Hi all! So couple of warnings first, this isn't a fix-it so it comes with content warning for grief, major character death and a dead body. It's nothing too graphic but let me know if you think the rating should be higher than T.
For anyone who's a regular reader of my main fic The Romanoff Chronicles, don't worry I am still carrying on with that, this oneshot was born from an unshakeable writer's block and a desperation to actually shake it.
The title is a (slightly paraphrased) quote from Terry Pratchett's Going Postal.
Purple.
It was all Steve could see. The ground, the sky, the clouds, the mountain.
A flash.
Dim brightness.
Lightening forked the sky. Silent as it tracked its path.
Violet and violence tinged the air itself.
For all the shades the planet boasted, there wasn't much sound. An eerie, empty world, and his existence echoed in it. Water splashed as he stepped through puddles, mud squelched in the aftermath, then his feet thumped against solid ground.
Splash. Squelch. Thump
Squelch. Thump. Splash.
Thump. Splash. Squelch.
The noises never landed right. His ears heard but his brain never registered.
And yet he never stopped feeling the desire to splash and crash and yell and scream. He wanted to fill this empty place with noise and clamour and an entire commotion. He wanted to conduct a chaotic orchestra. Needed to. Because if he didn't...
...If he didn't...
...He might hear. And he most definitely didn't want to hear.
So he tried and tried and tried to fill the dead planet with the sound of life, even if it was just his.
It always fell flat.
And it all stayed silent.
As silent as the grave.
A grave.
Her grave.
"No," he said and his voice travelled nowhere. A swift visit to his ears and then sucked away into the Vormir void. He willed his thoughts to follow.
Steve held the case at his side, hating what was within. A single stone. The solitary symbol of so much. Of all it had given and all it had taken. Such power in a tiny gem. He would have found it implausible if he hadn't witnessed all it had achieved.
He paused in his mechanic walking. He looked up at the mountain. He watched.
Return the stones to the moment they were taken.
Bruce's words echoed so loudly in his head he wondered if anyone else would have heard, had there been anyone else around to overhear.
Words that came easy to the giant man. Imparted as if it was the most simplistic thing in all the universe. That's the thing about the people giving instructions. It is simple for them. They just have to sit back and believe, as if it makes any difference to the person they've sent off.
Easily spoken words that weren't as easy for Steve to hear. Even harder for him to follow.
They weren't the ones caught up in the possibilities. He was the one living the impossibilities of the mission.
The crissing and crossing of timelines, the two lots of Avengers across New York and having to stay hidden from both, the same alien invasion for the third time in his life.
When Steve landed in a him-heavy 2012 he wasn't sure he'd made the right choice, weighed down as he was by the case and Mjolnir his reason for going there first suddenly felt like a reason to avoid it altogether.
The chaos.
All that fighting and yelling and crashing. All the things blowing up and the heavy distractions of leviathans floating down the street. The threat of the nuke, the taming of a god, the bonding of an ill-fated team.
He thought it would be easy to slip through unnoticed but as soon as he landed he felt the net closing in on him. The unseen ticking clock urging him towards both his goal and utter panic.
The Time Stone was easy enough. When he reached the door of the sanctum, having ducked and weaved his way through the streets, it opened for him. A woman of indeterminate age waited for him at the foot of the stairs. There was a time in his life when the artefacts dotted along the walls and throughout the foyer would have held his attention as exquisite pieces of art, if not for their arcane importance. It was a time when he found wonder in life, instead of emptiness, when he found comfort in memories, instead of pain. That time was behind him, now, and no amount of time travel would ever take him back there.
The Sorcerer Supreme was expecting him and was calm when she took the stone back, considering she was the one who told Bruce about the diverging paths of reality, he wasn't all that surprised. She looked at him as if she sensed his pain but she passed no comment. In fact they shared very few words, given that they were the only two beings in the whole of the universe who understood the significance of the moment.
"It may seem as if you have all the time in the world, Captain Rogers," she said in a serene voice he knew would have cut across any battlefield, "but I daresay it is of the essence."
"Yes ma'am," he said, never able to forget his manners, "but before I go, would you be able to fashion this back into a sceptre, please? Rumlow and his men aren't the brightest lot, but they'll notice a stone isn't quite the same."
With a smile she raised her hands, the Mind Stone lifting from the open case. It transformed from the simple gem to the ornate staff the other him had so recently learned to hate. As he held it he couldn't help but think of Vision, his friend of such a noble nature, who lived so short but left a deep and permanent mark on the world he'd protected for and with his entire life. A loss as heavy as the others.
"Thank you," he said with a small nod. "I'll be on my way."
Returning the staff was a blur. Steve knew the lack of focus was dangerous, he knew he needed to not be seen, but his head was as much of a mess as it was in the aftermath of the final showdown against Thanos. He still reeled from the massive holes gouged out of his world by the deaths of two of the best people he'd ever known.
And it was this, ironically, that forced his focus in the end. Steve Rogers was a man marked by his strength, but that didn't mean he didn't know his weaknesses. He had the great potential to be an impulsive and reckless fool. And if he saw the 2012 versions of his lost friends that impulsivity and recklessness would come out in full force.
It was with all the caution he learned in his time with SHIELD that he darted past crowds and into corridors, finding his way back to the shattered walkways where he could plausibly leave the sceptre for his fresh-faced, morally naive self. Considering how deep the poison of Hydra ran, he had no doubt it would soon find its way back into their possession. A necessary evil to endure for the good that would come from it.
The original plan, of course, was for all of them to drop in, steal the stones and flit away again, with the hope that the ripple of such an action would die out before becoming a massive wave.
The original plan went to shit.
They came, they were seen, and they were almost conquered.
As he went two stones down, Steve could only hope he wouldn't add to the horrendous mess they left behind. He zipped away without looking back. A man who'd spent so long full of nostalgia and he couldn't bear to look at 2012 any longer.
After that it was the seventies, a time as alien to him as when he'd emerged from the ice. An in between world of things he'd left behind and things he'd woken up to. A hybrid of past and future that only he could understand and a place he wished he'd never stepped into because a selfish yearning had bubbled within him from the moment he realised what time travel really meant.
A time with fractionally less him but more dead friends; two Starks and a Carter.
There was no need for him to worry about breaking in during the ongoing manhunt for him and Tony, his coordinates took him to exactly where he needed to be. Hidden in the shadows of a large underground bunker, listening in on what was both the first and last conversation father and son ever had. Actually, he did his best not to listen in but sound carried. While he tried not to think of the other him discovering Peggy's office Tony's awkward and almost uncharacteristic hesitations crept their way into his ear. For someone who claimed to have never got on with his father, Steve was surprised by how in awe Tony sounded. Then again, maybe he saw things differently since holding his daughter in his arms for the first time.
His heart had clenched at the reminder of Morgan. A little girl destined to always know the legend and never the man.
The voices faded and the Starks disappeared. Steve strained his ears to pick up every quieting syllable, knowing it was the last time he'd hear Tony speak. It was only when silence reigned completely that he went about replacing the Tesseract in its chamber, keeping it secure to cause untold amounts of chaos in the years to come.
He was not sorry to see the back of the stones, but he did regret not being able to do more to prevent some of the outcomes they led to.
He left the seventies much as he had 2012; silent, bound by duty and with no reluctance.
Something the grandeur of Asgard could not affect, nor the quiet solitude of Morag.
But it was very different to what Steve felt standing at the foot of the mountain faltering in the final steps of his journey, the final steps of what he was coming to accept as his last adventure.
His eyes travelled up the gentle slope that grew steeper and steeper the further it went. Never too treacherous to stop people from climbing. The journey wasn't the test, after all. The destination was. He looked at it and felt all the rage and hate, anger and anguish, guilt and grief, and all the other unnameable things that coursed through his veins and poisoned his body, mind, heart, and...
...soul.
He hated the mountain towering before him.
He hated the stone he carried.
He hated the price it asked for.
He hated the planet they all came from.
Things burned within him and he hated them too because it was a reminder of how useless he was. His grip on the case handle tightened and he closed his eyes to shut out the world around him, the thoughts in his mind and the emotions that weighed him down. The material dug into his skin and he used it as his anchor. All that was left was this final push.
He opened his eyes and looked, once again, at the mountain. The silent behemoth beckoning him. He knew what was expected of him. It wanted him to go up, to follow the path the other two Avengers had taken. The stone wanted a spectacle upon its return. And his foot hovered in the purplish air above the purplish ground.
It hovered.
And hovered.
And hovered.
Steve was tired of doing what was expected of him. Knowing only that the best times of his life had been when he didn't follow the set path, when he went off track, off script, off piste, off whatever.
He planted his foot back on the ground. Gave the mountain one last glare and hoped he wouldn't see the blinding white flare Clint had described.
Instead of going up, he went round.
It didn't make it an easier journey, every step still brought him closer to the finish line and the suffocating anxiety that had wound itself around him meant he was all too aware that it didn't matter which way he chose to go, it would all come to the same end.
The dread was so tangible he could almost feel it in every lungful of alien air, could almost feel it solidifying and trapping the air, tightening his throat. Ragged breathing, erratic steps and while he was desperate to pre-emptively block out any noises that came from the mountain above he wasn't pleased when his mind decided a roll call of the dead he knew was the best way.
His mum.
The Howling Commandos.
Coulson.
Peggy.
Vision.
Tony.
Her.
Emotions boiled and frothed beneath the surface but he couldn't give into them. Not here, not in this moment. With eyes scrunched shut and a long, shuddering breath he very nearly succeeded in reigning them back in. Very nearly had himself back under control. Then he heard it.
So vibrant. So solid. So determined.
None of the words. None of the tone. Just her voice.
How? How? How?
It was the only thought he could manage.
How had he heard her?
How had her voice travelled down from all the way up there?
How was it possible?
Because he shouldn't have and it couldn't have and it couldn't be. But then, what was the point in holding everything to Earth's standards when he was on a different planet?
Stumped on a question with no answer even that simple thought stuttered to a halt. A pause his emotions took advantage of. He wasn't entirely sure what he expected but the warm rush of relief was not on the list. It sucked away the dread that had poisoned his lungs and shifted the uncomfortable weight that had settled in the pit of his stomach since all but one of their group came back from their jaunt into the past. Something prickled at his eyes and he only realised he was crying when he wiped them and his hand came back wet.
It was freeing and dizzying and a balm on an untreatable wound. He strained his ears to hear more, greedy to absorb more, he just wanted more before there was nothing left...
...and everything lifted and moved and cleared by the wave of relief came flooding back with so much force his knees buckled and the air trapped in his lungs almost escaped on the wings of a keening howl. He clapped his hands over his mouth because she mustn't hear. He mustn't interfere as much as he itched too.
Her voice trickled down again and the delight he'd had just seconds before darkened to misery. It was torture of the cruellest kind so Steve ran, fast and loud and tried to fill the space with stomping and stamping and ragged breathing and everything that wasn't his voice. He wished it all louder and louder until he was deafened by his own commotion. But it wasn't enough.
Heart-
Clenching
Heart-
Wrenching
Heart-
Stopping.
And while his heart became tighter and tighter and stiller and stiller, his eyes grew wetter.
Return the stones to the moment they were taken. Bruce had said.
But the problem, the huge mind boggling and blowing and blanking problem was that this stone was handed over when she, when she...
...Went from present to past.
There to not.
Constant to never.
Alive to, to, to
Dead.
The air was rent apart with a sound so violent Steve was sent back to the War and Wakanda and the razed compound all at once. The indigo clouds roiled and lilac lightning lashed out, aghast at such a shattering of the planet's crypt-like peace.
Clint's explosive arrow.
Her stay of execution.
Even louder in the aftermath was the zip and clatter of the grappling hook halting their fall at the same time Steve rounded the last of the rocky outcroppings.
If I step out of the shadow and look up I'd be able to see them. There was no comfort in that thought.
The indistinct voices formed into words, unspoken conversations happened between the lines. Goodbyes were said in the looks and the smallest of movements good friends so often share.
Clint howled. It was all anguish and pain and grief.
Steve dropped the case in horror and denial and a desperation to not hear this.
Clint pleaded. For his friend and his partner and a miracle.
Steve covered his ears and closed his eyes and it was just so unbearable.
In that moment he was nothing but a statuesque monument to sorrow, imprisoned by his pragmatism that kept all sound and movement frozen because no one could know he bore witness.
He ended up trapped in flashing memories of the train ride he always wanted to forget. He stood in Clint's place and Bucky's face dangled before him as he took up hers. His hand slipped, eyes widened, voice echoed in the growing chasm between them, body fell through the air and the snow until even Steve's keen eyesight couldn't pierce the whiteness.
The brightness.
With the gasp of desperate lungs Steve opened his eyes and brought himself out of his past and into his present, where not a single thing was purple and every single thing was bathed in the peaceful light.
It was beautiful.
It was calming.
It was...
A soul accepted.
He wanted to hate it then. To despise it. To curse it and keep cursing it for as long as the serum in his blood gave him the strength.
But it felt so familiar. It felt like Natasha.
The light faded, stained by the bruising purple. All traces of her gone except the most obvious. It was the reason he'd hesitated at the foot of the mountain, the reason he'd chosen to go round instead of up, the reason he volunteered to return the stones in the first place. It was his chance to say goodbye.
And he wasn't sure he was ready for it just yet.
In the aftermath he heard Clint openly weep while he gripped the lifeline she had given him against the mountain face. Its disappearance was abrupt, the following silence heavier than all that had come before. Whisked away by the ethereal eddies and flows of the planet's whims, the archer was about to lay his hands on the most valuable prize he'd ever hold, he was about to break Steve's heart in the future-past.
And Steve, picking up the blasted case once again, was about to crush whatever remained beneath the heels of his battle-worn boots in the past-present.
He stumbled out of the shadows, unseeing. Without conscious thought or direction his feet took him where he needed to go. Even then, weighed down by grief and the knowledge that he trod upon her final resting place, the bond that drew them together worked as it always did.
They found each other, one last time.
It was a moment both simple and monumental. There were no dramatics; one moment she was an outline in the distance and the next he was on his knees next to her. Skin painted lilac by the ever-changing aerial landscape above. Not moving, not breathing, not there, not alive.
And yet, somehow, in the space of a breath he went from seeing what she wasn't to what she was.
He saw it all from her smirk to the gleam in her eyes to the grace that lived in her every movement.
That's when the tears started their assault again, stinging his eyes and setting off an ache that tore at his throat. So he closed his eyes and he still saw her. All the versions he'd known.
The fiercest warrior, the fearsome spy and the supportive friend.
The leader, the hopeful, the strong, the joker.
The grief-stricken, the depressed, the barely clinging on.
The public enemy number one and the public hero number never.
The Black Widow. The Avenger.
He opened his eyes again and realised that, unlike most people, she hadn't shrunk in the shadows of her death. She was much bigger than all those pieces of her, she was as she always was.
Natasha.
And, through the tears he'd lost the battle against, he saw every time she'd smiled at him and heard every time she'd laughed. He felt the heat of her anger and passion and conviction. Above all he saw her strength.
The strength that had her doing anything from launching herself at the Chitari to fighting free from a Wanda-inflicted daymare to holding a broken team together even as she, herself, broke.
It was there, even then, as she lay prone and empty and lifeless, having followed her convictions to her grave.
"Steven, son of Sarah, it has been a long time." The voice hissed along on the gusting air and though Clint had never named him, Steve had suspected he knew the stranger who guided the spies to their goal.
"Not long enough, Schmidt."
"I am surprised you seek the Soul Stone. I fear you will find nothing but disappointment. It has already been claimed. The liebchen's friend."
Steve reached out and cupped her cheek, unable to just stare at her any longer, needing some sort of physical confirmation that this was, indeed, reality. At any other time her eyes would have flashed surprise or she would have shifted away, always so suspicious of close contact unless she initiated it. But she couldn't anymore and it felt wrong, so he took his hand away and shut his eyes again. When he next spoke his voice was all overwhelmed vocal chords and hurting heart.
"I'm not here to take the stone," Steve said, "I'm here to return it."
"That is a first," the spectre said, his voice as ghoulish as his face, "a second first."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Steve hated getting drawn in but he had to know.
"No one has willingly sacrificed themselves here before."
Had she known? Would she have even cared? It didn't matter if anyone had done it before, it only mattered that someone needed to do it then. And she damn well wasn't going to let Clint fling himself to the bottom of a mountain.
Was she scared knowing what was about to happen?
They'd discussed a lot of things in their time together but the potential manner of their deaths had never come up. He had no idea if she would have preferred knowing or not.
It took a certain courage to face it like she had. Knowing she didn't have to die but it was the only way to bring back half the universe. And even then there was no guarantee it was going to work. But she took the leap of faith and it paid off.
For everyone.
One soul for trillions.
One soul for normality.
One soul.
But it still felt too heavy a cost. Far too heavy.
She gave up everything. Not just on Vormir but during the time Steve had known her.
Her anonymity, her freedom, her mental health until all she had left to give was her life. Traded without hesitation.
"I'm taking her body back home," Steve said, surprised he'd spoken but not at his words, "she deserves a proper funeral."
"That is not possible."
"I'm not asking, Schmidt."
"Of that I am aware but that does not change the possibility of the situation."
"Why not?" Steve aimed for angry but missed by miles as he choked on the two tiny words that lodged themselves in his throat. "She's right here, she's real." He grabbed her hand to make his point and wished he hadn't because he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to let go.
"She gave herself to Vormir and Vormir does not relent its hold on that which it is given."
"But I have the stone," desperation twisted Steve's voice into something he didn't recognise, "I'm retuning it-"
"Then, Captain Rogers, return it and be gone before Vormir claims you too. Be content in the knowledge that though your friend will not leave here, she has at least found her peace."
Steve looked down at her and wondered if he could be content with that knowledge but there was no answer to find, so he squeezed her hand and rubbed his thumb over the smooth skin on the back of it. Just as they always did when one of them needed comfort. Maybe she could feel it, wherever she was.
He knew he wasn't going to get a reaction, he knew it was a gesture more for him than her, but when she didn't squeeze his hand back everything in him fell apart.
This was it.
This was all he had left.
Moments at her graveside.
Because she was... she was... gone.
And the pain and grief and utter loss that wrapped itself around him was too much, too overwhelming and just too too much. He was feeling all these things and she wasn't feeling anything anymore and how was that fair? How was that allowed? She had spent all these past years alive and existing and after bringing everyone back she was supposed to be alive and living.
It didn't make sense, it could never make sense because she was always there and now she wasn't going to be anywhere.
And..
And...
And...
We both need to get a life.
You first.
Why would his mind betray him like that now?
"I don't-" Steve just about managed before a sob wrenched its way from the very depths of his body and almost washed away his words, but he was determined, "-know how to live in a world where you're in the past."
He didn't know what possessed him to divulge that to Natasha's body in the presence of his once greatest enemy, but he couldn't not say it. Just as he couldn't stop the small thought he'd harboured since setting out on this final journey, the one that whispered he had options now, that he could travel backwards just as easily as forwards, that he still wouldn't see her again but at least she'd be yet to come instead of already gone.
"I miss you, Nat."
He found the courage to let go of her hand only to lean forward and leave a gentle kiss on her forehead.
"You're one of the best people I've ever known."
When he pulled back he looked into her eyes. They reflected the roiling sky and he smiled knowing she would have liked the view above her. There was a small comfort in that. Still, they lacked the usual mischievous sparkle and knowing glint and it was all the proof he needed that his last hope for an impossible survival wasn't going to come true.
After another second or so to compose himself he rested a hand over her eyes and closed them.
"Goodbye Nat and...thank you."
It was all too real and all too final. His emotions were already bubbling away and when the unwelcome guest hovering beside them spoke he didn't want to keep a hold of his anger anymore.
"Cap-" Red Skull started.
"Shove it, Schmidt," Steve yelled, all raw anger and infinite sadness and guilt, guilt, guilt. He opened the case where the final Infinity Stone lay, "you want the stone? Then fine, take it, have it, keep it. I don't wanna see this damned thing again." He swung his arm back and then, with all the strength he had left, flung the stone as far from Natasha as possible. He never saw it land.
And he never saw Natasha again either.
One moment he was beside her and the next he was lying in water. It lapped gently against his ears, mixing with the angry words that echoed in his mind.
When he first landed on Vormir nothing was loud enough, and now it was all too loud. Nothing more so than the absence of anything or anyone with him in the waterlogged wastelands. The sharp pain through his soul an unwelcome dose of reality; he hadn't quite let go of the hope that returning the stone was enough to return her.
So he lay there in the dim brightness beneath the indigo clouds and lilac lightning and wept tears that shone like amethyst, until the only thing he could do was sit up and set the coordinates to a time and place he hoped to never see purple again.