#thunderbolts fluff

bucky barnes is closed off— everyone knows that, his new team included— but whatever had gone wrong during tonight's mission had seemed to shut him down completely.

it was supposed to be a clean in and out according to valentina. the team had been sent to san fransisco to retrieve a stolen cache of experimental technology from the ship yard before it left port. she'd given them very little information other than there'd be security and that she wanted it done clean and quickly.

but with not enough preparation, horrible coordination, and valentina's lack of any real intel, the mission had gone sideways and they'd almost been taken out several times. bucky had come dangerously close to losing his other arm, and when they finally got a look at what they'd risked it all for, he'd realised the 'stolen tech' was really just old stark industries prototypes.

after several grenade explosions, being shot at, being chased across a container yard, and falling into the bay, the team sat in complete silence in the jet on the way back to the watchtower completely empty handed.

yelena and alexei sit on one side of the jet, trading bitter looks and unamused complaints while ava sits just opposite them looking equally as annoyed. walker sits on his own a little further back, holding a rag to his leg where hot blood runs after a bullet had grazed him.

although they all sat apart with exhaustion evident on their faces after screaming their heads off at each other, nobody dared to sit anywhere close to bucky.

but then alexei breaks the silence, his voice irritatingly casual and loud. "you know, if you think about it, that really wasn't a horrible first mission."

yelena turns to alexei with the most confused face she could make. "that was complete dog shit, alexei. did we go on the same mission, or were you dissociating the entire time?"

"i'm just saying, it could have gone a lot worse!" he tries to defend himself, "we did our very best, and nobody died—"

"but we failed the mission." walker cuts in as he glares at alexei from across the jet, "look around, man. we didnt grab shit and now valentina's gonna be on all of our asses."

ava groans as she slides down in her chair, her arms crossing over her chest, "ugh, don't remind me."

"but we will have another mission to prove ourselves! we will be more successful and more strong next time." then alexei turns to the other side of the jet— the side where bucky sits on his own staring at the wall— and he gestures to him like he'll help. "right, bucky?"

bucky doesn't give them the light of day. he sits perfectly still, the dim jet lights catching on the grime caked onto his face and the tension hiding underneath his suit, his metal fingers tapping against his leg like a ticking bomb set to explode if they even looked at him wrong. there's something in the way he holds himself— unmoving, unblinking, and completely silent— that makes the rest of the team shift in their seats when alexei drags all of their attention to him.

"i just wanna get back and get away from you idiots." he mutters, voice flat and low, his eyes still locked onto nothing in particular.

although a little mean in hindsight, the team was a big part of the failure. they were uncoordinated, yelling into the coms, and trying to compete with each other the entire time. they were fighting each other more than they were fighting the opposition and bucky felt he had been left to pick up the pieces.

then ava scoffs. "yeah, i wanna get away from you guys too."

"tell us something we don't know." walker shoots back.

yelena groans, loud enough to cut through the hum of the jet engines. her arms fly up and fall back to her lap in a fit of annoyance. "alright, we all wanna get away from each other, so how about we all just shut up about it so we don't have to listen to each other?"

all of their grumbles and idle complaints die under the hum of the jets. even alexei slouched down into his seat, quiet for once as the weight of the mission and their dislike for each other presses down on him as well as everybody else.

bucky still sits in silence. his right arm flexes periodically, the flesh tough and corded beneath his sleeve. it's a conscious thing, something he'd been taught to true and relieve tension. his eyes are dazed and a little hazy, but it's not the fault of the fight— it's more like he's retreating inwards, like maybe his mind is on something else— or someone else.

only a few hours later, the jet touches down on the watchtower's helipad with a dull jolt, and it's only when the ramp slides out that the team pushes to their feet, dragging their tired bodies as best as they can towards the doors.

the elevator is painfully quiet, and the tension that sits in between them only makes the ride feel longer than it actually is. its a box full of glares and shallow breathing, and the moment the doors to the main living area open, the team topples out of the torture box, and the familiar quiet they stumble into is a sight for sore eyes.

the living room is dimly lit, most of the light coming from a small table lamp in the corner of the room and the night light of new york's skyscrapers outside of the window. you and bob are sitting on opposite sides of the coffee table playing a card game, and from the look on his face, you'd been winning.

and bucky, the man who'd been sitting in silence wearing a permanent scowl on his face ever since they stepped foot in the jet, suddenly looks a little... happier.

his shoulders drop a fraction. the soft frown crease in his cheek softens. the noise in his head dulls, like someone's turned all of the negative volume down for once. the mission, the arguing, the stress that wraps itself tight around his bones melts away at the sight of you.

at the sound of the teams shuffling boots and the soft thud of the elevator doors opening, the two of you glance up.

bob's face drops, a little caught off guard with how tired they all look. "what happened to you guys?"

and although bob continues to stare from his spot on the ground and his horrible hand of cards sit neglected on the table, you're already on your feet. the second your eyes land on john's leg— blood darkening the fabric of his suit and the rag clutched uselessly in his hand— your expression shifts, all of your warmth sharpening into focus as you reach for your lab coat draped over the back of a chair and pull it over your arms.

bucky shamelessly follows your every move from the moment you stand up to the moment you quickly walk on over to assess the damage that's been done to the team. your eyes land on his for only a moment, but the soft smile you send him is enough to make him feel better. then you turn to john.

"is that a bullet wound?" you ask calmly,?leaning down to get a closer look at his injury even though you already know your answer.

john moves the rag over so you can get a better look. "somethin' like that." he mutters.

"yeah, thought so." you hum, unimpressed. you straighten, already poking around in your pocket for supplies. "alright, let's go to my office."

you and john sweep past the team towards the elevator, you walking with confidence and purpose like this is routine for you— and it is— while john hobbles behind you, trying to best to keep pace with you.

the rest of the team parts for you without comment and watch the two of you pass, but bucky's eyes follow as you and john begin to leave, and his heart aches a little— not because he's jealous, but because he can't stop himself from wanting to be the one you're walking away with. every instinct and selfish part of him to yelling at him to just push through and take your arm like it always does when he decides you're where he needs to be.

so he does, because he's never been good at denying his urges when it comes to you.

"i'm going first." he cuts through the silence. the words are steady and low, and it's evident that it's more of a demand than a request.

you and john both turn, a little surprised— after all, bucky looks visibly fine and john's on the urge of collapsing. why would he need to go to your office first?

irritation flashes on john's face. "i've been shot, bucky."

bucky starts walking towards the elevator doors, hyperaware of the way everyone's eyes are on him, but only caring for yours. he presses the elevator button to the floor where your office is, and the doors open right away. he holds a hand to them to stop them from closing, then turns around to see everybody staring at him.

"if you can still walk and talk, then you're fine. i'm going first." he says to john, a little stern and annoyed, but then softer, he turns to you with a gentle smile. "right, doc?"

you blink, glancing between bucky and john. a tightlipped smile sits on your face, a little embarrassed because you know the team is going to make a big deal of this later.

"if that's okay with john, then it's okay with me." you say.

john scoffs, taking a weak step back and already turning around as if uou'd just personally insulted him. "fine. whatever. not like i'm gonna bleed out or anything."

bucky follows you with his eyes as you step into the elevator, every inch of him attuned to your movement, and he follows closely behind. and as soon as the elevator doors close, you turn to bucky with an incredulous glare.

"what was that?" you ask, your brows raised.

bucky turns to you, lip curling like he's unsure what you're talking about. he blinks a few times before he speaks, a little inflection in his voice giving him away. "what was what?"

"don't play dumb, bucky." you fondly roll your eyes. "why did you wanna get checked up on first? unless you've got some injury i cant see, it would've been better for me to see john first."

bucky turns his head away at the mention of john's name. if you didn't know any better, you would've thought they were sworn enemies. "walker's fine. it was just a graze. probably got hit on purpose because he wanted to spend some time alone with you."

you cross your arms against your chest. "he was bleeding pretty bad, buck, i dont think he did that on purpose."

there's a tick in bucky's jaw, and his metal fingers flex at his side.

"he's conniving. you don't know him—" bucky murmurs.

"i know him well enough." you counter gently, and bucky hates that it works. then you smile, teasing and trying to ease the tension. "and plus, john knows better than to try and take little old me from you of all people. he knows who'd win in a fistfight."

bucky turns to you, his brows knitted together. there's a long moment where he just stares at the side of your face as you stare at the floor sign, like hes recalculating everything he thought he'd been hiding so carefully.

the elevator door dings and they slide open. you waste no time in stepping out and setting pace down the darkened corridor, your office the only room illuminating any light. bucky is quick to follow you just as you knew he would.

"what are you—" he blinks, a little embarrassed as he falls into stride next to you. "nobody knows about us. i like to think i was good enough at keeping it between us like you asked."

you sigh. "i know you have, and i appreciate it, bucky— i really do— but you make it pretty obvious that there's something between us."

you push open your office door, the sterile light flooding the corridor. you gesture with your head for him to step inside, and he does without hesitation. this office is as familiar to him as it is to you, the smell of antiseptic and the scene of neatly organised chaos making him feel at home with you.

"i mean come on... i'm going first? you might not think so, but they're smart." you continue as you close the door behind you. "they probably think your hand is down my pants right now."

"it's not." bucky says immediately, almost defensive as he watching you walk over to your already prepped tray and pop open a new box of gloves. then quieter and with a tilted smirk on his lips, he adds, "but it could be if you wanted it to be."

you dont even look at him as you gesture towards the exam chair.

"real charming, barnes." you say dryly. "now sit down before i make you."

and he does, because for all of his bravado, he knows that when you use that tone, he has to listen.

bucky sinks down into the chair with a quiet huff. he reaches up and undoes the intricate clasps of his suit, the clicking noise filling the silence as you prepare your equipment. he removes his chest plate and places it down beside him, revealing the black tactical shirt underneath. you take into account the tears in the fabric and the dried blood near the fraying, and decide that's where you'll start.

you step closer, and the first thing that bucky noticed is the smell of your perfume covered by the scent of strong antiseptic. you start methodically, glove-covered fingers pressing into his skin and pausing whenever he tenses.

but he doesn't do that much, and he doesn't complain. he just watches you as you work, eyes fixated on your face while yours are fixated on his body, and you can feel his gaze burning into you as you work.

"what've you been doing while we were gone?" he asks, his voice soft as to not disrupt you from caring for him.

"nothing much. valentina wanted me to do some testing on bob, but i felt bad and i ended the session early." you dig your thumb into his collarbone, feeling some kind of crack underneath his skin. "does this hurt?"

"no." he says immediately.

you look at him, unimpressed. "bucky."

"a little—" he concedes, "but it'll heal in no time."

you sigh knowing he's right, and then you continue. "got some written work done, then bob got bored and call me down to teach me how to play 31, but then he got upset that i was better then him at it."

"that tracks." bucky says. there's a ghost of a smile sitting on his face, something warm and real that hadn't been present during the mission or on the jet.

you place a band-aid on a small cut on his jaw, a futile effort to patch up a cut that'll disappear during the night.

the smile fades and his shoulders sag a little in an almost boyish way, like the question alone weighs on him. "horrible. too many things going wrong at once. nobody knew what they were doin' and it was just... it was a mess. val's never gonna let us hear the end of it."

you frown. "i'm sorry, buck. that sounds like it sucks."

"it did." he nods, exhaling slowly like he's finally letting all of the tension and stress drain out of his body. his gaze flicks back to you. "but i feel better now."

your brows raise the slightest bit, and a small part of you thinks you already know why. "and why is that?"

"because i'm here now," he says simply, then softer— more certain— he adds, "and nothing feels better than comin' home to you."

his words hit deeper than you'd expected, and the bashful smile that creeps up on you is anything but subtle, the kind you dont wear around anyone but bucky. you duck your head, pretending to fuss with your equipment.

"this place is your home now? i thought you hated it here— especially my office." you tease as you pull off your gloves and toss them into the trash. "you said it smelled like old people, which is rich coming from someone who's lived three times longer than i have."

bucky's smile mirrors yours— soft, slow, and a little taken aback at your out-of-the-blue jab.

"it might as well be home. i mean, we do everything here— eat, sleep, watch movies..." he pauses as he thinks of something else you frequently do, eyes flicking to yours, "have mind blowing sex—"

"oh my god, bucky." you whisper as you try to restrain yourself from slapping a hand over his mouth. "there's cameras in here!"

his brows knit together like he couldn't care less, and he honestly really couldn't. it felt so normal to him— and he was proud of being able to do that with you— that he couldn't understand why you'd care about anyone knowing you have sex. "so?"

a breathy laugh slips from your mouth and you reach out to shove his shoulder. "you make it so hard for me to stay professional."

bucky grins, unapologetic and entirely pleased with himself as he reaches out for your wrist and pulls you in for a kiss, the tension of the day finally bleeding out the moment your lips press against his.

he couldn't care less about the cameras. he honestly hopes valentina sees it and knows that he's managed to swoop her smartest employee out of her hands.

but right now, bucky doesn't care about vengeance or stupid superiority over val; he cares about you and your warmth, about how you manage to feel like home no matter where he is, and how he can exist beside you and still feel like he belongs.

and maybe he'll take you up on that offer of sticking his hand down your hands later— who knows!

The silence around you was an intrusive, grating entity. A presence with the kind of suffocating quietude that did not soothe, but rather amplified the discordant chorus of voices whispering within the recesses of your mind. Your brain, frantic as it is, tried desperately to hold onto anything it could. The hum of electricity in the air, the faint ringing in your ear that was always there, sometimes drowned out but never truly gone. But nothing anchored you, not in the way motion did. The present threatened to bore you to the point of violent madness. Until you actively resisted the urge to shatter your own skull against the unforgiving concrete. Muscles in your body ached to move now.

You had never possessed an affinity for the calm.

To you, tranquility was not sanctuary; it was a profound, treacherous lie whispered by the world before the inevitable storm tore it apart. Calm was the agonizing static prelude that rendered you restless. Inciting a bloodlust that could only be quieted by the frantic tempo of survival.

You understood the concept of fear, yet not through the visceral, heart-hammering literal sense. The torrent of adrenaline coursing through your veins was always far too potent, far too intoxicatingly absolute, for your consciousness to register anything as mundane as hesitation or terror. You had inhabited this bloody existence for far too long to be swayed by the moral gravity of what you do. Instead, you conceptualized fear intellectually, recognizing it in the way a freezing silent atmosphere sharpens the human instrument. Heightening the somatic senses until the air itself feels heavy with malice. Fear was that creeping phantom sensation that you were not entirely alone when you should be.

Yet, within your internal landscape, fear had been reduced to a voice that rarely spoke. A subtle, fleeting inkling that your hyper-vigilant brain acknowledged with cold clinical precision, but refused to welcome. And you weren't about to step aside and invite it in now.

The desert vault loomed before you, a brutalist monument of uncompromising concrete. Impenetrable and cold-rolled steel in its hulking form. Though that didn’t deter your body away, but rather flicked a match as your posture squared and your heart felt heavier, faster, excited. You knew a thing or two about being impenetrable.

Your gait was deliberate, almost lazy. Chunky platformed heels striking the floor with a rhythmic, resonant echo that refused to hurry as you traversed the narrow corridor. Downward you stared, your gaze flickering to the digital tracking device cradled in palm framed by impeccably manicured pink nails. On the small screen, a solitary, blood-red dot pulsed with patterned malice, mapping a trajectory deeper into the belly of the facility.

With effortless practiced grace, you adjusted the weight of your customized, high-caliber submachine gun, letting the cold metal rest familiarly against your bare shoulder. Stepping into the waiting elevator, you slid the tracker into your black leather utility belt that dangled loosely across your hips. A belt that served absolutely no structural or modest purpose, existing solely as a morbid, high-fashion harness for a dozen gleaming daggers and three heavily modified handguns. All custom-made with sterling metal and pink marble enamel, decorated with a bit of lace, just because. Though the black, razor-pleated mini skirt that swirled about your thighs was far more dangerous than your arsenal.

You sighed, a soft, melodious sound of utter exasperation. Heel taping impatiently as you waited. Jesus, how many floors did this place have?

Taking advantage of the elevator’s sluggish descent, you reached up to adjust the straps of your baby-pink bikini top. It was a preposterous thing a for a black-ops infiltration, but that was the entire, intoxicating point: another day, another kill, and another absolute refusal to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of Kevlar.

You told yourself, not for the first time, that this was your last pro-bono contract. You desperately needed to stop giving charity to the intelligence community. Executing high-risk liquidations with little to no recompense. Yet, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine had been extraordinarily, almost hysterically eager to scrub this particular name from the ledger.

Benjamin Poindexter. Or "Dex," as his dossier indicated he preferred to be called.

Now, you had always favored a more intimate, psychological approach to your hunts. Finding no joy in the sterile, detached efficiency of one-and-done bounties. So before arriving, you had briefly, almost cursorily, familiarized yourself with the legend of the man known as Bullseye. You didn't study him with the meticulous rigor you usually reserved for your targets, but you had gathered enough fragments to paint a deeply disturbing, yet strangely inviting, portrait.

The man was unequivocally sick in the head. But hey, weren’t we all? He, as you categorized, was a fractured soul bound by an agonizing obsessive need for perfection and external validation. And, according to every rumor whispered from Hell's Kitchen to Madripoor, he never missed a shot.

You smiled, plotting as the elevator neared the bottom, your glossed lips curling into a sharp, beautiful sneer. It was a pity for him then, that you never get hit.

As the elevator doors groaned open to reveal the freezing expanse of the subterranean vault, your kinetic awareness bloomed. The bootleg Super Serum in your blood didn't grant you the roaring, tank-flipping strength of a super-soldier. But it did elevated your central nervous system to a state of terrifyingly efficient. You could feel the microscopic shifts in the air density; you could hear the subtle, metallic click of a firing pin before the hammer even dropped. And right now, your ears heard the song of gunfire like a gavel brought down by a judge demanding order. A ceremonial hum left your lips in anticipation.

You stepped out into the dark, your pink platforms clicking softly against the concrete, ready to find out what happened when an unstoppable trajectory collided with a mystery.

The heavy vacuum of the Vault didn't contain the violence. It incubated it, transforming the chamber into a claustrophobic amphitheater of slaughter. Inside the cavernous expanse, the air was thick with the ozone stench of discharge and the bitter, metallic tang of panic. Somewhere in the room, John Walker and Yelena Belova were already locked in a grueling, graceless battle of mutual survival. Their movements are a frantic testament to tactical desperation. Yet, your entry into this brutal performance was characterized by an almost sacrilegious levity. Your heightened cortex parsed the symphony of chaos with clinical detachment, filtering out the desperate grunts of exertion until your focus narrowed entirely upon him.

Benjamin Poindexter.

He was a monument to terrifying, rigid efficiency, his silhouette cutting through the dimness as he hurled a barrage of lethal projectiles towards Taskmaster, whose vibranium shield was preoccupied with deflecting Walker’s unhinged, heavy-handed strikes.

Your ears twitched, catching the faint, bewildered cadence of Yelena’s voice as she muttered a fractured question to the empty air: “What is happening?”

You didn’t know, nor did you possess the luxury of a singular damn to give.

“More extra credit,” you hummed to yourself, a soft, melodic purr of pure delight vibrating in your throat as your hands instinctively adjusted the weight of your submachine gun. Your eyes locked onto the broad plains of Poindexter’s back, your finger tightening against the cold trigger with the intent to paint the concrete in a single, devastating burst.

The trajectory was immaculate. The execution would have been flawless.

But the universe, in its infinite, irritating wisdom, chose that exact second to intervene.

A heavy, tactical boot collided with your flank. A jarring disruption that failed to compromise the dense, serum-enhanced architecture of your musculature. But the kick succeeded enough in rattling your pristine stance.

The sudden shift was enough to draw Bullseye’s hyper-fixated attention. His gaze snapped toward the source of the anomaly, his calculating eyes widening imperceptibly as they mapped the sheer, theatrical absurdity of your presence.

“Who invited the hooker?” Walker bellowed, his voice a crude, grating rasp that immediately sealed his fate.

Before the final syllable could fully leave his lips, your arm snapped forward with whiplash velocity. A pink-coated dagger, gleaming with deceptive cosmetic brilliance, whistled through the air. Aimed squarely and mercilessly for the center of his forehead. Walker flinched, the blade grazing the air close enough to leave a phantom sting.

Dex, however, remained momentarily paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated picture of you. Enough for his brows to pull and head to tilt. His mind, traditionally bound to the rigid structures of military pragmatism, worked to process the data. The meticulously styled hair that defied the humidity of a warzone; the absurdly skimpy, pastel bikini top that offered an arrogant, naked invitation to death; the ridiculously chunky platform heels that should have rendered motion impossible; and the low-slung leather belt cradling a dozen lethal instruments like a macabre harness.

You were a vision meant for a beauty pageant, packaged in a lethal, hyper-feminine veneer. Yet, Bullseye’s obsessive mind could only linger on the aesthetic incongruity for a millisecond. Before the deep-seated compulsion of his programming yanked his eyes back to his designated target.

Your brows pulled together in a profound, agitated scowl as you turned toward your instigator. It was the phasing woman, The Ghost, as the intelligence dossiers labeled her. Flickering in and out of the physical plane like a dying television set. Your customized firearms swung toward the disappearing specter, but before you could waste the ammunition, Yelena materialized through the smoke, discharging a crackling, blue-white ĺelectrical pulse that temporarily anchored Ava to the floor in a state of paralysis.

With the nuisance sidelined, you were back on him. And he, inevitably, was back on you. The over-six-foot assassin found his pristine, orderly universe utterly upended by a barely five-foot-two asteroid. The man was forced into an immediate, breathless defense. His large, calloused hands coming up to block a succession of blindingly fast, fluid punches that carried the deceptive, bone-snapping density of you. It was a grotesque, beautiful dance; Dex was urgently trying to parry your incoming strikes while simultaneously attempting to calculate the trajectory of a knife intended for a shield-wielding target across the room.

For LoveShot, the lack of exclusivity in his attention was a profound insult. You grew rapidly, violently tired of vying for a man’s focus while his eyes remained stubbornly fixed on another. Worse still, there was the irritating, persistent peck of the phasing woman biting at your back, threatening to disrupt the polished rhythm of your game.

Without tearing your gaze away from the unsettling blue of Dex’s eyes, your perfectly painted pink nails dipped toward your belt. Your arm extended outward, not toward the man standing mere inches from you, but blind across the room, mapping the space entirely through the exquisite, hyper-acoustic map in your brain.

Bang.

The single, deafening report echoed through the vault. For a fraction of a second, Dex caught himself mid-dodge, his body tensing as his instinct prepared for the bullet to rip through his own flesh.

Instead, the slug traveled a perfectly calculated, cross-facility arc. It bypassed the chaos entirely, tearing with absolute, clinical precision straight into the skull of Antonia.

The Taskmaster’s body dropped to the concrete like a sack of unceremonious meat. The room stilled. The energy of the battle evaporated in an instant, replaced by a suffocating, bewildered paralysis. Everyone froze in their tracks. Yelena remained pinned beneath Walker; Ava hunched mid stand on the floor; and Dex blinked

Once, twice, an imperceptible glitch of his eyelids. His mind, a perfect organic computer, literally could not calculate the variable that had just rewritten the rules of the room. He hadn't missed. She hadn't missed. But she had stolen his kill with an indifferent, blind throwaway shot.

“Pay attention to me!” you yelled at him, the melodious quality of your voice twisting into a sharp, petulant demand as you stomped your chunky pink platform against the blood-flecked concrete.

Before he could articulate a response, your heightened ears picked up an entirely different unglamorous sound: a wet, violent gagging. Your brows pulled together in deep disgust as your eyes drifted to an unfamiliar, disheveled man stumbling into the periphery, his stomach violently rejecting the reality of the room. Your gun began to rise instinctively to silence the noise, but Yelena’s hand abruptly intervened. Pushing your forearm down with a firm warning pressure as she raised her own gun. Yelena knew you were messy, and the worst part of it all was that you liked it.

“Uh, okay, eww,” you muttered, your blush powdered nose wrinkling in revulsion as you eyed the puking intruder.

The distraction lasted for a single, fleeting second before your gaze snapped back to Dex. He was already staring at you, his pupils dilated with a dangerous curiosity, still high off of adrenaline as his built chest rose and fell. That prolonged eye contact was all the invitation you needed. Your painted fingers slipped to your belt, drawing a fresh, gleaming blade to finally finish the job you were here for.

“Is she actually dead—”

A voice broke the tension, and you bristled instantly. You felt the sudden, hot flash of a genuine tantrum fury, thrown completely off your game like a child whose favorite toy had been snatched away. The orchestrated, seductive atmosphere of your game was entirely spoiled now by this bumbling idiot, who immediately turned and ran straight for the primary exit. Only for the heavy security doors to slam shut with a definitive, hydraulic groan, sealing you all inside the tomb.

Your perfect brows raised at the minor inconvenience of the lockdown, but the logistical nightmare of escape was irrelevant to you. Your world has narrowed to a singular path. With a slow deliberate stomp, you began to stalk toward Ex-Special Agent Poindexter.

Dex slipped a knife of his own into his palm, his entire posture dropping into a coiled, predatory stance as he assessed the hyper-feminine nightmare advancing upon him. He didn’t know your name. He didn’t know what artificial poison touched your bloodstream to grant you that terrifying, supernatural latency. But as he watched you step closer, his mind fixated on a single, impossible detail that defied every law of order he worshiped: he had seen the stray bullets from the crossfire strike your exposed, bare skin. And instead of ripping through flesh, they flattened, dropping to the floor like harmless, discarded coins.

The sudden, jarring hiss of the vault’s primary seals locking into place did little to disrupt the highly venomous orbit established between yourself and Poindexter. But the rest of the room devolved into a predictable, tactical flurry as the disheveled man, Bob, stumbled backward. His presence is an unrefined blemish against your playground.

"Will you stand down," Yelena muttered, her tone lacking the sharp, militaristic edge she usually reserved for combatants. Instead, it possessed a weary, heavy cadence that suggested an undeniable familiarity.

More importantly, she said your name.

The syllable hung in the freezing, stagnant air of the vault like a tangible, glittering thing. To Dex, it was a sudden, seismic revelation; the nameless killer that had just systematically dismantled his carefully crafted inner workings finally had a designation. A name to pair with the feminine blood-splattered face. His eyes, cold and hazardous analytical, narrowed as he watched the subtle shift in your posture.

Everyone’s attention had inevitably drifted toward the trembling, figure of Bob, whose very existence screamed of some bureaucratic absurdity. Yet, yours remained entirely anchored to Dex. You were swaying, a slow, hypnotic rocking of your weight across the square platforms of your pink heels. An explicit, non-verbal manifestation of how desperately you were itching for the violence to resume. You were a coiled spring decorated in lace and pink marble enamel.

Yet, you didn’t advance. You didn't move to complete the contract Valentina had so eagerly requested. No; you listened to Yelena. You allowed her brief intervention to stay your hand.

To a mind as violently compulsive as Poindexter’s, that single, uncharacteristic display of restraint was a puzzle piece that refused to fit into the established picture. It suggested deference. It suggested respect. But why? his internal monologue parsed, the gears of his hyper-vigilant mind grinding with a sudden, localized agitation. Yelena Belova was a broken, disgraced operative. Systemic loss and currently amounted to no real, formidable title within the intelligence community. She possessed no leverage over a lethal creature like you. But you listened. And Dex had decided that you didn't seem like the type to listen.

So the deduction arrived with certainty: you knew each other personally. You shared a history that existed entirely in the peripheral shadows, away from the sterile text of official governments. And then there was John Walker. The disgraced Captain America was currently nursing his bruised ego and a near-miss from your dagger, his jaw tight as he glared across the room. He hadn't merely thrown a generic insult when you breached the perimeter; he hadn't called you a hooker. He had explicitly called you the hooker.

The definite article was damning. It implied a recurring character in a sordid, violent history. A known variable in a world Dex had thought he fully planned out. A subtle, subcutaneous itch of possessive annoyance began to dig beneath Bullseye's skin. An irritating, foreign friction born from the realization that this beautiful, bullet-flattening psycho already belonged to a narrative he wasn't a part of. Not yet.

"The doors are dead," Ava's voice cut through the tension, her form flickering violently as she leaned against a console, her breathing shallow as the heat in the room rises.

"The main terminal is completely unresponsive. This isn't a containment protocol. We're locked in an incinerator!" She declared as red floodlights filled the room, painting the walls in danger and peril. The ominous warning partnered by a loud urging siren that made you cringe at the volume.

"She's right," Yelena said, her eyes shifting from you to the reinforced steel barrier, her expression darkening with a cold, retrospective clarity. “Two minutes and Valentina’s slate is wiped clean."

Walker let out a harsh, mocking laugh, though his hand remained close to his sidearms, his eyes darting warily toward your pink-belted arsenal. "You're telling me Val put us in a box? Why? We secured the asset." He gestured aggressively toward the dead body he raided on the floor.

Ummm no, you, secured the asset. They did nothing.

"Because we're fuck ups," you chimed, your voice a sweet hum that completely contrasted the grim reality of the realization. You stopped swaying on your heels, your painted fingernails tracing the delicate lace wrapping the grip of your submachine gun. "We're on clean up duty. She didn't send us here to retrieve anything. She sent us here to be deleted. Why'd you think we were all trying to kill each other?"

"A sterilization protocol," Dex summarized, his voice flat, devoid of fear, but entirely focused on you as he balanced his own blade in his palm. His mind skipped over the betrayal of his handler entirely, far more captured by the way your lips curved at the prospect of a trap.

"Well," you sneered, a beautifully wicked expression taking hold as your eyes locked back into his, completely ignoring the frantic tactical chatter of the others as the ceiling vents began to hiss with a heavy, pressurized gas. "It would be a terrible shame to disappoint her. Don't you think, Dex?"

Yelena’s voice sliced through the ambient dread once more, explicitly uttering your name in a sharp chastise. You whirled on her, your pink platform heel stomping against the concrete with the indignity of a slighted princess.

"What!? I shot the bullet, I got the kill!" you yelled, your voice a beautiful, discordant screech of entitlement that utterly refused to acknowledge the impending lethality of the scarlet room.

Ava, her form flickering with an erratic, painful instability against the backdrop, let out a harsh, breathless rasp. "You can't win anything if we're all fucking dead."

"What a perfect world that would be," you countered, blinking with a serene lack of self-preservation.

Across the space, Dex slowly crossed his arms. His analytical gaze was entirely rapt, his mind meticulously cataloging every erratic variable of your demeanor. He wasn't looking at the locking mechanisms or the gas vents, or listening to the warning sounds and the panic in the room; he was studying the strange woman who treated an execution chamber like another day at work. You caught his look and leaned into it.

Your chest rose proudly beneath the baby-pink bikini top as you declared. "And I can't die," the statement dripped with an absolute, delusional certainty. Your eyes locked onto Ava, a wicked, knowing smirk pulling at your glossed lips. "You were given a suicide mission the moment you got my name."

"We need to get out of here!" Yelena bellowed, her pragmatic instincts overriding the absurdity of your tantrum. She snapped her gaze toward the phasing operative. "Ava, can you walk through the door and open it from the outside?"

You let out a loud sigh, rolling your eyes so hard it practically hurt as you bypassed the frantic huddle entirely. With an air of boredom, you sauntered over to a nearby crate and sat down, crossing one bare, unarmored leg over the other, utterly indifferent to the collective weight of the eyes tracking your movement. It was a stupid idea, you decided within the confines of your mind Ghost was an unstable element; given the opportunity to slip the noose, she would simply leave them all to rot.

You watched the digital countdown on the security console bleed away. Death was a profound, terrifying conceptualization for the rest of them, a looming existential finality that made their hearts hammer and their movements frantic. But in your beautifully deranged mind, the concept simply did not apply. You were a creature meticulously designed to survive. The universe had provided ample, physical proof of your permanence with every flattened bullet that had ever dared to touch your skin.

And, as if to prove the accuracy of your intuition, the universe intervened again. Ava appeared back through the opening barrier, her expression frantic as she signaled the breach.

Before you could offer a sarcastic commentary on her return, Yelena’s calloused hand gripped your bare shoulder, violently hoisting you up from your perch and dragging your dense, heavy-laden frame toward the exit corridor just as the secondary demolition system triggered.

The ensuing explosion was a catastrophic, blinding wall of fire. The force was massive, a roaring wave of heat and displaced air that completely defied your augmented center of gravity, sending your body flying through the smoke-choked air like a mannequin.

You hit the ground with a heavy, unceremonious thud, landing squarely on top of a broad torso. A sharp, breathless groan escaped your lips as your vision cleared through the haze. You blinked down, realizing your dense weight was currently pinning Dex directly to the debris-strewn floor. He was staring up at you from behind his tactical mask, his breathing labored but his pupils still violently fixed on your face.

"Dammit, you're still alive," you huffed, your face mere inches from his as you frowned in profound disappointment.

"Unfortunately," he groaned back, the single word a rough, scraping cadence of dry amusement and physical strain.

With a look of exasperation, you pushed yourself off his chest, your perfectly manicured pink nails digging briefly into his tactical gear for leverage as you rose back onto your chunky platforms, dusting off your black pleated mini skirt as if the demolition was nothing more than an inconvenient gust of wind.

The vertical chasm of the elevator shaft stretched upward into a daunting infinity, a hollow concrete throat that seemed to swallow their collective, muttered fucks.

"So none of us fly?" Yelena questioned, her voice dripping with flat exhaustion as she stared into the dark expanse above. "What, we all just punch and shoot...?"

You pursed your lips to the side, your acute mind evaluating the sheer impossibility of the obstacle before you. "Okay, John, today's your lucky day," you announced with a flourish of condescending benevolence, nodding decisively. "I'm letting you throw me."

The knock-off Captain America let out a harsh, incredulous scoff, but the survival instinct overrode his ego. He unfastened his heavy shield, positioning the vibranium surface as a crude, metallic launch pad.

Taking a head start, or as much as the claustrophobic perimeter would allow, your platform heels struck the cold metal surface with a resonant clang. John braced and shoved, sending your body hurtling upward into the gloom.

The ascent lasted for a single, fleeting breath before gravity reasserted its absolute authority. Your trajectory stalled, and you plummeted straight down, collapsing back onto John Walker’s chest with an unceremonious, bone-jarring impact. You immediately let out a whine, a vocalization far too theatrical, far too perfectly curated to indicate actual physical pain, as your head shook no against his tactical vest, your styled hair spilling across his shoulders.

Across the narrow shaft, Poindexter’s jaw tightened. A sudden, uncalculated spike of visceral distaste rippled through his chest, a foreign friction that rubbed beneath his skin like coarse sand. He didn't like the sight of you draped across Walker's frame, and his fixated mind, usually so immaculate with its internal algorithms, failed to deduce why.

"Okay... new idea..." you wobbled up, smoothing down the edges of your razor-pleated mini skirt with a huff.

What followed was, by every metric of black-ops pragmatism, the single most ridiculous logistical solution ever conceived.

"I can't believe you all actually listened to me!" you gleamed in pure, unadulterated disbelief, your melodious voice echoing off the concrete as the six of you engaged in a grueling, synchronized army stomp up the narrow walls of the elevator shaft.

It was a claustrophobic, friction-locked nightmare. Backs pressed against one another, boots wedged against the wall, the group moved in a stuttering climb born of sheer desperation.

"Somebody has a hard butt," Dex groaned out, his low, gravelly cadence vibrating with irritation as he struggled to maintain his own gravity-defying weight.

He didn't do this. He didn't participate in collaborative, touchy-feely teamwork. It would have been infinitely preferable if the facility had simply collapsed, or if they had each discovered an independent method of escape. Rather than enduring this ridiculous, feet-up, back-to-back transit toward liberation. Yet, by some cruel twist of fate, he found himself intimately sandwiched between John Walker and the trembling, unrefined bulk of Bob.

"That's not my butt, it's my suit!" you argued petulantly from your position around the chain, nestled tightly between the defensive boundaries of Yelena and Ava.

"What suit? You're half naked!" Walker scoffed from the left, his voice strained under the immense physical exertion of the climb.

"Ummm, you weren't complaining when you saw an eyeful up my skirt!" you snapped back, attempting to twist your neck to glare at the disgraced soldier.

Then a sudden, erratic disruption broke the fragile, rhythm of the collective. The entire human chain staggered, slipping violently down the concrete shaft for twelve agonizing inches before everyone’s boots bit back into the wall, catching the descent with a unison gasp of panic.

"Sorry. Slipped," Dex huffed out. His cold, blue eyes remained locked onto the concrete wall directly in front of him, staring at the structure as if it had personally offended him. Though as he said it, there was no actual apology in his words.

Eventually, against every probability, the group breached the surface, dragging their bruised and thoroughly degraded frames out into the blinding, oppressive glare of the entrance room. But there was no sanctuary awaiting them. A heavily armed greeting of Valentina’s clean-up crew stood entrenched across the dunes, weapons drawn to finish the sterilization protocol that the vault’s demolition had failed to achieve.

Your augmented nervous system immediately mapped the exit trajectories. You knew you should run now. You should ignore everyone’s frantic attempts at a coordinated escape, shut down their stupid, collaborative plan, and save your own skin. It was what you always did. Yet, for some entirely foreign, almost lonely reason, you hesitated. It was... kinda nice being around people, you thought with a strange, fleeting twinge of sentimentality. So, you stayed, and you played your part.

With a burst of velocity and vigor, the five of you ambushed the perimeter, hijacking one of the heavy tactical vehicles in a flurry of synchronized violence. You scrambled into the back of the transport, completely elated that you had all actually made it out alive.

Well, most of you.

Before a single tire could kick up dust, the mundane reality of the fight was shattered. Bob, the shivering asset they had dragged from the depths, suddenly ignited awake. A decisive, terrifying stillness bled from his skin, and then he was flying. He was fucking flying.

The five of you sat frozen in the cramped cabin of the hijacked vehicle, your faces pressed against the reinforced glass, watching in absolute, deadpan silence as he launched himself into the stratosphere. He vanished into the horizon like a runaway god, leaving the entire battlefield in a state of stunned silence.

"You all fucking saw that right!?" you asked into the quiet cabin, your finger still hovering over the trigger of your pink gun.

Nobody answered. The sheer absurdity of the spectacle was still processing when the shockwave of Bob’s sonic boom hit the vehicle. The concussive blast rolled across the dunes, catching the side of the transport and violently tipping it over. With a metallic crunch, the car flipped, rolling once before landing heavily on its side, leaving the wheels spinning uselessly against the empty air.

By the time you managed to kick the shattered doors open and crawl out of the wreckage, the blistering sun had completely dipped below the horizon, plunging the desert into a freezing, deceptive night.

The remaining five of you turned your backs on the smoking overturned vehicle. With no functioning transport, no definitive plan, no backup, and absolutely no remaining allegiances, the long, silent march began.

The endless expanse of the desert night was vast and unfeeling. It was a bizarre, slow-moving parade of tactical pragmatism: Walker nursing his bruised pride, Yelena trudging forward with a low, muttered string of Russian curses, Ava treading sporadically to save her energy, and Dex walking with a rigid, calculated stride.

Yet, the entire bleak landscape remained anchored by a single, defiant flash of baby-pink lace moving through the dark, your chunky platform heels sinking into the cold sand with every lazy, deliberate step. The temperature in the desert dropped rapidly, the freezing night air cutting through the vast emptiness as the five of you trudged onward. The silence was broken only by the rustle of the paper Yelena had managed to salvage from the wreckage.

"She did that to him. To test on someone like that, it's inhuman," Yelena declared, her eyes fixated on the stark black ink on the document in her hand.

"Project Sentry," you nodded, your voice taking on a slightly higher pitch in confirmation.

"You know what that thing was?" Dex asked. The question cut through the dark, perhaps a bit harsher and more immediate than he had originally intended.

"Well, yeah. I know that many doctors have been trying to recreate whatever happened with me, but I didn't know they'd go to that extent," you mused, thinking back to the staggering, impenetrable density Bob had displayed before ascending. Your lips pouted slightly as a brand-new, thoroughly superficial grievance crossed your mind. "Why does he get to fly and I don't!?"

Dex completely ignored your slight jealousy, his mind already jumping to the next piece of the puzzle. "That woman back there. Did you know her?" he asked suddenly.

You blinked, pausing for a moment before it registered exactly who he was talking about, the masked woman, Taskmaster, whom you had carelessly executed across the room.

"No," you shrugged indifferently, eyeing whatever fruit Walker had managed to scavenge and deciding you wanted some of it, so you took it. The man could only grimace in exhaustion.

"I knew her," Yelena nodded, her voice heavy with the grim reality of their shared past. "She had a tough life. She killed a lot of people and got killed. Same as us someday."

“That's a shit life.” Ava commented.

Dex remained half a step behind, his devoid eyes studying the absolute vacancy of guilt or remorse in your demeanor. Your long, dark lashes merely blinked, your face remaining entirely neutral. You had shown far more genuine, visceral emotion when you grew tired of vying for his attention and shot Antonia out of pure pettiness. By all accounts of his rigid, obsessive-compulsive programming, he should have been violently irritated that you had stolen his kill. The contracts Valentina had given them were entirely irrelevant now, yet the theft remained.

But instead of anger, Dex found himself experiencing a strange, foreign sensation: amusement.

His fingers clutched his tactical mask a bit tighter against his palm as he actively forced down a smirk in the dark. Was he flattered? Excited? Drastically drawn to the sheer chaos of your presence? He couldn't entirely formulate the answer, but he knew he liked whatever the feeling was.

It wasn't the same predictable gravity he felt when he used to search for a north star, a moral anchor like Julie or Fisk to dictate his actions. His compass didn't feel guided toward the concept of 'good' when he looked at you; it felt perplexed and challenged. It was challenged in a unique, exhilarating way that made a small voice in his fucked up head whisper, "This isn't right," at whatever bullshit you pulled. Dex had spent a long time reigning in his desperate need to seek out external validation to show him what was acceptable. He had finally made peace with the stark reality that there was no pure good or absolute evil in their bloody line of work. There were only actions, and the positive or negative outcomes they generated.

And this LoveShot Killer balanced directly on the precipice just right. You were human enough to exhibit raw emotion, yet completely desensitized to the gravity of a body dropping. And you possessed an accurate terrifying shot that rivaled his own.

He watched your gait through the shadows of the dunes. He cataloged the hypnotic sway of your hips as you walked, moving through the sand as though you were following a melody playing exclusively inside your head. There was a distinct, unbothered pep to your step, a radiant, terrifying air of genuine happiness in your isolated world, despite the utterly miserable situation you all found yourselves in.

A situation that somehow managed to get more miserable. The confines of Alexei Shostakov’s dilapidated limousine were, without a doubt, the true zenith of psychological torture. The air inside the cabin was a stagnant cocktail of cheap upholstery, stale sweat, and the distinct, alarming odor of whatever concoction resided within the questionable cup.

"Do not drink out of the Big Gulp," Alexei warned with a boisterous, entirely unbothered wave of his hand.

Your face pulled into an immediate, violent grimace of disgust. You pointedly tuned out the ensuing emotional debris as Yelena and her father launched into a thoroughly depressing, sentimentally hijacked conversation regarding her childhood pee-wee soccer team. The sheer absurdity of the moment was only exacerbated by John, who offered a half-hearted cheer of, "Go Thunderbolts!"

This was a disaster. Dex sat rigidly in his seat, his internal monologue cataloging the sheer, unrefined ridiculousness of the environment with a dangerous venom. They were not a team. They were a collection of weaponized criminals who simply needed to escape the perimeter of this hellscape. So that they could disappear and never lay eyes on each other ever again. Dex didn't do teams. His historical record with structural alliances was a pristine ledger of catastrophe. His tenure within the bureau had been an entirely different situation, he possessed a script then, a rigid hierarchy, and explicit directives dictating precisely who to neutralize and when. But in this lawless team, Alexei was currently dangling the treacherous, highly volatile promise of redemption and camaraderie. Dex knew better. He was a fractured soul; he would never fit into the equation.

"Ah! Bullseye, the man that never miss!" Alexei’s thick, aggressively boozy Russian accent suddenly boomed across the cabin, slicing through the assessment. Dex didn't even bother to verify if the genetic relic was entirely sober.

The heavy, bearded man then turned his attention toward your corner of the leather seating. "And LoveShot Killer! I heard you never get hit, eh?"

For all your hyper-sexual, bullet-flattening bravado, you merely offered a brief, uncharacteristically awkward nod. You possessed an absolute deficiency when it came to navigating parental figures, so your eyes instinctively darted across the cabin, searching for a familiar target. They found Dex.

He was already side-eyeing you from the shadows of the vehicle, his mask cradled loosely in his large hand.

Under the intrusive, blinding shafts of sunlight cutting through the limousine’s grimy windows, the intricate network of creases around his eyes became starkly prominent. A large, jaggedly healed scar traced an uneven trajectory across his cheekbone, mirroring another violent marker just above his eyebrow. Like someone had driven a knife across his face in an attempt to dishonor. Yet, the physical disfigurement did not render him grotesque; it didn't project the unrefined aura of a convict that might make a person feel unsafe. It suited the sharp symphony of his features. He looked beautifully wild, dangerous, thoroughly rough around the edges, with a faint, predatory gleam vibrating in the blue of his irises.

"You're older than I thought you'd be," your mouth moved, the observation slipping past your glossed lips before your filter could actively suppress it.

Dex’s head tilted slightly, his voice dropping into a low, testing register. "Is that a problem?"

"No," you answered instantly, the syllable clipping short as your trained vision caught a sudden flash of polished metal in the rear-view.

The heavy, armored silhouettes of approaching pursuit vehicles were rapidly closing the distance through the dust.

"Someone do something about that!" you alerted the cabin, your arms crossing defensively over the scant, baby-pink lace of your bikini top.

Dex’s gaze dipped, his pupils tracing the sudden movement of your arms before snapping forward toward the windshield. The limousine barely reached an acceleration, the engine groaning in deep agony. And Bullseye let out a harsh, impatient exhale that vibrated through his chest like a low growl.

"Activating defensive measures!" Alexei yelled with a triumphant madman’s grin.

Instead of a localized smoke screen or an oil slick, the vehicle’s sound system violently detonated to life, blaring aggressive, bass-heavy stripper music through the cracked speakers. The sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the countermeasure struck your core so perfectly that a massive, unbridled laugh broke free from your throat. Dex watched the transformation of your features, his obsessive mind immediately deciding that he liked the addictive sound of your amusement.

Then, the rear window violently disintegrated into a shower of lethal glass shards. The bubble was popped. Dex was on his feet in an instant, his heavy frame shifting as he helped Walker anchor his massive vibranium shield against the incoming rain of high-caliber military fire.

"What happened to bulletproof!?" Dex yelled over the deafening music and gunfire.

"Bulletproof-ish! Everyone is a critic today!" Alexei bellowed from the driver's seat, spinning the wheel with manic indifference.

Ava attempted to intercept the threat, her form flickering wildly as she phased through the trunk of the limousine. But the pursuing vehicles were equipped with high-frequency sonic countermeasures; the moment the soundwaves blared across the sand, her kinetic matrix crumbled, and she collapsed onto the metal chassis in a state of agony. Dex and Walker immediately reached out, their combined physical leverage yanking her back into the relative safety of the cabin.

You decided you had endured enough of this. Squeezing your dense, serum-enhanced frame through the crack of the window, you hoisted yourself onto the exterior of the speeding vehicle. A fraction of a second later, Yelena materialized opposite behind you in the passenger side, her movements mirroring yours with practiced efficiency. The two of you raised your respective weapons, your acrylic pink fingers tightening against the trigger of your submachine gun as you prepared to paint the dunes red.

But before either of you could discharge a single round, the lead pursuing truck violently detonated.

The chassis flipped into the air in a spectacular arc of fire and displaced metal. You and Yelena paused mid-aim, your eyes locking onto one another for a single, bewildered millisecond through the smoke before the two of you slithered back down into the cramped interior of the limousine.

"It's Bucky!" Walker yelled, his voice carrying a sudden, triumphant inflection as he watched the dark, unmistakable silhouette of the Winter Soldier systematically clearing the remaining threats with clinical, heavy-handed precision from his own bike.

You let out a loud, elated cheer at the sight of the metallic arm cutting through the chaos.

But the celebration was violently short-lived. Through the smoke, Bucky’s focus remained utterly fixed on the rogue assets inside the limousine. With a fluid, unblinking aim, he deployed a magnetic explosive. The projectile whistled through the air, latching onto the undercarriage of the limousine with a definitive, metallic clack. Detonation was immediate. The under-blast tore through the axle, lifting the massive, rusted luxury vehicle entirely off the desert floor and sending it flipping violently through the air.

Fuck.

The constraints of the cold iron links wrapping around your torso were a suffocating, uninvited weight, yet your posture remained entirely fluid, entirely unbothered by the sudden, aggressive containment.

"You always did like it tight," you purred into the stagnant, dusty air of the abandoned gas station, your voice a wicked drop that cut straight through the tense atmosphere.

The so-called team immediately bristled. John Walker let out a sharp, uncomfortable cough, and Yelena simply closed her eyes as if praying for a sudden aneurysm to take her from the room. Across the concrete floor, Poindexter’s brows furrowed into a tight, menacing knot where he sat bound in his own heavy restraints. His calculating eyes flicked between your unbothered smirk and the broad, stoic shoulders of the man who had just neutralized them. A violent, possessive irritation flared beneath Dex’s skin, a friction he could neither calculate nor suppress. He didn’t like that comment. He didn’t like the inherent, unvarnished history bleeding out of your mouth.

"You look disappointed, James," you pouted, your lower lip jutting out in a display of mock grievance.

James?

The name echoed within the dark chambers of Dex’s mind like a jarring, misaligned gear. He questioned the syllable with a silent, hyper-vigilant intensity, trying desperately to work the answers of the situation as the six of you sat marooned inside the rotting carcass of the gas station. You didn't use titles. You didn't call him the Winter Soldier, nor did you use the sterile, bureaucratic designations of global intelligence. You called him James. It was an intimacy that suggested a deep history, a shared landscape of shadows that Dex was entirely excluded from.

"And you're still dressing like that," Bucky muttered, his deep, gravelly cadence devoid of amusement as his gaze flicked momentarily over the bikini top before settling back onto the collective group. "Look, save it. You're all evidence in the impeachment trial against Valentina."

"We don't even work for Valentina," Ava rolled her eyes, her form hunched with fatigue.

"I get it— she has some threat named Bob, and you're all heroes ready to save the day. Am I supposed to believe that?" Bucky said, his posture unyielding, entirely unswayed by the sheer absurdity of your group’s narrative.

"Yes!" you yelled petulantly, stomping a heel against the floor.

"We weren't going after her together," Walker gruffed out, his jaw tight.

"We're not a team," Dex stated at the exact same moment, his voice flat, mechanical, and entirely focused on separating his identity from the collective meat on display for the butcher.

"We were just trying to get home alive, actually," Yelena clarified, her tone heavy with the exhausting realism of their failure.

"That's even more pathetic," Bucky countered, his voice rising with a hard, uncompromising edge as he stepped away to answer a vibrating phone.

Your perfect brows raised as Bucky spoke into the receiver, his hushed, low-register tones seemingly deciding the ultimate fate of your company. To be truthfully honest, you had tuned out the vast majority of the reality surrounding you, the geopolitical nuances of impeachment trials and intelligence ledgers entirely failing to capture your interest. It wasn't until the heavy, clanking weight of the chains around your body suddenly dropped to the floor that you snapped back into the sharp, immediate present.

"Bucky. You have the wrong people," Yelena said, her voice sounding entirely defeated as she rubbed her wrists.

Bucky stood before the group, his cybernetic arm gleaming faintly under the dying fluorescent tubes, his eyes carrying the heavy, ancient weight of a man who had survived his own trail. "Look, I've been where you are," he began, the words slow, deliberate, and thick with a grim, universal truth. "You can run, but it doesn't go away. You can either do something about it now, or live with it forever."

The words hung in the freezing air, and for a rare, terrifying moment, the frantic tempo of your internal landscape ground to a sudden, agonizing halt.

Live with it forever.

The phrase dug deep into your chest, forcing your mind to retreat into the one place you spent every waking second trying to escape: the quiet. It was the exact reason you possessed such a violent, subcutaneous evasion to calmness. The silence was an intrusive entity that amplified the voices, the memories of the labs, the phantom scent of ozone and blood, the realization that you were an anomaly designed solely for the execution of others. You felt the sudden, terrifying weight of why you constantly had to keep killing, why you actively sought out the choice of survival. The bloodlust wasn't just a preference; it was a shield. If the guns stopped barking, if the bodies stopped dropping, the noise of your own fractured existence would finally catch up to you. You had to keep moving, keep fighting, because the alternative was drowning in the static of a normal, quiet world that had no place for a creature like you.

Beside you, Dex sat entirely motionless, Bucky’s heavy words striking a resonant chord within his own psychology. He stared down at his large, calloused hands, his mind turning inward in a rare, sentimental display of self-examination.

Redemption.

It was a beautiful, entirely treacherous concept that he had spent years convincing himself he didn't need. He had made peace with the stark reality that he was a monster, an instrument of pure murder who had caused an infinity of unvarnished pain from Hell's Kitchen to the dark corners of the globe. He had told himself that there was no pure good or absolute evil, only actions and outcomes. But as he looked at the others, broken side characters standing in the ruins of this gas station, a small, stubborn voice in his head began to reshape itself. He wanted to mean something. He wanted to prove, if only to the architecture of his own brain, that his life wasn't entirely fixed on destruction. He didn't want to be a weapon discarded in a sterilization protocol; he wanted to dictate his own outcome. He wanted validation that didn't come from a script or a handler like Fisk or Valentina.

And then his eyes drifted back to you. You were standing there, a defiant flash of baby-pink lace amidst the grimy concrete, looking just as beautifully damaged as he felt. He didn't want to live with the darkness forever. He wanted to challenge it. He wanted to see what happened when two broken stars decided to rewrite their own orbit.

"Stop Val and save Bob," Yelena sighed, the concession heavy but definitive as she looked around the room.

"Fine. Yeah," Walker agreed, stepping forward with a reluctant nod.

"Alright," Dex found himself nodding, his voice low, his gaze locked entirely onto your face as he committed.

"Sure," you shrugged indifferently, a beautiful, wicked little smile returning to your features as you smoothed down your pleated skirt, the weight of the silence instantly evaporating the moment a new target was established.

"Go on then," Ava nodded out as Alexei’s loud, boisterous, yelling suddenly filled the air, shattering the lingering sentimentality of the room as he heralded the official birth of their ridiculous, lawless crusade.

It was a wonderful morning in New York, clear skies and busy streets awaiting for some action. The vibrating cargo of the unmarked delivery truck hummed with a strange, domestic sort of friction. Bucky was somewhere up front, steering them directly into the jaws of a corporate hellscape with a tactical plan that amounted to “crash the doors and improvise,” while Alexei occupied the passenger seat, likely muttering to himself. But back here, isolated from the political gravity of the situation, the atmosphere had devolved into something bordering on a high-stakes pajama party.

Your laugh was a bright sound as Yelena and Ava offered deadpan nods to whatever military theory John was currently spinning. This show-and-tell was your group’s third attempt at artificial entertainment during the seemingly endless transit back into the city. It had been a necessary pivot, following a highly volatile round of "Put a finger down: Never have I ever" and a deeply questionable game of "Take a shot if," fueled by the single bottle of Smirnoff Ice you successfully smuggled away in your utility belt from Alexei’s limousine.

"What about you, huh?" Ava asked, her chin jerking toward Bullseye, who sat with one long leg extended completely across the metal floor, the other casually crossed over the other.

"Yeah. Why is your gun holster brown? Wouldn't it have made more sense if it was black or blue?" Yelena questioned through the haze of severe sleep deprivation, her Russian accent thick and sluggish.

Dex’s expression rendered itself thoroughly, genuinely amused at the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. His sharp brows raised, and he forced down an instinctual eye-roll with a slight, unconscious tick of his head.

"Forget the color, why do you only carry one gun?" you chimed in, your own perfect brows furrowing as you gestured toward his sparse, rigid arsenal.

"I didn't know color coordination was such a big deal," Dex replied, his gravelly voice cool and thoroughly unserious. It wasn't the sterile, calculated performance of feigning human emotion he had so meticulously rehearsed during his days observing Julie; this was entirely unrehearsed, unburdened, and light.

You watched, entirely rapt, as his large hand slipped inward, pulling the solitary firearm from the tactical strap secured across his broad chest.

"And I only carry one because I only need one shot," he stated flatly with absolute certainty, his gaze locking onto yours as he turned the weapon slightly. "Also, because I have favorites."

He held the gun up, a subtle, deliberate alignment aimed loosely in your direction, and for some entirely wrong reason, the gesture caused a strange, intoxicating sensation to dance directly in the pit of your stomach.

"Okay, my turn. I have my baby here—" you announced proudly, hoisting your customized submachine gun into the dim light, the white lace wrapped around the grip looking considerably more grimy and blood-flecked now than when you had initiated the contract. "Oh, and we have my honey— and sweetie— oh, oh—and I can't forget my girls!" You pointed in rapid succession to the two secondary handguns nestled against your hips and the dozen gleaming, pink-enameled knives tracing your waistline.

"That's cute," Ava nodded, though the flat cadence of her voice made it abundantly clear that she didn’t mean it.

Yelena seamlessly took the floor next, launching into a granular breakdown of her own specialized gear, while Walker nodded along with an air of grim, nostalgic recognition, loudly voicing that he vividly remembered the devastating efficacy of Yelena’s high-voltage electrical shockers.

At some point during the chatter, your roaming gaze found the discarded, dark blue pile of fabric tucked away in the shadows of the corner. Without a second thought, your grip snatched the material, pulling it over your head in a single, fluid motion before peeking out through the cut-outs.

Dex’s head turned, his internal algorithms instantly grinding to a halt as he caught you mid-motion.

You were sitting there on the vibrating metal floor, peering out from beneath the iconic, stark label of the Bullseye mask. It smelled entirely of him, a heavy intoxicating mix of expensive cologne and dried violent copper.

Fucking hell.

Dex stared, his jaw freezing as a sudden heat surged beneath his skin. He liked that sight. He liked it with a terrifying intensity that threatened to rewrite every piece of discipline he possessed. The very mask he had worn to commit an infinity of horrific, calculated atrocities, the symbol of his deepest damnation, was currently being worn by this tiny half-naked creature. Your massive, doe-like eyes stared up at him from behind the target emblem, and the image struck his brain with the force of a grenade. Sitting there in your pink lace and his dark hood, you looked, for all intents and purposes, entirely branded as his.

His mind raced, a hundred different dark, possessive thoughts colliding within his skull, only to be made violently worse when you playfully raised your own customized gun at him, closing one eye and pretending to shoot him dead center. His jaw clenched so hard the muscle twitched beneath his scarred cheek, his large fists tightening into white-knuckled blocks against his knees as he actively, desperately restrained himself from reaching across the short distance and pulling you into his lap.

"Are we there yet!?"

The roaring torrent of his internal monologue was violently severed by Yelena’s sudden, exhausted screech toward the front cabin. A fraction of a second later, you joined in, your voice echoing her petulant cadence as you yelled the exact same thing, completely unbothered by the fact that you were still wearing his identity over your face.

The terrifying portrait of a god completely dismantling your capacity without blinking was a deeply irritating check to your ego. The sheer absurdity of the violence left a bitter spike of pure envy in your chest. Why did the shivering, untrained asset get the cosmic, reality-warping powers while you were left with the pedestrian reality of invincibility and pretty guns?

You had watched from the debris-strewn floor as John’s vibranium shield was folded like a cheap piece of tin, Ava and Yelena dropped like discarded marionettes, and Dex was forced into a dance of parrying his own bounced-back projectiles. But Bucky had sustained the most visceral, uncompromising trauma. The heavy, metallic thud of his severed cybernetic arm hitting the concrete was the ultimate, unvarnished signal that the script was entirely dead.

Your little group weren't the Avengers. You possessed no grand, selfless illusions of martyrdom or moral nobility; you were weaponized threats, and you knew exactly when the situation demanded retreat.

Clutching Bucky’s severed limb to your bare chest like a trophy, you scrambled into the relative, groaning sanctuary of the elevator with the others. Once outside the building and into the stinging New York air, the seven of you attempted to process the absolute, reality-shattering failure that mission was. You handed the heavy, metallic arm back to its owner. Taking an uninvited familiar liberty in aggressively locking the cybernetic joint back into its socket for him.

Dex’s calloused fingers brushed lightly over the fresh, blooming cut on his bottom lip, his dark blue eyes fixated entirely on the display. His jaw tensed as he watched you tend to another man’s anatomy, all while his own iconic Bullseye mask remained perched casually on the crown of your head like a ridiculous beanie.

"Okay, we need a new plan," Alexei tried to nod, his massive, boozy body thoroughly beaten and leaking blood into the dirt.

"Nah—no new plans. That thing's too powerful," Walker sighed, his large hands clutching the pathetic ruin of his tactical shield.

"We just need to regroup and think—" Alexei tried again, his stubborn, Soviet-era optimism entirely unaligned with the reality of the crater behind them.

"This isn't regrouping. We're not even a team," Dex cut in sharply. His voice was a flat rasp as he slid his solitary firearm back into its chest harness, his aching, bruised musculature dropping into a rigid, defensive stance. All hope he was foolish enough to have in the gas station was gone.

"Of course we're a team! We're the Thunderbolts!" Alexei yelled, the delusion so thick it forced a loud, unbridled scoff from your throat.

"I don't know what that means," Bucky exclaimed, his expression darkening with a deep, historical exhaustion.

"It's her pee-wee soccer team-thing," Ava tried to explain, her voice flickering with a fatigued, erratic latency.

The argument that followed instantly degenerated into a frantic, overlapping chorus of panic. Everyone was yelling over the other with no apology until the sheer volume of the yelling finally snapped your remaining patience.

"There's no regrouping! He turned John's shield into a taco! And look at my gun!" you shrieked, hoisting your disfigured, custom submachine gun into the light. The sterling metal permanently warped with the deep, violent imprints of Bob's physical superiority.

"Oh my god, stop! There is no us, there is no we!" Yelena suddenly exploded, her voice carrying the absolute, suffocating weight of a defeat that reached back into her very childhood. "Bob changed into that thing, and there's nothing any of you can do about it!"

"And what did you do, exactly!?" you countered instantly, your painted pink fingernail pointing directly at her face. "Because I seem to remember you getting your ass beat way worse than mine!"

"Yeah! I suck! I'm terrible! We're all shit!" Yelena screamed back, her face flushing with a raw, unvarnished venom bathed in exhaustion. "You're not a hero! You're not even a good person!"

You grimaced, your features pulling into a genuinely offended scowl at the blunt, unglamorous evaluation.

"Alright, go easy on her," John Walker intervened, his hands lifting in a half-hearted attempt to dispel the sudden volatility of the Russian's anger.

"Oh, so what, you're nice now!?" she bit back, her eyes flashing with a terrifying malice.

John slowly turned his head, his wide eyes landing on Dex, the closest variable to him in the immediate space. Silently signaling a bewildered disbelief at the scale of the emotional outburst. Dex merely allowed an uncontrollable, sinister smirk to tug at the corner of his bleeding lip, his entire posture explicitly projecting that he wanted absolutely no legal or physical part in this.

“So it's my turn now?” John asked.

"No, you know you're a piece of trash, Walker. So does your family," Yelena delivered the final, crushing blow.

"Jesus," Dex muttered under his breath, his brows lifted imperceptibly and your jaw dropping in offense for John.

"We're all losers. And we lost."

With that grim, definitive finality, Yelena turned and walked away into the urban sprawl. You didn't hesitate; pivoting sharply on your chunky heels, you began to trudge in the exact opposite direction, your pleated mini skirt swirling with the momentum of your own tantrum.

"Where to now?"

Dex’s tall, imposing frame appeared seamlessly at your flank, his long legs instantly matching the lazy, deliberate rhythm of your stride. He didn't frame the words like a question; it was a flat, possessive statement of fact. It carried the certainty that whatever destination your brain decided on, his body would follow.

"Well, I need a new gun. And I want a taco," you shrugged indifferently. Dex offered a single, understanding nod.

Two blocks away, you both found yourselves in the vinyl-wrapped interior of a greasy, fluorescent-lit diner. It wasn't a taco establishment, but the fading neon sign in the window had promised a good milkshake, which was good enough for you. Ignoring the overt, lingering stares of civilian patrons, who were understandably alarmed by a six-foot scarred assassin sitting next to a half-naked woman in a pink bikini, you slid onto a chrome bar stool. Dex claimed the seat immediately beside you, his large hands settling on the counter.

"Are you okay?" he asked. The syllables were stiff, delivered with the awkward, hesitant cadence of a man who possessed absolutely no blueprint for treading on sensitive emotional terrain. The hesitation wasn't born from an uncertainty regarding your physical state. He knew you were fine, he simply just didn't ask people if they were okay. In his universe, targets either lived or died. But looking at the tight line of your shoulders, his fractured mind had deduced that this was the correct, human protocol to initiate, even if the underlying sentiment felt entirely foreign beneath his skin.

"Yeah. Yelena's right. I'm not even a good person," you shrugged it off with a lazy indifference, wrapping your fingers around the cold glass and taking a slow, rhythmic sip of your vanilla milkshake. "And I'm okay with that," you added, your doe eyes tracking the condensation down the glass.

Dex went quiet, his analytical brain turning the statement over like a complex equation. "Why?"

"I can't handle being America's sweetheart," you confessed, the words carrying a rare, unpolished truth. The mere conceptualization of it, being anchored to a rigid, moral team where you had to behave, follow a script, and act with selfless restraint. It was a suffocating, unbearable prospect.

"We are who we are," Dex nodded. The statement was absolute, a cold comfort born from a man who had finally stopped trying to force his broken pieces into a normal template.

"And I'm not sorry I took your kill," you chimed in, your tone instantly shifting back to its signature, provocative sweetness.

A genuine, slow-burning smile spread across Dex's scarred face, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he looked down at his own drink. "No... I didn't think you were."

"I would've gotten you too, if none of this shit fucking happened," you hummed.

Having thoroughly finished the contents of your own glass, your roaming gaze landed on his milkshake. Without a single shred of respect for personal space, your manicured fingers plucked your red straw out of your empty glass and slid it directly into his, leaning in close enough for the scent of your perfume to collide with the metallic edge of his cologne as you began to drink.

Dex didn't flinch. He didn't pull away. Instead, his large, calloused hand reached up, his fingers sliding against your hair as he wrapped his palm around the dark blue fabric of his mask, lifting it off your head like a hat.

"Nothing's stopping you now, angel," he hummed, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a sudden, dangerous spark straight down your spine.

"Hey!? I liked that!" you protested, reaching for the hood as he twirled it around his fingers. "And you're wrong."

His sharp brows furrowed, the system of his mind slightly disrupted by the contradiction. "How?"

"There's this annoying feeling now... like, like I can't just end it that way. That you shouldn't go out that way," You expressed, your voice tight with a genuine, thoroughly frustrating confusion at the uninvited moral latency currently taking root in your brain.

A dark, mocking glint danced in Bullseye’s eyes. "What? Does it ache right here, Love?" he mocked softly.

Before you could dodge, his large, heavy palm slid across the exposed skin of your midriff, settling flat and warm over your bare stomach. The sudden, intense proximity of his touch sent a visceral jolt through your nervous system, and your thighs subconsciously pressed tightly together against the chrome base of the stool.

Your mouth opened to deliver a sharp, defensive retort, but the words were violently severed as a sudden, concussive rumble of chaos began to stir outside the diner windows. The civilian patrons let out a synchronized gasp, scrambling toward the glass as the distant sound of detonations and screaming echoed down the asphalt.

"Trouble in paradise," you calculated down to, your eyes tracking the plumes of dark smoke rising toward the neon skyline.

"I can think of ten other bad things we can do instead of that..." Dex murmured, his gaze shifting from the window back to your face. He nodded toward the back exit, his mind instantly mapping a path that involved leaving the city to burn while the two of you discovered exactly what happened when two monsters stopped pretending to be soldiers. A slow, sinister smile flashed across his scarred face, an unsettling predatory expression that should have terrified you, but instead it felt entirely beautifully fitting.

The temptation was immense. God knows every subcutaneous instinct in your blood desired nothing more than to slip into the dark with a man who looked at you like you were his entire universe. But as you stared into the fractured blue of his eyes, that small, stubborn voice in the back of your head, the one that had felt a fleeting, lonely warmth while army-stomping up a concrete shaft with a group of rejects, spoke up. And somehow, against every law of your selfish, bulletproof physics, it completely overpowered the rest of the noise.

"We can't leave the team hanging," you sighed begrudgingly, letting out a heavy, dramatic breath of utter exasperation.

Sliding off the bar stool, your small, perfectly painted hand slid into his large, calloused palm, your fingers locking tightly around his as you began to physically drag the massive, muscular assassin toward the front doors of the diner. And Dex, with a slow, resigned exhale that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, simply let you.

The bell above the diner door jingled a useless, cheerful note as you burst through the threshold, the neon-lit sanctuary instantly dissolving into a gray, suffocating landscape of dust and screams. Your scuffed heels skidded over loose gravel just in time for your acute vision to map the immediate layout of the street.

Across the avenue, the rest of the team was violently strained against a massive, shearing wall of concrete that had sheared off an office building, currently teetering at a devastating angle above a trapped, weeping civilian woman.

"Move!" you shrieked, playfulness vanishing in a fraction of a second as the bootleg serum in your veins surged, elevating your central nervous system to a state of roaring, singular focus.

You and Dex arrived at the structural ruin simultaneously, a synchronized strike of absolute physical momentum. Your small, unarmored hands slammed flat against the freezing, jagged stone right alongside John Walker’s straining shoulder, your hyper-dense musculature locking into place as Dex wedged his broad frame directly beside yours. His large, scarred forearms flexed, veins bulging against his tactical gear as he poured every ounce of his mortal strength into the vertical plane. Together, a group of rejects and assassins heaved against the dead weight of the world. With a deafening, grinding screech, the massive slab shifted, toppling backward away from the civilian and shattering into harmless, billowing plumes of white powder on the asphalt.

Instantly, the atmosphere shifted. The trapped woman scrambled to her feet, her face streaked with tears as she looked at the bizarre, mismatched group.

"Thank you! Oh my god, thank you!" she sobbed, and a small, scattered chorus of surviving onlookers joined in, cheering openly for the monsters who had just played the part of saviors.

Slowly, you lowered your hands, turning your head in absolute, unvarnished confusion toward Dex. He looked equally, profoundly perplexed. The white target emblem on his mask sat static as his empty eyes darted across the appreciative crowd. Neither of you had ever received positive feedback so openly, so unprompted, without a script or a handler validating the kill. It was a completely foreign, intoxicating frequency.

But the celebratory high was violently short-lived.

The air temperature plunged into an impossible, sub-zero freeze. Several sharp gasps and panicked screams cut through the dust, and ahead, a towering, absolute darkness began to bleed over the high-rises. A void of crushing anti-matter that defied the afternoon sky. The sheer, existential weight of it pressed down on your chest, and for the first time in your bulletproof existence, a visceral, heart-hammering panic rippled through your core.

You took a staggered step backward, your heels clicking weakly against the debris. Instantly, Dex’s heavy, solid arm snapped out, anchoring you firmly against his side. You looked up at him through the gloom, your doe eyes pleading, silently begging the one man who never missed a shot to never, ever let that abyssal thing consume you, as a far more troubled vulnerability awakened deep within your mind.

You looked back up at the hovering, empty silhouette at the center of the dark.

"I think Bob's not playing nice anymore..." you whispered, an uncharacteristic, terrifying edge of genuine fear slipping into your melodic voice.

The street erupted into instantaneous tactical pandemonium. Walker and Bucky were already yelling, their voices booming over the din as they commanded the civilian crowd to get inside the nearest shelter before the growing void could swallow the block. But amidst the sweeping panic, your gaze drifted to the center of the avenue.

Yelena was standing there, her unmoving figure a monument of shock against the oncoming blackness. Then in the next microsecond, a distortion rippled through the air, her solid form was there, and then she was simply gone, sucked violently forward into the unknown of the dark.

Your brain barely registered Alexei's distant, heartbroken roaring before your body acted on pure, human instinct. You tore away from the perimeter, sprinting directly toward the mouth of the void after the fallen widow. And Dex, without a single syllable of hesitation, was running right beside you.

As the threshold of the dark swallowed his physical frame, Benjamin Poindexter’s internal universe fractured entirely. He didn't fully comprehend the reason why he had been compelled to move, why he had abandoned a perfectly viable exit vector to sprint into a cosmic meat-grinder. But his body had long since decided its primary directive: it would follow you into the dark, regardless of the chances of survival.

His mind twisted under the sudden manipulation of Bob's influence, the reality around him bending as his thoughts turned violently inward. He was deeply, agonizingly confused by these new moral tugs. He had spent his entire life operating as a perfect organic machine, requiring a rigid script, a Julie, a Fisk, a bureau manual, to dictate what was acceptable. He didn't like people. He didn't form attachments to the meat he was assigned to clean.

Yet, your chaotic, hyper-feminine frequency had dug so deep beneath his skin that the song of your pink heels had become his new operational baseline. He liked you with a terrifying, possessive intensity because you didn't ask him to be a hero, nor did you look at his scars and see a monster. You saw an equal. You were just as beautifully broken, just as desensitized to the slaughter, yet you moved through the world with an unbothered, radiant happiness that he had never been permitted to possess.

And that cheering... the sound of the civilian woman thanking him... it had sparked a dangerous, volatile wildfire within his compulsive brain. For a man who had spent his existence begging external forces for a sign that he was doing a 'good deed,' that unscripted, organic praise was the ultimate narcotic. He realized, with a sudden surge of adrenaline, that he would do absolutely anything, he would dismantle a god, he would march through hell itself, to receive that kind of unvarnished validation again. To be worth something.

But the void didn't offer redemption; it offered psychological execution.

The gray dust of the street suddenly dissolved, and Dex found himself violently wrenched out of the present, waking up with a gasping lurch on the floor of his old, sterile apartment in Hell's Kitchen. He was entirely alone. The air smelled of stale rain and old paper.

Through the dim, unfeeling light, he watched in horror as a familiar silhouette began to systematically destroy the room. It was him. A younger, unscarred version of himself, still clad in the rigid, pristine tailoring of his FBI tactical uniform. The younger Dex was unhinged, his eyes wide with a manic, obsessive-compulsive desperation as he smashed furniture, searching for an order that didn't exist in the world.

Suddenly, the younger iteration stopped. He drew his standard-issue sidearm, his large hand trembling with a pathetic, agonizing instability as he aimed the barrel directly at the framed photograph of Julie affixed to the wall.

The sight struck the current Dex like a physical blow to the sternum, transforming the space into a theater of pure torture. He hated this exact point in his timeline. He loathed every single second of that stifling, rigid era, the suffocating loneliness, the terrifying mental instability. The pathetic dependency on a woman who was nothing more than a temporary bandage on a bleeding psychic wound. He watched his younger self weep in the dark, a visual manifestation of how desperately unstable and unloved he had felt before the world had finally broken him completely. He wanted to scream, to reach out and shatter the mirage, to pull his identity out of the pathetic trap of his own history.

The younger himself stood frozen in the center of the decaying room, his knuckle whitening against the trigger as the barrel of the service weapon migrated from the wall, finding a jagged home directly beneath his own chin. His fractured, inexperienced mind had seemingly calculated a final, desperate answer to the static noise. The current Dex explicitly looked away, his jaw clenching as he refused to witness the pathetic, unvarnished depth of his past misery. Even though he knew that he had never possessed the nerve to pull the trigger.

"Dex!"

The heavy wood of the apartment door violently bursted open, splintering against the drywall as you crashed through the threshold.

More importantly, you were bleeding. LoveShot Killer never bled. The universe simply didn't permit the ballistic physics of flesh-ripping trauma to apply to your augmented skin. Yet, here you stood, looking entirely worse than he had ever seen you. Your meticulously styled hair was completely disheveled, your glossed lip split open, and deep, blooming cuts traced the exposed skin of your thighs. Worst of all, a dark, smoking bullet wound marred the toned surface of your stomach, the left strap of your top torn and dangling loosely off your bare shoulder.

The visual layout of your desecration struck Dex with a sudden, roaring wave of overwhelming anger. It wasn't an offense born from your sudden indecency; it was a found protective fury directed at whatever psychological entity had dared to lay a hand on you.

You ran straight past the current Dex, your awareness entirely blinded by the illusion of the void as you scrambled toward his younger, uniform-clad self.

"Hey— what're you doing?" you asked, your frantic gait halting as a pained gasp escaped your throat. "Stop being silly, okay?" Your sweet voice broke under the weight of the exhaustion, your painted fingers desperately reaching out to pry the cold metal of the service weapon from his stiff fingers.

"I-I'm here now, s-so we can go and find Yelena, okay?" you whispered urgently, your chest heaving beneath the ruined lace as you pleaded with the ghost.

"Who are you," the younger Dex spoke. The syllables were flat, dead, and entirely devoid of the predatory heat you had grown accustomed to.

You took a staggered step backward, your perfect brows pulling together in a grimace of profound distaste. You hated that look in his eyes, the hollow, mechanical emptiness that mirrored a clinical ledger. Those weren't the same electric, obsessive blue irises you had looked into across the diner counter merely twenty minutes ago.

"What?..." you muttered, unsure.

"Who are you!?" the younger Dex yelled, his posture dropping into an aggressive, unrefined sprint as he approached you with a manic malice.

He didn't waste a single second evaluating the outcome. His choice was instantaneous, a reflex born of his need for your safety. His solitary firearm raised, aligning perfectly with the space of the room, and he fired a single, deafening shot.

Bang.

You flinched violently as a hot spray of crimson landed across your cheek. Downward you stared, your wide, terrified eyes tracking the heavy thud of his body hitting the linoleum, your brain temporarily freezing as you tried to register the paradoxical sight of Dex killing himself to keep you unblemished.

Dex stepped forward through the smoke, his large, rough hand reaching out with a rare, uncharacteristic gentleness to guide your chin upward, forcing your gaze away from the corpse until your eyes finally locked onto his current, scarred face.

"That version of me died a long time ago, okay?" Dex muttered softly, his large thumb brushing against your cheekbone to smear the wet blood away from your skin. It was the only clumsy, unscripted statement of reassurance his damaged psychology could offer.

You let out a ragged breath, your chest heaving as the sheer horror of the void threatened to pull you under. But looking at him, really looking at the rigid intensity in his irises, the terror in your veins suddenly mutated into something else entirely. A sharp, intoxicating surge of adrenaline. You didn't want comfort; you wanted to feel alive, to feel the brutal, grounding heat of the only person who understood the dark as deeply as you did.

Your fingers curled into the fabric of his tactical shirt, aggressively yanking him down to your level. The collision of your lips was instant and unrefined, a heated, desperate crash of friction that tasted faintly of copper and vanilla. Dex let out a low, guttural growl in his throat, his restraint snapping like brittle glass. His large hands instantly abandoned their gentleness, trapping the sides of your face and sliding into your disheveled hair to tilt your head back, burying his mouth into yours with a fiercely hungry desperation.

It was intoxicating. The world around completely dissolved as he dragged your body flush against his broad chest, his heavy grip sliding down to clamp around your waist, lifting you slightly off your platforms. Every subconscious barrier you both possessed collapsed. You whimpered into the kiss, your mouth parting to invite the suffocating, dark heat of him, your hands moving frantically up his neck to anchor him closer, needing to consume him just as badly.

The heat turned dangerous, spiraling rapidly out of control as Dex backed you into the nearest wall. The thud of your spine hitting the plaster didn't even register. His hand slid beneath the torn bikini, his calloused palms searing against the bare skin of your breast, his thumb digging into your hip with a bruising, desperate possessiveness that signaled he was ready to completely lose his mind right here in the ruins of his past. The kiss grew deeper, heavier, a breathless, bruising dance that went entirely too far, blurring the line between survival and volatile ruin.

A sharp, concussive rumble from the hallway outside rattled the floorboards, the reality of the collapsing void violently bleeding through the threshold.

The sudden vibration forced Dex to tear his mouth away from yours with a sharp, ragged gasp. His forehead dropped heavily against yours, both of you breathing the same hot, frantic air as his chest heaved against your ruined lace. His pupils were completely dilated, dark and wild with an unadulterated, dangerous desire that took every ounce of his remaining physical leverage to actively restrain. Your breathing increased to a frantic, erratic tempo, lungs hitching as you stared up at his flushed, scarred face, your heart hammering a relentless rhythm against your ribs.

"What happened, hm... Love?" Both hands cradled your face again, softer now.

"It was so awful...... I was in the lab and I had to watch myself get locked in the room and it was dark—then I started attacking myself!?" you heaved out in a sudden, panicked rush of words, your knees buckling slightly under the weight of the memory.

Dex muttered a succession of soft, low-register shhs into your disheveled hair, his broad chest anchoring your trembling frame against the concrete reality of his presence. His blue eyes darted across the ruined apartment, instantly finding a discarded, oversized button-down shirt draped carelessly over a baseball trophy in the corner. The fabric was stained with old, dried patches of his own blood, an atrocity in his historical world back then, but a thoroughly familiar, comforting sight in his current line of work.

Carefully, his large hands gathered the heavy shirt. He wrapped the oversized cotton around your bare, bruised shoulders, his fingers meticulously helping your small hands slip through the wide sleeves before he began to work the plastic buttons up to your collar, concealing the ruined pink lace beneath his own dark history.

"Let's go find the others, okay?" he nodded, the directive surprising his own internal computer the moment the words left his lips. He wasn't a team player. He didn't care about the meat. But as he looked down at you, swaddled in his clothes and breathing against his chest, he knew he couldn't leave the puzzle unfinished.

The illusionary walls of Dex’s old apartment didn’t shatter so much as they bled away, dissolving back into the shifting, unstable architecture of Bob’s fractured psyche. Navigating the void was like wading through a fever dream, but together, the two of you managed to anchor the crumbling pieces of the others.

Ava was discovered first, trapped in a terrifying, perpetual loop of high-frequency phasing, her form screaming as she rapidly disintegrated and rematerialized. It wasn't until you stepped into her space, your voice cutting through the static to explicitly remind her that she was no longer trapped in the clean-room labs of her childhood, that her molecular matrix finally stabilized. Bucky was worse. He was marooned in a desolate, frozen play of his own past atrocities, surrounded by the bleeding ghosts of the Winter Soldier program. The heavy weight of his historic damnation was palpable, but your presence offered an uncharacteristic, grounding sanctuary. You reminded him, with a blunt, unvarnished simplicity, that he had no choice that they made him do it. The ancient tension in his shoulders finally fractured just as Alexei and John stumbled into the perimeter, their own psychological hazes clearing in the wake of Bucky’s dissipating nightmares.

But finding Yelena required traversing the deepest, most concentrated gravity of the anti-matter.

She was entrenched at the absolute epicenter of the darkness, standing guard over the trembling figure of Bob. The real Bob. He was slumped on the floor of his own mental prison, his eyes wide and leaking brilliant, terrifying tears as he looked up at the mismatched, bruised assembly. He literally could not believe you had all descended into the abyss for him.

"We're a team, right?" you said, the sentiment delivered with a half-hearted, beautifully cynical shrug as you adjusted the oversized sleeves of Dex’s button-down shirt. The sentimental beat was violently cut short by your own impatience. "Now do that god-thing and break us out of here!"

"It's not that easy—they just get worse and worse, and I—" Bob’s voice cracked, a devastating thunder vibrating in his throat.

"We'll go through it together," Yelena nodded, her voice a solid, unyielding anchor as she stepped directly into his collapsing perimeter.

The space violently rejected the intrusion. The wall's physical form convulsed into visual manifestation of his internal monster, the Void itself. Shadows with the density of collapsing stars erupted around, lashing out with whiplash velocity to tear the room apart. The transition from a quiet mental prison to a raging internal warzone was instantaneous and brutal. As You anchored yourself in Bob’s collapsing perimeter, the darkness didn't just lash out, it organized itself. From the bleeding shadows surrounding the real, trembling Bob, a towering silhouette materialized. It was the absolute presence of his devil: a faceless, undulating mass of pure anti-matter. The shift in the architecture was instantaneous and violent, the metaphorical walls of the mind hardening into an industrial, sterile labyrinth.

The illusionary sky vanished, replaced by low-slung, humming fluorescent lights that flickered erratically as the fabric of the facility began to fold in on itself.

Bob didn't possess the roaring, cosmic majesty of a god here; he was stripped entirely of his radiant luminescence, reduced back to a trembling, frantic man trapped in a plain cotton shirt. He was locked in a brutal, desperate grapple with a towering, shifting silhouette of pure anti-matter, his own shadow,. Bob was flailing, his pained, unrefined punches cutting through the air as he desperately tried to beat back a psychological parasite that was physically suffocating him.

"He's killing himself!" You yelled over the rising, mechanical screech of the collapsing room.

The rest of the team was instantly pinned down by the sheer atmospheric pressure of the failing reality. The floorboards buckled upward, and gravity wells erupted across the laboratory floor, anchoring Dex's heavy frame and dragging Ava down as her phasing matrix flared out. Heavy steel support beams groaned and snapped overhead, dropping a cascade of sparks and debris that threatened to bury Walker and Alexei entirely.

But the restraint didn't hold. Not after what you all had just crawled through to get here. With a collective, roaring surge of adrenaline, you broke free from the spatial gravity. John shoved a falling concrete pillar aside with his bare shoulder; Bucky and Alexei used their combined physical leverage to clear a path through the warping space, and Dex moved with flawless, unblinking precision, using a discarded piece of rebar to block oncoming threats.

You and Yelena spearheaded, rushing headlong into the heart of the epicenter where Bob was violently collapsing under the weight of his own shadow.

"Stop! Bob, stop!" Yelena commanded, her voice an desperate, unyielding anchor as her arms wrapped securely around his right shoulder, using her entire body weight to stall his frantic, self-destructive momentum.

You slid across the cracked tile floor, your platforms skidding through the white dust as you threw yourself onto his left side. Your solid arms locked around his trembling forearm, your fingernails digging into the fabric of his sleeve as you forcefully halted another pained, desperate punch aimed at the empty, suffocating air.

"We've got you! Just hold on!" you shrieked over the roar of the void, your face flushed with sheer physical exertion as Dex materialized directly behind you, his large, steady hands slamming onto your shoulders to add his massive, stabilizing weight to the human anchor.

Bucky and Walker dove into the huddle next, their massive hands locking onto Bob’s chest and legs, physically pinning the man to the floor to separate him from the dark entity feeding on his panic. Alexei, the father and guardian that he was, hunched over the mess you all were, serving and protecting in the way that he knew how. The eight of you became a single, solid monument of support. Broken pieces whole by each other.

"Look at us!" Yelena ordered, her eyes burning into his leaking, terrified gaze. "We're leaving!"

The declaration was the final, critical and promising in a way the void could not assimilate. A collection of selfish, discarded assassins putting their bodies on the line for a man they barely knew. The towering shadow let out a final, deafening screech of frustration, its form fading into a harmless, dissipating thread of dark smoke as Bob’s chest heaved in a massive, ragged breath.

Gravity snapped. And it was like waking up from a dream. The heavy, real-world atmosphere of New York rushed back into your lungs with a vengeance. The eight of you collapsed in a tangled, bruised heap onto the freezing, unpolished floor, gasping for air as the cold starlight of reality finally washed over your faces. The velocity with which the universe could pivot from an apocalyptic nightmare into a complete, bureaucratic farce was a testament to the joke of their existence.

With Dex’s steady, calloused hand anchoring your weight, you rose from the cold concrete floor of the real world. Your knees were still a little weak from the phantom trauma of the void, but the mocking cadence of your voice returned the exact millisecond reality solidified around you.

"Dammit, you're still alive," you joked, a soft, melodic huff escaping your lips as you looked up at him through your disheveled hair.

"Unfortunately," he shot back, the gravelly register of his voice carrying an uncharacteristic fondness. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he stared down at you, his obsessive internal self completing a massive, definitive calculation. He was keeping you. How could he not? You were a beautiful, bulletproof thing that had literally shot its way through his worst nightmares just to drag him back to the light.

His analytical gaze wandered downward, mapping the damage. The blood-stained shirt he had buttoned around you in the dream was gone, vanished back into the confines of Bob's mind. Your own baby-pink top remained violently torn, the strap dangling loosely over your bare shoulder in an explicit invitation to indecency. Without a single word of hesitation, Dex stepped intimately behind you, his large, scarred forearms wrapping securely around your chest to serve as a firm, protective barrier against the elements. He would have to find you a completely new, meticulously styled uniform later, but for now, his body was your defense and he already liked the way you fit into him.

Your eyes instantly locked onto the distant, unmistakable silhouette of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine barking orders across the plaza, and a sudden, subcutaneous heat flared in your veins. You began to stalk forward, Dex seamlessly moving with you, his muscular form still securely wrapped around your short body as the rest of the broken team rallied into a tight, unified formation alongside a confused but conscious Bob.

"I'm going to kill that person," you nodded, your voice taking on a dangerously sweet edge.

"We stick together from now on," Yelena declared, her hand firmly pulling Bob along as she assumed the baseline orientation of a leader.

"We can't kill her. We have to take her in," Bucky countered, his cybernetic arm gleaming under the city lights as his moral programming reasserted its heavy, unyielding authority.

"Maybe we break a few bones," Alexei offered with a boisterous, entirely unbothered grin, cracking his massive knuckles in anticipation.

"I'd like to kill her," Ava nodded flatly, her form stabilizing as desperately tried to bend his taco-shaped vibranium shield back into a practical shape, failing miserably with a quiet grunt of frustration.

Valentina, sensing the immense threat marching down the avenue, scrambled backward into the false, temporary safety of a haphazardly strung perimeter of construction tarps. The team surged forward, preparing to execute a thoroughly unglamorous, heavy-handed arrest, only to be violently ambushed by a blinding, deafening wall of flash photography and shouting members of the press.

You felt Dex freeze instantly behind you, his large chest tensing against your back as the intrusive media lights washed over his scarred face. Your small hand subtly reached behind his hip, your small hands sliding into his low-slung utility belt to wrap around the grip of one of his blades. You weren't above a televised murder. In fact, you thought it would look rather spectacular on the evening news.

"For years, I've been secretly developing a new age of protection," Valentina’s voice boomed through a microphone, her performative, corporate-politician smile turning radiant as she completely hijacked the narrative in front of the rolling cameras. "Today, the citizens of the United States needed that protection, and thanks to my hard work, they got it. Ladies and gentlemen, meet... The New Avengers."

The sudden, sheer absurdity of the announcement hit your brain with the force of a physical blow. The blade slipped from your fingers, dropping toward the pavement before Dex’s secondary hand snapped out with whiplash velocity, catching the steel mid-air while his other arm remained firmly across your chest to keep you modest in front of the flashing lenses.

Your perfect brows raised to the clouds as you looked around at the mismatched, bruised assembly of rejects standing in the glare. Everyone was equally, profoundly confused.

A silent, completely bewildered laugh broke free from your throat, your shoulders shaking against Dex's chest. An Avenger? You? A hyper-sexual, bulletproof liquidator who wore lace to a black-ops infiltration? It was a hilarious, beautiful joke. Dex tried desperately to suppress the amused, sinister smirk tugging at his mouth, quickly deflecting by looking over at Walker, whose face was frozen in a comical state unvarnished cognitive dissonance next to Ava’s utterly stunned, wide-eyed expression.

As the media circus swarmed around Valentina, the chaotic, bright energy of the plaza seemed to soften into something entirely different, something uniquely quiet and grounding.

You leaned back into the heavy, solid density of Dex’s torso, your laughter fading into a soft, genuine breath of contentment. For the first time in your life, the silence that usually amplified the terrifying static in your brain didn't arrive. The frantic, subcutaneous urge to keep killing, to keep hunting just to survive the noise, simply wasn't there. The static had been entirely replaced by the steady, rhythmic thump of Dex’s heart against your shoulder blades and the unpolished, exhausting warmth of the people standing beside you.

You looked over at Yelena, who was currently nursing a bruised jaw but looking back at you with a faint, weary smirk of mutual understanding. Bucky stood half a step away, his cybernetic arm catching the starlight, his posture no longer carrying the crushing, solitary weight of his past atrocities. They were all pieces of trash, as Yelena had so eloquently put it, discarded side characters, losers who had been marked for deletion by the very system that created them.

But as Dex’s grip tightened just a fraction more around your waist, a possessive, silent promise cementing itself between the two of you, you realized that being a loser didn't feel so bad when you were surrounded by your own specific brand of freaks. You weren't America's sweethearts. You were never going to be good people who followed a script or sought the sterile validation of a heroic title. You were the Thunderbolts. You were broken, desensitized, and thoroughly unhinged, but as the eight of you stood under the flashing lights, whole by each other, you knew the universe was finally going to have to make room for the supernova unleashing.

Bonus :)

The heavy, reinforced doors of the infamous Midtown high-rise groaned as they were forced open, the pristine, high-tech sanctuary of the former Avengers Tower completely vacant and swaddled in dust sheets.

"Are we even supposed to be here?" Ava asked, her voice flickering with latency as she stepped tentatively into the cavernous, sleek lounge space.

"You heard what they called us earlier- The New Avengers. Why wouldn't the Avengers live in the Avengers Tower!?" you justified, offering a brilliant, entirely unbothered grin that completely brushed past the legal definition of breaking and entering.

"Seems perfectly reasonable," Bucky nodded, his eyes gleaming under the ambient security lights as he casually tossed his tactical duffel onto a multi-million dollar sofa.

"Where are you going," Dex’s low voice cuts through the spatial geometry of the room. His large, calloused hand snapped out with precision, his fingers catching the bare skin of your upper arm the exact second you attempted to slip away into the shadows of the corridor.

"Exploring!" you chirped, turning your head to pout at him.

"I'm coming with you," he stated flatly. It wasn't an offer; it was a baseline directive. He wasn't letting his bulletproof girl out of his sightline.

Behind you, the team seamlessly dissolved into their own pockets of the tower. Alexei and John immediately migrated toward the industrial kitchen, the super-soldiers already bickering over the expiration dates of the high-end rations left in the sub-zero refrigerator. Ava collapsed onto the expansive couch with a long sigh, her form finally resting against the cushions, while Bob quietly located the remote, turning on the massive television screen with the wide-eyed wonder of a man re-learning how to be human. Near the primary terminal, Yelena and Bucky were already huddled over the control panels, their heads together as they systematically began rewriting the building's security codes to ensure Valentina’s cleanup crew could never breach their perimeter again.

The transition into this bizarre, unauthorized new life was characterized by an unglamorous peace. When the bureaucratic handlers eventually attempted to deliver the official, standardized "New Avengers" uniforms. Stiff, unyielding suits of muted Kevlar and patriotic insignias, you had rejected the garment with a tantrum that nearly resulted in the delivery agent getting a pink dagger thrown through his shoe. You absolutely refused to hide behind the heavy, suffocating cowardice of standard armor.

Instead, a compromise was meticulously engineered in the privacy of the tower's lower levels, drafted entirely between yourself and Benjamin Poindexter.

The resulting uniform was a magnificent, feminine middle finger to military pragmatism: a baby-pink, high-collared crop top with form-fitting long sleeves, constructed from a dense, blast-resistant weave that left your midriff entirely exposed. Emblazoned directly across the center of your chest was a stark, stylized symbol, a pristine target, mathematically perfect in its form, but curved beautifully into the distinct shape of a heart.

Dex loved it. His obsessive mind was completely captured by the design; it was a flawless, physical synthesis of his rigid, ordered universe and your chaotic, beautiful self. It was a literal bulls-eye, a love invitation to the world to try their absolute best to hit you.

The eight of you were undeniably fucked up. There were no grand illusions of moral nobility or pristine redemption within the walls of the tower; you were a ragtag parade of weaponized rejects, side characters who had survived the cleaning house. Dex still spent hours silently realigning the silverware in the kitchen to achieve perfection, and the static in your own brain still whispered of the dark labs.

But as you sat on the edge of the polished mahogany bar, swinging your new platform heels while Dex meticulously strapped a fresh dozen of your custom enameled knives around your low-slung belt, you realized the noise didn't matter anymore. It was nice to finally be around a group of people who looked at your broken pieces, looked at the wild, predatory gleam in Dex's blue eyes, and didn't ask a single damn question. The team didn't blink at whatever it was that was happening between you and Dex. There were no juvenile jokes from Alexei, no mocking smirks from Yelena, and John Walker never offered a single, unsolicited piece of advice about workplace decorum. Nobody taunted you when Dex spent forty-five minutes straight meticulously sharpening your throwing knives at the kitchen island, his eyes tracking your movement across the room with a laser-focused, protective intensity. Nobody commented when you casually lay across his lap on the massive plush sofa while Bucky and Ava argued over what to watch on the monitor.

It simply made sense. In a world that had spent years trying to break, script, or eliminate every single one of you, you had found an equal who looked at your unhinged, bulletproof nature and saw an absolute certainty. The rest of the Thunderbolts understood what it meant to be an anomaly; they weren't about to interrogate the physics of the only two people who could look into Sentry's void and find a way to make it hotter.

The New Avengers and Bob will be back?

=========================================

rebecca was in her room, playing quietly as she waited for her dad. you were in the kitchen. dinner was already done so with nothing else to do, you found yourself rearranging things on the counter, trying to distract your mind from the worry. you rubbed your seven-month pregnant belly as if it were a magic lamp and you were wishing for him to return. and then you heard the front door creak open.

—bucky? —you moved quickly out of the kitchen but you stopped on your track when you saw he wasn't alone.

—yeah, it's me.

—oh my god, —you breathed before he could finish talking, your hand flying to your chest. you weren't expecting five people with him. their faces familiar yet you'd never met them in person.

bucky stood in the middle of the group, his lips pressed together in a guilt line. he knew full well you weren't expecting this and that he should've warned you beforehand, but he hadn't known they'd all need a place to drop by on the same night after the same mission.

he'd hesitated, worried about adding more stress when you were already seven months pregnant. but then he thought of home and you and rebecca and how it might be the one thing that could soften the edges of everything they'd been through that day. and god help bucky, you'd told him a million times you'd love to meet them.

so here they were. on your doorstep. in your hallway.

—hi, —you said to them. you blinked, caught between surprise and disbelief.

bob waved his hand. yelena, ava and john pressed their lips together.

—oh, hi john —you knew john. he and bucky had caused each other a lot of headaches in the past, but you were glad that at least now they tolerated each other. john showed you a little smile.

alexei made his way through the group and approached you with open arms. you raised your eyebrows and just let the big man cover you in a hug. he smelled like vodka and leather but surprisingly, he was really careful with your belly as he hugged you.

—mrs. barnes, the wife of the soldier, oh, it's so nice finally meeting you, —he said with a rough russian accent. —behind every great man is a great woman, they say. a greater woman, may i add.

as he held you, you caught all the other faces around the room, all rolling their eyes. you giggled when he finally released you, alexei was just as dramatic as bucky described him. —thank you, alexei.

—you know my name, she knows my name! —he turned to tell the others. they gave him plain nods and lazy smiles.

—of course, everyone knows your names now. plus, bucky talks about you five all the time.

bucky closed his eyes and ava grinned and nudged him with her elbow.

—yelena, right?

you approached the blonde girl standing next to bucky. she had the same stormy look in her eyes as him, she could definitely be his little sister. she looked at bucky a little unsure when you called her name, almost as if for reassurance. she hadn't wanted to come at first, she didn't want to cross that line, didn't want to step into something as private and sacred as his home.

yelena nodded to your question. you softened your expression and offered a warm smile. bucky caught her hesitation and he gently pressed his hand to her back, giving her an encouraging push. you opened your arms and puller her into a hug before she could think too hard about it. she tensed for a moment but then her arms came high around you, as if she was afraid of even brushing your belly.

you hugged ava, careful not to press against her delicate suit. you'd heard enough from bucky to know how sensitive the tech could be and how guarded ava was underneath it.

bob was so ready when you hugged him and welcomed him to your house. he'd seen bucky's photos of you, the lock screen on his phone. he knew how after every operation, buck's first texts were always to you, checking in, making sure you were safe and letting you know that he made it out alive. if bob had the power of one million exploding suns, he was certain it still wouldn't match how fiercely bucky loved you. and that gave him hope.

you smiled before you hugged john. he wasn't sure if you'd want him in your house, after all, he'd been a pain in bucky's ass but hey, in his defense, bucky had been just as much of a pain in his. still, you welcomed him.

and the best for last. as the rest inspected your living room, looking at the photos and tripping over rebecca's toys, bucky stood with the most exhausted expression on his face. he stepped closer and let his head fall against your shoulder. one of your hands went to the back of his head, fingers slipping into his hair.

—long day?

bucky just hummed.

—how was yours?

—good. the baby barely kicked after last night, —in that moment you felt bucky's hands come to rest on both sides of your belly, his thumbs rubbed slow circles, up and down, protective, telling the baby he was finally home, taking care of his mom. —and rebecca drew alpine. with eight legs and no ears. she's very proud.

he breathed a laugh, —sounds about right.

bucky's friends were busy, the five of them around a photo frame on the wall. the only photo you had of bucky from 1940s, stiff and young in his uniform soldier, eyes still full of something bright that hydra hadn't yet extinguished.

he lifted his head from your shoulder and you cupped his cheek, your thumbs brushing over his rough beard. you pressed your lips softly against his, as if you were trying to transfer all the calm and love he'd missed during the day. as you pulled back, you noticed his shoulders dropped, releasing the tension, but the worried expression remained.

you reached up again, brushing your thumb over the line of his cheek as bucky's arms wrapped around your body, resting on the small of your back and pulling you closer to him, carefully, until he could feel your belly pressed against him, a connection between the three of you.

—talk to me, —you whispered.

he sighed, —didn't want to bring the day home, but they needed a place... and i couldn't leave them on the street. i didn't want to add more into it, not in your state.

you smiled. so it was that.

—you did the right thing, buck. they're family. if they needed somewhere to go, then they're welcome here. they'll always be.

bucky pressed his lips together. his two families. the one he fought beside and the one he came home to.

he'd never called them that before, not even in his head. they cared about each other in the quiet, protected one another during missions and watched each other's back in battle. they stood between each other and the line of fire and carried each other when the mission left someone too hurt to stand.

it doesn't matter if bucky never said the word, they were his family.

he slowly nodded at your words, —it was supposed to be just bob... didn't expect all of them to show up at once.

—well, neither did the couch, —you teased, getting a soft laugh from him.

ava caught both your eyes as she turned from the wall where she'd been quietly observing young bucky's photo.

—you were so clean-shaven, it's almost like seeing you naked.

you burst out laughing just as bucky groaned beside you, head dropping on your shoulder again like the comment physically wounded him.

—look at that jawline, it could cut glass, —bob said, squinting his eyes at the photo, hands on his hips.

—sharp enough to be a war crime, —you kissed the top of bucky's head. he lifted it slightly, oh so you were joining them now?

—were there toothpaste ads back then? because you sure look like one. fight fascism and fight plaque.

—that's the image of a man! of the soldier! a hero! —alexei boomed, gesturing toward the photo like it belonged in a museum.

—yeah, a man that gave speeches on liberty bonds or punch hitler.

—i did punch hitler, —bucky said flatly, barely looking up.

—how many times are you gonna bring that up?

—as many as it takes, john.

—you should put that on a t-shirt, —john continued, —i punched hitler and all i got was this brooding personality.

you noticed yelena's attention was on the rest of the photos. the teasing in the room faded to a hum behind her.

her eyes moved from frame to frame, pausing on each one. a photo from your summer in wakanda, bucky with his hair tied back, sunlight turning the metal of his arm into gold as rebecca sat on his shoulders, his hands steady at her ankles. next to that was a shot of the hospital room, bucky still in scrubs, circles under his eyes, holding his daughter for the first time. all memories you'd been building through the years. not all of them were easy, not all of them looked like picture frames. it was what yelena had been looking for all her life.

—bucky, —yelena called him, getting everyone's attention. the teasing died down completely when everyone looked to the stairs.

rebecca stood halfway down, clutching her uncle sam captain america's plushie, her socked feet fidgeted against the step like she wasn't sure if she wanted to go back up or keep coming down. her thumb hovered near her mouth the way it only did when she was unsure of something.

—damn, she definitely is your daughter, —yelena said to bucky.

the little girl was a small version of bucky. blue deep eyes, brown hair that curled at the ends in soft waves, the way she looked at everyone without saying a word, just like bucky always did. she had that look on her face just like his, the one where even though she wasn't talking, it showed that her mind was moving fast, watching everything and everyone.

mostly, she looked overwhelmed. strangers filled her living room, standing loud, tall, unfamiliar in the space she knew as home. until she saw bucky. her bucky. she didn't hesitate. she ran down the stairs, her little feet pounding against the steps. without hesitation, she threw herself into her dad's arms, wrapping her small arms tightly around his neck. bucky lifted her effortlessly, smiling big as he held her close.

—oh, you definitely ate all of your veggies today, bug, you got stronger, almost knocked me off my feet.

rebecca's giggles filled the room. the others stood nearby, watching the scene, unsure how to react to seeing bucky all soft. even alexei, who rarely blinked at anything, went unusually still. you rubbed your daughter's back as she tucked her face in bucky's neck, her little fingers twisted into the fabric of his shirt, when she realized all eyes were on her.

—she's a little shy at first, but when she gains a little confidence, you'll be begging her to stop talking, —you explained to the group, half apologetic, half proud. they all nodded and smiled, understanding. —'becca, these are dad's friends. they're here just for tonight. you okay if they stay a little while?

she gave the smallest nod, still hiding her face in bucky's neck. he turned, holding her against his body, toward the rest of the group.

—boss says you can stay, —bucky announced.

yelena let out a yay, bob mumbled a sweet thank you.

rebecca peeked a little from the crook of bucky's neck, her eyes finding john first. he offered her a small, friendly wave. she hesitated but she ended up lifting her hand a mimicking the motion.

—out of all of them, —bucky murmured, more for john to hear than to her, —you had to wave to walker first?

john of course heard it and rolled his eyes.

in that moment your feet started to hurt more than you realized. too much standing for a seven months pregnant. you shifted your wight, trying to ease it, but even the small movement sent a bolt of discomfort up your spine. one of your hands instinctively moved to the curve of your belly and the baby fluttered under your palm, not a kick, just a little roll.

bucky noticed, but not just him, everyone in the room did.

—you okay? —ava asked.

—you should sit, —yelena added.

alexei immediately grabbed the nearest chair to him as bucky carefully lowered rebecca. —okay, bug, let's help mama, —he approached you, wrapping his metal arm around your body and helping you sit carefully.

rebecca stood, clutching with her captain america plushie tightly as her eyes flicked between john, bob, yelena and ava. none of them knew how to respond to her watchful presence, except for john, who caught her gaze again and with the little experience he had with kids, knelt down to her level, making himself less intimidating.

—why don't you guide me to the kitchen and we'll get your mom a glass of water?

she blinked, thinking about it for a second, then slowly nodded. john stood, not expecting her to wrapped her small fingers into his hand as she lead the way. to say that bucky was freaking out would be an understatement.

in the kitchen, rebecca pointed at the cupboard where the glass where kept. john took one of them and filled it with water from the tap. then, she gave him her captain america plushie so she could grab the glass, was this kind of bad joke? john followed her, still holding the plushie like he wasn't sure if it was meant to curse him or recruit him.

yelena and ava huffed a laugh when they saw him carrying the plushie.

rebecca carefully approached you, then gently handed over the glass. bucky gave john a grateful nod. you smiled warmly, taking a sip, —thank you, sweetie.

—my sister makes mama sick sometimes, —rebecca explained to everyone. the room was still, hearing her voice for the first time like it was something sacred.

—but you take good care of her, —bob said, his voice gentle.

—yeah, you sure are doing a great job, kid. i couldn't have brought that glass of water better myself, —john added.

rebecca showed a little smile, proud. with extreme care, she placed her tiny hand on your belly, her fingers splaying and she waited, hoping for the smallest kick from her baby sister. bucky kissed the top of your head.

—i made dinner, but i only expected bucky...

a chorus of don't worry, not hungry, i'm okay, i ate earlier, happened before you could finish talking. you looked around them all, tired, boots dusty from whatever roads they'd taken today, and hungry. no matter what they said.

—so we could order something, —you finally suggested.

bucky thought it was a great idea because there was no way he was going to let them go to bed with empty stomachs. while he made the call to the pizzeria, rebecca marched to the kitchen, ava and walker behind her like shadows as she pointed out the drawer with the cutlery.

back in the living room, you stood up from the chair. yelena, alexei and bob didn't let you out of their sight for a second. bucky, still on the phone, caught your movement and gave yelena a sharp nod, a silent command to keep you from doing anything else and to get you to the couch. you assured that you were fine, but it was no use.

at least alexei was no bore, he talked nonstop, about everything that came to his mind, most of the times embarrassing memories of little yelena. and rebecca had abandoned ava and walker to their luck in the kitchen and sat down next to bob with her notebook. you heard her mumble a wanna see my drawings? and the boy, as the sweetheart he was, couldn't deny. she explained every detail to him, not even letting bob get a word or ask a question.

ava helped bucky spread the tablecloth and john placed carefully the plates and glasses on the table.

—so, —ava said, looking at bucky with a teasing smirk, —another girl? you're the ultimate girl dad.

—yeah, three girls plus you and yelena. keeping me on my toes.

ava didn't say anything but she felt a little warmer at the way he'd included her and yelena in that count, like they were a bigger part of his life. he hadn't said it with any special emphasis, hadn't even looked at her when he said it but still, it stuck with her.

and the dinner was nice. so nice. bucky sat close by your side, his fingers gently holding your free hand over the table. rebecca was between yelena and ava but she was laughing at something walker had said to her, something funny enough to light up her whole face. bob had a soft blush on his cheeks. people laughing, sharing stories, the clink of plates and glasses, it almost felt unreal to him.

Outside, the night hung heavy on the windows, thick and starless. Even though it was cold, your thick socks helped you bear it.

After a while, you had company in the kitchen. You didn't see the person, of course, but you could strangely feel their presence as if the entire room had been impregnated with that essence. The music continued to play, but it no longer filled the space; now it seemed like a distant echo, unable to compete with the sudden density of the air.

Then you felt it: the faint creak of wood under their weight as they rested an arm on the bar, right next to you. They didn't say anything at first; they just stood there, too close, so motionless that for a second you thought you'd imagined it. The warmth emanating from their body contrasted with the cold outside, and the scent—clean, almost electric—confirmed that you weren't alone.

“Hey,” you heard close to your ear, barely above a whisper.

Their voice made you turn your head immediately. You recognized him instantly, of course you did. It was Bob. His body, his silhouette… but not his posture. He was more upright, as if he weighed less. More relaxed. And he was looking at you. Not shyly, not as if he were waiting for your permission, but as if he already knew he was welcome.

What disconcerted you most was the color of his eyes. They shone a liquid gold, soft but impossible to ignore, as if something very ancient and powerful had peeked out from beneath his skin. The proximity made you notice them immediately.

“Bob...” you said softly, unsure whether to ask or affirm. You still held the spoon tightly. The aroma of dinner still wafted through the air, but everything else had stopped. “What are you doing here?”

“I went out to get a glass of water and found you here. That's all.”

“Your… your hair,” you stammered, barely reaching out to stroke a strand of hair, “what did you do to it?”

It was blonde, but not that horrible fake yellow shade Valentina had dyed it a few months ago. This time, his hair looked like it had been kissed by the sun, a color so golden it resembled one of those cherubs portrayed in old paintings. You could also swear it looked a few inches longer than you remembered.

“Don’t you like it?” he exclaimed. The question didn’t sound uncertain, as it should have, but rather amused. “I think it suits me.”

“Yes, you look… you look great, but why did you do it?”

He didn't respond immediately. His attention shifted to what you were cooking, with an almost unusual interest. He leaned a little closer over the counter, just enough to better observe the contents of the pot without invading your space too much... although you felt the warmth of his proximity extending like an invisible line between the two of you.

“What are you doing?” he asked softly, as if the question were more intimate than it should be.

“Nothing, just… something quick for dinner,” you replied, not quite looking at him. You tried hard to sound casual, even though you knew your cheeks had heated a little without permission.

He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on your hands as you rummaged. He didn't talk like Bob. He didn't move like Bob. And yet, there he was, standing next to you, wearing those wrinkled plaid pajama pants and a T-shirt you'd seen on him before at the back of his closet; the cover of Radiohead's single, Creep, printed on black. Everything was recognizable, but not familiar.

Suddenly, his hand slowly reached out to take a pinch of what you'd left on the cutting board and brought it to his mouth, still looking at you. He did so with disconcerting ease, as if you always shared these kinds of moments.

“Smells good,” he murmured, and for a second, the way he said it didn’t seem to refer to food.

You looked at him, still trying to understand what part of him that was. Because if that was Bob… why did he make you feel like you were a fixed point in his orbit?

“Does your head hurt?” you asked, still unsure. Your voice sounded different, as if it didn't quite come from you.

"No"

"Are you okay?"

A giggle escaped his lips.

“I am,” he assured you. Prompted by your inquisitive eyes, he added, “Don’t worry. You know me, you’ve seen me before.”

The way he spoke to you made you believe he wasn't your friend you were chatting with. He knew you, yes, but he was behaving very differently than usual. The realization hit you suddenly.

“Sentry?”

The name left your lips like a crack in the air. And although he didn't flinch or look away, you saw that faint flicker of acceptance in his eyes. As if you'd finally said what he'd been waiting for since he'd entered the room.

“I was hoping you’d notice sooner,” he said calmly, though not reproachfully.

He didn't sound proud. He didn't sound embarrassed. Just… confident. A confidence that Bob didn't know existed, but was natural to him.

“You weren’t supposed to come out,” you murmured, barely audible, as if naming the abnormality could reverse it. “Bob still doesn’t know how to control you.”

He shrugged with an almost elegant fluidity.

“I don’t need him to control me,” she replied immediately. “I’m not dangerous. In fact, it turns out I'm everything he wants to be."

You remained silent for a second, watching him intently. You didn't know if it was wise to call someone else, walk away, or try to figure out what had brought him to light.

“Don’t fear me,” he continued, as if he had read the doubt in your eyes. “I would never hurt you.”

“Why are you here?” you mumbled. Your back was to the counter, and he was standing in front of you, watching you. “Is Bob okay?”

“Of course,” he smiled at you. His gaze made you feel nervous. “It’s just… he was daydreaming about you. So I thought I’d intervene.”

You froze. When you finally managed to stammer out a response, you asked him to explain what he was talking about.

“I just want to see you up close. He’s watching you the whole time like he’s afraid of breaking you.”

The phrase—and the way he said it—confused you. Why would he have had to show up to get a close look at you? What did that even mean?

Why did it have to be him and not Bob?

“You’re his constant thought, did you know that?” he murmured calmly. “For better or for worse.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“He always worries about you. He wants to be good for you, to improve, to leave behind those weaknesses that torment him. But everything he keeps quiet when he sees you walk by, when you laugh near him, when you touch him… he throws it all at me.”

His voice didn't rise in pitch. It wasn't demanding. It didn't crack. But there was an undercurrent, a weariness so deep it reached your chest.

“And honestly, I feel like it kills me a little more every day.

“I can’t understand you,” you faltered. “Do you mean that he-you are… in love with me?”

A stifled laugh was heard in his throat.

“Obsessed, that's the term I'd give it. But yes, let's say so.”

Sentry didn't look at you like someone expecting a reaction. He didn't seem to be looking for shock value. He was just... saying it. As if saying it out loud would take a weight off his shoulders.

You feared you were delirious. The moment was so sudden and unexpected that it was the only explanation that made sense to you.

“I just thought it was time to let you know,” Sentry continued. “Because he won’t. At least not anytime soon.”

He took a step closer, slow, careful, but not hesitant. His movements were confident, as if he wasn't afraid of rejection, but of breaking something delicate.

His fingers brushed the edge of the bar, right where you'd placed the spoon seconds before. He didn't pick it up. He just rested his fingertips there, as if he needed to anchor himself to something real.

Then he reached out with his other hand toward you, very slowly, and with the backs of his fingers, he barely caressed your cheek. It wasn't an invasive caress. It was… careful. Too careful, as if he feared that you, too, were part of the same fracture he was carrying.

His touch was warm.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, his voice lower. More intimate. “You’re sweet. Attentive. I understand why he’s going crazy for you.”

And you wanted to say something, anything. But his presence weighed more than your thoughts. You didn't know if it was the tone or the content of his words, but something inside you tensed.

You didn't back down. You didn't touch him either. But your gaze dropped to his hand, still suspended in the air, as if you'd suddenly realized the moment had crossed an invisible line.

He noticed it. Of course he noticed it.

“But you’re not ready,” he said, without annoyance.

He didn't sound disappointed, or impatient. He said it as a logical conclusion. An observation. He slowly withdrew his hand, but didn't move away. He just looked down, as if the gesture of touching you had been more for him than for you.

You were in shock, trying to understand what was happening and waiting for his next move.

“I’m not asking you for anything,” he added after a moment. “I didn’t even come looking for anything. I just needed you to see me. To know that I exist beyond fear.”

Your throat closed a little, and your voice barely held as you replied:

“I… don’t know what to tell you.”

Sentry nodded, once, without drama. His golden eyes softened slightly, though the glow remained, pulsing, like a subtle warning that this form of him wasn't human. Not quite.

“You don’t need to say anything. Not now.” For a second, he was silent. “Sometimes Bob stares at the door for hours, wondering if you’ll ever show up.”

The phrase disarmed you more than you expected. You knew him. Not in words, but in actions. In the way Bob avoided eye contact when you greeted him. In the way he seemed to go silent when you sat down near him. In the way he always had something in his hands to pretend he was busy.

Sentry still watched you, patient. Almost serene.

“And all this stuff you’re saying… Does he feel it? Don’t you?”

“Both,” he explained softly. “But if you’re wondering who wants you more, then it would be me.”

You swallowed, looking at him with some surprise. You hadn't asked that, but he'd thought it prudent to mention it. He could have told you he cared or sought your closeness, but no. He said he wanted you.

“Is that why you came looking for me?”

Your voice was a whisper, gently caressing his ears. You no longer seemed scared, but curious, and that stirred something else in the God who watched you intently.

Sentry didn't answer immediately. He lowered his gaze for a moment, as if your question was too intimate even for him. And when he came back from his thoughts, his eyes had not lost their golden glow, but his expression had softened.

“I only came because… I couldn’t stay without doing it.”

His fingers closed in a slight gesture, as if he had wanted to touch you again and held back at the last second.

“Do you know what it feels like to carry something inside that doesn’t quite belong to you?” he asked, not looking at you directly. “A memory. A longing. An image repeated over and over again. And you didn’t create it, you didn’t dream it, but you feel it. It pulls you in. It transforms you.”

You looked at him silently, recognizing in his words not only the intensity of his existence, but the fragility behind it. As if he couldn't sustain himself for long away from Bob's shadow.

“You’re in him,” he continued. “In all his days. In every damn attempt to ignore you. In every night he forces himself not to knock on your room. In all those moments when he has to hold back as if your gaze doesn’t completely disarm him.”

The intensity of his voice didn't rise, but it became thicker. More tangible.

“I don't have their filters,” he admitted, “nor their fears. And if I'm here, it's because Bob wanted it so badly… that I didn't know how to stay silent anymore.”

It wasn't a confession, not quite. It was more like an inevitable outburst. And he was still there, so close, it was hard to think.

“I don’t know if this is real… or if I’m just feeling what you need me to feel.”

“It's very real”

His silence wasn't empty. It was the suppressed sound of something that wanted to explode but didn't dare. The gold in his eyes flickered like a flame about to go out... or burn out completely.

You felt it. Not for what he did, but for what he didn't do.

The way his eyes dropped to your mouth a second longer than necessary. The slight tremble in his breath as he stared at you without blinking. The way his body tilted, barely perceptible, as if the space between you was an obstacle eating him away from the inside.

He didn't touch you. He didn't say anything. But the desire was there, suspended between you both, as clear as the heat between two bodies that aren't touching.

And you, for the first time, didn't back down.

Your lips parted, not in invitation, but in surprise. There was something reverent about him. As if he were approaching you not as a man, not even as a god, but as an echo. Like someone who had been sensing you for too long in another skin, in another mind, in another contained love.

He knew it then. What he saw in your eyes. Not fear, not rejection. Just the certainty that if he did it, something would change forever. In you. In Bob.

Sentry didn't move anymore.

His lips curved into a small, sad smile. One of those that doesn't seek comfort, but acceptance.

“Now that you know… Will you wait for him? Until he’s ready?”

You nodded, out of inertia. The proximity made you feel dizzy, as if his energy were consuming you entirely, and the only thing left in you was that desire for him to finish what he started.

His beauty was nothing like Bob's. He was shy, discreet, cautious in his gestures. Sentry forced you to look at him. Not by imposition, but by nature. Because you couldn't help it. There was something about him that overwhelmed your senses, something that seemed made of light and gravity, and all of it pushed you to the edge of something you couldn't name.

There was no touch. No unnecessary words. Just that suspended instant in which your whole body understood that he could have touched you, and you would have allowed it. Not because he demanded it, but because there was something in you that had already given in without you realizing it.

You didn't know if it was the way he looked at you or how he seemed to be contained within himself, as if the universe were splitting open in his chest, but for a moment you stopped thinking.

You contemplated him as one contemplates something sacred. Not as one desires, but as one recognizes.

And that's where you truly felt it: divinity in its purest form. Not that of miracles or light, but that of the abyss. Of contained fire.

“I’ll go,” he exhaled. He allowed himself to caress your face one last time. “I don’t want Bob to lose his temper. I just… wanted you to know how much you mean. To both of us.”

He took a step back, and you instantly missed his warmth. You found a certain acceptance in his eyes, as if he knew his time had come to an end. It felt as if that version of himself couldn't last much longer in your presence without fading away.

“Can I ask you something?”

"Yeah?"

“Don’t hate him if he doesn’t remember tomorrow,” he said softly. You knew he was referring to Bob. “It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it. It’s that he can’t handle it.”

And with that last truth, he left.

There were no lights, no sounds. Only the faint emptiness left behind by an intense presence as it retreats. And you, standing in the kitchen, dinner cooling on the stove and your heart beating too close to your throat, realized that something inside you had just changed, too.

You didn't know if everything would be back to normal the next day.

But you knew, with absolute certainty, that you hadn't imagined it.

Although a part of you—the most rational, the most scared—would like to believe that it had all been a dream, a delusion, a fantasy brought on by tiredness or your own badly buried feelings.

Because in the end… was it Sentry who came to you?

Or Bob, in a form that even he doesn't understand?

You didn't know. And you probably never would. But the echo of his voice, the warmth of his presence, the weight of that gaze... that was real.

You couldn't tell anyone. Not because they wouldn't believe you, but because there was no way to explain it without breaking them, without exposing them to criticism. And because, at the same time, you were afraid it might break you a little too.

It had to become a secret. There was no other alternative.