Well sorry, I'm not Tony Stark

[Dr Adjective]

[Another joyful morning for Hope Hynes…]

Tacky neon shamrocks flickered a sickly green light across the sparse crowd of depressed morning-drinkers and tired night-shifters. The faint smell of tobacco spoke of the proprietors’ lax attitude to the state’s smoking laws, to say nothing of turning a blind eye to a minor freely moving through the bar area. The situation is legally grey and nuanced, they’d counter, she’s under parental supervision the whole time.

In any case, Hope lived there. If an inspector showed up, it’s not like they’d prevent someone being in her own home. The handful of cops who frequented the establishment didn’t seem to mind. A couple seemed, if anything, uncomfortably happy to have an underage girl around them. Hope tried not to engage with those ones too much. It bothered her how acutely aware the older men were that her 18th birthday was next week. It bothered her the way her dad seemed to encourage the banter far more often than he decided a line was crossed and shut it down.

A lot about Kieran Hynes had been bothering her lately, to tell the truth.

Hope drifted through the establishment, avoiding eye-contact with the patrons for all the good it did her. She trailed a pristine mechanical finger along the aged, stained, scratched-up wood of the bar, and knew damn well everyone present knew exactly who the little girl with the prosthetic hands was. They didn’t need to meet her eyes, ever more emerald-hued in the green neon glow, to recognise her. Kieran and Aisling’s girl. The cripple.

“Finally out of bed, are you?”

Like the rest of the affectations in the “Authentic” “Irish” pub, her father’s accent was more exaggeration than reality. It oscillated wildly between Limerick and the family’s ancestral Cork, sometimes drifting as far north as Galway. Luckily, most of the patrons were even less familiar with the old country than Hope herself. It was all just “Irish” to the median punter. As long as there was Guinness on tap and… Ipswich Town vs Manchester City, apparently, on the big screen, what did they care? No scores yet, but it was still early in the first half.

“Yeah! Sorry, I…” Hope began to habitually make her excuses. She’d even internalised them as excuses. As if a disability wasn’t simply a reason to take longer with physical tasks.

“You’re always taking forever, Jesus wept,” Kieran continued, as if he hadn’t even heard her. Maybe he hadn’t. Hope habitually gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Still. She’d love to know how quickly he could get up, shower, get dressed, get ready, all the rest, all without the use of his hands. A little seed of spite buried deep under layers of politeness and deference, struggling to sprout. She held it back.

“Can’t hang around, Taylor’s taking me to soccer practice, we’ll get breakfast on the way!”

The harrumph of disapproval said more than enough. Her father didn’t need to articulate it again in words. He did anyway. He always did. The entire world was always very desperately in need of his opinion, as if all society’s ills would just melt away if the common sense of Some Guy held the keys to the lot of them.

“Maybe she’ll finally get her head on straight now that Canon’s fixing the schools, eh?” he asked. Rhetorically. It wasn’t a question that wanted an answer, unless that answer was total agreement. Hope gave a non-specific grunt that could be interpreted as affirmative if the audience wanted to hear it that way. He did, and he did.

“No more boys on your team, praise be.” Another vague vocalisation in reply. When she’d joined the soccer team he’d been going off on how unfeminine it was, how they were probably all lesbians, just look at the women’s league, watch out for those duplicitous queerleaders (he’d been really happy with that pun), etc, etc... Now all of a sudden the integrity of the girls' sports he'd so disdained was a top priority. Remove punch card for the gays, insert punch card for the trans…es, same angry expression. He probably thought all the tall girls on basketball were secret men, ever since Some Guy decided that that was society’s number one problem now.

“I shouldn’t be back too late, I think they’ve got plans this evening too,” Hope began, her expression souring as soon as she noticed she hadn’t code-switched out of using her friend’s preferred pronouns around the dad who preferred to hate pronouns. The tall redhead rounded the bar, pulling a face as he regarded his daughter, started straightening up her hair without warning.

“Can’t have my angel going out looking so scruffy…” he grumbled, affecting a deeper register as if showing affection needed an equal display of gruff manliness to balance it out.

“Don’t like you hanging around with that one,” he continued. Of course the they/them-ing required an unsubtle response. “But it’s better than walking.”

At least he wasn’t giving her grief about how little help she’ll be around the home whatever time she gets back. Again. Like she should’ve learned to just invent better hands in a cave with a box of scraps by now or something. Shame that the reprieve had to be at the expense of Taylor and those nice girls on Cheer. At least this time he hadn’t compared the trans cheerleaders to a drag act. And when his mouth said drag, his expression…

“Sure is.” she agreed, forcing a nice warm smile. She was prettier when she smiled, all the older men liked to inform her of that. She’d gotten used to it. She could do this all day. The smile faded a rapidly as the girl wearing it turned away and stepped outside, pulling her letterman jacket tighter against the brisk midwinter chill. But it was restored in, much more sincere fashion, on sighting her old friend Taylor idling in a nearby parking spot. The car was almost comically large compared to Hope, but she sort of liked that, made it feel like climbing into something more exciting than just a vehicle for going from A to B, like those black SUVs SHIELD agents were going around in. The door flung open on her approach, and up she hopped inside.

“Hey Tayto.”

[And off they go...]