First Cause • Spider-Man: Homecoming [Unedited]

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Spindly, web-like veins and blood capillaries that have long since burst stain the formerly milk-white scleras of Umbra's eyes. Alongside her pallid coloration and waning muscles making what little skin is exposed of her upper body a drooping bag clinging to the outline of her skeletal muscles, she makes a vulnerable sight of the image of power and authority the being sitting in the med bay bed is supposed to project.

She does not look as she always does on the many posters that litter the main halls of the Black Ash: tall and gallant, a silhouette standing atop an incline over a bright background, her features ever lost in a conveniently placed shadow. Meant to be both a vision of greatness to aspire to and a reminder of what manner of being would dole out corporal punishment should one forget their lowly place in the organization. A known stranger, cloaked in mystique with an air of lethality.

Even with all that, the only reaction Gadea feels in herself at drinking what she spies before her resembles the same one she would have were she to come upon a lost, crying child. A visceral pity that takes her by surprise as well as renders her without words.

Her diluted pupils against dull, lacking gold irises, so wide and so black in the worst expression of despair Gadea has seen in all her life, Umbra's visage tells words, perhaps some indicating what Gadea is doing in her room with an unconscious attendant and a loaded rifle, are what she desperately needs to hear. It seems they too are what she struggles to stress her cracked, blue lips to form. The salivary sound her tongue makes as it unsticks from the roof of her mouth cause Gadea's shoulders to hunch involuntarily.

A long stride is what separates the two, but with the severity of both of their trained gazes, it is as though deserts and oceans stand between them. From her where she is, Gadea could fire her rifle into the soft-looking flesh over Umbra's beady eyes and her flat nose, where her eyebrows would be if whatever medical procedure she has undergone has not resulted in their loss. A shot from this close an angle, the bolt would go straight through her skull and strike the metal flooring beneath the bed. It would be over in half the time it takes to remember to breathe.

Her rifle rests beside her right thigh, the modified temperature of the room sapping the warmth from its metal barrel and in its place, leaving a chilling cold that has numbed her skin under her torn uniform. She would never have thought to have had anything in common with a patch of skin on her leg, but here she is. Armed to the teeth, with relatively no obstacles to prevent her from completing her mission.

But somehow, her rifle remains at her side.

She's numb.

Her mind's waterfall is a stagnant lake. The only echoes inside the walls of her head are haunting leftovers from her encounter with Anathem, impermanent phantasms that are swiftly replaced by snapshots of the present. Even her daydreams refuse to whisk her away from her current ordeal; they all sit in the stands to the side and watch with bated breath to see what she will do now. To see what comes next.