𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒅𝒐𝒐𝒓 ✘ 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐅𝐅

{6⁷} {DISCOMFORT IN CONFRONTATION}

∆ {6⁷} {DISCOMFORT IN CONFRONTATION} ∆

Four Years after The Snap

THE WORLD HAD stalled. As if, in these five minutes of silence, it hoped to make up the Silence that followed that the Snap deserved. At first, it had been constant, and then people had suffocated, drowned in it. So it was spaced out now, five minutes, one day a week.

Five minutes.

The birds had quietened, the wind had paused, and the Compound's usual electrical buzzing was drowned out here, where she lay in the grass. It tethered her just enough to keep her from drifting to another sea of green, one where stars burned in patterns that she doubted would ever leave her mind. Her eyes were closed, as she remembered the names of those people she'd let shatter into dust.

Sam Wilson, Peter Parker. Bucky Barnes, Stephen Strange. T'Challa and his sister, Shuri. Nick Fury, Maria Hill.

Wanda Maximoff.

That one name, written in red, separate from the others, the constellations she'd created sprawled in crimson ink around it. The space and darkness that her mind had assumed to be between the few, bright points, and had based her map of foreign stars on.

Four minutes.

Grass ruffled around her, in a breeze that had been muted by the world in its respect for those it had lost, everyone that they had lost. Even the balance of nature understood that people still needed this moment to dwell, to move on, or to remember. A time to grieve, designed by the world itself.

Three.

Natasha was sitting on the bench that overlooked the lake, enjoying the view. A vest wrapped around her chest, tightened enough that it restricted her breathing into harsh lurches that allowed her to feel like she was crying. To feel like she was honouring the memory of her sister, who deserved the agony of Natasha's tears. She'd always found herself wearing it at this time in the week. To commemorate the woman she'd had so little time with, one she'd been so awfully proud of.

Two.

The wind around Natasha matched her breaths. Sharp, harsh, ebbing one way and then pushing forwards another. The place Roxi had chosen was quiet. It felt too empty to Natasha, as if the emptiness that had taken residence in Roxi after their visit to the Garden had seeped out of her, poisoning the spot to be eternally trapping. Designed to make Roxi dwell on it further, to believe that it was her fault. Natasha had moved past that thought a while ago now, but it didn't mean she was ready to move on from Yelena.

One minute.

The incarnadine ink that spelled Wanda's name spread, like a stain on the blank page of Roxi's mind. Formed a woman, surrounded by scarlet magic - a witch's magic. It formed long hair that floated as if a breath of wind had caught it in exactly the right place, shaped into a body - a leather jacket that had once been Natasha's, a t-shirt settled underneath it. Created a –. Part of Roxi wanted to frown. The part that wasn't connected to her body in that moment, that she had subdued because the dead deserved her respect, her penance.

She tried again, this time focusing solely on the young Maximoff's face.

Some features were there. The shape of her eyes, the dimples and quirk of her lips when she smiled. But the others were hazy, as if smudged by a carless hand. As if its creator didn't care enough about the subject to truly study the way they looked, and had just filled in the gaps with bloodstain-blotches to call it abstract art.

But Roxi's heart had begun to race. Her breath accompanied it, and so did her mind.

She tried again, only to find that this attempt was too, in vain.