Eva buckled up her boots, motorcycle leathers creaking a little with the movement. Her brain had… switched off, kind of. Go home, it was telling her. Finish the draft of your designs for the new commissions you've got. Feed Rachel Carson. Check the greenhouse. Make tea. Take your dirty clothes down to the laundrette. There was no allowance for her to think about anything else.
She hesitated at the bookshelf, then frowned and took the envelope out and stuffed it in her rucksack. "I'm still missing something," she mumbled, pressing the heel of her palm against her forehead. "What… oh. Rachel Carson."
She shouldered her bag and made her way down the corridors towards the rec room. She didn't need to complete the journey; Thor was sat in the middle of a hallway, a massive axe on his lap that he was tilting to and fro so that the sunlight streaming in through an open window made a little dancing light that glinted off the blade and jumped from floor to wall to ceiling. Rachel Carson was chasing the light, tail bristling, mouth open in a half-yowl.
"Um. Hey."
"Eva!" The axe clattered to the floor as Thor jumped up to greet her. Rachel Carson stopped chasing the light, hit it with her paw a couple more times for good measure, and lost interest completely. "Are you alright?"
She ignored the question. "I'm going home," she said. "I just need to pick up the cat."
"Right. Of course." Thor scooped up Rachel Carson and handed her over. "She's a delightful rabbit."
"Cat," said Eva, again. She wasn't sure if he was joking or not.
"Of course. Would you like a lift home?"
"Huh?"
Thor picked up the axe. "I can summon the Bifrost with it," he explained. Noticing Eva's blank reaction, he added, "it's like a magical rainbow bridge that takes you wherever you want to go."
"Like the night bus after Pride parade," Eva commented.
"Exactly."
"I'll pass, thanks."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
They stood in silence for a moment. Eva got the sense that Thor was putting off returning to the others – to the fight. "How's Asgard?" she asked.
"It exploded."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Oh, don't be," Thor said in an artificially bright voice. "Even after Thanos found our escape ship, I'd say a whole quarter of my people still survive. Coming out alive after two apocalyptic events really is quite lucky. I have a lot to be grateful for."
"Always look on the bright side, huh?"
"It's easy when you're the god of thunder," Thor said. "Lightning brightens everything up."
This guy needs therapy real bad, Eva thought. "Right. Well. I'll see you around, then."
Thor hugged her. He was big and warm and smelled, very faintly, like eucalyptus. "Thank you for the coffee, Eva."
"Thanks for not smashing all the mugs anymore."
"I do my best." He let her go, patted her on the head and walked off, ridiculously large axe swinging at his side.
"Earth's mightiest heroes," Eva said, to the cat tucked under her arm. "No wonder we lost."
%
There were police cars and ambulances and fire engines littering the road the whole way home. Lots of house fires, car crashes and looting had happened, by the looks of it. New York was used to physical destruction ever since a wormhole had opened in the sky, but this was different. The city coped because it could fight back. Now, there was nothing to fight.
Eva pulled up outside her apartment block and went straight to the top to check on the greenhouse. Her vegetable patches looked oddly barren. She wondered if the… whatever it was had killed half of them off too, or if someone had just taken advantage of the commotion to just come and loot her tomato plants.
Usually she ran into at least one person on the fire escape between her apartment and the rooftop, but even glancing into the few windows whose curtains weren't closed, she failed to see anyone. Probably, those that were left had gone to find which of their loved ones had survived.
Eva left the television in her apartment switched off, and didn't check the news or social media on her phone, either. She changed out of her leathers and into some sweatpants and a big knitted jumper, emptied her linen basket, took it down to the basement laundrette and rode the elevator back up, staring blankly at her misty reflection in the waxed and graffitied metal. It stopped at the first floor and little old Mrs Jensen tottered in, using her walking stick to press the five button.
"Hello, dearie."
"Hi, Mrs J," Eva said, shifting the empty linen basket to her other hip.
"Terrible mess, isn't it?"
"Yeah. Did your son –"
"Oh, he and the grandbabies are all fine. My daughter-in-law's vanished, but if you ask me that's not much of a loss," the lady sniffed. "How's your nice purple friend?"
"He… didn't make it."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Mrs Jensen patted Eva's slight, tattooed hand with her own knobbly, liver-spotted one. "He seemed like such a nice young man. A little odd, mind. But that's modern times for you."
"Yeah."
"In my times, all we had were comic books about Captain America. Isn't he out and about again now with the rest of them? He's older than I am! His knees should be round the twist, but he's still jumping around like nobody's business." The elevator pinged and Mrs Jensen shuffled out.
"See you round, Mrs J."
"You too, dearie."
The doors slid shut. Eva managed to last until the elevator juddered into movement before the sob came out. She bit down on her fist, shoulders shaking, eyes burning, desperately trying to get a handle on herself again before she reached her floor. By the time she was back in her apartment the tears had been wiped away and only her reddened nose gave any clue that she had broken again.
She sat down in her armchair, curling into the dent that had been caused by years of use, and picked up the envelope she had left on the floor. Her fingers danced around the seal, slipping underneath the small gap, unable to rip it open yet. "Damn it," she muttered, chucking it back on the floor and switching on the TV.
She fell asleep there in the chair that night, half-drunk mug of chamomile nearly spilling out of her slumped hand, old horror movie playing on low volume on the television. Rachel Carson dozing on the back of the seat. In her wastepaper basket the ashes settled, a lighter discarded next to it where, hours earlier, she had sat and watched the fire. On the top of the pile of kindling, old receipts and discarded garden plans, sat the envelope. She had not been able to burn it, either. She couldn't do anything with the bloody thing. So it sat there, unopened, untouched, a reminder of what was missing.
A/N look, I'm not saying that they should let me write one of those new MCU tv shows with Loki and Scarlet Witch etc. What I am saying is that, as someone with experience writing the characters and managing multiple connected stories set in the same universe while keeping separate storylines, someone should drop my name into Kevin Feige's pigeonhole. Please.