#the entire graphics department is kept running by me and my one colleague.

[alarawriting]

52 Project #38: All We Wanna Do Is Eat Your Brains

Like “No Lullaby” at number 19 and “The Lake” at number 20, this is a songfic. Unlike those, the song itself -- Jonathan Coulton’s “Re: Your Brains” -- is comedic, so this is a comedy wrapped up in the skin of a horror story. Trigger warning for zombies, but no speaking characters get killed by zombies in this story.

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The fifth floor of the six-story Peaceful Pines Towne Centre shopping mall was entirely occupied by the business offices of the real estate company that owned and managed it, and many other similar shopping malls.

It was divided into two halves, the west side and the east side, with elevators in the center, and locked, heavy wooden doors between the two sides. At one point both of those doors had been unlocked. On the west side, there had been attractive, frosted glass doors leading to the reception area; those had been smashed. On the east side, there were security doors painted the same color as the wall. Those were locked, but could normally be opened with company badges. The system that allowed the badge locks to work had been unplugged, and the badge lock itself had been disconnected from the inside.

Once upon a time, the salespeople and the financial analysts and the C suite had all had offices or cubicles on the west side, and the IT people, engineers, and facilities management had all had offices or cubicles on the east side. HR had been on the west side, but right near the doors; all the people from that department were all on the east side now.

The bathrooms were in the hallway; the break room was on the west side, with the coffee machine, refrigerator and water cooler. On the east side there was nothing to support human life except air, the water cooler replacement jugs, and several packages of granola bars that one of the engineers had stashed in her desk.

The security cameras still worked, so it was quite possible to see, if you were looking at the monitor screens, a disheveled, pudgy man with short, straight dirty-blond hair, wearing a suit, with skin that was normally the pinkish-beige of a white guy but was now kind of grayish and also yellowish, standing in front of the security doors. “That you, Tom?” he said cheerfully.

“Uh, yeah?” The man on the east side of the security doors was tall and skinny, with black hair in a ponytail. He was also white, but had the kind of skin color which could maybe mean Greek, Southern Italian, Northern Middle East, or something like that, except that it hadn’t seen much sun in months, maybe years. It also had a bit of a sallow cast to it, but nowhere near as strong as the man on the other side of the doors.

“Hey there! It’s Bob, from down the hall. Good to see you, buddy! How’ve you been?”

“Uh… okay, I guess? Overall? Today hasn’t been great though…”

“Oh, I feel ya, buddy, I feel ya. Things were going okay for me, too, but now I’m a zombie!” Bob chuckled. “Isn’t it funny, the curveballs life throws you?”

“Uh, yeah. Funny. Hey, if you’re a zombie how come you can talk?”

On the monitors, they could see Zombie Bob shrug. “I’m no egghead. I’ll let the scientists figure that one out. But we’re not all dumb just because we’re zombies, you know.  I’ve been the head of Strategic Marketing for two years now… oh, but I guess you know that!” Bob laughed. “I know, I know, we’re coworkers! I don’t have to explain my position to you.”

“Sounds like maybe a touch of memory loss, there, Bob,” Tom said.

“Nah, nah, I’ve just been meeting with so many new people today! This zombie thing, it’s really underrated. I know I was practically pissing my pants when I realized I’d been bitten, but now that I’m a zombie? Oh, I know I look kind of unhealthy, but actually I feel great! No pain, and I’m never gonna have to worry about dieting again! Yeah, I’m gonna miss French fries, but to be honest I was considering doing keto, and this is kind of like extreme keto, right?”

“But zombies eat people. Right?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course we do. Mostly brains, those are the best part. Hey, listen, Tom? Could you do me a solid here?”

“Uh… what do you want?”

“Ah, it’s not a big deal. I just need you to open up these doors so me and my new colleagues can come inside and eat your brains.”

Tom took several seconds to process this request. Finally he said, “Why, exactly, do you think we’d be willing to do that?”

“Hey, I know. It’s a big step, right? You just get a little bite, then you turn into a zombie and you live forever, long as you can keep eating, but we’re gonna be eating your brains, so you’re not gonna be turning into zombies. I can see why you’d be reluctant to do that.”

“Okay, so why did you ask?”

“Well, here’s the deal, Tom. You’re all gonna die screaming. It’s gonna happen. Maybe not this minute, but by the end of the day, it’s happening. So why put it off? Why put yourselves through the agony of anticipation? Just, you know, rip the bandaid off and get it over with.”

“Yeah, no. We’re not doing that.”

“Come on, I don’t think it’s unreasonable. All we wanna do is eat your brains. It’s not like anyone’s talking about eating your eyes here!” Bob laughed again. On the monitor, the elevator opened, and two more zombies came out. They began to scratch mindlessly at the security doors. “Hey, hey there, folks, we’re not getting through these bad boys unless they let us in. Save your fingernails and teeth for a softer target, okay?”

The zombies actually seemed to listen to him. They stepped back and stood quietly.

“I’m not sure you’ve fully thought this through, buddy,” Bob said in a genially condescending tone. “Don’t mean to nitpick here, but this isn’t much of a plan. I know you’ve got a few guns in there, and maybe you’ve got the extra water cooler jugs and the refills for the vending machine? But really, how long’s that gonna last? You haven’t even got a bathroom in there. Bet it’s getting pretty stinky.”

“We’ve got some supply closets over here , and some buckets. We’re getting by.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like you can open a window and let some air in, or dump your buckets! Those windows in there, they don’t open. I know! I kept sending memos to facilities, asking if I could get a window that opened, and it was always, no, none of the windows open, they’re not designed that way! Guess they didn’t want any of C-suite to be able to jump if commercial real estate tanked again.” Bob laughed.

Tom stepped away from the door for a moment, speaking quietly and urgently to Nishant, who was waiting for an update. “They don’t know about the windows,” he whispered to Nishant, who grinned briefly, and then ran back toward the IT manager’s office. It was Tom’s office, but it was on this side, with his department, rather than on the other side where all the other managers’ offices were.

He returned to the door to talk to Bob. “We’ll get by,” he said.

“Whoo-ee. Only thing I can smell anymore is tasty meat, but I tell you, I don’t envy you. Hey, why don’t we compromise? You open up the doors so you can dump your buckets, and then we all come inside and eat your brains.”

“That isn’t much of a compromise, Bob.”

“Sure, Tom, but have you thought through your alternatives? I mean, what’re you gonna do, spend the rest of your lives locked up in half the fifth floor of the shopping mall? Good enough for now, I suppose, and maybe you’ll get used to the stink, but sooner or later you’re gonna run out of food and ammo. Guess you’re gonna have to make a tough call then, huh?”

“I guess so,” Tom said.

“No, I don’t envy you at all. The way I see it, your options are, die of starvation, wait for us to break down the doors and eat your brains, or let us in, and at least the third option’s pretty quick.” He laughed again. “Though I’m gonna be honest here, Tom, I’m gonna eat you nice and slow.”

Tom sighed. “I have to say, Bob, I’m a tolerant guy but I’m really leery of this lifestyle choice of yours. I mean, eating brains? Have you ever considered not eating brains?”

“Well, I’ve considered it, but frankly they’re so goddamn tasty, who wouldn’t? I mean, if you guys manage to hold us off long enough, maybe it’ll come to the point where you have to eat each other, and then you’ll be eating your own brains. It’d be better to just get it out of the way quick, don’t you think?”

“I think we’ll manage.”

“I don’t think you’ve really thought things through, though. But that doesn’t really surprise me. You were always a detail-focused guy, never had much of a head for the big picture. Always trying to solve the problem of today, even if it causes problems tomorrow. But me, the big picture is what I do.”

Tom had heard this particular spiel before. “So what’s the big picture, then?” he asked, as behind him Ekaterina tapped him on the shoulder.

“The big picture here is that you’re gonna be dead one way or another. The whole human race is gonna go, Tom. And by the way, I don’t appreciate your comment about my ‘lifestyle.’ I’d be reporting you to HR, but I’m pretty sure all of HR is on your side of the doors.”

“Who’s on your side?”

Bob laughed. “Oh, wait, I got it! You’re mad at the comment I made about gay lifestyles a month ago! That was supposed to be a zinger, right?” He chuckled again. “Well, you’ll be pleased to hear I don’t care about any of that stuff anymore. You remember Kevin, right? The graphic designer?”

Kevin had been 23 and engaged to a boyfriend who was a guitarist in a band. “I remember him.”

“Well, now he’s one of us, and that’s all any of us care about. Gay, straight, white, black, it doesn’t matter once you’re a zombie. We’re all united together.”

“When you say ‘us’. Who’ve you got?”

“Well, right off the bat we got Horace. You would never imagine how delicious he was. You’d think all that fat on his gut would be a problem, but I’m here to tell you, he was exquisitely marbled.”

Horace had been the CEO. Tom shuddered, as he removed his pants and shirt, stripping down to his underwear. “I meant, who’s a zombie?”

“Well, honestly, most of the folks over here, we ate them. I got bit on my lunch hour, and after I turned, I led a bunch of folks from the mall up here. They’re good people, though, Tom. Really focused and dedicated. Hard workers.”

“Working hard at eating people.” Tom handed his clothes to Ekaterina, and she ran them back tto his office.

“Hey, it’s hard work to catch you guys. It’d be a lot easier if you’d just let us in.”

“Okay, break it down for me, Bob. What’s our ROI on letting you in? Where’s the win-win?”

“Sure thing! Now you’re speaking my language, Tom. I think it’s really great that you’re willing to work with me on this.” In the monitor, Bob smirked. “So here’s  the deal. We’re all really hungry and we really want to eat your brains.  You’re stuck in half a corporate office with nothing to eat and nowhere to go the bathroom. And no toilet paper! Man, that's gotta be rough. So what I’m suggesting is, you let us in, we eat your brains, you don’t have to live through any more of this bullcrap, and you don’t have to watch your families and loved ones get eaten. What do you say?”

Tom swallowed. The laser printed message in 48 pt font, on the paper Nishant was holding up, said “15 FT SHORT.”

“I can see you’ve got some good points there, Bob. But we actually don’t want to get eaten, so I think we’re gonna stick it out for now.”

“I sympathize with that, Tom. And I appreciate how you’re listening and considering my proposal. I’d really like to help you out, any way I can. What if I offer fast mercy killing? We don’t start eating you until you’re already dead, and we bludgeon you to death fast, no biting and tearing. How’s that?”

“Give me a minute to run that past some of my people,” Tom said, and walked over to Nishant. In an urgent whisper, he said, “You can’t find any more cloth?”

Nishant, who was naked except for Western-style underpants, shook his head. “The bras and underpants for everyone here wouldn’t get us the rest of the way, either,” he said. “It’d be different if we didn’t have to support Jason’s weight=”

“No one gets left behind, Nish.”

“I know, but that’s why we’ve had to make what amounts to five ropes in parallel instead of just one, because Jason’s arms are not strong enough to support 400 pounds.”

“Okay, and is anyone proposing a solution?”

“Xi said we should toss down cardboard boxes, but they won’t take his weight either.”

Tom sighed. “I can probably stall Bob for another five, ten minutes tops. You’re engineers. Figure it out or we’re dead.” A 15 foot drop wouldn’t kill most adult humans, but it might well render a lot of them unable to run afterwards, and in a zombie apocalypse, that’d essentially mean death. “Have we got confirmation on the helicopter?”

“They say it’s on its way,” Nishant whispered, shrugging.

“Okay. I’ll tie him up as long as I can.” Tom returned to the door. “Sorry, that’s a non starter. I’ve got a counter-proposal for you, though.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Bob said approvingly. “Hit me.”

“What if, and I’m spitballing here, you let half of us go, and you just eat the brains of half of us?”

On the monitor,  Bob shook his head. “That’s not going to work for us,  I’m afraid.”

“What about a quarter?”

“It’s logistics, Tom. There’s no way you get out of here except the stairs and the elevator, and they’re both overrun with zombies. I can’t control all the zombies in this mall, just my own people.  You’re not getting to the bottom uneaten, and frankly, if someone’s going to eat you anyway, it should be me and my fellows. You can see my position on that, can’t you, Tom?”

“You could turn half of us into zombies, and eat the brains of the other half,” Tom suggested.

“No, afraid that’s not doable either,” Bob said.

“Mind filling me in on the decision process there?”

“No problem,” Bob said cheerfully. “We’re really hungry.”

“Huh. Well, I guess I can respect that, but that doesn’t get us past the hurdle that we don’t want to get eaten.  You have any suggestions?”

“Sure, I can compromise a bit. I want to work this out with you, Tom. I’m not a monster.” He paused. “Wait. Technically,  I guess I am. Huh. A horror movie monster.” On the monitor,  he shrugged. “It doesn’t feel too different from normal!”

“I doubt most monsters think of themselves as monsters,” Tom pointed out.

“Hey, good point, good point.” Bob looked at his wrist, which did not have a watch on it. “Look, it seems like we’re at an impasse for the moment. I’ve got another meeting, so maybe we could wrap this up?”

“Well, we haven’t worked out a deal yet…”

Nishant came back. This time the 48 pt font on the paper he was holding up said “ROOF. JASON’S UP. REST OF US GOING.”

Tom nodded to acknowledge the message. He didn’t really want to know how his mostly nerdy and unathletic coworkers could have climbed to the roof in the first place, but it was only one story overhead, unlike the ground five stories below, so it was a good plan. He turned back to the door. “But if you have a meeting, I guess there’s no help for it.”

“Yeah, we’d better table this for now, sorry. We’ll come back to this. I know we can get to common ground, somehow. Just gotta work it out,” Bob said. “I need to report in to my colleagues who’re chewing on the doors. Real dedicated folks.”

“Sure, and I need to report to the engineers with the guns that that’s what they’re doing.”

“Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to hear me out! I know we’re all busy as hell, and time is the one thing we can’t get more of, right? Especially for you guys.”

“Not a problem,  and I'm grateful for all the advice.”

“I’m glad you take constructive criticism well, “ Bob said, the genial condescension back. “Not everyone does. We’ll swing around to give another go at working things out later, and we’ll put this thing to bed when I bash your head open, all right?”

“Sure, if you don’t get a skull full of lead first.”

Bob laughed. “Man, Tom, you’re a funny guy! You should’ve done stand-up. See you later!”

As soon as he was gone, Tom ran for his office.

Bob seemed to have normal human intelligence  despite being a zombie. As soon as Tom had realized that, he’d known he’d have to keep Bob distracted so the zombie couldn’t hear any of the sounds within, especially the sound of breaking glass. He was right that the windows weren’t designed to open… but that wasn’t much of a barrier for a dozen desperate engineers.(Well. Technically nine desperate engineers and IT personnel, and three desperate people from HR.)

It was a good thing Bob himself wasn’t an engineer,  or he might have figured out what Tom had known, in a cold pit in his stomach,  the whole time.

The security doors were nearly impenetrable. But the walls they were attached to were just standard drywall. And they didn’t even go all the way to the real ceiling – just to the drop ceiling where the wires were. So any zombie who knew that could climb up into the ceiling and then jump down. If zombies could keep their human intelligence, then it was just luck that only one of the engineers had been down at the food court earlier today when the zombies attacked, and he’d moved fast enough to escape.

The window in his office was shattered. There had been a heavy hammer in the facilities closet, and Alexey had managed to grab two guns and ammo from the Bass Pro store in the mall before coming up the freight elevator and getting in through the delivery door – which was, thankfully, on the east side.  The glass on the fifth floor was thick, but between the hammer and a well-placed bullet, it had broken enough that they’d been able to smash the rest of it out.

Dangling just outside the window, where he could easily grab it and pull it inside, there was a cradle made of four ropes, where the ropes had been made by tying together scissored strips of everyone’s clothes. Tom stepped into the cradle, using the loops that had been tied onto the ropes to secure his wrists, and the straps on the bottom of the cradle to secure his legs. “Okay! I’m ready!” he yelled upward, and tugged on the cords.

His team pulled him up to the roof, with Nishant, Alexey, Xi and Timothy pulling on the ropes, and Jason sitting on the roof with the ends of the ropes tied behind him. Jason’s heart condition wouldn’t allow him to pull the ropes, but he could use his body as ballast to make sure none of the team fell. His face was pasty white, like there was no blood in his body, and he was breathing hard and sweating, but since Jason usually looked like that after any kind of minor exertion -- his heart was barely managing to do its job -- Tom wasn’t afraid he had turned.

Pete was holding one of Alexey’s two rifles. Ekaterina was unraveling the fifth rope and tying pieces of it around people’s waists and women’s chests, so they could have a tiny bit of modesty back.

“How did you guys manage to get to the roof?” Tom asked as he untied his straps and stepped out of the rope cradle.

“It was Ashley, actually,” Nishant said.

Ashley from HR was a petite woman, but in nothing but her bra and underpants, she was more muscular than Tom would have guessed. “ I do parkour and mountain climbing,” she said. “I’m not saying getting up here was fun, but you know, when the alternative is getting your brains eaten…”

In the distance he could see helicopters. “I know we contacted them already,” he said, “but let’s wave them down. Just to make sure.”

“We’ve got plenty of cloth to make flags,” Ekaterina said.

Tom wondered what Bob would think, when he and his zombies got the door open and found that they’d all gone through the window. The ropes had been pulled up, so he doubted that Bob’s first guess would be the roof… but Pete and Alexey were on guard with the guns, just in case.

Indrani, one of the programmers, leaned over the edge to see where they had come from. “Uh-oh,” she said. “They’ve found the window… looks like one of them is climbing out on the ledge.”

Alexey walked to the edge, cocked the rifle, and pointed downward. He fired. “Not anymore.”

They could all see the zombie fall. The shot hadn’t killed it – it was a chest shot, and they could see it flailing – but when it landed, a puddle of red appeared beneath it, including under its head, and it no longer moved.

“How much ammo have we got?” Tom asked.

“Enough to kill about 300 zombies, if every shot is perfect,” Alexey said.

“Which it’s not gonna be,” Pete added, somewhat unnecessarily. His brown hands were clenched so tightly on his rifle, the knuckles had turned white. “I’m… not the world’s best shot. I go to the range sometimes, get in a little bit of practice, but mostly I suck.”

“You’re probably better than most of us, though,” Tom said.

“I knew I should have gotten a shotgun,” Alexey complained. “At close range the rifle is almost useless.”

“You were under time pressure,” Ekaterina said. “If I’d been in the food court when a zombie turned and started biting people, I don’t think I would have been able to think clearly enough to go to the end of the mall and get a gun from the Bass Pro. Let alone two, and ammunition.”

“I think I see Bob down there,” Indrani said. “He’s… what is he doing?”

“Don’t fall off the side!” Timothy went to his knees rapidly, ready to grab Indrani’s ankles.

“I won’t. What are they doing?”

Rachel from HR peered off the side from a different vantage point on the left of the broken window. “They’re forming a human chain. Well, a zombie chain. One’s climbing on top of another and they’re holding onto each other.”

“That’s not good,” Pete said. “Alexey, you need help there?”

“No, stay covering the door to the roof.” It was chained and padlocked shut and the door was a metal security door, but who knew what would happen if enough zombies banged into it. Alexey took aim, and shot the bottom zombie of what was now a three-zombie human ladder, and all three fell. One managed to grab a ledge; the other two fell to the ground. One stopped moving; the other crawled feebly, her arms and legs obviously broken.

Tom looked up at the helicopter coming toward them. It had a rescue basket, large enough to fit all twelve of them. Twelve. The company had been thirty-three people this morning. He thought maybe one of the sales guys had been out in the field on a call, and the regular receptionist had been out sick, so… thirty-one people in the office had turned into twelve survivors. Plus some that had become zombies, like Bob.

A phone rang. Everyone looked at Donatella, the third of the refugees from HR. She was as underdressed as the rest of them, but she had a purse on her, made of a crunchy plasticky recycled material that no one had thought would hold up to the stress of being part of their escape ropes. The phone was ringing from inside it.

Donatella withdrew the phone, her hand shaking, and answered it. “Rose and Weldon Company, this is Donatella Antonucci, can I help you?” She listened for a moment. “Why don’t I put you on speaker?” And looked up at Tom. “It’s for you, do you want it on speaker?”

“Is it Bob?”

Donatella nodded. Tom rolled his eyes. “Fine. Put him on.”

“Hey there, Tommy boy! You there? It’s me, Bob, again.”

“Yes, Bob, I’m here,” Tom sighed. “No, we’re not going to let you in to eat our brains.”

“Yeah, I can see that you’re on the roof,” Bob said. “Who’s that with the gun? That Russian dude? Ilya or something?”

“His name’s Alexey, and yes.”

“He’s good,” Bob said approvingly. “But listen, Tom, it’s not too late to open up the door on the roof and let us in. We’re in the stairwell.”

“Then who’s trying to form human chains down there?”

“The correct word is ‘zombie,’ Tom, not ‘human’. Please don’t misattribute our species.”

“Okay, fine, who—”

“That’s Barry from Sales. You remember Barry, right? Always bragging about his workouts and his gym routines and the times on his runs? Well, turns out he wasn’t all hot air. I thought he got away from us – he sprinted off when we almost had him, and he was too fast for any of us to follow. But then an hour later he came back and joined us, because one of us had landed a bite and turned him. Isn’t that cool?”

“It’s really not as cool as—”

“I sure think it’s cool.”

“Bob, I’m a busy man, please get to the point.”

“Sure, Tom. I know your time is valuable, I don’t want to waste it. It’s just that you should know, Barry’s a talker, like me, so he has our colleagues doing the zombie ladder thing there, and I’ve taken us up to the roof, and I’m pretty sure we’re gonna manage to knock this door down sooner or later.” There was a “thump” from the chained, padlocked roof door. “So I’m just offering it up as an option here, you might want to consider just letting us come outside and eat your brains.”

The helicopter was getting larger, but the closer it got, it seemed the slower it was coming. “I imagine you could do that,” Tom said. “How many zombies you got in there?”

“Why do you wanna know?”

“No real reason,” Tom said. “Just, we’ve got a pretty defensible position here and a lot of ammo.”

“That’s good to hear. Makes it challenging. A good workout before dinner always makes the meal tastier, isn’t that what they say?”

“Actually they say you shouldn’t eat until half an hour after working out…”

“Pretty sure that’s a myth, Tom. But you could Google it on Donnie’s phone. I know you don’t have one of your own, I found it ringing in your office when I tried to call you.”

“So what’d you do, wardial numbers until you hit one that rang?”

“Pretty much, yeah. I probably should have thought of one of the HR ladies first, since I know they got over to your side before you closed the doors. By the way, Bart? In sales? You know, the guy who didn’t make it to the door before you shut and locked it? Dee-lish. Appreciate you leaving him for us.”

“Bob, have I ever told you what an asshole you are?”

“That’s really not professional language, Tom.”

“I know, but I’m standing here in my underpants and you want to eat my brains, so I’m not feeling very professional. I have a counter-proposal for you, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I think you guys should strongly consider the merits of eating shit and then dying. Especially you. After fucking off so long and so far there’s no longer any off to fuck. And also going to hell, straight to hell, without passing Go or collecting 200 dollars.”

Bob laughed. “Man, you’re funny, Tom! I’m gonna miss these little chats after I crack that skull of yours like a steamed mussel shell and scoop out the brainy goodness inside.”

Another “thump” from the stairwell. Alexey shot another zombie chain, sending three more of them falling. “This is fun,” Alexey said. “Tell Bob I’m looking forward to blowing his head off. I want to see if he still has red blood or if it’s turned green like some of these guys.”

“I heard that fine,” Bob said. “Is that Alexey? I’ve always liked Russian food.”

“Were you this big of a clueless narcissist when you were alive, or is this just a zombie thing?” Tom asked.

“Oh, come on, Tom, I thought we had a rapport. I thought we were making some progress, working on this thing together.”

“Bob, when you and I worked together on identifying cities whose legislature might be open to letting us build a new Towne Centre shopping mall in their town, we had a rapport and we made progress. You really wanting to eat our brains is just not our problem and I don’t feel obligated to help you with that.”

“Yeah, what do you guys even do for the company?” Bob snarked. “We’re not an IT company, we don’t write programs. We develop and sell commercial real estate. All we ever needed was one dude to hook up our PCs to the Internet. We didn’t even need servers, we could have kept it all in the cloud.”

“We did keep it all in the cloud, Bob. We haven’t had servers in about five years.”

“So what did your department even do? How did you justify your salaries?”

“Among other things, your database marketing plans wouldn’t have gone very far if we hadn’t been maintaining the database… but that isn’t even the point.” The thumps and the sounds of the shots had grown more frequent, and the chain, somewhat rusty, was actually rattling hard. It was entirely possible that if Bob and his zombies just kept throwing themselves at the door, it would break open.

Again, not the engineers’ solution. But Bob, and Barry for that matter, seemed to have retained their normal human intelligence… not gained any intelligence. Bob hadn’t thought of makeshift explosives yet. Or shoving a long heavy-duty file into the crack and filing away at the chain. Or anything else that might work.

“I can’t hear you very well, Tom, what’s going on out there? Sounds like you’re standing right next to the air conditioner, or a generator?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Bob, maybe it’s the line on your end,” Tom lied as the helicopter, finally above them, lowered its rescue basket. It was hard to hear Bob through the “whup-whup-whup” of the helicopter blades, but Tom made the effort to talk normally, rather than shout into the phone as instinct told him to do.

“What?”

“I said maybe it’s the line on your end,” Tom said, as rescuers directed Jason to sit in the exact center of the basket, and then had the rest of them spread out by estimated weight, to balance the load.

“What? I can’t hear you at all, Tom, what’s going on?”

Very loudly, because now he was in the basket and standing right under the helicopter and its whups, Tom yelled, “What’s going on, Bob, is fuck you!”

He hung up on the zombie and handed Donatella back her phone as the helicopter climbed, pulling the rescue basket into the air. “Block him.”

There was another human chain of zombies forming, now that Alexey was no longer in a good position to shoot them down. Tom, on the edge of the basket facing the building, stuck his middle finger up and leaned out as far over the edge of the basket as he dared, making the gesture at Barry and his zombie ladder as broadly and visibly as he could.

[patchwork-panda]

If A Moment Is All We Are (3/?)

TW (3): This chapter contains a mention of:

1) intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation (Dazai dialogue). 2) fair amount of blood and physical violence in the form of guns, explosions and slashing injuries, as a "fight" chapter. 3) some descriptions of physical injury including broken bones and slash wounds. I tried not to let it be too graphic. Please proceed with caution.

For those who prefer AO3 format: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24121633/chapters/58072957

“Excuse me!”

The woman who now sat at the table, the one the old balding cop had vacated, looked up at me with a friendly, questioning gaze.

“Yes?”

I slammed my hands down on the counter, startling her into dropping her pen, and pushed my sketch of the green snake tattoo towards her.

“I need to make a report!”

“W-what sort of report?” she asked unsteadily, looking me up and down.

I could tell she was already evaluating my credibility but I had to listen to Detective Dazai. It was my only shot at saving Mrs. Yamazaki. I sat down in the same chair I had been in earlier and looked her right in the eye, my voice barely shaking as I gave her a slightly less nonsensical version of the story I had told her colleague earlier. When I finished, I got to my feet and bowed as low as I could.

“I’m not making any of this up and this is not a prank!” I exclaimed, head still bowed. “I, as a concerned citizen, am asking you, a member of the Yokohama Military Police for help. I’m begging you, ma’am: please, listen to me!”

“Okay, okay!” she exclaimed, waving her hands in the air as her colleagues turned to look at us. “I’ll listen to you! Please, sit down.”

Relieved, I sat. My legs were still shaking as I watched her get out a pen and a piece of paper and only when she started asking me for more details and slowly filling out her form was I finally able to breathe freely again.

It worked. I couldn’t believe it. That crazy detective’s advice had worked.

I was elated. I half-thought I was going to start crying with relief when the officer suddenly looked up and shot an anxious look out the window. Curious, I turned behind me and to my surprise, I saw Detectives Dazai (looking miraculously unhurt) and Kunikida passing by the station and going back across the street from whence they came. Seeing the recognition on my face, she turned to me with an odd look in her eye.

“Kusunoki-san,” she said, reading off her form. “Do you... know those two men? I thought I saw you talking to them earlier when I started my shift.”

“Not really?” I said, thinking back. “I mean, kind of? Armed Detective Agency, right? I actually talked to them about this earlier. Oh, but don’t worry! They insisted I talk to the police first before they got involved. They said that would be best.”

The officer looked contemplative.

“Yes, I would have to agree.” She frowned. “If they manage to solve your case before we do, again, my whole department would be completely humiliated. No, we can’t have that...”

She tapped her pen on the table as she thought to herself.

“Honestly, I have a few more questions I’d like to ask you, but I can’t ask them here.”

Once again, she looked behind her before motioning me forward, her expression grim. I scooted towards her in my chair, feeling slightly unsettled by the look on her face.

“W-why not?” I asked quietly.

“I know the man you’re looking for,” she whispered. “I believe he is a member of the Port Mafia.”

Not knowing who the Port Mafia was, I shrugged and her jaw hit the floor.

“You don’t know who the Port Mafia is?” I shook my head and she started laughing. “Wait, are you serious? What are you, some kind of shut-in? You don’t read the news?!”

As she sat there, laughing uproariously at her own joke, I twitched, trying to force a smile on my face as I waited for her to settle down.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” she sighed, wiping a tear from her eye. “Alright, let me tell you something about them since you don’t seem to know. The Port Mafia has been operating in Yokohama for decades. Decades. They have eyes and ears everywhere, perhaps even in this very police station. I want to ask you more but it’s not safe to do it here.”

She scribbled something down on a piece of paper and pushed it towards me.

“Meet me on the top floor of the South Pier Art Gallery in two hours. We’ll talk then.”

***

The rest had been a blur. I’d gone home, celebrated my win with a steaming hot bowl of ramen (topped with some of the veggies Mrs. Yamazaki had foisted on me) and watched some new seasonal shoujo anime titles to pass the time. Then, I took the train to the edge of town, found the gallery and blithely took the spiral staircase up to the top floor where they housed the stained glass window collection, not knowing what lay ahead. Not five minutes after I’d arrived, the young man named Akutagawa had appeared, killed the two curators lying on the far side of the room and blocked the way into the main entrance. When I ran for the fire escape instead, I found myself face-to-face with none other than Detective Dazai, who pointed a gun at me and instructed me to turn back around to face Akutagawa.

As I stood with my hands in the air, cold sweat running down my neck and my pathetic life hanging in the balance, I heard Dazai say something to me in a low, hushed voice.

“Sorry... this isn’t what I meant when I asked if you were doing anything later.”

As the memory of our encounter on the street floated back to me, something stirred to life deep inside my chest, something stronger than the panic that had been choking me since the start of this whole thing... It felt like anger.

“Is that right?” I asked. My voice was shaking but the words kept coming out. “You mean dates with you don’t usually end with somebody getting shot? What exactly did you have in mind then?”

“Oh? Are you interested after all?”

His tone was still light-hearted and flirtatious but I could sense his hesitancy; the gun against my skull pulled back just a fraction and for a second, there was hope. What if the gun fell away from my head entirely? Would I be able to make a run for it, make it back to my apartment in one piece? Akutagawa might try to rip my limbs off and I might still get shot at but what if I tried...?

Dazai didn’t say anything else; he was clearly waiting for my answer. I should tell him yes, maybe then he would feel less tempted to shoot me (why hadn’t he done so already?). However, something about the idea of spending more time in the company of this madman (that is, if I did manage to leave the gallery alive) was more nauseating than the smell of blood permeating the room.

“Not at all,” I replied coolly, “I don’t date guys who are two seconds away from blowing my head off.”

This time, it was Dazai’s turn to laugh.

“Well then,” Dazai mused, “Would it make you feel better to know I’d be joining you right after?”

I actually scoffed.

“What are you proposing, a double suicide?!”

“If you’d like.”

“You have a terrible sense of humor, Detective.”

I wasn’t sure if he could hear me over the deep growls coming from across the room. The monster coming out of Akutagawa’s cloak swayed slowly from side to side, clearly looking for an opening. Akutagawa hadn’t moved a muscle in some time but somehow this didn’t make me feel more comfortable. The sun was starting to set, the colors of the stained glass windows around us gradually darkening, making that cold, calculating gaze and quiet anger coming from the entrance more menacing than ever. Fruitlessly, I weighed my options again, looking around to see if there were any routes, any at all, that I could take to leave the gallery with my life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find even one. I sighed, my shoulders dropping, that spark of hope fading with the last light of the sun.

“It was Dazai-san, right? Can I ask you a question?”

He didn’t answer, so I continued anyway.

“You talk about suicide so casually... You’re not afraid of dying?”

“Not really. It’s pain and suffering I’m afraid of, but dying?”

Dazai was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, he sounded peaceful, hopeful even.

“No. I think about Death so often that it’s as familiar as an old friend to me now. Finally getting to die... It would be comforting, almost like coming home.”

“Huh...”

Flashes of my previous life appeared before my eyes, from more recent to further back... Mrs. Yamazaki bleeding out, alone in her own darkened living room room. A young man’s body flying high into the air after an untimely collision with a speeding black car. The shadow of a burning building on the water’s edge, down by the pier, windows shattering as it was rocked by a sudden explosion...

And finally, an image of a ghoul, staring back at me from just outside my own darkened windows, with long, black hair cut in the same style as my own, drops of blood instead of tears falling down her cheeks, staining the fingertips she touched to them, the blackness of her pupils deep like bottomless wells... As I stared into my own haunted reflection that night, the night before I stopped going to class, I heard it—the darkness within calling out to me, the intrusive thoughts that tempted me to jump when I looked out through the windows of tall buildings...

I heard a distant roar. The shadow monster commanded by Akutagawa surged forward, jaws stretched wide and at the last moment, I turned my head to look Detective Dazai in the face. I smiled.

“I understand.”

Dazai stared at me.

“You do...?”

Without warning, an explosive force shook the gallery, enveloping me in clouds of thick, acrid smoke. I heard a crack and coughing violently, I looked down just in time to see the patterned floor below me give way, the cheap carpeting disintegrating beneath my very feet. There was no time for me to scream or think. I fell into the void below, my watering eyes catching one final glimpse of Akutagawa’s pale face, twisted in anger, as the darkness claimed me.

Wind rushed past my ears. I could feel myself picking up speed and I covered my head, wondering if tucking myself into a ball might mean less broken bones when I finally hit the bottom floor.

But I had stopped falling.

I was caught on something sturdy, with long, dense, wiry limbs. A tree? No, trees weren’t this warm... and they didn’t smell like gun smoke, books and ink...

“Got you,” someone grunted from just above me and I realized I’d fallen not onto a tree, but right into a man’s arms. I pushed my tangled bangs out of my face and looked up.

“Kunikida-san?!”

“I’ll explain later,” he gruffly, crouching down and setting my feet on the ground as the lights around us snapped back on. “We have to go, now! Can you run?”

No sooner had I nodded than he grabbed my wrist, his fingers closing over the fabric of my jacket, and tugged me after him, wasting no time in tearing off down the nearest corridor as soon as he was sure I could stand. Paintings whizzed by as we ran, abstract portraits blurring into colorful landscapes as we raced down the hall, my wrist locked in the detective’s iron grip. I could hear gunfire and yells, occasionally an otherworldly roar echoing from the top floor and I shuddered and pushed myself to run faster, to put more distance between myself and the beast making those horrible shrieks. As we ran past the spiral staircase to the corner of the central gallery, I abruptly realized the explosion had taken me from the top floor to the second—that much closer to safety...

Just when I thought my legs were going to give out, Kunikida abruptly stopped at the end of the corridor and I almost crashed right into him. His head jerked up and I caught a flash of green from the exit sign reflected on his glasses as he barked his next command.

“This way!”

I was brusquely yanked forward again, Kunikida’s long ponytail nearly smacking me in the face as he dragged me into a stairwell, the walls and steps narrow and lined with cement.

“We’re going down. Hurry!” he ordered, finally letting go of my aching wrist.

Ignoring the burning in my legs, I bolted down the stairs as quickly as I could, the tall detective hot on my heels as a crack echoed above us, like fireworks exploding in our confined chamber. Instinct took over and I ducked, throwing a hand over my head as I felt projectiles whiz past my shoulder.

“Get up!” Kunikida shouted and I obeyed, the sight of freshly gouged bullet holes on the wall ahead of me spurring me on. I was almost at the ground floor when I heard gunshots from very close behind. At once, I realized Kunikida was not with me and I whirled to see him several meters away at the turn, firing a small handgun up the stairs.

“Kunikida-san?” I called up, dashing back to him.

“Don’t come any closer!” he cried.

A sharp pain ripped into my cheek, tearing off bits of my hair and splattering my clothes with hot blood. I could feel the blood dripping down my neck in rivulets as I squeezed myself back into the corner and out of the way, a fresh hail of bullets raining down on us from above. I heard excited shouting; someone had followed us, their heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs—

“It’s the Port Mafia. You have to go!” Kunikida hollered, the echo of his voice nearly overwhelmed by the cacophony of more bullets firing into the stairwell. The impact scattered rubble everywhere and forcing me to guard my eyes.

“What about you?!” I cried.

“I’ll be fine!” he shouted. “Just get to the lobby, now!”

Red bloomed in the shoulder of his beige vest. He stumbled and pushed himself further back into the corner of the alcove, his bloodied hand reaching into his shirt vest and pulling out a small, lightly-bound olive green notebook. There was a determined look in his eye.

“What are you waiting for? Go!”

He ripped a page out of the notebook and I was suddenly blinded by a flash of green light. An enormous explosion rocked the stairwell and I stumbled to the ground as smoke flooded the air.

“Kunikida-san?!”

There was no answer. I pushed myself to my feet, staring in horror at the spot where he’d been.

“Kunikida-san...”

Was he dead? Had he died defending me?!

Frozen, I stood there, utter shock pulsing through me as my cheek continued to drip blood onto my blouse. But all too soon, the sound of footsteps began to pound down the stairs, snapping me out of my daze and I uprooted my feet, following Kunikida’s last order and made for the door to the lobby.

I had to live. If Kunikida was really dead, living was the only way to make sure his sacrifice was not in vain. Living meant I was saved.

Throwing my shoulder against the heavy door, I burst into the lobby. To my relief, a quick glance around the ground floor assured me that the lobby was deserted, with no security guards and no trench-coat-clad figures with guns anywhere in sight. Taking one last, regretful look behind me at the stairs, I immediately sprinted for the front doors.

“Hold it, Prophet.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a ribbon of black and red streak towards me. Before I knew what had hit me, something slashed deeply into my left leg and I hit the floor with a sharp cry of pain, the back of my thigh burning like it was on fire. I could feel the warmth of my own blood pouring out of the wound, pooling on the ground and soaking wetly into my ripped jeans. As I struggled to get up, I heard Akutagawa’s voice again.

“Surrender.”

Somehow, he’d gotten past Dazai and Kunikida. Or maybe the Port Mafia had already finished both of them off, giving Akutagawa a clear path to me... Gritting my teeth, I got up, staggering a little as I stood, my eyes meeting with Akutagawa’s cold gray ones. My legs felt weak. I could tell that I’d been cut very deeply but I continued running for the doors, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I made a bee-line for the dim light of the setting sun outside.

“Don’t ignore me.”

There was an unearthly roar and something hit the ground where my right foot had been barely a millisecond before, sending small chunks of flooring flying into the air as I dodged Akutagawa’s attacks. For one brilliant, shining second, I thought I was going to make it—my fingers brushed against the glass and metal front doors—

“Rashoumon! Higanzakura!”

Black and red wires tightened around my throat, wrenching me away from the exit before I could push open the doors and lifting me high into the air. I could barely breathe and I scrabbled against my bonds in vain, the skin of my palms and fingers stinging and bleeding with every attempt to pry the coils off of me.

What was this thing made of?!

Through watering and narrowed eyes, I watched as Akutagawa approached in measured steps, his hands in his pockets, that cold, impassive face coming closer with every passing moment.

“You run pretty fast for an injured girl, I’ll admit. Unfortunately for you, I was ordered to capture you. And I don’t intend to fail.”

The weight around my throat suddenly became crushing. Spots appeared before my eyes and I fought to stay conscious as the last gasp of air was squeezed out of me. Akutagawa’s ragged, darkened form faded in and out of sight.

No! I can’t die here...!

I clawed harder at the thing holding me, desperation setting in. I’d escaped him once before, I had to do it again...! Kunikida might have died for me and if I died now, Mrs. Yamazaki didn’t have a prayer. I needed to make sure she was really saved...! I needed to live!

I watched helplessly, my arms losing strength as another tendril of darkness grew out of Akutagawa’s black coat. Crackling with energy, its shape twisted to become flat and angular until I realized I was staring at an enormous scythe.

“Dazai-san guessed correctly. My orders were to capture you alive. However, whether or not you need to be completely whole was not discussed. I don’t think the boss will care if I cut off your legs. If I do that, you’ll never be able to run away from us ever again.”

“No...”

My voice came out as nothing more than a weak gasp. Unable to hear me, he drew the scythe back in preparation.

“Don’t!”

There were several loud bangs and the vise around my neck abruptly loosened. I felt a rush of wind above me as I fell through the air, shuddering as I landed on my injured leg, which buckled sickeningly beneath me, leaving me in a bloody heap on the floor. Rubbing my throat as I coughed, trying to bring fresh air back into my lungs, I looked up to see Kunikida, bloodied but alive and well, firing a small handgun from behind a large metal sculpture at Akutagawa. He had been forced to retract the demon and was instead raising it as a shield to defend himself against the blonde detective’s onslaught. His pale hand was spattered with red as he clutched at his shoulder, blood coursing down the back of his black robe and dripping at his feet.

I could barely believe it; Kunikida had saved me once again.

I watched him dive out of the way as Akutagawa sliced up the sculpture with his black sickle and duck behind another statue, firing constantly out of his small hand gun. Sparks flew as he traded blows with Akutagawa and he shot at Akutagawa until I heard the hollow clicking of his gun; he was out of bullets. Gritting his teeth, he flung it out of the way. There was another flash of green light and within moments, he was firing at Akutagawa again.

As they fought, I scanned my surroundings again, trying not to think about the amount of blood I was losing, wondering if any backup was coming. Kunikida was holding his own but with no one on the way, he couldn’t last long. I tried to pull myself to my feet and almost immediately slipped back down.

There on the floor, amidst the splatters of blood, was a soft layer of long black hair. It was all over the faux-marble tiles and as I brought my hand to my head, I realized that it was my hair—Akutagawa must’ve clipped most of it from my head when he tried to cut me in half. Looking back up to the main doors, I tried to stand on my injured leg and immediately regretted it.

“Shit.”

My leg was in bad shape; I could barely feel it and everything from the knee down was soaked in blood. Even worse than that, my breaths felt shallow and my head was spinning from anemia; I had to be close to going into shock and judging from the small pinpricks of pain, there were probably micro fractures in my bones. In spite of Kunikida’s best efforts to keep me alive, I had no clue how I was going to make it out of the gallery.

And then a flash of a different shade of red caught my eye.

Rolling towards me from the far side of the room, where the battle raged, was a bright red fire extinguisher. Parts of it looked damaged, and as I stared at it, I was struck by a dangerous idea. If I had no chance of survival, I could at least use my last moments well.

I scooped up the fire extinguisher into my arms and headed back into the fray.

“Kunikida-san!”

They turned to me just as I flung the pressurized device at Akutagawa.

“Heads up!”

All eyes in the lobby lifted towards the extinguisher as it flew through the air, seemingly moving in slow motion as it arced towards Akutagawa. Wordlessly, Kunikida raised his gun and fired once.

The atrium shook. Glass shattered and plumes of white powder filled the air, blanketing the statues in the lobby like snow. My ears rang; something was dripping out of them. The force of the blast must have knocked out my eardrums and I could feel myself flying backwards through the air. Without warning, I was propelled through the doors of the gallery entrance and I was awarded one glorious view of the outside, of the building bathed in a twilight glow, the very streets illuminated in flashing red and blue lights. I saw uniformed police officers swarming out of their vehicles, towards me, towards the wrecked building behind me...

And then I hit the sidewalk with a horrible crunch.

The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was a woman in black and white racing towards me where I fell, a golden butterfly glinting brightly in her hair.

[mrvelesbian]

Ineffable

(Maria Hill x Natasha Romanoff x Reader)

Trigger warnings: mentions of suicide (not graphic and they’re also marked in the story), grief(?), people being very sad, death 

Authors Note: This is my first time writing for any marvel character so I apologize if they’re ooc! This fic does deal with some heavy topics but I tried to keep it manageable? Feedback is always appreciated❤

word count: 4.601

in·ef·fa·ble

/inˈefəb(ə)l/

adjective

too great to be expressed or described in words.

You remember the day of the snap. You were rushing around your offices in DC frantically trying to get in touch with other diplomats to do anything- absolutely anything- to curb the chaos erupting across the globe.

"Richards!" You yelled, waving the stout man into your office. Richards was by far your favorite intern in the office, and the most competent. "I need the delegation from France on the phone as soon as humanly possible they're the last European country we need to talk to." Your colleague furiously scribbled on his notepad and nodded.

"What do you want me to relay to-" he began to ask.

"Finish your damn sentence Richards I'm on a tight schedule here" you said, exasperation obvious in your tone. When he didn't reply you peered up to see what had interrupted him.

Whatever you expected to see, nothing would have prepared you for the reality of what you saw. Richards face was beginning to crumble away like dust. The right side of his face was gone and his left eye was moving frantically as he shook his disintegrating hands like he was trying to get a bug off.

"Jesus Christ!" You exclaimed. You rushed over to him from behind your desk only to turn your attention to screams from outside your door. In the second you tore your eyes away from Richards he had completely disintegrated. Only a his notebook and pen remained. You threw the door open with the intention of getting help.

The hallway was in disarray, miscellaneous items strewn across the floor and people crying loudly. Not finding anyone in their right mind to help you, you moved towards the end of the hallway. You pushed your way through the crowd gathered around the small television and to your horror you saw two reporters scrambling to hold up a third who was dissolving just as Richards had minutes ago.

Suddenly you realized what was happening. "Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck" you rushed towards the stairs, pulling out your cellphone at the same time.

The snap.

It was a hypothetical situation brought up to you by Tony Stark in a debriefing with him a few weeks ago. An apocalyptic scenario. The worst possible outcome of whatever showdown was happening between Thanos and the avengers right now.

"Come on come on come on Maria pick up please" you pleaded to nobody. Your girlfriend's phone rang once, twice, three times before it went to voice mail. It's okay. Don't jump to conclusions. You told yourself. Instead of breaking down like you wanted to, you ran down into the main lobby and went out to the front of the building.

"Take me to the avengers headquarters" you barked at the driver in the car parked at the doors. "Ma'am that area is off lim-" he tried to reason with you. You knew you were being a bit of an asshole but you couldn't bring yourself to care. "I don't give a damn sir. You will take me there now or I swear to god-" you didn't get to finish the sentence before an agent came up behind you and put their hand on your shoulder. You shook his hand off and whipped around, a scowl already painted on your face.

"Excuse me miss? I've been sent by Ms.Carter, you're needed at headquarters immediately"

The ride to the avengers headquarters was a blur. The agents had tried to make small talk with you at first but the pitying look in their eyes told you everything you needed to know. She was gone. Maria Hill was dead.

I didn't even get to say goodbye.

°°°

Later that day Natasha and the rest of the avengers along with a few Wakandans stumbled into the conference room occupied by yourself, Sharon Carter, and two other agents you didn't bother to remember the names of. The second she was in the door she rushed over to embrace you. Her hair was caked with blood and she smelled of dirt but you clung onto her all the same. A sob broke from your chest, the first since you had found out the news.

"Oh baby it's okay I'm okay I'm safe we're gonna be okay" Natasha tried to reassure you. You shook your head into her chest, unable to articulate what you wanted to say. She put her hand under your chin and lifted your head so she could meet your eyes. Finally the words fell from your lips. "Maria Hill is dead."

Natasha stopped cold. Any hint of a smile disappeared from her face and her hands dropped to her sides. A chill had set over the entire room.

°°°

Nothing was ever the same. Sure you and Natasha still came home to the same apartment every night, still cooked in the same kitchen, still sat on the same couch, still fell into the same bed, but nothing was the same.

You had forgotten how to cook for two people. An extra serving of dinner always sat in the bottom of pan, mocking you and making you lose all appetite. Maria's keys sat in the same spot that they always had, her favorite jacket hung on the coat rack. Her bright orange toothbrush sat on the counter gathering dust.

You and Natasha clung together at night as if you were trying to keep each other from falling apart. Some nights the two of you just cried until all the water was gone from your bodies. Everything in your life seemed to be cracking at the seams, because how the hell could it not when only half of your heart was home.

Things at the avengers headquarters were hectic as they always had been, except this time the responsibility of keeping the universe afloat fell onto Natasha. Tony had immediately retreated upstate, Steve was across the country raising morale as best as he could, Clint was an international criminal, and Bruce refused to step foot in the facility. Every night Natasha came home with a folder bursting with paperwork to add to her stack on the dining table.

At your job things weren't much better. The secretary of state along with half of your department was gone and with the current state of affairs you needed every person available. The international community was in shambles, England had to elect a new PM, several oil crisises had begun in the middle east and in Asia the lack of labor forces had caused economies to plummet. Begrudgingly, you had accepted more influence in the government and by now you were unofficially running the state department.

Somehow you and Natasha had managed to find the time to establish an orphanage in the city for kids effected by the snap. The organization was a sliver of humanity in the consuming depression the world was in. The kids there made you feel like maybe things would turn out okay somehow.

You had named it the Hill house after her. Natasha had chuckled when you suggested it, obviously understanding the historical irony. "Maria would've been so embarrassed to have something named after her, she was too humble for her own good." She smiled briefly at the thought of the brunettes inevitable bashfulness.

°°°

Years had passed and things hadn't gotten any easier. You and Natasha had made it through, both for each other and for Maria's sake. Every fight between the two of you had ended with tears and apologies and thoughts of how angry Maria would be if you two drove the other away.

You'd officially been named secretary of state despite your numerous protests. The government had attempted to name Nat head of the avengers initiative, but she had immediately refused the title of director. "That's fury's job he'll be so pissed when he comes back and I'm in it" she said. Nobody refuted her assumption that there was even a way to bring Fury, to bring anyone, back.

As the days passed you and Natasha worked, came home, and slept. Things had fallen into a sort of sick routine.

Then Scott Lang showed up outside the avengers complex and everything changed. Suddenly Natasha was talking about time travel and something called the "quantum realm." She had tried to explain, the infinity stones were dust in our time line so they had to go into others to retrieve them. But in all honestly the theories seemed absurd at best to you.

You had gotten into an argument with her about it. How were you supposed to let her leave you as well? When there was a more than real possibility she wouldn't come back.

Vormir. Thats where her mission was. It was supposed to take something like a second in your time until she was back. She promised she'd be back. She'd held your face in her hands and vowed not to leave you all alone in the world.

But promises cant always be kept.

"Where's Nat?" Was the only thing that came out of your mouth when the avengers reappeared. You counted them quickly, hoping you'd just missed her. When she still wasn't there, you looked to Clint. "Where is she?"

Clint stared back at you with sad eyes. He looked like a man who had seen too much, experienced too much to ever live normally again.

"One of us had to die and she-" the rest of Clint's words turned to white noise. Dead. One of them had to die. Natasha had to die.

The world became a blur. Everything was too suffocating and nothing at the same time. You must have been screaming but you couldn't hear a sound. You felt strong arms wrap around you seconds later and hold you tight even as you thrashed about. You felt sorry for whoever was hugging you because you were sure you'd punched them in the chest more than once.

Natasha Romanoff is dead.

°°°

Coping is not the correct word for how you lived. You did not cope. How could you have? First you had lost Maria, nearly five years ago, without a goodbye. Now you'd lost Nat.

They were the things that brought light into your life. Maria's terrible dad jokes and Natasha's loud laugh rung in your ears when you laid in bed at night. If you concentrated hard enough you could nearly remember how it felt to be sandwiched between the two of them. Maria's arm around your waist and Natasha's head in the crook of your neck. Or your legs wrapped around Maria's waist and Natasha's hands running along your back. You could almost smell their perfumes when you walked in the bathroom. But everything was just out of reach. Your memories haunted you more than any ghost could have.

They were dead. Natasha Romanoff was dead. Maria Hill was dead.

You barely ate, you barely slept, your house looked unlived in because you spent as long as possible in the office every day. It was only when your interns shoved you into a company car at 2 am that you finally went home.

The woman who you saw in the mirror looked nothing like yourself. She had your nose and your lips but her eyes were dead and her cheeks were hollow.

Steve tried to come around and get you to talk, as did Tony and Pepper but nobody made any progress. Even Sharon, your best friend, couldn't break through to you. She got further than everyone else by getting you to eat, but getting you to talk was impossible.

°°°

"Get some fucking sleep for the love of god" Sharon sighed as she pushed you into the apartment at 2 am yet again. You mumbled a weak "okay" and closed the door. The picture hanging in the hallway mocked you. It was of you, Maria and Natasha on the couch. You were spread across both of their laps and Natasha's head was laying on Maria's shoulder, all of you asleep. You remembered Natasha punching Tony in the arm when she found out he took it, but she had hung it up all the same.

Without shedding so much as your belt you walked into your room fell onto your king size bed. The room was absolutely silent. You hated it.

"If we're all going to be sleeping in one bed there's no way in hell it's gonna be a queen" Maria insisted, pointing at the mattress next to her. "Natasha spreads out so much she could probably take up a queen by herself." Natasha shoved Maria's shoulder at her comment but the large grin threatened to break onto her face gave her true emotions away.

You curled up in the middle of the mattress, refusing to push into what would be Maria's spot on the right of you, or Nat's on your left. The bed felt suffocatingly large now.

When you awoke from your third nightmare that night nobody was there to hold you to their chest. You bolted from the bed into the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Tears sprung up in your eyes and you collapsed on the floor, utterly defeated.

"Wake up honey come on everything is okay you're safe don't worry" Natasha's smooth voice washed over you as you were pulled out of your sleep. You were drenched in sweat and your heart was beating a mile a minute. "I was in Baghdad again" you mumbled out. Maria hummed understandingly and rubbed your back. "Nobody is going to hurt you again baby not while we're here"

You no longer dreamt of bombings at embassies and guns pointed in your face. Instead you saw Richards drift away before your eyes. Heard Maria's voice calling out to you desperately. Felt Natasha's hand slip from yours as she fell off the cliff.

You couldn't take it anymore. You were exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally. You didn't want to do anything, you didn't want to talk to anyone, you didn't want to be alive anymore.

°°°

TRIGGER WARNING**

The wind whipped through your hair as you stared down the side of the 27 story building. Cars looked like little toys from this height and it was almost humorous to hear the honks and yells from tiny cab drivers. You faced upwards for a moment, letting the morning sun soak into your skin.

"What the hell are you doing up there?" Sharon Carter threw open the door to the roof entrance. How did she get up here? How did she even find you.

"Do not do this. Please don't." She repeated, trying to keep her voice steady.

Something inside you snapped at her words.

"Don't even try to talk me down Sharon. Don't say people need me. I know that people need me Sharon I know that. I know that practically the entire state department is riding on my shoulders. I know that there are 150 million people left in the US who are looking for something, anything to show them that its gonna be okay but Sharon, and I know this is selfish, but what about me! Sharon what about me. I am so tired, so fucking tired of being selfless. Maria is gone. Natasha is gone. And I know there's something worth living for I know that you love me and Tony loves me and Pepper but god fucking damn it Sharon it's not enough." Your voice cracked several times through your tears.

"I hate myself because I don't care that half the world is dead, I care that they're dead. I watched people fall apart right in front of me why the hell didn't I go with them" you let all the rage, the sadness, the despair in your body explode through your chest.

You could see Sharon's eyes threatening to let the tears in them spill over onto her cheeks. It was obvious she felt utterly helpless in this situation.

"What if she comes back and you're not here." Sharon said, just loud enough for you to hear her.

"Don't. Say that" you tried to breathe somewhat regularly.

"There's a chance. Even if it's the smallest one, this would take away your chance of seeing them again."

Images flashed through your mind of Maria and Natasha huddled together in your bed, trying not to say anything about the hole in the middle of them; Maria and Nat placing white and blue flowers on your grave; Maria and Nat rushing into your apartment to greet you only to see Sharon, ready to deliver the worst news they could receive. Even if there was a .0001% chance they would come back you couldn't force them to grieve for you as well.

An even louder sob spilled from your lips. You screamed out into the sky like you were being torn apart, but when Sharon pulled on your waist you let yourself fall back into her arms and cling onto her neck. You could feel her body shaking with sobs as well. She slowly sat down in the middle of the roof, rocking you back and forth.

"Sharon" you mumbled into her jacket.

"Sharon it hurts" you cried. "It hurts so bad" Sharon only nodded and pressed her lips to your head, your hair muffling her sobs.

"I know"

°°°

The final battle was worse than you could have ever imagined. Footage from the city showed the destruction that leveled large portions of the harbor and financial district. Blood was splattered on the concrete, painting it red and bodies littered the streets. Thankfully you had heeded Steve's warning and ordered an emergency evacuation nearly a week ago.

You watched nervously as the battle raged on, seeing some of your closest friends fall to their knees.

Then the first portal opened.

The battlefield was suddenly bathed in yellow light and a figure walked out. Slowly you recognized them: the Wakandan king and his sister. More appeared. Scarlet witch, Quill, Mantis, Steven Strange, Peter, and Valkyrie all appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

The snap was being reversed.

"Giles!" You barked at the intern sitting next to you. "You are to monitor this screen and nothing else until the battle ends. I want updates every 10 minutes and a call if anything significant happens. Now I must go"

You rushed down the stairs and into the parking lot. A quick call was made and within minutes you were in a helicopter headed to New York.

°°°

As soon as you landed on the Avengers' building's helipad you were scrambling to get off and into the head quarters. You sprinted down the stairs to the 17th floor labeled 'special forces and directors office.' It seemed the most likely place that Maria would be. If she was alive.

You pushed open the double doors to the main hallway and there she was, exactly how she'd been 5 years ago. "Maria!" You yelled, flinging yourself on her the second she turned around. You sobbed into her shoulder and gripped her coat like a life line.

"Maria I can't believe you're here. You're really here right? This isn't some sick joke?"

"It's really me" Maria smiled. "You look like shit what happened" she brushed a piece of your hair behind your ear. "Maria I- you left me" you said between tears. "What?" She whispered.

"You've been gone for five years Maria"

°°°

The battle was over. Tony was dead. He died a hero, the man he always had been deep down. Your heart broke for Pepper, who had lost the love of her life, and for Morgan who would grow up without him.

The first thing Maria asked when the avengers began to gather back at shield was where Natasha was. You nearly started crying again. "Oh Maria.... I" you couldn't bare to say it. "I am so sorry I am so so sorry she-"

Steve finished your sentence for you, his voice colder than you’d ever heard it, "Natasha is dead."

°°°

Maria grieved almost exactly as Natasha had. She threw herself into work, focusing most of her time on catching up on the 5 years she missed. She moved back into your apartment, a place you hadn't slept in in almost 2 months. Ever since your incident Sharon had essentially held you hostage in her house, only letting you leave by yourself for work.

The universe really was fucked up. You thought to yourself. The thing you'd been wishing for since the snap had come true. Maria Hill was home, the other half of your heart. Her muscular arms wrapped around you at night and her brunette hair tickled your nose when you hugged her. But Natasha left to make sure Maria could return. Your heart was still broken. Still incomplete.

Now it was Maria that needed to be held together. You knew how to hold her carefully so she wouldn't break because by now you were somewhat of an expert on grieving the deaths of your lovers.

That doesn't mean it didn't hurt like hell to see Natasha's leather jacket sit unused on her hook. To see her red toothbrush on the corner of the counter. To feel her side of the bed cold and empty. But somehow you were going to have to live with that.

°°°

It was a Monday morning when Maria got the call.

"Hill speaking" she said in her stern tone. "Hi Bruce." She spoke curtly, but with a warmer tone at the man's voice.

"Why do I need to get down there on a Monday morning, my day off my I remind you" Maria sounded slightly annoyed at whatever the doctor had suggested.

"I-" she sat up suddenly. "I'll be right there. Yes I'm bringing her. Okay goodbye" Maria hung up and swung her legs out of the bed.

"We need to go to Avengers headquarters now. There's something going on with the mission" Maria said as she tugged on a pair of jeans and a tshirt.

°°°

You sat anxiously next to Maria at the edge of the forest. Steve was due to come back 2 minutes ago but apparently an unannounced change had been made in the plans.

"Someone's coming through Scott throw the breaker quickly!" Bruce shouted.

A loud buzzing filled the clearing before a small figure appeared on the platform before them. But it was not Steve. No this person was much shorter, and her long red hair faded into blonde-

"Natasha?" You said, incredulously. The redhead turned around. She immediately sprinted towards the two of you and pulled you both into a tight embrace. "I thought I'd never see you again" she mumbled into your shoulder. "Either of you."

°°°

All three spots in the king bed were full again. No toothbrushes were left on the counter, no jackets hung limply on hooks. The house had life breathed into it again, but something was off.

Of course it would take time to heal from the trauma you went through. It was not easy by any means. You wanted to be happy and back to normal the second your home was alive again but a terrible voice in the back of your head reminded you that they could leave again. You could end up alone again.

You had nightmares nearly every night. Images of your girlfriends dead or dying plagued your unconscious mind. Maria and Natasha held you close and comforted you after every single one; They let you cry silently into their chests, not saying a word about your dreams, but silently they worried about you.

°°°

"Hey Maria?" Sharon stuck her head in the assistant director's office "can I talk to you?" Maria nodded and gestured towards the chair across from her. It was clear that Sharon was nervous by the way that she picked at the leather chair's arm.

"Listen Maria.... I don't know how to say this but when you and Nat were gone some things happened with y/n" Maria's brow immediately furrowed. You hadn't mentioned anything happening in the few months you were alone. "What kinds of things?" She questioned further.

"I'm not at liberty to say, especially not without y/n's permission....you have to ask her yourself." Sharon let out a deep breath. "But please tread carefully, she might seem okay but you and Natasha know just as well as I do that she's not." Sharon pulled herself up from her chair and patted Maria's hand before leaving the office.

°°°

TRIGGER WARNING**

"Y/n? Are you home yet?" Maria called into the apartment. "Yep I'm in the living room!" You replied.

"Hey babe" you smiled at Maria when she walked in. Natasha smiled from her spot next to you where she was sitting, a book in hand.

"Can I ask you something? About when Nat and I were gone." Maria made her way to the spot on your other side and sat down.

"Oh..." You stiffened. Shit. "Yeah of course" Natasha set her book down and turned to look at you as well.

"Sharon mentioned today that something happened in the few months that you were alone... What was it?" Maria continued.

You drew a shaky breath. It was better to just tell them than to lie. "FRIDAY can you pull up my medical records please?" You asked the robot. "Of course miss" they replied, opening the files on your tablet.

"You remember how I told you tony had installed FRIDAY in here when I was alone to check on me?" Your girlfriends nodded. "There's more to the story than just that" you whispered.

You set the tablet down on the table. "He was worried about me after I....." You gestured at the tablet.

Natasha and Maria both leaned closer to read the information on the device. "Checked into GWU hospital on April 3rd for...suicide watch?" Natasha turned to you, clearly shocked.

You hung your head in shame. "I'm sorry. I am so sorry." A tear fell from your eyes. "After you both left... I didn't cope. I fell into a hole and I didn't want to get out. I was so depressed and alone." You drew in a shaky breath. "I know it's stupid and I'm not proud to admit it but-"

Natasha pulled you into her chest. "I love you so much and I am so sorry you had to go through that. All of that"

Maria stared dumbly at the tablet. Tears were beginning to pool in her blue eyes. You turned to look at her "Maria I-"

She cut you off with a kiss. Her hands came up to stroke your cheek. "You are so strong. So unbelievably strong y/n. There is nothing in the whole fucking universe that could tear us away from you again."

°°°

Slowly things returned to normal. All three of your jackets were strewn across the house, the smell of home cooked dinner hung in the air every night, and you, Natasha and Maria fell into bed together as if no time at all had passed. Laughter rang through the halls and naps on the couch became a common place as they always had been. Some nights were spent cuddled in bed while others were spent with your legs around Maria's waist with Natasha's lips on your sensitive neck.

Life was still hectic and it always would be. Maria was still fury's second in command, Natasha was still an avenger (even if she had been taken off the front lines of duty) and you were secretary of state. But none of that mattered because everyone was home.