COLLATERAL DAMAGE —

#UNEXCEPTIONAL ; independent & private rebecca barnes from Marvel 616 canon ( mcu mention ). headcanon based & adaptable. nursed by ellie ( she/her ). est. 2014

.                                       BECKY’S EXPERIENCE IN THE WAR .                                     cw: war, medical mention, injuries, death

.              BECKY NEVER ACTUALLY saw the combat as it was happening, but she could hear it. Having been stationed in one of the field hospitals that was closest to an active front line, she could often hear the gunfire, especially on otherwise still days in the countryside. While she was in several hospitals during her time in Europe, she more or less stayed in Ally field hospitals and surgical hospitals along one similar line outside of occupied France. 

While there, Becky treated mostly American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers, though she saw her fair share of many Ally soldiers. The first soldier who she knew she could never forget, however, was the first soldier to die while she treated him. When he came in, it was already a dire circumstance. His first field dressings — sterile gauze that was distributed to all soldiers as a first line to dress their wounds as quickly as they could to stave off infection — had bled straight through to the point of dripping, and the wound in his leg ( what was left of his leg, at least ) already looked infected. He had been dragged — at some points literally dragged — through the mud for almost two miles before they’d finally gotten him to a hospital, and she had been the first person to him.

She did what she could for him, but there was only so much she could do. She was prepping him to see the surgeon when he died, but it wasn’t the act of death that she knew she’d never forget: it was the quiet moments before he’d gone. He’d given her a little smile and had asked her what her name was. He told her he was from Canada, some place far west she didn’t quite catch the name of. He told her he was scared, and that he wanted to go home. He asked her to hold his hand before he went into surgery, and then he closed his eyes. 

Many days during the war, Becky felt like she experienced more losses than victories. While she was able to treat and help so many young men, while she was able to dress wounds and stave off infection and make them comfortable until they were able to be transferred even further out of the combat zone, there were just as many young men whose hands she held as they passed. Sometimes, if they called out for their mother, or their sister, or their sweetheart, or Mother Mary herself, Becky just held them and said I’m here. She was fighting a different kind of war than they were, than her brother was. She was fighting against time and blood and infection, and the experience quietly and surely softened so many of the sharp edges she had gained while growing. 

She was proposed to about half a dozen times. She said yes to each young man, just so he’d have a smile on his face before he passed, or before he was put under for surgery, or before he fell asleep to finally escape the pain his injury was causing. She even received a handful of letters of young men who had been sent home from their injuries, reaching out to thank the nurse who had been there in the middle of their personal hell. 

After months in the hospital, Becky started losing track of who the real enemy was. She knew there were named and labeled enemies they were at war with, but she spent her whole time at war against time, and blood, and infection. She saw boys still alive after losing half of themselves, and she had to convince them that their hearts were still beating, and that that was a good thing. It wasn’t a war she ever felt like she could win. 

She remembers so many of them, though her nightmares often put her brother’s face or Steve’s face on top of theirs when it makes her relive what she went through. Her mind runs through scenarios where she hadn’t been able to help a boy, and suddenly, she looks up and it’s her brother. It isn’t Jacky from New Hampshire anymore. It isn’t Claude, or Gary, and Ernest, or Paul. It’s Steve, his chest gaping from where he had been hit with a field gun. Or it’s Jimmy, talking to her one moment about how he wants to go home and then gone, just like that. 

. OUT. ||| Oooooh, I love this one, thank you for sending it!

My dog is a very delicate 100 pounds and the goodest boy

My ex boyfriend ( fiancé ) and I have recently invested in a cricut and I already know I'm going to be insufferable about it

My bookshelves are color coordinated which is a hilariously divisive fact for some people. Some people love it and some people hate it. 😂

DOES BECKY EVER FEEL BAD ABOUT BEING SURROUNDED BY POWERS? || In the beginning, yeah. Like, a whole lot. Being surrounded by the exceptional feeds into already-existing inferiority complexes that she has. But, in a big way, the scale of extraordinariness around her kind of softens the blow a whole lot faster. Like, people are doing things she’d never even wanted to do — things that are beyond the realm of human capability — and she settles really quickly into just realizing that if she got down about everything she couldn’t do, she’d be down for a really, really, really long time. Like, she can’t kick herself for not being able to fly when that would never be a possibility for her in the first place. She can’t kick herself for not being able to read minds, because why would she ever have even wanted to do that? The abilities of others are so far outside of her realm of possibility that they don’t really feed into the insecurities that she’d grown up with, and it makes it easier for her to settle and deal, accept and move on. Because why should she whine about what she can’t do when she’s never going to be able to do those things anyway? 

So she works really, really hard on what she can do. In the beginning, there’s a level of trying to compensate, and then, she just realizes that even extraordinary people need ordinary help sometimes. Even the guy who flies gets his shit rocked from time to time and he needs a bag of peas and a sharp word about looking where he’s going. She learns how to fill a role that she can fill, and sooner rather than later, she just comes to peace with being surrounded by enhanced or super people and just deals. 

Her time in the war certainly helps. She didn’t have time to wallow, and she didn’t have time to obsess over what she couldn’t control. There were too many young men coming into the evacuation hospitals all the time, and what she’d done five minutes ago didn’t matter. Having that kind of experience certainly shaped her to be a different person than the Becky before the war and before the final coffin-nail of loss she experienced. 

. "NO, I HAVEN'T seen him anywhere." Her lips disapeared between her teeth as she held back a smile when the nurse gave her a look that clearly said she didn't believe a single word coming out of Becky's mouth.

Considering they were both adults, they certainly were treated like misbehaving children more often than not. It was fine, though: this was the most childlike Becky had ever acted. It was the first time in her life she wasn't actively struggling. Considering the slowly-healing hole in her chest and the ever-mounting list of things she couldn't or shouldn't do, her feeling as free as she was leftg her a bit surprised.

The nurse who absolutely didn't believe a word that came out of Becky's lying mouth informed her that, if she were to see Mister Finnegan, she should remind him that it was the time of the evening where he was expected back in his room. Becky nodded solemnly, dark eyes following the nurse out the door before she leaned over the edge of the bed and peered under it.

. "I'm to let you know that it's bedtime."

. OUT. || Thank you so so so much!!! Ahhhhh I'm so happy to be back. I've been on disco with friends but my summer went so super busy and so much happened that I didn't even log onto the dash out of stress about not being able to be on here. I'm really well tho! I hope you're well too! XO