Maria
Five years had gone by in the blink of an eye. What was that age-old saying? Time flies when you’re turned into dust. Or something like that. Maria didn’t quite care for the original version. Whoever had come up with that one had clearly never been turned into dust. It makes time fly much faster than having fun ever could.
Five years.
A car, out of control. Nick hitting the breaks just on time. The car was empty. A tingling in her hands. Dust. Rematerializing in the middle of a busy street. Almost getting hit by a car again. The second time in five seconds. The second time in five years. Five years, in the blink of an eye. Breaking-news broadcasts taking over billboards. ‘The Blip, Undone?’ flashing in giant letters on LED-screens. It was mayhem. At least Nick was there.
Over a thousand notifications overloaded her phone. It crashed, but not before Maria could read the date in the corner of her screen. The date and month were inconsequential. Maria didn’t even notice them. It was the year that caught her eye, that froze her breath in her throat, that nearly stopped her heart before sending it into a frenzied overdrive.
- 2023.
“Nick?”
She could remember saying the exact same thing, not even a minute ago. Five years ago. Maria Hill did not faint. She had not fainted since she was in the army, when she had gone nearly two days without water after a mission went south. Maria Hill did not faint.
Five years.
Mere seconds.
2023.
Maria Hill fainted.
-
The Avengers compound had changed, but Maria wondered if she would have noticed, had she been around for the past five years. They weren’t huge changes. A small obstacle course, as if for a hamster, right outside the entrance. New appliances in the kitchen. A new stain on the carpet in one of the meeting rooms. Maria was briefly surprised that Tony hadn’t immediately changed the carpet, but she supposed half of the world’s population disappearing in an instant took precedence over spilt coffee on dark blue carpet.
As if compensating for the past five years passing in the blink of an eye, the hours that passed since rematerializing seemed to drag on forever. Only frequent glances at her watch revealed that time was, in fact, still passing. It was nearing 1 a.m. The only people in the compound were Maria and Nick. It had taken almost four hours of incessant calling, texting, emailing, and even privately messaging a select few on Instagram and Twitter, for someone—one of the Avengers—to respond. It had been Steve, of course. Reliable as ever. He had picked up after what had to be Nick’s thousandth attempt at contacting him. The exchange had been brief, and Maria had simply watched on. Steve had informed them that they were in Wakanda. Maria was reminded of plans to finally visit Wakanda. That would have been a little over four years ago.
“They’ll be here in eight hours,” Nick informed her, voice gruff yet relieved. Maria nodded. “I suggest you get some sleep,” Nick added.
“Don’t know if I can,” Maria admitted. Not until she knew everyone was alright. Not until she knew Natasha was alright. Nick nodded.
“Coffee?” he asked. Maria nodded, and a cup of coffee was placed in front of her a few minutes later. Her phone lay next to her, untouched. She had called the team, too, of course. Helped Nick try to reach someone, anyone. But she hadn’t called Natasha. She didn’t dare call her. There was a constant hum of dread coursing through her every nerve and vein that she couldn’t quite shake. She feared what it would do to her if she called the redhead and she didn’t pick up. So she didn’t call. Eight more hours. She would wait in deliberate—but not quite blissful—ignorance until then. She turned off her phone, ignoring Nick’s curious glance her way. Eight more hours.
-
Natasha’s room had changed. These changes were far less subtle. They were deliberate. They were changes made by someone with everything to forget, yet choosing to remember. Desperate to remember. Pictures on walls, or in frames on bedside tables. Trinkets and other objects on shelves and windowsills. Traces of routines desperately clung to, like the two leather jackets hanging on their respective hooks. One of them with an hourglass symbol on the shoulders. Natasha’s. Another one nondescript, yet worn and clearly loved. Maria’s. Maria ached to reach for it, to put it on. But she couldn’t bring herself to change anything in the room.
The pictures were another shot to the heart. She featured heavily. Natasha and Maria on a motorbike. Natasha and Maria on Clint’s farm, his children squished between them in a hug. Natasha and Maria in their favorite pizza restaurant, at their usual table, one pizza shared between the two of them: one side, Natasha’s side, Hawaiian, and one side pepperoni. Maria in an oversized shirt on Natasha’s bed, book in her hands, hair tousled, morning light making her hair look a shade lighter. Maria in a USA jersey at the finale of the 2015 women’s world cup, cheeks flushed by alcohol and joy.
There were other pictures, too, that didn’t feature Maria. One half of a photo booth strip, a young Natasha and Yelena grinning brightly. An older Yelena, next to a man and woman Maria knew to be Alexei and Melina, despite having never met either of the three people pictured. Natasha and Yelena, feeding a pig. Natasha and Yelena, posing for a selfie. Pictures of Natasha with Clint’s family. Laura, Cooper, Lila, Nathaniel. Natasha and Wanda. The Avengers, all together. Natasha and Clint. Natasha, Sam, and Steve. Natasha and Tony. Natasha, Natasha, Natasha.
Natasha. The way Clint’s voice had broken, choking on the syllables. I’m so sorry, Maria.
Clint had looked pained as he addressed Maria. Everyone else had looked confused. There were people Maria had never met, and there were people Maria considered her dearest friends. Pepper Potts, a haunted look on her own face that had temporarily made way for confusion. Steve, solemn and no less confused. Thor. Sam. Tears had clouded her vision, but Maria had known that the one person she wanted to see more than anyone in the world wasn’t there.
She can’t remember what she had replied. Could only remember Clint’s ‘I’m so sorry’ and Steve’s ‘She died a hero’. Died. Natasha died. She must have lashed out, punched something or someone, because her right hand throbbed and her knuckles were bruised. But she can’t remember. She remembers Clint’s teary eyes, remembers people calling her name, remembers a door slamming. And now she’s in Natasha’s room.
No one bothers her, and Maria is torn between feeling relieved and lonely. She cries and screams and kicks at the wall until she exhausts herself. She falls asleep in Natasha’s bed, under the covers, burrowed in her scent but not her warmth. Never again in her warmth.
-
“I’m sorry,” Steve says, hours later. Maria sits down at the kitchen table as he hands her a cup of coffee. “I didn’t know.”
“No one did,” Maria replies tiredly. “No one but Clint, and even he never truly knew, only ever suspected. At least not before the dusting. Natasha must’ve told him afterwards.”
Steve didn’t say anything for a while, and Maria was fine just sitting in silence. But then he said, cautiously, “We’ve been calling it the Blip.”
“What?”
“You said the dusting, right?” At her nod, Steve continued. “We’ve been calling it the Blip.”
Maria snorted humorlessly. “That’s stupid. Who’s we?”
Steve gestured around them vaguely. “The world. Or the English-speaking parts of it, at least.”
“Gen Z, I suppose?” Maria asked. Steve laughed, nodded.
“Yeah, I believe so. You’d have to ask Peter, but I think it started on Twitter.”
“Peter?” Maria inquired. She was grateful for the momentary near-mundane conversation. Anything to distract her from facing reality.
“Parker. Spider-Man,” Steve elaborated. “He’s a good kid. He was blipped, too. Tony loved him, he was there when the kid got blipped. God, you should have seen him, Hill. A ghost of himself.”
Maria hummed, nodding slowly. She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer. Steve seemed to privy to her inner thoughts, though, or at the very least to the question on her lips, because he continued.
“Nat was… She was a mess. Don’t ever tell her I said that, she’d—Never mind.” Steve sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Sorry. Anyway, she was a mess. But she was also our glue. She held us together, Hill, all these years. She was relentless, determined. Broken, too. I understand why now. I mean, of course I understood before—half the world vanished, people we worked and lived with. Friends. But it makes even more sense now. I thought it was just our Avengers family she lost, y’know? And the Bartons. But it was her other family, too. And you.”
“All of them?” Maria asked, heart aching at the thought of the loss Natasha had had to endure. Steve nodded.
“Half the population. Statistically,” he said with a grim smile. “But statistics aren’t always proportionate or fair. Some people didn’t lose any loved ones to the Blip. Some lost everyone.”
Another silence fell over them, Steve’s words grasping Maria so tightly by the throat that she had to suck in deep breaths. Steve, thankfully, didn’t mention her gasps. He just placed a warm and heavy hand on her shoulder. It helped, if only infinitesimally so. When she finally had her breathing under control, Maria met Steve’s eyes.
“Tell me everything.”
-
‘Everything’, it turned out, was more than Maria could bear. Tony. Her pain-in-the-ass friend. Father to a young daughter, apparently. Vision. Wanda, having to kill him only for it to mean nothing, to then watch him die again. Maria had never been particularly close with the couple, but they’d shared meals and laughs and drinks at Tony’s parties, or at Natasha’s invitation.
‘Everything’ consisted of a wave of death across the universe, and a five-year-long search for a solution. Infinity stones. The soul stone. Natasha. A fight with Clint. It wasn’t fair, Maria wanted to shout. Natasha had two families to get back to. Clint only had one. Natasha was good, had turned to saving the world in her despair. Clint had turned to destruction. It wasn’t fair. But, as far as clichés go, whoever first said that life wasn’t fair had hit the nail right on the head. Life wasn’t fair, and death even less so.
At one point, someone had turned on the news, but the live footage of emotional reunions and tears of joy had earned the TV a well-aimed mug at the screen, courtesy of Maria. No one seemed too bothered, or if they were, Maria didn’t care enough to pick up on it. There wasn’t much to care about anymore, anyway. Natasha was gone. The world was a mess. Maria was alone. No one knew how much Natasha had meant to her. No one knew how much she had meant to Natasha. No one had known what it was like to love and be loved by Natasha to the same extent. The only ones to come close were Clint and Yelena. Yelena. Out of the three of them, only Yelena and Maria knew what it felt like to disappear for five years and lose their favorite person upon return. To have nowhere, no one, to return to. Maria couldn’t stay at the compound, and she couldn’t go back to their—now her—apartment. She couldn’t start fresh, or help Nick or anyone else with the transition back to normal. She couldn’t accept that Natasha’s death was heroic and just move on with her life. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
-
There was an emptiness to the blonde woman’s eyes that Maria was sure reflected her own. A shared perpetual exhaustion that ran as deep as their grief. The apartment was bare, empty aside from the necessary furniture. Maria hadn’t expected anything else. She knew that before the Blip, Yelena had always been on the move. It was a miracle she had been able to find a place on such short notice. Maria didn’t allow herself to wonder whether it had been acquired legally.
Maria watched in silence as Yelena downed another shot of vodka. The bottle of beer in Maria’s hands was wet from condensation. She wiped her hands on her jeans, tugged her sleeve over her hands to dry the bottle, and took another swig. They’d spent the past two hours like this. Sitting at the dining table, in silence, with the only indication of any time having passed being the steadily growing collection of empty beer bottles on Maria’s side, and the increasingly empty bottle of vodka on Yelena’s. Two hours of nothing but silence. Yelena hadn’t known yet. She’d had suspicions, when she had been able to reach Melina and Alexei but not Natasha. But she hadn’t been sure—hadn’t wanted to be sure. And then Maria had come and burst her bubble.
“Don’t say it,” had been Yelena’s welcoming words when she opened the door to find Maria standing outside her door. Maria had said it, anyway. She needed to. If only to try and get herself to realize it. To get the words to sink in.
“Natasha is dead.”
Yelena had punched Maria, square in the jaw. Maria had nodded, and said, “I know.”
Yelena had let her in after that, handed her a bag of frozen peas for her jaw and a bottle of beer, and they had sat down. That had been the last they had spoken. For two hours. Until Yelena stood up and broke the silence.
“Stay,” she said. It was nearing midnight, and Maria had yawned five times in the last minute alone. Maria nodded, accepting the invitation that felt more like a command, and thanked Yelena when she brought her a blanket. Yelena nodded at her before retreating to her room. The couch was uncomfortable. Maria didn’t sleep.
-
Yelena exited her bedroom in her underwear the next morning. Maria didn’t bat an eye. Not even when Yelena stopped right in front of her, meeting Maria’s eyes. Maria sat up from where she was still lying on the couch, looking up at the younger woman expectantly.
“Yes?”
Yelena pointed at a scar on her left knee. “Natasha was there when this happened. I was six. I fell.” She pointed at her shoulder next. “Natasha was there when this happened. It was two years ago. Or seven, I guess.” She pointed at a scar running along her lower abdomen. “Natasha wasn’t there for this one. Or this one. Or this one. This one. This one. Not for this one, either.” Yelena continued pointing at the scars that littered her body.
“Yelena,” Maria said, but she stopped. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say.
“My point is, she was my sister,” Yelena spoke through gritted teeth. “And I have a lifetime of scars, but Natasha was only there for two of them. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not—”
Her voice broke on the last sentence, and the final syllable was pushed aside by a sob. In an instant, Maria was up, pulling Yelena into her arms. Yelena clung to her, hands digging painfully into Maria’s shoulder blades, and both their bodies shook with the force of her sobs. “It’s not fair.”
Maria shook her head, the movement obstructed by Yelena’s head pressing into the crook of her neck. “It’s not,” she agreed, voice barely louder than a whisper. It was all the volume her own tears could allow. “I’m sorry, Yelena. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
-
Four days had passed in a blur of stilted conversations and crying. Maria hadn’t left, she still spent her nights on the couch, not sleeping until her eyes burned from exhaustion and tears, and her brain wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Sometimes, if she was tired enough, she could almost see Natasha sitting on the armrest by her feet, a comfort settling deep in Maria’s chest. A comfort she had only ever felt with Natasha. Then she’d blink, and the feeling of Natasha’s presence would disappear, taking that comfort along with it.
On the fifth day, Maria remembered the phone she had left uncharged and untouched after the first day. She plugged it in, waited for it to have charged a little bit, and then turned it back on. An array of messages and missed calls flooded her screen, but Maria ignored them all. She could only stare at her lock screen. Natasha sat in between Maria’s legs on a rooftop somewhere in Spain, Maria’s arms wrapped around Natasha’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to the redhead’s cheek. She could almost hear the sound of Natasha laughing as she took the selfie.
“You loved her.”
Maria almost jumped at the sound of Yelena’s voice. She hadn’t noticed the blonde coming up to stand behind the couch, peering down to look at the picture.
Maria nodded. “Yeah. I did.”
“How long?”
“Six years. Not counting the Blip. It happened after the battle of New York,” Maria replied. ‘It’ being the inevitable: a drunken experience, waking up together, naked, Natasha running, and then reappearing two weeks later, in the middle of the night, with chocolates and a bouquet of antique daggers because she wasn’t sure if Maria liked flowers, or was allergic or something, and Maria pulling her into her apartment by the collar of her shirt, kissing her, the two of them falling back into bed and never looking back from that moment on.
“I didn’t know. She never told me.” Yelena’s words were almost accusatory, but her tone was defeated. “I thought I knew her.”
“You did, Yelena,” Maria rushed to assure her. “You did. And she knew you. She told me about you, even before your reunion. And after, she wouldn’t shut up about it. She wanted me to meet you. But then… things went south so quickly, and she was still on the run, and weeks would go by where I didn’t see her.”
“Do you have more?” Yelena asked, accent a little thicker than usual. “Pictures, I mean.”
Maria nodded, patting the spot next to her. Yelena climbed over the back of the couch and sat down next to her. They spent the next couple of hours looking through all of the pictures of Maria and Natasha, and of just Natasha, that Maria had on her phone. The ones that had been on Natasha’s phone were also on it. Natasha had very romantically asked Maria to sync their cloud storage and calendars, and Maria’s eyes had embarrassingly welled up with emotion and love for the supposedly cold and deadly but actually warm and loving assassin.
“She was happy,” Yelena remarked when they reached the end of her camera roll. Maria allowed herself a melancholic smile.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“It wasn’t a question,” Yelena said. “She was happy.”
Maria looked at her lock screen again. “We were happy.”
-
“Tell me about her,” Yelena prompted the next day. They were having breakfast, which was the same as dinner the previous night and consisted of toast and coffee and not much else. It was a bit sad, but it fit their overall mood, Maria supposed. “There is so much about her I never got to know. I want to know. Tell me?”
Maria swallowed her dry toast, washing it down with her steaming hot coffee. Yelena was looking at her expectantly, but Maria wasn’t sure where to begin, what to tell her. What did you tell someone who would never have the time to get to know her own sister and was begging for scraps of her to complete the puzzle?
“We were engaged.”
Apparently, that. Yelena’s eyes flitted down to Maria’s hands, and Maria shook her head. “No rings. No one knew about us. Plus, with our line of work, they’d be more of an inconvenience than anything.” Maria pushed her chair back, lifting up her shirt to expose her ribcage. Right under her left breast was a small hourglass figure. The bottom half of it was a hill.
“She has the same one, on the same spot. It’s the two of us. The Black Widow symbol, and a hill,” Maria explained, pulling her shirt down. “We were going to get married in Wakanda. Bring everyone together under the guise of training with Wakandan technology, and then surprise the hell out of them.”
Yelena handed her a tissue, Maria accepted it wordlessly. “Who proposed?” Yelena asked. At that, Maria couldn’t help but snort in laughter.
“No one. I was cooking, and Nat walks in, tells me, ‘I accidentally referred to you as my fiancée in my head so we’re engaged now’, and I said, ‘Okay, good to know’, and that was it.” Maria’s lips turned up in a small smile at Yelena’s laugh. “Definitely not how I pictured getting engaged, but then again, nothing with her was ever what I expected. It was always exactly what I wanted though. Exactly what I needed.”
“Why Wakanda?”
“I’d never been. And you’d never been, either. That was important. Natasha wasn’t sure she’d be able to convince you to come to an Avengers training trip, she hoped Wakanda would be the right incentive.”
Yelena’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “Me? I would have been invited?”
Maria frowned and nodded. “Of course. You’re family. She wanted you to be her best man.” At Yelena’s confused frown, Maria added, “She would have made Steve her maid of honor. Said it’d be funny. She hates—hated traditional wedding roles.”
Yelena frowned, and Maria briefly wondered how the shape that her mouth made was humanly possible. It would have been endearing, if it wasn’t so goddamn heartbreaking. After a minute, Yelena nodded determinedly. “I would have been the best best man.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
-
Yelena
Yelena had never had a roommate outside of the Red Room. Until Maria. Maria was her roommate now, sort of. Not officially, she hadn’t moved in, but Maria couldn’t bring herself to go back to her own apartment and Yelena couldn’t quite fathom being alone right now. It worked out well for both of them. Yelena wanted to hate Maria. She’d started out strong, punching the woman that had had so much more time with Natasha than she ever would. But then Maria had just nodded, and said she knew, and she had looked more broken than any punch could ever leave her. So Yelena had let her in. And Maria hadn’t left.
Something about Maria told Yelena that the action was very out of character for the woman. Maybe it was the rigid way in which she carried herself, or the meticulously orderly way in which she did everything, or the tenseness in her jaw that made Yelena wonder if she had ever not known stress. Whatever it was, something told Yelena that Maria was not typically the woman to enter someone’s house and not leave and settle into a routine with a near-stranger. Then again, she was former military. Living with strangers and settling into routines with them was probably not that strange an experience to Maria Hill. Opening up to a near-stranger, crying in front of them and with them, on the other hand, Yelena was certain was a first for the woman. It was a first for her, too.
Yelena’s initial intention to hate Maria had made place for a sense of kinship within the first five minutes, and now they had reached a point of familiarity that made Yelena long for her sister even more. Maria told her little snippets of Natasha, of their lives together, and Yelena treasured every piece of information she learned, filing the bits of knowledge away to remember forever. Natasha was the kind of woman who deserved to be remembered.
As time went on, Yelena learned of Natasha’s hatred for beans and her love for PB&J sandwiches—something Yelena had been pleased to find hadn’t changed since their childhood. She listened with rapt attention as Maria told her the details of every mission they had ever done together, and even the one’s Maria hadn’t been involved in, a testament of how well they had known each other, of how much Natasha had trusted Maria. Maria told her of the weekends they’d spend with Clint’s family, Clint’s obliviousness and—later—suspicion. The mention of Clint made Yelena’s heart fill with hatred, but Natasha had loved him enough to die for him, and Yelena tried to hold on to that thought. She learned of Natasha’s carefully curated playlists she would send Maria, consisting of track titles that would form sentences. The shortest one consisted of ‘I Want’ by One Direction and ‘Chicken Tenders’ by Dominic Fike, sent to Maria when Maria was on her way home one day, and she’d immediately turned the car around and driven to KFC. Yelena had asked Maria to send her the playlists, ignoring the creatively crafted propositions for sex, and listened to nothing else for three days straight.
-
Somewhere amidst the blurry passing of time, Yelena had finally called Alexei and Melina. Or rather, she had called Melina, knowing Alexei would be with her. They had known, of course. It had been all over the news. They didn’t resent Yelena for not calling them, or picking up when they had called her. They understood. They also understood her grief. Yelena had never seen or heard Melina cry before, but they had cried together as they reminisced about Natasha. Yelena hadn’t told them about Maria, though. That was between Maria and Natasha. Or just Maria, now.
Maria had given Yelena space to talk to her parents, going out to explore the neighborhood. And then she had given her some more space. And then the day had almost passed and Yelena hadn’t seen Maria, and she grew worried. She would never go as far as admitting she had left her apartment in a frantic search around the city, but when she got back and found Maria sitting on the couch, Yelena hugged her tightly and for a few seconds too long, if only to give herself the time to blink away the tears of relief that threatened to fall.
-
When Yelena awoke the next morning, she heard a voice that wasn’t Maria’s coming form the living room. Yelena froze for a second, and then shook herself out of her stupor and ran into the living room. It was Natasha’s voice. Natasha.
Natasha’s voice, coming from Maria’s phone.
“Oh,” Yelena muttered, internally berating herself for being foolish enough to hope. Maria looked up, muttering a tearful apology.
“Sorry. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to them—the messages—before today. But I dreamt about her again, and when I woke up I realized I was forgetting the sound of her voice. She left so many, Yelena. It’s breaking me but I can’t stop listening to them.”
Yelena sat down next to Maria. “Can I stay while you listen to them? I miss her voice.” Maria nodded, then tapped at something on her phone. Natasha’s voice was raspier than Yelena remembered. Probably from crying. It hurt beyond belief, but much like Maria, Yelena couldn’t bring herself to stop listening.
“Hey. It’s me again. Bruce and I ran through the science of it, and we think this—leaving messages—is probably useless. Even if your phone blipped along with you, you probably won’t have any service or whatever. If you’re even still in a conscious state of being. God, that sounds awful. Anyway, I’m just going to keep trying, on the off chance you’re able to listen to these messages. It’s been three weeks. A newbie joined. She’s from outer space, but not really. She’s human. But not really. I don’t know, I don’t fully get her. Her name’s Carol. Captain Marvel. She and Nick go way back, apparently. He paged her, or something, before he blipped.”
There was a pause as Natasha sighed. It gave Yelena time to look at Maria. She looked as pained as Yelena felt.
“I sort of resent him, you know? For being the last person to see you. The last person you saw. I miss you so much, Masha. I never got to tell you, but I found a dress. It’s just hanging in our apartment now. I don’t know if I ever truly told you how beyond excited I was to get to call you my wife someday. I’m fighting for another chance, I promise. A chance to call you my wife.”
A beep signaled the end of the message, and Maria wordlessly moved on to the next one.
“I told Clint. About us. He wasn’t surprised. He said he knew already. You were right about that, I guess. God… Can you believe I even miss telling you you’re right? Y’know what I hate? That we never told anyone. I know it’s on me, mostly. I hate it, though. I’m sorry. I miss you.”
Maria’s shaky breath drew Yelena’s attention back to the woman next to her. “Why didn’t Natasha want people to know?” Yelena asked.
Maria sighed. “So many reasons. It wasn’t us, or me, in particular, though. She always made sure I knew that. Part of it was internalized homophobia. A side-effect of growing up in Russia, she used to say. Another part, a part she hated, was the simple fact that some parts of her job—before the Avengers, when she was just an agent—were easier when men believed they stood a chance. Not once did S.H.I.E.L.D. ever ask her to use herself like that, but it’s the modus operandi she was familiar with. And then there was also the very painful fact that Natasha doesn’t trust easily. To know one’s weakness is to have power over them, or so she’d always say. She feared that, if people knew, they’d use how she felt about me against her.”
“Even after all those years with the Avengers? She didn’t trust them?”
“She did come to trust them, eventually. But by then we’d kept us hidden for so long, that Natasha wanted to make it a grand reveal. The wedding in Wakanda was supposed to be that.”
Yelena thought about Natasha in white. Would she have worn white? It would have been such a Natasha thing to wear black, or red. She would have looked beautiful, either way. Yelena was sure of that. “More?” she asked, motioning at Maria’s phone. Maria nodded and dutifully played the next message. And the next. And the one after that.
The final message was the hardest. Where the other messages had occurred within weeks, more often days or even hours, of each other, the time gap between this one and the previous message was much longer. It was dated almost five years after the previous one. Only two weeks ago from today.
“Hey. It’s me again. It’s been a while.”
Natasha sighs, and there’s a quiver to it that makes Yelena ache. It sounds so close, Yelena almost believes she can reach through the phone and touch her sister.
“I haven’t called in years, I know. I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t want to, or that I didn’t miss you. Quite the opposite, actually. I miss you more each day. It’s just that… I held on to hope, all this time, that we’d find a way to bring you all back. And I didn’t want to fill up your voicemail box, in case we found a way, so I could let you know. This is me letting you know. God, there’s so much I need you to know, Maria. We found a way, maybe. It’s our best chance yet. We’ve brought everyone together. Even the little guy, Scott Lang. And a raccoon from outer space. And some weird blue robot girl. And Bruce is full-time Hulk now, but civilized. And Tony. Tony and Pepper have a kid, Mash. Morgan. She’s adorable.”
A deep inhale. A slow, shaky exhale. A breathy laugh, disbelieving.
“Maybe we could do that some day? Have a kid. Once we’ve brought you all back. Which we will. We’re going to use the infinity stones. Clint and I will go for the soul stone. It’s somewhere called Vormir. It’s in outer space, in the past. I’m going to outer space, and time travel. That’s pretty cool. Wish I could take you with me, but at least I’ll be bringing you back. I hope it works, Masha. I hope it works. I love you.”
Life’s general unfairness was an already established fact. The degree of unfairness, however, still never ceased to amaze Yelena. It had worked. It had worked, and the one person that had worked tirelessly over the past five years to make it happen was not there to see it. To witness the return of half the population. Of the people she loved most in the world. It was not just unfair, it was cruel.
Natasha deserved better. Natasha deserved to be there to witness the fruits of her labor. Natasha deserved so much more than she got. She deserved to live. And mingled with all of these feelings Yelena harbored, she could not shake a certain amount of anger. Anger at Natasha. It was a shameful feeling, but she couldn’t help it. Natasha had left Yelena four voicemail messages. None as elaborate as the ones to Maria. And not in as close succession, either. The first one was less than an hour after the snap. The second one the next day. The third one roughly a week later. The last one five years later, telling Yelena of the plan to bring them back. They certainly didn’t lack in emotion, but they were nothing compared to the messages left in Maria’s voicemail box. It angered Yelena. It made her jealous. And Yelena did not get jealous. Jealousy was for children who did not yet understand that life was unfair. And, apparently, jealousy was also for women who would never have the time to get to know their sisters.
As the days passed, Yelena guessed that Maria had probably picked up on Yelena’s jealousy, because she had stopped volunteering Natasha-stories and anecdotes, instead only talking about her when Yelena asked. It angered Yelena even more, because that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to know everything about her sister. She just would have loved to learn it from Natasha herself, rather than from the fiancée she had never told her about, posthumously. But that ship had long sailed, and so she would have to do with the bits of information she could learn from Maria.
-
The next time Yelena heard voices coming from the living room, she didn’t jump up and speed into the living room, for the very simple reason that the voices didn’t belong to Natasha. Instead, she took her time to assess whether any of the people posed a threat. When she recognized Maria’s voice, calmly addressing someone named Steve, Yelena rolled her eyes. She entered her living room, where Maria was leaning against the couch, Steve Rogers standing in front of her.
“How very American of you, Star-Sprangled Boy, to show up somewhere uninvited,” Yelena drawled.
Steve, to his credit, didn’t even react to the nickname. “Sorry. I just wanted to see how you two were doing.”
“Alive.”
Steve nodded. “That’s good,” he said awkwardly.
“Are you doing house calls at every grieving person’s residence?” Yelena asked. “Because my parents might not be as welcoming.”
“No, I just—Here,” Steve pulled something out of the messenger bag slung over his shoulder, handing it to Yelena. It was a flat wooden box. When Yelena opened it, she found a large medal with a white star, a smaller pin beside it, neatly presented on a white cushion. Yelena stared at it in confusion. “It’s a Presidential Medal of Honor,” Steve explained.
“I didn’t—” Yelena began, but then trailed off when she closed the box and noticed the name engraved on it. Natasha Romanoff. “Oh. Why are you giving this to me?”
“You’re her sister. Thought you might want it.”
“Yet another reminder of the fact that I will forever have to miss my sister? No, thanks. She dies, and then gets a medal for dying? From the very same government that did not hesitate to chase her across the entire globe for doing what was right?”
Steve grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Maria had remained quiet all throughout. Yelena wordlessly handed her the box. Maria took it silently, opening it and examining its contents for a few seconds before closing it again. She didn’t let go of it, though. Steve opened his mouth, then closed it. He repeated the process a few times before Yelena grew tired of it.
“Speak, Star Boy.”
“We’re going—I’m—There might be a—” Steve sighed. “Never mind. I’m sorry. For… Not sure for what. I’m just sorry. I’ll go now. Call if you need anything, yeah? I might be unreachable for a bit, but you can always reach one of us.”
Yelena held back a snide remark, just nodding. Steve pulled Maria in for a hug, seemed to realize that doing the same with Yelena would result in his death, and left with a nod in her direction.
“Is he always so eloquent?” Yelena asked sarcastically when the door closed behind him. Maria shook her head, but her gaze was far away, attention clearly elsewhere. A deep frown colored her face, eyebrows pulled together. “Maria? What is it?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Sorry. Do you mind if I keep this?” she asked, holding up the box. Yelena shrugged.
“I don’t want it. Do what you want with it.”
-
Natasha
Dying was rather peaceful. Or being dead was, at least. The dying itself had happened so quickly, Natasha wouldn’t be able to assess its overall peacefulness. Being dead was more of a vague sense of calm than anything consciously decipherable, so it wasn’t like Natasha had a clear notion of actively being dead. But she certainly did have a very clear notion of suddenly no longer being dead, of the vague sense of calm suddenly washing away, of the painful gasps of air and the subsequent coughing fit.
And then of a hand on her shoulder. A large, warm hand.
And then an equally warm voice calling her name.
“Nat? Natasha. Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay. You’re alive.”
“Maria?”
“I—No, sorry. It’s Steve.”
Natasha coughed violently, wheezing in a deep breath, before finally looking the man in the eyes. “I know it’s you, idiot. I’m asking—Did it work? Maria? Is she—And my family?”
Steve regarded her with a nod and a smile. “She’s alive. She’s back. They all are. Yelena, your parents, all of them. You did it.”
Natasha looks around her. The planet that had once struck her as beautiful, not too long ago, now makes her itch with discomfort. The jagged rocks and the cliff not too far to her left had once had a beauty about them, but now they just seem threatening. She looks back at Steve. He’s wearing the same white suit they had worn when they embarked on their mission to obtain the infinity stones. She wonders if he’s taken it off in between, then realizes she has no idea how much time has passed. “How long has it been?”
Steve grimaces. “Roughly a month.” Natasha glares at him, and he rolls his eyes, giving in. “Four weeks and six days.”
Natasha purses her lips, sighs, and says, “I think I preferred roughly a month.”
Steve moves to help her up, and it is only then that Natasha realized she was still half-lying, half-sitting on the ground, held up only be Steve’s hand on her back. Her knees feel wobbly when she stands, but she’s standing, and that alone feels like a miracle. It is a miracle, she realizes. “How did you do it?” she asks. “Get me back, I mean.”
“A soul for a soul, right? So I figured, the soul stone for a soul. To be honest, I didn’t think it’d work. I haven’t told anyone I was going to try. Almost told Maria and Yelena, but I didn’t want to get their hopes up and then have it all fail.”
“You’ve been to see Maria? And Yelena?”
Steve nods, swinging her arm over his shoulders and snaking his own around her waist. He slowly, and almost too gently, begins to lead her away from the cliff. “Yeah. Maria’s been staying with Yelena. Not sure when that came about, or why, but I think it’s helping them both. Can’t say for sure about Yelena, I only just met her, but Maria was a wreck after the Un-Blipping.” Natasha says nothing in response, and Steve seems to take that as his cue to try and lighten the mood. “So, you and Maria, huh?”
Natasha doesn’t know whether to smile or cry. “Just get me home, please.”
-
Home, as Steve apparently understood it, was the Avengers compound. It hadn’t changed much. Scott’s hamster obstacle course that Tony had bought him at PetSmart as a joke still stood right outside of the entrance, and Steve nearly tripped over it, cursing.
“Language,” Natasha scolded. Steve rolled his eyes. Natasha was still leaning most of her weight on him, and so the task of leading the two of them through the compound fell on Steve. Contrary to Natasha’s expectations, he didn’t take her straight to medical, instead stopping in the kitchen.
“Sit,”’ he instructed. Natasha did as she was told and watched him as he began to prepare her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He handed her the plate with a flourish, and said, “You need to eat. After that, we’ll get you checked out.”
Natasha nodded, and took a bite. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized how hungry she’d been. The sandwich was gone in a minute. Steve made her another one, and handed her a glass of water. Aside from the sound of her eating, the compound was eerily silent. After she finished the sandwich and gulped down the water, Natasha asked, “Where is everyone?”
“Clint went home, as did Sam. Scott, too. Bruce has been here, helping me out with the infinity stones. Bucky has been a more-or-less regular inhabitant, too. Wanda’s been everywhere and nowhere. I’ve tried to get her to stay here for a bit, but she says it’s too much. Thor’s gone off with the Guardians.”
Natasha frowned. “And Tony?”
Steve sighed, wringing his hands and looking anywhere but at Natasha. Fear spread through her at his silence.
“Steve,” Natasha urged.
Steve shook his head, still not looking at her. “It… It went south, Nat. I still don’t even really get what happened. There was a fake Nebula. Or, technically, a past-Nebula. And suddenly Thanos was there with his entire army, and Bruce’s snap had been for nothing. And then everyone showed up, and it was chaos, and then—I don’t even know how he got them, but suddenly Tony had the stones, and he snapped his fingers, and it was too much. It was too much for him.”
His voice was shaky, as were his hands. Natasha reached over to take one of his in hers, but she couldn’t look him in the eye. Tony. Insufferable Tony. Lovable Tony. Reckless Tony. Protective Tony. There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask, but she settled for the first one that came to mind. “Pepper and Morgan?”
Steve rubbed his eyes, finally looking at her. “Pepper is a wreck, but still Pepper, so still more put together than most of us are on a good day. Morgan is little. I think maybe too little to really understand what happened. Maybe it’s for the best.”
Natasha’s eyes were burning, and she hastily blinked away the tears. She swallowed down a sob, ignoring the pain in her throat. She looked around, taking in the kitchen. The sink, with the garbage disposal that Tony always complained was not for coffee grounds. The large coffee machine, way too luxurious for a group of people that only ever drank regular coffee. The fridge, big enough for a large family. A family that would never be complete again. Natasha felt the sudden need to be anywhere but in the compound. She stood up cautiously, still feeling like her legs could give out at any minute, and looked at Steve. “Take me to medical, please. Then take me home, to Maria.”
-
When Natasha first met Maria, she was still Natalia Romanova. No longer a Black Widow, but not yet the Black Widow. S.H.I.E.L.D. had only just allowed her to roam HQ freely, and within five minutes of her newfound ‘freedom’, Natalia realized she was being tailed. Had she not been so disoriented and thrilled at her first bit of freedom in ages, she probably would have realized it immediately. The agent was not being subtle, nor was she trying to be. She introduced herself as Maria Hill the moment Natalia spotted her, and then did not blink when Natalia backed her into a corner of one of the many training rooms, forearm pressed to her throat.
“Are you not afraid of me?” Natalia had asked, eyes tracking the woman’s every movement. Agent Hill had simply chuckled and shaken her head.
“No. Don’t get me wrong, I know you could kill me in a second if you wanted to. But the reason you’re here, with S.H.I.E.L.D., is because you don’t want to, right? So no, I’m not scared.”
“If you don’t stop following me, you’ll come to seriously regret that statement,” Natalia had threatened.
Agent Hill had jutted her chin out proudly, defiantly, and said, “Fine. I’ll walk beside you, then.” That had been the beginning of their partnership. For months, both refused to call it friendship. But as time went on, it did turn into friendship, and eventually so much more.
Natasha was reminded of that same defiance, that same stubbornness and determination, as she heard Maria and Yelena bickering while she and Steve waited for someone to open the door. She had knocked about thirty seconds ago, and for the past thirty seconds had to listen to Maria and Yelena argue about who would get up to open the door. Natasha looked at Steve, who smiled at her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She felt inexplicably nervous. She could feel adrenaline thrumming through her every vein, from deep in her chest, right up to the very tips of her fingers.
Finally, as if in slow-motion, she watched the door open. Yelena’s blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, wisps of hair flying out. Her green eyes were wide, her mouth agape, and for a moment it was as if time had stopped, or perhaps had never even existed. Natasha cleared her throat. “Hi, сестра.”
Hands grabbed at her before she even realized, and if it were an assassination attempt Natasha would have been a dead woman. Luckily, it was just her sister, pulling her into the world’s tightest hug, holding onto her for dear life. Within seconds, Natasha’s shoulder was wet from the younger woman’s tears, but she couldn’t even bring herself to tease Yelena about it. She wasn’t faring much better herself.
Natasha wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but eventually Yelena pulled away, and before Natasha could take in the sight of her tear-stained face, she recoiled from Yelena’s well-placed slap to the face. “Сука. If you ever sacrifice yourself again, I swear to God, I will kill you myself,” Yelena threatened, but then she was crying again and pulling her into another hug.
“I’m sorry,” Natasha mumbled into her shoulder.
This time, when Yelena pulled back again, Natasha was given the time to take in her sister’s features. More than five years had passed, and she hadn’t aged a day. It was a painful reminder.
“Natasha?”
Yelena stepped back, and finally Natasha was able to properly look into the apartment. It was pretty bare, only the necessary furniture decorated the living room, but it could just as well have been decorated with golden ornaments and intricate frescoes. It wouldn’t have made a difference to Natasha. All she noticed was the dark-haired woman standing a mere few feet away.
Natasha wasn’t sure who took the first step, but the next thing she knew was those familiar arms wrapped around her, her own around the waist of the woman she loves, faces buried in each other’s necks. Maria’s right hand was nestled in her hair, running her fingers through it, and Natasha could crumble at the familiarity of it all. More than five years had passed, but Maria still felt the same, still smelled the same. She still was the same.
“Is this real?” Maria asked, face still pressed into the crook of Natasha’s neck. Natasha didn’t think she had ever heard the agent sound so vulnerable. But right now, she wasn’t an agent. She was just a woman, back in the arms of a supposed-to-be-dead woman. Natasha supposed it wasn’t that out of the ordinary to be skeptical.
Nodding, Natasha replied, “It is. I’m here.”
“I don’t want to pull away,” Maria confessed, voice muffled by Natasha’s shoulder. “What if I do and you disappear again?”
“I won’t,” Natasha breathed. “I won’t. I promise you, I’m here. I’m not leaving. And, not to pressure you or anything, but I have gone over five years without kissing you, so I would just really like to kiss you right now.”
“Just a second. In case you do disappear. Just let me have one more moment?” Maria asked, voice cracking on the last word. Truly, Natasha had been helpless to deny Maria anything from the moment they met, so she just nodded.
“Anything you need.”
She could hear Steve leave somewhere in the distance, but Natasha couldn’t bring herself to care. Not when she had Maria pressing kisses to her neck, muttering her name over and over again, ever so reverently, as if Natasha was the answer to her prayers. Or, perhaps, herself a prayer.
“Masha,” Natasha mumbled. Finally, Maria pulled away, both her hands coming up to cup Natasha’s face. Her blue eyes shone with tears, and her cheeks were red and blotchy, nose running. She’d never looked more beautiful to Natasha. “Kiss me?” she asked.
“I’m all gross,” Maria protested, pulling her sleeve over the back of her hand and wiping at her face.
Laughing, Natasha shook her head. “I don’t care. I’ve done nothing but try everything in my power to bring you back for the past five years. I don’t think I can wait anymore.”
Maria’s watery chuckle sounded angelic, little lines appearing at the corners of her eyes as she scrunched up her nose in joy. “Natasha?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Kiss me.”
Natasha surged forwards, a bit too enthusiastically. Their noses bumped into each other, and their teeth clashed, and for a good minute they just laughed into each other, grinning too widely to close their mouths. Maria pulled herself together first, and when their lips finally touched in a proper kiss, Natasha could only think that the past five years of suffering were worth it, just to get to this moment.
A part of her had often worried that it wouldn’t be the same anymore, if they ever managed to bring everyone back. Worried that Maria would still be the same but Natasha would be too different, that maybe they wouldn’t work anymore. All those worries flew out the window at the first brush of their lips, and any remaining hesitance fully vanished at the first brush of their tongues. Maria tasted of coffee and maple syrup, and the smell of breakfast made a lot more sense now. It was still morning, but Natasha already couldn’t wait for the next morning, and every other morning still to come. She’d wake up next to Maria for the rest of her life, she’d make damn sure of that.
Clumsily, Natasha pushed Maria backwards until the back of her thighs hit the armrest of the couch.
“If you are going to have sex on my couch, I will murder you. It will be painful, excruciating, and it will look like an accident,” Yelena threatened. Natasha would have been perfectly content to ignore her little sister and continue kissing Maria, but Maria seemed to have some care for sticking to what was considered public decency. She pulled away, placating Natasha with one quick kiss, before gently pushing Natasha away, clearing her throat and facing a slightly disgusted-looking Yelena.
“Sorry,” Maria mumbled.
Yelena waved her off. “Come, sit. We still have food. Pancakes.”
And so, after five years of pain, blood, sweat, and tears, Natasha found herself at the kitchen table, sharing breakfast with some of the most important people in her life. And maybe the world was still imperfect, and there would no doubt be an extraordinary amount of chaos in the months to come as everyone tried to adjust to the return of over 3.5 billion people. But in this moment, the world felt pretty damn perfect. For once in her life, Natasha felt nothing but calm. Peaceful. For the first time, she didn’t feel she owed anyone anything. She felt free, and above all, she felt loved.