Lark

What's your problem, Barnes?

Aria’s POV 2 months later June, 2018

Avoiding people. That's what Aria was good at. Well, it was one of the many things she was good at that didn't actually hurt or kill anyone. And for the last two months that's exactly what she's been doing with everyone, apart from Tony of course. Aria hadn't willingly spoken to another Avenger in all of that time outside of eye rolls or huffs. She didn't count the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They were grunts like her and for the most part they avoided her like she had the black plague and that's how she liked it. She worked alone. Ate alone. Slept alone and for the most part trained alone. Aria never understood why people felt the need to be so reliant on other people. The want and the need for the connections that people fought over and died for. So not worth it in her opinion.

In the Sparrows you were taught to be self reliant at an early age. If you couldn't hack it you'd be punished until you could. A month ago her therapist had said that for the way Aria grew up, that the way she thought and felt, was normal for her. The look she had given Dr Kent when she had applied the word ‘normal’ to her had made the usually stoic woman laugh out loud. Dr Kent had promptly said, "Normal is relative, Aria. What's normal for you isn't normal for me and vice versa." Since that session she had stopped feeling pressured to feel so bad for keeping her distance from her teammates outside of doing their job. Tony knew her limits and respected them for the most part. Although from the moment she arrived at the Avengers Facility in upstate New York he had insisted she observe the team during training sessions. Wanting her to know how they worked with each other, so when she was forced to work with the group out in the field she could seamlessly join them. Aria knew she worked well with Natasha. It made sense with their similar backgrounds. Of course with Tony because, well he was Tony. And as much as she was loathed to admit it, she worked well with Steve.

The problem with Rogers was he had a bad habit of trying to push his golden retriever self on her with wanting to be friends and being endlessly polite. Aria scowled to herself as she thought about this morning's interaction. Out of all of the apartments in the compound hers was the only one that didn't have a kitchenette. Tony did it on purpose so she would be forced to interact with and be involved with the team for her own good he’d said. Back to this morning. Steve had had the audacity to ask her to join him for coffee when she came in for her breakfast. Like every other time, she had said no. And like every other time she denied Steve's invitation, he would get this look on his face like she told him Santa wasn't real or she’d kicked a puppy in front of him.

Ever since her last episode he had been more persistent than usual to be around her. So much so that she was tempted to channel him just so she could figure him out enough to see why he felt the need to try to be her friend when she so clearly didn't want that. But Aria had promised Tony when she joined that she wouldn't channel any of the team without their permission. So as to give them their privacy and she hadn't. With the exception of Natasha. It was only once and had been a complete accident. Rogers' best friend wasn't any better though. Like Steve, Bucky and her worked well together. Their almost exact skill set made it so that when out in the field she would be teamed up with him or Natasha. The topper on her shit sundae with the metal armed man was that he would shadow her around like a sad lost puppy until she would catch him. Then he would try to slip away like he wasn't doing anything. She wanted to avoid him even more than she did Steve because she had been inside his head.

The experience had made her feel hopelessness that she hadn't felt in almost two years. It took her a few weeks, but she now knew that she knew Bucky better than anyone. More than Shuri, more than Dr Kent and even more than Steve. She knew every moment of torture that man had been put through. Every op and person Hydra had made him kill. All of it. Aria felt sympathy and a camaraderie for Bucky. Something she had never felt for anyone before outside of a very select few. Because she didn't know what to do with those feelings she avoided him. She didn't even talk to Dr Kent about him in her sessions or not much anyway.