Fire and Smoke - Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Chapter 99

(I love you and now you'll finally see how)

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Somehow, I find myself back in the Quinjet. I have no actual recollection as to how any of us managed to return to the plane, but somehow, we have. I feel discombobulated, like my brain has been shut off and my body aimlessly only follows simple, voiceless commands. Sit. Stand. Walk. Stop. Now though, I can't seem to do anything but stare off into the distance, every limb too heavy to lift. My eyes are dry, like sandpaper. I can not seem to organize my thoughts into any semblance of harmony. The cacophony of each thought is deafening and doesn't only threaten to swallow me, but washes over me like a riptide, unstoppable in its ferocity, and I'm drowning. But I don't even care. I let it take me. I have no fight left in me.

I'm slumped over, not even having bothered choosing a seat to sit in, but am half sprawled across the floor. The jet rips across the quiet, unperturbed air, taking me further and further and further still away from her. I'm breathing shallowly, on the brink of breaking down completely, and yet I'm not sure I could cry even if I allowed myself to. It's that weird feeling of a barrier holding your emotions at bay, and that detachment from those feelings which  leaves nothing but coldness in its wake. It leaves you doubting if there even is a wave of emotions hiding behind that barrier, or if it's silent. Empty. That option scares me almost more.

The silence around me makes me forget I'm not alone, but am in fact surrounded by people who might understand what I'm going through. Understand my pain. And yet, I know they never could. They didn't go through the same thing as I did, and I didn't go through the same thing as they did. So, I'm alone, the only person who had a chance at understanding me gone.

Vision hasn't said a word, but steadily and silently steers the jet through the budding morning sky. I don't know where to. I don't care. Natasha is still and quiet. I thought she would have moved earth and moon and stars to find her sister. But she's so quiet. Now, she's sitting next to a still unconscious Steve, staring straight ahead, unseeing, trying to hide her pain.

All of us are being  ripped apart, slowly but steadily by different forms of pain, not having much more in common between us, than the word to describe what we're feeling. Pain.

And so I lay there, halfway between consciousness and sleep, my eyes wanting nothing more than to close and let me fall into the dark abyss of nothingness, but every time my eyelids droop, all I see is her. Wanda. Sometimes I see her smiling, laughing, her nose crinkled and her shiny green eyes so vivid you could swear you could see every shade of green in them. The next minute I see her as I last saw her. Crumbling beneath the earth.

The mental image of her makes me question every choice I made, wondering which one led to her being buried hundreds of meters below the earth. And that thought in turn makes me think of how much she tried to prove to the world, but mostly herself that she wasn't the monster Hydra tried to make her out to be. How she struggled with the perception people had of her because they couldn't understand her, and how she in turn struggled with herself, trying to always do the right thing in a world where there is no one right thing. And now she's buried with all of her monsters which she could never really escape.

I try to push my thoughts into another direction - any other direction but hers, but I can't. It's like I don't know how to function if she's not near. Even when she hated me, I could deal with the pain, because I still had my promise to fulfill. I still had to make it right for her. I failed, and I failed her. If I hadn't blacked out, if I hadn't let go of my powers, she could have made it out. But I was too weak, and I let the wolves get to her.

I muffle a sob with my hand, not wanting to cry in front of anyone else. Tears stain my vision, but I can tell no one pays me any attention anyway. They're too caught up in their own grief. And so I bring my knees to my chest, curling up against my legs, and let my head rest on my knees, letting the tears fall as they wish. It hurts too much and I feel too damaged to pretend to keep it together. There's no one to keep it together for.