REQUIEM | Avengers

II.

-II -

"My name is Stephen Strange, and I need your help to save the world."

The words were blunted by the silence of her apartment as she stood, staring at the man in front of her. A year ago, she might have asked where and when, reaching for her gun and her suit- ready to fight. But this year- this year alone...she turned and walked towards her kitchen, which was glowing with that green light.

"Did you not hear me?" he said from behind her, but as she reached to open the fridge, he was in front of her, a hand keeping the fridge door closed. She wanted a beer and she wanted him to leave. She wanted her world back, her life back, before...before everything.

Deep anger bloomed in her chest as she stared at his hand, illuminated by the stone. As she stared, she noticed the scars tracing across the back fo his palms and up his fingers. The strong hands that had made those intricate patterns in her living room were a myth- a figment of her desperate imagination- she realized. The scars were deep, raised, and white against his skin, even in the dark. 

"We need your help, Nina-"

She struck before he had a chance to finish. He was a foot taller than her, but as she ducked under his arm and grabbed his other had, pulling it tight to his back and pushing her weight into him, nothing mattered but the sound of him hitting the ground. He flexed his free hand, his scarred fingers moving to create one of the patterns she didn't understand, but she brought her foot up, kicking him in the jaw and his hand instinctually flew to his nose, stanching the blood. She grabbed the bloody hand and pushed it to the ground, holding it under her foot so she was over stop of him, one knee on his chest, holding his arm under his own weight, and her foot keeping the other one far away. His hands would not touch, would not create a single pattern so long as she had him.

She knew, as she looked down at the strange man- Dr. Strange, he had called himself- she should tell him that she wouldn't help him. She knew she should come up with something smart, jarring, something Tony would say. Something evil, maybe, to say to him as he bled on her kitchen tiles, ruining her last salvaged change at peace that her own family, that the Avengers, had ruined. Instead, the words that came from her chest we nothing but a guttural whisper.

"You don't get to call me Nina." She pressed down harder on his hand, but, to his credit, the man only flinched. "You don't get to say my name."

She hated him, for some reason she was not willing to find inside herself. All she did know was that there was something sinking in her chest. Mourning, she realized. Mourning for all she had lost, for all she had planned to have. For the life she had escaped and for the one she had hoped for. This man was the messenger- one of two that had found her that night- but she hated him and, mostly, she hated what she knew was about to come.

She shook off the rocking feeling in her head, the pain building in her throat, the rising nausea she had been fighting this past year as she bared down on him further.

"I know exactly what surgery they performed on your hands," she bluffed. She could see the damage. She didn't know him and, frankly, she didn't want to, but she knew well enough that without the surgery to his hands, he would have never been able to move again- whatever damage had caused those scars was nearly irreparable.

"I know the procedure and I damn well know how to undo it," she hissed, a smirk pulling at her lips. She reached under her sink, making sure to keep pressure on his hand, and grabbed the knife she had stashed there.

The blade glowed green against the thrumming light of that strange stone, and she held it up for him to see.

"You're not going to hurt me," he said. Not a question, but a statement laced with mocking male arrogance.