This is not the Endgame

Bucky went to the team meeting the next day with some updates about an issue with the foundation of the project building and what the architect recommended, but the meeting was late to start and there were no donuts. Ava was late. Finally Nelson, her boss, hustled in. "Ava was mugged last night," he said right off. "She's got a concussion, cuts and scrapes, and a knee injury, so she'll be out for at least a couple of days. It's not an ideal solution, I know, but I'll fill in until she's cleared to come back." And they went around the table, everybody bringing their updates and issues. Ben and Bucky described their situation, and Nelson jotted this down to take to the client. Once everybody was happy, the meeting was over. Bucky had to go check on the rebar situation--their order had been shorted for some reason, and he didn't know if he should call Ava anyway, if she'd want to hear from him. So he kept his mind on work, nailing down the details and finding solutions to the problems he uncovered. They weren't major problems; the construction company and the architects were experienced and well-regarded, but on a project of this size, there were no shortage of little problems that had to be resolved. Fortunately, Ben was an excellent architectural technician, good at explaining things, and Bucky was learning a lot.

So he kept his concern to himself until he went home, dumped his stuff, and went up for a beer with Steve. They stretched out in the sofa recliners--this was excellent modern technology--and watched the game, eating pizza. Bucky mentioned the mugging, and Steve looked uncomfortable. Bucky reached over and poked his friend in the side where he was a little ticklish. "What?"

"It happened nearby, last night," he said, swatting back. Dammit. Bucky had eaten dinner out after work, making friends with some of the other employees, then hit the grocery store. He hadn't come home til late. "She agreed to come look at an apartment, but she was mugged, a couple of guys were hiding in the alley. Sam was over, he let me borrow his car, tracked down the muggers, retrieved her bag. She'd used pepper spray on them, practically had to pry the canister out of her hand. The cops wouldn't come out," Steve said angrily, "said she could come down to make a report. But she'll be ok, Buck."

"Doesn't really sound like it, from what Nelson said at the meeting."

"She has a grade 2 concussion, she was sensitive to sound and light, dazed, sluggish, had a balance problem. It had gotten better while she was at the urgent care, I took her to the one a couple streets over." Bucky nodded. "She had a big gash over her temple that had to be stitched, and her knee was swollen, reddish, and hot. They diagnosed some damage to the ACL, but not enough that surgery should be needed. She'll have to do some PT, they gave her a brace and crutches." He sighed. "I insisted on her staying the night here, so I could monitor. I'd signed her out." Bucky's initial reaction was to yell about why he hadn't been told, but he thought things through a little. He wasn't her boyfriend, she was kind of his boss. He grunted. "I did have to explain the whole "romantic asexual" thing to her, though. She was kind of nervous about me, said that there's often a disconnect between the private and public faces of famous people even though I seemed ok."

"How'd she take it?" Bucky asked, diverted. There would be an issue if Ava had been rude to Steve.

"Totally fine, actually. I was kind of surprised, but on the other hand, people these days are often a lot more accepting of non-heterosexuality." Except online; he'd checked out support groups and communities, and been taken aback by people's denial of asexuality as a valid choice, that he just hadn't met the right person yet or just had a low sex drive. And romantic asexuality seemed to be a contradiction to them. He'd muttered a curse and not gone back to those sites. He didn't really feel like he needed support, anyway. Bucky and Sam were fine with it, which was what he needed. "She said that she got a monastic vibe from me anyway, whatever that means, and after some reflection, thought that it made perfect sense. She relaxed a lot. Said that there'd been an outside chance that I was one of those guys who say they want to be a woman's friend but were just waiting to make a move, or a closet date rapist. That's a terrible thing to do," he said, diverted, and Bucky nodded. "So she slept out on the recliner so she could keep her knee elevated, refused to take the bed. Sam went to the 24 hour pharmacy and picked up a bottle of Tylenol for her. I put the step stool into the shower so she could wash off the blood but not worry about falling over, and after her hair dried she went to sleep. She was much better this morning, left this afternoon. Wanda came over to drive her home." Bucky thought about all this.

"So did she ever see the apartment?" Steve rubbed his face, smiling.

"Yeah, actually. I showed her a couple of the units on this floor before she left, explaining the differences, how it was all going to work out, because nothing's finished yet."

"What did she say?" Bucky asked patiently.

"She liked them, especially the corner one since it has two extra windows. And she really liked that the elevator is working. Would it be a problem if she moved in again?"

"He asks, after showing her," Bucky said, kidding his friend, who rolled his eyes. "No, she's entitled to live wherever she wants. I won't bother her."

"I meant if you would have a problem."

"I know. No, I'm fine. She'd be a good tenant." And it would serve Bucky right to have this reminder of how much he screwed up. Sam might be right, he was a little dramatic. Steve sighed.

"Well, she's not in a condition to decide right now," he said. "And her lease still has a couple months to run." Bucky grunted, and they went back to watching the game. The conversation revived, turned to what Bucky was doing at work and Steve's classes. Steve got out his sketchbook and started a portrait of his friend, who was used to it. They talked about Steve's plans to be an art therapist; Steve had run a therapy group for survivors of the Hiatus, but acknowledged that he hadn't been too successful since he'd been obsessed with Peggy, who'd died years before the Snap.

It took two more days until Ava came back to work, and even then she had a couple of half-days before the concussion was healed. He didn't realize that she was the one who supplied the donuts until she crutched into the team meeting carrying bags of them. He jumped up to help her, then ghosted over to the coffee machine to brew her a cup, doctoring it the way he knew she liked. They gave updated reports to get her back up to speed, Nelson chipping in where applicable, and they received new assignments and things to follow up on. Later that afternoon, he dropped by her office to hand off some paperwork, an inspection report.

"Oh, good," she said, leafing through it. "Finally. I thought we'd never get an inspector down."

"At least it passed, and they can get started on the next phase." She nodded and put the report into a folder, patting it with satisfaction. He passed over a package of two new pepper spray canisters. The small size that was legal in the city. He knew she always had one in her hand when she walked anywhere at night. "I'm sorry you were hurt, I know Steve feels terrible about it."

"It's not so bad," she said.

"You had a bad concussion. You're still on crutches," he pointed out, a little flabbergasted.

"The concussion's healed, my knee isn't as bad as they thought. I've already ditched the brace, and in a couple of days, I start going without the crutch. I've had worse." She looked at him; he was unconvinced. "Close the door and sit down." It wouldn't do a lot of good; the fronts of the offices were all glass and once she'd joked at a meeting that she felt like she was in a terrarium. He swung the door closed and perched on one of the two chairs across her desk. She leaned forward and kept her voice down.

"I'm not saying this to minimize the suffering you've endured. I certainly haven't had decades of torture and experimentation, but this also isn't a competition. I've had a lot of trauma myself following the Snap. I'm only going to say this once, so listen up. It wasn't just losing my parents, home, my sister leaving too. It was watching people turn to ash and fade away. I can't smell gasoline without thinking of the gas tanker that had a dusted driver; it rammed a streetlight and started to leak. A car hit it and burst into flame. The smell of the people burning... the explosion took out half a city block, the stench was unforgettable. During the Hiatus, I spent some time homeless, first living with other homeless down by the river, then in my storage unit, but at least I could access showers and toilets on campus. I had a job, all the hours I could handle, but it didn't pay much, not much did, plus the whole gray market furniture sales, and I was malnourished for most of the Hiatus because food was so expensive. Like a lot of people I haunted dumpsters for food that wasn't completely inedible, I knew where every soup kitchen was within a five mile radius of my location, I qualified for what government assistance there was, but there was never enough food for everybody. The university, in my last year, dug up its lawns and leased 10 x 10 feet plots for urban farming, and let us use its kitchen and equipment to preserve our food. The vegetables that I canned helped get me through the next three months, until I'd passed the exam to qualify as a civil engineer and finally got a job I could live on. I caught every disease that came around, it seemed--colds, the flu, pneumonia, bronchitis, some weird bugs. Every scratch I got seemed to get infected, and I had dysentery for the better part of two years that I couldn't shake because even Pepto, which is used for bacterial dysentery, was $20 a bottle and I couldn't afford it, couldn't pay for anything more than aspirin, actually, even if there was something available. I was raped once and assaulted on another occasion, probably would have been raped again but I hit the guy on the head with a brick. Might have killed him, don't know, don't care. I was beaten up a few times so that I could be robbed. I have one truly happy memory from the Hiatus, which was when I got my first job offer that let me get out of the storage unit and into an apartment. And this wasn't in any way unusual; there were homeless encampments all over the place because cops and private security kept squatters out of buildings, enforced occupancy limits, and there were massive disruptions of the food chain that took most of the Hiatus to work out.

"I want you to know this so that you understand. I am not a victim. I am not a survivor, because people call you that like it's some kind of awkward, condescending, patronizing pity prize for your suffering. Or like you should be lauded for getting on with your life, of all the stupid things. Or because they want to be nice, but their approval of me is irrelevant. I am just someone who has had bad experiences, and I refuse to give them power over my life. It took a lot of hard work to get to this point. I refuse to let you or Steve or anyone pity me." She shrugged. "It hurt a hell of a lot more when you dumped me. This was just people preying on someone they thought was weaker than them. And it's true that while I am physically not as strong as most men, I have a degree of spitefulness that they are not expecting." And Bucky, flashing to hearing that an entire can of pepper spray had been discharged onto the two muggers, wasn't about to deny this. That she spent a few moments to make them really suffer when she was beat up and bleeding... was not to be underestimated.

"You want to do something for me? Just respect me. Because I don't think that you do. Spare me your pity, your sorrow, whatever. I don't need it, can't use it, don't want it." Bucky's eyes had gotten bigger as she spoke. He didn't know how he'd missed this much steel in her before.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and fled.