Doreen nodded. "I think for now we just shouldn't say anything." She sighed. "Give things a few days to settle down, at least."

"Yeah," Laurel agreed. She grinned a bit. "In the meantime, we should try to placate the masses on the blog."

"Hopefully they won't need too much placating." Doreen grinned briefly. "We can always find other pictures to entertain them with, although I'm sure they'll want to know why the Avengers were running around earlier."

"Well, we can't exactly announce to the world that they were after an assassin who tried to kill Natasha," Laurel said. "I figure we can just tell them that there was a situation and it's under control."

"Oh we can figure something out," Doreen said. She wasn't concerned about that, after all.

"Yeah," Laurel agreed, nodding. She sighed. "The team isn't going to be easy to deal with for a while, though, not with this happening."

"No, they're not," Doreen agreed. "Well, there will be a mountain of pastries at all times, and we'll see how everything else goes."

Laurel nodded. Then she went to sit down and draft a post for the blog. There was speculation flying already, and people were wondering what had happened.

Doreen checked on her from time to time as she cooked. She could see the speculation flying too, but it wasn't anything they couldn't handle.

Finally, Laurel managed to put together a passable post for their followers.

Hey, guys. I'm sure all of you are wondering why the Avengers were seen sprinting through the city earlier. And I'm here to tell you that there was a bit of a situation at the time, and it has since been contained. Can't give you much more than that, sorry. You know, the old "if I tell you, I'll have to kill you" thing, except more along the lines of "if I tell you, they will make us all regret it." I try not to think about it too hard. But yes, situation, under control, more as I get cleared to tell you.

#Avengers, #SHIELD, #classified, #so damn classified

Doreen snorted at the post but watched the reactions of their followers closely. When people seemed okay with that explanation, for now, she relaxed a bit.

"Hopefully that will take the speculation down a notch or two," Laurel said, sitting back and closing her laptop.

"That should do it, for now at least," Doreen agreed. "Dinner will be ready shortly, so you know. I get the feeling tonight will be a everyone eat on their own kind of night."

Laurel nodded.

"Good plan," she said. "We can have Jarvis give the dinner announcement once, but we won't push after that."

"Exactly. It's soup so it can just sit for as long as it needs to." Doreen got her bowl of soup, stretching out a bit and going to sit in the living room for the moment.

Laurel nodded and sat down next to Doreen. She reached for the remote. "I'm going to see what I can find by way of TV. I think marathonning a series sounds good right now."

"Go for it." Doreen settled in to eat her soup for the moment. She did make sure to take a bowl and some cookies into Barnes' room a little later on, when she was sure no one was looking.

Laurel ended up turning on the first season of Game of Thrones, just settling in to watch it. She knew what would happen already; she'd seen the show before, and read the books, so she didn't have to pay attention to every little detail and she could glance over every time one of the team drifted through the room.

Doreen settled in too after she made sure Barnes was fed, watching as everyone came in separately to get food. Thor stuck around, although he was subdued. Tony went straight back down to his lab, while Natasha ate quietly in the kitchen.

Clint eventually stuck around, perching on the arm of the couch. He watched the show too intently, as if trying to block out everything else around him. Bruce came out once or twice for some soup, but disappeared again soon after.

Natasha went back down to the gym after she was done. After a bit, Doreen got up and made a big batch of chocolate comfort cookies. She figured everyone could use those about now.

Laurel just stayed in the living room, just being there so nobody was really 'alone'. She didn't try to get anyone to talk at all, she just left the TV on instead.

Doreen also stayed in the kitchen and living room all the rest of the night. She figured if people wanted to talk, they'd talk. But she also figured it would be a miserable couple days.

And indeed it was. The tower was unusually quiet for the next few days, to the point where Laurel had taken to sitting in the main common area and using one of the giant hologram screens rather than her laptop, just to be a presence in the room.

The days were tense, if a little boring, for Barnes as well. One of the girls from before regularly showed up to chatter at him a bit and bring him meals, but otherwise he was left very much alone.

Doreen was in the kitchen more often than not, making sweets and candies of all kinds, as well as snacks and more food than was really necessary. She also got into the habit of going in to chat with (at) Barnes at least twice a day.

So when she had a whole array of candies and pastries on the counter, she made up a plate and went to go give them to Barnes. At least he seemed to be okay with eating things.