∆ {4⁶} {OVERSIGHT} ∆

SILENCE STRETCHED THINLY across the room as each of them processed what they had just been told.

Roxi's head was spinning; as if she had been spun in a circle so many times that even her thoughts became repetitive and round. She couldn't wrench herself out of the whirlpool in her mind, that dragged her every thought around so that it grated against her skull before sucking it towards the centre of her mind to join a churning mass of her thoughts. What Secretary Ross had informed them off, most definitely wasn't what she'd been expecting.

But hadn't she, for the past few days and weeks, been wondering if they needed another form of supervision? Yes, they worked well with Steve and Tony somewhat in charge, but there had been that thought nagging at the corner of her mind for the past few months. It was so easy for something to go wrong in their line of work, and they needed someone who knew the exact measures to take to stop those things from happening. 

The Accords, however, seemed to be on a whole new level. Essentially, they wouldn't be able to act against a force if this 'United Nations Panel' didn't agree, even if it was an event with the scale of the last three incidents, where the whole world could be put in a state of danger that only they seemed to understand the severity of.

Nobody else quite seemed to recognise how it felt to be the last line of defence; the only thing standing between the world and its imminent destruction. They assumed it was easy, that it was natural to them, and that they were brave enough not to feel daunted even in the slightest by what they faced. But all of them were scared, nervous, terrified. Roxi was sure that she could pinpoint exactly what each of them had felt during the incidents, because it was always the same thing; a hot dread that drenched you so harshly that it made your limbs weak and your stance shaky before you even had a chance to fight.

It wasn't natural, either. Almost all of them had grown up either being told or believing that fear was useless. Though, in Natasha's case, they would make an exception if you were the one instilling it. It was simply something they'd gotten used to by force of habit. Part of it, for some of them, was the inability to back down a fight, but for others, like Roxi herself, never dared back down because she was absolutely terrified of the consequences of losing. The past few years, even more had been on the line, and Roxi had drilled it into herself that she wasn't allowed to fail, no matter what. Because if she did, if all of them did, the consequences would be on them. 

But the last few years especially, Roxi had found herself slipping. It had started with Pietro. She'd failed, and the consequences were partly the guilt that had lay so awfully heavily on her shoulders for so long that she was almost used to it's weight. That was how she'd dealt with Ara's death, after all. She'd allowed herself to become accustomed to it. She couldn't afford to let herself slip again, because she didn't know if she'd be able to deal with the aftermath.

Perhaps that was why they, why she needed this management. Their job not only relied on them every time the world was ending, but they rarely got more than a year or two of a break between incidents. They needed someone to keep them in check, but it had to be someone who knew how to handle people like them, who were quite unique from everybody else in more ways that the average person could dream of. They were different. There was a certain way that you had to handle people like the team, and people assumed that it would be a great deal of caution. Because they were dangerous, and Roxi would be lying if she said she suspected that no-one in the room apart from Vision didn't have some form of PTSD. They needed to be treated like you would treat anyone else, but the person in charge would have to be ready for anything without walking on glass around them all the time.

The government couldn't do that, but it could be the closest they'd get.

Roxi, who at that point had decided that it would be better if she actually paid attention as people began to speak, sat up a little straighter in her seat, both of her hands slipping out of Wanda and Natasha's.

"Secretary Ross has a congressional medal of honour, which is one more than you have." Rhodey was the first to speak, and Roxi found herself fighting the urge to twist her features into annoyance as she realised that Sam and Rhodey were essentially squabbling over such an important matter.

"Well let's say we agree with this thing. How long until they lo-jack us like a bunch of common criminals?" She wasn't the only one either. Tony seemed to be completely done with the arguing, and Steve seemed to be trying to stay out of it for now - though he was struggling. Everyone else was simply listening in a sort of quiet shock, no doubt sorting through their muddled thoughts in hope of coming out with a clear answer - and hopefully the right one - on what to do.

"117 countries wanna sign this 117, Sam, and you're just like, no, it's cool, we got it." Did they? Did they really have it? Because to Roxi, it seemed that their control in general was slipping from their grasp as if it were the fine grains of sand  scattered by a broken hourglass. The sand might as well have been glass, with the amount of people who were probably going to end up hurt in one way or another because of the Accords.

"How long are you going to play both sides?"

"I have an equation," Vision announced, setting down a rink he'd picked up in the almost unearthly silence that had been clouding the room only minutes ago.

"Oh, this'll clear it up." There had been many times that Roxi had found herself laughing quietly at Sam's jokes, but now was not the time. This conversation they were having was so incredibly important; it would change everything.  Whatever they decided to do today would carry over for the next few years, and possibly far longer than that, if something went horribly wrong. She would've liked to think that it wouldn't, but with their luck and her general readiness to accept what was happening so she could try and prepare herself, that wasn't looking very likely.

"In the eight years since Mr. Stark announced himself as Iron Man, the number of known enhanced persons has grown exponentially. And, during the same period, the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate." Roxi furrowed her brow lightly with Vision's revelation. It was true. Since the start of Iron Man in 2008, so many people had either felt encouraged to or had simply become enhanced, and because the world knew of Tony, it had been far easier to root them out.

Loki was coincidental, and HYDRA had been planning Insight for years. But Ultron, and Wanda and Pietro; they had been caused by them, the Avengers. Sokovia had almost undoubtedly been their fault. They'd only managed to deal with it because they'd won.

"I'm saying there may be a causality.  Our very strength incited challenge, challenge incited conflict, conflict breeds catastrophe. Oversight; oversight is not an idea that can be dismissed out of hand." Vision's words wrung far too true in many parts of Roxi's twisted mind, as if corralling it so that it would warp and change further still. She stayed entirely silent as she listened, solely focused on the matter presented to them, and for once managing to rein in her violently thrashing thoughts that always seemed to be caught up in such a wild torrent whenever these fatally important conversations came up, whenever they had to make choices that would alter the way they acted or lived for the rest of her life. She'd done okay up to now, but today, the stakes were higher than ever. After today, everything would change, and Roxi was convinced that she wasn't ready for it.

"Boom!" Rhodey announced in a calmly ecstatic voice as he turned to Sam, as if the vital point that the android had made had been his own. Roxi didn't mind who stood where on the Accords; she simply didn't want her friends to become criminals. She wanted to keep them safe, and it 'd be so incredibly hard to do if they stopped communicating with each other as they were supposed to.

"Tony," Natasha turned the focus onto the billionaire, who had been sitting quietly in a chair at the back of the room while Secretary Ross had explained the Accords, and was now slumped loosely on the couch he'd bought only a week ago after he got fed up of all the stains on the old one, "You're being uncharacteristically non-hyperverbal."

"That's 'caus he's already made up his mind," Steve replied instantly, instead of waiting for an answer from Tony, and Roxi realised in that moment that she had been subconsciously twisting one of the metal support bars underneath the dark-wooded table as the conversation had continued, her mind too active to be entirely ignored, and choosing to use her powers in a subtle way to try and straighten her thinking out.

"Boy, you know me so well." But Roxi's mind didn't work like that. Nothing would ever be simple, easy, as straight forward as they had been so many years ago, when she would just be given orders and she would carry them out at the best level she could, because that was her job. To be one of Fury's best.

"Actually, I'm nursing an electro-magnetic headache. That's what's going on, Cap, just pain. Discomfort," the man mused as he made himself a cup of coffee from where he'd travelled to the kitchen, and Roxi found herself watching the man in a concern that never would've existed even a year ago towards the Stark. He had rehearsed this in his head for the past half an hour, she was sure. He'd been waiting for someone to say something so that he could prove his point, and so that he could do so in a way that would make the other people on the team wonder if their decision was correct.

"Who's putting coffee grounds in the disposal? What am I, running bed and breakfast for a biker gang?" He said the last two words with a contempt of the kind that Roxi hadn't heard in a long time, placing down a holographic image protector as he did. It lit up the moment he set it on the table, with an image of a smiling, dark-skinned boy who looked like he held more innocence than anyone in the room of Avengers could ever hope to have.

"Oh, that's Charles Spencer by the way," Tony gestured to the image, but quite suddenly, it seemed as though the Stark's words were garbled; drowned and muffled as if Roxi sat in a tank of water. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the photo, because she recognised him.

"He's a great kid. Computer engineering degree, 3.6 GPA, had a floor-level gig at Intel planned for the fall. But first, he wanted to put a few miles on his soul, before he parked it behind a desk. See the world; maybe be of service. Charlie didn't want to go to Vegas, or Fort Lauderdale, which is what I would do. He didn't go to Paris or Amsterdam, which sounds fun. He decided to spend his summer building sustainable housing for the poor, guess where?" Even as Tony explained the boy's life, Roxi couldn't rip her eyes from  the photo, a sort of horror filling her heart that she had never felt before.

"Sokovia." Roxi's whispered word came out before Tony could answer his own question, and even though the word was so quiet, it seemed to echo through the room for decades, before it rebounded back to Roxi. She felt as if her head might implode from how fast it was spinning, whirling, grinding, doing anything to grasp the concept that this boy, the one she had seen helping people up in the stampede of the crowd, carrying babies for terrified mothers and guiding the dread-filled elderly to somewhere safe before he would help himself, hadn't managed to be saved. He had done so much, only to be killed by the carnage, the ruin, the chaos, that the Avengers left in their wake. Roxi felt her grip on the twisted metal support bar below the table tighten to the point where her palms ache, but she couldn't bring herself to let go. Why it hit her so awfully hard, she wasn't sure, but all she could think about was the fact that she could've saved him so easily. She'd seen him three or four times helping others. She should've ushered him onto one of the lifeboats, made sure that such a good person managed to find a way to continue living, but she hadn't been able to.

Everyone's gaze had snapped to Roxi with the word, and she felt Natasha's worry-filled gaze burning a hole into the side of her face, but she couldn't bring herself to wrench her eyes from the image.

There was a moment of incredible silence, where all the oxygen in the room seemed to have been sucked out so harshly that it left each and every one of them winded. Everyone was still entirely focused on Roxi, and while she suspected that it was mostly to do with her reaction to the image, she didn't doubt that some of it was wariness that still managed to cling on to the back of some of her teammates' consciences that had appeared when they'd watched the videos that no-one was supposed to have, that no-one was ever meant to see. Even Roxi had stayed as clear of the matter as she could, but she supposed that it was impossible to avoid something forever. For four years now, she had been turning a blind eye to the damage that she had caused in New York, attributing the violence of her attack to the fact that she hadn't known she'd had powers. But the incident in Sokovia had been far more violent, and Roxi had had more control over them than ever. It wasn't the honest truth, but to her it had seemed to be, because she'd told herself that so many times that she'd eventually - to her relief - begun to  believe it.

"He wanted to make a difference, I suppose," Tony continued bitterly, ripping the attention away from Roxi, who any other time, would've internally sagged with relief without the pressure of so many people watching her as if she was about to explode. But now, her eyes remained fixed on Charles Spencer's face, and Natasha's eyes, those  beautiful green ones that held so much pain and torment from her past, were still firmly cemented to her. She would explain it to Natasha afterwards, she reasoned, when she'd had a moment to think.

"I mean, we won't know because we dropped a building on him while we were kicking ass. There's no decision making process here. We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I'm game. If we can't accept limitations, if we're boundary-less, then we're no better than the bad guys." A part of Roxi agreed with Tony's earnest words that Roxi was tempted to open her mouth to agree with him - at least to some extent. Yet, she didn't, because her mind was still reeling, her heart was still racing, and she could feel the force of her hands on the metal support bar leaving indents as she continued to clutch it as tightly as she could. Anything to ground her with out hurting someone else. She'd done far too much of that in her lifetime, even if they had been bad people, and it'd been for a just cause.

"Tony, someone dies on your watch, you don't give up," Steve argued as gently as he could, and Roxi couldn't help but feel a deeper, less desperate, calmer part of her brain agree with Steve's words. Because no, you didn't give up. You mourned, and then you moved on, however long it took, it was necessary, simply so that you would be able to save the world from the next world-ending threat that would undoubtedly follow in a few years' time.

"Who said we're giving up?" Tony's response, was quick, and calm, and perfect, but Steve had been equally ready for another response, and Roxi found her mind lapsing as she attempted to keep up with the paces conversation-turned argument.

"We are if we're not taking responsibility for our actions. This document just shifts the blame."

"I'm sorry Steve. That - that is dangerously arrogant. This is the United Nations we're talking about. It's not the World Security Council, it's not SHIELD, it's not HYDRA." Rhodey was quick with a response, and Roxi couldn't help but find at least a fragment of truth in each person's statement as she tried to draw some conclusion of her own, trying to draw the power, the will to rip her eyes from the hovering picture of the smiling boy named Charles Spencer, who had died because he devoted himself so entirely to saving others, that he no longer had time to save himself.

"No, but it's run by people with agendas. Agendas change." Everything changes. Roxi had never found a complete constant in her life, she thought at that moment, as she wondered how everything managed to slip through her finger like it was only the sand falling to the other half of the hourglass, giving someone else the happiness, the constants that she was so dearly missing.

"That's good, that's why I'm here. When I realised my weapons were capable of in the wrong hands, I shut it down and stopped manufacturing." It was as the room around them continued speaking, that Roxi was reminded of the insistent green gaze that still rested on the side of her head. It was so intense that by this point, Roxi was sure that Natasha could see right through her skull and into her brain, and hear everything that she thought as she thought it. She was wrong. She did have a constant, and she was sitting across the table from her. It was that, ultimately, that allowed Roxi to wrench her gaze from the slightly flickering image to focus on the redhead, watching as relief pooled in those beautiful green eyes as the pair made eye contact, a sign that Roxi had managed to pull herself out of the bottomless pit she had been falling into for the past ten minutes - at least, for now. All Natasha needed to do now was get her to step away from the brink. It would most definitely be easier said than done.

"Tony, you chose  to do that. If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose. What if the Panel sends us somewhere we don't think we should go? What if there is somewhere we need to go, and they don't let us? We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own." The last line struck a warning bell inside Roxi, but she didn't dare take her gaze away from Natasha to retaliate to Steve, trying to assure the redhead that she was okay, and if anything, that Natasha was safe, and that she could say whatever she needed to.

"If we don't do this now, it'll be done to us later. That 's the fact. That won't be pretty." Tony's words stirred up yet another flurry inside the blizzard of Roxi's mind. She hadn't even considered that they could be forced into this in the future if they refused to sign now - coerced, and manipulated in such a way that the government used them against each other to get exactly what they wanted. She couldn't let that happen; it was far too dangerous for all parties involved.

"You're saying they'll come for me," Wanda supplied, and Roxi fought the urge to twist her lips as a scowl as she spoke up bitterly, still in a much quieter voice than normal, though she still didn't dare to take her eyes from Natasha's. It was a form of reassurance.

"I'd like to see them try."

"We would protect you," Vision agreed, before Natasha finally gained enough confidence to speak her mind, thanks to the faith that pooled in Roxi's icy eyes as she gazed at the redhead.

"Maybe Tony's right." Tony's head jerked round, his face lit up in surprise as he replied in his usual more comical manner than the one he had donned minutes ago; the sardonic, realistic one that had allowed them to see some of the reality of this situation far more clearly.

"If we have one hand on the wheel, we can still steer. If we take it off..." Natasha didn't need to finish her sentence. Everyone in the room knew exactly what she meant, and it seemed that Sam wasn't pleased about it.

"Aren't you the same woman who told the government to kiss her ass a few years ago?"

"I'm just.. reading the terrain. We have made some very public mistakes. We need to win some trust back," Natasha defended as rationally as she could, though Roxi could see the faintest flicker of annoyance lighting up the back of the redhead's green eyes at the mention of the meeting she'd been forced to attend after the events of Washington DC.

"Focus up," Tony distracted, "I'm sorry, did I just mishear you, or did you agree with me?"

"Oh, I want to take it back now," the woman played along, not daring to rip her eyes away from Roxi's so carefully blank ones as the Ryder woman attempted to cover up the turmoil that twisted her head so harshly that it was pounding with the same sort of headache that Tony had mentioned only minutes prior.

"No, no, no. You can't retract it. Thank you. Unprecedented. Okay, case closed - I win," Tony announced, the slightest sliver of his usual cocky smirk graces his features as Steve's phone buzzes quietly against the table - though it's somehow the loudest sound in the room.

"I have to go." He dropped the bound copy of the Accords as if they were the cause of his newfound distress and left the room quickly. Once again, the meeting room fell into a stillness, before Roxi stood up, her hands finally leaving the metal support bar dented and twisted as she picked up the packet of painkillers that Tony had used earlier, and left in a silence so heavy that it matched the weight of the topic at hand.

Now was when everything was going to change.

{A:N:} Okay, yeah, pretty pleased with this, and I've got three down :). I have some plans for the next chapter or so where it gets a little interesting so bear with me while it gets to next Saturday. Roxi has a very messy view on the Accords as you can tell, and I know how she's gonna end up, but what do you think?

Also wow, I'm doing really well with this whole pre-written thingy. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

4015 Words

Written: 22 / 04 / 2021

Published: 08 / 05 / 2021

JABBERJAY_011