"I don't need luck," Clint would always say. "I've got skill."
"You sure about that?" Nat would usually ask, raising her eyebrows skeptically.
And the responses would vary, but what stayed constant was that he had always been smiling, then, eyes twinkling, alive and breathing. "You know SHIELD agents have the worst of luck," he had said more than once. "Don't jinx it."
Now, he is gone. Half the world is gone, and Natasha feels, suddenly, that this is what they deserve, for forgetting about the little things, for ignoring their own mortality, for tempting fate.
Tony returns.
Or, well, Tony is not dead, but it feels like a part of him did die along with the dusted, like a part of him was left behind in outer space.
"I couldn't stop him," he says, voice dripping with anguish to a newly shaved Steve, who isn't looking much better.
But he manages to respond with, "Neither could we." And isn't it ironic, that the first time these two have talked in years is to agree on a defeat?
Nat's chest feels tight. She swallows convulsively.
"I lost the kid," Tony says.
They've all lost people.
Come play with me! Yelena says in Natasha's dreams, jumping up and down in Natasha's Ohio bedroom. After all these years, she still sees her as a child, as the sister she was supposed to protect.
Why won't you play with me? Yelena asks, pouting, vanilla ice cream drying on sticky fingers. And then, Nat, where are you? Why did you have to go?
The world needed me, Natasha forces out, her voice trembling, on the verge of breaking, but she will be strong for Yelena. She has to be. Her hands, even in this dream, are larger than her sister's, more weathered by the world. She's always felt much older than she really is.
We could have had more time together if you'd just stopped trying to run away from everything, Yelena accuses, now grown, with callouses on her hands and scars on her body.
I'm not running, Natasha says, the lie tasting like dust on her tongue.
Yes you are, Yelena responds knowingly, eyes gleaming with more insight than they should have, with the knowledge that all of this is just a dream. I'm dead, and you are still trying to run away.
Watching Tony and Steve go back to arguing hurts more than it should.
Nat misses when they had been whole, when things were simpler.
(The fact of the matter is that they hadn't been whole even before half the world had turned to dust.)
She is very tempted to lock herself in her room and dissociate from the rest of the world again.
Very, very tempted.
But then, there's hope. She should know by now not to trust hope when it comes, so she is ashamed when she grabs onto it desperately with both hands.
After—
After, they trudge back to the ship, defeated.
Even Danvers looks hopeless, which is a distinct change to how she'd been before. Unbelievably, Natasha feels a fierce swell of anger flow within her, as if all the grief she's been harboring has been washed away by this channel of fire, and it is all that she feels, which is much, much better than the alternative, even though she knows, deep down, that she will probably regret this in the near future.
"We had you this time," she says bitterly, "and yet we still lost. Overconfidence isn't the best look on you." Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Rocket nod in agreement, so at least she isn't completely unjustified in her anger.
Danvers throws her hands up in the air. "What do you want me to do right now?" she asks. "We lost."
"Great. You're admitting it," Natasha says sharply. Steve looks like he wants to interject, but Natasha shoots a glare at him and he immediately subsides.
"Sure," Danvers says curtly. "But if I had had a first go at him, we could've won." She jerks her thumb back in the direction they had come from, and all of their eyes involuntarily drift towards the dead figure laying on the ground, still visible from quite a distance away.
"I take it back," Natasha says coldly, voice almost unrecognizable (it has been a long time since she's spoken like this). "Maybe you haven't admitted it."
"I'm not the one whose team's fallen apart."
"Hey now," Steve says. "You don't know what we've been through."
"And you don't know what I've been through," Danvers says, "so stop trying to bring me to your level." That hadn't been Natasha's original intention. She doesn't actually know what she'd wanted to accomplish in the first place.
"Can we shelve this for now and please get back to Earth?" Bruce all but begs, but they mostly ignore him.
"We have to plan for what's next," Natasha says, attempting to assert some flimsy semblance of calm over herself. "We can't stop dwelling on the what-ifs."
A moment's silence. Danvers turns around, tilting her face up towards the sky. "I'm grieving for people, too," she says. "I have a best friend. Her daughter's gone. I haven't visited them in a while—been off planet—but earlier today, when I called for the first time in years, she said she didn't want to see me, so it feels like I've lost both of them. Then, there's Fury." And here she stops, as if taking a moment to process it, and for some reason, this is what truly reignites the grief in Natasha. Not Clint or his family, not Yelena or Melina or Alexei, not Matt, but Nick fucking Fury, who she hadn't really known at all.
"Nick Fury was a good man," Natasha says, cautiously. A good man with a lot of secrets, she thinks.
"He said good things about you all, about the Avengers," she says, snorting a little with something like bitter humor. "But honestly, I don't know what he saw in you."
Natasha closes her eyes. "I don't know, either," she says quietly. After all these years, she still doesn't know.
She supposes she'll never find out.
Danvers flies off into space on her own, so the rest of them return to Earth to face Tony again.
"We lost," Rhodey tells him.
Tony sighs. "Why am I not surprised?" he asks tiredly. He's been confined to a hospital bed in the medbay that, before today, had been unused.
Pepper squeezes his shoulder with a sad smile. "You all tried your best," she says, which is maybe the nicest thing Natasha has heard in these past few days...weeks? God, it's been three weeks. It's felt like an eternity.
Nebula walks up to the bed to look him up and down and say, voice low, "I'm glad you're conscious." Then, she turns around and walks out of the room, with Rocket following at her heels.
"She's nicer than she seems, I swear," Tony says, trying to lighten up the mood and failing. "I wouldn't voluntarily bring a murderous alien here if I could help it."
Thor winces. Everyone chooses to ignore that.
"I've heard good things can come from talking about your grief," Bruce says helpfully.
Steve shifts on his feet, the discomfort clear on his face.
"Yeah, Cap. Got anything to share?" Tony says. "Or maybe Thor? Buddy, I haven't seen you in years! How have you been?"
"I have not been much worse," Thor says.
"Ah."
"Excuse me," Thor says abruptly, leaving the room to presumably wallow in self-pity like he has been wont to do for the past few weeks. If Tony wasn't high on pain meds, he'd probably say something like self-deprecation is my thing, but right now he can't quite pinpoint what it is Thor's dealing with other than grief, like the rest of them.
Still, "Point Break seems different."
"Tell me about it," Bruce says, laughing uneasily.
"So, we got any game plan now that all hope has been lost?" Rhodey asks. Natasha thinks that he gained Tony's sense of humor when there had been no other good source of humor available for his perusal.
Which is a lot of words to say that things have changed since the team had split.
"Keep doing what we've been doing," Steve answers. "Helping people through a universal humanitarian crisis is no easy feat. The job's not gonna be done anytime soon."
"Diving straight into working is a good way to escape your grief," Natasha interjects, and everyone turns to look at her, slightly concerned. Maybe she is a bit unhinged from this whole situation.
She doesn't much care anymore.
"Nat?" Bruce starts cautiously, and maybe it would have been okay. Maybe all he would have told her would've been comforting nonsense that her bruised heart would've taken up like a sponge because she's no longer strong enough to resist.
But this is a time of grief. Tempers are high.
Also, Tony is high. On pain meds. And loss. And self-blame.
Natasha has to remember this for what comes next.
"What are you talking about?" Tony asks, voice suddenly sharp and echoing around the room. "You're like a robot: nothing affects you. You're able to move on from anything life throws at you." This would be a compliment in any other situation.
But here and now, it just reminds her of the Red Room, and how much she lost just to get to this point.
"Tony," Steve reprimands, but it does nothing. Pepper's quieter refrain of his name does nothing, either.
"Sure, half of us are gone, but who did you lose, exactly? Tell me," Tony continues, voice like a dagger. His voice had never been a dagger to her before, always a shield.
Grief changes people.
Grief makes people lash out in anger.
That doesn't make it hurt any less.
"You don't know who I've lost," Natasha says, voice trembling. She's never felt so weak in front of them before.
"I lost a kid, Nat," Tony says. "Do you know how that feels?"
Natasha shakes her head, swallows past the lump in her throat, and whispers, "I'm sorry about Peter, Tony."
"Oh god, his aunt," Tony says, burying his face in his hands.
Pepper rubs circles into his back and shoots her an apologetic look, and she tries to smile in return but it feels more like a grimace.
"Tell me about your son," Steve says, ever the mediator.
Tony laughs wetly, straightening up so that they can see his broken face. "He wasn't even...he wasn't even my real son," he protests weakly.
Natasha holds back a flinch. "Don't say that," she whispers.
He turns to stare at her forlornly for a second before saying, "The kid was smart, so smart, and so kind, too." He sighs. "God, I never deserved him."
"How'd you get to know him?" Steve prompts.
"It was a stupid mistake, but I don't regret it, not one bit," Tony says with a wry smile, with a hint of the former Tony Stark.
"I still think it was pretty stupid of you," Rhodey interjects.
"Shut up," Tony says without heat, all of it having been blown at Nat. "Anyways, he'd probably be mad at me for this, but there's no more secret identity to keep. He was Spiderman, remember him?"
Steve's face dawns with horror. He says, "I dropped a jet bridge on him."
Tony waves the comment away. "Kid's strong. And brave, too brave." His breath hitches, just the tiniest bit. "He would've been the best of us."
Natasha finally finds the courage to speak up. She never had this problem before. "May Parker was dusted," she says, and Tony snaps his head to look at her in something akin to disbelief. "I checked. So were Ned Leeds and Michelle Jones. You don't have to inform anyone of Peter's death, and you don't have to apologize to anyone, either. He doesn't have anyone to remember him other than us. We have to make his life count." She takes a deep breath in and lets it out. "I know all of this because I care," she continues. "It may seem, sometimes, like I'm emotionless, like I've created these invisible walls between us, and maybe part of that is true, but I do care, and I want you to know that." She meets Tony's eyes. "You don't know who I've lost," she reiterates. "I've lost people you don't even know."
"Nat..."
She flicks her eyes around the room and notices everyone staring at her with either pity or empathy—it's hard to tell the difference these days. She clears her throat. "Sorry," she says, and then she walks out of the room and down the hallway to find the closest door that leads outside. She opens it and steps out into the nighttime air. Crickets chirp in the silence, and she knows there should only be half of them left but it sounds just the same.
Is this how they seemed to Thanos? Inconsequential, in the grand scheme of things?
Footsteps sound behind her. "Fuck off, Steve," she snaps, because profanity is a sure way to get him to back off, because she knows her people, and at the same time she can't seem to adjust to how they've all changed.
"Uh, not Steve," Bruce says, stepping out beside her and closing the door behind him. Natasha sighs, closes her eyes.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she says.
"You're living."
"That's so fucking cliché." It feels better to curse, almost like she's cursing at the whole world, and this whole situation.
"You're not emotionless," Bruce tells her. "I know that, we all know that, even Tony knows that but he needed someone to direct his anger at."
"Are you sure?" Natasha asks with a small, bitter laugh. "Am I that easy of a victim?"
Bruce shrugs. "You wouldn't be in this line of work if you were emotionless. Also, we've all seen you lose at Mario Kart to Clint. Your devastation was clear."
It's meant to be a joke. But, "I miss him."
"I know."
"You didn't answer the second question."
Bruce sighs, seeming to think over his words for a few moments. "You have more secrets than the rest of us, and to some that means that you are more vulnerable, that there is more of you to unravel."
"You're starting to sound like a therapist," Nat says, glancing at him.
Bruce raises an eyebrow. "I'm not finished," he says. "You're better at locking things up and compartmentalizing because you were taught to as a kid, which makes it easier for you to act like things are all fine when they're not." Natasha appreciates his frankness. "That doesn't make you weaker, it just makes you slightly harder to read, but only if you don't try. To some, that may seem like distance, but to me, it just seems like...protection."
Natasha's not sure if she feels better or not. She just feels numb. "Thank you," she says anyways, "for your honesty."
"Now, I want your honesty," Bruce says.
"Ah, so this was just a transaction."
But Bruce looks at her seriously, so all of her mirth flies away. "Your person, are they gone?" he asks.
Because Bruce knows, knows more than the rest of the Avengers. Because Bruce had approached her years ago and asked her on a date, awkwardly and nervously and endearingly, and Natasha had had to break it to him that she was already seeing someone (I'm definitely not seeing you, Matt would say), and he had accepted it because Bruce was just that warmhearted of a person, and Natasha had asked him to keep this a secret and he had, all these years.
"Yeah," she says.
"I'm sorry."
That's all there is nowadays, isn't there?
They continue on.
It's not quite living, but it's something.
Tony approaches her sometime (time really is meaningless when it comes to grief) and apologizes. Natasha brushes it aside, understanding, not wanting to be a hypocrite.
"The wizard I was with, Strange," Tony says, and it takes Natasha a bit to pinpoint exactly who he's talking about, but she's seen the footage, she's done the recon, she's kept the tabs, "he could kind of see the future."
"What," she says.
"Yeah, with the time stone, really long story. Anyways, he said that there was only one way we could win, and right before he got dusted, he said that this was the only way, that you were the key."
Natasha stares at him. "I don't know where you're going with this," she says, almost desperately.
"I believe in you," is what Tony responds with.
"You shouldn't."
"He believed in you too, and he hadn't even met you."
"Well I don't believe in his wizardry," Natasha protests.
Tony sighs. "I'm not sure if I do, either, but if there's any hope of getting through this..."
"Hope is worthless," Natasha says, turning away. "I'm done with hope."
Not all things are easy, but Natasha is trying.
Six weeks after the Snap, the Asgardians arrive. The group of escape pods lands on the field in the back of the compound with concerning creaks and groans. Behind the main sliding door leading out to the field, Natasha, Thor, and Bruce stand side-by-side.
"I'm taking your advice," Thor says stiffly.
Natasha can't remember giving any advice, any useful advice. The last few weeks have been a blur. "Is it doing you any good?" she asks.
Thor shrugs. "We'll see." He straightens up. "I can't be grieving when my people need me." And then he walks out the door, with Bruce following closely behind.
She follows them slowly, giving them space, mulling over whether or not that had been good advice to give to Thor.
A lady with an admittedly cool-looking sword steps out of one of the smoking pods and walks towards Thor. She salutes him mockingly and says, "Thank the Norns you're alive. I don't think I like being in charge."
Thor laughs, sounding far happier than he has in a while. "Valkyrie, it is good to see you," he greets with a genuine smile.
Natasha mentally makes note of her name and wonders why she's using a title as a name before figuring it has something to do with the grief that is plaguing everyone. She's certainly not going to ask about it.
Bruce, also looking happier than he has in a while, says, "I'm sure you were a great temporary ruler."
She glares at him. "I never want to repeat that experience," she says flatly. "I also ran out of alcohol halfway through the trip here, which probably has something to do with it." She frowns. "How good is Midgardian alcohol? I really want to get drunk but I know it wouldn't be a very responsible thing to do."
"The alcohol here does nothing to you because of your metabolism," Bruce responds promptly.
"Shit."
"Natasha Romanoff," Natasha says, introducing herself and shaking Valkyrie's hand. "I'll be involved with somehow declaring you guys a sovereign nation in...Norway, is that where you wanted it?" She turns towards Thor.
"No idea what that is," Valkyrie says.
"That's right," Thor says.
"Do you know how weird it is that you're in Norse mythology and you want to settle in Norway?" Bruce says.
Natasha had also noticed the irony. She's also noticing the other Asgardians getting out of the escape pods, as well as this rock...guy? Alien, rock alien.
"How many people are left?" Thor asks, watching the other Asgardians as well.
"Not as much as we started with," Valkyrie says with a sudden lack of levity. "Around half of us up and disintegrated near the beginning of the trip."
"That doesn't make sense," Thor says. "Thanos already killed half of us, he didn't need to kill half of who was left."
"You're going to need to explain whatever happened to me further," Valkyrie says, "but what I do know is that life is never fair."
"There's so few people left," Bruce says softly.
"But Asgard is a people, right?" Thor says with a tired smile.
"Yeah, speaking of that, is Heimdall here? Or Lackey?" Valkyrie asks. "A bunch of the kids keep asking for them because they tell the best stories and have the best magic tricks or somethin' and don't like mine, mainly because I have no magic. It would probably help with morale."
Thor winces. "Thanos killed them," he manages to choke out, then clears his throat.
Valkyrie closes her eyes and bows her head slightly. "May Valhalla welcome them with open arms," she intones.
After a few moments, Natasha says quietly, "Your people can stay here while we get things sorted." And isn't that gonna be complicated? Public opinion has been against aliens ever since the Invasion of New York.
"Thank you," Valkyrie says. Then, "Wait, why am I thanking you? Shouldn't the King do so?"
Thor lets out a tired, tired sigh. "It feels like I'll never get used to the title," he says.
"Well, you should, very soon." She pauses. "Wait, who's the heir now?"
Bruce snickers quietly.
"Well...you," Thor says cautiously.
"Fuck!"
Usually, it seems like the work is never ending, that the world is always in need of help...until it isn't, and Natasha is left with too much time on her hands.
"Why don't you travel?" Tony asks her.
She blinks. "Travel?" she repeats dubiously.
"Yeah, go sightseeing, or whatever the cool kids do nowadays." His tone is flippant but she knows he's trying to distract from what they're doing, which is packing up the Parkers' belongings before their apartment is listed for rent again.
They're going to store all the boxes in Peter's room at the compound, because of course he has a room there.
Of course he had a room there.
"You want me to go sightseeing?" Natasha asks incredulously.
"I can't exactly go sightseeing, but we could maybe go sighthearing instead?"
"Shut up."
Natasha forcefully pushes the memory away from the forefront of her mind before she realizes that Tony had spoken and she hadn't heard him at all. Okay, she's off her game today. She's probably been off her game for a while.
"What?" she says dumbly.
Tony squints at her but doesn't comment on it, instead repeating, "I'm sure you've got people to visit."
Natasha frowns, looking down at the chemistry textbook she's putting in a cardboard box. "I've got places to visit," she says. "I'm not sure if the people they belonged to are still there."
"Statistically speaking," Pepper says from the table where she is sorting through pictures, "half of your people should still be alive." She looks up. "You're not alone."
"I know that," Natasha says tiredly, "but I'm pretty sure the only people I have left are here or at the compound." Or off on a mission, like Rhodey is, otherwise he would be here because he actually knew May and Peter Parker. Nat had just stalked them from afar.
(Sometimes, she feels like she's replacing people.)
"Just saying," Tony tells her with a shrug, "I bet you probably didn't have time to enjoy much of the world when you were on the run."
Natasha's frown deepens. "I can't just..."
"Think of it as a mental health break."
She snorts. "When's your mental health break?"
He points at her. "That...is to be decided."
"'Cause of the baby?" she asks casually, closing up her box carefully and waiting for the reaction.
Silence.
She looks up to see Tony's furrowed eyebrows. "Do you have X-ray vision or something?" he asks, and Natasha snorts.
Pepper laughs lightly, one hand creeping down to rest on her stomach. "I figured that you already would've known," she says.
"Superspy," Tony grumbles, but a smile curves around the words.
"Any name ideas yet?" Natasha asks with a soft smile, because if there was anything good that came out of this, then this is it. And they have to appreciate the good things, now more than ever.
"Morgan," Pepper says promptly. "It's both a boy name and a girl name, so we don't have to argue last minute on anything."
"Which is good for me, 'cause Pep would win all the arguments."
"No way," Pepper says, eyes crinkling. And a small part of Nat mourns, not for the missed opportunity, but because she and Yelena and all the other Red Room graduates had never had a choice.
"You're already stubborn as is," Tony is saying, "but you plus pregnancy hormones? You'll be an unstoppable force, I swear."
"I'd believe it," Nat says with a wry smile, and it's almost enough to forget the dust lining the shelves and tables, the spoiled food in the fridge, the smiling faces of people who have passed.
Natasha shrugs on Yelena's jacket.
She steps out of the compound, the only place she's really known for the past few weeks.
Just because nobody's answering doesn't mean they aren't alive.
After all, Tony had proved that, hadn't he? And damn Tony for his stubbornness to sow this piece of hope inside her.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, some people are just gone, not dead, alive but hurting, closing themselves off from the rest of the world.
Nobody deserves to be alone.
Natasha sighs. Guess she's going ghost hunting.
Just to be clear, regarding all the tension at the beginning, I'm not hating on anyone. It's just a difficult situation and it felt natural to write some arguments. Honestly, everyone needs a hug right now (and I'm not giving it to them, not yet), but they've gotta wallow in the pain for a bit longer *laughs in evil fanfic writer*.