Nine
+++
“Just breathe.”--he hates this. “Calm easy breaths.”--he doesn’t know what he thought was so appealing about seeing her tiny and shivering in his arms that first time around. “Easy.”--he draws the vocals out, hopes that it calms her the way it’s supposed to. “Just breathe.”
Darcy is a mess on the floor, sitting in the remnants of this morning’s coffee, the shards of that one cup she’s somehow smuggled from her own abode into his cupboards and he hasn’t even looked but the likelihood that she just cut her soles is there. Clint has not had the presence of mind, other than to pull her into his arms – again, because it’s the only thing he can really think of doing in these situations. He doesn’t usually deal with traumatized civilians. Wanda had – once – been as far as it got; and considering she joined the avenging crew he’s not certain she even counts as a civilian.
Kate appears in his field of vision, behind Darcy, holding up a mob and a bucket, making an inquiring face that Clint responds to with a small nod, standing carefully – Darcy still in his arms. Pieces of her mug crack under his shoes.
“That was a good cup.”--he moans quietly into Darcy’s crown. “It was whole and it was pretty and I don’t even know why you put it into my kitchen.”
He’s not expecting an answer, but Darcy exhales a shaky, wet laugh against his neck and hums something that he can’t see so he pulls his head away a little. “was purple.”--she answers wetly, tears barely in her eyes any longer, but the snot ever so present on her full upper lip. She frees her hands when he sits her down on his counter.
Purple is your favorite color for some reason.
He wants to tell her that it’s not really a favorite rather than a habit he got into when he was fourteen and purple belonged to his gear long before it even was a gear instead of a costume. Purple is Hawkeye – his alter ego; the archer, the second face to him. And long before he had been Hawkeye purple had meant the letting go of everything that bothered him with every arrow he loosened in the brightly illuminated manège.
It hits him then though-- “You got me a mug that wasn’t cracked?” He can’t hear himself but his voice feels… thin as he looks at her: “Just for me?”
And of course she did; it’s Darcy isn’t it – Darcy and Clint and Lucky and it comes to him, softly, carefully and with a pair of wet, beautiful, blue eyes that maybe he is a lucky son of a poor battered bitch to have someone like Darcy look for a not-cracked, purple, big mug for him. Just because he’s a human disaster who can’t even possess proper kitchen-ware.
“’m sorry I cracked it.”
It’s probably way beyond cracked and the edges of Clint’s mouth twitch upward in an unfamiliar motion before he shakes his head and checks for her feet – they’re brown and wet with the coffee she’s spilled on them, but there’s not a single cut to be found. “Better the mug than your skin.”--he says carefully, checking once more, cautiously guiding his roughened fingertips along the wet slide of her heel’s arch, the palm of his hand coming to encompass the sides of her sole, feeling for cuts.
Her feet are small; her second toe is almost as long as her first, large toe and her nails are painted in a dark red that bleeds almost into black. He likes it.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
Darcy’s eyes startle up from where they’ve been locked on the ‘100% organic coffee’-print on his frayed shirt and dart to his own eyes before straying over his shoulder and towards the people in the room with them.
It occurs to him that… he’s forgotten about them. Naturally now that he’s aware of them he can tell where Kate is, close to Luke and to Matt who’s – still – rather stationary on the couch and has been forbidden from his own cup of coffee so long as he hasn’t seen a person who is knowledgeable about the arts of healing. Luke has proposed a person and it would seem that Matt knows the person, somewhat – Clint has a feeling it’s the nurse that has taken shelter with them when SHIELD-shit went down; it should be good.
“Might as well.”--she allows and pushes forth on her perch, wiggling to get down from the work-space – he steps back, allows her space enough to reach solid ground under her feet.
-
If she weren’t so very collected in the way she brings it forth and if he had not been an Avenger that (a) basically found himself surrounded by Metas on a near-to constant basis and (b) was a friend of Thor Odinson he would have had her admitted to a psych-ward. Because most of what she says should not make any sense.
“You can lift the hammer?”--he’s stuck on that one, admittedly.
Darcy bites her lip and shrugs helplessly. “I did at least once, yeah. But like… I don’t know if that’s an actual side-effect from my apparently crazy-eyed healing hoodoo.”--her eyes glide over towards Matt.
“You okay there buddy?”
It’s not like she hasn’t been asking for at least ten minutes straight once she realized just why Matt has been hogging his couch like a champion all morning without even Kate contesting for space on it when, usually, she would be the first to absolutely and unashamedly claim it as hers under any other circumstance.
Again, Matt nods; gives her a careful smile and an unseeing but incredulous look. “I’m fine, Darcy-girl. We’re kind of worried about the voices you keep hearing.”--the man redirects her question. “It didn’t start before yesterday?”
She shakes her head, takes a sip of tea that Kate had prepared – the coffee had been his last; he suffers just as badly as the lawyer does in this case. “Didn’t really start until today. Though… yesterday was the first time that… well… I didn’t know that they could be a separate entity.”--at this she gives Clint a look that doesn’t quite catch his eyes.
“Like… Thor explained it to me as something that is inherent to me, something that is me, not something that I borrowed from a meta-physical plane or whatever. The way I understood it, my being a Hearth Keeper was more an Asgardian Seal of Approval to let out that side of me that is Everybody’s Mom – 24/7. To them such a thing is very valuable, considering that those that remain to keep the hearth are basically last line of defense. Everything else – every warrior, every guardian, every king, is just cannon-fodder.”
He remembers something like this. Thor was very enthusiastic in talking about the… oh god what was the word again? His hand goes to his left eye, rubbing away an itch as he searches for the word.
“Afl-hirða.”--his mouth answers unconsciously to his non-verbal question; his eyes open. “Thor called them afl-hirða.”--and oh boy doesn’t that explain an awful lot about Darcy Lewis.
She’s never futzing moving out of here so long as he can help it.
-
Thor sits him down under the tree after a hella long trip that the other blond has spent joking about the critters on his planet and the shenanigans that the valorous Lady Sif would get up to in order to disabuse basically everyone around her of the notion that they would yet make a ‘proper lady’ of her instead of a warrior as she so desired. Clint has laughed at the appropriate times but he’s well aware that anyone talking that loudly and boisterously while on their way somewhere was getting at something bigger – and so he’s started waiting.
He doesn’t know exactly where they are, only that the SHIELD convoy Fury had put on them with the intent of keeping an eye on them has been shaken well and thoroughly by one very shifty Thor Odinson.
Now Clint knows that Thor is not all… brawn and no brain; he’s well aware that the warrior has a head that can match his muscles; he can be a strategist and a leader, on Midgard – on Earth – he just mostly chooses not to be. Clint will learn later that he is not allowed to do so, but on that day he’s not there yet.
At that point he’s just started to learn about the many ‘gods’ that there are on Asgard. The many brothers and sisters that Thor has, the children he already has, the adventures he’s went on – in the course of getting to know Thor’s family and kind, they’ve just recently encroached on the space of something that resembles politics. It’s really more a recount of the hierarchy apparent in Thor’s family but it goes with a lot of positions awarded to each and everyone.
The blond sits next to him and, for a few moments, they are both quiet, drinking in the vastness of Texas on the border to Louisiana – he’s always thought of the state as dry and desert like, the relative calm and quiet, the green around him, the grass and the swaying trees take him elsewhere; change his mind.
“It is indeed very beautiful.”--Thor smiles into himself; Clint looks over, wonders if he said something aloud, and finds the twinkling eyes of the warrior. “A friend of mine recommended I come here when I told her I would look for a secluded space. She was very explicit about the path to take. She did not disappoint.”
There’s something about Thor’s smiles that jumps over at people, it urges their own lips to twitch upwards – Clint has long but stopped trying to figure out if it Asgardian Hoodoo or if it’s simply Thor. He allows a small smile and looks around again. “She gives good advice if this is her idea of a secluded spot.”
It’s certainly not the back-booth of some wayward Diner in the middle of an easily surveyed city – SHIELD might just take some time until they find them.
“What got you feeling like you needed a spot this secluded?”
Because Thor can be as bad a prankster as Clint can be; Tony has found out the hard way that Myr-Gargan are quite gross to deal with and has been glowering at Clint for at least the last week, although he must be aware, on some level, that Thor too has been involved. It’s probably easier to glower at a human than it is than glaring at a godlike individual – but it doesn’t seem like this is the: let me drag you out here and leave you alone to find your way back kind of joke.
Clint would know how to get back.
Thor knows this – there would barely be any fun involved probably.
But the other man is already pulling a small wooden board from the knapsack he’s slung around his shoulder at the beginning of their small excursion and as he settles it between them, Clint is a little thrown off when it is checkered for chess. He doesn’t quite think that Thor would drag him to the middle of No-Where for a party of chess – he’s seen the blond get hideously frustrated with the small plastic figurines that wither and die in his fingers more often than not.
He doesn’t quite know what to say when Thor tries to find every last figurine he’s apparently thrown loosely into the knapsack and turns it inside-out to get at them. Surprisingly, when Thor has finished separating the blacks and whites from each other, their sets are complete. Despite their rough travels.
“I have asked my friend to lend me this; she is not necessarily fond of the game as I understand it, so she’s been very willing to allow me this.”--Thor picks up a peasant and gives Clint a look that the archer has learned to interpret as a ‘you gon’ learn today’-look; it usually yields fruitious result in the category of Clint dieing to get to know Thor’s Pet-Bilgesnipe that he apparently has on Asgard. It sounds like a domesticated Triceratops – in short: fun.
“We have a different way of playing what you Midgardians call Chess, although it is less a fashion of playing rather than… teaching children to strategize.”
And thus he puts the peasant on a small square closer to the middle than ‘Midgardians’ would do – Clint copies him; and realizes quickly that hopefully Thor does not expect him to play because whatever it is that is happening, it makes little sense to him. The peasants are backed by the one Tower and one Bishop, flanking the King, while, at the same time, being led by both Jumpers. The Queen is at the very back and center of their respective playing field-halves, flanked by the second Tower and the second Bishop.
“This is...”--he gives the blond a look, “-strategy?”
His friend gives a tiny smile: “I reckon we shall not be going much further than this today; it is simply… to emphasize a point. See… there is a reason that this should be the traditional way of strategy on Asgard.”
So Clint learns that there is a reason that the Queen is the most valuable piece on the board – on Asgard – and he learns just why Thor has taken his time about integrating his mother into the talks of positions and politics; and he learns until the sun sets and SHIELD finally finds them. He learns a new kind of reverence for Frigga – the mother who’s raised Thor, the only person to stop Odin in his way even if he was determined.
-
And just now he’s learned that Darcy Lewis, the woman who’s been squatting in his basement, is basically Frigga 2.0; she’s the person who is scary good at knowing when his fridge is empty, she is the good Samaritan who knits and crochets new hats for the general populace. She is all of those things in the same way she is Darcy Lewis.
It’s more than that though: she is the Hearth Keeper. It is in her nature to take care of those around her – give them a home; to make certain they are safe. And beyond that the Hearth Keeper is the Queen on the board; it is an entity that can move as it desires – any and all ways, it is the last line of defense before the populace. Because any threat that has managed to go through the Army and the King warrants the Big Guns.
She is the glue that keeps together an Army, she is the morale that keeps the warriors loyal even in seemingly hopeless situations.
-
“Yes, he did.” --Darcy’s mouth quivers a little at this even though her eyes are less shifty than they were before, “I keep forgetting he was your Battle Bud.”
Clint finds himself in that particular situation more often than he would like. To be honest he hasn’t thought about Big Blond for a long time… or about the Avengers – you know: aside from Nat’s habit to come pick him up whenever they have (desperate) need for an archer. He has disassociated himself from SHIELD now that it’s… whatever and well. Things around here have recently started to need his attention up close and since he’s an 110-per-cent-kind-of-guy he hasn’t spared his old team-mates a lot of thought.
It strikes him that maybe, considering the situation, he should change that.
###
Kate doesn’t move from Darcy’s side during the first week after the incident and neither Clint nor Luke really do comment on it. Luke, perhaps, because he might just remember that Kate does not have a mother (and Darcy is a little too proficient in being one for all the world), and Clint because he probably feels better knowing that Darcy is not ever truly alone – if anything should happen Darcy’s Curious Georges have come to accept Kate’s Panic Signal as a valid indicator to get help.
Granted there occurs not one fall-back into silver eyes and healing dead people but Kate can’t deny that she is on the lookout for it. After all, Darcy has mostly made it clear that this is a part of her; something that she has more or less been born with and therefor something that will likely happen again.
The young archer likes to be prepared – just in case.
Which means that for about ten days she is strung tighter than Clint’s Bow before the blond pushes a blanket into her hands on the tenth evening and glares her down onto the couch where Lucky quickly settles over her and heats her into the land of dreams.
She’s a little pissed at the flea-bag the next morning, but it’s not really his fault if Clint keeps buying his loyalty with treats.
Also: she’s never going to admit that she’s needed the sleep. She’s Kate Fucking Bishop; she doesn’t apologize and she doesn’t confess squat so long as it’s not in front of a court. Clint Barton will just have to do with her show of acceptance in the form of coffee.
It would seem that he deals rather well with her underhanded methods.
Even though he’s a heathen who takes his coffee blacker than his soul and devoid of all sugar.
-
Darcy’s Curious Georges have an affinity for finding people that do not belong to them. Kate has been there once; she’s been ostracized before taming Loony Luke and then steered into the direction of the woman who left steaming hot pizza for them to find and fill their bellies and whose trademark was a splash of bright red on her lips.
Usually in such instances Rob had been a known instigator – a dark character she can only vaguely remember in flashes of yellow skin, dark teeth and the raspy breath of someone who’s been smoking a pack of cigarettes despite their age and cirrhosis. Rob had had a hard life from what she’d gathered and she can see how it would make someone mean as it has him; it’s just not funny being a lone, young female living on the streets. She’s lucky Luke was not nearly as Loony as any of them thought him to be.
(Volatile and confused, yes, but not loony. Not really.)
The thing about cirrhosis though is that it’s a nasty little bugger that will see you to your early grave, see exhibit A: Rob. And since nature abhors a vacuum there has recently been a shift in the hierarchy around this part of town that steered herself towards Darcy Lewis.
She’s never seen Danny Rand, but there are grand myths accumulating around them already and given the young man in front of her she’s starting to believe them. Maybe. There’s been a time when the Rand name was as big as the Bishop’s and then a young boy died and things were lost to the flow of the river Time.
“You’re not even like… from around here.”--is all she can think of to say and the young brunet in front of her gives her a self-deprecating smile as he lifts his hand to scratch at his greasy hair.
“Well, true.”--he laughs half heartedly with the kind of Queens-Slang that has betrayed him in the first place, and, really, he looks like he wants to just disappear from where he stands right now; which might take some magic that Kate would be eager to see because he’s starting to tug at her heart-strings. “Um… is maybe… um.”
She feels Darcy behind her before she hears her and, knowing that Rand probably sent the boy and knowing, just as well, that the boy does not belong to the streets, just as much as he doesn’t belong in the system, she steps aside and allows the older woman to take a look at the newcomer.
“Hi.”--her friend starts, already stepping aside. “I’m Darcy.”
-
“How do you manage to pick them up with just a look?”--Barton asks over dinner when Peter has sat down with them, showered and given fresh clothes from the blond archer himself. Kate is curious as well, knowing, now, what she hasn’t known about Peter Parker before.
Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man indeed.
Bed-Stuy is not even his turf.
Darcy gives him a mocking smirk over the make-shift table they have built in his living room as she reaches for the rice over an episode of Dog Cops that is quickly losing her interest. “Maybe, Mr. Jack-booted thug, the accurate question should be: how come that after years of working for SHIELD and with Dr Jane Foster, ensuing in your stay at my apartment complex recently invaded by Daredevil and a Strongman, you’ve picked up identifying marks of a super-hero?”
Proportionally to Darcy’s climbing eyebrow, Barton sinks into himself.
Kate enjoys this show much more than the TV and shovels the rice into her mouth on automatic – she’s been championing chop-sticks since age five and her second Thai Nanny. Peter Parker, a recent member of the hobo groups in Flushing, well along the way with his chopsticks though nowhere near her, has equally abandoned Channel Twelve and is watching the verbal tennis match just as eagerly. Lewis has a strong hand today.
Barton waves off in a way that lets all the world know he’s surrendering to the sound logic of one Darcy Lewis. At the very least Hawkeye knows what battles to pick.
“Alright so what do we do with the runt?”
Darcy throws a spring-roll at the blond that he promptly fails to catch and Kate watches, with Parker, as quicker than light can hit the eye Lucky has gobbled it up. Darcy is already wildly gesticulating.
“I know you can’t hear, you ass, but the boy can so would you mind your words?”--Barton has the decency to look sheepish as he turns towards Peter.
“Sorry.”--he shrugs; motioning towards his ears. “I am kinda deaf.”
Peter returns the shrug, nods in acknowledgment and continues to slurp his noodles with practiced street-efficiency. Darcy is giving the blond a look, then Peter and Kate knows – oh god she knows that the runt is going to stay because Darcy has given her that look too. Still does on occasion.
It’s the kind that says ‘I’m going to feed you forever.’
It’s kind of a lovely thing to witness.
Also: she’s always sort of wanted a sibling. Looks like it’s a boy.
-
She’s not surprised that they keep him. Peter Parker has a lot of troubles that she kindly allows for him to talk about with Darcy and Barton in private – because she’s not an idiot and these kinds of things tend to be better talked about under fewer eyes. All she needs to know is that it was enough for a teenage super-hero to land on the streets with no way back to where he comes from and no support. Hey, it sounds a little familiar but that’s exactly why she doesn’t mind the runt.
Barton’s name’s going to stay though.
Runt. She likes it and, frankly, the shoe kind of fits, doesn’t it.
And she doesn’t even mind when Barton picks him up as well to run a few obstacle courses that, honestly, he shouldn’t have the time to build. But they’re fun and winding and by noon Darcy has to separate her and The Runt while simultaneously getting them down from the monkey bars where Barton has been egging on their full-blown ego-show-down who could possibly make more passes without usage of meta-human powers.
She catches Darcy sign something to Barton despite the fact that he’s still prone on the floor from where he’s been shouting what could possibly pass for encouragement – if they weren’t vile comparisons on whose upper body strength was greater. Kate is an archer, her upper body strength is immaculate – it would be a slight on her honor to have the Runt undermine her.
And since she is winning either way (Peter had been beginning to give her bug-eyed looks, but that’s where the fun had started) and he acquiesced to listen to the woman of the house, they both drop onto the large, thick, crash-mat adrenaline rushing to their heads as they lean backwards onto it; arms filling with blood, tingling until they’re cotton-soft-lead-weights at their sides.
Darcy snorts over their flushed heads. “You good for food or will your arms compete for my spaghetti.”
“We have been touched by His Noodly Appendage and are now ready for his ceremonial feast.”
And, seriously, Kate should have known that if she got a brother he was going to be weird. But hey, Pastafari, she can dig it.
###
Peter is put in the apartment with Hawkeye by decree of Darcy – which feels a little like going from Zero to Hero. Even though Clint is dead-set on sticking to Logan’s nickname for him. Because Hawkeye has seen him work with Logan; Peter has seen the apartment-complex already – back in December of last year, not too long ago actually. And Clint is well aware that, at a point in the past, Spider-Man has been a SHIELD Agent under the wing of Nicholas Fury.
“Thank you for not saying anything.”
The blond shrugs when they’ are done preparing Clint’s decrepit excuse for a couch in order for Peter to sleep on. No matter how much of a death-trap the archer insists it is, Peter is certain that it looks like heaven from where’s he standing.
“’s not so much for you as it is for SHIELD, kid.”--the blond returns. “You’re not yet current on the news around here, but they didn’t send you to Darcy Lewis for now reason.”
Yeah. He’s heard the rumors on the streets – can’t quite believe them until he’s really seen it, but he tends to think of himself as open-minded. And if there exists a Dr Strange and all his weird magics, additionally to Asgardians and their seidr why should there not be an equivalent to Hestia to this melee? To keep the balance at some point?
Sounds completely logical to him.
As if sensing his more or less understanding of the situation, Clint gives him a glinting side-eye. “They just got torn a new one by HYDRA, I don’t think they’d survive The Hearth Keeper comin’ for ‘em jus’ yet.”
“You’ve seen her?”--Peter wants to know as he sits down on the couch, sinking into bliss already as he clutches at a pillow that smells so unused Peter has to wonder if the archer has ever even used it.
“Them.”--the man corrects a little unfocussed, “Yeah.”--but even though the younger man burns for more, he doesn’t elaborate. Peter takes it and slips under the blanket as the older man sits down at the height of his knees, starting to sort through his arrows with soft clacking noises to the flimmer and shimmer of a re-run of Dog Cops. While before he would have hooked in, asked for what he wanted to know, he’s learned to not always ask questions; to observe and keep his mouth shut; to not immediately jump to conclusions no matter what nature they may be. He doesn’t think of people as inherently good any longer, nor inherently bad, either. Recently it’s felt good not thinking about people at all.
“Go to sleep, runt.”
It’s kind of weird that he misses Logan though.
-
He hasn’t been around SHIELD long enough to actually go through any of the official training programs and exams to garner clearance, even though Fury let him know that should he manage to stick around for longer than a month, he’d be enrolled automatically in what was effectively speaking SHIELD Academy.
Unfortunately the whole thing broke apart before even his 14-day-marker could be properly reached – which did nothing for his personal information that made it right along all the other intel during the info dump and was thus available to pretty much everyone. He doesn’t know where it went; apparently not even Stark knows where it went, but what he does know is that SHIELD turned HYDRA on his Aunt May in a quest to get at him.
It’s not a coincidence that the very street he’s been practically raised in went up in flames in the course of ‘freak electrical and or gas accidents’ caused by supposed tremors.
Frankly speaking, though, he has not had the strength to go look.
He doesn’t think he has anywhere to go back to.
And thus the streets swallowed him, Flushing especially, where the homeless did not ask twice when his stomach rumbled and a small twig of a man found him contemplating the left-overs in a dumpster. He’d been given luke-warm noodles instead, and a crash course in handling chop-sticks that have since not left his breast-pocket.
Three months into his stint on the streets and he’s gotten proficient in wielding the chop-sticks; he knows what places to defend in order to sleep there later; he has a good grip on where to get food. He watches out for the elderly around him – because he is the youngest it’s easier for him to make more food runs and feed them first.
In return, he is given a name and an address. He goes there without really questioning why – and until he sees Clint Barton nothing clicks.
-
He’s heard stories of The Hearth Keeper while he had still been at SHIELD. Mostly because Thor was a good story-teller and SHIELD bugged their agents down to their under-wear; he knows, he’s seen the forms on Coulson’s desk. It’s been a serious cause for reconsideration of joining the organization at one point.
Either way – apparently the Norse God went missing one day and no effort had been spared in finding him including recruiting a barely-yet-agent in the form of Spider-Man. If the reports were correct he was found some time in the evening in the middle of nowhere Texas-border-Louisiana; some National Park.
But the report spoke, too, of an activated bug that had managed to filter all kinds of intel on whatever had been going on while Thor had been AWOL – and it seems that there had been some uproar about whatever had happened; because the upper SHIELD levels couldn’t stop chattering about it for days. As long as it took for Fury to return from a self-imposed diplomatic mission and call his agents to order with nothing but a stern look and a foreboding Snape-Swish of his black leather coat.
Peter never found out all the details.
Just enough to know that whoever this Hearth Keeper was, she packed some serious punch. Enough to warrant Odin thinking twice about opposing her and usually choosing not to. Just enough to think that maybe having such a person on Earth for a change wouldn’t be so bad. Just enough to pray to them at night, sometimes, under his breath, when the rain dripped into his neck and he couldn’t move for fear of falling into the puddle that was spreading just a hand-width away from him.
He’s always kind of liked the idea of Hestia.
The woman who keeps the home-fires safe, the goddess who chose to help humanity and gave Prometheus a portion of her fire to carry to the beings that lived in darkness and coldness.
But because Earth is a vast place, simply relished in the idea of her and hadn’t bothered to go looking – didn’t even know what he would do if he’d find her and he wouldn’t want to put another person in danger. Aunt May had once been his homing-beacon after all; and look how that turned out. Yet for some reason, he’s found that person, that bright red lipstick and those startling blue eyes and he can’t imagine them silver, but he feels, before he’s even set foot into the apartment complex, that he is safe. That he can stop running from the darkness that is eating away at him from the insides.
Darcy Lewis is nothing like he’d imagined her while, at the same time, being precisely just that. It’s a weird dichotomy that takes a few days to get accustomed to and before he knows it, he accompanies Kate to fetch Darcy from her job and bask in the warm glow that she emits on their way home, shadowed by homeless folk that Darcy likes to call Curious Georges and leave Hot Pizza on the corners for. He doesn’t see the Hearth Keeper any time soon and talk about the entity, as Clint explains it to him, is generally avoided, but he can see how the shoe would fit.