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Sarah sat at the kitchen counter, holding a cup of hot chocolate that had gone mostly cold in her hands. She sighed, staring at the half-melted marshmallow floating in the drink. Her wings twitched with her agitation, brown and white tufted primary feathers brushing softly against her ankles. She shifted her shoulders, drawing them back in so that they didn't end up drooping all the way to the floor.
She'd spent an hour in AJ's room earlier, running her hands down through his short hair and down along his feathers, soft and grey and just a bit fluffy still, even if he's growing out of those baby wings too fast for her. He'd curled up next to her, kicking his Batman blanket to the floor and off his nest in his sleep.
She rubs at her face, runs a hand through her own hair. It's been a long night, but she knows she wouldn't be able to sleep if she tried. She should; she has to go to work in the morning, and she has the extra plates to prepare for the shelter in the afternoon. She'll be exhausted tomorrow if she doesn't get some sleep now.
The clock clicks over, lighting up the numbers 2:09, when she hears the familiar sound of an over-stressed engine, and a minute later, the front door creaking open, her brother's mouth already open and talking shit, James two steps behind him and just as heatedly arguing back.
They're whispering out of care for her and the boys, but they're arguing loudly enough for her to hear them in the kitchen nonetheless, because Sam gets louder when he's not winning a fight. She waits, putting the mug down on the counter, and eventually, Sam wanders in, those red and white wings of his preening behind him, trying to impress.
He stops mid-sentence when he sees her, saying, "Shit, Sarah. What are you still awake for?"
James slides into the kitchen behind Sam, eyebrows drawn even as his black wings curl in on his body in the way that seems to be his default when he's not posturing, and he's around often enough these days that she'd know.
Sarah gets up.
"Cass waited up for you, because you said you'd be home for dinner tonight."
Sam winces. "I'll catch him in the morning," he says, and Sarah knows he means it. She knows Sam is a good uncle, that he loves her boys more than he could ever love that shield he's been toting around for the past few months. She also knows that he's busy, that his job isn't some nine to five banking job down on main street.
Somehow, and don't ask her what any of them did to deserve it, her brother is Captain America, and all the shit that comes with a moniker like that.
Don't get her wrong. She's proud of him. She is.
"You'd better," she says, and even she can hear the tired resignation in her own voice. Sam frowns. She adds, "He got in a fight with some kid at school. I had to go pick him up. He told the principal that the other kid said something stupid, but wouldn't tell me what; said he'd tell you instead. He waited until I made him go to bed. That's the result of that conversation right over there." She nudges her chin in the direction of the trash can, where a broken glass picture frame is sitting on the top.
Cass hadn't meant to break it. He'd been angry, hurt, upset -- he hadn't told Sarah what the kid who he'd gotten into the fight with had said, but it wasn't that hard to guess. People have had plenty to say about Black Captain America in the last few months. Cass' wings had flared out, wide and tense and hitting everything around him until he could get them back under control.
A broken picture frame wasn't the first thing she'd had broken in her house from raising two boys on her own, and it wouldn't be the last. Besides, Cass had rubbed his eyes, tired, and said, "Sorry, Mom," and gone to bed without giving her any more lip.
Cass and AJ are good boys. They remind her of their father so much sometimes that it leaves her hardly breathing with how much she misses him, with how much she wishes he were here, here to help her raise boys into men.
But she has her brother, and her boys love their uncle like he's some sort of superhero.
(He is. And not just because he's Captain America or the Falcon or anything else. He's their uncle, and he comes to their soccer games and takes them out on the boat and teaches them things, things their father should have been here to teach them, like how to shave and how to groom their feathers before their first date.)
But being Captain America doesn't pay the bills, and Sam has missed more than a few dinners in the past few months, and her kids keep getting in fights. She's tired. She's so tired.
"Shit," Sam says, and rubs at his chin. He's got stubble there, dark and shadowed. He needs to shave, and Sarah realizes that he's got a bruise on his cheek.
She breathes, slow and steady, and looks at James. No bruises on this one, just hunched shoulders and drawn back wings, sensitive and still growing, recovering from whatever shit he'd gone through before Sam dragged him into her house and said, "Stay."
"You both look tired," Sarah says, finally. "Sit down. I'll make hot chocolate."
They sit, and she does, because sure, some of this shit sucks. But kids get into fights, and adults have to go to work, whatever their jobs might be. Because they're a black family daring to stand out, and people are going to have opinions on that for the rest of their damn lives.
Because they're all tired, but they're all here, together, in this house, and they all love each other more than she can say.
And that's enough, really.