Aim: Avenger | Y/N Story

13 - "Home"

No. I can't.

"Erin!" James called.

I can't do that.

"I will find you!" He called again.

I won't do that.

"Found you!" He shouted, picking me up. But I stayed rigid. I couldn't move, my mind was moving too fast, reeling. "Hey, are you okay?" He gently put me back down.

I cleared my throat. "Uh, yeah, I'm great. Just wanted to freak you out." I lie. I know the consequences for failing a mission, but I just can't betray them. Not after all they've done. I have a family now. And I'm sticking by them. But what if they betray me? Would they? My thoughts were interrupted by James.

"Okay, then let's do something." He stated. I looked into his mind and saw that he knew something was wrong and wanted to distract me.

"Explore?" I suggested.

"Sure!" We walk out and just wander. I'd point to things and ask about them, and he would answer. I wasn't really listening though. I kept thinking about that drone. Eventually we wound up in a hallway filled with the exact same doors, seemingly a bunch of offices, but one in particular caught my eye for some reason.

"What's this?" I asked. "It looks like an-" I froze when I opened the door. It was a room filled to the brim with books. My eyes danced over the thousands of volumes, most neatly organized onto shelves, but a few were strewn over small reading tables. "Wow." I breathed.

"You like books?" Barnes asked.

"Yeah! I remember everything, so when I get bored I run through books in my head. Kind of like reading it again."

"Couldn't you just summon the book?" He asked.

"No. For one thing, books are strictly monitored at Hydra." I said, and felt him stiffen.

"I'm sorry, I didn't-" He started.

"James. It's okay to talk about it. And even if they weren't, I would have a difficult time making a book appear."

"Why?"

"Because for me to do that, I have to remember every detail about an item. Not hard, when you have the memory I do, but books are tricky because they have so many tiny details. When I use my powers, I have to think of the whole item. Intricate things take longer."

"Oh. That wasn't mentioned in your file." He said.

"Didn't have time to be put in. The General thought it would be more useful to use my powers than study them." I strolled past the shelves, gently stroking the spines with my fingertips. I smiled, remembering how I once visited a quaint cafe that had shelves similar to these, but the shelves were older, and crammed with so many books the shelves bowed a little bit under the weight of it all.

"Can I ask you something?" His eyes looked curious, but cautious at the same time.

"Sure." 

"How did you . . . summon, I guess, your friend?" He asked.

"Ah, good question. Living things from my memories sort of have a mind of their own. I've found only the dead ones that I've shared a connection with are able to affect me. As you saw, in my nightmare, there was a particular person pulling me down. That was V-." I hesitated for a second, trying to say her name, but my throat closed up. I cleared it, and continued, "Verdienen."

"That's the name you kept saying. When you got shot."

"Yeah. I've been thinking about her a lot recently."

"Why only now?" He inquired.

Because she failed her mission and now I'm going to fail mine. But I can't tell him that. "Because she was one of the closest things I had to a friend, and being here reminds me of that feeling." I answered. Still the truth, but leaving out a piece.

"Y/N Y/L/N. Are you saying you see us as friends?" He teased.

"Oh, shut up, James Buchanan Barnes." I teased right back, and we both smiled at each other, but fell silent for a while.

James broke the silence. "You know, if you want, you can practice your powers here."

"Here? Not a controlled environment?" I scoffed.

"Yeah, why not? I can tell this place is more comfortable for you, and we don't really use it." He said.

I looked at him in disbelief. "You have a room filled with thousands of stories, and you don't use it?"

"I guess so." He smiled. "Do you want to practice?"

I pondered it for a moment. It would be nice to be able to practice, and hopefully understand my abilities better. "Yes." I answered simply.

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"And it was so cool! I was able to muster an armchair!" I chattered excitedly at the dinner table.

"Wow!" Natasha said. "Did it just appear? Or did it fall?"

"Well, I've been working on trying to make them appear in a specific place, and have had some success, so I tried something bigger. It worked!" I was smiling so big, and I could tell my eyes were sparkling.

"Congrats, kiddo!" Tony said. 

"Thanks. I think that I'm going to try some more complex things. One time on a mission, I went to this pawn shop, and there was a really cool record player I think Cap would like." I looked over at him, gauging his reaction.

He laughed and said, "if you can pull it off, I'll break out my records."

"Christmas is going to be so much fun with Erin around." Clint commented, and we all laughed.

I wanted to say something, but was afraid to. Saying it out loud meant making it concrete, and that was more terrifying than my missions. Oh, screw it. I cleared my throat and everyone glanced over at me, curious and smiling. "So, um, I just wanted to say-well, I, um." I was flustered, and laughed awkwardly. I looked over at Natasha, who gave me a reassuring smile. I took a deep breath and continued. "All my life, I've been called Erinnerung. I only knew my birth name because I read my file once. And while I like the name Erin, I don't want to be called that anymore. You guys are my family now, and I don't want that shadow of Hydra. So basically what I'm saying is you can call me Y/N, because this is my new family, and with a new family comes a new name." I finished and looked around the table, and saw that a few people were crying. "Oh no, I didn't mean to make you cry, you can still call me Erin if that's-"

"Oh shut up and come here, Y/N." Natasha said, her arms open for a hug. I wrapped my arms around her tight, and felt everyone else surround us in a giant group hug.

I'm home. At last.

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