∆ {3³} {BLOOD ROSES} ∆ 

NATASHA WASN'T SURE what'd put Ryder in such a strange mood. The woman hadn't objected when Natasha had helped her up, and she'd been joking around the team properly for maybe the first time ever. And her response to Natasha's flirting gave the redhead some hope that maybe he had a chance. Initially, she'd been unsure if she actually liked Ryder, but the sparks that'd danced up Natasha's arms when she'd helped the noirette up had confirmed it. She didn't know if she was okay with how she felt. It was a weakness, and Ryder might get hurt by somebody else looking to get at her because of it. There was a causality, and Natasha wasn't sure she was ready to deal with it. But right now, she needed to make sure Ryder could fight well enough after being hit on the head with a gun, and then high-tail it over to the Hulk for a lullaby.

After Natasha left, Roxi put her guns away again, pulling out her quarterstaff and leaning on it slightly as she made her way back to the quinjet, watching for any stragglers that might've escape the roundup. She hadn't found any yet, but as she entered a clearing, she saw the speedy silver kid zoom past her again, leaving a slight trench in the deep snow behind him. She was half temped to go after him, and had just started to do so when Steve's voice came through the comms, as if he'd known exactly what she was about to do.

"We have a second enhanced. Female. Do not engage." Roxi sighed slightly. If both of the enhanced were working together, she wouldn't have a shot against them together, so she continued her original path back towards the quinjet. Her hands were shaking, for a few reasons. Partly from the sheer cold, partly from adrenaline, some from the dizzying ache that swirled around her head, but mostly from the doubts that raced through her mind. Clint was hurt. If she'd just given in and told the rest of the team about her powers, she'd probably have been able to stop him from being injured. If she hadn't been so focused on the idea of people coming up behind them and hung back, maybe she'd have been able to stop it. The thoughts kept coming back, leering at her as the letters formed some kind of strange, wicked grin in her mind, telling her she could do better. But she was used to it. She was used to the way her mind would conjure up strange images and leave them swimming in a pool of her doubts, as if hoping she'd scare herself with each one, patiently waiting for her to fall through her own trapdoor.

The metaphorical trapdoor helped Roxi focus her mind, stopping the nightmare images from flooding the part of her headed she used for combat; the cool, level-headed side, that made sure she masked her emotions. Lately, her emotions had been getting stronger and stronger, and she was beginning to find it harder to hide them. Especially the guilt she still harboured about the name on that gravestone, even after all these years. The visits had loosened her mind, as if someone was reminding her that eventually, she'd let someone in, just as she had once before. This time, Roxi found herself vaguely hoping that it would be Natasha who she'd be able to open herself up to. And hopefully the redhead would be able to swim on top of the sea of information, instead of drowning in the riptide of memories and doubts like Roxi found herself doing, more than she'd like to admit.

"Guys, I got Strucker." But there was Steve as well. Initially, she didn't know if she'd really like the man, especially with the firmly fixed, patriotic mindset he had, but after the events of their mission last year.. She didn't know if it was fair to be critical to any of the people around her, especially seeing snippets of what they'd been through, as she had with Steve. Roxi herself had done far worse things, she reminded herself, and no-one had commented on it. The only person she'd ever felt had judged her was Natasha, and the redhead had a right to do so; she'd been through hell and back, and both women had ended up in the same line of work.

"Yeah, I got something bigger," Tony said confidently, though much more faintly than his normal loud boasting. A slight frown slid into place on Roxi's face as she tried to figure out what he might've found. Another key HYDRA agent? She couldn't think of any who would be here off the top of her head. She thought for a moment as the silver quinjet came into view, coming up completely stumped. 

"Like what?" She asked eventually, realising that she wasn't going to figure it out, as much as the idea of that annoyed her.

"Looks like a bunch of old tech," he told her through the comms as she made the last couple of steps through the snow, meeting Thor at the entrance to the ramp, Clint layed out on a stretcher behind him.

"Thor, I got eyes on the prize," Tony continued with a slightly more interested voice. Roxi almost sighed in relief as she sat down on one of the seats in the quinjet's cargo hold, waiting for the others to come back. Almost. She wasn't quite at the point of sharing her emotions with a God she barely knew, and even though she'd gone to visit him at his farm quite a few times over the past years, she still didn't feel close enough to Clint. If Natasha was here, maybe things would change. But only a little. 

They had finally found it. They'd been looking for the sceptre for so long, going around the world to HDYRA bases to look for it, and here it was. They'd take it home, and she could finally be done with the whole damn thing and go back to living peacefully in the countryside with no-one bothering her except the occasional phone call from various people and a few visits from Natasha. She wouldn't mind those visits getting more frequent though, she told herself, and nodded slightly with a light smiled on her face. Thor had his back to her, and Clint was passed out; what was the harm. 

It took a little while, but the rest of the ragtag group labelled 'the Avengers' filled up the small jet, each of them showing signs of the battle. A few of them had small injuries, Steve being one with a small cut on his arm, but the general idea was that they were all tired and worn out from the battle. Even Tony, who'd been safely stored in his tin can seemed as though he'd had a hard fight here or there. Roxi had been the one to get them off the ground, seeing as she was one of the only members of the team onboard who actually knew how to fly the ship, and out of them, she was not seriously injured and she'd had the longest time to recover from the fight. The dizzying swirling was still there, but it was considerably better than it had been before, and was no longer making her feel nauseous, and the sharp ache had receded into a faint one at the back of her head that she could ignore for now. She was strongly thankful that her other headache had faded in the battle, because otherwise, she might've been lying on the medical gurney next to Clint.

When she was still coming to grips with her powers, she'd liked to think of it as a white candleflame that flickered and sparked depending on what she was feeling at that point in time, and she'd thought that in her mental image of it, that it'd cast no shadows. How wrong she'd been. Now when she thought of it, she thought of a room filled with dancing, jeering shadows who would whisper her secrets to one another, and contort themselves into faces akin to emotion, and each one held a fear or a regret. What if she hurt someone? What if she told the others about her powers and they wouldn't accept her? Roxi hoped the reason she was becoming so hung up on what the others thought was because she felt as if she were a part of the team. She'd never been good at emotions and discerning one form another. Fear, pain, she understood those, but not these newer feelings like belonging and happiness. She hadn't felt them in a long time, and she quickly decided that sitting here pondering over her own thoughts wasn't going to get her anywhere good, so she instead set the quinjet to autopilot and finally made her way into the back of the plane.

It was relatively quiet, and Natasha was comforting Bruce about his transformation. Roxi knew the man needed it; he'd always been scared of his alter-ego, but a feeling she'd come to recognise rose like a balloon inside her, one she could easily label as jealousy. Clint was hooked up to an IV drip, and she made sure to check up on him briefly on the way past. She ended up standing next to him as she watched the two converse, her eyes snapping back to the archer when he spoke to her quietly.

"She feels the same you know," he breathed out, barely above a whisper, and with some difficulty due to the pain in his side. He'd obviously been watching her and seeing what she herself had been looking at. Roxi raised an eyebrow at him, her face completely calm, although she felt a little confused. Clint smirked at her slightly before he continued.

"Natasha." Roxi raised her eyebrow even higher, not catching onto what the man meant. The archer simply rolled his eyes before he carried on once more, this time sounding a little exasperated.

"She likes you too." Roxi just rolled her eyes and moved away from him and further into the back of the plane, pretending as if his words had meant nothing to her. In fact, they had sent her mind reeling as she tried to come to grips with what he had said. Natasha liked her? The thought made her feel slightly giddy, and a light feeling blossomed across her body. She'd never felt this before. The butterflies in the pit of her stomach had stirred up in a frenzy, fluttering around madly, stronger than they ever had before. She wasn't sure if she liked the combination of the emotions. They were distracting, and Roxi felt like they'd make her do something stupid, which was not what she ever aimed for. But when she looked at Natasha, crouched next to Bruce, comforting with a soft voice and a gentle smile, both of those feelings dropped nastily, as she realised that Clint was wrong. 

If she looked at the way Natasha acted with her and the way she acted with Bruce, she'd find a certain difference. At that moment, she felt like all the negative emotions she'd ever felt had been dumped on her at once in a kind of shower. Maybe this was why rain was supposed to be sad. This feeling... It was horrible, and Roxi felt as if it would never go away, as if would just stay and brew, and get stronger and twist itself into something worse. She was interrupted from stewing in a pit of her own emotions when Natasha's light voice split through her head and she looked up to listen in on the conversation. Even if she didn't like these feelings, she had to push them aside. They were meant to be a team, after all.

"Thor, a report on the Hulk," the redhead requested more loudly, her voice less soft than it had been a moment ago.

"The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims," Thor stated proudly with a smile, clapping his hands together at the end of the sentence. Natasha whipped around and gave him a hard look, while Bruce groaned slightly and put his face in his hands. Roxi copied the redhead's actions, turning to look at the God with a slightly incredulous look. For a thousand year old being, he could sure be thick sometimes. Thor's face dropped as he realised what he'd done, and quickly tried to amend it.

"But not the screams of the dead, of course, no no," he started, rambling slightly as Roxi rolled her eyes and leaned back against the side of the helicarrier. What she wanted right now, was a cup of tea, peace and quiet, and time to write down a couple of names in her black book. She hadn't been doing it nearly as much recently; she didn't have enough time, but she still needed to get it done. 

"...Wounded screams, mainly whimpering, a great deal of complaining, uh, tales of sprained deltoids, and, uh, gout." And she was not getting that here. Thor had finished his ramble with a proud smile, clearly feeling as if he'd saved the day and as if his stumble had been fixed. It was a mediocre effort, at best. 

"Hey Banner," Tony called from the pilot's seat which he'd clearly taken over once Roxi had evicted it. Roxi closed her eyes as she leaned her head backwards and just listened to the people talk, "Dr. Cho's on her way in from Seoul, is it okay id she sets herself up in your lab?"

"Uh, yeah, she knows her way around," Bruce called back, clearly a little annoyed at Thor. Roxi felt a pair of eyes on her, presumably Natasha's, and stuck her hand into the pocket of the redhead's old jacket to where the wolf charm was, running her finger over the worn food for comfort, feeling the scratched edged and the faint indentations that had once been sharp and clear, but had grown dull with her focus on it.

"Thanks. Tell her to prep everything, Barton's gonna need the full treatment," he commanded, JARVIS responding immediately.

"Very good, sir." Roxi zoned out as she focused on the old wooden charm, faintly acknowledging that Tony, Steve and Thor were discussing the sceptre and whether or not to have a party as a celebration for finding it. The general consensus was yes, to no-one's surprise, especially seeing as Tony was involved in the discussion. Another thing to look forward to then. Maybe she'd get to spend some time with Natasha. That was the only bit of silver lining Roxi could think of as she opened her eyes, ready to stop thinking about everything all at once.

{A/N:} Sooo I wasn't gonna publish this because I literally wrote it from 4:15 to now so about 1 and a quarter hours of writing. Seeing as it'd the holidays and my extra update day, I thought I'd do it. Quite proud of myself tbh. How long do you think it normally takes me to write a chapter? This chapter was more emotional so I was able to write it quite fast, so I hope you enjoy and that I didn't go on for too long because I have a habit to do that. I have so much planned for the next few chapters hehe.

JabberJay_011

2600 Words

Written: 28 / 10 / 2020

Published: 28 / 10 / 2020