SUMMARY: Ant-Man Scott Lang is not the only one under two year's of house arrest. After Sharon Carter turns herself in for aiding Steve Rogers and his team in escaping CIA custody, she finds herself facing two years under lock and key as well. Incarcerated in Peggy's old home that now belongs to Peggy's son and his family, Sharon tries to keep busy throughout the day by throwing herself into helping her family and being as inconspicuous as possible. But when the family goes away on a weeklong cruise and she must stay behind, Sharon has to face the enormity of her isolation, and is no longer able to keep her thoughts from a certain 100 year old supersoldier who she misses very much. Is he thinking about her?
House Arrest
I hear the ticking of the clock
I'm lying here the room's pitch dark
I wonder where you are tonight
No answer on the telephone
And the night goes by so very slow
Oh I hope that it won't end though
Alone
'Till now I always got by on my own
I never really cared until I met you
And now it chills me to the bone
How do I get you alone
How do I get you alone
"Alone"
-Heart
The early morning sunlight filter through the lacy curtains, slowly filling the darkened room with a dim light. Somewhere outside, a couple of birds chirped cautiously as the sun started to peek up over the hills in the distance. It was early, only about 5 AM, at an hour when most people were still asleep, but Sharon Carter had been up for an hour already. Old habits die hard they say. And she did not remember the last time she had gotten a full night's sleep. Too much on her mind and not enough to do, she supposed. Besides, given her former profession, sleeping through the night was often ill advised in her profession. It left you open for attack from an enemy. She yawned and stretched and slowly sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the somewhat ancient bed. She wanted nothing more than to crawl back under the handmade quilt that covered the bed, but she know if she did, she would be shirking what few responsibilities she had given herself in her present situation. And that was not a road she wanted to travel down. She slowly slid down to the floor, wincing as the old cold wooden planks caught the bottom of her bare feet, but also as her weight caused the ankle bracelet wrapped around her left ankle to dig a little into her skin. She stared down dully at the black box strapped to her leg. She was under two years of house arrest with six months left to go. She supposed she should be grateful. Her great aunt Peggy's house was a damn sight better than the Raft. Not that she considered herself dangerous enough to be sent to the Rraft, but where the Avengers were concerned, the powers that be that made such decisions seem to be panicky and touchy and prone to sending people to disappear in hidden prisons if they had been involved in any kind of embarrassment involving the mess with the Avengers.
After she had given Steve Rogers and his friends Barnes and Wilson their gear back from CIA lock up, she knew she had two options. She could run for it or turn herself in. Running for it would have meant that she would remain free, but it would also mean looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. It would mean never seeing her family again, and putting in danger anyone foolish enough to shelter her. She briefly considered going to her former SHIELD academy roommate Bobbi Morse and her husband Lance Hunter, who had gone freelance not long after SHIELD had fallen. But they themselves were living in a legal gray area, and although she knew they would have taken her in, she would have been putting a lot of unnecessary risk on their doorstep. Then doing the mental tally of people she could trust or still counted as friends after the ultimate betrayal of Hydra, she realized that list was depressingly short. Still, for at least a week, she had considered going it alone. But ultimately she decided to take her lumps and hope that Everett Ross was not unreasonable. She had turned herself in right after the king of Wakanda had brought in Zemo and the true nature of everything that had happened regarding the bombing at the UN and the potential release of more Winter Soldiers had come to light. Not that it had really mattered. Steve Rogers and those who had stood beside him were wanted fugitives, never mind that they had actually been right. The Sokovia Accords were now in place and only those who had signed it were considered legitimate Avengers. She had managed to successfully argue that Rogers, and Wilson had not actually been charged at the time they had left the CIA facility, or escaped depending on your verbiage, and that after 72 hours without a lawyer and without charge, they were technically free to go as American citizens being held by an American law enforcement agency. Their property had not been officially confiscated at the time she removed it from the lock up, and there was absolutely no crime in giving someone their property if they were not being held under official charge. The fact that Zemo was captured and the other Winter Soldiers were dead seem to mollify the judges who had decided her fate, and Everett Ross had actually surprised the hell out of her by going to bat for her and arguing for her immediate dismissal of charges. Unfortunately all he had been able to successfully argue was that she should not be locked up in the Raft and the court had decided on house arrest, and of course being fired from her job were fitting punishment for having the audacity to help Captain America.
Of course that had put her family in something of a bind, because following the events in Germany, Sharon didn't actually have a home to be arrested *in* anymore. Her great aunt Peggy Carter, who of course everyone knew had been significantly close to Steve Rogers during World War II, had risen quickly through the ranks of Allied intelligence throughout most of the 20th century. Even if the common person on the street didn't know her name, anyone in intelligence usually did. When she had eventually married her coworker Dan and started a family, as a gift Howard Stark had put several of his patents in her name, ensuring that the Carter family would be well provided for in the years that come. Nothing fancy like flying cars, of course. The Starks kept that for themselves. Instead, the Carters held the patents for several industrial processes that were frequently used and the technology licensed. The income had ensured that none of them actually even had to work, although they chose to, and that Peggy had been well provided for in her later years with her deteriorating condition. However, back in the 1950s, Peggy and her husband had built a comfortably sized sprawling two-story house on a nice piece of property where they had raised their two children, Craig and Kathy. Sharon's father had been Peggy's nephew, and when he was killed in Afghanistan when Sharon was 12, Peggy had insisted that her nephew's widow and young daughter had moved to the property with them. A small house with its own drive had been built nearby, but it was frequently empty. Although it was officially Sharon's mother's physical address in America, her mother Amanda had quickly taken up overseas missionary work as a means of coping with her own pain and perhaps even running from memories. Sharon had only been 14 when her mother had decided to go to South America to build houses on sugarcane plantations for poor workers. But it was also around this time that Peggy's husband had died unexpectedly of stroke, and Peggy herself was starting to show early signs of forgetfulness that would later be diagnosed as Alzheimer's. By this time Peggy's own children were grown and had started their own families elsewhere, so it was actually something of a relief when young Sharon had moved in with her great aunt in the big house. She had set up in one of the guest rooms, the one she currently occupied and still considered hers. She had lived there off and on until she was 18, staying at the small house with her mother when Amanda was in the country, and the big house with her aunt when she was not. At 18 she had gone off to SHIELD Academy while subsequently taking college courses, but when Peggy had finally been required to live in a nursing home, her son had returned with his family and now lived in the Carter estate.
When Sharon had been sentenced with house arrest, her first phone call had been to her somewhat irritated but mostly understanding cousin. After all, it made sense for her to come there having really nowhere else to go, and it would mean an extra set of hands to help with the children. Her cousin Craig worked long hours at his business, and another adult in the house was always welcome. Joseph was 15 and Isaac was 12, both ages that always required more adult intervention. Sharon was determined not to be a bother to her cousin's family, for she had always felt something of an interloper. To make up for the inconvenience of her being incarcerated in their house, she had thrown herself into housework, cooking, cleaning, and any number of projects to ensure that the old house was well-maintained, even if she couldn't really set foot off the porch.
This was her intended routine for the day: get the family off to work and school, and then throw herself into dusting every piece of furniture in the sprawling home. She dragged herself into the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face before heading downstairs to the kitchen. She had never been much of a cook before, but now she had plenty of time on her hands, access to the Food Network and decent cooking paraphernalia, so she might as well put it to good use. She checked the four phones plugged into the wall charger on the counter, one of them was hers although it very rarely dinged with any messages. The ones she did get were usually from her parole officer. They were all charged, so she unplugged them and set them out. She hauled out the four canvas lunch bags and set to work making sandwiches and throwing in a bit of fruit and yogurt for everyone to grab on their way out. She started the coffee pot and filled thermoses with coffee, hazelnut for Craig's wife Nancy, and black with three sugars for her cousin. She hauled out the small miniature sized Eggo waffles from the freezer and set them toasting in the toaster oven while she poached eggs. She fashioned sandwiches from ingredients using the waffles as pieces of bread and cheese and eggs and breakfast sausage all melted down in the microwave. It was an idea she had gotten after someone had brought her a Mcgriddle from McDonald's and she had actually liked it. With breakfast and lunch is made, and phones charged, she turned to head upstairs to help wake up the two children and nearly ran smack into her cousin Craig.
"Whoa there, sorry," he said.
She caught herself, then smiled at her cousin. "Sorry about that, Craig. Your lunch is on the counter next to your phone, and I wrapped up your breakfast because I know you're heading out for that meeting. I'm heading up to wake up the boys."
"Thanks for doing all this," he said grabbing his coffee and taking long swig.
"No problem," she shrugged, "I'm going to finish up all the laundry at some point today so you guys can start packing when you get home. Do you think Nancy will want me to pack the boys suitcases so they don't have to do it later?"
"I'm sure she won't turn down," he replied, "but really I don't want you to think we think of you as the maid or something. Just because you're stuck here doesn't mean you have to wait on the family 24 and 7. I mean we appreciate that you're doing all the stuff, but we don't want you to feel like you have to."
"Seriously, I don't mind," she said. "If it weren't for you guys agreeing to let me serve out my sentence here, I will be in a much less pleasant place, I assure you. If washing dirty underwear and helping Isaac with his math homework is what compensates for that, I'll consider myself lucky."
Her cousin eyed had her carefully and then said softly "Was it worth it?"
"Yes," she said simply. "And security clearance revocation keeps me from explaining to you just how thoroughly the answer to that question is yes."
He shrugged and gathered up his lunch and briefcase, shoving his phone into his pocket. "I know mom would probably agree with you. I'm just going to have to take your word for it I guess. But I will say, if you decide to head out to parts unknown after this is all over, we're going to miss you. And not just your kick ass paella."
Sharon smiled. "Thanks," she said, "but I honestly don't know what the future holds for me. All of my skills and relevant job experience are limited to agencies who currently want nothing to do with me, all things considered. I may have to go work at Starbucks."
Her cousin laughed and patted her on the shoulder before heading out the door for his early morning meeting. She could hear his wife Nancy puttering around in the master bedroom adjoining bath, but she did not hear any movement from the bedroom is occupied by the two children, so she headed up the stairs to try a new tactic waking them up.
She stood in the middle of the hallway for a brief moment trying to suppress a smile before holding up an air horn and blowing it loud enough to ensure that it would jolt the boys out of their bed. She opened the door to Isaacs's room first, walking in and using her foot to bounce the mattress of the bed up and down jolting him awake.
"Last day of school! Time is a wasting! Time to up and at 'em! Come on, Mr. Sousa let's roll, let's roll!"
Isaac bellowed in dismay, trying to pull the pillow over his head, but Sharon yanked it off.
"Aunt Sharon!" he yelled. "What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing a day at the beach wouldn't fix," she said wryly. "Now get your butt in gear. Ms. Rainette will be here in 45, which means you have 15 to get ready and 15 more to eat."
"What about the last 15?" he asked.
"That's to finish the homework you said you did last night but didn't," she retorted. "Now hustle!"
"Aw man!" the boy grumbled before rolling out of bed and sulking to the bathroom.
Sharon walked into Joseph's room and observed her teenage cousin faking sleep. She could tell he was awake by his breathing. She stifled a smile.
"Nice try young man, but greater actors then you have attempted to fool me with fake routines and have failed. You might as well give up the act now. There is no rest for guys who still have one more day of school left."
Joseph groand and rolled over, as if he honestly thought his cousin with simply walk out the door and leave him to go back to sleep. With a sigh, Sharon brought out her phone that she had slipped into her pocket, and pulled up a video of someone playing Reveille on the bugle for wake up call. Turning the volume up as loud as she could, she held it over the teenager's head and blasted it at full volume into his ear
"Ah god! Aunt Sharon, are you nuts?" He yelled.
"Getting there, dude," she admitted. "Now let's make this easy on both of us. Haul your ass out of that bed before I have to take desperate measures. And for the record, your father has giving me free reign to dump ice water on you."
"You wouldn't!" the boy said, sitting up.
"Want to bet?" she asked, staring at him evenly.
The kid's shoulders slumped. "You know, I take it back. You really would."
"Damn right," Sharon laughed and ruffled his hair affectionately. "Well, maybe it wouldn't be my first tactic. But let's not test that theory. Your breakfast is getting cold."
With that, she turned and left the room going back downstairs, pretending not to hear her young cousin's grumblings as he shuffled out of bed and searched for the clothes he had laid out the night before. She found Craig's wife Nancy in the kitchen drinking her coffee and eating her sandwich while scrolling through the morning news on her phone. Technically speaking, Nancy didn't actually have to be up this early, for her own real estate business opened at 9 AM. However, the family was leaving for a weeklong cruise the next day as soon as the kids were out of school for the summer, and she had wanted to get into her office early to finish up some work so that she could leave early enough to pick up the kids at school. Normally she took the boys herself, but this was an unusual week for them. It was one of the few things that Sharon could not help with, chauffeur duties. One time Sharon had stepped off the front porch to sign for a package, the alarm had gone off and within only a few minutes, the FBI had been at the house searching everything, much to Joseph's chagrin for they had found his pornography stash in the closet. That had earned him some serious reprimands and grounding from his parents, although privately Sharon thought maybe they had overreacted a little. The boy was a teenager after all. At any rate, after a thorough search of the house, and her, they had finally relented enough to agree that it had been an accident and had left the family and Sharon somewhat disgruntled and left with the necessity of putting the house back together. She had been extra careful about the sensors ever since then.
What had really angered her was that she knew very well, as the agents did, that it was completely unnecessary. She knew the house was thoroughly bugged. Those who were watching her knew damn well that she had not tried to leave the house, but it had been an accident, and yet the team had practically torn apart the house anyway, sifting through closets and emptying drawers. She had been under house arrest for a month before she bothered going to look for the bugs that she knew were there. They would have to be. She was one of the last people to see Steve Rogers and his group before they disappeared. That she had brought him his gear back indicated that he had means of contacting her, so she supposed that in the position of those looking for him, putting listening and watching devices on her would have been a smart move. But she had learned since coming to work for the CIA, that even though they were quite efficient at what they did, SHIELD had been far better. This was likely because SHIELD had not been bogged down by the bureaucracy that often hampered the CIA politically. But it just seemed to her that the agents at the CIA would barely have made it past level two or three out of 10 at SHIELD.
For example, whatever team had bugged her family's home, they were by the book and efficient, and completely unimaginative at where they hid them. Having hidden quite a few bugs herself in her career, she knew exactly where to look for them. Under the pretense of doing a thorough cleaning of the house, she had easily located the listening devices in the lamps, the button sized cameras in the light fixtures and curtains, and the fake fuse in an unused circuit of the breaker panel meant to cut power to the entire house if necessary. In the 18 months that she had lived there, she had surreptitiously searched the house several times, and she believed she knew where they all were. She knew that her own cell phone that never rang unless it was from one of her family members, and their phones including the children, were all bugged. She had easily found the hidden programs in the registries of all of the phones designed to allow the phone to be tracked and remotely activated and listened through, but she did nothing to remove them since that would indicate to those watching her that she was onto them.
Not that she imagined they had much to listen to. House arrest wasn't meant to be an exciting experience. And whoever was assigned to listen to the boys was probably good and sick of talk of the video game Fortnite. She almost pitied that poor bastard. But her daily routine had not varied much in the year and a half since she had moved in. She was usually the first one up and made breakfast, got everybody out the door to work and school, spent the morning cleaning the house even if it didn't need it, and the afternoon working out. When the family came back from their day, she would help her cousins with their homework, help Nancy with dinner, and then either join them in the living room or retreat to her room to watch television or do something crafty. She would then spend the night tossing and turning and waking up several times, before waking up in the morning for good and doing it all over again. On the weekends, the family might go and do something like go to a movie, which they always seemed apologetic about, but she insisted they go, for there was no sense in them being cooped up in the house just because she was. On those days when she had the house to herself, she usually worked out in the basement where she had set up a heavy bag and some workout equipment. She was determined to stay in shape, even if she ended up never using her skills again. She remembered watch guard duty to be extremely boring and mind numbing work. She almost pitied whatever poor sap had pissed off his section head and got in her detail. Some days she even tried to mix it up for whatever erstwhile agent had been assigned to her that day by firing up the video game system dance games and dancing and singing to "Upton Funk" at the top of her lungs. Other days she was feeling bitchy and made them listen to Bee Gees songs all day long.
Not that she was unprepared for the possibility of having to block the signals on these bugs. She was a spy after all, and was not unprepared for the fact that she was being watched and her communications monitored. Before she had turned herself in to the CIA for discipline, she had hidden a few electronic devices of SHIELD design around the house that she figured she would be staying in while the family had been out. When she had arrived, she had waited a few weeks, then pulled them out from the hidden place in the boxspring of the bed in the room she was occupying where she had hidden them. Before the house was bugged, for she had checked. The one on her wrist appeared to be a simple Apple Watch. But it had been modified with Stark technology and operated on a frequency not known by many in the CIA. It had barely been known in SHIELD. If it were examined, it would appear to be a regular Apple Watch with a few of the operating applications on it. But deep within an application that appeared to be a game, was the ability to communicate to a server using GPS piggyback technology. When monitored, the signal simply looked like a signal tracking GPS satellites, not a communication signal. That same app also had the ability to jam signals coming to and from an area with a roughly 300 foot radius, meaning that she could make all of the bugs in the house go dark. Of course that would be an indication immediately to her watch dogs that she was up to something, so she had no intention of using it unless it was an emergency.
There was also a chat feature hooked to the several burner numbers that she had used in the past in case anyone needed to contact her. There would be no messages going to the cell phone that she used that everyone knew about, but in the event that any of her former SHIELD associate or Steve Rogers needed to contact her, it would go to the hidden place in the special app on the watch. There had been no messages to any of her numbers. Logically, she knew it was because none of the people she wanted to talk to should risk having their locations determined from sending messages. Still, it was difficult not to feel a little forgotten.
Not that she had had no word from Steve Rogers. Following her sentencing, about three months into her house arrest, he had called during the day when the family was out. He had told her that he knew the phone was bugged and they were being listened to, which was why he had to keep the conversation short, but to tell her that he was in honestly glad that she was safe and not on the Raft, and that he was still very grateful for her help and hoped she wasn't too mad at him. She had told him that she was not mad at him, and she also was grateful for house arrest instead of regular incarceration, but that she was certain she was going to die of boredom with nothing to do. He had laughed and told her to stay out of trouble, and that he hoped he would see her again someday. He told her that he wouldn't tell her where he was going, but to only say that he and the others were safe for the time being. They had said their goodbyes and ended the call, and that had been the last she had heard from him aside from random sightings people reported on the Internet of seeing him and the others, now being called the Shadow Avengers, all over the planet. If even half of the reports were true, it seemed that Rogers and his compatriots had gone freelance against criminals, bringing down terrorist cells and putting a chink in the human trafficking chain. He had not indicated in the phone call that he intended to ask her to join them at any point, fort with mean returning to a life on the other end of the law, but she did wish she could have joined them. What they were doing was her area of expertise. And if the CIA or other intelligence agencies thought she was on trustworthy simply forgiving a man his property back, then fuck them.
But he had not asked, and she hadn't expected him too. And she had not heard from him since. Within an hour of the phone call, the house was swarming with agents and she was being put through the 3rd° along with a lie detector test, the agents refusing to believe that she did not know where Captain America was, or that there had not been some coded message in his phone call. She had been threatened with an extra six months on her sentence, or being removed from the house and put in a prison cell. This had all happened in front of her family including the boys. It had infuriated her but she never lost her cool. Joseph told her later that he was highly impressed at her never blinking under the grilling the agents gave her, because he personally wanted to punch each one of them. She had laughed and ruffled his hair and advised against attacking a federal agent. It never ended well she assured him. Then she had smiled softly and told him he was most definitely Peggy's grandson.
Her cousin Craig had been less amused. Although he wanted to help his cousin, he was not on board with agents randomly storming his house and sifting through their closets simply because she got a phone call. Sharon had offered to move to the small house on the property that she and her mother had shared when they still lived here, and Peggy and Uncle Dan had occupied the big house. Craig head sighed and shook his head, saying no, that he didn't want her by herself in the house less than a quarter of the size of the one she was currently stuck in. "But I have to tell you Sharon," he had said, "it does really suck, not just for you but for us. It seems like every time that man has come into our family's life, he leaves behind a whole lot of heartache. First mom, then you. Twice."
"Craig," she had countered evenly, "your mother would have been the first one to agree that he had no choice but to crash the plane into the Arctic. You know very well that millions of lives in New York City would have been vaporized if he hadn't. It was his choice and she supported him, no matter how much it hurt her. And I don't think she regretted the life she had as a result, which included your father and all of you guys. As for me, well, I've vowed never to regret my decisions by him. I took a demotion from field agent to watch his backside for two years under cover, and bringing down SHIELD was the right thing to do. Peggy herself would have done it if she had known it was infested with Hydra. Then giving up my freedom and my job at the CIA to help him go after Zemo? I don't regret that one bit. The other Winter Soldiers are dead, and that maniac is behind bars. On top of all that, he stopped T'Challa from committing cold blooded murder while wearing the mantle of Black Panther, which would have required him to give up the throne of Wakanda. Even my old boss Everett Ross agreed that Rogers was right this time, hell even Tony Stark agreed it."
"Yeah, but where is he now?" asked Craig. "You get to take the fall, and he gets to run off..."
"Nobody took a fall, Craig," she had cut him off. "And I don't want you thinking that. He was extremely grateful when I helped him out, you should have seen the look on his face when he realized what I had done, like he couldn't believe anyone would care enough to do it. He knew what it meant, the loss of my job and now I was a fugitive. For the record, he said thank you. And he didn't just run off. If even half the rumors are true, he's taking down a lot of seriously bad guys, with or without permission. Maybe the Avengers do need some oversight, SHIELD had provided that. But if they're going to go off on their own, let us be grateful that they're going after international criminals and not trying to set themselves up as the rulers of the world or something."
"Craig had sighed and shook his head, more sad than angry at the turn of events facing his family. "That may be so, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I know he's a good man, mom would not have loved him otherwise. And you aren't loyal to fools. I just hate seeing you like this, locked up and your skills just being put up on the shelf. Maybe none of us followed mom into the life, but I'm not ignorant of what it takes to live it. It's all or nothing with being a SHIELD agent. You should have had a lot more years in the profession."
She had clapped her cousin on the shoulder and smiled, telling him not to worry, she was far from done yet. And hey, she had joked, if the CIA got really desperate and needed competent people, they wouldn't care about her background, they would find some way to use her. Even as an analyst. Nancy had chimed in that she had thought Sharon was very brave for her decision, and that they had probably best leave it at that. After that conversation, they had mutually agreed not to discuss the specifics of her decisions to help Steve Rogers, but the conversation had touched a nerve hidden in the darkest recesses of her mind. Had he forgotten about her? Had she simply been a convenient to tool to be utilized and then forgotten? She knew he wasn't that kind of man, but some days, when she was having an exceptionally lonely day, it was difficult not to let that little voice whisper in her ear that she didn't mean nearly as much to Steve Rogers and she hated to admit that he meant to her. She was a consummate professional about everything and her life, and that was especially true of her work.
In taking on the job for Nick Fury to watch Steve's backside, she had memorized practically every scrap of written knowledge that existed on him, and had dredged up every word her aunt had ever spoken to her about him. She studied him so thoroughly that she could pick out his voice even when he tried to disguise it, knew the cadence of his steps in the hallway outside her apartment door when she had lived next-door to him, could pick him out in a crowd even when he tried to disguise himself. This was typical of guard duty on the subject, but she had not expected to grow to like and appreciate the man himself. Sure, he was Captain America, what was there not to appreciate? But she knew he was so much more, and over time she had gotten to see the man that her aunt had appreciated. After her funeral, when they had spent the afternoon together just talking, she had grown to know him more, and found herself wishing he knew her better, not just the wayward SHIELD agent who had been spying on him who turned out to be the niece of his lost love, but Sharon herself. She found herself wondering, for example, if he knew that her favorite food is sushi? She knew his favorite was bacon cheeseburger. Those were just little things that people knew about each other when they were friends. Maybe even more.
But maybe that was stretching things a bit. She had no idea how he felt about her. Despite the kiss under the bridge.
"Well, I guess I should get going," said Nancy, breaking Sharon out of her reverie. Sharon snapped herself back to reality and gave her cousin's wife a quick hug before handing her the lunch and coffee mug. Nancy called upstairs to say goodbye to her sons who yelled back their goodbyes, before she headed out the door. The boys came stomping down the stairs not much after, slouching in their chairs to gobble their breakfast sandwiches and finish their homework. Sharon skimmed the news on her phone for the latest list of daily tragedies and triumphs, while surreptitiously looking for some sign or indication of where Steve Rogers and the Shadow Avengers might be. To most people, skimming over a story about 15 young girls being rescued from a trafficking ring in Cambodia might garner little attention, but her trained eye that had been accustomed to looking between the lines of news stories quickly picked out that the girls had been rescued by forces other than the local police using tactics familiar to the American military of 80 years ago. Since she knew that Tony Stark's group had not gone out recently, she made a mental note to count Cambodia as a potential location for the freelance Avengers. It was in keeping with another new story she had read a few days ago that had happened in Indonesia. And so, with mostly just hunches to go on, she figured Steve and his crew were probably in southeast Asia at the moment.
"Aunt Sharon, I'm done," said Isaac with a grin, having shoved most of his breakfast sandwich in his mouth. Sharon smiled at her cousin. Isaac was a good-natured child who was rarely in a bad mood. It could be storming outside for three days straight and he would find something to be happy about. Natural optimism was his key feature. Unlike his slightly moodier older brother. Joseph was a pensive teenager who rarely cracked jokes, though he found humor in many things. But Joseph was more likely to study thing and try to figure out what he was not being told. He was a deep thinker, and resembled his grandfather Danielle Susa quite strongly, not just an appearance but also in personality. He hadn't spoken word since he sat at the table, for example, but now he looked over at Sharon and said, "Are you OK? You seemed kind of off this morning."
It was the kind of question that tended to throw Sharon for a loop, for she prided herself in not giving away her true feelings if she was having a bad day. She put on a brave face and tried to smile for the family, but it rarely fooled Joseph. Few people liked playing poker with her, Joseph usually could tell when she was bluffing. Not for the first time, she wondered if her young cousin wouldn't make decent SHIELD agent, if SHIELD ever manage to reform. On the other hand, she suspected he didn't have much in him that would allow him to do the active part of the job of an agent, but he would make a damn fine analyst. If his father wouldn't be dead set against it. Craig had no love for the profession that had stolen away much of his mother's attention during his life, and had his cousin currently incarcerated in his house. He would be less enthused to hear that his son might follow them into the life as well. But Peggy's husband Daniel had made a damn fine agent and later director, himself, despite his disabilities incurred from the war. One didn't always have to be an action hero to be an effective agent.
"Yeah, well, house arrest for 18 months will do that to you," she said with a grin to take the sting out of the truth of her words. Joseph got the hint and went back to his food and homework. Suddenly, came the sound of honking from the driveway. Sharon looked out the window and grimaced.
"There's Rainette. Come on guys, let's get a move on!" Joseph and Isaac jumped up and grabbed their backpacks and lunch bags. She hustled them out the front door, giving them quick hugs and sending them down the porch stairs, waving at the mother of Joseph's friend Mark who had agreed to give them a ride in the morning. Once the car had driven off, she turned and close the front door and went back into the kitchen to clean up the dishes. She sat for a bit by herself at the table scrolling through the news, before sighing and getting up. Although the house didn't really need to be cleaned, as she cleaned it almost every day just to keep busy, she had opted to go ahead and clean it anyway, telling herself that it would help the preparations for the family plans to leave the next day for a cruise as soon as school were out for the summer break. Truth be told, she wasn't looking forward to an entire week in the house by herself with them want to talk to. After 18 months of really only seeing her family on a daily basis, the occasional visitor or delivery person, and those who gave the children rides to and from school, spending an entire week without anybody there at all was akin to solitary confinement. It wasn't going to be fun. She plugged her phone into the stereo system and fired up some jumpy music to get her in the mood to start housecleaning. After somewhat eclectic mix of "Walking on sunshine," "You should be dancing," and "It's raining men," she got the already spotless house even more spotless and fixed herself a sandwich for lunch, before hauling down the laundry to make sure everybody had clean clothes to choose from when packing.
In the afternoon she busied at herself by writing checklists for the boys for them to remember to pack certain things such as their gaming systems and their summer reading books while she pack their suitcases for them. Craig and Nancy could handle their own packing, but she left checklists for them anyway. In the afternoon, she spent several hours down in the basement in the training center she had set up with secondhand equipment punching on the heavy bag, running on the treadmill, and working out with weights. She had even commandeered Joseph's airsoft gun to keep up what target practice skills she could, since she was obviously not allowed to have a fire arm in the house. The inability to have a weapon nearby made her extremely nervous. She had lived the sort of life that had involved pissing off quite a few very powerful criminals, and it would not take much for them to realize that she was basically stuck in the house with no protection. They airsoft gun and BB guns were better than nothing if one wanted to practice target shooting, but she had fashioned a few makeshift weapons out of what items she could fine around the house, which included a set of nunchucks made from metal pipes and a length of bike chain, and some escrima sticks made from leftover bits of PVC pipe that she had found in the basement, though she was not nearly as skilled in them as her friend Bobbi.
After several hours of running on the treadmill and pounding the heavy bag to try to ignore the silence surrounding her and the week of silence that was coming, she finally went back upstairs to shower and start pulling together items for supper. Normally Nancy cooked supper, but since this was the last day of school, there were several things that needed to be taken care of and she would be picking up the children and going last minute vacation shopping, which meant they would not be coming in at their normal time. She threw together a white sauce chicken Alfredo, knowing they would never eat it all but would ensure that she had leftovers for a couple of days. When it was just her in the house, she normally subsisted on sandwiches, not really seeing the point of cooking for just one person. Around 5 PM the family came bustling in with stories of last day of school and work before leaving for vacation. Sharon was able to throw herself into helping them with preparations and helping Nancy clean up the kitchen, enough to distract her from her situation. Of the many things she was going to miss this week, she was going to miss the distraction that her relatives brought from the fact that she was essentially imprisoned in the house. That evening was spent playing video games with her young cousins, and helping them pack their few remaining items. The family piled their suitcases by the door, so they would be ready to run out when the airport shuttle arrived the next morning. Everyone went to bed early, excited about the next day, including Sharon, although she stayed awake staring at her ceiling until one in the morning, her mind and emotions jumble of confusion.
The next morning was equally chaotic. The adults ran around the house trying to locate last minute items that had been forgotten in the packing the night before. Sharon helped Isaac tear apart his room looking for the travel charger for his Nintendo 3DS. Joseph was missing one of his favorite shoes that he insisted that he had to bring with him on the trip. Nancy couldn't find her phone charger and ended up borrowing Sharon's. Craig fielded a last-minute phone call from the office helping a coworker locate a file for a client that Craig insisted had been left on his desk but the coworker insisted could not be found. The honking from the driveway indicating that the airport shuttle had arrived through everything else into a frenzy of activity, and Sharon did the best she could to help her family get out the house without actually getting off of the porch. The driver helped them load their luggage into the van, and with many last-minute hugs, enthusiastic waving and shouts of goodbye, Sharon smiled and waved as her family departed for their weeklong vacation. When they had finally gone, she close the door behind them and leaned against it, suddenly aware of how truly quiet the house was without them.
At first, the silence wasn't all that different than what she dealt with on a daily basis. Although the house was spotless and did not need to be clean, she put on some music again as she had done the day before and ran the dust mop over the floors. There was no laundry to do, and no breakfast dishes to clean up, and her usual methods of distracting herself during the day were going to dry up quickly. Without the need to tend to the needs of the family, she hauled out the Tupperware box of various crafty items that her cousin Kathy, Craig's sister who lived three hours away, had brought her over the months that she had been incarcerated. Kathy was quite crafty herself, and insisted that Sharon needed to engage in a creative passion in order to keep herself occupied. Kathy practically lived in Hobby Lobby, and it seemed like every other month she was announcing to the family about some new project she had taken up. Last year it was hooked rugs, then it was crochet and knitting, and then as of late it was adult coloring books. Inside the large Tupperware was a stack of adult coloring books and a huge box of pencils and gel pens. There was also a "how to knit" kit and "how to crochet" kit with a couple of rolls of yarn. Recently, Kathy had brought her a calligraphy set, saying something about the use of the fountain pen and cursive writing being important to engage the brain. Sharon sighed and took out the calligraphy set. If nothing else it would give her something to do. Who knows, since she had no prospect of employment waiting for her when this was all over, if she got really desperate, she could always hand write wedding invitations or something. Then she shook her head violently. She doubted she would ever be that desperate for something to do. But she sat at the kitchen table anyway learning to work the pen and following the practice workbook until her hands cramped. Then she decided to try knitting a hat. That lasted an hour. Finally, she decided her best course of action was to go down to the basement and work herself into an exhausted sweat. That seem to be the only thing that kept her sane in the long term.
TBC
