Hi everyone! This is my first time writing for this fandom! Needless to say, I'm very excited!
So, this story is kind of AU, obviously. The Avengers were assembled as a prevention mechanism to defend the earth. So, no threat yet basically (the attack of new york didn't happen, nor did Ultron, the civil war, infinity war, none of those.) Got it? Good.
In this universe, Natasha is the leader of the Avengers. They aren't as close as in the movies since they don't know each other that well. They all live in the tower. What else? Guess you have to read to find out.
Tony Stark has had enough. He couldn't do it anymore.
Explosions. Ashes. Dust. Dust everywhere, flying around him, getting into his lungs, setting them on fire. He felt himself stop breathing, the dust settling around him slowly.
Bodies. The streets were littered with bodies. He didn't know where he was. He didn't care. He heard a gasp and looked around him. Steve.
Bloodied. Taking his last breath.
He couldn't- he couldn't look- he's dead.
He saw it. His chest heaving with his last sigh. He caused this.
He heard a scream, high pitched. 'Natasha.' He was right. He turned around and saw her standing, clutching her chest, tears streaming down her face. She was sobbing. Blood was seeping through her fingers, down her clothes, on the sidewalk. She fell to her knees, and Tony couldn't get to her, and there was fire again, and screams and Natasha sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, till she fell back, dead. Her blood a halo around her, and Tony couldn't help but scream, scream till his lungs were scorched, he wanted to set himself on fire, his friends- his friends- no, no, no-
"TONY!"
'Not you too-'
Pepper stumbled to him, her face darkened with soot, dirt, and despair. She threw herself in his arms, and looked in his eyes, her breath quickening.
"Tony, save me, save me, save-"
And she fell to the ground, gasping, rolling around, until a shot rang, and she stilled, her face forever frozen in an expression of terror, a bullet lodged in her brain.
Tony could see the "Stark" signature on the bullets raining around him, and he fell to his knees.
In a hail of bullets, he screamed, and screamed, till-
He woke up. He jolted awake in his bed, panting, his eyes darting around him, searching for the bodies and the fire and the blood and death. He was met with the calm darkness that was his bedroom.
Pepper was snoring softly next to him, her diamond ring glinting in the moonlight seeping through their half-open curtains. The ever-so-present reminder of her engagement to him- to a murderer.
He shook his head, trying to calm his still racing heart. He didn't need a heart attack right now. He needed a drink.
He got out of bed, stumbling slightly, and made his way towards the elevator. He pressed the 47th button, the button that lead to the common floor of the Avengers. In other words, where the bourbon was.
He swayed to the gentle elevator music, his dream replaying behind his closed eyelids.
When the elevator doors opened, he was surprised to be met by the gentle crackling and the orange glow of the artificial fireplace that Clint had begged him to install.
He approached slowly, wanting to turn it off, but stopped in his tracks when he saw Natasha on the couch, a blanket around her shoulders, and a book in her hands.
He cleared his throat, not wanting to surprise her, even though he knew that she had spotted him long ago. She wasn't a super spy for nothing.
"It's 3 am Stark. What are you doing up?" She asked in a neutral, almost annoyed voice, and Tony felt his skin bristle.
"Sorry if I'm annoying you, the person who's living under my roof, without paying a damn cent. I didn't know I wasn't allowed to go where I damn well please in my own place."
Natasha wasn't impressed. "You know that if it wasn't an order from Fury, I wouldn't be here."
Tony sighed, passing a hand through his hair. He decided to drop it, knowing that Natasha's passive-aggressiveness wasn't what he needed to calm down. He made his way to the bar and started looking for his favorite whiskey bottle.
That apparently caught Natasha's attention, who dropped her book and got up, sitting down in front of the bar.
Tony automatically got two glasses, filling them with the golden liquid, passing one to Natasha.
"Nightmare?" She whispered to him, and if he concentrated really hard, he could discern a faint hint of concern in her eyes.
"Yeah. The usual. Everyone dead because of me and my weapons."
Natasha nodded, a faraway look in her eyes that she always seemed to have when she sipped alcohol.
He wondered if spies could be melancholic, or even have feelings. He is certain he's never seen her smile a genuine fucking smile in his life. Those smirks of superiority didn't count, of course. He couldn't believe Fury assigned this woman of all people to be their leader.
True, she was really good at what she did. And she was the cleverest person he knew. And she could take down the hulk without breaking a sweat. And she was the most diplomatic person on their team. And she had more training than any of them. Still.
She was an ice queen. Cold, mean, uncaring. She couldn't care less if one of them died. The only thing important to her was the mission's success. That didn't exactly sit well with someone like him. He had killed so many people in his life- he just wanted the killing to stop.
He downed his glass in one gulp, earning himself a raised eyebrow from Natasha.
"Do you... want to talk about it?" She drawled slowly as if those words hurt to get out.
She was so unused to caring that it was painful to try, Tony thought, teeth clenched.
"With you? No, thanks." He rolled his eyes, then the image of dream Natasha flashed before his eyes.
Bloodied, crying- sobbing. So many raw emotions in her eyes he could drown in them. In her heartbreak. He didn't know where his mind got that image of Natasha from. It couldn't be more wrong.
She hung her head, looking at her glass, and swirled the liquid in it, as if deep in thought. There it was again, that haunted look. The only human emotions Natasha Romanoff ever showed. He didn't know if she noticed that her eyes did that... that thing, where they would reflect her whole soul. She may be the queen of emotionless bitching, but she had the clearest, greenest eyes Tony's ever seen.
Tony narrowed his eyes, a sudden thought crossing his mind.
"What were you doing here?" He asked, suspicion seeping through his voice. He couldn't make himself trust her. She had saved his ass many times, more than he could count, but after he heard the rumors, that she was in the Russian mob before joining S.H.I.E.L.D, he couldn't shake away the thought that she could kill all of them in their sleep and get away with it.
"Reading..?" She said it in a way that screamed 'isn't it obvious, you moron?'
"At 3 am?"
"What, am I not allowed to read whenever I damn well please?" She smirked, reusing his own words against him.
He gritted his teeth in hatred but said nothing.
"I don't sleep, Stark," she surprised him by saying that in an almost human voice. Almost.
"You... Don't? What the fuck does that mean?"
She chuckled darkly. "My mind never stops screaming."
His heart almost stopped. Nightmares. She had nightmares too.
He suddenly felt some kind of relationship establish between them. Some sort of... camaraderie. They were both damaged goods, though he didn't know the extent of the damage she had to endure.
He nodded, looking at her with newfound respect.
"Do you... Would you forget, if you had the chance?" He asked suddenly, after their third glass each.
"I don't think the world works like that, Stark," she said, looking down at her restless hands. They had been tapping the bar in a rhythmic manner for almost 15 minutes now. It was starting to make Tony nervous. He didn't know if she was doing that on purpose to annoy him, or if it was one of her rare (maybe her only) quirk.
"Still, if it did-"
"Then, I guess I would rather forget, yes," she answered in a tone that told him that she definitely did not want to talk about this anymore.
"If I... If I invented a machine that could make us forget... Would you try it with me?"
Natasha smirked her haughty smirk again. "You're drunk Stark, go to sleep."
It had a hint of sadness to it, one that Tony couldn't detect before. Either that or he was really drunk.
"Whatever you say, Romanoff." He downed the last of his drink and got up.
"Goodnight, Tony," she threw after him, making him stop in his tracks.
"Night, Natasha," he whispered, the idea settling in his mind. He would make them forget.
He went to his lab instead of his bedroom that night and did the same the three following weeks.
He worked tirelessly to create a machine that could split their memories into categories- folders, almost like a computer, and they would be able to choose which to delete, and which to keep.
Theoretically, that is. It didn't... exactly fulfill its purpose. Let me elaborate.
He had been working for 25 days now -Pepper was counting- when he thought he had something.
He excitedly turned the contraption in his hands, looking at it from every angle. He was very happy with it. It basically looked like a high-tech blue headband. It was actually pretty stylish if he dared say so himself.
The idea was that it would scan the brain for memories, which would come up on his computer screen. Then they would select which memories to delete, and hit the brain with radiation -sounds stupid, he knows, but he actually studied the shit, and he thought it to be pretty plausible. Plus, he's never wrong. He's Tony Stark, remember?
He called Natasha down, practically buzzing with excitement. He hadn't told anyone what he's been doing for days in his lab. Everyone thought he was upgrading the Iron Man suit. He couldn't wait to see Natasha's face- oh, here she was.
And she looked positively pissed.
"Stark, I was in the middle of a conference with Fury and the council. What could be so important as to warrant an emergency summon?" She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow.
"I did it, Romanoff!" He jumped off his chair and ran to her, shaking her by the shoulders. "I did it!"
She just stared at him, at a loss.
"I created the machine that can erase bad memories!" He grinned at her with his boyish, excited grin that he knew no one could resist. Apparently, Natasha could.
"Stark, that's... You were drunk. I didn't think you would actually do it." She ran a hand through her straight flaming red hair that brushed her chin.
"I did! Please Natasha can you try it?" He made his best puppy dog eyes- to no avail.
"Are you kidding me? What if it does something weird, like electrocute me, or change my hair color, again?" She raised an eyebrow, and he smiled sheepishly. So she still remembered that...
"That was a prank! It was intended. It didn't malfunction."
"That doesn't exactly help your case, you know."
"Please, Nat. Please, please, please." He joined his hands in front of him, practically begging her. "It will just scan your head for memories. Nothing dangerous, I swear. We won't even try to delete anything just yet!"
She looked at the headband in his hands, then back up at his face. He seemed honest. He had that innocent glow in his brown eyes that simply melted Natasha's heart- not that she would ever admit it.
She sighed and slipped it on, looking at Tony expectantly. "Never call me Nat again." Her eyes hardened for a brief second, and Tony shrunk instinctively under her gaze.
"Understood." He nodded, wincing a bit.
She sighed and decided to change the subject. "Are they supposed to show up as videos, or something?" She asked disbelievingly, almost mockingly.
"It's not even on, silly. And yes, that's the idea." He turned to his monitor, and cracked his knuckles, grinning like a child on Christmas. "Ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be." She rolled her eyes and looked at the monitor.
Tony turned on the headband from his computer and waited a few seconds. His screen remained blank.
"Hm, that's weird," he whispered, then turned to Natasha. "I'm sorry, I don't think-"
He immediately stopped talking when he saw her face contort in pain.
She hissed, falling to her knees, clutching her head. She tried to claw the headband off, but it seemed stuck. Then in a flash of light, she was gone.
In her stead, was a pale, frail little girl, with the clearest, greenest eyes he's ever seen. She was crying.
Shit turned around real quick. Hope you liked it! What will the others' reactions be when they see tiny Nat?
Reviews warm my heart :3
