∆ {6⁴} {THE FALLEN} ∆

Five Months Later

ROXI RYDER SAT on her hill, utterly silent, utterly still. The last slab set of slabs was going up today. The government had waited for three months before they began to build a memorial to all of the American lives taken during the blip. Some countries had done it earlier, like England, Scotland, and New Zealand. Others had waited even longer; Wakanda, Sokovia, Spain, Russia.

She had been here every day since they'd started building the memorial, for the first slab erected, and for each in the middle until now, where they raised the last few. She'd sat on this hill, under this tree, and had watched in her silence. The silence that followed.

It had been going on for far longer than normal. Usually a moment, quite literally a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, rarely a few weeks, with the world taking its breath to recuperate from whatever had happened. But no, this time, it was months, and the world didn't seem to be preparing to draw in air again. The world around her seemed to be lagging just as much as her brain.

Her goddamn mind seemed incapable of moving from the image of Wanda's pained, frightened eyes, the feeling of the sudden lightness where weight had once been, the way that everything had reversed, and that quiet stretch where she'd been useless, almost senseless apart from the monochrome that had stolen the colour from her vision. Since their journey to space, another image had been added, another feeling. The image was of the wall of stars, sprawled across a green sky that reminded her of Natasha's eyes, that she had tried to memorise so that she could draw it, share it with Wanda, seemed determined to never go away, and for that, Roxi was grateful. She didn't want to lose that image, that one last bit of Wanda that she still held in her mind, that one spark of hope she'd had as she had stared across the icy ocean of nothing but stars and dark and cold.

The feeling was that bubble of nothing that had crept into her so quickly, swallowing her hope so swiftly that she hadn't even noticed until the Mad Titan lay dead near her feet. It hadn't gone away, and the ocean had barely stirred since. She figured that it must soon. After all, it'd been half a year - something had to be giving, the trapped depths of her emotions had to start stirring in those trenches that she'd inadvertently dug so deep when her skull had been split by pain.

At least, Roxi could only hope it would be soon, because despite her sudden lack of emotion and turmoil, her mind still worked, and she knew what she should be feeling, even if she wasn't feeling it. She knew that she should be in touch with her feelings, starting to process her grief, be in denial, be delusional, or angry, or anything; or maybe she could even be glad for the memorial that had been built, if she hadn't been so selfish, as she had been so often lately. In her own mind, at least, which had nothing but time to think nowadays.

A scoff echoed through her silence, one that had not come from her own mouth, and Roxi's head snapped to a person sat, a little way down the hill. A woman, her light brown hair puffy and dead with the strength of the fading blue dye, her fingers wrapped harshly around the neck of a bottle of alcohol. As soon as she saw it, the memory of the smell filled her senses and sent her mind reeling, spinning, and bile suddenly burned her throat. There was no way that she actually could've smelt the liquid from her location - even the wind had dwindled into almost nothing these past few months - but it seemed her memory was strong enough to provide it for her. A flash of hard wooden floors; of broken bottles and blood and darkness and him.

Roxi twisted her face into a scowl, semi-consciously. For a moment, if only a few seconds, she doubted that that smile was genuine, that it was real, and wondered if maybe her mind had conjured the image on purpose, the smell, if maybe she'd made herself force her face into the scowl to keep up some pretence that she was still feeling things as she could. She still wasn't sure of the truth when she heard the woman in front of her mumble something in slurred words, that she could just about make out a few words of.

An accented voice, a sharp, rough voice, muttering something about victims of the snap with unregistered names. That caused Roxi's mind to unravel like a spool of snagged film, her thoughts to fall apart and her skull to pound. What would've happened if she'd been snapped away, stolen away from Natasha in a gust of wind and a cloud of dust.

Would her name even have been on the memorial here, or would it be in Spain? She'd spent far longer here, and yet a large part of her felt as if it belonged to her home country. What would even be written? It wasn't like the government had any files detailing her name. Maybe, her space simply would've read RYDER, or maybe she wouldn't have a spot. Natasha could tell them what her name was, to have it carved into the stone, but Roxi hoped that she wouldn't have done that. Sure, she'd grown comfortable enough in recent years to tell people she trusted her identity, to prove to them that she was beyond the habit that had haunted her life for so long, but the public knowing who she was? She couldn't trust strangers with that. Couldn't have a reminder of her past every time that she walked down the street, a memoir to tell her why she was the way she was.

Roxi stood up, a quickly-filling black book in hand and dropped her pen into her pocket, her finger propping open the pages to the one she'd been writing on, letting the ink seep and dry into the pages. She hadn't got far, yet. She was nearing the end of the 'C' section, and had decided that every day she didn't have every one of those names down in her book, would be a day that she would come here, and sit on this hill. So, she walked past the woman that stunk of alcohol, barely glancing at her harsh features and sneering face and blue hair, certain that she'd watched the last slab go up, and made her way back to her car.

Tony and Pepper had moved into their new house last week, and she hadn't been to visit them yet. She'd been seeing them a lot more often now that Pepper was pregnant, and her condition had been getting worse. He was observing her, watching how she acted and asking how she'd been. Not only about the headaches, but about the dizzying nightmares and flashbacks, and spells similar to the ones she'd had the day he'd arrived back on earth, where she'd been shrouded in darkness and the seemingly unending depth of her own mind.

This would be her first time driving to a place she didn't know since before the snap, and that made her unreasonably nervous. She was careful not to drive into dead ends, and when she did finally arrive, found herself glad that their drive was big enough that she would be able to turn around without reversing. Ever since Wakanda, the idea of going backwards set her breath quick and sharp in her chest, her heart almost burning in her chest from its strain to keep up with the fear her mind should've felt, and was acting like it was. Even in the absence of emotions, Roxi's mind put up a mask of pure bleakness that not even she herself could read, and she found that there was nothing worse in those situations. Needing a reminder of reality, of where you were, when you were on your own, and were not even sure who you yourself were.

It terrified her. It should've, anyway. But there again was that loop of pure and utter cluelessness about how she really felt, or if she felt at all anymore.

But she got out of the car and slammed the door, and set her eyes on Pepper and Tony's new house. It was beautiful. Wooden, modern, surrounded by trees and backed by a lake. It was perfect, and reminded her of Clint's farmhouse. Wooden, a forest only a couple of hundred metres away, a river among those trees that danced with fireflies and echoed with a memory of her trust and love for Natasha.

She stayed, staring, transfixed until Tony came outside to see what the noise had been and jerked her out of it with a soft hand on her shoulder and a gentle word. She smiled at him, but it wasn't born of emotion, because nothing was anymore, rather a learned use of muscles that had connotations she wanted to be associated with what she should've felt.

~

NATASHA ROMANOFF WATCHED as Roxi Ryder pulled into the driveway of the Avenger's compound. Watched as the icy-eyed woman got out of the vehicle mechanically, a black book clasped so tightly in one hand that her knuckles were white against the spine. Watched as she walked, eyes fixed on the floor, a slight upwards twitch at the edge of her lips that suggested she might have wanted to smile.

She welcomed the women back with a soft hug and teary eyes - she'd been crying a few minutes before, wishing Yelena had had the chance to meet Roxi before everything had gone to shit. Roxi hugged her back without a second thought tightly, smelling of the woods and mint and lemon.

They helped each other silently, through physical touch, but never words. Roxi's emotions had always been too complicated to even begin to dive below their surface, and Natasha had been raised to act as if she'd never had any. They had their love language, and didn't need words to help each other's emotions. At least, so they seemed to think.

The two women walked inside and went straight to their bedroom and submerged themselves in the dark, lying still together on top of the duvet, intertwined quietly as their minds raced opposite ways. Natasha's to a house in Ohio and a villa in Spain that she really wanted to see again. Roxi's to a field of emerald stars as she gazed into Natasha's forest eyes, to a pattern of stars that seemed to be burned into her eyes. She couldn't but wish she had some way to immortalise it, to write it down for Wanda's sake. Once she was sure that Natasha was asleep, she reached over to their bedside table and found a ballpoint pen, holding it for a few seconds, poised above her forearm.

She closed her eyes in the dark, to imagine that faraway darkness where her mind had been frozen for almost half a year now, and began to etch ink lines into her skin, pressing harder than she needed to and coaxing her skin to raise where the ink marks lay. She continued this for a while, the pen sprawling up to her shoulder from its sheer vastness, her strokes careful and deliberate, until she had decided that the tapestry she'd made of her own skin matched the image imprinted in her mind immaculately.

Then, Roxi Ryder closed her eyes, ballpoint pen in hand, and willed herself to sink into the darkness and into sleep.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

It's short but there's important sht in this chapter, and i managed to get it done before sunday even if it's only ten minutes. I'm watching black widow with my friend and writing at the same time, im introducing her to marvel and im so glad i dont have to watch the end credits rn. Anyway, hope it's good enough, please vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

JABBERJAY_011

WORDS [2050]

WRITTEN [12.2.2022]

PUBLISHED [12.2.2022]