Warrior || an avengersxreader fanfiction

chapter two

You wake up to the sound of coughing. You don't know who it is. Quickly, you get changed and run into the kitchen where you find your mother leaning on the counter, coughing and sniffling. A cold? That's not right. Your mom never gets even a little sick.

"You okay?" You ask, sitting down at the table.
"I'm fine. There's just a cold virus going around," She answered. You have seen a few people around town, sneezing and showing signs of a cold.
"I have to go to work today. I'll be back around five o'clock. You could go do something with Robert or whatever you want," She adds.
"I think I'll just hang out here today," You replies.
"All right. Bye," She says, grabbing her keys and walking out the door.
"Bye," You say.

In an extra room in the apartment, a punching bag hangs from a hook on the ceiling. The rhythmic beating of your fists on the punching bag is almost relaxing. Your fists continue to hit the bag, but your eyes move to the shelves in front of you that hold boxes of files and photos from throughout your mother's life. As you skim them with your eyes, your fists slow down to a stop. You see a box that is more worn than the others. You can tell that it was handled more than the rest of the boxes. You walk over to it and open the lid. Inside there are pictures of your mother, your father, Uncle Bucky, and everyone else who was ever friends with your mom in any point of her life. When you pick up a picture of your father from when he was little, before he got the Super Soldier serum, you hear the door open and your mother coughing. You put the pictures back in the box and go see your mother.

"Why are you back so early? It's only two o'clock," You say.
"They sent me home early. I told them that I'm fine," She says. "What did you do while I was gone?"
"I was just working on my punches," You reply.
"Oh. I'm going to take a nap," She said tiredly.
"Okay. I can make some soup or something, if you want," You offer.
"All right," She said, walking to her room.

You get a can of Campbell Chicken Noodle soup out of the cupboard and dumped it into a pot on the stove. When it starts bubbling, you turn off the stove, stir the soup for a few seconds, and pour it into a bowl to take to your mother. When you walk in her bedroom, you see that she's sprawled on the bed with her boots still on. She must be really tired. When you get closer to her, you see that she has her eyes closed, she looks really pale, and she's breathing very quickly. You set the bowl of soup on the small table by her bed and get the glass thermometer from a drawer in the kitchen. It was a gift to your mother when you were born, but it has never been used before today. 106 degrees Fahrenheit is what the thermometer says. That's unusually high. You need to do something.