A/N: Please read and review!
The time following the Battle of New York was a quiet and somber period. The battle scars could still be seen, and it was going to take a while for it all to get back to half of its former glory. The city became somber, but there was the strong resilience of survivors that had undercut it all. They could and would survive.
Steve had been helping out in the way he could, and he had noticed a change come over the whole city. The somberness had a profound impact over the people of the city. No one smiled or laughed over what they had to deal at the moment.
There was Alice, and she was trying to help out as well. She was just as serious as the people around her, but there was a part of her that was a little bit lighter. It was a small amount, but it was able to spread to the people around her, making them seemingly less gloomy than before. She was busy talking to the people around her when he saw her.
Alice was being very quiet as she had talked, but whatever she was saying to them had created that lighter change over them. Their dark spirits were starting to go away from them from whatever she had been saying to them. That was when they had went to speak to other people, spreading that same kind of feeling to even more people. She had realized he was watching her, and she gave him a small smile as she had waved at him in greeting.
"Hey," she had quietly said to him as she walked towards him. "How's it going?"
"Better," Steve had said to her, and he had given her a close look He wondered if she had appeared to be strained-looking. "Have you been sleeping at all?"
Alice tipped her head to the side as she had looked back at him. "Yeah. . .I have. . .a little. Why?"
"You look exhausted," Steve remarked, but after he said it, he realized he probably should not have said something like that to her.
Alice did not appear to be offended by what he had said to her. She had been looking around her like she had been hearing entirely in that moment, taking away her concentration for that moment. She wore a look of concern before she quickly shook her head.
"This can be exhausting. . ." She said to him, and she quickly went to change the subject.
They had been talking for that short moment, and Steve could see she had still possessed that light hearted spirit of seeing the best in the people around her. It was refreshing. There were few people who would even try to act that way.
Strangely, he was starting to feel much lighter than ever before just by being with her, and the longer he was speaking to her, the more she did not look as strained-looking.
Alice was in her spot at her building, so she could work on a paper for one of her classes. Something had made her look up from her work, and she was able to see Steve walking on the sidewalk that was below her spot. He had been carrying his bag, so she could see he had been coming back from the old gym to blow off some steam. Steve stopped walking to look up at her.
"What are you doing?" He had asked her. He had almost smiled as she had looked up at her.
"Working on a paper," she had said to him. "Could use a break, though."
Steve was able to understand what she had meant by that. He climbed up the fire escape to sit with her, and she had moved some of her stuff out of his way for him to be able to sit with her. He noticed what she had been working on.
"What are you working on?" He had asked her.
"An article for the school paper," she told him, quickly closing the old notebook. "I worked in my high school's paper. . ." Alice had shrugged. "Got me wanting to be a writer. . ."
"Talking about Smallville. . ." Steve had remarked. It did not take long for him to learn about the meteor shower that had hit Smallville and the strange events had happened since then.
"Yeah. . ." Alice had said. "But. . ."
She did not want to talk about it, and thankfully, he knew enough about it and was willing to respect why she did not want to talk too much about it.
"You never wanted to let people know about it?" Steve had asked. He could see that there was something about the meteor shower had bothered her.
"I never wanted to exploit them to make my own name," she said. "They needed someone to help them. Not to call them freaks or to exploit them."
Six years before. . .
Emma had went to take Alice to the room where they were going to work for the school newspaper, The Smallville Torch. She had wanted to show her something she had figured out about what had happened to the small town. She went to the full bulletin board like she was going to dramatically show her something important.
There were pictures and pieces of text that spoke about the strange events following that meteor shower. They had seemed to have been happening for as long as they could remember. Emma had them all connected like they were all very important.
"I call it my Wall of Weird," Emma said.
Alice walked closer to the board to start to study everything much better. She fumbled with her glasses to be able to see it all much better, but she could not see their connections.
"They had been happening since the meteor shower," she said to Alice. "It has to do with those green meteor rocks. . ."
Alice had realized what that had meant when she thought back to what her parents had finally told her what they had known about her birth parents and where she had come from. That had kicked her in the stomach.
"It's all my fault. . ."
Alice and Steve had been talking, and he could see she had been thinking about something else entirely, wearing a faraway look in her eyes. Steve actually reached out to he, lightly touching her hand to snap her back to the present world. She quickly shook her head, and she looked up at him, becoming pretty normal-looking once more.
He had been concerned for her, and she was able to understand that.
"A lot to worry about," she had said to him, shrugging lightly. "Which is why I needed that break. . ."
She gave him a smile as a way to keep him from worrying too much about her.
They would always take the time to talk to each other whenever they would see each other. It was clear they would always trust each other, but he could tell she had still been holding something back from him.