𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒅𝒐𝒐𝒓 ✘ 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐅𝐅

{6³} {THE GARDEN}

∆ {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.