Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own any of the Avengers. Or Peter Pan Peanut Butter.
Hi, kids. We're all here looking to drown our sorrows in heart-rending fanfiction after we all watched Endgame. I know it's true, 'cause that's exactly what I did. Good luck to all of us functioning like normal people for the rest of the week. Here's a poor attempt to simultaneously bandage the wound and also rub agonizing salt in it. Thanks for reading! :)
They didn't teach her basic life skills. They taught her how to destroy life, the one-hundred-and-one ways you can take down a man and end his life with just your bare hands. They taught her to manipulate life, the people around her, just to destroy them in the end. They taught her how to live as an assassin, which was to not live life at all.
All other girls grew up with mothers who passed on family recipes to them. Or at the very least, taught them to cook more than just assembling a peanut butter sandwich. But then, Natasha never had a mother to teach her basic life skills.
She never cared much about food. Food was fuel. It was something consumed time three times a day, time that should've been spent training. It never brought people together in the Russian compound. It was grey and bland, a means to an end.
When Natasha first went to America, she learned peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were common fare for childhood. Everyone had a memory of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a kid. Even Cap did, for Pete's sake. But she never did.
It was weird, the first time she ate it. It was sticky, stuck to her tongue, but tasted okay. A second taste proved it palatable. A third meant her fingers scraped the jar clean.
She understood it, then, as the years passed by with all its fighting. Peanut butter was comforting. It meant safety, normalcy, something that wouldn't change when everything else did. After Sokovia, Nat hid from everyone else with a jar and a spoon just to sit and process. It was part of the healing process. She'd never heal fully. There was too much blood, too much red, for everything to scab over and eventually give way to healed skin. There would always be a puckered scar.
After the Avengers' infighting, she and Steve and Sam bounced from country to country, never staying in any place too long, lest their scent be discovered. She could live with being a fugitive. She liked it when they hid in America the most. She always snuck into grocery stores with her sunglasses and hoodie and ball cap and bought Peter Pan's.
Thanos happened. The Snap happened. The world was brought to balance. And half of the people she knew were dead. Half of her friends. Half of her family.
She used to hide her peanut butter as a guilty pleasure food, but now that meant nothing. She watched the channel while consuming PB sandwiches. She didn't know how to make anything else. She didn't want to eat anything else. When the rest of the world was still flipped on its head, when all she wanted to do was fix everything, save everyone, she still had her bit of normalcy. Steve could tease her about it all he wanted if he wanted to. She wasn't normal; she was brainwashed, double-agent, assassin, splashed red, fugitive—all of the above and more. She knew that. Let her have her normal-people-food, damn it.
She just brought Clint back. Scott was with Bruce (Bruce) figuring out the test runs with the Pym particles. This was the first glint of hope she'd had in five years. She was nervous, yet determination steeled her. She would do anything to fix things.
Still, her normally cool hands shook as she opened the jar of peanut butter. She wanted to eat something, to ease the nausea in her stomach. To give her something to do, to kill time.
"Got any jelly to go with that?" She jerked her head up to see Tony walk in. His face looked battle-weary, though he hadn't fought in five years. He was ready to fight again, though.
"You can look," Natasha said. "I'm more of a plain PB person myself."
"Never would've figured you for a PB person at all, but it's amazing, even after thirteen years, what you can learn about a person," Tony said, circling to the fridge. He opened the door and searched its contents. "Is there enough bread for two?"
"Yeah." Natasha pulled out another plate and threw a slice of plain white sandwich bread on it.
"Thanks." Tony retrieved a jar of strawberry jelly. "I'm not much of a jelly guy, but Morgan likes strawberry on her peanut butter sandwiches. She kinda turned me over to sugary things." He traded cocktails for juice-pops. He did so happily.
Natasha didn't know what to say. Turning the conversation over to kids—kids weren't her forte. Her niece and nephews were gone; Clint was a mess without them and Laura. They were the past they were trying to bring back. Morgan was the future Tony didn't want to lose. She said, "We're not going to lose what we have by getting back what we lost, Tony."
"Yeah, I know," Tony said. He looked up with a half-smile dragging on his face. "It's a lot, isn't it? All of this could work, or we could lose. Again."
All Natasha could see were the benefits of doing this. They could bring back Sam, Bucky, everyone. "Or we could save everyone."
Tony sighed. "You know I have a savior complex. I gotta save everyone. Playing on my finer feelings is a low blow, Romanoff."
"Hey, don't think you're so special. We're all superheroes. We all have savior complexes," Natasha said. "We'll do anything to save everyone."
"Yeah," Tony said, "we will."
There was so much that could go wrong with this mission. A thousand variables. No, more like fourteen million. But there was also a chance. That one in fourteen million chance.
They were all sure putting a lot of faith in a guy they just met briefly five years ago. Natasha hadn't even met the guy. But she believed what he believed. She had the faith that they could do this.
In the end, Tony did, too. It just took him a second longer to resign himself to it. He did have a wife and daughter, after all.
"This could be our last hurrah, you know," Tony said casually, as he spread jelly on a slice of bread. Wordlessly, Natasha spread peanut butter on two slices of bread and put one on his plate. "So does that make this our Last Supper?"
"It's only our last if we die," Natasha said.
Tony looked at her, long and hard. "You know, I never thought that you and I would be working together this far down the line. You were just once this pretty assistant I wanted to hit on."
"Aw, thanks for the gross throwback down Memory Lane," Natasha joked as she took her sandwich and fell back in her director's swivel chair. Natasha never joked. End times and deadlines and last-chances were strange circumstances, however.
"I know, right?" Tony said. He leaned against the counter, sandwich in his hand. He lifted it in a toast. "It's been an honor fighting with you, Natasha Romanoff." Not Black Widow. Just Natasha.
Her mouth lifted a corner. She felt so tired. They still had so much to face—who knew what would happen when (if) they came out the other side. This was their last chance, their only chance. It was their destiny. The moment they'd been preparing for as superheroes. She held up her sandwich in her toast to the original Avenger, to the boss-turned-family, and said, "It's been an honor fighting by your side, Tony Stark."
Black Widow had been held in prison cells awaiting her execution a total of six different times. Every time they asked for her Last Supper request, she always said, "A peanut butter sandwich." But, being in foreign countries, they could never fulfill her request. It didn't matter. She always escaped her death.
Not this last time, though. She got her peanut butter sandwich as her Last Supper. She just didn't fully know it yet.
"Hey," Clint said, hurrying into the kitchen, "I survived the test run. I-I heard Lila. Nat, it works."
Natasha jumped to her feet, touched his shoulder. "Clint."
"We're doing this. Suit up," he said. Then he noticed the sandwich. "You didn't make one for me?"
"Hey, there's plenty of fixin's left," Tony said, waving a hand behind him. "C'mon, keep your energy up. Soup's on."
He failed to notice the pang of pain passing like a shadow over Clint's face.
"Here," Natasha said, "take mine. I'll make another." Her eyes shone as she and Clint looked at each other. Okay, more than a little hope. They were going to do this. They were going to save the world and everyone they loved. It was their destiny.
Natasha licked her fingers of peanut butter one last time as she put the jar away. Time to suit up. She looked up to see Clint and Tony, their faces haunted by their kids and the kids they didn't have, and steeled her determination once more. She'd take the shadows away from their faces, if it was the last thing she'd ever do.
(The Russo Brothers played us so dirty. They took Iron Man AND Black Widow and I am literally so sad.) ;.;