* THIRTEEN

‘and where as sharon carter been?’

‘you tell me kevin’

He notes the sigh as his hands tuck into the pockets of his pants. “If…I had to explain the feeling to someone, it’s like you’re swimming in a body of water, and you want to duck your head under for a while and block out all the noise around you.” The feeling of grief, he means. “But you also want to scream when you go under but doing so would let all the air you’re holding in out and let the water in.” 

After a few seconds, he laughs. At himself, at the metaphor, at the situation. “You can see why I wasn’t an English major in college. That’s not exactly a poetic comparison.” 

“Sometimes you gotta cave and eat your feelings, aye?” 

    It’s another moment where she wishes her aunt was still here, someone she could turn to that might understand. Not just the weight of the situation but how deeply bizarre it could be in their line of work. It’s been nothing but loss in the past several years and Sharon is only sure that it’s nothing something that is going to stop any time soon. It’s tempting to disappear again, become someone on the move, someone without any ties. ‘ Sometimes poetry is overrated. ’ 

“I would thinking marginally less. Only because a botched burger rarely means the end of the word where as the ring not getting to Mount Doom would mean the entire world would be shrouded in darkness and evil for all time so.” Pick your battles? “A botched burger certainly doesn’t sit well, that’s for sure.” 

“I hope I can, seems like a tall order. It’s like I’m on Chopped or something—You know you’re still be an okay cook after but that recognition would be awesome.” Again, the stakes are very different. “What kind of judge would you say you are?” 

‘ Nothing really sits well when you have food poisoning. ’ ( zing ! ) ‘ It’s hard to compete when one situation involves essentially the end of the world. ’ But could a bad meal feel like the end of the world. Probably? but Sharon isn’t going to die on that hill. 

“A mutual understanding of survival? Give and take, all that I get. Might have slightly different methods to accomplishing that though.” Teamwork was a great thing but there was a grey area that some worked in that he doesn’t quite understand. “Yeah, that risk I understand too. There’s some people…I wouldn’t trust em as far as I can throw em.” 

He chuckles at that. “I respect how serious you are about it, that’s quite a quest. Like Frodo taking the ring to Mount Doom, your quest is long. Though hopefully not nearly as dangerous.” Well the burger part of her life at least. “I’ll give you a heads up when I’m havin’ a burger night. then.”

   ‘ Yeah, there’s a handful that are going to give you that feeling. ’ She’d like to think she could avoid them completely but sometimes her back as been to the wall. It’s a difference that doesn’t need to be gotten into as deeply as she knows others might prompt her to ( or want to, there had been a few at the training that had wanted those kind of philosophical debates ). 

“That’s the thing, isn’t it? Years and years of shit like this,” Funerals, bereavement, he means. “And we still don’t have all the answers. There’s no one way to move on from something like this. We all have our own ways and…some are harder than others.” 

Old friends come to mind. Ghosts from long before any of this. There was no chance of them coming back…though he had given it some thought what with all this. Still thinking he could pick up the phone and call them, still thinking that after all this time they would knock on the door. It wasn’t easy. 

“Well…burgers seem like as good a place to start as any.”

   She knows it would be easy to just let herself fall into it, let the grief overwhelm her and take her back under. It’s a familiar space, one she could navigate and live with as she has with all the rest. But this time makes her wonder if she can soldier on as she always used to, people came back and many never got the chance to. Her lips thin as she buries a sigh, add on top of it all the five years she’s been ‘dead’ for and she would rather just disappear into some freelance work again.  

     ‘ Sounds like it’s gonna be a hell of a time. ’ An understatement.

@tredecium liked this for a starter

“You lost your job at SHIELD because of Rogers and now you lost it at the CIA because of him again? Honestly Sharon, you need to stop letting men influencing your life in such a way.”