*** Enjoy! I OWN NOTHING – except Hannah and Alex ***
Hannah was discovering a lot of things tonight about the world around her, and staying silent around the metal-armed, fiercely grouchy James Barnes was one of them.
She also learned that she could only take out a certain amount of cash on her bank card at one ATM, but, if she went to multiple ATMs, she could easily drain her checking and her savings within minutes. Also credit cards - she drained them. She hadn't wanted to, but James insisted. She thought she should save room on them for a hotel or something, which he shot down immediately.
"They'll trace everything, we need to leave this area now," he'd grumbled, his eyes casting about. Hannah had nodded dumbly and stuffed the vast amounts of cash into her purse. She would normally feel like she was walking around with a neon sign above her head that flashed "ROB ME" by carrying so much cash, but even with a stolen hoodie over his giant metal arm, people avoided James, literally parting like the Red Sea for him on the sidewalk.
Besides, if you have any sign flashing, it's one that says "FUGITIVE", she thought wryly.
Hannah also learned that it's really easy for someone with a metal arm to steal a car. He made it look like nothing, and soon they were driving out of the city. As soon as they hit the highway he spoke. "Do you have your cell phone?" He asked. She nodded and he held his hand out immediately, keeping his metal one on the steering wheel. "I need it," he ordered her. She dug it out and handed it to him and he threw it out the window immediately, and then pulled a violent U-turn and started going the other way down the highway, back through the city. She gaped at him, open-mouthed.
"But why?" She finally managed to ask, and he didn't even look over at her. "They will trace it, they likely already are, and they will think we are going the other way," his explanation was harshly spoken and to the point, but she supposed she understood. Still, she mourned her phone. After a moment, the irony of that dawned on her and she couldn't keep the small, dry, laugh from escaping her throat.
"What?" He asked her abruptly and she leaned her head back against her seat and stared up at the roof of the car, one hand coming up to rest on Alex's head as he slept against her chest. "It's just funny," she explained to the roof, "I met Steve when he ran over my phone, and the phone you just destroyed was the replacement I bought back then."
He was silent and she sighed. Somewhere in Alexandria, he finally pulled off the road and he wove around the streets for a bit before pulling off the road in front of a fairly run-down looking building in a tired section of the city. She craned her neck to see out the window and discovered they were parked outside a hostel. "We can get a room here," he told her gruffly, "No credit cards." She thought it was brilliant, but likely dirty and unsafe. Alex snored against her chest and she sighed. I guess it doesn't matter.
She watched James pull on a ball cap from the back seat and then he pointed at her. "Stay here, I will book the room, you two might be remembered, I will not," he directed her. She nodded faintly and sat back in the darkness of the car, watching him stride confidently into the building. She felt very tired and very weak all of a sudden and knew that too much had happened far too quickly, and she needed some time to deal.
She needed to figure out what the plan was. She doubted he had any real plan, and she needed to tell him about Clint. She was grateful beyond words for James' intrusion (she could not bring herself to call a grown man 'Bucky', and he didn't care either way) in her life, arriving in time to save her and Alex, for getting her away from the huge fall of danger that was about to drop onto her – but she was still afraid of him. He seemed unbalanced, broken, and in deep and serious need of some therapy.
He would keep her safe, but she wouldn't feel good about it forever – she had a feeling that Clint would have a more secure and calm solution. By the time she was laying Alex down on one of the blankets she'd packed for him, on one of the two tiny single beds in the hostel room that James had secured, she was feeling nearly faint with exhaustion. James was sitting on the floor, his back up against the door, just a couple of feet away. Hannah lay down next to Alex, wrapping an arm around him and hugging him to her chest and she watched James as he just sat there, gazing with hard eyes at nothing across the room.
He must have felt her gaze because he cut his eyes over to her. "Go to sleep," he told her quietly, "You need to rest and sleep." She nodded at him and he looked away.
"Thank you," she whispered after a moment, and he simply nodded once, not looking over. She closed her eyes then and slept.
When she woke in the morning, Alex was sitting up, pacifier in his mouth, leaning back against her stomach as he watched James. She lay on her side and watched her son stare at the man. Alex was typically a little fussy in the morning – he had a big appetite and liked to eat pretty much right away – but today he was simply fascinated by the metal armed man.
Hannah tilted her head and saw that James was regarding her son with a more subtle form of curiosity. "He resembles his father," James spoke without taking his eyes from Alex. Hannah sat up, pulling Alex onto her lap when she did. "He does," she answered simply. James looked away and Hannah leaned around the baby to snag the diaper bag. She wanted to give Alex a bottle, it was fastest and easiest, but they had no water.
"I need clean water," she said quietly, looking up at James, "For his bottle."
"They sell water at the front desk for drinking, in bottles," James explained, his tone remaining flat. She nodded and before she could make a move, he jumped to his feet and unlocked the door. "I will get some," he told her, casting a severe look her way, "Stay here." He left quickly and Hannah took the opportunity to lay Alex back and change his diaper. He started to fuss at her, his distraction in the form of James gone for the moment, and she tried to soothe him, but he was having none of it.
Grimly she soldiered on, changing the diaper and changing the baby into a long sleeved shirt and his overalls. She tried to sing to him, to get him to stop kicking his feet at her as she tried to put on his socks, but he was also having none of that. It was almost amusing the way he abruptly and immediately stopped fussing as soon as James re-entered the room, though. Alex's blue eyes grew large and wide and locked onto James. She was able to get his socks and little shoes on with no problem and then sit him up and run a comb through his hair.
She turned to James who thrust a water bottle at her. "Feed him," he told her, "Then we need to go." She mixed the bottle and handed it to Alex, who eagerly grabbed it and then scooted back to lean against her while he drank it. Her own stomach growled and James heard it, much to her embarrassment. "We will have to find food later," he told her, his voice completely unapologetic.
"That's fine," she murmured. Hannah looked down at Alex and stroked her hand over the top of his head. "Someone was coming to pick us up, someone we trusted, one of Steve's friends," she said, without looking up. Again she heard the noise of James coming before she felt it, as his arm shot out and grabbed one of hers, making her look up at him.
"Who?" He snapped, "Did you contact them from here? Did they betray you to Hydra before?" She pulled on her arm and he didn't immediately let go. "You're hurting my arm," she said as calmly as she could manage, "And you're scaring Alex." He let go immediately and turned away from them.
"Answer my questions," he spoke, facing the other side of the room.
"He is trustworthy, he's an Avenger," she replied, rubbing her arm where his metal hand had just gripped her, "His name is Clint Barton, he's going to keep us somewhere safe." James didn't reply. Hannah shifted around and let Alex sit up on his own with the bottle as she climbed to her feet. She stood in front of James. "I need to phone him," she said, tilting her head to try and get him to look at her, "I'm so thankful for everything you've done, I really, really am, but I can't run forever, not with a baby, it's not good for him, or safe for him. I think Clint can offer us a safe place to hide, somewhere more stable, you know?"
James finally looked at her and for the first time she saw something painfully human in his eyes and it almost broke her heart. "Will you tell Captain Rogers? About what I've done?" He asked her, his tone bordering on hopeful for a moment. She nodded. "If I ever see Steve again, I will definitely tell him," she replied.
"You should also tell him that this is his son," James continued, his tone getting hard again, but in a non-threatening way. She realized he disapproved of her hiding Alex from Steve and felt a wash of shame. Her cheeks flaming, Hannah looked away. "I did what I thought was best for my son," she said, a touch indignantly.
"And what was easiest for yourself. The boy should know his father, the father should know his son," James sounded like he was reading a script, but she peeked up at his cutting eyes and saw the glint of humanity in them again.
"I will tell him," she whispered.
"We need to leave," James said after a moment, "After, you can call Clint Barton."
Later, as they drove in another car, this one with a car seat in the back, which made Hannah very happy, she found herself overflowing with curiosity about James. "How did you not die?" She asked him, "Everyone knows you fell out of a speeding train down the edge of a mountain."
"I survived the fall because I had previously been subjected to experiments attempting to recreate Steve Rogers' transformation," he answered immediately and flatly, not looking over.
"Oh," she said quietly, staring out the window, "And your arm?" She could hear the arm click and whir briefly, as if it were reacting to being mentioned. "To replace the one I lost," he answered shortly.
"Did it hurt?" She finally asked, after a long silence. He didn't answer at first, and she thought she should maybe clarify, because obviously a lot of things could have hurt: the fall, losing his real arm, replacing the arm - he wouldn't know which she was asking about it.
"It was agony," his words were like a rasp and Hannah swallowed on a dry throat.
"You became a hero," she told him a few minutes later, "In history books, in comics and movies, you've even a got a big section in that Captain America display at the Smithsonian – the only Howling Commando to give his life in service."
"I'm not a hero," he told her immediately, his tone much more harsh, "The hero fell from the train and the monster got to his feet again." She said nothing, but squeaked when he pulled the car over suddenly and lunged at her, grabbing her shoulders and pressing her up against the passenger door. "I'm not a hero – I kill people," he snarled at her, his face a ferocious, twisted thing, eyes darkened with rage, "I have killed so many, without any remorse. I would have kept on killing."
Hannah's breath was locked in her chest and her shoulders were beginning to throb where he gripped them, his large hands swallowing the tops of her arms. "I'm sorry," she managed to get out, her voice a shaking, weak thing, "Please, James, I'm sorry." Alex let out a bleat of dismay from the backseat and that seemed to shake the darkness loose in James' eyes and he released her abruptly, staring down at his hands like he couldn't believe what he'd just done.
Hannah sagged forward, her hands coming up to immediately cup her aching, throbbing shoulders. She could feel tears leaking out of her eyes from how badly it hurt. She looked up at James and he was sitting facing the windshield and nearly hyperventilating, she could see. "James," she began, tentatively, "It's alright, I'll be ok."
He cast her a wild-eyed look and shook his head, his eyes gone wide and pained, his face horrified. "I'm sorry," he blurted, his tone sounding like a real person for the first time since she'd met him, "I hurt you, I'm sorry." She blinked in surprise when he thrust his door open and bolted from the car, slamming the door closed behind him. Hannah sat stunned, as Alex made sad little meeps behind her.
Is he coming back? She wondered, completely uncertain about what to do next. She waited nearly an hour before she lifted herself across the center console and started the car. She adjusted the seat and the mirrors and slid her seatbelt on. She felt bad about leaving, she worried that he intended to come back and was just cooling off.
We can't sit in one place like this though, someone might notice, it's not safe. Her mind was made up and she pushed the car into drive. She had no idea where to go. She was also shocked to discover that payphones appeared to be a thing of the past. No matter how many gas stations she drove by, she didn't see a single one.
About 30 minutes later she drove past a very large mall and decided to pull in on a whim. Climbing from the car in the parking garage she heard the familiar sounds of people and cars that heralded the mall and felt comforted.
Hannah was pleased that she had changed at the hostel (while James obediently turned his back to her) and was able to put the baby Bjorn on overtop of her long sleeved t-shirt easily. She lifted Alex from the car seat and plopped him in the carrier, facing outwards, and then put on her backpack, slung her purse on and put the diaper bag over her shoulder.
She brought the car keys with her when she left the parkade for the mall – even though she wasn't certain how long they would be able to use this car. It was stolen, they were unnaturally lucky to have found the keys in the vehicle, but she was terrified that she'd get pulled over and arrested. Of course leaving it parked in a parkade meant it could be tracked down as well, but she really couldn't handle the tenseness of driving around in it anymore. A mall offered the opportunity to blend into a crowd for a while, disappear for a bit, and if she was remembering correctly, malls had either pay phones or courtesy phones.
This mall was crowded, and it was blissful. Hannah made a beeline for a set of courtesy strollers near the entrance and quickly loaded all their gear and the baby into it. Her still-sore shoulders sagged in immediate relief; she had been feeling like a pack horse and it was nice to not be weighed down. Alex seemed pleased too, he began to kick his legs happily and sing in a loud off key way as she pushed him through the mall. Her mind was blank, but her stomach was hungry, so she headed for the food court.
After getting a plate of food from a bagel place, Hannah sat down wearily at a plastic booth in the food court and began to sip at her coffee. She tore off little pieces of bagel for Alex and watched him turn it into a mushy chunky mess. I need to call Clint right after this, she thought, I should probably call my parents too and tell them I'm alive. She thought about her apartment, the state it had been left in, two murdered police officers inside, who were apparently also Hydra agents. She wasn't even certain who Hydra was, just flickers of vague mentions in WWII history books telling her that they were bad guys. Supposed to be extinct bad guys though, she mused, taking a deep pull at her dark coffee, wondering if they were like the Nazis themselves, with small underground sects still surviving around the world.
They seemed really powerful though, how 'underground' could they be? Hannah wiped Alex's face with a napkin while he squirmed to get away and decided that it didn't matter. Regardless of their power, they wanted Steve, to hurt him, to kill her, to snatch their son – she needed help, and now that James had deserted them, she needed to get to Clint as soon as possible.