sfdg is a fic i started last july and wholly intended it to be a smutty one shot but it turned into… i don’t even know man lmao. its a bob reynolds/mel gold pairing, all from mel’s perspective, and takes place immediately after the events of the thunderbolts movie. since it was an idea that came to me last summer, and most of it was written on a bus trip between my home town and los angeles for a concert. There’s no solid outline for it, but i know it was going to revolve around the secret relationship trope and bob’s very shaky mental stability.
Mel thought the world was ending, and she was the cause. Not a space portal opened by invading aliens, not a rogue A.I., and not some all-powerful being with the ability to snap away half the universe. Just her with a fail-safe kill switch she used with only half a second's hesitation.
The guilt that came with that knowledge was so much worse than the guilt she thought she would have to live with knowing she had killed a man.
The anomaly lasted less than an hour, as stated by those lucky few who were able to escape the shadow's tongue, and those who were beyond it's starving grasp. The only structural damage was to the Watchtower and a couple surrounding buildings. But the psychological damage? Manhattan was still suffering, and likely would be for years to come.
According to The New Avengers, everyone who had been swallowed whole was spit back out, without so much as a scratch to show for it, but that didn't mean people hadn't gone missing. The media was quick to point out that fact, along with calling the entire event staged, since Valentina had called for a press conference very conveniently at the same time as the catastrophe.
The death toll was on a steadily incline, even days after the Void anomaly, slowly accounting for those missing people. Manhattanites were not okay, and there were nowhere near enough mental health professionals to help them all. Support groups were popping up every other block, the workforce was crippled, and nobody on the island could get more than a few hours of sleep without waking in a cold sweat.
It was all because of her.
At least nobody knew that, except for her boss, and, luckily, it was apparently in Valentina's favor to keep that secret.
Nobody knew that Robert Reynolds was the horror who swallowed Manhattan whole. There were theories, sure. A number of forums on the internet picked apart every detail of that press release and the random man standing behind the podium clapping for the New Avengers. The public had never seen what was supposed to become of Sentry Project; they never got to see Robert in all his golden glory, with his stoic cape and his bleached locks. They had only seen the Void as it erupted from him, and the man in plain clothes and shaggy hair clapping in the aftermath.