Checked Out
An Avengers/MCU pre-Civil War OC genfic
Chapter 1: Cows and fried eggs
The beige wall said ATM Bakery Deli. The wall was corrugated metal, and the letters were hand-painted. Next, the wall said Market in fancier, much larger hand-painted letters. Then it said Super in smaller letters, slanting upwards. Finally it said Westcliffe.
Snow didn't need anything from Westcliffe Super Market's ATM. The Deli and Bakery sounded good, though. She rounded the corner. Westcliffe Super Market was built on a concrete pad that took up the whole block. The Super Market itself occupied about a quarter of the pad. The rest was marked out in yellow for parking, to the front and left side of the building. The roof had a very slight peak. Otherwise the main building was basically square. The front entrance was covered by a brown stucco extension. The extension had automatic single sliding doors on either side. They were set at a 45-degree angle to the main building. The rest of the Westcliffe Super Market's front wall was shaded by a roof, supported by one steel pillar on either side of the entrance extension. The roof and the pillars were painted a brownish orange.
Snow stopped to let the automatic door slide open. She stepped inside and felt a lot better. A lot of Colorado was flat from what she'd seen. The part of Colorado served by Westcliffe Super Market was definitely flat, but Snow had crossed over top a long mountain to get here. There was another long mountain out to the west a few miles. It ran parallel to the one she'd crossed to get here. The wind was constant, and chilly. Snow's leather cafe racer jacket was designed to keep the wind off, but her jeans seemed like they just let it through. And of course it blew right through her short hair. Snow had stopped shivering a while back. She kept wondering if that was bad.
Westcliffe Super Market's front extension had two rows of shopping carts, done in red wire. Snow looked at them, but she didn't take one. The main entrance was an automatic double sliding door. It whooshed open when she stopped in front of it. The air that met her from inside the store felt warm. Snow walked inside and stopped, soaking it up. It probably wasn't actually all that warm—the back and left walls had open refrigerated shelves—but the constant wind outside stripped away heat.
The interior of Westcliffe Super Market was a warehouse done up to look friendly. It had polished cement floors and an open ceiling. The back wall of the store had some kind of design with cows and fried eggs. To the right of the entrance, there were a bunch of tables with baked goods on display. Snow looked at them, but she turned and went left. There were four checkout aisles, but only one of them had a cashier. The front left corner of Westcliffe Super Market was walled off into a small office with a customer service window. Around the window were ads for different kinds of lottery tickets, and also for cigarettes. An old man in a red-and-black plaid jacket and a John Deere mesh baseball cap was at the window. Snow stood behind him. He had bought a ticket that said Cash Wanted in letters like an old Western movie title. He was scratching off different parts of the ticket.
The woman on the other side of the customer service window was wearing a red polo shirt. There was a lanyard around her neck, but whatever hung on it was below the level of the counter. The woman leaned forward to see the man's ticket. She said, "Anything good, Clyde?"
Clyde said, "Nah. Shitty luck today, Darlene." He put the ticket in his pocket. "Gimme a Cash 5. Same numbers."
Darlene asked, "You want the EZ Match?"
Clyde asked, "Do I ever?"
Darlene shrugged and said, "I gotta ask." She did something behind the counter, waited, and then gave Clyde a ticket. Clyde glanced at it to check the numbers and then put it in his pocket, alongside the worthless Cash Wanted ticket. He turned around and almost bumped into Snow.
"Ma'am." Clyde touched the bill of his hat as she stepped around Snow. Snow turned to watch him. Clyde was headed for the entrance, zipping up his plaid jacket.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" Darlene was resting her elbows on her side of the counter, so she could look out the customer service window more easily. "Lotto tickets or smokes, honey?"
Snow said, "Are you the manager?"
Darlene straightened up a little bit. "No, honey. You want me to get him?"
Snow said, "Yes, please." Darlene moved to the side and picked up a phone. Snow looked up at the front wall. It had a pine forest design.
"Can I help you, ma'am?" Snow turned around to see a roundish man in a white shirt and a red vest. He wore a name tag on a lanyard, which said his name was William. It also said he was the General Manager. Snow thought that would make this a lot easier. She'd worried that she'd have to deal with an assistant manager.
"There's something wrong with the carts," Snow said. "I'll show you." She turned and walked towards the entrance. Her boots clunked on the polished cement floor. She heard William follow her after a moment.
There was nobody else in the entrance extension with the carts. Nobody unloading their cart, nobody grabbing one to head inside for grocery shopping. Outside it was late afternoon, but it wasn't so dark that Snow couldn't see through brightly-lit interior reflection on the windows. There wasn't anybody in the parking lot, just parked cars. Nobody pulling in.
Snow turned and said, "William?"
William said, "Bill, please. What's wrong with the carts?" Bill looked up and down the row. All the carts were in order.
Snow pulled one of the carts out. It was made of heavy-gauge wire, covered in bright enamel. She said, "Bill, watch this."
"Um, okay?" Bill was looking a bit confused. His face went blank when Snow picked up the cart with one hand. She didn't haul it into the air, leaning to one side to use her body as a counterweight. She didn't grunt and yank it. She just picked it up.
Bill looked like he knew what those carts weighed. He probably worked with them a lot, pushing rows of them up from the parking lot when the stockboys were all busy. They were nice, fairly new carts, with wheels that didn't squeak or rattle, so if you were just pushing one around it might seem pretty light. But if you picked one up, you'd find that all that heavy gauge wire and wheel mounts and bars added up to around seventy pounds. Most adults could pick one up if they had to, but they would probably huff and puff and stagger a bit, partly because of the weight but partly because it was a big, awkward burden. They wouldn't hold it in one hand like a toy, turn their palm up with the cart still in it, and waggle it from side to side a little.
"Ah, ma'am, you shouldn't be doing that," Bill said. Bill seemed like he had a long history in customer service. He had politeness ingrained into him, so he didn't say things like "What the fuck are you doing" or "How the hell are you doing that." But he backed up a little, with his hands out in front of him a bit. So he was probably thinking those things.
Snow was holding the cart in her right hand. She turned it so that she could reach the front of th cart with her left hand. She scrunched the front of the cart. The heavy gauge wire squealed as it deformed. It was loud enough that it might have been heard inside the store, so when Snow shifted her grip to scrunch the cart some more, she scrunched it a little slower.
Snow said, "Not here hurt anybody, Bill." The cart kind of sighed as the front and back collapsed towards each other. The plastic handle on the pushbar cracked and fell off, but it didn't make too much noise. "I'm just gonna take some stuff. I want you to make sure people leave me alone."
Bill was watching the cart. His face had turned a bit red and shiny, but he didn't look panicky.
"We, um." Bill's eyes flicked down and up, watching Snow's hands deform different parts of the cart. "There's not a lot of money. I can't open the safe for you." He did something with his mouth, like he was going to say something. Then he said, "Maybe you can open it. Nobody will try to stop you."
Snow wondered if anybody had ever robbed Westcliffe Super Market. It was a small town, so maybe not. If this was Bill's first robbery, he was handling it pretty well. Snow said, "I don't want your safe. Or your cash drawers. But I also don't want somebody to call the cops." Snow turned the cart in her hands. It was about half its original volume, now. She grabbed one of the wheels and started pushing it in.
"They wouldn't be able to stop me, okay? And somebody might get hurt." The wheel broke in half. Snow dropped it, and continued pushing on the wheel mount. "Not on purpose. I don't want to hurt anyone." Snow got the second wheel where she wanted it and started on the third. "But they'd probably shoot me." Snow grabbed the fourth wheel by the base and started squeezing. "Bullets don't work on me. But they might hit somebody else." She pushed and twisted some more, and then she was done. The cart had been scrunched into a ball a few inches bigger than a basketball. She held it out to Bill. He took it and staggered and bent his knees. It really did weigh about seventy pounds.
"I just want to grab some stuff." Snow reached out and took the balled-up cart back. It was pretty warm from the friction of all that wire being bent. She set it down next to a garbage bin. Bill didn't seem to have much else to say, so Snow walked back inside.
She stopped next to the stack of hand-held shopping baskets. Balling up the cart had taken a lot out of her. The way Snow's body worked, doing it hadn't been hard. But if she tried to do another one before she ate, she'd probably pass out. And maybe not wake up again.
Snow remembered the wall outside had said Bakery. She picked up a hand basket and cut over to the right. She picked up a clear plastic clamshell container that held six glazed doughnuts. The label on the top of the clamshell said the Donuts were Maple Glazed. Snow thought about putting a big, soft, sticky Maple Glazed Donut into her mouth. Her stomach felt twisty and her mouth went dry. She put the Maple Glazed Donuts back on the table. Next to them were a four-pack of muffins. She thought about how they would taste. Her stomach twisted again, but a little less, so she put the muffins in her basket. The sticker said they were bran. Snow walked towards the back of the store, with the refrigerated shelves.
When she was aware of herself again, she found she was walking slowly down an aisle with mops and light bulbs. There was a display rack of batteries hanging off one shelf. Snow didn't own anything that used batteries. She looked in her basket and found a loaf of wheat bread and a jar of peanut butter. She thought about it for a moment, then picked up a box full of plastic spoons, knives, and forks. Then she found the aisle for drinks, and picked up two gallons of water in plastic jugs. Then she went back to the mop aisle and took a tube of generic isopropyl alcohol wipes.
She walked up front. Bill was standing behind register 2. The cashier at register 1 was playing a game on her phone. Bill spotted Snow and waved. He had a bright, stiff smile. Snow walked over to the register.
Bill said, "Hello, ma'am!" His voice was too loud. "Did you find everything you were looking for?" The cashier at register 1 looked up. She saw Snow and looked around for any other customers ready to check out. There weren't any, so the girl went back to her game.
"Yeah," said Snow.
"Here, let's get your stuff on the counter," Bill said, making a beckoning motion with his hand. More quietly—too quietly—he said, "I thought it might be best if we go ahead and bag up your, em, purchases, just like your were. You know, making a normal purchase. So nobody will notice anything out of, you know, the ordinary?" Snow looked at him. His expression was brittle. He looked terrified. The thing with the cart had been way, way overboard. He was afraid she'd do the cart thing to him. But he was more afraid that she'd do it to somebody else in the store. So here he was right here behind the cash register, keeping Snow's attention on himself.
Snow's stomach twisted, worse than when she'd thought about eating Maple Glazed Donuts.
"Okay," she said. The word barely got past her lips. She felt empty. She watched Bill put her groceries into white plastic bags. For some reason, the bags said Lowes on them, in a yellow diamond with a tomato, some bananas, and some grapes. Snow wondered why the name outside was different from the name on the bags. It was better than thinking about how she'd scared Bill half out of his mind.
"There you go, ma'am! All paid up!" Bill was too loud again. Snow took the two white plastic bags in one hand, and the two jugs of water in the other. She thought about saying something, but there wasn't anything to say. So she walked out to the entrance extension. She walked around the corner and down the street, past Westcliffe, then Super, then Market, then ATM Deli Bakery. Behind the building was an unpaved lane and an empty lot. Beyond the lot there were a bunch of open fields, and beyond that the mountain.
Snow set down her bags and her water. She dug into the bags and opened up the carton of muffins. Each muffin was larger than her fist, almost as large as both her fists together. She smelled them. They smelled a little sweet and a little earthy. She wanted to close them back up, but she made herself pick one up. She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth. It was awful, moist and chewy and crumbly, with flakes of oatmeal on top and a hint of cinnamon throughout. Snow made a noise in her throat, but she swallowed. She broke the rest of the muffin in half, and pushed one of the halves into her mouth. Her throat kept trying to heave. She swallowed, swallowed again, and then went to work on the last piece.
When she was done, she stood with her hands on her knees for a while. Once the sugar hit her system, her stomach started to settle. After a few minutes, she straightened up.
Then she rose into the air with her groceries and her water. She turned left, which she thought was probably south, and flew away.
I'm going back and adding these notes well after publishing the chapter, at the suggestion of a kind reviewer. This chapter is really where the whole story started, for me. It was sparked by a short aside in J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars comic, in which a number of former superheroes simply drop out of their lives. They were disillusioned by the events of the story, and they simply decided to stop pretending to be part of regular human society. When they were hungry, they went into a store or restaurant and took what they wanted. When they were tired, they walked into a hotel and asked for a room. They were so powerful that the normal constraints of society—the police, mainly—didn't have any capacity to stop them. And since they weren't really hurting anyone, everyone mostly just stepped back and let them do what they want.
I liked the idea of the events of the Marvel Cinematic Universe affecting someone in a similar way. The story I kept imagining always started with a lone young woman walking into a supermarket and balling up a shopping cart like it was made of tin foil—but not in a showy, tremble-before-my-awesome-power kind of way. Just in a tired, let's-cut-to-the-chase kind of way.
So that's where this whole idea kicked off. This story is set prior to the events of Captain America: Civil War, because I really wanted the setting to be 'peak Avengers'. I was tempted to set it even further back, prior to Age of Ultron, because I like Bruce and I wanted to get his perspective into the story. But ultimately I decided the events of Age of Ultron were too useful for the tone I wanted to set. So, no Bruce for now.
One final note: this is a pretty slow-burning story, and it sticks to the periphery of the MCU. Eventually we'll see some interactions with, at the very least, Tony, but that's a pretty long way off, at least as I'm envisioning things right now. I did manage to drag Thor in much earlier than I'd hoped, maybe I'll be able to pull in some other Avengers ahead of schedule.
Thanks for reading!
