∆ {6⁶} {COMFORT IN COINCIDENCE} ∆
Two Months Later
ROXI ONCE AGAIN sat on her hill at the States' memorial. She didn't come here nearly as often now, since she'd finished writing down the names. There had been days that she wished she hadn't locked it in that box, had almost hated herself for depriving her the opportunity to run her fingers over the ink-stained pages, to memorise the names as obsessively as she'd written them.
A gust of wind blew past, and she shivered, despite the several layers of clothes that included one of Natasha's hoodies. She'd taken to wearing baggy clothes to hide the way her bones stuck out against her skin almost jauntily. She wasn't pale though, because exercise and fresh air were among the few things she hadn't begun to neglect these past few years. Despite her lack of appetite and inclination to eat, her training had meant that any bulk she had retained was almost pure muscle, and she'd taught herself how to fight and function with almost no energy. It had been a gruelling process, but one she had deemed necessary in the end.
She'd been here for hours, enjoying the lack of noise that reached her here as she scanned the slabs, counting them over and over to give her mind something to do. The grass was soft to the touch, and she had plans to go to Tony and Pepper's for dinner, to visit Morgan, their two-year-old who Roxi had barely met, what with all the time she'd spent away or locked in her darkness.
She brought her hand up from the gentle tickle of the blades of grass and ants' legs as they scurried across her fingers, and instead traced the raised skin beneath her sleeve, the familiar pattern that was wrapped around her arm. She stilled, however, when a vaguely familiar figure sat down next to her.
A figure with her brown hair half-dyed a faded blue, her face sharp and pretty beneath a nastily pointed scowl. This was the woman who normally had her fingers wrapped around the neck of a bottle, who usually sat further down the hill, where Roxi could stew in her distaste for alcohol in silence. But she didn't have a bottle, though her face was screwed up in some kind of loathing as she surveyed the scene before her. After a moment, she simply fell backwards, her back hitting the earth with a soft thump as Roxi watched her with a blank look.
She didn't know this woman. She didn't know anything about her at all, except for the fact that she came here almost as often as Roxi did, possibly more often.
"God, this sucks, doesn't it?" An accented voice, Spanish, came from the woman as she gazed up at the canopy of browning leaves below a sky that was shrouded in grey. Roxi didn't reply, still examining the woman without a word.
"Sure, it's nice to know that they are remembered somewhere, but they could've done a bit better than just a name in some stone, no?" Oh. The woman recognised her, too. Roxi considered whether she should say anything at all before she replied, taking her gaze off of the woman and resting it back on the slabs as she began to count again.
"I guess." An image of a name in stone in Sokovia, and then that same name written in red ink, surrounded by a map of stars she knew the intended audience would never get to see.
"Hey, what happened to the book?" The woman propped herself up on her elbows, her face squinting inquisitively at Roxi, who gave her the short, sharp response she felt was owed to that question.
"Where's the bottle?" The scowl flickered across her face again, a bitter sneer twisting her features until she seemed to think better of it, and also turned her attention back to the memorial. They stayed in that silence for a while, and Roxi realised that this woman was the first person she'd spoken to that she didn't know since the Snap. Natasha had been encouraging her just that morning to branch out, to find other people to talk to in hopes that she might find some diversity in her life. Stray from her normal patterns, those deadly habits that she'd become so stuck in. A sigh, a moment's hesitation.
"My name's Roxi." The words were sour in her mouth, and she almost cringed as she said them. She still wasn't used to it. It felt reckless, to give information she'd guarded so harshly for most of her life away as if it meant nothing. To most people, she supposed, it didn't.
"Mara." Roxi turned to look at the woman next to her, part of her wanting to see if the name suited her. Mara had a hand held out, and Roxi shook it quickly, noting the dark ink spread across her brown skin. Skulls, roses, blades, all crammed into as little space as possible. The smaller things were, she supposed, there was more space for other images, printed eternally onto the canvas of her skin.
Roxi could only hope that her sleeve hadn't ridden up her forearm enough to reveal the marks etched there. In an attempt to distract Mara from it, she simply spoke again.
"Who are you here for?" She didn't dare to say it loudly. Instead, she used that hushed tone that she'd picked up from Natasha, because it wasn't a light question that could simply be spoken like any other. Mara's features twisted, and Roxi half-expected it to move back into a scowl at the intrusive question. Instead, she found herself subject to a sad smile and mournful gaze.
"My sister. What about you?" Roxi looked down to the grass in between her legs, her fingers twirling the blades, a sad smile of her own pasting over her face. It felt odd to finally show emotion like this. Easier to answer as if Wanda's name was actually here, not in Sokovia.
"Me too." And then she realised she was actually feeling. It was not her mind simply acting as if she felt what she knew she should've, but emotion bubbled inside of her, in a way that split her smile wider in another thing she hadn't felt for years - relief.
"Who was it that told you you needed to socialise?" Mara asked after a few minutes, clearly not keen on dwindling on the grief that surrounded their lost sisters. Roxi's smile once again changed, now to a fond one.
"Girlfriend," The image of Natasha making dinner the night she'd filled her black book flitted through her mind for a split-second, and she found herself wishing she was spending more time with the woman in question, "You?"
"Therapist," came Mara's immediate response as she examined the tapestry of tattoos on her skin, though a slightly bigger smile had found its way to her face now, too. Perhaps Natasha was right. Perhaps having a new person to talk to wouldn't do her any harm.
~
ROXI AND MARA had ended up having lunch together at a small cafe down the street, and after discovering that they both spoke Spanish, spent the rest of their time conversing in their first language. It had been a long, long time since Roxi had had a conversation like that. She'd only done it once or twice in her life, but it had been refreshing, a break from her usual routine.
But now she sat in Tony's lab, all semblance of relief and possible happiness wiped from her system. He'd taken one look at her, and insisted she come through for tests. He seemed to find it necessary to go through a list of the things she'd experienced.
"So, weight loss, the head aches, mental breakdowns, loss of appetite, fatigue?" Roxi nodded, feeling one of the pains in her skull begin to form. Dull, constant pressure that layered over the trapdoor, pushed the sea of emotion beneath it further away, further from her reach. She wasn't really here. Some part of her missed Mara, even if she'd just met her and had only left her half an hour ago. She missed the sun's warmth, and the familiarity of Spanish on her tongue.
"This is getting dangerous, Roxi. More than it was before. You should tell her." Tony's voice was soft. He was wary of her reaction, and with good reason. Natasha had mentioned to her that she seemed to have become less tolerant with things that troubles her, more aggressive in her stances and speech. After she'd mentioned it, Roxi had begun to pick up on it herself, part of her enjoying the spite that she allowed herself to inject into as many words as she could. Part of her had enjoyed the spite rising in place of where her normal emotion had been before, because it meant she had something to direct towards people, rather than that dreadful blankness.
"I'll tell her when we're sure." Roxi had said that many times to Tony about the research they'd been conducting, and he'd always brushed it off without much of a fuss, though Roxi could always sense the disagreement that filled him.
"We're as sure as we're ever going to be." His tone was decisive now. He wasn't going to shift on this. Roxi was inclined to get up, then. To go and find Pepper and Morgan and avoid this conversation for as long as she could. Tony put a hand on her arm before she could, and even that light pressure was enough to keep her there. She hadn't really wanted to leave, even if that had been her first instinct. He was one of her anchors, and it would do her no good to shut him out. So she looked back to him; let him see the unsurity, the worry, the dread that had begun to course through her as a suggestion. Not just as a thought of what should've been there, but what she actually felt. His arm felt heavy on her arm though, weighing on the skin underneath that was still red from the stars she'd etched into it this morning. Some part of her was afraid that, even though it was a foolish idea, he would be able to feel it through her sleeve.
She had been planning to say something - anything - to reply to him, to say that she wasn't sure that she could stomach the thought of telling Natasha, not yet. But then Morgan had run through, telling them that it was time for dinner, and had come over to her and wrapped her small arms around Roxi's leg. She forced herself to look away from Tony's understanding gaze, her words drying, vanishing from her tongue as she set a smile on her face - the same one she'd used for Cooper, Lila, and Nathaniel whenever she'd seen them.
She missed them, and Laura, and Clint evidently did too, because he'd vanished. She and Natasha hadn't dared to breach that topic, but it was at the front of her mind now, something that would probably be beneficial to discuss. To work through how much Natasha missed him. Roxi had thought of it a few times before, but with that emptiness dwelling inside her, she had decided that it wasn't the best idea to discuss the topic, not while she was so out of touch with herself.
But for now, she picked Morgan up, sent a half-smile over her shoulder to Tony, and walked through to the dining room, greeting Pepper with a soft voice, enjoying the time she was able to spend with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Yeah, not the most exciting chapter but hey, new character. It's not exactly a filler caus stuff happens but yeah, hope it wasn't too boring. Pls vote, comment, let me know what you think, etc.,
JABBERJAY_011
WORDS [2000]
WRITTEN [25.02.2022]
PUBLISHED [26.02.2022]