Back Before the Start of Us (on hold)

Time, curious time

The morning couldn't come soon enough.
                         _________________
The next morning, the sky was dull and grey. It was absolutely tipping it down outside. Overall, the weather was foul and the mood inside wasn't much better either.

The usually chatty agents who hurried from place to place as if it was their one purpose on this earth, were quiet and shuffled about quickly in huddles, whispering rapidly to one another.

After leaving the meeting room at whatever ungodly time she did, Natasha had managed a few hours of dreamless sleep and now, as she walked through the corridors on her way back to the meeting room, the thick tension between the agents was unsettling.
Alarms screamed loudly through her veins, making her heart quicken and twist uncomfortably.
Did they know something she didn't?

She reached the meeting room far too quickly for her liking and when she got there, Steve, Tony and Wanda were already there. They were silent. Fidgeting in their seats. Staring blindly out of the window. Avoiding looking at each other.

Everyone was a mess.

Natasha took a seat next to Steve. The tension in the room was thick, the silence building up into an impenetrable wall between them all.
Then the door swung open.

Clint and Bruce marched in, bickering about something as they took seats opposite each other.
They stopped once they finally acknowledged the others in the room.
"Hey why the long faces?" Clint tried to joke but it came out sounding strained.

Natasha rolled her eyes. Did he expect them to be happy about this whole situation? He was the one complaining the most yesterday.
Nobody answered and instead Natasha just fixed him with a stern look.

Not now. Not right now. Now it was time to be silent. To think. Before everything came crashing down and became crazy again. Just a second to breathe.

The others filed in, a few minutes apart. They were silent and sluggish. Nobody slept last night.
Seconds poured out of the clock into a tangled mess of minutes on the floor and soon an hour had passed. Nobody had spoken but they were all impatient. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner they could forget it ever happened.

92 minutes walked into the room before he did. Coulson looked just as tired as the rest of them but his smile was bright. He looked as if he hadn't slept in 6 years and yet slept like a baby last night.

"Well?" Natasha piped up. She was fed up of this silence. Fed up of all of this.

"The kids are on their way. I just wanted to say, be gentle. They've been through a lot. And they're so young. You remember how scary things were when you were little."

His words met silence as everybody nodded their heads. Don't scare the kids. Got it.
Natasha remembered all too well how scary things were when she was little.

She remembered far too well.