ASHES ↠ b. barnes [II]

twenty four

        "FIVE YEARS AGO I HAD a heart attack and dropped right in the middle of my backswing." The Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross, began. He was standing in front of the wooden table, James Rhodes, Natasha Romanoff, Ezekyel Ljós and Steve Rogers took the left side of the table, Anthony Stark sitting by the corner, with a defeated expression as he leaned into the sofa.

        On the other side, sat Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, Vision and Sam Wilson, carefully staring at the secretary.

        Pietro hadn't separated from his twin sister since the incident in Lagos. A part of him blamed himself, for not being fast enough to get everyone out of the building before it blew up. And the other was just pissed off at the fact that entire world seemed to be against Wanda and what had happened— it was an accident. It couldn't have been prevented.

        Right?

        Ezekyel Ljós had a bored expression on his face, carefully staring at Tony who seemed to be zoning in and out with every word that left the secretary's mouth.

        Which, was rather unusual and a bit amusing, since Ross had only graced them with seventeen words. But then again, coming from him, that was enough to make the loudest person remain silent. Of the jokester type, like Ezekyel, run out of comments.

        To put it shortly, Ross was annoying as fu-

        "On the other side, turns out it was the best round of my life, because after thirteen hours of surgery and a triple bypass, I found something 40 years in the army never taught me. Perspective." Ezekyel almost raised an eyebrow at him.

        Perspective? This man wouldn't know about perspective if it were slapping him on the face.

        "The world owes the Avengers an unplayable debt. You have fought for us, protected us, risked your lives..." Ross stopped, trying to analyze the Avengers' thoughts; to no avail, obviously. "But while a great many people see you as heroes, there are some who would prefer the word vigilantes."

        "And what word would you use, Mr. Secretary?" Natasha asked him, a very small grimace appearing on her face.

        Ross couldn't know what the Avengers were thinking, but Natalia, a professional assassin trained by the best HYDRA asset and former Jupiterian warrior, had a pretty good idea of where he was going with his 'we're grateful speech', and one look at Ezekyel confirmed his own thoughts.

        And he didn't like it one bit.

        "How about dangerous?"

         There it was.

         "How would you call a group of US based, enhanced individuals who routinely ignore sovereign borders, and inflict their will wherever they choose and who frankly seem unconcerned about what they leave behind?" The secretary asked, trying to convince them of their cause. He stepped back and they were all staring at a map.

        "New York." Ezekyel observed the destruction, remembering that 2012 fight vividly. Loki had attacked Earth, looking for the Tesseract in order to rule the planet. It had not been a nice time, but they managed to stop him before he could succeed. That's when Ezekyel officially met Steve Rogers, the man that Peggy had been truly infatuated with. It was a bit awkward, he won't deny it, when they spoke about the woman with the same amount of adoration. But Ezekyel had moved on years ago. Steve still hadn't. Back to the fight, there had been indeed many casualties, and even though most of them were caused by foreign species, the government chose to blame the Avengers.

        "Washington, DC." This one struck a little closer to home. In 2014, Ezekyel had been reunited with his older sister, only to find that she had been brainwashed and hurt by one of their main enemies. HYDRA. It was on this year, that they realized that threats didn't only come from outer space, but also from their own planet. Once more, a few members of the Avengers had come to the rescue, to ensure HYDRA wouldn't get the means necessary to control the country. They succeeded, but there was an epic mess, and the government once more blamed it on the Avengers.