Lila
Lila nocks an arrow. She breathes in. She breathes out. She raises the bow and aims it, ready to finally get that bullseye. She flexes her fingers, readying herself, about to shoot.
“Alright, hold on, don’t shoot.” Her dad, and current instructor, steps closer. He checks her stance, his gaze running quickly from her squared legs to her straight arm drawn-back elbow. “You see where you’re going?” Lila nods, but lowers her bow anyway. “Now let’s worry about how you get there. I’m just gonna-” He nudges her foot out, further into her stance, and turns her shoulders so she’s facing almost sideways from the target. “-Hips... here, okay. Can you see?”
“Yeah,” Lila says, and it does feel better, more secure, but she figures that’s why he had her move. This used to be his job, he knows stuff like that, stuff that helps her with her aim and power.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“How about now?” He dangles a stray piece of hair in her face, and she giggles. “Can you see now?” He move his hand in front of her eye, and she laughs again.
“No, I can’t!”
Her dad laughs with her as he removes his hand, resuming their lesson. “Alright,” he says, and Lila feels a thrill run through her, like she does every time she shoots with her dad. “Ready?” He asks, and she nods, because when is she ever not ready? As she draws her arm back again, her mom calls out from the picnic table.
“Hey, guys, you want mayo or mustard or both?”
Lila blinks and turns back to her dad. “Who wants mayo on a hot dog?”
He grins at her. “Your brothers.” Gross. He turns to call back their answers, and she readies her bow once more. “Mind your elbow,” her dad says, softly, trying not to disturb her focus. Lila breathes in. She breathes out. She pulls back the string and lets her arrow fly.
Thunk.
It hits dead center.
Her dad laughs in delight and hold up a hand for a high five. “Good job, Hawkeye.” Lila grins at him, feeling a rush of happiness at the words. She’s not as good as her dad, not even close, but to hear him say that…maybe one day, she will be. The moment passes, and her dad pats her shoulder. “Now go get your arrow.”
She hears her mom say something, and her dad respond, but she’s too busy yanking the arrow out of the target to pay attention. She hears her dad call her name, and, arrow nearly out of the target, she turns around.
“Yeah, Dad?”
He isn’t there.
“Dad?”
Lila blinks and looks around, but the area where he’d been standing only a few seconds ago is empty, with only grass and some dust to greet her. Frowning, she heads down the hill to the table, and stops short. Because it isn’t just her dad who’s vanished. It’s everyone. Her brothers’ toys are laying in the grass, and the soup is still cooking away, but the people have vanished. Lila shakes her head, because what?
“Very funny, guys,” she says.
Walking into the house, she calls out “truly hilarious, but come on, let's go eat. I’m hungry.”
There is no response.
Lila looks back at the door and sees her tracks, dirt-covered shoes leaving prints on the floor. They are the only ones.
Feeling distinctly more nervous, she walks back outside and does a quick lap around the house, the shed, and the barn. Nothing. Her family has disappeared.
Lila wonders how Kevin from Home Alone could have possibly felt happy about his family disappearing, because right now she’s panicking a little. Scratch that, a lot. What happened? Are they okay? What is she going to do? She’s fourteen, she can’t survive on her own! She can’t even drive to town to get food, oh god, she can’t get food, she’s going to die out here and no one will know, because no one else knows where she is and her family is gone.
This must be a dream, she thinks, somewhat hysterically, I’m going to wake up and everything will be fine. This is just a bad dream.
But she remembers the worried look in her parents’ eyes when Auntie Nat had left, almost a week ago now, the hushed conversations that she’d heard them having. She remembers the way her aunt had looked unusually grim when she’d left, how her hugs had been long, too long for a normal mission. Something’s happened, she realizes with a sudden bolt of clarity. Something’s gone wrong, gone really wrong, on Auntie Nat’s mission, and it’s made everyone disappear.
Lila feels like she’s floating in a fog. Her mind is hazy and panicked, and she can’t think. She stumbles outside and tries to calm herself down. She sits down on the grass -the empty grass, with nothing but dust to greet her, - and wills herself to stop panicking.
She breathes in.
She breathes out.
The haze clears, and though she still feels distant and empty, she knows what she needs to do.
Lila walks back inside.
She locks the door, and every door that goes outside.
She goes up the stairs to her parents’ room and opens the door.
She opens her mom’s socks-and-underwear drawer, and digs until she finds the bag.
It looks like something she shouldn’t know about, and inside is a magazine full of things she definitely shouldn’t know about, but that’s not what she wants. She reaches under the magazine and pulls out a phone, small and black. The Emergency Phone. She remembers when her parents had shown it to her, when they told her to only use it is something was very, very wrong and they couldn’t call themselves, because this phone called Auntie Nat. She remembers being confused, because she had her aunt’s number on her phone, so why did they need a whole extra one? Her parents had glanced at each other, before her dad had told her softly that this called Auntie Black Widow, and that using it may have been that they needed superhero help, not Auntie Nat help. She remembers not quite understanding, but nodding along anyways. She understands now. And this definitely counts as an emergency.
She opens it, and finds a single number. Her fingers are shaking, but only slightly. Before she can let herself think, Lila pushes the call button.
It rings.
And rings.
And rings.
Just when she’s about to give up and try again, the ringing stops. She presses it to her ear and hears her aunt’s familiar voice.
“Clint? Now’s not a great time, did something happen? Are the kids and Laura okay?”
Still feeling that odd empty feeling, she whispers, “Hi, Auntie Nat. It’s me.”
There’s a sharp inhale on the other side of the phone, and then, “Lila? Baby, are you okay? Things are…really bad, right now, but did something happen? Where are your mom and dad?”
Somehow, Lila can tell her aunt already knows, but she says it anyways. “They’re gone. All of them. They turned into…dust, I think? There was a lot of dust everywhere.” Her voice only shakes a little. Distantly, Lila wonders why she isn’t more scared, why she isn’t still shaking on the ground. Later, she will learn that this is called disassociation. But for now, she focuses on her aunt’s response. Auntie Nat is quiet for a long minute. Then, she says, softly, “We lost, Lila. There was a- a man, named Thanos, who wanted to use some very powerful stones to kill half of the universe. We were trying to stop him, and we lost. We lost, and he killed half of the universe with a snap of his fingers.”
Lila reels, because that can’t be right. Her aunt is a superhero, everyone knows that, and superheroes don’t lose to the bad guys. Auntie Nat never loses to the bad guys. To anyone. But she has, and now Lila knows for sure what she had been refusing to let herself think. Her family really is gone. Well, except one person. Her aunt speaks again, still softly, but more hurried, like she doesn’t have very long left to talk.
“Lila? Lila, honey, are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, honey, I’m going to come get you. I’m in Wakanda right now, so it’s going to take me a couple hours to fly to you, but I’m coming. I need you to stay on the farm, okay? Stay inside as much as you can. Can you do that for me?”
Lila nods, then realizes her aunt can’t see her. “Yeah, I can.”
“Okay, good. Get something to eat, and then I need you to start packing. We’re going to go to the Avengers Compound for now, because it’s safe and we can’t stay on the farm by ourselves.”
Lila makes a small noise. Leave the farm? This is all she has left of her family, now. She can’t just leave them behind. Her aunt is still talking, so she tries to pay attention.
“I need you to find some suitcases, or-actually, your dad had a bunch of duffle bags in the storage room that he would use on missions, those should work better. Grab a couple of those, okay? Fill two with clothes and shoes and things, like you would take on a trip, but pack as much as you can. Comfortable and warm, okay? Don’t bother with super fancy stuff, just stuff that you can wear everyday. Put the rest of your stuff in the last one. Books, jewelry, art supplies, blanket, figurines, anything you’d want to have with you.”
“Okay, Auntie Nat,” Lila says, forcing the floaty feeling back as it starts to creep into her brain again. “I can do that.” She hesitates, then says, tentatively, “Can-can I bring some of their stuff, too? I don’t want to leave them behind.”
Her aunt makes a half-choked sound and then says, her voice breaking a little, “Yes, baby, of course. Grab some big envelopes, the ones you use to send flat packages, and fill them with any pictures you find, and any other paper things like drawings. Grab one or two things each that remind you of them, okay? Small things, so they fit in the bag. When I get there, we’ll go to the shed. I know the code, and I’ll help you pack his stuff. He’s been teaching you to shoot, right? Maybe someday you’ll be able to use his old bow.”
Lila feels overwhelmed at the very thought, remembering the bow in her fingers and the thunk of the arrow as it hit the target. Had that been just an hour ago? It felt like years. She felt the fog coming back and told herself to stop thinking about that. She makes herself speak. “Maybe. I’ll do all that stuff, Auntie Nat. When are you getting here?”
“Tomorrow morning, honey. I’m sorry it’ll take so long, but I’m on the other side of the world, and even in the quinjet, it’s gonna take a while. Just stay safe until I get there, okay? I love you, baby. Get some food. I’m coming as fast as I can.”
The call ends.
Lila stares at the phone for a minute, and then she turns around and walks outside to go get some food.