Peter stands in a stall of his high schools bathroom, and he stands very, very still.
It’s hard to breathe, it’s hard to think, but he stands there with his eyes closed and his senses wide open, and pretends everything is okay.
He looks down.
His hands are shaking, trembling, trembling, trembling , and he pretends he can’t imagine his fingers falling apart, fine dust that drifts and separates and blows away. Pretends that he feels solid, reminds himself that he’s real, that he’s real that he’s real that he’s real, and still all he seems to be able to do is shake.
He brings his hand to his mouth, bites on his fist, closes his eyes tight, tries not to whine.
He can taste ash on his tongue. Or maybe that's blood.
He shakes, he tries to breathe, and he tries to convince himself that the world won’t blow away at any moment.
That he won’t blow away at any moment.
He does not succeed.
Steve sits by his side through the small hours of the morning and the long hours of the day. Bucky knows this, just as Bucky has always been aware of Steve by his side.
That’s how they work. They’re a pair, through thick and thin, through war times and peace times and all the times in between.
Except when they’re not. Except when one falls from a train and into an icy chasm below. Except when one gets frozen in ocean water for sixty five years. Except when they meet again, on opposite sides with hollow hearts and puzzle piece minds, when everything is lost and confusing and angry and scared.
Except when one calls out a name, takes a step, and crumbles into nothing more than dirt and ash. Except when one has to lose the other not once, but twice.
So Steve sticks by his side, and Bucky lets him.
Broken soldiers leaning on each other, step by step by step.
Bucky wonders when they’ll ever reach the end of the line. He wonders if there will ever be a station to sit and rest. He wonders if some fantasy train will ever come pick them up and carry them onwards.
His feet are getting tired.
He is tired.
Looking around, the world seems very tired, too.
It’s not that Sam is afraid of disappearing, exactly.
For him, it was quick. He was there and then he was gone, just like that. There was no time to cry out, no time to register. One moment he existed and the next he had vanished. Qiuck. Easy. Painless.
No, the problem is that he disappeared alone, and that no one could find him, could identify him.
He has a grave, he knows. It is an empty one.
Sam feels a bit empty, too.
Nothing seems to work in making the hallow in his chest fill, and the tension strains tight and too much under his skin.
Sam smiles, stays close and in clear view of people, and waits for the sign that things will be okay.
He’s been waiting a very long time for that.
He can wait a little more.
Thor mourns.
He mourns for his people. He mourns for his homeland. He mourns for his father and his mother. He mourns for Heimdall.
He mourns for his comrades, for the Warriors Three, lost before he could get to them.
He mourns for the Avengers, and their tired broken spirits.
He mourns for his brother.
Around every corner,Thor spots something. A cat with sharp eyes flicks its tail at him. A child with raven hair with a sly smile slides past him.
Around every corner, Thor expects to see him. Expects for the grand reveal that it was another illusion, another scheme, another lie. Never before has he so wished for trickery.
But there is nothing. The cat with intelligent eyes is just a cat. The small black haired child with a gleeful smirk is just a child.
Thor waits. He waits and he mourns, and he regrets the fact that he knows he is just waiting for something he cannot have, and that he keeps waiting anyways.
For the first time in the longest time, Bruce feels more confident and in control than Hulk, and it is strange.
Strange, and wrong.
He meditates. He meditates for long hours, tries to understand that small part of himself that is him but is not him, the monster that in not a monster, the beast that is not a beast.
Hulk is scared.
Bruce knows about being scared. About being weak. About being hunted and hurt and guilty and broken. He knows about late nights and locked cages and shaking, trembling hands, about losing control.
The Hulk does not.
So Bruce meditates, and he tries, and for once he has the upper hand.
But they have been dealt the same deck, he knows. Knows that they are one and the same, in the end. Knows that some cards are just hidden from sight, that one can’t see the backs of the other.
He’s playing go fish against himself, and for so long all he had done was hold his cards tight to his chest and try to keep them from slipping, from seeing the Hulk see them.
Now, however, Bruce tentatively places out a single card, asks for the pair. Here, he is saying, this is how you deal with it. Deal with fear. Deal with pain. This is how you deal with failure.
It is a tentative trust. A trust made with grasping hands and desperate situations and far too much time forcefully connected, but slowly and carefully they stack the cards up and make pairs, one after another, and for the first time in a lifetime Bruce feels like things might turn out alright.
Rocket is never quite as jeering after the Guardians return from the ashes. It’s small things, not pursuing certain jabs when he might have before. Not complaining as much when doing something unpleasant.
Never ever claiming to be captain.
The Guardians let it slide. They’re all a little different, now that Gamora is gone. They are all grieving.
(They have brought back those dead from the Snap, but even they cannot bring back everyone.)
Peter listens to old, sad songs and never sings along. The bed feels wrong, the universe off balance, and his heart aches from being broken, from crying and pretending he has no tears, from a thousand little pains and reminders of a woman he loved and never quite understood, and never really had to to know she was everything, to know she was worth a thousand confusions and a thousand heartbreaks.
(He doesn't regret loving her. Maybe that's the hardest part. He would do it again in a heartbeat, would experience every agony from the very start just to have one more moment. He doesn't want to let go. Can't figure out how to let go. And all the music in the world cannot teach him.)
Drax stares out the windows for hours and hours, and indeed he is very, very still. He is still, and the stars seem very endless, and sometimes no one seems to notice his unmoving form, as if he truly is invisible. He somewhat wishes he was, wishes his soul would vanish from sight and mind, because it is an old soul, an old soul that has lost much.
Mantis traces small patterns on every surface, fingers forming shapes and words that only she can see. She does not speak, and her eyes hold a thousand emotions that no one can quite grasp. Bit she grasps all of their emotions, one by one by one, and sometimes she feels like she is drowning.
Nebula flits around the edges, a constant presence that touches and connects to things and people on the ship like some sort of phantom or ghost. She is quiet and cold, but she does not leave, and perhaps that says more than any words spoken aloud.
Groot himself stays close to Rocket, stays close to all of them. His game stays in his hands, and he continues to play with it, but small offshoots spread from his feet and latch onto all of them by the ankle, one by one by one, securing him, anchoring him.
No one protests. It is a relief, an excuse to stay in near proximity at all times for people who have spent far too much hiding emotional scars to properly express themselves and ask outright.
So they all stay close together, trying to sew up a torn family tapestry that already has far too many patches.
But they’re not very good at sewing, and their fingers, they bleed.
Dr. Strange knows that it was the only way.
He knows that it was.
Really.
But sometimes he sees the shattered people that his plan has left in his wake. Sometimes, he sees the anguish and the pain and the terror filled eyes of those who remember it, remember dying and disintegrating and fading, fading, fading into nothing.
(Sometimes, he remembers it himself, and the tremor in his fingers worsens to the point that picking anything up is futile. Wong places his hand on Stephan’s shoulder, and the doctor closes his eyes and focuses on that, just on that, and clenches his fists hard and tight.)
But he still exists. All those people still exist. They breathe and live and survive because of that plan, because of the path that he laid out for them all, a one in a million opportunity to win.
So yes, Dr. Strange knows that it was the only way.
But sometimes he sits on his bed and not even the most intricate wards can keep out the thoughts in his head, can keep out the guilt crashing down on him.
And sometimes it’s all he can do to just keep existing at all.
Tony checks. He checks and he rechecks and he creates suits for every scenario and situation. Here is a suit to handle underwater monsters. Here is a suit that is strong and good for pulling and digging. Here is a suit that can make twenty three flavours of ice cream.
He creates. He creates until his eyes fall shut and he collapses, and then he wakes and he creates some more.
Here is a suit that is faster and better and stronger. Here is a suit that is impervious to magic. Here is a suit that isn’t metallic.
Here is a suit that can defeat Thanos. Here is a suit that can collect thousands and millions of molecules of dust in seconds, catch tiny specs before they float away.
Here is a suit that can save his friends. Here is a suit that can save Peter. Here is a suit that can save Pepper. Here is a suit that can save Bruce, can save Steve, can save Vision and Wanda and Thor and Stephen and Bucky and Natasha.
Here is a suit.
Here, here, here, here-
He wishes fixing people was as easy as fixing machines.
He wishes fixing himself was as easy as fixing machines.
But it is not, and so he creates.
He creates a thousand beautiful things, and he deconstructs himself piece by piece by piece.
Wanda sits very still and very quiet, most days.
She watches, she listens. The world spins and spins and spins around her, and all she feels is numb. The colours are dull. The sounds are muffled. Taste and touch register only sometimes, and only in some frame of consciousness that is far, far away.
Some days, she sits in the Avengers Institution. The couch is big and has room to curl up into tight small balls or sit with straight backs and crossed ankles. Wanda does more of the latter than the former, and she watches.
She watches people come and go, come and go, and she never seems to join them.
The world is grey and cold. She thinks, in another life, she might have wished it would warm. Wished it would brighten.
She does not care much either way in this one. It seems rather meaningless, or maybe it seems like nothing at all.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t try to find out, either.
Other times, Wanda goes outside and sits in a small quiet space outback. There are two graves there, under a big willow tree, and sometimes the wind blows just right and the leaves whistle softly in her ears.
She can’t quite catch it most days, can’t quite appreciate it, but she knows it’s there.
The first grave is clean and sleek and new. It is well taken care of, with six letters etched into its smooth features that carve out the sole thing with anything left to her in this world. She knows this, has traced those small letters, has cried.
The second grave is a little older, though still well maintained. This too is a grave she has stood beside, has loved and cried upon, except her mourning then had much more grief and emotion and pain.
Now she is just numb. Numb and tired.
She sits there, the wind blows.
Natasha starts sitting besides her on slow days where the world seems to tilt just a little bit more on track and a little less in chaos. She is silent and quiet, and Wanda knows that even if her senses were strong and steady, this fact would be the same.
It is soothing, in some ways.
Natasha comes with tea. It is warm tea, Wanda knows, because steam comes from it. But it slips down her throat and she feels no heat and tastes no flavour, and the pressure where she holds the cup does not feel really there.
But Natasha sits besides her and the wind softly blows, and Wanda thinks that, if she listens hard enough, she can hear the leaves giving off a soft familiar whistle.
She does not smile. She is too numb to smile, but she takes another sip of tasteless tea and feels the world spin on and on and on, and it is something.
Shuri allows herself this, and just this, while her brother is gone.
She builds a thousand new innovative technologies, a thousand new ways to protect Wakanda borders and her people. When the Avengers ask for help, she builds what they need and serves in any way she can. She does her duty and sits in councils and sits in war meetings and sits in trials. She does not complain or whine or snark, for she knows responsibility.
There is trial by combat to make her Queen. She stands in the middle of the pooled waters at the edge of a cliff, and her head is high and her heart is pounding. She is not big nor strong, but she is smart and cunning and fast .
Still, she feels it would be easier to just leap across the waterfall’s great divide and run far, far away until not even the blue skies above can touch her.
But she doesn’t. She is proud and she knows responsibility, and she does not.
One by one, the tribes back down.
There is no fighting that day. Not when so much blood has been shed.
Blood and dust, she thinks, and her heart clenches.
There is no heart shaped herb for her, all of them burned and lost. She will not have the Black Panther’s might. She will not see her ancestors before her.
(Her brother, before her.)
So she allows herself this while her brother is gone. She allows herself to create and to lead and to be willing to fight. She does not allow herself to mourn, to fall behind and drown in her elder brother’s very large shadow. She does not allow herself to break.
Her people need her. Her nation needs her. She knows responsibility.
She does not allow herself to cry. Not when she learns that T’Challa is ash. Not when she learns her mother has left her, too. Not when she sees the body count or the damages or the long, long list of duties.
She builds a shell around herself, as if it was one of her very intricate machines, and she functions, and she leads, and she leads well.
She knows responsibility.
She knows.
When her brother returns, this is when she breaks. This is when she screams, angry shrieks of abandonment and fear and a thousand unnamed things pent up in her chest, breaking through every defense at the sight of her brother’s face.
And her brother, alive and breathing and alive, reaches out and holds her, and she cries and she cries and she cries until all her mourning and grief and exhaustion crumbles around her.
Her brother cries, too, and they hold each other.
She knows responsibility.
She knows, too, that it is best not to bear it alone.