CHAPTER NINE
They had already waited an hour. Paige scrolled through her phone, using the money that Clint had gotten for her somewhere to buy music and books. They sat inside the medical ward waiting for someone to come get them for testing. At this point she was more than a little irritated. At least when out on her own she didn't have to waste time like that. She and the other two agents looked up as the sliding doors opened and two women and a man walked in.
The second woman shook her head and spoke, her soft British accent hardened by annoyance. "We're not getting a monkey, Fitz!"
"Hear me out," argued the man, "it could do all the dirty work for us. And it would fit right in with Ward."
The woman who hadn't spoken gave the tiniest hint of a smirk before glancing over and noticing Natasha and Clint. She paused and folded her arms. "Well if it isn't the Avengers."
"Agent May," Natasha said with a smile. "Back in the field after all? Didn't you go to paper pushing a while ago?"
She shrugged. "Decided it was time to get back out there."
Clint got up and shook her hand. " Been awhile."
"Are you still as bad at flying as you were when I last saw you?" May smirked as he rolled his eyes. Then she turned back to her companions. "Agent Leopold Fitz and Agent Jemma Simmons."
"What an honor," replied Jemma with a grin. "The Black Widow and Hawkeye!"
Clint shook his head in amusement at her tone. Then he turned to Fitz. "I believe I have you to thank for the hearing aids?"
Fitz brightened up. "Yeah, well, I did my best. I know it's hard to design a hearing aid that works during missions. I hope it's working, at least. I believe it is." He trailed off, "I could've used a monkey to test it on..."
"They work great," Clint assured him.
May folded her arms, looking at Paige again. Then she turned to Clint and Natasha. "What brings you two to medical? I've heard the stories of how you try as hard as you can to avoid it."
"This is Paige Wilson," Natasha began, gesturing to the young woman who stayed seated on the chairs. "We're trying to get dna profiling done for her but no one's been helping. You two wouldn't happen to be able to do it would you?" She turned to Fitz and Jemma.
"Yeah, sure, should be easy enough," Fitz agreed. "That is, if Agent May doesn't need us any further?"
She shrugged. "I can drop these files off on my own."
Clint nodded to Fitz and Jemma. "Good. Let's get this done."
"Now, where to go," Jemma murmured to herself. She looked around in circles and finally caught sight of something that intrigued her among the bustling few agents and doctors. "Ah! There. Come on, Paige."
Paige stood and nodded with a tiny smile. With her arms crossed over her chest hiding her hands as best she could, she followed the four agents. She felt intensely stressed now, and didn't want to risk her magic taking over. So she hid her hands and kept walking.
They entered a small lab room down a hallway. Jemma smiled sweetly at Paige as she had the young woman sit on a metal table. "This won't hurt at all. I just have to take some saliva samples."
"You should probably do a blood sample too," Fitz replied as he started looking around for the testing materials she would need.
Jemma rolled her eyes. "I didn't know you had a degree in bio-chem?"
"What! I'm just-"
"-offering a suggestion. Yes I know." Jemma turned back to Paige and shrugged. Then she turned to Clint and Natasha. "Do we need to do a full blood work up? What is the DNA testing for?"
Clint shrugged. "We need to find out if she's human," he explained, walking to stand against the closed door. He leaned back against it and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "The results need to stay classified."
Fitz and Jemma both looked from the other two agents over to Paige. Natasha rolled her eyes and walked over the desk where a computer sat. She typed in her clearance codes and brought up the genetic work up done on Thor. "Compare her results to these. Look for Asgardian markers in her tests."
"Asgardian," Jemma breathed with a smile. "That is amazing! Are you able to heal yourself? We heard rumors-"
"We don't know if she's Asgardian," Natasha reminded her. "That's what the test needs to show us."
Fitz nodded. "Of course if she is Asgardian, we should do more tests. We might be able to synthesize some sort of healing-"
"From her blood! Fitz you're a genius!" Jemma took the dna sampler from her colleague and turned to Paige. "Alright my dear. Open your mouth."
Paige did as she was told and flinched back as Jemma began to swab her cheek. Her eyes began to tear up involuntarily and she made tight fists of her hands as she felt her magic tingling at her fingertips. She kept trying to tell herself she was fine, it was fine, everything was fine.
After a minute, Jemma finished and put the sample in a glass test tube. She then had Paige spit into a tube and handed it back to Fitz. They got to work analyzing the samples. Keeping a close eye on Paige from where he stood against the door, Clint tried his best to keep his mind from wandering. But the pain in the burn on his arm against his leather jacket distracted him. Natasha, for her part, took turns between watching Fitz-Simmons work and making sure Clint's head was on alright.
After ten tense minutes of listening to Fitz and Jemma mutter to each other, both leaned into look at the results. The other three perked up immediately as they grew silent. But then Jemma started talking to Fitz again.
"Well I don't know what those are, Fitz. Definitely not human," she murmured. "Look at those chromosomes."
"But those do match," Fitz argued. "Could be a variant in Asgardian dna?"
Jemma shook her head. "I don't think so-"
"What am I?" Paige blurted out a moment later. "You two can stop with the muttering." She didn't miss Natasha's growing smirk at her comment.
Jemma and Fitz stood up. They exchanged glances. Finally Jemma gave them her answer. "Some of your DNA does have Asgardian markers. So you're definitely partially Asgardian. But-"
"-There's another type of DNA in your body," Fitz added. "It's not human though."
"Definitely not," agreed Jemma.
Clint nodded. "Partially Asgardian, partially something else. A place to start at least." He turned to Natasha. "Let's get the results to Fury."
"There's another thing," Jemma added quickly. "She has some markers that seem related to Thor himself, beyond just basic Asgardian DNA."
"She what?" Clint stared at them in surprise. "Like a relation?"
Fitz nodded and pointed to some of the results. "Not an immediate family relation, but something. Maybe a cousin of some sort?"
Paige sat blinking. A cousin of Thor? She glanced from the computer results which she couldn't understand over to Jemma and Fitz, and finally a visibly shocked Clint and stoic Natasha. "What does that mean?"
"Means we better find Thor," Natasha murmured, looking at the results again. After a moment she typed a few commands on the computer and locked the results for Level 8 access. She turned to Fitz and Jemma. "This information stays classified. If Coulson asks about it, he's cleared for the information, but only him."
"Coulson," Fitz stuttered. "What-what do you mean? He's dead. Why would we...what would we-"
"There's no Coulson. Nope." Jemma stood and straightened her skirt. "I don't understand, Agent Phil Coulson died during the Battle of New York how would we tell...him."
Clint laughed, but Natasha merely shook her head, folding her arms. "You two are worse liars than even Clint over there. We know he's alive, and running your group."
"Just keep pretending though, it's entertaining." Clint stood from leaning against the door and walked over to Jemma. "But in the meantime, what do you have for a burn like this?" He took off his leather jacket and showed her the hand print burn on his arm.
"Oh my," Jemma frowned, forgetting all about the Coulson debacle. "Fitz get me some antibiotic cream."
Fitz huffed at being ordered around but did so. As Jemma kept examining the burn, he handed her latex gloves and a white tube of cream. She nodded her thanks. "This is a bad burn. Looks like frostbite - dry ice maybe. How did it get shaped like a hand?" She looked up at Clint.
"Classified," he replied quickly, not risking a glance in Paige's direction.
Jemma rolled her eyes. "Classified. If I'm going to treat this I need more information."
"I don't have anymore."
She frowned. "Fine." Applying the cream to his burn, she then wrapped it in white gauze and bandages. "Keep it covered, Agent Barton. You'll want to get it checked again for the blistering."
"Thanks," said Clint with a nod. He put his jacket back on. "We need to get this to Fury. Remember, this stays quiet."
"Can we take her blood for testing?" Fitz asked hopefully.
Natasha stared at him. "No."
Without another word, she nodded at them and left the room, leaving Clint and Paige to follow quickly. Paige hopped off the metal bed and thanked Fitz and Jemma quickly before hurrying after Natasha. Clint rolled his eyes after his partner. But then he followed.