"Wait, do we need to go and get Wanda?", Eleanor realised as the walk to the meeting room continued hand in hand with Nat. As she had been cooped up in her room for so long she had been worried that someone would forget to go and get her, which wouldn't have been ideal in trying to show her that she was still a part of the team.

Natasha shook her head, "No, Steve is with her and Vision has gone to get them both", she explained, causing Eleanor's mouth to open in an 'O' shape. It was silent from then on out, so Eleanor looked over to her wife and spotted that she was chewing on her lips, close to making them bleed. The uncertainty of the meeting caused stress for everyone. Knowing that Nat doesn't like it when her lips are rough and chapped, Eleanor poked her chin and flashed a goofy smile when Nat turned to her.

"Thank you", Nat chuckled quietly as the walk continued, now hyper-aware and trying not to bite her lips. It didn't take long to reach the meeting room, the place was designed for maximum efficiency, so rooms were placed strategically, knowing that people would go from offices to meeting rooms often.

Natasha walked in first and held pushed the door open harder than she needed to give Eleanor a chance to walk in without being hit in the face. The first thing that Eleanor fully took notice of when she walked into the room was Tony sitting hunched over in the back corner away from the table. Her eyebrows furrowed as she took in the sight of him, he looked guilty, not at ease. Considering what had been going on this made her panic slightly, that is not the kind of look you want to see when people had been calling for them to be locked up.

"Romanoffs", Ross nodded at them from his place at the side next to his right-hand man as they made their way over to the table. They gave polite nods in return and sat opposite Sam and next to Rhodey.

Eleanor stared down at the table briefly, but looked up when she felt Nat staring at her, she had expected a speech of some sort saying that it would be okay, but when she saw an amused glint in her eyes and a smirk, she huffed out a short breath and gave a small nod, urging her wife to get on with what she wanted to say. "Someone finally got your name right", she whispered with the smirk remaining.

Knowing that Ross' eyes were on them, Eleanor sent a warning nudge with her elbow onto Nat's ribs as a way to get her to shut up. Though Nat's joke came from a place of truth. In the field, she was still known as "Hughes" so that she didn't get confused with Natasha's orders and vice versa. But legally her surname was "Romanoff". When they got married she had taken Nat's last name, which people seemed to forget due to saying her maiden name more often.

Whenever documents are sent her way by her coworkers that have her name on them, she always has to edit them to represent her legally correct name so that the documents are valid and go through. It's annoying but it's not the end of the world.

Whilst waiting for the remaining people to file in, feeling Ross' judgemental gaze be cast over the room, Eleanor began anxiously tapping her finger on the table in front of her at a fast rhythm. This obviously caught the attention of the woman next to her, who immediately placed her hand on Eleanor's thigh, a feeling of calm washing over the two bodies.

With haste, Eleanor stopped tapping and instead gently placed the pad of her pointer finger on Nat's knuckles, and began rubbing circles over them. Natasha had to hold back a smile at the tickling feeling spreading through her hand and directed her eye line to the wall in front of her.

After what felt like forever, the remaining three Avengers walked in and took their seats. Whilst Ross began to move to the front and get himself ready, Eleanor continued making circling patterns on Nat's hand for comfort. When she first started to do that in meetings all those years ago at SHIELD, she was always worried that it was distracting Nat and that she was just too polite to say anything. So, she had taken her hand off which caused Nat to frown, and promptly reach her hand over to place Eleanor's hand back where it was. Since that moment it was a common thing in meetings for Eleanor to be using Nat's hand as some sort of fidget toy. It distracted her, and the contact brought comfort to Natasha. Win-win.

When Ross started to speak, Eleanor's head whipped up to face him, and her jaw was already slack with boredom as she tried to be attentive from the get-go and listen to what he had to say. "Five years ago I had a heart attack", he started and did a golfing pose. Internally, Eleanor threw her head back and groaned as she audibly gagged, externally her face was cold and focused. "And dropped right in the middle of my backswing. Turned out it was the best round of my life because, after thirteen hours of surgery and a triple bypass, I found something forty years in the Army had never taught me".

Eleanor pursed her lips, wondering where the hell he was going with this personal anecdote, it didn't seem relevant to her. At all. And already she was dying of boredom, tracing shapes on Natasha being her lifeline. She also found it quite patronising being spoken to in this way during a meeting, she just wanted him to get to the point. But that was who Thaddeus Ross was. Patronising.

"Perspective. The world owes the Avengers an unpayable debt". Oh. It was going in that direction. 'You've all done a good job but-'. She really wished he would just get to the point instead of sugarcoating it, buttering them up wasn't going to do shit if he was about to give them the worst news in the world.

He paused and gulped slightly before confidently continuing, "You have fought for us, protected us, risked your lives... but while a great many people see you as heroes, there are some... who prefer the word 'vigilantes'".

Both Nat and Eleanor tensed ever so slightly, they had worked as professional Agents for a good portion of their lives trying to do good for the country, and they were part of a group being coined as vigilantes, was a small stab in the chest. "What word would you use Mr Secretary?", Nat chimed in with a rather cocky voice.

"How about 'dangerous'? What 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?". Natasha looked over to the man who had walked to the side slightly with pure malice, whereas Eleanor sat there feeling slightly small as she grimaced. His answer made sense, but it wasn't a good one for them, it played into the narrative that the media had been harassing them with, only further pushing the assumption that something good was not coming their way.

On the screen in front of them a map appeared which caught everyone's focus, "New York", Ross stated as scenes of horror began to play out from the 2012 Battle of New York that four people in the room had been involved in. Rhodey seemed to look back at the two women and Steve with disappointment before turning back around. Natasha kept up her stern look as she met his eyes, and Eleanor just burned holes into the screen, not wanting to look at any of her teammates as memories came flooding back in. New York wasn't their fault, right?

"Washington, D.C", the videos now showed the helicarriers exploding in the air and falling into the water below, people screaming as they tried and failed to get away from the tidal wave it sent at them. Guilt ebbed and flowed through Eleanor's veins, they got off from these situations relatively scot-free, and there were real people on the ground left frightened and injured. But it was for the greater good, if those helicarriers had not been destroyed then millions and millions of people would not be here today. She kept reminding herself of that fact as the video continued.

"Sokovia", similar images played before it landed on "Lagos". Their most recent blunder. When the camera remained on a young child deceased on the floor, staring into the camera, Eleanor thought that she was going to throw up. Her movements on Nat's hand stopped, which in turn caused Natasha to increase the pressure on Eleanor's thigh to keep her mind at ease.

"Okay, that's enough", Steve ordered, and when Eleanor looked away from the screen after being put in some sort of trance by it, she saw Wanda looking down at the table with her jaw tight as she moved it from side to side. Suddenly a fit of burning anger flooded through her, Ross clearly used that image at the end just to get to her, and this was confirmed to be true when she looked over to Ross and saw his gaze landing directly on the young Sokovian.

Ross nodded and gestured for the guy next to him to turn off the screen. "For the past four years, you've operated with unlimited power and no supervision. That's an arrangement the governments of the world can no longer tolerate. But I think we have a solution". He gestured for the man beside him to hand over a hefty book which he took and laid out on the table in front of Wanda, which she quickly took and skimmed over the cover. "The Sokovia Accords".

"Approved by one hundred and seventeen countries it states that the Avengers", Ross continued as Wanda looked over to Nat Eleanor with her eyes momentarily wide with disbelief before sliding the book over to Rhodey. " Shall no longer be a private organisation. Instead, they'll operate under the supervision of a United Nations panel only when and if that panel deems it necessary".

Being under someone's control again didn't seem ideal, for the years that she had worked under SHIELD, doing whatever they told her to do whenever they told her to do it she thought she had been doing the right thing. But really the orders that she was given had been with negative intent in the grand scheme of things. She was confident that the things she had been doing as an Avenger always had positive intentions. Her actions anyway, Ultron was a huge outlier. But if they were to be controlled again under a panel, there was always the opportunity to be controlled for the wrong reasons again. Though it wasn't like they could go against the law. If they implement the accords then they implement the accords, there was nothing much that they could do.

Eleanor's entire body froze and tensed up when Ross stood behind her to look at Steve, so her foot started tapping to accommodate for that anxious energy. "The Avengers were formed to make the world a safer place, I feel we've done that", Steve spoke with authority, yet he couldn't meet the eyes of the man standing next to him.

"Tell me, Captain, do you know where Thor and Banner are right now? If I misplaced a couple of thirty Megatron nukes you can bet there'd be consequences. Compromise. Reassurance. That's how the world works".

Eleanor pushed her shoulders out to crack her back, all of the tension from this meeting causing aches and pains, and then turned to Ross who was at the front. "They aren't nuclear weapons though, at the end of the day they are people, one of them doesn't even live on this planet, so surely that doesn't equate to losing an inanimate object?".

"They can do a lot of damage Mrs Romanoff, you all need to be kept in line, believe me, this is the middle ground". Eleanor nodded slightly as she took in what he said, even though she still thought her point stands, this is the equivalent of microchipping a dog.

Rhodey placed his hand back on the accords, "So, there are contingencies?".

"Three days from now the UN meets in Vienna to ratify the accords. Talk it over", Ross began to walk out of the room, but not before Natasha could get another word in.

"And if we come to a decision that you don't like?".

Eleanor looked between them anxiously awaiting his answer. "Then you retire". Natasha gave a small smirk before her face went blank as her jaw went tight. It was the same feeling that Eleanor had when she nodded along to her response, a move to keep the peace but not because they necessarily agree.

They all watched as he walked outside and out of sight before Eleanor let out a breath that she didn't know that she was holding. "Well, that went...", Sam started before going silent, trying to think of words.

Luckily Eleanor knew how to fill in the gap, "Awful", she smiled and tilted her head towards him, earning a smirk in response.

"Yeah, awful", he agreed.

There was a moment of tense silence where no one really knew what to say, there were bound to be differing opinions on this, so people were cautious on how to start talking about it without causing an uproar. Instead of tracing shapes, Eleanor interlocked her fingers with Nat's, her wife was tense, it probably wasn't easy with both Red Room and SHIELD/HYDRA ties, so she wanted to make sure that she was okay with all of this. The action was appreciated, and Nat squeezed her hand three times to get that message across.

Though the moment was interrupted by Tony, "Come on, let's go somewhere more comfortable to talk this out". He sounded exhausted, not the man that they had all enjoyed living with at the Tower. They all agreed that they were sick of the stuffy meeting room, so moved out into the living quarters just outside, and Natasha guided Eleanor over to a leather sofa so that they could sit together. The single chairs were comfy but did not bring comfort if they couldn't sit with each other.

When Eleanor plopped down next to Nat, her head immediately went to rest on her shoulder, and Nat raised her hand, resting her elbow on the back of the chair, to run her fingers through Eleanor's hair. She immediately leaned into the touch and grabbed Nat's hand that was resting on her lap. They thought that they would be able to get a moment's peace before the debating began, but fighting between Sam and Rhodey immediately began, making the younger woman huff out an annoyed breath as she took in the words.

This was gonna be fun.