Lament of the Sea King [OPEN]

The world had gone to shit. It was the only way she could describe it. Lately Kate didn't look much like Kate, tired and beat up and today was no except to the new rule. She hated it passionately. All she really wanted was a spa day but with the city trapped and everyone freaking out that wasn't going to happen. There were reminders everywhere of the world that she had lost...no one here knew her, Clint didn't know her. He was from another world, he didn't want anything to do with her, he wasn't the Clint that she knew at all...and hers was still missing. The last piece of information she had was that he was going to die, that they were after him and Kate had come rushing back from LA the minute she found out. She'd frantically tried calling him, calling other Avengers...but the city she came back into was wrong. Everything here was wrong and Kate didn't know what to do about it.

The airport was full of refugees or rather trapees that couldn't escape back home, stuck in their holiday destination living out of suitcases in tents on what used to be the busiest airport in the world. This is the largest natural harbour in the world. The busiest...and now it was dead. There were dolphins swimming around, there were was silence. It was dead. There were no boats coming in, no goods, no fishing, no tourism, nothing. This place had no purpose anymore and it echoed the feeling in the city on a grand scale. It frightened her to see it so quiet.

Swallowing the lump in her throat she sighed heavily and boosted herself up, hands on the cold concrete as she pulled herself over the Harbour wall and sat down on top of it. It was a nice place to sit, you had the most incredible view and importantly some peace to gather her thoughts. She didn't understand the hole that was sitting in her chest. She was so sure she could deal with all of this and she could have, if she had her friends....but there was no one left. Her Avengers weren't here, her Young Avengers weren't here...no one knew her. Sure Captain America was from her universe but he was busy, always busy, he didn't have time to talk, she understood that. So Kate sucked it up. Got on with it. After all she was an Avenger not a child and she had a job to do, she didn't have time to sit and cry over spilled milk.

Except no matter how much you ran away from things they caught up with you, the pressures didn't go away, and despite the fact she was starting to lose faith in the ability of the other Avengers to deal with this Kate had to convince herself that she could do this on her own. That she was going to be able to cope. Maybe. It was hard to keep that idealism alive when everything that you ever knew was gone. That thought alone made her feel guilty for being melodramatic.

This time around they were all victims, it wasn't the Avengers above the city, they were victims just like the rest of the population except they were starting top irk Kate because they were acting like it. She was upset but she wasn't sat in a tower moping, she was running herself into the ground with dedication on the streets trying to save people, averting a humanitarian disaster and keep law and order...it was a lonely job. Finally she got annoyed with herself, balled her hand into a fist and punched the concrete, there was nothing broken but the skin, a trickle of blood across her hand from the burst knuckle and she felt a little better. The pain was a distraction.

“Man up Kate. This is pathetic.” She told herself, voice laced with anger. "You're an Avenger not a child." Children got upset about things like this, adults just dealt with it. Shut up and get on with it.

It felt like mourning, and that seemed extreme but it wasn't how it felt. The last thing she knew Clint had been shot through the head, not she couldn't get to him, not she couldn't check if he was okay. He was her brother and they had been through fire together, shared scars, ran out of miles then built their own road and Kate knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was possibly the best person she'd ever met in her life...now he was gone. Except that was always the deal wasn't it? She remembered how her family had drifted and fallen apart after her mother died, how Kate had thought her sister just needed a little space...then all they had was space. How her father had changed, while he was cold and emotionless she never thought him a bad person until it turned out he'd tried to kill her. Her life was falling apart in her and her friends were gone, her entire support network gone. What was she meant to do? It was moments in the quiet like this she missed him the most, she could almost hear Clint asking if she was happy, because he understood that there was a very large difference between being okay and being happy.

Her entire body tensed up at the voice, the movement beside her, Kate went straight into fight mode, her arm moving towards her arrows out of habit before she realised who it was and she visibly relaxed. Namor was the one person she never expected to bump into around here, in fact she didn't know him that well, she'd been in a room with him once or twice but Kate never expected him to have ever remembered her and to know her name...let alone the chance of a version of him that even shared a world with her to show up here. For a moment she looked at him, like she was trying to work out if he was actually there. Then she came to conclusion that she hadn't lost her mind that fast.

“Of, of course, please, yeah it's....nice to meet someone that seems to have some clue who I am.” She answered seeming a little baffled at why exactly the king of another kingdom was talking to her but...if he was from the same world as her - as he appeared to be - it wasn't a stretch to assume that he too had realised that everyone around them was from another world. The fish however. Well that was...interesting. "For me?" She asked pointing to herself, she knew better than to refuse what seemed to be a gift from anyone and she wasn't so sure what it was for...what was she meant to do with it? "Thank you..." And she was completely genuine about it, it might have seemed odd to her...and it might have been weird but it was the nicest thing someone had done for her in weeks.

And yes he was right, she was troubled....in trouble and worried and tired and exhausted and grieving...but those things aside everything about this troubled her. She sighed softly, the salt water from the river estuary stung her hands, bit at broken skin, it felt almost like burning, that moment you were doing the dishes and you stuck your hand into too hot water. "Doesn't this situation trouble you?" Shouldn't it be troubling everyone? "We should be dead. Instead this city is alive, being kept alive, and for what purpose..." Thanos wasn't the kinda person that kept things alive, he was a force of destruction. This was beyond unusual. "And what about our friends...everyone else here seems to be from another world...except Cap...he's from ours...but everyone else..." Her mind strayed again, to her team, her friends...the Avengers were her family and now they were gone.

His words reminded her of a song, one that told her you had to swim, swim for your life, swim for your family, your friends, for the music that will save you when you weren't so sure you would survive. That if it hurt you had to keep going because the world was watching us and you hadn't come this far to fall off the earth. Even though it felt like the nights in this city never ended the sun would come up again, maybe the sun would rise on a day where she got to see her friends again...maybe it wouldn't. It was the maybe that got her. The uncertainty. Kate found so hard to cope with, she had always had plans, direction, meaning and now it felt like all of it had been pulled away from her.

He was right, "You're right." Kate conceded, "Though I suppose that's why you're like king right? Isn't being a ruler mean you have to kinda...be right at least most of the time." She said most of the time because regardless of how hard you tried, human or not, you were gonna fuck up and make some bad choices. You just had to make sure that the times you were right outnumbered the ones where you were wrong.

Then of course...there were questions about the Young Avengers left now, Kate felt her heart sink. They were no where to be found, she was the only one left...she'd walked through their hide out in one of her fathers warehouses on the south side of the river and she had cried. Someone had left an opened bottle of soda in the fridge. There was still half open bags of snacks around the couch, the games console was blinking away at her like a Morse coded message from another world where they were okay. "No one else has come through yet..." it was far more lonely than she ever though it was going to be.

His complement however felt out of the blue, the truth was being a Young Avenger kinda felt like a joke sometimes, they weren't taken seriously despite the work they had done. Hell they had done things even the Avengers had failed at and yet, sometimes it was hard not to feel like a second class hero. There was surprise written across her face, a little awe at the comment, "Wow...that's....pretty high praise coming from you.." Well considering the reputation he had she didn't think he was capable of saying nice things. "The Avengers is just...so busy arguing inside all the time they loose track, I try to keep my team on track...that's how we work so well together.." sure there was the odd spat every now and then but they were teenagers they were allowed them.

She ignored him eating the fish, mostly because she had seen weirder shit while travelling around the world...you wouldn't believe the things they ate in some places. "I'm now six team members done, and I'm trying to do all the work myself we would do but....I'm just this...person without powers, with a stick that fires other sticks, a weapon from the palaeolithic era. What more can I do?"