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***

"OK. SIT TIGHT HERE FOR A SECOND WHILE I GO END THE SIM FOR THE OTHERS. I'LL BE BACK IN A SEC."

Agent Carrelli walked off to the other side of the gym, leaving Lola and Ramona to their own, for just a moment. Lola inspected her nails, while Ramona inspected nothing, instead focusing on the wall across from her in an attempt to ignore the needle that was collecting a small vial of blood from her right arm.

Lola dropped her hand back into her lap, the sound jolting Ramona's gaze in her direction. Lola shook her head at her, making a face as if to say, "What?" Ramona blinked and went back to looking at the wall.

It had been a long week at the Avengers compound. At least, it had been for Ramona. Her doctors had been checking up on her even more often than they had warned her they would, and Agent Carrelli had been doing more testing than the doctors had even done initially in an attempt to get the scoop on whatever the deal was with her powers. And on top of all of that, Ramona had been working tirelessly to get on top of the few months of schoolwork she had missed in captivity so that she could prove to her dad, and herself, that she was ready for her life to return to normal, despite the changes she had gone through since she last lived a normal life.

And through all that, there had been Joey, Eris, and Peter.

Joey understood on a whole other level what it meant to be the daughter of an Avenger. She had been super friendly to Ramona, and happy to help her find her way around the compound, and around meeting and talking to tons of the other people living here from Avengers, to agents, to other various staff members on site.

As for the Parkers, they were the only people here as young as Ramona. Without them, she wouldn't have had an example, so to speak, of what was expected for her age, typically.

There was something about Eris that Ramona really appreciated, and it was how down-to-earth she was. She wasn't pessimistic by any means, but she was honest, and there was a lot of value in honesty to Ramona. Even before HYDRA, Ramona's life was riddled with lies she didn't even realize. It was refreshing to have a friend who cared about the truth, no matter how harsh. Though it was hard for Ramona to hear that despite other people's reassurances, her gray skin was noticeable, it was nice to hear that even with that feature, she was still an approachable person, nobody cared about looks. It was nice to hear that even though Ramona was a little behind in her education, she was easily still smarter than half the people Eris and Peter knew in their graduating class.

And then there was Peter. Peter was the one with the idea in the first place of getting Ramona back on track with her studies, and the main source of any normalcy she knew since arriving here. For that, she was thankful. Without him, she wouldn't be nearly as confident in her ability to learn everything she needed to know to start school in the fall. She would have never started studying on her own, for fear of not being as smart as her father and her sister seemed to be. But that fear was completely dispelled, thanks to Peter; he told Ramona that everyone started somewhere, and if Bruce and Anslie were as smart as they were, that genius couldn't have been totally lost on Ramona. She had that genius in her, too. She just had to find it.

Agent Carrelli came rushing back over to the girls, drawing Ramona's attention away from where she watched Joey and Agent Johnson upon the fight simulation ending— today, each Enhanced person was against another in the simulation. Agent Johnson had battled Eris, and Joey had battled Pietro. By the look of Joey and Agent Johnson sharing a high five, it appeared that both of them had won their duos.

"OK. Sorry about that," Agent Carrelli said. "Lola, you and Jean can head out whenever, now. I'll see you guys next week."

Without another word, Lola stood and walked to the other side of the room, leaving the gym without waiting for Jean. Jean scoffed before mumbling, "oh my god," and she shared a look with Eris before following after her sister.

"I'm going to take the needle out now, Ramona, so you might want to look away," Carrelli chimed in again. Instead of turning to look at her, Ramona kept her eyes on the remaining group in front of her.

Two other people had left with Jean and Lola, and just before them, Agents Johnson, Campbell, and Rodriguez. Peter and Eris were waving at Pietro and Wanda as they left, so now, only Joey, the Parkers, and one of the younger students (who Agent Carrelli had explained was her cousin's friend, Kamala) remained.

By the time Agent Carrelli had the needle out of Ramona's skin and disposed of properly, Joey and the Parkers were approaching. Kamala took a seat on the other side of the room.

"How's everything going here?" Joey wondered, sipping out of her water bottle. Agent Carrelli looked up, smiling before returning her focus to the different samples she had taken from Ramona in the past hour and placing them in their appropriate vial racks.

"Good!" Agent Carrelli replied, scribbling a few things onto the clipboard that was sitting on the counter. "Just finishing up here. Ramona, you're almost good to go. What's up, though?"

Joey shrugged. "We just wanted to wait for Ramona."

Ramona looked at them, and she couldn't fight the small smile on her face. "Really? Thank you."

"No problem," Joey said with a small laugh. The Parkers stayed quiet, but they each smiled.

While Agent Carrelli finished some paperwork, she fell into a conversation with Joey about something else— there were names that Ramona didn't recognize. Peter and Eris seemed to not know who they were talking about either, but before they could start their own conversation with Ramona, Agent Carrelli dropped out of her conversation with Joey and asked her and the twins to wait outside so she could discuss something with Ramona, privately.

The three of them wandered back toward the door, talking again once they made it about halfway through the room, and both Ramona and Agent Carrelli watched them until the door closed behind them.

"Sorry about that," she said to Ramona. "I wasn't sure if you'd be OK with other people hearing while I debrief your results."

"OK." Ramona nodded.

"So far, your tests haven't shown me much of anything we don't already know," Agent Carrelli began. "I don't really see us finding out more information based on these types of tests alone. Your doctors, your dad, and I agree that the next step would be testing your actual physical powers. However, that's beyond what you're required to do. We can either leave this here, and I can continue cross-testing with your doctors to watch for any new information, or we can begin experimenting with the powers you have and see just what exactly you are capable of. It's your decision, though. There is no good answer or bad answer. It's whatever you're comfortable with. Whatever you choose, is how we will proceed."

Ramona blinked, processing the information that was just spouted at her.

It was her decision.

Right now, the expanse of her powers was just about what she showed the doctors, and what she used to do to... complete missions, at HYDRA. At the facility, they had drilled the idea into her that she should have been capable of more, with the amount of terraphynol they'd given her. Her doctors here agreed, including Carrelli. But... did Ramona want to know what she was capable of?

She had actually thought about it a lot since arriving here. Now that she wasn't being forced to, she didn't want to use her powers at all. She was understanding when she assumed she would have to for testing purposes, but now that it was an option...

"I think... I think I want to be done, then," Ramona told her. "If that's OK."

"That's totally fine," Agent Carrelli told her, smiling. "In that case, you're good to go from now on. If you're ever... curious, though, or you decide you do want to know more, you know where to find me."

Ramona gave a small smile. "Sounds good."

"Alright. You can go ahead and meet Joey and the twins, now, then."

"OK," Ramona said with a nod. "Thanks."

With that, Ramona hopped off the chair that she'd been seated in for the last hour or so, and she made her way across the gym and out the door, where Joey and Peter and Eris were waiting for her against the wall right outside the door.

"Hey," Eris said, looking up. The four of them instantly started walking toward the elevators. "We were just talking about maybe watching a movie or something upstairs, if you're down."

"Oh, sure," Ramona responded. "That sounds great."

***

"You can't just eat popsicles every time you get your blood drawn, Ramona. You need to eat real food, too."

Ramona rolled her eyes at her dad, who was sitting beside her in the medical wing as yet another one of her regular doctor's visits came to an end.

"I don't only eat popsicles," she retorted, though Bruce had a bit of a hard time taking her seriously as her lips and teeth were stained blue from the popsicle in her hand.

"OK," he told her, biting back a smile. "Just making sure."

Dr. Simmons, on the other hand, didn't bite back her smile at all. In fact, she laughed slightly across the room at the exchange before making her way toward the two of them.

"I spoke with Agent Carrelli earlier this afternoon," Dr. Simmons began. "She let me know that you decided not to go any farther with your Enhanced testing, which, as you know, is totally fine. But, we do still have to keep up with your regular check-ups, especially where your blood is concerned."

Ramona blanched at this.

"I know," Dr. Simmons sympathized. "The bad news is that your blood composition percentages— blood cells to plasma— are still extremely skewed since the terraphynol has essentially taken over your blood cell count. Normal blood is about 55% plasma to 45% blood cells, while yours is looking more like 50% plasma to 30% blood cells, to 20% terraphynol. Based on the information we have right now, it doesn't look like this is causing any serious health problems, but we don't actually have any other cases to compare this to.

"That being said, the good news is that we're basically, from this point on, only going to be monitoring your blood percentages to see if they start to go back to normal on their own, or, in the likely case that they don't, we just want to make sure that it doesn't cause you any other problems, and that the terraphynol ratio doesn't begin to overpower the rest of your blood composition.

"More good news, I'm sure you've noticed, is that since you've been here, and you haven't been injected with any new terraphynol in the last two weeks, your complexion has begun to return to normal, as opposed to the gray state it was in. Because your blood is still 20% terraphynol, we believe your hair and eyes will remain the dark color they are, and your blood will remain green, but since you aren't dealing with the surplus they were... providing you, your veins aren't black anymore, and therefore aren't giving your skin that gray-cast."

Ramona blinked, and she only answered once her popsicle dripped onto her skin and jolted her out of her own head. Dr. Fitz came over with a paper towel from where he was processing a vial of Ramona's blood at a machine behind Bruce.

"Sorry," Ramona told the doctors, finally. "That's just... a lot of information."

"Good information," Bruce chimed in.

"Yeah," Ramona agreed. "It's good. It's just a lot."

"Absolutely," Dr. Simmons said. "It is a lot. But your dad is right, this is all good. You're in a really good place right now, and we really don't have much to worry about. If something comes up that we do need to worry about, we'll reassess the situation, but for now, you're all good to go here."

Ramona nodded.

"We'll see you again on Wednesday, OK?"

Ramona nodded, again.

She followed Bruce out of the room and down the corridor to the stairs back up to the lobby, and then into an elevator. He punched in two numbers: 2, for him, and 4, for her. They arrived on the second floor quickly, and he couldn't help himself when he said, "No more popsicles today, please?"

Ramona didn't say anything, and instead shrugged as the doors closed between them. She heard him laugh before the elevator ascended again.

On the fourth floor, Ramona headed for the kitchen. In her head, she promised herself and her dad that she'd eat something with actual substance before having another popsicle.

As she rounded the corner into the room, she saw Pietro was already there, with Hawkeye and Black Widow— Clint and Natasha.

"Ramona!" Pietro greeted, as the first one to see her. Clint and Natasha turned over their shoulders and greeted her similarly.

"Hi," Ramona said.

"How is it going?" Pietro asked.

"I just had a doctor's appointment," she told them, standing awkwardly in the walkway still. "I came to grab something to eat, since they took blood."

"Do your thing, girl," Natasha chimed in. "The kitchen got restocked this morning."

Ramona's eyes widened. "Great," she said, much more enthusiastic than she was a few seconds ago. She headed straight for the fridge, and after looking inside, she peeked over at Pietro. "Are you using the stove?"

"Nope," he answered. "What are you going to make?"

Ramona pulled some cheese and tortillas out of the refrigerator. "A quesadilla," she replied.

"Great choice," he remarked.

Pietro fell into a conversation with Natasha and Clint behind Ramona, who fell into thoughts of her own while she started cooking. And to be perfectly honest, she was mostly thinking about the popsicle she was going to have after she ate this quesadilla.

*

Knock, knock.

Ramona furled her brows from where she was sitting at her desk in her room, her dad's laptop open in front of her.

When she opened the door, Peter was standing in front of her, a soft smile on his face and a laptop under his arm. "Hi," he greeted.

"Hi," Ramona replied, her tone lower than his. "What's– what's up?"

"I was just looking around for you, to see if you had some free time so I could help you study. It looks like that's what you're doing right now," he said, gesturing to the desk behind her. "Where'd you get that laptop?"

Ramona stepped aside to let Peter in the room, walking back to her desk. "My dad is letting me borrow it," she told him with a sigh. "There are so many random computer things in his lab, I'm sure he'll forget to ask for it back."

"You'd be surprised," Peter said, speaking from his own lab experiences.

"Hm?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. Anyway, I actually came here to tell you, I did some more digging on what you'll actually need in order to go to school in the fall." Peter pulled open his computer, taking a seat on the floor against the side of Ramona's bed. "I go to a specialized high school for science and technology. I'm not sure if either of those things are particularly interesting or important to you, but I just thought that if you'd go to school this fall, it'd be easiest if you went somewhere you already knew people. Me, Eris, Ned."

Ned, Ramona recalled. Golden-Gate Ned.

"Mhm." She nodded.

"Right. Well, basically in order to go to school there, there's just a test you need to take. We'll have to talk to Dr. Banner, and maybe Mr. Stark or Mr. Fury about it. Dr. Banner, because you'll need a parent to enroll you, and Mr. Stark and Fury would probably be the best people to explain to school board people your whole... situation, I guess."

Ramona gulped. The more she and Peter talked about the whole plan of getting her back to school in the fall, the more stressful it sounded.

"OK..." she said.

"This is good," he said. "Now, we know exactly what we need to study. There are tons of practice tests for this sort of thing— the SHSAT. If we just focus on that for the next month or so, you'll be ready in no time. I took this test before my freshman year— you'll pass with flying colors."

Ramona grabbed onto the end of the long braid she had tied her hair into earlier. "Send me all the practice tests you can find," she decided.

Ramona hadn't had the chance to open up to anyone here, really— not even her dad, or her sister— since being rescued. To be perfectly honest, she wasn't sure she knew how to. But slowly, as she and Peter began working on practice test after practice test, question by question, day after day, she found herself revealing more and more to him. About her life before everything, about her life now— in between questions she understood perfectly, and questions she quite literally needed him to break down and spell out for her. And in return, he opened up to her. He told her about what his life was like before he got bitten, and how his life changed once Tony reached out to him after seeing him appear online and in news papers, and how his life changed again when his family found out.

It was every day, the two of them starting a practice test, or working on one they already started, or finishing one they'd been working on for days. Sometimes Eris would hang out with them while they worked, and sometimes so did Pietro, or Joey, or Wanda, for moral support and company. The goal was to start and finish the test in under three hours— that was the provided time slot, with the real deal.

A few weeks of studying went by— three weeks and four days, to be precise— before Ramona could complete an entire practice test on her own, but the feeling of pride from both Ramona and Peter the moment she passed her first real try on a practice test?

It was like magic. I feel normal, Ramona began to find herself thinking, often, especially when it was just her and Peter. She was beginning to feel normal again. Finally.

***

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