Another few days passed, and the routine seemed to be holding. The days were still mostly silent, the nights less so, and the only thing that really changed was the size of Summer's guest's appetite.

Having fully overcome his initial inability to eat much of anything, he now ate like a horse. And that gave her a whole new matter to panic about.

After watching him put away four platefuls of dinner, Summer gathered up the dishes and went about her normal cleaning routine while furiously adding up the numbers in her head. Put simply, if he stayed indefinitely and kept eating at his current rate, she'd go broke feeding him in a short matter of time.

She understood that he couldn't do anything about it, what with his super-soldier metabolism (or at least that's what she read on the Internet about Steve Rogers), so there was nothing to be done about it. She couldn't put him on rations, but since she and David survived on savings, student loans, and child support, she was in no position to feed a bottomless pit.

She had one plate down and on the drying rack and was wracking her brain to come up with an estimate of when she could expect destitution when a sudden presence to her left made her stop and look up. James stood there, eyes on the sink, looking a bit awkward, and she flipped off the tap.

"Need something?"

"I thought... I could do that, if you wanted."

She blinked, glanced at the sink, and then back to him. "The dishes?" When he nodded slightly, she blinked again and asked, "Do you know... how?"

"I've watched you do them for two weeks," he replied, somewhat deadpan.

"Oh." She shifted slightly. Of course he had. He watched her do everything. "Okay. Um... sure. Thanks."

She then handed him the sponge, and a few moments later, she stood and watched in slight bewilderment as a metal-armed assassin washed dishes in her sink. She had the sudden urge to snap a picture of the spectacle, but then her better judgment kicked in.

David was at the table, coloring in a book, and Summer fidgeted for a moment, unsure of what to do now that she couldn't occupy herself with cleaning. She ended up sitting down next to David and getting on her phone, opening up her calculator app and deciding to go back to stressing about money.

Halfway through her calculations, an incoming call from her brother interrupted. As the room filled with the chorus of Weird Al's "White and Nerdy", she glanced up at James and then cleared her throat before answering.

"Hi Paul," she said lightly, reminding herself to sound as normal as possible and not give anything away about her current weird situation.

"Hey kid," came his reply. "You haven't been answering my texts. Why do you hate me?"

She snorted. "Sorry. I've been busy."

"With what? Writing one paper a week and mopping?"

"Hey," she feigned offense, "I'll have you know that I've cleaned the windows too."

"Seriously, I get worried when you don't answer like usual. Pretty soon you'll stop answering me altogether and never leave the house and end up like that weird uncle we never met who was dead in his house for a year before anyone noticed."

"Ew," she crinkled her nose. "Thanks for that, by the way. Real vote of confidence."

"Well. You're all alone out there. My offer still stands."

She sighed. "I know. And I appreciate it. But I hate California and it's better for David like this."

"Maybe. Well, if you won't come move in with us, I'm gonna sign you up for online dating. Or maybe FarmersOnly, since you're all into that organic crap -"

Her eyes widened. "Paul. No. I'm serious. I will send you a bomb if you do that." James glanced at her from the sink, and when she felt her face heat up a little, she attributed it to her outrage at Paul's idea.

"Oh come on! It's been what, almost six years - you need a date. With someone who won't knock you up and then split."

She grit her teeth. "He didn't knock me up, he -"

"I know. Sorry. But still. You need a date."

"And who would watch David while I'm on this date?" Another glance from the sink, and she stared down at her hand resting on the table.

"I don't know - take him with you. You know that there's plenty of single dads with autistic kids who are in the same boat as you, I bet you could even do a search based on that, and -"

"Gah, Paul, enough," she half-whined. Done with the dishes, James lingered for a moment and then wandered off to her bathroom. She sighed at his exit. "Besides, I'd probably just meet a serial killer, or an ax murderer." Or an ex-HYDRA agent, as she was decent at finding those, apparently.

"That is an unfair stereotype and you know it."

"Don't care."

On the other end, Paul let out a lengthy sigh as he paused. "How are you on money?"

She cringed but replied, "I'm doing fine."

"Sold any articles lately?"

"No," she sighed. "Not a whole lot of freelance stuff available at the moment."

"And your book?"

She cringed again. "Yeah, about that..."

"Of course," he snorted. "Are you ever going to put your talent to actual good use?"

"What do you think I'm doing in school?" she shot back slightly defensively, leaning back in her chair and tipping it back slightly.

"Getting in debt, mostly."

She leaned back further and crossed her arms, balancing the phone between her neck and shoulder. "Well, you're just a ray of sunshine today. Did you call just to get on my nerves and freak me out?"

"Why else do I ever call?" he replied. "No. I just don't like you being all the way over there alone. Especially that close to D.C.. And I know you feel like you need to live there because Grandma left you the place, but -"

"No I don't," she protested quickly.

"Whatever. But seriously, Summer! All that crap with SHIELD and HYDRA and our secretly Nazi government - if that's not reason enough to leave that area, I don't know what is."

She couldn't help it - she laughed. And she kept laughing until she bordered on hysteria and nearly tipped over her chair in the process. It was just too much, what with a HYDRA relic living under her roof and all. She balanced the chair at the last minute, and tried to contain her laughter.

"You're losing it, aren't you? I'm calling the men in white coats because apparently you think Nazis are a laugh riot."

"I don't," she said, forcing a deep breath to calm her laughter down. "I don't. Never mind. You wouldn't get it if I tried to explain."

"That, I believe," he muttered. "By the way, I think Sarah's pregnant again."

Her eyes widened. "What? Are you guys trying to be the Duggars 2.0?"

"Kind of," he replied. "Why not? And this would only make seven."

She rolled her eyes. "Poor Sarah. You're such a Catholic."

"Don't mock my Irish blood. It's not my fault that your portion of it from Dad is invisible."

She snorted. "Ginger."

"You wish you had my rugged Ron Weasley looks."

She wrinkled her nose again. "Okay, those words don't even work in a sentence together. I'm glad you got all those genes and I got the actual good ones."

Paul gave a laugh to that one. "Who knew kids so pasty could be so diverse?"

"Speak for yourself, Casper," she replied, hearing the bathroom door open from down the hall. She glanced up and then froze at the sight of her houseguest, this time wholly fulfilling the romantic-comedy cliche and exiting the bathroom wet and clad only in a towel that hung low on his hips.

He walked straight from the bathroom to her bedroom, which was only a number of feet directly in front of it, but she watched in what seemed like slow motion, feeling like somebody had lit matches underneath her cheeks. And then, to her undying, eternal shame, once he'd disappeared inside of her room, her balancing act with the chair failed spectacularly, and it fell backwards, sending her tumbling stupidly to the floor.

Grumbling incoherently about towels and cliches and muscles, she grabbed her phone off of the floor and sat up with a groan. "Dang it."

"Did you just die?"

"Almost," she sighed, fixing the chair and climbing back in it. Even David had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her as if she had two heads. "Stop judging me, David."

"Tell him Uncle Paul says hi."

"Uncle Paul says hi, David," Summer told the boy, who then turned back to his coloring. "He'd say hi back if he could."

"I know. I miss that kid."

"I miss your little brats too."

"Which is why they should all live together."

She laughed. It was a terrible idea. "That's my cue to hang up."

"Yeah, yeah. Answer my texts better from now on."

"Sure thing, No-Soul."

"Whatever, you... you... I don't know. Natalie Portman."

She squinted. "Is that supposed to be even remotely insulting?"

"Shut up. FarmersOnly."

"Letter bomb," she reminded him before hanging up. Talking to her older brother had left her smiling for a moment or two, but then it became a frown when she realized that this was the first thing she'd ever hidden from him. She'd never lied to him or concealed anything from him until now.

Sighing, she was lost in thought for a moment before glancing over and realizing David wasn't in his chair anymore. He was digging in her lower kitchen cabinets, and when she opened her mouth to ask what the heck he was doing, he triumphantly pulled out a package of aluminum foil.

"What are you doing with that?" she asked as he bustled over to the table, set it down, and then got back into his chair with a smile on his face. He then pushed it towards her expectantly, and she stared at him in confusion. "I don't get it..."

Then David shoved out his left arm, and she suddenly understood. "Oh. Oh... you want... I get it. Um... okay."

Hesitantly, she opened the package and ripped off a sheet of the foil. She wasn't sure that this was the greatest idea, but she couldn't say no to him, so she ended up making him a full fake metal arm out of aluminum foil, complete with tiny strips she wrapped around his fingers.

Once it was done, she thought it looked kind of terrible, but David was thrilled. Earlier she'd caught a glimpse of one of his drawings, and there was no mistaking who the silver-armed figure was supposed to be. They barely interacted, so she didn't understand where all of this was coming from, but then maybe that was it. They were, oddly enough, rather alike at the present time, and even if they weren't, a guy with a robot arm would probably be super cool to a little boy automatically anyway.

It figured, she mused, watching David wave his arm around with a big smile on his face. All this time she'd sworn off dating for his sake, not wanting to confuse him with men coming and going from his life, and he was probably getting attached to one anyway. And she didn't even get the benefit of dating out of the deal. Depressing.

She watched him get down and play with the new fake arm, a smile on her face as she did, and then all too soon, -Silent-Ninja-Footsteps walked into the kitchen from the hallway. He didn't look at either of them, heading to her living room, presumably for another book, but David apparently wasn't having it. He jogged into the living room after him, and Summer got up, biting back the urge to chew her nail as she followed.

She was right about the books, because James was standing in front of her bookcase, and David was standing at his direct left, holding out his left arm proudly, waiting for the soldier to take notice.

When he did, he slowly looked over the foil, from shoulder to the little fingers she'd made, and then he looked up at David's eyes, and then finally Summer's.

She couldn't quite discern the look in his eyes, but whatever it was, it made her heart feel heavy.


His first gut reaction was to assume that the boy was somehow mocking him. There was a memory somewhere to blame, something involving a guard, or several, and snide comments that he could probably remember if he tried hard enough to.

But then he'd looked in the child's eyes, and all he saw there was innocence and pride. There was no trace of mocking, derision, nothing that could possibly be taken as anything negative.

It hit him like a punch to the stomach.

He looked up at the boy's mother then, and she was looking on with a slightly nervous smile. Probably worried about his reaction, but she didn't look fearful. In fact, she hadn't looked afraid of him for awhile now. He'd also noticed that she didn't carry around her gun around the house 24/7 anymore.

Breaking him out of his thoughts, David giggled and then ran out of the room. He blinked and glanced again at Summer, who had let out a small laugh.

"He made me make him that," she explained. "He was very excited about it."

He didn't know how to process it. He felt uncomfortable, but he couldn't pinpoint exactly why. His throat felt odd, like there was a lump in it, and swallowing didn't help.

"Also," she said before briefly stepping away and then reappearing, "He drew this earlier."

She held out a piece of paper to him, and he took it. He looked it over, seeing a lot of random things - a Captain America shield, a big green fist, some unrelated things like trucks and what appeared to be a worm or snake, and then, rather prominently near the center of the page, a man with long brown hair and a silver arm.

He felt like he'd been punched again.

"He's taken quite a liking to you, I guess," she smiled.

He gave the paper back to her wordlessly, stumped as to what to possibly say. Then he turned back towards the bookcase, looking at the titles but not seeing them. It would take him awhile to mentally work through what he'd just seen.

"Hey, if you're getting sick of reading," he heard her voice pipe up again, "I could put a movie in. If you wanted."

He turned his head, looking at her again, and she started fidgeting with her hands. She'd been doing that a lot lately, and avoiding eye contact if she could help it. He remembered her comment about his staring, so he tried to not do it as much, but he usually wasn't aware that he was doing it until she started squirming.

"And I could make coffee."

He must have visibly warmed up to the idea, because she laughed softly.

"Okay. Give me five minutes, and I'll make it and then put something in."

When she turned and left, she did it with enough of a flourish to make the scent of her hair hit his nose. Her sheets and pillows didn't smell like it anymore, but the scent still followed him around in moments like these, and it was calming, like the smell of coffee. It was becoming familiar, which was significant when so few things were.

In less than the promised five minutes, he found himself sitting on her couch, coffee in hand and sitting on one side while she sat on the other, practically smashed against the arm. Even he thought it was strange to sit that far away from someone, and that was saying something.

"So, before I start the movie," she said, "I was wondering - do you know yet how long you're gonna need to stay here?" When he instantly frowned, she quickly added, "It's not that I don't want you to stay - I do - I mean, I want you to do whatever you want to do, and I want to help you."

His brows furrowed. She was talking faster than usual and openly cringing at her own word choices.

"It's just that since you've started eating more, you've been kind of destroying my food supply. And I get it, you've got to eat a lot - and I'm glad you're feeling better and not throwing everything up. But I'm on a fixed income, sort of, and I can't feed you like this for much longer."

He nodded. He'd never stopped to wonder how the woman supported herself, or think twice about money at all. Now he felt like an idiot.

"I don't know," he replied after a brief silence.

"I don't want you to think I'm pushing you out, because I'm not," she replied. "I can get by for awhile if I buy really cheap stuff in bulk. I can adjust what I spend and make it, for awhile, at least."

Truthfully, he wanted to get out and get started on what he'd set his mind to a few days earlier at the Smithsonian - taking revenge on HYDRA. But he didn't know where to start, and trying to comb through his porous, unreliable memories to remember faces and places was difficult at best. He needed an actual plan, especially considering HYDRA agents had tried to execute him multiple times between the helicarrier incident and his arrival here. He could not, unfortunately, just run out and start hunting the rats down with no contingency plans.

"So, don't worry about it," she said, drawing him back out of his thoughts. "I'll figure it out. I just didn't know if you had any plans or not. I'm not trying to rush you or anything."

The more she spoke, the more she seemed to become frustrated with herself. Her cheeks had a twinge of pink to them, and he didn't catch himself to stop from staring. The longer he looked, the more the color grew, and he didn't realize that his staring was the cause of it.

Then there was a loud knocking at the front door, and she jumped in surprise. He narrowed his eyes - she'd never had a knock on the door, not since he'd been here.

"What the..." she muttered, putting her coffee down and standing up.

Then there was another loud banging, and a deep male voice identifying the visitors. "FBI."

He jumped up from the couch, and Summer stopped in her tracks. He disappeared from her sight, like a ghost.


Her gun was on her person, and this was the first thing she double checked when she heard the word "FBI". A million different scenarios raced through her head, all ending worse than the one before, and the last thing she did before going to the door was to tell the newly reappeared David to go to his room and not come back out until she said he could. She also told him to take off the aluminum foil arm.

James had vanished into thin air.

Halfway through the third banging on the door, she opened it. Two agents stood on the other side, one man and one woman, wearing the typical "men in black" suits one would expect from the FBI.

"Good evening, ma'am," the man nodded and smiled. He looked to be in his 30's and seemed non-threatening at first glance. "Sorry to bother you, but we've had a report of a fugitive sighting in this area and we have to follow up."

"Oh... well, I haven't seen anyone," she shrugged. "It's pretty quiet around here."

The woman, tall and blonde and decidedly more severe looking than the man, smiled. "We're going to need to search your home, ma'am. Please step aside."

Panic tickled quietly at her spine. "Do you have a warrant?"

The woman merely chuckled. "Step aside."

The two agents then shoved their way inside, and the tickle of panic exploded into the full-blown kind, and instantly she knew that something bad was going to happen. There was no possible way that this would end in peace, and every instinct she had told her that the agents were not from the FBI. They hadn't even shown I.D. or given names. It was as if they didn't even care to lie convincingly.

"How many heat signatures did you pick up?" the woman asked the man as they began to search the house with their guns out. Summer's heart began thudding painfully.

"Three," the man answered.

"He's in here somewhere."

She waited until they had spread out, one in the living room and one down the hall, and she ran into David's room. She'd just grabbed him and was about to make him hide in his closet when that cold female voice sounded right behind her. "Don't think so. Out to the kitchen, both of you."

She closed her eyes and tried to swallow down the fear, but the sinking, paralyzing feeling within was getting worse with each passing moment. She had no choice but to comply with the woman's orders.

At gunpoint, the female agent marched mother and son out to the kitchen, then made them both get on their knees on the floor. David was starting to make a low-pitched whining noise, and all Summer could do was hold him close and tell him that everything was going to be fine. She also told him to keep his eyes closed.

The woman kept her gun on them while the man searched the house from top to bottom. Summer waited, ever mindful of the gun the agents hadn't thought to check her for - how typical, but she was thankful - and when the man came back, the words out of his mouth didn't surprise her.

"No sign of him."

The woman sighed. "Grab the boy."

That was a moment Summer would never forget - the moment that she learned what fear truly was.

Her hand shot to her gun in a flash. She jumped up, holding David close with her left arm and pulling the trigger with her right hand. She aimed for the woman first, and when a bullet hit her right shoulder, she fell with a loud cry of pain. She fired again, and the bullet missed and ricocheted into a nearby vase, which shattered and showered the floor in broken glass. Summer aimed for the man next, but he was quick; he knocked the gun from her grip, which wasn't as good as it would have been had it been two-handed, and then he thrust a long stick into her neck. Electric shock coursed through her body, and as she convulsed, she lost her grip on her son.

She hit the glass-covered floor with a great thud. The shock hadn't been powerful enough to knock her out, but it left her paralyzed and shaking violently. Her eyes were wide open, and David's screams pierced her ears as she laid there on her side, disarmed and all but defenseless, watching as the male agent took her only son and put a gun to his head.

The female agent had recovered and was standing over her. "Where is he? Where is the Winter Soldier? Tell us or the boy dies."

It suddenly occurred to her that she couldn't give them that answer even if she'd wanted to. She had not seen where he'd gone to, and thus had no idea where he was. Maybe he was halfway through the forest by now.

The woman grabbed her by her hair and wrenched her up into her knees, thrusting her forward to face David more directly. "Tell us or he dies!"

David was screaming more loudly and more desperately than she had ever heard before. His terror was written plainly on his small, innocent face, and he was trying to fight the man's hold on him.

She was crying, but she was completely unaware of it. The only thing she could see or hear was David, and her complete inability to save him from the monsters threatening him.

"I don't know where he is," she answered honestly.

Then the woman nodded to the man. Summer never found out what that nod meant, because a knife flew through the air, spinning and turning and aimed absolutely perfectly at its target, which was between the male agent's eyes.

The blade buried itself to the handle, right on target, and the man's grips on the gun and on David instantly slackened. The gun hit the floor and David ran to Summer. As the male agent hit the floor, the woman swiveled around to face the object of her hunt, only to get backhanded by a metal hand. Her gun fired and missed; he grabbed her arm with his right hand and used his left to crack in in half. The gun fell to the floor as she let out an anguished cry, and a metal hand wrapped around her throat and lifted her up effortlessly into the air.

Summer watched, holding David close and covering his eyes and ears as they huddled in a corner of the kitchen. Somewhere through her shock of what she'd just experienced and was still experiencing, she was still somewhat able to comprehend who she had to thank for her son escaping death, and how utterly deadly and vicious that same man looked right then. Everything she had read about him was suddenly proven true and yet proven wrong at the same time, because the assassin she'd read about never would have bothered to save a child. He never would have saved anyone.

"Go ahead," the woman sputtered, "kill me. There'll always be more of us."

"Why do you want me dead?" he growled, tightening his grip on her throat.

"HYDRA has no loose ends," she replied, turning purple. "You should know. Tying up the loose ends was always something you did beautifully."

With another growl, he dropped the woman to her feet and then snapped her neck with an almost lazy jerk of his hands. The crack reverberated against Summer's eardrums, and after the body hit the floor, there was nothing but silence.

He stared at the bodies for several long moments, anger and hatred clear on his face. Summer tried to focus on breathing, on keeping her head together and not completely falling apart, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

James looked her way, and their eyes met, but he didn't say a word, and she was not physically able to speak.

He dragged the bodies outside, then closed the door behind him. He'd left her gun by her side before leaving, but he gave no explanation as to where he was going. He didn't need to. She knew he was going to go dispose of the bodies, and she didn't want to know where or how he was going to do that.

She stared at the considerable amount of blood smeared on her kitchen floor. She didn't blink or move her gaze from it until she let go and let herself fall apart, clutching her little boy with every ounce of strength she had, and letting all of the terror, fear, and relief release and flow away through tears that rained down heavily from her eyes.

A/N: sooo some action! The next chapter is arguably my favorite one of this story, and I consider this one here the point where things start getting "interesting" lol, so stick with me! :) Thank you to everyone who is reading, following, and/or reviewing this story, I love you all bunches! See you in a few days, as usual :D