Perception of Layla

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"Layla, are you okay?" Layla leans against the door frame, her hands clamped over her eyes. Bruce places a hand on Tony's shoulder, stopping him from stepping forward. Her lips turn downwards into a grimace, her fingers curling into a fist over her eyes.

Her knees wobble as she slowly lowers herself to the ground. She shakily drops her hands, resting them on her lap, her fingers finding holes in her dirty jumpsuit.

"How about we get you something else to wear?" Clint offers, his gaze soft.

The girl nods, her brown locks falling over her face again as she slumps forward slightly. Thor steps forward, easily picking up the girl without protest. A small smile forms on his lips, "She fell asleep."

"That was abrupt." Tony muses, his eyebrows furrowed.

"I wonder what was happening before when she was holding her head," Bruce speaks, moving forward to check on Layla. "She seems fine. She must've just been tired."

"I assume you have quarters prepared for her," Thor says, still holding Layla close to him as she softly inhales and exhales.

Tony nods, "There's a secure room up a level, it should be able to contain her powers and keep her safe."

Thor nods, leaving the room with Layla curled up in his arms. Steve follows him out with his eyes, keeping his arms to his chest. "What all do we have on her?"

"We have everything from the base, once Thor gets back we can go through it all. There's a lot of it." Bruce exclaims, adjusting his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"How much is a lot?" Nat speculates. Bruce steps to the side, holding an arm out, revealing the window looking down into the room Layla was in before. They step forward and peer into the window, their eyes widening when they see the two wall-length filing cabinets. "All of that?"

"That's all the hard copy stuff, there are video documentations via computer as well." Tony rolls his eyes, running a hand down his face.

"Well let's get started," Steve suggests, following Tony down to the room below. Nat, Clint, and Bruce follow behind them, a quiet conversation commencing as they descend. Steve attempts to keep a straight face, but inside his mind wanders over all of the possible information they could find.

They didn't know how long Hydra had Layla. They didn't know what types of things have been done to her.

"Steve."

Said man shakes his head, snapping out of his thoughts, "Sorry- what?"

"Nothing- you've just been standing there for a while not moving or anything." Natasha raises an eyebrow, watching her friend carefully.

"I'm just concerned about what we are going to find."

"We all are," Stark mutters, beginning to leaf through the papers in the top level of the file. "These are the earliest dated papers. Eighteen years ago."

Thor enters the room just as Tony throws the contents of the first cabinet onto the glass lab table. "What is this?" Thor thunders, eyeing all of the documents suspiciously.

"Don't worry Barbie, we're just going through Layla's slash Atë's documents."

Steve reaches forward, grabbing the nearest folder, "I think we should go through this chronologically- that way we won't get confused." He speaks, pointing his last statement towards Clint and Thor.

"What?" Clint whines, raising his hands up in defeat.

Natasha rolls her eyes, doing the same as Steve and grabbing the closest folder. "Tony? Can't you put this all up on the hologram?"

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