CHAPTER 83

"Why?"

I asked Natasha who had a towel around her head looking like she just came out of the bath.

We were in the kitchen but I still couldn't wrap my head about what was happening.

"Why what?" She asked looking genuinely confused. She was the only person I knew who could pull off this look and have me completely stumbled on what she was thinking.

"Why my house?" I clarified as I poured three cups of coffee and took some cookies to go with it since it was game night. Bucky somehow got interested in sports and got me roped into watching the games with him. 

"Oh you mean that?" She said as her eyes sparkled in understanding. 

"Yes, I mean 'this'". 

"Well our previous place is busted, obviously, but then I remembered I got a free invite for drinks somewhere else… and, well here I am." She said in a way that made it so obvious that it somehow irked me. 

'I am not running an Avengers Daycare!' I refrained from saying those words as I just took my coffee and walked to the living room and deposited my evolutionary behind on a couch – my couch. 

Since Bucky was becoming a shut-in, he took claim to the couch nearest to the TV while Steve, as the oblivious grandpa he was who found himself at the end of Gen Z, took the farthest couch near the door. 

"So remind me again why I have to watch the game?" I asked as I laid the coffee and snacks at their front before sitting myself down. 

"You have anything better to do?" Bucky asked. 

"Sleep for one would be nice."

"You can do that in an hour. The games' not gonna last that long." Bucky said before taking a sip. 

The new arrivals of Natasha and Yelena were watching our banter with slacked jaws. I'm pretty sure they thought we lived like secret ops agents every time of the day. 

Like training till the night comes, everyone having his dorm, timetable and schedules, security cameras, restricted areas, white lights and walls. 

I could be wrong but what I'm definitely sure about is that they weren't expecting three bums with coffee and cookies watching a game and it also didn't help how Bucky could watch a game without showing emotions – to be honest, it was kind of unsettling. But then again looking at my and Steve's face, I'm pretty sure we all have the same nonchalant and unbothered expression wh-

"Jesus Christ! Can you guys at least smile or put more emotion in your voice when you talk about a game?" Yelena was the first one who couldn't take it any longer and broke the silence. 

"What?" Was the unilateral question we asked with our stares. 

"How do three so out of sync people manage to live together is something I'd never understand." Natasha said. 

"Hey, now you're just being rude. What do you mean out of sync?" Looks like Steve took mild offence to that statement. 

"It's just, forgive me for saying but, he's THE Winter Soldier." She pointed at the lazy image of Bucky reclining on a chair with a prosthetic holding a remote control and a cup of coffee. "YOU are Captain America." She pointed at Steve who was dressed as a cool youth pastor. "And him. He's like a myth, a boogeyman, in the mercenary circle." She said gesturing at me. I had even forgotten I had some infamy in the dark community which was surprising considering I only went after HYDRA and the Red Room. 

"I guess the point I'm trying to make is… you all make it seem like it doesn't matter. Even that S.H.I.E.L.D Director carries some type of importance with him and even though I don't know him that much, it's not hard to see that he carries that importance with him when he goes to sleep. But the three of you make it seem so… baseless. I mean, even the tracker I placed on Draul was kept on top of the fridge."

Looks like she's still finding it hard to accept what a normal life can feel like. 

The other two looked at her with surprise for a while before Bucky just shrugged and turned back to the TV while Steve just gave an apologetic smile. 

"So what were you expecting? Wires and tapes? You thought the house would be secured to hell and back? We are just three guys who are out of our minds with various degrees of stress and trauma. Why make it harder on ourselves than it already is by doing all that stuff?" Bucky's voice sounded over the couch he reclined on. 

"So what is it? Confidence or nonchalance?" Natasha still wasn't having it. 

"None. Sure there are bound to be people who would one day come after us but that's that and this is this. You don't expect us to be living our entire lives with an eye over our shoulders do you? That would just be a one lane ticket to lifelong paranoia. Sometimes you just have to do… nothing. While Newton is correct about action and reactions being vice versa, not all actions require a reaction. You just have to let things be and sometimes find yourself out of sync." I said. 

"Draul's right. We are not some secret organization or anything like that. It would be pointless if we turned our own house, which is probably going to get bombed in a year or two, into the Pentagon." Bucky was feeling chirpy today since that was more words than he had ever said to anyone that wasn't me or Steve. 

"So in the end it all boils down to confidence?"

"That and what use would it be installing security devices on a house that we are going to lose in a few years, and not to mention the obvious fact of why should there be security devices in a house shared by three men?" I said as I sipped my cup of black. 

"Are we all going to just ignore the fact that they are expecting their house to be bombed in less than three years? No one?" I heard Yelena's quiet mutter but just flat out ignored it. 

"Word of advice Miss Romanoff, running and looking over your shoulders for the rest of your life won't do you any good."

Natasha seems to take what Steve said to heart as she slowly nodded her head. 

"If that's enough of a counseling session then can we go back to watching the game? What do you know, looks like it's not only the quack who's got it." Bucky said while muttering the last part to himself. 

And like that the days rolled by with us doing nothing, well the other did nothing, while I tried finding out where the angry bird currently was. 

And by some weird twist, Natasha started living with us after Steve made a suggestion about staying with us for a while until she made sure other people were not after her. 

Well the house had 8 rooms and four were already being occupied when it was just the three of us so I wasn't complaining… all that much. I complained, that I did… but not much. 

… 

I have been receiving information about sightings of a redhead woman and some of the destruction which was always around her previous sighting for the past week and it had be running around the city of New York almost everyday. 

Jean hadn't reached out to any of those at the Mansion since the day she went missing and Storm and the others were starting to freak out. 

They were the ones who kept me updated on Jean's whereabouts as it had everyone, the teachers, at the Mansion looking for her. 

If I were being completely honest with myself, I was starting to get fed up. The chase never ends and it's been two weeks and counting since the raid at Alkali, meaning we were already into the second week of December and I was getting angsty. No chicken worth their salt was getting between me and my very first enjoyable holiday in years, even counting my pre-transmigration. 

I was out in the city today, like I've been in the past few days, chasing down one of the soon to be cold leads while the X-Men chased down another. 

I was driving when I felt something entering my range of perception and the moment I did, before I could even blink and eye, I saw myself and my car flying through the sky towards a certain direction. 

 What scared me most was that I couldn't feel anything until it had already happened. From the moment I felt what it was that I felt, to the moment I tried to react was already too late. Even now, I could feel the restraint on my body preventing me from moving an inch. 

Another scary part was how I couldn't use my senses like I use to. 

I was like there was something jamming my senses from being projected to the outside world. I knew that if I were to close my eyelids, not that I even could, but if I could, I wouldn't feel anything. 

I wouldn't even know that my car is actually soaring through the skies at insane speeds. It was like I couldn't even trust what my eyes were seeing anymore. 

This degree of power was… humbling. 

I was a sitting duck and I knew it. Instinctively I knew that there was nothing in my power I could do to ever hope to escape my illusory bindings. 

It felt like I have been flying for hours when in reality it was less than five seconds. 

I saw my car descending at speeds that would for certain wreck the life out of it, if it didn't turn me splat along with it too, and all I could do was watch as it crashed into the ground with a… thud. 

I could see everything because whoever it was likely wanted me to see it, and what I saw was how my car lost all momentum and landed perfectly in the soft grass without so much as an updraft of wind. 

I didn't know how to feel with such show of power. 

Sure I knew about universal and multiversal destroyers, people who could erase entire galaxies in seconds just for having a bad day… but the problem with that was that it was just my conjectures. 

I didn't even know how big and wide this planet is and anytime I think of someone who could wipe it all out, all I could picture was a small blue floating ball suddenly exploding. No fanfare, no suspense, just images of my mind trying to interpret what it couldn't comprehend. 

But this was different. 

This show of power could wipe out any city in the world, even state, and while it may not be as impressive as it sounds when you think about it in comparison to planetary destruction, it nevertheless was what I was seeing, and the being that stood in front of me was one who could definitely do all what I had mentioned above. 

Jean Grey – The Phoenix Force. 

I felt the hold on me disappear as soon as I saw her… it? Her. 

I didn't say anything. I waited for her to say what she wanted since she was the one who dragged me out of the state into wherever this is place is. There was no way I had the mind or courage to speak before it did. 

"You look just like any mortal that has come before me, man from the Outer."

Wait, what? 

"Fret not. Speak your mind for your existence matters not to me." She said it in such a way that no one would have been able to pick offense at her wording. It was like her words were the truth of all. A proclamation only those above her could defy. 

I looked at her, really looked at her and what I saw definitely wasn't Jean Grey. The human subconscious that identified itself as Jean Grey was gone, not even the skin she wore was that of Jean Grey. 

A million and one thoughts ran through my head as I looked at the being that represented life and rebirth across the entirety of the Marvel-verse while at the same time thinking of what would, or should be, the first question I asked her and the first thing she said to me cake to mind. 

"What do you mean 'man from the Outer'?" I was no longer paying attention to how she looked but more in what she could tell me. This was the Phoenix, trolling some pitiful existence wasn't something she'd do… except maybe if they were Charles. 

"I doubt you failed to understand my words mortal man. I meant it as I said." She spoke softly yet the words reverberated in the confines of my head as if they were imprinted on my brain. 

Does she know? 

… 

I looked once more at the being in front of me and that conclusion came to mind. 

She knows. 

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