I scream, jolting awake, startling everyone around me. As I take deep breaths, I run my fingers along the stone on my face. I must've fallen asleep at some point during the fifth movie, then accidentally leant my head on Steve's shoulder while unconscious. "Sorry," I apologise to everyone once I've caught a little more breath. They all give me either annoyed or pitiful looks. Sam, Clint and Tony are the former, everyone else is a varying extent of the latter, though everyone is slightly on edge after the shock of the scream.

"You have nothing to apologise for, Lexis," Steve tells me. "It's fine, you just startled us, that's all. We know it must be worse for you."

He reaches over and I instinctively flinch away, but he still managed to reach the stone patch and touch it. "Does it hurt to touch it?" He asked. "Not unless you touch the skin, for obvious reasons," I answer, trying to keep my head as steady as possible to avoid his fingers slipping. He finally retracts them and stands up. "Come on. I'll help you get rid of it."

I nod and let him bring me along to remove the stone. He takes me to my room since it's closest and wets a cloth in the sink while he makes me sit on my bed. When he returns the cloth is damp. He gently dabs at the stone. I sigh in relief and contentment, but he winces at the cracking noises that accompany my bliss. "It doesn't hurt, if it is any conciliation," I tell him. "I only feel pain when I am being touched, not when the water is healing me."

He nods, still dabbing at the stone. "I take it it feels nice to get it off?" He guesses. I sent him my relief and the sense of revival I gain from this and he hums with contentment just as I am. "Wow."

I nod. "Whether it is me being a siren or the curse, I am unsure, but I love it." He looked saddened and guilty at that. "What is wrong?" I ask. "You can't even tell what's a part of your own self and what's a part of the curse?" He shook his head slightly. "That's awful."

"When you live with a curse your entire life and all you really know is that your legs should be a tail and that you should be able to touch others without turning to stone, you tend to not have the ability to determine the difference between what is your real self and what is the curse's doing. Essentially the curse is more of a part of me than I would prefer it to be."

He only nodded again, sighing. "It shouldn't be, though," he said after a minute of silence. "Well there are two ways the world works," I shrug. "There is a way that things should be and a way things are. I did not have luck on my side as far as being born cursed goes, but I am lucky to be alive right now. I am the last known Stone Siren alive due to our hunting. A little known fact is that they only accused Stone Sirens of witchcraft back during the burning years. Not only was I lucky to escape from that when barely any of my kind did, I was also the only one to survive both the burning years and the years of murderers and plague. The combination of the three along with suicide were the cause of every known Stone Siren to die. The very few like me who survived had to go into hiding to do so. We do not know of each other, if there are any others out there for me to speak of."

He nods, but still seems the same emotion wise. Once he's finally removed all the stone from my skin (I could've done it much faster, but it was sweet of him to try) he uses the cloth as a sort of glove to help me up. Since it's wet, it works. He seems pleased that it does.

"Right, are you good now?" He asks me. "Yes, thank you," I nod. "It was strange to have the help. Nobody has ever done that for me before."

"Not even your parents?"

"My parents never had any reason to," I reply. "They used themselves as shields to protect me from harm and touching another Stone Siren will not turn me to stone. I was never touched by a human until they had been discovered. The last thing they ever did was cover me in stone so I appeared to be a statue. Their murderers completely overlooked me as one of their belongings and planned to collect me at a later date since nobody alone could lift me. Inbetween that, rain fell. It freed me and I ran. I doubt they even remembered that statue after the day they came to collect me."

"They sounds like they were really something," Steve smiles slightly, more in an attempt to lift the mood than genuinely feeling the need to smile. It was all I could do to smile back, if only to prove I was better off than he seemed to believe. "They were. They never deserved their early passing. They had centuries left to live. I have outlived them both greatly."

His smile dropped again. I sighed. "You do not have to pretend to care about them, you know." He blinked, surprised. "What do you mean?" "You are pretending to be sad about their deaths," I say. "You do not have to."

"I'm not pretending, Lexis!" He tries to defend himself. "You are good at it, I will give you that," I laugh humourlessly. "I understand. Why would you care about people you have never met? You have no reason to care about my little... what does Tony call it? Sob story."

"Lexis, I care about your parents because you care about your parents," he tells me. "If I didn't care about even strangers, you and I wouldn't be here. In fact, I'd be long dead if it wasn't for me caring so much about others. And it's only a sob story if you're only telling it for attention or pity or something dumb like that."

He patted my shoulder, still using the damp cloth. "Never think I don't care, Lexis. If it's important to you, it's important to me."