Matt slammed through the back door into Karen's kitchen. "Explain," he gritted out.

"Hey!" Karen chided him, her voice a harsh whisper. "I get that you're upset, but keep your voice down! I don't want Izzy coming down here, and seeing you all angry and covered in blood."

Matt put his hand to his side, and felt the patch of wet blood staining his shirt. "Fuck."

"I'd also prefer that she not to learn to swear until she's at least 4. Now sit down while I clean you up."

Matt shrugged out of his shirt while Karen gathered supplies. She sucked in a breath when she saw the knife wound and all the bruises marring his skin. "You've been overdoing it."

"And you've been lying to me."

"I never lied."

"You told me you didn't know where she was!"

"And I didn't! I didn't know she'd show up tonight out of the blue."

"You should have called me, as soon as she arrived, or texted. Fucking sent out a homing pigeon if you needed to! I would have gotten here sooner and-"

"She didn't want to see you, Matt! I tried to convince her to stay, but as soon as you knocked on the door, she bolted."

Matt launched himself out of the chair, almost dislodging the new bandage that Karen had applied. He started pacing the small space, rubbing his hands over his face. "I don't understand! I'm going out of my mind here, Karen. I need to see her. I need to talk to her."

"I know," Karen said sadly. "And I'm sorry. I tried, I really did. I begged her to call you, but she's not ready. And I have to respect her wishes, Matt. I've been her friend longer than I've been yours."

That stopped him in his tracks. The automatic denial caught in his throat: But you only just met her.

But that wasn't the truth. She'd met Calina six years ago.

And they'd had a five-year-long friendship that he knew nothing about.

For the millionth time since being dropped back into this world, he wondered what had happened in those missing years.

———

July 2018

2 months since The Vanishing

Her eyes had changed.

That's what struck Karen the most. Yes, she was thinner. Paler. Her hair was missing its usual lustrous shine and her lips were dry and cracked. But it was Calina's eyes that had changed the most.

She used to look at the world with such wonder. An almost naive joy used to light up those big hazel eyes, until - as cliched as it seemed - they sparkled. It drew you in, that gleam. That glimmer of vitality. More than her beautiful face and her long legs, Karen always suspected it was Calina's eyes that drew men to her like a magnet.

But that spark was gone now. And instead of with wonder and joy, Calina now looked at the world like it had broken her.

"How have you been?" Karen asked.

Calina shrugged, a small flicker of one shoulder.

Karen nodded in response. It was an asinine question, she knew that. No one was doing well these days. But people persisted in asking it of each other...and she didn't know what else to say to the woman walking beside her.

What could you say to someone who had lost so much?

Karen had been one of the luckier ones - relatively speaking - when Thanos had reaped his chaos upon the world. She'd lost her two best friends, but she still had David. She still had that love in her life, to hold her close at night and give her some hope for the future.

Calina had lost half of her sisters - the Widows she regarded as family - and she'd lost Matt.

Karen had witnessed first-hand the bond between the two of them. When Matt and Calina were in the same room together the air almost crackled, as if reacting to the force of their connection. When Calina looked at Matt, when he tilted his head in her direction, when their hands touched and they communicated with each other in that silent, mystifying way that used to drive Karen and Foggy a bit nuts...their love was palpable.

Karen had experienced a twinge of jealousy at the start, she could admit to that. A by-product of a few lingering, less-than-platonic feelings for Matt - remnants of her short-lived and ill-advised relationship with him. But those feelings quickly faded when she saw how happy he was with Calina. How different he was with her. How much more open and hopeful and centred he was.

He deserved that. And, based on what Karen knew about Calina's past, she deserved it too. The two of them had deserved their shot at being happy. At growing old together.

And it had been ripped away from them.

Now Matt was gone, and it seemed like he'd taken half of Calina with him. She was like a faded photograph, blurry around the edges. Desaturated and lifeless. And Karen was almost certain that she was still alive right now for only two reasons: the faint hope that Matt - and the rest of the Vanished - would somehow return...and because there was no one else to look after the puppy prancing ahead of them.

Calina tugged on the leash, trying to make the little dog heal instead of strain against the harness. "Nika, don't pull," she said.

The dog's comically large ears twitched at the sound of her name but she ignored the command and continued her attempts to race down the sidewalk.

"Puppy training is coming along well, then," Karen commented.

Calina rolled her eyes. "She's as wilful and stubborn as her owner."

It was clear to Karen that Nika had only one owner - and it wasn't Yelena, the Widow who had disappeared a few days after adopting her. She'd been with Calina ever since the Vanishing, and had fully bonded with her. She gazed at Calina with adoration, and followed her around Matt's apartment like a little shadow.

Karen was sorry that Calina had lost the two Widows who had come to visit her that fateful day - they'd disappeared right in front of her apparently, which must have been horrifying - but she couldn't help but be grateful that the puppy had been left behind in Calina's care. Walking the dog was probably the only time Calina left the apartment.

Not that the world beyond her four walls offered much to enjoy these days. The aftermath of the riots was still on full display, with damaged storefronts boarded up and the husks of torched cars still littering the roads. The police tape around fire-bombed buildings fluttered in the breeze, creating a rustling chorus with the missing person posters covering each and every tree trunk and street lamp. They passed a couple of soldiers guarding the intersection, their camouflage fatigues and assault rifles still as incongruous against the backdrop of high rise buildings as the first day the National Guard had rolled into the city.

"I heard POTUS was planning to revoke Martial Law soon," Karen said, searching for a conversation starter.

"That's good," Calina replied. "There's not much point in it now."

It was true. The anger and frustration from those first few days after Thanos' snap had dissipated fairly quickly once word came out of Wakanda. Those emotions had stemmed from the unknown - and the from the sense that the government was covering up the cause of the Vanishing. Now that everyone knew the truth, that anger had morphed to grief.

So much grief.

The world was saturated in it. Everywhere you turned, people were mourning. The air felt thick with sorrow.

And there was no distraction from it.

No dinners at the latest trendy restaurant. No ball games. No movies showing at the theatre. No trips to the salon. No beers at Josie's...

The essential services were still running - barely, and not without some major crises in the beginning - but most people had just stopped going to work. Restaurants and bars and a myriad of other businesses had closed. Everything that had once brought a little joy and relief to people now felt so empty and frivolous.

Pointless.

Karen shivered and pulled her light jacket tighter around her. It was July now, but the days were still chilly - as if the blanket of grief over the world had smothered out the sunshine.

Or as if mother nature herself sensed that the world wasn't in the mood for bright summer days.

"Do you want to come up for some coffee?" Calina asked, as they completed their circuit around the block and approached her building again. "To help you warm up?"

The offer took Karen by surprise. Every time she'd visited Calina, the other woman had always found an excuse to cut their little social outings short. "I'd like that."

As Calina prepared the coffee, Karen played tug-of-war with Nika. The puppy growled as she yanked on the end of the toy rope, her fluffy little tail wagging with happiness. "Ooh, so fierce," Karen laughed. The sound was rusty in her throat, and she realised it was probably the first moment of actual joy she'd felt since the Vanishing.

The game ended when Calina brought over the drinks. Karen accepted her mug and took a seat on the couch. Which gave her a view through to the bedroom, and the suitcase open on the bed. "Are you going somewhere?"

Calina sighed, taking a seat next to her. "Maybe. I don't know." She took a sip of her drink and absent-mindedly stroked her hand over Nika's head. "Natasha called me. Natasha Romanov. She's-"

"The Black Widow. The one in the Avengers, I mean."

"Yeah. She's been in touch with the rest of the Widows - the one's who are left anyway. She's asked us all to come upstate and...help out, I guess."

"Help out?"

"She's working with governments around the world, trying to co-ordinate relief efforts and prevent any further catastrophes."

"Like Iran," Karen guessed. It had been one of the first - and most severe - casualties of Thanos' plan. The nuclear power plant in Bushehr had lost more than half of it's crew at the moment of the snap. A few days later, when one of the cooling systems failed, there hadn't been enough experienced personnel on site to prevent the ensuing explosion. Thousands in the surrounding area had died, and the fallout had spread across much of the middle east.

Calina nodded. "Like Iran. But also like Bogota - the Cartel essentially runs the government there now. There are hangings in the streets, and hit squads at the borders preventing people from leaving. The world is a mess. And Natasha needs all the help she can get, especially since most of the Avengers disappeared. I just...I don't know..."

"What?"

Calina took a shaky breath. "I sometimes struggle to just get up in the morning and feed Nika. I don't know if I'm the right person to stop the world from imploding."

"There is no right person. Well, apart from Steve Rogers maybe."

Calina smiled sadly. "I'm no Captain America."

"That's my point - no one is. So all that the rest of us can do is try our best. Just...do what we can."

"Matt wouldn't have even hesitated. He'd be out there right now, helping whoever he could."

Karen gave a sad smile of her own. "Probably."

The two of them sat there for a few moments in silence, as if both imagining how Daredevil would have responded to this ongoing tragedy.

"I miss him so much," Calina whispered, wiping a tear from her eye. "I keep expecting him to walk in the door any moment. To hear his footsteps in the hall, and his voice as he calls out to me..." Her voice broke. The single tear was joined by another, and another, as she quietly started to cry.

"Oh, Calina," Karen scooted over to wrap one arm around the grieving woman. "I'm so sorry."

Nika whined on the other side of the couch, responding to Calina's distress. Hearing the plaintive sound, Calina buried her hand in the puppy's fur, even as she continued to weep. "I just don't know what I'm supposed to do," Calina said in a tear-soaked voice, sounding lost and alone.

"None of us do. It's only been a couple of months since it happened, and we're all stuck in a kind of limbo. We don't know if this is our new normal, or if the Avengers will somehow fix all this-"

Calina shook her head.

Karen sat back, eyeing the other woman. That wordless denial had seemed very...definite. "You know something, don't you?"

Calina sniffed, scrubbing the tears from her face. Then nodded. "Thanos is dead."

"What?"

"Natasha told me. The Avengers went after him already. They tried to undo it, but it was too late. We're not in limbo, Karen. This is our reality now, and nothing is going to fix it."

Karen could feel the blood drain from her face. "Wh-why haven't we heard about this?"

"The world is too fragile right now. If people lost that last iota of hope that they're clinging to..."

"It would be a disaster. The riots, the suicides..."

Calina nodded. "It would all happen again. Probably worse this time."

Not probably. It would definitely be worse. Even Karen could feel despair start to creep in at the thought that there was no going back to the way things were. That all those people who were lost...were gone forever.

She hadn't realised just how much she'd been praying it was all some big, cosmic mistake...

...and that someone, somehow, would fix it.

———

Calina closed the door behind Karen and rested her forehead against the cool wood. It was nice that Karen cared enough to visit, but pretending to be even marginally okay for the past couple of hours had completely drained her.

She padded slowly back into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. Nika jumped up beside her and circled around a couple of times before flopping onto her belly. Her head came to rest on Calina's thigh and she let out a sigh of contentment.

The puppy needed so little to be happy. A bowl of food, a few toys and Calina's attention, and she was content. But she deserved better. She deserved someone who would play with her for hours. Who would take her on hikes and socialise her with other dogs...

"I'm sorry you got stuck with me," Calina whispered, playing with her soft, fluffy ears. "And I'm sorry this is the world you live in, Nika."

It was the ultimate irony that Yelena had chosen that name. At the time, it must have felt fitting, naming her dog after Nike, the Goddess of Victory. It must have felt like a metaphorical two fingers up to the Red Room. A symbol of the new life she was embarking on. The new world she was entering.

But Yelena had only had Nika a few days before that new life ended. Victory turned to ashes. And the exciting new world turned to one permeated by misery and grief.

Calina didn't want to live in this world. She didn't want to live in any world without Matt. And for a few brief moments - after Natasha had ripped away the hope that he might return - she'd considered removing herself from this world. The thought of not feeling this way anymore - this aching, endless nothing inside her - had been so, so tempting...

But two things had stopped her. The puppy who depended on her...and the knowledge that Matt would never take the easy way out. He would always keep going, no matter what. And not just because suicide was a sin in his religion, but because it was who he was.

And she didn't ever want to disappoint him. Not even in death.

So she kept going.

She dragged herself out of bed every morning, even though it felt like her bones were made of lead. She fed Nika, and shoved food down her own throat, even though it all tasted like dust. She walked the dog, forcing one foot in front of the other. Even the act of breathing sometimes felt like a struggle...but she kept going.

Because Matt would want her to.

But would he want her to fight? To suit up again as a Widow and wade into the fray?

No, that wasn't a fair question. He would never prevent her from fighting, if that's what she wanted to do. He'd be concerned for her safety, of course. Hell, he'd probably try to come along as back up. But he'd never stop her.

The real question was one she had to ask of herself: Did she want to help save this world? This grey and lifeless, miserable world? Did she want to play a part in shaping it into something better?

Or did she just want to hide away in this apartment, and slowly collapse under the weight of her own grief?

She glanced around the apartment. Matt's sweatshirt was still draped over the arm of the chair opposite. His coffee cup still sat by the kitchen sink. His alarm clock on the bedside table still chimed every morning...

She could still feel him in this space, his memory like a tangible stirring in the air.

But he was never coming back.

He'd never zip that sweatshirt up again. He'd never make himself another cup of coffee. He'd never wake beside her in bed ever again.

Calina's breath hitched as the gut-wrenching finality of his loss hit her all over again.

For the thousandth time.

It came in waves, this grief. Constantly there, and deep as the ocean, but swelling at unexpected moments. Drowning her in sorrow again and again.

She bit her lip, trying to stem the flow of tears, surprised that she had any left to shed after her breakdown with Karen early. And in that moment she realised what she needed to do.

She needed to leave.

Even if it wasn't to go save the world, she had to leave New York. This apartment - and the city around her - held too many memories. Matt's presence was everywhere, teasing her with the impossible possibility: that he would somehow come back and resume his life with her.

But he was never coming back.

And she was just torturing herself by staying here.