That I would be your Girl - A Marvel Story

Chapter 15. Rival

**A/N&TW** I'm in love with this chapter, thank you to those who are reading your kudos, and comments make my day. Special thanks to ChivalrousAssassin for all of your help, I couldn't do it without you. TW for sexual content and violence.

Five years Before

"Toni, you have to help us," my voice was filled with raw emotion, it poured from me, I just hoped it would be enough. I would beg if I had to. I would get down on my hands and knees before her if only so I could be sure we could count on her to help us. I knew we could do this. I knew we could defeat Thanos, but we needed to do this together.

We needed her.

I would put all of my silly pride aside just for her to see things my way.

"I won't do anything for any of you, especially not you," she glared at me her honey brown eyes were lit with fury, "Once I considered you a friend Evelyn, a confidant even, but you could do nothing but look me right in the face and lie to me, over and over again." She stepped towards me pointing a perfectly manicured finger in my face. Her dark hair fell over her forehead from her once perfectly coiffed chignon, but now that I had brought her here, cornered her even everything seemed to be falling apart. "The very minute you looked at me, and saw the pain that I was in, over everything and you chose not to say anything, to do anything..." A sneer fell upon her lips, the vibrant red of her lips made her teeth look so white when she bared them in my direction, "that was the moment you should have known you could never ask anything of me, that is the moment I knew that you were never my friend."

I shook my head, "That's not true, Toni and you know it."

"Do I?" She held my gaze, and I could see the fury making her shoulders tremble, "All I know is that you and your boyfriends, need to stay very far away from me. The only reason I chose to meet you is because out of all of you, you were the one I respected the most, you are the one that as far as I'm concerned went through the most. You are the only one that could understand what it's like to be in this position as a woman, what it's like to have to prove yourself twice as hard as everyone else just to get a modicum of the same respect."

She shook her head and began to walk away. Without a thought I reached out for her arm my hand grasping too tightly around her bicep, I needed to get her to help us, I had to. I had come here to her because I knew she would not have even seen me if Steve or James was with me. Not free what happened.

Toni had been my friend once, and I thought that it would make it easier for her to see things my way, but when she turned and without a single thought in my head, I felt the heat of the blast of her weapon to my chest knocking me yards away.

"Don't you get it?" She screamed, "I can't."

I let my eyes crawl towards her to the way she stood with a hand over her abdomen, protecting it from me, from danger.

"You're pregnant." I said my heart hammering in my throat. A thousand thoughts that had nothing to do with Thanos burned through my mind. I stood quickly and started to move towards her again, but I stilled when she raised her hand again, the weapon on her palm glowing, ready to blast me away yet again.

She didn't reply she only offered me a look of utter rage.

"Don't you see Toni," I had to make her see, "this is all the more reason for you to help. Your son or daughter needs a world to live in, a world that isn't possible if we don't put an end to this threat." I could barely swallow down all of the emotions coursing through me.

She rolled her eyes and scoffed in my direction, "You are as dumb as the pair of puppies that follow you around, aren't you?"

"I know we can do this, but we have to do this together." I could feel the emotion tearing through me because I so badly wanted to see the other side of this battle but without our teammates, I just knew we would fail. We would try as hard as we could but... I looked up my eyes locked with hers and she saw the truth just as I did, but she could not concede, it was a matter of pride and Toni's had been damaged beyond repair.