Happy reading guys! My seasonal depression is kicking in so either I'll update more frequently or less. We'll see, so stay tuned.

IDon'tOwnMarvel

"You see Lang outside?" Kurt asked as I sat down across from him at the table and pulled out my computer.

I shrugged. "Yeah. He'll accept the job when he comes back."

Kurt looked at me quickly, clearly not one to back down from a potential bet. "Forty and he does not."

I smirked and stuck out my good hand. "Fifty."

"It's a deal." He shook my hand and we went back to whatever we had going on on our own computers.

Is it cheating if I already know the future? I smiled to myself, pulling up The Office on Tony's Netflix account and connecting my earbuds to it. Nah these guys are criminals. I can steal their money.

Kurt did end up convincing me to move over to where he was to watch some Foreign Film that I couldn't quite understand the plot of. That could've been due to the fact that it was in Russian, but Kurt was very insistent that it was good and I didn't hate the guy, so I took his word on it. He also pushed the idea of me learning Russian, but I knew that was out of my skill range and just passively agreed while trying to pay attention to the movie.

"You don't cry?"

"Huh?" I gave him a funny look while he looked at me curiously. "No, I guess not."

He frowned a bit to himself before looking at David who had also watched the movie with us. The man was just as confused as me.

He just shook his head and shrugged. "Nah. I don't get it."

"Sorry, Kurt." I hummed, pulling open my own laptop again and going back to Garage to see if I could find any more deals nearby.

There was one guy selling weed, but that wasn't really worth my time and I had no beef with stoners. None of those guys were ever bad either. Personally, weed wasn't for me, but I didn't have any problems with people who did it to cope with life or recreationally. Of course, I'd never tried weed, but I was pretty sure it wasn't worth it. That is what my dad said anyhow.

The day passed pretty quickly and like any other. Luis and Dave played Mario Kart on the small TV while Kurt and I stayed on our computers doing whatever variety of things we felt like. I did try to ignore the games going on on the TV in favor of a new malware device I was trying to create, but I caved a few times to watch them. Dave was the reigning champ, which did make sense due to his role as a getaway driver, but Luis got credit for his determination. He played round after round against Dave, fully expecting to win at least once.

'A' for effort, Luis.

"Hey, what's up hotshot?" Luis asked, only barely glancing over at the door when it opened.

"Maybe he didn't hear you." Dave nudged him and I looked up at Scott when he grabbed a beer from the fridge.

"How was the party?" Luis tried again to get a response but was unsuccessful until after Scott had taken a big gulp of the beer.

"Tell me about that tip."

I saw Kurt look up slowly from his computer while Luis was in the process of freaking out. Kurt got a big smirk from me at that.

"Calm down, alright?" Scott held out a hand. "I just need to know where it came from, it's gotta be airtight."

I bit my lip in excitement as Luis started to explain to Scott. Kurt rifled through his pockets for his money clip and counted out fifty for me. I held out my hand, making him get up from his seat to put in my paw.

He scowled at me. "I will win that back."

"Sure you will." I chuckled, flipping through and making a show out of counting it before shoving it in my wallet.

Scott was busy being confused by Luis's explanation so Kurt filled in for him in an annoyed fashion. "Old man have safe."

"And he's gone for a week." Dave added, obviously feeling helpful at his own input.

"Alright." Scott silenced us to clarify. "There's an old man, he's got a safe, and he'll be gone for a week. Let's just work with that."

Scott frowned then, looking between myself stuffing money in my wallet and Kurt looking away in annoyance. "Were you guys betting on me?"

"No," I shook my head. "I was betting on you. He bet against. I won."

I tossed a smile at Kurt who just glared. "You are witch."

"Sore loser."

"You guys are weird." Scott shook his head at us and I did the same back sarcastically.

The next few days were key as we spent time locating and purchasing different equipment that we might need for the job. I found a guy who would sell me an alarm disabler for a piece of spyware. He spent about twenty minutes telling me about how he was trying to use it on his cheating girlfriend while I just wanted to accept the deal and move on. And normally, I go collect the stuff in person, but Luis was happy to take the trip for me in case he turned out to be a creep. I didn't really want to risk having to fight this guy off with my bad arm.

Scott spent most of that day with a soldering kit that I didn't know he had, alongside the alarm disabler that I got for him. Instead of sticking around to watch him poke at metal, I left with Dave to make some adjustments to the van. He knew a guy who would do it for him, so I tagged along in order to immerse myself a little more in this criminal world. In all honesty, I had no idea what they were talking about or doing since engineering and mechanics weren't my strong suit, but Dave looked pretty confident.

"So who are you living with?" Dave asked, knocking me out of my headspace while I watched them work on the van. "You know, outside of hanging around us?"

I shrugged haphazardly. "Myself, I guess. I've got an apartment."

"No parents?"

"Nah."

"That's cool." Dave gave me a quick look over. "I left my house at 17, so I get it."

"Yeah...16."

Not quite the same thing, but, you know...

He whistled at that. "Damn, that sucks."

"It's alright." I shrugged again, shifting my arm to cross over my chest and changed the subject casually. "You know, it's good to know our getaway driver is a champ at Mario Kart. I think I'd be a little scared if the smoothie guy beat you."

"He's not that hard to beat." He smiled at the compliment. "A pigeon could beat him at that game."

It was official, Dave was nice. We rode back and I listened to him give me an extensive lecture on the techniques of losing the police while driving. He claimed that he's been run down only once by them, so that was a pretty impressive record considering he'd been a part of eight 'getaways' (three of which involved police). I didn't really learn much other than how to put other drivers at risk, but I listened anyhow. He seemed pretty enthusiastic about it so I didn't want to shoot him down.

This had to be some of the most fun I'd had since I arrived in this messed up world. It felt nice having some things in order and nothing super deadly on the horizon. Sure, Thanos still loomed in the future, but that was at least two years from now. We still had Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, Thor: Ragnarok...and, well, I wasn't super sure how Civil War was going to go down, but it would be helpful to warn them ahead of time about the accords if I could.

Otherwise, I felt pretty good about having people that 'looked out for me' in a sense and slowly started to understand why so many people might become criminals in the first place. You feel like you belong, really. The only issue came along when they found out that I was working for Hank too. If only I could keep that a secret forever. Then I wouldn't have to worry about their reaction to find out I was a double or triple agent. But, to be fair, they were criminals and ex-criminals. Everyone in the business lives double lives.

"Hey I gotta do something before we get back." Dave spoke up over the radio, turning it down.

I watched as he climbed out, ordering me to stay in the van and then disappearing through a parking lot.

"Got it." He climbed back in with a license plate in hand.

I just frowned at him. "What's this for?"

"For the van." He grinned, pulling away again to get back on the road. "In case we get cops on our tail."

That had to be one of the smartest things I'd heard come out of his mouth. I didn't take Dave as the kind of guy to think ahead.

...or the kind of guy to think at all.

We made it back in one piece despite the mini panic attack Dave had when we saw a cop go by. He stayed behind with the license plate to put it on while I went back upstairs. Scott was still at the table working on the alarm piece and Kurt was back on his computer. I sat down at the table with them and pulled out my own computer.

I worked on it until it got dark and ended up reminding Kurt that we needed to mess with the telephone signals so that no one made any distress calls while we were on the job. He nodded silently and started working on something else for it. He passed on some of the work to me, and that's how I ended up programming a small device he had to stop outgoing calls in the area.

Luis came over with waffles at one point for the others. I had brought myself a bag of chex mix from my apartment so I was fine just eating that. He offered twice anyways.

Later that night, we were all stuffed into the van and on our way. I was practically bubbling over in excitement, but I kept myself composed to maintain my professional vibe. Kurt left me with the two computers while he went outside to implant the signal jammer. I monitored inside, knowing damn well that Hank was watching us closely too.

"Landlines cut, cell signals jammed." Kurt said through the coms. "No one will be making for distress call tonight."

"All check?"

"Check."

"Check."

"If the job goes bad, you know I've got your back, right?" Luis leaned in closer to the two sitting up front.

Scott flipped up his hood and adjusted the bag on his shoulder. "Don't worry, that's not going to happen."

He stepped out of the van and started towards the wall beside Hank's house.

Luis moved to the front seat to sit beside Dave. "I love it when he gets cocky."

I snickered and kept my eyes on the screen. Scott couldn't go triggering any alarms, and if he did, I would handle it from here.

"Alarm is dead."

I watched carefully from my seat and confirmed the absence of an alarm system. A small countdown popped up featuring 19 minutes and 48 seconds. Kurt came back into the van and I let him take over, moving aside so that I was only in front of one computer.

"Alright, I'm moving through the house."

I ended up pulling out my chex mix bag and Kurt and I ate from it while we watched the screens. He was skeptical at first to take food from me, but ate some anyway.

"There's a fingerprint lock on the door." Scott said, sounding mildly puzzled

"It's got a what?" Luis perked up, looking to the house. "Ernesto didn't tell me nothin' about that. Aw, man, are we screwed?"

"Not necessarily."

"You doing that cool thing with the superglue and tape?" I asked, reaching for another handful of chex mix.

"Yeah. How'd you know that?"

"Uh, 'cause I'm smart." I smiled at the weird look Dave was giving me. "Saw it on a TV show once."

"I'm in."

Kurt gave the screen a once over before responding. "No alarms have been triggered. He's in like the Flynn."

Scott breathed a sigh of annoyance. "Oh man."

"What is it?" Luis questioned more, getting more antsy by the second.

"Well they weren't kidding." Scott huffed, "This safe is serious."

"How serious we talkin', Scotty?" Luis pulled the mic closer to his face.

"It's a Carbondale. It's from 1910, made from the same steel they used to make the titanic."

Luis and Dave gave each other a look before Luis spoke into the mic. "Wow. Can you crack it?"

"Well, here's the thing. It doesn't do so well in the cold. Remember what that iceberg did?"

"Yeah, man, it killed DeCaprio."

Dave voiced his say too. "It killed everybody."

That's when Kurt finally decided to get in on their conversations. "But not the old lady. She still threw the jewel into the ocean."

"Yeah, uh, Rose lived too, Dave." I cut in, ignoring the random scuffling on the other side of the communicators.

Luis didn't ignore it though. "What are you doing?"

"I poured water into the locking mechanism and froze it with nitrogen. Ice expands, metal doesn't."

There was a moment of silence that was interrupted again by Luis. "What are you doing now?"

"Waiting...waiting..." Loud pops and a clang could be heard beside his voice. "Nice."

Luis looked between the house and his mic. "What is it? Cash? Jewels?"

I already knew what he was looking at, but the others were on the edge of their seat.

"It's a suit." He snapped finally, tossing something down and cursing under his breath.

Luis furrowed his brow. "What?"

"It's an old motorcycle suit."

"There's no cash, no jewelry, nothing?"

Every face in the van fell with quite a few annoyed sighs.

"No it's a bust."

Now, I knew Scott had taken the suit anyways. His curiosity would have gotten the best of him had it not been for his need to get something out of this job. Either way, he climbed back into the van, his backpack a little thicker than before.

I spent the next day at my apartment, filling in Hank on the situation and then mostly just lounging about or working on a new project that would help explain myself to people without doing it over and over again. I couldn't exactly go out and risk re-opening the cut on my arm or getting hurt again because of it, so I stuck around my apartment, getting done what I had to get done for the week. The Office was going on the TV while I cleaned up a little. It was a pretty nice change of pace from the constant running around that seemed to happen in my life.

Today, Scott was going to test out the suit and then try to return it tonight. He would later get caught by the police and busted out by Hank. I really didn't need to go back to Hank's house until tomorrow when we officially got Scott to work with us. So far, I was feeling pretty okay with the way things worked out. Everything was going according to plan, and I was happy to enjoy quality time away from the avengers.

Another person I was excited to meet during this whole endeavor- Hope. She was responsible for teaching Scott how to fight, so I was kind of hoping that she might take time to show me a few things. I really just relied on defensive moves and with her background in martial arts helping me out, I might actually be able to compete with the other superheroes in this world. Relying on my purple power all the time didn't seem like a smart long-term move either. The only issue would arise if I couldn't get Hope to like me even a little. If she turned a cold shoulder, I would be at a loss due to my limited time to gain her appreciation in the first place.

During my day of nothingness, I took a moment to construct an email to the Avengers facility to let them know I was still alive. I felt worse the more I thought about the lengths they went through to track me down when I was gone, so email was a good way to make sure they didn't think I was trying to run again.

I was actually in the process of sending the email too when I got a knock on my door. Tensing and freezing in place for a moment, I processed the possible reasons behind a visitor and then grabbed for the knife under my couch cushions. It was held out in front of me when I paced quietly through the apartment and then peeked out the peephole into an empty hallway. The curiosity was enough to get me to open the door a little and look out into the hallway.

The door was shoved open then by whoever was behind it and I took several steps back against another wall, holding my knife defensively until I recognized the grinning face.

"Pietro!" I snapped, shutting the door behind him and discarding the knife aside on the counter. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He shrugged and zoomed around my apartment, picking up my computer to look at it and then dropping it aside to look over the books on my shelf. "I came to see if you still lived."

"Literally anyone could be watching me right now." I marched closer with a glare, having him skip away in a blue streak to my other bookshelf to look. "This could've been accomplished with an email...or a phone call."

"Yes," He agreed, appearing beside me and giving me a light shove with a smile before zipping back across the room. "I cannot push you over the phone though. The trip was necessary."

I caught my stumble on the edge of the couch and scowled across the room at him. He was just looking over my little collection of books like the most innocent man in the world.

"If I wasn't working, you'd be legless on my floor." I snarled back.

"You do not look like you are working." He looked back at me now, giving me a quick once over with a small hint of a smirk playing on his lips. "Just sitting around...saving lives?"

"I'm on the job." I sat down with a huff on the couch. "I'm technically undercover right now, so I shouldn't be talking to you. The guy has bugs everywhere. Literally."

"What job is it?" He sat down across from me in a chair and I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn't say when my phone went off.

I debated declining it but once I saw Luis's Facetime call, I knew that he would just keep calling until he got an answer. I held up a finger to my lips indicating that Peitro should stay silent before answering.

"Yo."

"Jack, the craziest thing just happened." Luis started, jumping right into his story. "So I was sitting on my couch that I got from that sale in Texas. It was actually the same sale that I bought my lamp at and you know the one because it sits over by the table in the apartment. The one with the swirly and decorative stand-"

"Luis." I shut down the story to save time. "What happened?"

I had a sneaking suspicion as to what he was talking about because it was already dark outside, but I did want to be sure that something else didn't go down and mess with the plot. Pietro frowned and tried to look over at the screen, but I pulled it away, shooting him a sharp glare.

Dave showed up on the screen, shoving aside Luis so that he could talk to me. "Scott got arrested."

There was a brief argument over the line and I just sighed. I didn't notice right away when Peitro sped around behind me to see who it was.

"Guys, chill out. What'd he get arrested for?" I asked, already knowing, but also being aware that it was a nice thing to ask like I was worried.

It was about that time that I noticed Pietro peering over my shoulder. I jerked the camera away and stood up, backing away from him.

Luis gained back control of the phone. "Burglary- Wait, Jack, who was that?"

"A, uh, client." I clenched my jaw at the obvious lie and Pietro tilted his head.

"Is he your boyfriend? That's awesome, sis, I didn't know you were about that life."

"He's not my boyfriend-"

Pietro mouthed out 'sis?' back to me.

I shook my head at him before addressing Luis again. "Look, I gotta go. Let me know if anything changes with Scott."

I hung up the phone and turned to Pietro with a glare. "You're in for it now."

He sped away as I charged at him.

"I didn't do anything!" He cried out with a smile and a laugh.

"You could have blown my cover, you hooligan!" I threw a pencil at him from the table and he ducked out of the way.

He laughed and threw it right back. I dipped out of the way too and I felt a smile cross my face despite how panicked I was earlier.

Shaking my head at him, I caved to his presence. "Dude, I came here to get away from you nutcases."

He placed a hand over his heart. "I am hurt, Lincoln."

"Look," I smiled, sitting back. "No one dies on this adventure. It's a nice break from my usual stuff. All I have to do is pretend to be a master criminal and make some friends."

Pietro nodded at that, making his way back over. "Is Luis your brother?"

"Uh, no." I laughed. "I never had a brother. Only a sister."

"You had a sister?" He sat down across from me again, putting up his feet on my coffee table.

"Yeah, Ellie." I forced a smile at the memory, hoping that I wouldn't ruin my three years of processing grief with helpless sobs. "She was my twin, actually."

The ache of pain was still there, but if those countless grief articles I found on the internet were right, it always would be. I frowned a little. Maybe I do need a therapist.

Pietro nodded slowly in understanding before picking up a book off the coffee table and reading the cover. "I'm sorry for your loss. And thank you."

"Thank you?" I actually smiled amusedly then. "For losing my sister?"

"No," He looked up quickly. "Oh, no, not that."

"Thank you…" I frowned at him. "I don't know, Blue. That was a weird thing to say after giving condolences for my dead sister."

Pietro hesitated at that and looked away. "No, thank you...for not letting that happen to Wanda."

I blinked at him, then knowing exactly where he got his information from. "Fucking hell, Tony."

"You saved my life." Pietro commented then, looking up at me. "Thank you. Especially for Wanda. I suppose I wouldn't care since I would be dead, but I couldn't let Wanda go through that."

"Yeah," I shook my head, brushing it off. "It really wasn't much of a save. I just changed the future enough so you didn't have to worry about getting shot."

"Still," He muttered, "It was a nice change. Now I get to watch the robot-man try and seduce my sister every day."

I smiled to myself. "Yeah, they're cute together."

"Either way," Pietro continued, putting on a less solemn tone. "I will try not to ruin the future too much."

"Thanks." I sat back on the couch and offered him a smile. "How is everyone else doing?"

Pietro lit up and almost immediately got to work with his explanation, letting me know what everyone had been up to recently. Tony had been in and out of the facility, spending most of his time at the tower with Pepper. The young adult in my apartment also took the time to mention how obnoxious Wanda and Vision were, as well as telling me that he had resorted to messing with Sam. Clint had gone home to be around when his son was born, so Pietro had limited choices.

Sam had tried to take off Pietro's legs at one point before he was able to skip away unharmed at the last minute. I had to laugh, thinking about how mad Sam would have been. I did miss them, but I wasn't sure how I felt about going back just yet. So far, it felt like every time I was around them I would either get hurt or lose something else. I was pretty happy with what I had now, even if TC would've been even better company than a group of criminals and Pietro.

Said dude did end up eating a bunch of my food and then passing out on my couch that night. He was gone early the next morning though, only leaving a note where my two cereal boxes had been. This led to me having to stop on my way to Hank's house at a coffee shop for a muffin and tea. Scott was due to wake up soon, so I just went that way, hoping that I wouldn't end up getting tossed out on my ass.