Checked Out
An Avengers/MCU pre-Civil War OC fic

Chapter 2: A lot of trouble there

Snow rubbed her eyes. She didn't think she'd slept. She couldn't remember sleeping since... before she'd left Seoul. She thought she must have slept at some point, a few minutes or hours here and there. She remembered reading that you can go crazy if you don't sleep. Snow didn't think she was crazy.

The light coming through the gap between the roll-up door and the cement floor was blue-white instead of street light orange. Snow used it to find her wipes. She undressed and wiped herself down. It had occurred to her somewhere over Ohio that she probably didn't smell very good. She'd taken to stealing travel packs of baby wipes from gas stations. They seemed to do a good enough job. None of the people she'd run into so far, during her infrequent trips to the ground, had acted like she smelled bad, anyway. Though she hadn't run into all that many people. Snow held her jeans to her nose and sniffed. They weren't stained or even dirty. Maybe getting a little threadbare. Snow wondered if maybe it was just too chilly, out here in the countryside, to sweat. That didn't really seem right. But she couldn't hold onto her thoughts long enough to think about it much.

She'd run out of bread the day before yesterday. The loaf had lasted about a week, and the jar was still half-full of peanut butter. She couldn't remember if she'd been here for five days or six. At first she'd made sandwiches with two slices of bread. She wasn't able to finish any of them, so she started just making half sandwiches on a single slice. She was usually able to finish them before her stomach threatened to send it all back up. At least she didn't have any problems drinking water. She'd refilled her gallon jugs three times, landing in strangers' yards in the early morning and using their spigots. Once, a light in the house had come on. She'd taken her single half-full jug and flown away.

Snow put her clothes back on and sat down to strap up her boots. She thought her boots and her jacket were the two things she really had going for her. The boots were heavy, scuffed, black leather tanker boots. She'd found them at a thrift store, back in New York. They'd fit perfectly. The clerk had said they were military surplus. Snow hadn't thought five-foot-nothing girls who weighed maybe ninety pounds could be soldiers. The military boots had made her feel like a badass. That had been a new experience.

She rolled up the door and looked outside. She was in an empty ten-by-ten storage unit. Wet Mountain Storage had a dirt lot, with two rows of larger storage units and one row of smaller units at the back of the lot. She'd picked one of the smaller units that didn't have a lock on it, and didn't have any neighbors with locks. The latch handle at the bottom of the door had a keyhole, but Snow just twisted it till the mechanism snapped. The lot was well-lit at night, and there were security cameras on each building. Snow hadn't thought she'd get more than a single night before someone came and bothered her, but nothing had happened yet.

That was good. She hadn't decided whether she'd leave and find someplace else, or force whoever owned the lot to let her stay. Both options seemed impossibly complex. Talking to someone, finding something to destroy so they'd know not to mess with her, warning them about what would happen if they called the cops... or flying around, looking for a new place, trying to balance the long list of necessary features: dry, private, enough room to lie down, close to someplace out of view so she could fly away and land without people noticing and getting upset. Just thinking about juggling it all was exhausting.

Snow made a deal with herself. She'd go to Westcliffe Super Market, which might also be Lowes. If Bill was there, she'd get another loaf of bread. Otherwise, she'd put it off. The muffins hadn't worked out very well, after the first one. She hadn't been able to force herself to eat another. She'd eventually thrown them out. Her water, she could keep refilling. And she still had a bunch of the plastic forks, spoons, and knives left, for spreading peanut butter on the bread. And plenty of wipes. Snow tried to think if there was anything else she needed, but her brain felt cloudy. The clouds in her brain were so thick, she could almost see them at the edges of her vision. They didn't let many thoughts get through.

There was a chain link fence running around Wet Mountain Storage. Snow flew over it. Behind Wet Mountain Storage was a barn with a gigantic tin roof, surrounded by a bunch of different farm vehicles and trucks. She turned to her left. Across several fields and roads, she could see the market's beige wall. She was a little too far away to make out Westcliffe Super Market ATM Deli Bakery. She started walking across the field. She walked parallel to the long dirt driveway that fed the barn with the gigantic tin roof. She had to fly over a couple low barbed-wire fences. The end of the driveway ran into one of the town's bigger roads. It was only two lanes, but the lanes were wider, and the road had double yellow lines and white lane lines. Most of the roads in Westcliffe were narrower and largely unmarked.

Westcliffe Super Market was at the western edge of town, before it gave way to wide, open fields. Westcliffe spread out mostly to her left, to the east. There were more fields that way, too, before they ran up against the mountain ridge Snow had flown over on her way into town. She hadn't known there was a town here when she'd flown over the mountain. She'd just seen the mountain and decided to fly over it. She'd never flown over a mountain before. There were a lot of mountains she'd flown past, but she'd mostly just meandered through the valleys. She'd seen the mountain, realized she'd never seen the top of one, and decided to fly up.

At the top, she'd seen another ridge in the distance, and the lights of a small town in the wide valley between them. The lights looked warm. The top of the mountain was colder than Snow had expected. She'd flown down and seen sparse rows of low houses, mostly on dirt roads in rectangular grids. There was an area that had the dirt road grid, but no houses. After that there were grids of paved roads with nicer houses, and then there was a street that had bars and restaurants on it.

Snow had tried one called Mountain View Bar and Grill. It had a sign inside that warned Cowboys to Wipe The Shit Off their Boots Before they Came In Here. The bartender had a neat man bun. Snow had asked the him for a water and said she was waiting for someone. Mountain View Bar and Grill had a steady stream of customers without getting very crowded. Some of the people coming in or leaving had nodded to her. The bartender kept her water filled but didn't bother her, even after she'd been there for almost an hour. Nobody spoke to her, but people didn't ignore her.

She'd stepped outside when the bartender was busy with someone else. She'd looked around and decided maybe she could find a place to try and sleep, here. It was the first place she'd been since New York that didn't feel either overcrowded or completely empty.

Snow walked past a nice brick house on the curve of a road that bent like a narrow boomerang. A cross street a few hundred feet up turned the boomerang into a big A. The cross street didn't have any houses on it. There were one or two houses on the two cross streets further down. The houses were all very nice, some of them with two stories. Snow thought it must be some kind of planned neighborhood, but the plan was maybe taking a long time to come together.

Ahead was a row of double-wides. Snow flew over the fence. She heard a car door slam, but it was behind one of the other mobile homes, out of sight. She'd forgotten to look. She should have gone out for food yesterday.

Across the street from the row of mobile homes was some kind of fenced-in park. The fence was some kind of reddish wood, tall, and didn't have any weeds growing around it. Snow detoured behind it. Any place that took that much care of their fence would probably notice someone flying over it. Cowering one or two people into submission so she could get food was one thing. Getting on the local news... Snow's brain couldn't focus long enough to tally up all the ways that would be bad.

After the fenced-in park was a huge yard with a tiny cabin. The cabin had a sign on it advertising HISTORIC REPLICA CABINS. And across the street from the HISTORIC REPLICA CABIN, finally, was Westcliffe Super Market. Or Lowes.

Snow walked through the single sliding door on this side of the entrance extension, and then through the double doors of the main entrance. She looked around. Bill had been standing at register 1. There was a cashier at the register itself. Bill, the general manager of the entire store, had been standing ready to bag. Now he was hurrying over to Snow.

"Welcome back, miss!" At least he wasn't overly loud, this time. The cashier was watching him with a confused expression. "Is there anything I can help you find today?" Bill asked brightly. "You can come right over to register 2 as soon as you're ready," he added before Snow could answer.

When Snow was sure he was done talking, she said, "I'm just going to get some more bread." She rubbed her mouth.

"Alright, ma'am!" Bill said. "That sounds great! I'll see you at register 2!" He folded his hands in front of himself, and then turned to head back to the registers. He started to go to register 2, then changed his mind and went back to the bagging station at register 1. The cashier looked at him, looked at Snow, and shrugged.

Snow walked around to the bread aisle. She started looking for the wheat bread she'd gotten before. She lost some time staring at the shelves. Her brain kept doing that, lately. It was like she took a nap or something, but her body kept going, and then she woke up. She was at the far end of the bread aisle, where there was an endcap that had a bunch of Gatorade energy bars. She was staring at the Gatorade lightning bolt. Someone else was in the aisle, a few feet away. They weren't faced towards the bread, they were faced towards Snow.

Snow looked up and saw a woman in a thick brown jacket. Her hair was almost as short as Snow's, but a dark brown where Snow's was closer to black. There was a silver and gold badge on her jacket. Snow couldn't quite figure the badge out, it had pointy parts that stuck out and round parts. The woman also had a heavy belt with a walkie-talkie on one side and a pistol on the other. The woman's hands were hooked on her belt buckle.

The woman said, "Hey, there. I'm Sheriff Mills." Sheriff Mills's face wasn't angry or scared. "I was wondering if we could have a talk, after you finish shopping?" When Snow didn't say anything right away, Sheriff Mills raised her fingers in sort of a 'be cool' gesture and said, "Not if you don't want to. Bill showed me his shopping cart, I'm not trying to push you." She smiled like she and Snow were sharing a little joke together.

Snow thought about it. Sheriff Mills didn't seem to want to make things hard, at least not right away. She seemed pretty clear on the idea that she couldn't make Snow do anything. She didn't seem scared, either. Snow thought everybody should be scared of her. She didn't want them to be scared of her. But it would be healthier for them if they were.

Snow looked at the bread selection. There were too, too many to choose from. She said, "I can finish shopping later. We can talk, I guess."

"Alright. Can I buy you breakfast? There's a great little diner down the street." Back in New York, there had been a little diner under the El near 72nd. Snow remembered getting eggs there, over easy, fried in grease from the bacon that came with.

Snow covered her mouth with the back of her hand and said "Uhm." Her stomach didn't have anything to bring up, though. She said, "I'm not really hungry." Her voice was a little shaky. Sheriff Mills was looking at her with an expression that Snow couldn't figure out. Snow said, "We can find a bench or something. Or your car. I don't care." Snow wanted to sleep. She wanted to lay down on the floor right there and close her eyes. But if she did that, she'd end up just staring at nothing until she got up again, like always. And Sheriff Mills might have some additional questions.

"Come on, we'll sit in my truck," Sheriff Mills said after a pause. "I'll crank the heat up." She turned and walked towards the front of the store. Snow put her hands in the pockets of her jacket and followed. She mostly watched the floor. Thinking about the eggs and bacon had made her a little dizzy. She glanced up as they passed the registers. Bill gave her a smile and a little wave. Snow looked at the floor again.

Sheriff Mills's truck was a big, white SUV with lights on top. It had a thick green stripe and a thin yellow one on the side. It had a big black and red star-shaped badge, and it said SHERIFF in big letters across the door. Sheriff Mills opened the front passenger's side door for Snow, then walked around to the driver's side. She started up the truck with a rumble, turned the fan knob all the way to the right, and cracked her window.

"So Bill never told me your name," Sheriff Mills said. The air blasting out of the vents was the stuff of life itself. Snow held her hands up to the heat and felt her whole body sag in relief. She hadn't realized how cold she was. After a while, she'd just stopped feeling it.

Sheriff Mills had asked a question. Snow thought back a bit, trying to remember. "Snow," she finally said. "I'm Snow."

"Yeah?" Sheriff Mills was amused. "Like Madonna? Or Beyonce?"

Snow turned that over in her mind a few times. "It's my last name," she said. "Don't like my first name." Snow thought her bones might be melting away in the heat. She sat back in the bucket seat. The seat was thickly cushioned, so much that it almost swallowed her. Snow wondered if she might be able to finally sleep, here. She decided to let it happen, if it was going to. That was a bad idea, but Snow couldn't remember why.

"Snow," Sheriff Mills said thoughtfully. "Where're you from, Snow?"

"Brooklyn," Snow's mouth said. She was right on the edge of drifting off. She could feel her mind trying to evaporate in the warmth.

"Never been to New York," Sheriff Mills said. "Lot of trouble there, recently." Snow heard the words, knew they should be jabbing her with memories. But the seat cushion absorbed it all. Yes, there had been trouble in New York. But that was a thousand miles away from here.

"Yeah," said Snow's mouth. Snow listened to herself speak. She wasn't telling her mouth what to say, it was just saying it. Snow didn't have to worry about it. Her mouth could run itself while she drifted away. "Why I left," her mouth said.

"Not a fan of trouble, I guess," Sheriff Mills said approvingly. There was something behind her words, but that was Snow's mouth's problem to deal with. Snow just wanted to sleep. She could feel it, like a wave just about to hit the shore. She waited for it to roll in. "That's good. Trouble... well, it's trouble. We're not really keen on trouble around here, either."

Snow opened her eyes. Sleep wasn't there. She'd reached for it, welcomed it, but like always, just as it got close it turned around and left.

Snow said, "I don't want any trouble, sheriff." She had to lift each word out of her mouth like an iron weight. "I really just want to be left alone."

"I think we can do that," Sheriff Mills said. "It might be easier if we work on it together, if that makes sense. Do you know how often you'll want to come down and get some groceries?" Snow looked over at her. "Bill wanted me to ask," Sheriff Mills said. "If he knows when you're coming, he can be there to get you through the checkout line."

"Maybe in the mornings," Snow said after thinking about it. "Every, like, five days. I don't really keep track of days." Snow rubbed her eyes. "If I come in, I won't come in again for at least three days." She was pretty sure she could keep track of three days. More than that and they blurred together too much.

"I think Bill can work with that just fine," Sheriff Mills said. "You know..." She paused. "I don't want to nose in where I don't belong," Sheriff Mills said. "But I'm really curious. How did—"

The truck shook with a roaring sound. Sheriff Mills startled, and slapped her hip. Snow jerked her knees up to her chest and hugged herself. The roar outside continued to build. Sheriff Mills slowly took her hand away from her holster. She ducked to crane her neck, so she could see up in the sky.

"Hey. Hey! It's one of those—things!" Sheriff Mills got out of the truck, still looking up. Snow stayed in the truck and hugged her knees. Out here in Colorado, they'd have only seen them on TV.

Snow had heard it in person. It was the sound of multiple large-scale repulsor engines operating at peak output. A helicarrier was landing in Westcliffe, Colorado.

Again, these notes are being added well after the chapter was originally published.

Not much to say here, really, except that bringing in the helicarrier wasn't even really part of my original headfic. The vignettes I laid out in my mind, back before I decided to start writing this stuff down, were base more on the comics—the story was originally set after the comics Civil War, during The Initiative. I've been pondering this idea for a long while. So there were a lot more fights with random heroes and villains, because that sort of thing sounds okay when you're not really trying to fit it all into a cohesive narrative. In place of all that nonsense, I've got the helicarrier.

One other thing, could I have possibly picked a more generic chapter title? I use phrases from the chapter text for each chapter title, something that sounds interesting but which doesn't really give a whole lot of heads-up regarding what the chapter is actually about. I don't want to set expectations up front, but I also don't want a boring slog of "Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3" and so on. If I were naming it now, I might go with "Gatorade lightning bolt" or maybe "HISTORIC REPLICA CABINS".

Thanks for reading!