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FLASHBACK, 2023 • avengers endgame •
Tendrils of agony crawl through the cracks within Ella Stark's mind, shattering what little remnants of its composure that still dare to remain. An eerie emptiness radiates from her dullened eyes, and her gaze meanders across the nothingness before her. In reality, the stillness of a lake is bestowed upon her sight, yet she sees nothing more than the ghosts of her blazing grief. It dances around her, it's every twirl chipping away at the nearly burnt out spark of her soul.
"Who knows?" The word seeps past her cracked lips with a strength no more than a whisper; her voice trembling beneath their escape. Her jaw twitching in place, — acting as a closing flood barrier between her and the tsunami of torment clawing for escape, — she casts her eyes upon the man sat beside her. Slouched upon the grass by her side, for one, last time is Steve Rogers. The man who had once brought her comfort he had failed at last, for the weight of his choice hung upon her shoulders with the mercy of a murderer, offering not a slither of relief.
Steve Rogers was leaving.
Tony, Natasha — two of the people she'd held dearest to her heart had already been stolen from her grasps, death had claimed them at the dawn of the new era. The Avengers had been shattered, and the fractured family conjured by Starks had crumbled once and for all; the final link within the chain holding their relationship — which had been wounded by their choices — together disintegrating beneath the hands of fate. And, in the wake of the arising darkness of the new day, Steve Rogers was slipping through her desperate, bloodstained fingers, leaving her, too.
She knew it was selfish, to wish for the man to stay — to will him to abandon his last chance at obtaining the life he'd always wanted, all because she was scared of being alone. A merciless voice within her head begged her to ask him to stay, to tell him that she needed him to stay. That her world still needed Steve Rogers. Yet, she plasters a saddened smile across her lips, forcing a gaping distance between him and the mourning that torments her from within. Despite the radiant ache rattling her bones, she feigns happiness for him; to reassure him it was okay.
In the end, she knew Steve Rogers deserved the life he always wanted.
It just hurt to know she'd never have the same chance.
Steve's gaze befalls her, and, as their eyes intertwine, she can't help but notice the scattered flecks of emerald within the vast blue of his irises. Upon the corners of his lips, a smile twitches in a meagre attempt to extend his heart to the woman by his side — the woman who had always stood by his side, even when it cost her everything. "Just you and Buck."
