Falling, wind flying around me, trying to catch me, but letting me slip through its fingers. I relax into the emptiness.
Clint's face is frozen in my mind, his figure silhouetted by shadow is above me as I fall.
Time slows. It's okay, I whisper to myself. The impact is harsh, pain shoots through every part of my body.
Then it's gone, all of it. Its dark, but not black, I realize. Slowly feeling returns to my body. The darkness lightens around me. This world is filled with fog with a reddish hue. The ground is not firm like it feels, but ripples like water when I push on it.
I push myself to my feet, my muscles tensing for a fight. I keep my hands out in front of me. I happen to look down at them. They don't look like my hands. They are so smooth, the calluses are missing. They are too small, too young.
I run my hands over my body. I'm thin I can tell, the muscle I've spent a lifetime building missing from under my skin. My fingers trace my face. I find a bruise on my cheek and the bangs that sweep across my forehead. I'm wearing dark cargo pants and grey shirt with the strip of the sleeve. I know it too well. I remember putting it on everyday at the Red Room.
I step out farther into this place. I can feel the blisters on my feet, the soreness of my muscles, the mark of a bad dance lesson. I keep walking.
In front of me looms a four pillar pavilion. A young girl stands under it, her dark hair tipped with red is tied up in high pigtails on either side of her head. She is dressed in a simple brown dress. She turns to face me as I approach. I am startled as I discover that her skin is a green color, the highlights of her face highlighted with silver.
"Who are you?" I ask. My voice sounds so young, so afraid. She stares at me, her dark eyes narrowing.
"Gamora," she answers.
"Gamora?" I breathe the name. "You're, um, you're Thanos's daughter."
"Who are you?" She asks, crossing her arms. I debate for a moment, she is the daughter of Thanos afterall.
"Natasha, I am, um well, I was a part of the team that tried to stop your father."
"You failed, like so many before you." She turns away again.
"We have a plan, we're gonna stop him." She looks back at me as I speak. "We needed the soul stone."
"You jumped?" she asks.
"I did."
"He threw me." Her eyes become vacant. "All those years of killing, I thought he had finally failed. There was nothing that he loved. He couldn't have loved me..."
She trails off. I step next to her.
"I'm sorry." My voice is soft.
"I should have, well, I should have done a lot of things differently."
"We all should have, but this plan, we're gonna win. I promise." I rest my hand on her shoulder. "Whatever it takes." My voice is quiet.
Silence seems louder here, all consuming, forcing the compilation of thoughts. I remember the first time a gun was placed in my hands, remember being taught to use it, remember the first time I used it to take someone's life.
"Where are we?" I ask after a while, as we stare off into the fog.
"I don't know," she admits. "Some people say that people who are sacrificed to the stone end up inside it, feeding its power."
"Do you believe that?" I ask.
"It makes sense right now."
I nod. It does make sense from where I'm sitting. Gamora looks down at her small hands curled in her lap.
"I look the same age as when I met Thanos," she says. "When he murdered half my planet, my mother. That was the day he took me with him, and I was wearing this."
She fiddles with the hem of her dress. I look down at my own hands, the wrists are raw from the handcuffs they used to keep us in bed at the Red Room. The bruise on my cheek, I think back. Training the faceless they'd brought in. The frantic person tied to a chair, the bag over their head and I'd shot him. I'd had to.
"When I was this age," I pause. "It was the day I killed someone for the first time."
Gamora is quiet.
"Maybe," she says, "we look this way because this is the way we looked just before we lost our soul."
"Maybe," I say.
I can't tell time here. It's infinite. Never cold, never hungry, never faced with anything to fear, with anyone to fight. Its quiet, and peaceful, almost.
Gamora, I learn, is smart, sharp tongued, and brave. We become friends, alone in the vast nothingness. Maybe it's the new look that makes me feel like a child again, running through clouds, and scaling the pavilion again and again. It's that childish feeling that keeps me content, almost happy, like I am reliving the childhood that the Red Room had stolen from me. It feels like years, but eventually I share my secrets and Gamora shares hers. The conversations are lively after we've felt out each others sensitivities, but they always end with the longing to return. The messy earth I found my family while defending, the even more screwed up galaxies she built a new life in, they are everything to us, even after everything.
I hope Steve found a life, found someone great, and moved on. I hope he's happy. I hope that Bruce met someone who loves and appreciates him as much as I do, that Thor finds the strength to put himself back together to the brave man I'll always remember him as, and maybe that he joins a gym. I hope Tony and Pepper have a beautiful life together, and that Morgan will grow up to be just as smart and brave as her parents. I want them to have a good life, a happy life.
I hope that Clint will let me go. Maybe someday he can understand why it's okay. I wish for all the Bartons to love each other for as long as they live. I want to tell my team how much I love them. How grateful I am for them. I want them to know that they saved me, but I need them to know that they are the most beautiful mess I've ever seen, and I'm so proud of them. I'll stay here, quiet, and peaceful, and triumphant.