∆ {6⁵} {REALITY} ∆

Two Years After the Snap

NATASHA ROMANOFF GLARED at the bottle in front of her. She loathed the way that the amber liquid tempted her so greatly, to just take a sip. It was some of the alcohol that Tony had left behind in the move, a year and a half ago now, and so far, she'd been able to resist the temptation. But before now, Roxi hadn't been away for long. Sure, there had been some weekends where she knew that Roxi's head was so quiet that the woman was cautious to be around her, in case something went wrong. There'd been those few nights, too, when Roxi had gone to nearby countries to visit their memorials. She never stayed long, and when she came back, her black book was always more ragged, and thicker.

She'd run out of space only a third through the States' memorial, and instead of getting a new one, or stopping - giving herself a break from the blame she forced upon herself as Natasha had implored her to - she simply added more pages. Each set looked different, some stained by the sun and some wrinkled by rainfall, and Roxi had needed to start using a string to keep all of the paper in place. There were barely any blank spaces, any bare paper, save for one page.

Roxi had left the notebook on the counter when she'd come back from Canada, and Natasha had decided that it was perfectly within her right to look through it, in concern for the woman she loved. She'd held it carefully, the cracked and dirtied cover so different from how it had been in New York when she'd found Roxi in the medical bay on the helicarrier, when it had still been fairly pristine and well-kept. Natasha hadn't even learned what it was until after Sokovia, in their two years of quiet homeliness, and even then, it was a result of Wanda's encouragement. Each page was written in careful handwriting, solely in black ink. Except for that one page. When Natasha had found it, her throat had begun to become sore, and as she gently traced her fingers down the list of names. This page was written in red, each name having its own space, and unlike the rest of the pages, Natasha recognised the names written there.

Sam Wilson, Peter Parker, James Buchanan (Bucky) Barnes, T'Challa, Stephen Strange, Nick Fury, Maria Hill. Wanda Maximoff.

The last name was written further from the rest, and from the look of the less legible writing, Roxi's hand had been shaking. A random pattern of lines and dots were scrawled around it, and the only way that Natasha had some vague idea what it was was because she'd watched Roxi ink it onto her wrist with a ballpoint pen almost every day for the past year and a half. Some of the other pages had been dotted with the marks left from tear drops, and yet none stained this page. Natasha hated the fact that she could still remember exactly how she'd felt when she'd read the last name, because all she'd been able to think about was how Roxi had felt when she'd written it, and that sort of searing pain was something that she couldn't wish on anybody.

Now, it was a different kind of burning that filled her. Longing for blankness, for her feelings to leave her alone. Some part of her envied Roxi in that aspect; she'd been empty of everything since they'd been to the Garden. She knew that the alcohol would help her with that. Help her forget, help her escape, if only for a few hours.

But she also knew what would happen afterwards, the consequences she would endure, and the spiral she might fall into. She'd never been particularly inclined towards alcohol before, even less so once Roxi had begun to tell her stories of her childhood, at which point the desire faded. Over the past few years, she'd only drunk small amounts of alcohol that she knew she could handle; she couldn't risk losing herself. But with no-one to distract her, what had happened in times that felt so recent and so much time to herself, lines had begun to blur.

So she'd got out the bottle a few hours ago and set it on the table in front of her, when her mind had still been hazy from sleep, and had been contemplating opening it ever since. A slightly dusty glass sat beside it - just a small one, something in her mind was still whispering - though both remained untouched.

After so long of contemplation, Natasha had simply had enough, and grabbed the bottle roughly by its neck, shoving it back on the shelf where it belonged with little regard for how neatly she needed, despite some subconscious part of her brain knowing that if it shattered she'd have to wipe it up. At least it'd give her something to do. She put the glass away too, and was planning on going straight back to her and Roxi's - now shared - room, but a figure caught her eye before she could.

Sat on the bench that overlooked their own personal memorial was Roxi, entirely still. A pang of something sour shot through Natasha for a moment. She'd had to walk past the room Natasha was in to get to where she was, but as she got close enough to the woman to see her face, she realised that it wasn't intentional. Her eyes were glazed and slow tears were rolling down her cheeks, even while her façade remained as solid and still as glass. As see through as glass to Natasha, too. Even when Roxi didn't seem to be feeling anything, Natasha could tell what would take the nothingness' place if it had the chance.

Guilt. Regret. Blame. Grief.

Any or all of them at once, it seemed. Roxi curled into her side as soon as she sat down, something that was unusual, but Natasha didn't let herself falter as she pulled the woman closer into her, and let her empty the seas below the trapdoor in her head, just a little.

"You know that they have a remembrance? Once a week, starting the exact time the snap was, lasts five minutes? The entire city just stops. People who are driving stop their cars, anything that makes noise just pauses. They lower their heads to remember the people that they lost, and everyone does it, because it affected everyone. Even people with no friends or family left, half their world vanished. Maybe their barista, maybe their favourite cashier at whatever store. But it hit everyone, so everyone finally has something in common. So they stop their days, once a week, and just remember, for five minutes." Roxi's voice wavered and cracked as she spoke, and Natasha found her words drawing an image inside of her head. She didn't ask where, because it didn't matter. The thing that mattered was the way people were coming together in their shared loss, everyone, because even young children seemed to understand the scale of what had happened, were used to these few moments of silence that even they could feel had so much meaning weighing upon it.

"Do you–. Do you want to do that?" Natasha's words were barely louder than a whisper, but Roxi had clearly heard them, because she nodded swiftly into her side. She tightened her grip on the woman, and her look of solemn concern deepened to pure worry as she realised just how slim Roxi was. She could feel the shape of her ribs beginning to jut out, along with the edge of her hips, and now that Natasha really took the time to look at her, her eyes were slightly sunk into her face. Even while her skin was tanned - quite attractively in Natasha's opinion - it seemed slightly stretched out, taut.

"Then we will.. When did you get back?" The second part was hesitant, a pause between almost every word, and Natasha had cleared her throat before she even started the sentence. Roxi didn't reply, and she didn't press her for an answer. Not now, but she would ask again later. When Roxi was more in touch with her emotions again, because that had to be coming soon. She hoped it, because there was only so long that she could put up a similar front, pretend that guilt wasn't eating her alive.

~

ROXI FELL BACK into routine quickly. Two days later, she found herself doing exactly what she had before she'd left. Up at four, a quick, scalding hot shower, and in the training room by quarter past. She would spend the entire morning there, often foregoing breakfast and forgetting to re-wrap her hands, working herself until she struggled to breathe and until her knuckles were bloody. Once, she'd broken her knuckle, and her agitation had flared that she hadn't been able to train until she ached for weeks on end.

She'd missed it while she was away, and by noon, her muscles burned so harshly that as soon as she sat down for lunch her legs began to seize. She downed several glasses of water and sat at the island for half an hour, the thought of food seeming unappetising despite the hunger she felt lightly nagging at her. There had often been days that she simply hadn't eaten, the idea of eating itself seeming unappealing. She'd lost a lot of weight, despite retaining her muscle and possibly even gaining some with the amount of training she'd been doing.

At some point, Natasha had come in, her hair still wet from a shower, and had made a peanut butter sandwich that they'd each had a half of. It'd taken Roxi a while to realise that her face wasn't only wet from the shower, but from silent tears that the woman hadn't addressed. Roxi had simply led her to the sofa a room over and they had sat down together, revelling in the peace and clarity of the silence around them. Roxi hadn't asked what was wrong, because while she knew that they'd have to start dealing with this at some point, she couldn't help but feel as if she hadn't recovered yet. Not when Wakanda still felt like it had happened last month.

Natasha had pulled her back to the training room after a while, likely not realising how quickly Roxi had slipped back into her old habits - ones she'd quietly voiced her disapproval of a couple of times. Roxi had agreed to try and get better at it, to give herself more rest, but it was almost impossible when she couldn't sleep without nightmares coaxing droplets of water through the trapdoor that she felt was beginning to rust shut. The quiet voice Natasha had used was something that Roxi herself had picked up on. She always spoke in that tone now, barely louder than a whisper. Roxi doubted it was intentional, but something about seeing the woman she'd loved, who was normally so loud and unafraid to be who she was suddenly rendered near-silent, only speaking in that hushed tone and with hesitant words.

They'd sparred together until dinner, which Natasha had insisted on trying to make, her face still flushed red, though whether it was because of their hours of flooring one another - it was mostly Roxi who ended up on the floor, but she'd got lucky a few times - or because of some of the compromising positions they'd ended up in, Roxi wasn't sure. Either way, she'd found herself quite looking forward to dinner. If not for the food, for the time that she would be able to spend with Natasha.

While she had gone back through to the kitchen and the smell of food had begun to waft through the corridors of the compound, Roxi had trailed back to their room with the idea of taking a shower, of freshening up. She'd been half-way through the freezing shower, scrubbing the skin of her forearms red when she'd realised with a jolt that it was bare of the pen marks she'd drawn there so adamantly for the past few years, even while she was away.

She'd got out of the shower seconds later and had roughly dressed herself, the clothes rubbing nastily against her half-dry skin. If anyone had asked, she wouldn't have admitted the speed and ungainliness with which she'd made her way to her bedside table, finding it devoid of a ballpoint pen and instead grabbing the first writing utensil she saw.

It was with the sharp point of a pencil that she drew lines into her skin, leaving red, raised lines rather than grey, because pencils don't mark skin. It was with a frantic, forceful, yet trembling hand that she traced those familiar lines until she was sure that the red lines would stay there until tomorrow. She had to keep this one piece that she had left of her sister close to her; had to have a way to remind her of Wanda. It was similar to the way Natasha so often wore Yelena's vest, she'd reasoned with herself as she'd done it.

As soon as she was sure of her lines, she discarded the pencil on the wooden surface she'd rested her wrist on, a few, tremoring breaths of relief leaving her as she gazed at the marks that, when she closed her eyes, matched perfectly with those stars in their emerald field.

It didn't really occur to her what she'd done as she felt her body begin to calm, and sorted out her clothes so she didn't look quite so dishevelled, pulling the sleeve of her jumper down so it covered the lines. She didn't need to see them to know that they were there, at least; she could still feel the skin stinging where she'd made the lines.

In fact, she barely spared her actions a second thought as she left, now quite interested to see what Natasha had made them, and if it would be any better than the last time they'd eaten food she'd prepared. Roxi normally cooked when they were both feeling up to it, but ordering food was a close second, and she supposed that Natasha couldn't have eaten take-away every day for the month she'd been away, travelling as many places as she could to note down the names of the dead in her black book.

She was glad to be done with it. Before she'd got in the shower, she'd locked it in a wooden box sat under their bed. The things in there were items of the past, though not everything was in there yet. She wasn't quite ready to let go yet, and likely wouldn't be for some time. But, it was progress, and she'd memorised more of the names than she'd like to admit.

All thoughts left her head when she walked into the kitchen and saw Natasha, her half-blonde half-red hair slightly frizzy with steam, and instead a wide, genuine smile split across her face. They ate together that night, and Natasha's cooking had improved. They shared one bowl of stir fry together, neither particularly in the mood for food, but wanting to spend time with the other.

Though she was unaware of it at the time, it was a memory that Roxi would come to treasure.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Hey. have another mostly sad, a bit happy chapter. Idk, proud of myself i got this done a few days early. I'll either work on the next chapter of this or the next of blood moon idk which but i have time for once so whoo. Hope you enjoyed, pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

JABBERJAY_011

WORDS [2650]

WRITTEN [17.2.2022]

PUBLISHED [19.2.2022]