There is no sun here.

If there was, that would be enough to keep him alive. Because then, all he would have to do is understand that there could be a way of reaching it. There would be a reason to try and go outside, to attempt escape, to think of some way out so that one day, he might reach the light again.

But there is no sun here. The air is toxic. The ground is poisoned. This is the only rock in this godforsaken system with any semblance of life. The only life found for light years around.

(They didn't try to hurt him right away. They talked.)

He knows without a doubt that Gamora is dead.

He runs a thousand different scenarios in his mind that all end the same. Gamora captured and shot dead. Gamora captured and tortured and then shot dead. Gamora's skull shattered from the height of the window. Gamora caught in the middle of a dust storm, choking on the poison fumes. Gamora running in pitch black dark, with nowhere to run to. Nowhere to go for miles. No food, no water, no shelter, no help. No sun.

Gamora lying dead and dry in the middle of star-lit desert.

("Tell us how to reach Asgard's treasures and we will give you Asgard." "Tell us and we will let you kill the Allfather yourself." "Tell us and we won't hurt you." "Tell us and we will let you live.")

(At first, he laughed.)

(They quickly taught him to stay quiet.)

They throw him in a dark room with no windows the day after Gamora leaves.

"Everything" was a heavy demand but the witch could pick out half of it in seconds alone.

He could see it the way her eyes shifted in response to what he thought, matching up almost exactly in reaction and response. It was eerie, this silent, second conversation they were having. One-sided— the witch understanding all of him and him understanding close to nothing, always large steps behind. It was familiar in a way that ached, memories of how another pair of eyes would hold the same perception Lady Maximoff conveyed in every glance.

Telepathy, Natasha had said. Witchcraft, others back home called it.

Thor knows having both is something to be wary of, but looking at Wanda Maximoff now, he can only see a young woman weighed down with a familiar grief. It simply hits too close to home to feel anything other than sorry.

Her eyes are slightly glazed over as he speaks, only showing sparks of alertness whenever something he says or thinks something that catches her attention. He quickly learns to avoid thinking about Pietro Maximoff as much as possible. It is not as simple as he hopes, trying not to think about something only to think of it more. Wanda flinches away from him every time and Thor is left with the constant, familiar guilt.

"What is that, first of all?" Wanda gestures to the folder Agent Romanoff prepared for him this morning, likely attempting to distract the both of them from his painful, confusing thoughts. The folder is rough in his hands, holding the only proof that his brother could be alive out there, somewhere.

Wanda perks up as she catches his train of thought, and Thor feels wholly uneased.

"This is your proof?"

Thor blinks hard, then clears his throat. "Yes- yes, it is. This is all that I have."

Thor hands the folder across the table to Wanda's open hands. The dark paint over her nails is chipped and faded.

She smoothly opens the folder and merely skims over the very top page, his detailed report of the events, her breathing quick and shallow. She moves on to the second page, this one a scan, and nearly drops the folder.

Her wide eyes shoot up to meet Thor's.

"I found the bloodied garment on my doorstep-"

"-three days ago," Wanda finishes for him, her voice breathless. Thor nods, then rolls his shoulders, tense. She turns back to the picture, mouth slightly gaping, tracing the picture of the bloodied sleeve with a chewed fingernail.

Wanda's nerves light along the back of her neck. It is obviously a piece of clothing, some form of tunic looking out of place with any type of fashion she's seen on Earth. At first glance, it looks black in color but the closer and longer that she looks, she can distinguish the dark splotches on the garment from the cloth's original green.

The dark stains are blood. A lot of it.

"I received that on my doorstep," he tells her, his voice shaking slightly, "and I did not understand it- at first," he tells her, close to rambling. "I recognized it as Loki's the minute I held it in my hand but I do not know who sent it or why they sent it and I can only wonder if there is a chance... if there is any hope that..."

He cannot finish and Wanda looks through the rest of the scans to allow him a brief respite in her questioning. He does not have to finish. She swallows down the bitter taste in her mouth.

There must be dozens of scans over the same piece of cloth, taken in every possible angle and position.

Her fingers trace the last picture. The entire garment looks like the fragment of a shirt, with one sleeve badly torn. The cloth has an overused air about it, giving off the impression that its wearer had put it on one day and did not to take it off for another year. There is a remarkable amount of dried blood around the midsection area and a dull sense of dread washes over her when she considers the sheer amount of blood. A significant amount of blood.

How much does it take to kill a god?

"Thor..."

"There is something else," he says quickly, afraid of Wanda continuing. He reaches into a leather satchel that she hadn't noticed before, and pulls out another folder. "Jane told me to put it in here- something about evidence contamination-" he babbles as he hands over the folder.

Wanda hesitantly opens it and reaches inside to find an air locked plastic bag, sealed tight against any possible contamination. It's a piece of yellowed paper. She thinks it's nothing but the page of a very old book until she sees the writing on the side.

She reads it. She pauses, looks up at Thor, her face searching his. There's despair but also hope. There's fear but also will. Rage but also fierce longing. It's the look of a man with something to fight for.

She wants nothing to do with it.

"I found it on my doorstep in London. I had only arrived there scarcely a week ago but somehow it was there. Whoever left it there must have known somehow that I would not be there at that precise moment. I was not at home but Jane-" His eyes turn dark. "Whoever left this should only be thankful that they did not touch her."

A simple phrase is written on the torn page.

HE WILL SUFFER.

She reads it in her head, over and over, until the words lose all meaning.

"I will give you some time, Lady Maximoff," Thor says quietly, after a while.

He seems to understand somehow how she's tuning out, overloaded with information and too many thoughts in her mind to sort out. She wonders how her face must look.

("Give her space when she needs it, Thor.")

She answers back something she does not catch but it must be sufficient because he nods and heads out towards the exit, pulling out a cell phone from his satchel that looks too small in his hand. Probably to call Natasha, ask her how he should handle her now.

She can't say she blames him. She doesn't even know how to handle herself.

Outside, thunder booms.

Wanda allows her gaze to wander.

Somehow, the light has shifted enough to let her know its well into the late morning hours by now. The TV behind where Thor was sitting has been playing the morning news for hours. She only now begins to notice it.

She people-watches for a while. Outside the cafe, a wailing child is yanked back by the sleeve of her jacket when she drifts too close to the warning yellow line. Her red faced father turns from his phone call, yells something to the child. Wanda cannot hear from where she's sitting, but the child cries harder. A man runs to make his stop and misses it anyway. Across the cafe, a long-haired woman leans against the wall, face halfway obscured from her open map.

More and more people come into the cafe, then out into the trains waiting outside. The noise is numbing on her thoughts, the everyday buzz and worry from people's everyday, normal lives more comforting than warm milk. It makes the folder in front of her almost feel separated from her- but not completely. Like a severed limb.

The pictures are blurry but still flashing behind her eyelids like some demented picture show she cannot turn off. And her mind is simultaneously strained in the fuzzy hold of a thousand New Yorkers' fluttering thoughts and emotions that pass over her head like a heady wind, only to drift away again.

She's caught in the tide, right where she likes to be these days.

She clutches her cup tighter and watches her fingers go white with the compression. She takes another sip of cold tea, rearranges the closed folder in front of her for what must be the 100th time this hour. The barista behind the register shoots her a look. It's probably nothing to do with her face, probably nothing to do with the same repeated images taking up the flat screen, probably nothing to do with recognition at all and probably something to do with the fact that she's taking up an entire table in what's beginning to be her five hour stay.

Where is Thor?

Her eyes find the flat screen mounted across the room. The same images over and over and over.

Drones attacking people. Humans draped over metal. Suits of armor crashing into buildings.

(Bullets raining from the sky.)

Sokovia on fire.

Five months of interviews and reviews and debates and investigations and questions and the reporters still keep finding new ways of saying the same exact thing.

We are not safe.

Wanda watches a man watching her on the news footage before his name rings out. He grabs his latte and heads out the entrance.

Wanda takes another sip of cold tea and twists her ring around her finger twelve times.

The Scarlet Witch takes out a drone alongside Captain America. The Hulk smashes into a crumbling tower and the blonde reporter spits out for the thirteenth time today, Can we really trust these people?

Wanda shifts the folder one more time. Everything is connected yet nothing makes sense, Thor has a brother, and when she looks for the crying child again, they are already gone. The hazy footage of the Scarlet Witch takes aim from behind the archer, and misses.

She goes after Thor when it is clear he is not returning to the cafe.

Outside the rain has only increased in density, leaving the meteorologists and weather channels to puzzle over the reason why Manhattan is pouring in the middle of August.

The rain soaks straight through her clothes into her skin in seconds. She could shield herself but chooses not to. The cold feels good on her pounding headache.

It is easy to follow the trail of faded grief from where Thor has been walking for hours. It is distinct from the others, his aura faint but warmer and gold and more familiar to her than the other threads. When she finally spots him, her hair is dripping and her mascara is running.

Thor looks no better. When he finally looks at her, he looks like a man with every reason in the world to be walking for hours in the rain.

His blonde hair almost looks black when it's wet.

She hands him back the manila folders from underneath her jacket, completely soggy, and says the last thing he is expecting to hear.

"I'll help you."

Thor can only gape at her, lost for words.

In the end, her answer was quite simple. It's what Pietro would expect her to do.

The room has four walls. He knows because he paced around and around and around it. It reminded him of that simple, essential fact to his sanity- the dark does not go on forever.

He started counting days by the number of paces- half a day was 2,500 laps around the room. A full day was 5,000. Day was the first half, the afternoon the second. He slept during what he decided was nighttime, the time he was too exhausted to walk around the room one more time.

He paced and paced and paced until the tips of his fingers were calloused and rough and every grove and rivet in his path against the wall was memorized.

He quickly stopped, by what his count was the fourth night, when he ran out of water.

Then, he took to counting out loud in the dark.

He figured that counting out loud took less time than pacing a full rotation around the room, so the entire sum of a full day must be larger than 2,500. 10,000 became a day, 15,000 an afternoon. His night beginning when he lost count.

He counted out loud in the dark, until his entire existence could be reduced to the sum of numbers.

(There is no sun. There is no way out there is no way out there is no way out there is no way no scenario no version of this where you come out on top)

There came a moment when he realized he wasn't counting anymore.

One of his thoughts must have gotten tangled into another, and another. Until whole days just passed without his permission. Until he could not find it in himself to care anymore about days and nights.

His thoughts lead to thoughts lead to more thoughts lead to Gamora.

Gamora broken. Gamora running and lost. Gamora abandoning them to save herself and dying anyway.

(So what is the point of this then? Why do you continue to keep looking for light in a place there is none?)

Gamora is dead and no one is coming. But he can't stop thinking because if he stops thinking that means he is dead.

(Why are you still here? Why are you still present? Why do you still live?)

If he stops thinking he'll forget his name. If he stops thinking, he loses the game. If he stops thinking, all that will be left is the black.

(Why?)

Thor is not coming.

(Why?)

It's been years since, but the same childlike fear of dark has returned and this time, there is no big brother's bed to run to.

(Why?)

He cannot see his hands in front of his face. He rubs his eyes until he can see myriads of galaxies but within seconds, they vanish into the blackness.

(Why?)

He cannot shake the feeling. Something hides in the dark.

(Why?)

There is something in the dark.

(You know why, Liesmith.)

Something is watching him in the dark.

(You lack conviction.)

A/N: Is anyone liking this? Please let me know!

I would love to hear what you think.