#orange
Together, they can do what they want – even manipulate other universes, because they are from other universes. Time glows green, Power mocks her, purple as sin and Space is that same, ethereal blue she has seen so many times before on Earth. Mind is the yellow that used to be in Vision’s forehead and Reality a deep, vicious crimson red.
Soul is an orange she can barely stand to look at.
Natasha knows what they want to do. Gamora, so young, visits her as their Avatar and tells them their plan, their boon to her.
“You deserve better. There isn’t anything they can do for me,” she says, “because Father never gave it back. But the Avengers gave it back. Soul will be home again.”
“It isn’t already?” asks Natasha.
“Time is relative,” the young Gamora says, smiling sadly, “and she can see far beyond the present. Soul will go back to where she belongs. Now, it’s your turn.”
Their will is awesome and to be feared – and when Natasha returns, she knows they were not being kind or fair. They were not giving her another chance to change the fate of the universe. Gamora told her as such. She did not lie or prevaricate.
“You’re going back to before you met them,” she’d said, “to the very start of what will become the Avengers again. Make sure he never uses us-of-another-universe like that, ever again.”
And so, Natasha finds herself in Budapest, the day before she saw the infamous Hawkeye for the first time.
It has been so long that she can’t remember her mission. A politician, she thinks, a murder. Natasha is the Black Widow again, Russia’s best. In another timeline, that would change into America’s best, but Natasha cannot allow that now – not when she knows that Hydra sleeps within the depths of SHIELD and all it stands for. She doesn’t think she can act inhuman again, like she doesn’t care or have anything to care for.
Natasha wants her family back.
She finds Phil within an hour of looking, discovering him in a café with a laptop and an earpiece, as if he’s just any other English businessman. There are two other agents in the vicinity, in the next café along. They don’t see her until she’s already past them and Phil genuinely stares when she sits down in front of him.
“…hello?” he breathes, confused.
“Your agency is compromised, Agent Coulson,” Natasha tells him, “and if it wasn’t, I would defect immediately.”
“Right,” Phil pauses, before pushing his tea in her direction. “Drink?”
The other Natasha wouldn’t have touched it – Natalia wouldn’t have touched it. She might have given him an amused smile. But Natasha of now drinks, reaching out and taking it, leaning in her seat and slouching back. She wants to be on her guard, but she can’t right now. She has to show trust. So, she drinks the tea and ignores how the patter in Phil’s ear gets so loud that she can hear the muffled call of his name; forces herself not to react to how the agents next door move abruptly, hovering outside.
“My name is Natalia Ivanovna Romanova,” she said, remembering to change Alianovna to Ivanovna moments before she speaks. The Guardian has called her daughter of Ivan and still, it haunts her – who is she, really? Where does she come from? Those are questions she once asked herself and put to rest, forgetting as time went by, up until that fateful day.
“Phillip John Coulson,” he replies, obviously perplexed. “What do you mean by ‘compromised’?”
“If I told you outright, you wouldn’t believe me and worse, they would know. I have no idea who else is on your team and no way to find out whether they’re on the right side,” Natasha answers. It has been less than an hour since she arrived in this new world and new life; it is important she doesn’t ruin the timeline completely, if she wants to make a difference.
But Phil is important – he has always been important. He was her handler, despite Clint being her recruiter and he knew her darkest secrets and didn’t look down on her. He cared for her, maybe even loved her. Natasha wants him on her side and more importantly, she wants to make sure he knows of the dangers ahead.
“Maybe I’m on the wrong side,” he replies neutrally. Natasha smiles.
“The moment you embody Nazi ideology is the moment Fury tells someone to call him Nick.”
While Phil processes her words, Natasha takes a pen out of her hair, slipping her fake glasses up onto her head to write down several key words. Hopefully, both Phil and Fury will realise the importance of keeping it secret. She hands the scribbled-on napkin over to Phil, who takes it hesitantly. He peers at it.
“‘Carol,” he mutters, head tilting. “Tesseract. Lehigh. Afghanistan. Stane. Hercules. Asgard. Goose.’ What are all these supposed to mean?” He meets her eyes, but despite the cool façade, she sees when his interest peaks. Knowledge of the Tesseract is supposed to be need-to-know. What Natasha worries about the most is mentioning Camp Lehigh, where Arnim Zola’s AI lives. The moment they discover the truth, anything could happen.
Oh and yeah, she said the word Nazi a minute ago, when anyone could be listening. Lehigh, Nazi – truly, she makes for a terrific time traveller.
Natasha decides to take her leave then, finishing Phil’s tea and shifting in her seat, motioning him forwards. Unable to help himself, he leans, fidgeting and waiting for the moment she might attack him.
She murmurs, “I’m going after another operative I once knew. If I die in the attempt, watch out for him. Barnes is as strong as his Captain, these days.”
Natasha stands, exiting, glancing at Phil’s stunned face once before she pushes past the other SHIELD agents, hailing a cab. In flawless Hungarian, she gets a ride out of the city, paying the taxi-driver with a punch to the face and petty theft. Her stolen cash is enough to get her a bus ticket to the next town, where she steals a car and drives across Europe, heading to the nearest Hydra bases she can recall.
One by one, she infiltrates and destroys, often leaving dozens of bodies in her wake. Natasha can feel herself getting colder. She has no-one. Not Clint, not Steve, not any of the original Avengers or the later ones. Sam might not be a soldier yet – Wanda and her brother are only children, orphans even.
Remembering Wanda makes her mind freeze and her heart stutter in her chest. Natasha was born decades ago – many more years than her old SHIELD file would suggest – but Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are thirteen years old at this point in time. She wonders when they started hating the world and Stark – when they volunteered for Hydra’s experiments and manipulations.
They’re innocent, she thinks, making her decision the moment she discovers Barnes’ cryostasis chamber. The book with all of his commands is taken from the corpse of a doctor, paged through and memorised, then burned for good measure. Natasha does not let a single word remain.
Unfreezing Barnes takes time. Natasha lays her hand on the cold glass in front of his face, whispering, “You’ll help me, right? You knew me, once upon a time. I called you James and I was your Natasha. I hope you remember me, later.”
There is a bullet lodged in her arm from invading the facility. Natasha is tending to it when the chamber finally opens with a chilling hiss of air, the Soldier waking with a stagger, dropping forwards onto his knees. There is a dazed look to his eyes and Natasha sees how he tenses, waiting for an opponent that will never come again, if Natasha has anything to do with it. His gaze locks onto her.
“Orders?” His Russian is flawless. Natasha wonders if he remembers English, right now.
“No orders, except to rest and eat, if you can. I am rescuing you, not enslaving you. Do you understand?”
He hesitates, fear entering the blue of his eyes. “Orders?” he asks again, hesitant. His eyes flicker to her arm, then around the room. He physically recoils at the sight of the many bodies decaying on the ground. “What happened?”
“Me,” Natasha tells him flatly, motioning with her head to a nearby gun. “Take that if you feel unsafe. I have a side-arm in reach.”
He takes the gun, getting to his feet in a shaky manner. There is a mask around his neck that he unstraps properly, hair hanging loose and grubby around his face. Natasha wonders about the procedures to feed, wash and clothe him. Does the Soldier take such orders? Does someone tend to him when he’s unconscious? Natasha rather doubts the last, placing herself in the situation and betting on said person dying the moment she woke.
“What do you want from me?” he asks eventually, hours and hours later. Natasha, having felt reckless and wanting to push the Soldier’s buttons, wakes from a gentle sleep at his questioning. She blinks away the remnants of slumber, getting to her feet and wincing at the lingering pain from her arm. He asks again, “What do you want from me?”
“For you to remember, James.”
“Who is James?”
Natasha walks over to where he has been standing, gun held tightly in hand. Her arm rises, fingers brushing his cheek. His stubble has grown in, while he stood watch. Natasha realises that she has no plan for the next decade and a half. In fifteen years, Thanos will invade and she has to prepare the world for that – and all she has done is liberate the Winter Soldier and give two old spies a puzzle.
Her hand falls. “I want to tell you a story,” she says, “and if you believe me at the end of it, I’d like to ask for your help in making sure that story never happens.” Natasha smiles at him, switching to English. “And James is you. James Buchanan Barnes, known to Steve Rogers as Bucky, former Howling Commando and Sergeant in World War Two. A sniper and a friend.”
“Steve,” he repeats, voice hoarse and hollow. His eyes screw shut. “Short lil’ punk who can’t keep to himself. Who is he? How do I know him?”
“You were friends,” Natasha says, stepping back. Her heart beats heavily. There are things she barely remembers – things that were taken from her that she never got back. Barnes could be different. “My name is Natasha, Natalia, the Black Widow. We loved each other, once.”
“I- I don’t know,” Barnes says, full of sorrow. He opens his eyes, looking at her. “I know you, but I don’t remember you. My head burns.”
Natasha holds her hand out cautiously, not wanting to set him off. “May I help you?” she asks. Choices, she thinks, make trust. When he steps back instead, she lowers her hand, returning to her chair. Once she’s sat down again, he stumbles back against the nearest wall, sliding to the ground.
They do not leave the facility for two days. When they finally do, stealing a truck and loading it with supplies, he settles in the driving seat and asks for her story.
“But first,” he mutters, “tell me where to go.”
And Natasha knows that she has already decided.
“Sokovia. We’ve got two kids to find.”
JARVIS has never received a letter before.
When it comes in, the personnel responsible for delivering mail to various Stark Industries employees tries to figure out who ‘JARVIS ST.’ is, searching for their name in the SI database. They at first type in Jarvis Saint, thinking it an intentional, humorous error on behalf of the sender. When no-one shows up, the two mail-room employees actually type in Jarvis St. Yet again, they are met with nothing.
Then they type Jarvis.
JARVIS himself was at first alerted to the Jarvis Saint search because it included his pseudonym. As an AI, he does not have to divert his full attention to it, his feelers acknowledging the situation and making a note of it. When the search continues however, more of his attention is turned to the search – perhaps he could help. JARVIS has the SI database some deliberate nudges before, when employees are having trouble.
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” one of them shrugs.
“We can’t exactly open it to find out,” the other flips the letter over in their hands, feeling the weight of it and peering at the postage. “Heavy. That’s a European stamp…Sokovia? Does SI have offices in Sokovia?”
No, it does not, JARVIS thinks. Solutions as to whom the letter is addressed to come up short. There are only two Jarvis’ employed at Stark Industries, neither of which whom work in the US branches of SI. One Jarvey Right works in Washington and Sarah Jevvie was formerly employed in SI as a secretary, before her untimely death in a car crash in nineteen eighty-nine.
Jarvis St.
Metaphorically, JARVIS tilts his head at the name and decides that someone is aware of him. Concluding that Jarvis St. is short for Jarvis Stark, he fabricates an email to the head of the mail-room where they are deciding the fate of his letter, instructing them to send said letter straight to Tony Stark himself, using clearance codes that the head of the mail-room is baffled to see.
JARVIS waits until the letter is half a building away from Tony to inform him of the development.
“Sir,” he begins, “a letter is being couriered to you as we speak.”
His creator barely looks up. “Why?” he asks, concentrating on his designs. JARVIS blanks his screens. “Hey!”
“Sir,” he repeats, “a letter is being couriered to you as we speak.”
“Why is a letter being couriered to me? Why am I even getting mail?” Tony fires question after question, looking back to his computer screen. “And why did you get rid of my stuff, J? This isn’t like you.”
“The letter in question, sir, is addressed to me.”
There is a long silence as his creator takes that in. JARVIS notes the tension increasing in his shoulders and hands, fists clenching.
“No,” he says, “that can’t be right. To you, J? How? Can’t there be another Jarvis around?”
“I do not believe so, sir.”
When they receive the letter, his creator orders the courier away without even saying thank-you, eyes glued to the various stamps and postal stickers. JARVIS has already tracked it to a small post office on the Sokovian border, though the lack of video cameras connected to the internet makes it impossible for him to track down the sender.
“Got a good look at it, J?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright, then – opening it up.”
Inside there are two letters and half a dozen photographs, each with clear, but tiny text on the plain sides. One photograph is actually a postcard, with a picture of which JARVIS identifies as a castle in Sokovia, near the city of Novi Grad.
“What language is this?” Tony mutters, walking over to a table where JARVIS has a high-definition sensor array. His creator lays each and every one of them down, eyes glued to pictures of SI bombs in rubble, unexploded. “Those are fakes. Actual SI bombs explode.”
“Indeed, sir.” JARVIS says, identifying clear patterns in the letters themselves, along with the text on the photograph-backs. “I believe the communications are encoded. I have identified various patterns throughout the texts, though no known cipher has been used.”
“Awesome. Any clues as to what the cipher is or can you work it out yourself, J?”
“I believe I could work it out within five hours, sir, provided the cipher has not already been given to us intentionally.”
His creator catches on, looking to the one item he hasn’t laid out: the envelope. Peering at it, he carefully looks inside and out, a noise of triumph exiting him on discovering something JARVIS cannot see.
“Impressions in the edge!” Tony exclaims, putting it down and smoothing it out, hands arranged around the area JARVIS is meant to scan.
“Impressions received,” JARVIS says, glad to discover that it is indeed a cipher. Using the cipher to decode the letters, he finds himself wondering whether this is someone’s idea of a joke; surely, Obadiah Stane is working for the benefit of his creator, not selling dodgy and prototype weapons on the black market, that would eventually end up being used in Sokovia and other destabilised countries.
Although…his own system analyses previous personality composites of Obadiah Stane and comes to the conclusion that it is more than likely that the sender is correct, even disregarding the evidence they have acquired and/or fabricated.
“This is fucked up,” Tony mutters. “How the hell…” His creator quiets, obviously coming to the same conclusion as JARVIS. “J, start the paperwork to inspect our dud stocks, storage warehouses, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Of course, sir. Inquiries will begin within the month.”
“Make it a week,” Tony orders and JARVIS complies, the best he can.
“Of course, sir.”