Chapter 10
Natasha sometimes misses the time before she was seen as a leader, before she was seen as someone who could take accountability for the actions of others. She misses the anonymity of being able to do her job without public criticism and the knowledge that only a few people in the world had an opinion about her.
Government meetings are just so goddamn boring.
“We ratified the 29th Amendment in 2014 specifically to prevent this catastrophe,” Secretary Ross says, rubbing his temple. “We’ve got people still dying of hunger and poverty and you want us to use millions of dollars to fight…what was the name again?”
“Adam Warlock,” Loki as Thor says, his tone grave. “Believe me, Mr. Secretary, you—”
“And why should we believe you, Thor?” the hologram of Nick Fury interrupts, cocking his head. “In our reality, Thor has come to Earth three times. The first, he nearly decimated a small town in New Mexico. The second, he was chasing down his runaway brother who very nearly decimated the most populated cities in the United States. The third, he stopped by for a visit to Dr. Stephen Strange, who still hasn’t told us what exactly happened in the meeting. Thor hasn’t exactly given us much reason to trust or believe in him.”
“Your reality’s Thor has not lost nearly half of what I have,” Thor replies steadily. Natasha wonders if Loki means Thor’s loss or his own. “My word is good, I assure you. The threat of Adam Warlock is not to be taken lightly.”
Anthony Stark gestures to the screen in front of him. “It’s not taken lightly. In fact, it’s being taken rather heavily. That ship of theirs is pressing in on Ultron’s planetary defense barrier harder than anything we’ve ever seen before or could’ve even predicted. So, like it or not, King Midas and his crew are coming to us, and soon.”
Natasha shares a look with her Tony. She knows he’s feeling the same way as her: worried and guilty. If they hadn’t have come to Earth, Adam wouldn’t be there.
She clears her throat, attracting the attention of everyone in the large conference room, both real people and holograms alike.
“Adam wants us,” she says matter-of-factly, gesturing to herself, Tony, Gamora, and Thor. “We killed the Black Widow for you. Let us take one of your ships, or repair ours, and we’ll go back into space to deal with him. This isn’t your fight.”
“SHIELD is prepared to deal with threats such as this one,” Fury counters, his hologram turning to glare at her. Natasha finds that she oddly missed that expression. “If we can defeat this guy, I say we do it. Show him, and the rest of the universe, that Earth is not a place they want to fuck with.”
Trouble, Miss Romanoff. No matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes around.
Natasha gives him a polite smirk. “No, sir, it’s not.”
“I disagree, Director,” Ross says, shaking his head. “I cannot, on good conscience, send our troops into this battle.”
The elderly Steve nods his head slowly. “I agree with Ross. We shouldn’t have Adam try and destroy this world you’ve worked hard to protect.”
Tony raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Rogers, agreeing with Ross. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
“Technically, you didn’t,” Natasha mutters to him, and he smirks back at her.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Fury says, “but if you don’t think we should fight him on this world, where do you suggest we take him?”
“Our world,” Steve answers firmly. “I had a lot of time to think during my days when you locked me up. When I left my world to return the Stones, everyone was grieving the loss of both Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark. They’ll be more than thrilled to have them back, and more than willing to fight the bastard who’s hunting them down.”
Gamora manages to catch Natasha’s eye. She nods once, glancing down at her own hand, and Natasha follows her gaze to see that the green-skinned woman is holding four Pym particles in her hand. Natasha makes a mental note to ask her what exactly happened in the meeting she had been in while Natasha and Tony had gone to Manila.
“Hold on,” Anthony says, looking at his counterpart in Tony. “You guys still don’t know how you got here, exactly. How do you know you can get back? Tampering with the Planck Scale—”
“We don’t know,” Tony interrupts, shrugging. He tiredly smiles. “That’s the hero gig. Part of the journey is the end.”
Anthony opens his mouth to reply, but before he can speak, the rest of the people in the room are already agreeing with Steve’s suggestion, all in favor of moving a fight that’s not theirs elsewhere. A part of Natasha wants to feel hurt, even betrayed after she killed the Black Widow in this reality, that they would brush them off so easily. But she gets it; she doesn’t think she would want to risk thousands of innocent lives in a fight they don’t have to be a part of.
What, you think I want to do this?
Immediately, plans are being enacted to figure out how to get Adam’s spaceship to follow Natasha, Steve, Tony, Gamora, and Thor back to their reality. Amidst the chaos, Natasha grips Tony’s hand tightly with her own. They exit the building holding hands, and when she looks up, Natasha can almost make out Adam’s spaceship, high in the sky, being held off by Ultron’s security system.
“I hope everyone’s ready,” Natasha tells Tony, grinning. “We’re bringing the party to them.”
Tony shakes his head and gazes at the ship in the sky. “I don’t see how that’s a party.”
~
“Did I miss anything?” Bruce whispers, sliding clumsily into the seat beside Natasha. “I didn’t have ID on me. Security wouldn’t let me in. I had to get Pepper’s weird uncle to vouch for me.”
Natasha shrugs. “Rhodey told that story he always tells in his best man speech, but that’s about it.”
“The ‘boom, you looking for this’ one?” Bruce asks.
“That would be it.”
“I’m so upset I missed it.”
Natasha smirks at him, using the expression as an excuse to study him closer. They’re at Tony and Pepper’s wedding reception, which would normally be a happy occasion, but Natasha wouldn’t guess that if she was basing it off Bruce’s appearance. His tuxedo is unkempt, almost messy, there are dark circles under his eyes, and his knee is uncontrollably bouncing.
Natasha gives Bruce a subtle head nod. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah, I’m all good,” Bruce says, looking anything but. “I’ve just been working in the lab a lot. I’m tired. Where’s Steve?”
“You just missed him. Someone from one of his support groups called him up for something and he had to go,” Natasha answers. She has an idea of what Bruce is working on in the lab, but she doesn’t want to pry.
Plus, she knows she’s probably going to have to help the already intoxicated Tony out after the reception, and she’s saving up her mental manpower for that.
“And he left his date all alone?” Bruce quips, nudging her shoulder.
Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, right.”
Bruce sits up straighter. “W-what? You guys aren’t…he stays at the compound sometimes.”
“So does a space raccoon,” Natasha replies. She internally shudders. She loves Steve, she does; she would die for him. She would kill for him. But date him? “Steve and I are not dating. Trust me.”
“I do,” Bruce says softly. He suddenly grasps her hand. “Nat, I just spent the last six months in the lab. It gave me a lot of time to think. It was very lonely, but the one person I kept thinking of, the one person I kept coming back to was you.”
Natasha internally sighs. She knew she and Bruce would have to have this conversation eventually. When they first saw each other when he came back to Earth, it was in the middle of the impending threat of Thanos, so they hadn’t had a chance to sit down and talk about what was going on between them. Then after they killed Thanos, Natasha had taken it upon herself to organize the Avengers and act as a liaison between multiple states with mutual allies, and Bruce had holed himself up in his lab.
And now here they were. The Hulk and Black Widow, sitting in the back of the wedding of one of the most famous men on Earth, talking about their relationship struggles. Madame B would definitely have a heart attack if she could see Natasha now.
“I’m not going to say what you want me to, Bruce,” Natasha says evenly. “You left. Not me. We’re different now. The world is different. It gets to the point where you can’t go back.”
“We can have this,” Bruce insists, pointing to Tony and Pepper, slow dancing in front of the attentive eyes of their guests. “Look how nice this is.”
Natasha remembers fixing Laura’s hair on her wedding day, taking Polaroid pictures with Coulson, drinking too much champagne with Clint.
“I don’t want it,” she says sharply. “I have a job to do. If I stop now, no one else will do it.”
Bruce sadly smiles, as if he’d known what she was going to say all along. Natasha’s shoulders relax, and she covers his hand with her other one. She still can’t believe she once offered to run away with him, can’t imagine being anywhere other than Steve’s side during the firefight that changed the universe.
I’m running with it, with you. If running’s the plan, as far as you want.
Not anymore.
Bruce stands, says he’s going to get them drinks, and disappears a second later. Natasha pretends not to notice him use the emergency exit door and leave the reception.
She drums her fingers on her empty champagne glass. If she were anyone else, any less comfortable in her own skin, she might tuck her hair behind her ear or slouch to make herself look smaller, affected by the magnitude of being alone at a wedding. But she’s not.
Natasha loves being alone, but hates being lonely. Sometimes, when doing the right thing, it seems like the two are a package deal.
~
Natasha tunes out the argument that has erupted between Loki, Tony, and Gamora. They’re on a SHIELD issued ship, one that she knows is actually one of their worse, older models, yet Fury had still acted like he was giving them one of his own limbs. They’re slowly cruising toward Adam’s vessel to try and negotiate with him.
“The Sovereign are easily offended,” Gamora grits out, not for the first time. “I promise you, there is nothing we or this planet have that they could possibly want. They won’t care that they’re killing us.”
“In both my realities, your father Thanos learned humans weren’t cowering wretches like the rest of the galaxy thought,” Loki counters. His wavy black hair is so dark it almost looks blue. “Adam can come to the same realization. There is something to be said for Midgard. There is something to be said for its people.”
“Where was this energy when you were bringing aliens down to destroy New York?” Tony scoffs, rolling his eyes. “Don’t act like you care about that planet or anything on it. You just want to save your own ass.”
The three of them continue arguing, struggling to reach a conclusion as their ship reaches Adam’s. None of them have noticed that Natasha hasn’t said a word. Gamora had been in favor of using the Pym particles to get them back to their reality but not telling Adam where they were going, leaving him to attack the Earth they left. Surprisingly, Loki had wanted to tell Adam where they were going so the fight wouldn’t be on this reality’s Earth that had nothing to do with Adam. Tony didn’t seem particularly in favor of any plan, just against anything that Loki said.
Natasha sighs to herself. She wishes Steve was here. He had used his Pym particle to go back to Bruce, Sam, and Bucky to soften the blow of his new old age and warn them of the impending attack. They knew for a fact his particle would get him to where he wanted to go; they weren’t sure about the rest of them.
“What if he doesn’t even believe us and attacks this Earth anyway, and then follows us to our reality when he realizes we were telling the truth?” Gamora points out, crossing her arms. “Then Earth in both realities is attacked. Why let both get damaged when just one can?”
Natasha stands suddenly, drawing the attention of her three counterparts.
“Let me go,” she says, her voice low. “I’ll take the solo pod to Adam’s ship.”
“Are you insane?” Tony demands.
“Not insane,” Natasha replies, “just persuasive.”
“If you have a plan,” Loki adds, “they’ll cooperate.” He holds her gaze for a minute before turning to Tony. “If Agent Romanoff wishes to try, I see no harm in that. She’s a formidable spy.”
Natasha nods her head in thanks and partly surprise at the god. She readjusts the knives strapped to her thighs and walks over to the pod entrance attached to the ship.
Tony sits back in his seat sulkily. “Good luck,” he mutters.
Natasha gives him what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “I have a plan. Don’t wait for me. Use your particles to get your asses back to our reality. I’ll meet you there.”
Gamora crosses her arms. “What happened to sticking together? Whatever you’re planning, you have to be completely sure it’ll work. These aren’t the human enemies you were facing on Earth. These guys are Sovereign.”
Natasha cocks her head, pressing the button to start closing the pod around herself. She smirks. “So am I.”
~
“We were expecting the Zehoberei warrior, maybe even the Asgardian, but not you,” Adam admits, eyeing Natasha curiously. With disdain or respect, Natasha can’t be sure. “You must take me for a fool if you think I’m going to let this go easily. If you think Ayesha will let this go easily. You illegally use Sovereign technology and—”
“Let’s not forget who granted that to us,” Natasha points out, crossing her arms and standing straight. Facing three Sovereign is more than a little daunting, but she’s not about to let that deter her. “Our deal was made to help each other. We can still help you. You can come to our Earth, our reality, and seek asylum there. We’ll vouch for you.”
“It’s too late for that,” Magus growls.
“Is it?” Natasha counters. “We have particles, made on Earth, that will hopefully help us get back to our own realities. We could have some made for you all—”
“Our DNA might have made you stronger, but it definitely did not make you smarter,” Adam chuckles condescendingly. “We have our own way to get to your reality, Natasha. Don’t you worry about that. We could attack this Earth now and then go to yours and attack again. I could bring balance to two realities.”
Natasha exhales deeply. She doesn’t like the look in Adam’s eyes. It’s an expression she’s seen on too many people before: one consumed by greed and power.
The Goddess steps forward, signaling for Adam and Magus to step aside. She stands tall in front of Natasha, her chin raised, and regards her seriously.
“My goal is to eradicate all sin in the universe,” she states, “and with it, all creatures capable of sin. Whether we attack this Earth or the one of your own reality...you, my dear, should have been eradicated a long time ago.”
Natasha raises an eyebrow, not letting her uneasiness show. “You’ll have to explain to me what you mean, I’m afraid. I’ve been wiping out the red in my ledger. I hope that’s enough to ask that you leave this Earth alone. If you’re going to attack, attack my own reality’s Earth.”
The Goddess chuckles, grinning maniacally, evilly. The expression seems drastically different than how she had appeared when Adam had first introduced her and Magus back on Sovereign.
“Can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Drakov’s daughter? São Paulo? The hospital fire?” The Goddess demands, leaning forward into Natasha’s face, glaring down at her. “Your ledger is dripping. It's gushing red, and you think saving a world no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?”
Natasha resists the urge to smirk. She’s good at catching on to things, and this is a script she knows all too well. A little improvisation won’t hurt, of course, but everything is now on track. Clint would be proud.
“I don’t know if I can save this world,” Natasha admits, her voice breaking. She quickly covers her mouth, as if she’s embarrassed at the display of emotion. “I just mean…we don’t even know if you all can go to my Earth. And this planet here is going to be attacked, with millions of innocent lives lost because of it.”
Adam walks over to her and rests a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he says. “There is a way for us to get to your Earth, and make everything right there instead.” He opens his hand, and the Tesseract materializes out of the air and rests in his palm.
Natasha’s eyes widen. She’d been expecting that Adam had some sort of plan, but she hadn’t been expecting an Infinity Stone. Oh well. She’ll adapt, just like she always has.
“It had been hidden on Sovereign, it turns out,” Adam says, his glee apparent. “I don’t know for how long, but that doesn’t matter now, does it?” He shrugs. “Once I’ve sought justice from you and your friends for making a fool of the Sovereign, I can use this to go anywhere in the universe and bring justice everywhere.”
Natasha secretively taps on her communicator several times, different lengths of time, telling Tony to “go now” in Morse code. A second later, she jumps up onto Adam’s back, swinging her legs around his neck and dropping her weight so that she lands on her feet and he falls on his side, dropping the Tesseract. Magus reaches for Natasha, but she sprints out of the way, appreciating her Sovereign speed, and hits the lever toward the front of their ship, kicking it into motion and throwing Magus off balance.
The Goddess scoops up the Tesseract, but before Natasha can reach forward to grab it from her, Adam is standing in front of her, swinging toward her face. Natasha ducks just in time and kicks his legs out from under it. He grabs her as he falls, and they both tumble to the ground, Adam landing on top of Natasha. She swings her legs around his torso and uses her arms to flip them so that she’s on top and punches him in the face, twice, as hard as she can. He reaches up and grips her neck, beginning to squeeze.
Natasha grabs his hand, trying to pry his fingers apart, to no avail. She manages to knee him in the chest, loosening his grip momentarily, and crawls away, gasping for air. The Goddess is standing right next to her now, partially turned to her, and Natasha reaches up to grab the Tesseract from her.
Magus uses her trick from earlier and punches a button on the front control panel, sending the ship rapidly in the opposite direction it had been flying, and Natasha goes rolling on the floor. She lands next to a large gun and wastes no time in getting to her feet to hold it, aiming it at Magus. She fires, but he dives out of the way, and the blast catches the controls used to control the ship, lighting them on fire.
Adam is back on his feet now, and charges at Natasha. She fires the gun at him and hits him in his shoulder, but it doesn’t slow him down. He hits her in the chest, hard, and she drops the gun. At the same time, an alarm begins blaring throughout the ship.
“Adam, we need to get off this ship!” The Goddess yells. She holds up the Tesseract.
“No, not yet!” Adam snarls.
But the Goddess has already opened a portal in the middle of the ship, and as the ship shakes and begins catching fire around them, Natasha has no choice but to fall into it, along with the Goddess, Magus, and Adam.
She lands hard on a large field of grass and rolls into a somersault to try and soften the blow. The Goddess lands next to her, groaning.
Natasha stumbles over to her and looks down with a steely gaze, holding up her knives, daring the Goddess to say something.
“On the journey here, there were many rocks in the road,” she coughs, materializing into the god of mischief. “Yet it still led to you coming home.”
Natasha breathes a sigh of relief, glad that her instincts were right. She helps Loki to his feet, looking around. The Tesseract landed about twenty feet away from them, but there’s no sign of Adam or Magus anywhere.
“They must’ve landed near here. They can’t be far,” Loki surmises, noticing her looking around. “Where is here, exactly?”
Natasha studies their surroundings. It’s just trees and mountains as far as she can see.
“I’m not sure,” Natasha answers. “I’d have to find a more significant landmark to be able to tell. Somewhere in the Midwest United States.”
Loki’s expression makes his disdain clear, but at least he doesn’t say anything. Natasha considers that progress.
Natasha fiddles with her comm unit. When it stops producing static, she speaks into it. “Tony? Gamora?”
A moment later, the unit statics, and then Tony’s voice is heard, loud and clear. Natasha’s knees buckle with relief, and she sits on the ground as Tony talks.
“Nat, we fucking did it. We’re back!” he rambles excitedly. “Holy shit! I gotta say, I didn’t know if we’d be able to pull this off, but we did. Go us. We definitely deserve a vacation after this. How did you all get back? Loki’s with you, right? He just sort of disappeared on us.”
“He’s with me,” Natasha answers. “Long story short, Adam had the Tesseract. He’s here somewhere too. We’re somewhere in the Midwest, near the Mississippi, if I had to guess. Where did you land?”
“Outside DC,” Tony answers. “We’ve already made contact with Steve, and he’s warned Sam, Bucky, and Bruce. We’re going to take the ship up to New York soon. You think you can lead Adam here?”
“If we go quickly, he’ll follow,” Loki says. “This is now twice we’ve duped him. He won’t take that lightly.”
“Okay. I’ll work on transportation, and meet you guys there,” Natasha says. “See you soon.”
“Roger that.”
She rests her head on her knees. She can’t believe they made it back. It’s an overwhelming feeling; she feels like she hasn’t gotten to take a break for the longest time, and the fight’s still not over. There’s no time to waste.
She gets back up to her feet and looks at Loki. “Well, let’s get a move on. Try and find some civilization before Adam finds us.”
The two of them trek through some woods for a few minutes when Natasha pauses, sensing something. Loki looks around.
Suddenly, an arrow lands in the tree directly behind him, missing his ear by just millimeters. Loki jumps to the side, his head whipping back to look at the arrow, and Natasha steps in front of him quickly, raising her hands to show they mean no harm to the shooter.
That’s a difficult thing to do when you’re facing someone who was once brainwashed by Loki, but Natasha’s ambitious.
Clint Barton is glaring at them, another arrow notched and ready to fly. His arm muscles are tensed, almost vibrating with raw energy, with pure anger.
“What the fuck is this?” he screams, his voice shaking. His mouth is quivering, and his eyes are watering, but the arrow doesn’t move an inch. Natasha knows that arrow could be plunged through both hers and Loki’s hearts if she isn’t careful about what she says next.
“I hope you told them yourself,” Natasha says, raising her chin, referencing the last conversation they had together on Vormir.
Clint takes a deep breath. “Shut up. Shut up. I watched you fall to your death. The red floating guy said that was irreversible.”
“It was,” Natasha agrees. “It happened. But that wasn’t the end.”
Clint still doesn’t let go of his bow and arrow, but his muscles relax obviously, some of the anger and tension disappearing. “Why is he here?”
“I needed him to get back,” Natasha answers truthfully.
“You should’ve killed him the second you saw him.”
“I thought about it,” Natasha says, ignoring Loki’s indignant scoff behind her. “But I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes. We don’t.”
She sees Clint consider what she’s saying. A minute later, he lowers his weapon slightly, but she knows he could still shoot both herself and Loki and kill them in less than a second if he changed his mind.
“How do I know it’s really you?” he asks, and his voice sounds so worn down, so tired, so unlike Clint, that it almost breaks Natasha’s heart, the same heart that Clint and his family helped fix.
Natasha slowly walks over to him. She stands directly in front of him, and he looks down at her. They stare into each other’s eyes for a long time, neither one moving, until Natasha gives him a small smirk, remembering a story only the two of them know.
“Glasgow, August, 2006,” she says quietly so Loki can’t hear. “Coulson didn’t know the popsicles he’d bought had Everclear in them and got wasted and went swimming in the River Clyde. We had to bring our mark to the river to kill him and then get Coulson out.”
Clint chuckles at the memory. He reaches out his right hand and Natasha grasps it with her left. They both grin at each other, knowing that Clint knew it was really Natasha the second she opened her mouth, and just wanted to hear that story again.
“It’s good to have you back,” he whispers, his eyes tearing up. Natasha hates that hers tear up too, the traitorous organs. “There was so much I still had to say to you.”
“Save it,” Natasha tells him, her lips quirking up. “Hope you stretched, old man. We’ve got a fight coming our way.”
“Yeah? Where at?” Clint asks, always ready to fight, one of the reasons Natasha loves him. “Hopefully not Budapest.”
“You wish,” Natasha teases. Then her gaze sobers. “New York. Can you get us there?”
Clint nods. He glances up at Loki. “We can’t just leave him here?”
Natasha hits his arm. “I’ve got a lot to tell you about, too. But first, we have to fight.”
“What’s the fight about?”
You’re a spy, not a soldier. Now you want to wade into a war. Why?
“There’s still some red,” she answers carefully. She thinks about her journey here, about how she’s changed. She gives Clint a reassuring smile and squeezes his hand. “And a little bit of gold, too.”