Chapter 32: Burst Bubble


"Lethe" in my flower,

Of which they who drink

In the fadeless orchards

Hear the bobolink!

...

Merely flake or petal

As the Eye beholds

Jupiter! My father!

I perceive the rose!

~Emily Dickinson


Nat had been searching the campus of Westview Community College for any hint of where Vision might have gone. She'd broken into and searched his office, finding nothing, had questioned his friends and colleagues, who all agreed Professor Victor Shade had never mentioned any place he wanted to go, or any reason he'd want to leave.

It made no sense. If he were a normal human, she might have thought he'd met some misfortune on Halloween Night, but he wasn't a normal human, and she couldn't imagine any explanation for his disappearance that wasn't nefarious. She didn't believe for a moment that Vision had left Wanda and their children willingly.

She was walking away from the college under an umbrella at dusk when the sky suddently lightened, and the rain stopped. She stopped and looked up. What could have lit up the sky? A nuke?

She closed her eyes, but when after several seconds neither death nor a deafening explosion came, she opened her eyes and accepted that it was daylight.

Memories were begining to flow. She was supposed to be dead. She'd died on Vormir, had yanked herself out of Clint's grasp and fallen to her death so Clint could go home with the Soul Stone. How the hell had she gotten to Westview?

And how long had she been here? She should have been middle-aged by now.

She started walking with no destination in mind. People were stepping out of their houses to look at the sky. She saw a man she recognized as the father of one of her students sitting on the sidewalk in a daze.

"You okay?" she asked him.

"I don't know. I just realized I haven't seen or spoken to my brother or my parents in years. I haven't left Westview in years."

"I think something weird's going on," Nat said. "I think you should go home until we figure it out."

As she continued, she came upon many similar scenes. Everyone she saw was dazed and confused, like they were waking up from a bizarre dream. Several people she talked to said they or their children hadn't aged in years. One person speculated that they had all been part of some kind of government experiment, another that they had been abducted by aliens. Nat encouraged everyone to go home and wait for official word.

Official word came in the form of armored jeeps driving slowly through town, loudspeakers repeating a message that there was no immediate danger, that the town was in the zone affected by a temporal anomaly, and for everyone to pack supplies and prepare to evacuate in a safe and orderly manner. The jeeps had the acronym S.W.O.R.D. written on their sides.

Nat watched the jeeps pass, wondering if she should stop one to try to get some real answers. 'Temporal anomaly' was so vague as to be practically meaningless, and it didn't really explain why she was there, why she was alive, and why she'd just suddenly rememberer her own death.

Another S.W.O.R.D. jeep passed by down a side street.

"Everyone please return to your homes and pack for a temporary evacuation. You are not in danger, but we need to investigate the area."

That wasn't a recording. That was Bruce's voice.

She sprinted down the block to intercept the jeep.

It came to a stop. The driver's door opened, and Bruce stepped out. Then he just stood there, gaping at her.

She remembered, now, the plan to reverse the Snap, reaching out to him to help. She had been so traumatized by failing to stop Thanos and so obsessed with doing whatever she could to fix it that nothing else had mattered to her, not even him.

That had been so long ago.

"Bruce," she said quietly.

He took a few slow steps toward her, then ran to her and swept her up in a hug.

"Nat," he breathed.

"The things I said after Wakanda...I didn't mean them. I know it wasn't your fault."

"I know. God, Nat. You're alive. You're still here."

"I don't know how I'm alive. I don't remember how I got here from Vormir."

"Wanda has been controlling the Infinity Stones. She used them to bring Vision and you back."

"How did Wanda get the Infinity Stones? Wait, let me guess. Our plan must have worked, or Wanda would still be dust, but then someone changed their mind about returning the Stones to their times?"

"No, we went through with the plan. Thanos still destroyed the Infinity Stones. But it turns out singularities of cosmic forces don't want to stay destroyed. They started popping back into existence around people who had a connection to them. Wanda almost collected them all. She used them to create her own dimension around Westview, kind of by accident."

That made a certain sense: the Infinity Stones were powerful enough that anyone who controlled them might do all sorts of things by accident. That Wanda had accidentally turned a town into exactly what she wanted it to be was entirely plausible.

"Where is Wanda? Is she okay?" Nat asked.

"She's in a medically induced coma. We think it's safest to keep her out of Westview until we can find the Stones. The plan is that, other than Vision's Mind Stone, Carol Danvers is going to transport them one by one to hide in different places around the galaxy."

"That's not a bad plan," Nat said.

Bruce gazed at her. "Nat, I can't even begin to tell you how... Hold on a minute." He touched a button on an earpiece. "Clint, can you hear me? Where are you? Come to...let's see... I'm on Filbert Road, just west of Main Street. There's something here you gotta see." He turned off the comm.

"Clint's here?" Nat asked.

"Yeah. We weren't sure if Vision would be able to come back once the inerdimensional barrier was down, so Fury wanted everyone who knew Wanda here in case we had to look for her."

"I'm lost," Nat stated flatly.

Another S.W.O.R.D. jeep drove up. Clint got out of it, staring in disbelieff.

"Tasha?"

"Clint." She ran to him and wrapped her arms around him.

"Wanda brought her back, just like Vision," Bruce explained. "Sorry we didn't tell you, but we weren't sure..."

"You knew and you didn't tell me? You just didn't tell me my best friend I watched die was in Westview? You didn't tell me that before you decided to risk destroying the bubble dimension? Remind me to punch you in the face later, Banner." Clint took a deep, shaky breath. "Tasha, you know I am never, ever going to forgive you," he said, still hugging her like he was afraid she'd try to escape.

"That's fine," she said. "I made the right choice, and I'd make it again every time. I owed you my life. Everything good I've ever done with my life is because of you. I was going to get you back to your family. And it worked, didn't it?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it worked."

"Then it was worth it."

Clint finally released her. Nat looked from him to Bruce, who had taken a step back to give them some space for their reunion.

They didn't look any older than the last time she'd seen them.

"How long has it been since...since Vormir?" she asked.

"Three years," Clint said.

"That's interesting, because I've been here for...God...sixteen years. I haven't seen you in sixteen years."

"What has it been like?" Clint asked.

Nat thought about it. "It seems super weird now, but it was kind of nice. I settled down, had a normal job, just lived a normal life. I didn't think about my past, about all the innocent people I've killed, or the people I failed to save. I felt like...I believed I deserved to just relax and be happy. Because that's what Wanda believes," she realized.

"What do you believe now?" Bruce asked, and his tone and the way he was looking at her asked more than the words did: he was asking if she was okay, which she hadn't been the five years after Thanos. He was asking what she thought she deserved now.

She was okay, she realized. The years she'd spent in Westview had changed her. Like Wanda had said the day she got there, it gave her time to recuperate, time to heal.

But she was an Avenger, and she wasn't ready to retire yet.

"I believe I needed the vacation, but now I'm ready to get back to work," she answered. "What can I do?"

"We need to find a woman named Mary-Jo Altman," Bruce stated.

"Mary-Jo?"

"You know her?" Clint asked in surprise.

"Yeah. She's my godson's boyfriend's mother."

"Great! Do you know how to get to her house?" Bruce asked.