The Weight of the Universe | Avengers

16. Aftermath

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Eve's eyes are narrowed as she focuses on the electricity around her body. Twenty-two days. It's been twenty-two days since Thanos erased half of the universe, since Bucky and the others turned into dust, since Tony, and probably Strange and the kid, too, got murdered by the Mad Titan. The rage boils up in her veins and she clenches her teeth, concentrating on the lightning in her eyes.

"Hit it." Thor commands in a monotonous voice. He's been blaming himself for their failure the whole time and anger has been his constant follower ever since. The two haven't stopped training, it's not like they would be able to get any sleep anyway, and are preparing themselves to get their revenge.

Racing towards the blond god, Eve aims her electricity at him, but he uses Stormbreaker to block the attack. She takes advantage of the moment of his defense, and strikes out, her electrified fist going for his face. Thor reacts quickly though and dodges before he kicks Eve in the stomach, resulting her in landing with a loud thud on the mat. But she doesn't show any signs of hesitation and gets slowly up again, inhaling deeply and ignoring the pain.

"I remember when we trained for the first time and you were holding back." Eve brings up and under normal circumstances, she would send him a playful smirk. But the ring around her finger reminds her that nothing's normal anymore.

"You complaining?" Thor huffs grumpily, his grip still tightly around Stormbreaker. It's unusual to see the God of Thunder in such a bad mood, though it's justified and Eve can't complain. She's been training nonstop and has shut everyone out, just talking when it's necessary.

"No, it's better this way. Unless you think that this bastard would hold back, too." She won't even mention the Mad Titan's name. "I just think that we should practice combat more since electricity won't harm us, and it won't do enough damage to him as well."

"Sure." Thor shrugs, not really caring as long as he has someone to spar with. As they proceed with the training, Eve starts to feel a little exhaustion. Even the super-soldier serum has a limit, especially since she's barely eaten or slept the last days, but she doesn't want to stop. If she stops fighting, she'll have to lay down and then her pain and feelings will return, and she doesn't know if she could survive this. Not again.

The moment the soldier catches Thor's fist and grits her teeth, using all her strength to stop his blow, someone enters the gym of the Avengers compound and interrupts their training. Although she's glad that she can catch a small break because she was shaking from Thor's force, she's also angry that someone stopped their sparring session.

"Eve." Her best friend calls her and she sighs, letting go of Thor's punch after signaling him to take a break.

"What?" She responds and turns around, meeting Steve's worried glance.

"You've got time?" He asks slightly carefully, yet with determination and Eve shakes her head.

"Not if we want to defeat that son of a bitch as soon as possible. I have to keep training, otherwise it'll take longer to kill this psycho and that means it'll also take longer to undo the snap and bring everyone back. I told you to only interrupt the training if Aurora has found any hints about his location." She reminds him and is about to turn back to Thor and ignore Steve until he lets out an audible sigh. It's the first time that she's talking about actually killing someone.