Hello readers present and future!
I know I should be updating my long-term fic. But Endgame is coming, and I really needed to write this.
I hope this makes you cry….I mean, I hope you enjoy this fic. :)
DISCLAIMER: I do not own any Marvel content. I do not make money from this (I wish).
Chess Pieces
"We always knew that this fight would end with Thanos. We always knew that in order to see our friends again, we would have to go through him. But we never expected the battlefield to be the souls of the dead. We should have expected something like this, I suppose. Thanos can literally bend reality. But we never thought he'd stoop so low.
It started like all things tend to start: with an idea. This was years before any of this happened, when Thanos' name was unheard of to us, when we had no inkling of anything called an Infinity Stone. The idea was, in Fury's words, to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them too, to fight the battles that we never could.
That they never could."
Natasha felt a hand on her shoulder, and leaned into it, breathing in the barely-remaining scent that still lingered on Clint's calloused hand, of fresh grass and dirt. Now mixed with the scent of blood, of course. They all had a permanent blood-smelling perfume after Wakanda. And dust. Everybody smelled like dust, and there was dust in every corner of every room, in every gutter of every street. Dust nobody had the heart to clean up, for obvious reasons.
"What if we fail?" she whispered, never looking away from the wall she was staring blankly at, never making eye contact with Clint, because if she did, she knew she would fall apart, unravel. And she needed to be whole right now, for what was coming.
"We won't," Clint said, not a hint of confidence or assuredness in his voice. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to reassure Natasha. Natasha was just glad that he was there, that he wasn't dust on the wind. All she would have asked of him was to know that he was safe, but him actually going with them to confront Thanos meant infinity and beyond.
"How do you know?" Natasha asked, still not looking at Clint.
"It's like Tony said. 'If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it,'" Clint responded, using his hand to turn Natasha's head so she would look at him, "We're the Avengers, and I say we've got a hell of a lot to avenge."
Natasha felt tears brimming at the corners of her eyes, and reached up a hand to brush the away. This was not the time. She hadn't cried when she had realized that they had never had a chance against Thanos, that they were screwed from the beginning. She hadn't cried when she had seen people start to disintegrate. She hadn't cried when she had seen what Thanos did to Vision. But all it took were a few words from Clint, and suddenly she was losing it?
Be strong, Natasha, she told herself, and it almost didn't sound like them speaking anymore. It almost sounded like her own voice this time.
Cap stuck his head in the little sitting area Natasha and Clint were in, stumbling a little as the ship jerked. "You ready?" he asked, adjusting the left sleeve of his uniform. He was back to the stars and stripes again, looking patriotic once more.
"Yeah," Clint said. Natasha could only nod, for fear of the potential quaver in her voice.
The two assassins made their way into the main area, where everyone else was already waiting. Thor fingered his axe almost impatiently, as if he couldn't wait to sink it into Thanos' skull. He probably couldn't. Rhodey paced anxiously, while Tony checked over his suit to make sure ever one of his new tricks were fully operational and ready to go. Rocket sat next to Nebula, neither of them saying anything. They had lost their whole team, from what Natasha knew.
"Does anyone need to use the bathroom?" Steve asked as he took his place in front of the team, "Because this may be your last chance for hell knows how long." Natasha resisted the urge to laugh out loud; it would be thoroughly inappropriate. Steve had a rare sense of humor that only appeared once every blue moon. He had been using it to lighten to mood a lot recently, as Thor was too depressed to do so, Tony was too depressed to do so, and pretty much everyone was too depressed to do so. Except Carol, apparently. Natasha was starting to warm up to the woman, and had to admit that it would have been fun working with her under any other circumstances.
Everyone mutely shook their heads, and Steve nodded, before turning to face the doors. "What's our ETA, Danvers?" he called out behind him.
"We'll be landing in under a minute, Cap," came Carol's reply from the cockpit. Natasha felt a chill of fear run through her veins. Under a minute. In under a minute, they might be face-to-face with the one that had caused all this heartache, the one that had murdered trillions easily. In under a minute, one of them very well may be dead.
It was the longest couple of seconds of Natasha's life.
"We thought we were unsinkable. We thought that nobody - nobody - would ever lay waste to the Avengers.
We were wrong. Pride is a dangerous poison. It gets in your system and you believe you can do anything. And then you fall, and you fall harder than you would have without the pride. In that way, ego is kind of like a drug. An addiction.
We weren't going to make that mistake again, we told ourselves. Except, we kind of did. By believing that the spirit of vengeance would be enough."
The doors of the quinjet seemed to take a millenia to open. Natasha braced herself, readying for the blast from the power stone, the mind-bending waves from the mind stone, the spiritual destruction from the soul stone. To be buried under five-hundred pounds of rock, breaking three ribs and keeping her from doing anything to stop Thanos from doing what he had done to Vision; what he had done to the universe.
Clint placed a hand on her shoulder, almost protectively, while clutching his bow with the other. Natasha raised her shoulder into his grip once, their signal for 'I'm okay', while reaching for her dagger-ended staff - an innovation of hers that had proven to be quite useful. His eye. That's where you aim it. It doesn't have a thick layer of skin to protect it, and the spear will go right through to the Titan's brain.
Natasha could now see rolling green fields through the gap in the doors. Thanos didn't deserve to live in such a beautiful place. He didn't deserve to live, period.
Carol came out to stand with them, holding up one of her fists like she was going to punch Thanos to death. Natasha had seen her in action though, and knew it was a mistake to underestimate Carol Danvers. Beside her, Thor readied his axe, his friend Valkyrie readied her swords and moved into a fighting stance. Tony raised one of his blasters, Pepper moving next to him, in a suit of her own. Scott was muttering under his breath about how he was "not trained for this, I'm just a Baskin-Robbins guy, I should be serving ice cream and boosting morale."
"I'll just stay back here and...watch the plane," came Happy's voice from the cockpit, and nobody could suppress a smile. He had offered to co-pilot the plane, obviously starstruck by Carol, even asking her for an autograph. Apparently, he had seen her in action on a train in 1995.
When the plane doors were finally open, everyone was a little shocked at what they saw. Instead of Thanos waiting for them with a malicious sneer on his face, they saw rolling grass hills, and a small hut in the distance.
Thor was the first to step out, moving confidently out of the plane, with no regard that it could be a trap. When Thor appeared to be unharmed, Cap took a cautious step from the quinjet, the rest of the team following suit.
Natasha was surprised when she took her first step onto the planet. The dirt was surprisingly spongy, and when she tested it out, it felt a lot like walking on a marshmallow. She had to admit that she kind of liked it. She might even be enjoying herself under much different circumstances.
Suddenly, they all spotted a figure making its way up the hill towards them, and everyone went on edge again. Tony moved in front of Pepper, as if to shield her, or maybe even attempt to hide her from Thanos' view. Nebula drew out two of her daggers, and Rocket readied his outrageously large gun. Natasha herself held up her spear, placing her feet in a position that would allow her to move quickly if needed.
"You could not live with your own failure," came a voice, a voice that had haunted every single one of their nightmares, as his head, and then his torso came into view, "and where did that lead you? Back to me."
Thor moved forward, readying his axe. "This time I will go for the head, you -" he began, but suddenly he stopped, frozen. Thanos laughed.
"Alright then, Avengers," he said, with a malice-filled grin on his face, "then you will fight on my battlefield. If you can defeat my army, I will give up the stones to you." Then, there was a flash of blinding red, a color that had haunted two of their number's dreams for nights on end - for different reasons, of course.
"What Thanos was offering us...it was too good to be true. We all knew that, of course. And we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop. And drop it did.
It was Steve who fell first."
They were now in a flat field, with dark green grass, surrounded by imposing mountains on all horizons. There was a ring or surprise, before everyone once again resumed their for the army Thanos spoke of.
Natasha surveyed her team, looking for a shaking hand, a hesitancy that could be fatal. Seeing nothing that could be considered a weakness by an enemy, she took to surveying their surroundings. They were in a valley, it seemed, surrounded by mountains on all sides. Like an animal in a cage. The grass under their feet was crunchy, as if it was dead, and the soil had none of the springiness Natasha had first encountered.
Pepper was the first to spot somebody, moving towards them in random bursts of speed and slowness. Odd, that it was only one person, Natasha had thought. Judging by the way the person was moving, Natasha could infer that it was a he, he had shoulder-length hair, and seemed to be injured on his left side. His left, their right. As the man got a little closer, they could see that he was missing an arm.
It was Steve who figured it out first. And then, he was sprinting towards the man at lightning speed, shouting "Bucky!" and wearing that look on his face. The look he only wore around Barnes, the look that had persuaded Natasha to switch sides during their little "Civil War". But something about this didn't feel right. Thanos had promised them an army, and instead given them one of the fallen back again?
Steve was almost to Bucky when everyone heard the gunshot ringing through the area, bouncing off the mountains. Everyone saw Steve collapse.
Natasha ran without thinking, the only coherent thought in her mind being Get to Rogers. She yanked out one of her stiletto knives and threw it at Barnes, who dodged easily, and re-loaded his gun. He was aiming for her this time. Aiming to kill.
At this point, Natasha's training took over, and she went on autopilot, changing directions so that she was able to jump on Barnes, wrench the gun from his hands, and give him a good series of punches that would make any other man pass out. But Barnes simply let her have a few hits before roughly grabbing her arm and throwing her to the ground. She landed her, and heard a crack as she lost feeling in her left thumb. She pushed herself to her feet, when something hot and fiery blasted into her back and she was knocked to the ground again.
She tasted blood, and realised that she had bitten down on her tongue. She lifted her head and spat on the ground, cringing when some dribbled down her shirt. Her fault for wearing low necklines, she supposed. She moved to push herself to her feet when she felt the same deadly heat holding her down, keeping her from moving. And suddenly, she was back in Wakanda, buried under a pile of rocks, watching helplessly as Thanos ripped a hole in Vision's head. And then, she was angry. She felt the rage boiling up in her. She would never be that useless again.
And so, Natasha forced herself to her feet, screaming because the red energy surrounding her burned, oh it burned, but she continued anyways. Because that's what the Red Room had taught her. Always keep going, Natalia. Even if you're bleeding out. Never give your enemies the satisfaction of you dying on the ground, because that means you gave up. And we never surrender, do we Natalia?
No. We don't.
And so Natasha Romanoff pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the fire leaving scars across every bit of exposed flesh. And she turns around, facing a snarling Wanda with a snarl of her own. A snarl that would make any wise man turn and run screaming, if he had any idea of what Natasha was capable of when she was angry. And she was pissed as fuck with Thanos right now. He dared to violate the souls of the dead in this sick, twisted way? He was going down, slowly and painfully. With a spoon, if Natasha could get her hands on one. And even if she would have to come back from the dead a million times to do so, then that's what she would do. Because she was an Avenger.
"Вы сделали серьезную ошибку," she whispered, hand tightening around her knife. Behind her, she heard Steve's heavy breathing as he pushed himself to his feet, because if she knew him, she knew that he would never stop fighting until the moment life left his body. She heard the noise of Pepper, Stark, and Rhodey taking to the air. She heard the swoosh of Thor's axe, flying through the air. And she smiled, a creepy, murderous smile. Because Thanos had thought he could use their loved ones against them in that way. He was going down.
"And so we fought. We lost some. But in the end?
In the end, ни один великий враг не может противостоять тем, кого, как он думал, он может сломить."
What did you think? Please, please review! If this gets enough good feedback, I may publish another chapter.
Have a nice day/night! :)