***BOOK ONE OF THE ELENA MAXIMOFF SERIES ***
After Elena Maximoff's world blew up in front of her and her siblings' faces, her siblings took it upon themselves to take care of their younger sister. However, after a questionable decision was made, sh...
You were the shadow to my light, did you feel us? Another start, you fade away.
Faded, Conor Maynard version.
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Time seems to blur. I grow numb to my surroundings, numb to my emotions. He was gone. My anchor had sunk to the bottom the ocean. I never want to interact with the Avengers. My sister tries to reach out to me, but I remain silent. My powers are developing, I can feel it. But I don't care. Vaguely I can tell that my sister is no longer granted free entry to my mind, a wall of obsidian stone separating me from her. They let me keep a lock of his hair. It's all I have left of him. It sits in a locket, that now rests heavily on my chest.
I don't feel motivated to do anything. I just sit and stare at the sun rising and setting each and everyday. The only thing that gets me to leave my room is the groaning of my stomach that comes and goes every other day. Steve tries talking to me. Wanda tries to get me to talk. Clint tries to get me to eat. Nat tries to sympathise with me. But they all can never get through. I can't let them. If I do, I could lose them too. Maybe there is something wrong with me. People who get close to me seem to die. My parents, 'E-him. Who would be next? Wanda? Steve? Nat? I couldn't let things get to that point.
Distancing myself from them seemed to be working. Not talking seemed to be working. Anytime I feel like opening up, I remember him, and his last words, and the heart-wrenching weight of blame crashes back down upon me, and reminds me why I have to keep away, why I have to keep them safe.
The sunset glistens in the sky. Donning a red hue over the outskirts of the city. I once might have called it beautiful. Now, I only cringe, knowing what comes next, and the nights are much more harder to get through than the days. The nightmares come and come and come and never stop. I can't sleep without seeing the horrors of my memories. Can't sleep without seeing Steve and Stark fighting one another, without seeing Nat throw herself over a cliff, caught by Clint but still falling to her death. Can't sleep without seeing a glowing gold glove with six stones before the universe is split in half. Can't sleep without seeing Wanda blow away like ashes. I can't sort fact from fiction, resulting in me usually going days without sleep before crashing, only to wake up with the sounds of screams ringing in my ears.
THIRD PERSON POV
Anyone could see the girl had lost weight. The bagginess of the hoodie that she once filled, now two sizes too small. See the dark patches under her eyes. Everyone felt the death of the young boy. Yes, boy, he had not been given the chance to grow into a man. To experience life to its fullest. Wanda Maximoff cried for the death of her brother every night. Though she had started to stop crying before falling asleep. A large contrast to the early days after Pietro's death, where she would tightly clutch the pillow, crying into it, only to wake up to a soggy pillow the next morning, not remembering when she fell asleep. She knew she needed to keep strong for Elena. She just didn't know how to reach out to the heartbroken girl. She had once tried to enter her mind, to ease some of her pain only to find a stone obsidian wall, blocking her out.
It was all too similar. When their parents had died, she went into the same state, it was only through Pietro that she came back to herself, that she began to talk again, adapt to the situation, live life as a normal kid. Except this time, there was no Pietro. No lifeline for her to cling onto. Wanda tried desperately to engage with Elena, tried to step in as the lifeline she needed. The Vision was surprising Wanda's anchor through her grief. Made her laugh when all she wanted to do was cry, was a shoulder to cry on when she couldn't seem to laugh away the pain. While Pietro's vacancy in Wanda's life still ached like an open wound, she had managed to come to terms with the fact that he had died, that she had lost her twin. She knew that if it had been herself that had perished, Pietro would put his grief aside and look after Elena, as he had done since their parents had died. Since before then.
It had been Wanda's aim just to get the girl to say one word to her. Any word. Russian or English. She wouldn't care what it was, so long as one word would leave her silent vocal cords. It was as though Elena had gone numb to the world. Numb to her own emotions. Wanda didn't know how to help, but she vowed never to give up, never to let her sister fall down the same path she did years before.
Steve tired interacting with the girl. Tried talking to her about anything and everything. Trying to get some reaction out of the small girl he had grown fond of throughout Ultron. He talked about his time in the war, the most interesting new gadgets of the twenty-first century, yet none of it seemed to resonate with the girl. Never seemed to give her a smile or make her frown. It was like she was just existing. Not living. Which made Steve's old heart ache for the young girl.
Natascha and Clint could only look at the girl and wish they could provide some sort of anchor. Clint tried to get her to eat, his fatherly instincts shifting into second gear, seeing her waste away a little bit every time she emerged from the confines of her room. Natascha knew the feeling of grief all too well, the red room introduced her to grief long before she was considered a woman. The deaths of the girls around her who were not up to the high standards of the red room was a small squeeze of her heart. Many of the girls she had grown up with, didn't graduate to be Widows. Weren't freed from their brainwashing until their final moments, when their fates were already sealed. Nat tried to resonate with the girl through their shared experiences of grief. But the girl seemed to be deaf. Not responding to any of them, trapped in her own torturous world of pain and grief.
None of them new how to help her. None of them knew how to get her to open up. They had thought they had exhausted all of their options until Tony Stark came up with the questionable idea, to give her as close to a normal life as they could.
