"What do you mean it's kind of fractured?!" Tony asked staring at my wrist like he didn't know what that meant.

"Is something wrong?" Steve asked coming up to us.

"No." I muttered, trying to pull my sweater further down over my wrist, looking for any kind of distraction.

Tony looked on the verge of exploding and I didn't like it. I quietly stepped out of arms reach, which unfortunately put me closer to Steve, but at least he seemed less susceptible to uncontrolled bouts of rage.

"She's injured," Tony fumed. "Again! and I'm getting grey hairs!" He ran a hand through his hair and a few notable lighter strands.

"That's just cause your old." Natasha said solidifying out of thin air. I jumped doing a 180 mid-air."What do you mean injured?"

"What's injured?" Steve asked, now focused on me, suddenly I was very aware of how close we were and how far away the door was. He noticed my glance towards it.

"It's nothing really," I mumbled. "Not really a problem at all."

Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Now he's angry too. Natasha was standing just to my side and looking very impassive, one eyebrow raised. I wanted to evaporate right there on the spot, just find a new home in the shaggy rug beneath my feet.

"What's fractured?" Natasha asked.

"Noth-"

"Don't say "Nothing really"." Natasha cut me off.

"Her wrist." Tony Answered.

"It's fine!" I protest.

"Whatever," Tony said, moving even closer. "Cho will be more than happy to fix said wrist."

"It'll take fifteen minutes and it could spare you from a lifetime of osteoarthritis. You don't get a say in this one."

"Does that imply I had a say in something else?" I asked myself. Everyone gave me a weird look. Oh, god why do I always stick my foot in my mouth?

"I don't know if I should ignore that or not," Natasha said grabbing my unbroken wrist and pulling me out of the hallway and into the elevator.

"Anything else hurt?" Cho asked. As she finished wrapping my wrist in a splint.

Oh, just my ribs, my head, my back, and my knee. "Nope, just the wrist."

"How'd it happen again?"

"I misjudged a jump off a rooftop and landed wrong."

"Like the time you were skateboarding?" She asked with a slight smirk. "You know back when I was your age I spent my time studying genetic regeneration...but I also didn't have any friends."

"That's alright I still don't have any."

"You sure?" She asked raising an eyebrow.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know, just seemed like might have a tower full of them. They're kind of fond of you." She pointed her tongue depressor at me, "Don't tell anyone I said that."

"Fond?"

"You know, affectionate, warm, having a liking for. They like you and I'm pretty sure they like it more when you stay uninjured."

"Well, I'm not dying. It's not really an injury."

Cho sighed. "I cannot tell you how deeply disturbing that is." I understood what she was saying in theory but for some reason, I had a hard time applying it to this picture I had. But all this chatter was nothing compared to the "talk" I got from Clint once I was done.

He was waiting for me outside of the med bay ever so calmly paying attention to his phone until I walked out.

"Everything good?" He asked Cho, notably not addressing me.

"Yeah, just a fractured wrist, she'll need to keep it stable and if it swells I just recommend ice." She turned to me. "No sparing until it's healed, and if you can use your left hand." I nodded, that would be easy, I'm mostly ambidextrous anyways one of the benefits of having regularly injured limbs.

With a nod, Doctor Cho re-entered her lab making me very aware that it was just me and Clint, a spy and assassin who was very good at hiding emotions and feelings.

"So, how bad was it Friday?"

"Hmm?" This one caught me off guard.

"You weren't out after Friday, so that brings me to the conclusion that this was acquired Friday, and since you have super healing therefore it was worse than you let on and this is just some of the slight side effects. So how bad was it?"

"I uh, it wasn't-"

"Kira, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just- I just- It was fine. It just didn't heal very fast."

His brows creased. "How much have you been eating?" I had a granola bar last night.

"What?"

"I know you need to eat a lot. Have you been eating enough, though? I know it affects how fast Steve and Bucky heal."

"I think so."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Uh- Breakfast?"

"Thought so. I think Banner made some bars specifically for Steve's metabolism. I'll get you some of those but in the meantime. Dinner and lots of protein."

He took me to the kitchen and proceeded to pull out a random variety of food, shuffling through some containers, smellings some, making a disgusted face then burying them at the back of the refrigerator. After sorting through the food he pushed an assortment of leftovers towards me.

"Eat, I'll go find some of those protein bars." And then he left, sparing me the awkwardness of forcing me to eat in front of him.

At first, I didn't really feel like eating any of it at all, but I knew I needed to be eating something when he came back so I just selected an egg roll from the pile and started eating, then the hunger from the past months or so caught up with me and I continued to eat. There was a lot of food and for the most part, I hadn't tried stuff like it before, for example, there was some type of Greek food, Curry and Thai noodles. All of it tasted good, not stale or old like some of the canned stuff I pilfered from the cabinet at my house.

How long had it been since I last had a full meal? I thumbed through my memory, It would have had t been sometime last week, though I had managed to steal a bit here and there and did tap into my stash, I never did like doing that. There was no telling when I would be able to fill it up again.

"So I talked to Bruce," Clint said, snapping me out of my haze as he entered the room holding a large box. "And he said you probably need to eat around five thousand calories on a normal daily basis, but when you're injured or exercising you need to up it to like seven thousand."

"Five thousand calories?!" I gaped. I don't think I could do three thousand calories even if I had that many to eat per day.

"Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Banner made these." He said tossing a bar at me. I caught it and turned it over. It was foil-wrapped but didn't have any kind of logo, just printed nutrition information and the flavor. It was coconut flavored, but best of all it had five hundred calories.

"Go ahead, you can eat it."

"Really?"

"Yeah, and you can have these too." He said dropping the box on the counter. "There are some different flavors, but they're all relatively the same. Steve and Bucky say the banana ones taste like crusty socks with sugar sprinkled on top, so I didn't get you any of those. And when you run out we can give you some more, just give Banner a heads up in advance so he can order some."

"Really?" I asked, almost unbelieving before I remembered I probably wouldn't live long enough to need a refill.

"Yep, I imagine trying to eat five thousand calories a day is exhausting. Especially since it needs to be mostly protein. I'm pretty sure your teeth would fall out " I nodded.

I peeled open the wrapper and inspected the bar. It looked like a typical cereal bar with chunks of coconut and chocolate distributed throughout. It tasted pretty good, like cereal but not as sweet and with more of a chewy texture. I could catch some hints of something tangy but didn't bother trying to figure out what they were. It tasted good and I didn't take long to finish the whole thing.

Once I was done eating I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do, but Clint took the lead and directed me down the hallway to what seemed to be a massive gaming room, with neon lights recliners and massive screens.

"Now I can properly beat you in Mario Kart and for the fifth time declare myself the reigning champion of said sport." He announced.

"The fifth time?" I asked.

"Yes, I've already declared victory over, Tony, Natasha, Sam, Rhodey, and Wanda, as well as Steve, but he was so lost I don't think it counted. He could probably do better now though."

I raised and eyebrow. "Wow, that's dedication." The sarcasm was not lost.

"Don't look at me like that. You look like Stark had a child and that might be the most terrifying thought I've ever had."

I couldn't help but smirk.

An hour later Clint was incredulous. "I thought you said you were good at this!" His car lapped mine for the second time and I was on the verge of just driving it into a wall, not that I hadn't already.

"I've never played before." I pushed a few new buttons and rocket launched myself into another kart.

I slowly maneuvered my kart back onto the track."How could you have never played before?"

"I don't own one."

"What about your friends?"

"Don't have any friends." He stopped playing and looked at me.

"How can you not have any friends? Your a very likeable person." Now I felt awkward, I didn't know why I said that. I just shrugged.

"Well, now you've got eight."

"Eight points?!"

"No!" He sighed dramatically. "Eight friends you morron, do I need to spell it out for you?"

Friend? Did he really consider me a friend? Wonder if he ever called someone else a friend before he ended up killing them.

"No, I got it. e-i-g-h-t."

He sighed again. "You're hopeless."

"I thought it was funny." I jumped and spun around, Wanda was standing behind me, elbows resting on the back of my chair. Somehow she had gotten there without any of my alarms going off. Apparently she wasn't the only one either, Bucky and Natasha had joined us. I hadn't seen much of Wanda recently she came and went sporadically, but everytime she left Vision dissapeared too.

"Here let me help you." Wanda said taking a seat next to me and directing my hand movements, so I would at least be pushing the right buttons. Natasha helped, by randomly flicking Clint in the back of the head. Bucky just watched. Not the screen his eyes spent a lot of time jumping around between person to person, but he spent a lot of time watching me in particular. Or maybe I was just paranoid. I accidentally made eye contact with him a few times, Though I quickly and awkwardly focused on the screen. It was probably pretty obvious that it was uncomfortable, but that might just be a me vibe, my Father was always telling me I looked like a mouse about to get emulsified by a school bus, he's creative like that.

That night I lay in bed staring at the water stained paint slowly flaking off the ceiling. It hadn't always been there I remember back when the paint had been fresh, then one day the rain had seeped through the roof with a slow drip, the next summer it was cracked, and then it began to chip slowly at first, but now sometimes the pieces of pant that fell off were as large as big as my fingers. It gave off a sense of inevitability and irreversibility.

Irreversible, that word gained a new meaning over the last few weeks. I'd made lots of irreversible mistakes and had tipped the hourglass with my last minutes in it. I could feel the grains sifting through as every second passed, ticking closer to my inevitable death, a literal deadline. No matter how many times I played out the scenario it ended the same way. There was no way I could escape this timeline, no way I could just leave all this behind. Unless I could, maybe I could. Next time my Father left I could too, and then when he got caught he wouldn't be able to chase me. The Avengers would for sure, but I would have a massive lead. I already had a fake I.D. It'd been my christmas present, it was still sitting in my closet unused. But if I left It'd mean leaving my father to die. I know I'd wished it before, but could I really just leave him knowing full well he'd be murdered.

If he lives more people will die, including you. A tear slid down my cheek. I knew I was being used, even if I couldn't admit it before, I didn't regret my decisions, not yet, for some reason I still enjoyed what happened, because it had been my choice for once.

The next day I gathered what little things I could take, a map, a few extra clothing items, my fake I.D., The money I would have to steal from the safe once the day of. All of this I stuffed into my ragged back pack and stashed under my floor boards, so It would be ready when the day came.

AUTHORS NOTES

I have amazing news guys! We broke 1k reads!! tysm :D

We are nearing the climax people!! And this is by far my favorite chapter, hope you enjoyed the banter. 

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