𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒅𝒐𝒐𝒓 ✘ 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐅𝐅

{4⁹} {THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWS}

∆ {4⁹} {THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWS} ∆ 

ROXI COULD BARELY breathe. She'd been the last out of the room, because she had the best chances of getting out alive. By then, the ash, the dust, the smoke; it had all managed to clog up her already burning throat, and she'd practically collapsed into Natasha's arms when she'd finally managed to get out of the building. She'd been doing that far too much for her liking lately. It wasn't that she didn't like being in Natasha's arms - she very much did - but more so that she didn't like how easily she'd become metaphorically disarmed. Something had made her lose her edge. Maybe it had been the incident in Lagos, maybe it had been the footage that Secretary Ross had showed her (that of herself), or maybe it had even been the arguing that had begun and spread throughout the team so violently since the announcement of the Accords.

She felt weak in a way that she hadn't since 2001 - the year she'd joined SHIELD - and she hated it. She hated that she'd allowed herself to be so close to slipping, especially in such an important situation. She was sitting in the back of an ambulance, waiting for them to clear her so that she could check up on Natasha, who she could see talking to T'Challa. Even with her bad throat, aching lungs, and dried blood that she hadn't cleaned off of her face, she wanted nothing more than to run to the redhead, to pull her into an embrace and ensure her that she was fine, that the world was fine, that everything was going to be okay.

It would be a lie, and both of them knew it, but if it was what they needed to keep them going, then it was going to have to do. She watched Natasha press her phone to her ear, finding herself fiddling with the familiar keyring in one of the redhead's jacket pockets, smiling in the smallest way she could as she ran her fingers over the dented, scratched wood. It smelled faintly of Natasha by now, as well as the smallest pine wood smell that it had managed to retain, even over so many years.

Natasha did come over, after a few minutes on the phone, sitting next to her  on the back of the ambulance and resting her head on Roxi's shoulder, linking their hands for what felt like the hundredth time in the past four days. Roxi drew in a deep breath, ignoring the way that the air made her lungs sear with pain.

They sat in a complete hush for a long time. It was a familiar quiet. It's the one that you grieve in, the one that you try to forget in, one that you try to remember in, one that can work wonders on your mind, but can also send it spiralling so harshly that you're never able to get yourself out of the plane wreck. And sometimes, no-one else would be able to pull you out either. The quiet can be a dangerous thing. It was the silence that follows catastrophe, the moment where the entire world takes a moment to catch its breath. Roxi had experienced far too many of them in her lifetime, to the point where they always seemed almost painfully drawn out, put in place to alienate her from everything around her. Of course, she knew that it was partly her mind spiralling in the exact way she didn't  need or want it to. What she needed, was to use this time to straighten out her tangled mess of thoughts, especially relating to the Accords.

And then that silence ended, as Natasha let out a small sigh and lifted her head, sliding her hand around Roxi's waist. Roxi leaned into her, not caring about what cameras might be on them as she drifted out of the fugue state of mind. 

"I don't know how you keep managing to do it," Natasha admitted quietly, her eyes fixed on the flashing sirens across the road, the air still filled with smoke, blood and the whimpers of the wounded, "You keep saving so many people. Even when nothing was meant to go wrong, you manage to react, and then you do this, where you manage to save so many more lives. But every time, you end up like this. Bleeding, exhausted, and I can see the way that your mind is so conflicted. Roxi, sometimes you need to take a moment for yourself, let someone else handle saving people. Even just one time, Roxi, because you need to let yourself catch up. You need to let yourself clear your mind every once in a while. The world moves so fast, and you somehow, manage to move faster. But it hurts you, and I don't want you to hurt." The last sentence was le tout in a broken whisper, and Roxi couldn't help but feel slightly guilty for the pain and worry she put Natasha, her friends, her family, through.