Resilience | ✔

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Beck stared out the window of the Quinjet, watching the rolling forests of upper New York's countryside pass beneath them, the remnants of the Adirondack Mountains blending with what she assumed were the Appalachians. Beside her, Steve sat in the pilot's seat, hands on the steering mechanism. He'd offered to fly her back to New York for her presentation, a comprehensive study on the true Marilyn Monroe (as opposed to the Marilyn Monroe the media had carefully crafted). It was for one of her classes at Brooklyn College.

She'd accepted his offer for multiple reasons—faster, better for the environment, she'd been wanting a ride in one for ages—and now here they were, miles above the earth. She had her presentation notes in her hands, but she couldn't concentrate on them. Couldn't stop thinking about the girl miles below and behind them, traversing the snaking highways in a limousine with her newfound biological father. The girl—Beck's best friend, not that she really seemed to notice.

It had not been Steve who had burst into Beck's guest room early that morning but Colonel James Rhodes, who Steve had introduced her to the night before. He was in a gray shirt and black sweatpants and held a mug of coffee and looked like he'd been up half the night and she, sitting up ramrod straight in bed, had yelped, "Who died?" Because she was half asleep, and hadn't gotten very good at reading him in their three minutes of interaction last night, and he looked like he was going to bestow some very bad news.

"He's adopting her," he exclaimed, ignoring her question.

Yeah, she wasn't very good at reading him.

She'd known immediately of whom he spoke. Hadn't even been that surprised. Why wouldn't Tony immediately want to take in Marley. Her Marley, her bruised, battered, battle-bloodied Marley who never showed the pain those fights gave her, who never gave up an inch of space in the field, who Beck had never seen cry, her Marley who had such a hard exterior but every once in a while, let Beck in to see her soft, warm interior, soft and warm even as she built herself up with sweat and blood and anger after each and every foster home shattered her. Her Marley, who made puns that made Beck's ears bleed and always listened and would start an argument being firmly on one side and then wind up arguing the other too and had never forgotten a single thing Beck told her and sometimes texted her pictures of animals at three in the morning with no context. Yes, why wouldn't Tony Stark pull her under his wing, decide to provide a permanent shelter for the girl who hadn't known one in seven years?

So instead of asking Rhodey to repeat himself, she'd just heaved herself out of bed, lurched across the room, taken the coffee and downed half of it in a scalding gulp, and ground out, "Tell." Like a soccer mom asking for all the juicy details about a disgraced parent on the PTA board, except a hell of a lot more steel-laced.

To his credit, Rhodey didn't seem at all upset about her taking his coffee. He explained what Tony was going to do: wake Marley up, have Natasha get her dressed, then load into a Quinjet and fly down to New York City, asking her if she wanted to be adopted on the way down. Beck agreed with all of it except the Quinjet. Rhodey noticed the frown that she couldn't keep from flickering onto her face when he mentioned it.

"Not a fan of Quinjets?" he said.

She shook her head. "Drive down. A Quinjet's too flashy. She'll get the wrong impression. And she won't have enough time to make up her mind. She likes having a lot of time to think about things."

Rhodey studied her. "Are you sure?"

Beck had thought of all the time she and Marley had spent together, the years if sparring and learning, just the two of them, from Steve. Learning Marley's moods and the way her brain worked, her perspective on life and view of those with excessive wealth versus none at all. She knew Marley almost as well if not better than she knew herself. Certainly loved her more, not that the fucking oblivious fool girl ever saw it.

Rhodey had read the answer to his question in Beck's eyes, nodded, and taken off down the hallway. Beck had drained the rest of the coffee and gone to seek out the best place to ambush Marley to try and tip her off.

Living with Tony Stark would be the best thing that had ever happened to Marley. Not because of him—Beck had never met him, so she had no idea if the two of them would be compatible—but because she'd have a fixed location. A fixed home. Because Tony would be legally required to take care of her for the next three years, and that would mean Marley living in a set place for the longest she had since her mother died. Marley was one of those people who need an anchor. She could go anywhere, do anything, meet anyone, as long as she had a definitive place to return to at the end of the day or week.

In a way, a little, Steve's studio fulfilled that role. But Beck—she didn't know how she knew, but she just know that it didn't cut it for Marley. Maybe Beck saw it in her posture, heard it in her voice. Maybe it was that Beck had realized several months ago that she'd never seen Marley fully relaxed—or relaxed to any degree, really. Always tense, taut, always guarded. Living like that endlessly had to grate on her. She didn't have an anchor, and she, drifting and not in a good way, needed one.

So of course, if Beck saw the chance for all that to change for Marley . . . of course she would try and give her a heads-up, try to convince her to take the golden opportunity laid at her feet. She just hoped that her Say yes had been enough to at least get Marley thinking about it.

And if Marley didn't take the opportunity, if Marley said no to Tony's proposal, Beck would do whatever it took to put a smile on her best friend's face. One of these days, Marley would see how much she was loved.

If she didn't . . . Beck had a good idea of what would happen, and it wasn't pretty.