The Game That Started it All

5 Stages of Grief

~1 week later~

No ones POV:

Everyone was back at the Avengers tower. Everyone was conscious, except for some at times.

Yet it was quiet. That word has never been used to describe their home, something was always happening here. Either people were joking with one another, there was a briefing with Fury or they all were just doing their own things.

It never seemed to be quiet though.

The silence was uneasy, everyone in their own stage of grief, except the last of the 5,

Acceptance.

No one has accepted the fact that Natasha Romanoff would never be coming home, that she was gone forever.

Stage One: Denial

The Avengers that found themselves in this particular category were Wanda Maximoff and James Buchanan Barnes.

They believed in some sort of twisted way that Natasha was still alive, that it couldn't be true.

They spent most of their time together, in a quiet space talking about what could have happened.

Wanda believed she was still alive because the feeling never went away. The one she got before Pietro died, the crash of emotions that sent her to the floor last time, never seemed to hit her. But maybe she was just saving herself from that pain..

Bucky agrees with her. He believes that hers and Loki's magic had worked, and she just ran away. They begged the others to go looking for her but everyone was to upset to. Too far gone, too devastated to even open their minds to the possibility.

So they talked, came up with conspiracies and plans to get her back, to get their beloved red head back to being her sarcastic self, wandering around the tower bringing light to everyone around.

Others thought they were crazy or insensitive, told them to move on.

Yet here they were currently, in Wanda's room enjoying each others company, trying to find the loophole.

Stage Two: Anger

Bruce hulked out the moment he heard. Most weren't surprised by it, just relieved that it happened in the forests of Russia. He tore and wrecked trees with ease, non stop for hours while the others got themselves out of the Red Room and onto the jet.

Thor accompanied him in the rage. He seemed to destroy everything that pissed him off in the slightest. If he bumped into a chair while lost in thought, the chair would end up on the other side of the room, maybe along with a few others. He even broke one of the couches after throwing it off the balcony when he spilt his tea on it. Yeah, that wasn't fun. The list of things smashed and broken by Thor was double sided, but nobody could blame him.

The two of them were on a rampage, a fire ignited in each of them, unable to be put out to the point that their emotions took over them. The flames burned down their conscious, seeing who could burn like an ember the longest.

Most of all though, they were both angry with themselves. It was an endless feeling. The guilt, the loss and the anger.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel signalling it was over soon. They had lost one of their best friends. Anger was their coping mechanism.

Let em' cope.

Stage Three: Bargaining

The bird boy and the trickster. The two of them categorized themselves in the 'What If' stage. The self blame, the fault and the bargaining.