The shadow Hunter

Chapter 47

After that incident I was careful never to make another mistake, trying desperately to keep my other two strikes in tact. The highlight of my week, always those 4 hours with Peter. But like clockwork, when the time ticked to 3 hours and 49 minutes, I reluctantly had to shove Peter out the door. And then it was back to the routine of my life stowed away, out of the publics sight. I woke up every morning and wrapped my tag and ankle in a plastic bag and had a shower. Then I would rush down the stairs and turn on the news as I ate breakfast, checking for any reports to do Nat or Wanda or even Steve. A few times there had been a report on a sighting or an attempted capture but they were always dead ends. 

Once I had eaten, on the days Tony was away working, I would go up to his lab and put on my suit. Tony had updated some features, I'm not sure why because he knew I couldn't use it. FRIDAY not only could map out floor plans of buildings and show me heat signals but now she could map out whole cities if i only asked- hidden alley ways and routes you wouldn't know about otherwise. Tony had also updated the vital checks, now FRIDAY informed me if I had broken something, if my blood pressure was too high or my energy levels too low. Now, I had been working on installing an information data base. Like the glasses I had made for Peter, I thought it would be useful to be able to access information on anyone around me. I did sometimes think this work was useless because I wasn't allowed to use my suit but I had nothing else to do with my time so I stuck at it.

Then I practiced. I used my shield, nervous that if I stopped using it all together I could lose it or at least weaken it. It was funny how something I had once hated and feared I was now scared to lose. But it was useful to me, It had saved my life so many times. It was a part of me, like a limb or an organ that needed energy and strength. Like people trained their arms and legs to keep them strong, I trained my shield. I could expand it further and further, the power getting stronger and longer lasting. By December I could almost fill the whole lab with it. 

In hour increments I would check the news, just in case something had happened since the last time but nothing ever had. Sometimes, I would leave new messages on Nat's old number, knowing she would never get them. I don't know why I did it, I guess it was just somewhere to vent too. Like on christmas, which was a bland affair. Pepper had tried to make something of it, she made a whole christmas meal and we opened presents but all of us knew despite the effort it was pointless. I had called Nat that night, asked how she was, how I wish she was here, how shit everything had been. I knew I would never get  a reply but each time I called I begged to hear her voice at the other end instead of the usual 'this number is no longer active' message. Vision had left to find Wanda and so he probably knew where she was, was probably with her but we didn't know where Vison was.

Every two weeks I dreaded my meetings with Jimmy Woo. He would sit me down, ask the normal questions, 'How are you getting on?', 'How are you feeling?'. Then he would slide into the other questions, about the red room, about HYDRA, about why I killed, and I would shut up like a clam. "Nothing you say is going to incriminate you, you know." He told me as an attempt of encouragement. "It's just to help you." But I didn't want help, I just wanted to be left alone, allowed outside, allowed more than 4 hours a week with Peter. 

Pepper's stomach had began to stuck out and every new day it seemed to have grown over night. I watched her press her hand against the bump protectively as she moved around. I watched Tony press his own hands to her stomach, whispering things to it. They discussed names, well argued over names, discussed plans to clear out the spare room, decorate, buy new things, furniture for the room, baby toys, diapers, car seats. The whole time I thought about my baby sister, or my baby brother- they didn't want to know yet. It didn't feel like mine at all, it didn't even feel like a real baby. I imagined the clump of cells in Pepper's stomach, something that looked like a head, something that was barely a leg. Even when they had shown me the scan, I couldn't make out a baby in the grey mass on the paper.  

And still I counted down. January 2018. Pepper was 5 months along, 4 months to go. January 2018. I was 5 and a half months into my house arrest, 18 and a half months to go.