To All Those Brave and Lovely

New Years

She spends the rest of Christmas break with Wanda in the same way they had spent the first week, shopping and staying up late and trying to make it through all the seasons of Supernatural before Nora had to go back home.  There isn't any more news about the unnamed group of people who want to destroy the Avengers, and they haven't yet moved out into the open, so Nora finally persuades Tony to let her go back to his house in time for school to start, even if she's there with a new list of rules that she wouldn't have thought him capable of enforcing, things like she's not allowed to leave without Happy or Peter or Tony himself by her side, and she has to stay off of social media, and she shouldn't be near windows too often, though Nora can't see how that last one was going to help.

"It's just a precaution,"  He tells her, not looking at her as he shuffles through his brief case to find the papers he needs for that day's meetings.  Tony's heading off on a business trip, leaving her here with Friday to keep her on lock down.  "There's really no sign that they're going to be coming here at all.  Just better safe than sorry, alright?"

He is sorry, she knows, but that doesn't make it better when she has to turn down ten invitations to different parties and can't see Peter for a week.  She had thought that when she came here, after all the new friends she'd made and all the new experiences she'd had, Nora would spend New year's Eve doing something more exciting than just watching the ball drop.  And yet, here she was, watching Halsey sing in at the New York show and wondering if she could bear to call Eden and hear what exciting thing she was doing.

"It's not for long,"  Natasha tells her, promising to stop by in the morning, because she's Russian and a spy and doesn't have to worry about things like hang overs.  Nora would have found that comforting, had she not been dressed to go to a party that all the Avengers (and Nora, coincidentally) had been invited to go to.  "You'll get your exciting nights soon, okay?  We just need to keep you safe until you're able to have them."

Nora drifts off sometime after the ball drops, curled up on the couch in a way that would make her neck hurt in the morning.  She hadn't called anyone, hadn't texted Peter, but she had broken one of Tony's rules and gotten on Instagram to watch the live feed from his Avengers party, cheering out loud when the camera zooms in on Nat and Bruce dancing together and making a mental note to mention it tomorrow.  (Nora wouldn't learn until later that it was a decoy to lure the terrorist group out of hiding, the perfect place for them to strike, all of them there together and Tony running the show from some unknown SHIELD bunker.)

She wakes with a start around three, the numbers on the clock bright in the dark, and Nora has to take a second to try and get her bearings.  Without being told, she knows that something was not right, that something of that not rightness had woken her up, but she couldn't quite decide what it was, just pulling the blanket off her and tiptoeing over to the wall to peer down the dark hallway.

Nora really wished she had left some lights on.

"Friday?"  She says, and even though its a whisper the AI should have heard her, but she doesn't respond at all.  Instead there is only the small thread of static coming from the speakers that normally holds her voice, and then silence broken by the slightest of noises coming from the front room.  "Friday, are you there?"

Friday is not there, and neither is the internet connection, which should always be up since Tony powers it independently of the main power grid, and that also means that the towers defenses are down and all the doors had been unlocked for who knows how long.  Exciting nights, Nora thinks, bouncing on the balls of her feet and wondering what to do, where to go, if this was something or really nothing.  And then there's the unmistakable sound of voices, people who either don't know she is here or don't care, too far enough away for her to make out what they're saying but loud enough to know they are close.  Be careful what you wish for, I guess.