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chapter twelve

IN MY DEFENSE

THE WIND BLEW Raven's hair across her face as she adjusted the basket she had over her arm.

"So," Natasha started, "this is what you came here for? The farmer's markets?"

   Raven held in a snort at her remark. She'd missed this.

   After not being able to fall back asleep due to the terrors that plagued her dreams, the sun was gracious enough to rise in a timely manner. It broke through the curtains in Raven's room and silently told her to get up, to which she obliged.

   Nat made an appearance not long after she'd gone to the kitchen. Steve was already up; she presumed it was because he couldn't sleep either.

   He offered her coffee, and before she could answer, the door opened and the Romanoff woman walked in, a smile breaking onto her face as soon as she saw her old friend.

   Natasha couldn't help but wrap the woman in an embrace.

   The redhead squeezed her eyes shut and inwardly forbade any tears from making an appearance. "I'm sorry. I know you said that you weren't ready, but I couldn't do this anymore. We've lost enough people, Nix. I didn't want you to be one of them." She pulled back and placed her hands on Raven's shoulders.

   "I know, it's okay," she smiled softly.

   The three friends had smiled at each other and talked while they drank their fair share of coffee before Raven invited them to accompany her to the farmer's market that Natasha now joked about.

   She poked a watermelon at the fruit stand and gave Raven a questioning look.

"I mean, we didn't exactly have any in the Compound," she retorted humorously.

   "She's not wrong," Steve agreed, returning back to the two women after going to the other side of the stand. He now held a bag in his hand, causing their gaze to fall to it. "Oh! Do you guys want to see what I got?"

[STILL ALIVE]

   As the trio walked back into Nix's apartment with the small grocery haul they'd acquired, Natasha's attention was drawn to a newspaper that sat on the small dining table next to the kitchen.

She wandered over to it, curious as to why Raven had it (she'd never been one to read the paper, always claiming that there wasn't a point since "everything was online"). Her eyes skimmed over the title as she opened it and laid it flat.

INFAMOUS ASSASSIN STRIKES AGAIN: WHO IS SHE?, is what the title read.

The article went on to describe different instances where people spotted the mysterious assassin; how people had only seen glimpses of them. The article talked about how the assassin hadn't made an appearance in years, many thinking that she had been one of the many taken by Thanos' snap. It listed interviews where people argued if she was to be considered dangerous, or a "vigilante" that took down crime bosses and made Cuba safer.

"Raven, what is this?" she questioned, her eyes still scanning the article until she landed on a blurry, dark picture of the assassin.