The Unsung Soul
On the windswept pinnacle of Vormir, Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton had their very last spar. Fists flew and wills clashed. Unlike their many spars together, they held nothing back. There were no pulled punches, no split seconds of dry banter. Neither wanted the other to get the upper hand. To pay the bloody price of the Soul Stone. Clint fought hard, but Natasha fought harder. She went down winning.
Some survivors who throw themselves off the edge of an incredible height admit that they had regrets on the way down. They shouldn't have jumped, they'd say. Not Natasha. There was nothing to throw away. Only all of herself to give. Not a single regret crossed her mind—well, one did. She knew that her friends, her team, would give it their all and win. But she wouldn't be there to see it.
Natasha fell like a drop of water into a lake. Just a tiny single drop. Falling, falling, a long way down, yet the whole way down she didn't scream. Clint couldn't hear her back break, or hear her skull split open. Still, the sight of his comrade, fellow Avenger, his occasional worst enemy but always his best friend, lifeless and sprawled on Vormir's sacrificial ground, sent massive ripples through the core and fiber of his being. His vision, impeccable for perfect aim, now blurred with tears. He squeezed his eyes shut and wetness rolled down his cheeks. When he opened his eyes again, the mingled shadow and illumination of an eclipse greeted him. He sat up from a stagnant pool. The warmth of the Soul Stone pulsed in his right hand. Clint balled his hand back into a fist and struck the pool. Was that a pool of his tears? It sure felt like that. He wanted to crush the damn stone and get Nat back.
She wouldn't have wanted that. She'd scold me and throw herself off that cliff again.
That put his wild urge in check. Years of discipline and training, and what was at stake, kept Clint from falling back into the pool in despair. He had a family to see again, and countless other lives counting on him to bring them back. Only the mission drove him forward.
When he returned home, his retrieval of the stone would be considered a success. A job well done. Instead, he felt like a failure.
"Where's Nat?" Steve asked, and all eyes turned on Clint.
All he could do was stare through with eyes that watered up again, when he thought he had no more tears left to shed, and a ball of grief over Nat and rage at himself strangled the words in his throat.
There was no time for a funeral. Not when there was Tony's time heist to follow through. In a one to fourteen million six hundred and five shot, against near impossible odds, somehow they followed through. Now they had two lives to mourn: Tony's and Natasha's.
The Avengers grew bigger and stronger, and the remaining members would ensure that it would do so for many years to come, but it would not be the same without two of its founding members. This battle for the universe proved that among the Avengers, Tony was its heart and Natasha was its soul.
The heart, the center of the body, pumped tirelessly to give life to the structure that housed it. Tony did just that, always working and striving to make the Avengers the world's greatest response team to whatever threat may come their way. You could hear a heart's every beat, and feel every beat course blood through your veins. Tony, the inventor and architect, had his mark stamped on every brilliant design of his, from the suits to the base many of his comrades called home. His life's blood coursed through every aspect of the Avengers. It beat loud and clear, even after the heart in his body stopped beating and the arc reactor's glow faded. No one could deny that Iron Man was the team's heart. But the soul? Well, the soul was a quiet thing, not easily proven and certainly not seen. But it was there. It mattered. The Black Widow was here, and she mattered.
Compared to Tony's, the service to honor her memory was much smaller and quieter. She had countless enemies but very few friends. Those few friends were all she needed, she once told Clint. Those friends she had called family days before her death stood at the pier now, holding a vigil through the night. Black and red were her signature colors on the field, but Clint opted for warm colors, like gold and amber, like the color of the Soul Stone, to use for her service that night.
That was why everyone stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder sharing a silence, holding sky lanterns, then gently raising them high. Buoyed by a warm breeze, the lanterns floated up and away through a dry sea of darkness. Clint got the idea from his roaming in Asia. Survivors from Thanos's snap in those countries had honored the vanished with sky lanterns, and the haunting, beautiful sight burned like a brand in his mind ever since.
The Avengers stood for hours, watching the sky lanterns dwindle in the distance, and no one sat down. No one had a choice, anyway—Bruce had flung all the benches on the pier into the lake in his prior fit of grief and rage. Even with the benches, no one would sit. Clint would rather stand straight and tall, almost in defiance to the darkness, to say that victory was theirs and nothing and no one could take that away from them now. He was sure that his comrades shared the intent behind his gesture.
Eventually, everyone had to retreat from the pier to repair the damaged headquarters. Everyone but Clint, who couldn't bring himself to jerk out of this dreamlike stupor the floating lanterns cast over him.
"You guys go on ahead," he said softly. "I'll catch up with you later."
Steve nodded in silent understanding, and Clint was left to himself at the edge of the pier. By now it was so dark that he couldn't tell the water from the sky. Wrapped up in his thoughts for what felt like too long, finally he felt safe to unfurl them all.
"Wish you were there, Nat," he said. "You should've seen all the ladies team up around the spider kid and kick ass." He choked up and murmured, "You would've been at the front leading them."
Clint ran his hand forward through his hair, which Natasha once made fun of. She had called it a high school boy's edgy Mohawk. Much of her life revolved around being a spy, so Natasha came and went from the world quietly, with hardly a trace. At least Tony died surrounded by his loved ones, in the aftermath of a battle well fought. Natasha died alone, far away from home, on the sacrificial altar of the planet that housed the most difficult stone to retrieve.
Clint let out a shuddering sigh. "I'm sorry I couldn't bring your body back, Nat. I wish we had something here to remember you by."
As soon as the words left his mouth, he could just hear Nat's soft, amused voice in his ear: "You idiot. There's already plenty here."
That's right…he had Nathaniel, his youngest son, who certainly would've been Natasha if he had been a girl. When Nate grew up, Clint would tell him all about Aunt Nat so he would always be proud to carry on her name. He would talk about Aunt Nat to his other kids too. His chest tightened. It would hurt at first to tell them that she wasn't coming back. But that pain would heal with time, so that the more Clint would bring up their Aunt Nat, it wouldn't be with so much a pang in his heart, but with a smile on his face, when he could fondly share those times when Natasha showed another side to her, when she wasn't being the cold-blooded assassin she had to be for most of her life. She had never said it out loud, and would be too embarrassed to say so, but she always had a soft spot for kids. Nat loved Lila, Cooper, and Nate very much, and Clint would make sure that they'd never forget her. As long as they wouldn't forget, Natasha would live on.
And the team…Tony's work and effort into the Avengers was easier to see, but Natasha was just as important in keeping it together since day one. While the likes of Iron Man and Captain America became the publicized, celebrated faces of the Avengers, Natasha worked behind the scenes, from the shadows. That didn't make her contributions to the team any less important. She held her own among people in super suits, geniuses, gods, and monsters. The Hulk, back when he was a primal force to be reckoned with, could be kept in check with her help, and even insanely powerful members like Wanda deferred to Natasha for her wide breadth of experience in combat, tactics, and covert operations. At times Clint felt hilariously out of his league compared to the more advantaged and enhanced Avengers, but Natasha inspired him to keep his chin up and do what he could do best: never miss a target.
The floating lanterns were long gone now, somewhere behind the line of trees on the other side of the lake. Clint didn't know where to rest his gaze. The darkness closed all around him, but like a blanket rather than something wringing the life out of him. For the first time in what seemed like years, he cracked a smile that sent little spikes of pain through his cracked lips. Tears fell from his chin and into the lake. Even if he couldn't see or hear them, they rippled through the water, reaching farther than where they had landed. Natasha left her mark on the world in the same way.
"I don't know where the Avengers are headed from here, Nat. It's too dark out to see right now. But whatever happens, thanks to you, the team's in good hands. We're going to be okay."
I was just a kid in high school when the 1st Avengers movie came out. Seven years later, I'm now a medical student and the Infinity Stone saga comes to an epic close with Endgame. What a surreal and gratifying experience. Natasha was one of my favorite characters since I got into the MCU fandom, so she has a special place in my heart. As a writer and a fan, I felt it was appropriate to give her the send-off I think she deserves. I look forward to Black Widow's upcoming solo movie!