Snow

The story isn't told the same on both ends, but we are walking everyday under the same sky, and when he looks at it he sees the same clouds as she does. He is a fighter and his life has only been that since the war, and so was hers. But she made him fall for the sweet tenderness of the orange-pink tint of the sky at sunset. She brought him to life. He was truly born the day he met her, even if it was during their darkest time. Everything before was just a way to make his human body and mind functional, for the rest, it was just there. But she taught him how to love himself.

He is ever thankful for that. 

He could get stuck in hating himself so often, but she gave him the tools to not lose his self-esteem and keep loving himself at least a tiny bit every single time. 

Thanks to her he was able to see the little sparks of joy around this mess. And he learned it all from the time he spent with her. 

Because she was different, because she loved him despite everything. She was never his enemy. He is so grateful to have met her. 

When the snow slowly falls on the edge of his window during cold winter nights. When he walks around a snowy forest path in the dead of night or under the shadows of buildings to rest from a devouring sun. He always remembers and misses her presence in his life. He misses being himself as easily as it used to be with her. And he misses it because he knows he is different from before and he wouldn't be as unfit as he was to be connected to others.

She used to be so close to so many people around them but over this year so many things have changed and it's mostly because she has been isolating herself, she does it without knowing. It's a sort of coping mechanism for her, she thinks. She does it when she’s at her worst.

Yes she is sick of herself. She is sick of the way she looks, sick of the way she feels. She is sick of the way she acts, sick of not knowing who she is. She wants to be comfortable in her own skin. But she doesn't think she will ever be comfortable with herself. 

She’s scared that she might never find herself, scared that she might lose control if not already and she is so sick and tired of it, of all of it. But now, she has reached a point where it doesn’t bother her anymore, not because she got over it, but because she is tired. The woman Bucky knew wasn’t the same anymore.

It was like she was paralyzed, she had no feeling, she no longer felt things she knew she should. She had no idea where her real self was. She was lost and it killed her inside.She wondered when she became that cold, when did she became that numb, when did she became so ashamed ? 

All the words that left her tongue felt like it came from someone else. She was scared to live, scared to move on.

She was having heart palpitations and was constantly tired. She could barely walk because she was so weak. She stayed that way for a while and eventually got so stressed out from the constant worrying that she started having panic attacks, they were bad. 

The panic would keep her up at night. She was getting no sleep and felt like she was going to die. She remembers laying on her bed, body exhausted and heart palpitating, hyperventilating and sobbing, she felt like a burden. Anxiety and panic attacks were killing her from the inside and she was getting worse each month.

At this point, everything just wasn’t affecting her anymore, the pain she should’ve been crying out for, the happiness that should be cheering her up, those little things that she always noticed and loved. Every emotion in her heart just goes away day by day, and she starts to feel an utter emptiness in herself. It’s like everything is just voices in her head and around her that she can’t understand a thing anymore. She used to cry over everything then smile after that, but right now, even crying is tiring, she just wants to sleep, and sleep and just never wake up.

Steve's departure had been the final blow, the loss of yet another member of her family and she couldn't take it anymore, she couldn't stand it anymore. First Natasha, then Tony and finally Steve, it was too much, more than she could handle.

Summer 2018 - Avengers Coumpound

She doesn't think she wants to die. She’s not sure she ever did. She thinks she just needs a moment to herself. A moment where she can just be here. A moment of peaceful quiet to gather her thoughts and breathe. A moment without the endless roar of pressure and anxiety and fear and nightmares- and even dreams. It scares her. 

Everything scares her. 

Possibilities. 

What-ifs. 

Differences. 

She doesn't understand it. She probably never will. She doesn't know.....maybe they aren't meant to understand. Maybe they’re just meant to keep playing until the game's finally over.

It’s been a month and it’s been excruciating. She is mentally and emotionally exhausted from trying to act the same for everyone else because that’s what they need. Everyone lost all their hopes, are grieving their lost ones when they have one, or, for the luckiest among them, spending time with their family, or at least what's left of it. 

It’s been a month or so since half her family disappeared. Bucky. Wanda. Sam. Peter and Strange not coming back from space. T’Challa. And many, many, many other people. 

For her, Bucky was...  He was her everything, they never went official, but deep inside, they always cared for each other, as more than friends. But Bucky’s wellbeing was her priority. 

They lost track of each other during their lives but always managed to find each other back, and when they did, they never left each other and stayed in Wakanda. At least until he happened. 

Thanos.

Wanda and Sam were one of her best friends, she was always close to them, she loved annoying Sam and spending time with Wanda. Peter was like a little brother to her, a hyperactive one, that’s for sure, but with the best heart someone could have. He was always ready to help, always full of good intentions. T’Challa had always been welcoming with friends of Steve Rogers as well as Shuri and all the wakandans that welcomed her and Bucky.

Memory had always failed her, all her life, she even had to choose her own name back in the days as she didn’t remember hers, she still doesn't, so she named herself Aspen. Yet she had no trouble remembering the battle, much to her despair. 

Aspen had no trouble remembering the cry from T'Challa, the Avengers, Wakandan army and her charging  to meet the Outriders in close combat, holding them off in a bloody melee as Shuri worked on Vision. The battle intensifying, them being slowly overwhelmed by the seemingly never-ending numbers of Outriders. 

One by one, Bucky, T'Challa, Steve, Bruce and her were mobbed and forced to the ground by sheer numbers, while Rhodey was blindsided and grounded by Obsidian. She was exhausted from using so much of her powers and trying to hold those creatures off, but she carried on, for the sake of humanity.

She remembered how she was astonished and delighted to see the tide of the battle turning in their favor when the Bifrost Bridge beamed down from the sky into the center of the battlefield, scattering the Outriders. Thor’s axe emerging from the Bridge, cutting swaths through the enemy. Thor, a racoon and a tree stepping out of the Bridge into the battlefield, confronting the Outriders. Thor using Stormbreaker to single-handedly destroy a large element of enemies in a single lightning-charged slam, before joining the melee.

She remembered how they lost their advantages when underneath the Wakandan barrier, large bladed wheel-like vehicles wreaked havoc across the Wakandan army, forcing T'Challa to order a retreat and Wanda coming into the battle.

She remembers how the portal opened, and Thanos himself stepping through it, arriving in Wakanda. With the Power, Space, Reality, Soul and Time Stones mounted on his gauntlet.

How Rogers rallied the Avengers to hold Thanos off for as long as they could. Banner making the first strike, leaping furiously at Thanos, only for him to casually phase Banner out of space using the Space Stone as if he was nothing. He tumbled helplessly through Thanos into a solid rock cliff, where he became imprisoned. Thanos blasting Rogers aside with a shockwave from the Power Stone, Black Panther leaping for Thanos' throat. Falcon attempting to provide air support while she tried to hold him back and block his hands with her powers, only to be incapacitated and grounded by the Space Stone.

She remembered the power of the fully enchanted axe quickly overwhelming the beam, and Thanos doing nothing to stop Stormbreaker from burying itself deep in his chest.

At this instant, she thought it was over, that the battle was finally over and they had won. But she never felt more stupid than there, because Thanos mustered the strength to simply snap his fingers anyway. The Gauntlet was activated in a blinding flash of energy and that's when the descent into hell began.

She recalled the battle wounding down into a ceasefire as many corroded into dust while she, amongst other survivors, watched in horror. 

Seeing Bucky crumbling into dust in front of Steve, Thor and her just seconds after Thanos’s snap of fingers and disappearance was heartbreaking, a pain piercing her heart, crushing it and putting it back in place. After Bucky, she watched T'Challa, attempting to help Okoye up and encouraging her to fight, falling into ashes before her eyes. Kneeling over Vision's body, Wanda vanished into dust too. Hidden in tall grass, Sam disintegrated as Rhodey called out to him. Most of her friends, her family were gone, reduced to ashes. She remembered how everything went quiet for a second or so, everyone wondering what had happened. But after that it was chaos, pure chaos, everyone calling and asking for people.

The majority of world governments were in a state of chaos because half of the world's population had disappeared. It was like this in all the Universe, half of the population gone.

She thought that Tony had been reduced to ashes too as well as Peter and Steven, as they never came back from space. Tony, a man who took her under his wing and treated her like a daughter years ago. But thanks to Carol he came back, weakened, but alive.

Thor beheading Thanos with Stormbreaker should have relieved everyone but it did not. It did not because Thanos had previously used the stones against themselves and destroyed them, all hope was lost to reverse what has been done.

She couldn’t live with the fact that she had survived and others didn’t. She did not deserve it, not after everything. 

Aspen wasn’t feeling worthy.

Present time - Aspen's apartment, Brooklyn

She still wasn’t feeling to this day.

She looked up at the sky and cried. She looked up and thought of him. She thought of all of them. All the adventures coming to one full circle. The still air, not daring to leave her lungs, in fear that if she let go and took a breath that the world, and the beautiful sky would shatter. The fragile tears rushed down her cheeks as she watched the world change. All the while him, and everyone else, weren’t beside her anymore. Everything she wanted to hold on tightly slipped away in one single moment, the world crumbled, the sky faded, and now she lives in a world of black and white, never to see color again.  

The knot she feels in her throat won't go away. A trapped cry or the truth she's too afraid to face. The hurt she got from smashing something she thought was the best thing she found at the worst time. And all because she never understood love. 

She tried and it would hurt her to try ways to give him what she couldn't understand. Crying wasn't as painful as sitting down, passing out screaming in agony inside so she clenched her jaw. 

Angry, she doesn't know how she begins to see if her perception of love would have been something she had time to learn, it could have lasted much longer. Not really upset that he left, more upset that he had suffered for so long and was still here, in the probable hope that she would make it right. Overwhelmed that he delivered love so beautifully, it motivated him enough to stay close to her even when he was in pain. It angers her like never before to learn that she misunderstood the meaning. She delivered what she thought was love in the most physical way. She knew she was confused but she had never thought of understanding it through him. She hates saying things that sound like an excuse. She was far from it. 

Her life was a mess, but so was his. When she met him, she didn't have time to clean up. Always afraid to expose the things she hated to keep inside just because she never felt it made sense to anyone. He saw her self-destruct by isolating herself and moving away all the people she had left and now he too has given up all hope of seeing this girl who was so happy before coming back to him.

She’s trying so hard to fight it but it’s so hard. She just wanders in her little apartment, she doesn't go outside anymore, she just sits and stares at a wall for hours on end and does it all over again every day without eating or sleeping much. Because she doesn't have the slightest clue of who she is anymore. The girl from her memories or the girl she was when she had none, the girl she created when she didn’t knew her own name, the girl she was when she was with her family, the Avengers. 

She was so numb and couldn't cry but at the same time wanted to scream in pain. It’s so hard, because nobody will ever understand her situation ever.

Her head went from memory to memory in a never ending circle.