∆ {6²} {TONY STARK 3.0 - M.I.A} ∆

"WHO WANTS TO know?" Roxi was the first to speak, because she did not have the energy for this. The pain in her chest was pulsing slowly with the rise and fall it took, and a familiar piercing ache was beginning to bounce around the inside of her skull. Her voice came out unintentionally sharply, likely mimicking the pain itself and the way the waves were beginning to crest beneath the trapdoor.

"Where is he?" The blonde woman insisted, barely sparing Roxi a glance. She wore an odd armour, made of a material that looked slightly concerningly like leather, with areas made out of a gold metal that felt alien - it was what had let her know that the woman was there. If things started to get too out of hand, Roxi could deal with it easily.

She knew that, beside her, Natasha would've already assessed this new person as best as possible, and relied entirely on the woman's opinion, but a glance her way revealed nothing of what she thought. She found her fingers itching for the comfort of her keyring, longing to glance at Wanda who should've been in the corner of the room, ready to send her a soft smile that Roxi would return as privately as possible. A promise that they'd be alright; that they'd try and count the stars again sometime, that they would always come back for each other. Instead, she held her icy eyes on the stranger, and the way that the metal she wore seemed to hum with an unnervingly familiar level of power. It reminded her of the armour that Thanos had worn, and for that reason, she remained cold, alert, unafraid to take action if she needed to.

"Gone." Steve's voice was soft in the silence, with a concerned glance towards where Natasha and Roxi stood, remembering how the former had reacted all those years ago when the director of SHIELD had faked his own death. It was the only time he'd seen her like that. At least, until recently, when a similar cloud had started to hang over her head.

Roxi hadn't actually been told for certain that Fury, and likely Hill had vanished like half the world had, but she had assumed the worst. Natasha had mentioned nothing of them, and neither of them had come to the compound as they normally would after an event like this one. Especially because Maria technically worked for Tony nowadays.

"Gone where? He sent the signal six days ago." The woman glanced around the room, properly taking them in this time, rather than keeping her eyes fixed on the pager. She noted the way that the two women at the front, close together and how they both wore masks of stone and how calculating their eyes were. She saw how all of them had moved into a group as soon as the two women had turned around. These were people who were used to being together - or working together, at the very least.

"Yeah, well, six days ago, a lot happened if you didn't notice." That was Rhodey, and Roxi felt an urge to correct the man. This woman was evidently not from Earth, or had not been here in a long time. Though, she supposed it was her powers that told her that.

"I noticed something. Why the hell is it so quiet? Is it to do with that energy surge?" The stranger knew exactly what she was talking about. Roxi could tell by the way she didn't hesitate in her speech, how her natural self-assuredness was being nagged at by fear. She had recognised it almost immediately, but that was because Natasha acted like that, and even if she looked in a mirror, she would find it settled on her own frame like an extra layer of clothing.

Everyone else in the room exchanged a silent look, all deciding who it should be to say something, to explain what had happened less than a week ago. None of them really understood it, Roxi could feel it. At the very least, she hoped for it, because she didn't want her grip on understanding to slip. She'd done remarkably well at it over these years, but somehow, her brain still felt like the lag from those few seconds where the world had gone backwards in every sense of the world was affecting the way it worked; her ability to grasp the actual reality of what had happened.

"A titan - Thanos - collected the Infinity Stones and the last one was here. So, he took it, wiped out half of all life in the universe." It was Natasha who braved the sheer silence, her words still soft, though they carried through the still air clearly. If she'd spoken them any louder, Roxi thought that the waves would crest just a little too high and she'd have to leave before her swirling ocean of emotion got the better of her.

"What?" And now all of the stranger's attention focused on Natasha, and Roxi had to force her entire body not to tense up in anticipation for hostility. She could feel her powers begin to stir in her veins, could feel them rise as her agitation did. She hadn't used them in almost a week, and she hadn't thought to use them much while she'd simply been lying in bed, dreading any time that the covers were suddenly pulled away from her because she lost weight, warmth, comfort all at once, just as she had with Wanda. But now that she'd felt the alien metal, they'd lit up under her skin with a buzz, desperate to fill the air again, to give her some feeling of the control that she could feel so swiftly slipping.

"He's gone. Gone gone. Shattered into ash just like half of the rest of the world." Roxi spoke, her tone still sharp and harsh, and she felt it cut through the air around her. This time, the stranger did meet her eyes, and Roxi wished that she'd felt a flicker of regret in her mind. It was too full for that, though, what with the echoing pain and the shape of the words she'd just spoken hanging inside of her skull, where the crashing of the waves and the thrum of her power almost drowned them out.

The stranger observed the cold woman before her, the way that her gaze and words were equally as harsh as each other, and the way that she simply emanated a feeling that coursed through her whenever she used her powers. She felt inclined to tilt her head, to display her curiosity, but neither the icy woman nor the green-eyed blonde beside her gave anything away. She couldn't give them an advantage so easily, not when she didn't know anything about them other than that they knew- had known Fury.

"I'm Carol Danvers. Or Captain Marvel." She added the second part as an afterthought to her carefully considered words, and yet, even with her allowing the woman to win this fight, she and the blonde she stood next to didn't change their expressions. It was unnaturally unnerving.

"I met Fury on a mission - or whatever you guys call it - in 1995. Fighting aliens, going to space, the normal stuff." Still, their expressions didn't waver. She needed to prove to them that she had actually known Fury, because it seemed as if the rest of the people in the room were waiting on the judgement of the two women to be announced.

"His partner at the time was a guy named Coulson. Phil Coulson." And finally, something flickered across the brunette's face, if only for a second, but she exchanged a quick look with the blonde, her shoulders relaxing, though her arms didn't uncross.

Natasha noted that, quietly. Defensive body language; Roxi wasn't daring to let her guard down, even though the stranger's words were proof enough. Natasha didn't blame her, because she hadn't allowed her body language to change at all. They still didn't know a thing about this woman's intentions. But there was something she'd said-

"You mentioned a signal?" She spoke up, not daring to make her voice as loud, or hostile as Roxi's when she knew that the woman had that aspect of the scene handled. She didn't want Roxi to get too surrounded by emotions however, when she'd been on her own the past week. She couldn't let her take the conversation entirely herself.

"Yeah, that." The stranger's hand gestured to the pager behind them, and Natasha almost frowned. The stranger - Carol, apparently, had known Fury well enough to have a private link that he'd never told any of them about. Some part of her was bitter that Fury hadn't trusted her like that - though maybe he had. She'd never been far away enough to need it. But why had he never called her before? If he had such a secret contact, she had to be powerful, or meaningful in some way. So why not get her involved in 2012? After that, though, SHIELD had fallen.

All of them twisted back from where they'd turned to look at it, save for Natasha and Roxi, neither woman willing to take their eyes off of 'Captain Marvel'.

"You didn't happen to see a man in a red and gold suit flying around on your travels did you? Probably accompanied by a kid from Queens and a magician that apparently makes you think you've taken LSD." Roxi spoke up, having calculated her words, once again gaining the attention of the entire room, and several incredulous looks from those around her.

"Why would she have seen Tony? Stark's in space." Bruce's voice trailed off at the end, a silent 'I hope' being automatically added by all of their minds. Roxi chased the thought from her head, gaining a few seconds of clarity as everything in her paused for breath.

"I didn't, but that signal means that I get here as fast as I can, not that I get side-tracked on missing persons missions." 'Carol' was obviously a no-nonsense person, but it was exactly what Roxi didn't need to hear. No-one else seemed to think twice about her response to Roxi's question other than the fact that she hadn't denied being in space. But Roxi could feel it on her, because the metal she wore thrummed with the same chill from the battlefield in Wakanda, the one that had made her skin rise into goose bumps and her.

"Wait, wait. You were in space?" Rhodey asked, his eyebrows raised and a look of disbelief sat on his face, "And how the hell did you know that?" He turned his attention to Roxi, who finally took her eyes off of Carol to reply. She would know the second that the woman moved, anyway.

"How do you think?" Her answer was clipped, as her voice was, because all she really wanted in that moment was to know where Tony was, so that she could make sure that he was alright. She couldn't lose him too. Not after Wanda.

"Then, can I ask you a favour?" Roxi's words were as sharp and careful as her attention, the sides of her mouth lifting into a cold smile as she walked towards Carol, not giving away that she felt the support beams in her mind begin to buckle. The waves were cresting higher and higher, and there was a part of her that wished that she could simply fall beneath the turmoil on the surface. But that was where a dangerous indifference rested, where she taunted the hearth of apathy she so dearly wanted to burn in.

That deathly silence seemed so attractive in that moment, where she had too many things grating against the inside of her skull that it seemed to send an extra wave of shuddering pain through her head. The numb blue-blackness of the depths of her emotion, where the indifference she had learned for all those years seemed to have retreated to once she'd found her place, her family. It had receded like the tide, and there was a part of her that wished it would wash over her again, if only so that she didn't have to deal with everything that she was feeling.

"Can you look for Tony Stark? For Iron Man?" There was a thick stillness for a few seconds, before Carol nodded in agreement, and Roxi had a feeling that her eyes had betrayed the pure desperation and fear that she truly felt in that moment.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Yeah irdk what this mess is. I'm tired and i wanna include all the other stuff in one chapter ig?

Who knows, but this is short and bad, so sorry abt that. Also I will be going back to one update a week after this caus otherwise they're too hard to get out and im back at school now so i got less time.

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

JABBERJAY_011

WORDS [2200]

WRITTEN [21.1.2022]

PUBLISHED [22.1.2022]