clever as the devil, and twice as pretty.
It is a known fact that when you lie, you do it for a reason - but Nina was lying unhinged and she loved it. she loved the way they left the tip of her tongue. She loved the adrenaline she felt whenever she'...
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OLD HABITS DIE HARD. During the past year when her whole world seemed to flip upside down, Vision, her main confidant whenever she'd find herself at the compound training, had told her numerous times that what she was doing wasn't normal. But very recently, he sat her down once again right after a vigorous training session with the holograms she's aquatinted herself with and told her that pathological lying is a symptom of various personality disorders, including antisocial, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders.
Nina groaned, called him full of shit, and hasn't spoken to him ever since that fated day.
It's not like it's her fault. Vision was acting like she was doing something so despicable and evil when in reality, lying was nothing. If it was such a big deal, then why wasn't he sitting Loki down, talking to him about responsibility after what happened to the battle of New York? Or Adrian Toomes — who literally tried to kill a fifteen-year-old kid a year ago? Or maybe her mother - who had literally abused her all her life? Why not give them the psychoanalyzing sessions when their issues clearly ran deeper than Nina's? Everyone was acting like she was such a fucking villain for doing something so completely harmless and it pissed her off.
So, yes. Old habits die hard. But if only the people who constantly chastised her (namely, Vision, Tony, occasionally Rhodey) for her attitude saw her when she was fourteen, they would think that her present self is a fucking saint.
She was a lot of work, but fuck, at least she was trying.
Nina grunts with each punch, the sandbag jerking and swaying from the impact. Not nearly as satisfying as an actual fight (or even a sparring match with those ridiculously realistic holograms), but it does the job.
In all honesty, she doesn't know how long she's been here; all the minutes had already blurred together after she feels that surge of animalistic rage that hit her after she found a very specific Reddit thread discussing how unimportant Mendax was - and of course, a lot of incel boys who were probably thirty living in their mother's basement agreed with the comments - inputting their own thoughts that, much to Nina's dismay, made a little bit of sense.
One had suggested that she mind-controlled Tony Stark into getting herself into the Avengers (which was fucking confusing - it's been a year of "mentoring" and she wasn't even allowed to operate anywhere outside of New York) which led to Nina thinking of those multiple times when Vision would chastise her about her lying problem, which led to now.
Nina needs to get all her anger out now so it doesn't bubble up inside her and explode later. Just thinking about her worth being questioned boils her blood and she punches harder, faster, practically yelling with every thud of impact.
Fuck him. Fuck them. Fuck them all - how dare they insinuate that she'd cheat her way into the team? Did they think that she wanted to lose her whole family in a day? Did they think Illiana rebuilding HYDRA was a blessing in disguise for her? Did they really think that she would want to be where she was right now because how fucking dare they try to -
