𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒅𝒐𝒐𝒓 ✘ 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐅𝐅

{1¹⁰} {THORNS AND ROSES}

∆ {1¹⁰} {THORNS AND ROSES} ∆

ROXI DIDN'T LIKE showing her emotions, but here she was, standing in a ring of dead Chitauri, a look of pure shock and fear painted on her face, her ice blue eyes wide as she looked at the scene around her. The Chitauri's metal armour was twisted and warped in a strange way, and judging by the way it sat on their bodies and the screeching sounds that had come from them, they had been crushed by their own armour. Her mind had gone numb, and her blood had run cold as it coursed through her veins. Her broken communicator was squealing and hissing static in her ear, but it felt as distant as the noise of the battle in the background to Roxi. 

All she could hear was Loki's words, twisting and slithering through the air, repeated over and over in one phrase. Something like magic. She could hear him saying it so many times is a different way every time. One was a voice of utter malice, the other of praise, and as the three words pranced around her in the air, her wide, wild eyes wandered desperately over the wreckage, hoping desperately that Loki would pop up somewhere and claim responsibility, that he was actually chanting the phrase over and over, almost yelling it in her ear, before whispering from ten meters away, his voice carried by the wind. But she found nothing. It was just her. She had done this. Blood dripped from her chin once it had finally wandered down her face from her temple, landing on the dusty rubble below her. She couldn't feel it, her mind caught up in her actions like it was stuck in a thicket of rose thorns, grasping and desperate not to let go, spiking her now and then, sending slight jolts of pain through her head if she tried to process what had happened. Try as she might, she couldn't find the rose through the thorns. The quarterstaff in her hand, retracted back into the handle and slick with blood, both red and purple, was beginning to fall out of her hand, as her fingers hung down as she stood, frozen in shock. Eventually it fell, and it hit a chunk of cement, covered with shattered glass that had probably been part of one of the office building either side of the street, bouncing a few times before settling, stirring up a slight cloud of dust, the clunking of the impact barely registering in her tangled mess of a head. 

Roxi didn't know how she stayed like that. All she knew was shock, numbness, and a pain in her head, different to any she'd ever felt before. What brought her out of it was something quite trivial. The comms device nestled in her right ear screamed at her, and she realised that it had gone quiet while she'd been caught up in her own mind. Voices began to filter through again, as if the shock-wave from whatever Roxi had done, had fixed it. The first broken voice she heard was Clint's, but she only caught a few words of what he was saying.

"R- where i- der?" He sounded exhausted, and slightly in pain, meaning he'd probably received some kind of injury. The next voice she heard was Steve's, and she subconsciously wondered if his hair was still slicked back like it had been earlier.

"She was fi- t- th us last t- saw- her." He sounded similar to Clint, his breathing heavy and his voice slightly strained, in the background, Roxi could faintly hear Thor yelling at the dead Chitauri. The earpiece crackled again, releasing a harsh whine, almost strong enough for Roxi to take it out; almost. 

"I saw her fighting earlier, she was a way away from us, she must have drifted while fighting," Natasha's voice broke through the near-silent chaos erupting around her, clear, although the volume wavered and the comms crackled a little. It was at that point that Roxi found the metaphorical rose. She'd didn't know how long she'd been pushing away the thorns as they cut into her skin, but she had found the clearing, and she could see the rose.

Her mind cleared, like it never had before, completely calm, like a sea that had never seen a storm, no emotions gathering in the blue sky like a dark thundercloud, just sunshine, clouds and smooth sailing. Roxi raised a hand to her bleeding temple and shook her head slightly, before bending down and picking up the discarded quarterstaff.