Death of the White Wolf

Yelena cradles her niece's limp body, the coldness seeping into her own bones. Blood stains her clothes and soaks into her skin, but she couldn't care less. The world fades away as she mourns for the life stolen from her niece.

"мне жаль, мне жаль," Yelena whispers in Russian, a mantra of sorrow repeated over and over as she rocks gently. Her teammates—Steve, Bucky, and Sam—share in the collective grief. No one dares to pry Alexa from the blonde's arms; they all understand it would serve no purpose.

“Yelena?” Steve cautiously approaches the mourning Russian, uncertain if she's even aware of his presence. “We're landing in 2,” he informs her, receiving only silence in response. He didn't really expect her to acknowledge him, but he hoped she would at least let him know she was still present, not lost in the depths of her thoughts. Yet, he understands; they're all grappling with the loss of their niece.

The weight of guilt hangs heavily on Steve, the regret of not being able to save Alexa. He wonders how he will face his son and explain that his twin sister won't be coming home. The thought of witnessing his son's heartbreak is unbearable. The others on the quinjet share this burden, each wrestling with their own sense of failure.

Yelena, however, bears the brunt of the pain. She had to watch as someone with her niece's twin brother's face drove a sword into Alexa's heart. The screams, the fading light in her niece's eyes—Yelena experienced it all, holding her as life slipped away. In that moment, she wished she could die alongside her niece, sparing herself the agony of informing her family that Alexa would never return.

Dying seemed preferable to facing the shattered expressions on her sister and sister-in-law's faces. Yelena couldn't bear witnessing the heartbreak in her nieces and nephews when they learned their older sister was gone forever. The prospect of returning home with the lifeless body of her niece was a fate she desperately wanted to avoid.

Because, seriously, how the hell was Yelena supposed to face her family after this? How does she get to keep breathing while her niece, her sister's own blood, doesn't? It's a messed-up kind of unfair. As they touch down, the rest of the team, basically the only family they've got, is there to greet them. And up front, there are Alexa's mothers, Natasha and Wanda. Yelena's the last one off the quinjet, still holding her niece's lifeless form. Natasha and Wanda rush toward her, tears clouding their eyes as they take in the sight of their baby girl, bloodied and gone.

“What the hell happened?” Natasha demands, trying to keep herself together, not wanting to show any weakness. When nobody answers, she switches to a more forceful tone. “I'm asking again, and someone better spill before I beat it out of you.”

“The mission went sideways,” Sam replies, catching the attention of Wanda and Natasha.

“What do you mean?” Wanda asks, her Sokovian accent heavy with emotion. She felt her daughter's death, the connection severed in a way similar to when her own twin brother temporarily bit the dust before she saved him, brought him back to life. But this time, she wasn't there with Alexa. She wasn't there for her baby's last moments, unable to save her like she did Pietro.

“We completed the mission—or so we thought. But there was someone who looked like James,” Steve explains, his blue eyes filled with grief and pain as he looks at Wanda. He's begging with the mother of his son, grappling with how to break the news to their son that his sister is no longer alive. Yet, deep down, he knows he doesn't have to say anything; their son felt his sister die, felt the connection sever. “We got separated. Yelena and Alexa were stuck underground, and Bucky, Sam, and I got ambushed by super soldiers.”

“I was fighting an enhanced,” Yelena speaks for the first time in hours, her voice raw from crying. “They made me watch as Alexa had to face someone who looked exactly like her twin. She couldn't do it. I kept telling her James was safe, that the guy she was fighting wasn't him, but she wouldn't listen. She said she couldn't do it because he had her twin's face, and that's when the mimic struck. Drove a damn blade through her heart, but not before she took down the person who was holding me back from helping her. I killed the mimic. I didn't care that he wore my nephew's face. I was just stuck, helpless, watching her die in my damn arms.” Yelena cradles the lifeless body, muttering apologies over and over again.

The next few months were a total nightmare for everyone, hitting Yelena and the whole Romanova-Maximoff crew like a freight train. James, Alexa's twin, just checked out from the world, preferring to transform into his Raven self rather than deal with human emotions. He'd disappear for days, showing up only when the compound was cloaked in the darkness of the early morning or the dead of night.

Wanda and Natasha, both grappling with the void left by their daughter, coped in starkly different ways. Natasha sought refuge in the numbing embrace of vodka bottles, often finding Yelena as a companion in this bitter ritual. Meanwhile, Wanda unleashed her powers, a tempest of energy tearing through the surroundings, leaving destruction in its wake. It was a far cry from a healthy coping mechanism, but in their shared grief, they stumbled through the darkness, not knowing any other way to navigate their pain. The strain on their relationship was palpable, an unspoken weight hanging in the air whenever they were together—each a painful reminder of the one they lost.

Their other children, too, bore the weight of grief. The entire family struggled to find solid ground in the aftermath of Alexa's departure. It wasn't just the loss of a sister; it was the shattering of the very foundation that held their family together.

In the midst of all this chaos, they decided to honor Alexa's wish for a Viking-style funeral. It was a wild mix of ancient tradition and modern messiness. The funeral was both a way to remember her and a stark reminder of the void she left behind. The flames of the ceremony reflected the burning pain everyone felt, and as the digital longship sailed away, it was like watching a piece of their hearts drift off into the unknown.

Grieving Alexa's absence was like trying to navigate a storm without a compass. Nobody knew how to make it through, and each day felt like a struggle against the waves of grief crashing over them. It was a mess, a heartbreaking mess that no one signed up for, but they were stuck in it together, a family tethered by love and loss.

"SHUT UP!" The words, a volcanic eruption of pent-up grief, shattered the heavy silence that had settled over the Romanova-Maximoff compound. James, after months of bottling up the storm within, finally unleashed his torrent of anguish. "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" His fingers ran through his tousled blonde hair, the same shade as his beloved sister's. Each strand was a painful reminder of her absence, a visual echo that reverberated through his heart like a haunting melody.

His reflection in the mirror was a daily confrontation with the ghost of his twin. The mere act of looking at himself became a torture, a relentless replay of the bond they once shared, now severed by the cruel hands of fate. The temperature in the room rose, mirroring the intensity of his emotions as the once ironclad control over his powers began to slip away.

"MY SISTER IS DEAD, VISION! How do you expect me to act? Happy?" His voice trembled with a mixture of anger and agony. He directed his frustration towards Vision, the android who, despite his best intentions, would forever fall short of comprehending the complexities of human emotions. "I know you're an Android and all, but you will never know what true human emotions would feel like. No matter how much you read about it, you will never know what grief is like."

He paused, a heavy breath escaping him, as if the very air had been sucked out of his lungs. "What is grief if not love persevering?" he quoted, the words hanging in the air like a lament. "But grief isn't that. Love shouldn't feel as if half of your heart was ripped from you, love shouldn't feel as if half of your soul was crushed and taken from you!"

James crumpled into himself, the weight of loss bearing down on his shoulders. He sobbed, the sound a raw, unfiltered expression of pain, rocking back and forth as if trying to find solace in the rhythmic motion. "The last thing she saw was my face on someone else. She couldn't kill someone because they looked like me, because they looked like her best friend, her twin. How am I supposed to live without her?"

Wanda, understanding the depth of her son's despair, wrapped her arms around him. She pressed kisses onto his head, a maternal attempt to mend the wounds that no words could heal.

“I'm sorry, I couldn't save her, baby. I'm so sorry,” Wanda sobs into her son's hair, the same hair as her baby girl. James buries his face against the crook of his mother's neck.

“I miss her мама,”

“I do too, мој мали гавране, I do too,” [Serbian: my little raven] Wanda says. She knew her baby was blaming himself for his twin's death, knew it from experience. That night, he and Wanda went flying for the first time since Alexa's death.

“She used to love flying,” James says filling in the silence, as they're up in the clouds, the full moon out. “But not as much as she loved running in her wolf form.” The shared memory brought a bittersweet smile to both their faces.

“She always did prefer her wolf form. Always said that while you might be the king of the sky, she was the queen of the ground,” Wanda says with sad smile. She hugs her son, clings to him as he's one of the reminders she has left of her daughter. “Волим те. Волим вас обоје"[Serbian: I love you. I love you both] She wasn't ready to let go of her daughter, not yet.

“И ми те волимо мама,”[Serbian: We love you too mama] James reciprocated in Serbian, tears clouding his eyes as they listened to the melodic howls of wolves below them.