acceptance ♜ b. barnes [O.H.]

𝑻𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒗𝒆

New York, 2015

Lenna stayed conscious just long enough to process James' final words. Her hand that her head was leaning on gave way and she fell on her keyboard. The videos began to play again and she fell asleep to the sound of his voice.

The videos were still playing when she woke up a few hours later. She groaned and turned the computer off. Lenna knew she had no time to waste, but she couldn't help but take her time with her morning routine. Today wouldn't be another day where she sat around at home, so she prepared for the worst.

Except for one tiny problem. She fell asleep in her contacts. After five minutes of pure agony, she managed to get her contacts out before they were permanently seared to her eyeballs. She took an extra thirty seconds to blink out all the extra tears that had gathered; trying to remoisturize the searing meat spheres in her head.

"дерьмо́," she growled. She snatched her glasses off the shelf roughly and shoved them on her face. Her hair, which was up from washing her face, was harshly tugged from its ponytail and fell in waves around her face.

At the very least, she didn't look like a total bum! While Lenna didn't look great, she held on to this fact so as to not lose her shit on everyone who talked to her. She wore a pair of Adidas joggers with a loose Nashville tank top, a sports bra, and one of James' zip-up hoodies.

Every two seconds, Tony would walk up to her and ask her to change and every time she would walk away.

She ate her breakfast, a burrito left for her by Bruce, in silence as she followed Hill to where Steve was waiting by the elevator. Lenna ignored them for the most part, just trying to savor her food before they had to go and be superheroes.

As they were walking up the first flight of stairs, Lenna heard something that caught her attention.

"The Maximoffs," she interjected as she swallowed a bite of her burrito.

"Well, that makes sense he'd go to them," Steve continued on for her. "They have someone in common."

Hill looked down at her tablet, "Not anymore."

The Stark glanced Steve's arms and glanced at the picture. There was Baron von Strucker, dead in his prison cell with the word "PEACE" written in his blood on the wall behind him.

Lenna took the tablet and walked ahead of the two. She walked right into the lab where everyone else was and handed the tablet to Thor.

"What's this?" Tony asked.

"A message," Steve said, strolling into the room. "Ultron killed Strucker."

Thor pushed the tablet at Tony.

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene," Tony commented after looking at the picture.

"Aw, just for us," Lenna snickered and she sat on the table.

"This is a smokescreen," Natasha said. "Why send a message when you've just given a speech."

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss," thought Steve.

"I bet he... yep." An error message appeared on the computer screen. "Everything we had on Strucker's been erased."