I didn't go anywhere without a weapon anymore. I couldn't afford to let my guard down for a single second. An accident could happen anytime, anywhere.
So I walked everywhere with a bottle of gasoline, a lighter, and a knife.
All of it hidden beneath my clothes. Tucked into places no one ever checked. Places Clint had taught me to use. How to move without them shifting. How to make sure nothing showed through the fabric. No one noticed. Not once.
People only saw what they expected to see.
In the garage, right after I parked my bike, I noticed something behind old boxes and forgotten junk. An old bow. The leather was dry, the string loose, and the arrow bag completely empty.
I brought it inside.
"Mom?" I asked, holding it up. "Why do we have this?"
She looked at it for a second. Then she laughed.
"Oh my God," she said. "That thing?"
She leaned against the counter.
"That was your father's. Back when he thought he was Robin Hood."
My dad glanced up. "Hey."
"He wanted to impress me when we started dating," she continued. "Said he was going to hunt something."
"I almost did," he muttered.
"You did not," she replied immediately. "One arrow almost fell on your own foot."
She smiled, eyes warm.
"A squirrel won that day. Threw nuts at him and ran away. Your armed father lost to a squirrel that fought back."
She chuckled softly.
"Your dad is an idiot. I don't know why I didn't break up with him back then."
My dad smiled anyway.
The arrows were long gone, but that didn't matter. After everything Clint had taught me about bows and arrows, the bow itself was an extremely useful weapon. Silent. Precise. Reusable.
So during my next lesson with Clint in the Marvel universe, I asked him, "Can you teach me how to make arrows?"
He looked at me for a moment. "From scratch?"
"With limited supplies," I said. "Things I can find in a forest. Some rope."
He nodded. "All right. Let's do it properly."
He took me to a park. The entire lesson was spent there.
"This wood won't work," he said, snapping a branch. "Too soft."
My fingers hurt. Splinters dug into my skin. The knife slipped more than once.
"Slow," Clint said calmly. "You rush, you ruin it."
By the end of the lesson, my fingers were full of splinters and small cuts. But I had made one arrow.
Just one.
It was ugly. Uneven. Crooked.
But it worked.
I couldn't stop smiling.
When I came back to my universe, I spent the entire afternoon crafting arrows in the forest. I stayed in one of my main hideouts: the abandoned dump on the hill. The one with the rusted bus sitting there, half-buried and forgotten. No one ever went there.
I sat inside the bus, tools spread around me.
"Again," I muttered to myself.
Most attempts failed. Shafts snapped. Tips bent. Feathers refused to stay in place.
By the time night fell, I had twelve arrows.
Barely.
My hands hurt so much I could barely move my fingers, but I stayed another twenty minutes anyway, testing them. Shooting at empty trash cans scattered down the hill.
They didn't break.
They were good enough.
When I arrived home, my parents panicked.
I was late. Very late.
I was supposed to be home by 17:30. I arrived an hour and a half later, hands bleeding, clothes dirty.
"What happened to you?" my mother asked, already reaching for me.
My father grabbed his keys. "We're going to the hospital."
"No," I said quickly. "I'm fine. I just fell into a cut tree. The bark was broken."
They didn't look convinced.
My mother sat me at the kitchen table anyway.
"This will hurt," she warned, holding a pincer.
"I know."
She removed the splinters one by one while I winced. My father hovered nearby, panicking over every small cut. She bandaged my hands despite my protests.
When my brother came home from Mike's house, it took him a while to notice my bandaged hands. He was still talking excitedly about another Dungeons and Dragons game. Dustin had invited me many times, but I always refused, using the excuse that it was too long for me. Which was partly true, considering that once they even played the entire day.
But the real reason was that all my free time was already taken. Training. Preparing. I didn't have hours to waste on a game where they just sat around talking. I also didn't understand what was so interesting about it that they could play for so long without stopping.
After all the splinters were removed and my mother's shoulders finally relaxed, she noticed my brother. With her worry gone and the realisation that I was going to be fine, her anger returned.
She crossed her arms.
"You're grounded," she said. "No going out alone. From now on, your brother will take you everywhere."
That was a problem.
A huge one.
I couldn't afford that. Not now. Not with only a few days left.
So I solved it.
The next day, I handed my brother five dollars.
"Five a day," I said. "You tell Mom I'm with you."
He raised an eyebrow. "And you're actually not?"
"I'm going to another friend's house," I said. "One she won't let me go to because I'm grounded."
He thought about it for less than a second. "Deal."
That way, I could keep preparing.
The countdown had already started.
At any moment, everything would begin.
I couldn't afford to make mistakes now. Not if I wanted Will, Barbara, and everyone else to make it out alive.
I would save them.
I would turn all my fear into motivation if I had to. I would find a way to save Will faster.
Save everyone.
I had to.