Avengers: Liberation

Chapter 24- A Kiss Plain And Simple

The landing inside Stark’s engineering lab was not the most grateful. I accidently tensed my body up as we entered the narrow entrance scraping the metal exoskeleton across the concrete tunnel wall. I flipped over myself, and landed with an echoing crash behind me. I groaned as all the oxygen in my lungs emptied very quickly.

“Miss Davis are you alright?” I groaned again and took in a sharp breath. My left wrist felt tight, bulging and bruised.

“I’m fine Jarvis, how is the suit?” I asked as I tried to move my body, but it seemed the exoskeleton had seized up.

“The suit is replaceable.” I chuckled as Jarvis showed a schematic of the areas with permanent damage, so really the majority of it. I quickly pulled the metal plates away from my sore body and suspended them in the air around me. I cradled my left hand against my chest as I walked with the metal.

“It was a prototype styled suit Miss Davis, it wasn’t made for hard landing.” I nodded and sighed to myself, I hope Jarvis disposes of this suit before Tony sees it. If he ever gets to see anything again.

“Where should I put all of this?” I asked as the metal hovered around me. Jarvis lit up a glass able with let up with a 3-D schematic of the Mark V. I lowered the suspended metal onto the glass table forming the correct pieces in the correct place.

“What next?” I asked as I watched small metal pincers come out of the glass table console and examine the pieces of metal.

“I will order new parts for the Mark V, and rebuild it before Tony even knows it was taken off the shop floor Miss Davis.” I nodded and looked down at the touch screen attached to the glass table to see the time was just shy of six in the morning. I sighed and removed myself from Jarvis concentration, and walked up the spiraling stair case to the main living room.

I wandered through the living room and into the kitchen. The large glass wall which faced out to the see showed the oncoming day. I sighed as the automatic door opened up to welcome a strange sight.

There sat Eric Lehnsherr, he had a mug clutched in his grasp, his lips sat on the edge of the mug, as steam rose from the liquid inside. He pulled his mouth away as the automatic doors slid to a close. He held the mug in his lap and looked over to me. His blue eyes glinted bronze from the early morning sun.

Neither of us spoke automatically, if anything we had left things on a sour note. I tucked my healing wrist behind my back and maneuvered myself around the kitchen so that Eric didn’t see any injury from my earlier exploits. I saw a silver coffee machine in the corner with a hot water nozzle. I grabbed a tea bay from the clear glass jar situated next to it, and held it underneath the nozzle. Eric had turned around to face me. He sat on a stool at the breakfast bar which I was safely situated behind.

I pulled away my steaming mug of tea, and walked over to the fridge, still behind the bar. I pulled out the tea bag and dropped it into a waste disposal hatch in the marble worktop. I pulled out the milk and gently poured automatically mixing the tea. I brought the tea up to my lips and leaned against the work top looking directly at Eric Lehnsherr.

“You look tired.” He stated simply, as he set his steaming mug on the breakfast bar. I nodded and set down my own mug on the worktop. I could feel the bags sitting underneath my eyes, a mixture of stress and lack of sleep created them very easily.