𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖚𝖑𝖚𝖒 - [𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲]

𝐱𝐱𝐱𝐯. 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘱𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘺

𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 — couples therapy

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 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐑 nowadays for Emilia, as though every moment she was awake she had to force herself through a sticky haze to simply get on with her day... Then there were the nights; those were even worse.

 After months of occupying a room mere doors away from Tony and Pepper within Avenger's Tower, Emilia still had torturous dreams of the events that had passed them by. In the midst of the night when the moon glared through her window and the stars twinkled in their taunting manner, Emilia's eyes would flicker behind her lids.

 Hands would curl into her covers, clawing at them as though she were a wild animal, and tears would stream down her cheeks, soaking her pillow as flashes passed her by. She could almost feel the grains of ash and dust on her fingertips when her mind ridiculed her and made her relive their loss once more.

 Thanos would enter her dreams, seeming even more imposing than he had been... and that gauntlet on his hand would glint beneath the dull light of Titan. She could have sworn she felt the fire on the side of her face once more, she could have sworn she heard sweet Peter Parker's voice call out for his mentor, begging him to help... She could have sworn that Stephen faded beneath her touch once again.

 Every night was the same.

 She'd wake with a gasp that tore at her throat; she'd choke and splutter as cold air forced its way into her lungs like an invasive parasite. Her vision would be fuzzy from the tears and constant fatigue. She was always surrounded in the darkness of the early hours, left all alone to breathe through her pain and tear at her hair with shaking fingers.

 Some nights, as though it were muscle memory, her hand would fly out and grasp at the cold side of her bed... Reaching for somebody who was no longer there, reaching for a ghost who could not reach back.

 There had been times in which Pepper would knock on the door and Emilia would feel the familiar swell of guilt in her gut for waking the pregnant woman who had already begun to show.

 Nights where Tony would tear himself from his work in the lab to check on her.

 Even the chime of F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice would ring out in concern.

 Emilia was certain that if Bruce hadn't been swamped with perpetual fatigue, he'd have shown up too. The Doctor, upon Tony's request, had also joined them within Stark tower. It seemed that the billionaire hadn't been lying when he'd brought up Emilia and Bruce working together once more.

 And work together they did. The two physicists had put their minds to a new project... Converging the two beings that lived within Bruce's body. Bruce and the Hulk's relationship had always been strained; Bruce had always deemed the green being as a monster only capable of chaos and destruction, and the Hulk had become tired of people viewing him through such a distorted lens.