fight like a girl

“Oh, yes, sorry,” she laughed and shook her head, “Pietro is my twin, but he would have people believe he’s the older sibling. To me, twelve seconds of wisdom is hardly worth bragging about.” She contemplated  her inquiry for a moment. “I think I will give him the apartment tonight, if that’s okay with you?”

“I have a brother, but we haven’t talked in ages. It must be nice to be close to your twin,” she’s saying, and then letting out a laugh. “If you don’t mind my plethora of electronics, then yeah, we can hang out at my place. It’d probably be better, I have access to anything at the tip of my fingers.”

“Well, wow, thanks for letting me know that my job is safe. Money, I’m less concerned about.” But now she has him interested. So he saunters over, not-so-sneakily looking over her shoulder. “Why don’t you just completely gut it. Like an elegant fish. That could be such a sleek model if you did.”

She’s glaring up at him. “Ever heard about personal bubbles? Yeah, you’re in mine.” And then she’s going back, continuing working on it. “I don’t care about sleek models like you do. And are you going to be around me for much longer?”

Tim doesn’t answer for a long moment, frowning as he is and tapping his pen against the desk until that starts to get to him too and he twists his hands together instead. Breathe in. Out. Fine. Okay. He could do this. Except everything was not okay and he could not do this. Not alone. “I don’t know,” he eventually drags out, expression guarded as he glances across at her. “I’m not good at the–…inside stuff. If she was putting on a mask and seeking vengeance for his killer I could understand it but she’s just–…not. She won’t eat. What’m I supposed to do, tip her head back and hold her nose and drip soup down her throat? She’ll barely talk either, it’s so quiet, and I can’t stop thinking that someone’s gonna come in and hurt her when I’m not there and it’s making me check the perimeter more but that’s fine, or it’d be fine if I knew that she’d put up a fight or something. Babs, you’re probably the least questionable character I know, what do I do? I know…I shouldn’t have to ask for help but I don’t know what to do. We never trained for the total breakdown of a legal guardian.”

He’s right, they’ve never trained for something like that. Hell, she doesn’t really know what to say, or how to help. But she knows Dana wants to die, that much is obvious. “I...” she’s starting, and then running her fingers through her hair. “Tim, first things first, you can always ask for help. We’re family, we’re here for you, okay? Have you tried talking to her? I... I don’t want to... it just sounds like she doesn’t want to... you know... live. And maybe if you show that you’re there for her and maybe I can go over and talk to her. I can look into therapists and see what we can do to help her. There has to be something, right?” Her fingers are flying over the keys, already looking for several therapists and looking for any information she can about suicide.

There’s something on her mind, he thinks, but his mind isn’t letting him think about it so he kisses her back, humming a little as he brings his hand up to cup her cheek.

She lets out an answering hum of her own, before moving closer to him. She lets the kiss go on for as long as possible, slow, leisurely, and only pulling away to give him a small smile. “Do... can you stay with me tonight?” 

“Oh, I can. Just didn’t wanna go outside your means for when you lose. Fine. Five hundred bucks, and if you win, I’ll give you a job.”

She’s still working on fixing it and she’s glaring down at it. “I don’t want your money and I don’t want your job, you can keep both.” She’s seriously not having any of this, honestly. She should be nice, this is Tony Stark, but she honestly doesn’t give a fuck. 

Tim’s bouncing his leg and tapping his pen against the textbook, chewing at his lower lip as she catches his attention, whence he looks up. “Uh. Yeah. No. I mean–” He’s hesitating, unwilling to admit that maybe he Doesn’t Quite Got This. “It’s…fine. It’s Dana. She’s not– I don’t know. She’s not okay.”

Her eyebrows are furrowing in concern and she’s frowning. “Are... what’s wrong?” She doesn’t know how to approach this, and she feels helpless and stupid, and she’s mad at herself, but she knows she has to be there for Tim. 

“You don’t look like shit. You look like if comfort snacks were human.”

The only thing she wants to say is ‘how high are you?’ but she’s not bringing that up, so she’s just leaning up to kiss him, deeply.

Wanda could not help the beaming smile that she wore as a result of connecting to this young woman. She was so genuine and sweet (and she was not afraid of her). “Then it sounds like a plan,” Wanda replied, “is there a type of pizza you like best? Pietro and I don’t order it often, so I would be trying two new things tonight.”

“Anything and anything, honestly,” she says with a laugh. “Is Pietro your brother?” She’s asking, and then grinning. “Do you want to head to my place or is yours better?”

“…At you?”

Her mouth drops open a little and then she’s shaking her head. “Okay, Clint, now that’s just rude.”

“Wanda,” she replied, offering the red-head her hand with a smile, “is important mission to be educated on these films. I can order pizza, if you like?”

She reaches up to take Wanda’s hand, and then laughs. “Oh, yes, you’ve just made my entire night. Pizza and education? The best type of night, honestly.”

“I know how that feels,” she replied, visibly noting that Barbara refused to look her in the eyes. The coffee machine beeped, signaling that it had finished brewing. She excused herself for a moment and got up to prepare the cup of coffee as she knew Barbara liked it and then returned with the cup in hand, holding it out to the red-head before she sat down once more. “When Ronnie died in the accelerator explosion, I felt as though I should’ve been able to do something to stop it, but I couldn’t… I was right there, and I couldn’t save my husband.” She lifted her eyes in an attempt to meet Barbara’s. “You’re not helpless, and you won’t do yourself any good by punishing yourself for something that was out of your control.”

Her heart goes out for Caitlin and she takes a sip of her coffee, trying to focus on the pain of the hot coffee instead of the need to cry. “I know... I just... even though it’s been years since my accident, I still feel helpless. And with that sort of situation, where all you can do is watch, it’s just... hard.” And then she’s looking up at Caitlin. “Even more so with you, I mean, you lost your husband and I can’t...” She can’t help the tears from falling now, because she’s going to lose Harry and all she can do is watch. “All I can do is watch the people around me get hurt and I can’t do anything about it. And then my boyfriend is dying and I can’t do anything to help him and once again, all I can do is watch.” She’s sucking in a deep breath and trying to keep control over her tears, but she feels like she can just talk to Caitlin and she... she needs that right now. “I’m sorry...”

Tim gnawed at his lip, frowning at his textbook without reading it. Eventually, he gave up, closing it over with a groan. What the heck was he supposed to do?

“Something wrong?” She asks, glancing over at him.

Harry smiles into the kiss, humming a little, low in his throat. “Hm, you’ve mentioned it a few times. Coffee was a good idea.”

“It was. And to think this all started with you telling me I looked like shit,” she pulls back just enough to give him a small smile. 

“Tenacious,” Tony comments, leaning against the wall and watching her. “Fifty bucks says it’s irreparably broken.”

She’s seriously not amused. “Really? I thought you could pay more than that. What’s fifty bucks to you?”

“Oh, both are beautiful,” she replied with a nod. She loved red hair - red anything, really - and, of course, who didn’t want to have knowledge or an enchanting singing voice? “I am just discovering the Western animated fairy tales. They’re wonderful. Growing up, my brother and I heard stories of the Magic Swan Geese and the Wise Little Girl…” She wrinkled her nose. “None of them were pleasant. It may seem forward, but would you be interested in showing me one of your favourites of these films?”

She’s grinning. “You know, I would love to. And it’s not forward at all, I don’t mind. I’m Babs, by the way.”

“I know you know what you can handle but they don’t know what you can handle. They’re not in your brain.”

“I’m glad they’re not in my brain, my brain’s a dangerous place,” she says with a small laugh. She’s silent for a moment, before she tilts her head up, pressing a kiss to his lips. “Have I told you lately how glad I am that we’ve met?”