To All Those Brave and Lovely

All the Lovely Ones Have Scars

They leave them alone, for the most part.

She's not sure how long they've been there.  Nora tries to store up little details, to figure out where they are to report to Tony when he does finally rescue them, but so far, nothing is working.  She thinks they're underground, and Peter is somehow convinced that they're just outside of New York (apparently he was awake after they got abducted), and thanks to one of the guards taking pity on them, they know for sure that MJ is safe.

They're catching scraps of information they aren't supposed to know, like how they're really just playing a waiting game to see if Tony and the Avengers will take the bait.  Or how the only end game for these people is that the Avengers end, preferably in a painful fashion, and they'll be happy with whatever consequences they have to face because of it.

"We might die,"  She says, around a time that they think if lunch but could be in the middle of the night.  "They might kill us, and no one will ever know what happened to us."

"I'm not scared."  They've taken to holding hands any chance they get, even if the guards come along and kick them apart any time they notice.  He's got steel in his voice now, a kind of resolve that she hadn't yet heard from him.  "I'll get you out of here, I promise."

She doesn't ask him how he planned to do it.  

They take her out of her cage ten hours later.

She can keep track of time through the changing of the guards, counting the number of times they pace up and down the long hallway, hearing the door squeak open when one replaces the other.  Time blurs together after a while, but for now, she learns to know when night turns into day.

Right now is definitely night, when the door swings open and a leather gloved hand reaches down to yank her out of sleep, holding her upright as she catches her bearings.  "Get up now, love."  This is the nice one, the one she can count on for a bit of news and a scrap of the food his wife packs him in his lunch.  "The boss wants to see you."

That's what they call Evangeline's mom.  The boss.  

"Why?"  She blinks against the harsh light, still surprising even after however long she'd been here.  "why does she want to see me?"

"I don't ask questions."  His hands are heavy on her shoulders, but gentle, and it doesn't take much prompting before she turns toward him and lets him put on the blindfold.  There's always a blindfold. "I just do what I'm told."

She sighs, and thinks about calling out a good bye to Peter, but at the sight of him sleeping in the corner of his room, she thinks better of it.  "Let's get this over it."

She's always blindfolded when they take her places, led through hallways full of twists and turns, then up elevators and down steps.  Nora thinks she could be able to make it out, at least to the upper levels, but from there, she'd have no idea where to turn.  She supposes that that is the point of the blindfold.

When she enters the room, there is no bucket of ice cold water, just a long oak table covered in food, one bare lightbulb hanging down over it.  Evangeline's mother sat at one end of it, and after staring for a moment, Nora took a seat at the other.

"Sit."  Margot (Evangeline's mom) waved a hand out in front of her.  Her ring glinted in the light, sparkles shining off the diamonds.  "Eat.  Drink with me."

It's a proper dinner, the sort of fancy she had been expecting to be forced to have every night when she first moved in with Tony.  She doesn't make a move for any of the food, not trusting it enough to put her guard down even a moment, but she does bring the crystal wine glass to her lips, just to play the part.  She doesn't swallow anything.  "What's this for?"