Beautiful Chaos

{part three | chapter eleven}

"Dad," Lilith said, rubbing her eyes as she woke up in the passenger seat of his expensive, orange car, "Maybe you should just..." She hesitated when he looked at her with warning eyes as he parked the car outside of the compound.

"What?" Things had been strained between them since the fight. Despite their touching moment in the snowy wasteland, their frustration with eachother had grown and they found themselves to be growing apart. Lilith took a deep breath and steadied herself.

"Just... try to be nice. They're your friends. My friends. Our family."

 there was a pause before his response, "Fine. No promises." 

"Thank you." They both exited the vehicle and made their way inside. Vision was sitting on a couch, fiddling with a chess piece. Lilith made brief eye contact and quirked the corners of her mouth into something resembling a smile. He nodded in response but went back to fiddling with the wooden knight without another acknowledement. Lilith said a quiet goodbye to her father as he made his way to where Rhodey was waiting for him, letting him know she was going to take a nap and probably wouldn't be up for a few hours. The new prosthetic thatTony had designed to help the man walk would take some getting used to, and Tony wanted to help his friend through the adjustment. Lilith on the otherhand, had someone else on her mind. 

The girl hurriedly exited the compound instead of heading towards her room like she said she would. 

"God damn it Steve if you can't make this work..." She mumbled as she got re-entered the orange car, this time on the driver side and peeled away from the building, kicking up dust behind her as she sped off. She hoped the letter she had written would arrive on time. 

She had written:

"Dad, 

I'm glad you're back at the compund. I don't like the idea of you rattling around a mansion all by yourself. We all need family. The Avengers are ours. We've been inseperable for all my life, you and I. I think we need a change in pace for a while. 

I hate to leave you, I really do. But I can't abandon the rest of my family and I just... I'm still mad at you, I think. For a few things.

I know I hurt you, Dad. I thought that if I went against you you might change your mind, that you would stop being stubborn for one minute and see the real issue. But I don't regret it, and I'm sorry for dissappointing you. 

Hopefully one day you can understand. 

I hope you can forgive me for everything. I hope... I hope things get better between us. But no matter what, I promise you: If you need us... If you need me... I'll be there.

Lilith"

🥀🥀🥀

It had been a long time since the breach at the raft prison. It had been a long time since anything, really. Lilith hadn't seen or heard or reached out to her father in months. She hadn't dreamt about Loki in weeks. She hadn't seen tall buildings that touched the untouchable blue of the sky in almost a year. Clint didn't have to go on the run like Steve, Sam, Nat and Bucky, or put on house arrest like Scott, and Lilith -officially- wasn't involved with the prison break. Wanda was technically supposed to be on the run, but she was really staying with the Bartons and Lilith. Having the ability to manipulate the minds of others came in handy during the monthly visits from the government officials, who sometimes found Wanda during their check-ins. 

 Other than that, life was nice and quiet and peaceful. The Barton farm was exactly where she needed to be. She didn't mind that her and Wanda had to share the spare bedroom or having to wake up earlier than usual if she wanted to shower before Cooper, who took a full thirty minutes just to fix his hair. Lilith was pretty sure he had a crush on Wanda, based on the amount of times he walked out of the family's shared bathroom with the scent of his dad's fancy cologne creating a cloud around him. She didn't mind the baby waking up in the middle of the night and screaming to be fed or cradled or changed, in fact, she offered to help with Nate whenever Clint or Laura were too tired. 

She didn't mind cooking twice a week, she didn't mind helping with chores, and she didn't mind the dogs taking up permanent residence at the foot of her mattress. She didn't mind that her swords and knives and pocket staff were stashed away in the barn's rafters or that her suit wouldn't fit her right anymore because Laura had fed her so much the first month of the girls' stay that Lilith had put on ten pounds. She didn't mind the new stretch marks on her thighs or the soft spot on her still-flat stomach where her hard, toned ab muscles had become less prominent. She didn't mind that Clint still made her train with him in the field behind the house, she didn't mind when Lila started joining the practices, and she didn't mind when Laura told them that they couldn't have 'just five more minutes' when she called them in for dinner. 

She had grown very accoustomed to her life on the farm with Wanda and the Bartons and she liked it.

She liked it quite a bit.

She crawled into the cool sheets of the queen sized bed that occupied one half of the guest room about an hour after she had woken up to rock Nathaniel back to sleep. She heard Wanda's breathing from the twin-sized bed across the room and sighed, glad her younger friend was getting some rest. She checked her phone and saw that it was almost three in the morning. She would be up again in four hours to beat Cooper to the bathroom. Wanda wouldn't be up until around ten. She snuggled into the cold sheets and held the comforter close to her body, the open window providing a nice breeze and the relaxing sounds of wind rustling through grass. She drifted off to sleep, thinking about Loki and their meadow, but never visiting it in her unconcious mind. She woke up with the sun, weirdly well-rested and refreshed despite being up with the baby. She chalked it up to a lack of weirdly realistic dreams and made her way to the bathroom, toilettries basket in hand and a clean towel tucked under her arm. It was going to be a good day. 

And she knew this, because there were no killer-robots or gods of mischief or dangerous fights here. 

All there was, was good food, a warm bed, family, and an annoying teenaged boy who practically marinated in his dad's forty-dollar cologne at eight in the morning. 

🥀🥀🥀

[end part three]