Hey hey, sorry about the wait. I'm a horrible author I know. This chapter is over 2,000 words and I wasn't even aiming for a big number wow look at me go. So this chapter signifies the end of a story and the beginning of a new one, so I hope you all enjoy. Also, I have two requests for any reviewers. First: criticism. I never get criticism! And as much as I love all your support, I'd also love to know what you dislike about the story or what you think could be done better. Second: any Jackie headcanons? I'm planning on doing a cute filler chapter so any small ideas you have about her? Anywho, enjoy!
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah, you can do it!" Daddy says, tightening the straps on my skates. Mom stands beside him, smiling to herself. Everyone else is already on the ice, except me.
"But it looks hard," I complain, staring at the cool, glittering rink. People move around swiftly, almost making the sport look easy.
"Just remember what your aunt taught you," Dad reasons, standing up. He wobbles a bit on the blades, causing me to laugh.
"But Auntie's a ballerina! Of course she'd be good at this," I whine, watching the ice timidly.
"Come on," Dad states, taking my hand. "Stop stalling and let's get on the ice."
He pulls me past a few people, my anxiety building up. We reach the rink, a mixture of anticipation and fear resting in my stomach. Dad makes his way onto the ice first, basically dragging me behind him. The second my blades touch the ice, I can feel a rush of exhilaration go through me. A large feat, indeed. Dad moves away, easily gliding across the cold surface, meanwhile I am left to stumble and fall. After only moving a few small steps, I trip and land on the ice. I see Auntie skate up gracefully, clearly showing off.
"Медведь, are you alright?" she asks, smiling as she holds out her hand. I take it, trying to pull myself up and stumbling again in the process. She giggles a little. "You've roller skated, right медведь?"
I nod.
"This is not much different. Just try to keep your ankles straight," Auntie says before swiftly gliding away. I've got this. Just like roller skating. I'm great at roller skating.
So, I start to move. Slowly but carefully, keeping my ankles straight as instructed, and this actually isn't so hard. I move forward a bit, catching Dad's eye. He looks so proud. I see him hold out his arms, and Uncle skates up next to him, a smirk on his face as he watches me. It turns into a soft smile as I inch over.
"Come on, you can do it!" he yells. I make a crazy decision and just start moving forward, ignoring the bumpy ice. I glide towards them, laughing as I watch Auntie roll up next to Uncle.
When I finally reach them, dad picks me up quickly, throwing me into the air and laughing. I feel so proud of myself. I did it! It's not so hard. Maybe, if I keep practicing, I could be as good as Auntie N-
When she woke up, Jackie didn't even have the strength to open her eyes. She just laid still, wondering if the ringing in her ears would ever stop. But as the sound started to fade, she noticed something. She was smiling. For absolutely no reason. Yet, she enjoyed the feeling, something telling her she should savor it while it lasted. She tried to lift her arm, grunting when she realized that she could not move it at all. In fact, she could barely feel any part of her body, which was starting to worry her.
Jackie took this time to observe her surroundings. She was in the S.H.I.E.L.D infirmary, lying on one of their not-so-comfortable beds. She was struck with a sense of déjà vu as the door opened. In stepped a medic, and her favorite redhead.
"You're awake," Natasha noted.
"So I've noticed," Jackie grunted back, trying to sit up a bit. "How long was I out?"
"Only about an hour, surprisingly. You really tired yourself out," Nat answered. The medic was fumbling with the IV she was hooked up to. There was a heart rate monitor as well, beeping steadily. And that's when she remembered.
"Tony! Is he-?" Jackie asked in panic.
"He's fine. Bruce yelled in his ear and startled him back to life," Natasha answered. Jackie unconsciously took note of how Nat's eyes drifted to the floor. After knowing her for some time, Jackie knew what that meant. Nat wasn't telling her something. She decided to brush it off though, starting to gain feeling in her body again.
"And Loki?" she asked.
"In captivity, for the time being. He and Thor will be going back to Asgard soon," Nat replied. Jackie sighed in relief. It had all worked out. For the time being, everything was okay.
Jackie had finally packed everything up from her temporary room in the helicarrier. She glanced back at the laptop that still sat on the foldable desk. Skype was opened and Vivian's contact was the only thing Jackie could look at. During the time of panic, she hadn't thought twice about calling her friend. But now, it seemed like the most dangerous thing in the world.
Vivian probably hated her at this point. Jackie had to admit, she could be rude at times. And not talking to someone for months definitely qualified as one of those times. And yet, she closed her eyes, moved forward, and without letting herself question what the hell she was doing, clicked on the mouse pad. She heard the terrifying noise of the Skype connecting sound, opening her eyes to look upon what she had done. Come on Jackie, she thought to herself, you've fought aliens and super agents and come out on top. How bad could calling Vivian really be? And yet, a new feeling of anxiety rushed through her as she realized her friend had answered. And in seconds, her friend's very displeased face was plastered on her screen.
"You had better have an excellent explanation for this," she started, her arms crossed. Jackie laughed awkwardly.
"Sorry?" she tried nervously.
"Sorry? Sorry? I swear to god I'm going to come over there and strangle you. Where the hell have you been? How did you know about what was happening in New York? And what is with your room?" Vivian ranted. Jackie realized her friend's concern, as her room was littered with small boxes and the walls were metal.
"Yeah, uh, foster parents have a weird taste in home design," she lied easily. "I'm moving."
"Back to Illinois?!" Vivian asked quickly, her unhappiness gone.
"No, just to a different house. I'm still in Florida," Jackie responded, fidgeting awkwardly. Her friend didn't look very happy anymore, but she believed the story well enough. "I sent you an email-"
"Yeah, I saw," Vivian cut her off. Jackie sighed. In all the time she hadn't seen her friend, she'd forgotten how short of a temper she had.
"Look, I'm sorry. I really am. I just got so caught up in-"
"Work?" well this is fun. "That's what the email said."
Shit, I must've wrote it in as work and not noticed. "Sorry, I was in a bit of a hurry."
"Too busy to even write a decent email to your friend," Vivian grumbled, but there was a smile on her face.
"Heh, sorry?"
"But how did you know what was gonna happen in New York?" Vivian pressed.
"I saw a news report, said something about a thing being built on Stark tower. I just got worried, I guess," Jackie explained, beings sure to sound sincere. Luckily, Vivian was never the sharpest tool in the box (Jackie still loved her, though), and she believed it.
"It's so crazy to think about," her friend started. "Aliens. Superheros! Did you watch the full report."
No, I was too busy being featured on it. "Yeah, it was crazy."
"When they did that close up on Captain America, I nearly screamed. And did you see the one that kept electrocuting shit? He looked like a god," another thing Jackie loved about Vivian was that she was boy crazy. She had enough crushes for the both of them.
"Here, I'll send you some screenshots I took," Vivian continued, picking up her phone. Jackie heard a yell from her friend's side, and the black haired girl looked up in annoyance.
"Yes mom?!"
There was a muffled "Put the dishes away" and Vivian rolled her eyes.
"Don't break anything," Jackie teased, earning a growl from her friend.
"Call you later," she said, smiling again. The call ended, and Jackie let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Her own phone bussed from across the room, and she raced up to get it. She had a message from Vivian, as expected. She was almost surprised that her hacking (which was googling "How to make it so people can text me") had worked. She opened the message, clicking on the first picture. It was a slightly blurry screenshot of Tony, flying across the sky. She swiped, finding the closeup of Rogers her friend has talked about. There were hearts photoshopped around it, making Jackie laugh.
She swiped, seeing a pretty decent picture of Clint and Hulk. Giggling, she swiped again. It was a picture of- of her. She almost didn't recognize herself. Her wings were spread to their full span, green energy swirling around her as she fought off a chitauri with its own weapon. The image wasn't blurry at all, and she looked awesome. Like awesome. Jackie smiled, laughing a little. How the hell did I get here?
She watched in happiness as Thor and Loki dissolved into thin air, the Tesseract in their possession. It was over. The team started to say their goodbyes, everyone smiling the whole time.
"So, where are you going anyways?" Tony had asked her, leaning smugly against his car.
"Probably back to headquarters. God knows Fury won't let me out of his sight," Jackie replied.
"Well, as you might have noticed, my tower is in pieces," she laughed a bit. "But, I'm remodeling it to accommodate the whole team. You know, for bonding and such. I've got a few extra rooms."
"You mean-?" Jackie asked excitedly. Clint came up behind her.
"I hear he's got a pool. A big one," he whispered. Jackie laughed.
"Well, would you like to come live with Earth's Mightiest Heros? You are one of them, after all," Tony asked, smiling cheekily. One of them. I'm a part of Earth's Mightiest Hero. Not too bad.
"I would love to!" Jackie exclaimed. She wanted to run up and hug him.
"See, no one can resist my charm. No one," Tony said to Clint, who was still behind Jackie. She laughed again, feeling genuinely happy. She sucked up her gut and held out her hand sarcastically. Tony reached down to shake it.
"Good day, Milady."
"And good day to you."
And as the Avengers disbanded, going in their own directions, Jackie flew above the sky, watching the car Clint was driving, which contained all her stuff. I'm a part of something. And as she flew through the sky, not even sure of where she was going, she just kept smiling. Maybe there would be a new catastrophe tomorrow, but for now, that was it. This was the end to another weird, great adventure. And Jackie had a feeling there was a lot more to come.
"Sir, with all due respect, she's just a kid," Clint reasoned.
"You've seen what she is capable of, correct?" Fury asked back, staring up at the large screen that was plastered to a wall in the S.H.I.E.L.D headquarters lab. He was just checking again to make sure his find was correct; he didn't want to miss a single thing.
"Of course, but she'd never hurt anyone unless she had to," Clint tried again, fidgeting where he stood.
"I'm not saying you have to eliminate her, just keep a close eye on her," the director explained. There was a small beep, signaling the search had finished. The results were the same. "No personnel found in this time period".
"Sir, what would make you think she was working with another agency?" Clint asked, watching the screen suspiciously.
"Well, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong, we've done the searches. We've checked everything, and this is the only logical explanation. You said she can't remember anything before the age of eight?" Clint nodded. "Well, according to her age, she would have been seven around 2006. Here's the problem," Fury pointed to the screen, "We have searched hundreds of thousands of record in the past year and a half since she's been with us. No registrations or paperwork of any kind exists with her name or face on it. We cannot find a birth certificate anywhere. We can only find her from around 2007 and up, when she is passed the age of eight."
"So what are you saying, sir?" Clint asked, his mind running wild.
"This leaves us with two options. One, she was raised by an organization we are yet to hear about and wiped clean of any of her memories. It would explain her mystery talents. Yet, even so, there would be records, something that shows her existence," Fury cleared his throat. "We have run every test available, searched high and low, yet, we have found nothing. Which leads me to my second assumption. It might sound crazy, but I think I have enough proof to believe-
-that she didn't exist.
At least, not yet."
Now that was unexpected.
So, if I am correct, this means Jackie's birthday should technically be 9-3-1999. Yes, look who's getting all technical and shit.
No Tony Stark in a dress here (be thankful he's still alive), STAY FERGALICIOUS MY FRIENDS! (special thanks to my ginger friend for that adjective)
review?