Fic: Waiting Room [Avengers]
Title: Waiting Room
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Phil/Clint
Rating: PG13 [Themes]
Summary: Ororo remembers waiting.
A/N: More in
coffeesuperhero's fantastic Family Man series. Some family drama with an extra helping of Pheels.
It’s a memory Ororo carries with her throughout her life. Its edges become blurred, even as age and understanding make its meaning clearer, and she seems to learn something new every time her thoughts return to it.
She’s in second grade. She knows she should be paying attention to the teacher, but she’s staring out the window, watching the wisps of clouds swirl across the blue sky, thinking of the shapes she could will them into if she tried hard enough.
The door opens, and Ororo immediately snaps to attention with the rest of the class as the principal comes in, looking rattled. She tells the teacher something, quick and terse, and the teacher’s face pales.
In retrospect, she thinks they must have been warned. When she started at the school, they must have been briefed on the possibility that this would happen, that, one day, a stranger might come to collect her without explanation. They would have been prepared for something she never expected.
“Ororo?”
As one, the students turn to her. She’s already strange, with her pale hair and mysterious fathers, and now she’s being called on by no less a person than the school principal.
“Ororo, sweetheart,” the teacher says. “Pack your bag. There’s someone here to get you.”
She obeys quickly, shoving books and papers into her bright green backpack. She doesn’t remember what class she was in, what she was doing, what books she had, but she remembers that bag. Dad gave it to her, picked it out of a bin full of other backpacks, this atrocious bright green thing with purple zippers, because he knew she would love it.
She follows the principal into the hall, and there’s Aunt Nat, smiling the way she does when she has to make people believe that everything’s fine. There is a cut on her forehead with three tiny bandages, and Ororo can see an edge of white peaking out from the sleeve of her jacket.
Something has happened. Why is Aunt Nat here? Where are her dads?
Ororo can feel tears stinging her eyes. “Aunt Nat? What’s going on?”
She smiles, and Ororo wonders if it hurts to smile like that. “We have to go,” she says. “Your old man needs you.”
Daddy always laughs when Aunt Nat calls him “old man” and asks if dad will still love him when he’s wrinkly and arthritic. Ororo doesn’t understand why it’s funny until she herself is older, but it still makes her smile when dad says, no, he’s going to trade him in for a younger model.
She takes Aunt Nat’s hand and allows herself to be led through the school and into the bright, blinding sunshine.
She’s old enough to understand that her dads have a dangerous job, that being superheroes means real fighting with real bad guys who want to hurt them. It isn’t until she enters the chaos of a post-crisis SHIELD medical facility that she realizes she has only understood anything in the abstract.
This is the reality.
Through the maelstrom of screaming and blood and shouting doctors, Aunt Nat guides her to a single still beacon. Her dad is sitting on a bench against the wall, bent over with his head in his hands. His jacket is gone, his white dress shirt torn and stained with blood and ash. There is a moment, when Ororo first sees him, that she doesn’t recognize him, can’t match this battered man to the unflappable father who packed her lunch and gave her a hasty goodbye kiss only hours before.
Years later, Ororo will know this as the moment she first understands that her father is mortal, that she sees in him the humanity which she will one day so admire.
The sudden shift in paradigm is immediately overwritten by the simple understanding that her dad is upset, and she rushes forward, flinging her arms around him. He startles, but then he gathers her up, hugging her close. He smells the way daddy’s hero vest does sometimes: like smoke and dirt and electricity and awful things that Ororo doesn’t know the names for yet.
Dad sits back and looks at her, smiling and smoothing her hair. His eyes are red and tired and wet at the corners. “Hey, sweetheart. How was school?”
Ororo knows it for the deflection it is and won’t be fooled. “What’s going on? Where’s daddy?”
Dad flinches like she’s hit him. “He’s, um.... ‘Ro, your daddy.... You know we had to go fight some bad guys today, and Clint... he... he got hurt.” Dad looks away, like he doesn’t want her to see how scared he is, and that’s the scariest thing of all. When he looks back, though, he looks her straight in the eye, like she’s a grown-up and he knows she’ll understand. “He’s hurt very badly, and I don’t know if he’s going to be okay.”
It’s hard to hear, but she knows even now that sweet lies are worse than bitter truth. Slowly, deliberately, she nods. “Are you okay?” she asks.
He blinks and, just as slowly, shakes his head. “No, Ororo. I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
She puts her arms around his neck and hugs him as tightly as she can, because what else is there to do?
Hours pass, and the chaos slowly settles until the medical ward is quiet and calm. Ororo does her homework, reads, colors, plays games on the little device Uncle Tony gave her for her birthday, does more homework. Aunt Nat takes her to the bathroom, takes her to get food, takes her to see Uncle Bruce in one of the tiny white rooms. The Other Guy took some hard hits, so Uncle Bruce is a little woozy, but he smiles when he sees Ororo and lets her climb on the bed to hug him.
“It’s gonna be okay, honey,” he says, and Ororo nods like she believes him.
Through it all, her dad sits on the bench against the wall and doesn’t move.
She doesn’t know what time it is when the doctor comes to talk to dad, but everyone looks anxious and exhausted, even Aunt Nat.
“Agent Coulson?”
Her dad stands up so fast, he knocks one of Ororo’s books to the floor. He looks down, startled, and immediately kneels to pick it up. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
She tries to give him an encouraging smile, but he doesn’t see it as he turns back to face the doctor.
She doesn’t understand most of the words they’re saying, but she understands the deepening lines between dad’s brows. She doesn’t know what intracranial bleeding means, but she knows what it means when dad thumbs at the gold ring around his finger.
She remembers wondering, with strange dispassion, what will happen if daddy dies. Will they put his body in the ground beneath an endless row of simple white stones? Will there be something on the news like there was when everybody thought Mister Bucky was dead? Will dad marry someone else? Will they move? Preeti Shankara’s mom died and her dad married someone else and they moved to Vancouver. Ororo doesn’t want to move to Vancouver; she just wants her daddy.
“Can I see him?” dad asks, and there’s something in his voice that Ororo’s never heard before, something that makes her want to cover her ears and sing songs to herself until it goes away.
The doctor shakes his head. “Not yet, I’m sorry. We’ll let you know as soon as we have something.”
He leaves, and dad just stands there for a moment, staring. Ororo thinks that he looks lost. When he sits again, it’s like he can’t hold himself up anymore.
Ororo is suddenly very afraid.
“Daddy?”
When he looks at her, his blue eyes are blank and shining. He starts to talk, but it’s like the words are stuck in his throat. He puts a hand on her head, smoothing back her hair, and looks away. It’s only when Ororo climbs once again into his lap and puts her arms around his neck that he draws a sharp, shuddering breath and begins to cry.
She will see him cry again on her wedding day, and not once in between or after.
She falls asleep tucked against him, his heartbeat strong and comforting in her ear, and she stirs only a little when she’s lifted up and carried away in a pair of massive arms that smell of leather and lightning.
She has nightmares she can’t recall and wakes up tired, blinking against the bright sun streaming through her bedroom window.
At first, she doesn’t remember the medical ward and the waiting, and, when she does, she thinks maybe it was a dream. She’s still wearing her clothes, though, so dad must have brought her home, but he wouldn’t leave daddy, so maybe....
She goes running down the hall in her bare feet, heart pounding against her ribs. They’re home. Daddy’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.
She smells coffee, strong and sharp, the way dad likes it, and bolts toward the kitchen.
“Dad?” she calls. “Daddy?”
She skids to a halt on the tile floor.
Aunt Pepper and Uncle Tony are sitting at the table. Her dads are nowhere to be seen, and the reality of their absence is suddenly too much.
Ororo bursts into tears.
She remembers Aunt Pepper hugging her, comforting her. She remembers hot chocolate and donuts and a look on Uncle Tony’s face that she’s never seen before.
She looks him in the eye, the way dad does when he needs to tell her something serious, and asks, “Is my daddy gonna die?”
Aunt Pepper puts a hand on her arm and says, “Of course not, honey. He’s going to be fine.” But Uncle Tony just stares back at her, thinking.
After a moment, he leans forward on the table and gives her half a smile. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met your old man?” Ororo shakes her head, and his smile widens. “Well, you know Thor has that crazy brother nobody likes to talk about?” Ororo nods. “Yeah, he’s a jerk. So he shows up one day and decides that he wants to take over the world, and he used some magic mind control to make Clint help him. And for, like, three days, this bad guy’s got your old man under his thumb, running him around, making him do these really terrible things. Your Aunt Natasha got him back, though, with her scary powers of beating up people, and do you know what the first thing he did was?” Ororo shakes her head. “After three days of no sleep and having his head messed with, your dad suits right back up and rides out with the rest of us to save the world. Now, I’m out there with my armor, and we’ve got super strength and super powers and super whatever-the-hell-Natasha has. But not Clint. No way. Clint’s just this regular guy, and he’s going up against, literally, alien hordes with nothing but good eyesight and a bunch of pointy sticks. And he’s winning.”
He pauses, and what he’s saying doesn’t fully sink in until many years later, when she considers her father and his place among the heroes of this world. It’s not until she knows what it is to fight beside those who have nothing but their skills and courage that she understands what a truly uncommon man he is.
“I won’t tell you he’s gonna be fine. Because I honestly don’t know, and you’re too smart for that, anyway,” Uncle Tony goes on. “But I will tell you that I’ve known Clint Barton for a long time, and if it came down to a fist fight between him and the Grim Reaper, I’d put every last dime I have on Clint.”
Ororo considers this and replies, “That’s a lot of dimes.”
Uncle Tony grins. “Yeah, well, Clint would probably put them in a sock and hit me with it. And then, I don’t know, buy candy bars for orphans, or whatever he does when he’s not being an Avenger.”
Ororo sips at her hot chocolate and doesn’t cry. “Is dad still at the hospital?”
Uncle Tony’s smile tightens, but it’s Aunt Pepper who says, “I don’t think anything could drag him away.” She shares a look with Uncle Tony that Ororo will one day remember as... full. “When you finish breakfast and get cleaned up, we’ll go see them, okay?”
Dad is in the same place, still sitting on the bench against the wall. Ororo wonders if he’s moved at all.
Uncle Steve is next to him, talking quietly. Dad is listening, but he’s looking away, his jaw tight.
“...know this is hard, but we have to be prepared,” Uncle Steve is saying. “Phil, if he doesn’t-”
“I’m not giving up on him, Captain. Not yet. And I’m disappointed that you are.” Dad’s voice is cold and hard, something Ororo has never heard, and Uncle Steve looks stricken.
“No one’s giving up. I just....”
“There are provisions in his medical file that will suffice until such time as a final decision is necessary,” Dad snaps. “I will discuss this if and when that necessity arises and not a moment before. Do I make myself clear?”
Ororo’s never heard him talk to anyone like that, much less Uncle Steve, but Uncle Steve just frowns and turns away. He sees Ororo and smiles, kneeling to give her a hug. “How’re you holding up, weather girl?”
Daddy and Uncle Steve are the only ones who call her that, and it makes her chest hurt a little bit.
“I’m kinda scared,” she admits. “What’s dad angry about?”
Uncle Steve sighs again. “He’s scared, too. Your daddy’s not doing too good.”
“What does that mean?” she asks. “Dad said he got hurt, but what’s wrong? Why can’t they fix it?”
“I.... “ He gapes at her blankly, and she knows that this is one of those questions that grown-ups never know the answer to.
“Some things can’t be fixed,” Aunt Pepper tells her gently. “And sometimes doctors just don’t know how to fix them.” She crouches down next to Uncle Steve and looks Ororo in the eye. “Ororo, Clint got hurt very badly. He got hit in the head, and that kind of thing can be hard to take care of. There are a lot of things that could happen, and the doctors aren’t sure how to help him.”
Ororo remembers Uncle Steve teaching her to play catch. She missed, and the ball hit her square in the forehead. She’d fallen over, blinking away the little bright spots that exploded in her vision. She wonders if it was like that for daddy and thinks it must have been a thousand times worse.
She extricates herself from Uncle Steve and Aunt Pepper and goes to sit on the bench next to her dad. He puts his arm around her silently, and she folds in against his side. If they’re going to wait, then they’ll wait together.
The doctors give them one of the tiny white rooms to wait in. Aunt Nat brings Ororo her homework from school, Uncle Tony brings pizza, and it seems like everyone in or related to SHIELD and the Avengers comes and goes in an endless cycle of comfort and condolences. Dad nods and tells them thank you and answers all their questions politely with, “We don’t know anything yet.”
He doesn’t cry, his voice doesn’t shake, and, as long as someone else is there, he seems worried but hopeful. It’s only in between the well-wishers that he looks exhausted and lost. Ororo is proud of him.
The doctor comes again, and this time Uncle Steve and Uncle Nick come with him. Aunt Nat appears behind them and gestures to Ororo. “Come on, ‘Ro. These guys need to talk for a minute.”
Ororo looks to her dad. He nods, but he’s looking at Uncle Steve. “Go with Natasha, sweetheart.”
She goes into the hall, and, as the door shuts, she hears the doctor say gently, “I’m afraid we need to talk about worst case scenarios.”
Uncle Bruce and Uncle Tony are standing in front of another door, talking. “...running out of options,” Uncle Bruce is saying. He sounds tired. “The longer they wait, the more dangerous it’ll be to try anything, and even if it works....”
“Yeah,” Uncle Tony says. “I know.”
They’re talking about daddy, she realizes. They’re talking about daddy, and he must be there, behind that door, in one of those tiny white rooms. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s gone, and they just don’t want Ororo to know. But she has to know. She has to see. She has to understand why everyone’s so tired and scared.
She wrenches away from Aunt Nat and ducks behind Uncle Bruce. Aunt Nat calls out, but her hand is on the door, is pushing it open. She rushes into the tiny white room and stops dead.
The man in the bed is not her father. Her father is tall and strong, with big hands and a bright smile. This man is ordinary and broken. There are white bandages and shining metal bars and plastic tubes everywhere, caging him in. Her father is handsome. He’s a dashing superhero. He’s the world’s greatest marksman. This man looks old and fragile. His eyes are shut and framed by a bandage on his forehead and a terrifying plastic mask on his mouth, as if the ephemera of modern medicine are creeping in on him, conspiring to keep his sharp eyes closed forever.
Ororo can’t breathe.
Someone takes her arm, starts to pull her away, but she can’t go. She has to understand.
“Don’t,” Uncle Tony says. “If she wants to see, let her see.”
The hands holding her let go, and she takes a few, unsteady steps forward. Uncle Tony comes up behind her and lays a hand gently on her head. Ororo stands silently, studying the figure in the bed.
She doesn’t remember the moment that it clicks. All she remembers is that, in the space of a heartbeat, she goes from staring at a stranger to looking at her father, battered and broken and all too still.
“Daddy?”
One big, strong hand is resting on the white sheet beside him, and she wraps her tiny fingers around it. She wants to shake him, to scream at him, to jump on the bed. He’s too quiet. Daddy’s never quiet. He’s always talking and laughing and teasing and telling stories. He never stops moving, never stops being awake and alive, and now he’s just... not.
She looks up at Uncle Tony, and she can feel the tears stinging in her eyes. She tries to find words, to form a question, but there are no questions left. Uncle Tony smooths back her hair and gives her a sad smile.
He understands. She won’t fully know why until years later, but he understands.
Finally, she finds the question she wants, but she has to force it out through this horrible feeling in her throat. “Can I stay here?”
Uncle Tony shakes his head. “Sorry, kid. The doctors are still trying to make him better.”
She nods solemnly and turns back. She heard somewhere that you can talk to really sick people, even if they’re sleeping, and sometimes it helps. She thinks it’s probably not true, but she takes a deep breath, anyway. “Daddy? Can you.... You probably can’t hear me, but I... um....” Even to her own ears, her voice sounds small and trembling, but she presses on, determined. “Daddy, you need to wake up. Dad’s really upset, and I can’t.... He needs you, okay? And you gotta go on the field trip next week, ‘cause you said on the paper that you’d go, and if you don’t then... then.... Daddy, you promised. You promised you’d go, and you promised dad that you were gonna be together forever. You said so, and you gotta... you gotta.... Daddy, please.”
There are tears streaming down her face, and the horrible feeling in her throat is getting tight and bitter. She tries to swallow it, force it down, but she just cries harder. Her chest hurts, her eyes hurt, her skin hurts, and she can’t stop crying. She’s shaking so hard, it feels like her insides are rattling loose, banging against her ribs. Uncle Tony picks her up and carries her away, rubbing circles on her back and whispering gently into her hair, but it doesn’t matter. He can stop her shaking, but he can’t stop the twisting, drowning feeling in her stomach.
They will tell her later that she cried for a solid hour, that she made herself sick and threw up in a trash bin and then went right on sobbing. All she knows is that she cries herself to sleep.
She wakes up, just for a moment. Her dad is holding her, and it’s the soft roll of his voice that has woken her.
“Whatever you have to do,” he’s saying, and she can’t see who he’s talking to. “If it doesn’t work, and he’s not.... We’ll deal with that, but for now, just.... Whatever it takes.”
He smooths back her hair and and kisses her forehead, and she drifts back to sleep.
It’s an experimental procedure. It’s been done once, maybe twice, in the whole world. Ororo will never understand exactly what it is that they do to save him, but she knows it’s the most desperate of measures. She knows that it takes seven hours, most of which she sleeps through.
She knows that at 1:13 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Clint Barton dies. His heart stops, and he is dead on the table for exactly 46 and one half seconds.
She knows that her dad holds her close through all of it, until at last Uncle Bruce comes in. He looks like he’s one good yawn from falling over, but his exhausted smile is genuine.
Uncle Thor is snoring in one of the chairs, and Uncle Steves kicks his foot to wake him. Dad’s arm around Ororo tightens, and Ororo holds her breath, waiting.
“It worked,” Uncle Bruce says. “It’ll be a long time before he’s back in top form, but it worked. He’s gonna be fine.”
She remembers the change from one moment to the next like a plunge into cool water after a suffocating heat. There is a sound as everyone breathes at once.
“There could be some....” Uncle Bruce hesitates, glancing at dad. “We won’t know until he wakes up what kind of... long term damage there is. He might be missing a few things, and memory will probably be pretty fuzzy for a while. All the important bits look good, though, so he’ll still be, y’know, the loud-mouthed smart-ass we all know and tolerate.”
“I’m gonna tell him you said that,” Uncle Steve says, grinning.
“Tony’s words, not mine,” Uncle Bruce replies. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a shower and spend some time reflecting on the power of medical advancements. By which I mean sleeping. For days.”
“Thank you,” dad says, holding Ororo tighter. “Thank you.”
Uncle Bruce waves as he turns away. “You should have a shower yourself, Coulson. You smell like Steve’s gym bag.”
He does smell a little, but Ororo doesn’t care. She feels like she’s been wrapped up tight in something hot and scratchy, and suddenly it’s gone. She’s slowly re-adjusting to the feeling that her world isn’t crashing down around her.
Dad hugs her close and rests his face against her head. If there are tears in his eyes, no one says anything.
“Valhalla has been cheated this day,” Uncle Thor declares, “and this world is better for it.”
“Amen,” Uncle Steve agrees. He catches Ororo’s eye and winks. “Your old man’s a tough one, weather girl.”
She grins back at him and says, “Damn straight.”
Uncle Steve laughs, but dad pulls back, looking shocked. “Ororo Munroe.”
She ducks her head, trying to hide her smile. “Sorry, dad.”
“No, you’re not,” he sighs. “Bruce is right, though, I am a little... stale. Why don’t you go with Uncle Thor and tell everybody the good news?”
Ororo gives him a kiss on the cheek and climbs off of the hospital bed. She shrieks as Uncle Thor sweeps her up onto his massive shoulders, and they’re off on a victory tour of the facility. Uncle Thor even makes up a song about how daddy is too smart for Death to catch him. Ororo sings along with the chorus.
It’s another two days before they can see daddy, but the waiting is easier. Dad still doesn’t leave the hospital, but, when Ororo comes back in the morning, he’s wearing different clothes and looks like maybe he slept a little. He goes over her homework with her, and he sounds more like himself, her kind and fearless father, even if the edge of exhaustion is still there.
“You’ve been very brave,” he tells her softly, looking her in the eye. “Thank you.”
When she is twenty-nine and still recently wed, something goes awry on an Avengers outing and T’Challa is injured. Not nearly so bad as this, but badly enough to frighten her, to keep her anxious and pacing and unable to rest until they tell her he will heal. Her fathers are with her through every second. Daddy makes sure that she eats and drinks and talks to her, keeping her from being lost in the shadows of her own mind. Dad just sits beside her and holds her hand.
It is only then that she understands what he is thanking her for now.
“I don’t feel very brave,” she admits. “I cried when I saw daddy.”
Dad smiles and smooths back her hair. “Being scared doesn’t mean you’re not brave, and neither does crying. It’s what you do when you’re done crying that matters.”
She thinks about it, and maybe it makes sense. “What are you supposed to do after you cry?”
“Get up and keep going.” His smile is suddenly sad, and he looks away from her. “I think maybe you’ve been braver than I have.”
He’s the bravest person she knows, so she’s not entirely sure what to think of that.
When Aunt Nat finally comes to tell them that daddy is awake, she’s smiling for real, and dad’s hands are shaking.
“The doctor says one at a time though,” she says, and Ororo gives her dad a shove.
He looks at her, puzzled, and she rolls her eyes and points to the door. “Go!”
Aunt Nat shakes her head, laughing. “Listen to the lady, Coulson. You’ve got about five minutes to be a sap before he passes out again.”
Dad gives them both a glare, but he doesn’t argue. Once he’s gone, Ororo asks Aunt Nat anxiously, “He’s gonna be okay?”
Aunt Nat nods. “He’s gonna be okay.”
When it’s Ororo’s turn, she goes into the tiny white room to find dad bent over daddy’s hospital bed. Most of the tubes and metal bars are gone, and she can see daddy’s face, his blue eyes open. Their fingers are laced together, and their heads are close. They’re not talking, just looking at each other, but there’s so much in that look that Ororo can almost hear it echoing off the walls. For the first time, she watches them and thinks, not just that they are her parents, a unit, but that they are two halves of something greater, and she’s lucky to belong to them.
Daddy sees her, and a wide, familiar grin breaks on his face. He lifts his hand, still caught up in dad’s, and gestures her forward. She rushes to him and slips in between them so that she can put her arms carefully around his neck. She can feel him smiling against the side of her face.
“Hey there, weather girl.” His voice is rough and quiet, so soft she can hardly hear it, but it’s him.
“Hi, daddy.”
“S’good to see you,” he says, and it sounds like he’s fighting for the words. She thinks about what Uncle Tony said, though, and knows that he’s always fighting for everything. “Heard you took care of your dad.”
“She did,” dad answers, wrapping an arm around Ororo. “Couldn’t have done it without her.”
Something tight and brittle breaks off in Ororo’s chest, and she feels suddenly, overwhelmingly safe.
“Well, somebody had to,” she says, and daddy grins.”But you gotta get better now, ‘cause that’s your job.”
Daddy doesn’t laugh. He stares past her, and she knows that he and dad are looking at each other. She can feel the weight of it around her, like a warm rain that makes everything new and clean.
“Well,” dad says, “she’s not wrong about that.”
Ororo will remember this, and, one day, she will know that this moment, this flicker of hope after so much horror, is when she finally, truly begins to understand what it is to be a hero.
Fandom: The Avengers (2012)
Pairing: Phil/Clint
Rating: PG13 [Themes]
Summary: Ororo remembers waiting.
A/N: More in
coffeesuperhero's fantastic Family Man series. Some family drama with an extra helping of Pheels.
It’s a memory Ororo carries with her throughout her life. Its edges become blurred, even as age and understanding make its meaning clearer, and she seems to learn something new every time her thoughts return to it.
She’s in second grade. She knows she should be paying attention to the teacher, but she’s staring out the window, watching the wisps of clouds swirl across the blue sky, thinking of the shapes she could will them into if she tried hard enough.
The door opens, and Ororo immediately snaps to attention with the rest of the class as the principal comes in, looking rattled. She tells the teacher something, quick and terse, and the teacher’s face pales.
In retrospect, she thinks they must have been warned. When she started at the school, they must have been briefed on the possibility that this would happen, that, one day, a stranger might come to collect her without explanation. They would have been prepared for something she never expected.
“Ororo?”
As one, the students turn to her. She’s already strange, with her pale hair and mysterious fathers, and now she’s being called on by no less a person than the school principal.
“Ororo, sweetheart,” the teacher says. “Pack your bag. There’s someone here to get you.”
She obeys quickly, shoving books and papers into her bright green backpack. She doesn’t remember what class she was in, what she was doing, what books she had, but she remembers that bag. Dad gave it to her, picked it out of a bin full of other backpacks, this atrocious bright green thing with purple zippers, because he knew she would love it.
She follows the principal into the hall, and there’s Aunt Nat, smiling the way she does when she has to make people believe that everything’s fine. There is a cut on her forehead with three tiny bandages, and Ororo can see an edge of white peaking out from the sleeve of her jacket.
Something has happened. Why is Aunt Nat here? Where are her dads?
Ororo can feel tears stinging her eyes. “Aunt Nat? What’s going on?”
She smiles, and Ororo wonders if it hurts to smile like that. “We have to go,” she says. “Your old man needs you.”
Daddy always laughs when Aunt Nat calls him “old man” and asks if dad will still love him when he’s wrinkly and arthritic. Ororo doesn’t understand why it’s funny until she herself is older, but it still makes her smile when dad says, no, he’s going to trade him in for a younger model.
She takes Aunt Nat’s hand and allows herself to be led through the school and into the bright, blinding sunshine.
She’s old enough to understand that her dads have a dangerous job, that being superheroes means real fighting with real bad guys who want to hurt them. It isn’t until she enters the chaos of a post-crisis SHIELD medical facility that she realizes she has only understood anything in the abstract.
This is the reality.
Through the maelstrom of screaming and blood and shouting doctors, Aunt Nat guides her to a single still beacon. Her dad is sitting on a bench against the wall, bent over with his head in his hands. His jacket is gone, his white dress shirt torn and stained with blood and ash. There is a moment, when Ororo first sees him, that she doesn’t recognize him, can’t match this battered man to the unflappable father who packed her lunch and gave her a hasty goodbye kiss only hours before.
Years later, Ororo will know this as the moment she first understands that her father is mortal, that she sees in him the humanity which she will one day so admire.
The sudden shift in paradigm is immediately overwritten by the simple understanding that her dad is upset, and she rushes forward, flinging her arms around him. He startles, but then he gathers her up, hugging her close. He smells the way daddy’s hero vest does sometimes: like smoke and dirt and electricity and awful things that Ororo doesn’t know the names for yet.
Dad sits back and looks at her, smiling and smoothing her hair. His eyes are red and tired and wet at the corners. “Hey, sweetheart. How was school?”
Ororo knows it for the deflection it is and won’t be fooled. “What’s going on? Where’s daddy?”
Dad flinches like she’s hit him. “He’s, um.... ‘Ro, your daddy.... You know we had to go fight some bad guys today, and Clint... he... he got hurt.” Dad looks away, like he doesn’t want her to see how scared he is, and that’s the scariest thing of all. When he looks back, though, he looks her straight in the eye, like she’s a grown-up and he knows she’ll understand. “He’s hurt very badly, and I don’t know if he’s going to be okay.”
It’s hard to hear, but she knows even now that sweet lies are worse than bitter truth. Slowly, deliberately, she nods. “Are you okay?” she asks.
He blinks and, just as slowly, shakes his head. “No, Ororo. I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
She puts her arms around his neck and hugs him as tightly as she can, because what else is there to do?
Hours pass, and the chaos slowly settles until the medical ward is quiet and calm. Ororo does her homework, reads, colors, plays games on the little device Uncle Tony gave her for her birthday, does more homework. Aunt Nat takes her to the bathroom, takes her to get food, takes her to see Uncle Bruce in one of the tiny white rooms. The Other Guy took some hard hits, so Uncle Bruce is a little woozy, but he smiles when he sees Ororo and lets her climb on the bed to hug him.
“It’s gonna be okay, honey,” he says, and Ororo nods like she believes him.
Through it all, her dad sits on the bench against the wall and doesn’t move.
She doesn’t know what time it is when the doctor comes to talk to dad, but everyone looks anxious and exhausted, even Aunt Nat.
“Agent Coulson?”
Her dad stands up so fast, he knocks one of Ororo’s books to the floor. He looks down, startled, and immediately kneels to pick it up. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
She tries to give him an encouraging smile, but he doesn’t see it as he turns back to face the doctor.
She doesn’t understand most of the words they’re saying, but she understands the deepening lines between dad’s brows. She doesn’t know what intracranial bleeding means, but she knows what it means when dad thumbs at the gold ring around his finger.
She remembers wondering, with strange dispassion, what will happen if daddy dies. Will they put his body in the ground beneath an endless row of simple white stones? Will there be something on the news like there was when everybody thought Mister Bucky was dead? Will dad marry someone else? Will they move? Preeti Shankara’s mom died and her dad married someone else and they moved to Vancouver. Ororo doesn’t want to move to Vancouver; she just wants her daddy.
“Can I see him?” dad asks, and there’s something in his voice that Ororo’s never heard before, something that makes her want to cover her ears and sing songs to herself until it goes away.
The doctor shakes his head. “Not yet, I’m sorry. We’ll let you know as soon as we have something.”
He leaves, and dad just stands there for a moment, staring. Ororo thinks that he looks lost. When he sits again, it’s like he can’t hold himself up anymore.
Ororo is suddenly very afraid.
“Daddy?”
When he looks at her, his blue eyes are blank and shining. He starts to talk, but it’s like the words are stuck in his throat. He puts a hand on her head, smoothing back her hair, and looks away. It’s only when Ororo climbs once again into his lap and puts her arms around his neck that he draws a sharp, shuddering breath and begins to cry.
She will see him cry again on her wedding day, and not once in between or after.
She falls asleep tucked against him, his heartbeat strong and comforting in her ear, and she stirs only a little when she’s lifted up and carried away in a pair of massive arms that smell of leather and lightning.
She has nightmares she can’t recall and wakes up tired, blinking against the bright sun streaming through her bedroom window.
At first, she doesn’t remember the medical ward and the waiting, and, when she does, she thinks maybe it was a dream. She’s still wearing her clothes, though, so dad must have brought her home, but he wouldn’t leave daddy, so maybe....
She goes running down the hall in her bare feet, heart pounding against her ribs. They’re home. Daddy’s fine. Everything’s going to be okay.
She smells coffee, strong and sharp, the way dad likes it, and bolts toward the kitchen.
“Dad?” she calls. “Daddy?”
She skids to a halt on the tile floor.
Aunt Pepper and Uncle Tony are sitting at the table. Her dads are nowhere to be seen, and the reality of their absence is suddenly too much.
Ororo bursts into tears.
She remembers Aunt Pepper hugging her, comforting her. She remembers hot chocolate and donuts and a look on Uncle Tony’s face that she’s never seen before.
She looks him in the eye, the way dad does when he needs to tell her something serious, and asks, “Is my daddy gonna die?”
Aunt Pepper puts a hand on her arm and says, “Of course not, honey. He’s going to be fine.” But Uncle Tony just stares back at her, thinking.
After a moment, he leans forward on the table and gives her half a smile. “Did I ever tell you about the time I met your old man?” Ororo shakes her head, and his smile widens. “Well, you know Thor has that crazy brother nobody likes to talk about?” Ororo nods. “Yeah, he’s a jerk. So he shows up one day and decides that he wants to take over the world, and he used some magic mind control to make Clint help him. And for, like, three days, this bad guy’s got your old man under his thumb, running him around, making him do these really terrible things. Your Aunt Natasha got him back, though, with her scary powers of beating up people, and do you know what the first thing he did was?” Ororo shakes her head. “After three days of no sleep and having his head messed with, your dad suits right back up and rides out with the rest of us to save the world. Now, I’m out there with my armor, and we’ve got super strength and super powers and super whatever-the-hell-Natasha has. But not Clint. No way. Clint’s just this regular guy, and he’s going up against, literally, alien hordes with nothing but good eyesight and a bunch of pointy sticks. And he’s winning.”
He pauses, and what he’s saying doesn’t fully sink in until many years later, when she considers her father and his place among the heroes of this world. It’s not until she knows what it is to fight beside those who have nothing but their skills and courage that she understands what a truly uncommon man he is.
“I won’t tell you he’s gonna be fine. Because I honestly don’t know, and you’re too smart for that, anyway,” Uncle Tony goes on. “But I will tell you that I’ve known Clint Barton for a long time, and if it came down to a fist fight between him and the Grim Reaper, I’d put every last dime I have on Clint.”
Ororo considers this and replies, “That’s a lot of dimes.”
Uncle Tony grins. “Yeah, well, Clint would probably put them in a sock and hit me with it. And then, I don’t know, buy candy bars for orphans, or whatever he does when he’s not being an Avenger.”
Ororo sips at her hot chocolate and doesn’t cry. “Is dad still at the hospital?”
Uncle Tony’s smile tightens, but it’s Aunt Pepper who says, “I don’t think anything could drag him away.” She shares a look with Uncle Tony that Ororo will one day remember as... full. “When you finish breakfast and get cleaned up, we’ll go see them, okay?”
Dad is in the same place, still sitting on the bench against the wall. Ororo wonders if he’s moved at all.
Uncle Steve is next to him, talking quietly. Dad is listening, but he’s looking away, his jaw tight.
“...know this is hard, but we have to be prepared,” Uncle Steve is saying. “Phil, if he doesn’t-”
“I’m not giving up on him, Captain. Not yet. And I’m disappointed that you are.” Dad’s voice is cold and hard, something Ororo has never heard, and Uncle Steve looks stricken.
“No one’s giving up. I just....”
“There are provisions in his medical file that will suffice until such time as a final decision is necessary,” Dad snaps. “I will discuss this if and when that necessity arises and not a moment before. Do I make myself clear?”
Ororo’s never heard him talk to anyone like that, much less Uncle Steve, but Uncle Steve just frowns and turns away. He sees Ororo and smiles, kneeling to give her a hug. “How’re you holding up, weather girl?”
Daddy and Uncle Steve are the only ones who call her that, and it makes her chest hurt a little bit.
“I’m kinda scared,” she admits. “What’s dad angry about?”
Uncle Steve sighs again. “He’s scared, too. Your daddy’s not doing too good.”
“What does that mean?” she asks. “Dad said he got hurt, but what’s wrong? Why can’t they fix it?”
“I.... “ He gapes at her blankly, and she knows that this is one of those questions that grown-ups never know the answer to.
“Some things can’t be fixed,” Aunt Pepper tells her gently. “And sometimes doctors just don’t know how to fix them.” She crouches down next to Uncle Steve and looks Ororo in the eye. “Ororo, Clint got hurt very badly. He got hit in the head, and that kind of thing can be hard to take care of. There are a lot of things that could happen, and the doctors aren’t sure how to help him.”
Ororo remembers Uncle Steve teaching her to play catch. She missed, and the ball hit her square in the forehead. She’d fallen over, blinking away the little bright spots that exploded in her vision. She wonders if it was like that for daddy and thinks it must have been a thousand times worse.
She extricates herself from Uncle Steve and Aunt Pepper and goes to sit on the bench next to her dad. He puts his arm around her silently, and she folds in against his side. If they’re going to wait, then they’ll wait together.
The doctors give them one of the tiny white rooms to wait in. Aunt Nat brings Ororo her homework from school, Uncle Tony brings pizza, and it seems like everyone in or related to SHIELD and the Avengers comes and goes in an endless cycle of comfort and condolences. Dad nods and tells them thank you and answers all their questions politely with, “We don’t know anything yet.”
He doesn’t cry, his voice doesn’t shake, and, as long as someone else is there, he seems worried but hopeful. It’s only in between the well-wishers that he looks exhausted and lost. Ororo is proud of him.
The doctor comes again, and this time Uncle Steve and Uncle Nick come with him. Aunt Nat appears behind them and gestures to Ororo. “Come on, ‘Ro. These guys need to talk for a minute.”
Ororo looks to her dad. He nods, but he’s looking at Uncle Steve. “Go with Natasha, sweetheart.”
She goes into the hall, and, as the door shuts, she hears the doctor say gently, “I’m afraid we need to talk about worst case scenarios.”
Uncle Bruce and Uncle Tony are standing in front of another door, talking. “...running out of options,” Uncle Bruce is saying. He sounds tired. “The longer they wait, the more dangerous it’ll be to try anything, and even if it works....”
“Yeah,” Uncle Tony says. “I know.”
They’re talking about daddy, she realizes. They’re talking about daddy, and he must be there, behind that door, in one of those tiny white rooms. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s gone, and they just don’t want Ororo to know. But she has to know. She has to see. She has to understand why everyone’s so tired and scared.
She wrenches away from Aunt Nat and ducks behind Uncle Bruce. Aunt Nat calls out, but her hand is on the door, is pushing it open. She rushes into the tiny white room and stops dead.
The man in the bed is not her father. Her father is tall and strong, with big hands and a bright smile. This man is ordinary and broken. There are white bandages and shining metal bars and plastic tubes everywhere, caging him in. Her father is handsome. He’s a dashing superhero. He’s the world’s greatest marksman. This man looks old and fragile. His eyes are shut and framed by a bandage on his forehead and a terrifying plastic mask on his mouth, as if the ephemera of modern medicine are creeping in on him, conspiring to keep his sharp eyes closed forever.
Ororo can’t breathe.
Someone takes her arm, starts to pull her away, but she can’t go. She has to understand.
“Don’t,” Uncle Tony says. “If she wants to see, let her see.”
The hands holding her let go, and she takes a few, unsteady steps forward. Uncle Tony comes up behind her and lays a hand gently on her head. Ororo stands silently, studying the figure in the bed.
She doesn’t remember the moment that it clicks. All she remembers is that, in the space of a heartbeat, she goes from staring at a stranger to looking at her father, battered and broken and all too still.
“Daddy?”
One big, strong hand is resting on the white sheet beside him, and she wraps her tiny fingers around it. She wants to shake him, to scream at him, to jump on the bed. He’s too quiet. Daddy’s never quiet. He’s always talking and laughing and teasing and telling stories. He never stops moving, never stops being awake and alive, and now he’s just... not.
She looks up at Uncle Tony, and she can feel the tears stinging in her eyes. She tries to find words, to form a question, but there are no questions left. Uncle Tony smooths back her hair and gives her a sad smile.
He understands. She won’t fully know why until years later, but he understands.
Finally, she finds the question she wants, but she has to force it out through this horrible feeling in her throat. “Can I stay here?”
Uncle Tony shakes his head. “Sorry, kid. The doctors are still trying to make him better.”
She nods solemnly and turns back. She heard somewhere that you can talk to really sick people, even if they’re sleeping, and sometimes it helps. She thinks it’s probably not true, but she takes a deep breath, anyway. “Daddy? Can you.... You probably can’t hear me, but I... um....” Even to her own ears, her voice sounds small and trembling, but she presses on, determined. “Daddy, you need to wake up. Dad’s really upset, and I can’t.... He needs you, okay? And you gotta go on the field trip next week, ‘cause you said on the paper that you’d go, and if you don’t then... then.... Daddy, you promised. You promised you’d go, and you promised dad that you were gonna be together forever. You said so, and you gotta... you gotta.... Daddy, please.”
There are tears streaming down her face, and the horrible feeling in her throat is getting tight and bitter. She tries to swallow it, force it down, but she just cries harder. Her chest hurts, her eyes hurt, her skin hurts, and she can’t stop crying. She’s shaking so hard, it feels like her insides are rattling loose, banging against her ribs. Uncle Tony picks her up and carries her away, rubbing circles on her back and whispering gently into her hair, but it doesn’t matter. He can stop her shaking, but he can’t stop the twisting, drowning feeling in her stomach.
They will tell her later that she cried for a solid hour, that she made herself sick and threw up in a trash bin and then went right on sobbing. All she knows is that she cries herself to sleep.
She wakes up, just for a moment. Her dad is holding her, and it’s the soft roll of his voice that has woken her.
“Whatever you have to do,” he’s saying, and she can’t see who he’s talking to. “If it doesn’t work, and he’s not.... We’ll deal with that, but for now, just.... Whatever it takes.”
He smooths back her hair and and kisses her forehead, and she drifts back to sleep.
It’s an experimental procedure. It’s been done once, maybe twice, in the whole world. Ororo will never understand exactly what it is that they do to save him, but she knows it’s the most desperate of measures. She knows that it takes seven hours, most of which she sleeps through.
She knows that at 1:13 a.m. on Wednesday morning, Clint Barton dies. His heart stops, and he is dead on the table for exactly 46 and one half seconds.
She knows that her dad holds her close through all of it, until at last Uncle Bruce comes in. He looks like he’s one good yawn from falling over, but his exhausted smile is genuine.
Uncle Thor is snoring in one of the chairs, and Uncle Steves kicks his foot to wake him. Dad’s arm around Ororo tightens, and Ororo holds her breath, waiting.
“It worked,” Uncle Bruce says. “It’ll be a long time before he’s back in top form, but it worked. He’s gonna be fine.”
She remembers the change from one moment to the next like a plunge into cool water after a suffocating heat. There is a sound as everyone breathes at once.
“There could be some....” Uncle Bruce hesitates, glancing at dad. “We won’t know until he wakes up what kind of... long term damage there is. He might be missing a few things, and memory will probably be pretty fuzzy for a while. All the important bits look good, though, so he’ll still be, y’know, the loud-mouthed smart-ass we all know and tolerate.”
“I’m gonna tell him you said that,” Uncle Steve says, grinning.
“Tony’s words, not mine,” Uncle Bruce replies. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a shower and spend some time reflecting on the power of medical advancements. By which I mean sleeping. For days.”
“Thank you,” dad says, holding Ororo tighter. “Thank you.”
Uncle Bruce waves as he turns away. “You should have a shower yourself, Coulson. You smell like Steve’s gym bag.”
He does smell a little, but Ororo doesn’t care. She feels like she’s been wrapped up tight in something hot and scratchy, and suddenly it’s gone. She’s slowly re-adjusting to the feeling that her world isn’t crashing down around her.
Dad hugs her close and rests his face against her head. If there are tears in his eyes, no one says anything.
“Valhalla has been cheated this day,” Uncle Thor declares, “and this world is better for it.”
“Amen,” Uncle Steve agrees. He catches Ororo’s eye and winks. “Your old man’s a tough one, weather girl.”
She grins back at him and says, “Damn straight.”
Uncle Steve laughs, but dad pulls back, looking shocked. “Ororo Munroe.”
She ducks her head, trying to hide her smile. “Sorry, dad.”
“No, you’re not,” he sighs. “Bruce is right, though, I am a little... stale. Why don’t you go with Uncle Thor and tell everybody the good news?”
Ororo gives him a kiss on the cheek and climbs off of the hospital bed. She shrieks as Uncle Thor sweeps her up onto his massive shoulders, and they’re off on a victory tour of the facility. Uncle Thor even makes up a song about how daddy is too smart for Death to catch him. Ororo sings along with the chorus.
It’s another two days before they can see daddy, but the waiting is easier. Dad still doesn’t leave the hospital, but, when Ororo comes back in the morning, he’s wearing different clothes and looks like maybe he slept a little. He goes over her homework with her, and he sounds more like himself, her kind and fearless father, even if the edge of exhaustion is still there.
“You’ve been very brave,” he tells her softly, looking her in the eye. “Thank you.”
When she is twenty-nine and still recently wed, something goes awry on an Avengers outing and T’Challa is injured. Not nearly so bad as this, but badly enough to frighten her, to keep her anxious and pacing and unable to rest until they tell her he will heal. Her fathers are with her through every second. Daddy makes sure that she eats and drinks and talks to her, keeping her from being lost in the shadows of her own mind. Dad just sits beside her and holds her hand.
It is only then that she understands what he is thanking her for now.
“I don’t feel very brave,” she admits. “I cried when I saw daddy.”
Dad smiles and smooths back her hair. “Being scared doesn’t mean you’re not brave, and neither does crying. It’s what you do when you’re done crying that matters.”
She thinks about it, and maybe it makes sense. “What are you supposed to do after you cry?”
“Get up and keep going.” His smile is suddenly sad, and he looks away from her. “I think maybe you’ve been braver than I have.”
He’s the bravest person she knows, so she’s not entirely sure what to think of that.
When Aunt Nat finally comes to tell them that daddy is awake, she’s smiling for real, and dad’s hands are shaking.
“The doctor says one at a time though,” she says, and Ororo gives her dad a shove.
He looks at her, puzzled, and she rolls her eyes and points to the door. “Go!”
Aunt Nat shakes her head, laughing. “Listen to the lady, Coulson. You’ve got about five minutes to be a sap before he passes out again.”
Dad gives them both a glare, but he doesn’t argue. Once he’s gone, Ororo asks Aunt Nat anxiously, “He’s gonna be okay?”
Aunt Nat nods. “He’s gonna be okay.”
When it’s Ororo’s turn, she goes into the tiny white room to find dad bent over daddy’s hospital bed. Most of the tubes and metal bars are gone, and she can see daddy’s face, his blue eyes open. Their fingers are laced together, and their heads are close. They’re not talking, just looking at each other, but there’s so much in that look that Ororo can almost hear it echoing off the walls. For the first time, she watches them and thinks, not just that they are her parents, a unit, but that they are two halves of something greater, and she’s lucky to belong to them.
Daddy sees her, and a wide, familiar grin breaks on his face. He lifts his hand, still caught up in dad’s, and gestures her forward. She rushes to him and slips in between them so that she can put her arms carefully around his neck. She can feel him smiling against the side of her face.
“Hey there, weather girl.” His voice is rough and quiet, so soft she can hardly hear it, but it’s him.
“Hi, daddy.”
“S’good to see you,” he says, and it sounds like he’s fighting for the words. She thinks about what Uncle Tony said, though, and knows that he’s always fighting for everything. “Heard you took care of your dad.”
“She did,” dad answers, wrapping an arm around Ororo. “Couldn’t have done it without her.”
Something tight and brittle breaks off in Ororo’s chest, and she feels suddenly, overwhelmingly safe.
“Well, somebody had to,” she says, and daddy grins.”But you gotta get better now, ‘cause that’s your job.”
Daddy doesn’t laugh. He stares past her, and she knows that he and dad are looking at each other. She can feel the weight of it around her, like a warm rain that makes everything new and clean.
“Well,” dad says, “she’s not wrong about that.”
Ororo will remember this, and, one day, she will know that this moment, this flicker of hope after so much horror, is when she finally, truly begins to understand what it is to be a hero.