Can I offer you a nice chapter in these trying times?


Ximena used to love the rain, rare as it was. But now, the rain was a nuisance. It was better than the gross heat, but she was still stuck inside, not daring to go back out and get wet and risk getting sick. When she was younger, and back home, and with parents that would make her take warm showers afterwards, she would sometimes make mud puddles in the rain, or follow the trail of water that flowed down her driveway. She had loved the rain then. Then she had someone to take care of her.

Now, it was far too cold. There was no warm shower in the warehouse, nor anyone to remind her to take one. Crow Man, but she felt that she would have to remind him, not vice versa.

There was lightning now, and with the lightning thunder and fast winds that slammed against the warehouse and made the walls rattle. The warehouse had always felt secure, for the most part. Had offered protection with its heavy door and metal walls and broken windows. It kept the bad out. But with the storm, with the cracks of light and bursts of thunder that sounded too much like otherworldly gunfire, she found herself not in the warehouse, but rather thrown back to the day fire rained in New York City. The shop she and her parents had taken shelter in as the sky split open shook just as hard as the thin walls of her warehouse, and despite how hard she had her hands clamped over her ears, she swore she still heard the chittering and shrieking of the Chitauri.

Ximena didn't care for the rain, nor the lightning and thunder that always seemed to join it. She hadn't since she had been pulled out of the rubble alone. It may have been sunny that day, but the storms that followed never failed to pull her back.

Crow Man had retreated back under his stairs, leaving Ximena huddled on her pallet of blankets in her corner of the room. Neither had been particularly talkative during the day, and a somber sort of silence had followed them into the darkness. Ximena had burrowed under her blankets, and pulled the hood of her jacket up and pulled the strings tight. It did little to make her feel more secure, and the strangling grip she had on Oso-Osito didn't do much good for her either. With every burst of thunder, she felt as though she was crashing back to that day in New York, felt as though the door of the warehouse would burst open and there'd be an army waiting to bring the building back down on her.

She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the memories before they sucked her in completely like they had the year following the attack, but all the action did was make them more clear in her mind's eye. She knew if she did not shake out of it soon, she'd find herself back in a waking nightmare. She needed a distraction. She needed-

Ximena sat up, keeping her blanket pulled over her head like a hood over her hood, and looked into the darkness to where she was pretty sure Crow Man sat. She reached, and there was that same sort of blankness about him. Still, tapping into it eased the tightness in her chest. She wished, not for the first time, that she could be like Crow Man and just… just shove everything down and away.

"Crow Man," she called out, her voice strained and catching in her throat. There was no answer, and she swallowed hard. "Are you awake?"

A beat of silence.

"Yes."

"Okay." Ximena didn't really think she'd get this far, and didn't really plan on any conversation points. Thunder rumbled up above, and she ducked her head at the sound. She felt a quirk of curiosity which wasn't hers overriding her fear.

"Does the storm bother you?" Crow Man asked, and Ximena nodded, and then wondered if he could see the action.

"The thunder," she found herself saying, "too much like bombs and guns." She took a breath to try and ease the tightness in her chest. She didn't expect Crow Man to answer, and so his response from the darkness startled her.

"Yes, it is." His tone was contemplative, and remorseful. Ximena figured that if he was military like she thought him to be, then he knew what those things sound like, and to have him affirm her thoughts made her feel… not necessarily better, but validated. She wondered, not for the first time and likely not for the last, who he was before appearing in her warehouse. What had he done? Why was he alone?

She didn't ask these things; for all she knew, he didn't know the answer to these things. As often as she would see him jotting down lines in the journal she had given him, she didn't know if any of it actually helped.

Lightning flashed above, and several seconds later, thunder followed. Ximena squeezed her eyes shut.

"My mom told me once that if you count the seconds between the lightning and thunder, that's how many miles away the storm is," she said. "But I think just waiting for it, not knowing when it's coming, I think that makes it worse." Anticipation was the word - it had been a vocab word in her reading class right before she had run away. The anticipation made it worse.

"Why-" a pause, only just, an easy to miss microsecond if you weren't paying attention- "are you not with your mother?"

Oh, this was not a question she had anticipated.

"She's dead." The words came out automatically, and tinged only just with a defense - Ximena had had plenty of practice with them thanks to nosy classmates over the past two years. "Why aren't you with your mother?" she countered, the way she would if another foster kid would badger her. A fight usually followed, but Ximena figured Crow Man wasn't in the mood to throw down.

"She's dead," he replied, borrowing her words, but not her inflection. "I'm sorry about your mother," he went on, and Ximena figured she could appreciate the sincerity in his voice.

"'S alright," she said. "I'm sorry about your mom too." She knew that if she let the conversation lull now, she wouldn't be able to pick it back up, and so she went on, "don't you got any other family?"

There was a beat, as though he was trying to decide whether or not he was going to answer. As though he wasn't sure about the answer he was going to give. "I have a sister. Rebecca. I don't know where she is."

"You could facebook her," Ximena offered.

"I'm not good for her." It sounded as though he wanted to add something to that, but refrained, and she would have wondered more on it if not for her exasperation at his notion of himself.

"You don't know that," she said with a huff. "Just 'cause you're a little fuzzy doesn't mean you're bad. That's what my doctor lady said. Things and people that are familiar can help you get better. So you should google your sister, see if you can find her."

He hummed before asking, "Do you not have any more family?"

She had uncles and aunts in Arizona, and scores of cousins, but they had left her alone in New York, and so she didn't like to think about them.

"I, uh. I gotta grandma in Mexico. But the judge wouldn't let her take me with her." She almost went on to mention the letters adn phone calls, and how they had stopped, and decided against it. "I was… I was trying to get to her before I ended up here."

"Mexico is far to go alone."

"I know that now."

She heard an amused huff, and wrinkled her nose in response, but said nothing else. She had already revealed more than she had planned to, but she blamed it on the mood the storm had put her in.


The girl made no mention in the week that passed about her fear during the night of the storm, nor that of her dead mother, and, he assumed, dead father. Nor did she pry about his own revelation about his sister. In all honesty, he did not know what he would say if she did ask. He had next to no memory of the girl he called Rebecca. She had dark hair, like his, and bright eyes, but he remembered nothing else of her appearance. Nothing of her personality. Was she meek? Was she rambunctious, like his girl here at the warehouse? Had she mourned his death when he never returned from the war he had no memory of?

When he thought of her, his phantom of a sister, a faint pain speared his chest - did he miss her? Was he fond of her in his youth? He was sure he did, or else he would not feel this pain.

He hoped he had been a good brother to her.

"If I stay in this stupid place any longer, I'm gonna die!" the girl wailed, and Crow Man looked up from his journal - purple and be-slothed as it was - to see the girl pushing herself up from where she had been spread out on her pallet of blankets. They had not gone out into the city since the men attacked the couple in the alley. First it had been the rain that had kept them in, and then the somber mood they both seemed to have been in. As the girl stood, he noted how she seemed to favor her right arm, which would not have been cause to worry, if not for how he had noticed the first week he had been with her that she was left handed. Her shoulder was bothering her then.

"Does your shoulder hurt?" he asked, standing as well. She froze, a slight pause in her step that would have been easy to miss for someone who hadn't spent the last month with her.

"It's fine."

A bold-faced lie. The dislocated shoulder would take weeks to fully heal; of course she would still be having discomfort. "Nena."

"Crow Man." She made a face at him as she started past him to the door. She tossed her bag over her right shoulder, and threw up two fingers in the display of a peace sign. "I'm outskis," she said brightly. "It's Thursday!"

Ah. "Nico is working."

"Nico is working!"

"And your shoulder is hurting."

"And my shoulder is-" She stopped short and narrowed her eyes at him. "Fine."

He opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself. Why should he be bothered if she wanted to hurt herself further. Let her learn on her own. Because you got yourself attached, a voice in the back of his head hummed smugly. Why else haven't you gotten out of town yet? It's been a month, Soldier.

I am not the Soldier any longer. The girl calls me Crow Man. HYDRA does not control me anymore.

Doesn't mean they stopped looking for you.

"Crow Man?"

He blinked to see the girl looking at him, brows furrowed. She had expected him to repeat her words, just as she had repeated his. He offered what he hoped was a reassuring look; at the very least, he hoped it wouldn't put her on edge.

"And your shoulder is fine," he repeated, deciding, against his better judgment, that now was not the time to worry about being found. "I will go with you," he went on, and she rolled her eyes. "Just in case."

"You're probably stinky too."

He let his shoulders drop. It seemed there would be no winning against the girl today. "And I am most definitely stinky too," he admitted, and she let out a bright laugh. He supposed there was nothing wrong with letting her win, just this once.

As they left the warehouse, she let him open and shut the door, and he noted how she would roll her shoulder now and then, wincing as she did. As much as he wanted to ask if she had been taking acetaminophen as he had told her to, he held his tongue. That she was in pain was answer enough. In any case, she must have sensed it in that way she noticed many little things, and she glared at them as they stepped out into the street.

"I'm fine," she told him. He hummed and stepped around her, corralling her into the inside of the sidewalk. If she noticed, she said nothing.

"I said nothing."

"You were thinkin' it," she accused him. "I felt it." She put such emphasis on the word felt that he thought maybe he was missing something.

"Did you?"

She opened her mouth to answer, only to snap it shut and narrow her eyes at him, as though he almost tricked her into revealing some protected secret. She turned her nose up away from him and took several steps ahead. He shook his head, feeling a ghost of a smile playing at his lips at her actions.

Punk.

He let the girl have her distance, knowing she would return to his side once the infraction was forgotten. There were more people out this week than there had been when they last ventured into the city, but he stayed only a step or two behind the girl; he still kept an eye on her, and was close enough that the distance didn't particularly matter.

He would reach the girl before anything else could, and he was content with this knowledge.

Then, when he was just beginning to forget his concern from earlier, when he was just about ready to gloat at the voice in his head for its paranoia, he heard it.

A quick, two tone whistle. Low, then high. Far away, barely audible.

He stopped. Only for a second.

They found you.

He listened for the answering call. There was none. He narrowed his eyes, and began to move again.

The girl somehow noticed his pause despite being in front of him, and she herself paused long enough for him to reach her side again. He felt her looking up at him curiously, as though trying to puzzle out him sudden discomfort.

"Crow Man?"

"It is nothing," he said, but could not force himself to try to reassure her further. He had no way of knowing if what he felt was real or not. If what he had heard was real. All he knew was that his instinct had never led him astray before.

They found you.

They did not.

They found you, and they found you with the Girl. The voice was not smug as it had been in the warehouse. It carried an undercurrent of urgency. He clenched his jaw and balled up his left fist; the machinery in the arm whirled, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear.

They cannot have her. They did not find me. There is no one left to find me.

The thought was childishly stubborn, and felt false, dangerously so. Someone watched them. He could feel it in his chest, in the small of his back and up his spine. He could not stay out in the open, but he could not leave the girl alone, and she would not understand. What would he tell her?

What will you do, Soldier? They are here, you know they are here.

He had no answer for the voice.


She felt the shift as soon as it happened. Crow Man had been quiet on the walk to the YMCA - he was quiet as a rule, but now there was something off about this quiet. Not aloof like he had defaulted on when he first appeared in her warehouse, but strained. He had been nostalgic back at the warehouse, and that had been half the reason Ximena had prompted this trip into the city. But now… Now something preoccupied him.

Now he worried her.

She watched as he tugged his cap down further over his face and ducked his head, adopting a slouch. He was hiding. Despite having told her that there was nothing to worry about, there was clearly something wrong. She glanced around, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Just people going about their days. She reached, and immediately pulled back in - there was too much, and it overwhelmed her, nearly knocking her down. Too many people having bad days, being annoyed and irritated, too many people with their good days, and the clash made her feel sick. She reeled back in, and clung to Crow Man and his not quite muted paranoia. His emotions she could handle, even though they made her fingers fidget and her palms itch.

"Crow Man," she said, and he looked down at her, his eyes cold and hard, almost glazed over, before softening, focusing. "We can go back if you want," she said. "We don't gotta go this week."

He looked to actually consider it and for how he was acting, Ximena wouldn't blame him. She could probably walk him back and then head off on her own later. But he shook his head, and Ximena could still feel the uncertainty within him. She decided not to push it.

They continued to walk down the sidewalk, and Ximena saw what looked like a bargain store - not a store she had ever gone to, but had seen in passing often enough. It had never really piqued her interest, but maybe… She looked over at Crow Man, and noted how he would clench and unclench his hand, and she swore she could hear a mechanical whirl coming from beneath his sleeve. Bursts of anxiety would pop off of him, as though he was struggling to shove it back down, and he stared hard up ahead.

She wasn't the only one to notice this, because people were all but running out of his way as they made their way down the sidewalk.

"Hey, Crow Man," she said, and when she reached for him, she reached slowly, and made sure he could see her moving toward him. She tugged at his sleeve, and he went tense before blinking down at her. "You wanna go lookit at what that store's got?" she asked, pointing to the shop. It was across the street, but people jaywalked all the time, so she figured that wouldn't be a problem.

It seemed to take him a second to process what she had said - the tightness she felt from him eased, only just. Maybe he seemed to realize it as the out she meant it to be, and he gave a solemn nod.

"Cool! Let's go," she said, and released his sleeve. She found herself held back, however, and looked down to see that Crow Man had grabbed her hand in his own. She blinked down at it, noting that it wasn't his metal hand, and that it was warm despite the glove. When she looked back up at him, he seemed to be making a point to not look at her.

She gave his hand a tug. "Come on, you big baby," she said, and pulled him after her as she stepped into the street. There was a flush of amusement, but Crow Man said nothing, and if he wasn't going to make a big deal about it, then neither was she.

They didn't get hit by a car crossing the street, so Ximena considered the expedition a success. When they got to the store front, Crow Man hesitated right in front of the door, holding Ximena back with him. He stared intently into the store, and Ximena felt her chest tighten with his paranoia. But people only started to look at them funny when they didn't walk in, and Ximena didn't feel anything wrong, Crow Man aside.

"Ain't nothing wrong with the store, Crow Man," she told him quietly, and finally he let her walk in, and released her hand. She knew better, though, than to wander off immediately with him being as nervous as he was.

The store wasn't busy - there were only a handful of other shoppers, and only two employees that Ximena could see. There were various clothing racks in the middle of the store, some shelves of knicknacks towards the back, and a sign reading BOOKS (and below that, EMERGENCY EXIT) pointing to a back room. Her hands pricked at the sight of it.

No one paid them any mind as they stepped down the trio of steps into the store - not even when Ximena stumbled over the last one. The only thing that saved her from crashing into one of the clothes racks was Crow Man grabbing her backpack and jerking her back up to her feet. The strap of her bag tugged at her shoulder, and she bit back a cry of pain; she wasn't about to let him win their argument about her shoulder. The hand on her backpack went still. She could tell by how she found herself locked in place, and when she looked back at him, she saw that it had been his metal hand he had caught her with. He dropped her, and looked away.

"S'alright," she told him despite the dull throb of pain, and he made no comment in return. "I'm wanna go look at the books," she told him, and she felt alarm as he looked past her to the area the books were stowed away. Still skittish then. "Look, the guys' clothes is kinda by them," she pointed out, and really, they weren't that close. But they were, she noticed, in a place that offered him a view of both the books and the front of the store. He had no real reason to miss anything.

"It'll be fine," she told him, giving his arm a reassuring pat. "Look, this place is small enough that you can see everything, and I'm just gonna be over there. You'll be good."

He looked down at her and she could see in his eyes that he very much did not want her to leave his side. He glanced around, narrowing his eyes at the other shoppers, but seemed to decide that they were harmless, because he gave a curt nod.

"I'll be good," he said, and his tone was flat and unconvincing. Ximena almost didn't want to leave him. But. Books. And maybe if she left him to work out whatever it was that had spooked him, he'd realize there was nothing wrong to begin with. "You'll be good?"

She shot finger guns at him. "I'll be good."

There was a flicker of warmth in her chest of amusement that wasn't hers, but it was snuffed out too quick for her to really enjoy it. He didn't feel like he was going to lose his head anymore though, and so she gave him one more smile before making her way to the back of the store.

Ximena didn't have money for books - she had to save what she had for food she couldn't steal and the laundromat. But she liked to look at them, and maybe if there wasn't a camera back there and there was a title she really wanted, she could always slip it into her overalls and hope no one noticed.

The book room wasn't so much a room as it was a wide hallway that led to a heavy door. A red sign above it made it clear that it was the emergency exit, and that customers weren't supposed to touch it. In the far corner, a small security camera blinked, and Ximena sighed at the sight of it. There would be no sneaking of books then.

There were a lot of old mom romance novels tucked in the shelves, so Ximena figured she wouldn't be sneaking a book even if the camera hadn't been there. Well, maybe she'd get a laugh out of Crow Man if she found one that was ridiculous enough.

The idea was promptly forgotten when she, thankfully, found the kid books. They were tucked toward the back, moving her almost completely out of sight from where she was sure Crow Man was at, being a creeper.

He knew where she was though, and it wasn't as though anyone could get past him without him noticing.

Ximena gave one last look out into the store, and moseyed on over to the back.

Most of the books, she found, were too baby-ish for her. Elementary school level. There were some Goosebumps, and she found a Fear Street book, but she never really liked those. There was a Harry Potter one too, and the one about that little mouse that saves a princess.

The one with the dragon on the cover caught her eye.

"That looks like a fun book."

Ximena jumped, and the lady who had snuck up on her let out a soft laugh. Ximena blinked up at her, wondering where in the world she had come from - she hadn't felt her, and she hadn't been out in the store when she had walked in with Crow Man.

She was young and pretty, with a heart shaped face and soft features, and was dressed like she belonged in Cathedral Heights, not Foggy Bottom. Her blond hair was pulled up in a tight bun, and her smile didn't meet her eyes.

She was not the kind of person who talked to kids like Ximena.

Ximena glanced down at the book she had in her hands - it was called Dragon Rider, and seemed okay.

"Yeah," she said. The lady was standing closer than she needed to be, and Ximena shifted back a bit, closer to the back door than she wanted to be. She tried to look past her without being too obvious, but her view was blocked.

"Maybe you can help me find a book for myself," the lady said, a faint drawl in her voice, and Ximena wanted very much to not do that. She leaned in a bit, and Ximena gripped the book in her hands. "There's a better book shop with a cafe on the next block over," the lady said conspiratorially, like she was sharing some divine secret, and now the alarm bells were really going off.

Ximena reached, and really she should have done this the moment the woman showed up, and recoiled immediately at the emptiness she felt. Ximena had never felt a truly apathetic person before, and truth be told, it terrified her. There might as well have been a corpse standing in front of her. She swallowed hard.

She needed to go. Right then.

"Nena."

Ximena looked up past the lady, and she was sure relief coated her face when she saw Crow Man standing at the hallway's entrance. His expression was stony, and she wondered if he heard the lady trying to tempt her away. She felt the shift in him as easily as if she had gone through it herself, something twisting and building into something so unlike Crow Man - it's whoever he was in the alley, Ximena realized. That man had been ruthless, had acted without thought, and had been absolutely unbelievably cool. Now though… Now there was a dangerous glint in his eyes as he stared down at the lady that blocked his way to Ximena.

The lady's smile froze on her face, and she sighed, straightening. The way she held herself was different than when she approached Ximena - she seemed bigger now, seemed to match Crow Man's alert pose. Ximena took a step back at the dark look that flared in her eyes, and looked to Crow Man.

"Oh, солдат, I was so close to having my turn at hide and seek," the lady sang, and Ximena drew back in shock; gone was the soft drawl in her voice. In its place was a different, harsher accent - European? Russian? The woman rolled her head as she turned to face Crow Man, and his expression darkened dangerously when he saw her face. Waves of barely contained rage twinged with … with fear rolled off of him, and it nearly overwhelmed Ximena at how he didn't shove these emotions away as he had all his others.

His gaze darted down to Ximena, then just past her to the door behind her. His metal hand kept clenching and unclenching, and between the absolute emptiness of the woman and the mash of chaos from Crow Man, Ximena felt as though something very bad was about to happen. "Nena," he repeated, voice stilted and leaving no room for her to argue his next order. "Go."

"Wha-"

"Go."

The voice came from Crow Man, but the man standing in front of her was not her Crow Man. He was someone else altogether. Cold and calculated and dark.

And she did not need to be told again.

But before she could turn tail and run, the woman was moving.

She grabbed Ximena by the front of her overalls and, with a strength that didn't match her frame, slammed her back into the shelf. Pain bloomed as her head snapped back and connected with the wooden frame, and she didn't know if the burn in her eyes was from unshed tears or the gold bleeding into her irises. With gold tinted vision - which, it didn't used to do that - Ximena saw Crow Man sweep forward, saw a metallic flash in the lady's other hand coming at her, and in her panic and fear, Ximena fell back on her tried and true method of ending fights with bullies.

She pushed.


verdict's out on how nice this chapter actually was...