Still Feel It All (Avengers: Endgame)

Prologue

"Still Feel It All" - MARO

Seeing empty spaces in the Target parking lot was genuinely frightening the first time I left the house after half of the world disappeared. When I got up to the store, I saw people standing outside with Starbucks coffee, just talking. As if things were okay. As if there was something to talk about.

A couple of guys my dad's age were having a passionate discussion about what they'd do to Thanos if they could. They had some interesting ideas for tactics

As Target runs go, it was quick and relatively painless, even for my stretched-thin budget. I went straight for what I needed and checked out with a full cart, checking off items on a long shopping list as the teenager behind the counter scanned them. Lightbulbs. Rice. Chicken soup. Paper towels.

I loaded up my Volkswagen Beetle with shopping bags, but before I left I walked down to the bookstore on a whim. It was my favorite place to go before everything happened. I even worked there, two summers in a row between semesters at college. The owner was an older woman who didn't like me very much, but she needed my help more than she cared to admit, and as a broke college student of course I needed the money. Besides, I loved being around so many old books. It was an English major's paradise.

The door was locked, and one of the glass panels on the window was cracked, but not shattered. I already knew what I'd find when I opened the door, but something told me I just had to get inside. Maybe I was searching for some sort of comfort, some reminder of what it was like before space invaders took away everybody I loved. Everything from my old life was gone. Everything... except maybe this bookstore.

The painted sign on the door said "Heads and Tales," encircled by a pretty floral design. I still had a key in my bag from the summer before. I hoped that Mrs. Hapsby hadn't changed the locks again-- but when I pushed my key into the slot, it turned easily. I heard a faint 'click,' and the door was open. The motion-activated lights flickered on and hummed.

I was immediately hit with the burned-hair metallic smell that had coated everything for weeks after half the world vanished. It was the smell of organic matter disintegrating, turning to ash and blowing away with the wind, and it actually forced me to my knees right there in the middle of the bookstore.

It was five in the morning in California when it happened. I woke up knowing something was wrong, but I'd woken up in a panic for much lesser reasons. I tried to tell myself that everything was okay, it was just anxiety, but two out of three of my roommates' beds were empty, and it smelled like someone left a curling iron on in the bathroom. The sun hadn't risen yet, and still, it seemed unnaturally dark. I heard someone scream, and my third roommate stumbled in, still in her nightgown, hair matted and eyes welling with tears.

"Kit?" She asked. "Where are they?"

I shook my head, mute. My phone rang, and immediately my heart sank. Sirens blared outside; it was amazing that I hadn't heard them before. Every police car in the whole state must've been outside on the road. I thought of my sister with a sinking sense of dread.

I was shaking when I finally tried to stand up from the blue-carpeted floor, and I leaned heavily on one of the shelves of books lining the wall as I struggled to catch my breath and keep back tears. It was a hard-wired sense memory. Even if I woke up one morning and it was a year ago, and everything turned out to be just one long nightmare, I'd probably never be able to use a curling iron again without spinning out.

The room was spinning, and there was a hard white noise rattling in my ears. It took me a minute or two to realize that the sound wasn't in my head but was instead broadcasting from the mounted speakers in the corner of the room.

What was now the Heads and Tales bookstore used to be a Gamestop, and it still had the TV screen in the corner where they used to show videos and promote new games. It was just static now. Trembling, I reached up to turn it off as I crossed back behind the desk.

Mrs. Hapsby had been here, I was sure of it, but there was no sign of her now. Obviously. I opened the cash register and jumped back as it rang out loudly. The money was all still there.

The place was dusty, but it was still functional. I'd always been plagued with terrible luck, despite my winning Thanos' cosmic coin toss. Maybe my bad luck was running out.

For the first time in many, many days, I felt something. Purpose.

This was something I could do, if not to help other people then at least to help myself. This was something I could focus on until the grief passed like storm clouds rolling over, the way they kept saying it would in those stupid support groups. I could be useful, even after losing everything. Maybe, after all of it, here was something I could gain.