Normal People Costumes.
Natasha is a very focused person, Warren is beginning to discover. She has her goals and she achieves them quickly, sometimes without anyone even noticing. And that is half-good, half-terrifying, and fully efficient on her part.
Right now, she has one mini-goal in mind that leads to her overall objective. That goal is to get Warren looking much more Normal. He looks like nothing but a mess at the moment, and it pulls a lot of looks from strangers in the clothing store. The worst part is that to anyone who doesn't already recognize Natasha as the Black Widow, all she is is a neglectful mother who has allowed her young son to get as extensively dirty as Warren currently is.
Scabs have formed over the cuts Warren's seatbelt gave him in the crash, which is already a bad look. Along with those scabs, though, he has dirt and grime all over his body, and his hair is sticking up in all the wrong places. On top of all that, he is wearing pajamas. And not the type of pajamas he could just pass off as comfy clothes. The type of pajamas that are only perceived as pajamas. He never changed out of them before leaving his foster home and he never got the chance to afterward because his bag is abandoned within the wreckage of Fury's SUV—not that he had many clothes, anyway.
The point is, Warren looks like he ran away in the middle of the night, lived with wolves for a good week-and-a-half, and has just returned home from his woodland escapades.
Natasha needs him to look about one-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-three times more inconspicuous if things are about to go as she suspects they will. He needs a Normal Person costume. So, into Walmart, they go.
"What is this place?" Warren asks, squinting up at Natasha as she hurriedly leads him through the busy parking lot.
"Walmart," Natasha answers simply. "Never been?"
"Never. Last time I got clothes, it was called Sal-mate-shun Army," Warren tells her, the name coming out all choppy and slow. "Something like that."
He follows Natasha through the automatic sliding doors, which Warren still thinks are cool even though he's seen them before, and into the store. "Salvation Army," Natashacorrects.
The place is absolutely huge, and the desserts are kept right by the doors, which almost has Warren running over to them. Luckily, Natasha catches his arm before he can leave her side and marches him off towards the boys' clothing aisle.
"So many of the same things," Warren murmurs as he drags his hand along the hanging t-shirts. He starts spinning one of the racks in circles the moment he discovers that that's even a possibility.
"Come here," Natasha orders, and Warren quickly does so. She's next to a table with all sorts of different colors of pants. Jeans, khakis, cargo, and all the other types of pants to ever exist—much more than Warren even knows about. She pulls a pair of brown-ish pair of Dickies carpenter pants off of the stack, holds them out in front of Warren, huffs, and puts them back on the pile. She repeats this process two more times until she's satisfied with the ones she has chosen, then gives them to Warren for him to hold. Warren follows her back to the t-shirts, next. "What's your favorite color?"
Warren shrugs. "I don't know. What's it supposed to be?"
"It's supposed to be yours," Natasha tells him.
"Oh." There are all sorts of colors in the world and Warren is supposed to choose just one to be his favorite? By himself?
Well, there's red. Like blood. Like the book with the black star that turns Papa into the Soldier again. Red is bad. What about orange? Fire is orange, and quite fittingly, oranges are orange. Warren doesn't like oranges. They've got too many stringy bits. Yellow is supposedly like the sun, but Warren hasn't stared at the sun too much because it is, in his opinion, much too bright. Yellow reminds him more of the lights he doesn't like. Green is like the grass and like the trees, which isn't so bad. But then there's blue. Blue like the ocean, blue like his papa's eyes.
"I like blue," Warren says decidedly.
Natasha grabs a size small blue t-shirt off of the rack and drapes it over Warren's shoulder before moving past him to the section for hoodies and sweaters. Warren follows her around as she collects a dark gray zip-up hoodie, socks, and underwear for him.
After that, they check out—sadly without any treats from the checkout aisle—and go back to Natasha's apartment, where Warren gets cleaned up, Natasha puts something called Neosporin on his scabs, and he puts on his brand-new clothes. His Normal Person costume.
☁︎
The last place Warren wants to go back to is the hospital, but for some reason, Natasha insists on it. It's all a part of her main goal, Warren presumes, but he does not particularly like this step. The good thing about the hospital now, though, is that there are no more SHIELD or potentially HYDRA agents inside anymore. They've all left, as far as Warren can tell. Now the hospital contains regular, sad people.
Another good thing is that they're not at this hospital because Nick Fury is dying in the operating room this time. Apparently, it's because Natasha is just dying for some bubblegum, which is strange because, if she really wanted bubblegum so bad, then why didn't she get it at the store?
Warren watches as Natasha slides a two-dollar bill into a slot and the vending machine sucks it up like a spaghetti noodle. Money. That's what you need to get things out of the vending machine. That makes sense.
"Can I press the buttons?" Warren asks, standing on his tiptoes to look up at the bubblegum packs.
"Sure. 510."
Slowly but surely, Warren presses the same numbers he sees in front of the bubblegum, which is apparently 510. One pack of bubblegum falls down to the bottom of the machine and Warren hurriedly pulls it out. "Here," he says, holding it out to Natasha. When he looks at her, he's surprised to see that she is already punching the same numbers into the machine for a second time, much more quickly than he did, and several more packs of gum start falling to the bottom of the machine. "Why are you doing so much?" Warren asks, distress in his voice as he scrambles to gather all of the packs of bubblegum in his hands.
One last thing falls to the bottom of the vending machine, this time with an echoey clang. Before Warren gets the chance to, Natasha crouches down and grabs the unusually loud and solid pack of gum. Warren curiously looks to see what exactly made this particular pack so loud, but what he comes to see is that it isn't a pack of gum at all. It's that little, shiny device that Fury gave to Steve.
"What was that doing with the bubblegum?" he asks, confused.
"Hiding," Natasha answers. "Give me some of that gum."
After shoving all the extra packs into his pockets, Warren opens the last one and picks one piece out for Natasha and one piece for himself. He pops the gum into his mouth and is delighted by its sweet flavor. "Mmm!" he hums, nodding his head in approval.
Then, out of absolutely nowhere, Natasha grabs his arm and pulls them around the corner. "Looks like Steve's here," she mutters.
Warren peeks around her to see. There's a big and strong guy in sweats, a hoodie, and sneakers standing at the vending machine. Warren is impressed that Natasha was able to recognize the guy as Steve so quickly, but she has known him for a whole lot longer than he has.
For a moment, the two of them just watch Steve stare at the empty gum slot in the vending machine. Then, Natasha walks up behind him and pops her bubblegum. Warren follows after her just in time to see the unamused look on Steve's face.
Suddenly, Steve grabs Natasha by her arm and pushes her roughly into another room, up against a wall. It makes Warren's breath catch in his throat for just a moment. He never would have expected Captain America to be the type of person to do that to one of his friends, but frustration is clearly overwhelming him at the moment. Warren stays back, pressing himself against the doorframe and watching them whisper harsh words to each other that make Warren feel like TV static.
Five words stick out like a sore thumb to him. They come from Natasha's mouth in a confident, yet anxious manner. "I know who killed Fury."
The silence that follows the words doesn't help Warren ignore the heavy pounding of his heart in his chest. He reaches up and presses his hand against his new, blue t-shirt to feel it. It's weird to think about how, despite being beneath layers of flesh and bone, he can still feel his heart beating beneath his palm. It makes Warren doubt how protected it really is within his body.
Warren's skin feels more and more static-like, as if he's being poked by needles all over, as Natasha goes on to explain who the mystery killer is.
"Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He's credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years."
Two dozen. Warren doesn't know how large that number is, but it makes his eyes feel heavy no matter how big or small. Death follows his papa like a shadow. Warren is sure that if Papa could get his brain's puzzle pieces all put back together, he would hate that number and he would hate that shadow. That's why the doctors always erased him. They needed him to do the things he hated.
"So he's a ghost story," Steve says.
"Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out," Natasha begins to explain. Five years ago, Warren would have been two. He wasn't ever put on missions yet, then. He mostly just stayed in his cell, except for when he'd see his papa to be used either as motivation or punishment. He doesn't remember those days, though. "But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer so he shot him straight through me." Natasha lifts the bottom of her shirt, revealing a corner of her stomach. A thick, fleshy scar of yellow, purple, and pink stands out against the otherwise smooth complexion of her skin.
A bullet had torn through Natasha. A bullet from the barrel of Warren's papa's gun. In a twisted sort of way, it connects the two of them—Natasha and Warren.
"Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye, bikinis."
"Yeah. I bet you look terrible in them now."
"Going after him is a dead end. I know. I've tried," Natasha tells him.
Warren knows why. It's because going after the Winter Soldier means going after a machine stored away in a freezer, hidden far, far away in a place no one would ever even think to look.
Natasha pulls the small, metal device from her pocket and holds it out in front of Steve's eyes. "Like you said, he's a ghost story."
Steve takes the device from her and puts it in his own pocket. "Well, let's find out what the ghost wants," he says decidedly.
Letting out a deep breath, Warren pushes his hair away from his eyes. Part of him wants desperately to tell them that this is useless. To tell them that they're going after the wrong person and that his papa isn't the bad man, but is only the bad man's tool. You don't go after the sledgehammer that tore into the wall; you go after the man who was swinging it. Only they don't know that the Winter Soldier is only a weapon. And Warren can't tell them because if he tells them, they'll know where he came from. They will know he's from HYDRA, they will know that his papa shot Natasha five years ago near Odessa, and they will know that his papa shot and killed Nick Fury just last night. They will hate him. Maybe hurt him. And all Warren wants is protection.
Warren only chews his bubblegum.
☁︎
After a quick stop back at Natasha's apartment for her to put on her Normal Person costume, the trio of now outlaws make their way to the shopping mall. Surprisingly, Warren actually has been inside a shopping mall before. It was one of the few places he went to after escaping HYDRA, before he was ever in foster care. He didn't get to spend much time exploring, though, because the security guards were quick to kick him out.
As soon as Warren informed Natasha of that, she began giving him a whole rundown on how to not act suspiciously and get kicked out, which she is still doing now. Steve holds open the big, glass door for them and they walk inside, Natasha tugging Waren's hood over his head.
"Keep your head down," Natasha tells the boy, gently but firmly pushing his head a little. Warren lets out a disgruntled groan. He is not keen on this whole mission, and he is especially not keen on being pushed around. "Fury took you with him for a reason. They'll be looking for you just as much as they'll be looking for us."
"But I can turn invisible," Warren reminds her.
"Your clothes can't," Natasha counters. That's true, and it's quite a problem. Warren hopes that when all this is sorted out and everyone is safe and free—if that ever happens—someone will make him more clothes that are accommodating to his abilities.
"Besides, turning invisible in the middle of the mall is probably the most conspicuous thing you can do right now," Steve tells Warren.
He gives him a very dad-like pat on the back, which Warren returns, oddly enough. He just assumes that's what he's supposed to do. Apparently he's wrong, though, because Natasha quietly snorts out a laugh.
Warren glares at her. "Shouldn't we be going faster? This is very slow."
"First rule of going on the run is don't run, walk," Natasha says.
"If I run in these shoes, they're gonna fall off," Steve tells her.
Warren huffs because he would like to get out of this mall as soon as possible. It is painstakingly busy today and he's scared that every other person is a HYDRA agent, ready to snatch him up and take him straight back to his cell. He'd be punished very badly. That's only if they didn't choose to kill him instead.
In an attempt to stop thinking about how HYDRA is everywhere, always watching, and always listening, Warren instead pretends that he is like all the other kids he sees, walking around the mall at their parents' sides. Natasha said it's good to do that. To pretend to be a Normal Family so that people look at them less.
Maybe someday, if Papa gets free and HYDRA is all over, he and Warren can go to the mall together. As Warren follows Natasha and Steve through the mall and past all sorts of stores, Warren tries to pick out which stores he thinks he and his papa would go to. There's a colorful yellow and blue store with all sorts of stuffed animals and even clothes for them inside, and Warren thinks that going in there might be fun. They pass by a book store and Warren thinks that maybe his papa would teach him to read with one of those books. All sorts of stores draw Warren's attention, and if there weren't so many people in the mall, he thinks he might actually like it. Especially with his papa by his side.
What is really fascinating, though, is the tech store Natasha and Steve lead him into. There are computers surrounded by more computers, lots of fancy phones, TVs, and some video game consoles. Warren isn't positive about what he could buy with a single dollar in the US, but he's pretty sure that this store is worth a lot of dollars. A whole lot. Maybe even more than he'll ever see in his whole life.
The best part is that people can try out the computers for free. That's why they're there in the first place, after all. They need a computer to attach the little, shiny device to. Warren's not sure what exactly the device is going to tell them, but he doesn't care much.
While Natasha starts typing away at one of the laptops, Warren situates himself next to Steve and starts messing with the next laptop over. He has no idea how any of it works, but he starts pressing all sorts of buttons.
"The drive has a Level Six homing program, so as soon as we boot it up SHIELD will know exactly where we are," Natasha explains.
That, Warren knows, is not a good thing. SHIELD is who they're on the run from, after all. HYDRA, too, though, he's pretty sure. It's hard to tell the difference between the two. HYDRA agents look like SHIELD agents and SHIELD is acting like HYDRA—it's all too confusing for Warren to sort out in his mind. For now, he groups the two together in his brain.
"How much time will we have?" Steve asks, looking all over the store and out through the windows.
He's very paranoid and it is easy to see on his face. It's unnerving seeing Captain America, of all people, paranoid because he's supposed to be the bravest out of anyone in the world. He doesn't look so much like Captain America with Normal Person costume on, though. He has a hat and glasses on, and it's weird. Right now, he is doing good at just looking like a Normal Guy. The costume is working quite well, except for when Warren stares at him for too long.
"About nine minutes from," Natasha murmurs, plugging the little device into the side of the laptop, "now."
Little letters start to show up on the computer screen and it draws Warren's attention from the random settings page he's accidentally wound up on on his computer. On Natasha's screen, the letters are all appearing super fast and Warren is impressed by Natasha's ability to make sense of it all. It looks like absolute nonsense to him.
"Fury was right about that ship; somebody's trying to hide something," Natasha says, her eyes narrowing in concentration. Warren is hiding something, too. Luckily, that's not what Natasha is talking about. "This drive is protected by some sort of AI. It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands."
"What is AI?" Warren asks, leaning closer to the screen.
"Artificial intelligence," Steve answers. Unfortunately, that's not much of a help. "Can you override it?"
"The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly." That must mean that they're super smart, Warren thinks, because Natasha is shaping up to be one of the smartest people he has ever met. Granted, he hasn't met many people, let alone gotten to examine their intelligence, but the sentiment is still worth something. Natasha furrows her eyebrows in concentration and starts explaining what she's doing, but it doesn't make sense to anyone but her. "I'm gonna try running a tracer. This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can't read the file, maybe we can find out where it came from."
A map appears on the screen and little dots and lines place themselves all over it.
"Can I help you guys with anything?" an unfamiliar voice suddenly asks. All three of their heads snap over to the left. A man with a long-ish beard, extremely long hair, and an aggressive side part is standing beside them. Warren stares at him with a grimace.
Natasha, however, is an expert at being a superspy, so she snaps right into her Normal Person persona. "Oh, no. My fiance was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations," she says in a silky smooth voice and with an all-too-convincing smile on her face. She grabs Steve and leans in close to him.
"Right. We're getting married," Steve adds stiffly. His smile is much less convincing.
And even less convincing is Warren's smile when Natasha grabs him and pulls him in front. "Grandma's giving us a little break from the kid."
"Congratulations! Where are you guys thinking about going?" the long-haired man asks. He leans over just slightly to see the computer screen at the same time as Steve, and the map is focused on one place in particular.
"New Jersey."
"Oh." The man looks at Steve with raised eyebrows, and then down at Warren, who is still staring at him, but no longer smiling. The man's customer service smile drops ever so slightly as his discomfort grows. "Cute kid," he murmurs.
Steve chuckles awkwardly. "Thanks."
For a moment, the tech guy just looks at Steve's face, and in that moment, Steve panics, thinking the guy has recognized him and their cover is absolutely, 100% blown. Then, finally, the guy points right at Steve's fake glasses. "I have the exact same glasses."
"Wow, you two are practically twins," Natasha deadpans. She's already back to typing away at the computer.
"Yeah. I wish," the man says. His eyes are wide, impressed, and way too enthusiastic for any of their liking. He looks Steve up and down. "Specimen. Uh, if you guys need anything, I've been Aaron."
"Thank you," Steve says with a nod. As the tech guy walks away, Steve turns Warren the other way so that he'll stop staring at the poor man. Neither of them are great actors, but Warren is objectively worse than Steve. The two now gather around Natasha, watching her navigate the computer. "You said nine minutes. Come on."
"Shh. Relax." Natasha rolls her eyes at him. "Got it." A box appears around a particular spot on the map and Steve leans in close to the computer. "You know it?" Natasha asks.
"I used to. Let's go."
He pulls the device from the computer, Natasha grabs Warren's hand, and the three of them rush out of the tech store. Leaving the mall is unsurprisingly a whole lot harder than getting in, now that SHIELD knows they're there. Natasha's masterful escape plan involves all sorts of things that Warren isn't fond of, including fake laughing and what Natasha calls "public displays of affection," but it works nevertheless. They make it out of the mall without a single SHIELD-slash-HYDRA agent getting in their way.