A short chapter, but important.

Hope you enjoy :)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Mens Rea

Bruce couldn't remember the last time he was so worried.

This girl was going to be the death of him.

It was dark out. It had been dark out for quite a while now. Every once and a while, between paces, he'd look out the window, to check for her, only to see his own reflection looking back in the dark glass. The frustration only mounted as weather reports told of road closings and black-outs. What if Amelia was lost out there, in the snow? What if she was cold, or hurt, or trapped? He couldn't do anything, he was stuck here —

The door opened.

A cold blast of air blew through the house, casting snowflakes and paper across the living room. Bruce brought up his arm to protect his face from the unexpected wind, and when the door slammed shut, he brought it down and set his eyes on the girl slumped against his door.

He wasn't sure if he should be angry or relieved. Amelia wasn't very communicative to begin with, so the fact that she had been out there, doing who knows what.

Angry seemed appropriate. "Jesus, where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea —"

"An ambulance crashed," she cut him off, although there wasn't much sharpness to her tone. Her arms hung at her sides like they weighed more than she could carry. Amelia looked positively exhausted. "Black ice. I had to help."

"And you didn't think to maybe tell me this before you disappeared for six hours?" Bruce demanded, trying not to lose his steam over that. It was hard to be angry at someone who had pure motivations, even if they were being extremely stupid about it.

"It was an emergency. I had to fly donor organs to a hospital." Amelia winced as she pulled herself off the door, dropping her backpack by the couch and looking ready she might sleep on that, too. "I'm sorry, really. I kind of…got caught up in the moment."

He sighed, hands on his hips. It wasn't the answer he wanted, but at least she was being honest. And apologized.

Bruce decided to cast aside his anger for a moment; the girl looked exhausted. Letting his hands fall to his sides, he asked, "And when's the last time you ate?"

"Uh," Amelia had to think about it. "This morning. Yeah. Breakfast." When he sighed again, she threw him an annoyed look. "Can you please stop doing that?"

"I will if you start taking care of yourself, for once," Bruce muttered, schlepping it over to the kitchen. It was past dinner time, but at this point he was used to the odd hours of making meals. He never had to worry about left-overs when Amelia was around — she ate more than he did.

The girl made a noise of complaint, but didn't argue the point, which Bruce appreciated. He really didn't want to get into an argument about responsibility right then.

Amelia eventually followed him, leaning against the doorway as he grabbed clean plates from the dish rack next to the sink. Bruce was starting to think it was a little strange how she hadn't met his eyes since she got home, and wondered if something else had happened she wasn't telling him about.

He was just about to open his mouth, to ask her to help, but the girl spoke first.

"Why is the US Air Force after you?"

The bowl dropped from his hand, clattering into the sink. All feeling disappeared from his fingers and he grasped the edge of the counter when the breath escaped from his lungs.

How did she know? What did she know? Who told her? There was a reason he was living in anonymity – because only a certain few knew the meaning behind his identity, the truth beneath the skin.

He didn't realize he had gotten lost in a reverie until Amelia's voice called him back. "Doc?"

Bruce looked up, startled to find her still standing there in the doorway — as if she hadn't run away by now — swathed in a blanket that swept against the floor. Her expression was unreadable; Bruce expected to see fear, hate, distrust, but none seemed apparent. She just seemed too tired to express any emotion at all.

Leaning against the sink, Bruce clenched the edge and eyed her, uncertain. "How...who told you? Where did you go?"

"Some dude named General Ross," she said and his heart started to pound. Oh, god, it was even worse than he thought. But if that crazed war hero was in New York City, he would've know about it. "I met him in Detroit."

Detroit? As in Detroit, Michigan? How? "What the hell were you doing all the way over there?"

He sounded more accusing than he meant to; it came from a combination of fear, confusion, and concern over her well-being (and mental process. Detroit?!). But of course it didn't come out that way, and Amelia took it at face value.

Scowling, the girl got defensive. "I told you — I was delivering donor organs and medical supplies, for a hospital there. Because of the ambulance crash, they'd never get there before expiring. Without me, the supplies would've never gotten there on time."

"And the supplies were for Ross?"

"No," the girl hesitated and Bruce realized that there was indeed more to this story than he first thought. Amelia sighed and said, "I flew too high and got noticed by the Air Force – they sent drones after me, thinking I was an enemy weapon or something. I managed to get rid of them!" she added at the look of alarm on his face; this did not make it better. "One in a wheat field in Ohio, I think, and another in Lake Erie. No one got hurt, except maybe some fish."

"They tracked you to Detroit?"

"They were waiting for me at the hospital. They had figured out from the pack I was carrying and checking hospital air waves and finally figured out I wasn't there to hurt anyone. General Ross had some issues with me destroying millions of dollars of government property. And whether I have actual powers or not."

"Of course he does," Bruce muttered to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose. The man was afraid of anything he didn't understand, which happened to be a lot of things. Any problem that didn't solve itself, Ross just threw more bullets at it until it went away. To Amelia, Bruce said, "And you told him?"

"Come on, give me some credit!" Amelia complained, throwing out her arms. "I knew the guy was an asshole the second I met him. He only brought you up when I didn't give him what he wanted. You were an example, a traitor to the US now living on the run, a constant danger to the public."

"Did he say...how?" Bruce didn't want to say explicitly what it was unless she already knew. If she did, he had no idea why she would be standing here right now, still talking to him.

"I don't know," Amelia shrugged, making a face. "Your old-man shoes? Ross seems like the kind of guy who's afraid of anyone who's smarter than him."

Bruce was so relieved he laughed a little. For once he was thankful for Ross' massive ego – the man saw his task so important, so dangerous that he trusted no outsider to know about it. "That sums him up pretty well. I guess after the first Ph.D, I should've quit while I was ahead."

The very thought of having his secret revealed — that General Ross could still somehow upset everything, even without trying — nearly gave Bruce a heart attack (as if that could kill him). What was the General doing in Detroit, anyways? Was he still looking for Bruce, following some trail? Bruce had never been in the city, at least not since the Accident, but he did know some people there. Maybe that's what Ross wanted?

It was hard to say, and there was no way Bruce could be sure. There was no way he was going to contact his old friends, either, in case it was true.

Still, he couldn't shake the thought from his mind, and continued to ruminate on it as he cooked. Amelia found a place at the kitchen table, resting her head on the wooden surface and apparently having fallen asleep there. The sight was kind of cute, Bruce had to admit. This was the sort of thing parents took pictures of to laugh about later, out of nostalgia and embarrassing their now-grown kids.

Bruce just shook his head, smiling to himself. If he ever took a picture of Amelia, he had a feeling she might just break the camera.

When he placed the bowl of soup in front of her, the girl jolted — she really had been asleep, and Bruce almost regretted waking her. Food didn't really seem like a priority to her, but he wasn't letting her go to bed on an empty stomach.

The girl raised her nose, peering into the bowl. "You're like a one-trick pony. You only make soup."

"It's nine o' clock. What did you expect, a five course meal?"

"No," Amelia said lightly, and took up the spoon nonetheless. Yet, Bruce swore she muttered, "Originality" under her breath.

He decided not to comment on it, for the sake of peace.

The plan worked out. Amelia barely had enough energy to eat, and thus didn't waste too much breathe on words aside from basic conversation. But as the soup started to settle in her, Bruce could see her gain a little bit of energy back, the light back in her eyes. Would she try staying up longer now that she was working on calories?

When she got up to put her empty bowl in the sink, Amelia asked, "So, I was thinking —"

"Nope," Bruce said loudly, gently guiding her out of the room with a hand on her shoulder. "No more talking. Time for bed, you,"

Amelia dragged her feet, throwing him a dissatisfied look. "A bed time, are you serious? I'm seventeen."

"You're also living in my house, so you live by my rules," Bruce replied. There wasn't any real threat in that statement – if Amelia didn't want to go to sleep, there wasn't too much he could do about that. But considering it was after midnight (again) and she just made a six hour flight in the midst of a massive snowstorm, he felt like he made a pretty good judgement call.

His theory proved correct. Amelia's resistance was only half-hearted and climbed up the stairs without much complaint. She didn't even bother turning on lights to her room before flopping on the bed. Bruce reached to flick off the switch for the hallway light, and it occurred to him that Midtown High had canceled for the next day.

"Oh, before I forget, your school –" Bruce started, but his voice died in his throat as he turned around and saw Amelia fast asleep. Bruce decided she could be pleasantly surprised in the morning, after she slept in, that she had nothing to worry about.

The man smiled to himself as he closed the door, shutting it as gently as possibly. "Good night, Amelia."