because I firmly believe Natasha and Phil had a strong friendship.

(and maybe also because I've been rewatching Agents of SHIELD, and his dry humour is just so fantastic...)

"This seat taken?" Phil asks as he looks down at Natasha. She's leaning back against the trunk of a large tree that's not far from the lake's edge. Her arms are hugging her legs loosely and he thinks her expression is a touch troubled as she gazes out over the water. He knows that look, and he knows that he's one of only a select few who do. To most, she just looks contemplative, but to those few who know her, she's lost and searching for something to provide some balance. He's not surprised - her entire world had just been uprooted.

She looks up and offers a half-smile that's not fooling either of them. "All yours."

Her voice is even, if a little neutral, but it's the pain in her eyes that he focuses on. He knows some of her pain - dying and leaving behind your friends and family is a commonality among them all here, after all - but most of it, he suspects, is something he doesn't understand. Something he can't understand, because he has no idea what she's lived through since his death at the hands of Loki. Sure, he's heard bits and pieces, and seen a thing or two when he's looked in on the world, but mostly he's in the dark. Logically, he knows that this place has deemed her soul has healed enough to move out of the transitional place, but looking into her eyes now - he has some serious questions about that.

He sits down and joins her in leaning back against the trunk of the tree. "How are you doing?"

She glances over at him, her expression telling him everything he needs to know without her having to say a word. "I know, stupid question," he admits, a rueful smile curling on his lips. It hasn't been long since she'd joined him here, so he knows everything is still fresh. "But how are you doing?"

He isn't surprised when she doesn't answer right away. He knows an honest answer about emotions will take her time to formulate. It always has. They're quiet as she collects her thoughts, and the gentle sounds of the water lapping at the shore and wind rustling in the trees instead fill the scene. It reminds him of those early days when he had sat with her in silence, letting her work through the brutal aftershocks of the deprogramming sessions. She'd never explicitly asked him to stay, but she'd also never asked him to go. So he stayed, and eventually they started talking a bit as she got more comfortable and they removed more and more of the programming the Red Room had put in place. Under it all he'd found a girl struggling to come to terms with the weapon they'd forced her to become and the things she'd been forced to do, and someone searching desperately for a purpose and trying to find a foothold in a brand new world.

"I miss them," she admits finally, her tone even but still bursting with emotion.

Phil schools his features to hide his surprise, because they are words that would never have left the lips of the Natasha Romanoff he'd known. She had always been fiercely private, even to those she allowed into her inner circle, and so he knows without a doubt, that despite how much she might have been thinking and feeling them she would never have said them aloud. And so his heart floods with pride that she can admit it openly now. But it also fills with sadness, because he knows she's gone through hell to get to that point.

He wants to smile and tell her that the afterlife takes all that pain away. He wants to tell her that the emptiness inside her fills with something good sooner than later. He wants to tell her that it doesn't take long to feel like you haven't left the best parts of yourself behind.

But he can't.

The afterlife may be magical and mysterious in ways none of them can understand, but coming to terms with your death and grieving what you've lost are still painful processes people have to undergo here. And he's fairly certain that beyond him, she doesn't have anyone else here. She'd left the rest of family and friends behind to save them.

"I know it's not helpful," he begins carefully, "but it does get easier eventually."

She scoffs. "That therapist you made me go to used to tell me that."

"As I recall you weren't terribly fond of those sessions."

She smiles at the memory, but it's fleeting. "No, can't say that I was."

"She was right."

"Still a shitty thing to tell someone."

"Yeah," he agrees with a soft sigh.

She's quiet for a beat before she speaks again. "I lived longer than I was probably supposed to," she muses, "but there was so much more I wanted to do."

Phil sighs again because after the start in life she'd had, he had really hoped that she'd get to have those sorts of things. And maybe she did have some, but it seemed that she'd been saddled with responsibilities that pushed most of those things further and further away. "I'm sorry you didn't get to do it. You of all people deserved it."

"What about you?" she asks, shrugging off his condolences and pushing them away from her side of that particular emotional topic. "You finish your bucket list?"

He shakes his head. "Not even close."

"Well, you got to die and come back to life," she points out, tone dry as the Sahara and just like he remembered. "That's one no one else can cross off their list."

"You know, shockingly that wasn't actually on my list."

"No? Should've been."

He shakes his head as he blows out a breath. He's happy to hear her dry humour sneaking out, having wondered if what she'd lived through had washed it away and hardened her again. "At least we both got to meet aliens. Not everyone can say that."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Thor took a lot of selfies with fans."

"Of course he did," Phil says, shaking his head in disbelief. "Well, we both went to space, so that's something." Her eyebrow arches as she shoots him a questioning look. "Right," he says with a nod, "there's a few things I should probably catch you up on sometime."

"I'll say," she mutters. She pauses for a beat and then a small smile curls on her lips, one he recognizes as when she knows she's got a winning hand. "I did spend most of the last five years emailing with a raccoon and an alien who'd been mostly replaced with machinery and technology."

Phil blinks. "Okay," he says with a tilt of his head and a smile, "you win."

Her smile widens for a moment before it fades and they're both left gazing out over the water, the soft sounds of the wind in the trees and water lapping at the shore the only sounds filling the scene again. Her voice is soft when she speaks again. "Who'd have thought we'd end up here together?"

Phil smiles and can't resist throwing in a playful verbal jab. "I always did warn you and Clint that you'd kill yourselves one day with your reckless attitudes."

"Yeah," she says, tone and expression far more thoughtful than he'd expected. "But what about you? You were the responsible one and you beat us both here," she adds. He can hear the laugh sitting on the tip of her tongue, and yet not struggling to get out.

"Well, someone had to kick the Avengers into forming," he quips, trying again to ease some of her seriousness and steer them back to a lighter tone.

She smiles sadly. "But you didn't actually die then. You told me when I got here that you hadn't been dead as long as I thought," she points out, ignoring the olive branch he'd offered to guide themselves away from this heavy conversation.

"True," he admits with a single nod of his head. "But technically I was dead for several days before they brought me back."

"How exactly did they bring you back?" she asks with a furrowed brow. Her tone isn't bitter, just curious, and he's grateful. She has every right to be angry with him for leaving her and the rest of them to mourn him, but she's apparently moved right past it.

"Some alien tissue and tech."

Her eyes widen. "SHIELD had that hiding away somewhere?"

"For you, actually."

Her eyes widen further and she recoils a little in shock. "Me?"

"Well, not just you. But in the case of the death of an Avenger."

"And Fury used it on you." She blows out a small exhale before he hears a bit of the snarky Natasha he knows return. "Sneaky bastard."

"Well, that's Fury for you. Believe me, I wasn't consulted. I'd actually spent time overseeing the development of the project before I submitted to have it terminated due to debilitating, persistent side effects. Clearly I was overruled."

"How bad were the side effects?"

"Bad enough they had to use memory wipes so I'd stay sane."

She recoils again, and he knows it's because of her own history with conditioning and memory wipes. He doesn't blame her, given that he now knows a fraction of what she'd gone through.

"In the end it only lengthened my life by a few years, but it did let me find another great team and spend time growing with them."

She smiles, and he can see this time it's not forced and not tinged with sadness, but is warm and genuine. "I'm glad. I'm not sure I'd have stuck around at SHIELD as long as I did without your support, so I know they were damn lucky to have you."

He smiles fondly. "You'd have liked them."

She shakes her head and scrunches her face. "No, I wouldn't have. I didn't like anybody."

"You liked Melinda May," he counters.

It's her turn to smile fondly. "God, I haven't-" she cuts herself off and clenches her jaw before correcting herself. "Hadn't seen her in years… You dragged her out of administration?"

"With an assist from Fury. He knew I'd try to recruit her for my team, so he primed her with a mission to observe me for side effects."

She eyes him critically for a moment. "I assume you found out?"

He nods. "Unfortunately it happened right when you and Cap were exposing Hydra, so we were all pretty sure she was a sleeper agent."

"Shit."

"Yeah," he breathes out. "Believe me when I say that wasn't a fun time."

She fixes him with an utterly unimpressed look. "Because dumping all of SHIELD's secrets and my past online for the world to see was a real fun party..."

He exhales heavily. "Yeah, okay. Not fun for you either."

"Understatement," she mutters with a roll of her eyes.

He ignores her reaction and presses on. "One of our first ops, we tracked a woman who was a part of the Rising Tide-"

"The hackers?"

He nods. "She came to us as this kid who was lost and struggling without any footholds in the world, an empty page for a family tree, and a hell of a lot of baggage. She reminded me a lot of you in those early years actually," he says fondly, turning to meet her gaze. "She was all rough edges, but with willpower and stubbornness like you wouldn't believe."

"I'm trying very hard not to take offence to that," Nat teases.

Phil laughs heartily. "Eventually she and I grew closer, and without me really realizing it, she'd become like a daughter to me." He pauses for a moment before turning to face Natasha. "I cared about her the same way I cared about you, Nat."

She's speechless and he wonders if she'd ever known just how much he cared. Judging by her reaction, probably not. "I gotta say, I'm a little hurt you didn't know," he admits.

She shakes her head immediately, meeting his gaze. "I knew. I just-" she stops abruptly, sighing heavily and covering her face with her hands momentarily before dropping them back into her lap and allowing her gaze to fall as well. "My brain was so fucked up that it took me a long time for me to realize it. And when I finally did, I couldn't express how I felt."

He nods in understanding. Only a handful of people really know the depths of the things she went through after defecting, and how deep those wounds went.

She looks back up at him. "After Clint, you were the first person to show me any kindness. I never forgot that."

Phil smiles warmly. He'd supervised a lot of agents over his career, but Natasha was one of a few that would always be special to him. "I don't know if I ever told you, but I was proud of you. I am proud of you. Everything you overcame, and then everything you did as an agent and then an Avenger... It was nothing short of amazing, Nat."

She smiles widely and her eyes brighten as she leans over and bumps his shoulder with hers. "Thanks, Phil," she says softly.

Phil can't help but think back to his first interactions with her. She'd been a slightly scrawny teenager then, waging wars in her own mind as she tried to find footing in a new world. Everyone had approached her like a caged animal, expecting the worst. He'd decided to take a different tactic.

"A word of warning," Fury says, as he hands a thin folder to Phil. "She's not all that talkative, but don't mistake her silence for meekness. She's as deadly as they come."

"I've heard the stories, sir," he replies as he flips through the few pages in the folder. "Question is, how many of them are true?" he asks as he looks up. Fury gives nothing away in his expression, but then Phil hadn't expected him to. "So you want me to oversee her integration?"

"Eventually, yes, but we're not there yet. We still need to know more about her. Beyond the initial bit of intel she gave us upon arrival at Barton's request, she hasn't told our interrogators shit. She actually managed to get more information out of the last one than he was able to get from her. He didn't even realize it until I pulled him out."

"He didn't realize a sudden change in her behaviour was a manipulation?"

Fury's stare is hard. "He thought it was a breakthrough," he replies wryly.

Phil nods silently before letting out a heavy exhale. "And you want me to talk to her?" he confirms, a bit surprised to have been tasked with such a delicate assignment.

"You seem to have a knack for handling the troublesome cases."

Phil smiles, remembering Fury tasking him with handling Barton in his early days at SHIELD. "What's the play?"

"First things first - learn what we can about her. I'm under no illusion that she's going to freely give up everything she knows right away. Lord knows I wouldn't if I were in her shoes."

"What intel are we looking for?"

Fury shakes his head. "None. At this point I'd settle for her confirming her damn name. Learning more about her is the primary objective. Once she gets more comfortable, we can look to narrow our focus."

"What's the next step?"

"You do realize I just asked you to do what no interrogators have managed to do in the weeks she's been here, right?"

Phil shrugs, a little smile on his face. "I'm an optimist."

Fury shakes his head and scoffs. "It's in the back of the folder," he explains, waiting for Phil to flip to it. "It's not gonna be easy."

"I see that," Phil says, eyes widening a touch at the sheer list of procedures and tests in store for her.

"Listen, I know Barton told you the same thing he told me - that he saw something in her that you and I once saw in him. You know him better than I do - do you trust his judgment?"

Phil nods. "He's reckless at times, has a penchant for pushing the boundaries, and has a seriously strong hatred of procedure, but yeah, I trust his judgment."

"Okay," Fury says with a nod. "This stays need-to-know right now. That means off the books until such time that you and I feel it can be put onto the books. Verbal reports directly to me only. Got it?"

Phil nods seriously. "Understood, sir." Normally he liked to stick to procedure, but these were extenuating circumstances, so he agreed wholeheartedly with keeping things under the radar until they were on more stable ground. The blowback from the council would be devastating otherwise.

Fury nods and then turns on his heel before disappearing quickly down the hallway. Phil turns his attention to the door in front of him before he looks back down at the folder in his hands. It had basically no information on the Black Widow beyond scraps of information that were really more rumours than actual solid facts. The only thing he knew for certain was that Barton told him he was certain that she had wanted to die. Phil turns that fact over in his head. That meant that somehow she'd broken at least some of her conditioning. If nothing else, it confirmed to him that there was a human being under all that training and conditioning.

He takes a moment to button his jacket, straighten his tie, and adjust his ID badge before tucking the folder under his arm and opening up the door.

"Hi," he says as he enters the room, having felt her gaze immediately. "I'm Phil," he adds as he closes the door behind him.

She remains silent, but her gaze is piercing. Barton had warned him that she was younger than they'd realized, but it was still startling to see a teenager sitting in front of him. To think that she had killed so many people in so few years… And that she had likely experienced enough trauma for several lifetimes...

"This is usually the part where you introduce yourself," he says with a smile to fill the silence. He pauses to allow for a response, but isn't surprised when there isn't one. "But I'm gathering you aren't a talker. That's okay. Between you and me, I don't mind. Barton talks enough for a whole team of agents, so the silence is a bit refreshing to be honest."

There's no outward change in her facial expression, but he's pretty sure that amused her at least a little. If nothing else, it probably amused Fury, who he was certain was watching the feed.

"May I sit?" he asks, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the table. She just continues to hold his gaze. "I'm gonna take that as a yes," he says with a nod as he pulls out the chair. "You want me to uncuff you?"

That gets her attention and he spots her eyebrow twitch. The movement is barely perceptible, but it's there and it's something to work off of. He smiles knowingly, "I know you could be out of those within seconds if you wanted to, even with the enhanced locking mechanisms and upgraded metal, so why bother, right? This way we don't break a perfectly good pair of handcuffs that they probably spent a lot more on than they'd like to admit."

"I wouldn't break them," she says quietly, her tone a cross between arrogance and amusement. She pushes her hands forward as far as the cuffs allow to let him unlock them.

"So you do speak," he says with a tilt of his head as he fishes the key from his pocket and unlocks the cuffs. He just catches the edge of a scar on her wrist and he wonders if the rumours about the Red Room handcuffing their "students" to their beds at night were true.

"You Americans talk so much, but say so little."

Phil laughs heartily as he sits down. "Yeah, that's true. You're more of a strong, silent type, huh?"

"Why talk when there's no need?"

"Why's there no need? I would think there'd be a need for you to talk at least a little."

She leans back and crosses her arms. "And why do you think that, Phil Coulson?"

He smirks a little, unsurprised that she'd managed to read his ID tag easily without her ever seeming to break eye contact. "Because you know that you have intel that we want."

"SHIELD may not want it that badly. Who's to say you won't...what is it they say...lock me away and throw away the key?"

"Would you be here talking to me if we were going to lock you away?"

She eyes him for a long moment. "If I have bargaining power...what is it you think I want?"

"Honestly?" Phil asks, head tilting slightly as his eyebrows rise. She gives a tiny nod. "I don't know."

She huffs out a breath of amusement. "How refreshing. A man who doesn't have all the answers."

He smiles. "I don't know what you want, but I'm guessing you definitely don't want whatever it is you were a part of before. Or do agents of the Red Room often engineer the circumstances of their own deaths purposefully?"

Her gaze remains hard, but he swears he sees her brow furrow just a touch before she smiles widely. Likely an effort to disarm him, he guesses. "Not that I know of," is her dry response.

"I thought not," he says, glancing down at his watch. "If you'll excuse me, I have some paperwork to do. Okay if we chat again tomorrow?"

"I don't really have a choice, do I?"

"You do," Phil assures her as he rises to his feet. "If you don't want to talk, you can stay in your quarters."

Her eyebrows arches. "Is that what SHIELD calls cells?"

"I'd hardly call it a cell," he remarks drily, "and besides, from the little we've gathered about the Red Room, I'd say it's quite an upgrade on the living conditions there."

He sees her eyes harden and he knows he's hit on something. But as quickly as he sees the flash in her eyes, it's gone. "We can talk tomorrow," she says brusquely.

"Excellent. Now, unfortunately I'm going to need to put these back on. Procedure...I'm sure you understand."

She smirks. "I think you mean the guards are afraid of me."

"That too," he agrees with a small smile. "I'd appreciate it if you tried not to terrify them too much, Miss…"

She eyes him for a long minute before she responds. "Romanova. Natalia Alianovna Romanova."

He smiles. "Miss Romanova. It's a pleasure to meet you," he says, holding out a hand.

If she's surprised by his gesture, she doesn't show it, but he suspects she is. She grips his hand tightly before she lets go and then brings her other hand up and holds them both up to allow him to cuff her again. He gestures to the camera in the corner for a guard to enter.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he promises, watching as she's led out of the room.

"You're back," she says as she's escorted into the room by a guard.

"I said I would be," he says without looking up from the op plan he's working on. He hears the clink of metal on metal as the guard moves to attach her cuffs to the table. "That's not necessary," he says, glancing up at the guard.

The guard's gaze shifts to confusion. Phil offers him a smile and the guard acquiesces with a shake of his head and a "it's your funeral" muttered under his breath before leaving the room. Phil refocuses on his paperwork.

"Do they really think I'm going to kill you?"

"Well, are you?" he responds without looking up.

She scoffs. "What good would it do me? I'd be better off waiting for the director."

"You shouldn't have said that. You're going to make them anxious."

"I already do that just by being here."

Phil holds in a smirk, because she's absolutely right. Even heavily armed, the guards were incredibly wary of her. And rightfully so...but even he had to admit seeing grown men that worried about a teenage girl was amusing on some level. "True."

"Do you always bring paperwork with you to interrogations?" Natasha asks wryly.

"Who said this was an interrogation?" he replies, still not looking up as he scrawls a few more notes onto the first page in the folder.

He sees her tilt her head and roll her eyes in his periphery. "Don't insult my intelligence."

"I'm not," he insists, glancing up for just a second. "The Director asked me to spend some time with you. Get to know you."

"And get the intel I've got," she finishes.

Phil looks up then and shakes his head. "Actually, no. Just get to know you."

He holds her gaze as she scrutinizes him, searching for the tell that he's lying. She won't find one because he's not lying. Fury had told him to get to know her. The intel would come later. He smiles warmly before he looks back down at the folder.

"Why? So we can be friends?" she throws at him sarcastically after a long moment of silence.

"Only if you want. One-sided friendships are such an emotional drain on a person," he quips drily.

They fall into silence then and he looks down again to continue adding notes.

"You said you supervise Agent Barton," she says suddenly.

"Well, no actually, I didn't. But yes, I do from time to time," he says before looking back down and turning to the next page of the folder in front of him.

"You two fit."

"So I've been told."

It's quiet then for a moment before her voice breaks the silence. "There's a window here on the third floor that is never locked," she says, pointing to a spot on the blueprints.

It takes every ounce of composure he has to not jump at the fact that she's behind him. It was almost creepy how quiet she was. "How do you know that?" he asks, looking up and over his shoulder to find her standing there.

"It's the security night guard has a bad smoking habit but it's against corporate policy and he doesn't get breaks."

"That didn't answer my question."

She smiles widely. Some might call it a bit menacing, but Phil clocks it as amusement and arrogance. "I know because I stole a year ago what you're allegedly trying to steal now. So either your intelligence is awful, or you're trying to play me."

He smiles. He'd expected her to take longer to catch on. "Guilty," he admits, flipping the folder closed and leaning back in his chair.

"I thought I asked you not to insult my intelligence, Agent Coulson," she says as she walks back around to her own chair, and there's a touch of something dangerous in her tone.

"I meant no insult. I told you, I want to get to know you. Didn't seem like a game of 'five questions to get to know you' was going to be your style, so I wanted to try a different approach."

"We could play that game if you want," she purrs, batting her eyelashes teasingly as she leans forward. "I've never played before. Usually I'm asking the questions."

Phil shakes his head immediately at her shift into the typical honeypot tactics. He knows the Red Room wouldn't have cared about her age and would have certainly condoned and encouraged such tactics, but to him it's downright wrong to see a child try to sway him sexually. "You don't need to do that."

"Do what?" she asks sweetly.

"That," he says, nodding toward her. "The fake sweet routine to get close to a target. And honestly? If you're going to keep doing it, I'm going to leave. I know you're still a child."

"I was never a child," she says, tone shifting now to tinges of bitterness as she sits back in her chair. But he can tell it's honest.

He leans forward and interlaces his fingers. "No, I imagine you weren't. And I'm sorry for that."

"I don't want your pity."

"It's not pity."

"Then what is it?"

"Empathy."

She falls silent then.

"Do you want to talk again tomorrow?" he asks.

He sees something in her eyes as she scrutinizes him, but he can't quite put a name to it. "Yes."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow, Miss Romanova."

The pattern continued on for a week before he was able to get anything out of her, or perhaps more accurately - until she chose to give him something.

Natalia stares down at the folder he's put in front of her before looking up at him again. "No tricks this time," he promises. "What can you tell me about this place?"

"There's access to the basement through an old tunnel," she says casually. "It's accessible through a bookstore down the street." She quiets as her fingers drift over the map slowly before stopping to tap on a store halfway down the block. "The owner doesn't check the store on the weekends, and doesn't have any surveillance."

Phil pulls back the folder and makes a few notes. "And how do you know this?"

"I was sent to kill an enemy of the Red Room there last year."

"Okay," he says with a nod. "Thank you."

Something flickers in her expression and suddenly she's lost the harder edges of her mask. "Ask me your questions," she instructs. "The ones you want to know."

"How old are you?" he asks, opting to wade gently into things and see if she's actually going to share anything. He's not holding his breath on that, but she's already surprised him on other occasions...

She surprises him by actually answering. "I don't know. They took me when I was young. I don't remember before."

He holds in his reaction and presses on. "Birthday?"

She shrugs. "We all moved up to the new year at the same time."

"Are there others like you?"

"A few from the classes before me," she answers with a nod. "No one else from my class."

"Why did you want to die?"

"I'm tired," she answers simply.

He hesitates before asking the next question, because it's a big one. "What do you want?"

"I want it out," she says, tapping her head. She pauses then, her expression thoughtful. "And I want to try to be better. To wipe out red from my ledger."

Phil files that away, because it's clear she's given an honest answer. "Will you tell us what you know?"

"That was already five questions," she replies with a smile curling on her lips as she references his mention of the 'game' from earlier in the week. "And anyway, I can't tell you much," she says, tapping her head again.

The implication is clear - there's enough conditioning still there to prevent her from spilling any real secrets.

"Would you like us to help you with that?"

He thinks maybe she looks a little hesitant. "Agent Barton said SHIELD is different from the Red Room." Phil nods. "How different?"

Phil tilts his head as he considers her question. "We're an organization that tries to help people with the threats they don't know about, and the things they can't understand. We operate in a morally grey area sometimes, yes, but our agents have a choice. We don't force them to do anything." He pauses to let his words sink in for a moment. "Other than the occasional debrief and paperwork," he adds with a small smile before sobering back into a serious expression again. "But let me be clear. We have rules and regulations, but they exist to help people. We kill as a last resort, not a first option, and only when absolutely necessary."

"That is different," she confirms. Phil just nods. "And SHIELD can use me?"

"We could use your talents, yes," he amends. It's a small thing, but words matter. And to someone who picks up on the smallest of details, he knows it's especially important to her.

"Then yes. But I have a few conditions."

He smiles gently. "I'm listening."

"I know everything that's going to be done to me ahead of time."

Phil nods seriously. That she has to lay that demand out makes his stomach churn.

"I want to take down the Red Room."

He nods again. "So do we. Once you're situated we can look to allocate resources to help with gathering intel, and possibly put together a task force."

She nods her acceptance of his answer. "And I don't want to be Natalia anymore."

Phil frowns in confusion.

"I want a new identity," she clarifies.

He nods. "We can do that. Do you know who you want to be?"

She shakes her head.

"Think about it. But remember that you don't have to always throw out everything," he advises. "Maybe Natalia can be a foundation for the new you to grow from."

She hums a noncommittal response before she leans back in her chair. "When do we start?"

He smiles. "We just did."

Thoughts on Natasha's introduction to SHIELD? Enjoy seeing how Phil handled her in those early days? Other comments? Let me know. :)

(Also - just a reminder that if you're digging this story, I now have another one called Conversational Junctures that is the same format but covers everything before the Snap. Check it out if you wish!)

Hope everyone is staying safe!