∆ {6¹} {AFTER} ∆

THE ONLY THING that Roxi had been able to hear for days, was that incessant beeping. It rose occasionally, when her agitation did, or when her mind flashed back to that day in Wakanda. She'd clocked what it was after a few hours of lying still; it was a heart rate monitor, and the plastic-y bed with the thin fabric cover was a hospital bed.

After what had happened, she didn't remember much, apart from her head becoming so full of noise and emotion and pain that she'd found herself leaning almost entirely on Natasha. She supposed she'd passed out. There had been a couple of times where a sharp pain in her chest had begun to build, but it had never lasted long, for whatever reason.

Her head felt awfully quiet now. Roxi's mind was never quiet, it never left her alone, and to be left in such a silence that even she herself wasn't breaking, was unnerving. Natasha hadn't seen her either, and Roxi wondered if it was because she wanted to give her time to deal with what had happened, at least to an extent where it wouldn't impact the people around her as harshly as it might. Or maybe, she was trying to contact Yelena, trying to figure out how to accept what had happened.

The two women had both seen their families shatter into dust before them, or in Roxi's case, in her hands. She felt a shudder shake her frame, as her mind forced the reminder of what it had felt like forwards. The way that one second, she'd been holding her sister as closely as she could, and the next, the warmth had vanished, the feeling of Wanda simply gone.

Natasha hadn't got that luxury. She'd called Yelena countless times, even when she was standing outside the room that Roxi was in, but the blonde assassin never picked up. The two women who had found solace in each other now had one more thing to relate on; they had both lost their sisters to titan that they could've done more to stop, at least in their own opinions.

As if sensing her train of thought, Natasha walked through the door, her face wet with tears, her fingers tugging the edge of her jumper sleeves - one that Roxi was fairly sure that Yelena had picked out for Natasha to give Roxi for her birthday. She'd actually worn it quite a lot on the run, but it looked better on Natasha anyway, and Roxi knew she needed the comfort.

Natasha sat down on the edge of the bed, her hand immediately finding Roxi's and her tears only thickening. Roxi sat up, ignoring the twinge of pain in her chest. She'd broken two of her ribs when she hit the tree in Wakanda, and they were still healing. It was Natasha who pulled her close, burying her face in Roxi's shoulder so that the tears soaked through Roxi's thin shirt. Without meaning to, Roxi began to cry as well.

But this wasn't one of those moments of peace. This was pure grief, painted over the scene in strokes so broad that it seemed impossible to have a positive outlook. They clung onto each other tightly, Natasha's knuckles white as she gripped onto Roxi's forearm, and yet the ice-eyed woman could barely feel it.

"You were right." The words came from the Russian's mouth fast, and barely distinguishable, but somehow Roxi, with her mind in its disturbing silence, still managed to work out what the woman had said, "It wasn't enough. We weren't enough." The words rang through Roxi's mind, and she forced herself not to comprehend the defeat behind the blonde's sentence.

Instead, she wondered. She wondered, if Natasha was taking this so hard - with fair reason-, how were other people taking it. She wondered how she herself would take it once the shock and disbelief had worn off.

She wondered if the trapdoor would slam down once again and rust shut, if maybe the oceans would roar into peaks far higher than even the ones that slammed against her skull now. She wondered if the sea would settle into a deadly calm, if she would become afraid of retreating into her own mind. She even wondered if the pains would get worse.

There was a whisper of her name, and she snapped her eyes to Natasha's tear-streaked face, something inside of her giving way when she saw the slightly desperate look on the woman's face. She drew Natasha into a closer embrace in the least awkward way that she could, feeling her frame shake with the weight of her sobs.

Roxi didn't know what to say. Even after all the time she'd spent with Natasha over the years, nothing came to mind, and she felt it draw shame up her throat, into her mouth, where it held her tongue still and silent. She felt the urge to go back to her old room, to put on one of Natasha's old jackets, to lie in her bed with her old keyring that somehow Natasha now normally had more than her. She knew she couldn't; Natasha had come to her because she needed her, and besides, her body had begun to ache again.

So, the two of them sat, bodies, minds, hearts aching in their tearful silence, hoping to find comfort in each other's equally broken selves. It took them a while, but they both remembered who they were meant to be.

It was Roxi first. Although she remained silent, she felt the flow of tears stop, to the point where the old trails felt dirty where they lay on her face, and pulled away from the hug, instead taking both of Natasha's hands in hers and looking the woman dead in the eye, hoping to help calm her down. It was when she realised that Natasha's fast breaths weren't slowing down that she tore her tongue from the shame that held it and rasped out the few words of reassurance that her numb brain could manage.

"What was it that, uh, you said your- Melina used to say to you and- and Yelena?" For a second, Natasha watched her with bewildered eyes, and Roxi wondered if she'd managed to say exactly the wrong thing. Shit, why had she said it? Natasha was still clearly feeling the immediate pain from Yelena's.. death, and she'd just brought it up as if it was a good way to make the woman feel better.

"That- that pain only makes us stronger?" For a moment, something vulnerable flashed through Natasha's face that Roxi had only seen a few times before. Her tone, the way her eyes seemed bewildered, in pain, hopeful, and so dependent on the trust that she seemed to have in Roxi - it reminded her of a child. It made some sort of twisted sense, she supposed. Whenever Natasha felt vulnerable, too exposed, she reverted to a mindset she'd never grown out of properly, to the one that she'd known the most comfort in, in those three years in Ohio with Yelena and Melina and Alexei.

"Yeah," Roxi forced her face to smile, "Pain only makes us stronger."

"You're right," Natasha sniffed, and the smile on Roxi's face became more genuine, "Does that mean that you don't get to complain about being injured anymore?" Roxi's smile didn't fade, though she gave the woman a playful glare. It was true that she'd been using the pain in her chest as an excuse to not have to get out of the hospital bed, to stay solitary and clean while she was afraid to face the world. She feigned a look of offence though, melodramatically holding a hand over her heart.

"Shouldn't you be concerned?"

"Not if you're clearly well enough to act-. No, wait, you're right, I should be concerned, you're acting like you know how to have fun." At this, Roxi simply rolled her eyes and stood up, pulling Natasha with her, still wearing nothing more than a thin t-shirt wet with both of their tears and a pair of old tracksuit bottoms. She was pretty sure they had also belonged to Natasha at some point, because they were a couple of inches short, and left Roxi's ankles exposed to the chill of the medical room.

"Strange," she hummed, as she pulled Natasha closer and adopted a thoughtful look, "I can recall several times when we've been doing things you definitely found fun." Natasha's jaw dropped at the insinuation, acting as offended as Roxi had been only seconds before, some form of joy filling her at the playful grin that had settled on Roxi's face.

"What, like dancing?" Natasha attempted to salvage the conversation from where it had ended up, "'Caus I'm pretty sure you were terrible at it, and the only fun I had when we've danced is trying to avoid you stepping on my toes."

"Well maybe if I had a better teacher then that wouldn't have been an issue,' Roxi reasoned, moving one of her hands to Natasha's waist and holding the other one in the air - some basic dancing position she'd managed to remember from the limited lessons she'd managed to get from Natasha. Even then, it had taken her a fair amount of convincing to get them at all.

Natasha had decided at some point that any kind of dancing was too close to her childhood for her to be keen on the idea of it. But at some point, years ago now, Roxi had found her gazing at a wall of mirrors, softly humming some sort of melody that had sounded so beautifully painful to her that she'd found herself needing to do something about it. She'd only realised as she walked closer that Natasha's muscles were twitching with the illusion of movements, tugging to avoid the phantom pain that her body had come to expect.

She'd awkwardly taken the woman in her arms and held her gently, trying to maintain both an element of space and a feeling of comfort and had turned around in circles a few times, having no clue what she was meant to do. At some point Natasha's mind had realised their motion - possibly when Roxi had stepped on her toes - and the redhead had stepped back to reality, ready with a snarky quip and a pleasantly surprised look on her face.

"Well let's go ask Steve then," Natasha suggested, and upon seeing the distaste flicker across Roxi's face at the idea of having a proper lesson, simply widened her grin and pulled Roxi towards the door, "Come on." She ignored the woman's slightly whined protests about how her ribs still hurt and how she wasn't wearing suitable clothing, because although Natasha knew that they were partly genuine reasons, she needed something to occupy her mind before it strayed to Yelena again.

Roxi hadn't seen much of Steve these past few days. He hadn't visited her yet, and she didn't blame him for that. Her current condition was only a reminder of what they had failed to achieve. It was a thought that crossed her mind whenever she felt a particularly sharp twinge of pain, or saw herself in a reflective surface.

She'd seen him walking past though, slowly, his gaze fixed on the ground, one of his hands often raised to pull at the hair of the beard on his chin. He'd start pulling it out soon. It took them a while to find him, the silence of the compound broken by their steps. They walked in sync, but whispered things to each other in fragmented Russian and soft Spanish, phrases of gentle reprimanding of each other for their lack of self-care these past few, dreadful days.

When they found Steve though, their silence re-emerged, and the smiles dropped from their faces. He stood at the table that projected the holograph where Rhodey had briefed them on their mission to Wakanda, and was simply staring at a number that wouldn't stop going up.

The text above the number that glared so unnaturally brightly in its red, read GLOBAL [MISSING], and the two women could only stare as the number surpassed 3,200,000 and then 3,300,000. Natasha hadn't dared to check the statistics, and Roxi hadn't had any access to electronics, to the outside world. In a matter of seconds, they had reverted from their spell of gentle words, soft touches and firm diversion, and they found themselves back at the stage where they simply wanted to curl into each other and weep. All thought of dances driven from their minds, they found themselves simply standing and staring, their minds blank other than that red number, which really wouldn't stop going up, though Roxi found hers harbouring the beginning of one of those dreadful pains. Normally, there would've been a part of her that told her to sit down, to have a drink of water from the same one she'd taken a drink from only a week ago.

Then, she'd asked where Tony was, in fear of what was to come and what might happened to him. Now, she wondered were Tony was, terrified of what had happened and what had happened when that wave of blindingly white power had shot through the universe.

Normally, she'd still be nursing her wounds and afraid to fall asleep after watching Rhodey himself fall from several hundred feet, who she hadn't been able to save.

Then, she'd thought guilt weighed heavy on her mind. Now, nothing but the red seemed to be on her mind, seeping into her eyes so that even when she blinked, the number was imprinted on her eyelids.

"This is a nightmare." So he had noticed them. Roxi's fists tightened into whiteness and taught skin, because the red had started to remind her of her sister. She wished in that moment that she could cry over Wanda, over Pietro too, over the twins who'd had their lives cut so awfully short.

"I've had better nightmares," Natasha replied, her voice still soft with disbelief and wrought with pain that Roxi wished that she could take away, so that she could feel it for Natasha. The red must've been bothering her too, especially when her past had been so soaked in it. It hadn't rubbed off of her hands all these years, and now it wouldn't get out of her head.

"Hey. So, that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing." Rhodey. Roxi wrenched her eyes away from the number that had started to slow down, but was still unequivocally going up. She loathed the way that when she blinked she could still see it, as if it was branded on the inside of her mind. Besides, she didn't know what Rhodey was talking about. She'd not been out of the hospital, and almost no-one had come to visit her. She didn't mind, but she did wish that she had been clued in. Natasha simply released a sigh.

"What've we got?" They'd practically run to the room where this thing was being kept, and Roxi simply found herself looking at an old pager. She didn't understand, why was this so important? There seemed to be a lot she didn't understand at that moment, but she found herself storing it away, to deal with later.

"Whatever signal it was sending, it finally crapped out." Bruce spoke next, and Roxi guessed that everyone seemed to know about this but her, but that was the least of her worries. Her eyes were stinging because she'd been trying to get the red to get out of her head by not blinking for sustained periods of time, her head ached because- possibly because of that theory that she and Tony had been working on, and every breath she took sent a nasty spark of pain through her chest.

"I thought we bypassed the battery."

"We did, it's still plugged in. It just.. stopped." After what seemed like hours of that room and her lack of understanding, even though it had barely been seconds, she looked away from the pager, and her instinct looked past the red.

"Reboot it. Send the signal again." That was because she could feel something.

"Hey, well we don't even know what this is." Something odd, something foreign, something alien.

"Fury did. Just do it, please. You tell me the second you get a signal. I want to know who's on the other end of this thing." Fury's name halted her thought process for a second, but that lag seemed to provide enough time for her to realise that she could feel a metal she'd never felt before, and that it was right behind them. She turned just before Natasha did, and the two women faced the intruder, shoulder to shoulder, their faces a calm mask, and both immediately knew that the other would be analysing this woman in her suit, parts of it made of that strange metal.

"Where's Fury?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Oh hey, look at that, another chapter. How unusual. Anyway, welcome to Endgame, and I do have some plans but i still gotta cobble them together so the next few chapters might be a bit oddly written. What'd you think of the Moon Knight trailer? Pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

JABBERJAY_011

WORDS [2900]

WRITTEN [18.1.2021]

PUBLISHED [19.1.2021]