It was night, or early morning really, and Laura was sitting on the steps to the back porch when Natasha reached her.
“He’s not coming home, is he?”
Natasha said nothing, and only waited, a safe ten paces away. Laura tried for a smile. “Haven’t talked to the kids yet, but five years. Fuck. The newscasters aren’t even the same as they were yester – well, five years ago.”
Daring to inch closer, her steps feeling heavier with the weight of the fact that it was over and they’d won but he was dead because of her, and she noticed that Laura’s hands were shaking as they limply held on to each other.
“So he’s dead?”
Ashamed that she was letting her friend, her friend who had only just started to exist again, fill the silence, Natasha opened her dry mouth and said “Yes”. She didn’t say anything about kneeling in that strange otherworldly pool and holding that damn stone and wondering if he even was dead or if something else, something stranger had happened to him. “We couldn’t have done it without him, any of it,” she said, but these were hollow words, bland hollow words for heroes. And they’d once agreed that that’s not what they were.
“And he saved my life.” Or, he’d told her that it was worth saving, over and over again until she could almost believe it. (But it would still, always feel stolen, she knew that. There were some things you couldn’t ever wipe out.)
Laura’s smile looked as broken as Natasha felt. She probably should have gone to a hospital before flying here, but she’d needed to see the final proof that it hadn’t all been for nothing.
“Of course he did.” And Laura held out a hand.
Feeling like some kind of feral animal that her friend was trying to coax in from the wild, Natasha inched forward over the long grass until she was taking a hold of it and folding it safe, unshaking between her own.
“Won’t you come in and stay, Nat?”
*
Around politics, movies, updates on friends and celebrities and the state of the universe and over steaming mugs of cocoa that the night was too warm for, Natasha explained the choice that she’d let him make. She told his story slowly, as though drawing it out would land the blow more gently. Laura kept herself small, her feet up on her seat, but she never shrank away. But then, she’d never felt the fear or disgust around Nat that she should have. Clint had said he trusted her, so that was all that had mattered.
“He would never have lived with himself if it had been you,” Laura announced eventually. “He always said that you were the best thing he ever did.”
(Later, years later, in the middle of some night the kids were sleeping long before them, Laura would turn over and face her so that they shared a pillow and say, “I’m glad you came home. Because I love you, and because I’m relieved that he didn’t. I think that makes me evil. Better or worse – I vowed that. But I am so glad I never saw him at his.”
“His worst never matched mine,” Nat had to remind her, softly, so softly.
And a hand would stroke through her hair. “No, you never had anything to lose then.” And Laura would kiss her in a way that made her want to cry because she did have so damn much she could lose now but none of it should belong to her in the first place -)
“Dumbass,” Nat said, and breathed out in relief at Laura’s laugh.
“Absolutely.” Then Laura started looking far away. “I have to tell the kids.” Her warm eyes found Nat again, latching on to her like she saw a lighthouse there instead of a woman. “Will you stay? Can you stay?”
Nat thought about her room in the compound that was now burning rubble if it was anything. It hadn’t felt like somewhere to rest in for a long time. It had been a symbol she had clung to in order to hold it together, to keep it, and the people sometimes inside it, from falling apart. But now they were all safe or dead or leaving. There was nothing left for her to hold together. She’d seen that look in Steve’s eyes when he’d helped lift Tony away. He wasn’t staying. She didn’t have a family left to need her.
“I can stay. If you want me to stay.”
“What do you want, Nat?”
“I want to finish my cocoa. And I want you to stop being so damn nice to me.”
“The first is do-able.”
“I’m the reason your husband’s dead.”
“And you’re the reason my kids are home safe. That I’m home safe without ever having to know -” She cut herself off, reassembling her expression. “It’s going to hit me, soon. And I want you there with me when it does. Nothing about this seems real to me, nothing but you. And you had to watch.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and Nat knew that she was visualising it all, this impossible planet light years away that Natasha had so poorly described because in the end only the events of that day had mattered. “Maybe I’m a coward. But I’m glad I didn’t have to.”
“You might be the strongest person I know.”
“Natasha, I’m a fucking wreck. I’m just…” she released her two-handed grip on her mug and laid her hands carefully on the table. “A little slow.”
Natasha let herself smile into her cocoa. “I’ve watched more people deal weird about loss in the last few years than… yeah. Everyone deals differently. It’s been a strange few years.”
“And when was the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”
Too often. Sometimes all there was to do was sleep and sometimes that had been Natasha’s way to cope. If she wasn’t needed for anything, for anyone, she would shut down.
She felt Laura’s eyes skate over her face and knew that she was seeing all the places she’d aged and Natasha did feel needed. But she’d just fought a battle against a whole army of alien monsters and she didn’t know if she was supposed to be starting or finishing with grief so she felt dog-tired.
“Babe, no offense, but it looks like it’s been a while.”
Natasha felt her mouth stretch up into a real smile. “I really missed you,” she said, and had never felt so honest. “I’ll stay tonight.”
*