/i was done listening!/

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The Avengers stood around the room, some sitting like Maria who was using a pair of tweezers to pick the glass shards out of her foot. Magnolia sat over in the corner, not having changed from her ripped dress. She hadn't spoken since the attack, her arms crossed over her chest as she thought about anything and everything.

"All out work is gone." Bruce said as Tony stood over Ultron's deactivated body parts, "Ultron cleared out. He used the internet as an escape hatch."

"Ultron.." Steve said under his breath.

"He's been in everything. Files, surveillance. Probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha said, having actually changed into sweats and a jacket.

"He's in your files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more exciting?" Rhodey asked as he walked to the other side of the room.

"Nuclear codes." Maria said as it dawned on her. She looked over to Magnolia who hadn't moved, her piercing green eyes looking at the floor. She knew that Magnolia had always had problems with things trigger her and her past. Things that made her remember the feeling of her horrors.

"Nuclear codes." Rhodey echoed back, "Look, we need to make some calls, assuming we still can."

"Nukes? He said he wanted us dead."

"He didn't say 'dead.' He said 'extinct.'" Steve corrected before Clint continued, "He also said he killed somebody."

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Maria said but Tony proved her wrong.

"Yes, there was." He brought up Jarvis' holographic schematics that were now jumbled and broken. Pieces of blue had been integrated into the orange of the AI.

Bruce walked over to it was Tony walked away, baffled by how this could have happened, "What? This is insane."

"Jarvis was the first line of defense. He would have shut Ultron down. It makes sense." Steve said with his arms crossed.

"No, Ultron could have assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy. This is rage." Just as Bruce said that, the heavy foot steps of Thor walking in could be heard, the demi-god now wearing his whole armor getup with his hammer on one hand.

He walked forward angrily before grabbing Tony by the neck and lifting him up off the ground.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!"

"It's going around."

"Come on, use your words, buddy." Tony choked out as his hands pulled his Thor's wrist.

"I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark."

"Thor. The Legionnaire." Magnolia said sharply, being the first thing she had said since the fight. Thor let go of Tony, letting him drop back down to the ground, "Trail went cold about 100 miles out, but it's headed north. And it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again."

Magnolia looked up slightly, away from where she had been staring at all this time as she realized what was north. Sokovia. Strucker's labs and the twins, which she could only assume hadn't gone far from their home country after escaping.

Realizing what she had done, she stood up and started to walk out when Steve called after her, "Magnolia, we were done yet."

"I was done listening!" She yelled back, not looking to see but could feel their eyes on her as she left.

Natasha turn to the rest of the group and said quietly, "I'll go talk to her." Before getting up and following her out.

***

The redhead knocked on the door but didn't hear anything so she peeked in anyway. Magnolia's room was full of monotone colors and big enough so that she had a glass coffee table and a small couch to go with it. Fairy lights were hung on the wall next to her bed with a couple of plants dotted around for some color and a dark punching bag hung from the ceiling in the corner.

She looked over to Magnolia's bed and saw a big lump covered with a fuzzy white blanket. Natasha smiled at the girls childishness as she walked over.

"There wouldn't happen to be anyone in here, would there?" Natasha asked.

"noo." Came softly from inside the blanket lump, making the redhead almost burst into laughter but she continued.

"Oh really? You sure there isn't anyone underneath this pile of blankets that happens to be hiding from the world and it's problems?" Natasha sat down on the bed as Magnolia poked her head out of the blankets, laying in her stomach with her head resting on top of her crossed arms.

"I let them go." The blonde complained.

"Who?"

"The twins. When I went down to check on Tony in Strucker's labs, where he found the scepter, I saw the twins and I let them go." Magnolia confessed to her.

"Why?"

"Because I know what it's like to be scared to do anything in fear. I could practically feel their angry and hatred towards Tony, their resurfacing fear from their past." Magnolia said loudly before taking a deep breath and sitting up, wrapping her blanket around her shoulders, "When I was first found by Shield, I was terrified of doing something wrong. Like if I did something wrong or incorrectly, that you guys would send me back to Hydra. I know what it's like to be an experiment. A weapon."

Magnolia stopped for a second as she started to remember her time back at the Russian labs. What he did to her. "That's what he would call me, you know. A weapon so powerful that it would shape the future."

Natasha didn't say anything for a moment, letting everything sink in and knowing that Magnolia happened to like the silences sometimes.

"Well, you are. Shaping the future, that is but for the better. Probably not what he had in mind but." The blonde let out a small laugh as she leaned her head on the older woman's shoulder. "You are a good person, Magnolia. I promise. You are a good person who took pity on those two because you cared about them. And that's makes you amazing, the fact that you can care about complete strangers. Trust me, it's more rare than you think."

Natasha placed a kiss on the side of her head as she rubbed her back with one hand, "Everything will be fine, Magnolia. Just you wait."
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"-

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