Never in a Million Years |N.R|

|52| How do we carry on?

The next couple of weeks felt utterly surreal.

Grief continued to weigh heavy on everybody's shoulders, as well as a growing feeling of guilt due to us becoming privy to the true extent of Thanos' damage to the world.

Nat held herself together in the day, busying herself with fielding calls and running numbers etc. But she'd always crumble the second our bedroom door shut behind her once we all eventually called it a night. Like clockwork, she'd step over the threshold and sigh a deep breath, putting up a fight to hold her tears back but eventually losing.

I didn't act like or show that I knew they were coming. I'd give her a moment to herself to let her decide if she wanted me, and then rush straight over to her the second I heard her call my name through sniffles. And from the second I'd wrapped her up in my arms, I wouldn't let go, not even as we slept.

I remained stead fast for her every waking moment of each day, strong and reliable in my stance as her shoulder to lean and cry on.

I only dared to let myself feel anything of my own once I was sure she was asleep, and although I had that same nightmare every single night since the first one home, I always managed to wake myself up before I reached a point of crying out or screaming in my sleep. The last thing I wanted to do was scare Nat, or stop her from relying on and opening up to me because she felt guilty about burdening me any further.

It went against everything I'd been told by my therapist but I couldn't bring myself to put a stop to it. This situation was a true exception, and so treating it with the same logic as I would any other problem felt silly; impractical. So I accepted the burden of Nat's struggles, as well as my own, and paid no mind to the fact that I had no outlet for my feelings, other than crying silently in the darkness and quiet of our room once Nat had fallen asleep.

It wasn't healthy or maintainable, I knew that, but I accepted it as my fate for the foreseeable future until it became impossible.

Then, and only then, would I let myself ask for help.

Although as strange as it sounded, despite my injuries having been quite bad, they'd managed to bring some laughter to break up the misery - but not before a more than sufficient telling off from one particular redhead turned blonde of course.

I was sat on the edge of the bed, facing the pillows at the top of it with my legs crossed, whilst Nat stood behind me with all of her medical supplies set down beside me, atop the comforter. She sighed and huffed over my shoulder as she pulled my t-shirt up, revealing my back, before grumbling for me to raise my arms so that she could take it off all the way.

After softly asking if it was okay for her to unclip my bra, she was straight back to her unimpressed, muttered ramblings about how I needed to look after myself better, and how if I'd told her sooner then the cuts on my back would've been mostly healed already.

To refrain from angering her any further, I opted for remaining completely and utterly silent as she poked and prodded at my different cuts, teeth biting into my bottom lip hard to stifle any noises of pain. I knew she wasn't meaning to hurt me at all, and that if I told her she was she'd stop immediately and apologise profusely, but the last thing I wanted to do was add to her already overflowing guilt.

So I stayed quiet.

"Right, there's three along the top here and one further down on your right that need cleaning properly and to be bandaged. Okay?" She'd already begun preparing her tools and materials before I could answer, so I just simply offered a nod. Whether she saw it or not was another question.

My eyes watered and my teeth nearly broke through the skin of my poor lip as she very thoroughly cleaned the first gash at the top of my left shoulder blade. I'd been able to see that one in the mirror, but it was just out of reach for me to have been able to treat it myself.