Matt had always been a giggly drunk.

No, not always. She's struggling to remember.

(A huge part of accepting grief is admitting forgetfulness.)

Matt had been a giggly drunk up to a certain point. There had been a balance to it. Too little alcohol and he'd be a bit buzzed, complaining about his out-of-wack senses. Too much alcohol and he'd become incredibly maudlin and occasionally extremely depressed.

To be completely honest, he'd always been somewhat depressed, but he hadn't let her see it, hadn't let her help, and she thinks, maybe, that she should have tried harder, that if she had he'd still be here, somehow.

Anyways.

Nat had stopped by his apartment one night and found him lying listlessly on the couch. "Matt?" she had asked, not quite concerned but not quite amused, either. She'd known, even then, that there were two sides to a drunk Matt.

"Nat," he'd said then with a dopey smile, and she'd grinned back at him, trying to imagine how it would sound.

"Have fun?" she'd said, moving to sit on the couch beside his chest. She had reached out to brush his unruly hair from his face, and he'd leaned into her touch.

"Uh huh," he'd said, nodding not unlike a bobble head. In a fit of sobriety, he'd sat up suddenly and thrown his arms around her shoulders, leaning over to press a gentle if slightly sloppy kiss on her cheek, but she had appreciated the action anyways.

"Your head's going to kill you in the morning," she'd told him fondly, running a hand through his messy hair.

And it had never been defined before, had never needed to be said between the two of them, but it was at that moment that she realized...

"Love you," Matt had said, pressing a kiss to her shoulder over her jacket.

Looking back at it, it's kind of funny, how taken aback she had been, how she'd opened her mouth and closed it and opened it again, and no sound had come out. She thought she hadn't had the right words then, but now she knows that the right words would have been a simple I love you, too.

Maybe Matt had known it, but—now that the grief has come, now that the self-doubt has come—maybe he hadn't. She had always prided herself for reading people but she's learned that people can change, and that maybe she isn't as good as she thought she had been.

Maybe Matt had died not knowing it.

Now, he has flown away in the wind, and she can't possibly know whether or not she had been enough.

They work on the time travel stuff. Truthfully, Natasha isn't all too helpful in these matters, and most of the science goes over her head, but she tries, and she's organized, and apparently her presence is good for morale or whatever.

Tony walks into the hangar with a mug of coffee in hand, and it's almost like old times until he says, "I leave for one single day to invent time travel, and instead of waiting around you guys turn Scott into a baby?" He sounds honestly offended. Nat snorts, and he turns to glare at her.

Steve shrugs. "It wasn't just a baby," he says.

"I don't want to know," Tony responds promptly. He sighs, gesturing at Bruce. "I thought you knew better than this."

Bruce raises both of his hands helplessly. "Obviously not," he says. "If I messed up that badly with gamma radiation it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to mess up with time travel, too."

Tony stares at him for a moment before saying, "Wow. That was almost funny."

"Thanks?"

"Anyways, EPR Paradox."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Instead of pushing Lang through time, you were pushing time through Lang. It's dangerous. I probably should've cautioned you against it."

"But would we have listened?" Nat asks, not without reason.

"Well, I would certainly hope so," Tony tells her frankly. "Anyways, thank god I'm here, 'cause I solved it."

Steve crosses his arms in front of his chest. "Solved what?" he asks.

Tony blinks and seems to look around for something before sighing and gulping down the rest of his coffee. "God, I'm so sleep deprived," he complains. "I left my capacitor in the lab."

"Capacitor?" Scott asks eagerly.

Tony narrows his eyes at him. "Are you okay?"

"No, but go on."

"...Okay. Basically, I made a fully-functioning, time-space GPS," Tony says, more than a little proud of himself, and Natasha feels like she can actually see some of his guilt ease. It is comforting, to know that the guilt won't always be there, lurking in your shadow.

("How'd you do it?" Nat asks him later. She doesn't have to clarify what exactly she is referring to.

Tony raises an eyebrow at her. "Science stuff. Not exactly your area of expertise, just like spy stuff and general organizational skills and the ability to instill fear in people with just a look aren't mine."

She snorts. "But you were struggling with it," she tells him. "We all know you were working on it for more than a day."

A moment passes as Tony stares at a framed photo on his desk. "I had help from beyond the grave," he says mysteriously, and Nat lets him keep his secrets.)

"You weren't there earlier today," she says, sitting down next to Clint at the dining table. "We're making progress, good progress."

He stares dejectedly down at his sandwich and says, "I don't want to hold on too closely to hope."

Nat tries to smile reassuringly at him, but it fails. Who is she to tell him to hold onto hope? "I wouldn't depend too much on luck, either," she tells him wryly.

He snorts, but halfway through it turns into a shaky exhale. He buries his face in his hands and his shoulders shake and Nat wraps an arm around him and tries to soothe him in any way she can. "Sometimes, I miss the good ol' days," Clint croaks out.

"How old?" Nat asks.

"Back to when I had no worries." Which would have been...a long, long time ago, maybe when he and Nat had just been toddlers.

She frowns. "But then I wouldn't have met you," she tells him. "I wouldn't trade that for anything."

Clint looks up at her then and sighs with a sad smile on his face. "Have I really made that much of an impact on your life?" he asks, and it's rhetorical, it has to be.

"Of course you have," she says anyways, because this is better than things left unsaid. "I've become a better person because of you."

"With me, not because of me."

"Both," she insists. "Clint, I wouldn't be here without you." He needs to know his worth, now more than ever. The dead linger over their shoulders, and the two of them are still breathing and surviving and hanging in there.

After a few moments, Clint says, haltingly, "Remember that time I put glitter in Fury's body wash?"

Nat laughs unexpectedly, and after a second Clint joins in. "Oh god," she says, still shaking with it, "that was a sight. Fury was livid."

"I was paranoid for months afterwards," Clint tells her, as if she hadn't known, as if she hadn't been there, but maybe it's good to reminisce, the nostalgia clogging up their throats.

Natasha has been running from her past for a long time. Maybe she can finally begin to face it.

"You never did tell me how he got you back," Nat says, memories flashing behind her eyes.

"You never found out?" Clint asks with raised eyebrows.

"I was on a mission when it happened!" she protests. "Fury timed it perfectly."

Clint sniffs. "Well if you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you," he says, smirking. "I'm taking this secret to the grave."

Nebula and Rocket return from space. They gather up the team again, or what's left of it. They're still figuring out how to find their missing pieces.

"Nat can do the test run," Clint says, jerking a thumb at her.

She stares at him. "Clint," she protests.

He shrugs innocently, though there is a concerned gleam in his eyes. "What?" he asks. "Thought you wanted to prove to me you're not a coward."

They both know that's not the real reason.

"Not like this," she says helplessly.

"We do need someone to do a test run," Bruce tells her hesitantly, wringing his hands together, and why does it feel like he and Clint are ganging up on her?

She frowns. "Clint..."

"Come on, Nat," he says with a smile that's a combination of sad and amused. "Don't you trust me?"

And that's how she finds herself on the platform in the middle of the room, wearing the bulky time suit. She feels unbelievably awkward up there, but she manages to give the others a firm nod.

"Okay, Nat," Bruce mutters over the device. "Starting in three, two, one..."

A whooshing sound rushes through her ears. It feels like driving through a tunnel. She blinks and is suddenly stumbling into existence on a familiar farm out in Russia.

Which shouldn't make sense, because this is time travel and not distance travel.

But maybe, just maybe, whatever god is out there is helping them out just the tiniest bit.

"Natasha?" a familiar voice asks, and she turns around and there she is: Melina Vostokoff, in all her glory.

(Deep down, Natasha Romanoff has always been just a scared little girl abandoned by most of the world.)

"Mama," she gasps out, the tears building in her eyes, but she lets them fall because she has nothing to be afraid of, not here. She runs into Melina's arms and Melina hugs her tightly.

"I didn't know you were coming," Melina mutters into her ear. "Would have prepared food or something. What are you wearing? What happened?"

Nat does not know how to explain.

"I missed you," is all she can say. Her cuff vibrates, and she ignores it, squeezing her eyes shut and holding onto her mother tightly.

Melina is from the past, likely from 2018. She is so, so intelligent but she knows nothing of time travel or of Thanos. Her heart beats fast and strong under Natasha's fingertips, and she must be so very confused.

But, in the few moments that Natasha has left here before the end of the world, Melina says, "You're strong, Natashka. You'll be alright."

Natasha crumples out of existence and appears back in the compound with her cheeks still wet. She stumbles a little, and strong arms hold her up as she viciously wipes away the tears with the backs of her hands. "Nat?" Clint asks. "Hey, Nat, look at me. Are you okay?"

She blinks at him with something more like a grimace than a smile, and whispers, "I will be."

"Tell me something good," Tony says, and they both turn to face him, Clint still with that concerned look in his eyes and Nat with her grimace of a smile.

"It worked," she tells them all, laughing a little breathlessly at the incredulity of it all. "It worked."

"Holy crap. We're freaking time travelers," Rocket says after a moment.

It takes them days to figure out the logistics to the whole operation. Everyone is anxious to get going, and they have to be constantly reminded to take a rest.

"Let's figure out how Thanos got the stones the first time around," Bruce says.

Steve frowns, probably not wanting to relive the experience. "Why?" he asks.

"So we can steal the stones from right under his nose," Rocket answers, pointing a finger at Bruce. "I like that idea. Very dramatic."

"I'm not sure if that's a tactically sound idea," Nat says, grimacing.

Bruce shrugs. "Humor me," he says. "Those might be the only times we truly know where the stones are."

"It is the easiest way to figure out the where and the when," Tony chimes in.

"Thanos got the Power Stone first," Nebula starts. "He got it from Xandar." She tilts her head to the side slightly with a noticeable creaking sound. "Or, well, he stole it from Xandar's limp fingers after he and his forces defeated the Nova Corps and destroyed the planet."

That is...a pleasant thought.

Thor winces. "And that is where my part of the story starts," he tells them all. "About a week after that, Thanos boarded the Statesman."

"The what?" Clint asks.

"The Asgardian refugee ship."

"Sucky name," Rocket mutters. They all ignore him.

Thor sighs, running a hand through his hair. It's grown longer in the almost five months since the Snap, but still remains shorter than when they had fought Ultron together.

God, how long ago was that? Ultron seems like such a measly threat now, in the grand scheme of things.

"We tried to evacuate, but Thanos managed to kill half of everyone who was left," Thor continues. "At the end of it all, it was just me and Loki left." His face twitches, like he's trying not to cry. Natasha can relate. Clint presses his lips together to hide his discomfort. "Thanos almost killed me, threatened to do so, actually, if Loki didn't give him the Tesseract, the vessel for the Space Stone." Thor shrugs. "He gave up the Space Stone and died for my life, and look at how I repaid him."

At least Clint has the grace not to say anything unsavory about Loki when Thor is grieving.

Maybe later. Maybe after all of this is over. Maybe when the pain is not so much.

"Anyways," Bruce says with false brightness. "Hulk couldn't defeat Thanos on the Statesman either, and we were both transported to Earth via the Bifrost."

"The what?" Scott asks, eyes shining with genuine curiosity.

Bruce frowns, trying to explain the Einstein-Rosen bridge in layman terms. "A magical Asgardian bridge," he says after a few moments. Tony groans and slaps a hand to his forehead.

"Magic? I know magic," Scott says excitedly. "Want to see my card tricks?"

"Not that type of magic," Rhodey mutters.

"Basically," Bruce continues, "I was teleported to Earth and got to warn Tony and Doctor Strange about Thanos, which is right when some of Thanos's goons attacked us."

"Me, Strange, and Spiderman went up to space in the donut spaceship," Tony says, "and I presume Bruce went to find you all."

"Yeah," Steve says. "We went to Wakanda to try to get the Mind Stone out of Vision."

"Is that a person?" Rocket asks with furrowed brows.

"Vision was a person, yes."

"Ah...why'd he have the Mind Stone inside of him?"

"Long, long story," Tony says. "Anyways, us space people landed on Titan, met Nebula here"—he gestures to her—"and fought Thanos before he got to Earth. The thing is, by the time he got to us he already had Reality and Soul."

"I can explain that," Rocket interjects. "Thanos got the Reality Stone from this guy called the Collector, who collects weird shit."

"Wow, I would've never guessed," Clint mutters sarcastically.

"We tried to intercept the big purple grape but he tricked us with the damn stone and ended up kidnapping Gamora."

"Gamora?" Nat asks.

"A teammate," Rocket says with a suspiciously shaky voice. He clears his throat.

"My sister," Nebula tells them, and they all turn to look at her. They all know who her so-called father was. "She knew the location of the Soul Stone. It was on Vormir."

"Which is...?" Nat prompts. She doesn't think she's ever going to get used to the concept of outer space. The Red Room had never prepared her for espionage on that level.

"A dominion of death at the very center of celestial existence," Nebula responds.

"What."

"Thanos killed my sister there," she finishes, and then sighs, resting her elbows on the table and pressing her forehead into her hands. "Gamora wouldn't have given up the location of the Soul Stone if it wasn't for me, if I wasn't so weak, if Thanos hadn't caught me and tortured me." She says that so casually that Natasha is taken aback for a second.

"Hey now," Tony says gently, "it's nobody's fault but Thanos's."

"Everyone keeps telling me that," she says lowly, an undercurrent of tired anger in her voice.

"Right."

"Let's move on."

"Okay." Tony grimaces. "Now, Thanos has gone to Titan. We tried to stop him. We failed."

"You did manage to make him bleed, though," Nebula notes. Nat raises an eyebrow.

"Not a lot, not enough." Tony scoffs. "Strange gave up the Time Stone to save me, and also because he believes this is the only way for us to win or some bullshit. I half-think he was delusional."

"Maybe he was right," Rhodey says.

"Maybe."

"And that brings us back to Earth," Steve recaps. "We also tried to stop him. We also failed. He got the Mind Stone and snapped."

Silence, for a few seconds.

Then, "Three of the stones were given up to save another person at the expense of half the universe," Nebula notes, shaking her head bitterly. Guilt dawns on Thor's face, on Tony's face. "I would call those actions nothing but foolish endeavors to delay the inevitable."

"Those were actions born of kindness," Nat says, and they all look at her with weary eyes and weary shoulders. "Foolish kindness, maybe, but you shouldn't begrudge the dead for that."

After some time to decompress, they reconvene.

"Okay, this is going nowhere," Clint declares, flinging his hands up in the air and leaning far back in his chair. Natasha is very tempted to push him just to see if he'd fall or not.

"Would it be easier to figure out more convenient places and times to retrieve the stones?" Rhodey asks, stroking a hand over his chin.

"What places and times, though?"

Steve shrugs. "Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do we know?"

Thor frowns. "It's not a stone," he says, "it's more of an angry sludge."

"That would've been nice to know before," Rocket mutters.

"My grandfather hid it from the Dark Elves in a rock between dimensions that can only be accessed every 5000 years."

"Right," Tony says slowly. "That means we have a limited number of options regarding Reality."

"It was on Asgard in 2014," Thor says suddenly.

"That's a lot more helpful."

"Shut up, Tony," Steve says, though there is some mirth in his words.

"Shut up?" Tony asks, mock offended. He presses a hand to his chest and asks, "Who returned your amazing vibranium shield to you? I can take it back at any moment, y'know."

"My bad, I take it all back," Steve says with a small grin, and it really is nice to see the two of them getting along again.

"I don't think this information is all too helpful," Thor says with a small smile of his own, "because the Aether was flowing in Jane Foster's veins at that point in time."

"How the hell does that work?" Rocket asks.

"Magic."

"I'm pretty sure I can make some sort of device to safely extract the Aether from Foster," Tony tells them all. "It'll take a bit more time but it'll be worth it, 'cause how else are we getting it?"

"That's great," Scott says enthusiastically, taking a victorious bite out of his apple.

Clint discreetly elbows Natasha and hands her a banana, which she takes to mean that she's forgotten to eat again, which is less great. She peels the banana and takes a bite out of it, eyeing Clint carefully. He nods once and they pay full attention to the proceedings again.

"Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag," Rocket says, and now they are getting somewhere, even if Nat has no idea who or what Rocket had been referring to.

"Morag's a terrible planet," Nebula mutters, "but it should be relatively easy to get the stone before Quill does. He always was an idiot." Thor snorts, apparently having met this Quill before. "It's true!" Nebula insists. "Nobody but an idiot would've dated Gamora." She groans. "I never had the chance to threaten him with dismemberment if he ever hurt her!"

"I'd help you," Tony tells her, an eyebrow raised.

"Good. He's Terran, y'know."

"What?"

"He's from Earth."

"Really?" Rhodey says.

"Yeah, says Kevin Bacon is the greatest hero to ever live," Rocket interjects. "Is that true?"

"...Sure," Rhodey tells him. "You can interpret it like that."

"That's not a straight answer."

"He means no," Nebula tells him.

"Yes! Suck it, Quill." Rocket pumps a fist into the air before he remembers that Quill isn't there and is therefore dead. He slumps back into his seat and breathes out.

"So, the Doctor Strange guy," Scott says after a few seconds. "He was a magician?"

"Yeah. A real one," Rhodey says.

"I feel attacked. Anyways, was he the same guy who was a world renowned neurosurgeon a few years back?"

They all stare at him. Natasha takes out her phone to search him up, and Clint, from the chair next to hers, leans over to peer at the screen too. After her search goes through, they both look up at Scott, and Clint asks, "How do you know that?"

"I know stuff!" Scott says defensively.

"Had a nice place in the Village," Bruce tells them with a reminiscing tone.

"Yeah," Tony agrees. "Sullivan Street." A pause. "I invited his buddy Wong to my now nonexistent wedding."

"You ever planning on actually getting married?" Steve asks him.

"Maybe after this works," Tony answers, and Natasha internally winces at his blatant show of hope.

"Actually," Bruce says thoughtfully, "I think it was Bleecker."

"Sullivan and Bleecker. They're cross streets."

Something in Nat's brain snaps into focus. "Wait, he lived in New York?" she asks, but it's a rhetorical question. "Guys, pick the right year and there were three stones in New York."

Silence.

"Nat, you're a genius," Clint says, voice suffused with glee. He throws an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close and Nat can't help but smile back.

Eventually, Nat finds herself on the night before the so-called Time Heist.

"Alright, everyone go to sleep," Steve tells them all, and gets several groans and protests in response. "We need to rest before the big day!" he says reasonably.

"Yeah, yeah," Tony says, not bothering to hide the mug of coffee in his hands.

"Tony."

Nat and Clint quickly hide their own mugs before they can face the utter disappointment of Captain America.

Thor teleports (that's what they're calling it now) back to Asgard. Nebula and Rocket return to their spaceship. Rhodey drives off to his apartment, located closer to the city. Everyone else retreats to their rooms at the compound.

But not everyone stays there.

Nat finds herself itching to get out of here, on this night where everything seems to hang in the balance. It hits her, all of a sudden, that she's been spending all of her time here in the compound, clustered with the others, trying to avoid the dead.

She's not running away, she tells herself. She's going home, in a sense, and she's going to come back in the morning, anyways.

She gathers a small bag, shrugs on Yelena's jacket—now worn more times than she can count—and shuts her door almost silently. She creeps down the hallway and towards the front door of the compound. It's not like she's running away, she reminds herself, but some things are better done alone.

And because she's so silent, she hears Tony's voice, coming from the living room. She changes her trajectory and stalks towards the room, peeking inside.

"God, what a world," Tony is saying, his Iron Man helmet sitting in front of him on the table, recording him. "If you'd told me 10 years ago that we weren't alone, let alone to this extent, I probably wouldn't have been surprised. But come on..." Natasha shares his sentiment, more than he could ever know. "Who knew what epic forces of dark and light would come into play?" Tony continues. "For better or worse, that's the reality our children get to grow up in." It suddenly occurs to Natasha that maybe she shouldn't be listening in on this, that this is private and definitely meant for someone who is not her. Pepper or Peter Parker, maybe? But he goes on, and she does not step away. "That's why I thought I'd better record a little greeting, in the case of...an untimely death on my part."

"No," she whispers, because damn Tony if he plays the sacrificial martyr, not again, not on her watch. He's going to make it out of this alive. They're all going to make it out of this alive.

"I mean, death at any time is untimely," Tony says, unintentionally ignoring her outburst, "but...this time travel thing we're going to try to pull off tomorrow has me scratching my head about the survivability of it all. But that's part of the hero gig, right?" He gives the camera a little, genuine smile, bordering on a smirk. "Part of the journey is the end."

Tony is more perceptive than she could have ever imagined, years ago when she had just been Natalie Rushman, when she hadn't recommended him for the Avengers Initiative, when she hadn't seen how much more there was inside of him beneath the shields. Natasha's teammates know a lot, and she has learned to give them credit for it. This explains why Tony glances to the side at her, unsurprised, and beckons her over.

She unpeels herself from the wall and walks cautiously inside, and he smirks at her, noticing how she's treating the whole affair like a bomb waiting to explode. Tony looks back at the camera and gestures at her. "This is your Auntie Nat," he says, and she thinks, Oh. And then, I've missed being an aunt.

"Hey, Morgan," she greets warmly, waving at the camera in a way she hopes isn't awkward.

"She's also going on this Time Heist thing we have scheduled for tomorrow," Tony says, eyes crinkling with his smile. She thinks fatherhood is a good look on him. "Any parting words, Nat?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Don't be so pessimistic, Tony. Take life as it goes."

"Says the spy," he mutters.

"Shut up."

"I would like to state for the record that your Auntie Nat is a little sh- annoying, a little annoying." He winces, and Natasha snorts. "God, gotta get used to that," he mutters.

"And I would like to state for the record that your dad is an amazing man," Nat tells the camera, "and that you're going to be alright."

"Yeah," Tony says, a bit taken aback and a bit choked up. "Everything is going to work out exactly the way it's supposed to," he reassures his unborn child and Natasha and himself all at once.

A pause as Nat looks at him and Tony looks back at her. "So, Morgan, with your dad's penchant for nicknames, I assume you have one?" she asks. It is surprisingly not too awkward to speak to someone through a recording; it's almost like speaking to the future.

"Of course," Tony says promptly. "It's Maguna."

Nat tilts her head. "I was thinking of Mo-Mo?"

"God, that is so much worse. That is an atrocity. How have you survived this far?"

"On pure spite," she answers gleefully.

Tony laughs, and the tension in their shoulders finally melts away. "Anyways," he says, leaning closer to the helmet. "I love you so much, kiddo. Hope to see you soon."

"I love you too," Natasha says softly. "Everyone's so excited to meet you."

"You'll be loved, I swear it," Tony says solemnly. "There's no number that can describe my love for you."

He shuts down the recording. They breathe in the silence for a few moments.

"You okay?" she asks, sitting down on the couch beside him.

He runs a hand through his hair. "Are you?" he counters.

She shrugs, and he leans into her slightly. After a second, she lays her head on his shoulder and sighs.

"You should be resting," he murmurs.

"You should be resting."

"Sometimes we feel like the same people," Tony says with humor in his voice.

"Yeah, well, you couldn't sleep. I have things to do."

"Like what?" he asks.

Like facing the past.