A/N: Surprise! Early update! This is me making up for last week's tardiness. Get ready, it may start getting fluffier in here soon…Special thanks to my reviewers, especially tumblr user sj-call7, who created an account just to review my story.
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."
~Ernest Hemingway
The next morning, she awoke to gentle sunlight streaming in through the hole where the window used to be. When she cracked her eyes open just a bit, she saw tiny flecks of dust fluttering through the morning rays. She stirred happily under the comfort of her warm blanket, cotton sheets rustling—
She jolted and her eyes flew wide open, all contentment banished. She never woke up to sunlight. She must have forgotten to put her alarm on for work.
It was only when she flung her sheets off that she remembered it was Saturday. She gave a light grunt and plopped back onto the pillow, bringing her right hand up to halfheartedly rub her eyes. A stabbing pain shot through her palm when she flexed it.
"Ow." She curiously turned the hand over, holding it above her. A line of stitches pinched her flesh together between her thumb and index finger. The skin was tinged pink, probably because she had just aggravated the injury. Something smelled vaguely of smoggy D.C. rainwater. Avery realized with dismay that it was her pajamas, which she neglected to change out of after her little stormy adventure on the roof.
The events of the previous night came back to her. Even now, the absurdity of her predicament was glaringly obvious—there was a recuperating assassin sleeping on her roof, for Pete's sake.
Like she had been slapped clean upside the head, a question sprung to the forefront of her brain: why hadn't she called the police on him by now?
He himself admitted that he had killed people. Real people. People with families, regular people that hated their job, people that looked forward to bringing flowers home to their wife, people that were excited for the next installment of their favorite TV show. This wasn't a joke.
The stupidity of her actions came crashing down on her in a wave of self-flagellation. What was she doing? If it was discovered that she was giving sanctuary to possibly one of the world's most wanted mercenaries, she would be thrown in jail along with him or, worse, given the death penalty. Her parents would probably face punishment, too. And this was all assuming that his own bosses wouldn't find him- in which case she would definitely be killed.
Before last night, she had only talked to him during transient encounters, a few of which were instigated by him. But things changed. She had crossed a line. She had offered friendship to someone she knew almost nothing about, and what she did know about him was enough to make anyone else dial 911 on the spot. And now she had invited him to stay in (or on, technically) her own house. She had even tried to help him repair his arm! Sure, he promised not to hurt her, and even gave her stitches when she did get hurt, but he sure had hurt a heck of a lot of other people that had been on his hit list!
Avery sat on the bed for a full minute just calling herself unsavory names. Not only did she feel naïve, stupid, careless, and certifiably insane, but she also felt like a traitor for feeling this way after all she had promised him. That—in and of itself—made her feel more insane.
She needed some fresh air.
Listening for a minute to discern any scuffling noises from her houseguest above, but hearing only silence, she assumed that he was sleeping.
If bionically equipped assassins sleep, anyway. Maybe he's using his solar panels to recharge, she thought with a touch of misdirected bitterness.
She leaned over the edge of the bed to glimpse the now brownish-rust stain on the floor. The sound of clanging in the kitchen downstairs reminded her of another set of problems. She was going to have to explain both the broken window and the bloodstain to her parents, not to mention how she had cut herself and gotten stitches.
Whenever Avery's mom came home from the hospital's night shift, she normally just slept for the whole day; her dad would still be in New York for a few days. Avery reasoned that she would have time to formulate a plausible cover story. For now, she could just focus on minimizing the amount of explaining she would have to do.
She stayed true to her thoughts of the night before and quietly crept over to the computer for do-it-yourself blood removal tips. The monitor lit up, the brightness of the screen making her wince so early in the morning. Her eyes flicked back and forth over the screen once she pulled up a few articles. The easiest one called for scrubbing the carpet with dish soap and a toothbrush.
She was almost trembling from the need to distance herself from her situation, but she had to straighten the room first. The dish soap was downstairs in the kitchen, in the cupboard under the sink. Avery tiptoed over to her door, which was still shut, and listened carefully, waiting for the coast to be clear.
A minute or two passed. Finally, Avery heard her mom's light footsteps creaking up the stairs. They paused outside her room for a minute; Avery knew her mom was listening to see if she had woken up yet. Avery kept perfectly still in her spot behind the door. Eventually, the footsteps started back toward the other bedroom. The door made a muffled thud as it shut.
Avery wasted no time. She sped downstairs as quietly as she could, grabbed the dish soap from the sink cupboard, and sprinted back up, stopping in her bathroom to grab an unused toothbrush from the shelving beneath the countertop.
A dirty coffee mug from a few days before was sitting on her bedside table. She grabbed it, took it back out to the hallway bathroom, and rinsed it a few times. Once it was filled with clean water, she went back to her room and gently closed the door, locking it this time.
She knelt down by the bloodstain and wet it with the water from the coffee mug. After pouring some of the dish soap onto the iPhone-sized blotch, she scrubbed the area with the toothbrush in small, consistent circles.
She tried desperately to distract herself from thinking too hard about anything while she worked. Tornadoes of self-doubt and guilt loomed over her head, dancing back and forth on the edges of her vision. Soon enough, she had to close her eyes and hum random songs while scrubbing.
By the time she finished humming the fifth song, she dared to open her eyes. Most of the stain was gone or incredibly faint. She poured some more fresh water on it and dabbed it with a dirty t-shirt from her laundry pile on the floor. Satisfied that the splotch was now almost invisible, she snatched up a clean lace tank top and a pair of camouflage shorts. After throwing them on and refreshing her deodorant, she gave herself a cursory look in the mirror- other than the troubled look on her pale face, she looked about normal- and put on a quick coat of mascara. Avery left the haphazard bun on her head as it was; oddly enough, her dark curly hair looked better messy. She threw her wallet, phone and keys into a small red purse, slipped on a pair of boots, and started for the door.
She suspected it was just her momentary paranoia, but as she was exiting, she thought she saw the fire escape begin to shake. She fled the room quicker than you could say "nope." Whether he was coming down or not, she couldn't deal with it just then.
Avery snuck downstairs once more, picking up a kitchen notepad and leaving a quick note to her mom. She kept it brief: "Out for a walk. Be back later. Have phone if you need me."
It occurred to her for a fraction of a second that she was leaving her mom in the house with the Soldier, but she rationalized that it wouldn't be a problem. He had no reason to hurt her, and at the very least, he wanted his whereabouts to be known to as few people as possible—in other words, it was unlikely he would reveal himself on purpose.
When Avery had carefully shut the front door behind her, she made a beeline for the sidewalk. Her neck prickled as she walked away. She was too much of a chicken to turn and see if he was watching her from the roof.
If he was watching her, she wondered what he was thinking of her sudden and unexplained departure. Would he suspect that she was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. after all, and was going to deliver information on him at this very moment? Or would he just assume she was going about her every day life?
If she had learned anything about him from their time together, it was that he would probably take the mentality of the former.
Maybe she should have left him a note, too. What if he ran off?
Wouldn't that be a good thing? she asked herself. At the same time, she questioned why she was feeling anxious about him leaving in the first place. He had already demonstrated that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, even if he only had one working arm. It's not like he was some helpless baby she had to coddle. Anything but, she thought, remembering his chiseled figure from the night before.
Did his potential departure bother her because she thought he would hurt someone if he left? She chewed on this for a moment, but concluded that it wasn't accurate, either. As long as people left him alone, he would do the same.
All of this still left the grand question- why was she helping him to begin with?
A car horn blasted Avery out of her reverie. She jumped, realizing that she had been distracted and walked out into the middle of the street. The angry driver of a blue Toyota was emphatically waving her on. She gesticulated apologetically, running to the other end of the street.
Her train of thought derailed, she looked around to see where she had wandered off to. It only took a second for her to realize that she had unconsciously traveled to DuPont Circle, one of her favorite parks in the city.
The park only covered about as much area as her apartment complex, but the small oasis was a welcome escape from the concrete dessert elsewhere. A large white fountain shaped like a bowl sat in the middle of the circle while cars continued to buzz around the green. A few park benches where interspersed under the shade of the trees. It was remarkably crowd-free for a Saturday. Avery saw an open bench to her left and happily went toward it.
She sat down and took a minute to smile at the kids splashing their hands in the fountain. She had done the same when her dad used to take her here. It was noticeably cooler under the tree's shade, something she was grateful for today in the morning heat.
A cyclist on a yellow bike whizzed by on the path in front of her, and its metallic frame caught the sun and reflected it in a sudden glare. Inevitably, the glare reminded her of the day when she had first seen the Soldier in the street.
The thought she had been dreading resurfaced: maybe she was helping him purely because he needed it.
Regardless of everything he had done, regardless of whoever was after him—he had no one else to turn to. His memory had been wiped so many times that he was subjected to crippling seizures by the simplest triggers. There was nothing he could do about it. But something had woken him up to realize that his life wasn't normal, that he couldn't just live on carrying out orders forever.
By virtue of who he was—and what he did—she knew trust didn't come easy to him. But everything he had done recently suggested that he was trying to trust her. She couldn't even imagine what it had taken for him to show up at her door when he was most vulnerable—broken, beaten, and weak. He had heard her promise of friendship on the rooftop, and, even more remarkable—he believed her. The longer she was with him, the more slivers of his personality shone through his cracked and crumbling exterior.
There were only two choices. She could call the police right now, when she was out of harm's way, and tell them where he was. They would capture him somehow. She and her family would be safe again. He would be out of her life, and it would be someone else's problem...
…Or she could continue to give him sanctuary and ignore the risk to herself. She could aid him in whatever way she could, keep his whereabouts secret, help him to heal his fractured mind and damaged body.
She teetered on the precipice of the decision, one last question overshadowing all the others- could she really betray the trust of someone who trusted no one else?
Hands clasped, she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, already knowing the answer. She wasn't going to abandon him. She would have to forgive him for the lives he had taken, but never forget what he was capable of.
Avery sucked in a breath of air. While the chaos of her indecision had now subsided, the heavy burden of her responsibility settled on her shoulders in its place.
She spent about another half-hour just sitting on the bench to let her choice sink in. If she was really going to help him, she decided, she was going all in. They would need the right equipment to fix his arm, he would need clothes, and she would have to figure out a way to smuggle him food. If it rained again, he would need some shelter up on the roof—there was no guarantee that her parents wouldn't be home this time if he needed to come inside.
The most pressing matter was the equipment for his bionic limb. Figuring it could be her only chance to get to the hardware store without her parents knowing, but cursing herself for not taking her car when she left, she began the long trek to Cooper Hardware Inc.
It was at the total opposite end of the city, but it was the only place that she thought could have anything helpful. The sun was climbing the midmorning sky as she set out, baking every pedestrian—tourist and government worker alike—on the heat-radiating sidewalk. By the time Avery was near her destination, she was sweating. A far cry from most places, the sidewalks in Washington remained crowded long past the morning work rush; people in the city started and ended work at all hours of the day. This ensured that she had plenty of company for the whole of her walk.
If there was any city that never slept, it was this one, Avery thought as she made it to the store and pushed the glass door open.
An electronic bell noise ding-donged as soon as she set a foot on the rubber mat inside. A portly man in his 50's looked up from his place behind the front desk and gave her a courteous smile. He wore a red employee vest, had thinning silvery hair, and looked a little surprised to see a teenage girl in his hardware store. She recognized his expression immediately and opted to ignore it.
Five or six other men were browsing in the store, mostly concentrated in the automobile aisles and absorbed in the products they were holding. The fluorescent light panel above her head flickered. Everything was bathed in the acrid scent of engine oil. She stood in front of the doorway for a few more seconds before realizing she had no idea where to start. When she took two hesitant steps forward, the "Hand Tools" aisle caught her eye. She hastened in that direction, thinking that if she could find something to pry the Soldier's arm open, it would be there.
Both sides of the aisle were covered from top to bottom in tools hanging from their hooks. Her eyes swept over the smaller tools at the front—measuring tapes, screw drivers, hammers—and continued further down, where the bulkier tools sat on the shelves near the floor.
She had a vague idea of the kind of tool she would need. It would have to be something for metal work, strong enough to handle the Vibranium, but specialized enough to fit in the narrow space between the arm's plates.
After a few minutes of searching and reading product labels, she picked up two tools that she thought would work, a 'Hand Seamer' and a 'Multipurpose Prying Tool.'
She held one in either hand, looking back and forth between the two. As far as she was concerned, she was out of her depth. Maybe she would get both and just return what she didn't use?
Without warning, a voice right behind her left ear said, "The prying tool will work."
She gasped and shied away, having thought for some time that she was the only one in the aisle. In the span of about three seconds, she went from surprise, to anger, to recognition, to shock.
Her 'houseguest' stood before her in a navy sweatshirt and baseball cap. He had pulled his hair back, and his hands were shoved in his pockets- probably so his arm wouldn't malfunction from use and give him away. He was still wearing his black trousers and combat boots, and still maintained that cool, reserved demeanor.
"What are you doing here?" she hissed, her voice audibly squeaky. "Someone'll see you!" She lifted her head to peak over the aisles, checking to make sure no one was in the neighboring lanes. Even a regular civilian might notice him—the news footage of him fighting Captain America had been playing for days now. She spun back to face him. "Were you following me this whole time?!"
The faintest shadow of smug amusement settled on his face at her reaction, flustering her even more. "No one will recognize me like this," he said with a sidelong glance. He pointedly ignored the last question, effectively giving the answer.
He set about to scanning the store in a calculating fashion, pausing to suspiciously eye a man looking at a muffler a few aisles over. She glanced at his chest. "Where'd you get the clothes?"
"Not important."
Avery let out a small, frustrated grumble. She took one step closer to him. "I'm paying for this," she held up the prying tool, "and then we're getting you out of here before your arm gets twitchy."
She stomped off toward the front desk. The tool was pretty expensive, so she had to rummage through her tiny purse for a minute to find her debit card. During the brief exchange with the store clerk, she noted that his eyes kept darting to the spot over her shoulder. She picked up the plastic bag that now held the tool and turned.
The Soldier was waiting expectantly by the door, arms crossed, one shoulder leaned up against the wall. His head was tipped down so the hat obscured most of his face, but she could tell he had been watchfully scrutinizing her interaction with the store worker. No wonder the man had been nervous.
"Come on," she said as she passed him and pulled the door open. The electronic ding noise sounded again.
Once out on the street, she found herself worried whether he could handle the crowds. She wasn't sure how he had followed her, but it sure hadn't been through jam-packed way she used.
The streets had thinned out, yet there were still plenty of shoppers, joggers, and sightseers all along the roads. She looked back at him following soundlessly behind her. He never took his harsh glare off the people milling around near him, and looked like he was preparing himself to fight at any moment if the need arose.
She slowed her pace to walk beside him. He hardly noticed her. Already having an inkling of what the answer would be, she asked, "Why were you following me?"
She knew he heard her, but he just continued glaring at anyone that came close.
"You thought I was turning you in, didn't you?"
His glare shifted to her, lingered, and went back to the other pedestrians.
"I won't lie, the thought crossed my mind," she said a little breezily. They came to a halt at a crosswalk. "But where would the fun be in that?"
She glanced coyly up at him. Sobering, she continued, "Besides, I couldn't do that to a friend."
He stared down at her, his shoulders loosening for a change as his eyes roamed over her sincere features. His visage was almost tender.
She knew she'd made the right decision in helping him. The crosswalk light turned green. They crossed the street and continued the trip home in silence, walking side-by-side.