Valorous (Book Three)

Chapter: 20

DAY: 168

Lark

I stared at Remy for a moment and then climbed off his lap, getting to my feet.

"Just come with me, Lark. Come with me to the new base." he said. "I can't stand to see you like this." Remy ran his fingers through a little of my hair.

"See me like what?" I asked him.

Remy looked me in the eyes. "Like you're lost."

I went silent.

"Lark, whenever I see you, you're always lost somehow. Either in thought or in life, and I watch you around Bucky and Steve and Natasha and I see how anxious and nervous you get." he told me.

"I have the weight of two sides bearing down on me twenty-four-seven. On top of that, I'm fucking pregnant and  lets not forget the Aether that's slowly killing me. You don't know what the hell I'm going through. Why do you want me to go back with you? Why me? There's a lot of other people who need to go back more than myself. I'm not handy with anything, I screw everything up and everyone else suffers."

Remy lowered his voice and took my hand tightly in his as he got to his feet and turned me to look at him."I'm asking you, Lark, because I'm tired of seeing you so exhausted and broken."

I wanted to pull my hands away, but I was frozen and too scared to.

"Look at yourself, Lark. Look at your skin, look at your arms and shoulders and hands. There are so many scars, all over your cheeks and nose. You're a tough girl, a wonderful girl, but that hard skin won't last forever. Eventually it's going to crack and fall away and you'll fall away with it. I know that I have no place to be talking to you like this, but I'm trying to show you that there is more to life than just feeling like shit." Remy kissed my hand and kept it close. "You have so much more to live for than just hanging around a bunch of guys who are eventually going to hide you away and trap you in a basement."

He was right, sooner or later I'd end up in a cage. Whether it was in the form of a house, a cell, or a hospital. I hated the idea of it but it was becoming more and more of a reality. My unbalanced emotions and looming depression made it a thousand times worse. Anxiety would creep in and torture me until it was satisfied.

"Remy, you don't understand that if I go with you, Bucky'll track you down and kill you. I'm pregnant with his baby. If anything happens to me, you can bet your ass he'll whoop it into hell. I have never seen him at his absolute lowest, and I'm sure you're not planning on seeing it either."

"Scary super soldier slash ex-assassin rampage?" he said as a guess.

"Yes." I said, trying to get him to understand my point. "Bucky wouldn't let me go that easy, he'd never let me do anything with you."

"So that's what you meant when you said that you were dangerous." Remy leaned against the wall with a sigh.

The idea of having some freedom was something I'd been fighting for a while. I knew I couldn't have that, and any chance of a normal life was long gone. I wanted to fix everything around me but I couldn't do that when I was already so broken myself. Putting myself together seemed impossible on my own and I was afraid to ask for help or go looking for it.

"I can't go with you." I wanted to tell him why but my only response would be that Bucky would hunt him down and kill him; and Remy already knew that. 

I took that silence as my time to go. So I grabbed my jacket and pulled it on as I made my way down the aisle, careful not to trip on a soup can. I had to climb over a knocked over shelf to make it past the registers to the door, but that was the least of my worries.

As soon as I walked outside I saw all the damage the storm caused. Power lines had fallen, trees were strewn all over the ground like giant tumbleweeds, leaves layer everything. It looked like the tornado had literally torn through here. It was hard to believe that it was right there in front of me.

I shake it off and put my focus on finding the motorcycle, but it wasn't anywhere nearby. Remy's truck was there but it had swerved off to the side. I walked around the side of the store and saw the bike tipped over in a ditch, the head light a few feet away from where it laid there. Now how was I going to get back? My mind wandered for an instant and that pang of guilt came back, infesting my stomach and making me feel so sick with myself.

My legs started moving before I made that conscious decision to walk. I crossed the main street into a small grassy area that would lead me straight to a back road. I'd take it just to stay out of sight of Remy and maybe out of sight of Bucky and Logan. The gravel road had turned into it's own stream, babbling as it rolled down the hill. I stayed to the side of it, giving up on trying to keep my feet dry, the water just kept rushing on.

I caught sight of Remy's truck driving along the main road, grumbling as it came to a stop. "Lark!" He shouted, leaning his head out the window. I dove to the ground, scrambling into the ditch closest to me and huddling down. I didn't need to see him and didn't need him following me back.

"Hello, Lark." I stopped, frozen as a familiar voice trembled my bones. I turned around, and there stood Jack. He smiled as he pushed back his hood, revealing a face that no longer looked human. "You lost?"