"Good job, Nina. Catch your breath and keep it up. Twenty laps to go," Nina stood, chest heaving, mouth agape, staring after Steve. She looked like a kicked puppy and felt like one that had been run over by a car.
After catching her breath, Nina took off again, this time playing with her pace a little. She was trying to get into that sweet spot between too fast and too slow. Instead of slowing to a walk when she started to lose her breath, she would slow to what was sure to look like a pitiful jog. Pouring sweat, barely upright, shins splintering, side in a stitch, Nina finally completed all twenty five laps. Steve, Olivia, and Katerina had been lounging in the grass for a good while now and Nina all but collapsed next to them. She made no qualms about sprawling out on her stomach, pressing her cheek to the cool, prickly grass.
"Alright, who's ready for twenty five more!" Olivia cheered, granting a long, dramatic groan from Nina.
"How about a good cry? Can we do that?" She asked between gasps of air.
"You did good, kid," Steve assured her, patting her shoulder.
After a few minutes she had no choice but to get up and follow the Captain into another battle she was sure her body would barely be capable of handling. Nina soon found herself standing in a gym within the Tower, staring at a bunch of black weights, gleaming metal, and worn leather. She wasn't sure if Steve had taken the time to look at her arms, but she hoped he, at some point, took into consideration the fact that she couldn't lift more than sixty pounds and that was pushing it.
Turns out 'pushing it' was exactly what the good Captain had in mind for Nina. For the next two hours she pushed, pulled, and lifted the maximum amount of weight she could handle. Handle translating to, able to move with relative ease once. Once. It wasn't until she almost beheaded herself with a barbell that Steve decide enough was enough.
She couldn't help but look at him in disbelief when he handed her a jump rope. "But," She began, almost as afraid to talk back to Steve as she was to let her feet leave the ground. "We already did cardio," The look on his face told her the misery on hers was pleasurable to him.
"And now we're doing more," That supportive smile never did leave his face.
Given that the gym was free range for all Avengers, the four of them weren't the only ones present. At the far end of the room, Nina caught sight of Bucky. He had stopped just long enough to get a drink and witness Nina's emotional undoing. He was smiling, barely restraining laughter.
Nina never really had any choice but to give up. While she was jumping rope she recalled how much she used to love it as a child. She could have jumped rope for days and she could do it all. Forward, backward, criss cross, double dutch. Hell, throw an extra person in and she could do that too. But it had been a while and it showed. Jumping rope wasn't like she remembered and she envied her younger self.
Following round two of cardio was, well, basically anything you could do lying on a gym mat. Push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts, crunches, and a whole menagerie of things of things Nina had never heard of, let alone thought her body was capable of doing. By the time it was done she was lying on her back watching the ceiling spin and trying to remember what it felt like to not be in pain.
"Alright, break for lunch," Steve finally announced. Nina thought she was going to cry. "Except you, Nina," Her head flopped back down on the mat and rolled to the side.
Steve helped her up and then called Bucky over, which made her suspicious. Was she in trouble? Did she not do well enough?
"When the girls get back I'm going to have them training with Wanda and Vision. I might be the guy for physical strength, but I can't do anything to hone their other abilities. You'll be training with them, but I wanted to talk to you about your healing abilities first," Nina nodded. Thank got she wasn't going to have to lift anything.