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Chapter 30 – It Hurts To Remember
In a normal setting, the Avengers were a loud and loving team of misfits.
The near-constant sounds of arguments over pointless topics; the faux fights over who was the strongest Avenger. The obnoxious voice of someone screaming the lyrics to a mind-numbing pop song just to annoy their half-asleep teammates.
The point was, silence was a very rare occurrence with the seven messy heroes.
So, you could be excused for thinking that someone had tragically died with the stifling silence that had befallen the quinjet after Ophelia had stabilised the sun from its near implosion.
The brawler in question twitched her fingers sporadically as she stared into thin air. A deep frown etched on her face as she tried and failed to rid herself of the nightmarish images in her head. Her stomach twisted in revulsion as she remembered the image of Louis sprawled on the ground.
His throat spilling dark red onto the thickly carpeted floor.
Her hand slick with his blood, his life.
Her fault. It was all her fault.
Ophelia flinched back suddenly as the images became too much to bear. Her mind swirling frantically, trying to differ between what was real and what was fake.
Louis was alive, she knew that, she remembered his dark blue eyes looking back at her with thinly veiled hope. The feel of his wrist in her hand as he felt her heartbeat. She knew her brother wasn't dead; she knew logically that she had never killed him.
But years of guilt, grief and self-hatred took more than logic to break out of. And Wanda's trip down memory lane awakened the guilt that remained deep in her soul despite being buried under the thin veneer of a hero.
The brawler forcefully shook herself out of the destructive trail her thoughts were leading her down. Clumsily shuffling the deck of cards that had materialised in her hands, Ophelia set her eyes on her teammates. And the shambles they all seemed to be in.
It seemed like after warping Ophelia's mind, Wanda still had enough energy to do the same to Bruce. And her ministrations ended up triggering the most recent appearance of the Hulk. Perhaps one of his most violent appearances to date, the Hulk spared no expense for the level of destructive prowess he showed to the nearest city.
Bruce sat huddled at the foot of one of the passenger chairs. A thin blanket wrapped snuggly around his shoulders as he wore an expression of mortified horror. Cold sweat glistened on his face like an early onset illness as he sat curled up in a ball. Trying to make himself as small as possible.
It was ironic in a way, Ophelia mused to herself. The two avengers with the most to lose if they lost control of themselves, ended up doing just that. If Natasha hadn't woken her up, the brawler couldn't promise that she wouldn't have caused her second supernova.
