Resilience | ✔

Chapter Thirty-Four

ONE YEAR LATER

"Rhodey, I'm home!"

Marley slammed the garage door shut, pushing her sunglasses up into her hair with her free hand. She hung her car keys on the hook and tromped out of the mudroom.

"Hey—come into the sun lab for a moment, will you?" Rhodey called back.

"Yeah, just let me put my stuff in my room!" Marley adjusted her grip on her blanket before it started dragging on the ground. Tony and Pepper were in New York City for a conference or something, and they'd suggested she get out of the compound while they were gone, so she'd invited herself over to Charlie's for a sleepover.

Singing the Harry Styles song that had been on when she'd gotten home, she made her way through the compound to her room. She dumped her blanket and pillow and backpack on the bed, gave her teeth a quick brush, fixed her necklace so the clasp was in the back, and ran her fingers through her hair. She'd had the windows down on the entire drive back, including the highway, and over two and a half hours getting of windblown didn't do a lot for her appearance, no matter how much it kept her awake.

She texted Charlie that she was home, then plugged her phone in to charge on her desk and, still singing, made her way back to the sun lab. It had been added in late summer last year after Tony had spent so much time in his lab that his vitamin D levels had tanked. "Tell me something, tell me something, you don't know nothing . . ."

"Okay, just a heads-up," she called as she made her way through the den to the lab, "Charlie and I played Towerfall Ascension until like three in the morning, so I'm not running on the top of my game." She turned the corner into the doorway to the lab and stopped dead in her tracks.

She hadn't—

Oh, those faces were so familiar, still so familiar, but—she hadn't seen them in over a year, over two—

Sure, there was Rhodey, standing a bit apprehensively by the conference table. But everyone else—

Steve Rogers lifted a hand and said, "Hey, Marley."