Not Quite

I was back on Tony's plane, and he'd passed out on the other side. Erin was in the back, tucked away in the on board luggage compartment, inside of her duffle bag. Hopefully, what we gave her should put her to sleep long enough for me to get her to S.H.E.I.L.D. And she wouldn't know she'd been in a duffle bag. Somehow, I didn't think she'd take that too well, even if it was her own.

Pulling out a table from the side of the plane, I pulled my sketchbook, and flipped it open, letting my hand glide across the page. That was I missed about my old body. I could draw so much better with smaller hands. A pair of eyes started to appear on the page before I realized who they were. I stared back down at them, missing their violet coloring until I heard a rustling in the back.

The door to the compartment clicked open, and the skinny girl tumbled through. "A duffle bag? Really?"

"I would've carried you, but Tony suggested against it." I shut my sketchbook and stuffed it back into my pocket as she sat across from me. "How are you awake? That serum should've knocked you out for a day, at least."

"Insanely fast metabolism."

"Aren't you going to try and make a break for it?"

"Well, I don't know how to fly a plane. So, no." She crossed her legs under the table.

"Can't you fly anyway?" I questioned.

"I don't fancy passing out from exhaustion when I get to where ever I'd be going." She looked out the window into the night. "Speaking of, is there any food here?"

I looked at her frame more closely. Her cheekbones kind of stuck out, and her hands, though long and boney, looked too large for her arms. "Here," I said, getting up. "What do you want?"

I heard a small laugh from her, while she thought for a minute. "Cookies," she said finally. "I haven't had cookies in a really long time."

I brought her over some of the generic brand that Tony kept in the various drawers stocked with every type of food imaginable. "He keeps it stocked with anything and everything."

"Oh, this is his plane?" She cocked her head to side, a curl falling out of her fishtail braid.

"Yeah, one of many. He has a fleet." I looked over to her, gnawing on a cookie. I was more than a little confused as to what was running through that pretty little head of hers. And also confused as to why I thought she was pretty. "So, what's your story, Ms. Leigh?"

"Shouldn't you already know, Rogers?" She raised a thin brown eyebrow. "I'm a test tube baby, made a mad escape attempt that actually worked when I was thirteen; I stay out of the spot light, explore aerospace engineering for fun, and teach dance," she replied when I didn't answer. "What about you? Why did you even come to get me?"

"S.H.E.I.L.D. wants you. That's all they told me." I felt her eyes piercing into me.

"Oh, I should have a lovely welcoming party, then." Her statement put a twinge of regret into what I was supposed to be doing as she looked down to her the packet of cookies and fiddled with them. "What about you? What's your story?"

"Well, I'm Captain America." Most of America had heard my story already, and I didn't like telling it.

"Oh, you fought in New York. With The Avengers or whatever. I may not own a TV, but even I heard about that." She bit through another cookie. "Every girl in my old apartment building is obsessed with you, so I know your story, old man." She smirked.

I laughed off her comment about the girls in her apartment. That was more than a little bit uncomfortable. "I'm not that old."

"Seventy years is a long time." She looked over to Tony on the couch on the opposite side of the plane from us. "Who's he?"

"Iron Man," I replied, figuring she'd know.

"Obnoxious." A light dawned in her eyes. "How can you stand being friends with him?" She asked with a laugh.

I looked over to my sleeping friend. "Once you get over how much he talks, he's not that bad."

"So, he's just good when he's asleep?"

"Basically." She allowed a small chuckle with me. A silence fell between us. "Why did you leave?"

"What do you mean?" I saw a guard threaten to start creeping up again between us.

"Your mad escape attempt. Why'd you leave?" I asked.

"I was a little too free." She set her face in a way so that I knew that was all I was going to get.

I took a long look at her face, the high cheek bones, the pointed chin, the piercing eyes. "You know, you're a strange girl."

"Been called worse, Rogers." She smiled a small smile. She walked over to the food bar and grabbed the note pad and pen that made their home there, and, upon returning to her seat, started scribbling mad numbers on it.

"What's that?" I looked over the long equation written at the top of the paper.

"Smart stuff," she said, not looking up. I saw she was so enthralled in her own work, or maybe just not talking to me, I figured I could pull my sketchbook back out. Her eyes stared up at me from the page, and I finished them, drawing her thin eye brows in the cocky expression they usually held, while the real ones stayed glued to the paper.

I watched her work until I drifted off to a not so peaceful sleep.