Of Home Near

Now
May 2018

There was something about being with Steve Rogers when he had the bit between his teeth that made Natasha’s nerves hum. She felt as if she was jangling with energy, ready to run into battle screaming a war cry with a flag clutched in one hand and a sword in the other.

He banged open the doors of the conference room, making everyone inside jump, and demanded, “Where is he?”

“What –” Clint spluttered. “Who –”

“Thanos,” Steve said bluntly. His gaze flickered across the room before landing on Tony, who looked a little alarmed by the sudden attention. “Tony, you talked to him. Did he say anything?”

“Did he say – we were fighting for our lives, it wasn’t exactly dinner and drinks,” Tony protested. “What’s with you? Did Romanoff take you out back and fuck the homicidal tendencies back into you?”

“Excuse me?” Natasha said, her eyebrows climbing.

“He’s had those since 1918,” Bucky said helpfully. “Or 1924, anyway. He doesn’t need help with them.”

“I don’t have homicidal tendencies,” Steve said impatiently. “Tony, Thanos? Did he say anything about where he might go when he was done?”

“You don’t have – you know the rest of us have met you, right?” Tony demanded, his eyes flashing. He put his hands down flat on the table, pushing himself upright and bracing himself there despite the way both Pepper and Rhodey reached to pull him back down. He resisted them, glaring at Steve, and went on, “Some of us came pretty damn close to getting killed by you and you think you don’t have homicidal tendencies?”

“If I wanted you dead, you’d know, believe me,” Steve said flatly. There was a note in his voice that made Tony look at him sharply, like for the first time he was actually seeing Steve and not whoever it was he had thought Steve Rogers was.

Bucky opened his mouth to speak, thought better of whatever he had been about to say, and shut it again. Sam and Rhodey both glanced at him, but all of Tony’s attention was on Steve, the two of them staring at each other with hard, dangerous eyes.

Steve Rogers was, as he had told Irina Larionova, a trained killer. He hadn’t been trained the way Natasha, Irina, or any other product of the Red Room and its predecessor had been, but he was still a trained killer. It was the first thing that Natasha had noticed about him all those years ago on the helicarrier’s deck, past the barely-comprehending grief and the movie star good looks. Even back then, she had seen the air of restrained violence that it was clear Coulson hadn’t been aware of, the way Steve held himself and the quick flicker of his eyes around the deck before he had focused on her, recognizing her as much as she had him. She had seen that too, though she hadn’t known him well enough at the time to be certain of it until later that day.

Natasha knew about Abraham Erskine, about why Steve Rogers had been chosen for Project Rebirth over all the other candidates at Camp Lehigh. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man – but even Abraham Erskine had known that the Allies had needed a soldier. They had needed someone who could and would kill even if he had never done it before, who would do it without hesitation when push came to shove. Erskine had wanted someone who was willing to entertain other options before that last and final one, who didn’t actually want to kill. But they had still needed a natural killer.

Tony Stark was a natural killer too. He just went about it differently.

And, Natasha knew grimly, he almost certainly didn’t think of himself as one. People generally didn’t. But to do this line of work, you needed a thread of ruthlessness that most people simply lacked. It was the same thing that General Dreykov had looked for amongst his prospective Widows, winkling the signs of it out in children who were mostly too young to have ever really been tested in the kinds of situations where you discovered what you were really made of. What you were when the lights were out and you were alone in the dark.

It wasn’t a comparison that she would ever bring up to Steve or Tony or any of the other Avengers; she wasn’t particularly happy that she had thought of it herself. But she thought it was true. The difference was, of course, that they were all adults. They knew what they were doing and why; they had, all of them, made the decision to be here. To be this.

Natasha had made that decision too. She had made it for the first time ten years ago, crouched in the corner of a dingy Parisian apartment with Clint Barton calmly and quietly talking her down, and again six years ago, when Steve Rogers had come to the door of Clint’s cell-cum-cabin on the helicarrier and said, equally calmly, that it was time to go. She had made it in Washington four years ago and in Sokovia three years earlier and Budapest a year after that, because it was the kind of decision you didn’t make just once. You made it over and over again, because even though it was the kind of question that only had one answer if you had to ask it in the first place, you always had to ask.

For a long time, all Tony and Steve did was stare at each other, Tony’s hands pressed hard against the table that was probably holding him up and Steve’s digging divots into the back of his empty chair. It was Tony who looked away first, all the acknowledgment that he would offer of the truth of Steve’s words, and he let Rhodey and Pepper support him as he slumped back into his chair. His gaze flickered towards Natasha, his eyelids dipping slightly in what was probably the only apology she was going to get; she nodded a little in response.

Steve took his hands off the back of the chair and winced at the damage he had done to it, shaking splinters off his fingers. He pulled out the chair next to it for Natasha and then sank into the damaged one, flexing his fingers. “As long as Thanos is out there with the Stones, he’s a threat,” he said, like he was picking up the dropped thread of a conversation he and Tony had been having. “We need to find him, kill him, get the Stones, and put them somewhere safe.”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Tony said. “You’re forgetting a few steps.”

Steve cocked his head slightly to one side, his eyebrows going up.

“Oh, here we go,” Sam muttered under his breath, exchanging an eloquent look with Rhodey from opposite sides of the table. Natasha dug the ball of her thumb between her brows. Well, they weren’t trying to kill each other, at least, which was no longer a given.

“Listen, we’ve all taken a swing at him at least once,” Tony said, his gaze flickering briefly to Thor, who was watching both men with an unreadable expression, “and he slapped you and Romanoff back to 1945. He wiped my face with a moon while the Bleecker Street magician gave away the store. Thor –” He glanced in Thor’s direction again, hesitating, and then decided not to pursue that line any further. Thor didn’t say anything, but his gaze turned downwards, his fists clenching and unclenching like he was wishing for someone’s neck to wring. Tony finished, “What makes you think it will be different this time, even if we do find him? And he’s –” He waved one hand. “– out there. I just got back from it, there’s a lot of out there out there.”

Steve’s gaze flickered briefly to Thor and Bruce, like he was looking for affirmation of just how big space was; Bruce just grimaced in response. Thor didn’t look at him, just kept clenching and unclenching his fists.

“I want the son of a bitch dead as much as the next guy,” Tony went on when Steve didn’t say anything, seizing on what he clearly saw as Steve’s momentary hesitation. “But Problem A is finding him, Problem B is getting there, and Problem C is actually killing him.”

“Maybe not as much as the next guy,” Clint murmured, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze moved from Pepper to Rhodey and back to Tony, a pointed reminder that Tony still had most of his people while Clint’s family was gone.

Tony had the grace – or the self-preservation instinct – to look slightly apologetic, but he didn’t take his gaze away from Steve.

“As long as he has the Stones, he’s a threat,” Steve repeated, slow and patient and calm. He spread one hand on the table, his wedding ring glinting in the overhead lights, and said, “He could do anything and we wouldn’t have any warning. Maybe he already has and we just don’t know because it wasn’t aimed at us. Do you really want to spend the next five, ten, twenty years with that sword hanging over your head, waiting to find out if –” He snapped his fingers, and everyone in the room flinched as though he had fired a pistol. “We owe it to everyone who’s not in this room to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

A muscle worked in Tony’s jaw.

Natasha studied him, not letting her frown actually make its way to her face, and realized, He’s afraid.

She only had the barest idea of what had happened to Tony while he had been in space; the impression she had gotten was that he hadn’t had much of a chance to tell anyone else, either, even Rhodey and Pepper. What she did know – what they all knew – was that he had gone toe to toe with Thanos and lost. Whatever had happened out there, only he and the alien woman Nebula had walked away from it; everyone else – Peter Parker, Stephen Strange, and the remainder of Rocket’s crew – had died. For better or worse, Tony had to live with that for the rest of his life.

Natasha had learned how to live with that kind of truth a long time ago. So had Steve. Clint, Yelena, Rhodey, Sam – it was the sort of thing you had to learn how to live with, or go mad; all of them knew it. She could see that same awareness on Thor’s face, the knowledge that if he didn’t learn how to live with it, then it would break him. She wasn’t sure that Tony had ever really understood that.

Maybe if he had, there wouldn’t be an Iron Man now.

Tony blinked once, but he still didn’t look away from Steve. “Why?” he demanded. “Why us? Why does it matter to you? Everyone out there, everyone that son of a bitch did this to – why us?”

“Because we’re the Avengers,” Steve said, meeting his eyes across the long table. “Aren’t we?”

For a long time, all Tony did was look at him. Then the corner of his mouth curled a little and he said, “Yeah. I guess we are.”

Natasha took Thor with her when she went outside to fetch Rocket and Nebula, mostly because Thor was the one who actually knew them. Or knew Rocket, anyway, since Nebula had arrived with Tony. Yelena trailed after them, apparently unwilling to let Natasha get too far out of her sight. Clint had looked like he was thinking about coming along too, then visibly decided that his time was better spent making sure that Steve and Tony didn’t go for each other’s throats, tentative peace or not. Tony would fall over if he tried to move too fast; Clint, Bucky, Sam, and Bruce could probably sit on Steve if they really had to. Natasha was honestly hoping that being forced to think about Thanos would keep them from remembering how much they hated each other.

Only they didn’t actually hate each other, even after what had happened with the Accords and Siberia. They didn’t get along, but they never had gotten along, something that had always seemed to puzzle and frustrate both of them. Despite the severity of the current situation, it wasn’t as though any of that had gone away. And that was without counting in Germany and Siberia.

“Do you deal with a lot of aliens?” Yelena asked as they emerged onto the lawn.

“Just this one regularly,” Natasha said, which made the corner of Thor’s mouth rise a little.

“It’s been some time,” he allowed gravely. “By mortal standards, at least.”

Yelena cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t remark on what Natasha had to admit was a fairly alarming statement if you didn’t interact with Asgardians on a regular basis. She supposed that if Yelena had been here for most of the last three weeks then she had had time to get used to Thor, though Natasha had gotten the impression that Thor hadn’t been speaking much to anyone. He was less obviously clingy than some of the others, but it wasn’t hard to miss the fact that so far he had conspired not to leave her, Steve, or Tony all day. He seemed to be content as long as he could keep at least one of them in sight at all times; from what Natasha could tell he was fairly egalitarian about who it was, though she knew he had always been closest with Steve.

Natasha had seen the spaceship in passing from the windows of the compound and on her way out to the old SHIELD warehouse to meet Steve, but hadn’t had time to actually take a good look at it. Up close, it was more birdlike than she had expected, the glossiness of its spread wings marred by carbon scoring, more enormous dents than Natasha could count, and several obvious patch jobs. The raccoon Rocket and the blue-skinned woman Nebula were both standing on top of the nearest wing, talking to Carol Danvers, who was on the ground standing back on one heel so that she could look up at them. She hadn’t been here earlier; she had left the previous evening to spend the night with some Earthside friend, rather than infringe on the Avengers’ reunion.

All three turned to watch Natasha, Thor, and Yelena approach. Instead of her blue and red flight suit, Carol was wearing Wranglers and a battered brown leather jacket over an equally-battered USAF sweatshirt and looked surprisingly normal; she could have been anyone. The same couldn’t be said for the two aliens, but Natasha had already learned that Asgardians were an exception as far as looks went.

“Everything all right in there?” Carol asked. “It sounded a little tense earlier.”

Natasha shrugged. Either Steve and Tony would kill each other or they wouldn’t, and if they hadn’t done so back in Siberia two years earlier there was probably nothing either of them could say that would result in more than a little light maiming, especially with the rest of the Avengers there to hold them back.

“We’re going after Thanos,” she said.

Rocket pumped a fist in silent glee and hopped down from the ship’s wing, a process that involved a ladder and what seemed to be some kind of rocket booster, since the wing was the better part of a story off the ground. “I call dibs,” he said. “It’s about time.”

“I think everyone else already called dibs,” Yelena observed, her voice overlapping with Thor as he said, “Thanos owes me a blood debt that can never be repaid.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a debt, then,” Rocket said. “Isn’t collecting them with interest kind of the point?”

Nebula followed him down, stepping off the side of the ship’s wing and landing in a crouch that made Natasha’s bones ache just to look at. She straightened up and said, “Good.”

Natasha looked at Carol, who just nodded, her face grim. She tucked her thumbs into her belt loops the way Steve did, standing with her shoulders back and braced to take a hit. After a moment, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“We’re still working on that part,” Natasha admitted.

Carol nodded to herself. “I know people who might be able to –”

“Don’t bother,” Nebula said, cutting her off. She had a low, breathy voice, and when Natasha watched her lips she could tell that whatever she was saying wasn’t the same as what Natasha heard. Magic like Thor’s Allspeak, maybe, or some kind of alien technology that Natasha didn’t want to think about too closely. “I can tell you where Thanos is.”

Rocket looked up at her, his ears flattening. “Thought you just spent a couple years looking for him.”

“Finding him was never the problem.”

Something in her tone, alien though it was, made both Natasha and Yelena look at her sharply. Yelena shifted a little, like she wanted to move closer to Natasha but was too proud to do so. Nebula’s gaze slanted towards the two women, seeing that flicker of recognition, and her eyelids dipped a little in acknowledgment.

Some things, Natasha thought grimly, never changed.

“When will your ship be fit to travel?” Thor asked gruffly; Natasha didn’t think he had noticed the silent exchange, though from the way Rocket’s tail twitched she was almost certain that the raccoon had. She wasn’t sure about Carol; she was having more trouble reading the other woman’s face than those of the two aliens, human or not.

Rocket and Nebula exchanged a look. After a moment, Nebula said in her odd, husky voice, “A day.”

“I can do it in half that –”

“Not without –” They spun off into a technical discussion that Natasha didn’t even try to follow until Rocket suddenly spun on one foot and demanded of Thor, “What, your –” He made a pulling gesture with his hands. “– can’t manage it?”

Thor grimaced. “I’m not certain. Not for somewhere I’ve never been before, and not for this many people.”

Rocket’s gaze shot towards the main building of the compound and he added dourly, “We gotta take everyone?”

Thor looked at him reprovingly. “Yes.”

Rocket opened his mouth to protest, then reconsidered and subsided with a grumble. He glanced back at the spaceship and said sullenly, “We need another day. Half of it’s undoing whatever the hell you two did to it,” he added meaningfully with another glare at Nebula.

The corner of Nebula’s mouth twitched a little.

“We probably need at least that long for Tony to get back on his feet,” Natasha said to Thor. “He’s not going to agree to be left behind just because he needs the suit to stand up for more than five minutes.” And once they actually had something to do, then he and Steve would stop taking verbal potshots at each other; she was pretty sure they both needed this.

They all needed this.

Thor dipped his chin in acknowledgment, but he still looked unhappy at the delay. “Where is he?” he asked Nebula, the low rumble of thunder lurking behind the vowels and a little jolt of static electricity making the hair stand up on the backs of Natasha’s arms. Rocket’s tail twitched, his ears flattening again, and Carol looked sharply at Thor, one hand curling into a fist. Maybe it was only a trick of the light, but for a moment Natasha thought she saw golden energy curl over the backs of her fingers.

“Let’s go over this inside,” Natasha said, resisting the urge to glance upwards to see if storm clouds were gathering in response to the distant rumble of thunder. “The others should hear this too.”

Rocket shook himself all over, his tail fluffing out into a brush with static electricity, and added, “Yeah, and there’s something you guys might want to see. We found –” He looked sharply upwards, his ears pricking.

Thor followed his gaze, and after a moment Natasha and Yelena did too. It took her another few seconds to hear what it was that Rocket’s and Thor’s more sensitive ears had picked up. It wasn’t thunder.

“Oh, shit,” she said.

“What is that?” Rocket demanded.

“A headache,” Natasha said wearily, pinching the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t so much surprised as she was annoyed; she should have seen this coming. “We’d better tell the others.”

“Hey.”

Steve glanced up as Sam set a steaming cup of coffee down in front of him, doctored with milk and sugar the way he normally took it and fragrant with the scent of real coffee beans, not chicory or wheat bran or any of the other coffee substitutes that had been common during the war. Steve roused himself from his slouch and sat up to wrap his hands around the warm ceramic. “Thanks.”

Sam put his own coffee down on the table, carefully distanced from any of the documents and files still strewn about, and took Natasha’s empty seat on Steve’s right. “You looked like you needed it.”

“Thanks,” Steve said again, his voice dryer this time. The caffeine wouldn’t do anything for him, but he appreciated the taste and the ritual of it. He flicked a glance down at the other end of the table, where Pepper, Tony, and Rhodey were having a whispered argument. Or maybe just a conversation; it was always a little hard to tell with those three, and Steve wasn’t going to put in the effort to listen in.

What he wanted was to not be in this room right now, littered as it was with the detritus of the life he had left behind, but he had already walked out enough times today and didn’t want to do it again. He was pretty sure that Tony felt similarly, which left both of them on opposite sides of the room, pretending the other didn’t exist until they had a good reason to stop. Their temporary truce of the morning was over; right now they were both trying not to pull out the knives again.

More than anything else Steve just felt tired now that his earlier burst of adrenaline had dissipated without anywhere to actually use it. There was nothing they could even start to do until they knew where Thanos had fled, or at least had a decent guess that they could follow.

Steve didn’t bother to look at Bucky, but he was well aware that he wasn’t exactly the best tracker in the world. And this was just the one planet.

Sam leaned in towards him, keeping his voice low, and said, “You think this will work?”

“What, killing Thanos?” Steve took a sip of his coffee. “Why wouldn’t it work? We’ve killed plenty of people and it’s always stuck so far.”

“You know, it’s you saying things like that that make people think you have homicidal tendencies,” Bucky said, leaning in from Steve’s other side.

Steve saw Tony’s gaze flicker quickly towards them, attracted by the sudden motion, before he turned back to Pepper and Rhodey.

He set his coffee cup down and rubbed a hand over his face, feeling tired. Steve could remember, with his usual perfect memory, telling Abraham Erskine eight or seventy-five years ago that he didn’t want to kill anyone, and most of the time that was still true. There were only a few people whom he had ever really wanted to kill, once he understood what that really meant. Arnim Zola, for one. Johann Schmidt. Alexander Pierce.

Thanos.

Steve had never been able to kill any of the people he actually wanted to kill.

Leaving aside Thor, who was in a category all his own, Steve was well aware that his body count was the highest amongst the Avengers. Mostly he didn’t lose sleep over it, which sometimes bothered him more than anything else, because he thought he should have. It was for that reason, he knew uncomfortably, as much as anything else that Abraham Erskine had picked him out of the lot. Because whatever happened next, he would be able to live with it.

Not that he thought Dr. Erskine had ever predicted anything like this.

His silence in response to the comment made Bucky shift uneasily, as though he realized that he might have said the wrong thing. Steve elbowed him gently to let him know that it was all right and he didn't care – he’d heard worse from people he cared less about – and just said, “It will work.”

He slouched back in his chair again, setting his coffee cup down and twisting his wedding ring around his finger. Bucky and Sam exchanged worried looks across his head, which Steve ignored. At least no one here was actively accusing him of treason or thought that he had been brainwashed; at least here he could be honest without anyone thinking he was crazy, or at least not more so than usual. He hadn’t been able to say that for a while.

He cocked his head a little at the distinctive sound of helicopter rotors in the distance, too far away from unenhanced human ears to make out. A moment later Bucky turned his head too, listening, and Sam straightened up as he watched them. Clint, who had been sitting several seats down leafing through one of the old SSR reports, sat up to watch them; he had been in the field with Steve often enough to know that something had caught his attention.

News helo, Steve thought, but the rotor sound was wrong for that. And there would only be one news helicopter.

“Black Hawk and two Little Birds,” he said at the same time Bucky said, “Two Little Birds and a Black Hawk.”

“And a Chinook,” Steve added; the bigger, slower heavy-lift helicopter was behind its faster compatriots. “Probably the Night Stalkers.” He glanced across the table towards Rhodey and Tony. “You expecting company?”

“No,” Rhodey said, starting to stand up.

“Uh, guys?” Bruce, who had wandered out into the kitchen, came back into the conference room with a tablet in one hand. “I think we should – this is the front gate.” He leaned over the table to tap at the controls for the projector, which pulled up the view from the security cameras.

“Oh, the Night Stalkers brought the rest of the gang too,” Clint said, disgusted. “So Ross should be showing up – yep, right on cue. You think he’d have called first.”

Steve glanced at Sam and said, “Can you go get Nat and Thor and the others? Thor probably heard the helos at the same time I did, maybe earlier.”

“Yeah.” Sam drained the last of his coffee and shoved his chair back to stand up, but before he had gone more than a few steps towards the door it swung open, letting in Natasha, Thor, Yelena, Carol Danvers, and the two aliens.

“Is that SHIELD?” Carol demanded. “It’s not SWORD –”

Steve didn’t bother asking how she knew about SWORD’s existence but not SHIELD’s demise. “It’s Secretary Ross and a couple of JSOC squads.”

Apparently she knew about Ross, because she didn’t ask for further clarification, just crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall by the door.

Rocket scrambled up onto the table so that he could get a better look at the security hologram and said, “So this is the knucklehead that keeps calling and whining, huh?”

“That’s him,” Bruce said, the concern on his face turning briefly to entertainment at this characterization.

“So three weeks of calling and whining and what finally gets him to show up now with all of these douchebags?” Rocket demanded.

Under the circumstances Steve couldn’t actually disagree with this description of the American military’s special operations forces, but he felt his shoulders draw up a little anyway. As he relaxed a second later, he was amused to note that the other five veterans in the room – Bucky, Sam, Rhodey, Clint, and Carol – had all had the same reaction.

Yelena gave the raccoon a withering look. “The spaceship on the lawn,” she said. “Obviously.”

“What, you guys don’t have that?”

“Not really,” Bucky said.

For confirmation Rocket looked at Thor, who just nodded.

“This really is the back of beyond,” Rocket moaned. “How do you guys live like this?”

“One day at a time, Sparky, just like everyone else,” Tony said. He tapped his fingers on the table, staring at the speakerphone like he was waiting for it to ring. Well, he presumably was.

Steve glanced at Natasha, who shrugged back at him. Steve groaned and pushed himself to his feet with one hand flat on the table, making everyone else in the room look at him.

“Going somewhere?” Tony demanded.

Steve jerked his head in the direction of the front gate. “Out there, before they send the 101st Airborne in and embarrass all of us.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment, then he let his breath out slowly and shook his head before he pushed himself upright. He had to stop with both hands gripping the side of the table, breathing hard, and Rhodey and Pepper both scrambled to brace him.

“What are you doing?” Pepper hissed at him, alarmed.

Tony addressed her, but his gaze was fixed on Steve. “Like the man said. We’re the Avengers, aren’t we?”

He met Steve’s eyes, and after a moment Steve dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment, feeling a little knot of unease he hadn’t even been consciously aware of loosen inside him.

“Yeah,” Bruce said, straightening up. His jaw worked briefly, obviously nervous about confronting Thaddeus Ross face to face, but there was no tremor in his voice as he said, “We’re the Avengers.”

Natasha met Steve’s eyes from across the room. “Time to remind people.”

The Secretary of State met at them at the front gate.

One of the MH-6 Little Birds had shadowed their approach from the main compound, so their arrival wasn’t a surprise. It was clear from Thaddeus Ross’s expression, though, that the Delta snipers the little helicopter was carrying hadn’t seen fit to pass on exactly which Avengers were there.

“Mr. Secretary,” Steve said evenly, tucking his hands behind his belt buckle. Once he had had a moment to think about it, he didn’t blame Ross for calling out the cavalry under the circumstances; Howard had done essentially the same thing back at SSR headquarters. Going by the expressions some of the other Avengers were wearing, he was the only one who felt that way.

Ross looked like he had aged a decade since the last time Steve had seen him three weeks earlier, but his gaze was still sharp as he looked the eight Avengers over. Tony was leaning heavily on Rhodey’s shoulder, but he had insisted on coming all the way out with them. None of them were armed, though Tony’s arc reactor was still glowing beneath his shirt, but that didn’t really matter.

“You look like shit, Stark,” Ross said bluntly.

“Yeah, well, so do you,” Tony said, straightening and obviously trying not to be obvious about hanging onto Rhodey for support. “I got stabbed in the gut and spent three weeks dying in space, what’s your excuse?”

Ross didn’t bother to answer him, just turned his attention to Steve and Natasha, who were on Tony’s other side to make a point. Bruce, whom Ross had already known was there, was as far away from Steve and Natasha as he could get, which Steve had mentally bookmarked to deal with at some distant point. Right now he could only deal with being at odds with one teammate at a time and Tony had that slot booked up for the foreseeable future.

“Were you two in space too?” Ross asked. “Or do you have some other fun story you want to try and pass off in the next five minutes?”

“We were in 1945,” Steve said.

Whatever Ross had been expecting, it hadn’t been that, though Steve would have been surprised if it had been anywhere on his list of possible outcomes. To his credit, the secretary only blinked once before saying, “You were what?”

“Thanos used the Time Stone to send us to SSR headquarters in March of 1945,” Natasha said. “We only got back yesterday, a few hours after Tony.”

“Yeah, and by the way, if it takes you eighteen hours to get a response team out here because my Uber landed, no wonder nobody but us did anything when Tweedledum and Tweedledee showed up in New York three weeks ago,” Tony said meaningfully.

Steve bit the inside of his cheek on an automatic I told you so, though from the way Rhodey winced and Ross’s gaze darted towards him his reaction hadn’t been missed.

The Sokovia Accords, Steve knew very well, since he had apparently been the only person who had actually read them in full, were almost laughably designed on the presumption that Earth wasn’t going to have any extraterrestrial incursions in the near future. Nick Fury seemed to have been the sole official in any government concerned about the possibility that the Chitauri had been a probe as much as an invasion or that Thor’s fight with the Destroyer in New Mexico and the Dark Elves’ brief battle in London hadn’t been a pair of freak occurrences that would never be repeated.

Tony’s suit of armor around the world would never have worked, but Steve could appreciate that he had least considered its necessity.

For a long time, Ross didn’t say anything, just studied the eight Avengers. Steve looked past him at the soldiers drawn up on the road leading into the compound, reading the shoulder flashes that he could see. It was, as he had expected, a somewhat ragtag assortment; it probably had taken Ross the full eighteen hours to get an assault team together that might be up to tackling a small alien invasion. JSOC’s special missions units were spread out across the world at the best of times and there was no reason to believe that they hadn’t been hit by the Snap just as hard as everyone else. Steve was uncomfortably aware that some of them looked downright glad to see him – or to see the Avengers, anyway, since it meant that they’d be on the front lines of whatever weird bullshit came next, not the unenhanced soldiers. One of the Delta operators Steve had met when he had been with SHIELD winked at him, though his aim didn’t waver from where it was pointed directly at Bruce’s head.

Well, to be fair, most special forces operators Steve knew would like to have the opportunity to fight aliens, they just didn’t want to be the only ones doing it. He knew; he was one of them.

“So who’s parked on the front lawn?” Ross said eventually.

“Friends,” Thor rumbled.

Ross’s gaze flickered towards him. “What kind of friends?”

“I don’t think that really matters right now,” Bruce said, his gaze fixed on Ross like they were the only two people in the world. “Or it shouldn’t, anyway, and you and me and the president all know it. Just matters that they’re friends and they’re here to help.”

Ross had looked back at him as soon as he spoke, the fingers of one hand twitching incrementally towards the gun Natasha could tell he had holstered beneath the fall of his suit jacket. He watched Bruce the way he would a dangerous animal, the way he had never looked at any of the other Avengers, and there was an edge of tension in his voice as he said, “Help do what?”

“Kill Thanos,” Steve said bluntly. “Or do you have a problem with that one?”

Thaddeus Ross had maneuvered his way into the Secretary of State office after his predecessor had resigned by virtue of being one of the only ranking officials in any branch of the government who had managed to come out largely untouched by SHIELD’s collapse. That this was because the Pentagon had quietly shuffled him aside after the Hulk and Emil Blonsky had torn Harlem apart five years earlier had been less important than the fact that Ross was the only official outside SHIELD who had any experience with enhanced individuals. That the disaster with the Accords had cost Matthew Ellis his reelection had also assured Ross a place in the next administration’s cabinet, though Natasha suspected it was less because Ross was actually fairly competent when he put his mind to it and more to stick a thumb in the eyes of both Ellis and Tony Stark. “Tough on superheroes” was something that had appealed to the new administration, since the then-president had had personal history with Tony Stark and had twice been publicly insulted by Steve Rogers, back before both the Accords and the election. Despite the fact that Ross had never been able to make good on the late and unlamented president’s campaign promise to bring the rogue Avengers to heel, he had still managed to hold grimly onto his cabinet position.

Natasha didn’t particularly like Ross, but she respected him; she knew that regardless of his personal feelings about any of the individual Avengers he would be willing to work with them for the good of the country. Probably not the world, but no one had ever been under any illusions about his willingness to do that.

Over the past thirty years, Natasha had found that while many people, if asked, would say they wanted to save the world, it was just too damn big for most to think about. It was safer to appeal to patriotism, or barring that, family, friends, or personal self-interest. In a way, patriotism was better. It meant that at least you were familiar with the concept of thinking about something other than yourself, your mom, and your three best friends.

Since the conference room was full of old SSR files that no one wanted Ross to see, they had moved into one of the rooms off the living room, which doubled as a second conference room since it sported a big round table with a holoprojector at its center. Rocket was standing on top of it when they came in, fiddling with the holoprojector and looking back and forth between the device and what looked like some kind of tablet as he talked to Nebula, who answered in monosyllables and grunts. Ross’s doubletake at their appearance was rapid but obvious, to Natasha’s brief amusement. Presumably he had assumed that any friendly aliens would look more like Thor than anything else, essentially human on the surface and thus easy to ignore.

Rocket and Nebula both swiveled to watch Ross’s entrance. “What, this is the a-hole you kept going on about?” Rocket demanded loudly. “I thought he’d at least be interesting or something. This is just a guy, everyone’s seen one of those.”

“That is a talking raccoon,” Ross said.

“What’d you call me, you –”

Nebula grabbed Rocket by the back of his vest-like garment as he made a flying leap for Ross. He hung in her grip, scrabbling at the air and shrieking, “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! Don’t you ever call me that!”

“Stop that, you’re embarrassing yourself,” Nebula hissed at him. “You’re embarrassing me!”

Rocket twisted around to glare up at her. “You don’t get embarrassed! And put me down!”

She dropped him with a thump. “I can get embarrassed if I want to!”

“Travel’s broadening,” Tony said, trying not to too obviously collapse into the nearest chair as Rhodey helped him over to it. “You should try it sometime.”

Ross looked hard at him, then swept his gaze around the room, taking in the occupants who hadn’t gone out to the gate with the Avengers. Pepper had gone immediately to Tony, but Carol stayed where she was, her hands in the pockets of her jacket. Ross frowned at her, obviously trying and failing to place her. After a moment, he said, “The less I know, the less I have to explain in a congressional hearing, so talk fast.”

“Who is this guy?” Nebula asked Tony.

“The Build-A-Bear there kind of summed it up,” Tony said.

“He didn’t explain anything.”

“Yeah, probably for the best.”

Ross eyed the three of them in disbelief, then turned his attention to Steve and Natasha, apparently under the impression that they were the only two responsible adults in the room. Under the circumstances, Natasha couldn’t exactly blame him. “Rogers, tell me you actually have a plan.”

“Sure,” Steve said. “We go out there, we find him, we kill him, we come home.”

“That’s the plan?”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Do you want a situation report or do you want to not know what we’re doing? You can’t have it both ways.”

“Sitrep, Captain,” Ross said, his voice more even than Natasha had expected from him, given their last interaction. “I already got the nickel tour from Rhodes and Wilson three weeks ago, tell me something new. Give me something I can tell the president.” He eyed Rocket, who had climbed back onto the table and was glaring at him. “That isn’t about the talking rac –”

“Maybe let’s not use the r-word,” Tony suggested helpfully.

“He’s a rabbit,” Thor said.

They all stared at him.

“What do you think a rabbit is?” Bucky asked him dubiously.

Thor pointed at Rocket, who said, “Arguing with Asgardians is a good way to get your skull smashed.”

Thor looked hurt. “I wouldn’t do that to a comrade.”

“Since when do you have self-preservation instincts?” Nebula said to Rocket.

“Hey, I have self-preservation instincts coming out of my –”

“I mean, have you ever seen a rabbit?” Bucky persisted. “Do they even have rabbits in space?”

“Certainly,” Thor said. “I’ve seen many rabbits in the Nine Realms. Not all of them talk, but –”

Ross gave them all a disbelieving look and turned his attention back to Steve and Natasha. “I’m beginning to understand how Thanos got past you.”

“Not funny,” Tony said shortly, straightening up. “Don’t joke about that.”

Ross frowned at him, apparently disconcerted by the unfamiliar experience of finding something that Tony Stark wouldn’t poke fun at. “All right,” he said slowly.

Bruce’s mouth was tight. “If you need a point of reference, he kicked the crap out of the Hulk. Him. Not him and his army. But he’s got one of those too.”

It said something about Ross’s fairly limited breadth of experience that that actually seemed to get through to him. “All right,” he repeated. “So what’s your play, Rogers? Stark?”

“I thought ‘find him and kill him’ was pretty short and to the point,” Tony said. He looked at Steve and said, “How are we doing that again?”

Steve crossed his arms over his chest and looked across the room. “Rocket, you and Nebula said you knew where he was?”

The two aliens stopped sniping at each other to turn warily in their direction, Rocket muttering a last, “Rabbit,” under his breath. Natasha resisted the urge to cross her fingers, hoping that they would be willing to follow Steve’s lead. Rocket had been in Wakanda, at least; he had fought with them there. Nebula had spent three weeks in close company with Tony; Natasha was hoping that she would follow his cues, which would only work as long as he and Steve weren’t fighting. She was also hoping that Tony and Steve would manage to keep from fighting again until Ross had left.

Rocket looked at Ross for a long moment, then his gaze flickered to Steve, over to Thor, and back to Steve. “Right,” he muttered, tapping at the screen of the tablet he was holding until a hologram of Earth appeared hovering over the center of the table. There were minute differences from the way that one of the SI holograms would have looked – a little more gold than blue in the diffusion of light, a faint sparkle around the edges, probably a few other things that Natasha didn’t have the eye to see. Everyone in the room stepped over for a closer look.

“When Thanos snapped his fingers, Earth became ground zero for an power surge of ridiculously cosmic proportions,” Rocket said in a lecturing tone. He tapped his screen again and a wave of golden energy spread out from Earth, making the hair rise on the back of Natasha’s neck. She moved around the side of the table to get a better look, noting that the origin of the energy wave was centered on Wakanda.

“How do you know this?” Ross asked.

“Sensors on the Benatar picked it up all the way out on Titan,” Rocket said.

Ross’s eyebrows rose. “The Benatar?”

“The spaceship,” Tony clarified helpfully

“Hey, I didn’t name her,” Rocket said, apparently in response to Ross’s baffled expression. “You got a problem with it?”

Ross stared at him, obviously trying to decide if he was joking or not, and finally said, “No problem.”

“My ship’s sensors picked it up too,” Carol said. “I was out near Hala.”

Ross looked over at her. “Who are you?”

“Carol.”

His eyebrows went up again at the obvious Anglophone name, then his gaze flickered to her USAF sweatshirt. He said slowly, “You’re Carol Danvers.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m Carol Danvers.”

Natasha glanced at Clint, who shrugged back and mouthed, Fury? She gave him another shrug in response; Carol Danvers’ existence must have been buried somewhere in SHIELD’s files, the hard copies of which Ross would have had access to even if they hadn’t been amongst the digitized ones Natasha had released four years ago.

Ross fought a short but obvious battle with himself against pushing further, then turned his attention back to Rocket, who had been watching with his ears perked up. “You morons want to kill this guy or what?” he demanded.

“Go on, Rocket,” Steve said, unoffended.

Rocket glared at Ross and then at Carol for good measure. “Like I was saying,” he repeated, “power surge of ridiculously cosmic proportions. No one’s ever seen anything like it.” He tapped his screen again and the hologram changed, racing across space before zeroing in on another planet, one wholly unfamiliar to Natasha’s inexpert eyes. “Until three days ago on this planet.”

“Thanos is there,” Nebula said.

“He used the Stones again,” Natasha said, leaning in for a better look as Steve came up on one side of her and Thor on the other, both of them as intent as wolves on the hunt.

“To do what?” Ross asked.

“Anything he wanted,” Nebula said.

“Such as?”

She was quiet for a long moment, then she admitted, “All my life, he only ever had one goal, one great plan. He bent all his will, all his forces, all his…children…upon it. And now that he’s accomplished it…” She let the words trail off.

“How do we know that he’s still there?” Rhodey asked.

“Thanos spent a long time trying to perfect me,” Nebula said, no inflection at all in her voice. “And when he worked, he talked about his great plan. Even dissembled, I wanted to please him, so I would ask where we’d go once his plan was complete.” A muscle worked briefly in her jaw. “His answer was always the same. ‘To the Garden.’” She nodded at the hologram. “Thanos is there.”

“That’s cute,” Rhodey said. “Thanos has a retirement plan.”

Ross looked at Nebula. Natasha could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes, slotting the other woman neatly into a position he understood – probably on a mental shelf right next to Natasha, in all honesty, and from what she could tell of Nebula Ross wouldn’t even be wrong to do so.

“Is that it?” he said. “Is that all you have?”

“He’s kind of out of range for a drone strike,” Sam said. “So, you know, this is what we got.”

“Besides, this one’s personal,” Clint said meaningfully.

Natasha glanced up in time to see his hands flex like he was thinking about wrapping them around Thanos’s throat, which in all honesty he likely was.

Ross ignored both men and addressed Steve instead. “Recon?”

Steve shook his head. “This is it.”

“This is it?” Ross repeated.

“If it helps,” Steve said dryly, “satellites are a pretty recent invention.”

“He says this because his idea of reconnaissance is getting captured,” Bucky muttered, though he said it loudly enough that Ross’s gaze flickered sideways towards him. “When he actually bothers to do it. How do you think he got his jump pin?”

Steve glanced at him, rolling his eyes, and the corner of Bucky’s mouth crooked briefly.

“Who are you taking in?” Ross asked Steve, who made a circling motion with one finger to encompass the inhabitants of the room. Ross’s gaze skated over them, professional and assessing. He obviously counted out Pepper, but he frowned at Yelena, clearly trying to place her one way or another. Yelena glared warily back at him.

As far as Natasha was concerned, the lack of recognition was a relief; she didn’t want Ross to have any idea who Yelena was.

Ross turned his attention back to Steve. “Any reason to think you’re going to get a different outcome this time?”

“We’re not playing defense anymore,” Steve said. “And we won’t be going in shorthanded.”

Ross’s gaze swept across the room again. This time his frown was directed at Tony, who bristled under the attention, but Ross didn’t say anything to him, just looked back at Steve. “I want a no-shit assessment, Rogers, Rhodes,” he said slowly. “Can you do this?”

Steve and Rhodey glanced at each other. They were the two most senior military officers with combat experience in the room, apart from Ross himself. Clint and Sam had both been in for longer than Steve, but they had been enlisted men, not commissioned officers. Besides, everyone knew that Steve Rogers had always been the de facto leader of the Avengers.

“Yes, sir,” Rhodes said. “We can do it.”

Steve stared at Ross for a long moment, challenging, then his mouth twisted and he said, “We’re going to do it, Mr. Secretary, with or without your permission.”

“How Chester Phillips didn’t kick your ass from here to next Tuesday is anyone’s guess,” Ross told him, his voice very dry. “I need to make a phone call. Don’t go anywhere.” He walked out of his room, pulling a satellite phone out from inside his jacket; Natasha assumed that the cell towers were still down.

“What’s that about?” Carol asked once he was out of earshot.

“The Sokovia Accords,” Sam guessed, looking around for a chair and dropping into it once he’d found one. He rubbed a hand against his forehead. “I think the reasoning for them went out the window twenty-four days ago, but they’re technically still in effect. Plus Ross is basically sanctioning a black op on another planet.”

“The what?”

Sam and Clint began to explain them to her. Steve braced his hip against the table and looked at Rhodey. “Thanks for backing me up.”

“I want the son of a bitch dead as much as you, Cap.” He frowned briefly at Steve. “How did you get your jump pin?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Did a combat jump, same as everyone else.”

“Yeah, only he didn’t go to paratrooper school before he did a combat jump, he just jumped out of the airplane,” Bucky said dryly. “And it wasn’t even a military plane, it was a Stark Industries passenger plane that Howard Stark was flying against orders over occupied Austria.”

Tony’s head swiveled slowly towards him at the word Stark.

“It wasn’t actually against orders,” Steve protested. “Howard’s a civilian. And technically nobody gave me orders not to do it either. Besides, what, you’d rather I stayed in camp? We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I had.”

“No, I just think it was stupid,” Bucky told him. “Especially the part where you jumped out of the god damn plane without any training.”

“It’s not like jumping out of a plane is difficult,” Steve pointed out. “Parachutes aren’t hard to figure out.”

“And now you want to fight aliens,” Yelena said.

“That’s not actually that difficult either, just different.”

Yelena looked at Natasha. “Are you sure you don’t want to marry someone smarter?”

“The last time he jumped out of a plane I jumped out after him,” Natasha pointed out. “Which is also where I was the last time he was fighting aliens.” She smiled briefly at Steve. “I think I’ll keep him.”

Steve grinned back at her. “Thank god, that’d be a hell of a thing to break up over since that’s how we met.”

Yelena made a face and mumbled something in Russian that Natasha didn’t quite catch, but which made Bucky snort and Steve laugh.

Thor said abruptly, “Does he mean to stop us?”

Steve turned towards him, his expression going serious. “No, he’s not going to stop us. Ross knows that we’re going to do it, but if he gets us permission then he also gets to put it on the evening news. It’s Doolittle’s Raid all over again.”

“What?”

“So basically we’re invading Iraq,” Bruce said, his mouth twisting.

“What?” Thor repeated.

“Retaliation,” Natasha explained. “And revenge. It’ll give the new administration something to brag about. And people probably need that right now.” She leaned back, bracing her palms against the edge of the round table. After the Battle of New York, there had been a lot of angry chatter both in the street and in Congress about why the U.S. couldn’t launch a retaliatory attack against either the Chitauri or Asgard; there had been some confusion about who was actually responsible. No one had been happy about the fact that the United States quite literally couldn’t strike back.

If – when – they did this, then Ross and the new president would take the credit for it; President Korematsu was probably desperate to dissociate herself from her predecessor and this would go a long way towards that, as well as letting her either directly or indirectly blame the Snap on both the Accords and the former president. Natasha didn’t particularly care if the United States took credit for a hit on Thanos, since the damage was already done. She just wanted him dead.

Some days she thought the Avengers had been well-named.

She looked up as the door opened again and Ross came back in, still holding his satphone. He looked meaningfully at Steve as he held out the phone and said, “Be polite.”

Steve’s eyebrows went up, but he took the phone. “This is Steve Rogers – yes, ma’am, it’s good to hear your voice too.”

Natasha watched his face as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line – the president of the United States, presumably. Thor and Bucky, with their enhanced hearing, were both listening intently.

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said again. His gaze flickered across the room before he said, “Romanoff was with me, Stark was someplace else. We’ve got me, Romanoff, Stark, Rhodes, Wilson, Barton, Banner, Barnes, and Thor here, and some friends.” He paused, listening, and then added, “Probably best to just say ‘friends’ for now. No, ma’am.”

A tiny frown wrinkled the skin between his brows and his jaw worked briefly. Bucky looked down, tracing the joints of his metal hand with his fingers; Ross was watching Steve like a hawk.

“Yes, ma’am,” Steve said again, his shoulders going tense. “I understand. No, ma’am, I’m aware – we’re aware.” His gaze flickered to Natasha, then to Sam and Clint, both of whom straightened up. Natasha saw a muscle work briefly in Ross’s jaw, then glanced at Tony, who was watching Steve keenly. She could guess what President Korematsu was talking about. Steve listened, nodded to himself, and then said, “What about Sergeant Barnes?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Bucky muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Steve…”

Steve shot a glare at him and said into the phone, “That’s not negotiable. Yes, I understand, but it’s still not negotiable.” There was a long pause as Bucky just shook his head; Steve glared at him again and said, “Thank you, ma’am, we can live with that. You understand I can only speak for myself –”

Bucky mouthed something at him; Steve mouthed shut up back, flexing the fingers of his free hand. “Yes, Madame President,” he said. “We can do it.” Another long moment of silence, then Steve said, “We’ll see you when we get back, Madame President.” He took the phone away from his ear and handed it back to Ross.

Ross listened to whatever the president said, his expression unreadable, and said, “Understood, Madame President.” He ended the call and looked hard at Steve, then said, “I’m leaving a squad to keep an eye on your friends.”

“They’ll be bored,” Steve said.

“Worse fates.” He gave Steve a hard look and Tony a second one before he turned on his heel and left.

The moment the door closed behind him, Steve slumped back against the edge of the table and rubbed his hands over his face.

“Steve?” Sam asked as Natasha put a hand on his arm.

Steve glanced up, leaning into Natasha’s touch. “We’re on,” he said. “With all the bells and whistles.”

“What’d it cost?” Clint asked, watching him.

“Never mind that,” Steve said, shaking his head. “We’ll deal with it when we get back.” He rubbed at his forehead with the side of his hand, then looked at Rocket and Nebula. “How long do you need?”

Rocket’s tail flicked back and forth. “Another day,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Okay.” Steve straightened up and glanced around the room. “That’s our timeline.”

It was late by the time Natasha went up to her room, gently shaking off Clint and Yelena again. She was unsurprised to find Steve sitting in her window seat, his legs drawn up as he stared out at the Benatar on the lawn. He pulled his legs back to make space for her as she sat down next to him.

He had been scarce since Ross had left, obviously upset about whatever it was he had bargained away. They all knew him well enough to leave him alone when he was in that kind of mood. Besides, there had been plenty to do, even if it was just checking over the gear remaining at the compound. Tony had been cloistered in his workshop with Rhodey and Bruce so that they could get the damaged suits up to snuff, since the three of them had taken the most damage during their earlier fights with Thanos and the Black Order. All Steve needed, on the other hand, was his shield and his uniform, and he had both of those courtesy of Howard Stark. The lack of anything more substantive to do had left him to brood.

“Talk to me,” Natasha said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

Steve didn’t turn his head, his gaze fixed on the spaceship. Despite the hour, it was still lit up, Nebula and Rocket both busy working on it. “I just threw everything we’ve spent the past two years doing out the window,” he said bitterly.

“As soon as Ross showed up you didn’t have a choice,” Natasha said.

“There’s always a choice.” He rested his forearms across the tops of his knees and finally looked at her. “When we were back there, I kept asking myself why there was stuff I’d do for Phillips or Peggy or Howard that I’d never dream of doing here – doing now, I mean. I wouldn’t do it for Fury; I sure as hell wouldn’t do it for Ross. But I’d do it for Phillips. I’d do it for Peggy, Howard, the Howlies, even Senator Brandt. And that was the day before yesterday, not six years ago.”

“And now?”

“Same reason I’d do it then,” Steve said tiredly. “We’re at war.” He clasped his hands together, pressing his joined fists to his forehead, and then admitted, “What I agreed to – it’s not as bad as the Accords. Korematsu’s not Ellis, and she’s sure as hell not – anyway, she’s got a lot of leeway with Congress right now, just like Roosevelt used to. But all that shit we went through, now it’s for nothing. We’re right back where we were two years ago, except with half the world dead.”

He glanced up at her. “You and Sam and Clint, Bruce – none of you have to stay if you don’t want to once this is done. I only agreed for myself. And Bucky gets an investigation, a fair one, but after that it’s up to him too.”

“I’ll stay,” Natasha said. “So will Sam and Clint, no matter what the details are. I don’t know about Bruce,” she admitted.

Steve nodded to himself, as if that was the answer he had been half-expecting, but said, “It’s their choice. Everyone gets to make it.”

“I made my choice two years ago,” Natasha said. She reached out and put her hands over his, stroking her thumbs over his scarred knuckles. It was ordinary fighter’s scarring, the same marks that were on her hands; it seemed to be the only scarring that his enhanced skin kept, probably out of sheer repetition. “What else is it?”

Steve gave her the ghost of a smile, but it was gone an instant later. “You know what I keep wondering? What I’ve been wondering since Ross got here and dragged all of that shit up again?” His jaw worked silently and he glanced aside before he looked back at her and went on. “I keep wondering if I did this.”

Natasha tilted her head.

“If I’d just gone along with it, with the Accords, Sam and Wanda, they’d have done it too. Clint, you – we’d all have been here when Thanos arrived.”

“It wouldn’t have changed New York, Steve,” Natasha said quietly. “I’ve seen the footage. You heard what Bruce said. Rhodey was here, he couldn’t get there fast enough. Tony and the Parker kid, Stephen Strange, they’d still all have been out there. The only difference is that what happened in Edinburgh would have happened here instead and everything there would have been the same. The rest – it might even have been worse. If we’d been here, then we wouldn’t have gone to Wakanda. No one would have turned out the National Guard for Thanos, not until it was too late. It would have just been us against his whole army. T’Challa wouldn’t have come here for that fight.”

“Maybe he’d still be alive then.” A muscle worked in Steve’s jaw. “Maybe a lot of his people would still be alive if we hadn’t brought the fight to him.”

“That was his choice, Steve,” Natasha reminded him. “Not yours. You asked, but it was always up to him to say yes, and he said yes.”

Steve glanced down at his hands. “Yeah,” he admitted.

“Besides,” Natasha said slowly, “even if you’d signed the Accords, it wouldn’t have changed anything that Zemo did. The whole situation was just…convenient for him, because we were already divided. But he would have done it anyway.”

“Yeah,” Steve said again, his voice quiet.

“And if it hadn’t been for that, I might not have ever found out about the Red Room,” Natasha added slowly, not liking to think about it. “Maybe I would have, since Yelena was already out when it all went down and she contacted me, not the other way around, but…it would have been different. Ross would never have gone for it and even if he did –” She bit the inside of her cheek. “The kind of tech Dreykov had isn’t something he should get his hands on. No matter what happened, we would have ended up in the same place, either because of Zemo or Dreykov.” She flexed her hands against his; she didn’t like that conclusion either.

In a way it was reassuring. There was nothing they could have ever done to stop what was coming. It was the same thing they had talked about back when they had been at the SSR, the horrible conclusion that whatever they did in 1945 they would never be able to stop Loki and the Chitauri or the Dark Elves. They would never be able to stop Thanos from coming, because all of that had been set in motion by factors outside of their control.

After a moment, watching Steve’s face, Natasha realized that she had been quiet for too long. But there wasn’t accusation in his eyes, just calm, steady acceptance.

“Thanos did this,” she said. “You can’t blame yourself for what he did – for everything he did.”

“Yeah,” Steve said again. “I know that. I know. But –” He let his breath out in heavy rush and then repeated. “I know.” After a moment he raised her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles, his breath warm against her skin. “I love you.”

Natasha leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. “You need to stop thinking.”

“Yeah?” Steve said, raising his eyebrows.

Natasha stood up, tugging him along with her, then released his hands so that she could pull her shirt off over her head. “Yeah,” she agreed, putting her hands on Steve’s waist and pushing up the hem of his t-shirt. “You think too much.”

Steve kissed her again, then helped her pull his shirt off. He was, she noted with mild curiosity, still wearing his dog tags, warm from his skin as they swung forward against her chest. Natasha curled her fingers in the chain and drew him with her to the bed, feeling him grin against her mouth. He reached behind her to unclasp her bra; Natasha had to release him so that she could get the straps off over her arms, gasping as Steve cupped her breast in one big hand. She leaned up to kiss him again, tracing the line of his spine with her fingers and feeling him shudder against her at the light touch.

“I need to stop thinking too,” she told him, breathing hard.

Steve’s mouth brushed against hers, then he kissed the side of her neck, the arc of her collarbone, his breath fluttering against her skin as he said, “I can probably help with that.”

Natasha flattened one hand against his back, letting the other one trail lower, slipping below the band of his jeans to the firm muscle there. And tomorrow we’re going to fight the man who killed half the universe, she thought. That was something she really didn’t want to think about.

They were at war. Anything could happen next.