Work Text:
Marcie had always hated flying, but when faced with the two-day drive between Tulsa and Myrtle Beach combined with limited vacation time and a toddler, flying always won.
Daniel said it was only practical (though he hated flying too—poor leg-room, he said, usually with a wink and an obviously feigned stretch of legs shorter than Marcie’s) but Penny was the one who usually convinced Marcie that everything would be okay. She’d been that way since they were kids: rational to a fault, brave in the face of risk, and at least twice as stubborn as her big sister.
At times like this, when the plane started to hit turbulence, Marcie was more grateful than ever that Penny was seated in front of her, ready to turn and hold her hand when she was scared. Daniel was napping against the window and Benny was starting to get fussy in the seat next to her, his chubby fists pounding against the armrest until she caught them in her hand and cooed soothingly, but Penny reached back without even looking. When Marcie caught her hand in a grip that was both too tight and no doubt unpleasantly clammy, Penny turned her head and smiled at her.
“It’s fine, Marcie,” Penny said indulgently and with a squeeze of her fingers. “It’s just a few bumps, yeah? It’ll be over before you know it.”
“In a short drop and a sudden plop, you mean,” Marcie said, but quietly so Benny wouldn’t get scared. He’d switched to giggling now, clearly enjoying the ride and his mother’s attention, and the surge of pride she felt was almost stronger than the rollercoaster in her stomach. Benny was a lot like his aunt sometimes, in only the best of ways. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”
“That was Daniel, actually,” Penny said with a sing-song tone, just before they hit another bump. Marcie squealed in terror; Benny squealed in delight. “I’m just enjoying the perks of a brother-in-law with a million frequent flier miles.”
“I never should’ve agreed to this trip,” Marcie said, but even as she did, the turbulence lessened. She breathed a sigh of relief and kicked herself for being an idiot, especially when the captain came on and said they’d be landing shortly. It was always a little bumpy when the plane started descending, and she’d flown enough to know that. She didn’t know why she worried so much; the turbulence hadn’t even woken Daniel up.
When Penny let her hand go and turned back around, it was with one last squeeze and a smile, and what must’ve been a herculean effort not to make fun of Marcie’s usual skittishness. It was embarrassing all the same, and so when she felt the plane dip again a few minutes later, she determinedly didn’t cry out or reach for Penny at all. Even when it felt worse than before, she kept still, closed her eyes, and tried to wait it out—it was definitely just more turbulence as they prepared to land.
The screams started right before an unfamiliar alarm sounded, and she opened her eyes to look over at Benny, reflexively and with a mother’s concern, only to see him turn gray and disappear. His soft hand which had been clutched in hers disintegrated into nothing, his red overalls and apple cheeks breaking into dust and fragments. She cried out and whipped to her right, to Daniel, but all she saw was an empty seat and a cloud of gray dust.
“Marcie!”
Penny’s voice cut through her panic, and when Marcie faced forward, she was still there. She looked terrified, her face pale and her eyes big and glassy with tears.
Marcie couldn’t breathe.
“What’s happening, Penny?” she asked. There was a ringing in her ears, and her voice didn’t sound right; she was crying too, she realized, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see shapes moving in a blur outside Daniel’s window.
“Close your eyes and tuck your head between your knees,” Penny said, but she didn’t turn back around to do the same, and Marcie only got as far as closing her eyes before there was an enormous crunching sound and then nothing.
***
Marcie walked with a limp after she got out of the hospital.
It was such a stupid detail to focus on, considering everything, but it was something she couldn’t block out no matter how much she tried. The doctor called it nerve damage and a comminuted fracture along her left femur; it was amazing that she hadn’t bled out during the six hours she’d been trapped in the plane’s wreckage, but the way she’d been pinned between her seat cushion and the seat in front of her had managed to keep the bleeding in check, and a series of surgeries after she’d been found had done the rest. It was astonishing that she’d survived when no one else had, though unfortunately that also meant that her days after that were filled with pain killers and questions while people came in and out of her hospital room, trying to see if she remembered anything from just before impact. Had the man in 4C turned to dust, or should they have found his body by now? Had the flight attendant with the pretty smile been near the emergency exit, or had that been the woman with the headcold and the golden scarf? Did the co-pilot say anything after the pilot disappeared, or was it just static, because they couldn’t find him either? They found Penny in the end, though, near as she’d been to Marcie’s seat. And when they tried to call Marcie’s parents or Penny’s boyfriend, all they reached was their voicemail.
When the nurses told Marcie that, they said they were probably just away from their phones and they’d try again later, but even with her mind dazed from the painkiller sluggishly moving through her IV drip, Marcie could see the shared grief in their eyes. It was the one everyone in the world was feeling, and it was there every time she closed her eyes; that, and the one thing she’d heard them whisper in the hallway outside her room, now on an endless loop with the fog in her brain.
Marcella Johnson: the lone survivor of Flight 3014.
There was nothing she could do, not while lying there or after, and it was impossible to understand. So she focused on something that didn’t matter at all.
Once she could walk again, Marcie walked with a limp.
***
There wasn’t much use for paralegals after Marcie got out of the hospital, and since both her boss and his partner had disappeared into dust while they were having a lunch meeting at a trendy new bistro, Marcie didn’t go back to Tulsa. She didn’t see the point, since her parents’ house was here and they had a family plot where she could put Penny to rest, right alongside empty coffins where her parents would’ve been if they’d died in a plane crash instead of what the media (what little of it remained) was calling “the Decimation.” More details came out about that every day, but Marcie could barely stand to be around other people right now, and the first time an anchorwoman started crying on-air, she had to stop watching the news too. So what she heard about things—when she heard things—came in bits and pieces.
A month after the Decimation had happened, she knew it was the fault of an alien named Thanos, and that the Avengers had tried—and failed—to stop it. It was the first time she’d really thought of the Avengers as anything but a media sensation, something that sold action figures and made the news when strange things happened; it wasn’t like they’d ever had any reason to come to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she’d been grateful of that in the past. Whenever she’d thought of the Avengers before, it was in the context of Benny watching a cartoon about them and saying he liked “the green one” the best; now, it was when she remembered that he’d had a coloring book about them too, that every time he’d colored a page every single Avenger had been done in green, and that the book had been recovered in his backpack along with other belongings salvaged from the wreckage. Marcie couldn’t look at it without crying but she couldn’t get rid of it either, so she tucked it away in her parents’ bedroom and tried her best to pretend that Daniel and Benny were just back in their apartment in Tulsa, waiting for her to come home after visiting her folks.
When that didn’t work, she went to work. There was a lot of it to be found, and for a while, it was mundane, menial sorts of work; she didn’t have a CDL or really any training in First AID and so her most important role for a while was as a laborer, helping to either clean up or collect crops before they spoiled. She spent most of July harvesting peaches in Georgia, and most of August doing the physical therapy she’d pretended she didn’t need in July; in September, she joined a volunteer organization for checking up on people with mobility issues, and she tried her best not to flinch when anyone tried to shake her hand. She couldn’t do it, in the end; her strongest memory of Flight 3014, the part that no one had really asked about, was feeling Benny disappear under her hands. The texture had been like tissue paper until it crumbled into dust, and the thought of touching anyone else—of having them turn to dust on her palms the instant she did—was so terrifying that she couldn’t manage even the barest polite gesture.
***
The first person to speak up at their support group was a woman named Evelyn, but after introducing herself, the next thing she said was that she hadn’t lost anyone recently.
“My dad died when I was a kid,” she clarified, and her voice was the sort of cheerful of someone who’d worked in customer service for years. Her entire persona was like that; a head of tight black curls, smooth dark skin, perfect makeup topped with smiling lips painted in bright, cheery red. “9/11. My mom got breast cancer a few years later, and then I just didn’t want any connections, you know? I didn’t see the point.” She stopped, and her smile wavered. “But then I had a girlfriend when I was 22, 23. She died in a car accident.”
Evelyn had been a bartender when her girlfriend died, she said, but the day after it happened, she’d gone straight into training to be an EMT. When the Decimation had happened, that’s where she’d been: watching a man having a stroke disappear before her eyes as a flood of 9-1-1 calls came rolling in.
“Becoming an EMT was the best thing I ever did, and I always wanted to be one,” she said, “and that’s really why I’m here. I know it might seem insensitive right now, but I wanted to tell people about the worst part of losing someone: the guilt you feel when it leads to something good.”
Her story got a few murmurs of agreement and a surge of angry whispers before the group leader quieted them down. Marcie couldn’t speak with the rest, however, because her throat was tight with anger and she couldn’t stop thinking of her little boy’s hand disappearing under her fingers, of reaching for Daniel only to see a cloud of dust, of seeing Penny scared and then seeing her body. She couldn’t imagine how anything good would come of that, and it hurt her heart to even think to try. She’d never met Evelyn before that morning, but in that moment, she hated this perfect stranger, and that hurt too; Marcie wasn’t used to hating people, and it wasn’t fair to blame someone for sharing their story. None of this was fair, for anyone, and in her head, she knew that.
Marcie didn’t go back to the support group, though, and whenever she considered going to a different one, she always found herself too busy.
***
Eighteen months after the Decimation, Marcie considered and rejected the idea of selling her parents’ house. She didn’t know the reason behind either—maybe it was because there were now neighbors on both sides instead of it being a neighborhood of ghosts, or maybe it was because of the memories that she couldn’t classify as good or bad—but in the end she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just because money was a weird thing these days, with the entire fabric of the banking industry and treasury broken down by the fact that people were still scrambling to survive and working where necessary instead of just where paid the most. It wasn’t just because it was a good location for her new job or because it was close to one of the communal markets that had opened up where the nearest McDonald’s used to be. Or, well, maybe it was.
It took a while for Marcie to realize that the familiar woman she saw around the block was Evelyn, the same woman from the support group, with the same bright lipstick and overalls. It took longer still for Marcie to realize that it was weird that she recognized her after seeing her for only one hour over six months ago, and that the weirdness wasn’t something she wanted to deal with in any way. Life was fine, with her work with widows of the Vanished and her too-big house and her quiet cries at night, and she didn’t need anything else. She was fine, and there was nothing strange about starting to avoid the market, then the overgrown park, then even the memorials for the Vanished that had started to pop up around the city, all in the hopes of not seeing someone who wouldn’t even recognize her.
In the end, it didn’t matter much; one day Marcie left work and went to the market for something hot and pre-made for dinner, and she turned a corner and smacked right into Evelyn.
Evelyn didn’t recognize her, clearly—she smiled and said “excuse me” and continued on her way after righting Marcie by the shoulders, and that was that. Marcie, though, stopped avoiding the market at least, and the next time she saw Evelyn, she resisted the urge to turn and run. Instead, she did the opposite; Penny would’ve been proud.
“Hi,” she stammered out, with a short wave that made her feel like a dork. A lot had changed, but not that. “You probably don’t remember me—my name is Marcie.”
When Evelyn smiled at her and gave her name in return, Marcie felt a familiar jolt of electricity right near her heart, and hoped she hid it well behind a smile and an offer to get coffee sometime, maybe.
***
Marcie and Evelyn’s first date was on what would’ve been Benny’s seventh birthday, and it was a mess right from the start. The location was good—a café that was mostly self-serve like most places were these days, but people tried to keep it clean and that was nice—and the atmosphere was good, located as it was on the side of a less busy street. Evelyn was wearing a barely-mended purple sweater and dark jeans that made her look stunning, and her cherry-red lips were just as perfect as the last time she’d seen them, her hair even moreso. The problem was Marcie and her brain, and the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about how Daniel never liked cafés but had gone with her to them anyway because she liked them, and how Benny had loved cinnamon rolls and how he’d be starting second grade soon if he hadn’t been one of the Vanished, and how Penny hated coffee but loved the smell. It was hard to be here and hard to be moving on in any sense of the word, and she knocked over her cup of coffee twice in the first ten minutes.
Evelyn seemed calm and happy, which was somewhat of a foreign thing to someone who even now mostly saw the grieving. When she told Marcie that she was glad she’d come out with her and then gently covered her hand on the table with her own, Marcie stiffened and froze in blind terror.
Evelyn noticed, and her strong, warm hand pulled back immediately.
“I’m sorry, did you mean you just wanted to be friends? I thought, when you asked me out…” she trailed off, and—there was disappointment in her voice, but no censure or judgment, and Marcie could’ve said yes and had a friend for the first time in years. Just that seemed like a miracle, and a lot to ask for.
Instead, she shot her hand out and caught the edge of Evelyn’s sleeve before she could pull out of reach, just enough to be close but not actually touching skin.
“That’s not—that’s not the problem,” Marcie said, and Evelyn waited. It was a kind thing, waiting—Marcie sometimes had trouble collecting her thoughts these days, even on the best of days, but Evelyn seemed willing to wait forever. It was enough. “The thing is—I survived a plane crash that happened because of the Decimation. Flight 3014. I was the only one.”
It was a terrible first date conversation, but in some ways it was easy. The easiest thing Marcie had done in years.
***
Evelyn asked Marcie to move in with her after they’d been dating for a little over a year, and though it no doubt would’ve surprised the people who’d known her before, Marcie jumped at the chance. Wanting to have a milestone that wasn’t just based around “days since the Decimation” was how she rationalized it to herself, because she’d never been the type to take a relationship this fast, but the truth was that Evelyn had no tact and honey-gold eyes and the most beautiful laugh and Marcie ached when she couldn’t see her every day. It didn’t matter that Marcie was still scared in some ways of moving out and moving forward, and it didn’t matter that she still could hardly touch anyone; it was getting better, and that was enough. It was getting better, and she could barely handle the guilt at knowing she might be happy eventually, after everything that had happened.
The first time she and Evelyn made love was in their new place, and Marcie’s hands shook the entire time. Touching Evelyn’s breasts, her throat, the scar on her stomach—courtesy of someone who really didn’t want to get into the ambulance, Evelyn explained with a laugh—was more warmth than Marcie had known in ages, and she felt joy, pure and simple, at the way she could make Evelyn moan from one kiss to the next. Marcie might’ve been out of practice, but she made up for it with enthusiasm and the knowledge that she cherished Evelyn, every part, from the way she was wet around her fingers to the way she snored when she slept, and that was enough.
When Evelyn held her after her nightmares and kissed her tear-damp cheeks and whispered words of love into her hair, though, that was more than enough: it was everything.
***
It took five years for the lights to come back on in Marcie’s parents’ bedroom, but it took five years and one day for Marcie, after seeing people popping up all around her and realizing what that meant, to go back to the house she still couldn’t bare to sell.
Standing outside of a house that had stood silent for five years, it was a shock to realize that she could hear familiar voices. Four voices, and the knowledge made her shake inside with a bewildered sort of hope. Her parents were inside, and her little boy, and Daniel, just like they’d never left; Marcie didn’t know how it had happened, and she didn’t know if she should even take those last few steps. For all she knew, it could reverse any second, turning them back into dust.
While she stood frozen, however, she felt a squeeze on her shoulder, of Evelyn standing at her side. That was the biggest difference between then and now: if her parents, Benny, and Daniel disappeared again, this time Marcie wouldn’t be alone.
When Marcie walked up the sidewalk and through the door, Evelyn was right behind her and holding her hand.