Hey ya'll, here's chapter four! I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I don't own any Marvel characters. Just Maggie and her friends.
"So has he called yet?" Adele asked Maggie as she helped her friend paint her toenails a brilliant shade of purple.
"Yeah, he called last night." Maggie responded, as she pained Adele's toenails a powder blue color.
"And?"
"And Uncle Seamus hung up on him." she sighed and Adele frowned. "He has been so weird this summer and I have no idea why!"
"Oh honey, Colin didn't tell you?" Adele asked and Maggie shook her head. "Well remember when Colin made that huge romantic scene?" Maggie nodded. "Well earlier this year he went to your uncle and asked his permission to talk to your father to ask his permission to date you." Adele sighed. "So when you said no to him, you pretty much said no to your uncle's choice and your father's decision."
"Okay, that makes sense." Maggie said as she stared at Adele's feet.
"What the hell is up with your dad anyways?"
"What?"
"I mean his crazy need to control everything you do." she sighed. "I mean, he's practically trying to betroth you to Colin. Wonder what he's getting out of the deal." she muttered and Maggie laughed. "Free drinks whenever he goes down to the pub."
"Oh thanks Adele." Maggie laughed.
"I'd sell you off to Colin for that." Adele muttered and Maggie rolled her eyes. "So, did you end up getting to talk to Clint?"
"No, last night was uncle Seamus' night off, he kept the phone next to him all night."
"Seriously, go online and get those roaming minutes on your cell phone, that's insane. They can't keep treating you like you're four."
"I didn't bring it."
"You didn't- God, no wonder they can get away with treating you like you're four!" Adele shouted and Maggie shook her head as she picked up her soda and took a drink of it. "Here, call him now." Adele said as she picked up her iPhone and handed it to Maggie. Maggie dialed the number and Adele reached over and put it on speaker phone.
"Hello?" a female voice answered the phone and Adele frowned.
"Hey, uh, is Clint there?" Maggie asked.
"Is this Maggie?"
"Yeah..."
"It's Natalie." she said and Maggie grinned.
"Oh hey Natalie, how are you?" she asked.
"I'm good, here, let me get Clint for you." she said and a moment later the phone was picked up.
"Hey Maggie."
"Hey Clint, I am so sorry about last night."
"It's alright." he replied. "I uh, had a nice chat with your uncle."
"Oh god, what did he say?" she asked.
"Oh, just something about the appropriate times for a man to call a woman- or something like that."
"Oh wow-"
"And what, pray tell, is the appropriate time to call a woman?" Adele asked loudly and Maggie groaned.
"Hi Adele." Clint said after a moment.
"Hey there lover boy. So, spill, when is the appropriate time to call a woman?"
"When they've got permission from the woman's father to do so." he replied.
"Oh god Clint-"
"I told you uncle I'd be happy to ask your father permission to call you, but seeing as no one knows where he is, in the mean time, I'll just go by what you want." he told her and she smiled.
"You said that?" she asked softly.
"Course I did." he replied. "Then he hung up on me."
"Well, to make up eavesdropping, and everything, Adele offered up her apartment for me to cook you dinner." Maggie said quickly and Adele glared at Maggie before rolling her eyes.
"I'm going to my mum's for the weekend anyway." Adele said and there was a pause.
"What time do you want me over?" Clint asked and Maggie grinned.
"Why don't we say seven?" she asked and Adele nodded.
"Sure, what's the address?" he asked. Adele gave it to him, and then hung up.
"You bitch!"
"You just had to speak up!" Maggie giggled as she looked at her best friend. "Oh god, I can't believe I said that!"
"Look, Maggs, I'm all for you two getting your rocks off, but if you do it, do it in the spare bedroom." Adele said casually and Maggie lightly swatted her friend's shoulder.
"Well I've got four hours before he shows up. I think we should go grocery shopping." she said to Adele who nodded as she jumped up.
"Come boy wonder! To the grocery store!"
"I'm not wearing the cape."
"Party pooper."
Dinner that night went by great, there was almost no mention of Maggie's family, or anything like that, it was just a nice dinner where the two of them were able to sit down and talk.
"So, I was wondering," Maggie said to Clint who looked at her curiously. "Do you remember that scavenger hunt I told you about?"
"Yeah, the three day long one." he said with a nod and she nodded.
"Right, well, I was thinking, maybe, do you want to go with me to that? Like, would it be something you would be interested in?" she asked and he thought for a moment.
"I don't see why not. How many people would be on our team?"
"Just me and you." she said and he nodded.
"Do we know what we're looking for?" he asked and she shook her head.
"No, have you ever heard of Geocaching?" she asked.
"What exactly are we looking for?" Clint asked Maggie the morning they started the three day scavenger hunt.
"Well, remember how I told you about Geocaching?" she asked and he nodded. "Well, Paul- You'll meet him tomorrow," she quickly explained. "He's gone out in the woods, and he's hidden clues, we're going to try to find as many spots as we can by tomorrow, no matter where we are, or how many items we've found by tomorrow at five, we've got an hour to get to the ruins, where we'll camp out, we'll all be together, and Paul will go through everything, and we'll find out who's done the most."
"You really like challenges huh?" Clint asked and she nodded.
"I love it." she replied as they pulled up at the parking spot.
"So do we know where everything is?" he asked.
"No, we've got the longitude and latitude of our first one, each person has a different first cache, and from there, we're all looking for the same things. We get points depending on who gets there first, depending on the cache, there might be a container with a notebook in it, where we'd write down our team name and the time we found it, I always like to take a picture with my camera showing the time on it, just in case someone tries to take credit for a time before mine, which is a real dick thing to do." she sighed. "From then, it would be a visual cache, where we'd take a picture in front of something, or doing something, it could be a puzzle cache, where we have to figure out a puzzle to find the next one, it's great."
"Sounds good." he said and she nodded as she unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car. He followed her lead, getting out of the car, he took his backpack from the trunk of the car, the large metal case at the bottom weighed him down slightly, but it was nothing he wasn't used to. She stretched a little before she put her backpack on, and started walking towards a group of people who were waiting. He locked the car and followed after her. Adele was standing there chatting with Maggie, while Colin talked with some other guys, all of them shooting Clint dirty looks.
"So, where's your first find?" Adele asked.
"Uh, let me see..." Maggie pulled the GPS from her pocket and typed in the longitude and latitude before showing it to her friend, "Near the big oak." she said and Adele nodded.
"We're close to there, we're at the old house."
"Oh Christ that's creepy."
"I know right. I think Paul did that on purpose. He's just fucking with me."
"Oh you know Paul." Maggie chuckled. "And seeing as I do too, we'll all probably be through that death trap at some point or another."
"So lover boy, are you ready for some fun? Think you can handle the woods for a few days?"
"I've handled worst." he shrugged.
"Clint tests survival gear for a living; this should be like a vacation to him." Maggie said and Clint took her hand.
"Well with you here it will be." he said and she turned pink, but smiled.
"You two are so-"
"Is everyone here?" a guy's voice rang out and everyone grew quiet. "Alright, look like we're all here," he said as he looked over the groups.
"That's Paul." Maggie said softly to Clint who nodded, looking over the ebony skinned Englishman who was talking to the crowd.
"He's not Irish."
"No, he moved here from London about five years ago, and he was the one who got everyone into geocaching." she explained. "He works at the newspaper, running their website."
"Right then, you've all got your assignments, and seeing as you're here, I assume you all have chosen to accept them." he said with a grin and a few people chuckled.
"He likes to pretend he's Charlie and we're his Angels." she said softly and Clint chuckled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She smiled as he pressed his lips to her temple, and looked at him.
"Alright everyone, I'll see you all tomorrow, No later than six o'clock. You get there later than six, and you're counted out and you know it." Paul said to everyone. "Now. Let's treasure hunt." he winked and people laughed before starting to disperse.
"You know where our first cache is?" Clint asked and Maggie nodded.
"Yeah, it's near this big oak tree." she said as she handed him the GPS.
"That doesn't say that on here." he said as he looked at it.
"I grew up in these woods," she told him. "I know them like the back of my hand." Clint followed her towards the area on the GPS, when they finally got to the large oak tree she had told him about, the GPS said that they were there, but there was no sign of the cache.
"What are we looking for?" Clint asked.
"Something like a strong box, or a tupperware container. Something that you could fit a notebook into, even if it is small." she explained.
"Is there any sort of marker or anything?" he asked and she shook her head as she overturned a large rock.
"No. Maybe. If you see something that shouldn't be there or something like, an unnatural formation or something." she said and he looked around, before seeing something.
He walked over to the base of the tree where there seemed to be a piece of twine with leaves strung from it. He pulled the twine and realized it led into a large crack in the tree. He pulled it a little harder and grinned when a tupperware container came out of the large crack in the trunk, tied to the twine with a small notebook, and what looked like a dozen army men inside.
"Maggs," he called and she looked over and grinned.
"Great job Clint!" she smiled. "You sure you've never done this before?" she asked and he smiled as he untied the twine and pulled out the notebook.
"So just write our names and the time?"
"Yeah, right there on the first page where it says FTF." she said and he wrote down their names.
"What's FTF?"
"First to find." she explained as she pulled a small black bag from her backpack.
"What's that?" he asked as she pulled out a small cupcake toy.
"It's an exchange." she said as she took an army man out and put the cupcake toy in. She took the notebook from him and turned to the next page where there was a single line written, she typed the numbers into her GPS and a location popped up. "We've got our next target." she said and he nodded as he closed up the cache and put it back into the tree trunk. "Here," she held out the army man. "For your first find." It was the little green army man looking through his binoculars. He took it and she smiled before gesturing for him to follow her. "Come on, we'd better move our asses if we want to keep up our time." she told him before she started walking, following what the GPS told her to do.
Later that evening they had found a place to make camp near one of their caches. Maggie pitched the tent while Clint built a fire, she pulled her sleeping back out of the backpack she had been hauling and threw it into the tent, before she walked over to Clint and sat down next to him. "Sometime I forget how well you know all of this wilderness survival stuff." he told her and she chuckled. "And I keep wanting to protect you from everything, but then I'm constantly impressed by the way you handle yourself, and I realize you know all of this." he took her hand and she smiled at him.
"I do try to distance myself from the hardcore stuff." she admitted as she laced their fingers together and laid her head on his shoulder. "I mean, I love camping and everything, but really only for a day or two, I could never do what my dad does." she shrugged and he nodded. "You want to know the truth about my dad?" she asked and he looked down at her.
"Only if you want to talk about it." he said and she looked up at him.
"I didn't, not at first. I thought- I don't know, I thought maybe you were a friend of his or something..." she said as she slipped her hand from his.
"You thought that?" he asked and she nodded. "Why would you- You thought he sent me to keep an eye on you didn't he?" he asked and she nodded. "Maggs, what's he do to you?"
"It's not me, not just me, it's the whole family." she explained and he turned so he was kneeling in front of her. She looked up at him with those big blue eyes, and he reached forward and gently cupped her cheek.
"What's he do?" he repeated.
"He has these rules, like, you never go against the family type of stuff," she said as she touched his hand. "I- I only knew you weren't with him when you hung up on my uncle."
"He's in on it too?" she nodded and he leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "Listen to me Maggie." he said and she met his eyes. "Do they hurt you?" She nodded and he sighed deeply. "What do they do?"
"Usually it's just emotional stuff. That's Uncle Seamus' specialty. You can go from feeling like nothing, to being the lowest piece of scum on the earth in three seconds." she explained and he nodded. "He's been pretty vicious this year." she told him and he nodded.
"Because of everything with Colin, right?" he asked and she nodded.
"I shouldn't be telling you all this." she said softly.
"No Maggs, you should be telling me this." he said. "Look, I can help you, you just have to trust me, okay?" he asked and she nodded. "You have a job, when you get back to Santa Barbara open a new account that they don't know about, slowly start transferring your funds into it, deposit your paycheck there, do whatever you can to make sure they can't get hold of your funds. When you've emptied and closed your account at your bank, they won't be able to hold financial stability over you." he told her.
"My sister works at our bank, she'd notice if I started taking large amounts of money out."
"So don't take out large amounts of money," he explained. "Say something like your car needs a repair, or you need a new set of luggage. That'll account for where some of the money went. Tell them you're lending money to Adele, your main priority is getting out of their hold financially. Do you still live with your parents?"
"I rent an apartment not too far from them, one of my dad's old war friends is the landlord, he gave me a good deal."
"Move." he said simply. "I promise you Maggie, it sounds like a lot, but it's not." he explained. "Stay with Adele for as much as you can while you're here. Don't give them any reason to have to have contact with you." he told her and she nodded.
"You sound like you've dealt with this before."
"I have." he said softly. "You did the right thing telling me Maggs."
"It doesn't feel like the right thing."
"You ever told anyone about this before?" he asked and she shook her head. "Then trust me, it's the right thing." he told her. "I won't let them hurt you." he said softly and she looked at him before leaning forward and wrapping her arms around him.
He held her there for a long time, somewhere in the back of his head he knew he was wrong for promising something like that. He knew he would catch a lot of shit for getting so personal, and he was starting to curse himself for letting himself get so attached.
This was just proof he wasn't cut out for these types of jobs, he was a sniper, and a damn good one, going undercover like this, it wasn't in his nature.
But as he held her, he couldn't help but notice how right it felt.
I hope you guys liked hearing a bit more about what's going on with Maggie's family. I'll get into it more- trust me, I will- but in the next chapter, we're going to take a trip to the future. Keep on the look out for the next chapter!
P.S. Please don't forget to review!