Hawkeye's Sister

Chapter 14

***Loki***

Claire and I sit in the "doctor's office" and wait for them to come with the diagnosis. Her hand is wrapped around mine, and I can feel her shaking. A little part of me is saddened, I thought we were past this stage.

"Hey, its going to be fine." I say, trying to comfort her. The truth is, I am just as nervous as she is to hear what the doctors have to say.

"Liar." She says, and I grin sheepishly at her. She gives me a small smile, and then the doctors come in. We both sit up straight, and I look with hope to Alfred. His face is serious, but not the look he wears when he tells someone that they are going to die.

"Hello Claire. How are you today?" He asks, sitting next to her. She gives him a small smile, and holds my hand tighter.

"Fine, thank you." She says quietly, and I clear my throat.

"As much as I love making conversation, can we please get to the issue at hand?" I say impatiently, hearing a small breath of relief from Claire.

"Of course." He pulls out some papers, and puts on a pair of glasses.

"Well the good news is that you are not going to die in the near future." I sigh in relief, and then look at him to continue.

***Claire***

"We did a full body scan on the day of your first appointment, and we found this." He slides a picture across the table, and I look at it. I recognize my small form, but there is a strange white shape where my heart should be.

"What is that?" Loki asks, as if reading my mind.

"That is what we spend so much time studying. It seems to be a ball of energy, that has invaded and knitted itself into the muscle of her heart. Whenever her heartbeat goes too high it starts pulsing faster, causing her heart to constrict and then expand at a faster rate. This is one cause as to why it hurts." I push the picture back as he shows us another picture, but this one has a whole bunch of squiggly lines.

"Although her heart is sped up, it is not dangerous. The source of the pain is the body's refusal to accept the energy as part of her own body. It tries to tear it out, but cannot due to the fact that it is now part of her heart. The medicine in her bag shuts down these reactions, but only temporarily. Now here comes the interesting part..." He puts another paper with more squiggly lines down, and the two picture are almost identical.

"This is the energy signature for the tesseract, and it almost identical to the energy signature coming from her heart. It is possible, that if we get Claire's body to accept the energy, that she could have and endless supply of energy and she would become the equivalent of a god. Her cells would barely age, and she could live for thousands of years." My head spins at all the information, and I hold onto the table.

"Is there anyway we can get rid of the pain permanently?" Loki asks, and I tighten my grip on his hand.

"Theoretically, yes. There are two ways. The first we have ruled out, as it would involve having to somehow get the energy out of her heart. The second would be, as I said earlier, if we could get her body to accept the energy. We have no idea how to accomplish either of these things, and we will need more time to research. However we have developed a stronger medicine, one that you would only need to take once a week. Your lungs are almost completely healed. The reason you had trouble breathing was because of two small holes, one in each lung."

"I don't have to use the breather anymore?" I ask hopefully, wanting to be rid of the hateful mask and machine. He smiles.

"No you do not. You will have to come in once a week for your medicine, but other than that and the heart condition you are healthy." My heart swell with joy at these words.