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Her phone doesn't ring.
She calls them, tries again once, twice, three times, over and over again, redialing Yelena's number, redialing Clint's number, redialing Matt's number, redialing anyone she knows because of the distinct possibility that they are gone, dead.
The phone lines are busy, she tells herself. That's the only reason they won't answer. (The small part of her who is still naive holds out for hope.)
But dust floating away in the wind flashes behind her eyes.
Nobody answers. The only people she knows for sure are alive stand before her.
(She should have known better than to reach out for hope.)
Natasha uses her boxes. She has a job to do. People need help, and she doesn't, not really. She's fine, she's fine. She can get a break—a mental breakdown—when all of this chaos is over. Right now, other people need her.
And she needs her people.
"You're not in charge anymore," she says, voice harsh, because of course the first call that successfully comes into Wakanda is from Ross, who's fucking blaming them for everything that's happened like they aren't already blaming themselves.
"What do you mean by that?" he asks her innocently. Natasha's willing to bet he lost no one and cares for no one else, the lucky bastard.
She sucks in a sharp breath through her nose so that she doesn't do something she'll regret later. "Now is not the time to play the blame game, Ross," she says, voice like acid. "People need you to get your shit together and help them."
"And I will help them by arresting you criminals and maintaining the country's safety." Natasha snorts. Unbelievable. Honestly, he should've been dusted (Wanda and Sam and Bucky and T'Challa and Shuri should've survived). Besides, they're not even in his beloved country right now.
"Is now really the time to continue this grudge?" Natasha asks, suddenly tired.
"It's not a grudge if it's justified," is his simple answer.
And Natasha could tell him. She could tell him that this wouldn't have happened if they'd all been together, fighting as a united front. If they had had actual support instead of scorn, then maybe they could have won this.
They'd never lost before, at least not to this level. Natasha can't help but think that they had never been apart before, either.
"We're helping people," she says bluntly, "you're wasting your time on us and not on those in need. What does that say about you?"
She ends the call. Ross doesn't call again.
It isn't as satisfying as she would have liked.
They find their way back to New York, to the Avengers Compound that they had never gotten to truly make a home in.
They find dust-covered tables and dust-covered walls. They find a dining room and a living area and a nicely-stocked kitchen, ready for the team bonding that hasn't occurred for years. They find doors labeled with their names, and rooms almost identical to the ones they had had before, in Avengers Tower.
Tony had kept all of their stuff. He had made space for them.
Tony isn't here.
Natasha presses the palm of her hand to her door and leans her forehead against it, too. She sighs. She trails her hand down to the doorknob and turns it, opening the door to a place she could have lived in, slept in, a place she could have made home.
She closes the door behind her and sinks to the ground against it, letting out a long, weary sigh.
She locks the door.
She allows herself one day to grieve.
She comes out the next day—ready and not ready at the same time—to face the world.
Here's the thing: Natasha Romanoff has always been scared of messing up.
Even after the Red Room, when the consequences weren't so dire, she still tended not to make any unnecessary risks unless a lot of good could come out of it (swiping her ledger clean) or before going over all the possible ways her actions could go. But it had been better, hadn't seemed to matter so much, when she had had people by her side.
Not that she doesn't have people by her side now, but the number has significantly lessened, and going on in a world where half the population has been eliminated is uncharted territory.
Natasha doesn't know what to do.
And really, the only person she can reliably depend on right now is herself.
(Because people are depending on her not to break.)
(And she won't break. She won't.)
She finds Rhodey sitting at an empty table with a mug of cooling coffee in his hands, staring into space.
"Hey," she says, walking quietly into the room and rummaging around for another mug so she can get some coffee for herself. She's wiped off all signs of yesterday, all the anguish and grief and red eyes, and she hopes that her current surprise isn't visible, because it's sort of eerie how easily she can find the mugs, because the kitchen is set up almost exactly like the one back at the tower.
"Hey," Rhodey says, glancing her way for just a moment before staring down at his coffee. He lifts up the mug, takes a sip, and grimaces.
The corner of Natasha's lips twitches as she sits down across from him. Rhodey has always liked his coffee comfortably hot. (She knows that just like she knows how Tony always drank his coffee black and steaming, how Steve used to experiment with creamers and the like before deciding on a favorite, how Thor would always drink whatever was placed in front of him, how Bruce preferred green tea over coffee.)
Natasha finds that her coffee taste shifts with her mood. Right now, her coffee matches Tony's preferences, and she blows on it a little to cool it down. Unlike Tony, she'd rather not burn her tongue. (Unlike Tony, she's here and alive.)
The silence is becoming disconcerting.
She wants to start a conversation, but she doesn't know how.
Luckily, Rhodey does so for her. "You only notice the silence when people are gone."
Natasha grimaces. "Is that what it was like for you guys to move here from the tower?" she asks, a strand of guilt tugging on her heart.
Rhodey shrugs. "You know how it is," he says with a weak, grief-filled smile.
Natasha studies him, eyes roving his features. She hopes it's not unnerving. She hasn't had to do this to people she knows, not in a while, at least. Maybe she doesn't know how to read people anymore. Maybe the snap had broken something inside her that can never be healed. "You can't miss someone before they're gone," is all she says.
"It would make it hurt less when they're actually gone," Rhodey says, voice grim. "And maybe they would feel appreciated when they were actually here."
"You feel like you didn't appreciate them enough while they'd been alive," Nat concludes. And maybe it's not a them but a him. She can relate. She'd been the one who left, along with half the team. Rhodey had been the one who'd stayed, who'd lived through the consequences instead of running away from them.
She doesn't see why he should feel guilt over this, but grief changes you, makes you think irrationally.
"Yeah," Rhodey says, then stares at her in turn.
Nat frowns. "What?" she says with a shaky smile.
"Don't blame yourself for this either."
She immediately looks away and brings her mug to her lips to hide her unease. The coffee scalds her tongue but she doesn't let it show.
The next person she runs into is the damn raccoon. He talks. What has Natasha's life turned into?
"For what it's worth," she says, leaning against the wall, "I'm sorry about your tree friend."
Rocket doesn't turn from where he's sitting on a bench, facing the woods. They're in the back of the compound, where there are outdoor obstacle courses and open fields. Nat could close her eyes and imagine sparring out here with Clint, surrounded by whistling birds and the gentle breeze.
"Thanks," Rocket says sourly, "but that's not worth much."
Natasha shrugs, even though he isn't looking at her. "I never claimed that it would."
When he turns towards her slightly, but doesn't move away, she walks forward to sit at the other end of the bench.
"My family's complicated," he says.
"Tell me about it."
"We're a team. We call ourselves the Guardians of the Galaxy, which I think, personally, is a stupid name."
"You don't always get to choose your name," Natasha says neutrally (not at all neutrally).
"Yeah, well. We chose that, or at least Quill did." He sighs, ears twitching forlornly. "You know Groot's died before? But I saved his little sapling self, and he got to grow again and have a new life, and part of me thinks it would be okay if he hadn't been dusted and had left some part of himself behind, but the other part of me knows I'm just lying to myself to make me feel better, or worse. I'm not really sure."
Natasha doesn't really know what to make of that. "Lying to yourself is the worst thing you could do," is what she says instead. "If you lie to yourself then you won't be able to do what needs to be done."
"Which is?" he asks, glancing at her, absurdly, for advice. She's not sure if she has any, or at least any that is useful. She's as lost as everyone is, but she supposes she deserves this because she doesn't want to let anyone know that.
"Live," she says simply.
"That's bullshit."
Natasha shrugs, almost helplessly. "I don't know. You have to figure it out for yourself."
"Did you?"
"Maybe. We'll see."
He sighs, buries his face in his hands—paws?—for a moment before saying, "I have one more question to ask."
"Shoot."
"Am I a trash panda?"
Natasha blinks. "What," she says.
"How are you, Nat?" Steve asks her as soon as she walks into the conference room. Holograms of those confirmed lost flash periodically, and news channels from around the world play silently on the screen.
Nat crosses her arms in front of her chest and folds into herself before she notices and reverses course. "Fine," she says. "Better, but not...the best."
Steve nods, as if it makes sense. It's what she likes about him: he's direct, practical, accepting of all your faults whether you want him to be or not.
He did the same for Bucky.
And look where that got them.
Not that she resents him for it, not at all. She's just...remembering, reminiscing. She feels empty and numb to it all and she doesn't know how to stop it.
"You disappeared yesterday," Steve says simply. Nat is not at all surprised that he is the one to broach the topic first, may be the only one to broach the topic at all.
That doesn't mean she'll make it easy for him, though. "I was in my room."
Steve glances at her with what she can only describe as a small, fond smirk. "You're not alone in this," he murmurs.
She breathes in, gathers up the courage to grasp him on the shoulder. "Neither are you," she says.
They stand there, mourning together in the silence, because that's how the two of them have always been.
"Thor," Nat says, nudging the man in question with her arm. He doesn't answer, staring into space, back bowed in defeat, hands clasped between his legs. "Thor," she repeats. She won't let him drown.
He blinks, seeming to come back to himself, seeming to grab onto the life raft she is offering, if only for a moment. "Natasha?" he asks, voice rough, as if it's been a while since he's spoken.
"Yes, it's me," she says simply, moving to sit down next to him because it feels weird to stand over his hunched form when he usually takes up so much more space in her life.
She doesn't know what happened. She has an idea—loss, grief, the same thing everyone's feeling—but she wants to know more, and she's afraid that Thor won't let her when he had before, back when things were simpler.
"How do you do it?" he asks.
Nat tilts her head. "Do what?"
"This, act like everything's okay." He's not looking at her, just staring at the wall in front of them as if it holds the answers to everything.
Natasha swallows, closes her eyes for just a moment. "It's just an act," she whispers. "Everything's not okay."
Thor laughs, a little broken laugh. "I could never act for the life of me," he says. "That was always Loki."
"It hadn't always been natural for me," Nat is quick to clarify for some reason. "Acting was a survival skill." It still is a survival skill.
"But you've learned it well," Thor says, then glances at her for the first time, giving her a small smile that is so unlike Thor. Nat just wishes they could have helped him when he'd gone to space, helped him so he hadn't been alone. Or, at least, so that he could have had more company than who he already had. They'd been stuck on Earth in a petty civil war when he'd been doing who knows what.
Natasha takes a deep breath in, then lets it out slowly. "You know how I do it?" she asks, but doesn't wait for an answer. "I box it all up, all the trauma and the pain and the grief and the bad memories. I put them away and I don't think about them because I know I have a job to do, which is to help others. I don't have the time to grieve when they're doing the same. I'll make up my own time for my own grief, but not now, not when others need me, not when the common good of the world is at stake. Nobody deserved this, and yet here we are, and that's what I'll be doing for these next few days, weeks, months, whatever: I'll be helping people."
"Why you?" Thor asks.
Natasha shrugs. "I still need to make up for my past mistakes. I swear we went over this."
"And I could have sworn that we also went over the impossibility of what you're seeking," he responds, smiling wryly. "I thought, that after all these years, you would have accepted that by now." His eyes are telling her silently that he isn't criticizing, just caring, and that's the Thor she's missed all these years.
"I'm stubborn. We all have our crosses to bear."
Thor furrows his brows, not understanding this earthly phrase, which had been her intention, though not without the consequence of reminding her about something (someone) she'd rather forget right about now. "What?"
"Nothing," she says quickly. "Have you had contact with Asgard? I'm sure they're struggling, too."
And, well, her intention this time had been to remind him of his duty to his people, because duty and responsibilities are good distractions from grief, but she quickly realizes that it backfired once his face drops.
After a few seconds, he says, quietly, "They are struggling. It's my fault."
"It isn't. None of us could stop Thanos—"
"It's not about Thanos!" Thor says, voice anguished. "Norns, things happened, even before Thanos found us. My father died and my sister, who I didn't even know existed, came to take the throne for her own, and so she tried to kill me and Loki—Norns, Loki—but we survived and landed on Sakaar, this trash planet you've never heard of. We went back to Asgard to fight her again but she was too powerful and we knew her power came from the planet, so we just- destroyed the planet. We destroyed our home. Only 5,122 made it off the planet onto the orgy ship we stole from the Grandmaster—long story—and I know because I counted each and every one of them myself. Actually, now that I think about it, there'd been 5,123 because a baby had been born on the ship. It hadn't the best but it had been fine, it would've been fine, it would've been all fine had Thanos not found us and—" He cuts himself off, sighs, rubs his forehead with his hand.
Holy shit, Nat thinks. Thor knows more of responsibility than she seems to. He's changed, they've all changed.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't be bothering you with all of this," Thor says.
"No. You can tell me anything, Thor. I'm here," she says, because that's all there is, nowadays. "I'm here."
Natasha goes and looks for Bruce. After all, if she's going to talk to everyone today—everyone that's left—then she's going to have to do it sooner or later.
Nobody's forcing her to. She just likes to set her own personal deadlines.
It makes things easier.
She won't fall apart.
"Hey, Nat," he says softly from an armchair in the very cozy living room that they never got to live in. His glasses are on, and he's reading a book, and the sight is so familiar that Nat can almost forget that he's been gone several long years, like Thor and not like Thor at the same time, because Thor had a duty, and Nat should've been able to stop Hulk from taking Bruce along with him.
"Bruce," she says, leaning her shoulder against the doorframe. She doesn't want to go in. That would be too much.
"How have you been?" he asks softly, placing down his book.
Nat shrugs. "I've been better," she says truthfully, even if it's vague.
"Space was weird and terrifying and amazing all at once," Bruce says, seeming to change the topic out of nowhere, but she knows him better by now: this is his way of helping.
"Yeah?" she prompts, moving to sit on the arm of his chair, sinking into the soft cushioning (of course Tony would think of comfort in the place he didn't think any of them would get to live in, of course he would).
"Yeah," Bruce says, laughing a little, and it's the same laugh he's always had. "I really wish I could have taken a picture or something."
"Tell me about it," she says, helping Bruce in her own little way, because he hasn't changed all that much at all, because rambling out his thoughts has always helped him, and because both of them know the other has lost people, and neither of them are willing to admit it.
People come and go. They split up tasks, they travel from place to place but always come back to the only home they really have now: the compound. Steve, Natasha knows, would have said, before, that home is in the people they are with.
But half of those people are gone, so they make do.
They collect supplies, they distribute them to those in need. They organize support groups and volunteer groups and other groups that all fall under the umbrella of 'mourning'. Everyone is trying.
Natasha finds it easier than she'd like to lock things away.
Pepper comes back to the compound three weeks after the Snap, as it has been named by the public. Natasha wonders, at first, how they'd known this whole mess had been instigated by a single, simple action, but then she remembers that Steve has been doing press release after press release, consoling people via the national news as Captain America should, words calm and unfaltering, and Natasha had just blocked it all out because it doesn't directly affect her, and she doesn't have much left to give for something that isn't her responsibility.
She's been in charge of dealing with local, national, and international organizations and governments. Politicians and representatives are the worst—Ross left an impression—and she gets a headache just thinking about them.
Pepper, she observes, hasn't been much better. She's also been in the public eye, fielding questions on Stark Industries as well as Tony Stark himself, because, while Tony is no longer CEO of the company, he still affects stocks and morale and the whole R&D department and...Natasha has been speaking about him in the present tense.
(They don't have a body. A small part of her still hopes he's alive.)
Natasha also notices that Pepper seems to lay a hand on her stomach at random intervals during the day, which is- it's something. She wants to say, We'll be here, we'll be here for both of you. But they hadn't been there for Tony and she's not sure if Pepper will welcome this, seeing as she only really talks to Rhodey, Bruce, Thor, and even Rocket (though that conversation was rather one-sided, seeing as Rocket is brooding and tends to run off into the forest for hours at a time).
Adding another person to their sad little group isn't novel, but what is is a former SHIELD agent coming to pay them a visit one afternoon.
Natasha has to admit that it takes her a moment to recognize him (after all, it's been years). "Dillon Beasley," she says, "long time no see."
"Romanoff," he responds with a genuinely warm smile, though there still is a hint of that nervous newbie she'd been partnered up with on some mission. Those missions seem so fruitless now, so faded in the grand scheme of things.
"Steve Rogers," Natasha says, jerking her thumb at the man next to her, and there it is: Beasley has and always will be a nervous and fumbling fanboy for anyone he deems superior to himself in nature. Natasha suspects he learned how to do so from Coulson.
"Captain Amer- Rogers," he squeaks out, rushing to shake Steve's outstretched hand. Steve raises his eyebrows in amusement.
"No need for titles: Steve or Rogers is fine," he says, and Beasley swallows a little, turns red, and takes a step back immediately. Natasha smirks. At least he's learned not to call people by their so-called superhero names, which Natasha may have had a hand in after he'd referred to her as 'Black Widow' and 'ma'am' in the same sentence.
She'd almost forgotten about him. She doesn't know why she's having so much fun at this moment. She supposes it's the little things, now, that are worth it.
"What do you have for us?" Natasha asks, trying to get back to business. After all, she doubts Beasley would be here without reason.
"Right," he says, visibly reigning himself in. He straightens up and puts his hands into his pockets. He grabs something with his right hand, and Natasha narrows her eyes and crosses her arms when he doesn't immediately take it out. "So, unofficially, of course, those of us that are left of SHIELD have been trying to track down the agents who haven't answered our calls, just to confirm that they really have been dusted and aren't hurt or in hiding. If they are dusted, we look through their belongings and store anything important and/or confidential in a secure place."
Makes sense. Steve nods.
Beasley grimaces, glancing her way for a second before his eyes flicker away. "We managed to track down Nick Fury and Maria Hill's last known location." Right, because they're gone now. Natasha would know (she tried to call each of them exactly once). "We found this there," he says, more slowly, more confused, finally bringing his right hand out of his pocket, holding a...pager. Huh. Natasha hadn't known those were still in use.
She blinks, glances sideways at Steve, whose eyes seem to be holding a hint of nostalgia in them.
"Are you giving this to us?" Natasha asks.
"Frankly, yes," he says. "We don't know what this is. We don't know what to do with it. We thought you might."
"Why? Because I'm a superspy?"
"Because Nick Fury trusted you the most," he says, rushed, and then hands her the pager. She flips and turns it around a few times in her hands before sliding it into her own pocket.
"Thanks," she says, quietly, for what exactly, she doesn't know.
"No problem," he says.
They stand there awkwardly for a few seconds before Natasha asks, "What is SHIELD going to do after you guys have no agents left to check on?" What are they going to do after their job is done, and they have nothing left to occupy their minds?
He smiles grimly, moving to walk back into the world outside the compound. "There are still bad people out there," he answers, reminding Natasha, all of a sudden, of life before, when times were simpler, when idealistic rookies like Beasley had made her laugh. "Terrorist organizations to stop, mass murderers to arrest. Half the world dying doesn't mean they stop, so neither should we."
Natasha feels, absurdly, proud. It's like she's seen him grow up.
She also feels, suddenly, useless, because Nick Fury had never told her shit, and now she has his pager.
Steve rubs the back of his neck, so he must be feeling the same thing, not regarding Nick Fury, but regarding the Avengers, or what's left of them. This has been more of a humanitarian crisis for them than a fighting-bad-guys crisis. Some of the others have been itching for a fight, but Nat secretly thinks that this is good for them. After all, they'd lost to Thanos. Who knows if they can ever return to who they'd been before?
"Good luck," Steve offers with a genuine smile, even if it's visibly tired.
Beasley's small smile turns into a full-on grin, memories flashing behind his eyes. "Luck?" he says. "Don't jinx it."
(After he leaves, Steve turns to her with a confused expression on his face.
"Inside joke," Nat says quietly, because the phrase had started with Clint, and now Clint is gone.)
A blonde woman wearing a red and blue suit with a golden star on it walks into the room and asks, "Where's Fury?"
Or, well, Natasha assumes she walked into the room. She didn't actually see the action taking place. She's actually kind of insulted that the lady had managed to sneak up on her without her knowing. Natasha had just turned around and she had been there.
She's way too tired for this.