chapter four | the aftermath

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CHAPTER FOUR
the aftermath
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┏━━━✦❘༻✶༺❘✦━━━┓CHAPTER FOURthe aftermath ┗━━━✦❘༻✶༺❘✦━━━┛

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THE EARTH STILL spun. After everything that happened, somehow, the earth still spun. Diana was curled up on her old bed in the Avengers compound, daylight filtered through the slotted blinds she had angled to block most of it, she didn't want to see the sun right now. Charlie was in the room next door, it was empty even when Diana lived here in 2016, they had made up a lot of empty spare rooms for anyone who had the potential to be an Avenger, of course, new recruits didn't happen every day, but neither did purple aliens wielding gauntlets with stones imbued with terrible power.

Diana took another look around her untouched room, her new suit was in a heap on the floor in the corner, her spear propped against the wall next to it. She didn't want anything to do with it at the moment. She looked at her board next to her failure to see the photo of Bucky she used to carry everywhere since 2014.

She couldn't be in her own room anymore, getting up from the bed, she had opened the door to see Charlie standing there, his arms crossed over his stomach like he was holding himself. His 12-year-old stature didn't bring him to a shockingly tall height, but he was still way taller than the last time Diana had seen him.

There was a red tint in the whites of his puffy eyes. His lip trembled. Diana couldn't bear to see such a pained face and instead pulled into a hug.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, stroking his head as tears fell from her own eyes, "I tried, I really did."

Her stitches were itchy and burned as her salty tears ran over them. She couldn't believe that a blue alien with horns coming out of her head did that to her, but she has the scar to prove it.

The ache in her chest and the arms encircling her waist brought her back to the present. Charlie held onto her so tight, that it almost hurt. There were no words after that, the sunset was pooling in slits on her floor, Charlie was soon going to return to his temporary room and lay there for the rest of the night. Diana was soon going to have to make something for dinner to make sure he eats, at least she hopes he'll do that.

Soon Charlie was gone from her, returning to his barren room to lay down on recently washed sheets. Diana glanced at Wanda's door across the hall from her threshold. She took careful steps, slowly entering her friend's room. She wished that Wanda was there, sitting crossed-legged on her bed watching an old sitcom on her tv. But the room was silent and full of cold, dead air. Wanda's things were also untouched and coated in a fine layer of dust, Diana would have to come through here and fix that for her.

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