Feel My Soul Avenger

A New Home

As an apology for the long wait, please enjoy this 19k chapter. It's double the length of the previous one.

Warnings: Swearing, Healing, Mentions of Previous Assault, Plot, Mentions of Child Abuse though NOTHING graphic, Angst and Fluff, Anxiety, Feels, A few Religious Moments (One of my characters is Catholic and crosses herself)

Spanish will be in italics. All definitions will be in the Author note at the end of the chapter, as well as what website they can be found on.

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE, PLEASE READ: Healing from any trauma takes time, so I don't want to be unrealistic and have everything be honky dory right away. I've only recently healed from my own childhood trauma, and it's been more than 20 years. If you're healing in any way, even if it's over a common cold and not a trauma, be kind to your body, mind, and soul. You deserve it, and you ARE loved.

Onwards Christian Soldiers! JK here's the new chapter my lovelies.

Stella P.O.V

        I was nervous. Scratch that, I was terrified. Why the hell, did I decide to come back to work today? Oh right! It's because I'm a bleeding heart, too nice of a person, who can't in good conscience take time off to heal my mental wounds. It doesn't matter that I should, just that I can't. Not when I know my boss is already overworked and tired from dealing with his 2 other cafes and having a pregnant wife. Is working today a bad idea? Yeah, probably. But I'm going to do it anyway.

        God. I was dreading seeing Leon today, and worried about how he'd act once he finally saw me. Just how mad was he going to be at me? The cafe had been trashed during my dubbed Heroes in Clingy Spandex Rescue, and I hadn't even shut down like I had been supposed to. Fuck my life, I just know he is going to be furious with me. The first time he trusts me with the cafe and being in charge, and everything went to shit. Did I even still have a job here? Ugh, that was a thought I didn't want to dwell on. It wouldn't be the end of the world if I wasn't, I honestly didn't feel very safe here anymore. But I need the money to live and maintain some level of independence, and I really don't want to have to go job hunting.

        Shit, and what about Jack the dishwasher? What had even happened to the resident nicotine addict? I felt like an absolute bitch, because I hadn't given him a second thought since he went out to smoke the day of the attack. Did he say "Fuck it," and go home? Had he heard what had been happening up front and simply decided to not get involved? Or maybe something worse happened? Maybe he had been caught in the crossfire? Or maybe those Hydra thugs had more people surrounding the building, and he had been taken care of? 

        The bad possibilities were endless, and I could only hope that he was still alive. I didn't want to believe that he wasn't, even though it is a very real possibility. Shit, what if he had passed into the great beyond? Was his death made to look like it had been an accident? Maybe a heart attack or a stroke? Those should be easy enough to fake, and if his wife wanted an autopsy I'm sure the coroner could be paid off easily enough. Those few men and women didn't get paid enough to dissect human corpses, so I'm sure they'd be relatively easy to bribe. I could only hope for his wife's sake, that if he had gone to sleep with the fishies, that he had life insurance. NYC was too expensive a place to live to not have a steady income.