birthdays and bloodlines

"Looks like they have their father's genes."

Barton Homestead - January 7th, 2016

"It's your birthday?!"

So here were the facts:

1.) Christa's mom died exactly one week ago.

2.) Christa's house was blown up less than one week ago.

3.) Christa was now in the care of the Avenger Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, and his wife, Laura.

4.) Today was Clint Barton's forty-fifth birthday.

To Christa, the fact that she was living with an Avenger was quite surreal to her. It hadn't registered quite as much as now, she realized, as she stared up at the man's tired, lined, and yet somehow very young face. He was a real person, not just an Avenger who had gotten her out of a burning, partially destroyed house, a man who had taken her in and was, apparently, her foster father.

As those thoughts rolled over in her head, Christa felt dizzy.

Just the fact that it was apparently his birthday today had brought this all crashing down on her far harder than it had before.

The family--Christa (wow), Clint, Laura, Cooper, Lila, even Nathaniel was awake--had sat down to breakfast at the kitchen table just minutes ago to enjoy an (albeit suspiciously) grandiose meal--pancakes had never been something Laura had served as of  yet during Christa's stay. Wrapped up in her own thoughts and unable to be distracted via noise due to her hearing loss, Christa had started slathering several pancakes with syrup at once. Lila sat beside her, having insisted upon being Christa's little "buddy" since the moment she'd stepped through the door just a few days ago. Her bright brown eyes had widened at the large pile of pancakes, but she had said nothing, merely gotten her own pile that was nearly as big. She had started trying to imitate Christa, a fact that had given her both emotions of annoyance and slight adoration--it was pretty cute if she wasn't too grumpy.

The group had just started to eat when Lila had given a little gasp, an exclamation that Christa couldn't hear, and started running out of the room. She had darted back seconds later with a piece of paper in her now slightly sticky fingers and handed it to her father.

"DAD! Look!"

Clint had taken the picture in his hand and stared at it for a moment. A smile had spread across his face and he had turned to his daughter.

"That is a work of art," he had said.

She'd grinned as he'd held up the picture to the rest of the family. "Isn't that a work of art?"

Christa had seen the exchange between father and daughter and had looked up to see. On the paper had showed a picture of the man himself in his Hawkeye suit, standing in the middle of several smaller stick figures that looked suspiciously like Lila, Cooper, Laura, Nathaniel, and--oh--even Christa had stood in the background. A speech bubble had come from all of them, saying, "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!" Above them, the other Avengers had been drawn to form the number "45" in bright, vibrant colors.

Laura had given a large smile and gently stroked her fingers through her daughter's hair. "It's wonderful, sweetie."

Christa's eyebrows had furrowed. A piece of pancake still in her mouth, she had finally asked, "It's your birthday?!"

And that's when the feelings started rushing in.

Those in front of her all nodded, aside from Nathaniel, who just seemed to gurgle a little.

Clint seemed almost embarrassed. He looked down at the piece of paper for a moment before setting it back on the table. Then he took out the usual pad of paper and handed what he next wrote over to Christa from across the wooden table.

We're not making a big deal over it, don't worry. I know you're not exactly top of the line right now.

That just made Christa a little angry. She was absolutely fine! She tried taking in a huge breath in order to properly say what was on her mind, but then her side started searing with pain and she started coughing.

Clint could tell she had been trying to protest (very) loudly, and gave her an almost pitying but also slightly admonishing look. Dangit, man, couldn't she be a little defensive sometimes?

After several moments her coughing fit finally stopped and the pain in her side had mostly faded. Lila ran over to her and gave her a hug. Then she parted from Christa and turned to her brother.

"Cooper, we still haven't decided on what kind of cake we're making!"

"Whoa, wait, I thought I said before that we weren't making a big deal out of this," Clint protested.

"I want it to be chocolate!" Cooper said over his father's words, ignoring him and going into what had obviously been a heated argument with his sister before.

"It should be lemon! Dad likes lemon better, right, Dad?" The girl turned to Clint with puppy dog eyes (not something she had to try very hard to do).

"Kids, stop fighting, please," Laura said in a somehow both tired and firm way. Cooper and Lila's mouths both shut instantly. Nathaniel had started fussing slightly.

"Sorry, Mom," Cooper said, a guilty look on his face.

"Yeah, sorry, Mom," Lila added.

"I forgive you. Anyway, you two can decide on a cake recipe later; you need to go clean your rooms before Aunty Nat gets here."

At this, the two's eyes lit up.

"That's right..." Cooper said.

"Aunty Nat! How could I forget?" Lila started making various martial arts movements across the kitchen. Then she stopped, exclaimed, "I'll go clean my room now!" and zoomed out of the room.

Laura looked over at the pile of mostly uneaten pancakes her daughter had left behind. Evidently she decided that the girl had eaten a sufficient amount (she had taken... quite a few in the first place), she said to her husband, "Clint, you're eating those, right?"

"I'm on it."

Christa had been on the most part quite oblivious to the conversation before her, focusing mostly on her pancakes. However, she had tried to pick up what they were saying (kind of hard because they weren't talking slowly or even to her). When Lila started running out of the room after having shrieked with glee, she turned to Clint and Laura with a confused expression on her face.

The couple exchanged a look that communicated words Christa knew they had discussed before. Then Laura passed the pad of paper to her with newly written words.

Ever heard of Black Widow? Natasha Romanoff, rather. She's a close friend of Clint's and is visiting for dinner.

Wow. Black Widow, huh?

Christa looked up from the paper with evident surprise on her face.

You're gonna have to get used to it--I'm friends with many special people, came a note from Clint.

"Who else am I gonna meet?" Sudden curiosity peaked in Christa. Man, if she was staying with an Avenger....

Clint gave a small chuckle. Then he gave a shrug.

Well, okay, then, she thought with a bit of sarcasm. Let's just leave it at a mystery, shall we?

She wasn't exactly a fangirl, but who wouldn't want to meet the Avengers?

Breakfast was finished in silence (ha, ha, ha), and then almost simultaneously those remaining at the table stood up, started cleaning up, blah blah blah. Except for Christa. She darted out of the room as fast as she could while in her current physical state. Because something had just crossed her mind.

Blood.

No, she wasn't a vampire--or, was she? You could never be sure with blood. No, by blood she was thinking of what that nurse or doctor or whatever had said to her the other day:

"Now, we had Christa's blood test results come in. Everything in there looks normal, except for something in particular we found somewhat interest--"

And then the woman had been interrupted by an idiotic doctor who had come in and said that whatever was thereafter supposedly "not wrong" with Christa's blood would not be revealed.

Of course... Christa wasn't going to keep it that way.

You couldn't keep secrets from an Amory.

So yesterday, after she and Clint had come back home (wow) from the hospital, Christa had searched for where a laptop might be. That way, she would be able to do her hacking--oh yes, hacking was what she was planning on doing--in the peace and privacy of her own room. But as it turned out, the Barton family did not have a laptop. What family didn't have a laptop? Apparently theirs; all they had was an old Windows 7 computer (okay, so it wasn't that "old," but she knew that, for instance, Tony Stark had probably created some newer, better computer in his time on earth, so why wouldn't a friend/colleague of Tony Stark have one of those?).

At least it was in the house's office.

At least she had that.

Now, twelve hours later, she slipped into the dark office room, left the light off (she just felt like being in the dark right now--besides, there was a window by the computer, light filtering through it--it worked), shut the door, set a mirror she'd stolen from a bathroom beside the computer so she could see if anyone was coming in, and plopped herself down in front of the computer. After she pressed the power button and as the computer started to slowly load into something she could work with, she started spinning around on the cushion-y, twirly chair. What? It was fun.

Finally, the computer loaded.

For Christa, hacking into a hospital database was easier than doing her own laundry. Perhaps because it was more fun. She downloaded the cracking tools she had previously written and stored in the cloud, and ran them looking for holes in their network. It was only a matter of time to find an opening now.

But it was going to take a while to chug, and she was sure the processor on this computer was used in the moon landing in 1969. Christa hated using a slow "rig."

Christa looked at the time on the computer, it finally registering with her.

4:27 p.m.

4:27 p.m.?!

She ran her hands through her hair--hard--in utter and complete frustration. Why, oh why, did this computer have to be so freaking slow? All she wanted to do was find some information on her blood that the doctors had evidently not found important enough to tell--

A flash of color--red, perhaps?

Crap.

Pulling a harmless-looking tab over what she had been working on, she quickly zipped around in the chair to see a couple of familiar people entering the room--and one less familiar one. A peach-colored face, clever olive-green eyes, and vibrant, curly, bob-length scarlet hair.

Christa recognized it. She'd seen the news, read the newspapers (her mother had been a little old-fashioned--what could she say?)--even a spy couldn't keep her face hidden long if she was out saving the world with a group of universally famous superheros.

"Natasha Romanoff?" Christa said. Her tone was of clearly fake surprise and awe, eyebrows raised, an attempt to distract from what she had been doing in front of the computer. The black chair she sat in was tall and wide enough to block the large computer from the sight of the people before her. She gave a small cough.

"Christa Amory," the woman before her responded (if Christa had read her lips correctly, which she was ninety-eight percent certain she had), her head tilted to the side slightly, an inquisitive expression on her face, her eyes slightly narrowed and her mouth turned up in a slight smile--or was it a smirk? She turned to the people beside her--Clint and Laura. "So this is the girl you rescued?" Christa couldn't catch that part, but she said it anyway.

Clint nodded. "Yep." In a softer tone, he said, "Be gentle with her, she lost her mother only a week ago."

Natasha gave him a look that spoke almost better than her words could. "I know." She stepped closer to Christa and gave her an unusually kind smile. She held out a hand to the girl.

The girl took it. She was slightly distracted and so wasn't necessarily acting entirely normal at the moment, a little too cheerful. Just trying to hide the fact that she was hiding something.

"Quiet one, are you?" Natasha muttered. She turned around to Clint. "Hey, you got a notepad I can borrow?"

"Always," he said, a closed-mouth smile on his face as he handed her a notepad that was starting to run out of paper. And a pen, too. That was important.

Weird living with an Avenger?

Christa looked up at Natasha with her eyes slightly narrowed. She shrugged. "I dunno. Weird being one?"

Natasha raised an eyebrow. She scribbled something down on a piece of paper before handing it to Christa.

Maybe.

Suddenly, an acrid, burning smell permeated the room. Christa saw Laura and Clint's noses crinkle with disgust and saw them yell something as they began to quickly exit the room. Natasha's head whipped around to the door, hair swinging with the movement.

"Is that... the cake?" Christa asked skeptically, remembering the argument between Lila and Cooper hours earlier.

Natasha quickly glanced back at Christa whilst backing out of the room. She slipped another quickly written note to her.

Looks like they have their father's genes.

Then she quickly (and urgently, for the smell was starting to strengthen) darted out of the room.

Christa watched Natasha go, and once she was officially gone, let out a sigh of relief before carefully and slowly shutting the door to the office.

There we go, she thought. A slight smile came onto her face. Sure, she was kinda annoyed that her meeting with the famous Avenger had been cut off, but she would be able to see her again soon. She was staying for dinner, after all.

And she could go back to her work in peace.

Finally--clicking away--typing--

Aha!

Finally, she was there. The file on Christa Amory. Specifically, her blood. Whatever might seem... peculiar about it. Confidentiality? Ha!

Click.

FILE ON: BLOOD > GENETICS > RELATIONS WITH PATIENTS IN DATABASE

POSSIBLE GENETIC RELATIONS FOUND:

• AMORY, ESTHER LILITH

• STARK, ANTHONY EDWARD