FOILS 2

"Even though we technically shouldnt be using a normal human being's average health statistics as a baseline for you," droned Banner, attaching his stethescope to his ears, "We're going to. You seem pretty human."


------


"Can we try Wii Archery instead?" asked Angela, holding the real-life bow and arrow at arms' length in the training room.
 
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"No." Hawkeye said grabbing the bow from her and giving it back the right way up.


"You need to learn how to use multiple weapons. Besides, many people think archery is fun. Don't you want to be like, uh, like, Katniss?"


"I assure you good doctor." Ava said as the the cold metal touched her skin.


"While I look human, I most certainly am not."


Ava would not let herself show it, but she wanted to tremble. This lab, so like her fathers. This man had her at his mercy. She looked up at his face and tried to take deep breaths.
 
Banner went through the motions. This was premed with prepubescent alien girls. Oh, fun.


"Open wide," Banner said. Hawkeye had eaten 25 ice pops to supplement their lack of actual medical sticks.


----


"Katniss? I want to be like me."


'And 'me' can't hit the side of a barn,' Angela said. Showing her extreme lack of athletic grace to Banner, the cynical and critical, wasn't as embarrasing as tripping over round-tipped safety arrows in front of archery's equivalent of the Rock.
 
Ava opened her mouth and recoiled as Banner stuck a stick in it but did nothing. Unfortunately, that's when she started gagging. She tried to hide it, to contain it, but she couldn't. She pushed him away and ran a step before falling to the ground and throwing up everything she'd eaten that day.


Hawkeye grunted and put the bow down.


"Okay, you don't have to shoot arrows today. Maybe another time. What sort of training excessive would you like to do Angela?"
 
Horrified, Banner wondered briefly if Clint had jokingly laced the ice pop sticks. He shook his head as Ava threw up.


"Okay! Okay, I'll forfeit Clint's TV room if we can trade it in for a janitorial staff."


Gettting the paper towels, he wondered if he could get Angela to clean Ava's mess again.


----


Angela grinned. "Im in the mood for a marathon of X Files."


She looked helplessly at Barton with her big eyes. "Ava's way better at this than me. Why don't you just use her as your strong woman?"
 
Ava finished being sick and quickly started to clean even though it felt like she had been turned inside out. Unfortunately she slipped in her own sick and fell down. She groaned softly and slipped again as she tried to get back up. She was really shaking now, sure that Banner would kill her.


Hawkeye looked Angela over for a moment and sighed as he put his now down.


"Fine. Let's go watch x files, whatever that is."
 
Banner came back with Windex and screamed like a little girl.


"Stop! Stop what you're doing!" He hurried to pick Ava up. "What are you doing!"


Was that a raw tomato in that puddle of Ava Soup? An inner part of his scientific self wanted to study it. Not now.


-----


Angela screamed like a little girl.


"You must be learned. Banner was saying something about a TV room. Ive wanted to use it since we got here."
 
Ava shook visibly in Banner's grasp.


"S-s-sorry s-sir. I I was trying to clean up, but...I failed." Ava looked at the ground and tried to choke down whatever bile was left in her throat.


"Please make it fast sir. You seem...not like Father."


Hawkeye set the netflix up in the play room and had just put in a bag of popcorn when he heard some squelching and screaming from down the hall. He looked down there for a moment, but decided to leave Bruce with it, whatever it was, unless he was summoned.
 
"You're not going to get punised, Ava," he said in a tone that indicated otherwise.


Banner bent down and cleaned the rest of it up, grumbling to himself about his bad back and how if, "Angela was half as humble as you, we might get along."


-----


"What...." Angela looked at Barton. "What was that?"
 
Hawkeye shrugged and looked at the door again.


"No idea...I guess we should check it out. Then we can come back and watch your show." Hawkeye exited the room with Angela (presumedly) following behind him. They walked into Banner's lab and stopped immediately.


" what happened!?!"


Ava was shaking and covered in sick, standing in the even larger puddle of sick covered on the floor. Bruce was grumbling and when he came in he gave him the dirtiest look he'd ever received without him turning into the hulk.
 
She's your strongwoman.


"What, are we going to have a whole audience for Ave getting sick?" Banner stood up. The knees of his jeans were wet and splotchy. "Clint, werent you supposed to be watching what she ate all day? She's not supposed to eat an entire fridge! She's-" he stumbled for a word. "ah... anorexic. Basically."
 
"I, I thought she should eat! You didn't tell me what to give her! I gave Ava normal food, pancakes, fruit snacks, juice, some candy...you gave her a sandwich!"


Clint came into the room and grabbed a paper towel and started wiping Ava's face off gently.


" it's okay, it's not your fault Ava. Are you gonna throw up more?" Ava shrugged, then nodded hard and Hawkeye picked her up and put her in front of a sink where she ejected the rest of her food with Hawkeye patting her back awkwardly. When she was finished Hawkeye wiped her off some more and picked her up.


"Angela. I need you to show her how to shower. Please." Ava was so tense in his arms, and shaking. Like a dog that had been abused, one that was spooked. Ava was a puppy with her tail behind her legs thinking she was going to get hit again.
 
Angela just stared at Ava. Ava, and all her puking glory.


'Shes your strongwoman.'


She was held limp like a ragdoll, like Angela's stuffed ragdoll alien Stan, but a paler shade of green. Her arms were like noodles; her hands grasped at the sink edge. She looked human in the worst way possible.


"Angela!" Banner barked.


She jumped. "Y-yeah. Jeez! Don't go berserk about it."


Tripping over her untied shoelaces, Angela grabbed Ava's wrist and tried not to think about how fragile her bones felt on the way to the shower.
 
After Hawkeye got Ava and Angela squared away he went back and helped Banner clean up the mess.


"I'm sorry I messed her up already. She just looked so thin, ya know? I just wanted to show her a good time, after all those years I figured she deserved it...is she gonna be okay?"


Ava sat on the floor of the shower with her clothes on and the water raining down on her. Angela had turned it on and showed her how to work it and what to use on her hair and her body. She had told her to take her clothes off and she would, after they had cleaned. She shuddered again and tried to stand up and managed to fall down hard instead, water going into her mouth and nose making her choke.
 
Angela, returning from her own bathroom, knocked on the door.


"Is all well in the universe, Ava?" she asked.


----


Banner halfheartedly righted an overturned box of Mini Wheats. The kitchen still smelled like vomit; moving slowly, Banner started to make a pot of coffee. The bitter brewing smell mixed into the air horribly.


"There's no way to be sure, Clint. She seems to recover well from physical trauma, but I wish I knew what made her tick. She's a Frankenstein. Unique, so we don't have a baseline to compare her to. Her normal body temperature could be 37 degrees Celcius or 137 degrees Celcuis. She could survive on metal or could be inherently allergic to Earthly vegetation. It would be stupid to assume anything at this point concerning what's normal for her."
 
Ava sat up and coughed the water out along with an answer, probably yes, but Angela probably knew that was a lie. Ava did not enjoy these showers.


Hawkeye stared down moodily at the coffee in his hands.


"But...you watched the videos right? Fury said there were a ton of hours of experiments, surely there had to be a baseline to experiment from? After all those years?"
 
"I don't know, Clint," Banner grumbled. "And you know how much I hate not knowing. There are just too many variables out of our hands. I can't tell you anything conclusive."


He let his voice hang. This time, unfortunately, sandwhiches wouldn't help smother the distress in the air.


"Just leave it for now," Banner added. "As long as she's breathing, she's ok. And take that as positive, supportive gesture of me caring."


-----


"Are you sure?" Angela yelled over the water. "Would it be awkward if I came in? I need to ask you something."
 
Ava opened the shower door and looked up at Angela through the streams of water coursing down her face.


"What is the question?"


Hawkeye nodded. "Thanks. See you around Bruce."


He walked out and went into his room and sat on his bed with a sigh. Running his fingers through his hair and feeling all the permanent bumps and scars that his life had left. How many more did Ava have?
 
Ava stepped out in a drenched, still-food-stained set of black uniform clothes, and when she did Angela forgot her moment of fleeting, sappy sympathy.


"Why can't you take showers normally? Even I can take showers! What happened to you that you can't take showers normally?!"
 
Ava blinked and wiped some water out of her eyes before responding.


"I was multi tasking. I washed my clothes. I will then wash my body. This is my second shower in my life. I did not know I was doing it incorrectly."
 
Angela paused, and dipped into a silent moment of introspection.


"...no, that's stupid. What am I thinking, you can't wash clothes like that." She shook her head and looked sternly at Ava. "Well, I forgot what I was gonna ask you, because you distracted me."
 
"No no no, wait, I remember now! Don't distract me again." Angela looked at Ava with new focus. "Did you... you didn't really mean to hurt me and Dad the other day."
 
Ava frowned.


"It was never my intention to harm you. Simply to inject your father with a serum. When that failure occurred I decided to observe you and do experiments of my own. I saved you and your father from the accident that occurred when I provoked you. No, I never intended to harm you. Those were not my orders."
 
Angela hesitated, turning Ava's explaination over and over, like food in her mouth, testing it. She hummed.


Angela, against that quiver of doubt in the back of her mind, trusted Ava with this. And as long as Ava didn't mean it, it was okay.


"Can you ever not speak like a robot?" She laughed. Her laugh was as unrefined as the grumble of a landslide. It was her dad's laugh.
 
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