Sure, there's probably 49875209872309 of these 'Natasha and Tony meet in the afterlife' fics...but what's one more, right? 😉
Enjoy.
"They said everything happened the way it was supposed to," Tony says as he sits down next to her on the bench. His tone is a bit bitter, Natasha thinks, and she doesn't blame him. After living through trauma herself, she wonders how anyone can think of things turning out the way they were 'supposed to' as any sort of balm to a tortured soul. How is being told that all the cruelty and pain you'd lived through was predetermined supposed to be a comfort? "Did they tell you that too?" he asks.
She'd fallen hundreds of feet while a mix of regrets and hopes flew through her mind and her gaze stayed fixed on Clint who'd rapidly become nothing more than a faint dot in her vision, before she'd felt an instant of absolutely excruciating pain and then the world had gone white. Then she'd opened her eyes to a world that was softer than the one she'd left, and found herself face to face with some sort of ethereal being. They'd told her she had lived the life she had been meant to, and that she could now be at peace. She remembers scoffing internally at the declaration - because, yeah, finding peace was as easy as someone telling you that's how it was gonna be.
"Yeah," she answers him. "Seems like a bunch of bullshit to me." And oh, does it ever. Everything that had happened to her - from being taken from her family as a child and forced into the Red Room, to having to endure years of psychological conditioning, to losing so many of her friends with a snap of some fingers, to having to give her life to save the ones she loved - that was all predetermined? She'd spent years scratching and clawing what she could salvage from the wreckage of her past to become… someone , and now they tell her it didn't matter because it was just how it all was supposed to go anyway? That all that pain and trauma and suffering was because some being or the universe or whatever the fuck made those kinds of decisions had decided that's just how it was going to go for her? Bullshit.
"Yeah," Tony agrees half-heartedly.
"But if it's not…" she begins and he turns to face her with an expression of curiosity. "If it's not, then I want a do-over."
He chuckles, though she knows it's not entirely because he feels it's funny. "I don't know that I would," he admits in a rare moment of complete honesty from the man who often preferred to dance around the truth with humour.
She understands that too. "Morgan and Pepper," she says and he nods as a serious little smile plays on his lips.
"They were the best parts of my life," he says simply and Natasha bobs her head once in understanding as she wonders what the best parts of her life were. Yelena? Clint? Laura and the kids? The Avengers? "What would you want to change?" he asks. His tone now is softer, gentler even.
She considers it. Everything is on the tip of her tongue because there's been so much pain in her life that it seems a completely reasonable response. But everything she can think of changing leads to her losing the parts of her life she had liked. Wipe away the Red Room and yeah, it probably eases her pain and trauma back a few hundred notches, but she doesn't meet Clint and Laura, and she doesn't become an aunt to three amazing kids. She never meets Yelena and Melina and Alexei, and she never becomes an Avenger. Other possibilities float in her mind, but none of them can fix something without breaking something else. And that's, she thinks, maybe why it's not complete bullshit that things happened the way they were supposed to. Maybe all that pain and trauma was so she could have those little fragments.
"I don't know," she answers finally with a shake of her head. She can feel tears pricking her eyes as she thinks of everyone she'd left behind, of what could have been...but apparently would never have been. If it's not bullshit that everything had gone exactly as it'd been predetermined, then maybe it's bullshit that she was the one who drew the short straw.
He's quiet for a moment and she figures he doesn't quite know how to respond. She doesn't blame him; she knows she wouldn't know how either.
"I don't know that there's anything I could change that wouldn't lead to me completely losing the parts of my life I liked and enjoyed," she admits, surprised with herself that she's said it out loud. She knows he understands this because he'd told her as much; Morgan and Pepper, in his eyes, were worth the pain of everything else. She understands that, and in many ways, Natasha feels the same about her own life. Getting to be friends with them all, and having Yelena as a sister, and having those two families...maybe it was worth the horrors she'd lived through to get those things. But there was that tiny, quiet, and insistent voice at the back of her mind that whispered that it wasn't, that those things she'd lived through should have meant she got more out of her life before it had abruptly ended.
She hears him exhale sharply. "I wish there was a way," he says, and his tone is a bit melancholy now, she thinks. It's certainly a far cry from the quips and easy confidence she's come to associate with him. "I don't know all that much about your life, but I know it was hard. I know parts of it were hell. And you didn't deserve that pain. Not a goddamn minute of it." His tone hardens at the end, like he's angry on her behalf, and her heart swells a little because she knows it's genuine. "I wish there was a way it could have been easier for you and you still got those good parts."
She smiles at him, Tony Stark, the utter and complete teddy bear that he is. He always wanted so badly to fix things for his friends, he was generous that way and always had been...maybe more than almost everyone gave him credit for. "Maybe it was worth it," she ventures, "to have you guys as my family, to get to be an Avenger and save the world."
"Maybe," he replies with a shrug, "but sorta seems like you got the short end of the stick."
She sighs. "Someone had to, I suppose."
"Maybe," he agrees again, "but maybe it shouldn't have had to be you." His insistence is a balm to the uncertainty swirling in her mind as she sighs lightly again. "Who do you think you would have been? If you hadn't gone to the Red Room, I mean."
"Taken by," she corrects quietly. She doesn't know why she's telling him this, but suddenly the words she'd never told anyone apart from Yelena, who understood the pain like no one else could, are spilling from her lips easily. "They took me. Paid off my family after tests revealed that my genetic profile suited their parameters for potential." Tony blinks and she can see the tension ripple through him like a snap, but he doesn't say anything. "I don't know anything about them, other than that my mother kept looking for me, and was killed for it," she admits. She's wondered about them even more since Melina had told her she hadn't been abandoned. Had she been from a poor family? Had the money they'd gotten for her saved them? Did she have siblings? What had her mother been like, fighting to try and find her? Had she been named after anyone? Was Natalia even the name she'd been given?
He's quiet for another moment, as though considering the information she's given him. "Well, I can see where you got your stubbornness from," he says with a small smile that she can't help but return. She knows neither of them know the person her mother was, but being told she's like her...it warms her heart in a way she didn't expect. "And I bet she was probably scary as hell when she was in Mama Bear mode too," he adds with another smile, this one a little bigger.
She feels the tears fill her eyes at his words. He's speaking about her mother fondly, as though he knows the kind of person she had been simply because he's known Natasha. She'd thought about the woman every day of her life, even if she hadn't always admitted it, and to hear him describe what she might have been like and the apparently obvious parallels between them...it was overwhelming.
"Tough as nails most of the time, but a complete pushover when it came to making her family happy," he says, shuffling a little closer to her as he begins ticking off the descriptors on his fingers. "A wicked sense of humour, dry as the Sahara, no doubt. Resourceful beyond comprehension, probably. Definitely smart as a whip. Fiercely loyal to her family and friends, and willing to do whatever was necessary for them, even if it meant giving something up herself."
She doesn't even realize she's leaned her head onto his shoulder until she feels his arm wrap around her shoulder. She sniffles quietly and he squeezes her in a one-armed hug.
"I think all the best parts about you came from her, Natasha. I think you are her daughter in every single way, even if you never knew her." He pauses then for a beat, allowing her to really hear his words. "And I think you've made her proud, Nat. What you overcame, the woman you grew up to be despite it all, the friend you were to all of us, the hero you were for the world… I think she's damn proud of you."
The tears are a steady flow now and she couldn't stop them if she wanted to. She lets herself be held by him, this man who seems to understand her better than she'd ever given him credit for, and allows her heart to fill with the quiet hope and contentment that his words bring her.
Eventually - she doesn't know quite how long they've been sitting like that - she breaks the silence. "Thank you, Tony."
"Anytime, Nat," he answers right away as he squeezes her shoulder gently again.
They sit there quietly, her head still leaning on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her, watching the last few slices of bright colours of the softened sunset slip below the horizon as the sky fades into dusk and then to a darkened night sky dotted with stars.
"So," he begins, maybe a little tentatively she thinks, "they tell you that you could be at peace now, too?" She hums affirmatively in reply. "You got any idea what that means?"
She lifts her head off his shoulder and turns to look at him. She finds years have disappeared from his face and she wonders if she looks younger now too. "No clue," she answers with a shake of her head. She'd never believed in any sort of afterlife so this was all brand-new territory for her.
"Yeah, me neither. Sort of found it a bit pretentious for them to just declare that I should be at peace, you know?" She nods. His tone softens when he begins speaking again. "Pepper told me I could rest. Before I died, she told me they'd be okay and that I could rest."
"Can you?" she asks before she can think not to.
He sighs lightly. "I think I'd like to, but I'm not sure how," he admits. "That part was always supposed to be with Pepper."
"I'm sorry, Tony," she offers, and this time it's her who reaches around to squeeze him in a one-armed hug.
"But I guess she was always smarter than me anyway, so I may as well do what she tells me to," he says in a tone which is filled with love and fondness, and maybe a little amusement too.
"A wise decision which has served you well in the past," she says with a small smile that he returns.
"What about you? Think you can rest now? Because by my calculation you've put in more than enough time to earn yourself a nice, relaxing retirement."
She considers it. She had always assumed nothing would ever be enough to make up for the horrors she'd been the cause of for so many people for so long. She'd never stopped to think she could ever wipe out the red from her ledger, let alone what would happen next. But maybe dying just as she was on the cusp of getting her friends and family back, and so trillions could be brought back...maybe it was finally enough. She squeezes her eyes shut tightly for a second to try and reconcile that with the voice that usually whispered in the back of her mind that nothing could ever be enough.
"I know what you're thinking," Tony says and her eyes open to look at him, "but you saved Clint's life on Vormir, Nat. Not to mention the trillions who got to live out the rest of their days because of what you did."
"That doesn't erase what I did before I joined SHIELD."
"Maybe not, but you think you'd be here if you weren't worthy?"
She looks around. Maybe he has a point. "It is less fiery than I'd anticipated," she says, half-heartedly trying for a joke.
"And not a single demon that I can see," he returns in kind.
"I'm not sure I know how to rest either," she admits, thinking back to five stubborn years of persisting at something everyone else had moved on from.
"Well," he begins as he shifts to stand up, "I guess we'll have to figure that out." She looks up at him with a tiny frown creasing her brow at his sudden actions. "Fancy a stroll, Ms. Romanoff?" he offers as he holds out a hand to her. "Maybe we see what else this oddly soft and lacking sharp edges world has to offer, hmm?" She takes his hand and lets him pull her to her feet. "You think they have cheeseburgers here?"
She snorts. "You're ridiculous, you know that?"
"You're saying that like I'm not completely aware of that fact and like I haven't been told that a few thousand times." She rolls her eyes but loops her arm around his. "Lead on, Macduff."
"That's not actually the quote you know."
"Oh my god, you're worse than Bruce! It's in the zeitgeist, it's fair game."
She smiles and tugs on his arm gently to lead them away from the bench where they'd been sitting.
"This is gonna sound awful," he begins again, breaking the short silence that had taken hold once they'd started walking, "but I'm glad you're here."
She shakes her head at his pre-emptive apology because she knows what he means. She had never wanted anyone else to die - the whole point of her sacrificing herself was so they could get everyone back - but she was grateful to have someone with her to face these unknowns.
"I mean, obviously not glad you had to die because you didn't deserve th-"
"Me too," she says softly, interrupting his rambling before he could build up too much steam. "It's nice to have a familiar face."
"Yeah," he agrees. "And Nat?"
"Mm?"
"I'm sorry it had to be you. I know we weren't on the best of terms toward the end there, but-"
"I know," she says softly, interrupting him. "And I'm sorry it had to be you ."
"Well, it started with us two, I guess it's fitting it ended with us, huh?"
She smiles and leans in to bump his shoulder with her own. "I guess so," she agrees.
This one was inspired by a book I read, which had a character in between life and death able to go live different iterations of their life based on their choices. Got me thinking about how Tony and Nat might've wanted to change things and how they would handle that possibility. And I was maybe a little bitter about the Black Widow movie being the last we'd see of Natasha Romanoff...
As always, comments and thoughts appreciated.