She stepped in like she owned the space and didn't want anything from it. No perfume, no rattling jewelry, just the soft thud of flat shoes on cheap carpet. Her eyes swept the room once: bed, table, cracked frame, then came back to him.
Up close, she looked ordinary on purpose. Neutral colors, hair tied back, a face you'd forget. He knew that trick: you remember the loud ones. The quiet ones walk past you every day.
"Doorframe's new," she said, glancing at the splinter near the hinge.
"I was careful." He heard how that sounded and grimaced. "I'm trying to be."
"Good." She nodded at the wobbly chair. "Sit? Or you going to hover by the exit?"
He sat. The chair complained. He set his hands flat on his knees and kept his fingers spread so nothing snapped by accident.
She chose the wall instead of the other chair, like she didn't want to box him in. "I said I'd bring food. I wasn't lying." She put a brown paper bag on the table. Inside: takeout containers, still warm. "Eggs, rice, plain stuff. Good for shock. Eat."
He didn't move.
"You going to make me taste test it?" she asked.
He realized he was waiting for a catch he couldn't see. "Sorry." He opened the lid. The smell hit his stomach like a hook. He ate too fast, then forced himself to slow down. Chew. Swallow. Breathe.
She didn't say anything while he ate. She stood with her shoulder on the wall like she had done this a hundred times for people who were shaking for different reasons. When the fork scraped empty, she tipped her chin at the water. He drank. The plastic bottle dented under his grip; he eased off.
"I don't like that name," he said finally, eyes on the dent. "What they yelled yesterday."
"Which one?"
He looked up. Her face was calm.
"Superman," he said, quiet. The word felt wrong in his mouth. "That's not me."
"Okay," she said. No argument. "What's your name?"
He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His real name had anchors in a different place, a job that didn't exist here, friends who didn't pick up, a childhood that belonged to a world without Stark on billboards. Saying it felt like summoning a ghost.
"I don't know what it means here," he said.
She accepted that with a tiny nod, like she'd expected it. "Then pick something to call you for now. Or I'll just say 'Hey, you' and that gets old."
He thought of a dozen bad lies and let them go. "Call me… Jack," he said. It wasn't his name. It fit like a loaner jacket.
"All right, Jack." She tucked her hands into her pockets. "You already know I'm Nat."
He didn't think that was her name either. It was good enough.
"You work for someone," he said.
"I work with people," she said. The corners of her mouth tilted. "Some of them yell a lot. Some of them would like to meet you. But I came alone because if you're going to run, I'd rather you run calm."
He stared at the paper bag. "What do they want to do with me?"
"That depends on who you ask," she said. "Today, I'm asking for me." She pushed her shoulder off the wall and came a step closer without crowding him. "At the fire, you kept your head long enough to walk two bodies out. You also cut a wall in half. We should talk about that."
He blinked. "I didn't mean..."
"I know," she said. "Not blaming. Just calling it what it is." She tapped the table once with a fingernail. A crisp, measured sound. "Can you make those lines happen on purpose?"
His throat went dry. "I don't want to try in here."
"Good answer," she said. "I'm not here to teach you how to fight. I am here to teach you how not to." She took a slow breath and let it out. "First lesson is boring. It's breathing and picking one sound in the noise."
He almost laughed. "Breathing?"
"Everyone forgets how when it counts." She made a small gesture with two fingers. "You hear everything, right? Too much of everything?"
He nodded. The room's sounds were stacked in neat piles for him now because he knew to do it. Her heartbeat was steady and small. The compressor in the mini-fridge made a lazy rattle. Down the hall, someone flipped a page in a magazine. Two floors up, a faucet dripped every three seconds.
"Pick one sound." She lifted a forefinger and tapped a quiet rhythm on the table: one-two, one-two. "Tie your breath to it. In when you hear it, out when you don't."
He did. He watched her finger, listened to the little tap, and let his breath ride the intervals. The room got a fraction farther away.
"Good," she said after a minute. "Now switch from my finger to something you can't see. Choose the fridge."
He moved the anchor point in his head to the rattle. It wasn't silence. It was something to hold.
"This is control," she said. "Not about being a statue. About aiming what you feel so it doesn't aim you."
He looked at her. "I almost hurt that baby."
"You didn't," she said, flat. "You walked them out. We fix the heat thing so it doesn't pick the target next time."
"Heat vision," he said, testing the stupid phrase out loud. He hated it.
"Call it whatever you want," she said. "Rule one: you don't point it at people. Rule two: you pick the smallest slice you can cut if you need it." She flicked a look at the doorframe. "Rule three: slow beats strong unless the building is falling."
He swallowed. "You… do this a lot?"
She didn't answer that. "You want the quiet room?"
"What's the catch?"
"No catch," she said. "It's a safe house. No handcuffs. No labs. Door locks from the inside. Only condition is you don't fly through the wall when you get spooked."
He believed the "no handcuffs." He didn't know whether to believe "no labs." He looked at his hands. The skin had healed where the doorknob bit him yesterday. "I'll owe you," he said.
"You don't owe me anything," she said. "Eat, shower without scalding the pipes, sleep eight hours. That's the program."
A knock hit the door hard. Not gentle like hers. The motel manager's voice came through, nasal and bored: "Room fourteen, you paying for an extra guest?"
Nat's eyes flicked to the chain. He had slid it back, but the metal bracket on the jamb was cracked from his first day. She stepped to the door and opened it just enough for a conversation. "We squared it at the desk," she said.
"Not on the ledger," the manager said, trying to push. The chain held a beat, creaked. Nat didn't look away. She held up a folded bill. Paper made more sense to him than people. The manager took it and left.
Nat shut the door and looked at the chain. "We should go now."
He grabbed his hoodie. "You'll walk me? Or… tail me?"
"Both," she said. "You lead. I'll pretend I don't know you."
They left the room together because pretending seemed pointless now. He closed the door careful and checked the knob twice. On the walkway, two guys in sagging jeans leaned against the railing, watching the parking lot like they were waiting for someone to be the problem. One of them looked at Nat and smirked. "Hey, sweetheart..."
Her look cut him off at the knees. It wasn't anger. It was the flat warning on a highway sign.
They went down the stairs. He hugged the rails with his attention, giving himself things to measure distance to the landing, the angle on the exit door, how many steps until the sidewalk and let the city open without flooding him.
They didn't talk for two blocks. She let him choose the street. He picked narrower ones. He picked shadow.
At the corner, a delivery driver and a bicyclist shouted at each other. The truck had nudged the bike. The back wheel was wedged under the bumper; the cyclist was limping and furious. A small crowd started to congeal out of curiosity.
He moved without realizing. Nat's hand closed on his forearm. "Observe first," she said low. "Pick the path that doesn't break anything."
He forced himself to stop and look. The axle was bent. The frame was pinched. The driver was white-faced with I-didn't-mean-it panic. The biker was trying to yank the wheel free and about to rip tendons doing it.
"Talk to them," Nat said.
He stepped in with his hands up. "Stop pulling," he said to the biker. "You'll hurt yourself." Then to the driver: "Put it in neutral. Foot off the brake. Do not hit the gas."
The driver stared at him and obeyed. He crouched at the bumper, put both palms under the metal, found the pinch point with his fingers, and breathed. One-two with the fridge in his head, even though the fridge was blocks away. Slow, not strong. He lifted just enough to slack the tension and rolled the wheel two inches. The frame squealed, then slid free.
He let the bumper down an inch at a time. The truck settled. No new dents. No screaming. The biker's anger dropped to a shaky exhale. "Thanks," the guy muttered, half embarrassed.
"Get your ankle checked," he said. "Sprains lie."
The crowd broke up when nothing dramatic happened. Nat didn't smile, but her shoulders loosened a notch.
"You want a medal?" she asked as they walked again.
"No."
"Good," she said. "You're not getting one. But that's the work. Not the sky stuff. That."
They found a diner that looked like it had been there since the seventies and didn't care who you were if you didn't bleed on the floor. Nat picked a booth in the back where the kitchen noise softened everything else. He counted it without meaning to: flat-top sizzle, plates, the bell at the pass, someone humming off-key near the dishwasher. She ordered for both of them: plain omelet, toast, coffee. He didn't argue.
"Ground rules," she said when the waitress left. "You don't go on talk shows. You don't make speeches. If you want to help, you help quietly. If you want to hide sometimes, you tell me first so I don't waste a day looking under bridges."
He stared at the napkin dispenser. "You going to report me anyway."
"Probably," she said. "But my report can say things differently depending on what you do." She leaned in an inch. "Listen, some people see a weapon when they look at you. The only thing that changes that is time and boring rescues."
"What do you see?" he asked.
She didn't blink. "A guy who's scared and not stupid. That's a good combination. It means you won't try to impress me by punching a tank."
He huffed. It almost counted as a laugh.
The omelet arrived. He ate half and realized he was holding the fork like it was made of sugar glass. He put it down and picked it back up with two fingers. Nat pretended not to notice.
"Yesterday," she said. "At Stark's fight. Why did you go?"
He swallowed. "It felt like if I didn't, something worse would happen." He added, small, "And I thought maybe it would make sense if I saw it up close."
"Did it?"
"No," he said. "But I can't stop thinking about the moment before I… left the ground. I knew I could. I didn't know how I knew." He shook his head. "I don't want it to be like that. I don't want it to surprise me."
"Then we train," she said. "Not to fight. To fall without breaking the floor."
"Train where?" He pictured gym mats, mirrors, people staring.
She slid a small, ugly flip phone across the table. "This calls me and two other numbers. No Internet. No games. If you text me an address, I'll find a roof we can use."
"A roof," he repeated, dry. "Great."
"You like the sky. You're just mad at it," she said.
He pocketed the phone. It felt ridiculous and solid. "If I go with you now, who shows up when you leave?"
"Maybe nobody," she said. "Maybe a friend with coffee. Eventually, a man with a patch and a lot of opinions. Not today."
"And Stark?"
"He'll find you when you're ready or when he's impatient," she said. "Either way, better you meet him when you've had eight hours of sleep."
He listened to the bell at the kitchen again. One-two. The noise in his head took a small step back from the table. He realized he trusted her enough to be afraid with her in the room. That wasn't a good idea. It felt necessary anyway.
They paid and left. Outside, the day had sharpened. He could smell rain that hadn't started yet. Nat pointed her chin toward a brick building with a fire escape that zigzagged up six stories. "You can walk," she said. "Or you can practice."
He looked up. The metal ladder creaked in a way that promised scrapes. "If I go up there and I don't come down slow,"
"I'll talk you down," she said. "That's literally my job."
They crossed the street. He took the ladder, not flying, because the choice mattered. The rungs held. The world simplified to hands and feet and places to put them that didn't break. Nat climbed two flights and then cut across to the stair opposite, giving him space while staying near.
At the top, the roof was gravel and vents and a view that made the city look like it was trying to be less than it was. He stood with his toes against the parapet and kept his hands on the stone because that felt honest.
"Okay," Nat said. "You want control? You start small. Don't go up. Go… lighter."
"Lighter?"
"Like you're standing in a slow elevator you control," she said. "Half an inch, then down. No more than your shoes' thickness. You mess it up, you sit on that vent and we call this a field trip."
He snorted. "You talk to everyone like this?"
"No," she said. "Just the ones who could accidentally rewire a city block."
He closed his eyes. He didn't reach for the heat. He reached for the thing under it—the pressure that felt like a second gravity inside his bones. He pictured unweighting his feet without leaving them. The trick was not thinking about the sky. He thought about the diner floor. About bolts in the fire escape steps. About Nat's finger tapping one-two on a table.
Something softened in his calves. The gravel under his shoes felt… less. He opened his eyes a sliver. The rubber toe of his sneaker wasn't quite grinding the grit anymore.
"Good," Nat said. Her voice stayed level. "Down."
He let the imaginary elevator sink. His heels settled with a tiny crunch of stones. His heart was fast, but not panicked.
"One more," she said. "Then we stop."
He did it again. Up a hair, down with control. This time his balance tipped forward a fraction and his body tried to cover by giving him more lift than he asked for. His stomach dropped. The roof edge moved.
"Down," Nat said, low, sharp. "Count."
"One," he said. "Two." He willed the floor to take him. It did. His soles hit hard. He stumbled a step back and grabbed the parapet with both hands.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Yeah." He meant it. He was shaking, but not from fear this time. From effort.
"That's training," she said. "Boring, small, repeatable." She pointed to the vent. "Sit. You're done for today."
He sat. The metal hummed. He realized he was smiling for real for the first time since he woke up in the alley. It felt strange on his face.
"Tomorrow," Nat said, as if she hadn't noticed the smile. "We try a wristwatch. You learn to wear one without snapping it."
He looked at her. "You're serious."
"I'm always serious," she said, but her eyes were lighter. She pulled a key from her pocket and set it on the parapet between them. No label. Just metal. "Good room. Three blocks from here. If you want it, text me first and I'll clear it. If you want to stay in your palace at the motel another night, I'll be around."
"You going to sit outside my door?" he asked.
"I'm going to sit where I can hear if you blow a hole in the wall," she said.
He picked up the key. "Thanks," he said. Two simple words, too small for the bag of food and the rhythm on the table and the way she didn't flinch when the bottle steamed.
"Eat again in two hours," she said, pushing to her feet. "Carbs and protein. Don't go to anywhere alone. And if your eyes start to hurt, you look at concrete, not people."
He nodded. "Nat?"
"Yeah?"
"If I mess up," he said. "If I can't… If this gets worse..."
"It will," she said. "And you'll still have choices." She jerked her chin toward the stairs. "Come on. Before the rain."
They went down together, him first this time, because he knew the steps now. At the bottom, she peeled away at the corner like she'd always been part of the brick. He walked back toward the motel in the open, the flip phone heavy in his pocket and the key.
He didn't take the new room that night. He went back to the old one and closed the door gentle and stood with his hand on the knob while thunder spoke somewhere far off. He put the key on the table and the phone beside it and stared at them until the city's noise sounded like normal.
He lay down without taking off his shoes and told the ceiling the truth, because someone needed to hear it out loud.
"I'm scared," he said. "But I'm trying."
The rain started five minutes later. He didn't fly. He slept. Not long, not deep, but enough to wake to a day he hadn't broken. That felt like the first win that mattered.