YEARS LATER
"You know what's happening, don't you?" she says. And she's too horrified by the destruction that happened – that keeps happening all around us – to even sound accusing. "What did this?"
"It wasn't them," I say, having hard time recognizing my voice, it sounds so distant through the veil of shock. "I know what this looks like but this wasn't Hydra. It couldn't have been. They only ever had the one…"
"What are you talking about?" she snaps even as she drags me to cover of a nearby café. Because being out in the open as cars devoid of drivers keep swerving out of control and planes without pilots drop out of the sky is not the greatest survival strategy. "Hey," she shakes me, forcing me to look her in the eyes. "What is happening?"
"It's the Stones... Must be," I say in a shaking voice. "Look, this is all just a scary story. You'd overhear it if you were with Hydra as long as I was because so much weirdness happened in the early days and Redskull just disappeared without trace and..."
"Well something did this. If you have an explanation I need to know," says Dottie, catching my hesitation to talk about it.
"No, you don't. Knowing how this happened won't stop it happening. That's not what we need to be doing now," I say, forcing the voice in my head that just keeps screaming in wordless horror at the desolation all around me to shut up for a while so I can think. "It's not everyone. We're still here. It's not killing everyone. That means..."
"Yes?" she says, still gripping my forearms a little too tightly as she struggles with her own terror.
"It can be survived and we survived it. And there's aftermath to be dealt with. Something most people will be too shellshocked to do."
I don't say the rest. I don't have to. She caught my meaning perfectly. I see it even as her eyes stray to a little boy, about five, looking panicked as he's failing to open the door of the car he's in. Alone.
She doesn't hesitate for a moment as she runs out to open the door for him and tells him to go stay in the café because it's not safe outside.
It's that obvious what we're going to do next. The only thing there is to do…
The street outside is both loud and eerily devoid of human voices. What people are there are looking around in wordless terror, unable to comprehend the situation. Even the wounded don't scream, too deep in shock to react to pain as they stumble around, their ash covered faces wearing the same numb expressions. No one is even daring to call out the names of people they just saw disintegrate right before their eyes.
I note the silence and force myself not to think about it as I start inspecting the motionless cars one by one, forcing the often reluctant passengers to leave them, move away, gather somewhere in a safe distance from vehicles that in a lot of cases look damaged enough to start exploding in the next moment.
"Out. Now," I hear Dottie say, yanking yet another catatonic person out of their car. This one a police officer and it's obvious it would never occur to him to move until she made him. He was just sitting there, staring at the seat his partner used to occupy.
"We can't trust the emergency services to handle this," I say, catching up with her. "No one is trained to deal with… the end of the world," I finish, feeling a hysterical laughter rising up in me. I force it down. It might be the hardest thing I ever I did but I do force it down because I know – if I start laughing now I'll never stop. I'll never even notice when laughter turned to a scream.
And so I don't allow myself. I find something better to do. And there is so much to do.
Dottie just gives me a single, grim nod of agreement and continues to do the same. A few people, seeing our example, start moving too. Slowly at first, uncertain what to actually do to help.
"Just put out the fires you see," I say to a woman who meets my eyes as I help her carry a badly injured teenage girl out of the wreck of her car. "Everyone will remember where they were when this happened. And what they did next. That is what matters."
"Yes," she whispers. And even as her eyes finally brim over and tears spill down her ashen cheeks she starts taking her shirt off to press it against the girl's leg, slashed open and bleeding heavily.
There is a sound of explosion from somewhere up the block, startling all three of us.
"It's fine. I've got this," says Dottie, already starting to run in that direction.
Straight into danger – and I feel no fear for her, none at all. For years, whenever things got dangerous, I reminded myself she's been through worse so of course she can take it. Today, for the first time, that is no longer the case. No one ever has been through something even close to this. Still I trust her to be fine. Because if there's someone who can take it – yes, even this, whatever this incomprehensible wave of obliteration actually is – it's her.
"Does anyone else need medical attention?" I say then, turning around to check on the shellshocked crowd around me. Even though it's been years since I made use of my medical training I still seem to be the best chance these people have. And so I do what I can. Whatever I can.
In so many cases it's simply not enough.
I lose sight of Dottie for what feels like hours and when I find her again she's more ashen than before and there's something in her arms. A bundle. A… "Oh…" I say, recognizing what she's carrying.
"I think she's just a few weeks old. There was no one… around…" says Dottie, looking at me with a kind of hopeless desperation I've never seen her exhibit before. I've never felt more kinship with another human being than in that moment.
"Can someone take her? I can't... I... have to keep helping the injured," I say, straightening from an old man whose internal injuries were too much for me to do anything about. Would be for anyone, even if I had any decent supplies on hand. "We need to keep helping," I say, angrily wiping the tears from my cheeks as Dottie hands the child over to an elderly woman that comes forward from the crowd of survivors.
...
We live through those longest hours of our lives. We… survive.
Which is really the best that can be said for the madness of that day. It was survived. By many. By a lot less than the people who were spared the instant death that came from one moment to the next.
The deathcount was far worse than that. Too much to comprehend, even for me. And I was the one getting blood on my hands trying, fighting to save at least some. At a least a few. Because every single life counted and every loss, every death, was too much to bear on a day like this. And still we kept losing more.
"Whatever did this," I find myself saying, later, what feels like years later, finally having found a moment to wash the blood and ash from my hands.
"Yes…?" she says, catching hold of my hands to stop me from scrubbing them, because I'm now at a point where I might scrub off my skin and not notice, just keep doing it.
I shoot her a grateful look, uncertain whether I could have stopped if she didn't make me.
"I don't know what it was. I really don't. But whatever got all those stones together and..." I take a shaky breath and find there's nothing I can say because I can't begin to imagine a being, however alien, that would be capable of such casual act of destruction. Something that was over in just a few seconds.
Something that will never be over to those of us who had to live through it.
"Do you feel like it's over?" says Dottie, bringing my attention back to her. "This was the longest day of my life. And you know what my life was like," she says with a brief, mirthless laugh. "But we survived it. The sun has set. Even the worst day ends with a sunset. Right?"
"So why does it feel like tomorrow will be just as bad…?" I say, feeling that's what she was trying to say. And she's right. A tragedy on this scope… It doesn't just end. It doesn't get better, one day at a time. It... stays. "A part of every single day that follows because this won't just fade… won't just become history…" I find myself saying before falling silent because my words are not helping.
She doesn't need me to say anything. She just needs me to be here – I know because that's all I need from her. That's the only thing that'll help us face a tomorrow no less horrifying that today was.
"Staying here isn't a good idea," she says then, when she can no longer take the silence. "But there's no one else who can step up. Most of these people are hopeless... catatonic... and even those who can function have no idea what to prioritize. They keep talking about Wakanda..."
"That's not an option. They just lost half of their population too," I remind. Not that she doesn't know.
"And everyone expects them to just swoop in and save the day all the same."
"It's human nature. They just want someone to tell them it's alright. They'll take it from here," I sigh. "No one is built for this much responsibility. Elsewhere they're probably expecting the Avengers to show up any moment to put out the fires for them..."
"Why do people do that? Just expect for someone to do the hard thing for them."
"Because there was a time when that's exactly what happened. Someone did the hard thing for them. We never had that..." I remind. "It's what childhood is like. Or so I'm told."
"Ah. Yes. That does explain it..." she says. Adding, almost as an afterthought… "If we stay this visible Hydra will catch up to us still being alive."
"Half of Hydra," I remind. "We can handle half of Hydra."
She tries to smile and then the moment is over. And it's time to do the hard thing again... and again...To do all the hard things you never expected someone else to do for you. A side effects of your respective nightmarish early years.
They might have left you scarred, but they made you tough, too.
Nowhere near tough enough to be able to deal with something like this, but compared to the others, the masses of the traumatized survivors, you seem to be doing great. Putting out one fire at the time. Almost forgetting that you're the kind of people who normally start them. But that's what cataclysm like this does. Brings out the best in people - even the worst of people...
