#olivia walker

Her mom rents the movie, and they watch it together.

“You got any more questions?” she asks Olivia when the credits roll.

Olivia shakes her head.

“If you watch other movies with your cousins, or your friends, and you have more questions, about anything, you let me know, okay?”

Maybe her dad’s side of the family is from Custer’s Grove, and when her grandpa dies, right before Olivia is about to start high school, her family moves. She joins the drama club, joins dance, drops dance and joins cheerleading, meets Lemar through a girl on her squad. Meets John via Lemar. Falls head over heels.

After graduation, Olivia goes to NYU, John to West Point. Four years later, they head back home to Georgia to get married. John completes his military training and is sent off to God-knows-where. They want to have a baby, but it’s never the right time.

The government knocks on their door and tells John he’s now the new Captain America. John is thrilled; Olivia is happy for him. Then Lemar dies, and John has a breakdown. Valentina. US Agent. Olivia is pregnant, but when the baby comes, things don’t get better.

So she leaves, takes her kid one Friday night and drives to her parents’ house. And that’s that.

John doesn’t make a fuss. They occasionally talk on the phone; she doesn’t want to keep him from seeing his son. John is busy, but when he visits, he does his best to be present.

Then he drops off the map for a couple of weeks.

When he shows up on the news as part of the New Avengers, Olivia is in the middle of unloading the dishwasher. She drops the plate, stares. Her fingers twitch. Her first instinct is to call him. She doesn’t.

He calls her. Calls to warn her that the press might show up at her door again. He gives her the number of a woman named Melissa Gold.

“Mel’s our PR rep. You can call her if there’s a problem. Or if y’all need anything.”

“Can I call you?”

The question just slips out. She doesn’t take it back.

Silence at the other end of the line.

Then, “You can always call me.”

She doesn’t for a while, but she watches some of the interviews, follows the news on the New Avengers. When the press literally shows up on her doorstep, she calls Mel and learns that Mel also does a whole slew of other things that have nothing to do with PR.

The first time Olivia calls John just to talk, they spent almost an hour on the phone. He’s doing better; she can tell. He isn’t good, but it’s her husband she’s talking to, not the stranger that let their kid cry in his playpen.

John gets better. He finds a therapist he doesn’t hate, someone who doesn’t get it exactly (who would?) but who’s aware of the fact that they don’t.

Mel lets slip that John’s been talking to Bucky. She doesn’t share details; it’s unclear if she has any. Olivia doesn’t ask. She waits until John starts to share.

Eventually, John and Olivia reunite. She jumps at the chance to move back to New York.

She gets along with the team but becomes especially close with Mel, because Mel is the one who holds down the fort when the team’s away on a mission. Mel knows what it’s like to send her partner off to battle and spend the rest of the week worrying if he’ll come home in one piece.

In turn, Mel is glad to have a friend she can call to say, “I’m worried,” when the team has missed a check-in, and Olivia will say, “Me, too,” will say, “It’s gonna be okay.”

He still says the words (because he still loves her, will never not love her), but the first time he leaves their kid crying in his playpen, Olivia knows, can feel it in her gut that something is very, very wrong.

John apologizes.

Then it happens again.

More and more cracks appear in their relationship, and Olivia gets that it's the PTSD. She knows, maybe better than John himself, that he's depressed, but the knowledge alone doesn't help.

It doesn't stop Olivia from feeling like the foundations of their marriage are slowly disintegrating.

It doesn't stop her from feeling like the life they've built together is slowly crumbling before her eyes.