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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NINA WAS FAMILIAR WITH THE CONCEPT OF DEATH. You will lose someone very important to you, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of them. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
But Nina was only at the beginning, and the beginning hurt.
The ride back to Queens in the Quinjet is a silent one. Of course it is. Tony Stark was dead... if that sentence wasn't enough to stun someone into pure silence, Nina didn't know what would.
Not only that, but she had witnessed the whole thing firsthand: watched as the life fell out of his eyes. Felt the lingering presence of his mind leave, replaced with this cold, gaping hole that felt empty and hollow.
They're both covered in dust and dirt. Suits made of nanotech not covering their bodies at this point - instead, Nina sports a large white t-shirt and a pair of pants two sizes too big for her while Peter wears the clothes he's worn five years ago... at the field-trip to MoMa.
Something that was only less than twelve hours too the two of them... five years to the rest of the living population.
The thought makes Nina shudder.
Not only has she get thrown into a war, she dies, then she gets thrown into another war... then Tony dies - and apparently there's something going on with her mother and now she couldn't get the thought of Druig out of her head... how his voice cracked at the very last syllable and how—
"You're Mendax, right?"
Nina stiffens at the presence of the man next to her, body throwing itself into a fight or flight mode. Steve Rogers was right beside her, rubble on his face... it still made her wonder why he chose to accompany the two kids home especially since he came out of war and just lost a dear friend - but he insisted. So he was here.
"Yeah," the girl responds softly, not because she's shy, but because she thinks that she has no energy to raise her voice. "Nina Valkin."
The captain nodded, a hint of a smile making way onto his face as he chose his next words very carefully. "Tony told me... he told me you made me my shield, you know?"
The shield. Tony had freaked out really badly at the sight of it; so it was a bit hard to believe that whatever he was saying was true. And, the two of them were supposed to have bad blood, right? Sure, a lot could happen in five years, but she knew Tony. She knew how stubborn the man could be.
But when Nina's eyes scan Steve, and when she realizes that there's nothing but honesty in those blue eyes of his, she realizes that he's telling the truth.
