Ok, the first chapter has been up for a while and nothing has exploded *knock on wood*, so I'm going to assume nothing will explode if I write another. (Hey, with this computer, you never know. The thing's sentient.)
Fun Fact: It is not easy to write fanfictions over the cat. Or anything over the cat. It's just hard.
Melody: Thank you for the review! I definitely plan to write more of Natasha, and I'm trying to grow Sophie over time; when I started writing I had a problem with everything about the character dumped into the first few pages, and I'm trying to cut back. Thanks for the warning about feistiness, I'll keep an eye on that!
fezwearingjellybananas: Is it weird that I hear that announcer guy from Portal 2 in my head? Like, Warning. Ego has reached unsustainable levels of inflation. Deploying countermeasures. (BTW, your username made me snort water up my nose. I'd ask what the story behind that is, but the one that popped into my head is a hard one to beat :P)
And now, the fic:
I really hate to say this, but… Barton's house? It's nice.
It's not niiiiice, like the house from last night, with metal and wood from every corner of the earth thrown around just to show that the owner can afford to throw around metal and wood from every corner of the earth. But I've never liked those houses much anyways, except for the amount of really expensive stuff they could hold. This house... I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Maybe... what did that woman in the library say... something about her new apartment, to her friend-I wasn't eavesdropping, I don't eavesdrop, no matter what Barton says-homey. That's the word I was looking for. Homey.
Then I see the name BARTON on the mailbox and the door, and all illusions of homey-ness disappear in an instant.
"DAAAAAAA-DDDDDDYYYYYYYYYY!" A little pink blur nearly bowls me over, and I leap backwards, ramming hard into the car.
I don't know exactly what I did to my ribs last night, but my guess is, it's not good.
Barton takes hold of the blur and swings it up into his arms. A little girl. A little girl in a pink shirt. He kisses her and, once again, his eyes aren't angry.
"Hey, sweetheart!"
"Coop and me are in the treehouse," she tells him, then pinches his nose and giggles. She looks at me. "Are you the homest girl?"
"I-what?"
"Home-homes-hom-home-" She sighs and looks at Barton. "Daddy?"
"Homeless? Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Yeah! That!" She points at me. "Are you?"
"I-I-" Funny. That isn't a word that I use very often. I do have a home, on the third floor of an abandoned building in NYC. Yeah, I don't own it, like most things of mine, but it still is my home, right?
"Yeah, kiddo. This is her. Did your mommy tell you about her?"
"Yessss!" she says, drawing out the 's'. "Let's go tell Mommy you're here! She wants to have you here so much that when Daddy called about you she started shouting!" She squirms out of Barton's arms and starts running to the house. Barton, not even glancing at me, motions me towards it too, and I follow him. Before heading in, I notice a boy, twelve or thirteen, maybe, running towards the house.
Holy crap, he looks like-
"Kid? You coming in?"
I am. I am coming in, at least I'm trying, but my legs literally aren't responding.
"Kid?"
Where'd the house go? Why am I in...
New York...
"Soph? Soph, look at this puppy! Look at this puppy, Soph!"
That's a nice puppy, it really is.
"KID?"
Rory, laughing. The way his face lights up is beautiful, beautiful like the highway at night is beautiful. "Look, Sophs, it's friendly! Can we keep it?"
Yes, Rory. We can keep it.
"Hey! Hey, puppy, come back!"
"KID!"
Barton grabs my shoulder and hauls me into the house, and Rory and puppy and New York are all gone.
"What was THAT all about, kid?"
I try to say something, but I choke on it and all that comes out is a cough. Barton doesn't look like he'll let me get off with just a cough, but pretty soon he has to, because someone else comes into the room. Two someones, actually. A woman, carrying a baby.
"Hi, honey," she says, kissing Barton's cheek.
"Hey, honey." The baby coos and his attention swivels to the baby. "Hi, Nate!" He pulls a face and this tiny, toothless smile breaks out on the face of the baby. The woman, meanwhile, looks up at me. "Hello."
"Hi."
"I'm Laura."
"Sophie." We shake hands.
"This is baby Nathaniel, this is Lila, and," the boy who looks way too much like Rory comes in, "that's Cooper."
"Hi," Cooper says disinterestedly.
He even sounds like Rory...
"I fixed up the room in the attic for you." Barton's head snaps up from the baby.
"Honey, I..."
"Clint."
"The attic room is for long term guests, Laura."
"I hope you heard what you just said... Excuse us a moment." Barton and Laura leave the room. Lila looks at me.
"Does Daddy not like you?"
"Not a bit."
She frowns. "I think you're nice. Your hair is pretty."
Take that, Barton.
"Thanks, Lila."
She keeps looking at me, but doesn't say anything else, so we just stand there silently until Barton and Laura come back in.
"As I was saying, Sophie, we fixed up the attic room for you. Lila, can you take her to go see it?"
"Yes, Mama!" Lila grabs my hand-I jump, it's not like I sit around expecting someone to randomly grab my hand-and half-drags me out the room, through the kitchen, down a hallway, up stairs, and into an empty bedroom.
"Uh... this isn't an att-HOLY-" I duck as Lila swings a broomstick above my head, then roll away and grab it, pulling it out of her hands, as she comes down for another swing.
"Aww! I almost had it!"
No crap you almost had it! Does Barton actually want me dead?
Then I realize that she's not looking at me, but at the ceiling above me. There's a golden ring coming out of the ceiling above me, and a piece of rope on the ground. Luckily, I'm taller than Lila, and I can reach up and grab the ring. I pull it, and it swings down, letting a folding ladder come fall out of the ceiling. I start to climb it.
"No! I go first!"
Ok, then, Lila goes first. I follow her up.
"Look!"
Nicer than the third story of a wrecked and abandoned building, that's for sure. Not that I'm knocking my home. I like my home, even if it is drafty in the winter and buggy in the summer and smells a bit. It's just that this place has four walls and a roof, and a bed, not just a coil of blankets, and a window, with curtains-real ones, not the moth-eaten ones still tacked to the remaining wall-and, oh my, it actually has a shower in a room next to it! Showers are nice; they have them at the homeless shelter and it's incredible how much better hot water makes me feel.
Hmm. Maybe I should take a shower tonight to take care of the-
"Do you like it?" Lila asks, swinging her arms in a circle around her and thwacking me in the chest. Fireworks go off in front of my eyes and I buckle over, eyes watering.
-rib problem.
"Yeah, Lila," I gasp out. "I like it."
Dinner.
Might have been fine if I hadn't been completely late and none other then Barton himself came to my-the attic room and yelled for me to get my sorry butt to dinner. As we both sit down at the table, I can still feel his glare on me.
Thinking back on the New York whatever with those goons from space, I can't help but wonder what happened. Then, the scariness of the invasion was almost completely overridden by those new heroes. My building was far enough away from Stark tower that I could see the aliens without being in danger, but, me being me, I had jumped from building to building until I was right near the heart of the action. That was when it got scary, but the heroes-the Avengers-you could tell that they had things under control. And this guy glaring at me from across the table was my favorite of the lot-this being about when I started to realize that my aim was pretty good, that I could throw something at a squirrel, say, or a leaf, and hit it where I wanted to. So the guy on top of that apartment complex, nailing everything with his bow, really fascinated me.
Who would have guessed? The real Hawkeye is a real jerk.
My musings are blown out of my head when I notice the spaghetti. I'm not hungry like I'm usually hungry-I actually ate this morning, so I still feel pretty good-but the mere sight of the spaghetti makes my mouth start watering. Of course, it is being passed around in a huge bowl, and I'm not exactly good at holding something heavy-which is weird, because I can climb buildings no problem-but I'm sure that I can manage it for a moment.
Laura passes me the spaghetti and I have no trouble getting it on my plate, but when I put the bowl back on the table, I reach too far and it lands with part of the bottom on the edge of Cooper's plate, and the spaghetti starts to slide out of the bowl. I panic and swing it up to flip it back into the bowl, but I overshoot again and-
And-
My face is covered in spaghetti and blocked by the bowl. My chair now has its back flat on the ground. My chest feels like crap again.
Today just isn't my day, is it?
I push the bowl off of my face and wipe the spaghetti sauce out of my eyes before I open them. Everyone who can has jumped out of their seats and are standing around my chair. Lila is laughing, Cooper is laughing, even the baby is laughing. Laura wets down a washcloth and hands it to me, and I wipe down the rest of my face.
Barton, though. Barton.
If there was anything to do to make him hate me more...
Well, I could try to grab my iPod-I can see its outline in his pocket and if I made a dive for him I could have him down and have that iPod out of his pocket in an instant, or at least, that's what my brain is telling me. My wrists still aren't ready to go through with it. So instead I just look up in his eyes and return his glare. I can see myself reflecting in his pupils. My eyes in his eyes in my eyes in his eyes in my eyes in his eyes in my eyes...
I hope he knows that I will never forgive him for taking my iPod.
"At least you were the last one served," he grumbles as we all sit back down at the table. My eyes in his eyes in my eyes in his eyes...
Incredible how a little hot water can make my chest feel so much better.
The mere sight of it made me moan. A deep purple flower blossoming from the bottom of my rib cage and running almost completely around my chest, fading to a light green just below my breasts and near my belly button.
What's with the whole 'water is hard' thing? No one ever told me that water was hard. Water is supposed to be smooth and soft and mostly harmless, unless you decide to be a mermaid and breathe it, and that is all I will say about that.
I get out of the shower and towel off before pulling my clothes back on. My shirt is still pretty wet from when I stuck it in the sink-had to get the spaghetti sauce out of it somehow-but my pants are fine and I no longer smell like nine o'clock at the Italian restaurant. I shut off the lights, turn them back on, shut them off, turn them on, off, on, off, on. Laura actually had to come up to my room and show me how to turn on the lights, it's been so long since I've used them. And yes, contrary to Barton's opinion, I did know how to work light switches, back when my mom and I still had the house, before her boyfriend gave her that powder that she inhaled, before she lost her job and the landlord threw us out and she started seeing all those men at night and leaving me alone.
To think that I thought that she had abandoned me until I saw her picture in that newspaper, of her in that bed with the sheets all red around her.
I shut off the lights with a little groan and fall into my own bed-no, not my own bed, this is Barton's bed and Barton's room and Barton's house and I don't want anything that was his originally. I pull the covers up around me and bring my knees up to my chest. Yeah, this is more comfortable than the previously mentioned half-built abandoned building-but that was Rory's building too. And now I'm alone.
I only wake up once in the night, feet still buzzing from slapping against the payment.
Penance. Every night. Every second. Reliving it.
Penance.
I was at an Awana conference today with my friends, and one of them showed me that video of Jeremy Renner on that talk show, where he played the piano and sang that parody about Hawkeye's 'powers'. Thought I was going to die! Although I seriously hope that he did that before AoU, because that comment about virginity completely defies biology...
Anywhoo... Yay! Second chapter! Hope you enjoyed! (Please review!)