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John scrolls.
It’s a stupid thing to do, and he knows it. He knows that every comment he reads is another tiny incision under the skin, that every looping clip of his grief-fueled lapse in judgement is chipping away at something inside him, but his thumb moves anyway, swiping through headlines and posts and half-lit photos where his face is stretched and distorted, a monster mid-scream or mid-strike. He can’t stop. He can’t even make himself want to. It’s like some terrible, invisible hook under his ribs, pulling him toward every cruel word, every headline that calls him a murderer, a disgrace, a failure.
And it makes no sense, because Olivia’s in the next room.
His wife. His person. The one who stayed when everyone else—the military, the government, the world—didn’t. She’s here, and she’s hurting too, and he knows he should get up, should leave the damn phone alone, should stop chasing the approval of people who never gave a shit about him to begin with. But he can’t. There’s this yawning ache inside him that feels like it’ll swallow him whole if he stops looking. As if maybe one post—just one—might be different. One person might say, I get it, might say, I would’ve done the same.
As if that would fix a goddamn thing.
(It won’t. He knows that too.)
He can hear Olivia’s approach, light footsteps drawing near.
“Hey,” she says softly.
John doesn’t look up. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” she says. He thinks it’s a lie. She probably got up, saw his side of the bed still empty, and then the late hour. She knows where he’d be, if not beside her. “I’ve been up awhile. Kinda hard to sleep when your husband is camped out in the living room.”
He exhales, closes his eyes. He’s so fucking tired.
“I’m fine,” John says. It’s a plain lie, and Olivia knows it.
Olivia sighs. “No, you’re not.”
John forces himself to glance up.
She’s standing a few feet away, arms crossed, wearing one of his old West Point sweatshirts and a pair of leggings, expression tired in a way he recognizes too well these days. He can see the way her mouth goes tight, the lines at the corners of her eyes deepening, frustration curling up around exhaustion. It’s not new. Nothing between them is new anymore, except maybe how far apart they feel in the same room.
(His fault. What isn’t his fault these days?)
Olivia continues, “How long are you going to keep doing this?”
It isn’t the first time she’s asked. It’s not even the second or third. He’s not sure if her question now is referring to tonight or all the months prior, stuck in this same awful loop. It could be either or both, as Olivia stands there, like someone holding out their hands to a drowning man who won’t swim. And John feels like he’s stuck at the bottom of a well, the sound of her voice warping around the edges, distant and sharp at once.
“I—” John falters. He drags a hand down his face. “I needed to check some stuff.”
“You always need to ‘check some stuff,’ John,” Olivia says, and her voice has that sharper edge he recognizes, somewhere between irritation and concern. She’s worried, but John knows he’s been wearing her down. He wonders when she’d decide to give up on him. He thinks she’d be well justified in doing so. “Every night,” she continues. “What exactly are you looking for there?”
John tries to come up with a response. He can’t.
He ends up staring instead, at the way her chest rises and falls, and tries to focus on that. One thing at a time. She’s breathing, she’s right there, and if he could just focus on what’s in front of him instead of that horrible, final crack, and oh god, Lemar, Lemar, Lemar, wake up, please. He blinks a few times, as his gaze lifts to Olivia’s tired expression. There’s a part of him that wants to say: I’m fine, it’s not your problem. But the bigger, better part—the one that used to be, or at least tried to be, a good man—knows that’s a lie.
“I just…” John starts. His voice cracks, and he hates how small he sounds. “I need to know what they’re saying.”
Her expression hardens; not cruel, not unkind.
It’s worse: she looks wounded.
“Why?” she asks, and it’s not a rhetorical thing, not a throwaway. It lands between them, and John doesn’t know what to do with it. “Why does what they say matter more than what I do? Why do you let them matter more than me?”
John doesn’t have an answer for that, either.
At least, not one that makes any sort of sense. Not one that provides any sort of justification. Because the truth is it doesn’t matter more, not in any way that’s fair or right or earned—but it feels louder. It’s bigger, deeper, and an ocean of strangers with pitchforks is easier to drown in than the quiet disappointment in the eyes of the woman he loves. If he’d drown in both cases, John would rather not take anyone down with him.
But it seems he’s failing in that, too.
“I don’t know,” he says hoarsely.
It’s painfully, brutally honest.
He doesn’t know.
It shouldn’t. He knows it shouldn’t. But some days—most days—John doesn’t even recognize the person in the mirror. He stares at his reflection and all he can see is that uniform, that shield, the blood. The way it felt when the shield connected with that Flag Smasher’s chest. When the serum burned through his veins like wildfire and everything narrowed to a pinpoint of fury and grief and he’s fucking dead and it’s your fault and you deserve all that’s come for you afterward.
And John wonders: Was he always like this?
Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe all these terrible parts of him had been carved out by West Point, by his time serving in the military, and the worst of it was just amplified by the serum. Or maybe he was. Maybe it started long before that, when he was a kid with parents who told him he wasn’t enough, who drilled it into his head that the only way to prove his worth was to bleed for it. Like Mike did, because they were so proud of his older brother, and then Mike had died in his military service. Because Mike was a hero, and John was a wreck who had tarnished a good thing the moment it had been placed into his hands.
(Which case was better? Did it even matter now?)
He looks down at the phone in his hand.
At the stupid, glowing screen.
Is this the inevitable end of John Walker?
John wants to ask, wants to say: Liv, tell me I was better before.
But he’s afraid of the answer. Afraid she won’t lie to him.
“I miss you,” Olivia says, quieter now. There’s no accusation in it, just an aching pain that he can hear. It feels sharp against his enhanced senses. Or maybe that’s just the guilt. “I miss my husband. And I love you, but I don’t know how long I can do this if you won’t meet me halfway.”
His throat tightens. I love you, she says, but I don’t know how long I can do this, and John thinks that she’s stuck by him for far more than he deserves already. And he loves her for it. Loves her, full stop. Loves her in a way that makes his chest feel too small, like his heart might split its seams. She’s the only thing that makes him want to crawl out of this pit. But wanting and doing aren’t the same thing, and he’s so tired of doing anything at all. He’s exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix, and sometimes he thinks it’d be better for everyone if he closed his eyes and didn’t open them again.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and it’s not enough.
They both know it.
Olivia takes a seat beside him, and John turns as she takes him by the hands. Her face is so close now, and she still smells like that peach soap that she’s been using since high school, and god, she’s beautiful. “I can’t—” Olivia cuts herself off, takes a breath. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself.” She exhales, and it sounds like it hurts. “Watching you let strangers online ruin you more than me telling you I love you. I’m here. I’m trying. But this—” Her voice wavers. She catches herself. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t put in the work too.”
And then, suddenly, like a whisper in the back of his mind—
Lemar’s voice: Time to go to work.
John can hear it clear as day, accompanied with that bright, supportive grin Lemar had, because he had so much faith and pride in him, and John had fallen short of all that Lemar had believed of him. It unravels something inside him, breaks a knot loose that he’s kept buried for months. He’s not being fair, he knows. Loss wasn’t held in isolation. Olivia was grieving Lemar too, and she’d done it while having to deal with John.
“I’m sorry,” John chokes out. “I’m so sorry, Liv. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know how to be in this world without him. Without—without—”
He scrubs a hand over his face, trying to breathe around the weight in his chest. It feels like drowning, like he’s back in that square, the shield in his bloodstained hands, a hundred faces looking up at him like he was a monster. Who was he—what was he if he couldn’t be useful? There had always been some bar to reach: championships, and medals, and promotions. John strived for them, and let his worth be tied up in what he could achieve. Without any of it, where did that leave him?
It felt like all he amounted to now was a burden.
Lemar wouldn’t have collapsed like this.
Olivia would be better off without him.
“I wake up every day,” he says, voice breaking, “and I wonder if it would’ve been easier for everybody if it was me in that box instead of Lemar.”
His words hang in the air. Neither of them moves.
“God,” Olivia whispers, and she squeezes his hands tight. He lets out a jagged breath, and feels the sting in his eyes. “I knew you were in a bad place, but I didn’t know it was like that.”
“No, no, Liv, I don’t—I don’t want to die,” John says, and it sounds like he’s convincing himself more than her. It is true, though. He’s not looking to die. Not exactly. He just doesn’t care most days if he makes it back or not. Sometimes, it feels like Lemar is already waiting for him somewhere. “I just—maybe you’d be better off if I weren’t dragging you—”
“Don’t,” Olivia interjects, letting go of his hands to take him by the face, palms on his jaw, pulling him towards her until their foreheads are pressing against each other. John blinks. His entire view is of her furious, shiny eyes. “Don’t you dare. You are my husband. I love you, and I choose you, and I will keep choosing you. And you can’t—” Her voice breaks, wrecked. “You can’t do that to me. I spent years worried you wouldn’t come home one day. And then it wasn’t you. It was Lemar. And now I’m scared every time you leave that I’m not even going to get a call about you not coming back.”
Her words are sharp, but she’s crying now.
John shifts to wipe her tears, as Olivia pulls back, lowering her hands. “I love you,” he breathes. “I love you, I love you, I’m sorry. I—Jesus—”
They sit quiet for a few minutes.
Olivia moves closer as she gathers herself, pressed against John as she continues, “I didn’t mind being a military wife,” she says, and John knows this. She’d been nothing but supportive of him and Lemar when they’d enlisted. “I thought it was fine as long as you came home. And you always did, until,”—until Lemar didn’t, she doesn’t say—“until you started with these off-the-books ops for whatever Valentina is part of, and I don’t trust her, and I need you to tell me you’ll keep coming home.”
John feels like his chest might cave in. He wraps his arms around her, burying his face in her hair, breathing her in. She smells like peach soap and something warm, something that’s always meant home. “I don’t want to leave you,” he says, the words wet against the top of her head. “I just…I don’t know if I’m…worth…”
I don’t think I’m worth all this effort.
Being who I am. What I am.
John doesn’t quite say the rest aloud, but Olivia hears it anyway. She gently extricates herself from his hold, leaning back. Then, she cups his face again, and makes him look at her. “You’re not a bad person, John.”
He lets out a jagged breath. “Aren’t I?”
Olivia meets his gaze, steady. “You’re not well,” she says. “You’re hurt. But if you want to get out of this,”—she lightly taps near his temples, hands still cradling his face—“you have to stop letting people who don’t give a shit about you steer the ship.”
John swallows. “And if I can’t?”
“We can,” Olivia says, with certainty. “We’ll get through this.”
John exhales, and it comes out almost like a laugh.
“It’s always we with you,” he murmurs.
Olivia smiles, fond. “Yeah. That’s the point, John.”
Her words settle something in him.
It’s been so long since anything felt this simple.
“Okay,” John says, and echoes her words. “We’ll get through this.”