Chapter 7: Becoming a Hero

That next morning Steve wasn't surprised to find her gone from the bed. Since the snap, it had become a routine for either of them to cure a sleepless night by training until their body was numb whenever they needed time to "process".

Sure enough, Natasha had been working the bag like it was Thanos himself since dawn. She slowed her punches as she felt a second presence enter the gym.

"Damn, Natasha… we could have used punches like those against big bad purple in that final battle."

"Oh, please Sam. Flattery will get you nowhere with me. " She steps away from the bag, grabs her water bottle and starts to dry off with a towel.

"Alright, I'll shoot straight. How are you doing? Ya know, after dying and coming back to life among the living?"

"Clint hasn't said a word to me. And Steve..."

"Yeah, Vormir really did a number on both of them..."

"..." Natasha ignored the soft attempt at information.

"What… what really happened out there?" There it is, an actual question.

"What needed to be done." Nice try, but she was not going there. She had already lived-well- experienced that moment and wasn't ready to go there again. Not so soon and not ever again if she had a choice.

"That's hardly an answer." Sam sure as hell shot straight. It was a quality that Natasha had respected and appreciated while they were on the run after the Accords. However, right now it was a pain in her ass.

"You weren't even there. You didn't have to…to survive those 5 years... With everyone just … gone." The excuse she gave was weak, it was whiny… it didn't sound like her.

"Sorry, I was too busy being dusted."

"Sam" she gave him a look, her eyes telling him to cut the shit "What's next? Don't even try to tell me you wouldn't have done the same exact thing as me if you were at Vormir?"

"I never said I wouldn't."

"But Steve did."

"Did he now?"

"Not exactly, but I could tell… if he could get more than a few words out on the topic without becoming physically ill, I know he would be giving me the 10th degree."

"Yeah… that sounds about right. You should of seen him on Vormir."

Natasha's face palled at that thought.

" I- Uh..."

"Didn't think of that did you?"

"No… uh… how did…how did you guys ...find me?"

Sam glanced over at her, taking a mental note of her pauses…she seemed so uncharacteristically unprepared for the situation at hand.

"Well after we used the stones to win against thanos, we had to return them back to their timeline so that we didn't create alternate realities or something like that. So naturally Cap had volunteered to return them. But big Green and Cap came up with a plan to get you back. We had to go to vormir to get your body and use the stones on you."

"Use the stones on my body?" the words fall out of her mouth in a soft utter of disbelief. She's listening, but the information sounds foreign. It doesn't sound real. It doesn't sound like it happened to her, to her body.

"Heh- yeah I'm not too sure on the specifics and to be honest I don't think Banner is either, but by some miracle it worked. It wasn't pretty by any means, but it worked."

"Wasn't pretty?"

"We're talking CPR for 30minutes…. And if I'm being perfectly honest." Sam raised his eyes to meet hers " I was against using the stones… it felt… unnatural to me."

So that's why my ribs feel like hell.

"So yeah, give Steve a minute here, he's gonna need a breath before things are normal again."

"And Clint?"

"Well, now that one… might take longer. He didn't even want to hear about the plan to retrieve you."

"Where is he?"

"At the farm, with his family."

"Laura? The kids?" Her eyes nearly bulge, of course. They're back.

"Yep, all of them. As if the stones never existed."

"I have to-" She needs to see them, needs to make sure they're okay, make sure Clint is okay.

"Natasha." Sam stops her line of thinking by putting an arm to her shoulder, "Clint's fine… he'll come around...you're needed more here."

"Steve's fine."Sam gives her a look of disbelief.

"Is he, now? And what about you?"

"He's…We're fine. Bruce did some scans, it checked out... I'm fine."

"Look, I know it's easy to focus on other people's problems, it's natural for people like us to want to help others."

"Like us?"

"Avengers, you know... heroes." she cringes at the words.

"I-"

"Romanoff, come on now, you're smarter than this." His tone is gentle, but the disappointment is still there.

"..."

"I don't expect an answer but I want you to consider this: how is what you did… how is that any different from what Steve, Captain America… the greatest Hero in American History, did back in the 1940's when he crashed the Valkyrie into the ice?"

"I-" Sam holds up his hand to stop her. "Save it, I'm not the one that needs to hear that answer."

And with that he left her to her thoughts.