"What is that?" Anastasia—whom they'd decided could tolerate her illustrious and queenly name being shortened to 'Ana' when such plebeian brevity grew unpleasantly necessary—inquired of the aluminium tin her father had returned from the grocery store with.
"Protein and supplement mix," he explained as he settled down a blender beside it. "We need to put more muscle on you, but all you ever want to eat is cheese."
She rapidly crossed herself and demanded: "What's wrong with cheese?! Cheese has plenty of protein!" she argued. "And calcium! It's dairy. Also it is good for the soul."
"Well then you shall be pleased to hear this protein is a dairy byproduct, and thus shall probably appease your highly limited palette. Especially when I blend fruit in."
"My interest has suddenly been piqued...!"
"That's the spirit," he laughed. "Give me a moment, I'll give you some to try right now. If you don't like the flavor, you can pick out the next tin; but you're finishing this one."
Mr. Hamilton's daughter was casually lobbing daggers backwards over her shoulder to see if she could get them to stick in the target boards they'd set up on the side of the living room. The A-Frame had only two bedrooms, and the kitchen opened into the living room, giving them a large central space to work with.
"Ooh. Nice, it works." He sat up rom his table and then turned about. "Hey squirt! Catch!" He lobbed the package.
"What-?" She jumped and caught the device in both arms, and then picked up and held it out. "This is dynamite," she informed him. "Five pounds of it. What are you trying to do to our poor house?!"
"It's on a timer! Diffuse it."
"Dad!"
"I was testing a new detonator! Give it a shot!"
She glared at him but then turned over the package and reached for the wires. She paused and wrinkled her nose. "Wait." She turned the device over and over, touching the wires and stick. "How...?" Normally her foresight would have highlighted what wire needed to be cut, to the point where her father didn't even need to color-code anything he asked her to practice at diffusing. Now all she could see was a grisly blank future should she cut anything. The bomb seemed rigged to explode if it was tampered with in any way.
"Ha! Well if it's stumped you, I think that means it's a sound design decision!"
"First of all, why is this much dynamite in the house!?" Anastasia demanded. "This is not what I meant by redecorating! And—second of all!—how do I diffuse it!?"
Anastasia couldn't use her foresight to cheat at everything in life. Her own deck of future possibilities was limited by what actions she could imagine performing. Ergo she couldn't throw knives successfully just because she knew what would hit and what wouldn't; she had to be able to make a near-perfect guess about where to throw, and then possess the skill to accurately put her weapons into motion. Likewise, if a bomb couldn't be diffused by cutting wires, she was at a loss where to begin because she knew of no other ways of tampering with the device.
Her father cackled and got up out of his chair to join her. "You honest-to-God only need to slip the corner of a playing card into the blasting cap. Here," he offered her one. "It's a safety. Then you can diffuse it for the long term."
"Oh. Well that's unexpectedly easy."
"Of course! You always need an easy way to avoid blowing yourself up. The important thing is to make it entirely unintuitive so that no one else figures it out!"
She was impressed. Still: "Dad, I don't think you're allowed to have dynamite until your feelings towards the Whatever-Whatever-Whatever-Church have subsided. That lady was clearly suffering from some kind of psychosis and her issues are her own."
"Well..." he took the bomb back and spun it thoughtfully about as he thoughtfully pursed his lips. "I guess you're probably right. Probably. Maybe."
"You'll blow our cover," she reminded him.
He pouted. "I liked that pun," he admitted. "By virtue of being a pun, it has convinced me, but only because of that."
"Go store that safely," she reproached him affectionately. "It's far too heavy a payload to be putting in our basement.
"Ookkaayyy..." he sighed dramatically, defeated.
Anastasia always looked so fierce when sparring with him, with her brows tight together. He wondered if he ought to buy her a mouth guard specifically to keep her from grinding or shattering any teeth.
"Show me how high you can kick," Mr. Hamilton encouraged, backing across the living room with the training cushion in hand. His daughter whirled and bent to an acute angle as the pivoted to bring her other foot up high.
He felt he could only teach her so much when it came to hand-to-hand. What he knew was patently undisciplined and based entirely on fast reflexes, good instincts, and lots of experience. It was ugly, old-fashioned, american street-fighting. Dirty fighting. He could teach her to throw a bunch, to shoulder out of the way of a punch, to stab someone, to grab someone's hand to foil a stab, to steal something, to back off and gain the high-ground, and he could teach her basic throws and trips.
However he was also a rather strong, adult man. Ana was still petite and, while strong for her size, lacked the same sort of momentum in a punch which a person might required to break noses or jaws. She needed to be quick, and she needed good footwork; and if she was going to pick up fighting, he might want to look for lessons into something more refined for her.
Of course that put him in a bit of position; Anastasia was a ruthlessly fast learner when it came to moving her body, and wouldn't stay patient with being one-of-thirty students when she had so many other things she'd rather be doing. On the other hand, if he booked her a private tutor, he risked someone taking too much of an interest in her. In general, he liked people not to notice his daughter.
"You thought of picking up iceskating again?" Mr. Hamilton suggested as he paged through a catalog of house paints, power tools, and a wide variety of bits and sanders. Anastasia wrapped her hands in preparation for the gymnastics bars.
"I don't have time for hockey. Or for any sport," she disagreed.
"Different type of skate, squirt. Figure skating."
"What for? It's girly," said the girl with the bouncy blonde and copper curls.
"Spins," he explained. "It's hard to get an opportunity to enjoy G-forces like that without mechanical aid, except during ice-skating. I've been thinking that you handle disorientation and vertigo very well," he explained. "Maybe you can do make something interesting of that."
She thought about this. "Like what?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not the one who thinks she's a ninja. It was just an idea. Besides, you seem to like getting exposure to a little bit of everything to round out your options."
"Huh." She entertained the notion as she approached the bar and waved away well-meaning attempts to help her up. She jumped from the bar, and swiftly began swinging herself. Doubtless she was imagining it to be a clothesline or antenna or fence she needed to surmount.
"Is that your daughter?" an unexpectedly well-muscled and sun-weathered woman of about forty-eight or fifty asked him. "Has she ever competed?"
"The loud blonde one?" he asked without looking up from his catalog. "She's fairly new at it."
"Seriously? She's sure taking it to like a fish to water. I've never seen a kid so gun-ho about being upside down before while being 'new.' Have you considered signing her up for lessons?"
"She's imagining the floor is littered with the bodies of her enemies."
"Pardon?"
"Hmm? Oh, say, do you know if they have any martial arts courses here?"
"...Yeahhh... Some boxing, mixed, wrestling, karate, judo, taiji, and aikido. Usually about two rooms over. You can usually use the space in between lessons, too."
"Why thank you, that's very informative." He pointedly turned another page.
She didn't take the hint. "I'm a teach here. For the bars, the beam, yoga, Pilates, pole fitness-"
"Pole Fitness. Well, if the child tells me she wants to start up a side job at Hooters-"
"It's a completely valid, non-sexual form of exercise that's currently in vogue all over the nation. You're a bit of a judgmental ass, aren't you?"
He looked up in surprise to find the woman's expression was more wry than angry. "Well... that's not usually the vice people accuse me of," he decided, feeling ever so slightly guilty for being a bad human being. Ever so slightly. Had a reputation to maintain, after all.
But the exercise-woman thankfully absolved him with an amused eye-roll, and went off to assist some girls on the balance beam, and he didn't break out laughing at anyone.
Mr. Hamilton paused at his daughter's door, listening and slowly leaning into the drywall. She was being very quiet. He caught the whispered ghosts of fabric, and the click of ceramic scales and metal ammunition. She was donning her catsuit and hood.
He closed his eyes. Well... he'd kept solid tabs on her for as long as he could, but it had been obvious each day that a slow agitation was growing and buzzing under her skin. She needed to get out. Not just out of the house—that was easy—but out from under his wing for a few hours. She didn't resent him; she just needed... air.
He'd need to gather pieces for a new outfit. She already had a light weave of dragonscale bullet-resistant armor sewn into the upper chest and back, and it at least gave him some minor peace of mind, but he could do better. Much better. She'd outgrow her current size soon enough, and focusing on compositing an upgrade would give him some indirect means of protecting her.
She was still so small. She insisted she was a teenager, but to him she was his child. Unwise, vulnerable, adorable, and not even particularly sure of who she was or what she wanted.
But now the decisions behind her safety and upbringing weren't wholly his anymore. She was too old; she could fight him. Part of those decisions were now hers, and she'd proven it the day she'd thrown him for a loop and walked into gunfire in broad daylight. If he didn't keep teaching her how to move, how to think, how to fight... if he didn't find some method of slowly letting go... she'd learn it all on her own, by whatever means she could find, and be at ten times the risk for mistakes.
It was strange to think how much of this 'parenthood' thing rested not on making the right choices—as people so naively presumed—but on earning the privilege of having children continue to be honest even whilst they were making the wrong choices. And then so much more depended on not betraying their trust. Mitigation, encouragement, support, sternness... none of these things were so straightforward or easy or detangled from one another. There were no right answers; only colors. Maybe that made it better. Yes. It probably did.
It had always been the case that Buttercup would some day come to wear a proper tabard, whether it displayed stripes of one bearing or another. Why? Who knew. Maybe it was his fault. Maybe it was Batman's. Maybe it was the media and comic books and video games. More likely, it was just how estranged her ability made her feel from reality; she'd seemed to have known this was what she'd wanted at an absurdly early age, and clung to it long after normal children gave up dreams of being astronauts and race car drivers. She seemed stricken by wanderlust. He couldn't take it from her, so he had to give it to her; had to get her to that goal safely and strongly and in full color. Somehow. Easier said than done. It's what made her—raising her—challenging. And nerve-wracking.
He smiled to himself, wryly. Almost Joker's smile, because parenthood was weird. Weird and hard. No one had ever mentioned parenthood was hard. Not seriously hard. Oh sure, people complained went gone on Dr. Phil to blame everything but themselves, but now that he was in these shoes it was a little clearer why so many people failed so terribly at it: it was a bit like trying to find the top stair of an M C Escher painting; which was to say, there wasn't one, depending on perspective, and valid choices looked to be everywhere, far-between, and mutually-exclusive.
His daughter's door cracked open, and it did his heart good to realize she no longer felt the need to escape out windows. She came out with a hoodie on over her outfit and with no mask, suggesting she really did just mean to roam about and get a sense for the city at night, and only wanted weapons (and a bit of armor) in the event she was accosted by thieves or bullies.
"Hey," she was a little surprised to see him so close to her door.
He smiled reassuringly. "Be safe."
She gave him a thumbs-up and then hopped over to squeeze him about the middle. He hugged her back, and then let her go.
"Any idea when you'll be back?"
"Maybe about one?" she decided. "We can start shifting my sleeping hours back incrementally." She waved, and then hurried off to go figure out her own peculiar little life.
He watched her go, fondly, sadly, scared.
Well. This was as good a time as any for him to get some creeping done as well...
