No bargain with death (MCU x reader)

1. The visit

You sat where you always tended to sit when an important decision had to be made. Your legs crossed on a pillow on the ground. As it was winter your preferred place was next to the radiator, your head resting on your crossed arms on a soft pillow on top of the radiator.

It made you feel warm and reminded you of evenings in front of the fireplace, curled up on the couch with your head resting on your mothers lap. These times were long over. Your mother was gone and so was the beautiful house on the hill that the two of you had inhabited.

Now you sat here, ready to solve a problem. Not that you knew what the problem was which you were trying to find a solution for. Or that you knew about any solution. But that would change soon. At least your knowledge of the problem. You knew that. You could feel it.

It was a feeling in your guts, making you jumpy and nervous. It was the cold creeping up on you despite the fact that you were pressed against the radiator. It was your instinct warning you of what was to come. It was your brain telling you to get up and run away as long as you still had the chance.

It wasn't that you could predict the future though. It was just that your talent knew when it would be consulted.

It was pretty fond of being consulted. A showoff. You weren't. You hated your gift. No one had asked you if you wanted that burden. Someone had simply dumped it on you and if you found this person one day you'd beat the living shit out of them.

But for now you couldn't do anything. You had to live with this talent of yours. You had to wait for the problem to reveal itself.

People. It always involved people. You hated them. They were self-centred, selfish idiots. They always tried to get their will. Nature was their natural enemy and so was time. Despite the fact that time itself was man-made. Not the fact that nothing stood still. The measurement. The hurry. It was all man-made.

That wouldn't be too much of your business though. But the problem was that they came to you when they wanted to betray nature. To overcome life itself.

This was the reason why you could feel a change in the atmosphere when your clients approached. It was the undeniable fact that by consulting you they asked nature itself to withdraw. To give them back what they once considered theirs. It had happend exactly twice that you had given your clients what they'd asked for. That made six times of using your talent. You were only (y/a) years old but you weren't planning on increasing this number.

So you waited for the clients to come close enough to tell them off. You tried to emotionally prepare yourself for what was to come for it always was emotional. Heartbreaking. Sad. You were surprised that it hadn't killed you yet.

Apart from the clients showing up sometimes, you were completely alone. No one was there to share your empty flat somewhere in the middle of a busy city which's name you had forgotten. After all it didn't matter to you where you lived. Planet earth was the place you lived at. That had to be precise enough.

You had never felt the urge to tell anyone where you lived. You didn't order things online. You grew your own plants. You only left your flat at night. At night ever city is dark. Every single one of them. Not the lights, no, but the hearts of the people. They were grey little stones, rotten things.

There was no need for you to meet one of these hearts. But you preferred them over the fast beating, glowing ones of the people out there during the day. The hopeful ones. Because you knew that death didn't care. It took the beautiful ones and the dark ones. It kept them close in its icy grip and it wouldn't let go of them. Or it shouldn't.

Your thoughts were interrupted when you heard two voices out on the street getting closer.

"I don't think that this is a good idea!" , the voice cut into the silence that had not at all been peaceful. You stiffened, your fingers dug deep into the pillow. You felt even colder.