “Too many variables. Won’t work.”

 

“God, can you be quiet for once?” Lucy hisses as they make their way through the halls, stationing themselves with backs pressed to the walls. Walker only shakes his head.

 

“This isn’t going to work,” he says again to which Lucy scoffs, a halfway deranged laugh springing free. Walker narrows his eyes. “What?”

 

“Just thinking about how fast it’ll take for you to book it out of here and leave me the moment something goes wrong,” she explains. Walker faces her fully now, hulking form towering above her, but Lucy isn’t scared or intimidated. She can hold up against him just fine on her own. She also knows he won’t hurt her. She’s not sure why, but she does. 

 

Abandon her, though? Jury’s still out on that.

 

“Look, kid,” he starts, to which Lucy immediately interrupts him with, “I have a name, dipshit.”

 

Walker blinks at her for a moment, waiting. He gestures for her to go on and Lucy feels immediately stupid for how easily she let that part of herself slip free. Still she doesn’t take it back.

 

“Lucy,” she shares and Walker nods.

 

“Lucy,” he repeats, nodding, something gentle creeping into his tone. He says it in a way she’s never heard before – an underlying softness to it. The carefully constructed walls around Lucy begin to tremble, but she only hardens her stare, squares her shoulders, and doesn't let them fall.

 

“I was in the army. I recognize when a plan can go wrong and this,” he says, gesturing toward the way they came, “is a plan that goes wrong.”

 

“But it might not,” she argues and Walker sighs, shutting his eyes, head falling back between his shoulder blades.

 

“I’m being tested,” he mutters. “God is real and he sent you to finish me off.”

 

For a moment, they’re silent. And then Lucy can’t take it anymore.

 

“Why did you save me?” she asks suddenly, without thinking. Walker turns his head to her, eyes narrowing. She continues, “In the shaft, when you left everyone else for dead. Why did you catch me?”

 

Walker shakes his head, scoffing quietly. 

 

“I had a hand free, you were just the closest to it,” he bites out, and the small part of Lucy that believed it was intentional is immediately killed. Ice floods her veins once more as she clenches her jaw. “And I did not leave everyone for dead,” Walker continues.

 

Lucy rolls her eyes. 

 

“I didn’t,” he protests. “I knew what I was doing.”

 

Red flashes in Lucy’s vision.

 

“Walker, shut up,” she whispers.

 

“No, really, this is – ”

 

“Be quiet,” Lucy says, pulling him back against the wall next to her. Walker finally opens his eyes and follows Lucy’s gaze toward the red light painting the walls. 

 

“Shit,” she mutters.

 

“Turn on the lights, Yelena,” Walker begs beside her. When nothing happens, he growls, “Gotta do everything myself.”

 

“Wait,” Lucy says, grabbing his arm again, pulling him back before he can give himself away. He turns his scorching glare toward her. She tries to remain steady as she gazes back. “There’s another way.”

 

At Walker’s furrowed stare, Lucy simply pushes past him and steps out into the hall.

 

“Lucy!” Walker starts forward, but with a flick of her wrist, he’s sliding five, ten feet down the hall, cursing. 

 

There’s about a dozen men in front of her, each covered in armor and strapped with a gun. Lucy relies on their shock at seeing her, a girl no older than twenty, standing before them with no weapon in her hands – none they can see anyway.

 

Before they can think to start shooting, she lets the light flare out of her, blinding them.

 

Walker reaches her just in time, hand covering his eyes – smart, she thinks – slowing as he comes to face her. Once the light dies down, she tells him beneath the confused shouts of the men, “Now you can hit stuff.”

 

Walker grins and they both push forward.




*




It doesn’t take them long.

 

Walker plows through half of the men quickly, while Lucy uses the star stuff in her veins to lift the men around her and slam them against the walls. She avoids hearing the telltale snap of bone as she does.

 

Once it’s over, they stand above the bodies, surveying them.

 

“Told you it would work,” Lucy says. Walker glares at her.

 

“It barely worked.”

 

“But it did, ” she sing-songs, reaching out to help him pull the uniform off of one of the soldiers.

 

Walker pulls off his helmet.

 

“You’re too trustworthy,” he tells her, something like genuine concern in his voice.

 

Lucy stands to meet him again, opening her mouth to protest, when the flash of a gun draws her eyes away, the sound of a shot ricocheting off the walls.

 

The bullet lands an inch from Walker’s neck before Lucy stops it.

 

Hand outstretched, the bullet hovers in the air, trembling alongside Lucy. Walker backs away from the lead, eyes wide as they turn from the bullet to Lucy, to the lone soldier standing across from them.

 

Lucy can’t see the man’s face, but she knows the terror on his face, has seen it countless times ever since she became – this.

 

The bullet comes apart, lead and metal corroding and burning into stars, until there’s nothing left but light.

 

A moment. Then, the soldier raises his gun again.

 

Walker shoots him before the other man’s finger even reaches the trigger.

 

Lucy flinches, looks away before his body slumps to the floor.

 

When she looks back up, it’s to Walker’s gaze trained on her, bright blue blinding her in the darkness of the hallway surrounding them. So different from her own dark pools of brown, almost black. She’s suddenly terrified that he’ll run, that he’ll see her for what she is – a monster, maybe, or something worse. 

 

Instead, when she sways on her feet, body exhausted, he drops his shield to grab her arms, steadying her.

 

“You okay?” he asks, tilting his head down to meet her eyes. Lucy blinks, galaxies torn apart in her mind, her temples pounding. 

 

“Just breathe, okay?” she hears and she tethers herself to the sound, reaching her hand out until she’s grabbing onto something solid, something holding her just as fiercely. 

 

When her vision finally clears, it’s to John’s open face and her hand within his. She watches it, the way her fingers wrap around his and marvels at the feeling – something calm rushing through her. 

 

For the first time in over a year, nothing burns.

 

She finds Walker’s eyes again, sees the gentle look in them. She clears her throat forcefully before pulling her hand away, clenching it down at her side.

 

“I’m fine,” she says, to which Walker’s lips twitch up.

 

“Never said you weren’t,” he responds, and Lucy can’t help but huff out a laugh. 

 

Without another word, they both return to stripping two of the soldiers, fitting themselves with the outer layer of their uniform.

 

Once they're both outfitted, Walker turns to her and clicks his tongue. Lucy understands immediately – her shorter stature and physical attributes leave the uniform hanging off her body in all the wrong places, sleeves falling past her fingers and pants falling down her hips.

 

“We’ll find something else,” he assures her, laughing quietly, to which Lucy halfheartedly throws him the bird. Walker only chuckles, picking up his shield.

 

“Let’s just find Yelena and Bob,” Lucy sighs, pushing the sleeves of the uniform up her arms. She starts down the hall but stops abruptly at Walker’s words.

 

“‘M John, by the way,” he tells her. Lucy turns back around to face him. For the first time since she’s met him, he looks downright sheepish. He shrugs, forcing some steel back into his voice. “I know your name, figured you should know mine.”

 

Lucy nods. “I know your name.”

 

With a pained wince, Walker looks down at his boots, his laugh rough this time.

 

“Yeah, figured you would,” he says. He clears his throat. “Well, thanks. For – you know, back there – with the… thing – ”

 

“Oh, this is painful,” Lucy wheezes, stopping Walker short. She waves him off. “It’s fine. Don’t hurt yourself. You saved my life earlier, even if you weren’t planning to. So, we’re even.”

 

Walker only nods, though there’s something unreadable in his eyes. 

 

“Even,” he repeats. Lucy swears he sounds almost sad as he says it.

 

They’re pulled out of the moment suddenly by the sound of boots echoing and gunshots firing.

 

“Can’t catch a break, can I?” Walker mutters, pulling on the soldier’s mask.

 

“Nope,” Lucy says, “You hardly deserve it, anyway.”

 

With one last bark of laughter, Walker follows her as she races back toward the fight.




*




Walker pulls Lucy behind his shield as bullets ping repeatedly against it.

 

“Stop! Stop! It’s us! It’s me, John! Stop!” he yells, and the gun stops firing abruptly. It lowers to reveal Bob and Yelena.

 

Yelena and Walker begin yelling at one another, waving their arms above their heads. Lucy’s eyes catch on Bob as he struggles to remove his helmet with one hand. With a wince, Lucy reaches out to help him, untangling a strap from his unruly hair.

 

“Thank you,” Bob sighs once it's off. He flashes her a kind smile and something fierce and protective rises up in her. God, she gets Yelena’s immediate attachment to this guy now. He really is just a civilian – kind and undeserving of everything he’s been roped into.

 

“Helmets are stupid,” she shrugs and he nods. In the midst of his argument with Yelena, Walkers yells I resent that!

 

Bob snorts, then shrugs.

 

“My hair’s too long,” he mutters, disdainfully, running a shaking hand through it. “I think I need to cut it.”

 

“Hm,” Lucy tilts her head, playfully assessing his head, before reaching out to tug on a single, chestnut curl. “I like it. Don’t need to fix what isn’t broken.”

 

Bob blinks over at her, tilting his head. He nods once, swallowing. “Thanks,” he says, voice soft, thready, and so genuine something in Lucy’s chest begins to ache.

 

After a second, Bob gestures toward her hands.

 

“That thing you do is pretty cool, you know,” he says. At her questioning glance, he moves his hands around in a circle motion. “The light thing. It’s like stars, or a galaxy, just in your hands. Like your own personal flashlight.”

 

Lucy can’t help but smile.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true,” she agrees, looking down at her palms. She never once saw it as something cool, something desirable. Only a means of destruction, of hurting others. She thinks back to the way she held Walker’s hand, how nothing happened. 

 

Bob nods, grinning fully now.

 

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Like a supernova.”

 

Lucy tilts her head before nodding slowly.

 

“Exactly.”

 

There’s something in Bob’s gaze when it meets hers again, something knowing. A flicker of understanding.

 

Then, he blows out a breath.

 

“What I wouldn’t give to have something like that,” he sighs, wistfully. Her brows furrow.

 

“Something like what?”

 

“Something that can help people,” Bob states after a pause, shrugging lightly. He offers her a gentle smile and Lucy mirrors it.

 

Before either of them can say anything else, Yelena and Walker finally calm down enough to turn their attention toward actually getting out.

 

As Bob and Yelena pull on two other soldier’s uniforms, Walker shakes his head.

 

“They’re going to know we’re not in their ranks,” he says, and at Yelena’s asking why, he gestures over to Lucy, drowning in her own uniform.

 

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” she sighs, throwing her hands up. Walker opens his mouth to retort but stops himself as his gaze catches behind Lucy’s shoulder.

 

She turns and stops at the sight of a large box, like a coffin, holding a mass of guns. The soldiers must have dropped it on their way inside.

 

She swivels back around slowly, meeting the eyes of the rest of her begrudging allies.

 

“No,” she shakes her head, crossing her arms. “Absolutely not.”

 

“Lucy,” Walker starts.

 

“No,” she affirms, pointing to the offending object. “I am not getting in that box.”




*




She gets in the box.

 

“You okay in there?” Walker asks in a low voice.

 

“When I get out, I’m going to kill all of you,” she bites. Then, after a pause, she adds, “Not Bob. I won’t kill Bob.”

 

“Oh, thanks,” the brown haired man responds, voice slightly terrified. Then again, when is it not?

 

“Where the hell is Ava?” Yelena mutters. No one responds and Lucy’s stomach falls in disappointment.

 

There’s a small crack in the box, just enough to peek her eye through, and she searches the terrain. What was once an empty lot outside the vault is now packed with military trucks, men with guns, and officials beneath tents.

 

And right in the middle of one of those tents, hair perfect and back straight, is Valentina. 

 

Lucy considers burning through the box, breaking free and destroying everything around her, just to reach the woman who ruined her. 

 

Then, Walker’s voice comes through.

 

“Almost there, kid,” he tells her and the nova in Lucy dissipates. She clenches her eyes and sighs.

 

Soon, she thinks. First, she has to make sure they all get out.

 

“Where is Ava?” Yelena repeats, desperation creeping into her tone.

 

“She’s gone,” Walker mutters, his own voice tinged with the same disappointment in Lucy’s chest. “Of course she’s gone.”

 

“Now what?” Bob asks.

 

Too muffled to fully understand, Lucy hears another voice. Something feminine and accented. She smiles up at the lid of the box.

 

They move her to the back and place her down gently. The lid is pried open and Lucy is left looking up into the masked faces of Yelena, Bob, and Walker.

 

Bob pulls himself up into a seat along the wall of the truck, reaching out a hand to help Lucy out. 

 

“You gonna be okay back here, Bob?” Yelena asks.

 

Bob throws her a thumbs up.

 

“I’m good,” he says, then bumps his elbow to hers as she sits beside him. “I’ve got Lucy to protect me even if I’m not.”

 

Lucy snorts, but nods anyway. She catches Walker’s eyes, notices the slight worry in them. 

 

“We’ll be fine,” she assures them, and doesn’t look away until the door shuts.

 

Bob’s elbow presses against hers and she uses the point of contact to calm herself down as the truck begins trekking forward. Lucy’s shoulders begin to drop and settle as the exhaustion slowly registers in her body. She lets the rare calm wash over her, like the sea at the Santa Monica pier. 

 

She lets her eyes shut and imagines it, the ocean breeze on her face, the waves lapping against her feet. The sea, as much a part of her as she is of it, signified by her last name: Del Mar. When she was younger, she used to believe it belonged to her – or at least, she belonged to it. If she had nothing else, she had the ocean. She imagines herself back there, and something like peace rushes over her skin.

 

It’s cut short immediately when the truck slows to an abrupt stop.

 

“Shit,” she mutters, moving to peek through the small window between the back of the truck and its cab. She sees the soldier questioning Walker, assuming Ava has phased away to avoid any further suspicion – though it’s not enough to keep the men outside the truck from training their guns on the truck.

 

“Shit,” she mutters again, turning back to Bob, who is now standing, reaching toward the door. She snatches his wrist just as his fingers wrap around the handle.

 

“What the hell are you doing?” she hisses. Bob turns to face her, eyes alight with something dangerous. A sad smile graces his lips. 

 

“Helping,” he says simply, turning the handle. His wrist is freed from her grip, and just as she moves to follow him, she is stopped abruptly at the way the light around herself seems to grow dim, as if shadows have begun to creep far beyond where they should be.

 

Lucy spins, watching as the interior of the truck disappears, replaced by familiar walls.



And suddenly, Lucy is back there.

 

Their old apartment, wallpaper peeling and freezing with a lack of insulation. 

 

Lucy blinks rapidly, chest growing tight as she faces the door to the bathroom.

 

She remembers this day as if it occurred only a second ago, instead of ten years. She’d have to be dead to forget it.

 

She doesn’t have to reach for the door to know it's locked.

 

Still, that doesn’t stop her from calling out, “Mom!”

 

Her voice overlaps with another, younger and broken. To Lucy’s left, a young girl with her hair and eyes rushes forward, banging on the wall. She slams into it with all her might, sobbing all the while.

 

“Mom, open the door!” she screams through her tears. “Open the door!”

 

Lucy’s breath comes out fast and shallow, and she can’t take it.

 

She rushes forward, reaching her hand out toward the door –



And then the darkness fades, and she’s back in the truck. Only this time, the back door is open and Bob is gone.

 

For a moment, shame pierces through her, and she considers running out after him, into the line of fire.

 

Only a voice, familiar and urgent, calls her out of her trance. John’s voice, still talking to the other officer.

 

She spins on her heel, disoriented but determined, back to the window separating her from the cab of the truck. The soldiers remain stationed around them, flanking them, slowly raising their guns.

 

Just as they place their fingers over the triggers, the gunshots begin, but not from the soldiers in front of them.

 

Rather, they come from the gun Bob has taken out of the back of the truck, uniform forgotten. The soldiers in front of their vehicle rush after him and Lucy peels the window back.

 

“We have a problem,” she informs Walker and Yelena just as Ghost phases back into her seat.

 

“What – ” Yelena cuts herself off, pulling off her helmet just as her gaze lands on Bob in his scrubs, holding a gun up and firing, drawing the soldier’s attention away – all for them, for Walker, Ava, Yelena and Lucy to get away. 

 

“Oh no,” Yelena says. “Bob helped.”

 

“I’m going after him,” Lucy starts, but then Walker’s hand grips her wrist, holding her in place. She tries pulling free. “John – ”

 

“It’s too late, kid,” he tells her, voice hard and reedy. Lucy is ready to argue against him, as always, but then the gunshots start up again.

 

Bob is riddled with bullets within seconds, too many bullets. Lucy had no idea a human body could withstand something like that, but that’s the point. It can’t.

 

He drops to the floor, limp, and all that’s left to identify him are his unruly, chocolate brown curls. 

 

“No,” Lucy breathes, bringing her free hand to her mouth, her chest clenching. Not Bob.

 

Not the one person who deserved, more than any of them, to get out.

 

“Come on, let’s go,” Ava finally speaks up, her own gaze hard. “That’s why he did it.”

 

Both Walker and Lucy look to Yelena. The truck doesn’t start moving until she nods.

 

They drift on in silence. No one stops them.

 

Lucy falls back into her seat, staring at the spot Bob sat in only minutes ago. No. How could he be gone?

 

She should have kept her eyes on him, should have fought harder. If she’d been paying attention, she could have stopped him, figured out another way. Instead, she’d let a memory take hold of her. She wasn’t sure how, but it felt deliberate – the way she’d traveled back to it. Like she was back there, in the moment, watching it happen again, knowing there was nothing she could do. 

 

Bob had been wrong about Lucy being able to help others. She couldn’t even help him, the way she couldn’t help her mother all those years ago. 

 

Just then, something in the sky catches her attention, pulls her from her inner implosion. Like a falling star. She returns to the window between herself and the others as the four of them stare at the figure retreating to earth, and –

 

“Is that – ” Walker begins, cutting himself off, because no . It can’t be.

 

“No way,” Lucy breathes.

 

The shape comes hurtling toward the hill, toward the soldiers and the vault. Toward them.

 

“No, no, no, no,” Yelena repeats, over and over. 

 

Lucy only has a split second to stretch her hands out and let the energy wrap far beyond herself, around John, Ava, and Yelena, just as Bob crashes into the earth and they go flying. 

 

The force of the crash sends them flipping, and Lucy is thrown up against the ceiling of the truck, but she doesn’t let her hold drop. The truck rolls down the hill but they go untouched from within, not a dent or scratch as Lucy’s forcefield shines around them. She only drops it once they land onto the terrain below. 

 

She slumps to the ground with a groan and only opens her eyes when she feels a hand on her shoulder. 

 

“Alright, I gotcha,” Walker tells her as he helps her into a sitting position. Stars spark all around her vision, but the nebulas within her begin to ease and ebb. “That’s twice now.”

 

Lucy clenches her eyes shut. “What?”

 

“Twice now that you’ve saved my life,” John elaborates, and when Lucy looks at him, there’s an awed expression on his face. Lucy shakes her head, then winces against disorientation.

 

“Don’t make me regret it,” she says, and doesn’t stop the smile that comes up to her lips at the sound of his laugh.

 

She stands, and Ava and Yelena help her from off the back of the car. Just as Yelena turns to reach for Walker, Lucy grabs her arm, looks into her eyes.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, trying not to let her voice shake. Yelena only blows out a deep breath and covers Lucy’s hand with her own. The blonde nods.

 

“Me too,” she sighs. Lucy turns her hand and squeezes Yelena’s fingers with her own. Silent and steady, like the tide. They share a soft smile before letting go.

 

“Time to call an Uber?” she asks and Lucy laughs.




*




They walk in silence, in the pitch black of the desert night.

 

Walker is the first to say what they’re all thinking.

 

“Jesus Christ,” he utters and Lucy can do nothing but nod along.

 

“What was that?” Ava adds, turning her head to face them. Before anyone can offer a guess, Yelena responds.

 

“That was her,” she accuses, tone like steel. “She did that to him.”

 

She doesn’t need to say the name for them to know who she’s talking about.

 

Her. Valentina.

 

Rage in the shape of a celestial body takes form in Lucy’s chest, second only to the sadness that creeps up at the reminder of Bob.

 

“To test on someone like that,” she hears Yelena mutter, “it’s inhuman.”

 

Lucy looks over at her. “What do you mean? Test?”

 

Yelena pulls out a stack of folded paper from her pocket, all labeled with the OXE logo. She hands over only half of the papers at first and Lucy takes them, eyes trailing over words like glorious and good. A figure draped in gold and blue stares up at her on one page, while another displays that of a logo, a disfigured S. Below each page is the word, like a name: SENTRY.

 

She passes the papers over to Walker and Ava, just as Yelena hands over the rest.

 

“This isn’t her only trial, either,” Yelena adds, pointing to the second stack in Lucy’s hands. “She’s tried this before. These are just the only records I found in the vault.”

 

Lucy’s hardly listening as she stares down at the paper in her palms, crumpling beneath her fingertips from the force of her grip.

 

There’s a figure draped in dark blue, like that of her jacket, with pinpricks of light flaring out in increments, a starry night sky personified. Her hair is white, stark against the suit she wears, and galaxies radiate off of her palms. Below the figure is the name: NOVA.

 

“Why Bob, though?” Walker asks, voice sounding far away. “Why is he their newest hero?”

 

“Because she failed with me,” Lucy responds. When she looks up, they’re all staring at her. She holds the portrait for all of them to see. 


“I was her last trial. I was Project Nova.”

 

 

Chapter 2: the destruction of matter

Summary:

Riding on the trunk of a limo, insulting a congressman to his face, and almost killing the woman who ruined your life - it's all there!

Notes:

lucy: *is sad, guarded, and without parents*
john: i am going to create an energy that is so dad

 

enjoy!!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

Even after explaining, Yelena, Ava, and Walker have many questions.

 

“Did you know what she’d do?”

 

Not at first.

 

“How long were you in the lab?”

 

Eight months. 

 

“Why didn’t it work?”

 

I don’t know.

 

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

 

Failure failure failure.

 

After about half an hour, they must notice the way she’s gone silent, fatigued with the interrogation. They stop asking questions, but Lucy knows they each have millions.

 

Lucy remains sitting on a jagged rock while the three of them debate how Sentry must have gotten into the vault with them. Another project of Valentina’s that was too suspicious, shut down before it could begin. Scheduled to be destroyed along with everyone else in that vault. Including Lucy.

 

“Valentina knew I was going after her,” Lucy pipes up, staring down at her hands, elbows resting on her knees. Clenching her jaw, she adds, “Too much trouble than I’m worth to be kept alive.”

 

Silence stretches between them and Lucy can feel their eyes on her. Sympathetic. Pitying.

 

She’s spared having to say anything else when John speaks up, asking if they’re hungry. Lucy turns her head and watches as he begins cutting cactus berries from the root by their feet.

 

She hardly pays attention to the conversation between Ava and Yelena, something about the other masked figure Ava killed, but she leans into the soft accent of their voices exchanging words, back and forth. Like a song. 

 

Shit life, she hears Ava say, and she can’t help but agree with her. 

 

They begin their trek again, heading north. Lucy is silent all the while, wrapping her arms around herself, only looking up from her feet when she hears Walker call her name.

 

She turns to face him as he falls into step beside her, like they had in the hallway only hours ago. He holds out his palm toward her. Glistening atop it is a full cactus berry.

 

“Peeled it for you,” he tells her. This, the simplicity of having fruit peeled for her, touches her more than it probably should. She tells herself it's only because he feels bad for her, and is trying to make sure she doesn’t self-destruct. She wishes she could tell him it doesn’t work that way – even if she wanted it to.

 

Instead, she reaches out for the berry, locking eyes with Walker.

 

“Thank you,” she says, genuine and true. Walker offers her a gentle, uncharacteristic, almost sheepish smile, and they continue walking. Ava and Yelena remain a few paces ahead, conversing amongst themselves, offering one another quiet laughs. Lucy is keen on simply observing them, this small moment of camaraderie, but is interrupted by Walker.

 

“Listen, I just wanted to say,” he begins, eyes hard and facing forward. Lucy peers up at him, her cactus berry dripping onto her skin. She hasn’t taken a bite yet. Walker sighs through his nose, shoulders dropping. “I’m sorry, about Val and – ”

 

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Lucy shakes her head, but Walker holds up a hand.

 

“No, I mean it,” he adds, turning his head toward her as they walk. “I was… less than kind to you, back in the vault. I didn’t know about this, or anything else that happened before. I should have been… well – ”

 

“Less asshole-y?” Lucy offers, tamping down a smile. Walker blinks over at her before chuckling. 

 

“Yup,” he nods. “Less asshole-y. Less of an asshole. Less like an – ”

 

“Alright, alright,” Lucy groans, pushing at his shoulder, to which Walker honest to God chortles. “Apology accepted.”

 

It grows quiet for a moment, then John adds, “I didn’t mean to suggest my life had any more value than yours.”

Lucy nods. “It’s fine, Walker.”

 

“No, it’s – ” he breaks off, shaking his head. “It’s not,” he finishes lamely.

 

Lucy sighs then.

 

“Yeah,” she agrees, “it wasn’t.”

 

Walker kicks up a rock, brows furrowed.

 

“But,” Lucy continues, “it’s fine, now. You said sorry. You live and you learn. At least, that’s what my caseworker told me once.”

 

Walker lets out a huh sound before nodding, “Yeah. That’s right.”

 

Silence once more, but unlike before, Lucy doesn’t want the quiet. She’s afraid of the space in her head, the voices whispering how much of a failure she is, the galaxies being pulled apart before crashing back together.

 

She glances down at the slowly drying cactus berry. 

 

“I’ve never had one of these before,” she states, nodding at the fruit. 

 

“Not many cacti in…?” Walker trails off, waiting for her to respond.

 

“California,” she states and he snaps his fingers.

 

“I knew it,” he announces triumphantly and Lucy only snorts.

 

“Not where I lived, no,” she shakes her head. “And if there were, they would die within months. People in California love to water their plants.”

 

“You don’t need to water a cactus regularly.”

 

“Exactly,” Lucy says, biting into her berry. Walker shakes his head, huffing with laughter.

 

“You know,” he adds, as Lucy wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, turning to face him. “I never would have guessed you were in the foster system.”

 

Lucy tilts her head.

 

“I just mean,” Walker continues at the sight of Lucy’s deadpan stare, “that you’re sold this idea of what foster care is like, you know? Kids who are unsure of themselves, who can’t handle their own. Which is obviously bullshit cause God knows how much they’ve been through – how much you’ve been through.”

 

Lucy nods, looking down at her half eaten berry, suddenly sick at the reminder of those early years, moving from house to house while her mom got sober. Her mother gaining custody again before relapsing less than a week later. How Lucy forced her into sobriety in the days before a caseworker visit, terrified they’d send her back to the system the moment they caught wind of her mother’s using again. And then there were those years between, with half of the world gone – along with her mother.

 

“You’re capable, is what I mean,” Walker adds, bringing Lucy back from her silent musings. “That’s why I was surprised. I guess that just means I have to reevaluate what I originally believed.”

 

Lucy nods, finally understanding.

 

“I get it,” she says. “You’re not exactly what I thought you’d be like either.”

 

Walker’s shoulders grow tense by his ears, a soldier waiting for criticism.

 

“I’m not?” he asks. Lucy considers her words carefully.

 

“I just mean that, with the way they made you out to seem on the news,” Walker flinches at the mention of the incident, and Lucy murmurs a quiet apology before continuing, “you seemed cold. Even before you were Captain America, you were… untouchable. The way they claim most veterans are, you know?”

 

Walker nods along.

 

“But, I’ve spent more than a few nights in homeless shelters, when I wasn’t in the system anymore, and I met a lot of veterans there. More than there should have ever been,” she says, agitation lighting her up from the inside. 

 

She’d always cursed those in charge, those in power, for claiming to care about the men and women who fought for them before abandoning them completely, leaving them to the wolves. It was revolting, how quickly they were tossed aside once they weren’t deemed useful anymore. 

 

“You remind me of them,” she continues. “You’re mean and rude at first, but it makes sense after all the shit you’ve been put through. And once you get to know them, well….”

 

“Well,” Walker copies, watching her. Lucy sends him a gentle smile, calling to mind the few he’s given her.

 

“They have your back,” she states, and Walker nods in agreement. “They’re kind, and they understand.” Then, she holds up her half bitten fruit with a pointed look. “They peel you a cactus berry.”

 

Walker laughs, low and raspy but real.

 

“Not many veterans have killed a man in front of the American public before,” he adds, darkly, staring down at his hands. “Even if he wasn’t innocent.”

 

“No, they haven’t,” she agrees, nodding. “And I’m not saying it was right. But I know what that’s like; to be told you mean something and then kicked to the curb the moment they see just how screwed up you are.”

 

“Thanks,” Walker drones and Lucy knocks her elbow with his.

 

“You know what I mean,” she says and he sighs, nodding.

 

“Yeah,” he announces, lips curling up as he knocks his elbow back into her own. “I know what you mean.”

 

“So, if there’s anyone who had a fucked up idea of someone else, it’s me,” Lucy concludes before biting into the rest of her cactus berry. 

 

“Then that makes two of us,” Walker declares. Lucy matches the small smile he sends her way as they make their way through the desert, a comfortable silence settling over them. 

 

Stars shine above them, and when Walker’s arm brushes up against her own, she’s not afraid to let herself lean into it, for just a moment.




*




Lucy misses the dark, cold weather of a few hours ago.

 

Now, the desert sun beats down on them without mercy and the heat within Lucy’s own veins feels doubled. She’s peeled off her jacket, tying it around her waist until all she has left is her tank top. She feels bad for the rest of the group, left with only armor and nothing else.

 

Paired with the blasting heat, the ache of her feet from the night spent walking, and Walker and Ava’s constant bickering, Lucy swears she is one moment away from turning back around and giving herself up to OXE for a glass of cold water.

 

Then, Yelena’s tutting cuts off the arguing pair and they all fall silent, watching Yelena as she drops to the floor before following her. Walker moves Lucy so she’s between himself and Ava, pushing himself up forward enough to cover her from the view of any outside eyes.

 

Lucy is so busy blinking over at him, at the surprising show of care, that she doesn’t notice the limo until it's two hundred feet away and Yelena groans out a pained, embarrassed, “Oh, no.”

 

They all watch as the vehicle pulls up fifty feet away, an ugly, burgundy thing that stops abruptly as an equally large, burgundy figure jumps out of it, yelling for Yelena, waving his arms in desperation, claiming to be her dad.

 

Lucy turns simultaneously with Ava and Walker to stare at Yelena, who winces in mortification and simply holds up a halfhearted thumbs up.

 

They stand, Yelena jogging forward in an attempt to quiet the hulking man. He only cries out her name and pulls her into his arms, Yelena’s remaining still at her sides. This Lucy understands – parents are difficult. If her mom had pulled up in the limo instead, she isn’t sure if would react any differently in this scenario. Still, a small sting of resentment travels up at the sight of them; because at least Yelena knows who her father is, and has one parent still in her life.

 

“Finally someone you can relate to, Walker,” Ava speaks up from beside them as they move toward the two figures, arguing amongst themselves now. In Ava’s eyes, Lucy recognizes the hurt, the grief. She lets her shoulder brush against the woman’s, without thinking, hoping it’s enough. 

 

When Walker turns to look at her, Ava explains, rolling her eyes, “Cause you’re a dad.”

 

There’s a flash of pain that crosses Walker’s face, blink and you’ll miss it, before he offers up a faint laugh.

 

“Yeah,” he nods. Lucy glances at Ava, who shrugs and speeds up her walk. Lucy remains beside Walker.

 

“How old is your kid?” she asks. A long moment passes where Walker doesn't respond. Chancing a glance over at him, she catches the way Walker simply stares forward, eyes blank, as if he hadn’t heard her. The same way he had earlier atop the elevator shaft. She reaches a hand out, places it on his shoulder. “John?”

 

“What?” he snaps. Lucy reels back, narrowing her eyes. Walker’s eyes widen, ice immediately melting from them. “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to – I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s fine,” Lucy shakes her head, but keeps her hands close to her body, berating herself for reaching out. She shrugs, hands holding her elbows tight. “Just asked how old your kid is. You don’t have to answer, I was just – I don’t know.”

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Walker responds, hand lifting, reaching out, before dropping it with a sigh. He crosses his own arms, tension suddenly filling the air around them, breaking through their hard earned peace. “He’s two. Almost three, actually. His birthday is in January.”

 

Lucy nods, humming. “What’s his name?”

 

A small smile graces Walker’s mouth.

 

“Matthew,” he says. “We usually just call him Matty.”

 

Lucy’s own lips twitch up as she imagines a little boy on toddling legs, with Walker’s eyes and attitude. 

 

“Bet you’re excited to get home to see him,” she murmurs, something akin to longing pulling at her chest.

 

John blinks over at her, confusion rippling across his face before he looks away, swallowing deeply.

 

“Yeah,” he states, eyes far away once more. “I am.”

 

Lucy doesn’t question him further as they reach the limo, doesn’t let it show that she knows he’s lying. She doesn’t have to.

 

John knows it, too.




*




Yelena and Alexei have an interesting relationship, to say the least.

 

Between Alexei’s lack of self awareness and Yelena’s constant awareness, they spend the majority of the time arguing back and forth about anything and everything.

 

Yelena shoots down any insinuation of the connection between the four of them, firm in her belief that they are not friends; a sentiment that Alexei argues against wholeheartedly, tearfully applauding her daughter for naming her new friends after her old peewee soccer team after Walker drones out a sarcastic Go Thunderbolts.

 

Lucy sits beside Ava on the long limousine seat, her sweaty back sticking to the leather, as Yelena and Alexei volley back and forth. If she wasn’t so bone tired, she would admit that the two were actually pretty funny together.

 

It isn’t until Alexei asks where they’re all headed and Walker suggests they split up that Lucy realizes this – whatever this is – won’t last. She hadn’t even realized she had been leaning into this idea of them, something not dissimilar to the one Alexei paints.

 

A team, like they’d been in the vault, working together to get one another out. To bring light to the darkness, like Alexei says. Though, she does disagree with the Wheaties comment.

 

“Do people still eat Wheaties?” she finds herself asking, to which Alexei booms out a laugh.

 

“Of course they do, my small friend,” he assures her. Lucy can only snap her head over to Walker and mouths, irritatedly, small? John only shrugs, grinning in amusement.

 

Yelena shoots Alexei down once more, relaying the gravity of the situation to him, and ultimately Lucy. She’d been stupid to even consider something like what Alexei had described – something of a team, maybe even something of a –

 

Lucy’s attention, which had been drifting past the windows, catches on the dark shape behind Walker’s head, in the distance, traveling closer toward the limousine.

 

“Shit,” she mutters, before calling out to the rest of them, “Trouble!”

 

Walker turns his head and follows his gaze, urging Alexei to step on it to avoid the convoy.

 

A moment. Two. Their pace increases a mile, maybe two.

 

“Are we even moving?” Lucy asks, just as Ava mutters, “Is that it?”

 

Yelena tries hurrying her father, but the limousine hardly shows any sign of moving faster. The trucks continue gaining on them until they’re close enough within range to shoot.

 

“Alexei,” Walker warns, gripping his shield close, ready to use at a moment's notice. Lucy readies herself, lets the energy within her simmer to the surface, just as Alexei assures them the limo is bulletproof. Then, he reaches over and flicks on a button that Lucy hopes reinforces the outer shell of the vehicle.

 

Instead, Pony begins to play, a strobe of lights powers on overhead, and fog begins to fill the car. Lucy watches it all unfold with wide eyes, pulling her hands away from the seat, suddenly reevaluating why it might be sticky.

 

“Who are you driving?” she asks above the noise, the general bickering and the gunshots that have sounded again.

 

The bullets pierce the car’s back end and, at Ava’s yell, Walker lifts the shield in time to block any more from hitting those within.

 

“What happened to bulletproof?” he screams and Alexei only waves it away on a technicality. 

 

With a few maneuvers, a bottle of vodka goes flying out the front window, Molotov cocktail slamming into the front of the first truck, catching fire. Just as they all look toward it with hope lining their frames, the fire is snuffed out, and the trucks begin shooting again.

 

Glass shatters, and Lucy winces as a shard slices across her cheekbone, lifting her arms to stop any more damage from occurring. To her left, Ava mutters that she’ll be back before phasing through herself, John, and the car, landing on the trunk. She kneels atop it for just a moment before the ringing begins again. She falls, hands covering her ears, and almost slips from the trunk before Walker grabs ahold of her arm. Lucy rushes forward to help and the two of them pull her back inside.

 

Lucy rushes forward to make sure she’s stable, sitting her up against the seat once more, squeezing her shoulders quickly before she returns to Walker’s side behind the shield.

 

“Let me try,” she pleads, to which John only stares at her, baffled. She takes his moment of confusion for what it is – a distraction. She pushes past him immediately and takes up Ghost’s previous spot. She stands, shakily, on the back end of the limo. 

 

She calls to the stars within her, breathing deeply, something in her chest stretching out to the people within the car. Something protective. Something bright.

 

Just as the next wave of bullets comes, Lucy thrusts her hands out and a new forcefield forms, glimmering around them. Lucy watches in awe as the bullets simply bounce away less than a foot from her nose. Behind her, she hears Alexei cheering, yelling to Yelena about his small friend.

 

Walker calls out to her, laughing in triumph, “Holy shit, kid!”

 

Lucy lets out her own half deranged, half ecstatic laugh. She had no idea she was capable of this, but somehow, when she’s with them, she knows she is.

 

She sways slightly as the limo veers to the left, avoiding a rock in its path.

 

“Drive straight!” she yells as she steadies herself once more. For a moment, Alexei listens. And then he curses as he shifts hard to the right, and Lucy goes tumbling down. The energy around her is snuffed as she slips from the tail end of the limo. She yells, hands scrabbling for purchase anywhere, gasping when Walker’s palm grasps onto hers.

 

Her legs hang precariously off the edge of the trunk and she yells out his name in desperation.

 

“Hold on,” he grounds out, arms straining as he pulls her in. Ava comes to his side and helps him, breaking Lucy’s fall as they tumble onto the limousine floor. 

 

“You okay?” she asks, gripping Lucy’s arms, checking her over for any wounds the same way Lucy had minutes ago. 

 

Lucy can only nod, both ducking once more bullets fly their way. John is back to pressing the shield against the open window, flinching with every hit to the vibranium.

 

Lucy hears Alexei shout out Yelena’s name and she turns to watch as the blonde pulls herself out of the car, perches herself on the window, aims her gun, and fires.

 

The bullet lands and the entire truck goes flying in a cloud of fire, leaving only two.

 

With wide eyes, Lucy meets Yelena’s gaze as she reenters the car, no words needed to say what they’re both thinking: That wasn’t me.

 

Bullets fly forth from the second car, until that one, too, is upended. Lucy can only watch, dumbfounded, as a figure on a motorcycle emerges from the smoke, hot on the trail of the final truck.

 

“It’s Bucky!” Walker yells in victory.

 

Alexei laughs, awe in his voice as he introduces, “The Winter Soldier.”

 

And Lucy, with her star filled brain, only has enough wits to gasp out, “Congressman Barnes?”

 

The man on the motorcycle swerves as the truck’s guns turn on him, avoiding the bullets like they’re drops of water. He races toward the open window of the militarized vehicle and snatches out a large gun, flipping it in his hand before shooting down at the spool of metal cable tied to the front of the truck. He veers back on one wheel, waits until the truck is far enough ahead to dismount his bike, snatches up the cable, wraps it around his arm and punches straight into the ground.

 

And the final truck goes toppling forward.

 

Alexei, Ava, and Walker begin cheering. Lucy herself can only laugh in astonishment, in excitement, yelling out a “Holy shit!”

 

The triumph is short lived, however, as the congressman stands, faces them, and lifts a large weapon toward their vehicle.

 

There’s only the sound of an explosive locking onto the limo and Walker’s Oh, shit before their own bulletproof-ish carrier goes flying.

 

Lucy is in mid air when she reaches out, with all her might, to wrap the car in energy again – like she had before.

 

She’s almost got it when her head hits the last pane of solid glass left on the limo, and she feels nothing but darkness.




*




There are stars behind her eyes again, but this time, they take the shape of the ones she used to have on the ceiling of her childhood bedroom. Glowing warm and gentle, she leans into the memory of laying below them and charting out the constellations she made up entirely on her own.

 

Even as she comes to, slowly, the warmth remains in her frame, lingering as her eyes flutter open, soft noise filtering in through her ears.

 

Until her sense of sound returns full force and the sound of arguing echoes through her head.

 

She groans, not loud enough to break through the cacophony voices around her but enough to signal to one person – a person, she realizes, she’s leaning against, her throbbing temple resting on their steady shoulder. A voice, familiar in its low register, bites out, “Be quiet! She’s waking up.”

 

Lucy finally regains feeling in her tongue, and just as her brain reconnects its wires, her mouth opens and she blurts out, “Why are you all so loud?” 

 

A chuckle to her left. The shoulder beneath her head shakes in hardly suppressed laughter. With all the strength she can muster, she turns her face up and meets the gaze of John Walker. His blue eyes remain open and in a perpetual state of concern; a look Lucy is beginning to associate with herself.

 

“Welcome back,” he drawls and Lucy only groans again, shaking her pounding head.

 

“Not in the mood for sarcasm,” she manages, to which another voice – accented and wheezing, Yelena – agrees with her. 

 

Lucy lifts her head, painstakingly, taking in those around her. To her left, Walker and Yelena, while across from her sit Alexei and Ava. All of them are equally bound in rope and, in the super soldier's case, wrapped in steel metal bars.

 

Glancing down, Lucy notices her own lack of hands, and after a second of panic in which she believes she has genuinely misplaced them, she feels the ache of her arms where they’ve been pulled behind her back, hands limp and losing feeling.

 

“Just a precaution,” another voice tells her. Lucy snaps her gaze over toward it. 

 

Bucky Barnes stands with his back to the window, the metal of his arm glinting menacingly in the sun.

 

Lucy knows this is a man with a certain amount of power, knows he has some sway in the higher ranks of life, but she truly couldn't care less in the moment.

 

She simply scoffs at the congressman, pushing past the bout of nausea that hits her as she tilts her head.

 

“Do you usually kidnap and tie people up to get their attention?” she asks, glaring at the taller man. “Is that how you got elected?”

 

For a second, Barnes says nothing. Then, he’s laughing. A quiet, shaky thing, but a laugh all the same. 

 

Reaching behind himself, he grabs a canteen before walking over to Lucy. He kneels behind her and with one swift pull, the binding comes undone. He hands her the canteen.

 

“Drink. You need water,” he urges, shaking the bottle at her when she simply stares at him. She takes the bottle in a shaky hand, and the sight of the water within is enough for her to put it to her lips eagerly, gulping as much of it down as she can. 

 

When there’s nothing but drops of liquid left, she wipes the back of her hand over her mouth and nods at Bucky.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers. He nods, moving back toward his previous spot. He doesn’t bother tying Lucy back up. That gesture allows her to hope, for just a moment, that he might let them all go – until he mentions a committee, a trial against Valentina, and Lucy feels used all over again.

 

Ava, Yelena, and Walker begin explaining what happened in the vault, what happened to Bob. Bucky deflects their commentary, only stopping to really listen when Walker tells him to cut the shit. 

 

“I know you, John,” Bucky amends, hands placed on his hips, something akin to pity in his gaze as he focuses on the super soldier. “I know it’s been hard since Olivia left you and took your kid, but still. This is on you.”

 

It’s as if the words slot a final puzzle piece into place. Walker’s agitation and quiet demeanor anytime his family was brought up. The way he snapped at Lucy when Ava had mentioned being a dad. It all made sense.

 

With a steady ache in her heart, Lucy turned her head to look at Walker, searching until his eyes met her own. He looks down at her with a gaze drained of life, of a person beaten by the world around him, turned on by all those who once stood by him. Someone lost, someone hurting.

 

Someone like her.

 

Walker only tilts his head slightly. What’re you gonna do?

 

Lucy nods in understanding, pressing her arm into his. It’s all she can do.

 

The arguing continues. Bucky hardly believes any of them when they mention Bob and the Sentry Project.

 

It isn’t until Lucy speaks up that Barnes finally starts to listen.

 

“This isn’t the first time she’s done this, Bucky,” she states, reaching into her jacket to pull out the Nova papers. She hands them over to him, and he takes them suspiciously, eyes scanning across each of them quickly. His eyes bounce between her and the figure of Nova. She watches as the realization sets in. He’s too smart to believe she might be lying. He already knows she’s telling the truth as she says, “That was supposed to be me. I don’t think I was the first, and I obviously wasn’t the last. But I’m the only one you have left.”

 

Bucky considers her for a moment, only looks away when the phone in his pocket begins to ring.

 

The five of them begin to murmur to one another, trying to find some way to convince him further; and then Bucky’s voice rings out as he seemingly repeats the words from the other end.

 

Project Sentry.

 

They watch with bated breath as Bucky continues the conversation, looking exhausted as he sighs out Bob.

 

“Bob!” they all copy, emphatically nodding.

 

He hangs up the phone. “Bob,” he murmurs again, and they all repeat it. Lucy is beginning to lose all meaning of the word, but the sound of it brings that slight pain to her heart again – directed at the man with kind eyes and brown curls, who is under Valentina’s thumb, listening to her promises, her praise.

 

If Lucy had once believed it, she knows Bob will, too. And he’ll do anything she says, because Lucy had once been willing to do the same.

 

“She’s going to destroy him, Bucky,” she says, peering into the man’s eyes, keeping them steady, trying to communicate something deeper than words. “And then what happens to the rest of us?”

 

Slowly, Bucky nods in agreement, in determination, as he circles the group pulling at their bindings, freeing them.

 

“I gotta stop her,” Bucky is saying, just as he releases Yelena. “And you are going to help me.”

 

Yelena argues against it, telling him he’s got the wrong people, to which Bucky responds kindly, firmly. About how he’s been there, about either doing something to heal from their transgressions or living to regret it forever.

 

The words sink in as they all consider what comes next. Yelena sighs, then nods.

 

“Stop Val, and save Bob,” she says before turning to face Ava and Walker. They each nod in agreement. The three train their gaze on Lucy. 

 

“Well, what are we waiting for?” she asks them, lips twitching up, to which they all smile knowingly. Their attention returns to Alexei.

 

Lucy winces at his yells, and with her hands pressed over her ears and her head pounding, she considers just leaving him there. But only for a second.




*




They’re waiting for Bucky to bring the truck around.

 

Ava and Yelena remain side by side, trading concepts of a plan for when they finally reach Bob. Alexei went off with Bucky, talking his ear off about super soldier serums and the Cold War, Bucky looking only a split second away from punching the man with his vibranium arm.

 

John hangs behind with Lucy, sitting beside her as she continues to gather her bearings. She ties and re-ties the laces of her boots, checks her jacket pockets, pushes her hair away from her face, trying to tame the cloud of dark waves that have gathered around her face in the last twenty four hours.

 

“How’s the head holding up?” Walker asks from beside her. Lucy looks up from her bootlaces before shrugging. 

 

“Better, I think,” she concedes. Walker nods, pointing at her temple.

 

“You’re getting a bruise,” he adds and just the slightest brush of his fingers against her skin causes her to wince, flinching. He pulls his hand back. “Shit, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

 

“It’s okay,” Lucy breathes out through her teeth as the pounding in her skull subsides. She blinks her eyes back open and catches Walker’s furrowed gaze. In an attempt to quell the worry she observes painted across his face, she adds, “It’s not the first time I’ve been knocked out.”

 

Walker blinks at her, expression unchanging but rather deepening.

 

“Was that supposed to concern me more or less?” he asks, and Lucy only laughs, shaking her head, berating herself for it immediately.

 

“Yeah, I heard it once I said it,” she gives in. Walker humphs and says no more, but the lines around his mouth are lax, just on the cusp of a smile. Lucy feels bad for having to bring it up now, but it’s eating away at her as she considers her past carelessness. She breathes out deeply and continues, “I’m sorry about what I said earlier.”

 

At first, Walker seems confused. But then his eyes land on Lucy’s and understanding dawns on him.

 

“It’s alright,” he sighs. “You didn’t know.”

 

“I shouldn’t have assumed – ”

 

“I didn’t give you any reason to believe otherwise,” he states, shrugging, running the thumb of his right hand along the palm of his left. “I guess telling everyone things were fine made me believe it, to some extent.”

 

Lucy hums. Before she can say anything else, Walker squares his shoulders, turning toward her.

 

“I love him,” he states, voice wavering slightly at the end before he clears his throat and adds, “Matty. My boy.”

 

Lucy nods, smiling kindly.

 

“I don’t doubt it,” she agrees, hesitating for a moment before reaching out to squeeze his wrist, until his grip on his hand grows lax. “Whatever happened, I’m sure they know that, too.”

 

Walker shakes his head, smiling sadly.

 

“I’m not sure if that’s true,” he murmurs. Lucy tilts her head down, meeting his stare head on.

 

“Then make it true,” she adds resolutely. Walker looks unconvinced, so she adds. “You’re trying to be better, right?”

 

“Of course,” he breathes. Lucy shrugs, like that’s it.

 

“Then that’s more than enough.”

 

Walker scoffs. “Is it?”

 

“More than most people can say,” she nods, chuckling in self deprecation, carrying on, “It’s more than I can say.”

 

Walker watches her closely, and an understanding ripples across his face. As if he found the last piece missing for her own puzzle

 

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” he starts, voice warm, and an alarm begins to ring within Lucy’s head. She holds her hand up in an effort to stop him and shakes her head, laughing awkwardly.

 

“You don’t have to do that,” she groans, and Walker only rears back in confusion. 

 

“Do what?”

 

“The – you know,” she gestures to him. At Walker’s blank stare, she sighs, elaborating. “The parental-figure-to-the-kid-without-parents thing. You don’t – don’t have to do that.”

 

Walker is shaking his head, scoffing.

 

“That wasn’t what I was doing,” he argues.

 

“It was one hundred percent what you were doing,” Yelena says from ten feet away, not bothering to look at them. Ava nods in agreement beside her.

 

“Have you two just been listening this whole time?”

 

“Oh, as if you don’t do the same, Mr. Super Soldier,” Ava responds. Lucy snorts and John only shakes his head, his own shocked laugh pouring out of him.

 

After a moment, his attention returns to Lucy.

 

“I just meant to say that you deserve much better than whatever your parents put you through,” he continues, and Lucy can’t do much else but blink up at him. He presses his arm into hers. “You deserved to have people who tried.”

 

Lucy nods, swallowing down the sudden lump in her throat, blinking away the slight mist in her eyes.

 

“Thanks,” she chokes out and Walker offers her a smile that lights up the dim room. Small and fleeting, but steady, like the sun.

 

Before either of them can say much else, a honk sounds from outside and they all turn toward it.

 

“It’s time,” Ava says and they all nod, readying themselves for whatever awaits them beyond this room.

 

Walker helps her up from her seat on the floor before leading them to the back of the truck – leading them to salvation. 

 

Or else, destruction.




*




It is, unsurprisingly, a pretty long drive from Buttfuck, USA to New York City.

 

Lucy sits in the back with John, Ava, and Yelena. She remains silent for most of the drive, still recovering from her hit to the head, but she remains tuned into her companions’ idle chatter.

 

Walker remains at her side, shoulder pressed up to hers, and she takes the support willingly, leaning her weight, relying on his stability.

 

The three of them share their choice of weapons and Lucy snorts as John tries to defend his choice of helmet to the two women. At his halfhearted glare, she only holds up her hands in surrender, which makes him grin.

 

As the drive continues, Lucy continues her efforts in trying to tame her hair, pulling it back into a knot at the base of her skull that falls almost immediately.

 

Yelena, seemingly sensing Lucy’s frustration as she tugs at her hair, to no avail, gestures her over. 

 

“Come here,” she says. When Lucy blinks over at her, Yelena sighs, reaching out to tug on her ankle. Lucy scoots over the rest of the way and stations herself in front of Yelena, who grabs her shoulders and turns her gently around, until she’s facing Walker.

 

When Yelena grabs her hair, starting from the base of her skull, she flinches, snapping her head over to the woman. Yelena lets go, though keeps her eyes steady on Lucy’s.

 

“Let me try something,” Yelena suggests, softly. She doesn’t move an inch until Lucy nods.

 

She takes Lucy’s long hair into her hands and begins sectioning it off. Lucy trains her eyes down at her boots, swallowing down the tightness beginning to spread in her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time someone braided her hair, if anyone ever had. Yelena was so gentle with her, constantly checking in to make sure she wasn’t pulling too tight. 

 

After a minute or two, Yelena reaches the end of her hair and curses.

 

“I thought I had a – ”

 

Before she can finish, Ava pulls out a hair tie from a hidden pocket in her suit, handing it over to Yelena, who takes it gratefully and uses it to tie off the braid.

 

She claps once when she’s done, reaching out to pull a few strands of hair from the braid so they frame Lucy’s face.

 

“Gorgeous,” Yelena states, making a frame with her fingers around Lucy’s face, making the younger girl laugh. Ava nods in agreement, reaching out to pull the braid around from Lucy’s back to her shoulder. The women both fuss over her hair until they deem it perfect.

 

“Better?” Yelena asks, hopefully. 

 

Lucy looks down at her hair, the gentle way it curves around itself into a simple yet efficient and elaborate braid. Lucy nods, lips curling up in a smile.

 

“It’s perfect,” she murmurs, looking between the two women, voice low. She’s afraid if she raises it, they’ll be able to tell how touched she is. Still, from the soft grins on their faces, she doesn’t think she’s successful. “Thank you.”

 

Clearing her throat, she glances over at Walker. His eyes are already on her, a kind and gentle look on his face. A look she’s never seen before – unguarded and new. She holds the braid up for him to see.

 

He nods, thoughtful, reaching out to run his thumb over the end of it, as if without thinking.

 

“Looks good,” he says, letting go, unaware of the light that shines through Lucy’s chest at the praise. He gestures to his own head. “My turn?”

 

Lucy huffs out a laugh, returning to her place by his side. She’s still touching the braid, reverently. She never wants it to fall.

 

“I never actually learned how to do this,” she admits, laughing quietly, self pityingly.

 

After a small stretch of silence, Yelena speaks up.

 

“I’ll teach you one day,” she says, and Lucy meets her eyes. Hazel-green and so bright, so genuine. Lucy smiles and nods.

 

“I’d like that,” she voices and Yelena’s lips stretch beautifully around a smile.

 

Before anyone can say another word, they feel the truck rattle with the force of a crash, the sound of glass shattering muffled through the walls of the truck.

 

They all stand, ready.

 

“Guess this is the plan,” Lucy mutters, just as John pulls open the back door and they all charge.




*




Lucy has three men floating in the air when Valentina’s voice comes up on the speakers, calling out to them.

 

“I left the door unlocked for you,” she hisses, irritation creeping into her tone. “Come up.”

 

With a blink, Lucy lets the men drop to the floor, knocked out immediately. 

 

They pack into the elevator like sardines, pressed close and panting as they travel up dozens of floors.

 

Lucy’s chest grows tight the closer they get to the top. It’s been months since she’s come face to face with Valentina. The last time she’d seen her, Lucy had been locked away in a fireproof cell, pain lancing through her and tears streaming down her face.

 

She’d sworn that day, the last time she’d seen the woman who ruined her, that she wouldn’t rest until she saw the end of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. 

 

Now, though, things have changed. There’s still that familiar surge of anger, rage and devastation burning in her chest, but it was quelled by the hope that sparked in her heart, like the birth of a star. 

 

Together, they’d save Bob. Together, they’d stop Valentina. And somehow, Lucy believed they could face whatever came next – together.

 

“You alright?” John asks beside her, pressing his shoulder into hers. 

 

Lucy looks up at him. “I will be.”

 

The elevator dings as they reach the designated floor and the doors open before anyone can say another word.

 

They exit onto the large, half developed floor. Unopened boxes to their right, and a bar to their left. Standing at it, voice projected across the room, is Valentina, calmly pouring herself a drink.

 

They circle her as she goes on about optics and the prices of the old Avengers Tower. Lucy can admit, she feels a little intimidated, standing in the presence of what once was. Still, that feeling is quelled when Valentina catches sight of her, Bucky and his less than half a term all but forgotten.

 

Val smiles, dripping with venom.

 

“How sweet,” she coos, gesturing her glass to Lucy. “You found yourself some new babysitters.”

 

Lucy’s grins momentarily, eyes hard, before letting it drop. Hate curdles in her chest.

 

“Now, what will your constituents say when they see you, along with a team of ruthless criminals, have kidnapped a teenager to go along with this, frankly, foolish plan to… what?” she asks, turning her attention back to Bucky. “Get me fired?”

 

“We’re taking you in, Val,” John declares, tone hard, with barely concealed rage. Valentina glares at him, insults him, and Lucy almost wishes Bucky hadn't stopped him from pulling his gun out. A new kind of anger flares up, a protective weight surging to the surface.

 

“Says the knock off Nick Fury,” Lucy states. Without looking over at her, Valentina laughs, ice in her veins. Look at me, Lucy thinks, something burning within her. 

 

“The lamb has teeth,” she tuts, taking a sip from her glass before continuing. “What a disappointment you turned out to be.”

 

“Like you’re any better?” she scoffs, energy rising and rising like the sea in a storm. Lucy steadies her breathing as Val’s attention returns to her.

 

“Never said I was, sweetheart,” she clicks her tongue, sizing Lucy up and down. “But it takes one to know one, hm?”

“Suck my dick, Val,” she bites, stepping up as the rest of her allies move in. “Where’s Bob?”

 

“Left without even leaving a note,” Val continues, shaking her head in mock sadness, eyes alight with amusement. “Abandoning me without a word.”

 

“You abandoned me,” Lucy pushes back, throat growing tight, voice rough. Valentina sighs, exasperatedly.

 

“You could have been great,” she affirms, that same tone from the lab overtaking her voice. Like she believed what she was saying. Like she believed in Lucy. She gestured over at Lucy halfheartedly, frowning. “Instead, you’re… this.”

 

“Valentina,” Bucky warns, something simmering beneath his tone. Valentina doesn’t stop. She steps closer to Lucy, heels echoing on the floor like nails driving into a coffin. Lucy can only stand there, body freezing, skin burning. Her eyes begin to prick with the beginning of tears, but she won’t let them fall. Valentina catches them nonetheless and curls her lip.

 

“You turned me into this,” Lucy says, voice wavering.

 

“No,” Valentina responds, gesturing to Lucy with her glass. “I only gave you the tools to be great. To be better.” With a shake of her head, with no feeling in her eyes, Valentina concludes, “It isn’t my fault you aren’t good enough.”

 

A sharp breath escapes from Lucy’s mouth, chin trembling, fingers shaking.

 

“Valentina,” John hisses to Lucy’s left, more angry than Lucy has ever heard him, but Lucy can’t look at him. Can do nothing but stare at Valentina as the supernova within her shatters in on itself, imploding, destroying everything in its path. Everything but the raging storm within her, stars colliding and bursting, burning.

 

Not good enough. 

 

Not good enough. 

 

Never good enough.

 

With a simple hmph, Valentina turns her attention away. She’s only made it five feet when the glass in her hand shatters in a burst, and a large, deathly shard of it launches up toward her pale neck. 

 

It stops just an inch shy of skin.

 

Valentina looks unphased as the glass falls from where Lucy had launched it, her hold on it slipping from her mind, and merely drops to the floor, shattering completely. 

 

Valentina tilts her head, expression smug.

 

“I’m not alone,” she announces, before calling out, shortly, “Robert.”

 

From the stairs behind the bar come the echoing, solid sound of boots. They can only watch as he emerges; a man draped in gold and blue, hair bright as the sun, standing tall and unflinching.

 

“Oh my God,” Yelena chokes out. Lucy herself has no words.

 

Because they all watch as Bob descends the last few steps and comes to stand beside Valentina who, proudly, introduces him in all his glory as The Sentry.

 

Praise pours from Valentina as Bob stands steady and still, watching them all. He’s so different from the Bob Lucy remembers. His chestnut curls gone, his curved posture straightened. Only his eyes remain unchanged, still their signature deep ocean blue.

 

He meets her gaze for a moment, and it all comes crashing down on her. This could have been her. He is what Lucy almost was, and she is everything Bob could become. The rest of the team tries reaching out, each with less and less luck.

 

For a moment, it seems as if Yelena might get through to him, but then his expression shuts down again, grows passive and closed off. Nothing but a shield.

 

Valentina’s plan is too clean cut, too perfect. It can’t work – but it might. If Bob allows himself to follow her orders, it could . She knows because she’d been willing once, too. 

 

Robert, they don’t think that you’re good enough, Valentina had told him. But that wasn’t true. The only one who believed that was Valentina herself.

 

It isn’t my fault you aren’t good enough.

 

“Whatever she‘s told you, she’s lying,” Lucy speaks up, stepping forward after Yelena’s final failed attempt to bring Bob back. His eyes return to Lucy as she repeats, “She’s lying. She doesn’t care about you, Bob. She just wants you to think she does.”

 

“Robert,” Valentina starts, glaring at Lucy. She doesn’t let the woman finish.

 

“You don’t have to listen to her,” she continues. “You’re worth so much more than this. You’re more than just a means to an end.”

 

Valentina begins speaking again, murmuring to Bob, but he keeps his eyes trained on Lucy. Lucy offers him a small, shaky smile.

 

“We came all this way for you,” she continues, stepping forward. “To make sure you didn’t make the same mistake I did.”

 

“What was your mistake?” he asks in a soft voice, one that reminds her of their time in the vault, when she’d complimented his hair and he’d looked at her as if all the light in a starry sky had focused on him.

 

“I believed it when she said I was good enough for her,” she sighs, voice breaking. “But I wasn’t. No one is.”

 

Bob looks away for a moment, considering. Lucy continues.

 

“You told me you wished you had a way to help people,” she recalls, and Bob’s eyes flicker in recognition. “You do. You can be a hero, Bob. Just not with her.”

 

Bob straightens, watches Lucy with a fragile look in his eyes. He’s swaying, leaning forward, as if toward her.

 

“Please,” she murmurs, holding out a hand. “Don’t let her destroy you, too.”

 

Bob’s hand twitches at his side, fingers spasming toward hers.

 

They’re almost brushing when Valentina speaks up.

 

“Then why did you leave him?” she asks. 

 

Bob’s hand falls as they both snap their gazes over to her.

 

“What?” Bob asks, voice hard once more.

 

“No one ran after you when they thought you died,” Valentina sneers. For the first time, Lucy sees the facade drop as Valentina’s face displays rage and hatred. “They left you there, Bob.”

 

Lucy shakes her head. “That’s not true. I wanted to – ”

 

“You all left me there,” Bob mutters, as if finally recalling.

 

“Bobby,” John starts, carefully.

 

“Don’t call me that!” Bob snaps, eyes glowing gold. Lucy flinches, backing away a step without thinking. Bob catches sight of it and scoffs. “Don’t look at me like I’m the monster, Lucy,” his lip curls as he says it, head tilting at her in consideration. Lucy’s blood runs cold. “We all know who that really is.”

 

It hits her chest like a spear and a breath punches out of her.

 

“Bob,” she tries, still so foolish. The man only straightens, grip tight over his wrist.

 

“I’m the Sentry,” he states, looking down at her. “And you all need to leave.”

 

Yelena tries to speak behind Lucy, but her voice is drowned out by Alexei’s enraged yell. She only catches his use of their group’s name, the Thunderbolts, before he rushes toward Bob. He’s immediately thrown back against the wall of the building, concrete cracking beneath the force of it.

 

Then, all hell breaks loose. Only Yelena and Lucy continue to try de-escalating the situation. Lucy tries standing between Bob and John, unsure which of them she was trying to protect, only to be thrown off to the side, toppling on top of John. 

 

Her head pounds and she tries to stand, but she only stumbles. John catches her, places her behind a metal storage container, then charges back into the fight, blocking bullets from hitting Bucky with his shield. The two slam into the wall from the force of it.

 

Alexei. Yelena. Ava. All fight to no avail as they’re kicked to the elevator. John joins the pile, grunting, his shield bent almost in half. Bucky, in one last stand, punches and throws as many blows as he can in an attempt to bring Bob down.

 

Bob only stands, unamused, as each hit is deflected. He catches Bucky’s vibranium arm in his hand, glances down at it distastefully, as he pulls it from its socket and strikes him across the jaw. Bucky falls to the ground, arm thrown in their direction.

 

Lucy remains with her back to the wall. Between her and the rest of her allies, Sentry stands in the way. His gaze lands on hers and a flurry of emotions passes over his eyes. She catches regret, and disdain, and most of all, anger.

 

With a grunt, she pushes herself up. With a shaking breath, she holds her hands up, stars sparking to her fingertips.

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she tells him, and Sentry only tilts his head, smirking.

 

“Do you honestly think you can?” he asks her.

 

Just as he thrusts his hand out toward her, Lucy blocks the blow, her own energy crackling through her. Sentry’s brow furrows and he reaches out again at the same time Lucy does.

 

It’s a battle of force from there, two beings with the power of stars and suns pushing against one another. Sentry’s eyes are hard, once golden and feverish now a bright, blinding white, like the light from Lucy’s old cell. 

 

Lucy strains with the power surging through her, crying out as it begins to burn. She hears her name called – John’s voice, desperate and broken – but she can’t stop. She’s the only one who can come close to bringing him back, and she will. She has to.

 

They’re both hovering above the ground at this point, power surging around them. Somewhere above, light fixtures shatter, but neither of them flinch. Lucy trembles but does not let up. She remains with her arm outstretched, gasping as she feels her frame weaken. Her mind is spinning, the bruise at her temple stretching, and she tries. She tries so hard.

 

Valentina’s voice booms through her, along with Sentry’s.

 

You weren’t good enough. Not worth the trouble. A monster.

 

She cries out, dropping her hand and clutching her head. Before she can reach out again, a hand wraps around her throat and lifts her higher.

 

She clutches her fingers around Sentry’s forearm, struggling against his grip, throat constricting and lungs aching with the need for breath. She tries to speak, but she can’t.

 

In her periphery, the team appears to be screaming, banging their fists against an invisible wall.

 

Her eyes begin to grow dark, spots appearing at the edge of her vision. Tears streamed down her face. 

 

“Please,” she manages to choke out. “Bob.”

 

She reaches out with a hand and her fingers find purchase on a lock of Sentry’s hair. No longer brown or curling around his face, but his all the same. She tugs on it the way she did in the vault, softly, trying to communicate more than words ever could.

 

Don’t need to fix what isn’t broken.

 

Between one blink and the next, Sentry’s eyes shift from white to blue. He releases his hold on Lucy and she falls to the floor, writhing as she sucks in air faster than her lungs can take it, coughing and choking in her hurry.

 

Through the curtain of her hair, she watches as Sentry backs off, blinking rapidly.

 

“I didn’t – ” he begins, pressing his lips tight instead of continuing.

 

Lucy’s body trembles as she tries rising, her arms deadweight beneath her. Instead, she simply drags her body as far from Sentry as possible, terror and hurt and guilt roiling through her.

 

There are arms around her suddenly, one sliding beneath her knees, the other around her back, lifting her up quickly. She leans into the steady hold as they rush back to the elevator and she drops her aching head onto John’s shoulder, shaking.

 

Before the elevator doors close, she meets Bob’s deep blue eyes and sees her own fear reflected back in them, a shadow shifting unnaturally beneath him.

 

 

Notes:

as always, leave comments!

Chapter 3: a light in the tunnel

Summary:

you're not alone.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

 

 

John carries her out of the building, placing her down with her back resting against the building.

 

Lucy continues to cough sporadically, still feeling as if she can’t breathe properly. Her throat aches and her head is throbbing, but her heart hurts most of all.

 

All she can see when she opens her eyes is Bob’s face, shut off and devoid of any feeling, and the same word echoes throughout her skull – bold and red and printed across the wall off her cell.

 

FAIL.

 

Not good enough. Not good enough.

 

Monster. Monster. Monster.

 

Lucy bows her head between her knees and trembles, hardly feeling John’s hand between her shoulder blades, urging her to breathe.

 

There’s arguing, as always, but this time, there’s real heat in it – in a way it hasn’t been since they first found one another in the vault.

 

Alexei urges them to band together once more, reminding them of their being a team – the Thunderbolts, he announces, to varying degrees of annoyance. He continues to push while Ava, Bucky, and John shoot him down, the latter holding up his warped shield. 

 

“Oh my God! Stop!” Yelena snaps, going off on her father and, ultimately, the rest of their group. She squashes any remaining hope they might collectively harbor as she reminds them that Bob is gone, solidifying the thought in everyone’s head. When Alexei tries reaching out, Lucy watches as Yelena’s walls physically harden and she yells at him and Ava respectively, turning her attention to John when he tries to deescalate the situation.

 

“You know you’re trash, Walker,” she bites, words spitting out of her mouth. “So does your family.”

 

Lucy finally sits up, glaring at Yelena as John’s shoulders tense.

 

“That’s not fair,” she grounds out, shaking her head. Yelena’s gaze lands, finally, on Lucy. For a moment, something softens behind it, before hardening once more.

 

“None of this is fair, Lucy,” Yelena states, and Lucy nods, the bruising at her throat aching. She pushes past it.

 

“Yeah, you’re right,” she begins, pushing herself up to stand. “None of this is fair. Nothing about any of our lives has ever been fair. And the one person who deserved some kind of good in the world,” she continues, pointing up at Tower, voice catching, “is gone . But at least we tried.”

 

“He almost killed you,” Yelena reminds her and Lucy throws up her hands.

 

“So did the rest of you!” she snaps back. Then, with a sigh, she forges on, “But I’m still here. And, yeah, maybe it’s stupid to believe a group of fucked up, broken people can do something good, but that’s how belief works. You don’t know if it’ll pan out until it does.”

 

Yelena shakes her head, pressing her lips together. 

 

“We’re losers, Lucy,” she maintains. “We lost. Just like Valentina said. We’re just not good enough.”

 

Lucy’s shoulders fall, the final thread of her hope snapping in half. There’s nothing left to say as Yelena walks across the street, away from them.

 

After a minute, Walker turns to them all. “So, that’s it?”

 

Alexei shakes his head, calling out his daughter's name before following.

 

Ava phases out and John turns to Bucky, seeking an answer. When the congressman comes up with nothing, he turns back to Lucy.

 

But she’s already gone, too.




*




She makes it three blocks when she hears her name being called.

 

“Lucy!” John’s voice drifts to her ears, over the passerby of New York City as she heads down an unfamiliar street in an unfamiliar city. Completely and entirely alone, the way she’s always been.

 

“Lucy!” John had caught up to her by now, jogs up to reach her. Lucy can hear his boots behind her as he grows near her, following her. “Lucy, will you just stop and talk to me?”

 

“I have to get back to California,” she mutters, rubbing her fingers across her tender neck. Her voice is fragile and broken, but it has less to do with her injury and more to do with the crack that has finally splintered down the center of her heart. 

 

“And how are you going to do that, kiddo?” John sighs. Lucy merely shakes her head, knot forming in her throat. “Lucy, please,” John tries again as they reach a much less crowded street, only a man walking his dog and a mother rolling a stroller passing them. 

 

John’s hand catches her upper elbow, gently. Lucy flinches away from it like a burn, rounding on him, anger sparking – but it isn’t like the anger she felt before. 

 

This one is exhausted and terrified and lost, anger like the one she felt in the cell – when she truly believed she’d die there, burning so bright there would be nothing left but stardust. She remembers the nights she spent curled in on herself, hoping for it to all be over. To be gone.

 

“No,” she snaps, voice catching, backing away from him. John, to his credit, doesn’t push forward again. He simply watches her with hurt shining in his eyes, a furrow between his brows. Lucy pushes past her own aching to continue. “There’s nothing left to talk about. You heard Yelena. We lost. This is over – whatever this even was.”

 

John nods, considering.

 

“Alright, sure,” he says, conceding, pushing on. Always ready to argue, this man. “But I can’t just let you leave without a plan.”

 

“Why does that matter to you?” Lucy questions, shaking her head emphatically. 

 

John glances away for a moment then squares his shoulders, shield falling at his side, his frame open and vulnerable – for the first time since Lucy has ever met him, he’s not hiding.

 

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I care about you,” he states. Not a question. Just a fact. Lucy lets out a short breath, holding her hands out in exasperation. 

 

“Why?” she persists, laughing in self depreciation, eyes stinging. “ Why do you care? You don’t even know me, John.”

 

At John’s silent look, his loss for words, Lucy’s own breath shudders out of her. Looking down, she says, “Whatever hole your family left in you, I’m never going to be able to fill it.”

 

Lucy stares at her boots, the tips of Walker’s just barely peeking into her periphery. She expects him to leave. Everyone does, eventually. She just doesn’t know if she can handle watching John leave. It’s always been better to push first, to give them another reason to leave rather than be reminded of why they do – because she’s not good enough.

 

Instead, Walker steps closer, and when she snaps her gaze up, she meets fury in his gaze. She braces herself for the hurt, the moment she loses something she’d only just got used to having.

 

“I have never once expected you to be anything more than what you already are,” he begins, eyes hard and persistent. He gestures back down the block, toward the tower, angrily. “And whatever Valentina told you today, or in the lab, you need someone to tell you she’s wrong.”

 

Lucy blinks, shock rippling through her. Walker continues.

 

“You told Bob was worth more than just being a means to an end,” he maintains, “but you don’t believe it for yourself. I don’t know why – and maybe I never will.” John shrugs, chuckling slightly for a moment before straightening and meeting Lucy’s gaze head on. “But you have to know that you’re worth more. You always have been. And you’re right. I don’t know you. Not entirely. But the parts of you I do know – they’re good, Lucy. They’re enough.”

 

Then, with so much resolution, with so much belief, he says, “You’re enough.”

 

Lucy lets out a breath bordering on a sob. She wipes the tears that fall from her eyes immediately, turning away so John doesn’t see them. It’s all in vain as John reaches over and simply brushes a knuckle kindly, almost playfully, against the wetness at her jaw, wiping it away. Lucy sniffles, laughing shakily.

 

With a loud sigh, she sits heavily on the curb of the street, suddenly drained. John sits beside her, their shoulders pressed together as they lean against one another.

 

“Thank you,” she murmurs after a moment, above the sounds of the city, muffled around them as if far away and not completely surrounding them. When she turns to look at John, he’s already looking back. She tilts her head down in apology. “And I’m sorry for what I said. About your family.”

 

John intakes a breath before letting it out slowly, nodding.

 

“Maybe I do feel cheated,” he admits, forehead creasing as he considers his words. “But,” he adds, meeting Lucy’s gaze again. “I think there’s a part of you that feels cheated, too.”

 

Lucy swallows, brushing back a strand of hair that has fallen from her braid. Yelena’s face flashes in her mind and her heart constricts even farther.

 

“I’m so lost,” she breathes, staring out across the street, eyes misting again. It's as if she’s watching life pass her by through frosted glass. A group of girls around her own age sit around a table on a café patio, laughing and smiling. A mother and father sit across from their daughter, no more than four years old, taking pictures as she bites into a slice of birthday cake. Lucy smiles wetly at all of them, while she caves from within.

 

“I have nothing left,” she chokes out, clenching her hands to her knees. “I don’t have friends, or family. I don’t even know if my mom is looking for me – or if she’s even alive. And I thought… I thought if I could just end Valentina, in some way, then I would stop feeling it.”

 

A beat. “Feel what?” John asks, quiet and fragile.

 

“The emptiness,” Lucy breathes, curling her legs to her chest. “Everything – hurts. All the time.”

 

Her hands tremble as the words pour out of her. She’d been stuck for so long beneath the current, screaming, no one coming to rescue her. Until them. Until him. Now, she just feels foolish for ever hoping she would never be alone again.

 

“I’ve hurt so many people,” she shudders, pressing her clenched fists to her eyes. “And I can’t stop thinking about it. I see them, all of them, over and over again. I don’t know how to make the hurt stop. For anyone.”

 

John breathes deeply beside her while Lucy remains curled in on herself, burning. Then, a warm weight settles around her wrist, causing her to look up.

 

“I still see him in my dreams, almost every night,” John says, cradling Lucy’s wrist in his palm. Unafraid, even after everything. “The man I killed with Steve Rogers’ shield. Even after… what he did,” Walker swallows harshly, chin trembling slightly before he continues, “he still haunts me. Everyday. And other faces, too. Everything I did in Afghanistan. The people I killed working for Valentina. Friends I couldn’t save. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully forget them.”

 

Lucy shrugs, hopelessly. 

 

“Then, what do we do?” she breathes. “How do we forget?”

 

John sighs. 

 

“You don’t. You can’t,” he supplies, still holding Lucy’s wrist. “But, maybe it’s good to remember. The hurt is there for a reason. Reminds you to keep trying. That’s all you can do. That’s gotta be enough.”

 

“How do you know?” she asks, looking up at him, eyes glassy. With a gentle smile, he turns his hand so Lucy’s fingers replace her wrist. He squeezes it, doesn’t let go.

 

“Because someone told me lately that it was,” he says. At Lucy’s trembling smile, he shakes his head. “I don’t think we’re meant to deal with it on our own. The emptiness. So, let’s deal with it together, yeah?”

 

Wiping her eyes, she nods. John reaches his free hand up to knock his knuckles against her chin, playful and tender.

 

“Atta girl,” he asserts. He gestures with his own chin down the street. “How about we get some pizza, huh?”

 

Just as Lucy is about to nod, the murmur of a crowd catches her attention. They’re all looking up, pointing. Furrowing her brows, she follows their line of sight. 

 

Her breath falls out of her when she views the figure, as if the shape of a man was punched clean through the sky.

 

But this shape is familiar.

 

John turns his head to see what has rendered her speechless and he curses immediately.

 

Because there’s no mistaking the man above them.

 

“Bob,” Lucy breathes, standing.

 

Before either of them can say another word, the shadowed figure reaches an arm out and all hell breaks loose.




*




They find the rest of the team back in front of the Avengers tower, each working around each other to get as many civilians as possible out of harm’s way. 

 

With a nod, John and Lucy split up, each rushing into the fight.

 

Lucy finds a woman trapped beneath a car, leg stuck beneath the wreckage. She rushes forward just in time to push the energy out as a large piece of rubble falls from overhead. The rubble shatters and becomes nothing but star dust. 

 

With some strain, Lucy flexes her fingers out and wraps the car in energy, lifting it just enough for the woman to pull herself free. A man comes from off the street and lifts her. Lucy nods over to the lobby of an apartment building.

 

“Go!” she yells, and they do. Lucy drops the car, breathing through the exhaustion, adrenaline and worry overtaking her frame.

 

She glances around herself. Yelena, Bucky, and Alexei continue to usher civilians to take cover. Another helicopter comes crashing down and Ava phases fast enough to push a civilian out of phasing out again just before the vehicle can crush her. She returns, and her masked face snaps up to the sky where a piece of rubble comes falling down. 

 

A woman is sprawled across the street, dragging her body as she screams in horror, in the path of the rubble.

 

The concrete lands and begins arcing toward her. Just as Lucy rushes forward, the rubble is stopped with nothing but John’s back.

 

He’s wincing, grunting beneath the weight of it, and if he remains there another second, he’ll be crushed.

 

Lucy runs, regaining her momentum, as she comes up beside him, plants her hand against the rubble and begins to push.

 

“Lucy,” John starts, back straining, voice pleading.

 

Lucy merely shakes her head.

 

“We deal with it together, right?” she calls, glancing over at him. With a clenched jaw and shining eyes, he nods.

 

Lucy tries calling to the energy within herself, tries to wrap it around the rubble, but it’s too heavy. Her arms buckle from the weight of it and she plants her feet, preparing herself for whatever comes next.

 

Before the concrete can crush them, a second pair of hands joins hers. Ava’s masked face reaches her periphery as the weight is lightened slightly. Then, Alexei joins at Walker's left, Yelena following shortly after. Their final pillar of strength, Bucky plants his palms to the rubble. With a final push, the rubble goes tumbling to the floor and the six of them remain standing, gasping from the exertion. 

 

Smoke and debris clear from the air and Lucy glances at her sides, to the team flanking her. The hope within her chest blooms, faster and harder than it ever has. Stars that don’t burn but shine.

 

It’s silent around them for a moment before the applause begins.

 

Lucy watches in awe as civilians and bystanders around them cheer and clap, smiling in relief – all at the sight of them.

 

At the Thunderbolts.

 

The joy is short-lived, however, when a small call of Mom? breaks through the noise. They all turn to watch as a young girl stands in the middle of the street, terrified eyes searching for her mother as a slab of rubble comes shooting from the sky.

 

Alexei is on it immediately, hovering protectively over the girl as the rubble shatters across his back. With a smile, he holds the girl's hands in his and lets her know she’s safe.

 

A ripple of horror spreads across the street as, less than a second later, the child is turn to darkness, nothing but a shadow left splattered against pavement.

 

A shocked gasp falls from Lucy’s lips as pandemonium begins again.

 

Screams echo down the street as people run, only to be overtaken by darkness. Above them, the shadowed figure hovers, hand outstretched, as people are taken one by one.

 

A large, terrifying shadow begins spreading, curling around rubble, cars, people. Leaving nothing behind.

 

“You can’t outrun the emptiness,” the shadow declares, voice heavy and somber.

 

Lucy shakes her head, ridding herself of any desire to rush into the darkness, and turns to face the wave of civilians. John, always one step ahead, begins ushering them toward the lobby of an apartment, trying to get them all inside.

 

Lucy follows, pulling civilians in with the energy within her, not letting them remain outside. Ava, Bucky, and Alexei follow, grabbing as many men, women, children as they can and taking them out of harm's way. 

 

Lucy catches sight of Yelena before Alexei calls her name. She starts forward behind the desperate father. Yelena appears as if she doesn’t hear him, simply standing before the darkness as it rushes toward her.

 

“What is she doing?” Lucy breathes, pace quickening as John, Bucky, and Ava flank her. Ice settles in her chest as realization dawns on her, noting the way Yelena’s shoulders drop in defeat. In acceptance.

 

Before Lucy can scream her name, Yelena steps into the darkness and is gone.




*




They pull Alexei away, wailing and screaming for his daughter.

 

“My girl,” Lucy hears him sob as she rubs a trembling hand across his back. “My darling Lena.”

 

Her own breaths come out shaky, her throat tight. Her braid feels heavy across her back as the ghost of Yelena’s fingers brush the hair away from her face. She shakes her head, trying to make sense of it.

 

Ava starts forward, determination lining her frame, and Bucky argues against it. What if she’s dead?

 

Ava fires back. What if she isn’t?

 

Lucy thinks back to the night of their escape, less than twenty four hours ago. The way the shadows had crept up on her, opening up into one of the worst moments of her life. They way she’d swayed at the memory, the way the emptiness within her had widened.

 

A void, he’d heard Bob tell Yelena in passing.

 

Just as it finally dawns on her, John speaks up. Helmet all but forgotten, he recalls his own memory in the vault. Himself, ignoring the cries of his son, snapping at his wife. John’s shoulders are tight with the memory, but he spares no detail.

 

“It wasn’t just a memory, though,” he continues, looking at them. “It was like – I don’t know – ”

 

“Like you were outside your body, watching it happen to yourself again,” Lucy nods, as all attention turns on her. She forges on, avoiding the shame in her chest as she says, “I saw something, too, after I touched his hand. The day my mom overdosed. Probably one of the worst days of my life, and after I saw it, I felt – ”

 

“Ashamed,” John finished for her. Lucy’s breath rushes out of her as she repeats the word.

 

“Exactly.”

 

“So, there’s a chance then?” Ava speaks. “To save her. To save both of them.”

 

After a hesitation, Bucky nods.

 

“What are we waiting for?” Alexei booms, wiping his eyes, squaring his shoulders before walking out of the awning. 

 

With a deep breath, Lucy follows, the rest of them close behind.

 

The darkness creeps closer and they all watch.

 

“Hold your breath,” Lucy breathes as the shadows brush the tips of her boots. She hears four inhales, followed by her own.

 

And then… nothing.




*




When Lucy’s eyes adjust, she finds she’s back in her old apartment, after the blip.

 

She stands in the kitchen and her eyes land on two figures. Her mother, sitting with a bottle clutched in her hand. Herself, kneeling in front of her, shaking her shoulders.

 

“Listen to me!” the younger Lucy screams, tears streaming down her face. “Mom! Wake up! Can you hear me? Please, Mom! Mom? Mom!”

 

Lucy stumbles backward through the hallway, trying to get as far away as possible, opening the front door, hoping for an escape.

 

Instead, she crashes back into the kitchen as the Lucy of the past wails for the mother sitting less than an inch away from her.

 

Lucy yells, calls out for John or Bucky, but no one responds. Then, she steels herself, breathes.

 

I don’t think we’re meant to deal with it on our own, she hears a voice in her head. John. The emptiness.

 

When she opens the front door, it's to a different room.

 

A man is strapped to a chair, one arm human flesh, the other shining metal. Scientists stand around him, speaking to one another in Russian as the man in the chair screams, fists clenched on the arms of the chairs. Sweat soaks through his long, dark hair. His back arches as pain lances through him.

 

Bucky stands before the scene, eyes wide and hard. He breathes sharply out through his nose, unable to look away. Lucy comes up beside him and grabs his hand – the one made of vibranium. Finally, Bucky’s gaze snaps away from himself and lands on Lucy. Something like relief flickers across his eyes as his fingers squeeze hers.

 

“Let’s find a way out, yeah?” she asks, voice gentle. Bucky swallows, then nods. His hand remains in hers as they travel deeper through the memory, reaching a large cabinet door.

 

When they open it, it’s to a large, destroyed warehouse. Some kind of machine remains destroyed to their right, burning. At their feet, bodies are strewn. A man and a woman with familiar features. And among them, a young girl, clutching at her body as she phases in and out of existence, crying in pain.

 

Kneeling before her is Ava, bright eyes glassy and broken. She reaches a hand out to her younger self and watches as it passes straight through her. Lucy comes up to her, places her own hand on her shoulder. Solid. Stable. Ava leans into it gratefully, sighing.

 

She stands, wraps her hand around Lucy’s wrist to squeeze before nodding.

 

They travel deeper into the memories, reaching through a trap door and dropping into another room.

 

A man with wire rimmed glasses and an old, trendy haircut, clutches a doll to his chest, staring out at the wall in terror. In regret. A radio plays beside him, Don McLean’s voice singing about the day the music died.

 

Alexei sits beside himself, shaking his head.

 

“It’s all my fault,” she hears him say, dropping his head in his hands.

 

Lucy grabs one arm while Bucky grabs his other. They pull him up and lead him away. They push through, deeper and deeper until they reach a final door.

 

John.

 

Lucy swings it open and comes face to face with John kneeling, the broken head of another man in his lap, blood and brains seeping onto his palms as he screams his name. Lemar!

 

John watches it all a few feet away, shield at his feet, knees trembling.

 

“John,” she calls, coming to stand in front of him. His eyes remain wide and frozen. She reaches her hands up and cups his face, tilting his head down to meet her own. Finally, he does, breaths sporadic and sharp. “Hey,” she murmurs. “Hey. I gotcha.”

 

John reaches up and squeezes her wrists. With a nod, Lucy steps back, assessing their group.

 

“Quite the bonding experience,” she states, met with blank stares and Walker’s wheeze.




*




They pass through more rooms, together.

 

Alexei poked and prodded with Soviet needles and serums. Ava’s molecules break apart and crash back together over and over again. John in Afghanistan, bloodied hands shaking as he tries to light a cigarette, a row of bodies covered in sheets only five feet away. Bucky, brainwashed and broken, pulling a woman out of her car and crushing her windpipe.

 

Ultimately, they crash into the cell together. Lucy immediately freezes as their eyes adjust to the burning white light emanating through the cell.

 

At their feet, bodies lay burnt to a crip, nothing more than ash and calcified bone.

 

“What did this?” murmurs John just as the light dims and the figure emerges.

 

“Me,” Lucy says, voice shaking.

 

Lucy watches herself as the burning returns to her insides. Against the wall, she moans in pain and curls in on herself, fingers burning black holes into her scrubs at her shoulders. She sobs as pain overtakes her, clenching her eyes shut to avoid looking at the bodies.

 

Lucy walks over and kneels in front of herself. Her hand shakes as she reaches out and brushes back the figure's hair. The other girl shows no sign of recognition, simply cries out in pain, in a sorrow so deep it can’t be found, like a lost city beneath the sea.

 

“Lucy,” Ava murmurs behind her and she only sighs. She steels herself before turning back to her team. Just as she does, her eyes catch on the glass observation window and the word printed across it, big and bold: FAIL.

 

And just behind it, just a flicker, are the shapes of Bob and Yelena, sitting close together.

 

Lucy jumps up immediately, plants herself in front of the window, rears her fist back, and punches into the glass.

 

It rattles and Lucy’s fist aches, but she doesn’t stop. She hits again, and again. On her fifth try, another hand comes into view. John, his shield strapped to his arm. Alexei and Ava join. The glass splinters, cracks. A final, vibranium arm arcs along with their own and the glass shatters.

 

They all tumble through it, emerging into an attic, where Yelena and Bob fight against a curtain around their neck.

 

Ava slices through it immediately, blade spontaneously in her hand. Furniture flies at them from all sides and Lucy deflects it immediately, sending it crashing back against the walls. Bucky smashes a table to the ground. Walker punches the warping wall. Alexei rips a pillow in half.

 

When calm settles over the room, Yelena and Bob survey the rest of their group in varying shades of shock and gratitude. Lucy smiles at Bob, almost close to tears at the sight of his chestnut curls and deep sea blue eyes. When he catches her gaze, he mirrors her expression before horror falls across it. He points to her neck, the bruising across it.

“What happened?” he asks, worry filling his tone. Despite herself, Lucy laughs quietly, warmth filling her chest as she reaches out her hand to grab his and squeezes.

 

“I missed you,” she admits truthfully, to which Bob tilts his head in confusion, but that doesn’t stop the gentle grin from splitting across his face.

 

“You came for us,” Yelena breathes, voice soft. They all nod and a relieved expression flits across her face as she asks if they’re all alright. The responses are varied from fine to let’s get the everloving fuck out of here. Lucy can’t be blamed if those are words verbatim from her mouth.

 

Bob thanks them, eyes shining, hand still within Lucy’s. 

 

“Of course,” Ava responds, lip twitching up slightly. “Here we are, Shane’s Elite Electronic Thunderbolts.”

 

Alexei protests immediately to which John interrupts, wondering how they’re all supposed to get out. At Bob’s less than encouraging response, Yelena nods.

 

“Show us the worst,” she says, and Bob does.




*




Bob’s memories are nothing like what Lucy expects, and yet they’re all the more heartbreaking.

 

And enraging.

 

When John shoots his arm up and knocks out the Void projection of Bob’s father, he turns to Lucy for a moment.

 

“Too much?” he asks, though his tone borders on it not being enough. Lucy can’t help but agree, staring down at the man crumpled at their feet.

 

“I would have done worse,” she mutters. The room begins to fold in on itself suddenly, and they all pack into a coat closet, falling onto a street corner.

 

Yelena’s head snaps back as a man in a chicken costume strikes her with a sign. He waves it wildly, hitting Alexei in the jaw, John in the chest.

 

Just as he brings it down on Bob, Lucy steps in, the sign burning to a crisp upon touching her skin. The chicken darts forward again and Bucky punches him square in his beaked face. 

 

“Come on!” Alexei yells, ushering them through another door built into the ground.

 

They crash to the floor in a heap, each wincing as they sit up, taking in what looks to be a lab around them. They move deeper into the room, all eyes trained on the dark figure across the floor, back facing them, two shadows burned into the wall behind him.

 

Bob begins his story, the words pouring out of him. His trip to Malaysia and the advertisement of a medical study. A miracle, a second chance. A way to finally be something.

 

The words hit Lucy’s chest. Hadn’t she believed the same, once? That’s why she was here, wasn’t it?

 

She wanted to be good enough, not knowing she already was.

 

Before Lucy can reach her hand out, to reassure Bob that she understands, the shadow speaks.

 

“And look what you unleashed,” he growls, circling the table to face them. Nothing but blinding white eyes signals to any sign of life within the darkness.

 

Lucy’s jaw grows tight when the shadow insults Bob, and Yelena speaks for all of them as she steps up, unafraid, and tells it they’re leaving.

 

The shadow considers, tilts its head, and sighs. 

 

“No.”

 

The table behind him floats up and goes hurtling toward them. Before Lucy can block it, it takes Alexei and Yelena out with them, pinning them to the wall. Metal from the ceiling warps and flies toward Bucky, wrapping him against one end of a shelf, while another piece, small and sharp, sinks through John’s shoulder, sticking him to another. 

 

Lucy charges forward, only for two sparking wires from the lights above to wrap tight around her wrists, dragging her away until she’s on the wall beside Yelena and Alexei, unable to move. Ava is taken out last, another piece of metal binding her to the opposite end, unable to phase out of it.

 

They all struggle against the bindings as Bob pleads to the darkness, begging it to stop.

 

“You don’t matter,” the shadow states. “To anyone.”

 

“Don’t listen to it!” Lucy yells out just as Yelena responds, “That’s not true!”

 

Yelena’s throat is immediately wrapped in tubing, while a shard of metal hurtles itself toward Lucy’s, stopping only just as it touches skin. Not enough to pierce through, but enough to be torturous. Lucy gasps, her head reared back to avoid the shard. John yells her name, trying to pull out the metal lodged into his shoulder, but he winces, crying out at the pain of it.

 

Glass shatters suddenly, arcing across the room, catching each of them, slicing through skin. Blood begins to bead along Lucy’s brow bone, her jaw, her throat.

 

“I’m stronger than you,” Bob tells the shadow, unconvinced.

 

Lucy can almost hear the grin in his voice as he responds. “Let’s see.”

 

Bob throws the first punch, but it’s dodged immediately. The shadow punches back, hard, and after a few more blows, Bob goes toppling to the floor. John calls out to him, urging him to get up, but it's drowned out by the taunting of the shadow.

 

Still, Bob pushes forward again, only to be beat down once more. Lucy strains at her binding, wincing as the metal at her neck stabs into her skin.

 

The room begins to expand, walls shaking and glass shattering, as Bob is pulled further and further away, watching them between his curtain of chestnut curls. His eyes land on Yelena’s for a long moment, something flickering behind them. Something unnameable and all their own. Lucy feels, for a moment, as if she shouldn’t be bearing witness to it. Then, his gaze hardens, he turns and, with a yell, charges at the shadow, dropping them to the floor.

 

He begins bashing his fists into the shadow’s face repeatedly, so hard the floor beneath them cracks. Again, and again, and again. The shadow only laughs, jeering. 

 

At first, it's only a flicker, a trick of the light. Then, Lucy sees it: the darkness traveling up Bob’s leg, crawling over his skin and clothes, swallowing him. Bob’s punches grow harder, merciless. The room vibrates with energy, with anger and pain and shame. Lucy shakes her head and meets John’s wide gaze. 

 

To her left, Bucky says what they’re all thinking, “This isn’t right.”

 

Yelena tries calling to him, but they only fall further back and the darkness only grows, traveling up his back. With a grunt, she begins pushing at her bindings, and with the help of her father, she manages enough space to slip free. She stands and wastes no time before running. Desks and chairs come flying toward her, the wall begins crumbling in on itself, but Yelena avoids it all – all to reach him. 

 

With a cry, Lucy forces light from her palms and shatters the metal at her throat, pulling at her bindings until they burn. Just as she begins to follow the blonde, John rips the metal free from his shoulder and falls into step beside her. 

 

They run through the wreckage, dodging and blocking anything that comes their way. Lucy forces a chair back the way it came to keep from crashing into John’s skull and John deflects a large, shattered vial from piercing into Lucy’s chest with his shield. They reach both Yelena and Bob, the former wrapped around the latter, face tucked into his shoulder.

 

John starts forward, wrapping his arm around Bob’s, pulling him back from taking another punch. Lucy mirrors Yelena’s position on Bob’s right, wrapping herself around his shoulder, reaching her hand out to cover his, bruised knuckles soft beneath her palm.

 

One by one, the rest of the team joins. Bucky, Alexei, Ava. Until they’ve all got Bob cradled between them, holding him back from the shadow, something like hoping shining through them.

 

Stars in the darkness.

 

Bob sobs in their embrace but ultimately, finally, beautifully, falls into them as the darkness dissipates.




*




They land on their backs, still curled around one another. 

 

Lucy is wedged between Ava and Bob, flanked by John and Alexei. For a moment, they all rest there together, letting the warmth of one another seep through the remaining cold. Until light begins to shine from above and Lucy opens her eyes to watch as the void begins to fade.

 

New York returns quietly, windows suddenly shining from the light of the sun, buildings standing tall and glorious once more.

 

John helps her up, hands on her shoulders, eyes trailing over her, alight with worry.

 

“You alright?” he asks and Lucy only reaches up to squeeze his wrist, nodding.

 

“I could really use that pizza right about now,” she tells him, and he blinks at her slowly for a moment before laughing, reaching up to ruffle her hair.

 

“I’ll get you all the pizza you want, kiddo,” he says, and Lucy grins, lips stretched wide. Then, he turns to Bob, expression softening even further as he nods to him. “You were great in there, Bob.”

 

Bob smiles, chuckling, cheeks slightly pink. 

 

“Thanks, Walker,” he says. Then, his brow furrows as he tilts his head. “Wait, in where?”

 

Lucy only blinks over at Bob, who glances around the street in confusion, trying to shake away the fuzziness of his brain. To his left, Yelena places a kind hand on his shoulder, murmuring to him. Bob looks back at her and sends her a look so bright, Lucy looks away in fear that she’s suddenly seeing too much.

 

A voice, high and reedy, sounds behind them and they all turn to find Valentina standing, speaking into her phone. There’s a small flicker of anger within Lucy at the sight of her, but it’s different now. 

 

Valentina wasn’t the catalyst for Lucy’s emptiness – it just was. And while Valetina might have spurred her on, Lucy has to admit whatever life she had before was already gone, even before she’d entered that empty warehouse.

 

This, though. This moment now. It settled in Lucy’s chest. As the team, the Thunderbolts, gather around her, she doesn’t feel quite so lost. There’s a path, a life, a light shining out ahead of her, and Lucy is heading right toward it.

 

And her team is heading toward it with her.

 

Still. That doesn’t mean she can’t hurt Valentina, just a little bit.

 

Before they go after her, John asks, “What happens when he regains his memory?”

 

Lucy considers it for a moment before shrugging.

 

“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” she nods, peering at all of them, a smile blooming on her face. “Together.”

 

Alexei looks as if he might burst from excitement while Bucky lets his own grin slip free, exhausted but real all the same. Ava bumps Lucy’s shoulder with her own and murmurs an encouraging, Go on then. Yelena mirrors Lucy’s expression while Bob turns to her and asks, in disbelief, “Together? As in me too?”

 

When Lucy turns her gaze to John’s, he nods. 

 

“Together,” he repeats.

 

Lucy lets out a breath and turns, heading straight toward Valentina. She flexes her fingers and a shard of rubble floats beside her. As she gears up to throw it at the woman, Bucky calls out, “Can’t kill her, Lucy. We gotta take her in.”

 

With an irritated, inconvenienced sigh, Lucy switches the piece of rubble for a rock hardly the size of her palm. Ava snorts behind her while Bucky mutters, “Better.”

 

They charge toward her, each with varying comments about what they could get away with before giving her up to the authorities. Bucky and Alexei move in front of Lucy as Valentina slips behind a large piece of fabric separating them from one side of the street to the next.

 

As Lucy slides the fabric back, she walks through the makeshift curtain – and straight into an array of reporters and cameras, flashing sporadically.

 

In her shock, she drops the rock, snapping her gaze over to Bucky and Alexei, who stand just as dumbfounded as she does. Ava and John join her on one side while Yelena and Bob flank the other.

 

John slides to Lucy’s side in an instant and stands slightly in front of her, trying to shield her from the array of photos being taken. As touched as she is by the gesture, she knows it doesn’t work. They’re practically everywhere, each of them hanging onto Valentina’s words as she goes on about her hard work and determination to keep the citizens of the United States safe and protected. 

 

Lucy feels where this is going immediately, clenching her hands at the thought of Valentina taking their credit. Considering the Thunderbolts hers.

 

In an instant, though, she’s proven wrong.

 

Because Valentina didn’t see them as the Thunderbolts after all.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she announces, proudly. “Meet the New Avengers.”

 

The flashes increase immediately, cheering sounding from around them, but Lucy can hardly process it all. Her wide eyes go to Valentina immediately, who catches her gaze and winks, smug. Then, they shift across the faces of the rest of the team. The only person who seems remotely happy about any of this is Bob as he begins clapping, smiling widely at all of them.

 

Lucy turns back to face John, who shrugs, blinking rapidly.

 

“So much for a first visit to New York,” Lucy can’t help but breathe.

 

She watches Yelena walk toward Valentina, whispering in her ear, catching the words faintly, even above the noise off the camera shutters and various questions.

 

“We own you now,” Yelena tells Valentina, and the older woman freezes slightly. With a tight mouth, she looks back over to the team, over powering her in every way.

 

Valentina’s gaze locks on Lucy’s again, frowning. Lucy grins, triumphant, and winks.

 

Hatred burning in her eyes, Valentina lets out a fake laugh, turning back to the crowd. With a final look at the older woman, Lucy does too.

 

She breathes in deep, and for the first time in over a year, isn’t met with resistance in her chest. The supernova within her remains steady, shining brightly but not burning. Lucy lets her shoulder drop slightly.

 

This wasn’t the life she’d been expecting to have, it wasn’t the path she thought she’d be moving toward, but the light shone before her all the same. She was ready for it, and even if she wasn’t, she wasn’t on her own anymore.

 

She had them. Bucky and Alexei; Ava, Bob, and Yelena.

 

John, still at her side, pressing his shoulder into hers.

 

I gotcha, it says. And Lucy presses back.

 

Whatever happens next, they’re going to deal with it – together.

 

Because no one was ever meant to be alone.

 

Finally, Lucy faces the light.

 

And she smiles.

 

 

Notes:

what a ride! i hope you all enjoyed! talk to me in the comments!

xoxo

Notes:

that's the end of chapter one!! it might not be perfect but truly it was just like my brain vomiting words onto a google doc.

chapter two will be out soon. please, feel free to comment any thoughts! i love to read them!

xo <3

Series this work belongs to: