Chapter 28
"Raven?" Eun Gi shook Raven by her shoulder. "Raven? Wake up." Her voice was soft and urgent, urging Raven from her sudden slumber.
"Wha?" She yawned, stretching. "Did my phone ring? Did someone text me?" Instinctively she touched her chest, checking for any tangles she might have made in her necklace. Instead she felt skin, that her loose top had been buttoned down to expose her chest. This wasn't strange if it was just Eun Gi in the room, but there was something on her chest that she didn't want her to see.
"What are you not telling me?" Eun Gi demanded lividly. "What happened to you?"
"I can explain," she begins to say. This is the worst day of all days. Being beat up by mercenaries, fighting with the Avengers, people bringing up all these bad memories, crying in front of everyone and now this. Raven can see the fear in Eun Gi's eyes as they gawk at her chest, the bruising had spread since this morning. Compared to all her years of broken bones, chemical and open flame burns, this mar on her chest is almost artful.
The blow from Fatty's shotgun hadn't broken bones, that much Raven was sure of but, if the state of her skin meant anything her muscles and blood were probably horrendously bruised. The purple blotch bloomed in the center of her chest like a hellish flower, with red lines highlighting the random layers of the irritated area. It hid the faint burns from the taser disks well, if you didn't gawk at it like Eun Gi had. Now she likely knew everything that had happened before she showed up. Knowing her she was beyond furious, guilty and hurt. All rolled into a spiky ball ready to be thrown at her head.
"Explain?" She snapped. "Oh you are going to explain and not just to me!"
"Wait, what?" Eun Gi wouldn't, she wouldn't. "You aren't going to…"
"I'm getting the Avengers and you are going to see a doctor about that! I don't care how much you say you're fine, you are going to a doctor!"
She stomped off before Raven even had a chance to make a case. She probably deserved it, she had told so much lies and kept so many secrets from her friends it was miracle they liked her. So Raven laid back down on the bed, face up breathing softly as the day took its final swing at her. Behind her closed eyelids and the rhythm of her breathing she heard Janos, as if he were sitting on the bed beside her.
"My invincible girl, why do you keep hurting yourself?"
"Piss off," she told her daydream.
"I told you that no one would understand you. But you never listen to me, you're so insistent on having your own way."
"It's not too hard since you're way is complete bollocks."
His voice was deceptively fond. "You will destroy yourself one day and have it no other way. You make Icarus look cautious."
"Icarus was an ill-prepared pussy."
"Language Raven, there's no need for swearing."
"Drop dead."
"After you, my invincible girl."
Tony was talking to Avengers about a possible plan of attack in case Raven's handler came back when he was interrupted by a violent banging on the glass door to his workshop. Eun Gi stood there breathing heavily, one hand shaking while the other kept pounding the glass. It was shatter proof but at this rate she might put a crack into it. He would have thought something was wrong if she didn't look like she was ready to breathe fire.
"Woah, woah, woah, easy with the glass!" He opened the door. "What's the matter?"
She spat, "That idiot is what's wrong." She grabs his by his shirt tugging him by this shirt. "Come with me, all of you!" She ordered.
"What's this about?" Steve hollered over the small crowd heading to Raven's room. Eun Gi's voice seemed to gather them into a herd, shuffling them out of the workshop.
"That idiot!" Was Eun Gi's shrill reply. "That stupid, irresponsible idiot!"
Raven looked more relaxed than he would, if it were him and Pepper going at it. In fact she looks exhausted despite having gotten up from a nap, the first bad sign. The second was the damage on her skin, the ugly purple bruise spread across her chest like a hellish rash. Pepper gasped loudly because it looked like it hurt, like Raven shouldn't be able to breathe and here she was sitting up without much complaint.
"Holy shit," Bucky breathes, "what the hell is that?"
"It's a bruise," Raven muttered, in no hurry to button up herself. Maybe she was too sore to put in any effort. "A bruise with some faint burning…"
Eun Gi voice breaks through the controlled calm Raven had over the room. "How did it happen? How did it get like that? Tell us," she demanded, "and no lies!" Raven opens her mouth and she yells once more, almost to tears. "I said no lies!"
"Fine," Raven snapped. "But just know, I was going to tell you but…"
She gestures to the room, which is understandable but Eun Gi isn't having it. Tony wouldn't have believe this girl was the same girl who held a knife to Steve's throat and laughed. Everyone can sense that this something they do a lot; yelling about Raven's health and safety.
"You could have told me the second the fight was over. Eun Gi I'm hurt. I think something is wrong! We had a whole day to ourselves!"
"I didn't want to worry you! I didn't want to talk about it!"
Whatever Raven says it knocks Eun Gi back like a slap. "This is something we talk about later! This isn't like talking about Janos, what happened at Felix's house or my father! This is about you, you and your health! That can never wait."
"I've been through worse."
"I don't care if you've been through worse! You always tell me when you've been hurt," Eun Gi screamed, face going red. "Damn you Raven this is not about appearing weak it's about making sure you're okay! Now what happened?"
Raven took a deep pained breath. "In order of events… One of the guys injected me with adrenaline… That drug I can't take unless I plan to have an uber dramatic suicide. He held me down and got me here." She twists her neck to point to the spot on the neck that seemed scratched up. "I knew it wasn't regular adrenaline. That it was twice as strong because it was the type that they used on me on the bunker, it's fast acting… So I knew what was happening the second the pain started, so I took four taser disks and electrocuted myself." She points to the four spots along her chest without looking. "Here, here, here and here. I passed out and when I woke up my heart was still beating, I had the effects of the drug but I stopped my heart from stopping."
"That how you managed to keep up before I got there…" Eun Gi holds her head in dread. "How you managed to break someone's neck twice. You were on some sort of… high."
"A manipulated sense of invincibility – yeah, my mind was kinda numbing out the pain. And the bruising is from when we fought the rest of them in Connecticut. Fatty fired a shotgun at me, close range. I fell back and I couldn't breathe for a moment. My jacket filtered the damage." She gets up to go into her closet fetching a black jacket none of them had seen before, along with a flatten shotgun bullet. Raven put the two side by side. "I had this jacket hidden underneath the one I had when you found me, it's made from vibrainium." She took a deep breath as she went on. "Yes, it's bullet and fire proof – similarly to a firefighter's coat, it can withstand open flame for about half and hour before you start to feel any serious discomfort."
Tony picks up the hoodie marveling at its craftsmanship, slightly more impressed with that than the danger Raven had been in. This was amazing and she made it all on her own. He bet no one had a clue she made this and wore before every fight. "You made this?" He remarked in awe. Then his fingers brush along the area where the bullet would have hit. "It almost tore through…"
"To be fair I didn't anticipate close range, high powered bullets. It was more made for long distance sniper rifle rounds… I was going through a paranoia phase," she hastily explained.
"Your chest could have caved in from the force alone," Bucky states tightly. Everyone can tell he wants to yell at her. He knows better than anyone how seemingly non-fatal wounds can escalate to death. "You know better than that," he said disappointedly.
Raven turns sour, his words pull an ugly snarl from her face. "Oh right, I'm supposed to think about everything! I gotta be thinking about how I can bloody die and which way, I gotta calculate the minutes before I die and how to prevent it because Raven can't turn off her brain for two minutes!"
"That's not what I meant."
"Then what the - did you mean then?" She screams. "I gotta think about everyone including myself, I gotta always know what's going to happen because god forbid I relax for a minute and just rest! God forbid I just catch me breath and be grateful I woke up at all and was capable of basic motor functions without losing control of my bladder!" On the last note of her rant Raven clutches her chest and lowers her voice aggressively. "I shouldn't be yelling… I shouldn't be yelling." She sits down taking in slow, calculating breaths.
Eun Gi folds her arms. "You are going to see a doctor. I don't care what you say."
"Fine," Raven relents. "It's absolutely unnecessary but fine."
Fine seems to be the most profane thing Raven could say. It rolls off her tongue more acidic than most other four lettered words.
"I mean it," Eun Gi warns her. "You're going to take better care of yourself now that you're out of Hydra. No more excuses."
"I said… Fine," she hissed.
Within minutes Raven was back where she had began when she first came to Tower, Tony's personal physician came to examine her. He was less tender this time, not to say he was cruel but he knew Raven's wasn't as frail to bad news as he previously thought. Raven never paid much attention to him, not expecting to meet him again in hurry but it looked like they might end up being on a first name basis soon. Tony called him Doc but Pepper introduced him as Dr. Shelley, Raven might have liked him more if she knew he shared surnames as her favorite writer. But it was too late for redoing first impressions. What was stranger was that he oddly reminded her of another author, Stephen King; beady eyes, thin glasses and thin lips on a pronounced jaw and chin. He takes one look at her bruised chest and stares at her like she should be dead. The sentiment was getting old fast.
"On a scale of one to ten, can you describe the pain you're in?" He asked her point blank.
"Uhhh," she droned, unable to answer him. No one has asked her that since she was rescued. Where does it hurt? Can't you feel that? Yes, Raven is sore and her body is stiff but to rate her pain seems pointless. She's not in agony from her bruises, other things are hurting more; the realization that she may really have to kill Janos to be free of him, she made Eun Gi upset, her other friends being in danger and all her well kept secrets being knocked open. Those worries cut deeper than this peculiar bruise. "Five, four?" She grumbles. What was a bruise to broken ribs, bone jutting out of your foot and your back being eaten away by burns? On top of a stamped out heart.
"A four?" He gaped, as though Raven's mouth and her body were on two different planes. "You got shot in the chest by a shot gun, who's bullet has been known to blow faces off. After being forced into cardiac arrest. And this pain is a four?"
Raven sees Janos again, in the corner of the room. In one of his neat suits smiling at her with his controlled fondness. Kindly and cold with his combed back dusty brown hair and small grey eyes. This is the man who was prepared to let her die. The same man who tucked her in at night with a cup of honey and lemon tea. Seeing him hurts worse.
"Three," she decided firmly. "It's a three."
Dr. Shelley blinks once and makes a wild guess. "You had worse?"
"Yeah… So I'm fine." She keeps saying this although nothing is fine. Raven wants to scream and cry, howl at the moon until this intangible ache goes away. She wishes Felix was here, he always knew what to say when Janos got under her skin. He would know – But what if he's dead? What if Rogelio killed his own son? It wouldn't be the first despicable thing he's done.
"Miss Rocher – Raven," he corrected himself. "Are you feeling okay?"
"You just asked me that."
"No, I asked about the bruise, not you." He sets down his clipboard. On another day Raven would have gotten him out the room with a biting snark. He'd be fumbling half-assed diagnosis's just to get away from her. Today she only wishes to be swallowed up and never found again. "How are you feeling?"
"You aren't my therapist."
"No, but you know better than anyone how medicine can alter someone's personality." He adds, "I don't want to prescribe anything that won't help."
"I don't need medicine," she protests softly. "I'm… sick of people giving me pills to take." She rubs her face ignoring the stings of discomfort. It's all too much and she can't keep quiet anymore. "Fed up with people asking me how I feel and then shoving something at it to fix it. Maybe you can't fix it!" She shouted. "Maybe there's nothing to be done, Jesus!"
Dr. Shelley doesn't make a sound. Instead he fetches Raven glass of water from a dispenser in the examination room. "One more test and then I leave," he promised. "I need to see how irritated your bruise is. Is that okay with you?" He asked sincerely.
"Fine," Raven muttered.
Thankfully he's clinically quick, but he couldn't resist poking the bear one last time.
"I would like to ask you a few questions, since you've agreed to a thorough health check." Raven doesn't bother putting back on her shirt as she listens. "Have you had any other serious injuries that I should know about? Besides the ones we've discussed. Head traumas, for example?"
Without thinking Raven tells him everything. "I had two skull fractures from being thrown from twenty feet give or take, and I was subject to routine electrocutions as a form of torture three months ago."
Dr. Shelley blinks at Raven, slowly absorbing what she said. "You had two major head traumas and you were tortured via electrocutions… What was the time between these incidents?"
"A year," Raven answers definitively. "Fourteen months at best."
"So you barely recovered only to be injured again, and again." He mutters the last part more to himself. "You are aware the side effects of repeated head trauma? Whether by blunt force or electricity?"
"Missing memories, personality change, disturbed sleep patterns, I know I know." She rubs the back of her head. "If the pain wasn't going to kill me I'd wish it had. So are you going to try and prescribe something for that, or are you going to sit around and see what happens?"
Dr. Shelley comes out of the examination room in a state of mute hurry. He goes to where everyone is standing but looks mainly to Eun Gi. Without a single glance at anyone else he asks her. "I need you tell me right now, about Raven when she had her skull fracture injury and when she was tortured, has her personality changed? Was she different? I need you to tell me right now."
His tone is frightening urgent it infected everyone."Woah, Doc, what's going on?" Tony intervened.
"Mr. Stark," he said carefully. "I have a suspected diagnosis for Raven but I need a reliable source of medical history. You, Miss Shin. So tell me, what happened with Raven?"
For a silent second, everyone can see Eun Gi's first knee-jerk reaction was to lie. She stopped herself and told the truth instead. "I…" She murmured, a little lost at where to begin.. This is the softest anyone heard her speak. "She… Got meaner… quieter," she said. "When she got very angry she hurt people, not in scary ways but in ways Raven would never do."
"So her personality changed." Dr. Shelley goes grim. "She became extremely aggressive. How aggressive?"
"Intense," Eun Gi said. "She never hurt anyone she liked, but if someone got her mad she would… It was only people we didn't know or care about." Her hollow attempt to defend Raven doesn't go unnoticed. Was Raven the one with the quote-unquote power in this relationship? "And sometimes…" She went on. "She'd hurt herself. She would hit walls and mirrors, and scream."
"And Raven used to do those things before?" He pushed.
She shook her head. "Blood used to make her sick and then one day she didn't mind being covered in it."
Now Dr. Shelley had the courage to face the others. He turned primarily to address Tony and Pepper but with enough voice that everyone could hear. "I just wanted to have some sort of confirmation… I can't compare brain scans but these injuries that have been backed up by Miss Shin and Raven herself." He rubs his head unsure for a second, whether he wanted to continue or not. "These type of injuries have one thing in common; brain damage. I suspect Raven has been so extensively and repeated abused that not only are we dealing with psychological but neurological problems. I wouldn't be surprised if Raven's pain receptors aren't even working properly."
"Huh?" Eun Gi echoed, lost in the medical jargon.
"Raven has been hurt so much, she can't feel pain like normal people do. Most people see it as becoming stronger but her brain is adjusting to damage that has made her mind… numb. For all we know, Raven could be in serious pain but she can't feel it until it is at a critical point."
Eun Gi holds her head in horror as she struggles for a seat. Clint being the mascot for the growing brood of damaged kids Shield's collecting, goes to her side. "Hey, deep breaths okay? Go a little easy on her Doc."
"We are past that point Mr. Barton, Raven needs rest. And I mean serious rest. Raven's mind and body has been on a downward spiral, it's compelling to say that her stubbornness is keeping her alive but medically it's her damaged brain fooling her until she heals on her own. If you want this kid to live past thirty you will listen to me, all of you. Raven needs several months of rest. She needs it or her body will collapse and I can guarantee you she will not get back up." He turned to Eun Gi. "You're the only one she'll listen to, so you need to make sure she relaxes okay? She needs to lie down, to not overwork herself. She needs to heal properly."
With a tearful eyes she nodded. "Is she really… so sick?"
"Her body is hurting," Dr. Shelley told her. "And her mind does not know."
No one noticed when Bucky had left the room until they all realized he wasn't there.
Bucky had snuck away to go into the examination room where Raven sat on the table tiredly buttoning up her shirt. She glanced up at him and forced a weak smile. He knew she was hurting and like Steve she was too damn stubborn to ask for help. He didn't have to listen to Stark's doctor to know that Raven was in trouble, Hydra was killing her slowly, this life she didn't ask for was killing her. He made a promise to help her and he was going to keep that promise, Raven gave him enough hope and strength to find Steve and start over. She deserved someone like that too.
"They gossiping about me in there?" She wondered softly.
Bucky didn't answer her with any niceties. "What do you think?" Raven is so much like Steve, trapped in a small, sickly body with the heart of twenty men. It's no wonder the two don't get along. They're so alike they could be related. So he knows excactly how to get through her thick skull. "I thought Steve used to give me heart attacks, but you…" He shook his head. "I'm feeling my age, pipsqueak."
"You were one of the people who asked," she pouted. "I told you they would be ugly stories." She sits down with a weak whine. It makes Bucky's fists clench. "Eun Gi's crying isn't she? She always does that when it comes to my health."
"You mad or something?"
"Nah," she muttered. "Just tired." She yawns. "I wish I could sleep for like a week."
"Why don't you?" He suggests. Coming to stand beside her he folds his arms and fakes apathy. "I mean they're going to make sure you do anyways."
Everything he's heard from Stark, about her handler, her and that girl, he doesn't know Raven that well. He wanted to change that. "I remember these summers in Brooklyn, it was so hot you didn't want to wake up for work." He chuckled. "Me and Steve had these shitty jobs, real backbreaking stuff."
"Yeah?" She yawned. "I've never been a fan of summer. Lack of beach body and all that. I always loved winter. It was the last time everything was normal…" She observes him with playful suspicion. "You aren't trying to break the ice about me and Eun Gi are you?"
"Not really… Kids get to do that huh?" He mused with no visible emotion. "That's okay now?"
"Didn't you get the twenty-first century welcome chat?" She teased. "Gays are totally cool now but assholes are still about. The words you can't say anymore."
"I got the last one – Sam told me about that." He cleared his throat tightly. "Steve's never really told me about the whole…"
"I don't know why you're so bashful, you lot live in the gayest cities in America, then and now. You can't tell me you never met one drag queen, running from the police?"
Bucky smirked with smothered chuckle. "A lot of things happened in that city." He turns his head to look down at her. "You know, you really gotta slow down… Take it easy, be a kid."
"I try to, but no one let's me." Raven winces and rolls her shoulders. "You ever wonder what you're going to do with yourself sometimes? I mean how you fit into shit and if you can? Everybody wants me to take it easy but… I don't know, I haven't taken in easy for years, I'm always worrying about stuff, knowing stuff that will keep you up at night. I wish I could be a normal kid, go to uni, get a regular job but I think that I'm way past that."
"I… can't remember much what I wanted out of life besides… well knowing Steve. I don't know what to tell you Raven. Maybe you can -"
"If you say help people I will punch you in the throat," Raven warned. "I've spent my whole life helping people, who never gave me back shit. Helping people is a thankless job which I don't have the heart for." She inhales, grimacing. "I'm not a good person, I can say that. I've done some horrible things Bucky, things that I gotta live with and a reputation that isn't going to go away. I may have escaped Hydra but in some ways they won. I'm no good for anything anymore. I probably won't even make it to thirty because of the hell they put my body through. Eun Gi hates talk like that, but it's true."
"Hey, that's not true." Bucky reached over wrapping a metal arm around her shoulder. "You're a good person." He pulled her into his side. "They didn't win because we're here."
Raven disagreed. "For you maybe, you got to keep something from your past. You chose to fight for this country when you had your head and you still want to after everything, you got what you wanted. I lost everything, the person I should have been died the second my handler adopted me. And everything that made the old me me was taken from me. You got to have so much more than me, and you might not like to hear that but, at least your mom got to say goodbye to you. She got to have closure, mine died not knowing if she even managed to save me. I was still a baby to her." She pulled his hand off her shoulder. "You have no idea what I've lost Bucky, that I'm still losing. First it was my mind, now my life. What's left of it anyways." She rises from beside him. "I know you wanna get to know me, be friends… Just don't waste your breath, alright?"
"Don't be such a punk," Bucky snapped. "God, I thought Steve was a pain in the ass but you take the cake. You want me to be straight, fine! I do wanna make it up to you because you saved me. I feel less than the goddamn weapon Hydra wanted me to be because I forgot about you, that I thought I killed you and left you in that place. You saved my life Raven, you treated me like human being no matter how much trouble you got in, you made me remember Steve and my name. And the second I get another chance I can't open my stupid mouth and stick up for you… Not like your girlfriend who was ready to kill someone for giving you a little hassle."
She stiffly refuses to look at him. "You don't have to," was her soft reply.
"I want to."
He held her by her shoulders, unbeknownst that Tony had done the same hours ago. It shook her how gentle his metal arm was, unlike all the other organic ones that caused her pain. How Janos would clutch her wrist, tugging once, hard enough to pull her arm out it's socket when his temper arose. And here was Bucky, the ex-fist of Hydra holding her as preciously as Tony did.
"Do you get it now?" Bucky told her. "I'm gonna look out for you, the best I can."
Felix told her something similar when she was twelve. As long as your with me, no one's going to hurt you. No one better than me knows what horrendous assholes fathers can be. You can stay here as long as you like and whenever okay? I'll give you your own little wing. You can ride the horses and climb the trees. You can let here be home. Raven missed him more than anyone, and Bucky split that wound open and sliced it down the middle.
"C'mon don't cry," he soothed taking her into his arms. "I gotcha kid. I gotcha."
It was the type of hug she hated most, face buried in chest, trapped with no way to swiftly run. But she getting used to it with these people. The reason she was crying was because Felix might be dead. Eun Gi was hopeful but she didn't know Rogelio Valquez, she never saw how tense it was between the two men. How Felix was ready to chose her over his own family, and sometimes he did. The possibility of never seeing him again felt too real with Bucky's speech, was the universe replacing him before she found out he was dead?
What about all her other friends, what would Janos and Rogelio do to them if they gave up on luring her into traps? It was all too much. Having her life uprooted, the roles of loved ones re-casted over and over. Raven felt like a rock trapped in a changing current being beat down from the waves slowly turning into a pebble. For the first time in months she wanted to go home, back to the way things were without this frightening new way of living.
Hello lovelies! I'm still maintaining my weekly update streak folks! And you're getting some more Bucky-Raven moments at last!
As always read and review. Any feedback is welcomed and craved.
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