Fandom The New Avengers - POST ENDGAME (Closed RP)

[cosmicforce]

Ace watched as everyone at the table displayed their cards before doing it as well. The boss pulled his quick winnings towards himself and the game continued, but Ace seemed lost in thought. His skin started to glow blue, and the boss cocked an eyebrow towards him. "Who you trying to talk to, kid?" He was familiar with the look the boy got when he was using his telepathy, and he was uneasy about what he was exactly doing with it.

"Listening," He lied, and he lied well. Spades asked no more questions and he was free to continue the mindless game of poker while also working to get a message into Rowan's mind.

Get the gun.

Rowan's head shot up and he inhaled sharply. The sound was intrusive and familiar, and he almost panicked before he recognized who it was. "I don't know where she is but we have more important things to do right now. Cover me." He started slipping through the crowds of people, keeping his head down so he wouldn't be noticed. He had to rethink his combat outfit, it made him easy to pick out.

Ace was still playing. Three chips left. The light grew brighter as he tried to let Saphira hear him. Grab the two on my right. and then Leighton Go for the two on my left.

Then it started. Rowan stopped moving a good few feet from the table and snuck his branch down from his ankles, across the floor and then slowly up Bow's body. The shots started ringing out instantly, firing straight into the thick branches, but Rowan didn't flinch. Determined to grab the gun.

Ace kept playing the game with a sly grin as the chaos began, hoping that the girls would listen to what he asked for.

 

[PixieDust]

Saphira had been watching the entire scenario unfold from a nearby table and was completely unfazed when she heard Ace’s instruction in her head. “Ugh, finally! I was getting bored.” She sprung into action, disappearing in shadows and reappearing behind the two men on the right of Ace. In her left hand she now held a jewelled dagger which glistened with flames. With no hesitation, she plunged the dagger into the arm of the man closest to her, swiftly relieving him of his gun. The other man seemed alarmed and fumbled to retrieve his gun and take aim at her, but she swiftly kicked his chair from under him and formed a circle of flames around both men that wouldn’t burn them, but would prevent them from leaving.
“Sorry,” she said cheerily “I guess luck didn’t want to be a lady tonight.” She casually stepped through the flame circle and took the other gun, whilst the men looked on in horror. “These look fun,” she mused “guess I need some cute holsters now.”

Leighton had also managed to hear Ace’s instructions. With some concentration and sheer determination, she had managed to bind one of the men in a rope of light, but she had yet to notice the other man advancing from behind her, ready to take her out with a fatal shot.

 

[cosmicforce]

Rowan disarmed the guy in the middle, giving Ace the opportunity to teleport himself behind Spades. It would have been the perfect attack if he hadn't been expecting it. The boss whipped around, pulling out a gun to aim steadily at Ace's head. "This is a bad idea," Ace warned, "I've got friends now."

Rowan, once he finished disarming the man, snatched the gun up with a second branch, bringing it back towards his shaky hands. The pain was almost as blinding as the light that came from Leighton, but he was somehow working through it.

His branch snuck up the man's body, wrapping tight around his neck and squeezing. Rowan just admired his new gun while he waited for his move to work.

Ace had managed to wiggle the gun out of Spades' hands without using his own. It dropped to the floor and then flew across the room - he was fairly sure he heard it shatter some glasses, but he couldn't and didn't care. The combat quickly shifted to a hand, fist, and knife - on Spades' part at least - fight.

Bow dropped unconscious at the same time that Ace had a knife go through his upper arm. They both yelled before they fell, and Rowan was finally given a moment to assess the situation around them. He saw Ace, and then Saphira. They were both doing good for themselves, even with Ace's injuries. Then there was Leighton. She was working her powers well, but behind her...

Rowan sprinted to where the girl was, instinctively the branches formed a shield that he held up between the two of them and the gunman. Wow, he'd never done that before. "You keep going!" He told Leighton. "I got this one."

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton only realised almost too late that anyone had been behind her. Only when Rowan spoke to her did she realise what he had done, but there was no time to contemplate anything much. She quickly scanned the room, noticing the fight between Spades and Ace.

It was clear that Ace was injured and needed all the help he could get. She rushed forward, passing Saphira as she went and saying, “get Ace out of the way now!”

Saphira nodded, disappearing and reappearing next to Ace, grabbing his arm and reappearing away from the rest of the action. “Stay here and don’t do anything stupid,” she said.

Meanwhile Leighton had finally reached Spades. Putting her hand out and rooting her feet firmly, she let out a powerful blast of white light that knocked him clean off his feet just as she had with the punch bag. He lay still on the ground and as he fell, so did she. The last thing she saw was the white light fading from her vision.

Saphira gasped, shielding both her and Ace’s eyes as the blast occurred. “Oh my god! Is she okay?” She stared at Leighton’s unconscious form on the ground and then turned back to Ace. “Are you okay?”

 

[cosmicforce]

Ace was usually quite the terrible listener, but when Saphira grabbed and moved him he suddenly noticed the pain in his arm. It made it hard to move but he’d manage, there was no reason to sideline himself. He was just about to head back to the boss when the light appeared. He was grateful for Saphira’s hand then, because he knew he would have stared right at it.

Rowan on the other hand was fighting the man Leighton had left behind. He couldn’t see what happened straight on, but he sure as hell could feel it, and the light seemed to distract the henchman enough to allow Rowan to wrap a branch around his neck. He threw him into a wall and the man was instantly out cold.

Then he turned and saw her on the ground.

Perhaps he showed more worry than he intended because as he ran towards Leighton, Ace seemed to shoot him a look.

He got there before Rowan only because he managed to teleport. “I’m okay,” Ace assured, taking a good look at the man crumpled on the floor.

The chaos continued around them. All of the henchmen were down but innocent bystanders still stared at them with looks of horror, the music still played loudly, people chatted amongst themselves. Rowan knelt down next to Leighton and searched for her pulse. When he found it he seemed to visibly relax just slightly. “She’s okay, but we need to get out of here. Why isn’t this simulation ending?”

Ace was still staring at Spades’ body, something about him suddenly looked weak. He was childish again, but not in the carefree way he usually was. He was broken. “I know why,” he said. “He’s not dead.”

“Well then kill him, Leighton needs rest.” Rowan’s branches wrapped around her, this time so gently that they just cradled her, keeping her steady and stable.

Ace glanced between his new friends and his old. His body was shaking as he reached his arm out, calling Spades’ gun to him.

He closed his eyes and pointed it down towards the body. Then he fired.

Blood splattered his face, his hair, his shirt. The simulation started to fade.

 

[PixieDust]

When the room shifted back to normal, everything seemed eerily quiet. Saphira looked between her three teammates one by one. Leighton still lay unconscious, her features looking uncannily calm considering what had happened. Rowan looked pretty intense as usual and clearly still preoccupied with making sure Leighton was okay. Understandable.

It was Ace, however, that Saphira was most worried about. He looked pale and deeply shaken, his shirt now stained with blood from what he’d had to do. She simply lay a comforting hand on his shoulder as she said, “we..made it.”

Wanda walked over from the corner she had been standing in and looked them over. “You all did well for a first try. Since one of you is completely incapacitated right now, the next simulation will continue tomorrow. Any injuries you received whilst there should heal by tomorrow considering they weren’t entirely real.”

 

[cosmicforce]

Rowan’s eyes flashed the same bright green as the night before, but immediately dimmed again at the sight of Leighton in his arms. “You could have killed us!” He hissed towards Wanda, getting to his feet. He had Leighton encased in a mix of branches and his arms and held her close. It was rare he showed this much care for someone, maybe these training activities were working.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Ace announced. He was slipping out of his shirt as he spoke, hunting around the room for a first aid kit. He was shaky but determined and not at all like he was when they went in. “Bossman can be so much worse. He has more henchmen than we have Avengers. He could have killed us if Wanda wanted it like that.” He finally found what he was looking for and sat with his back against the wall, starting to clean out his wound with his working arm.

 

[PixieDust]

Wanda’s expression became colder as she spoke. “I did not almost have you killed. You can’t die in there. I never said this was going to be easy. Do you think this was easy for any of us?” She inhaled sharply as she continued, “we’ve all lost people here. I don’t want you to be ill prepared out there. It could have and probably would have been much worse in the real world.”

Leighton began to stir slightly, opening her eyes and looking around in confusion. “Did we get ‘em....is Ace okay?” She was not quite fully aware of her surroundings just yet.

Saphira simply glared at Wanda the entire time she spoke, folding her arms. “Whatever,” she snapped, before disappearing in shadows.

 

[cosmicforce]

"I'm gonna suggest you get out of here before I kill you too," Rowan snapped towards Wanda. The branches, however, didn't tighten and when Leighton started to come to they gently rested her on the ground, moving to help her prop herself into a sitting position instead. He didn't look up at Wanda, just focused his attention on Leighton, fighting the anger that was starting to bubble up inside him.

Ace wrapped his shoulder as best he could, trusting that the pain would fade within a few hours. "Morning sleeping beauty. Thanks for saving my butt back there," He offered her a smile, finally seeming a little like himself again.

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton sat up, still leaning against the branches and looked between everyone in the room. The tension could’ve been cut with a knife. She watched as Wanda left and then turned her attention to the guys.

“It’s nothing. We’re a team, right?” She smiled slightly before frowning. “Okay somebody in this room is majorly pissed off and it’s kinda giving me a headache.” She rubbed her temple and began to raise herself to a standing position. “Where’d Saphi go? I swear she’s like a preppy supermodel ninja...”

It seemed as though most of her energy had returned and the colour was returning to her skin. Although she was a little disoriented and stressed by the situation they had just been caught up in, she wanted to focus on making sure everyone was okay to keep her distracted.
“Need help with that, Ace?” She asked, “or maybe what everyone needs is to rehydrate. I can go and get drinks or something. Or maybe I should find Saphira....”

 

[cosmicforce]

Once he saw Leighton on her feet and acting like her normal self, Rowan practically stomped his way out of the simulation room. Without something to distract himself, it was getting harder and harder to keep the anger from consuming him completely. So he let it, slipping into the practice room he let all of his training take over. His eyes flashed painfully bright and he wrapped a long branch around the punching bag they had broken earlier. It could be heard throughout the entire complex when he threw it at the wall.

Ace, still bandaging cocked an eyebrow towards the sound. "I'm fine, but someone's mad that you got hurt," he nodded in the direction Rowan had left in. "Go check on your friend." He finally got back to his feet, tugging his shirt over his head. "I'm gonna get some lunch and take a nap. It's been a long morning." With that, he snapped his fingers and his headphones appeared back around his neck. He slipped them up over his ears and danced his way out of the room, quietly singing along.

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton watched wordlessly as Ace danced his way out of the room. She could hear just how angry Rowan seemed and was torn between wanting to calm him down and letting him have his time to himself. Eventually her desire to help won out.

She knew firsthand that his temper could be dangerous, but she was pretty sure she could talk to him. Who knows, maybe they really were becoming friends.

A few minutes later, Leighton approached the training room with two cups of coffee in hand and slipped inside.
“Hey,” She said loud enough to hopefully capture his attention, “I come in peace earthling, and I brought coffee.”

Even though he was clearly filled with rage, Leighton was completely calm and smiled as she leaned against the door frame holding out the coffee.

 

[cosmicforce]

There was a hole in the far wall, the same size as the punching bag but looking more like a human had been thrown into it. It was deep and sent pieces of drywall flaking to the ground, but Rowan hadn't stopped. He was still punching and throwing and doing whatever he could to let some of the rage inside him. Simultaneously he was filled with memories and voices and pleas for him to go back to the lab he came from. They were all he could hear - not the sound of Leighton's footsteps, or her voice when she arrived at the doorway, just yelling. Reboot. Test again. Wrong. Fail. Get better 262. He threw the bag onto the ground. It made more of a noise than a dent and he finally looked up, making direct eye contact with her.

Attack. They said, but he didn't move. ATTACK. They yelled, but he barely blinked. Leighton looked so calm, and he recognized the two cups of coffee in her hands, one exactly how he made his. Had she remembered from this morning?

His eyes were still glowing as he approached her, but he didn't make a move to fight, instead focused on her face as he tried to ignore the way they convinced him she was a threat. "Milk and sugar?" He asked. His voice was as deep as it had been during their sparring match, but yet it was steadier like he had some form of control now.

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton tightened her grip on the coffees, beginning to feel unnerved by the glowing of Rowan’s eyes. Whatever had happened to him before was clearly happening now, only this time, he seemed to be resisting.

The redhead stood as calmly as she could and kept her hazel eyes fixed on him as she nodded. “Yeah...hope I got it right.” She forced herself to move slightly further into the room. She didn’t want to seem as though she were looking for the nearest exit.

 

[cosmicforce]

As she stepped forward Rowan stepped back, trying to protect her, but the brightness was starting to dim. A branch grabbed the coffee for him, dodging Leighton in an attempt to not frighten her more, and he sat down, his back to the nearest wall. It was a good way to ground himself, he found, and as the bottom branches started to dig into the ground the top ones started retreating, leaving a nervous Rowan sipping on a cup of warm coffee.

“I think I got a bit angry,” he mumbled, finally looking up at Leighton again. “Thank you.”

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton relaxed when Rowan began to revert back to normal. Taking a sip of her own coffee, she looked around the room at the broken punch bag and the huge hole in the wall. With a small smile she reassured; “I’m pretty sure Hulk and Thor have probably done worse damage before.” She then took a seat next to him. “Do you think we’ll meet them? I can’t lie, I’d probably fangirl hard if I met them. I mean meeting a literal god and the Incredible Hulk? It would be insane.” She kept the conversation as light as possible to keep him distracted.

 

[cosmicforce]

The more she spoke the more Rowan seemed to visibly calm. Eventually he relaxed enough that his eyes became normal again and the branches completely vanished, leaving him achey and surprisingly empty. “I just wanted to meet Tony again,” he admitted. “I guess Bruce and Thor would be cool too.”

Rowan took another sip of his coffee, surveying the damage. While part of him feared the response to his actions, he also hoped that at the very least Bucky understood. The brainwashing made you do violent things.

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton downed her coffee very quickly. It gave her quite the energy boost. She looked around the room once more and sighed before looking over at him again. “You’re worried about the damage aren’t you?” She got to her feet and offered her hand to help him up. “If it’s gonna keep playing on your mind then maybe we should go find someone to tell and we can both take responsibility. I was the one who pretty much destroyed the punch bag after all.”

Leighton frowned a little as her stomach began to rumble, then she chuckled. “Hmm I guess my stomach has other ideas first...”

 

[cosmicforce]

Rowan followed suit, finishing off his coffee and getting to his feet. Th energy boost gave him back some confidence, and with that came the familiar stoic look on his face. “Kitchen?” Was all he offered, but he was already walking out of the room. He could hear Ace down the hall making food for himself and singing along to his music and he almost turned back around. But he had seen that Ace was a lot more mature than he appeared, and that he was one powerful person to boot. He just kept walking, instead hoping that the boy wouldn’t try to make conversation with him.

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton followed after him, heading straight over to the fridge. “Anybody like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” She asked as she set out the ingredients. “Uh, Ace what exactly are you listening to?” She added, looking amused. “Do you just dance around wherever you go or what?”

 

[cosmicforce]

“I’ll eat whatever,” Rowan said as he leaned back against the countertop. It was true, he was just happy to have food since becoming accustomed to starving back at Hydra. Sometimes he still forgot to eat, or avoided it - like that morning - but when he was offered food he would never turn it down.

Ace nodded as well. Though he came to get food all he had in his hands was a glass of chocolate milk. He had spent the last little bit debating what exactly he was going to eat. Peanut butter sounded good.

When Leighton questioned him he just shrugged. “I spent too much of my life being sad or mad, spreading hate and violence. May as well be happy while I can.”

 

[PixieDust]

Leighton nodded at Ace’s answer as she made all three of them sandwiches. “You have a point. Which makes me think we all need to blow off steam without training, you know, like have fun. It’s been pretty intense here so far.” She gave them both their sandwiches and sat at the counter with her own.

“I’ll take that, thank you!” Saphira appeared from the shadows and took Leighton’s sandwich, taking a bite with a grin. “Mm peanut butter is the best!”

“Hey that was mine!” Leighton said, “where do you even come from when you appear like that?”

Saphira gave her a mock sinister look and loudly whispered, “if I told you, I’d have to kill you. Anyway, you were saying something about fun right? I agree, we all need fun from time to time. Anybody got ideas?”

 

[cosmicforce]

Rowan nudged his sandwich into Leighton’s hands, moving to start making his own instead. It was probably for the best, he could add more peanut butter and jelly to make it more filling - he was more hungry than he wanted to admit.

Ace nodded in agreement, giggling when he watch Saphira steal the sandwich, knowing that usually would be him and that it wouldn’t have been as funny if it was him stealing it. “I agree. What is there to do around here? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

With his mouth full Rowan looked up, scanning the crowd before joking. “We can go to a casino.”

It seemed like Ace wanted to be angry but instead he just looked shocked, then he laughed. Really hard, far harder than he should have given that the joke was neither funny nor creative. “I didn’t know you could joke!” He exclaimed betweenn giggles, making Rowan chuckle as well.

 

[PixieDust]

Both Saphira and Leighton seemed surprised by Rowan’s joke. Saphira joined Ace in laughter. “Right? I thought he was going for the brooding mysterious vibe!”

Leighton raised an eyebrow, looking between Ace and Saphira incredulously as she hopped down from the counter with her sandwich. “First of all, it wasn’t that funny. Second of all, have you forgotten that both of you can teleport wherever you want? Why don’t we just...go somewhere away from here.”

Saphira laughed and rolled her eyes, “like where, cutie. As much as I’d love to, I can’t take you on a magic carpet ride.”

“I don’t know it was just a thought. If I’m gonna be here I want to have fun too!” Leighton sighed. It felt like she hadn’t had fun in forever, and the place was beginning to feel like a prison.

 

[cosmicforce]

"That's just my personality," Rowan mumbled, but it was far too quiet for anyone to here. His personality was simple; he didn't have one. He was conditioned to be a nobody, a machine, and having the ability to do anything other than that was so foreign to him that he didn't know what to do with himself.

Ace shrugged, "I can't teleport more than a couple of yards yet. I also can't take anyone with me, if I could we'd all be in Greece right now. I've always wanted to go to Greece."

"I'm more of a Russia kind of guy," Rowan remarked, again without really thinking about it. That was the danger of losing himself and his morals, he talked too much.

"Been there, done that. Not as impressive as you'd think." Ace said it so casually it made Rowan look over at him, cocking his eyebrows in confusion. "What, I was in a literal mob and that's what you're shocked by? I practically lived in Russia for a year."

Rowan returned to his normal quiet self then, going back to eating peanut butter sandwich. Truthfully, he hadn't been there since his escape from the lab, but what he remembered outside of that was beautiful. He missed that little corner of the world. He watched as Ace turned back to their friends with that constant excitable look in his eye. "We can go swimming?" He suggested.