Resilience | ✔

Chapter Twelve

It turned out blynai were pancakes—made with white wheat flour and beaten egg whites, according to Wanda. They were very light and tasted delicious, especially with honey. It wasn't as formal an event as dinner had been. Everyone was there, Steve and Sam and Nat back from their mission, but they all stayed in the kitchen, noisy and chaotic, sitting and leaning and wandering as they ate. Sam insisted they add Marley to the chore system, but Pepper shot him down, suggesting that maybe they should let Marley pick out her bedroom before they made her wash dishes. Tony came in briefly to say hello and good morning to everyone and grab breakfast, but announced he had a meeting with the Secretary of Defense and had to skedaddle.

"I hate it when he has meetings with that man," Pepper said quietly to Marley as they watched Tony hurry out of the kitchen, coffee in one hand and several blynai in the other. "They take all day and he always comes out exhausted and downtrodden." Marley wasn't sure who used the word downtrodden anymore. "They rely on him too much."

"What do you mean?" Marley said.

"Their job is to figure out how to defend the United States." Pepper folded her arms. She was the only person in the room not wearing pajamas, clad instead in a navy pantsuit and nude heels. "Figuring out how to manage superheroes is now part of that job, and they're too lazy, so they have Tony do all of it."

"Isn't that better than them regulating everything?" Marley said.

"No, because they wind up doing that anyway. It's a hopeless cause for him." Pepper frowned at the far wall, then shook herself a little. "Speaking of picking out your room, would you like to do that now? I've already arranged for your belongings to be shipped up here. They're flying by Quinjet, so they should be here today."

"Oh," Marley said, surprised. "Um—sure, I'd love to pick out a room. The one I have now is fine, though."

"No, that's a guest room," Pepper said. "You get a room in the same wing as the rest of us. Come on." With a slight jerk of her head, she started off, heels clicking on the floor. Marley followed.

The rooms were all the same, but Marley appreciated that she got to choose. It was a loaded gesture—Tony and Pepper showing her that from the very beginning, she had options. In her foster homes, she'd always been assigned a room, although that was understandable since none of her foster homes were about the same size as a five star hotel. She picked a room with a good view of the "backyard"—a huge open space, a garden, a hedge maze, and the forest bordering all of it. Pepper typed some things into a small screen by the door and Marley's name appeared on it. "So everyone knows who's who," Pepper explained.

Marley retraced her steps from her room to the kitchen, and from the kitchen to the guest room she'd been staying in. She grabbed her backpack, the clothes Wanda and Nat had lent her, and Iron Bear, and headed back to the room she'd picked—her room.

There wasn't a whole lot to unpack. She put Iron Bear on her bed and the clothes in the closet. Not much in her backpack was available to be unpacked, as it doubled as her purse. She changed out of her pajamas and went to go look around.

As she wandered, peering in rooms and running fingertips over smooth walls and gazing out windows, she realized she hadn't done anything normal recently. She hadn't watched her weekly episode of Supernatural (she was in season 5), hadn't had her normal tea (peppermint with a spoonful of honey), hadn't sat down and read a book or done school in—five days? She'd lost track and didn't feel like trying to figure it out. She hadn't checked her blog, either. Her followers were probably losing it—she was active every day, had been since she was twelve. Twelve was a little young for Tumblr, but people thought she was older. She felt older.