White flashed in front of Bruce's eyes, filling up his vision and eclipsing the stunned faces of his teammates. The clanking of metal echoed in his ears as the pain in his right arm faded, duller and duller until he couldn't feel anything at all.
Then, everything was orange. A soft, deep orange that glowed from an unseen source and filled him up with warmth. His fears, anxieties, pain—all of it was gone. There was nothing but the warmth, the orange, the shallow water beneath his feet, and the figure walking slowly toward him.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to fully adjust, and when he saw her face, he felt a different kind of pain return. It was blunt and debilitating, growing in the center of his chest and winding itself around his lungs.
She stood in front of him as the Natasha he loved best. Not just because the weight of 3.5 billion lives (more, if you counted the whole universe) no longer weighed heavy on her brow, not just because her hair was short and all red and more her than it had been in years. But because she looked like the Natasha he'd fallen in love with eight years ago—in a much simpler time.
Her black silk dress started above her knees and crawled upward until it met the soft white silk covering her chest and shoulders. Bruce vividly remembered sitting next to her that night as the party wound down, close enough for the scent of her sweet perfume to make his head dizzy. He tried only to glance at her when the conversation called for it, but it was hard not to stare at her, each of her movements so intriguingly precise and graceful—from the swigging of beer from her bottle to the smooth way she deflected an invitation to try lifting Mjolnir. (Bruce didn't want to push her on it, but he suspected she could've done it.)
Bruce couldn't imagine a time he'd felt more at ease than during those brief weeks when they'd tiptoed around each other. Not even when he'd found the balance between himself and the Hulk and felt contentment in his body for the first time in years. He wished he could go back to it, but, despite her standing in front of him looking like a ghost from a pre-Ultron past, he knew he couldn't.
Natasha was dead.
"Nat," he croaked. He felt like he couldn't breathe.
"Hey, big guy. You did it." It wasn't a question. He was… somewhere, somewhere between their existence and her afterlife, and she must've known their success was the only way he could've made it there.
"We did."
"No." Natasha stepped forward, the water rippling under her silent steps. "You did it. You snapped your fingers to bring them back." She stopped in front of him. "Guess you're not a monster after all."
She was so close that Bruce could see the faint birthmark above her lips, the cleft in her nose, the slow upturn of the corner of her mouth as she stared at him. He'd always loved her smirks—loved how they showed the tiniest chink in her armor, an insight into what she thinking without giving too much away.
"I couldn't have done it without… without you, Nat." He couldn't bring himself to say exactly what she'd done that made this snap possible.
"No, don't stop there. Keep the praises coming." Her laugh echoed in the bare expanse, and Bruce felt his lips quirk upward despite everything. Death hadn't changed her at all.
Bruce took a small step forward, his chest almost touching hers, her face filling up his vision the way that blinding white light had. He wanted to touch her so badly, his hands twitching in eagerness, but a spiritual realm contained in an infinity stone was beyond the knowledge he'd gained from his PhDs; he wasn't confident that touching her wouldn't break whatever illusion he'd been sucked into. He couldn't lose her again, not this quickly. He clenched his fists.
"I thought about you when I snapped," he told her, watching as her confident smile softened into something akin to affection. "Is that why I'm here? To bring you back?"
Natasha shook her head, eyes suddenly glassy. "It doesn't work like that."
Bruce's face fell.
"Hey, this isn't so bad, as far as death goes. It's better than a being killed by a floating country." Her tone was light, teasing, but it softened into something more emotional. "At least this was on my terms."
The heavy realization settled into his bones. "Nothing we do can bring you back." He knew she would've been calling them at headquarters right now, asking them what she'd missed and how to get back to them, if bringing her back was possible. They would've had more than this brief reunion.
"Nope." Her lips popped on the 'p.' "I'm out of commission. For good."
Natasha reached out and pressed a hand to his cheek, her palm small against his green face.
There had been a time when the anger boiling inside him, constantly threatening to overflow in an explosion of green and roars and ripped fabric, had been calmed by her touch. Before the cure in the form of gamma radiation exposure and further experiments, Natasha Romanoff had been his temporary relief. The best kind of relief.
And he'd rejected it. He'd run—which was the Other Guy's decision but one he didn't entirely disagree with—and by the time he'd come back, the Earth was in such a state of chaos that romantic relationships weren't a possibility. There were infinity stones, a mourning planet, and five years of separation as he worked on himself and she threw herself into leading the Avengers.
A small part of him had wondered if they could try again once the smoke had cleared, once the population was 7 billion strong and they could finally sit back and relax; crazier things had happened, he'd thought, like time travel. He'd factored in the unpredictably of the quantum realm and the protection they needed from their quantum suits and the precise points in time they needed to travel to, but, stupidly, he'd never factored in her dying.
Her hand was surprisingly warm against his skin.
"It's time for you to go back," Natasha told him, and he wondered how she knew. Maybe her presence in the soul stone gave her some sort of cosmic tie to it, gave her insight that Bruce could never possess as a mere wielder of the stones. Or maybe she just knew that he wouldn't want to leave her, not again, and that she'd have to be the one to push him back into reality.
Bruce stood there, not sure what to do. Urged on by her hand on his cheek, he reached out, pressing an over-sized hand to her waist. They stood there, touching each other, staring. He knew she was right; he needed to go back and make sure that everything had gone according to plan, but he didn't want to.
He wished he could stretch the seconds, toy with the quantum realm and make each one of them last for hours.
"Bruce." Natasha's voice was soft. He closed his eyes, wanting to remember it, knowing that no matter how hard he tried, he'd eventually forget it. "Tell Clint that I made the right choice."
The pain in his right arm cut through his concentration, and he felt his body hit the hard floor of the Avengers headquarters.
Nat was gone.
Tony Stark had never fancied himself the self-sacrificial type. He was no Gandalf, no Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he sure as hell was no Jesus Christ. He didn't get to sacrifice himself for those he loved and make the world a better place in the process; he got to try to sacrifice himself, defy the laws of man by surviving, and then figure out how to pick up the trauma-ridden pieces while atoning for the mistakes he made that led to the need for an act of self-sacrifice.
But this—this was really the end of the line for him. He was as sure of it as he'd been sure of Steve Roger's insanity when he'd come to Tony's cabin—his perfect home, one he'd never see again—and told him the key to bringing everyone back was time travel. Time travel. Like Tony was gonna roll out a DeLorean and confetti poppers and congratulate them for finally cracking the code.
Funny enough, they had.
Funny enough, he'd survived a vengeful mentor, an alien invasion, a bomb set to destroy all of Manhattan, a sociopathic robot (that he'd regrettably created), a breakup of Beatles proportions, and an impromptu trip into space. But a couple of gaudy space gems and his own damn Iron Man suit were his undoing.
God, fate was an asshole.
The dark, dusty battlefield faded into a white light as his muscles contorted and lit on fire, and then—he felt perfectly fine. Better than fine. Better than he'd felt in years.
Everything was orange, the kind of burnt orange that lit up the lake outside his and Pepper's house at sunset. Dreamsicle skies, Morgan called it. He was dying under dreamsicle skies, and Morgan wasn't with him.
But someone else was. A figure—average height, female, walking with an unmistakable confidence and swagger that few people possessed—moved toward him.
"Didn't think I'd see you here," Natasha told him in an insultingly surprised tone, though her smile betrayed her.
She looked exactly as she had the last time he'd seen her—quantum suit on, hair twisted into a red and blonde braid, smirk on her face. Tony thought of her assurance that they'd all make it out alive, the overconfidence and pep in her step when she told them "see you in a minute," the last thing she'd said to any of them but Clint.
Until now.
"Romanoff," he said, voice trembling, though he tensed his neck and tried to make it steady. "Wow. Who could've predicted I'd someday get a ghostly visit from my secretary-turned-assassin-turned-hero?"
"Actually, I consider myself an assassin-turned-SHIELD-agent-turned-undercover-secretary-turned-hero."
"Semantics." He cleared his throat loudly, and Natasha just stood there, watching him. There wasn't any point in bullshitting her; she was great at reading people. "So. I'm dying."
Natasha took a deep breath, her smile faltering.
"No, come on now. Don't get all soft on me in my dying moments, Romanoff. I need some normalcy before the lights go out. We said, whatever it takes, remember?" Tony gulped. "Some advice might be useful, though."
Natasha thought about it for a second. "Honestly? Dying was the easiest thing I ever did."
Tony sighed. "I asked for advice, not fortune cookie wisdom."
She shrugged. "That's the best you'll get from me."
"We did it, you know. Snapped our fingers, brought back the dead, got the whole team back together for one last reunion tour." He held eye contact. "Well, almost the whole team."
"Normally, I'd be pissed about you guys fighting without me, but I think I can let it slide just this once."
"Much appreciated. I really don't need my final moments spent with a vengeful spirit." He cleared his throat. "But there's a new Thanos problem. Well, more of an old Thanos problem since a past version of him decided to blow up Avengers Headquarters. No casualties."
"You put on the gauntlet..." Natasha trailed off.
"To get rid of Thanos. Really, it's a long and tiring story. Just know that we won." He paused. "We won."
Tony chuckled, but it felt hollow. They won, but Natasha hadn't, no matter how she managed to spin her self-sacrifice into something positive. They had lost her.
He couldn't look at her anymore, eyes falling down to the thin layer of water beneath their feet. Her suit was distorted in the water's surface, the red and white bleeding into each, into her hair, her facial features a Picasso painting of complete and total calm.
Natasha was dead and floating around in an infinity stone, but despite everything, she was at peace.
Maybe death wasn't as bad as Tony had always thought it was. Maybe there'd be some sort of relief in putting an end to his fight for survival and letting himself drift off. Tony Stark never passed up an opportunity to try something new; why should a nice, long rest be any different?
Tony met her eyes again. His hands shook. "They're gonna be so lost without us."
"For a little while, yeah," Natasha agreed. "But they'll get their shit together eventually."
There wasn't anything else for him to say, but a deluge of snarky comments and unimportant conversational topics swept over his tongue and tried to pry their way out of his mouth anyway, wanting to bide time. He swallowed them back and looked down at his hands, the armor normal, no infinity stones in sight.
Tony knew it wasn't real. He knew that, any second now, they'd be back in place and the pain would set his nerves on fire and the weight of inevitable death would make his muscles weak.
"It's the easiest thing I'll ever do," Tony whispered to himself. And then Natasha was gone and his whole body ached and he was crawling toward a large chunk of debris, ready to rest.
Bruce watched Clint as he went on his farewell tour, saying quick goodbyes to every Avenger and lingering on Wanda. He whispered to her and moved the hair out of her face with the ease and admiration of a father.
He walked over to Bruce and gave him a pat on his good arm, though he wouldn't meet his eye. "I'll see you soon, buddy."
"Clint."
Something in Bruce's voice must've caught Clint's attention. His eyes shot upward, deep creases forming between his brows. "What?" Clint's voice was low, urgent. "What is it now?"
Bruce's eyes moved to the group milling about, talking to one another and catching up on five years' worth of experiences and world events. No one was close enough to hear them. "When I had the gauntlet, when I snapped—I tried to bring her back."
Clint's jaw tensed.
"And then something happened. It was like I was sucked into the soul stone, like it has its own dimension or plane of existence, and I…" Bruce could hardly say the words. They felt uncomfortable, ridiculous, impossible now that he was saying them aloud. "I saw her there."
Clint's voice was thick. "Nat. You saw Nat?"
Bruce nodded. "She looked great. More content than I've seen her in—"
"Does she know we won?"
"Not exactly, but I told her that we got the stones and did the snap. I told her everyone should be back." Clint nodded. "Clint, she... she wanted me to tell you that she made the right choice."
Tears brimmed in Clint's blue eyes, and he shook his head. "Yeah. Sounds like Nat."
He patted Bruce on the shoulder again before turning away and heading toward his plane. Clint turned one final time as he moved to board and met Bruce's eyes. He nodded once—one final acknowledgement of everything that had happened before they all moved on.
One final acknowledgment of Nat's sacrifice before they moved on without her.
When Natasha had kicked herself away from the cliff wall on Vormir, her hand slipping through Clint's, she thought of her family. Not her parents and the wonderfully mundane expectations they must've had for her before her birth. Not the fucked up people she'd spent years learning from and training with in the Red Room.
She thought of Clint, Steve, Bruce, Tony, Thor—the misfits Fury had shoved together to form his long-awaited Avengers Initiation, people she never could've imagined she'd care about as much as she did. She thought of Fury, Sam, Wanda, Maria, Laura, the Barton kids—the ones she'd loved and lost and desperately needed to get back. She thought of the futures they deserved, the happiness they could have in a world full of life, a world that was built around reunions and relief instead of death and grief.
She opened her eyes right before she hit the pavement, taking in the image of Clint hanging above her, safe and one step closer to having his life back. Until the end, he'd wanted the best for her. He thought trading his life for hers, never seeing his family, was the best possible outcome.
But, as per usual, Natasha had gotten her way. She'd made it happen for herself. With one effortless shove, she'd wiped her ledger clean.
Natasha smiled.
And then her body hit the stones beneath her.
She wasn't lying to Tony when she told him it was the easiest thing she'd ever done. It was an easy choice—herself or Clint. They both had a family waiting for them, but his children only had one father. They deserved more time with him, to know and love every complicated bit of him the way Nat had gotten to over the years. And the crack of her skull on jagged rocks was easy, too—quick and mostly painless. She'd felt worse.
When she opened her eyes again, she was in the soul stone. There was a comforting calm to it—death. Or maybe that was just the soul stone's effect. She'd sacrificed herself for it, so the very least it could do was give her some peace.
And then she'd seen Bruce. And Tony not long after. And it didn't hurt like she figured it should have. It was validation, proof that she'd done exactly what needed to be done to save them. No, she wouldn't be remembered; there would be no elementary school history lessons on Natalia Romanova, no acknowledgement of her contributions to undoing the Decimation, no honoring her heroism with a posthumous medal or a busy street named after her.
And none of that mattered. She sacrificed herself quickly, quietly, sneakily. It was fitting for a spy; she lived in the shadows, and she died in them, too. Sure, she wouldn't be in history book indexes, but her family was alive. They'd carry on her legacy—Tony's, too—and continue making the universe a safe place. More Decimation-scale disasters would happen, and they'd be there to avenge the universe: Wanda with a flash of red, Sam with a gust of wind, Thor with a deafening crack of thunder.
They made dying such an easy, obvious choice.
The water was cool against her back as Natasha laid down, braid slipping into the water, water creeping into her ear canals and muffling the quiet sound of her breathing. The water seeped into the fabric of her suit, pooling between the thick layer and her skin, sending a shiver through her body.
She was dead, but she could still feel. She'd felt deeply when Bruce had looked at her like he'd give absolutely anything to bring her back. She'd felt even deeper when Tony faced her with an unsteady air of confidence, unable to hide the fear of dying that was written all over his face.
And she felt what felt like everything now as she stared up at the deep orange sky until it turned to an all-encompassing white and she was free.
END NOTES: I have never written a Marvel fic, and I haven't written a fic in general in probably 6 years. So feedback in the form in of comments would be much appreciated!