Updated 11/30/23
As always, I do not own Harry Potter or the Avengers. Lots of love, ~Auna.
I wake up to find myself lying in the most comfortable bed I've ever felt. The room is a little warmer than I'd like, but the comforter is a nice weight over my legs. Through a crack in the curtains, I can see the pink light of the sun coming up and jump out of bed. I nearly fall over when I hit the floor, because the bed is taller than I expected, but I find my glasses on the bedside table. Then I notice that I'm not wearing my dress from yesterday, but rather a large T-Shirt that says, when I hold it out and manage to read it upside down, "Sarcasm is just one of the many services I offer." I drop the shirt, which falls down to my knees, and smile as I make my way out of my new room and into the kitchen. My jaw hurts, I realize then, and I poke at it before I remember it isn't a bruise, I was just very angry yesterday.
There's a new table tucked up against the wall by the bathroom door with three mismatched chairs.
After assessing the limited supplies available in the kitchen, I decide to make an egg quiche for breakfast. About an hour later, after the pie crust has set and I'm finishing getting together the egg mixture, Miss Natalia comes out of her room, rubbing her eyes slightly and wearing an oversized T-Shirt like mine with a pair of baggy dark blue sweatpants. Her shirt says "Anything you can do, I can do bleeding" and I smile at it as I pour the egg mixture into the pie crust.
"Sorry breakfast isn't ready yet, I wasn't sure what time any of you would wake up so I decided to make something that would take a little longer." My voice is quiet, because Mr. Clint is presumably still sleeping, and Miss Natalia scares. "Sorry." I blush.
"No, it's okay kiddo. You just startled me a little." I turn around to put the quiche in the oven, and Miss Natalia makes a strangled sort of sound. "Jazz, tell me you haven't been cooking unsupervised, with the oven at 350 degrees!" I slide the pan into the oven calmly, so I don't get burned, and remember this time to push onto my tiptoes. Maybe if I ask, Mr. Clint and Miss Natalia would get me a stool? When the oven is closed and the timer set, I turn around.
"Well, I could but that would be a lie. And besides, it's not like it's the first time I've done this. I've been cooking and baking on my own for years. Although I might need a stool, your oven is a little bit taller than I'm used to."
"You-" Miss Natalia leans into the wall and stares at me for a moment before clearing her throat. "Okay, fine, but why did you think this was necessary?"
"What do you mean? It's the job of the youngest person in the house to cook all the food for meals." I'm confused at Miss Natalia's confused look.
"I, no sweetie it isn't. And besides, I'm going back out again in just a few minutes, and Clint isn't going to wake up until eleven unless someone comes to get him, so you'll be eating this all by yourself."
"I…" I look down at my hands, then up at Miss Natalia. "You mean, I don't have to cook breakfast every day?" Miss Natalia comes closer to me and kneels on the floor, taking my hands in hers.
"No sweetheart, you don't have to. In fact, I'd prefer it if you didn't, so you don't get hurt, okay?" One of her hands brushes some of the hair from my face.
"I wouldn't get hurt," I say softly, ignoring the urge to hug her for caring if I injured myself in the first place. "I've never hurt myself before."
"Mmmm, but you might, and I don't want that to happen, okay? So please, don't cook unless one of us is with you, okay?"
"Okay." I smile a little at her.
"Good girl." Miss Natalia leans forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. I blink as she stands up and walks over to the coffee machine in the corner. "Now," Miss Natalia turns the pot on and glances at me with a soft smile, "I'm headed out again in about twenty minutes, and a new Agent should be by to watch you about five minutes after that. Please, be good. Like I said, Clint will be asleep until eleven, so you'll only have whoever it is to watch you. Hopefully they'll be better than that dude from last night."
"He was a weirdo." I nod solemnly and Miss Natalia pulls a mug from the cupboard before joining in. She makes her coffee in silence and I work on cleaning the kitchen from the mess I made with breakfast.
"Steve is at his apartment, and you won't be able to see him for a while, but in a couple of days we might be able to organize a call." Miss Natalia interrupts the silence as I start washing the dishes. I smile down at the sponge and count the bubbles on my hand to keep from blushing.
"That would be nice." I finish up the bowl and set it next to the sink to dry, but Miss Natalia grabs a towel and dries it herself. I force myself to pick up the next dirty dish, although I'm too distracted to notice what it is.
"You know, you remind me a bit of myself when I was your age."
I look up at her as she puts the bowl away in the cabinet. "I do?"
"Mhmm. Although you're much more polite than I was." She raises an eyebrow at me, a light smirk tugging at her mouth.
I purse my lips indignantly and focus on scrubbing the dish in my hand. "There's nothing wrong with being polite. It might convince the person to do something nice for you later."
"Oh?" Miss Natalia's voice is light, almost like she's trying not to laugh, and I wonder if she's teasing me. Then I push the thought away, because I don't have time to drift off thinking.
"Of course! It's harder with all of you trained adults but I'm sure I'll manage." I don't look at her, fighting another blush at the fact that she managed to get a secret out of me.
"I'm sure you will too." A quick glance shows Miss Natalia carefully drying the pan with her lips twisted into a smirk. I ignore her while I finish washing the utensils.
When I'm finished and Miss Natalia has put away the last spoon, she grabs her coffee and a bag off the coffee table I didn't notice before. She opens the door with her foot, which looks awesome but also kind of awkward, and kicks it open the rest of the way.
"Remote's on the table, watch whatever you want and don't worry about the volume- Clint will sleep through it." She gives a nod to the television remote sitting on the table, then walks out the door and lets it fall closed behind her.
I frown just a little at the abrupt departure, but make my way around the couch to pick up the remote. It takes me a few minutes to find the right button, because I don't know what the power button looks like, and I resort to just poking all of them.
When I finally manage to turn on the TV, there's a man in his early twenties standing in front of a table covered in different objects, some of which I recognize from Fury's toolbelt. I sink down onto the couch and press more buttons to unmute the TV.
"...most essential things for survival. There are many different types of matches, and some can only be lit by striking the match roughly on the side of the box. Other types of matches can include strike anywhere matches, which can be lit by dragging the head of the match on almost any surface. To figure out what type of matches you have, simply attempt to strike one against a surface. This, if the match is strike anywhere, will turn the red phosphorus on the match head into white phosphorus, which ignites when in contact with oxygen and your match will light. If the match is not, nothing will happen."
"Huh." I watch the young man on the screen demonstrate and then remember the small matchbox in one of the drawers in the kitchen. I wonder if they are strike anywhere matches? With a quick glance at Mr. Clint's door, I jump up from the couch and into the kitchen. The matchbox is right where I remember, and I pull one of the matches out. Taking a deep breath, I push it firmly onto the counter with the match and pull sharply. The match breaks. I frown at it, and then sweep the broken bits into the trash can and prepare to try again. It takes me four matches before I light one successfully on the counter, and I grin at the fire.
I turn around quickly, intent on waking up Mr. Clint to show him the fire, but discover a new Agent standing right in front of me. I inhale sharply, and in the next second process two things: Agent 3 is wearing copious amounts of perfume, and perfume is extremely flammable. The fire lights the perfume cloud, and Agent 3's long blond hair is ignited along with it. She screams, and I drop the match on the floor. It goes out, but Agent 3's hair does not. She is still screaming, turning in circles and trying to put her hair out.
Mr. Clint comes running out of his room, and sees me staring at Agent 3 helplessly as she frantically tries to smother the fire burning her hair. He makes it over to the fire hydrant I hadn't noticed on the wall. Ten seconds later, Agent 3 is covered in fire hydrant fluff and Mr. Clint is laughing. Her hair, half burnt, full of white fluff, and slightly smoking, is a giant mess on top of her head, but otherwise she looks alright. I glance between her and Mr. Clint and try to figure out what to feel.
"You!" She points at me with a sharp fingernail. I absently note that it's an obnoxious violet color. "You lit me on fire!" I stare at her.
"Technically, she lit your hair on fire." Mr. Clint is attempting, and failing, not to laugh at her. I'm still staring in shock.
"I'm sorry. It was an accident," I say quietly.
"UGH! I'm done. Fury can find someone else to babysit you, brat!" Agent 3 turns on her heel to leave and trips over the couch, then hits her head on the coffee table. She scrambles to her feet, glares at the both of us (Mr. Clint is still trying valiantly not to laugh) and then marches out the door. As she steps outside, I note that the hallway ceiling is a lot lower than the ones in here. She slams the door shut, and the sprinkler system goes off in the hall. "ARGH!" Agent 3's angry, stomping footsteps sound all the way down the hall.
"Oh. My. Gosh." Mr. Clint starts laughing so hard he has to sit down. I can feel my lip quiver. "Kiddo, you-"
"I'm sorry." I sniffle quietly.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong? Jazz?" Mr. Clint quits laughing and scoots over to me. I clench my hands into my T-Shirt and close my eyes as the hot tears I tried so hard to hold back force themselves out. I give a hiccup and Mr. Clint pulls me into him gently. As he hugs me, I note that the guy on the television is still talking, this time about some sort of knife. I hug back tentatively.
"I hurt her. Even though it was an accident, she still got hurt because of me." Mr. Clint presses my face into his shoulder and my voice becomes muffled.
"Hey now, none of that. She's not hurt, alright? I know that woman, she's really nasty but when she gets injured she whines and cries about it, she doesn't get mad."
"But Agent 3 still lost her hair because of me! I lit her hair on fire!" Mr. Clint chuckles and pushes me back so he can wipe at the tears on my face.
"Agent 3?" He raises an eyebrow. I sniffle.
"Well, yeah. I already went through two agents yesterday. That was Agent 3. I've decided that, until they prove their mettle, they don't deserve their names, so I'm calling them by numbers."
"That, kid, is a fantastic idea." He grins at me, and I smile back a little. "And you know what? I just had a fantastic idea of my own." He pulls me into him and stands up. I'm a little surprised by how tall everything still is from Mr. Clint's height, because he's so much shorter than Mr. Steve. Mr. Clint walks over to the drawer with the matches and pulls out a sharpie pen. I frown at him as he walks over to my room, still holding me. Mr. Clint then opens the pen with one hand, and reaches up to draw a line, two inches long and slightly crooked, on the wall.
"Mr. Clint!" I shriek at him, and reach out to try and rub the marker off the wall, but it's too late. "You wrote on the wall! In permanent ink!"
"Yeah, it's to mark the first Agent you've gone through that you got rid of with fire."
"The first one!" I shriek, completely embarrassed.
"Well yeah, you're going to go through way more than this. And at least some of them have to leave because of fire. You're wayyyyy too fun for that not to be the case." He smirks at me, completely satisfied.
"And you are having too much fun for the situation." I jab a finger into his shoulder. I get the idea that I should not be the serious one.
"And you-" A knock on the apartment door interrupts him. Mr. Clint sets me down to go answer the door, and I hide behind the door to my room frame.
"Hello."
"Hello Agent Barton, I'm Agent Beaver." I glance around the corner to lay eyes on a middle aged man with thinning blond hair on his head. His hands are covered in scabs and calluses that I can see even from my vantage point.
"We've met."
"Great! Well, I'm assigned to a woman named Sophie Evans, Coulson refused to tell me more or give me a file and just directed me here. So, what am I supposed to do and who exactly is she?"
"That," Mr. Clint jerks a thumb over his shoulder at me, and I blush, "Is Sophie Evans." Agent 4 looked suitably puzzled.
"A child?"
"Yes." Mr. Clint is obviously unimpressed. I scoot out a little more and wave. "She goes by Jasmine."
"Oh." Agent 4 sounds faint while he stares at me. "And, umm, is that its middle name or-"
"She," I interrupt sharply, "Is right here and can answer for herself. I'm not some foreign animal, Agent 4. I'm a seven year old girl."
"Yes-yes, a child. A- A child?" He squeaks, turning faintly red now. Mr. Clint rolls his eyes dramatically and looks at me over his shoulder. He jerks a thumb at Agent 4 as if to say 'get a load of this guy.' I wince at him.
"Yes, Beaver. A child. Your job is to watch her, and make sure you're careful- Nat might not be here right now, but the kid set the last Agent in charge of her on fire."
"Agent Romanoff is absent?" He perks up, oblivious to the rest of the sentence. I halfheartedly glare at Mr. Clint, not that he can see. Mr. Clint groans and wipes a hand across his face before stepping away from the door.
"That's what I just said, isn't it? Now are you coming in or not?"
"Yes! Yes, I suppose I should enter." Agent 4 rubs a hand over his thinning hair and steps across the threshold as Mr. Clint takes a deep breath. I make a face at his idiocy.
"Now, you said I was to watch her, yes?" Agent 4 asks as Mr. Clint lets the door swing shut.
"Yes. You are, and make sure you're careful. Like I said, the last Agent who was assigned to her left on fire."
"Set on fire…" Agent 4 murmurs from where Mr. Clint left him standing in the doorway. I walk over and sit down on the couch while Mr. Clint makes himself a cup of coffee. I watch him over the back of the couch as he adds a fourth of a cup of creamer and no sugar, swirls the coffee in a mug that matches his dark grey pajama pants, and gives a nod of approval when he takes a sip.
Without another glance at either of us, although he ruffles my hair as he passes, Mr. Clint walks into his room and closes the door. I turn and stare blankly at Agent 4. The television is still running in the background, although it's playing an advertisement for one of those touch free faucets. I find the remote on the coffee table but don't bother changing the channel, instead muting the sound. Agent 4 finally seems to realize he's been left alone in a room with me the second the sound goes out, and clutches his hands anxiously in the baggy sides of his pants. I stare at him and he swallows.
Mr. Clint turns on the shower.
Someone a few floors above us flushes a toilet.
Three Agents pass through in the hallway, arguing loudly about who's going to pay for lunch this time.
Agent 4 finally decides to sit on the couch.
"Umm, the weather is… nice today." He tries to smile at me, but it's too shaky and forced to be effective. I frown at him. Agent 4 reaches into a velcro side pocket of his pants. "Do you, umm, like playing card games?" I blink, and continue frowning. Maybe I can intimidate him into leaving, like Mr. Clint did Agent 2? "Please don't," he laughs nervously as he holds a worn deck of cards out to me, "Please don't bite me, or anything weird like that. I can't afford to get rabies."
"I don't bite." I frown further. "And I don't have rabies, what is wrong with you?" I stand up from the couch and walk around to the television stand, intent on finding something interesting somewhere to entertain me, at the very least until Mr. Clint gets back out here.
The drawers have a few batteries and nothing else in them- at least, the ones I can unlock. The other two are locked up nice and tight, and I can only assume Miss Natalia had something to do with that last night. They must have knives in them or something. Her room is probably locked too. I guess I'm learning how to pick locks. I move on to the small accent bookshelf in the corner and start picking through the books.
"Do you require entertainment?" Agent 4's slightly timid, definitely confused voice, sound from his position on the couch.
"That depends." I yank out a book titled "The Great War" that has a faded maroon cover on it and flip through some of the pages before snapping it shut when I learn that the Great War was just World War I. The resulting cloud of dust makes me sneeze.
"On what?" I avoid rolling my eyes as I stack "The Great War" on the floor next to the shelf.
"On what I find-" I tug out another book from the stuffed bottom shelf, this one dark green and falling apart "-on this shelf." I flip the cover open and the first third of the book falls to the floor. I stare at it for a moment, then carefully move the yellowed pages inside the cover. My fingers rub at the dust and I see the silvery title of the book, some Russian looking words I don't recognize. The oven beeps just then signaling that the quiche is done.
I jump up from the floor and make my way into the kitchen, the second book abandoned by the first. Agent 4 is apprehensive as I calmly check that my breakfast is finished and then remove it from the oven with careful hands and two hotpads, a special luxury (Aunt Petunia only ever gave me two at a time: one for my hand and one for the counter). I place the steaming quiche on the counter to cool and set the hot pads next to it. Agent 4 is very pale when I turn around and return to digging through the bookshelf.
Fifteen minutes later, I've gone through all the books on the shelf and found nothing interesting enough to start reading. Mr. Clint hasn't emerged from his room yet, so I decide to eat my breakfast. Agent 4 continues to stare at me as I dig through the cabinets to find a serving spoon, a fork, and a plate. I ignore him. The spoon and fork are both in the drawer to the right of the sink, but the plates are in the top cabinet above the fridge and I'll have to climb on top of the counter to reach them. There's a string that dangles down so I can open the cabinet, but it must be intended for Mr. Clint and Miss Natalia- people tall enough to reach the plates inside with a little bit of help, but not to reach the handles stupidly placed at the top of the cabinet face rather than the bottom. Agent 4 clutches the throw pillow tightly as I pull one of the kitchen chairs up to the counter and step on top of it. When my T-Shirt comes up above my knees, I belatedly remember that I forgot to put on any pants. Then I remember that I don't have any pants yet, and this is going to have to work for a little bit.
"Do you require assistance?"
"Well," I grunt slightly as I reach my hands over the top of the fridge and start to pull myself up, "It would certainly have been nice a minute ago before I went to all this effort. Now, it's more of a," I pull myself up the last bit, "Lost cause." I'm panting, and take a moment to stare at the apartment from this new angle while I catch my breath. The ceiling fan, which I hadn't noticed before, hangs over the coffee table. The kitchen light fixture is within easy reach from my new perch atop the fridge. I can see everything going on in the apartment.
A click, then a soft thud sound in the wall somewhere, and I notice the air vent on the wall beside the fridge. It looks large enough that I could climb inside of it and crawl around. I bet even Mr. Clint could, despite his stocky shoulders. Then the air vent starts blowing on me. I wrinkle my nose and fetch my plate from the cabinet quickly.
A few minutes later, I'm happily munching on my breakfast at the kitchen table, and Agent 4 is sitting across from me in the third chair. I left the one next to the fridge where it was. When I finish eating my breakfast, I clean up my dishes and the rest of any mess I could have made in the kitchen. Mr. Clint is still in his room, and Agent 4 is staring at me like I'm some sort of alien, so I begin investigating the rest of the room.
Nothing of interest turns up in the couch, although there were a lot of crumbs from chips and popcorn, and three old television remotes, and I've just started digging through the drawer I found the matches in when Mr. Clint comes out dressed in the same uniform he had on yesterday.
"I'm going to head down and see if Coulson needs anything done for the day, and if not I'll probably stop by a few of the training rooms. Jasmine, would you like to come along?" Mr. Clint raises a pointed eyebrow at my hand in the drawer as he rinses his coffee mug in the sink. I blush and remove my hand, before realizing what he asked me.
"Tour the compound! Yes, I'm coming! Can we go now?!" I start jumping up and down at the thought.
"Yes, we can go now." Mr. Clint chuckles a little at me. "As long as that's okay with your babysitter." He glances at Agent 4. I roll my eyes and march up to the man, grab his hand and pull him towards the door.
"He's fine. Agent 4 is cooler than a cucumber, he doesn't care if I get a tour about my new home." I look back at him with false suspicion. "Do you, Agent 4?"
"No, umm, Sophie. I don't mind." Agent 4 seems to pale slightly, but I'm too excited at the prospect of exploring the compound to really care.
"Well then, in that case," Mr. Clint smirks at Agent 4, "Let's get going."
We march through a maze of halls and down three flights of stairs with Agent 4 trailing silently behind us. Mr. Clint tells me about a few of the rooms in a quiet voice. Most of them are just offices after we get past the apartment area, although a few are closets filled with supplies for different things ranging from mops to clean the floor to specialized weapons to disguises for undercover operations.
We pass through the offices section and enter a large cafeteria where Mr. Clint ignores everyone, and everyone ignores Agent 4. Apparently, he is not very popular among the crowd. The cafeteria has a bunch of glowing number 3's on all the concrete pillars, which extend up to showcase four stories of people walking around. Mr. Clint says that there are training rooms down some of the hallways away from this cafeteria, and the other floors above us have the same layouts as the one we were just on, for this side of the building at least. Mr. Clint offers to get a hold of a map for me when we get back to the apartment. On the other side of the cafeteria we enter what seems to be the new part of the compound. The walls are finished, and the outside walls are made of large glass windows. Everything has a modern office feeling instead of a 90's military compound made from concrete.
We get to the end of the hallway, where Mr. Clint remains mostly silent, and enter an elevator. The buttons tell us that there are nine floors, but Mr. Clint pushes the one and the five at the same time, and the lights inside the elevator turn blue as the doors close. There's no music in the elevator, but one of the walls is glass and I can look outside at the rest of the compound as we go up to floor fifteen. The people outside working on what I can only assume is an airstrip, which looks a little like what I would imagine an army base air strip to look like, begin to look more and more like busybody ants. The elevator gives a friendly ding as the doors open, and I hurry to follow Mr. Clint out.
We go straight down the hallway in front of us to the very end, then take a right and go down a secret staircase that Mr. Clint has to use a passcode to get through a big heavy door. The stairwell is dark and I can hear our footsteps echoing down a long ways. Three flights down, each one ten stairs and then a landing to turn around, we exit another heavy door into a bustling hallway. Four harried looking young adults rush past us to the other end of the hall, arms overflowing with papers and files.
An alarm sounds from one of the rooms where we start walking, but nobody reacts other than the obvious supervisor who starts yelling to turn the sound off. We walk past that room, its hallway walls made from glass, and past a few more until we reach a pair of double doors on the left side at the end of the hall.
Through them is a room as large as the cafeteria, although it's not four stories high, filled with Agents rushing around places, yelling to each other and passing things along. The chaos looks easy to get lost in, but Mr. Clint puts Agent 4's hand in mine and instructs the man to not, under any circumstances, let go of me. I pout as we follow Mr. Clint to the center of the room where Mr. Cou Cou from earlier is looking to be living up to his namesake. The calm way he instructs the other Agents in their task is crazy compared to the rushed and frazzled attitudes of the rest of them.
Mr. Clint walks carefully through the fray and I follow him, much to Agent 4's displeasure if the pressure he's putting on my hand is any indication. Mr Clint stands calmly next to Mr. Cou Cou and puts his hands in his pockets. Between one group of Agents and the next, Mr. Clint lets out a low whistle.
"Busy day today Coulson?"
"No, Agent Barton. It's Seniors Off day, so I've just got a bunch of hillbilly rookies attempting to learn things on the spot." The two watch a younger girl carrying a few too many files drop one and then trip at the front of the room. The coffee in her other hand leaps out of the cup and spills all over a stack of papers and a computer sitting on the edge of the desk nearest her. The papers from the desk fall down on top of her head. Before she can get up, another girl, also carrying too many folders, but not carrying any coffee, trips over her prone form and they create a pile on the floor. Three more paper loaded girls trip over them in the next thirty seconds, and the five of them groan to each other. Mr. Clint and Mr. Cou Cou watch them without expression, but I wince when they all land, and the five girls carefully get up and begin separating their papers. A sixth girl trips over the group of them a minute later, and then the four of us become distracted by another group of rookie Agents who need Mr. Cou Cou's assistance with something.
"-Walters set off-"
"-alarms everywhere-"
"-can't find the paperwork-"
"-Amy's missing still-"
All four of them are talking over each other about something that seems to be connected, but I can't catch enough to put together the problem. Mr. Cou Cou however, seems to understand just fine because he redirects them with ease and sends them in their way.
"No missions for you today, Barton. Romanoff should be back before the evening, and there's a card in your file in my office to take Sophie shopping for some of her own clothes and things."
"Thanks Coulson." Mr. Clint walks to Mr. Cou Cou's other side to leave through another set of open double doors, and I brush up against an oblivious Mr. Cou Cou as I pass him. His pocket is full of lots of goodies, including a set of tickets to a piano concert in a month and a key access card that says "Level Four Clearance" across the top. I feel bad about the piano tickets and resolve to find a way to return them later.
The hallway on the other side of the room is the same as the last one, and we walk down it to the end of the hall and take a left.
"This entire section of the compound is just a big square with the Central Control Room, where we just were, right in the middle." Mr. Clint explains as we take another left and find ourselves in the hallway we entered in the first place.
We go back to the elevator we first entered and go down to floor 8, where we walk down to the end of the hall and take a right again. "The obviously newer section of the building has all the higher ups offices and communication centers. The rest of the facility is to prepare Agents to go on missions, with training rooms and facilities, and also house us, with offices, housing, food and resource centers. Agent Coulson's office is on this floor, along with Maria Hill's- I'm sure you'll meet her soon. Fury's is a few floors up from here."
Mr. Clint walks quickly and deliberately through the halls, and I fight to keep track of the turns. Luckily there are no codes I need to know to get anywhere. Mr. Cou Cou's office is bland and boring, which is to be expected from such a calm, unruffled man, but honestly disappointing. Agent 4 keeps a hold of me outside the office, so I don't get the chance to sneak the concert tickets into a desk drawer or anything. Mr. Clint opens the third drawer on the furthest left filing cabinet and pulls out a file almost immediately. He flicks through until he finds a little plastic card which he slips into his pants pocket, and puts the file back. I pout at Agent 4 when Mr. Clint can't see. When we leave, Mr. Clint locks the door and then leads the way easily back to the elevator.
I guess I'll have to sneak back later and return the tickets. Agent 4 releases my hand when we get into the elevator, apparently satisfied that he doesn't have to keep direct contact with me while in a four by four foot metal box, and Mr. Clint's stomach makes a noise. I giggle, and he ruffles my hair playfully.
On the way back to the room, Mr. Clint let's me skip ahead of him down the hall and then run back. We take the long way, skipping the cafeteria, but end up taking a much more direct route through the offices and housing to get back. Mr. Clint lets Agent 4 inside but holds me back.
"Jazz, this door has a special knob on it that reads handprints when you grab it so the door knows if you're supposed to be let inside or not. Usually the computer system can just let people in if they're supposed to or not, but your hand isn't in the system yet so we have to scan it first."
"Okay!" I chirp, and Mr. Clint smiles at me a little.
"Place your hand here, the knob is going to heat up just a tad." He takes my wrist and carefully pressed my palm to the door knob. I wrap my fingers around and bite my lip against the sting when then metal gets hit against my hand. "Just another second, I know it's hot."
The metal flashes a bright green color before returning to normal, and then Mr. Clint releases my hand.
"Do all the doors in the compound have that?"
"No, just personal rooms on this side of the grounds. It's a slightly older piece of technology that we haven't been able to replicate in the new doorknobs just yet." He pushes me inside and I skip over to the kitchen stools.
"Well, I'm going to run out to Pablo's to get some pizza and I'll be back in about," Mr. Clint checks his watch for the time and I take the opportunity to glance at the oven clock and see it's about noon, "sheesh an hour."
"An hour!" Exclaims Agent 4, jumping up from the couch.
"Yes Agent 4, an hour. It's noon, everyone will be on their lunch break." Mr. Clint rolls his eyes. "I'll be back in an hour. Surely you can watch a nine year old girl for one hour?"
"I, umm, yes-yes I'm sure I can…" Agent 4 clearly believes he is not up to the task, but is also clearly not going to let Mr. Clint know that.
"Great! See you guys in an hour. Cheese, right J?"
"Yeah!" I think back to the pizza Mr. Steve and I ate the day before and fall into a daydream as Mr. Clint closes the door. Five minutes later, I'm hungry and bored so I decide to dig through the drawer I was going through before we left.
Aside from a few paper clips, safety pins and tape, there's a screw driver with a worn handle in the back of the drawer. With a glance over my shoulder at Agent 4, who is taking deep breaths on the couch, I wave the tool. "Can I play with this?"
"Ummm." Agent 4 snaps around and stares at the screwdriver. The Phillips head glints in the sunlight from the kitchen window. "Yeah, I don't know. So long as you don't break anything, I supposed it's fine?"
"Cool." I chirp happily at Agent 4. He turns back around and starts looking for the television remote. I climb back on top of the chair from earlier, and then the counter. By the time I'm on top of the fridge, Agent 4 has started flipping the couch cushions over. I snicker at the sight of the remote sitting on the coffee table right behind him, and then turn my attention to the vent on the wall.
The cover is held in place by just four screws, one in each corner. My new handy dandy best friend helps me get them off. As I'm working on the second screw, a bit of dust in my nose makes me sneeze. When I pull my face out of my left elbow, my eyes alight on the light fixture within easy reach. I take that out too, and set the lights on the fridge next to me. The rest of the vent comes off easily and I check that the tickets are still tucked safely in my boot where I put them earlier before crawling inside. There's so much room inside that I turn around and pull the vent cover back on. The dusty vent is not only big, but also dark. I crawl forward with my hands always further forward than my head to make sure I don't crash into anything by accident. When I reach the end of the tunnel and turn left, I hear Agent 4's victorious cry. He must have found the remote then.
I keep crawling through the vent slowly, the screwdriver making a screeching sound on the inside metal every little bit. By the time I've reached what I assume to be the hallway, and can see a vent opening to my far, far left, Agent 4 has figured out the television remote and I can hear him flicking through the channels. I keep crawling determinedly to the hallway vent opening and make it just after he settles on something I can no longer make out. I check the vent, and there seems to be no one in the hallway. The screws are useless from the inside, because I can just push them down with the butt of the screw driver.
The vent nearly clatters to the floor loudly, but I manage to catch it with two fingers and almost fall through to the floor. The screwdriver is not so lucky, and makes a tinny noise as it settles on the concrete. Carefully pushing myself back up, I turn the vent and slide it through to lay on the other side of the opening.
When I start to turn around again, intent on dangling my legs into the hallway, I sneeze. And fall through the vent, eight feet to the floor. My right hip lands right on top of the screw driver, and I groan at the feeling and the bruise I'm sure to develop in a few minutes. I simply lay on the floor and stare up at the little dust particles floating down from the vent for a few minutes and manage to sneeze two more times. Just as I'm about to sneeze a third, footsteps echo down the hallway and I scramble to my feet. The footsteps are getting closer, and I can't see any viable options around me. None of the doorknobs will let me in, and I can't go back into Mr. Clint and Miss Natalia's apartment, because Agent 4 is in there and he thinks I'm still with him. This is my only chance to return the tickets to Mr. Cou Cou. So, I do what any loving citizen would do in the face of danger. I run.
Surprisingly, I manage to make my way through the halls without much trouble, but the screw driver presents entirely too much entertainment. Nobody stops me along the way, because most of them don't see me, but I see screws everywhere. Absolutely everywhere! And I just have to unscrew them.
The access card from Mr. Cou Cou proves useful in getting his door open, and I place the tickets carefully on his desk. As I'm leaving again, I take note of the screws in the door hinge and smile to myself. Oh, this is going to be soooo fun.
They don't catch me until Miss Natalia and Mr. Clint get back around three thirty, but by then it's much, much too late.
So, I hope that's everything you wished for! Next chapter will start with the aftermath of this, which is definitely even more chaotic. Lots of love again! ~Auna.
PS we should be meeting Tony Stark in just a few chapters, and there may or may not be a scene where the two of them light a couch on fire...