THE DEATH SEASON ▹ final avengers ✓

31 | the reverse snap

Steve slowly stands, "We will."

SVET LEAVES THE OTHERS .

She trips. She falls. She gets up.

Dizzy. Shaking. Nearly convulsing. Her vision swims and she keeps a hand pressed to mouth like she's ready to retch any moment. She feels like she's moving in slow motion, trying to wade through the impenetrable thickness of her grief. But her feet keep trudging on.

The redhead stumbles upon some quiet corner of the Avengers Compound that she's never known as home, but somehow feels the closest she can get to her mother now. The closest, and yet somehow the farthest too. The wall braces her fall to the ground, making it slow, making it painful as her back slides down it.

When Svet hits the concrete, it all comes loose.

The grief becomes all consuming, and every second she thinks it might go away, it might hurt less, it just gets worse.

And the guilt is as strong as the grief.

She's drowning it. Feels it bubbling up around her like acid, stripping and flaying away her flesh to expose her for who she really is inside. Guilty that she spent so long away from her, guilty that she didn't come home sooner, and most of all, guilty that she let her go.

She let go.

She had her mama within her grasp, close enough to touch, to be held. And then she let her go.

It's all her fault.

Once upon a time, she had a family. Now, she has nothing. She has no place in the world.

Svet's hair falls and sticks to either side of her face, a curtain that can't hide her from her shame. Her shoulders ache from the tension of the tremors wracking her small frame, and she doesn't bother to wipe her running nose, or the spit dribbling from her mouth.

Her chest heaves, up and down, up and down with no sign of stopping. The tears burn her chapped cheeks and she hiccups as she weeps. She keeps her head in her shaking hands and her knees pressed against her aching chest.

Her cries echo throughout the room and she doesn't bother to smother them anymore. She lets them ring out clear and loud and she lets herself feel all of it.

The grief. The guilt. The pain.

The last time she felt pain like this, the last time she lost a parent, she thought she was going to die. Now she remembers what her papa said, all that time ago when he wanted to make sure that when they all left her behind, she was ready.

Bucky wanted her to be ready to be alone. She wasn't. And she isn't.

But that's the thing about death; it doesn't give you any chance to be ready. It takes your father. It takes your mother. And then it decides to leave you alone. Lets you live because that's what you deserve. That's your punishment: a life sentence. 

The loneliness is crushing and there's no relief. The final Romanoff. The final Barnes. The last one on Earth to have her blood and DNA.

An orphan.

The word screams at her, mocks her, echoes around in the darkest corners of her mind just to remind her that she's all alone.

It's all her fault.

It's not Steve that finds her. Or even Clint. It's someone much more surprising.

It was after helping Rocket, Bruce, and Tony fit the final Infinity Stones into a red and gold gauntlet that Lisa remembered. So long on a helicarrier after they seemed to have lost all hope, Natasha came to her. Encouraged her. Made her feel like a fighter again. Inspired her to be something more.