Hey guys! I'm going to start adding in songs that I was listening to while writing or that I think relate to the vibe of the chapter. Some songs might get repeated so I'm sorry about that!
ADITI
I groaned and rolled over in bed, not ready to start the day just yet. It was too much effort to do things. Especially when all the world did was prove that nothing mattered anyway.
"Aditi." The name swam towards me through the clouds of semi-consciousness.
"Hmm?"
"You're late for school." Clint poked me in the ribs. I shot up, scrambling for the gun that I kept beside my bed.
Clint, who was ready for this, had his hands over mine in a flash, lowering the barrel from my grip. I was breathing hard, my entire body shaking, the adrenaline thundering through my body from my fight or flight response. I couldn't feel him. It was like I was underwater, as though I was deaf, a sense I'd always had was gone. I couldn't feel what he felt. It was like trying to reach someone through thick, wet sand.
I made a couple of whimpering noises and burst into tears. Clint didn't say anything, just put the gun down and pulled me into him. I hadn't been sleeping well for months. Not since the psychopath Connie had looked me dead in the eyes and told me she'd be keeping an eye on me. Anytime someone touched me when I was sleeping, I reacted like that. Sometimes it even happened when I was completely awake. My paranoia had been causing issues. People would get headaches around me, and more than once I'd accidentally left Bruce with a black eye back when I was still making appearances outside my room. I couldn't feel them. But for some reason, they could feel me.
"Can you call them and say I'm sick again?" I whispered. I couldn't face going into school that day, couldn't face feeling as though I was walking around blind, couldn't face the pity on Peter's expression. Funniest thing was, I didn't even miss my friends. Nobody else knew, apart from Tony and Peter of course. Everyone else thought I went to school every day.
Clint sighed and wiped my face gently. "I already did, but I said you'd be in later if you felt up for it."
I nodded. I hadn't been in for three weeks. It was nearing mid-October and so far I had missed most of my last year of school.
I looked around my bedroom. I hadn't cleaned it. I was wearing the same clothes I'd been in for three days.
"Peter said he wanted to see you later." My uncle could see my face drop the moments those words had left his mouth. I hadn't let Peter in my room in a month. People just assumed we were together. I knew he made things up for me, that he told Ali we'd been to the park that day, or that we were doing homework together. He'd lie and tell people I was at my parent's place, or round his house with May. People always asked for 'Peter and Aditi' now. Not Peter or Aditi. And I couldn't bare it. I couldn't bare it.
I shook my head slowly. "I just want to be left alone."
"Tough luck." Tony Stark said from my doorway. "Want a cookie?" He asked, offering me a box. I shook my head. He shrugged and popped another one into his mouth.
I looked up at my uncle with a pleading expression, and his response was a shrug.
Tony came to sit down on my bed, looking at me as though he was considering something carefully. "Those dreams of yours, have you had any more?"
I shook my head.
"Nothing?"
I shook my head again.
"You've been keeping up with your work?" He asked. He was paying my school fees so it was a fair question.
I reached down beside my bed and threw him a pile of papers.
"And the work I've been setting you?"
Another pile of papers landed next him.
Tony gave a small grunt and began flicking through them. He nodded, seeming satisfied, and moved the piles onto the floor.
"Aditi, spandex is coming to see you. He's been begging for weeks now. He's worried. I'm worried, and I think you know how rare that is." He raised an eyebrow. I shrugged. We'd bonded over our relationship to Peter during our captivity in the Ascendency prison and somehow it had stuck. Being in next door cells might do that to you, I didn't know. I hadn't been in prison before. I wasn't sure why, or how we'd stayed tentative friends, but we had.
"There's nothing to worry about." I whispered.
Tony let out a dry laugh and Clint gave me a warning look.
"The others will start to notice soon-"
"They never noticed me before, so why would they notice my absence now?" I cut in, my voice harsh and rigid. "I know how people's eyes glaze over me. I know I'm quiet and I know I don't speak up much. People are detached from me, it's how I can- how I could accurately read their feelings. People have always focused on Roara and Ali."
"Peter noticed you." Tony said in a low voice. "Peter always noticed you. It's time you realised that and stopped acting like a whiney child. Pay him some respect, god knows the kid's earned it from you of all people. He saved your life-"
"And I saved his."
"THAT'S WHAT PARTNERS DO!" Tony was on his feet now, no longer holding onto the veneer of calm. Then he sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. "God help me, I'm sounding like Rogers. And you are talking like Alina."
"Maybe if I were a bit more like-"
Clint put his hand on my shoulder. "We don't need any more Alina's. We need our Aditi. You have things she could only dream of."
"What the ability to make someone scream in agony just by looking at them?" My voice was barely audible. I hated this. Speaking to people and not automatically gauging how they felt about what I was saying. It felt like I had lost a limb.
"No." Clint shook his head. "The ability to be kind and generous without thinking twice about it. The ability to see the good in everyone. The ability to trust and be trusted. You might not be able to wire up an engine in an evening but you can make people feel at ease within seconds, and that has nothing to do with your empath abilities. It's a gift, and a rare one."
"I hate to agree with Robin Hood here, but he's right." Tony shrugged. "You've got something. But right now you're a total fucking mess and you're not letting people help you."
I groaned and put my head in my hands. I didn't want people to help me. I didn't want them to be let into my mind because that required me opening up. I'd taken for granted how easy it was to share feelings when I hadn't had to speak to people, when I hadn't had to be vulnerable like this. I used to be able to just touch someone and let them in.
"I'm off." Tony grunted. "Because I actually have a life. Oh and Aditi?"
I looked up. "Yeah?"
"Take a goddamn shower."
I didn't take the shower. I sat in my bed and stared at the wall opposite me until Clint brought me a sandwich that I ate. I left the plate with the pile of others. My hair was falling into my eyes so I put it up in a bun, with hair sticking out at all angles. I watched How to Get Away with murder, but I couldn't concentrate.
I pulled my sketchbook out and began to draw. I sketched aimlessly, letting my hands follow familiar patterns and lines, moving around the page to shade. I'd always liked art, but it was always more of a hobby for me, not something I wanted to pursue for a career. I wasn't really good enough for that, and art school was way too expensive. I supposed now I had the avengers as monetary back-up, but Tony would never approve of it. He was okay with me doing psychology, though he'd prefer I do engineering or physics. I was good at physics, not as good as Peter mind, but I just didn't love it. But I used to love people. I used to love understanding them, how they worked, what affected them.
I always felt like I was outside of everyone else, apart from when I was with my family. As though I was just an external viewer, analysing people and their actions. Like I was up on a great hill and watching them from afar.
Drawing and painting had always been an outlet for me. A way for me to be creative and let out my feelings, understand them, without having to discuss them with anyone else. I hadn't had so much time to draw before when all the big things were happening, like being kidnapped and then working with the Avengers. Now, though, I had lots of time. I think that really, without art, the hole I'd managed to fall into would have been even deeper.
I couldn't sleep. I had no appetite but I ate because it was in front of me, like a robot fulfilling commands. Everything tasted like cardboard. I could barely remember the last three weeks, I just knew the time had passed and I had done very little except for draw and cry and stare at the ceiling. I went from feeling panicked and terrified, my heart beating out of time and my breath being unable to catch itself, to feeling nothing at all, as though I had been dunked into a pool of ice. I didn't know which I hated more. Feeling nothing or feeling everything. But the art helped. It helped me feel a little bit more like myself again.
I looked down at my pad and then back up. And then back down. And then I squinted. And then my eyes grew very wide indeed.
"Oh. My. God." I breathed. "CLINT!" I looked up, he wasn't there.
I scrambled out of bed, my feet barely hitting the floor before I was racing to the door and wrenching it open. I fell sideways in my rush but got back up again and sprinted down the corridor.
I passed by Wanda as I ran. "Aditi I thought you were in school?"
"No - time - to - explain." I panted as I ran, swerving around another bend and bursting into the living room.
Alina looked up from a piece of paper she was inspecting, Steve by her side. Tony was sipping some coffee. Clint looked up from a set of papers.
"CLINT!" I dived across the table, documents flying everywhere.
"Aditi what-"
I slammed the drawing pad down in front of him. "Look at this." I said triumphantly.
He frowned and picked it up. He looked closer at it, and then moved it further away.
"Well I'll be damned." He breathed.
"What is it?" Ali asked coming over. "And why aren't you in school?"
"She's sick." Tony answered. "But Aditi, really, what is it?"
"It's Loki." I looked at Clint, who was flicking through my drawings. "Loki and Roara. I didn't mean to draw them, I didn't mean to draw anything. But it's definitely them."
"But you haven't had any visions." Clint said darkly, going back to the first drawing I'd showed him.
I shook my head. "No, but maybe I don't need to."
"Wait you haven't been having any visions?" Alina asked, surprised.
"Long story." Clint muttered.
The drawing in question was simple. Loki, wearing the clothes I'd last seen him in, was knelt down and holding a limp Roara in his arms, and she was wearing what I'd last seen her in; a t-shirt, hoodie, and jeans. The terrain around them was rocky, with what looked like gusts of wind all around them, and in the distance...
"Are these two suns?" Tony asked, taking the drawing from Clint.
I pointed to the other side of the sketch. "And two moons."
Steve frowned as he looked over Tony's shoulder. "You drew this?"
I nodded.
"It's really good."
I couldn't help blushing a little. "Thanks."
"And you really didn't mean to draw this scene? It's so detailed I don't know how you could have..." He trailed off and squinted at the drawing. "You didn't see her get shot."
"What?" I asked, thoroughly confused.
"Roara got shot, before going through the portal."
"Wait that's what killed her? Who shot her?"
All eyes in the room turned to Alina.
"It wasn't what killed her." Alina said grimly. "And she didn't look exactly like that when it happened. She looked..." Alina shuddered, "different." I had never seen her shudder, not once, and I never could have imagined that I ever would.
"Even so." Steve pointed to my drawing. "The wound on the shoulder, the grazes on the face, the rips on the clothes, the bullet hole in the middle it... it's exact." Steve turned seriously to me. "You haven't been looking at the footage we told you you couldn't see, right?"
They hadn't let me see the video of Roara dying and falling backwards into the portal. They said it wasn't for me to see. They hadn't let Peter see it either. I shook my head. I hadn't wanted to see it. It would have been too difficult, too graphic. Too painful.
Tony cleared his throat. "Friday pull up frame 107 of the Roara Search collection." As images flickered over a hovering hologram, Tony scanned my drawing with a device and pulled it up beside the pictures to make a comparison.
I flinched when finally the correct image showed in perfect resolution. It was as though I was watching it in front of me, as it was happening. Roara...didn't look like herself. She didn't look like a 19 year old girl. I'd forgotten how thin she'd become while she was trapped at the Ascendency, but this was worse that that. She didn't even look remotely human anymore. She had antlers coming out of her head, her skin was green and brown, with cracks in it where red fire seemed to glow. But nobody else seemed alarmed by this.
They had all been there when it had happened. They'd watched the footage over and over, frame by frame. They'd grown used to this.
Apart from Alina. Ali looked like she was going to be sick. I noticed Steve quietly slip his hand into hers and give it a squeeze. She squeezed back.
Tony nodded. "Exactly the same injuries, exactly the same placement. Even the blood stains are... are perfect." He turned to me. "Do you have any more?"
"You're free to look through my book." I felt tired now, and sick. I wanted to go lie down. I hadn't been this active in a while and just the look of Roara on that screen...
"You shouldn't be looking at this Ti. Anyway you're sick, you should be in bed. I'm gonna take you back." Clint put an arm around me and guided me back to my room. I couldn't even remember the walk back I was so out of it.
Clint sat me down in my chair and put new sheets on my bed, tidying up the room slightly as he went. He was being so gentle. So soft. So.... fatherly.
"Clint, when was the last time you saw your family?"
"You're right here Ti."
"No I mean-"
"You're the one who needs looking after right now. And you're my family. Your aunt can handle the kids, don't you worry. I go back more often than you realise." He shrugged. "Are you okay?"
"That photo. Of Roara."
Clint scratched the back of his head. "Yeah. It's... it's a lot to take in the first time you see it."
"Alina shot her."
"It's complicated."
"I drew them. On a planet I don't know. I definitely drew them."
Clint sighed, "Now that, I can't explain. You look like shit, get some sleep."
I couldn't sleep, not for a while. That image of Roara was burned into my memory. I couldn't un-see it. She had looked like a God, like a terrifying God I would never want to meet. Like the monster under the bed. Like something out of a horror film. I eventually managed to doze off into a completely dreamless sleep.