"Tony, are you absolutely sure you can walk on it?" Steve stared at Tony's swollen ankle as he balanced precariously on the other one.
"Yeah, it'll be fine, I can barely feel a thing," Tony lied. In reality, his ankle was quite painful, but the sooner he got back to the town, the better. He needed to talk to Reed, desperately.
"Fine. Walk over to the kitchen." Bruce gestured to the kitchen counter on the other side of the downstairs floor, which Pietro was cleaning. He had the weirdest quirks.
"Alright," Tony braced himself and placed weight on the ankle. It hurt at first, but as he lifted the other foot to move, the pain plateaued, and wasn't too intense. Tony breathed a heavy sigh of relief and took another few anxious steps. It was the first time since falling that he had been able to walk without a stick/crutch.
"Tony? Why haven't you got a crutch?" Pietro asked as he put the almost-empty bottle of cleaning fluid underneath the sink.
"I can walk now, apparently," Tony grinned sarcastically, throwing a glance back to Bruce. "Doctor's orders, right?"
Bruce nodded, smiling. It was comforting to know that Tony hadn't broken his ankle or worse. He didn't want to be put under the pressure to repair a torn achilles tendon or mend a broken bone. He was fine with antibiotics and sprained muscles, thanks.
"Cool. I'm gonna go check on Wanda." Pietro disappeared in a flash of blue-white. His hair, which had now grown down to about his ears (seriously, that stuff grew like bamboo) was bright, almost bleached white. He'd have to ask to borrow Wanda's scissors to trim it.
His feet hit the stairs quickly, with very little space or time in between; the sound of Pietro ascending stairs was more like a humming noise than the thud-thud-thud of someone like Steve.
Wanda was sitting in front of a large, slightly worn-down mirror in the spacious if dusty attic, a hairbrush hovering over her hair. She was staring at the reflection of the hairbrush, her eyes nearly burning through it.
Pietro sat on the dusty lower bunk bed (this attic needed cleaning, he mentally noted) and watched silently, not wanting to distract her. The wooden brush slowly made contact with her scalp, before slowly running its bristles through the length of Wanda's waist-length brown hair. Fortunately, hers hadn't turned white, too.
"That's incredible," Pietro spoke up once Wanda had brushed her hair five or six times, growing more confident with each stroke.
"I tried to move the can," Wanda confessed, pointing to the pile of torn tin on the floor about a metre from her. "But it just tore into pieces."
Pietro scooped a piece up to look at it; the metal was torn roughly, with jagged spikes on every edge. He whistled in wonder at it, commenting on how cool it was.
Wanda chuckled. "It's not going to be very cool if I accidentally tear a door from its hinges."
"I don't know, from what I've seen, Clint is the DIY king." Wanda rolled her eyes at that. Pietro had become close friends with Clint, and the two were forever poking at each other; Pietro running rings around Clint to annoy him, and Clint calling him Sonic the Hedgehog in response.
"I'm going to go out and practise on something heavier," Wanda said excitedly. "Do you know where the firewood is kept?"
Pietro grinned.
"Woah, Sam, come check this out," Clint shouted. He and Sam had been working on finding a way across the river that ran next to the house. Nobody apart from Bucky was willing to risk going over the crumbling concrete bridge downstream, so up until now, the group had just waded through the calf-height cold water. The river was shallow near the house, but Sam and Clint, or as Pietro called them, the DIY Duo, were looking and exploring to see if there was a more stable bridge upstream.
"What, did you find one?" Sam panted, climbing up the slope and batting holly out of his eyes.
"No, but check this out," Clint was clearly excited, and Sam couldn't help but groan. Clint was like a magnet for weird things.
The structure was certainly weird; a small lean-to, built of vine and tree branches, with an array of odd-looking plants inside, and long, thin sticks inside a trunk-like container at the back. Ivy was draped over the whole thing; it looked like the strange tents that American hunters used.
"Woaaah, get a load of this!" Clint held up a thick, light-coloured wooden bow, and drew the string back instinctively. To avoid damaging it, he slowly released the pressure.
"There's arrows over here," Sam held up one. It looked primitive, but was sturdy and no doubt lethal. The arrow was the length of his arm, with striped grey feathers tied onto the end, and a notch carved into the base. It was presumably how the arrow stayed on the bowstring. At the other end was a carefully-made, dark purple arrowhead. It looked to be made out of a light flint-like material, and reflected light from the many small facets carved onto its surface. Sam tapped the very tip against his finger and noticed that a dark, blood-like liquid seeped out. Upon closer inspection, the arrowhead was hollowed out in the centre and contained what they both agreed to be poison or venom of some sort. It was cleverly designed, so that it wasn't visibly different to a regular arrowhead, and didn't release the venom/poison concoction unless in contact with the target.
"This stuff is hardcore," Clint counted at least twenty poison arrows, and god knows how many regular ones. He was pretty sure that when fired correctly, the non-poisoned arrows could easily kill.
"Let's get this stuff back to the house, who knows what it's for. Maybe one of them has some idea what it is or who it belongs to." Sam suggested, lifting up a handful of dried herbs. They were unlike any he'd seen before.
From high up in the canopy, fascinated by their behaviour, the builder of the shelter watched on.