Disclaimer: I don't own Captain America
CHICAGO
1999
I was ten when it ended.
Or started, depending on how you looked at it and even my own view shifted at various stages and ages that I wasn't sure what to make of the state of my life anymore. But I still had the memories, transient as it seemed sometimes.
We had our four month old German Shepherd puppy Rex for only ninety days and he had taken to me right away ever since my parents let him sleep on my bed at night when they first brought him home. Adopting a dog was something that was long discussed and I was over the moon when we finally made the trip to the shelter, and right when I looked into those glossy black eyes behind that wired cage I knew he was meant to be mine. He was my best friend and I took him everywhere with me when I didn't have to be at school.
In the middle of a dense and snowy January, it'd started to rain right when I clipped Rex's leash on and tried to lead him down to the sidewalk, droplets coming down in large and rapid blows, so I hurried to scoop him up in my arms before he whined from the cold. I ran back up the steps to the lobby where Dad worked, Rex's ears tucked low underneath my chin.
He'd definitely need a bath at home.
"You're such a wimp," I muttered when I ran my fingers over his wet muzzle, making him whimper. His soft, damp fur nuzzled my cheek.
I'd been waiting for Dad for a while. It was Saturday and Mom wasn't home so that meant I had to tag along with Dad for whatever he had to finish up in his office since I wasn't allowed to be home by myself just yet. I'd grown so comfortable with the building that I didn't need help from the lady at the desk to find my way to his office anymore. It was only five elevator rides up.
Everyone had gone home, including the nice receptionist, so it was just me and Rex trudging through the crypt-like quiet corridors back to Dad.
Rex started squirming in my arms so I let him down when the elevators doors pinged open and he took off full speed for Dad's office. He worked for a special security force, but he had the kind of job where he told the muscle who did the protection what to do and handled everything else behind the scenes. Apparently important people sought for their safety and they had networks all over the country. Some not even in the United States.
But Dad never told me this. I only overheard what I could from his phone calls with my Uncle who worked with him.
I waved happily at Dad's smiling face and hurried to meet him at Rex's excited barking. His paws scurried across the carpeted floor and nearly jumped onto Dad's lap, but his short stature only brought his front legs up against his knee. Dad stroked the top of his head and Rex's tail wagged vigorously.
I came around to hug Dad and he snapped his laptop shut, the screen a pale powder blue with a small box open in the middle. It looked like he was video calling somebody.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"Just the end to a long day," he answered, ruffling the top of my hair. I pulled away before he could make any tangles. "Did you call your mom?"
"She didn't pick up." I settled down on the worn leather sofa in the corner, reaching down for a book that I brought with me in my backpack to keep me occupied until it was time to go. Plus it distracted me from the growling in my stomach. I hadn't eaten since noon at home.
Rex's wet nose rested on top of my left sneaker. I fell asleep one too many times on that couch while waiting for Dad, and it always ended with him smoothing a hand over my face, pulling whatever book I had to catch up on for school from my hands.
"That must be her," Dad said, almost to himself when his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, but when he answered it his expression shifted. "I'm gonna take this outside, kid," he told me before standing up from his desk and disappearing out the door.
I watched him go, feeling a little bemused by his speedy exit and by the lingering fact that his voice sounded unbalanced, smile too strained. Not his. Rex jumping up into my lap pulled me from my thoughts though, and he made himself comfortable while I toed off my sneakers and burrowed deeper against the couch, comforted always by his smell and warmth. The rain pattered against the windows as I found my last page from Nancy Drew's The Witch Tree Symbol.
Between the gloominess of the story and Rex's gentle breathing against my stomach, I fell into a deep read, turning page after page that the raging storm outside fell deaf to my ears. Along with Dad's muted voice in the hallway.
A nagging in my chest, in the back of my mind made me look up from the book then and watch the wide open door for a moment. I glanced at the clock on the wall and realized that it'd been almost half an hour since he left and knowing that made me uncomfortable. He would have came back already. He should have.
Then Rex growled.
His snout lifted from my stomach and he eased up slowly - too slow to be normal for a dog - on his legs, eyes pointed in the direction of the doorway. He jumped off the sofa and slowly stalked forward, ears standing at attention.
But I couldn't hear a thing.
"What?" I said to him, closing my book. "What is it?"
Rex bared his teeth. A long snarl rippled from him and he crept closer to the open doorway, making my heart skip with each step he took. He wouldn't make those noises if he smelled Dad or Mom and I became so scared I couldn't move.
Who was out there?
The sound of glass shattering made Rex shoot off down the hall then and the book fell clumsily from my fingers when I stood up, heart pounding. He started barking, angry and aggressive like any dog that was territorial and I knew whatever he was sensing wasn't Dad or Mom. It wasn't family.
I hurried after him, calling his name and tried listening for where his barks took me next. But there were so many doors, so many long, endlessly long hallways and twists and turns, stairwells and elevators that everything started to look the same and bubbles of hysteria formed in my chest. Where was he?
Where was Dad?
The power to the building cut then, everything morphing into one huge black cloud that I couldn't navigate through, not even by the direction of the moonlight peeking through the office windows. I couldn't hear Rex anymore, not the rain, not the snow and definitely not my Dad. I should have went back to his office, I should have waited for help to come, should have just hid and made myself small like every child knew how to. But I didn't. Maybe if I did nothing I would've died.
Would that have been better? I often wondered that. Because of how that night actually went, I wondered about a lot of things and the one that kept coming back was how I was still there. Alive.
"Dad?" I whispered into the air.
Heavy footsteps came from the room farthest to the left. I stumbled toward that direction in the dark out of hope, but the tall and wide silhouette coming out into the hall stopped me dead in my tracks. That person wasn't Dad. He would have said something... he would have answered me when I called for him.
My ears started to ring with panic and as quietly as I could, I took careful steps backwards to one of the empty offices, praying whoever that person was wouldn't hear me. Where was Dad? I had to find him before the intruder, before they'd hurt him because all I felt from this person was if they got to Dad first, they would harm him.
Rex's faraway bark from somewhere on the same floor made the shadowy figure turn their head in that direction, so I hurried to escape but my foot snagged around the legs of one of the office chairs and I fell with a startling loud bang against the desk. Cheeks flushed with heat, my pulse raced when heavy boots followed my trail, closer and louder like the beat of my heart and light from the open window blinds was just bright enough for me to crawl underneath the desk.
I tucked my knees to my chest and pressed my mouth against them when the moonlight suddenly got swallowed by a huge mass from the doorway. The intruder's boots stomped a path around the desks, as though he were a wild animal hunting. He stopped every now and then between the aisles, no more than a few seconds before continuing on and I slid my feet in further when he passed by where I was huddled.
He was almost to the door again, his giant black boots taking such deliberate steps that every blip of my heart felt like the last. Then he stopped. His outline, ten times as big now, cast an inhuman figure against the opposite wall and I could do nothing but stare at it, and count the seconds until he went away. Until I could go look for Dad.
I had no time to react when he began flipping the desks upside down, revealing the empty spaces underneath. All except mine. A burst of adrenaline shot straight through my gut when his fingers - long metal encased fingers - gripped the underside of the table that covered me and I scrabbled past his legs the second the roof of the desk flew away. I was easily less than half his size and I ran as fast as I could in the direction where Dad disappeared to, where Rex was barking earlier. I could still hear his cries coming from the same place. It was like they were guiding me.
Run, just run, I thought to myself the whole time and that was what I did. I knew I wouldn't be alone for long. It was so dark, like a passage before an afterlife, but the only thing that kept me moving was memory - of Dad, of Rex and how to get through the puzzle-like design of the building. There was an emergency stairwell around there somewhere... I'd seen it once. I just had to keep going.
Fingers raked through my loose hair, brushing through strands until they grabbed a fist full of my jacket and the other hand went around my waist. I was suddenly hauled up against a broad chest and my mouth covered before I made a sound. The person walked backwards and ducked into an adjoining corridor, their back pressed to the wall with me held aloft.
I breathed heavily over their hand. My feet hung like an empty noose in the air and I tried twisting and pulling myself free but then they whispered my name in my ear and my blood chilled to an icy sludge. It was him...
It was my Uncle.
But I didn't understand. What was he doing there?
Rex started barking again and it was closer now. My thoughts instantly shifted back to Dad and that maybe my Uncle might've found him first; that maybe he came to get me and was going to take me back to him. Take us back home. He was family... he was going to help us, wasn't he?
"S'okay," Uncle panted in my ear. "I'm gonna get you out of here."
He set me to my feet, keeping his hands on my shoulders while he peered slightly around the corner, Rex's barks echoing through the vents.
"Go." He nudged me in front of him, checking every dark corner of the hallway and especially behind us. "Don't look back." With a single hand on my shoulder, he steered me through the dim hallways, stopping every now and then to listen when the floor above us creaked slightly or when he thought he heard footsteps following us. I didn't tell him about the stranger I encountered earlier... maybe we were far away enough now. I had hope.
I felt safe.
After some time, the red glow of the emergency stairwell lit up the third floor and Uncle ushered me toward it. Cold air blew harshly in my face and I shivered when my palm touched the smooth staircase railing, taking as many steps as I could at a time but the downward swirl of the stairs below felt infinite. Like I was delving headlong into a tunnel but there was no exit out, no comfort of city light at the other side.
A door burst open behind us and the sharp whir of a bullet flew narrowly past my ear. Uncle's fingers gripped my forearm and he yanked me to the left, my head knocking into the wall as another bullet shot through the air and missed me again. I looked back to see Uncle holding his side and blood staining his white shirt, droplets falling onto each step he descended. But he kept standing, kept pushing me forward, urging me to go faster. To run.
"No," he said when I tried stopping. "Don't look back. Don't ever look back."
We were almost to the exit door that'd take us out into the street so I did as I was told and went farther, faster, pushing through the sting crawling up my tiny legs because if I didn't I wouldn't see Dad again. Wouldn't hold Rex in my arms. He was only a puppy... he must have been scared. He must have been wondering why no one was there with him.
I only turned my head again once when I realized that Uncle's pursuing footsteps had stopped all together and he leaned weakly against the wall, blood on his slacks, running in rivulets from his mouth.
He shook his head when I ran up to him, reaching into his suit jacket pocket and handing me a small crumpled and blood-stained folded sheet of paper.
"Go," he instructed again. "Go.. to that address. They'll know what to do. They'll-" he sucked in a breath, sliding down the wall to the floor. I fell to my knees beside him, clutching the lapels of his jacket and tugging as if I could muster the strength to drag him with me. "They'll take care of you."
"But the door's right there," I pleaded with him, pulling on him some more. "Come on... come on!"
He pulled his hands away from his stomach then and I saw deep through the tears in his shirt two bullet wounds. He lifted his eyes to me then, bluer and clearer than they've ever been and with a soft voice whispered, "Go."
Footsteps thundered above us, deliberate and precise but just fast enough for me to see a glimpse of dark hair, eyes appearing equally as colorless behind the mask covering most of their face and a narrow red beam flashing underneath the yellowish stairwell light. A gun. And something else metal. Something much bigger.
"Go," Uncle groaned weakly, his entire body lying in blood and when he looked at me for the final time, I knew he meant his last words. I just didn't know what he meant it for. "I'm sorry. Go!"
By the love of my parents, by the dream to be held by them again and feel Rex's soft fur underneath my fingertips, I ran. I ran out the door and down the icy, downtrodden sidewalk. Far and long and with each step my bare feet sunk low into the fresh snowfall blanketing the streets, slowing me down but I kept on going.
I left everything I loved behind.
With the small square of folded paper clutched tight in both hands, I stood silently in front of the unlit alley door, staring up at the chipped and faded brown paint until my frozen fingers could uncurl and knock on the wood. I couldn't remember how I ended up there. I knew I ran for a long time until the burn in my legs became too much and I was forced to walk, unfolding the scrap of paper and reading the simple written address on it. I had no idea which way was which but I kept walking anyway, staying under the street lights and stopping at busy corners only when I needed to. No one looked at me. I was invisible.
Under some circumstances, that would be the worst thing but in that situation, I supposed it was luck that moved me safely through Chicago's smoky streets and eventually, down the quiet and snow packed alleyway of that strange, unmarked door.
Several minutes passed until it swung open and a short-statured, brown skinned woman stood at the entry. Her eyes widened at my appearance, hair pulled tightly back into a bun and she wrapped the grey cardigan she wore tighter around her chest. She called something over her shoulder in a language I didn't understand then suddenly a man appeared behind her, darker haired and with eyes that looked angry under his thick eyebrows.
His hand reached out for the door knob but before he slammed it in my face, I held out the note with both hands, trembling from the cold.
I watched his eyes skirt over the message and they melted like a piece of candy on top of a hot stove, his gaze shifting to me again and when he said something to the woman they both quickly sprung into action. The lady hurried me inside, aiding in taking off my soiled jacket and draping a much larger and warmer blanket around my shoulders before directing me to the sofa.
I sat disoriented on the couch, snow caked underneath my toes melting into a large puddle on the carpet as the woman moved about the kitchen and she returned with a steaming white coffee mug, pushing it into my hands and encouraging me to drink. I took a slow sip, the mild flavor of chamomile settling over my taste buds.
The man moved around upstairs, doors opening and closing shut and what sounded like a closet being rummaged through, and eventually he came back down holding a single duffle bag. He spoke with someone over the phone in his native tongue, eyes roaming from the windows to the door as if he were expecting someone to burst through them. The warmth from the coffee mug made my fingers stop shaking and I managed to drink half of the tea, the woman sitting silently and watching over beside me. She didn't speak.
I imagined it was difficult to find something to say.
What I remembered next was being led out the door, a much too large new coat around myself with the man carrying the bag out to the awaiting car parked at the curb. A single person sat behind the driver's seat. Another man, grey in the face, wearing one of those newsboy caps and old sport jacket like a taxi driver and he looked old enough to be my grandfather. He smiled once but didn't say a word.
They settled me into the backseat, the duffle bag stored in the trunk and the man leaned down to look at me through the rolled down window.
"This is it, you're going far away now. But you'll be safe, you'll be with good people, yes?" The man told me in clear English, the woman peering over his shoulder with a frown on her features.
But my family, I thought to myself.
My family...
They couldn't come with me, that much was certain. I didn't know where they were, what happened to them but even in my fragile state of mind I knew that if they were alive... they would have been right there with me. And they weren't. From there on out, I had to start a new life in a place where Uncle trusted and knew I'd be okay... where maybe one day we might see each other again. But even that seemed impossible.
I remembered the way his blood felt on my hands.
It was all I could think about the rest of the night.
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The next several years happened like somebody hit the fast forward button and forgot to take their thumb off. The first family I came into were simple and quiet of the working class, boarding me into their band of three older children and supplying me with everything an exchange student needed, or at least that was what they were told I was. I was an orphan by all things considered. But to that kind Danish family, it was a once in a lifetime connection and they treated me no different as their own, took no offense when I could barely utter a word my whole tenure with them. But I was grateful. It really was a once in a lifetime opportunity to live by the sea.
After leaving Chicago, the man and woman who saw me off kept in contact every month by either a letter or postcard - usually only a line or two. They always said the same thing; they hoped I was enjoying my new life and assured me that the next location would be a safe journey. I believed them. My life, if nothing else, was definitely ordinary again.
I never wrote back to them. Their envelopes grew into stacks underneath my bed collecting dust as the years passed, through the next stint in Sweden, Australia, and Belgium. It was the graduating year of high school that their correspondence came to an abrupt halt. But I didn't think anything of it at the time, I was about to turn eighteen - an adult to some people - and in my mind, they must've thought it was long due to cut the cord. To teach me to live on my own.
But I always felt alone, no matter where I was or who I was with.
And I never heard from Uncle or my parents. They were gone, like everything else.
NEVADA
2007
The year I turned eighteen, my graduating year, brought what might have been the biggest bout of change. For one thing, they transported me back to the United States. I met my final foster parent; a man in his late sixties with grey at his temples, a divorcee whose adult children lived thousands of miles away, kept an interesting collection of vinyl records, and intended to work until his dying breath. I wasn't sure why he agreed to take me in; he seemed to do fine on his own. But as we drove through the vast Mojave roads to his sleepy small-town home, I understood why. He lived a peaceful life. But he was alone.
He was alone.
I helped him tend to his ranch every day and he showed me how he ran his business - an independent delivery service. Before me, he'd do them all by himself in his red pickup truck but now that there was someone else, I started making deliveries every day after school. Some were within the limits of the town, whereas others I had to travel well into the next city by bus. The longer the route, the more you got paid.
I became good at it. And the more deliveries I made, the more I liked it. The roads led me to destinations that I'd never been, never imagined I'd ever see; big never-sleep cities with crammed traffic and blinking lights, hideaway river-side communities that looked more like road-stops. A place where you go to rest for the night then drive right off again the next morning. It gave an odd, maybe misplaced sense of fulfillment that I was earning my keep in this world. And I got a taste of what it was like to do things on my own.
It didn't make me happy.
But I found one thing that gave me purpose.
SOUTH KOREA
2009
I became a courier.
Not the kind that wore those company sponsored shirts with the brand stamped on the back and drove bulky open-door trucks, but those that were unaffiliated to a single business, they could form more than one contract and create many ties. The better courier you were, the more connections you had and it all fell on how fast the packaged was delivered and how well the condition of it was. The higher a courier's personal rating, the more they got paid for every service. After I turned eighteen and graduated high school in Nevada, I kept making deliveries for the old man and he didn't seem to mind the fact that I chose to hang around instead of going off to college like I was meant to. Like how normal teenagers were supposed to.
One day on a drop-off, someone recruited me into their network of package carriers who earned more money on the basis of potentially illegal deliveries and the chance to travel internationally again. It took me a week to agree to it.
So they sent me to Seoul, housed in with a single mother and her newborn baby, in a cheap rundown apartment complex. A portion of my earnings went to help feed and clothe the baby and in return I got a dry place to sleep. It was all sensory overload at first. But after a few weeks of deliveries and my first failed trade-off, the bustling roadways and sidewalks were no less comfortable to me than a four poster bed. I taught myself to memorize the writings of the street and store signs so I'd always know where I'd be even if I couldn't actively read or speak it. There was always a short cut to take, always a bus or subway train to hop on. I felt at home.
It became the first place where I stopped counting the days until the next move, barely thought of it. Truth be told, a part of me didn't want to leave but I knew it would happen one day, at some point in time when life held it's next lesson for me. And I'd already learned so much in South Korea. It taught me how to travel safely at night, how to read coded graffiti marked on certain buildings so every courier knew what could be used as a safe place of refuge and which alleys to be avoided (I learned that one the hard way), how to make a living.
So that one day I might start living.
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YAKUTIA
2014
The freshly shoveled porch steps creaked underneath my boot, like a dry old hinge on a door and I paused in the center, waiting for a sign or noise of movement from inside the cabin that I'd awoken Kirill and his family. I could see a faint glow of light through the windows from where I left it on in the kitchen, but no voices. No motion within. I breathed a sigh of relief before hitching the wooden logs underneath my arm and carefully easing through the door.
The slate grey horizon was lightening to a powdery blue and that meant Kirill and his family would be waking soon to begin their day. I learned that it wasn't entirely necessary to keep an eye on the time in Yakutsk; the color of the sky, the aching in your toes and fingers, and hardy discipline was all the map you needed to run your life in the coldest city on earth.
The stove was nearly full of crackling firewood so I did my best to load the remaining logs into the furnace, splitting the wood into long slices the way Kirill showed me long ago so more could fit inside the pit. My hands and arms ached from the dozen trips I made from the yard and back again and I took a moment to slip off my gloves, rubbing and blowing on my fingers to get some blood flowing but it wasn't the time for a break. Next was water.
When I returned from the shed, the basin for the family's water supply full for the day, the sight of Kirill and his wife Liubov preparing the morning meal in the kitchen made me stop for a moment, the great big ice cube held flush to my chest biting through my clothes with it's chill.
Liubov looked up at me with a smile from her mixing pot while Kirill graciously took the final chunk of ice from my grasp and went to dispense it himself in the wash basin.
"Sit now," Liubov told me. "The cold will eat you if you don't eat enough in return."
I smiled a little at her words and removed my fur lined hooded coat and gloves, taking my place opposite of her, watching her expert hands spin dairy into a thick, rich cream. That was my favorite part of the mornings. To get to see this humble and hard working family enjoy every gift that nature gave them to get through each unforgiving day, but ask nothing more in return for burden of living in such a climate. It was as they once told me... there was no bad weather. Only weather and one's attitude toward it.
I sipped slowly on the ceramic cup of tea Liubov made me while their little boy washed up in the bathroom and padded eagerly to the breakfast table. Kirill was also seated beside his wife and they spoke quietly about their plans for the day, filling their plates with fresh whipped cream, thawed frozen fruits and miniature but incredibly fatty pancakes. I always waited until everyone's plates were empty before taking my portion. For all they did for me, it didn't feel right to be the first to do anything. Except wake earliest in the mornings to make their lives a little easier.
"Courier 137?" The man at the post office stared down at the clipboard at where I just signed in to receive the package. His brows, once a deep crinkle, now raised in slight surprise when I pulled the scarf down from around the lower part of my face so he'd know it was really me. His expression didn't wilt though and it might have been because I was ten minutes late for the pickup. "Got a big one for you."
He disappeared behind the single door behind the desk and returned moments later with a desktop computer sized cardboard package. Contrary to the width, it was fairly light and I was able to transfer it on foot through the bleary Yakutsk streets. The Sakha, as thick skinned as they were, didn't always venture out to the frozen markets and that left open contracts for couriers to fill. But I didn't accept as much work as I did while in South Korea. Not the kind that paid money.
Package carrying was just a job, but surviving as the Petrovs did was the art. I owed a lot to them.
But I didn't know it yet.
Once I reached the drop off point, my feet were on the move to the next destination. The Petrov's little boy would return from school in a few hours and it was quite the trek back to the cabin for their ice fishing supplies Kirill kept in the shed. The Sakha reaped their stocks during the summer months leading up to winter but one never stopped harvesting; a daily task that now fell to me. I would never perfect it compared to those born into that life but I did it so that Kirill could keep a roof over his family's heads and their stomachs full.
The Sakha gave me no ill looks, made me feel no shame.
I found peace there.
It was the peak of Yakutia's frostiest months when I received the letter.
The envelope was unmarked, which posed no suspicions to me as the network of international couriers were always promised anonymity, but what felt like a strike of lightening was the brief but unavoidable notice that I was to move on to the next location by tomorrow morning at dawn. A single one way ticket was taped to the bottom of the page. Norway.
My heart was like a brick in my chest, heavy and weighing me down as I finished gathering the evening's supply of firewood and brought it back to the cabin with the fish I managed to catch in the village river that morning. I had to tell the Petrovs. I just didn't know whether it'd be best to rip the bandage off and inform them as soon as I returned or wait until the evening passed; would either choice really mattered? Come morning, I would've still been flying far out of Yakutia and I found myself not wanting to leave. Ever.
I hardly touched the stew Liubov placed in front of me. Their little boy spoke of the lessons he learned in school and Kirill asked him where they should go fishing the following day, as they always did together once a week. Sometimes they invited me along.
Tomorrow would not be the case.
The stew was now stone cold when the Petrovs sent their boy off to sleep and they sat side by side at the table with straight shoulders, watching and waiting for me to make the first move. Speak the first word.
But I couldn't. Slowly, I reached into my pocket for the letter and slid it across the table to them, Liubov wringing her hands together while Kirill studied the parchment with a deepset frown. He unfolded it as though a bomb were strapped inside and I couldn't watch as he read the contents, for seeing their reactions, their possible dejection would make me tear the letter in two and stay as long as I pleased. But I gave six years as a courier.
Couriers were meant to always be on the go. For their own safety and those they cared about. I knew deep down that moving on would be the best.
It didn't make my last night in Yakutia any easier and the Petrov home remained in somber silence.
"We promised Arian we'd wake him before you left," Liubov whispered to me in the candlelit kitchen, clutched in her hands a small stack of homemade pancakes wrapped in a warm dish towel to keep them hot. She slipped it into my gloved fingers then, turning to pour some tea for herself and Kirill. "He wanted to say goodbye."
"It's alright," I answered. "Let him sleep. He needs it."
"He won't understand." She gazed over at me from her steaming mug. "He won't understand why you can't come back."
"Then.. don't tell him. Just that I'll miss him."
Luibov nodded, the corners of her mouth pulling down and for what felt like the first time in all my twenty-five years of living, I didn't know what to do next. Did I consider Yakutia home now? I wasn't sure and in my line of work it was difficult to constitute what did and what didn't make a house a home; a courier's life was meant to be a long barren strip of road, intended for one person, stopping only at borders that would take you to your next payment. And it was a life not meant for everyone.
I could have fought against the transfer, could have used my growing connection to the Sakha people as a profitable reason to stay; they might have allowed it... but what I wanted and what was right wasn't an interchangeable thing. Sometimes I was thrown into dangerous situations. The longer I lived with the Petrovs the more I jeopardized their wellbeing.
It was time for me to go.
The sky was cloaked in a silvery haze when I stepped out the door, shavings of paper thin but freezing cold snow nipping at the exposed skin on my face and already forming a layer on my eyelashes. It wasn't yet dawn. I still had hours left until my flight left but given the time and the harshness of the elements, it would be longer than most on-foot journey to the nearest airport. The last trip I'd ever take in Yakutia.
I looked back at the Petrov's porch when my fur boots sunk into the snow packed road and I saw their figures standing at the top step watching me depart, arms wrapped around each other's backs. Silently, they raised a hand in the air in goodbye.
I didn't wave back. Eyes stinging and heavy from the cold, I turned back to the road and rubbed my gloved fingers across my eyelids, wiping away the frozen flecks of water that were stuck to the top of my eyelashes and even fresher tears that trailed hot streaks down my cheeks. It kept me warm the entire voyage there.
The terminal was at it's busiest peak at seven o'clock in the morning while I sat on an empty bench, stomach full and settled from Luibov's care package, my hands resting jittery on my knees while I watched the overhead flight schedule nearing closer and closer to the time for my own boarding. Less than thirty minutes. I never took anything with me when transferring to a new location. It was easier and at times better to begin anew, and it usually didn't take long to gather what I needed after completing a delivery; I never needed much anyway. A part of me intentionally left my things behind so that maybe one day, in some way, I might return to Yakutia, maybe not back to the Petrov home but somewhere close. And that thought alone made me happier.
I had been sitting by myself since arriving at the airport when a man dressed in equally heavy winter furs sat four seats down from me. He gave me a long glance before turning his head back to watch the people in line paying for their tickets, hurrying to the baggage claim and those that were cutting it close to their flight as they walked briskly with their luggage in hand. But he had no bags himself.
Something in my gut told me to move, to start walking to the jetway because that man was certainly not just any man. He kept looking at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his stare and I was so nervous to look back in fear of what he would say. I didn't have anything with me. There couldn't have been anything he wanted.
My heart pounded like faulty piping when a second man came and sat at the other end of the bench, a little bit farther down but still enough to see him looking at me longer that what would've been comfortable. My nails dug through the material of my wool leggings. I wanted to go, but I didn't want to come off as paranoid, and worse off... end up being correct that maybe these men weren't just men. Outerwear in Yakutia tended to coverup all distinguishing features so how could I have said they were bad? Out to get me? It was just my survival instincts, my experiences as a courier that sharpened me to suspect any-
My waning pulse sky rocketed again when I noticed a third man standing in line at the ticket booth. His hands were in his pockets and he gazed around at the crowd around him, making particularly deliberate eye contact with the men sitting at either side of me. And like the first two men, only his eyes were visible. Then he looked at me.
I ran. My feet raced all the way down the terminal, just narrowly brushing past families and people traveling by themselves but I must've collided into some of them as I heard luggage clattering to the floor and people crying out. I kept going, hearing multiple pairs of boots - more than three - running after me. My hood fell down from my head and the scarf protecting my face also came loose from the chase and when I breathed in, it was like a jolt of electricity in my lungs. It made me run faster, alighting my bones like fire instead of frost.
I saw the sliding doors leading outside when a body coming from an intersecting corridor slammed into mine. I fell to the ground, my cheek pressed against the white tiles and heard the many voices of men and women swarm me. One of them grabbed my wrists and pinned them behind my back.
I'd thought that life, as I knew it, was done. Even if I wasn't going to die, my new godforsaken existence still had come to an end.
But then a man helped me to my feet, looked at me in the eye and said, "We've been searching for you for a long time. We're with S.H.I.E.L.D., ma'am. We're here to bring you home."
WASHINGTON, D.C.
What I failed to tell them was that I no longer had a home. I didn't say much at all when the undercover group of men and women revealed themselves to be agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and had been looking for me since I left Chicago fifteen years ago, boarded me onto their private plane and flew us all the way back to the United States. It occurred to me once on the way there that it was a hoax and these people were really hunting me but not to bring me home, maybe to get rid of me as a repercussion of the many connections and risky situations I had encountered during my deliveries. Maybe the bill finally came due.
Either way, what did it matter? My family was long gone and my life as a courier would most likely cease to be. I didn't care what was going to happen next.
They didn't handcuff me, not even when the plane touched down at the port and they loaded me into a sleek black SUV. I recognized being in the capital because of the landmarks from pictures in school books and I found myself rolling down the window just a little lower so I could soak it all in. So different from the coldest city on earth. The wind against my face causing no ache. The lush greenery of the trees, vibrancy in all the colors.
It was beautiful. Maybe the last beautiful thing I was going to see.
What I remembered next was sitting in an interrogation room and a man in a dark grey suit opposite of me holding a manila folder.
"I apologize for the secrecy," he said. "But considering that you'd been out of the country for six years, we didn't know how you'd respond so we had to approach the situation with caution. We couldn't completely trust that our letter would bring you to the airport." He took a seat then and opened the folder stuffed with papers and photographs. "We understand that you'd been operating under the alias according to your latest delivery-" he checked the file then, "as courier six."
"It's just a number," I told him. "Every courier in the network gets a different one every delivery. To ensure anonymity so we can't be tracked."
"I see. That explains why it took us this long."
"They... never told us what was in the packages. I know not all of it must have been legal-"
The man held up a hand then. "This isn't about your past employment," he explained but I didn't understand; wasn't that why I was there? Why else would they take the time to chase down international couriers, if not to bust any potential illegal trades? I knew I must have made some of them in the past, but I had to. I had to do it to stay alive. The man continued when I didn't say anything. "Do you remember what happened that night in January 2nd, 1999?"
My fingers clenched together on the table.
Did I remember? Yes, of course, I did.
But I didn't want to.
The man sifted through the files then and slid out three pictures. One was a snapshot of my dead Uncle slumped against the wall at the end of the stairwell, when he made me abandon him. Those glassy, lifeless eyes.
"After we discovered his body, we made a full search of the premises but we were unable to locate your father. Your mother was also missing from your house and the hospital she was employed at." He pushed two more pictures toward me, both of bloodstains on the floors of Dad's building, long and wide outlines.
"They're dead," I said quietly. "That's what I always thought. I mean... why would my Uncle send me away alone? Why am I still by myself if they're not dead?" I wiped the back of my hand against my cheeks and it came away wet.
"The thing is," the agent began carefully. "Elliot O'Brien's body was the only one on scene. If your parents had been truly dead, then... where did they go? What moved their bodies and not his? We searched every inch of that building, inside and out, both your home and the hospital your mother worked at. There was no trace of them. It was like they... disappeared. As you did." He clasped his hands together on the table then, pausing when I did nothing except stare blankly at the lines of photographs. "Alina, do you understand what I told you?"
I picked up the picture of the body sized blood puddle that should have had my father in it. A foreign, impossible feeling stirred slowly in my gut.
"They... could be alive?"
"It's possible," the man replied. "Now that we've found you, we're closer to finding out what exactly happened."
"You said you're with S.H.I.E.L.D. How did you know who I was?"
"Both your father and Uncle had been working undercover for us for almost a year until Elliot's death and your father's disappearance. We have reason to believe that somebody caught wind that there were our agents and had them eliminated."
"But who would want to- wait, did you ever find him? The man with the gun?"
"The man with the gun?"
"Yes, the one who shot my Uncle. I saw him. He- he was tall, like my father and I couldn't see his face except for his eyes. He was dressed like... like military. And something metal? Yes, I remember he had something metal on his arm. I remember the lights in the stairwell reflecting off it."
The agent's shoulders tensed as I told him this and with a quick shuffle, he scanned the rest of his papers, almost frantically like two dots just connected in his mind.
"There was cameras in the building. There has to be videos of him, right?" I said. "Right?"
"They'd been disabled. Before the shooting."
My chest felt like it was going to collapse while the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent packed up the papers in his folder, seemingly unsettled by this new bit of information. I never forgot the look of that man. And it surprised me that they had no clue about his existence.
"There's an apartment downtown we've set up for you. We'll be in touch in the morning."
The door opened then, revealing a young man whom I guessed was going to be the one to drive me to where I was meant to sleep for the night. I stood up, my knees feeling hollow and wobbly as if it was the first time I used them and followed the two agents out into the clean white corridor. It was awfully quiet for being what I understood as a highly advanced and covert police station, with several doors lining each side of the hallway but we were the only ones around. Until another door creaked open at the far left end and suddenly there was barking. Lots of barking and a nervous voice trying to talk over it.
I had no time to react when a solid, furry mass crashed straight into my legs. A series of sharp non-aggressive barks made me flinch and when I opened my eyes again the large face of a fully grown German Shepherd stared back at me, perched on his hind legs, his front paws pressed tight against my stomach. He barked again, licking my hand and running around my legs, in between them and rubbing his fur against me any chance he could.
It was him. It was Rex.
I slumped to my knees, tears rendering me blind as I took him in my arms and just cried. His head was tucked underneath my chin, licking the side of my face while I held him close, running my fingers through his soft hairs. He still smelled the same. Exactly the same.
A young agent came rushing over to us then, holding a leash in one hand as he gawked in disbelief at the scene. The agent who questioned me also watched but with a calm expression on his face, his hands resting on his hips.
"He was just a puppy when I left," I said through the tears. "How is he still alive?" Fifteen years was a long time, even for a stubborn dog like Rex.
"We found him hiding behind the reception desk that night covered in blood, but none of it was his," the man said. "S.H.I.E.L.D. took him in under it's enhanced K9 program and he's served in many of our successful recon and retrieve missions. He just returned from a deployment with S.T.R.I.K.E. and Captain America." Rex was lying on his back now, all four paws up and giant tongue lolling out one side of his mouth as I gently scratched at the fur along his neck. "There was always something unstable about him. He was the most aggressive out of all our trainees and he never took to any of his handlers. Now I know what he was missing."
"Sir?" The young agent with the leash, his latest handler I surmised, began anxiously, "He needs medical clearance before dismissal."
"Not necessary. He has everything he needs right here." The agent plucked the leash from the younger man's grip and held it up. "I would offer you this, but I don't think you'll need it."
I pushed myself up then, seeing Rex quickly roll over on his paws and stand close to me, his body touching the side of my leg. I smiled down at him. "No... I don't think I will either."
In fact, I didn't need much at all in that moment.
I had a part of my soul back.
A/N: I'm really nervous in posting this and intimidated by the how big the Marvel universe is, but I did have fun writing it so I hope it wasn't too boring. I know there wasn't a lot of dialogue. I just wanted to do some world building so things would make sense later on. Things will pick up pretty fast.
Thank you for reading!
