"Hey brother! Do you still believe in one another?
Hey sister! Do you still believe in love? I wonder
Oh, if the sky comes falling down, for you
There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do"
- Avicii
Despite sleeping in arguably the most comfortable bed on the face of the planet, Danny couldn't help waking up from night terrors. Cold sweats and racing heartbeats plagued her almost nightly. There were a lot of things to get her head wrapped around; one of which was the sad realization that she hadn't had a good night's sleep in years.
It would always be the same nightmares, mere flashes of the hell she went through at The Workshop. The injections of serums that were likely stolen; the intense radiation therapy; drowning in a tank of gamma residue; the surgery that she was knocked out for; the fucking coma she was put in. Every little thing had, for lack of better term, given her powers beyond imagination. Every little thing that Danny had been put through made her wish for the sweet release of death, but it seemed even that was something she may never have.
Danny found herself sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, staring at her hands. The comforter and sheets were shredded, likely the result of her claws coming out subconsciously while she slept. She ran her fingers through her hair, slightly damp from sweat. Her chest felt heavy, and Danny knew she wouldn't be able to fall asleep again. Looking at the mess around her, the nineteen-year-old decided to take the ruined sheets and bring them to the laundry room.
That was, if she could find it. The mansion in the better part of Manhattan felt expansive this late at night. Pepper had put her up in Tony Stark's old family residence after she was discharged from the hospital a little over a week ago, if only to help her get back onto her feet. Danny refused at first, not wanting to feel like a burden, but Pepper was adamant.
"I feel weird about it," Danny had confessed to her on that first night. "I'll go to a motel; I really don't mind."
Pepper had the nerve to look offended. "You've literally just been discharged from the hospital after going through God knows what. What kind of person would I be to let you fend for yourself like that?"
Where was she going to go anyway? She had no parents, no way to find her brothers. But of course, Pepper was too nice to point that out.
It took a bit of time to find the laundry room, and even longer still to find the linen closet to replace her sheets. Danny shook her head at herself, imagining the reaction coming from Stark when he would eventually find some poor kid that just so happened to ruin his favorite set of duvets. Then she frowned, remembering that he was still missing and could be dead for all anyone knew. The thought left a sour taste to her mouth.
As Danny made her way back to the guest bedroom, her eyes lingered on the light that came from under a door that she had missed the first time. Against her better judgment, she approached it curiously. The door opened silently, revealing a staircase that led to what Danny assumed was the basement.
"Ms. Barton?"
"Oh, Jesus, fuck!" Danny nearly jumped out of her skin, freezing halfway down the steps and dropping the sheets. She felt her pulse beating something fierce in her ears. Attempting to catch her breath, she said, "Hey, uh, JARVIS? Can you please give me a head's up next time?"
"My apologies," the AI responded, almost sounding like it meant it. There was a pause as she picked up the sheets and continued her way down, marveling at the workshop housed in the Starks' basement.
There was half-finished tech across the workbenches, tools hanging around, and a robot chilling in the corner. Danny's eyes were wide with wonder as she walked around the lab, and her fingers dithered across the surface of the tables. She picked up a prototype of a red, white, and blue shield.
JARVIS spoke up again. "Ms. Barton, I don't believe you're authorized to be loitering inside Mr. Stark's lab."
"Are these all of his?" Danny ignored the statement, filing through stacks of old blueprints and folders. "And they're just… sitting here?"
"These are his father, Howard Stark's work," JARVIS answered. "I do believe that they have remained relatively untouched since his death."
Danny made her way around one of the workbenches, finding boxes of scraps and tools haphazardly strewn about. She picked up a Flathead screwdriver and rolled it in her palm. "Do you think Mr. Stark would be mad if I used his lab to tinker with some stuff?"
JARVIS quipped, "We could always give Ms. Potts a ring."
"It's late," she responded in consideration. "I don't want to disturb her."
Her eyes roved the scene once more, staring in admiration at the tech that would never see the light of day. The place should be turned into some kind of museum, Danny thought to herself. Howard Stark literally gave the world the atom bomb. History was probably made in this very lab and she's just… existing here.
Danny began reminiscing about her younger teen years while she was still in foster care. She never stayed with a family as long as she had stayed with Pepper, and she bounced around a lot in high school. Sometimes she got into fights and sometimes her foster family got sick of her.
One of her families had enrolled her into a supposedly gifted school in New Jersey. There she had pursued sciences and entered competitions for computer science and engineering. Danny probably could have gone to a good university if she wasn't expelled for standing up to a bully (go figure) and if her lymphoma diagnosis hadn't landed her in The Workshop for the better part of three years.
Danny found an old stool and dusted it off before taking a seat.
"I don't think it would be wise to –"
"I promise not to mess with Mr. Stark's other things, JARVIS, just…" Her eyes looked up and around the room, knowing that the artificial intelligence was watching over her. "Do me a solid?"
She'd only interacted with JARVIS for one week. Pepper had given her general access to the house – the mansion – and the AI had been good company considering. A few heartbeats passed before JARVIS responded with, "Very well, Ms. Barton."
"Are you sure you're going to be okay at the house for a while?"
The spoon in Danny's hand clinked along the sides of her cereal bowl. "Pepper, you know I haven't been in a place this nice in my entire life," she started. Taking a bite, Danny spoke mid-chew. "Plus, I was able to make some things down in the lab over the last week –"
"You went into Tony's lab? Danny, I thought I told you – !"
"I swear I didn't touch his project things!"
Pepper sighed audibly on the other line, and Danny shrunk in her seat guiltily. "Alright, alright. Just, please, try not to mess with anything else."
"I promise," Danny said, hoping Pepper could hear the sincerity in her voice. "I won't get into any more trouble. Don't worry about me."
She turned the speaker up on her phone, getting up to place her empty bowl in the kitchen sink. After a beat, Danny said, "I heard on the news that they finally found Mr. Stark. Is he going to be okay?"
"He's being evaluated right now and probably being interrogated by every agency out there – What is it, Happy?" Pepper pulled the receiver away from her mouth to talk to Stark's driver and body guard. Danny waited patiently for them to stop speaking. "Danny, I've got to go. I'll talk to you soon. Call me if –"
"– if there's an emergency or it's the end of the world," Danny finished, shaking her head. "I know, I remember. Take care, Pep."
"Bye, honey."
Danny ended the call, looking at her reflection in the black mirror that she held in the palm of her hand. She put down the phone and made her way to the lavish living room of Stark's mansion. God, she could never imagine living a life of luxury like this.
"JARVIS, can you please turn on the news?"
But that didn't mean she wouldn't enjoy it while it lasted.
As she watched the news broadcaster report on the military unit finding Tony Stark in the desert, Danny couldn't help but to wonder what kinds of horrors he had gone through while being held captive. Some of the blurry photographs and videos they were parading of Stark probably didn't even show the extent of his injuries or diminished health. The rumor mill had been going since he landed in Germany; it seemed like every news channel was reporting on him being questioned.
Her mind drifted, and it wasn't long before Danny had questions of her own. His life story, his alliances, his role in the weapons industry. Did he even R&D most of his own technology? Danny muted the television and asked, "JARVIS, what are you?"
A moment passed before the disembodied voice answered, "I am just a rather very intelligent system."
She made a face at that, slowly processing the dumb acronym. "Who created you?"
"Mr. Stark did," the AI responded. "He modeled me after their late butler, Edwin Jarvis, quite some time after the deaths of – his – p̶͈̀̃̚ȧ̴̭̓͜r̵̢̟̬̓̔̾é̸̬͍͂n̶̜̈́̿̍t̵͓̤́s̸͈̔̎̈́ –" JARVIS's voice modulated, almost as if it was being shut down. Danny sat up, alert. "My security protocol appears to have been breached."
An alert popped up on the corner of the television screen, saying that the motion sensors in the front courtyard had been tripped.
The doorbell rang, echoing slightly in the nearly empty mansion. A chill ran through Danny's body. Her eyes flickered over to the foyer across the room, following the form of a person as their body cast a shadow through the frosted glass. She asked the AI, "JARVIS, who's at the door?"
"It is a man. Unfortunately, my facial recognition software has malfunctioned."
"Fucking great," Danny muttered to herself. It was right to feel cautious; Pepper had never told her about a visitor coming. Next to nobody even knew she was there. She looked around the area looking for something to defend herself with when she realized, momentarily, that she was literally a living weapon.
As Danny approached the front door, another ring of the doorbell was followed by knocking. She made a fist with her left hand, consciously forcing the metal-coated claws to come out. For a short-lived moment, Danny felt the bones in her hands shift and felt the burn of her skin as they tore through. She merely winced through the pain.
With her right hand on the doorknob, Danny prepared herself.
"Hello?" The voice came muffled through the door. "Is anyone home?"
Danny froze. Holy shit. That voice sounds like it could be… No. No way. Something tickled the back of her brain, like a memory pushing to be remembered.
"My name is Clint Barton," he called out. "I'm looking for my sister, Daniela. Someone named Virginia Potts says she was staying here?"
Holy and shit were the only two words running through Danny's head. Her claws slid back into her forearm at the surprise, focus gone on keeping them unsheathed. She stood frozen with her hand on the knob, unsure on what to do.
"If this is a bad time, I could come –"
Danny all but threw the door open just then. Her eyes landed on the form of a man in his late-twenties, with short cropped hair, wearing dark wash jeans and a button-up. If it weren't for his eyes, Danny probably wouldn't have recognized her brother.
"Clint?" His name came out as a shaky whisper, given she was trying so hard not to cry. It was her brother. Her big brother.
The man standing at the door looked at her with a blank expression, confused. Slowly, recognition came to his eyes as well. "Danny?" he said, incredulous. Clint looked her up and down in disbelief, almost in shock that the little girl – the same little girl that had been taken away almost twelve years ago – was standing right in front of him. He took a few steps forward, pulling her into the tightest hug she had ever been given in her life. She hugged him back just as hard, crying into his shirt and hoping for all there was that she wasn't dreaming.
Neither of them knew when it happened, but eventually they ended up on their knees at the door's threshold. Rivers of tears were streaming down their cheeks, and heavy sobs landed in Danny's chest like she was drowning in her own cries. She'd been doing that a lot recently, crying.
Clint was the first to pull away, trying to wipe away Danny's tears with the pads of his thumbs. "You… you've gotten so big," he said in a voice just above a whisper. "You're an adult. My God."
Through lessening sobs, Danny let out a humorless laugh. "Fuck – Clint, I thought – you were – dead."
He sniffed, using the back of his hand to wipe his face. Clint looked his sister in the eye, saying, "Danny, I am so fucking sorry."
"What are you – sorry for?"
"For not looking for you harder."
Danny held back a light sob, shoving his shoulder. "You're here. That's… all that matters." She wiped the wetness from her cheeks away, pulling herself to her feet. Both Bartons picked themselves up and moved to the kitchen, sitting at the island counter. Danny's hands were still shaking, and Clint reached across to envelop them between his.
"Where's Barney?" were the next words out of her mouth.
Clint's expression hardened, and his tongue darted out to wet his lips. "I honestly don't know," he answered. "Last I heard he had joined the army, but we didn't really stay in touch too much, after…"
The room got quiet. Neither of them wanted to remember the day they were separated; a day when the remnants of their small family were torn apart. But Danny knew that it was ingrained in their minds; there was no way to forget something so scarring.
"What have you been doing, over the last few years?" Clint asked finally, breaking the silence.
Danny swallowed, unsure how much she wanted to unload on him. She didn't know what to say, for the life of her, but she had to start somewhere. The blonde settled with: "I'd bounced around the system a lot. Pepper was my first foster mom when we got separated, stayed with her while she interned at Stark's company."
Clint's brows furrowed. "Pepper?"
"Virginia Potts," she clarified. "After she got promoted, she was almost never home so I had to go back in." Danny's gaze stayed on their joined hands, her mind still reeling about the brief reunion with her brother. "It was good, for a while," she finished.
"I tried looking you up, you know." He avoided her eye contact, looking guilty. The expression forced deep wrinkles in his forehead. "But a few years ago, it was like – like you went off the grid, or something."
A prominent frown fixed itself on Danny's lips. She knew why. Yet she didn't know how to break it to him. Danny ground her teeth together, pulling her hands away from Clint's grasp. "I was…" She let out a shaky sigh.
Starting over again, Danny explained, "I had a cancer diagnosis halfway through high school. In 2006, my foster parents let me get taken in by an organization that promised to – to cure it."
Clint's jaw dropped, and a quiet "oh, my God" graced his lips. His hands closed into fists, the muscles in his jaw then going taut.
Danny laid out, "I was diagnosed with lymphoma when I was sixteen, but I was sick for months before. There was this weird guy that approached us one day at the hospital, talking about this place that would work to cure me. To give me my life back, whatever that meant." She dared to look at her brother then, whose brows were knitted together and whose mouth was pressed into a thin line.
She continued, "I guess they were tired of having a sick kid, so I went to The Workshop and…"
"Wait." Clint had a hand over his mouth, shielding his full expression from her. "You had an incurable cancer? Well – Are you still sick? What the fuck happened?"
Danny opened her mouth to answer, but no sound came out. What exactly was she going to say to him? The scientists did illegal experiments on me and created a monster, but yeah, I'm cured? Clint wouldn't understand. He couldn't.
Don't tell him anything.
She jumped upon hearing the intrusive voice in her head. It was the same one that would seep into her train of thought, the same one that seemed to take over her actions whenever she would lose control of herself. Her unprovoked jerk was enough to make Clint visibly on edge, and Danny noticed.
"Danny, what's wrong?" he asked her slowly.
"It's – I'm okay."
He went around and tried to place a hand on her shoulder. But Danny flinched away, knocking herself out of the stool, just barely catching herself. Concern was etched into Clint's features, and unbeknownst to her, he reached for something tucked at the back of his waistband. In a much softer voice, he said, "C'mon, talk to me."
She backed away from him, her heart racing, continuing the clenching and unclenching of her fists. Danny was more scared than angry; afraid of herself, and the things she's capable of doing. "Stop," she whispered, shaking her head in an attempt to clear it.
He will only hurt us, the Voice uttered.
"Won't. He's my brother." Danny spread out her fingers, holding her hands at her sides. Her eyes started to burn, and she shut them immediately, knowing the color of her irises were changing to that bright green. She took another step back, fighting to remain in control. Her cheeks became wet again – was she crying?
She pleaded to the Voice in her head, "Just – stop –"
Clint reached out for her again, one hand staying steady and hidden at his side. "Danny? Hey. Whatever's going on, let me help –"
"No!" Her voice was overlain with another, angrier, more sinister tone. She opened her eyes, keeping her gaze down and avoiding his. Danny could feel, ever so slowly, her resolve being chipped away. "Clint – no, no – I don't want to hurt –" Her eyes caught sight of the thing Clint held in his grasp. It took a split second to process the sight of the military issued gun before the Voice took over completely.
Weapon.
The events happened in slow motion: One moment her guard was up, and the claws had ripped through her skin, and the next Clint's gun was aimed at her heart.
Then, everything went black.