∆ {6³} {THE GARDEN} ∆

TWO WEEKS HAD passed, and Carol still hadn't found Tony. Roxi had found herself growing more irritable by the day, to the point that she would rather sit in silence and be left to her pounding headaches, which were becoming more and more common. There seemed to be little breaks between them nowadays, and it was becoming more normal for her to have the ringing in her skull than not.

She sat, once again, in her quiet, taking small sips from a cup of water, the door to her room locked as she sat in the dark. It calmed her mind, allowing her to try and familiarise her body with the pulsing pain, to get herself back into a mindset where she could be useful. Where she could make a difference, change the outcome of things, where she could be enough to help people; where she could be enough for herself.

Her hair hung limp around her face, clumped into separate locks with grease - she hadn't washed lately, either - and she'd been ignoring the hunger growling in her stomach for the last day and a half. The darkness gave her a pause, a place where she could retreat when the lights of the compound seemed to flare up in her vision, so bright that it set her head ringing. It sheltered her, in a way that she'd used to dislike.

She'd used to have nothing that she let herself hide from, though, and that had changed. Because here, in her silence, her darkness, her hiding place, she was safe from worry about Tony that outside of this room dragged on her shoulders; a weighted blanket. Here, half-under her covers, her spine aching from its awkward position braced against the wall, the wooden headboard, or even the stiff stillness of the air, she felt nowhere close to Wakanda, where her sister had vanished from her arms.

She was sure that the darkness had seeped into the skin underneath her eyes, because it must have gone somewhere for her to still be able to think about the fears that seemed to claw at her the moment her darkness was broken. It was her precious silence that shattered first, though. The entire world shook with a rumble, and the fact that there was enough light for her to tell sent a twinge of spite flickering through her.

She heard movement outside as her head spun, a rush of feet, a roar of an ending, one sound growing closer. She flinched when someone banged on her door, and one of her vertebrae slammed against the headboard, sending a sparking pain up her spine. She sat up straight, a feeling like static racing along her nerves. Automatically, she clamped her hands over her ears, her fingers white with the force that they were applying to her skull, because her silence had been broken, and the echoes wouldn't shut up.

The world was quaking, and so was her mind, every little noise, every speck of negative emotion grating against the inside of her skull, sending a shudder through her, because it felt worse than the sound of metal shrieking against metal. She fell back in her bead, twisting her body awkwardly so that she could force her face into the sheets below her, because maybe the feeling of something other than air on her face would jolt her mind back to reality. A sob ripped through her before she had the energy to stop it, and she dug her fingers into her scalp harder, feeling her nails become coated in something warm and thick, because she wasn't meant to cry. She hadn't meant to, hadn't wanted to, and yet it had slipped through the floodgate - the trapdoor - that kept her ocean of emotion contained. Some muffled voice carried through her shattered peace.

By the time that the chaos borne upon the waves had calmed, tears had formed a permanent track on her face, and felt as if they had burned into her, because they didn't belong to her. They shouldn't be on her face, and she loathed herself for letting them drip through her walls. When she finally wrenched her fingers out of her knotted hair, which was now matted, her fingertips had been stained red.

She twisted back onto her front, glad that the sheets below her had been able to regulate her breathing well enough that it hadn't escalated further. Of course, they were soaked in one patch now, but she kept her eyes on where she knew the ceiling would be. It would act as an anchor in this nothingness.

Roxi gazed up, unseeing, her arms spread either side of her, her knees pointing left at an uncomfortable angle that should've made her hips ache. She was wrapped once again in her darkness, her bloody hair spread out like a fan beneath her head.

There was a flash of orange and purple around her as the door opened. Light slammed against her eyes, and she slammed them shut immediately, and sound crashed into her in a tsunami that sent the seas of her mind rippling dangerously. In a split-second, her hands were back over her ears, as the door closed and darkness swept over her once again. She didn't stop for a moment to consider who it was, or why they were so urgent in trying to reach her that they'd broken the lock, because she'd made sure that it couldn't be picked when she'd sealed herself in here.

There was another moment of stillness, before whoever was in her darkness with her, walked over, almost silently, and lay down next to her on the bed. A familiar smell washed over Roxi - one of roses and vanilla - but her mind was still stuck in its infernal lag and she found herself unable to put a name to the feeling of the person beside her. Some of the clanging and grating pain inside of her head depleted, but she kept her eyes on the ceiling, unsure if she was actually blinking or if she just thought she was. Maybe she wasn't breathing either.

There was a weight in her hand, someone placing their own in it, soft and yet somehow calloused at the same time, gripping it tightly, hoping to get some kind of reaction. Roxi wanted to give one, but she couldn't. That was the moment when the terror picked up, because her mind had suddenly realised that her body wasn't responding as it should.

She vaguely recognised the person beside her tracing a hand over her fingertips, and suddenly halting their movements, likely when they felt the blood crusted there. Roxi didn't dare to take her hand back, and for a few moments, her body seemed to be on her side, because her other hand clasped the hand of the figure next to her between her own two hands. A shudder of relief seemed to pass through the person's body, and now she recognised a name. Natasha.

"Natasha." She repeated her thoughts, the only thing available to distract her from the swells of the waves that were still settling from her sudden disruption. Again, a wave of loathing washed over her. She must sound like a child. A useless, afraid child. She'd sworn to never be that again, to leave behind her name because it'd been a shackle. It had reminded her of what he'd done to her, and that was why she'd left it behind. But here she was, 17 years after she'd run away, after she'd shot him in the head. She'd been trying to escape that cycle, and thought she had, for so long, but in that moment, it seemed that she'd never left it.

In that moment, she could feel his hands on her, could hear his voice and hear his stench of alcohol. And she loathed that too. So when Natasha led her in the direction of the bathroom, she stumbled in front of the women, hanging sickly in the doorway for a few seconds before she hit the light switch and slumped over the open toilet. She hurled, but nothing but bile came up, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Roxi barely noticed as Natasha held back her hair, tying it with a loose hair band.

She stepped back from Roxi, and a glance to her side, in the mirror, showed Roxi a blonde, staring down at her hands, which were now too, tainted red by her blood. She saw the way Natasha's eyes darted back to the sides of her head, where dark red matted her hair into knots, to her fingers, which were leaving carmine smears on the porcelain toilet seat.

A few seconds later, there was the sound of water beginning to fill a bathtub, but it was the first sound in the past few hours that Roxi didn't mind. Maybe because it was associated with Natasha in her head. She hoped so. She liked the idea of having Natasha with her forever, by her side, of being able to love Natasha forever. She wanted to say something, but her mouth wasn't moving. A large part of her was afraid, she supposed, that if she tried to say anything, everything would pour out at once.

Natasha must've undressed her, because she had ended up in the water, and the water had ended up red. Natasha had begun singing, humming lullabies in all the languages that she knew as she worked, combing through Roxi's hair as gently as she could, working through the knots and the blood, carefully cleaning the ten small crescent-shaped wounds on the sides of her head, circling around her ears.

Before long, the entire room smelled of mint and lemon, and something in Roxi's mind that had turned off with the light had clicked back on again. She'd joined in for the songs she knew, the water thawing the cold the darkness had brought her to the point where she could think clearly. She started to rub at her fingers, to get rid of the blood that caked them, though however hard she tried, the stuff under her nails remained there - maybe it was because they were so short. Her cuticles were tinted too, and briefly, she wondered how many washes it would take to get rid of the hue.

Natasha's songs stopped, and her hands stilled where they were combing Roxi's hair, as if she was considering how to voice what she'd wanted to say the entire time she'd been here. Roxi had noticed it as her mind had re-joined with her body, the way that Natasha had a slight glint in her eye that meant she was keeping something in, and then she'd realised that she'd had that look the entire time. She reached up with one hand, albeit quite awkwardly, and took Natasha's into her own.

"What is it?" Natasha sighed quietly, and pulled the comb through the strand of hair she was working on and set it down on the edge of the bath, silence suddenly reigning again. Roxi sat up, with little regard for her lack of clothes - it wasn't anything Natasha hadn't seen before - and turned to face the redhead, whose eyes were still fixed on the comb.

"Tony's back." Eventually, Natasha's whisper split the silence, and Roxi froze.

"What?" The word escaped her in a breath, as her mind began roaring again. Tony was back? How?

"Carol found him, brought him back. He doesn't look good, but he's alive." Natasha's words began to flow past her again, washed away by a tide of frantic instincts. She seemed to notice, however, because Natasha quickly gave Roxi's hand a squeeze. An anchor; a tether to keep her rooted and still among the swelling waves.

Carol had found him. It had been two weeks, but their new acquaintance had followed through on her half of the favour. Tony was back, and he was alright. Then the numbness fell away, and her first instinct was to move, so she did. She hauled herself out of the bath, pulling the plug and grabbing a towel.

She didn't care that her hair was still only half-brushed, didn't care that she still looked awful, with dark bags underneath her eyes, or that her mouth still tasted bitter. She didn't spare a thought to the idea of the light that would slam into her, or the noise. She wasn't even vaguely inclined to think about other people, she just wanted to see Tony.

Natasha had simply watched for a few seconds, trying unenthusiastically to call her name and get Roxi to focus on her again. She'd known that as soon as she mentioned it, that she would lose her until she'd seen Tony again, but Roxi needed to see him. She didn't have Wanda anymore, and Natasha was aware that she would miss the way that the two women interacted as much as Wanda herself. When she was around Wanda, Roxi smiled in a way that Natasha loved to see, with a care and innocence, and tended to forget about whatever it was that had been on her mind beforehand.

Natasha had never seen Tony and Roxi interact alone. Something had changed between them at some point, because Roxi had used to complain every time she had to deal with Tony. She knew that there was a specific reason, and that both of them refused to tell her about it, but as long as it meant that Roxi had another person to be close to, somebody who could help her, then Natasha didn't mind.

So, she got Roxi some fresh clothes, and as soon as she was changed, led her through the compound's harshly bright corridors. The icy-eyed woman didn't dare to stop, despite the blaring lights causing her head to spin. She needed to see him, to know if he was safe for herself.

They arrived at the wrong moment. Tony stood, an accusatory finger pointed at Steve, looking far thinner than Roxi had ever seen him. The scene, if she had been doing as she had been trained, would've set warning bells ringing everywhere. There was someone she didn't know, and the tension in the room would've been enough to set her hair standing on end if she wasn't focusing on Tony.

"Tony." Everyone's eyes were suddenly upon her, flicking to the mass of knotted hair, to the bags under her eyes, to the way her skin seemed paler than the last time they'd seen her. Roxi looked awful, but Tony didn't seem to notice.

"Ryder." In a moment, his aggression had vanished, and it was replaced with pure, unchallenged relief. The two of them met, Roxi wrapping her arms around the man, being as careful as she could to not injure him any further in his frail state. Part of her wanted to hug him as hard as she could, just to make sure that he wasn't going anywhere, to make sure he wouldn't disappear from her hands as Wanda had. But she didn't, because she could feel how light he was.

She pulled back, leaving her hands on his shoulders as she scanned him over, checking for injury, finding a mostly-healed red line etched across his stomach. He found himself doing the same, his eyes lingering on the side of her head, on the purple under her eyes. They stayed like that for maybe a minute, before Tony's attention was brought back to the rest of the room, and his aggression quickly surged up within him once again, his focus now solely on Steve. Roxi stepped out of the way, knowing that she had no right to get in the way of what Tony was feeling.

He raised a hand to his sternum, and pulled the arc reactor off of his chest. Roxi knew that he didn't need it anymore, but it still sent a flash of alarm through her body, her eyes never daring to leave him, just in case. He took Steve's hand, firmly placing the machinery in it.

"Here, take this. You find him, you put that on. You hide." His knees began to give out, and Roxi reacted in a flash, his abandoned wheelchair catching him before he could fall, pure worry beginning to overtake the relief that had filled her so quickly.

"I'm fine," he insisted, though he didn't make any move to get out of the wheelchair, and after a second, slumped back in it, unconscious. Pepper and Bruce took care of him quickly, moving him to the medical ward down the hall, but Roxi's mind had finally caught up, if only for a moment, and hand realised the new stranger in the room, and the fact that Carol was actually back.

She surveyed the new stranger quietly, her blue and purple skin plated with metal, and a deathly calm look placed upon her face. She had dark eyes, and an air about her that Roxi recognised all too well. Here was yet another person who had been brought up, trained specifically to kill and to never let emotion get in the way of a mission, unless it could be used to her advantage. Roxi decided to quietly keep an eye on the stranger, but made her way to Carol, a small, genuine smile tilting her lips upwards.

"Thank you." Carol simply returned the smile, understanding flitting across her face before she replied.

"Well now you owe me a favour." Roxi didn't mind that, though, because she had Tony back, and that was all she needed. She would check on him later, make sure he was okay, and if she felt he was stable enough, ask what had happened.

"Bruce gave him a sedative, he's gonna probably be out for the rest of the day." Rhodey walked through to them, bringing them the news. While Roxi was glad that he would get some rest, she wanted to talk to him, though she knew it was because she was hoping that he would be able to help her, and discarded the thought from her mind, deciding she was being selfish in that moment.

"You guys take care of him, and I'll bring him a Xorrian elixir when I come back," Carol proffered, and Roxi simply offered her a nod of thanks in return, knowing that the woman likely had many, many places to be. She, after all, had a much bigger area to cover than they did.

"Where are you going?" Steve was clearly less inclined to have Carol appear after saving one of their own and disappear immediately. Either that, or he was simply being cautious. Roxi hadn't had time for that, not with the waves seeping through the trapdoor so frequently these past few weeks.

"To kill Thanos." At that, Roxi straightened, her interest piqued in a painfully obvious way, a flicker of determination and anger shuddering through her body at the idea of having the titan dead. She wanted him to pay. She wanted him to feel the pain, the grief that Wanda had. She'd seen Vision die twice, had seen Roxi on the brink of death, hadn't had time to say goodbye to any of them as she'd died, not having a clue what was happening to her.

"Hey. You know, we usually work as a team here, and uh, between you and I, morale's a little fragile." Natasha's voice trailed off at the last two words as she walked towards Carol. She didn't have to glance at Roxi for her to know what Natasha had meant. She didn't mind though, because she knew Natasha was right. There wasn't any way she was going to let Carol take Thanos alone now. For one thing, she had no idea what Carol's powers were and wouldn't feel comfortable with the woman going after the titan alone anyway, for another, he still had the stones, and as far as she was concerned, if they would bring three and a half billion people back, she would do almost anything to achieve that.

"We realise up there is more your territory, but this is our fight too." Steve joined in, and Roxi simply stood to the side, observing. She agreed, and didn't feel the need to state it because she was sure they'd all picked it up by now. She wasn't trying to hide her emotion, because it would be like trying to create an even harsher barrier between the water and the trapdoor, and she didn't think the ringing in her skull could deal with that.

"You even know where he is?" She hadn't really noticed until now, but for a little while at least, the pain had gone away. She hadn't noticed its absence until it had come back and she was wishing that it would just go away. Her thoughts went to Tony again, in the hope that he would be alright, and that maybe they would be able to figure out the origin of the pounding aches, and how to get rid of them.

"I know people who might." Great, more strangers. Her suspicion felt forced now, when she knew that she was lacking on it and was trying to sharpen her instincts again. It felt as if her wariness didn't belong to her, and something about that caused discomfort to curl inside her.

"Don't bother," the blue-skinned stranger spoke from the background, "I can tell you where Thanos is." Roxi hardened her features, feeling confident that she could hold her facade until this meeting was over. She wouldn't need one after that, because she had a certain type of calm anger that she had used to shield herself in the past. That was where she had learned her mask, because she'd decided that anger was more useful than fear, and had channelled all her dread into that insatiably cold fury.

"Thanos spent a long time trying to perfect me. And when he worked, he talked about his 'Great Plan'. Even disassembled, I wanted to please him. I'd ask, where would he go once his plan was complete? His answer was always the same. 'To the Garden'." Roxi kept her eyes fixed on the stranger, knowing that if she hadn't already been feeling so much, she might've felt sympathy for her. Sympathy, never pity.

"That's cute, Thanos has a retirement plan," Rhodey said into the quiet. His humour had helped to calm her before, to feel as if she was closer to her old way of life. But she couldn't feel like that now, not when Wanda wasn't here, not when she knew that billions of other people weren't here either.

"So, where is he?" Rocket - a talking raccoon of some kind who had arrived in Wakanda with Thor and had been staying with them ever since - pulled up a hologram from the device on the table. It was an image of the earth. It was strange to see it look so small, Roxi realised rotating so slowly and quietly.

"When Thanos snapped his fingers, earth became Ground Zero for a power surge of ridiculously cosmic proportions. No-one's ever seen anything like it until two days ago, on this planet." It was a green planet, far more so than the earth had been, and Roxi could only imagine that the place would be covered in lush vegetation and massive lakes.

"Thanos is there," The stranger confirmed, just as Rocket's words seemed to catch up to both Roxi and Natasha. The former tensed her jaw and clenched her left fist, wishing she could exert some of her power in a useless way, to get its buzzing out of her veins. She hadn't used her powers for weeks, and they had begun to build up nastily. Natasha, on the other hand, simply leaned forwards, her face wiped blank by shock as she announced her realisation.

"He used the stones again."

"Hey, hey, hey, hey," Bruce cautioned with a breathy laugh clearly riddled with anxiety about the plan that he could see forming, "We'd be going in short-handed, you know?"

"Look, he's still got the stones, so-."

"So let's get 'em. Use them to get everyone back." Carol interrupted Rhodey, and Roxi found Natasha beside her suddenly, their hands linked as a clicker of hope lanced through their connected fingers. They might actually be able to do it. She could have Wanda back. Tony could get Peter back, everyone could get everybody back.

"Just like that?"

"Yeah, just like that."

"Even- even if there's a small chance that we can do this, I mean, we owe it to everybody who's not in this room to try." Roxi's fingers closed tighter around Natasha's at the prospect. These last three weeks had been some of the worst of Roxi's life. Almost constant nightmares, frequent moments in her darkness like the one she'd had earlier, being unable to be around more people than Natasha at once, because if she was, she would miss Wanda in such a painful way that it would drive her back to the darkness.

"If we do this, how do we know it's gonna end any differently than it did before?"

"Because before, you didn't have me." Roxi decided at that moment, that if Fury had introduced Carol to her and Natasha before, that they would've got along exceptionally well, and that Natasha especially would like the woman's attitude.

"Hey, new girl? Everybody in this room is about that superhero life. And if you don't mind my asking, where the hell have you been all this time?" Rhodey was the one to reply, and Roxi couldn't help but wonder if his response was so harsh because Carol's statement reminded him of something Tony would say, and having his best friend unconscious in a room down the hall; it would feel as if part of Tony's dynamic had already been replaced.

"There are a lot of other planets in the universe, and unfortunately, they didn't have you guys." The statement seemed to draw a general response of agreement from the remnants of the Avengers that were scattered over the room. It was Thor who reacted though, standing up in his corner where he's been brooding the entire meeting. Roxi didn't blame him, because she blamed herself, and knew he was doing the same, believing that if he'd just got it over with and hadn't drawn it out, then this wouldn't have happened.

He walked over to Carol, his face sullen, looking massive with his bulky, tall figure next to Carol's smaller, thinner one. He held out a hand past her, and caught Stormbreaker as it flew towards him - Roxi had had to alter its path so it didn't hit anyone else on the way - and watched as Carol remained unbothered. She didn't even seem concerned enough to flinch, and instead turned up the edge of her lips in a smirk.

Here stood two immensely powerful beings, neither scared of the other, nor of anyone else in this room. Their power was of an unmatched level, and Roxi was glad she didn't have to deal with that level of pure energy surging through her, even as Thor surveyed Carol and made his decision.

"I like this one."

"Let's go get this son of a bitch."

~

NATASHA AND ROXI hadn't spoken as they had changed, the former pretending not to notice when Roxi pulled her suit towards her from across the room in individual pieces - a way to take just a little off the top of her power, to keep it level enough to last the journey to wherever the hell they were going.

They were now sitting in a spaceship, piloted by Bruce and Nebula - which was apparently the stranger's name. They were strapped in tightly, and for a moment all Roxi could do was stare at the stars, and wonder if it was easier to count them here. She'd be able to do that again soon - to count stars with Wanda, tease her sister about how close she had been to them; to simply relax in a way she had not known for weeks.

"Okay, who here hasn't been to space?" Rocket's voice interrupted her reverie, and Roxi raised her hand, along with the majority of the ship's passengers, feeling like a child again for the second time that day.

"You better not throw up on my ship," Rocket told them firmly, and Roxi wondered what on earth this would feel like. Maybe like a rollercoaster. She'd never been on a rollercoaster, actually. She'd wanted to, and it'd been one of her suggestions to Natasha for a date that they'd never got around to. But from what she'd heard, butterflies were somewhat comparable to being on a rollercoaster, and Roxi couldn't imagine the feeling she got around Natasha ever being bad.

"Approaching jump in three, two, one." Roxi was slammed back in her seat, and despite her head already being pushed against the headrest in preparation, it still managed to slam into it, and Roxi wasn't sure if she let out a cry of pain. If she had, it had been lost to the speed at which they were going.

Then, after a few seconds, it stopped, as if they had been spat out by space itself. Roxi found herself distracted by the stars once again. But these ones were different, and somehow, she automatically connected them and made vague shapes in her mind. She'd have to try and remember them as well as possible, so that she could draw them out for Wanda, to show the woman who'd been through so much a glimpse of a different universe. She deserved that much, at least, and Roxi felt like she owed her sister something. Some part of her felt like Vision ahd died because of her, that she had caused that look of utter grief. But maybe, just maybe if she could do this one thing.

"I'll head down for recon." Roxi's gaze snapped to Carol, who glowed like a star outside of the ship. It was odd, to say the least. To see a person just floating in the vacuum of space. Though, she supposed, she did something similar in her darkness. Just lay, still, quiet. It was really the waters of her mind that she was suspended in. She knew that, but she wasn't planning on admitting it to anyone and disliked even doing so herself.

The difference was, Carol could control herself here, and she stood out from the darkness - she burned it away from her, and Roxi had found herself embracing it.

"This is gonna work, Steve," Natasha spoke quietly, and Roxi somehow knew, without even glancing in their direction, that the words weren't only meant for the supersoldier.

"I know it will. 'Caus i don't know what I'm gonna do if it doesn't." The conversation was so similar to the one she and Natasha had shared before Wakanda that it made her stomach turn, and instead of finding comfort, her face simply settled into its practised cold features, anger beginning to rise once again. This time, at herself.

"No satellites, no ships, no armies. No ground defences of any kind. It's just him." Carol reported, and Roxi drew in a long, slow, deep breath.

"And that's enough."

They landed not too far out, and each of them had inscrutable faces, even Steve. Carol went in first, followed by Bruce in the Hulkbuster suit, then Rhodey in his War Machine suit, and then Thor, wielding Stormbreaker was a callous air that matched the rest of their attitudes. By the time Steve walked in, flanked by Roxi and Natasha, who walked, as they normally would, side by side, the hand Thanos had worn the gauntlet on lay on the floor, severed cleanly by Thor's axe.

Rocket turned over the detached limb, to look at the gauntlet. That was when everything inside of Roxi dropped. Her heart, her stomach, her mind, her voice, her caution, even the feeling of her powers fell away into the darkness.. She stared at the empty gauntlet almost impassively.

"Oh no," came the quiet words from Rocket as Roxi still stared, Steve and Natasha's gaze now following her own.

"Where are they?" Steve addressed the titan through a clenched jaw and a tense voice - he was afraid of the answer that he was about to get, though Roxi couldn't imagine the feeling inside of him being worse than the one that she felt. Everything had fallen away, and for the moment, nothing had taken its place. But she was waiting for a wave of emotion to crash over her forcefully that she would likely stagger when it hit, accompanied by another pounding, pulsing tide of pain.

"Answer the question," Carol insisted, a light like a star's coursing through her body.

"The universe required correction," the titan rasped out, "after that, the stones served no purpose beyond temptation." That was when Roxi expected the wave to break against her stony cliff of indifference. That was when she expected the swirling, churning current of anger to rise inside of her and wash every sane thought left from her mind. But it didn't come.

"You murdered trillions."

"You should be grateful." Again, Roxi expected a swell of emotion, but the ocean seemed remarkably calm, as stunned as she was by the sight of the empty gauntlet that she hadn't dared to rip her gaze away from.

"Where are the stones?" Natasha's question was borne upon heavy breaths, her own eyes fixed on the side of Roxi's face, watching the stillness there apprehensively.

"Gone. Reduced to atoms." Natasha's eyes watered, the vest feeling heavy on her chest as she still watched Roxi, knowing she wouldn't have the heart to step in if she wanted to do something. But Roxi remained calm, impassive, unbothered, at least on the outside to anybody who didn't know her well.

"You used them two days ago!" Bruce's voice was frantic, too, his voice strained and his words slightly hoarse.

"I used the stones to destroy the stones. It nearly killed me, but the work is done. It always will be." It was then that the icy-eyed woman expected the largest swell; a torrential wave of pure emotion - maybe anger, maybe desperation, maybe guilt, or maybe all of them - but still the waves were non-existent, and the buzz of her powers even began to die from her veins.

"I am inevitable."

"We have to tear this place apart, he has to be lying." Rhodey's pleading words were muffled to Roxi's mind, but she could still make out what he was saying, still frozen to her spot.

"My father is many things. A liar is not one of them." Nebula's soft voice barely dented the roaring that Roxi only now realised was growing in her ears.

"Ah, thank you, daughter. Perhaps I treated you too harshly." Roxi didn't hear the titan's words at all, or the whoosh of Stormbreaker as Thor swung it. She didn't hear the sound of flesh being cleaved into two parts, of bone breaking, or of the titan's head hitting the ground.

"What did you do?" Rocket asked, faintly, and it was then that Roxi realised that there would be no wave of emotion.

"I went for the head." Natasha's eyes were wet with tears as she stared at nothing, really. She'd had a chance to get Yelena back, and it had slipped through her fingers. She brushed her fingers over the vest once again, before turning her attention back to Roxi, who still stood unmoved.

But that was because Roxi had realised what had happened. She had realised the moment that everything had dropped from inside of her - most of all, her hope - and with the knowledge that she would never again count stars with Wanda, nothing had taken its place. She was simply left with the darkness she'd cowered in, a blankness that she, for once, didn't know how to deal with.

So Roxi Ryder met Natasha Romanoff's eyes, blue against green, and both of them began to silently cry. They cried for billions of people who they hadn't been able to save, they cried for all of their fallen family. But most of all, they cried for Yelena, for Wanda, and for each other.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This shit is hella late but this is also the longest sht ive ever written istg (12 pages long if you were wondering). I really need to go to bed now, it's 1am. enjoy some pain :) pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,

JABBERJAY_011

WORDS [6100]

WRITTEN [07.02.2022]

PUBLISHED [07.02.2022]