Chapter 5
The Black Widow is never surprised. The Black Widow does not show emotion. The Black Widow does not show weakness.
Especially in the company of the one who turned her best friend against her for the first and only time in their lives.
But damn it’s hard not to when Natasha has just learned that, even if she survives the journey back home, it might not be the home she knows.
“I’m not overly fond of the term ‘alternate universe,’” Loki tells, rolling his eyes.
“Then where are we?” Natasha demands. “You say you grabbed the Tesseract in 2012 when no one was looking and made your way around space before landing here, where the snap didn’t happen. What would you call this?”
Loki bristles. “Alright, fine, this is an alternate universe. Or as close as you can get to one, anyway.” He shakes his head, long black hair falling around his face. “I’m not sure how. I wasn’t trying to. I was just trying to find somewhere Thanos wouldn’t be able to find me.”
“And you ended up in a universe where you don’t work for him and no one knows where the Infinity Stones are,” Natasha adds dryly. “Wonderful.”
She rubs her temple. She’ll never admit she’s out of her area of expertise. Even when Scott was rambling about quantum physics to her and Steve, she pretended to know everything he was saying. When Scott and Tony argued at his house whether they should attempt the infamous Time Heist, she stayed quiet until she said what she could, until she said what she knew would matter to Tony.
We have to take a stand.
She’s not going to make everything they did for nothing. They have to get back.
See you in a minute, she’d told Steve. It was turning into a damned long one.
“That doesn’t mean Earth is completely different,” Loki says. “There hasn’t been much research on alternate universes for me to study, obviously.”
“So Tony and I...could still be alive in this universe,” Natasha muses, mind whirling with all the possibilities. If that was the case, should they still try to get back to their family? “Or...Asgard could still be intact.”
Loki scrunches his nose. “Intact? Oh, gods, don’t tell me Odin died and Thor made changes without any counsel.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow, remembering what Thor had told the Avengers: his father had died, revealing he had an older, long-lost sister – who also happened to be the goddess of death, because why not – and the only way to stop her had been to cause Ragnarok, the end of Asgard. Then as they were leaving for Earth, Thanos and the Black Order had killed half of the Asgardians, and then half of those who remained died after the snap. And that wasn’t even mentioning he had watched one of his best friends and closest confidants die right before Loki also died.
No wonder Thor had changed. Natasha wondered how Loki would react if she revealed all of this information to him.
“Well, I can’t say. I’ve never been to Asgard” is the answer she settles for.
Loki chuckles, leaning back in his chair. “Well, Agent Romanoff, don’t fret your tiny human mind. Never say never.”
Natasha crosses her arms. “So you are planning on going back? Last time we saw each other you were en route to be imprisoned there for your crimes.”
“Everyone goes home eventually,” Loki cryptically replies, smirking. “I am simply on a journey right now. On the journey here, there were many rocks in the road. And somehow it still leads to me coming home.”
“Been practicing poetry?” Natasha sarcastically asks.
Before Loki can reply, someone knocks on the door. Natasha stands up and Loki morphs back into the golden Aerlig in a second.
The door clicks open, and Tony enters. He gives them both warm smiles. Natasha feels sick. She and Bruce used to talk about Tony’s PTSD from the Battle of New York. If it hadn’t been for Loki…
“Snack room. I love it,” Tony sings, walking over to the table behind Natasha and grabbing an assortment of snacks. While chewing, he points at Natasha. “Make a note. We should seriously add snack rooms to our ships when we get home.”
“I’m not your assistant, Tony, make note of it yourself,” she replies good-naturedly. “How long until we land?”
“Couple of minutes,” he replies, grabbing the seat next to her. “They decided Gamora’s going to stay here on the ship in case anything goes haywire.”
“And you?” Natasha prods, not hiding the concern in her voice. She ignores Loki’s – Aerlig’s – amused expression at her tone. “No offense, Stark, but undercover isn’t exactly your style.”
“I’m…going to take that, as a compliment,” Tony says, throwing a piece of fruit at her face. She catches it in her mouth and gives him a cheeky smile. “I will be going down, actually. The Sovereign have developed some stealth cloaking tech based on Al-bedo’s genetic makeup that makes whatever’s under it disappear. But it’s still a prototype, so I’m coming along to make sure it works properly.”
“Okay,” Natasha sighs. She figures she can still keep an eye on Tony that way.
All three of their communicators beep suddenly, signaling the ship is going to land any second. Adam’s voice rings out over the intercom. “Stark, grab the cloaking gear from the hull. We’re approaching the outskirts of Kallu now.”
Tony stands up, winking at Natasha. “See you in a minute.”
“Screw you, Stark.”
“I’m a taken man, Natashalie!” Tony gasps in mock shock, pointing to his ring finger as he exits the room, chuckling.
Aerlig – Natasha decides to call him this when he’s in Sovereign form – stands, preparing to leave the break room. “His arrogance has not dwindled. In fact, one might argue it has…exacerbated.”
“He died saving the world; he’s got the right,” Natasha retorts, following him out of the room. Before they ascend the stairs to meet the others, she catches his arm. “Hey. Look at me.”
Surprisingly, Aerlig turns around and looks at her, prepared to hear what she has to say.
Natasha cocks her head to the side, her expression sober. “If anything goes wrong out there…get Tony back safely. Please.”
Your world in the balance, and you bargain for one man?
Aerlig stares at her for a moment in silence. Then, he turns on his heel and goes up the stairs, leaving Natasha alone.
~
“People don’t seem to like the Nova Corps too much,” Natasha mutters, highly aware of the locals’ wary expressions of them as they strode toward the reort building in the stolen uniforms. “These guys good or bad?”
“Supposed to be good,” Al-bedo answers. Natasha glances to her left; he’s using his powers so nobody sees him, but it is a little unnerving to go into an undercover mission on a foreign planet with no ability to see one of your allies.
Whatever. Natasha’s dealt with crazier, more difficult things.
“But sometimes they’re bad,” Aerlig adds. “Much like your policing task forces on Earth.”
“How do you know what the police are like on Earth?” Tony asks.
Natasha glares at Aerlig, but with the large Nova Corps helmet on her head, he misses her expression. Before he can answer, Adam holds up his hands, stopping them.
“Alright. Five Nova Corps is going to seem suspicious. Once we get down there and locate the slaves, two of us take point with them; don’t let any of them out of our sight. Al-bedo landed the ship we’ll be transporting them on close to our ship. Those two keep contact with Gamora so she knows when you’re coming. The remaining three stay behind to find the traders and anyone else in on this,” he says, looking around.
Everyone nods in confirmation. Natasha feels a sick sense of comfort in following orders. For the last five years, she’d had to deal with the anxiety that came with sending people – and raccoons – she cared about into situations they might not make it out of alive. Before then, at SHIELD, as long as she completed her mission, Fury never asked for detailed mission reports from her. He knew she would do what she needed to get the job done. And that mentality had been encouraged and instilled during her time in the Red Room.
It would be a welcome change to simply follow orders because, for once, she didn’t know a better way to do things. Who knew what surprises this Kallu place could offer?
You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why? What did Loki do to you?
Adam converses with the front desk of the resort. Natasha takes this time to examine possible escape routes. The team’s goal may be to rescue slaves and smuggled goods. And that’s fair; she’ll do what she can to help. But her main goal is to keep Tony alive and get back to Earth.
No matter what Earth it is.
The five of them make their way to the basement, unescorted, under the guise that the Nova Corps needed to examine structural frameworks of major buildings. Gamora had told them all on the ship that the Nova Corps had been wiped out by Thanos, but since Sovereign was apparently immune to his snap, surrounding planets probably wouldn’t have felt the effects of his wrath either.
Loki – as Aerlig – had purposefully avoided Natasha’s eyes when Gamora told them this.
Natasha brings up the rear, letting Adam take point. The five of them are silent, scanning every square inch of the walls in the basement, looking intently for anything that might indicate where the slaves are being kept.
Out of the corner of her eye, Natasha sees someone walking in the opposite direction of them.
“Hey!” she calls, sprinting toward them.
She throws herself at the person, wrapping her arms around their shoulders and kicking both of her legs straight out in front of her, next to the person’s waist. She uses this momentum to swing herself up so she’s straddling the person’s shoulders and then swings downward, effectively flipping the person onto the floor and pinning them down.
Her four comrades run toward her.
The person she’s pinned down is male and humanoid with light blue-gray skin. He spits up at Natasha. She balls a fist and punches him in the face.
“What are you doing down here? This is restricted territory,” Adam asks the man. “Who are you?”
“Moqa,” the man answers, glaring at them. “You all aren’t Kallusians. I suggest you leave now if you know what’s good for you.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen,” Al-bedo says. “We’re looking for slaves being trafficked through your planet. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Moqa stares at them for a moment, his face void of emotion.
“The slaves,” he answers simply, “aren’t worth saving anymore.”
Natasha’s grip on him tightens. “What did you do to them?”
“I haven’t done anything!” Moqa insists, still not looking as scared as he should be with five people looming over him. The “yet” at the end of his statement is implied, but before Natasha can begin interrogating him, Adam reaches down to Moqa and handcuffs him.
He stands up. “You’re coming with us.” To the rest of them, “Let’s tear this place apart until we find them.”
Natasha brings up the rear again, keeping a close eye on Tony and an even closer eye on Moqa. Something isn’t right, she’s sure of it. She could figure it out if she could just get the chance to look at the Kallusian or speak with him more. Figuring people out is her specialty.
After nearly an hour of searching the basement, Aerlig notices a part of the wall that’s a slightly brighter shade of paint than the rest of the wall. Without a moment’s hesitation, he pulls out his blaster and blows the wall to smithereens. Smoke emits from the blast, obstructing their view from looking inside.
“You should have thought that through,” Adam chastises.
Moqa suddenly spins around and begins to sprint away. Tony aims his blaster at the ground in front of him and fires, making Moqa halt in his tracks. “Sorry, Mocaccino. You’re staying with us.”
By now Natasha has figured it out. This resort is going to explode at any second. She feels it deep in her gut. They need to get out of here.
“We need to go now,” she hisses to everyone, grabbing Tony’s arm, preparing to run with him. “This place is about to blow.”
Al-bedo looks bewildered. “What? We need to rescue the slaves!”
Adam, however, gives her a considering look. “Why do you say that?”
By now, the smoke has cleared. They all peer in to the room. If Natasha hadn’t been trained at age four to suppress her gag reflex, she would throw up right now. Tony does, ripping off his helmet to retch onto the floor.
The smell of decaying bodies wafts through the air. Natasha looks around in horror. Dozens and dozens of dead bodies, some alien, some human-looking, all bound in chains, are piled carelessly in the room. And in the front of the pile…
“Damnit!” Aerlig swears.
In front of the pile of dead is a bomb, blinking and flashing rapidly.
Natasha hates being right sometimes.
~
“You know, I think this might be our first fight,” Natasha jokes, attempting to lighten the mood.
“Stop using sarcasm to get out of serious conversations. It’s not funny, Natasha,” Bruce snaps, slamming his Stark laptop shut. This causes Natasha to square her shoulders and look at him seriously. They’ve recently mastered the transformation from Hulk back to Bruce using what the team has dubbed the lullaby, but they haven’t been as successful preventing Bruce from transforming into the Hulk in the first place.
Three years ago, Natasha would have fought anyone who suggested she would actually be fond of the one man who managed to scare her, the one man she knows who isn’t fallible to her skillset. Fate has a cruel way of working, especially for her, she thinks.
Bruce immediately holds up his hands, sucking in his breath. “Shit. I’m sorry. Natasha, I–“
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” Natasha quickly assures him, ignoring how her heart has begun to pound heavily at the slam.
They’re in Bruce’s lab in Stark Towers, relaxing for a few hours before the team heads to Sokovia to get Loki’s scepter. The mission has been planned for awhile, something Steve has wanted to complete ever since SHIELD was revealed to be Hydra, but he wanted to wait until Thor came back to Earth to go.
Bruce takes off his glasses and tosses them onto the table in front him, rubbing his eyes. “I’m still sorry, though.” He shakes his head. “It was stupid of me to suggest that Clint shouldn’t come to Sokovia. I’m sorry.”
It was, but it was even more stupid of Natasha to get attached to her stupid best friend and making her protective of him, but she’ll never admit that.
“Clint’s fine. He dealt with what Loki did to him. He’s not going to spontaneously combust at the sight of the scepter,” Natasha says.
She remembers squeezing herself into a twin-size bed for two months, Lila on one side of her, Cooper on the other, playing music loudly on the speaker in Lila’s bedroom to drown out the sound of their father screaming. Trying to get Loki out of his head, trying to save his wife and kids.
Lila and Cooper might have been momentarily distracted by the music, but Natasha has better hearing, and the screams coming from Clint and Laura are sounds that will stay with her for a long time.
“You’re not real! Stop pretending to be my wife! Get out of my head!”
“I’m real, Clint! Look at me! Loki’s gone! You’re going to wake the kids!”
Once Lila and Cooper fell asleep, Natasha would turn off the music. By this time, Clint had usually resorted to normal speaking volume, still crying out that there’s something in him, something he can’t get rid of. When the music turned off, Laura knew it was safe to come in Lila’s room. She would give Natasha an apologetic, sad smile, and Natasha would slide out of the bed and go to Clint. She would detail how she recalibrated his brain, reminding him of how they defeated Loki, and before she can get to the part where Thor and Loki get sucked into the sky, Clint would be passed out on his and Laura’s bed.
For two months this happened. Natasha would do it for the rest of her life if the Bartons needed her to.
“Clint’s fine,” she reiterates to Bruce.
“Okay, I believe you. I’m just sure it’s difficult,” he replies, turning back to his computer screens. “I mean, first he gets brainwashed, and then Coulson dies, and Clint really only has you left to talk to, right? And you just had to go undercover for a few months after the whole Hydra debacle, and...” He shakes his head. “He’s a stronger man than me, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, he could definitely take on the Hulk,” Natasha quips, her stomach dropping. There’s no way this...thing...between them is going to work if she has to keep all these secrets.
Oh, well. Bruce will find someone else. She’ll die before she spills Phil’s or Clint’s secrets.
Bruce chuckles and takes a drink of his water. “It could happen. Things change.”
He believes her so willingly, doesn’t for a second consider she might be lying. It angers her. Phil is alive and well and going on missions, for fuck’s sake, and Clint is married with two children. How can someone she knows believe the coverup stories so naively? It makes her want to hate him.
It also makes her want to never be away from him.
STOP LYING TO ME!
I’m sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you’d do.
How things change, indeed.
~
Natasha’s vision focuses once the initial explosion throws everyone to different parts of the hall. Alarms are blaring overhead. The walls are cracking and caving.
“Tony,” she gasps, coughing. “Tony!”
He doesn’t respond. She staggers to her feet, pulling her blaster of its holster.
Moqa is laying on the ground a few meters away from her, blood pouring out of his temple. He groans and looks up, meeting her eyes.
“H-help,” he rasps. “I need...medical...help.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow. Then she empties three shots directly into his chest.
She steps over him, treading quietly, looking for any of the team. The alarms definitely mean someone is going to come down to the basement soon, and they need to get out of here.
“Romanoff,” Aerlig calls.
She turns at the sound of his voice. He and Al-bedo stand on each side of Adam, holding him up.
Natasha squints her eyes. Why does the supposedly strongest Sovereign need help after an explosion when she’s doing fine?
Well, “fine” is being generous. Her head is pounding, her shoulder is sore from where she landed on it, and she tastes blood, but she will be fine.
“He was closest to the blast,” Al-bedo says by way of explanation. “Trust me, any of us would be doing a Hela of a lot worse. Let’s get out of here before Kallusian security comes.”
“No, we need to find Tony,” Natasha argues.
As if on cue, the ceiling besides her caves in, and parts of the wall tumble down on top of it, barricading the way to venture any further down the hall.
“It’s too late for him,” Adam coughs, shaking his head. “Think logically, Natasha.”
If the building around them wasn’t about to collapse and kill them all, Natasha would fight him, injured or not.
“Go, then,” she snaps, adjusting her helmet. “Leave the extra ship for us. I’ll find him myself.”
Aerlig looks like he wants to argue, but Al-bedo is already dragging Adam away, and Natasha turns back toward the rubble. She pulls out her comm unit and tracks Tony’s. He’s close.
“Tony!” she yells desperately, climbing over pils of dismembered limbs mixed in with pieces of beams that had held the ceiling up. “Come on, Tony. If you yell out to me I owe you.”
“You owe me a cheeseburger then,” a faint voice replies. “Whopper, no onions, extra m–“
Natasha can’t help but laugh, overwhelmed. She quickly runs toward the sound of his voice. His left shoulder and arm are caught under a steel beam, and his face is cut up, but compared to certain states she’s seen him in, he looks great.
“Anything you want, once we make it out of here,” she promises, positioning herself to dead lift the beam. “On three, roll out. One, two, three!”
Tony heaves himself away from the wreckage the second Natasha manages to lift the beam. She drops it back down once he’s free, breathing heavy, and rolls her shoulders.
“You ready to run?” she asks, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the stairs, quickening their pace with each step.
“I feel like that was a rhetorical question,” Tony wheezes.
They make their way to the ground level, where civilians are scrambling around wildly, screaming. There doesn’t seem to be any organization to the chaos, and Natasha takes advantage of this. She and Tony go straight through the crowd and exit the building.
She nods to one of the hovercrafts parked outside. “Think you can fly that thing?”
“Only one way to find out,” Tony answers, rubbing his hands together.
They hop into the hovercraft. Tony studies the controls for a minute before pulling back a lever and pressing his foot to a pedal. The hovercraft shoots up into the sky, making Natasha tumble back in her seat.
“Sorry! Sorry, I think I’ve got the hang of it now,” Tony says, slowing down the speed. He begins driving. “Where to?”
“The ship that was supposed to carry the slaves,” Natasha answers. She shakes her head. What the hell happened here? And why did the Sovereign leave so quickly? Something has to be going on. If this was a set-up...
They drive in silence before reaching the ship. They scramble out of the hovercraft and board the ship, breathing heavily.
Natasha finds drinks for them to hydrate themselves. Once they’ve drank and sat for a minute, Tony pulls up a holographic map of the surrounding planets.
“Do we go back for Gamora?” he asks. “Because I gotta say, I’m not too fond of the guys that just left us without a second thought.”
Natasha considers their options. They have a fully-functioning, large ship at their dispense, capable of bringing them back to Earth, even if it’s not the Earth they’re familiar with. But they wouldn’t have gotten this far without Gamora, who deserves to find her family again, too, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be left alone with the planet that once tried to kill her sister and Loki.
Even though they’re gone, I’m still trying to be better.
“Gamora wouldn’t abandon us,” Natasha finally says. “And we wouldn’t have defeated Thanos without her sister.”
“Damn pathos,” Tony mutters. He enters in coordinates to the ship. “Okay, fine. Setting course for Sovereign. But we’re not landing. We get close, we make the call to Gamora and tell her to take an Omnicraft out to us, and then we hightail it out of here.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Natasha agrees. After a beat, she says, “Tony, there’s something I need to tell you. And you can’t get mad at me because we’re all each other has left right now.”
“Shoot.”
“Aerlig is Loki,” Natasha says, not pulling her punches. She waits patiently for him to respond.
To her surprise, Tony swears, and then chuckles. “If we’d just let Jolly Green onto the elevator...”
Surprised – and pleased, although she’d never tell him – that he’s not angry at her for not telling him right away, Natasha just settles back in her seat. “Well, regardless. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right when I realized it. He also said we’re in an alternate universe, or so he thinks.”
That’s what surprises Tony. He mumbles equations to himself, different theories and outcomes about alternate realities, before running a hand through his hair, his helmet having gotten lost after the bomb went off.
“Well, that...makes our goal of getting home a little different,” he finally says. “You still wanna go?”
“What, you don’t?” Natasha asks.
Tony’s silent.
“I do,” he eventually says. “In this universe...maybe Pep just didn’t put up with my bullshit and we’re not together. Maybe Morgan was never born.” He shrugs his shoulders and gives her a tired smile. “But I have to try, Nat. I have to. We have to.”
I can’t roll the dice.
Natasha nods. She’ll follow Tony wherever he goes.
When they near Sovereign, Natasha uses her comm unit to try and contact Gamora.
“Natasha!” the green woman exclaims, her voice fuzzy over the static. “Are you and Tony okay? Al-bedo and Adam said it was too late for you, or something, and made me fly them back. I’m so sorry, I never would’ve–“
“We’re fine. Gamora, it’s okay,” Natasha assures her, feeling slightly guilty that they were considering not coming back for her. She squashes that thought. “But we’re outside. Haven’t landed yet. We can leave now, if you want. Go find your guy.”
Gamora’s silent for a moment. Natasha thinks her connection’s been fried before the other woman eventually speaks.
“I think you guys should land,” Gamora says.
“What? Why?” Tony asks.
Gamora takes a shaky breath. “The Sovereign have healing pods, similar to their birthing generating ones, for everyone. It’s not specific to any one person so anyone can use one. Adam used one, and it’s like he was never in an explosion.”
“And that’s great, we’re happy for him,” Tony sarcastically says, rolling his eyes, “but that doesn’t really have anything to do with us.”
“Actually, it does,” Aerlig gets on the line.
Natasha doesn’t miss the way Tony’s face pales or his grip tightens on the steering controls.
“As humans, it’s going to be much easier for you to be killed on this side of the galaxy,” he continues, ignoring Tony’s incoherent grumbles. “If you all had any alien genetic mutations in you, it would increase your chances of surviving exponentially, and you might actually have a shot at getting back to your home planet.”
“What are you saying?” Natasha demands.
“You can use the healing pods,” Gamora summarizes, and Tony and Natasha look at each other with wide eyes. “You guys would have alien DNA in you. You’d be stronger, harder to kill, more invincible.”
Well, Natasha hadn’t been expecting that.