Frail heart

What will I make of myself?

Chapter twenty-five

The team got back to the compound early that morning, you instantly being taken by the medics to med bay. Wanda had followed them in, along with Steve and Natasha, while the others went to bed to get some much-needed rest. After hours of tossing and turning attempting to fall asleep, they all concluded that it just wasn't going to happen until they knew you were okay.

That's what led everyone to the sitting area outside med bay, waiting for news from the nurses and Banner. There had been no updates since you were admitted and everyone was getting antsy; they had seen the injuries you'd sustained and didn't know if you were going to worm yourself out of this one so easily. 

Not long after you left for the mission, there had been radio silence on your end from the moment you ended your call with Steve, and as it neared sunrise the day after, some of the team had entertained the idea that you might not come back at all. The thought had sat uncomfortably in everybody's heads, but they couldn't exactly rule it out at that point, and it had struck a nerve in a few of your fellow team members.

They'd underestimated you many a time, but they knew you were more than capable of holding your own, and to imagine that you weren't going to devote yourself completely to that fight was something they couldn't do. Your father was powerful, they could assume such from his meticulous planning and extensive knowledge of exactly which buttons of yours to push. He knew you inside and out, and it'd had you at a great disadvantage, but you were resilient.

Everyone had seen you fight, and even on the odd occasion where you were biting off more than you could chew, you never stopped fighting. Not for a moment, not until you were battered, bruised, and on the brink of death. It was because of this that they couldn't discredit the fight you were bound to put up when you'd left in the Quinjet, and seeing you hunched over your father's almost unrecognisable body only furthered that point.

Stepping off the Quinjet amidst the abandoned ruin, no one had expected to see what they saw. They knew it would be bad, you wouldn't have let your father draw another breath outside of that battle field, but they hadn't known you had it in you to be so brutal. It was like turning over another stone that revealed some other part of you that had previously been hidden away, another piece to a puzzle that seemingly never ended. It made the team question if they'd really made any progress getting to know you, or if it was all just a front to shield them from the parts you took no pride in flaunting around.

You hadn't wanted them to see, you'd wanted to make it home in one piece and forget any of it ever happened, ignore the questions and the prying eyes. Staring down at the mess you'd made of a man you should have idolised, loved...it had you planted firmly on the floor, drowning in the realisation that none of it had made you feel any better. Your mother was still gone, your efforts hadn't brought her back and you were naïve to have thought they would. It was a losing game.

A peculiar sensation had overtaken you hearing your father's vile words, not like any you'd felt before. It wasn't rage, you'd felt rage, crippling and debilitating in nature. It was a bitter certainty, a deep understanding, acceptance, that you'd do what needed to be done but wouldn't reap any of the benefits.

In that moment, eyes locked on your father's rambling figure as he tore your mother apart with his words, you'd known that this was where it ended. This was where it ended. You suppose what was left of your mother died along with him on that field. Now that it was over, now that you were left to pick up all the scattered pieces...the fall felt so much greater.

The page had been turned but now they were all blank, waiting for something to be made of them. You can imagine the pen shaking painfully in your hand as you wondered what narrative you could possibly weave within those pages to fix what had been broken, to mend the unmendable. She was the start of it all, and now you were writing the rest without her.

What do we make of ourselves when we come to realise that everything we've ever been, ever known, was a lie? In a moment in time where we are simply nothing, vile and pure, unsure as to what runs through our blood and pumps through our hearts, what do we make of ourselves?

What will I make of myself?