Pathetic.
A home. James is somewhat certain they've found one. At the very least, a temporary one. They'll stay here in Bucharest until someone inevitably shows up and tears it all to shreds, but for now, they have it. They have a place. Some cheap flat—apartament is the Romanian word for it—on the shittier side of the city, but that doesn't really matter. It has a small kitchen, an even smaller bathroom, and a bedroom for Warren, and that's practically a mansion on his terms.
James doesn't need a bedroom of his own. He has a thin mattress set up in the corner of the living room to sleep on, but half the time he just settles on the floor. For whatever reason, he seems to sleep better that way. Sometimes, he wakes up in the middle night to find Warren trying to pull him up onto the mattress. James always tells him he's fine on the floor, but Warren insists that real people sleep on the bed.
Nightmares still plague James' nights without letting up, but Warren seems to be getting a little better. Still, though, at least once a week, James has to stay up all night, sitting beside Warren in his bed and running his hand through his hair to remind him that he's still there.
In the daytime, Warren is braver.
Maybe it's just that the shadows aren't big, black holes in his vision—the knowledge that there's not someone standing there watching him whom he can't even see. In the daytime, he can still see in the shadows. He can see every which way. He knows when he's safe.
It took a few weeks of adjusting, but Warren now stays home alone when his papa is at work. He used to follow Papa around everywhere he went, when they first moved here. When Papa would work behind the bar at the pub, Warren would sit on one of the parlor stools, drink Sprites, and practice writing in his notebook. He's still pretty rusty at Romanian, but his English writing is getting quite good. He can spell the word beautiful and has even started putting commas into his sentences, though they're not always in the right places.
Now, however, Warren only goes with his papa to work on the days when he's feeling extra clingy. Otherwise, he stays home all by himself, which makes him feel very Old and Good and Responsible (which he can also now spell). He wears his wolf costume for most of the time he's alone, because it makes him feel brave, and when he's not writing stories, he's sitting cross-legged in front of the box TV James picked up off the curb.
Warren's birthday was sometime in December. James can't for the life of him remember the day, if HYDRA had ever even allowed him to know it. But he does remember the frigid air blowing into the facility each time the guards opened the doors and the soldiers muttering curses about how damn cold out it was that day—the day James first held Warren in his arms. So, near the end of December, James had put the last of their stolen money into buying Warren a secondhand DVD player along with a few movies to keep him entertained when he's alone.
So, that's how now eight-year-old Warren spends his days. Either trailing his papa like a shadow, or consuming and creating so many stories that James can't understand how all of it can fit inside of Warren's little head.
Not today, though. Today, Warren has an itch he can't scratch all on his own.
Today, Warren wants to make a friend.
In all the movies and shows he's watched off scratched DVDs and on the strange channels hotel rooms always have their TVs turned to, there is always a group of friends. The main character has a best friend, or a sidekick. Like how Mr. Fury's best friend is Miss Maria Hill, as far as Warren can tell. So, on this cold and wet January day, Warren has decided that he is going to make a friend of his own. That way, he can write stories with them, and someday, they can go on big adventures together.
Warren doesn't have much of a plan on how to go about this. All he knows is that he's got to be brave and kind, because brave and kind people are the ones who make friends, according to the TV shows he watches.
So, to be brave, Warren first puts on his wolf costume. Along with making him brave, he'll be warm, and just like the other kids who were buying their costumes for Halloween, like Papa had told him about. Then, Warren puts on the puffy, blue coat his papa bought for him just last week. It's a size or two too big, but he doesn't mind. And finally, Warren pulls on his fuzzy winter hat and tugs on his shoes.
Without wasting another moment of solid friend-making time to consider the potential consequences of what he's doing, Warren steps out into the hallway of their building. It's always a bit dingy in the hallway—the linoleum floors are caked with so much dirt that it feels sandy to the touch, and the sickly yellow light at the end of the hallway never stops flickering—but Warren is brave today, so he goes on, anyway. All the adults are at work, so there is no one there to question where he's going on his own, if adults even really do that. Warren hops down the creaky steps until he reaches the bottom floor, where he drags his finger along his neighbors' mailboxes until he gets to the door.
Pushing open the door, Warren is immediately met with a gust of harsh wind nipping at his cheeks. Usually, he would hide his face behind his papa's back, using him as a windshield, but Papa is at work, so Warren just squints his eyes and marches on forward.
The streets are relatively empty, but there are a good few people scrambling to reach their next location before the sting of the cold reaches more than just their cheeks, fingers, and toes. A few doors down, outside of a clothing store, a woman is walking along the sidewalk with children's hands in each of her own. The kids are about the same age as Warren, if not younger, so Warren supposes she'll be a good person to ask for directions.
"Scuzați-mă, domnișoară," he says when he reaches the woman. Excuse me, Miss.
She has sharp features, but when she turns to the sound of Warren's voice, she doesn't seem so sharp. She's got a soft, comforting look to her, and a smile worth a million bucks. "Da?" she replies.
Warren gets straight to the point. "Unde este locul de joaca?" Where is the playground?
Ignoring her children as they whine about wanting to go to the playground themselves, the woman arms Warren with a set of directions. Just down to the end of the street, and then a left, and then Warren will be at the playground. But the woman doesn't let him go without further questioning. "Unde este mama ta?" she asks. Where is your mother?
Unsure of how to answer, Warren hums uneasily for a few seconds. He figures he should lie. That's what he's always done. So, with as much conviction as a really good lawyer, Warren answers with, "Ea este bolnavă. Mă întâlnesc cu tatăl meu la locul de joacă." She is ill. I am meeting my papa at the playground.
"În regulă. Fii în siguranță, dragă." All right. Be safe, dear. And with that, the woman and her kids shuffle into the clothing store, not without the children whining more about the playground.
It doesn't take long for Warren to find the park. He's good at following directions, for the most part. Simple ones, at least. All he's ever done, really, is follow directions. He's just not so good at following them when they get complicated or frightening or difficult. These ones are easy, though. Just down the road and then left. Warren repeats it to himself under his breath until he steps foot on the woodchips.
The playground looks just the same as it does on the television, except it's all a lot more white, considering the thick layer of snow that covers the equipment. Despite the snow, there are still a few of the tougher and more wild children out, throwing snowballs at each other and risking a run through the moving swings. The sight of all the kids sort of makes Warren nervous, but he really does want a friend, so he ignores the anxious pit forming in his stomach.
A girl on the teeter-totter catches his eye first. She's wearing a bright purple snowsuit and has her black hair tied up in braids beneath her pom-pomed cap. Across from her, weighing down the other side of the teeter-totter, is a boy who looks a bit older than Warren. He has curly, brown hair, lots of freckles, and a devious kind of grin.
Wringing his hands together in an attempt to both warm them up and ease his anxiety, Warren approaches the two kids. "Hello," Warren says to them. One thing he has noticed as he's gone out to places with Papa is that the kids usually speak at least a little bit of English. They learn it in school, or something.
"Hi," the girl says.
The boy doesn't say a thing. He just looks across the playground to his friends, who are watching from the swings, and locks eyes with them, still grinning.
Warren isn't sure what to say, at first, but he guesses he should probably make conversation, like Papa does with people in the pub. The only thing Warren can think to say is the question running through his brain. "Why are you not going up and down?" he asks. They're on the teeter-totter, but they're not going up and down. They're just sitting. It's strange.
The boy snickers. "Why aren't we going up and down?" he echoes. Warren nods, because, yes, that's what he asked. He can hear the other kids approaching behind him, their boots crunching in the snow. "Why are you wearing that costume?" the boy questions instead of answering.
"It's my Halloween costume."
"It's January."
"January?"
"Yeah," the boy says, an expression on his face that Warren cannot identify. His friends all gather around him and the girl, laughing at a joke Warren didn't mean to tell. "You know. The month. January. Ianuarie."
The months of the year. Warren has yet to learn all about those. He knows Steve Rogers was born in September and Papa was born in March, and that's about it. Well, there's also that day that the museum said was Captain America's birthday, even though it was a lie. July something. The America holiday. Warren remembers hearing big booms from outside their motel room. He thought HYDRA had found them, at first, but Papa had told him it was only fireworks.
Maybe, Warren thinks, Halloween is like that special day in July. A holiday. So, maybe, they only wear their costumes on Halloween. That would be a waste of a costume, though, wouldn't it?
"You're weird," one of the kids gathered around says through giggles. Warren's skin somehow feels colder, like he's being pricked by a thousand tiny needles. And he hates needles.
"Don't be mean," the girl on the teeter-totter scolds. And Warren starts to like her until a mischievous smile cracks open across her face. She looks at Warren, but she speaks to her friends. "Maybe he's an alien, and it's his first time on Earth. You don't wanna be mean to an alien."
Warren feels something hot bubbling up inside of him. Not hot enough to warm him on the outside and protect him from the harsh weather, but hot enough to scorch his insides. He furrows his eyebrows as a frown creeps across his face. "I'm not an alien," he says to the girl, sounding a bit like those whiney kids begging to go to the playground earlier.
"No," another boy chimes. "He's a dog. Look at his costume. You're a dog, aren't you?"
"I am a wolf," Warren tells them all.
"You look more like a dog. Too pathetic to be a wolf."
Pathetic? Warren's heard that word before. He's certain of it. It's just that he hasn't heard it out of the mouth of anyone nice. Taking a breath, he wipes the snot accumulating at his nostrils on the sleeve of his jacket and sniffs. He's calm. Cool as a cat. Cold as a stray cat, in this weather. No, no, calm. He's making friends. They're only poking at him hoping he'll bite. So he won't bite. He won't.
"Well, I'm really a human. Not a dog or a wolf. Not any animal," he says to them calmly.
"Are you sure?" the first boy questions.
"Yes."
The boy turns to his friends. "Este un câine bolnav. Un câine rău," he spits. He must think Warren can't understand him, but he can. He's a sick dog. A bad dog, the boy had said. A sick dog. A bad dog. "Câinii răi sunt doborâți," the boy adds. Bad dogs are put down.
And before Warren knows it, he's being shoved down into the snow. The bitter cold seeps into his jacket, getting into his hood and sliding down his back. A pathetic whimper escapes his lips before he can stop it. One of the other kids kicks up a chunk of snow, which lands right on Warren's cheek. He wipes as much of it off as he can with one swipe and scrambles to his feet, hot tears gathering around the rims of his eyes. They're only poking him because they want him to bite. He repeats the fact in his head over and over and over again. As many times as he can in the span of ten seconds. He spends those ten seconds only staring, breathing, blinking away tears.
They stare right back at him. Some of them look anxious, like they don't really want to be there, but the others—well, they're the ones who look like wolves. They're smiling, sharp canine teeth peeking out over their bottom lips, with a type of gleam in their eyes that Warren doesn't understand.
Why don't they like him? All he's been is nice. That's all he has tried to be. Has he done something wrong? Is it the way he stands? Should his hands have been in his pockets? Or is it something else? They're all wearing snow boots, but not Warren. Warren wears sneakers. Is it that?
Or is it that they can smell the blood of all the people he's killed on him?
That must be it.
Warren doesn't even inherently understand the killing. He never has. When he thought of it under HYDRA, he thought of it as his job. His way of surviving. A means to an end. And now, he understands that it was bad. He gets that he is a bad person for what he’s done—that many people will think of him as a monster until the day he dies. He understands that to a certain level. But he doesn't feel it. It’s weightless on his shoulders. A fact he knows to be true but has never been able to experience himself, like the existence of the Northern Lights. He knows it's real, but it doesn't feel like it is.
It might just take a true loss of his for Warren to feel the weight of the things he's done. The loss of someone he loves. Someone he thinks of as one of God’s finest angels, because that's what all people think of the people they love most, isn't it? He’ll have to look the dead in the eye and give them one final warm embrace to know the weight of his actions.
These kids, though, must smell it on him, and they must understand it in a way Warren doesn't.
Before any other cruel words can escape the other kids' mouths, Warren turns on his heel and he runs. As fast as his feet will take him. He takes a right at the end of the street, sprints along the sidewalk with salt crunching beneath his sneakers, passes by the clothing store, and rushes back into their building. The door slams shut behind him. He scrambles up the stairs, stomping on the linoleum. He goes so fast he can hardly notice the light at the end of the hall blink, blink, blinking.
But before he can make it to the door to their flat, he slams into someone. He almost falls flat on his back, but whoever he's slammed into holds him up, one hand on each of his arms. The right hand is soft, pillowy, flesh. The left is solid, firm, metal.
Papa.
"Warren," James practically shouts. Warren lets a startled sob escape his lips. "Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing out alone? You can't—you're supposed to stay in the apartment, Ren." When Warren doesn't say anything, James pushes open their door and brings the both of them inside. He yanks Warren's hat off of his head and tosses it to the ground before wiping snow from Warren's cheeks. "What happened? Why d'you got snow all over you? Warren, tell me what happened."
He's all fast, voice louder than usual, his blue eyes wide as saucers, and his hands shaky. Warren sniffles and James squeezes his arms just a tiny bit tighter, silently begging for an answer.
Have they been found already? Do they have to leave? God, they've only been here for a month or two. It's supposed to be their home. They can't be found, can they?
"Warren," James pushes.
Warren sucks in a breath. "I was making friends!" he heaves.
"What?"
"At the playground! I wanted to have a friend! But—but they're all mean, Papa. They pushed me in the snow, said I am an alien, and pathetic," Warren blubbers. He shrugs his jacket off, then kicks away his shoes, and he can't hear any of the words his papa is saying to him. He shoves away from James and runs for his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
James follows right behind him without a second of hesitation. When he barges into Warren's little bedroom, he finds the boy pressed into the corner between his mattress and the wall. James sits down on the bed and puts a hand on Warren's back.
He breathes for a second, letting the panic slip away. They're not found. They're not found. Warren's back shakes up and down, up and down beneath James' hand. "I'm sorry they pushed you in the snow, buddy," he says softly. Warren stays silent, aside from the sounds of his tears. "You're not an alien or anything like that. Kids are just mean."
Warren's voice is muffled with his face all squished, but James can still make out his words. "They're mean to weird kids. Pathetic kids."
"Hey, you know what?" James murmurs. He squeezes Warren's shoulder, making him peek out from his hiding place against the wall. James doesn't want to tell him this—not really—and he's not even fully sure how he knows it. Sometimes, the memories just appear out of nowhere and they're bubbling out of his mouth before he can stop them. "Steve used to get picked on when we were kids. All the time."
Finally fully emerging from his corner, Warren looks at his papa with wondering eyes. "Steve Rogers?" he questions, just to make sure of it. He doesn't know any other Steve's, but when Papa talks about Steve Rogers, he usually says Steve Rogers. Not just Steve. When Papa nods, he really knows it to be true. Steve Rogers. Captain America used to get picked on. "How?"
James blows air out the side of his mouth. "He wasn't always Captain America, you know. He was shorter than all the girls and as skinny as a twig."
"Really?"
"Really."
"Did they say he was pathetic?"
"Sure did," James huffs.
"They were wrong about him," Warren says firmly.
Nodding along, James brushes a bit more snow out of Warren's hair. "They're wrong about you, too," he tells him.
Warren's not pathetic. He's strong, he's brave, and he's smart. He's kind, too, and that's better than all those other kids out on the playground. He wouldn't call any of them aliens. But, even with the knowledge of who Steve Rogers once was and that some kids are just plain mean, something roots itself deep within Warren's chest. Something he can't extract with words or hugs. Something that will have to be ripped right out of him, one way or another. Words hit as hard as hail stones, especially when there's no shelter to hide within.