Author's Note: Very short, yes, but it sets up the end. Two chapters to go.

"Let me go."

Natasha said the words knowing Clint wouldn't do it.

Her heart was beating loud in her chest, and her mind raged with screams, contradictions, cries telling her to jump, to save the universe, to let herself be consumed by the darkness and cease to exist forever. She deserved it. Her life was nothing but a blur in the continuum stream of time, stained with violence, death, and regret. The red in her ledger… she thought it was gone, for a while. Happiness blinded her with a tight embrace and a lie. That she deserved Maria's love. That she had a chance at loving her back.

The voices belonged to her victims, to her friends, to everyone she had known.

Do it!

Don't!

Jump!

Maria…

"No. Please, no…"

And the only thing getting her through the pain of knowing she wouldn't get to see Maria's face again, the only thought giving her some kind of aberrant peace, was the fact that she had to comfort Clint, her dear friend. Oh, how she loved him, with all his flaws and imperfections and mistakes. He had saved her from the precipice once, but he couldn't do it now. It was fitting. It was right. The debt would be finally paid.

So she had to let him know it was not his fault. She had to be the one. It was written in the stars. Somehow, she knew the future was a lie and the present, an illusion. She knew a higher power had set her fate, maybe even before she was born. She never believed in Gods and Monsters until she walked among them.

And now Natasha Romanoff would do their bidding by fulfilling her destiny.

"It's okay."

She had made her peace. Barton sobbed. It broke her heart, but she knew he had finally accepted her fate, then, because his voice pleaded, but his eyes gave away he was mourning already.

"Please…"

Natasha saw with clarity then how Maria's pain would unravel once she came back to a world without her – she would fall into the dark only to be pulled back up by their friends. She would have Fury. She would have Clint (maybe not at first, but eventually). She would have work to do. And Nat knew she would move on. Because Maria was a fighter, a survivor. It would be the fight of her life, but she would win. Natasha felt so proud. And she knew, with every fiber of her being, that Maria would have a long, fulfilling life. She imagined her with grey hair and wrinkles and a loving partner by her side. She hoped Maria would retire, sooner than later, and she wished for her to have beautiful children. Maria would be a wonderful mother, raising them to be nothing short of extraordinary.

Natasha's heart ached, but the pain kept her focused on the task.

"She'll understand," Nat whispered.

Then, the fall.

She kept her eyes on Clint. The friction of the air was deafening. She couldn't stop her hands from trying to reach out to him as if a final miracle would happen.

A white burst of light and thunder.

A voice then, rising above the chaos.

"Let me in."

Panic replaced the aberrant peace. This voice didn't come from within. This voice was replacing the wind around her, and it was hungry and overwhelming and wrong.

She should have reached the end by now. But there was only darkness, and cold, and the voice, it roared.

"Let me in, Natasha. Come to my warm embrace. No pain. No burdens. For I rule within."

She screamed then. It was all wrong, she knew.

"Let me in, Natasha. And you shall be free. What is it that you desire the most? Let me in, and you shall have it."

This was not death. This was an invasion.

She screamed into the void, but there was no one to hear her.

"I am power. I am one of the six . I am the strongest one. My mother was a star. My father was destruction. I am logic and survival. A power that will not be enslaved by emotion or biology. And you are mine."

She cried out for Clint, for Maria.

"So I now claim this vessel which was you as my own. Fulfill your destiny. In return, I'll give you eternal bliss. Tell me, child, what is it that you desire?"

She felt her resistance faltering, her body vibrating at the speed of light, her screams turning to sobs, her sobs turning to words she didn't understand. She saw her past, her present, her future.

"Now it shall be I who controls our fate, I who determines what this body does. Today begins my reign, Natasha, but fear not. Let me in. No pain. No burdens."

She felt weightless. Her body floated in the vacuum then. There was no place to fall to, no death, no life, no escape. Darkness exploded into infinite light, embracing her. She felt it inside then, taking control. Her throat burned and her tears froze.

"It is done. I rule within. You are free. And I know now. You shall have it all, Natasha, in exchange for your soul."

All fight had left her body as she was placed by an invisible force over an altar made of the souls that came before her. They welcomed her, a million voices at once.

"Your deepest desires, what you thought unreachable shall now become your eternal rest."

Her body was paralyzed and cold but even then, she felt her own hot tears running down her face, as the voice tore an answer out of her from the deepest confines of her mind… Family, motherhood, peace.

"You shall have it all, Natasha."

Before complete darkness took over, before the light became nothingness and she gave up control, she saw Maria's face, adoringly staring down at her, guiding her through the end – "Let go, Nat, baby, let go…"

It was a memory, she knew. But it felt so real, so perfect. She smiled.

"I rule within. Now, dream."

Natasha finally closed her eyes.