Clint first took me to his place a year after S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited me. How and why is a story for another time. But even when I – early on, for a variety of reasons – avoided spending time there, Clint urged me, cajoled me, coerced me back. In spite of my initial resistance, the farm became home. Laura became family, as did the kids, when they came. It wasn't really something I could fight. My job puts me in the thick of a cold world, and the only home I had before the farm – Malibu – could be devastatingly complicated and cruel. And astoundingly lonely. The farm was warm, peaceful, simple, and never, never lonely. You put a person someplace like that enough times, they'll start to crave it when they're gone. Or at least I did.

Standing in that house, with the smell of French toast and coffee filling the air, the prime concern of two people who loved me, I should have been exactly where I needed to be to deal with what was, at that point, the worst day of my life. Which life, though? At the moment, I had two, and they were banging together and trying to claim the same day as its own tragedy. But Tony Stark belonged to Sierra Stark, an elusive wild-child heiress who had been lined up to be crowned Queen of the Tabloids right before being spirited away to boarding school and falling off the social scene's map three years ago. But now Tony Stark was in Sierra Casper's safe space. Casper wasn't an heiress. She was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent recruited as a child under highly classified circumstances and trained outside of the Academy on a very individualized basis to become a multi- and highly-skilled spy and assassin with more skill than most agents a decade older than she. She had also promised a little boy she would bake cookies with him that day. And now Tony Stark, even in death, was complicating everything for Sierra Casper. Because when you peeled away the badass, she was only Sierra Stark fleeing from her problems.

In my defense, I had done an astounding job. Then the old man had to go and get attacked in Afghanistan and show up on the news in this house, where he didn't belong. Where I was doing just fine without him. It was so very like him. And so very like me to turn from Clint and Laura and bolt up the stairs, which is what I did. If I had a plan, an organized plan, I can't remember it now. And my memory's damn good, so my guess is that I was so shell-shocked by the fact that I was probably an orphan that I wasn't thinking about any steps that came next, just whichever step I was taking at each given moment, and they were essentially the steps of a drunk.

Clint called after me, of course, and came after me. He was on my heels when I swung into my room. "Hey," he said as I headed for the closet. I found my grab-and-go bag and reemerged without answering him. "Sierra," he said, firm, serious, but still gentle.

"Clint." I dropped my bag and returned to the closet, grabbed a tank top and some jeans. I tossed them on the bed and looked at him. "Can I have some privacy? Really probably shouldn't wear my pajamas to HQ. I could probably get away with the shirt, but the pants? Plaid is so not in this season."

"Hey, take a breath."

"No. I don't want to take a breath. I want to go find my dad. Or what's left of him – The idiot! What was he doing in Afghanistan?"

"Weapons demonstration. He had Colonel Rhodes with him."

"Rhodey?"

"He's fine. He wasn't in the same detail as your dad."

"So he not only let him go to Afghanistan, he let him out of his sight."

"Tony's an adult."

"No he isn't!"

"Well, neither are you. Hey." He takes my shoulders like he did downstairs. He doesn't let me shrug him off this time. "I need you to calm down and talk this through with me. Then we'll do whatever we need to do, okay?"

"What I need to do is go find my father."

"Sweetheart, you're not going anywhere like this."

Now I knock his arms away. "So you're just going to trap me here when we both could be out there looking for my dad? You're just going to waste our time, waste our resources? He could be alive, still! He could be!" I whipped my head around and considered the window, but even if I dived out through the glass like a true-blue action hero, Clint would have caught me quick.

"Yeah, he could be –"

"You can'tkeep me from looking for my father, Clint!"

"Agent Casper," he said, in his best government official voice, and my spine straightened without my consent. My breathing evened out. I clenched my jaw. He'd played his ace. Cheater.

Clint Barton was my mentor for all things life-related. He was my friend . . . In some ways my best friend. But at this point in my story, I'm sixteen, and he'd been in charge of me for three years, training me mercilessly and bringing me with him on life-and/or-death missions on kind of a regular basis. And of all the things Clint had burned into my brain in those three years, one lesson was the foundation of all others: His orders were law. Stronger than law.

I hated him, hated him, hated him for pulling that shit right then. But like I said – I went still.

"You need to pause and think for two seconds," he said.

I did. All I saw was my dad's face and the term PRESUMED DEAD, written just like that, in all caps and whatnot. Written loudly.

"Can I un-pause now?" I said.

"You wanna know a secret?"

"Dying to hear it."

"Every time you're about to lose your cool, you nearly break the little finger on your left hand."

I glanced down, and wouldn't you know it, my thumb was pinning my pinky against my palm like the little bastard was the one responsible for Dad's disappearance. I released it.

"You've always done that," Clint said, sounding less like Agent Barton and more like the Clint who would call me sweetheart. "I should have pointed it out, but it was helpful before I got to know you well. And it's been helpful since you learned to lie like a spy."

"Scared I'd fool you otherwise, Clint?"

"I trust you too much for that."

A few moments passed, and then I finally started to cry. Clint pulled me to him and held me. I let him. I cried into his chest like a five-year-old. Clint's a very good man.

And then a small voice said, "Wha's wrong?"

I broke off the hug. I wiped my face, turned from the door, which was open, allowing little Cooper to peer in on smart, strong Sierra as she had a breakdown.

"Don't worry about it, Coop, we're taking care of it," Clint said. "Go downstairs. Mommy made breakfast."

But Cooper's persistent. "You okay, Serra?"

"Coop, go downstairs, please," said Clint.

I took a good breath, deep enough that I could let it pour out fast and make my voice sound reasonably smooth. "I'm okay, Cooper. Go eat, okay?"

". . . You come."

"Cooper," said Clint, "Sierra and I need to talk alone. Go eat breakfast. Now, please."

The kid finally gave in. Listening to him toddle down the hall, I sniffed and said, "You never say 'please' to me."

"Sierra," he said. "Please try to relax andlisten to what Fury and I want you to do."

"Fury," I muttered. "You and Fury were in contact, talking about what I should do about my father's life, before I was even conscious."

"Talking about how to save your father's life and how much of a role you should play."

"Fine, Clint," I said to the window. "Let's hear it."

"First off, we go to New York and meet with Fury."

I spun around to face him. "I was just going to do that. You stopped me."

"You were doing it out of impulse. Not because it's the thing to do."

"So my instincts were right." I wiped my face again. "That's a good thing. Score one for instincts. Sierra takes home the gold. The crowd goes wild."

"Finished?"

"Yeah, let's go."

"There's more."

"What?"

"No matter what happens, you don't go to Afghanistan. You can stay in New York, you can come back here, you can go to Malibu. But not Afghanistan."

I stared at him. He didn't blink.

"You want me to sit on my hands while my father is MIA."

"Anything you can do from base, do it. But I don't want you in the field on this one."

"It's a scavenger hunt, Clint. It can't be as dangerous as half the stuff I've done since I joined S.H.I.E.L.D."

"It's not guns and bad guys I'm worried about."

"Thought you trusted me?"

"I do."

My mind zipped through all the possibilities, waiting for something to click, and then –

"You don't want me to be the one to find him. If he's dead. You don't want me to be there."

"I don't think he's dead, Sierra."

For a blessed second, a warm rush of relief, or maybe hope, poured through me, because I believed him. It wasn't that I didn't think Clint could get away with lying to me. It was that Clint didn't lie to me. He just didn't.

"I think it's much more likely that he's being held for ransom," he said, and the warm feeling froze over. "According to Fury, no one's made contact with any of your father's people about a payment, but the fact that we haven't found a body and the fact that he's one of the richest men on the planet leaves some room for hope."

Hope. Yes. That good warm feeling should still have been there, because a kidnapping is better than a murder. Far less final. I shook my head once. "What does that have to do with me being on a search team?" Another click. "Oh. You think I'll want to give in to their demands."

"If you were part of the field effort to find him, there's a chance – slim, but there – that you might end up having to make calls a family member shouldn't have to make. No one wins in that situation."

I stayed quiet.

"There's also the chance you'd be recognized."

"I haven't been in the public eye in years. You remember how much of a bitch it was dodging the press when I went back to be emancipated."

"There's still a chance. Hostiles figure out who you are, they could have two hostages instead of one."

"That scenario implies that I would let myself be captured."

"That scenario implies that you weren't able to help it."

"I'm the Poltergeist, Clint," I said. "I don't get captured."

Even then, he couldn't help but roll his eyes. "You're not infallible, Sierra."

"You're not infallible," I grumbled.

"You're sixteen. I know they look alike to you, but they're extremely different."

"Can we go now?"

"Look at your left hand."

I had pinned down my little finger again. I released it as Clint stepped closer. "Sierra, I promise you. If he's alive, we'll find him."

Again, I believed him. My dad was an important man, to the world – in spite of the hatred so much of it felt for him, or maybe because of it – and to S.H.I.E.L.D. We'd find him if he was alive, and he and I could reunite, and go out and gorge ourselves on late-night waffles like the good old days, and then . . . what? Revert back to estrangement? I don't know. But whatever it was, it would be preferable to him being dead. And preferable to the not knowing.

If I had my way, I'd be in the field. But haunting HQ until we had answers was the next best thing.

Eventually, of course, I'd have neither. But there would be other stuff on my mind at that point.