(A/N: I don't own the Avengers, I really don't and I never will. This exists because I'm freaking depressed. I give you the Avengers coping with the loss of one of their own. Team fic but then you probably knew that.)
In Mourning
He sat alone in the small tile-floored kitchen, the room cast in the odd shadowed light of a single fluorescent bulb humming above an empty sink where the tap stood dripping repetitively in a steady plink, plink, plink. The dishes from dinner that night stood in the drying rack, cheap glassware that had lasted for ages, chipped and clouded and scratched as it was. There was still a sponge sitting half-forgotten on the side of the sink, likely still damp and stinking of their meals over the past week; he made a note to toss the sad green and yellow thing out.
With a small contemplative smile he splayed his fingers over the careworn surface of their kitchen table. It was decades old and his fingers snagged on dents and minute cuts, places where the varnish had worn away in the shapes of plates and glasses, the shapes of fingertips run in familiar patterns. After all that time it only had a slight wobble, which they had corrected with a dish cloth and never worried about again.
Spreading his fingers wide, he pressed his hand firmly against the old oak and imagined that he could feel the warmth of a thousand shared meals and the press of forearms and palms, the occasional pillowed head next to a fresh cup of coffee. In his other hand he twirled a small knife between his fingers, unerringly it twisted about, his tendons seemed accustomed to an act that they had never once performed simply because he had observed it so many times. The blade was hers it was perfectly balanced so that even a novice might feel confident using it and a professional would never fail to strike accurately. Dimly, as with the table, he imagined that he could feel the warmth of her fingers wrapped around it and somehow, that comforted him.
For a moment he considered the play of the light over the blade and the knife halted its movement in his hand. With grim finality he drew a deep breath and plunged the weapon into the center of the table, leaving it where it had found purchase to stand of its own accord. He focused on it, letting the blue walls and oak cabinets blur in his peripheral vision until he could see nothing but the shining silver and black of the knife and the warm wood of the table. It was no substitute, it would never replace the person that had carried it and it would never fill the chair that sat two spaces from his own, which on principle, they would leave exactly where it stood.
The knife, like a monument, an obelisk, a testament to all that they had lost, was as cold and silent as the fiery woman that it represented. His heart would have torn itself from his chest in that next moment were it not for the warm hand that clasped his shoulder, resting there, giving comfort in the sheer weight and warmth of it. A stuttering breath flooded his lungs and he dropped his head into his hands, tears dripping between clutching fingers. He didn't try to stop them.
They were like that for a long time, one taking comfort that he knew the other didn't truly have to offer and the other giving it because he didn't know what else he could do. They were all of them broken. Their hearts would not beat properly, the air tasted of misery, and their minds were haunted by a thousand gestures, smiles, laughs, fights, jokes and more, all lingering like ghosts.
When he had mastered himself, he rose to his feet, staring for a moment longer at the knife that stood alone before tearing his eyes away and focusing instead on the checkered tiles beneath his feet. They were as scuffed and chipped as the dishware, as the table, as the team, broken down by old age but still standing up to the work that they were required to do.
"She is gone," he acknowledge at last, voice thick with tears and regret and that nagging sensation of emptiness. He lifted his head at last and met brown eyes that had once been warm and full of laughter even when they were mocking and cold to most. Some shade of grey had dulled them; sorrow had taken away their depth and left them flat and lifeless, a personal monument to sorrow.
"Yeah. Yeah, she is," the other said softly, a thick swallow against tears made his Adam's apple bob beneath unshaven skin. The same warm tanned hand that had laid itself so comfortingly on his shoulder shifted and grasped his own pale digits, squeezing with a reassurance that neither of them understood.
"You should be asleep," he said at last, wrapping his fingers more tightly around that offered hand and holding on as suddenly the ticking of the wooden and faux golden clock on the wall began to sound like thunder.
"So should you, and the rest of them. But that isn't going to happen. Come on. You shouldn't be alone," the other said, raking his free hand through unkempt black curls in a nervous gesture.
"Tony…they don't…"
"They need their Captain. You should know that Steve; we all still need you," Tony whispered, words and gestures all interrupted and made uncharacteristic by grief and pain and sorrow and loss. At the moment they each made a poor facsimile of themselves and they all knew it, accepted it and understood that eventually they would recover.
"I can't even look at me," Steve admitted and was not shocked to find that his voice was weak, his words seeming wrapped in self-loathing.
"None of us can look at ourselves either," Tony said and tugged Steve with him into the dark wood paneled hallway, coat hooks on the right hand side, overly plush beige carpeting beneath their bare feet. Her room was the first one on the left, close to the kitchen because she had always wanted to be the first one to smell the morning coffee. The door didn't hang properly on the hinges because she had closed it on so many feet over the years. Inside the room was still hers, and down to the last crooked seemingly miscellaneous teddy bear that one of them had given her as a gag gift, it would never change.
Their feet carried them silently past the bathroom which was on the right and where her toothbrush was still in the cup with all of theirs. Her hairbrush was still on the counter, neatly aligned with the edge because she had made a groove with it over time, smacking it down in the same place day after day.
Next on the left was a pantry, in which several boxes of her favorite soda and energy bars could be found. He could hear their second fridge humming away and the dryer making gentle tapping noises every time the button on someone's jeans struck the drum.
The next room, on the left again, was a guest room, used frequently by friends and teammates when they stopped by after missions or before. It was empty. They had, as a group, asked for space and privacy, there would be no body filling that bed for a very long time.
His room was on the right, the last one before the stairs, but he didn't dare go into the dark by himself and in the end he didn't have to. Tony led him on, to where the hallway emptied out into the living room. There was one light on in the corner, yellow light diffusing through an ages old shade that had darkened over the years. The furniture, two couches, both were green, a loveseat in blue, two arm chairs in red, and an ottoman in an obtrusive golden color had been pushed to the edges of the room, butting up against wood paneling without much of a care. Steve trailed his fingers over the worn suede of the closest couch and considered the mass of blankets and pillows and bodies that had piled itself upon the beige carpeting.
The television was on but muted and its blue glow shown over the others, their eyes all trained on him, some still with tears shining on their cheeks. He met all of them in turn, Clint looking absolutely empty and destroyed lie in the middle, on his back, watching Steve without much emotion that wasn't already burning away at his mind. Bruce, eyes perpetually half green ever since they lost her, had one arm wrapped limply around Clint's middle, lying on his side to accommodate the gesture, the only comfort that he could offer in his own grief. Next to Bruce lay Thor, on his stomach, reaching across Bruce to rest his hand on Clint's upper arm.
With a gentle shove Tony pushed him into the blanket and pillow set that had been stolen from his own dark room and he lay silently beside Clint, mirroring Bruce's position and hearing Clint sigh softly. Tony's arm soon draped over him and another hand came to rest on Clint's arm. The archer swallowed thickly and tears bled from the corners of his eyes; Bruce and Steve reached out simultaneously and wiped them away.
For a moment Steve considered the wetness on his fingers and then he hugged Clint once again, his own sorrow seeming insurmountably small when compared to someone who had as good as lost his twin sister. And so he lay there, giving what strength he possessed to the man he was holding and drawing more from the closeness of the group. Eventually they all fell asleep that way.
Six thousand miles away, Natasha Romanov ran a finger over a monitor, tears in her eyes as she stared at the snowy black and white video feed. They would heal eventually, and begin to operate without her, and they would be all the safer for it. She brushed a tear from her cheek and crushed the flash drive that she had used to access the feed.
(A/N: I hope that this didn't suck. I just needed to deal with some serious bummed out feelings.)