Hi again!
QueenOfHEL666: Yeah, it's awesome! Although if that happened after AoU... yeah, I'm gonna shut up now. I'm glad that you like the story! Hopefully this one lives up to the expectations. (And I notice that you are a fellow lover of Norse mythology. Isn't it great?)
fezwearingjellybananas: Ah, yes, there is a fez wearing Doctor, isn't there? I'll bet there still is a great story behind it. The name, that is. I know that Doctor Who is awesome from the small clips of it that I've seen. As for my story, well, it involved a huuuuuge dessert malfunction in Russia. Enough said there.
I have names for the chapters now! Good? Meh? Lousy? Let me know, I love that little review box!
Disclaimer: I know nothing about archery (trying to find lessons), so if the archery lesson is totally out of whack, please don't wallop me over the head. I do that enough myself. ;)
Considering that all of my other experiences with department stores involve bright lights and sirens, Laura's mission to get me some new clothes didn't do so badly. In fact, if I could ignore the fact that there is a broken watch in this plastic bag, I could say that it went perfectly. But that's one loud broken watch, so...
Meh. Story of my life.
The one thing I really didn't understand was the necessity of having more than one shirt, pair of pants, et cetera. Ok, two each might make sense, one for warm weather and one for cold, but I have no fewer than three outfits in this bag. Three!
Three!
I take off my old clothes and put on one of my new sets of clothing. Black shirt and dark jeans, like my old stuff. Black sneakers, too. Shoes cannot be 'sneakers' and bright pink at the same time. It defies the definition of sneak.
I look at my old clothes and suddenly feel weird. Yesterday, if I'd been standing and looking at my clothes, I would have necessarily been naked.
Who colored the first target? The colors make no sense. It's like they shut their eyes and randomly pointed to colors, and made each ring whatever color they pointed at.
"Are you even listening to me?" I jump and nod. Barton tones down the death glare to the regular, steely-but-not-quite-murderous glare that he probably stayed up all night perfecting. I return it.
Look away. Look away. Look away.
I look away, across at the bows hanging up on a rack.
"Now, like I was saying, I want to figure out your draw strength. You should probably start sma-"
I walk over to the rack, pick up the bow on the right, and walk back to where I had been standing, in front of the target. Barton sighs, pinching himself between his eyes.
I reach carefully, carefully into his pocket.
Crap. I know he still has it on him, it must be on his other side. I slowly ease my hand back out, and cough. He looks up. "Fine. Let's see you pull that back."
No problem, old man. Bowstrings are easy. I have some of these things in my home, made them myself to shoot squirrels and leaves and whatnot. There's nothing behind pulling bowstrings. Ok, maybe a bit of something, but it can't be all that hard.
I grasp the bowstring and pull it, and for a moment it feels like pulling a brick building. I can't-
No. I will not admit defeat in front of Barton of all people. If he has this bow, he can pull it, and so will I. I lock my right arm straight and pull back on the bowstring with my left. My left arm starts to shake, but I feel it moving backwards, so I keep pulling.
"Ok, kid, that's enough, that is way too much draw weight for you." I hear a note of panic in his voice. "Now, ease the bowstring back, and remember, the worst thing you can do to an empty bow is-"
The bowstring slips out of my trembling fingers and I feel a sear as it cuts along my palm. I hear a snap, shut my eyes, and feel something strike me hard across the face. After my face is done stinging, I open my eyes.
There's blood running down my palm and my face in two fiery streaks, and the bowstring is dangling in two pieces. Barton's eyes are shut and his mouth is pressed so hard that I cannot see his lips.
"Give me the bow." I slap it into his hand before taking a look at my palm. There's a swath of skin missing, and there's blood welling up from it, like that time I'd tripped while running and skidded along the pavement. I can feel blood trickling across my lips and down my chin, too, but it's a different kind of pain-a slice rather than a throb.
Give me the spaghetti any day.
"You. Broke. My bow." Barton's eyes are open again and he's staring at the broken bowstring with a mix of horror and fury. Don't care. His bow, his problem. Just stick a new string on it and it's fine, right?
"Nat got me this as a birthday present." Oh, crap, really? Barton being mad I can stand, but what if Natasha hates me after this?
Barton hands me a bandage,-was he waiting for me to hurt myself?-turns around, and starts to walk towards the farmhouse, bow in hand. Aha! The opportunity I've been waiting for! I walk alongside him, reaching my hand into his pocket and transferring the contents to my own. It brings me a certain satisfaction to see him keep walking towards his house without even a glance towards or a patting of his pocket. Instead, he carefully lays the bow down on the farmhouse porch with a muttered 'I'll take a look at it in a minute' and we walk back towards the target.
"I'll choose a bow for you this time," he says, and spends several minutes glancing between me and the bows, occasionally taking one off of the rack and pulling it back before placing it down again. Finally, he chooses one and hands it to me. "I think this one is the right draw strength. And please, actually load an arrow this time."
I pull the bowstring back easily. Give me a break. I've been hauling myself up buildings routinely for the last three years, does he think I'm a weakling?
I fire the bow and hit the ring just outside the center of the target, but the arrow bounces off. Evidently Barton does think that I'm a weakling, because his eyes are wide as he takes the bow out of my hands. Soon he's back to looking at me, the bows, me, the bows, pulling one, putting it back down, repeat. He takes another bow and passes it to me, but this time I can barely pull the bowstring back. The arrow I fire off ends up hitting a rock with a horrible crack and Barton and I both leap into the air. Once again, the bow is taken out of my hands and deliberation begins again.
"Try this one." He shoves another bow into my hands and the first thing I notice is how well the grip fits into my hand. I fit an arrow to the string and pull back, the draw weight just hard enough for me to feel the tension without turning my arm to jelly.
I like this one.
I aim and fire, and the arrow hits the line between the center and the ring outside it. Maybe, just maybe, a bit closer to the center. I glance over at Barton, but his eyes are unreadable.
"Looks like we found you a bow, kid," he says quietly.
Yesterday, I probably would have guessed that Laura was okay, maybe not happy after that issue with the spaghetti, but certainly okay with me. Today, I have good reason to think that she despises me just as much as her husb-OH CRAP!
"This is just to test your gums. It isn't going to hurt."
Are you flipping kidding me? It's a sharp. Pokey. Metal. Object. Get it away from me!
Ow!
OW!
OW!
Several sharp pains my mouth later, the dentist leaves and I can hear her talking to Laura.
"Cavities...Some need to go...Can do it now..."
A different woman comes back inside with some sort of face mask attached to a tube.
"Ok, I'm going to put this over your-"
No.
I whack the mask out of her hand and pivot out of the chair.
The door is shut! And locked! What kind of a freak locks someone in a room with a woman carrying that-that thing?
"Listen, Sophia, this isn't going to hurt you either. It's so that we don't hurt you while we're getting rid of your cavities."
Oh. Is that all that is?
"My name isn't Sophia," I say as I creep back to the chair.
"That's what your guardian put on your forms."
What guardian? What forms?
Then that woman actually puts that mask on me and I forget about everything but trying to get it off.
"It's alright. Like I said, it isn't going to hurt you. Just breathe, ok?"
I breathe in and out several times and my head gets fuzzy. The woman takes it off and leaves, coming back with the first woman. They prop open my mouth and the dentist takes this metal-this pokey metal-this very pokey metal drill and puts it in my mouth!
"It's fine. After the laughing gas you won't feel a thing."
Do you mean the fuzzy feeling I got in my head? Because I am totally fine now. No longer fuzzy headed and-
AGH!
At my frenzied punching of the dentist's arms she takes the drill out of my mouth.
"Are you all right? Do you want me to get your mom?"
My mom is dead, stupid!
My mom is dead...
The other woman, not the dentist, frowns down at me. "I gave her the required dose, I can't understand why she's panicking."
Maybe because I could feel you boring holes in my mouth with that freakin' drill!
The dentist puts the drill back in my mouth and-
AAAAAAAAAAGH!
Out of my mouth. Again.
"What's the matter?"
"I CAN FEEL THAT! IT HURTS, YA-"
The dentist's head snaps up to the other woman.
"Where did you get the laughing gas?"
"In that-"
"Show me."
The two women leave and come back several minutes later. The dentist looks ready to scream and the other woman looks like she's about to burst into tears.
"Ok, Sophie, I'm really sorry about this, but we have to finish drilling this one cavity. After that we'll have to send you home for a while."
As it happens, I'm not three, but I let her talk down to me anyways. Always let the person with the wickedly sharp drill talk to you however they like.
I hold on tight to the armrests and the dentist turns the drill back-
AGH!
The next afternoon, Laura helps me drag myself into the car, my mouth full of metal and fillings and my head feeling like it's floating.
Laughing gas is not funny.
Still, I think I prefer it to nothing at all.
Well, there's the third chapter! Hope you all enjoyed!
And the whole lack-of-anesthetic-while-having-a-cavity-drilled actually has happened to me, sort of. My dentist and I found out the hard way that I do not respond properly to local anesthetic. Guess I get it from my dad. When I had to have more drilled, they pumped me so full of the stuff that I only felt a bit of a twinge, but it took hours for me to feel my face again. I don't think I'm going to give them a third go.
My previously-mentioned friends from AWANA spent part of that conference entirely confusing me about Spiderman. Thought he got his powers by being bitten by a radioactive spider, but then they started messing with my brain about 'Oh, he built this, no, he just can do it', so I've placed every single Spiderman movie on hold at the library. Of course, they have all of them but the first one. *sigh*
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