ʟᴏꜱᴛ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ || 𝟙

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ 16

"Can I talk to you?" Parker asked as he joined her in the backyard, the last warm golden rays of sun dipping below the line of trees behind him.

"Do I have a choice?" she grunted in effort her back to him. Planting her feet solidly on the ground she anchored her body weight on the balls of her feet, twisting the hilts of her knives in each hand. 

"Preferably not holding any sharp objects." He requested mildly.

Sighing, she drew her arms back and hurled the knives at the target. Rotating her wrist slowly, she cursed herself as the left knife hit the tree trunk just a few seconds later than the right. She had no idea how she knew, but it seemed that she was either born or had been trained to be ambidextrous and her left hand was lagging dangerously behind.

5 seconds behind. 5 seconds that could get her killed in the future.

"There." She said sarcastically, holding up her palms as a sort of truce. 

"I just needed to let you know, we'll be staying here for the night. The Quinnjet is still with Mr WIlson  and Mr Banner so they'll be picking us up in the morning."

"Fantastic," she replied, pushing as much 'please-go-away' into her voice as she could.

Either he was dense or he purposely chose not to hear it. "The doctor's coming with us." 

"Great. What do you guys do to evil doctors?" she asked, marching to the tree, positioning her foot against the trunk of the tree, using it as an anchor so that she could yank out the blades. 

"First of all, we're the Avengers and secondly... I don't exactly know the protocol for crazy Russian doctors," he admitted. "I'm still kind of new... I got brought into the team while we were in this crazy flying donut and-,"

"Avengers?" the words came out of her,  a question and a statement at the same time.

"Yeah, this guy - Nick Fury - he had the idea to bring a group of-,"

"Spare me the history lesson." She snapped, the title nagging at her mind, an itch she couldn't scratch but bothered the hell out of her.

"Well, I guess we'll just hand her over to Mr Rhodey and see what he does with her. Probably some interrogations and then straight to some supermax," he shrugged.

She snorted, twirling one blade in her left while wiping down the other on the side of her vest, mentally reminding herself to sharpen them later.

"Well," she slammed the daggers back in their sheaths. "Good talk." she nodded, about to head back to the cabin.

She had barely gone three steps ahead when he asked in an incredibly soft voice, allowing the icy cold wind to carry his question to her.

"You would have killed her?"

Inhaling sharply, she turned around to see him leaning against the very same tree trunk she had mutilated.

Her reply was come, monotonous. "Yes, I would have."

"Why?"

"Look," she huffed, staring at the wisp of smoke that was curling above the cabin, a sure sign that the one armed metal guy must have lit the fire.

"I don't know much about life, fuck I feel like I was born yesterday, which I guess I in a way, sort of was. But if there's one thing, the only thing that I know to be true down to the very marrow in my bones, the same way I know how to reload a gun in less than 30 seconds or how to incapacitate a grown man in five moves is that this world is cruel... and that if we aren't cruel right back, it'll eat us alive. It's a kill or be kill world out there Parker."