Basic Training, Take Two
Olivia sat on a small bench in what appeared to be some sort of training room of the base. There were mats on the floor and on the walls, but it was far too large to be a cell. Natasha and Maria were standing before her, their arms crossed, small smirks on their faces.
"I'm sorry?" Olivia blinked, having just heard what they were planning to do and still feeling a little lost from the entire odd conversation that had just happened in the command center, "You want to what?"
"We're going to teach you how to fight," Natasha said simply.
"Every agent of SHIELD goes through basic training," Maria explained, "This isn't the army, we're a little more extensive than any training you might have had in the past. I'm sure Fury told you, we take care of our own, we want to make sure everyone is able to defend themselves."
Olivia was silent for a moment, a thoughtful look on her face even though she wore a small frown, looking between the two woman as she considered their words. Natasha's reaction in the jet was starting to make a little more sense to her now, the woman had clearly been shocked to learn that she didn't know literal combat from her time during the war. And what she did know, Natasha apparently did not think it was enough.
"...I'm not sure how I feel about this," Olivia murmured, though the tone in her voice made it clear to the others that she wasn't finished speaking, but was still trying to gather her thoughts.
On the one hand, she appreciated their gesture, the fact that they were concerned enough about her to take the time out of their day to want to teach her to fight meant a lot to her. On the other hand, she felt like it was almost just a bit of an insult to Steve, that perhaps they thought he wasn't good enough to protect her, that may be Natasha also blamed Steve for the minor injury she had sustained when getting Loki back from Thor.
But, then again, she could understand where they might be coming from. They were both women very skilled in combat in their own right, it would make sense that they wanted to share their knowledge. But, on a more personal level, she truly didn't feel comfortable learning how to fight in general.
"Why do you want to teach me that?" maybe if she could understand more of their reasons for wanting her to know, she could understand a little bit better if she would be willing to learn.
Maria and Natasha looked at each other, seeming actually surprised that she had asked. whether it was because it was a sign she wasn't truly on board with learning or they were surprised she was questioning their decision she didn't know, but Natasha dropped her arms and moved to sit beside Olivia on the bench.
"Look," Natasha began, "I get that it's a really different time than what you're used to. But women can do, and are expected to do, more than they've ever done before. We don't have to hide behind men and let them fight our battles for us, we can fight them just as well."
Olivia nodded slowly at that, "But you were piloting the jet," she reminded Natasha, "You didn't engage in the battle either," and she looked over at Maria, "And you don't run SHIELD, Fury does..."
If it hadn't been for the way she had said it, Natasha was quite sure she would have been very insulted and angry with Olivia's words and the implication behind them. But the girl seemed genuinely confused and spoke without any sort of malice or taunt in her voice. Taking a moment to actually consider her words, Natasha could understand why she was confused. Here she and Maria were, talking about how women could be their own people and fight their own battles, and yet she hadn't fought Thor or Loki, she had piloted the jet. And while Maria wasn't the director of SHIELD, she was Fury's right-hand woman. But to someone from the 1940s, she could understand how it might appear more like Maria something of a more advanced form of secretary.
"You and Steve didn't know how to pilot the jet, I did," Natasha explained to her. autopilot could be engaged for her part of the flight sequence when they were steady in midair, but not when they were approaching their target.
"And whenever Fury can't, I do run SHIELD," Maria added.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend..." Olivia began, a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.
She did know that many women were far more independent than they had been in the 1940s, it was something glaringly obvious to her just in how they held themselves outside and what she observed of them whenever Steve and her would go on walks or sit in cafes and just look around. She had honestly thought that Natasha operated in the form of an assassin the same way Peggy had a spy. That it was something done in the background, something done a good deal away from the fighting, but she was starting to realize she may have gotten that wrong.
"What if you and Steve got separated," Natasha offered instead, trying to phrase it a different way, "And you had to face an enemy all by yourself, what would you do?"
"Or if he got injured and you had to protect him," Maria added, "If you don't know how to fight..."
"I understand," Olivia cut in, not even wanting to think of a situation like that, where Steve was too injured to defend himself.
But she could understand where they were coming from now, it wasn't that they were trying to turn her into a soldier, they were actually looking out for what happened if the soldiers fell. There was nothing wrong with being a soldier, Steve was a soldier and she loved him very much, the Commandos and Bucky were soldiers and they had become like family to her, Michael had been a soldier and he was as good as a brother. Her reluctance was something she had difficulty explaining to other people, something she hadn't had to explain to anyone when Dr. Erskine's experiment was taking place.
In 1945, she knew her place, she knew her role, she knew her responsibilities and the expectations placed on her. She knew her duty. As a Medic, help people who had fallen, who were injured, get them somewhere safe. As a woman, stay away from the front lines, do everything she could for the war effort without endangering herself. Peggy had always been a staunch supporter that women could be just as helpful, and had proven herself to be. This was a different time, this was a time where women had grown to be so much more than they were, they could do more, they could be more, just as Natasha had said.
But she didn't know what she could be, and perhaps that was something of the problem. There was no war, she couldn't be a medic in the field of battle, SHIELD would not allow her to go to any of the wars still being fought. And she understood, being an experiment herself, being what she was, she was too great an asset to SHIELD to risk like that. She had no formal education in terms of medicine, she couldn't be a nurse or a doctor without the right credentials, not without many more years of education. Which didn't help her in the now.
All she had ever known was of her old life. There was no way for her to return to that and she knew she couldn't keep being the same person she had always been, but it felt like if she could just hold on to being a medic, she would at least have a purpose.
What Natasha and Maria were planning...she didn't know if she could do it.
"Let us at least show you the basics," Maria offered, seeming to sense the true reluctance Olivia was feeling about all of this, "And then we can go from there."
Olivia looked between the two women before giving a small nod, she could at least try.
~8~
Steve wandered the ship, looping around it at least twice, looking for something, anything, to do to distract himself, but all the SHIELD agents were at work, Fury was busy directing the troops, Natasha and Maria were with Olivia, and the only other people on board were Loki and Thor, Thor was busy speaking to Phil and he was not about to turn to Loki for company. The only ones left were Tony and Bruce. While he wasn't very keen to have to speak with Tony, let alone be in the same room as him, right now he would take even Tony's animosity over the way he was feeling. Ever since Olivia had been pulled away by Natasha he felt like he was on the razor's edge of a panic attack, he needed something to distract himself even if it was arguing with Tony Stark.
So he made his way towards the lab that Bruce had set himself up in, walking in right when Tony appeared to poke the man with a miniature cattle prod. Of all the stupid, careless...
"OW!" Bruce let out a cry, and Steve picked up his pace, almost fearing that the Hulk would take form.
Tony, for his part, looked completely disappointed and let down that the Hulk didn't appear, "Nothing?"
"Hey!" Steve called out as he approached, glaring at Tony, "Are you nuts?"
"You really have got a lid on it, haven't you?" Tony ignored Steve to focus on speaking to Bruce instead, "What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve demanded.
"Funny things are," Tony shrugged easily.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny," Steve had to clench his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and grabbing Tony by the shirt to make his point even clearer. All it was serving to do was remind him exactly why he didn't like it when Olivia wasn't beside him. If Tony had succeeded in bringing out the Hulk and the man went on a rampage, it could tear the base apart and Olivia wasn't there and he wouldn't be able to protect her. He didn't even know where she was! He took a breath, trying to calm his thoughts, trying to reassure himself that Bruce had not turned into the Hulk, that Olivia was still safe, as was everyone else on the ship. But it didn't do much to ease the edge he had been feeling since he lost sight of Olivia, it was just making him even more tense and short-fused, "No offense, doctor," he added after a moment.
"No, it's alright," Bruce reassured him, "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."
"You're tiptoeing, big man," Tony shook his head at Bruce, "You need to strut."
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Steve reminded him.
"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."
Steve frowned, "You think Fury's hiding something?"
"He's a spy. Captain, he's THE spy. His secrets have secrets," he pointed absently over at Bruce, "It's bugging him too, isn't it?"
"Uh..." Bruce tried to backtrack, "I just wanna finish my work here and..."
"Doctor?" Steve looked over at him. While he didn't think Tony took this seriously enough to warrant showing concern for the things Tony was wary of, Bruce had at least expressed more of a maturity, if HE was worried about this then it might be something to note.
Bruce look between the two men, clearly not wanting to get in the middle of it, but, true to Tony's words, he HAD been having some concerning thoughts, "'A warm light for all mankind,'" he repeated, "Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it."
"Well, I think that was meant for you," he pointed at Tony, "Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news."
"The Stark Tower?" Steve began to recall. It was the building he had been sketching when he and Olivia had been in the cafe. He wondered, if he had known what building it was then, if he would have bothered drawing it or let Olivia keep the doodle, "That big, ugly...building in New York?" he changed the course of his wording when Tony shot him a look.
"It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"
"That's just the prototype," Tony agreed, "I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now."
Bruce nodded at Tony, "So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"
"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files."
Steve shook his head and turned face Tony, alarmed with how casually he'd spoken of hacking SHIELD, "I'm sorry, did you say..."
"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide," he held out a bag to Steve, "Blueberry?"
"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?" Tony scoffed, "Historically not possible."
"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them."
"Following is not really my style."
"And you're all about style, aren't you?" Steve might have felt a little bad about how his words had clearly struck a nerve with Tony, had it not been for the unnecessary and unwarranted words Tony had spoken to him just after Olivia had been injured.
"Of the people in this room, which one is: A. Wearing a spangly outfit, and B. Not of use?"
"Steve," Bruce cut in, seeing Steve about to respond in kind, "Tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?"
Steve considered it for a moment, but shook his head, "Just find the cube."
"You're asking the wrong person, doc," he heard Tony remark to Bruce as he turned to leave, "Olivia's his commanding officer, you want him to do anything you have to get to her."
Steve's jaw clenched at the mention of Olivia, of how Tony was talking about her. He had thought he'd been lucky to get through that conversation without Tony bringing her up. Apparently not.
He shook his head and strode into the hallway. But even as Tony's words about how there was something wrong with this whole situation played over his mind, it was actually something Olivia had said to Bruce that had gotten him thinking more on the subject. She had told Bruce she would rather get to know a person based on themselves rather than what others had to say about it.
He and Olivia hadn't been an official part of SHIELD, they didn't know how the organization operated any longer, what might have changed from within. Just because Fury had helped them when they first came out of the ice didn't mean they should trust him implicitly. If he wanted to know more about the situation, he shouldn't take someone else's word for it, he should figure it out himself.
So, with that in mind, he turned and made his way down the hall, heading for the hull...
~8~
"This isn't going to work if you don't try," Natasha sighed for what felt like the hundredth time since she and Maria had begun to give Olivia lessons on the basics of fighting. No one was expecting her to become a super soldier with high combat skills instantly, but they were at least expecting something better than this.
"I'm trying," Olivia told them, lowering her fists from where they had been raised.
"You're really not," Maria argued, having been observing from the side in order to help instruct Olivia on better stance or form as she went.
"I know you've got super strength," Natasha continued, "You've got to use it. When you're in a fight, when you're in a battle, you need to use every advantage you have. You can't hold back."
"I don't want to hurt you," Olivia blurted out, running a hand through her hair, feeling very tense and stressed right now.
"And while that's great, when you're actually fighting an enemy they're not going to care, they're going to want to hurt you and worse."
"Isn't there something else I could do," Olivia began to pace slightly, feeling more on edge, "You said you didn't fight Loki because you were flying the jet, can I learn how to fly the plane jet?"
Maria frowned as she observed Olivia, hearing something else in her words than what she was saying, "You really don't want to fight, do you?"
It just seemed so strange to her and Natasha that a woman like Olivia, with all of the super strength and agility and endurance that Captain America had, would be so reluctant to actually enter battle. She should have been willing and ready to use all of her strength to keep people safe, and that would mean fighting for them. But here she was, trying to find every reason to avoid the fight.
Natasha seemed to realize what Maria had, that there must be something more going on here than just a 1940s mentality. From what the files said, Olivia's best friend in the world was one of SHIELD's best agents, someone who was skilled in fighting and weaponry. The girl clearly knew it was possible for women to do all that, it couldn't just be a thought that men should fight and women should stay behind. If the girl truly believed that, she wouldn't have been a medic, she wouldn't have fought so hard to have a hand in the war. She wouldn't have been putting herself on the field of battle to get the injured off of it if she didn't think women should be part of something like that.
So what was it? She clearly didn't appreciate the thought of Steve getting hurt in the course of trying to protect her. She clearly didn't like the idea that someone would be so hurt they'd be defenseless. And she clearly displayed a desire to protect other people...but there was something else holding her back.
"Why?" Natasha asked, "You've got to give us something."
"We might be able to figure out something else," Maria offered, "But we need to know where the issue is."
Olivia looked up for a moment, before sighing, "I told you," she closed her eyes, "I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone," her voice cracked slightly as she looked at them.
"Look..." Natasha begin with another sigh.
"No, you look," Olivia cut in, "You don't understand, neither of you could ever understand and I don't want you to, because I wouldn't wish the means of understanding on anyone," she took a breath, "Almost my entire life I have been in pain. I have been poked, prodded, cut open, on almost every kind of medication. I have been weak, and ill, and hurting all the time," her voice broke, "I don't want to reduce anyone else to that life."
"Major Williams," Maria began to shake her head, actually feeling affected by the pure emotion in Olivia's words, the tears she could see gathering in her eyes.
"That's just it," she continued, "Major Williams. Medic of World War II. Neither of you have ever seen a war like I have. I would never wish you to either, because it is hell," she had to cut herself off at the last word, needing to catch her breath, "You see the footage of the soldiers fighting and that's all you ever hear about, the soldiers fighting, or the soldiers recovering in hospital, or the soldiers who died. But no one ever talks about the people who got them off that field. I have seen men with their inside spilled out, I have seen men with their limbs torn off, I have seen men's brains littered on the grass," she was shaking even as she tried to get her words out, wanting them to understand why this was so hard for her, "I tried my hardest to save them, to help them. That was my job, that was my duty, to help not to harm. You asked why I don't want to fight? I have seen what is left after the fight is over. I don't want to cause that."
She turned away from them, her hands on her forehead as she tried to gather herself again. It was always hard to talk about what the war was like. She always tried to keep a positive attitude, to care about other people more than herself, she had always been like that. Even when she had been in the hospital and it had been her life and her health on the line, she never wanted Peggy or Michael to be sad or worried about her.
She had saved so many lives during the war, but for as fast as she was and as strong as she was, there were some men who were just gone before she could even get to them. And she had to see the aftermath of it. She knew Steve had so many nightmares about leading the battles, about the explosions and the bombs and the gunfire. She had nightmares of the people she couldn't save, the bodies that littered the battlefield, the state they were in. She saw what fighting could do and she knew with her strength she could cause that level of harm, she could kill a man with a single punch and she hated that. Her skills, her strength and speed were supposed to be for saving people and helping the fallen, not inflicting that same damage on another.
Help not harm, it had been the lesson she had always lived her life by. Because she had just been hurt her entire life, and she had seen so many other people hurt, she didn't want to inflict it. Because she knew, with her strength and her agility and all the other reasons Natasha and Maria had for why she should fight, that she could do so much more damage with it.
And it scared her.
What would she become if she turned her back so fully on who she was that she began to use her strength to harm others?
The only person who knew how she felt was Steve. He was the only one she had ever talked to about it. Did Natasha and Maria honestly think that Steve had never tried to teach her how to fight or defend herself? That he hadn't had the same exact concerns they had? That if she had been separated from him or someone else had been injured or she found herself captured that she wouldn't be able to defend herself? He worried about that more than anyone because she didn't know how to fight and while she knew she should, it was hard to bring herself to learn. All she kept imagining was the wounds of those on the battlefield and knowing she could inflict that same damage on her own, she lived in utter terror what it meant to fight. Because during the war, it had been to the death.
Maria and Natasha where silent, giving her the illusion of privacy as she tried to pull herself back together from her minor explosion. They looked over at each other for a moment, before nodding their heads and slowly approaching her as the girl was standing there, now hugging herself, her breathing just a little shaky as she tried to reel herself in.
"This isn't the war," Natasha began cautiously, choosing her words carefully, "You're probably never going to be in another War like that again."
"There won't be any injured soldiers for you to pull off the battlefield," Maria continued, "But there WILL be civilians, who could end up injured if the enemy isn't dealt with in time."
"The duty of a medic is to treat wounds and casualties and care for those whose lives are in danger."
"You can keep them from ever being injured in the first place, if you can fight the enemy and stop them yourself."
"And we can teach you ways that will incapacitate them without killing them," Natasha promised her, finally realizing what Olivia's true issue was, a fear that 'to fight' meant 'to kill' because of her strength, "You can knock them out to be rounded up later, you don't have to cause them a fetal injury just fighting them."
"You don't even need to have a gun" Maria offered too, "Just...give us a chance to show you how."
Olivia took a breath and turned to face them, looking between the two women who seemed genuine about their offer. She had been so afraid that, when they would teach her to fight it would be to teach her how to kill and hurt, to act as a soldier and take the enemy's life. She didn't think that SHIELD saw it as an option to merely incapacitate the enemy instead. But here was a woman, second-in-command of SHIELD, promising her that it was so. And here was another woman with the skills to kill a person, but showing her there were other ways to take down an opponent than just that.
Maybe there was a compromise that could be made, she had learned to control her strength in every day life, maybe she could learn to control it amidst a fight and attack as well.
And so she gave them a short nod.
~8~
Steve made his way into a secure storage unit in the hull of the base, using all of his might to slide a heavy iron door open and carefully walk in. It was his experience that the most important secrets were kept behind the thickest door. The room beyond was what appeared to be a large warehouse filled with metal crates all stacked on top of each other. He looked around, seeing a catwalk that went just above one of the stacks, and jumped up as high as he could, grabbing onto the edge of it and pulling himself up. He maneuvered himself closer to the edge of the catwalk, crouching down just on top of one of the crates, and leaning over to yank the top off.
He tensed, his jaw clenching with anger as he saw what rested within...
~8~
"Holy shit..." Natasha let out as a groan when her body slammed against the mat of the training room...quite a few feet away from where Olivia was standing.
"Sorry!" the woman called.
"Again," Maria murmured, shaking her head more in amusement than irritation, "You don't have to apologize every time you hit an enemy."
"I know, but Natasha is not the enemy," Olivia told her, walking across the mat and reaching out a hand to help Natasha to her feet.
The training was going well, from what she could tell. Natasha and Maria both seemed pleased with her progress. They were teaching her the basics, how to punch, how to kick, to duck and block. Natasha appeared very happy with how quickly she was picking it up. But, while she hadn't had much of an active role in using moves such as the ones they were teaching, it didn't mean she hadn't been observing the Commandos and Steve during every battle they ever had. Just because she didn't use the skills she knew didn't mean she didn't know them.
And with her strength and speed and agility, she picked things up remarkably fast. They had even moved on to how to hit an enemy to send them the furthest distance away from you. She did make sure to hold her strength back, not wanting to hurt Natasha, or Maria when they swapped places, but she knew if she used her full strength against an enemy, for instance this Chitauri army from outer space, it would send them even farther away.
"Thanks, Liv," Natasha murmured as she was helped up, winding her arm slightly to get the feeling back in it as she had landed on it quite hard.
Olivia paused for a moment, looking over at Natasha, "Liv?"
Natasha wasn't thrown by the question, "Yeah. That ok?"
Olivia considered it a moment, glancing between Natasha and Maria, thinking on how the two women had stepped up and wanted to help teach her how to fight, wanted her to be more than what she had been, but had still understood her issues and adapted to make it something more comfortable for her.
"Only if I get to call you...Tasha," Olivia stated.
This time it was Natasha's turn to give her an odd look, "Most people call me Nat."
"Most people call me Olivia," she countered, subtly telling Natasha that she didn't often let people call her 'Liv,' but not outright telling her she couldn't.
This time Natasha considered it, "Tony call you Liv?"
"Not as yet."
Natasha smirked, knowing that would really irritate Tony if SHE had the privilege of calling Olivia that when he didn't, and held out a hand, "You got a deal."
"Looks like we're going to have to cut this short," Maria called over, stepping closer to them with one hand by her ear, having gotten a call from Fury over the comm. system, "Fury needs you for a little interrogation," she told Natasha.
Natasha let out a mock suffering sigh, "A woman's work is never done. And speaking of," she continued as Maria led them out of the room, "Weapons. Thoughts?"
"Well she's ambidextrous," Maria began to think out loud, considering how quickly she'd picked up attacks with her weaker arm and what weapons were specific to one armed combat or two.
"But can't be close enough for real hand-to-hand, Cap would kill us if an enemy got that close to her."
"Also can't be long range," most long-range weapons tended to be lethal.
"Non-lethal too," Natasha caught on.
Maria nodded, before glancing at Natasha, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"It might need a touch more," Natasha nodded herself, "Think Coulson can get his hands on that FF-03 prototype?"
Maria smirked, "For her? He'd steal it himself."
"Um, not to interrupt," Olivia spoke up, "But...do I want to know?"
The two women just started to laugh.
A/N: Hmm...seems Olivia might be getting a weapon of her own, I wonder what it'll be? :)
But I cried writing her little breakdown :( I hope it sort of explains why Olivia has chosen to stay in the background for so long when it comes to physical fights. She's truly scarred from seeing so much destruction during the war, all those injuries :( And even though most were created by guns and other weapons, she's terrified that she'd end up creating the same damage to another person. Especially in the heat of battle when she can't control her strength or put that much focus to that :(
Steve went into battle fully intending to use his strength to fight the enemy. Olivia went into battle to use her strength to help the injured. So it's taking a lot for her to try and work out a way to balance that 'not wanting to cause harm' mentality with knowing she might need to inflict some level of it when facing an enemy :( Steve might go into battle and understand lives might be taken, he's accepted that as part of being a soldier even if it haunts him later. Olivia did not sign up for that, she does not want to take a life, even her enemy's, she signed up to save lives.
Keep in mind, THAT was one of the main reasons Dr. Erskine chose Olivia, because she CARED, even about the enemy. So it's hard for her to find that line to walk between old-fashioned medic and combat medic in a modern sense. From what I know, there WERE medics during some wars who refused, outright refused, to take an enemy life or carry a gun no matter what. Olivia is following something of that belief. She has been hurt her entire life, in constant pain, till the serum, only to be thrust into a war and forced to see the fallen. It's going to impact anyone :(
But Maria and Natasha seemed to finally understand her mindset and that they can't teach her in a manner the Black Widow might teach in, one that assumes she'll fight to kill or need moves that will kill an enemy. She might, MIGHT, be willing to fight if they can make sure she won't actually kill anyone, if they let her go out there with the understanding she will not be 'shooting to kill' so to speak. Her main role will ALWAYS be as a medic and her focus will always be on the injured, but if there are no injured she's coming around to the idea of fighting to prevent injury. If there are injured, I can't see her ignoring them just to keep fighting, she'd help first, fight after ;)
We may see her mentality on the fighting/killing grow or expand as the series goes on, but so fresh from the war, this is where she's at right now ;)
Also we're about halfway through the story! :D So don't forget to vote for a pairing name for Steve and Olivia on my profile :) I'm going to announce the winner when I post the last chapter of this story so we have a few more days yet ;)
Some notes on reviews...
Yup, it was definitely a lesson in combat ;)
I agree, they need to be able to function away from each other, though I feel like it's a bit understandable in this story given all they've endured. But I think by the end they'll be better able to handle being apart. I think a lot of Steve's anxiety comes from the knowledge Olivia doesn't know how to defend herself, which is slowly changing :)
I think part of Fury involving Olivia is Steve won't go if she doesn't ok the mission and he won't go without her, but also he's definitely expecting it to turn dangerous and ugly and assumes people are going to get hurt, in which case, a medic who is used to battle and war and as strong/fast as Olivia would be an asset and she'd do much better than a random doctor pulled into a warzone, because she's been in a warzone before. I think a part of him, maybe he doesn't even realize it, also sort of assumes the rest of the team would be enough general protection for her to do her medic job instead of needing her to fight beside them :/ I can understand the concern, I think Natasha and Maria are certainly going to work on making sure that won't happen ;)
They were totally holding hands when they were unfrozen :) I feel like Phil's initial reaction would be 'relationship goals' lol :)
Almost everything is prewritten, but depending on the day and chapter (and if I have another story being posted the same day, like today), it can take me some time to edit it to a standard I feel ok posting :)