Inheritance of ash

day three - part one

It was raw. Steady. Real.

Kate forgot to be angry. Forgot how to breathe. Because in that gaze, steady and unwavering, something pulsed between them—something Kate didn't understand, didn't want to understand, but couldn't deny.

And for one dizzying heartbeat, she swore Yelena felt it too.

Then the engine roared, and the moment shattered.

Yelena leaned forward, twisting the throttle without warning. The bike shot forward like a bullet, and Kate yelped, instinct slamming her arms tight around Yelena's waist.

"Warn me next time!" she shouted, her words swallowed by the wind.

"Hold on tighter," Yelena tossed back over her shoulder, voice maddeningly calm.

Kate muttered something under her breath, but she didn't loosen her grip. Couldn't.

Didn't want to.

Ahead of them, Pietro and Wanda's bike blazed a path, oblivious to the charged silence behind them.

And just like that, the four of them were off.

⸻

The therapy room was the same soft, contained place it had always been — ocean-blue walls that calmed even when the rest of the world refused to, a single armchair that swallowed Vicky whole. Light filtered through blinds in a steady, patient way. It felt like a place designed to outlast panic.

Liane sat opposite, knees crossed, hands folded loosely in her lap. She smiled the way she reserved for people who needed permission to be small, the smile of someone who'd learned that gentleness was its own kind of language.

"How are you, Vicky?" she asked without pressure, the question round and simple as a pebble dropped in a still pond.

Vicky shrugged and kept her eyes on the pattern the sunlight made on the carpet. "Fine," she said, which was shorthand and defense.

Liane knew the shorthand. She'd read it before and she didn't correct her.

"Would you like something to drink? Water? Tea?" Liane offered.

Vicky declined. Small comforts weren't helpful right now; movement felt like a betrayal of whatever raw place she carried inside.

Liane's gaze moved, not unkindly, to the beige rubber band around Vicky's wrist. It looked ordinary until you remembered the last time Vicky had sat in this chair the band had been black. Liane didn't point that out outright; she never rushed. Instead she let the gesture be the invitation she always deployed — quiet and open-ended.

"You've been gone a long time," Liane said instead. "People notice. I heard about the explosion, the—" She stopped herself, letting the unspoken wrap around the room like a warm cloth.

"If you want to talk about Bucky, we can. If not, that's okay."

Vicky's jaw tightened. The name hung between them; it was everything and nothing. She wanted to run. She wanted to talk until she had bled enough that words no longer mattered. She wanted to keep it inside until it stopped hurting. She chose the middle ground, the one she always chose: retreat.

"I don't want to talk about that," she said, and the sentence was flat enough to be its own wall.

Liane didn't push. She didn't need to. Instead, she let her eyes do the gentle work. "I noticed the band," she said after a beat. "You used to wear a black one here."

Vicky told a small lie that felt rusty in her mouth. "I lost it in the explosion."

The truth was that she'd snapped it too roughly. Just once. But that had been enough for the elastic to break.