Chapter 11
Natasha readjusts the knives strapped to her thighs as she exits the Quinjet that had been parked at the Bartons’ farm. Clint steps out behind her, followed by Loki, who had been handcuffed at Clint’s insistence.
Laura exits last, wrapping her cardigan around herself tightly, chewing her bottom lip. She was going to fly the Quinjet back to the farm after dropping off the other three. She had insisted on learning how to pilot it after the Avengers had stayed over. Clint had been hesitant about it, so Natasha had done it instead.
Although with the way Laura’s acting now, Natasha is worried she’ll forget that that happened. The brunette had been shocked to see Natasha, but other than a brief hug, she had stayed silent for the entire ride to New York.
Clint and Laura briefly kiss each other and hug tightly. Natasha’s breath catches in her throat as she watches them, two of the people she cares most about this world, and can’t believe she almost lost them for good. She forces herself to look away for a second to give them privacy and catches Loki eyeing her curiously.
When the couple pulls apart, Natasha steps towards Laura, giving her a friendly smirk. “No goodbye for me?”
Laura regards her seriously. Without looking away from Natasha’s eyes, she says, “Babe, give me and Nat a minute, please?”
Clint gives Natasha a somewhat apologetic grimace as he shoves Loki in front of him, the two men walking away to give Laura and Natasha some privacy.
“You died, Nat,” Laura whispers, tears forming in her eyes. “We mourned you. The kids didn’t go to school for the last few weeks of the school year. I…” She shakes her head, looking away into the distance. “Clint told me how it happened. After everything the three of us have been through together…” She shakily laughs, the tears flowing freely down her cheeks now. “You thought you could just leave.”
Natasha inhales sharply. She had known that Laura would be sad about her death, but she didn’t expect her to be mad. After all, the choice was between her or Clint.
“Don’t tell me that you were the better choice over Clint, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you myself for good this time,” Laura sniffles. She looks at Natasha, suddenly the most serious she’s been in years. “I know what Clint did during those five years. If he hadn’t told me, I would’ve found out by the news. Now that government agencies and law enforcement have their numbers back up, there’s an international hunt for the masked killer known as Ronin. He’s estimated to have killed over two hundred people.”
Natasha furrows her brows in worry. If the world is looking for Clint, that not only puts Laura and the kids at risk, but also all of their friends who knew Clint was Ronin.
“We’ll be okay,” Laura says firmly after noticing Natasha’s expression. “I’m just saying…I’m extremely glad my husband is alive. I am. I became indebted to you a long time ago, Nat. You dying so Clint doesn’t have to is immeasurable. I’ll always owe you. But I’m allowed to be angry that you fought to die instead of someone who just killed two hundred people.”
“I don’t judge people on their worst mistakes,” Natasha replies quietly. “You two didn’t.”
“The best decision we ever made,” Laura chuckles, pulling Natasha in for a hug. “We have a lot to figure out. But that will all come later.” She unwraps herself from the hug and rests her hands on Natasha’s shoulders. “Go save the world. And come back home. Both of you.”
~
Natasha had never considered herself particularly well-liked. She had a very small handful of people she would consider friends, and that was fine with her. She’d never been raised to believe that having many friends or a large following was desirable.
But looking around Times Square now, Natasha can’t help but wonder if she’s been missing something her whole life.
All around, the screens on every building and large billboards and posters everywhere are not only celebrating the return of half of the population, but also the Avengers, and most specifically, commemorating herself and Tony. Natasha sees a car with a bumper sticker that reads, Honk if Natasha Romanoff saved your life!
When an old picture of her and Tony together in 2012 displays across the Times Square MEGA Screen, Natasha can’t help but grin. Accompanying the picture is the caption, A decade as Avengers. Many more in our hearts. To Iron Man and the Black Widow – thank you.
Natasha’s awe at the declarations of thanks and love is not matched by Okoye, however. The Wakandan had been sent to Times Square to meet Natasha, Clint, and Loki and take them to the Avengers Compound.
“Americans,” she says with disdain, glancing around at the bright billboards. “So…loud.”
“Loud, but dumb,” Natasha agrees, looking around. The supposedly dead Black Widow, Hawkeye, Black Panther’s head of Wakanda’s armed forces, and the god who once tried to destroy New York are all standing in the center of Times Square, and no one is paying them any attention. “We haven’t been spotted yet. Let’s get a move on and keep it that way.”
“Remind me again why we couldn’t simply get flown in to the compound,” Loki says as Okoye ushers them to an empty alleyway where a sleek black car is parked.
“Remind me, are you supposed to be talking?” Clint snaps, pushing Loki into the backseat.
He looks at Natasha, and the two of them both blurt, “Shotgun!” at the same time.
“Children,” Okoye mutters. “Barton, get in the front seat before you murder the Asgardian. Apologies, Nat.”
Natasha shakes her head good-naturedly and slides into the backseat with Loki. “Clint didn’t want Laura anywhere near the compound,” she explains. “Plus, Tony already set the defense system up so that anything larger than one of his suits is going to be shot at. Okoye was in Times Square anyway, for…”
“A meeting with some members of the United Nations,” Okoye answers, turning on the car. “Acclimating a country to suddenly having previously dead citizens is a difficult task. When Captain Rogers called, T’Challa left to go to the compound before I did.”
“How fast can this thing go, exactly?” Clint asks as Okoye starts the car. “The compound’s at least two hours away with traffic, and we’re trying not to be seen.”
“The Princess Shuri has been very eager the past couple of weeks to make up for the five years she was gone,” Okoye answers cryptically. “This is one of her newest inventions.”
“She made a car?” Clint asks, in the same tone he might question a fellow parent about their kids’ sports team. “That’s pretty cool, actually.”
Natasha smirks to herself. She’d only met Shuri once before, but she’d given Bruce a run for his money, so she knows they won’t be disappointed now.
Okoye enters coordinates into the car. A minute later, the car begins buzzing rapidly, and smoke pours from the back of the car. Natasha tightly grabs onto the car door. She trusts Okoye with her life, she does, but the state of the vehicle isn’t very comforting.
Natasha’s breath catches in her throat as the car immediately lurches forward and spins. Her vision blacks out for a second to adjust to the speed at which they just moved, and she rolls down the window while staring at the floor to get some fresh air.
“About time,” a voice that sounds suspiciously like Tony Stark chirps from outside.
Natasha slowly turns her head. Outside the window is Iron Man himself, standing outside of the Avengers Compound.
Natasha’s shock is evident in her silence. Just a second ago they’d been in the middle of Times Square. Okoye smirks, her pride in Shuri’s apparent teleportation device clear.
“I must say, that was impressive, for a Midgardian invention,” Loki muses, exiting the car. He stares up at the Compound, with its dark steel defense system already intact and prepared.
Okoye barely spares him a glance as she begins walking toward the front entrance, where a group of people is gathered.
“The defense system is up and in place so the interior can’t get any worse, but it was pretty beat up after the fight,” Tony explains as they begin walking toward the group. “It’s going to be a little bit before everything is back to the way it was.”
“Maybe it doesn’t need to be,” Natasha muses. She jostles Tony’s shoulder. “We were in space on alien planets. If that’s not inspiration for a new compound, I don’t know what is.”
As they reach the group, everyone falls silent. Natasha knows Tony has already been here for some time and reunited with everyone, and she wishes she could have witnessed Pepper’s reaction, and she knows everyone would have been ecstatic to have him back. For herself, she had expected only a handful of people to actually be emotional at her return.
She was wrong. She’s not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
“Natasha!” Wanda breathes, the first one to break the silence. The witch flies forward, wrapping her arms tightly around Natasha’s neck. “I’m so sorry…the last thing we ever did was argue about me and Vis being late. I thought I would never get a chance to fix it.”
At this revelation, Natasha feels her eyes watering. For her, that had been over five years ago, something long forgotten, but for Wanda, it had been just a few weeks ago.
Natasha squeezes her back tightly, desperately trying to keep her voice from wavering. “It’s okay, Wanda. It’s okay. All that matters is that we got you back. We got everyone back.”
Wanda pulls away from her, looking seriously into her eyes. “You got everyone back, Natasha. Without you, none of us would be here.” She steps back, gesturing to the group of people behind her.
Natasha looks around in awe. People she’d only heard about and had never gotten to meet, like Dr. Strange or Peter Quill, are standing together, staring at her and Tony with mixed reactions of surprise and respect. Natasha would be lying if she said she doesn’t appreciate it.
“Look who’s finally here!” Tony says, clapping his hands once and gesturing to Natasha. “The Black Widow herself, ladies and gentlemen, and…tree and raccoon, Natasha Romanoff.”
The next few minutes are spent exchanging hello’s and hugs, but Natasha knows this giddy feeling isn’t meant to last. After hugging Thor, Natasha steps back and clears her throat.
“I’m not sure how much Tony and Gamora got to tell you all,” she says, “but there’s a being from a planet called Sovereign coming here called Adam Warlock. He somehow split himself into two more entities, called Magus and the Goddess. They’re fast, and they’re strong, and they’re smart.”
“And they’re down one,” Loki adds, the first time he’s spoken since arrival. It seems as if people are noticing him for the first time. Natasha watches as Thor furrows his eyebrows. “I took care of the Goddess whilst still in space, so it will be just Adam and Magus. Their goal is to rid the world of all evil, including potential evils, which in turn, includes all of us. But there’s a lot more of them than us. I believe—”
“You believe what?” Thor interrupts, marching forward. He stops directly in front of Loki, chest heaving. He points to his brother’s chest. “You…have died…in front of me countless times now, Loki. Why are we to believe your lies?” He grabs a fistful of Loki’s shirt. “Is any of this even real? Is that truly Tony and Natasha? Are you even my brother?”
Loki glances down at Thor’s protruding stomach. “Are you even my brother? It seems the years have not been kind to you. The last I saw you, you were fit and strong, assisting Tony on the floor of the Stark Tower lobby. What hap—”
“What?” Thor inhales, turning to face Tony and Natasha. “This is…”
“Still your brother,” Natasha answers cautiously. “Just…from an alternate reality.”
“Yeah, us traveling through time to fix our reality messed with a couple of others,” Tony adds. “Surprise, surprise. It’s a darned shame no one warned us not do it, but—”
“The repercussions of that will show their hands eventually,” Dr. Strange interrupts. He nods at the sky. “But first, we’ve got incoming.”
Everyone follows his gaze. Natasha swears to herself when she sees Adam’s ship fly in above the Compound.
“This will be easy,” Thor claims confidently, reaching out his hand to the sky. A moment later, Stormbreaker flies into his grip. “Two of them against the entirety of us. They don’t stand a chance.”
Tony’s uncharacteristic silence makes Natasha whip her head towards him. “Tony, Adam’s about to try and blow us to smithereens in the next thirty seconds, so if you have something to tell us, say it now.”
“Okay, okay!” Tony says, holding up his hands innocently. He sighs. “This isn’t definite, but…Bruce is inside with Steve, Rocket, Sam, and Rhodey, because…I don’t think the Compound is fully healed, I guess you could say. One hard hit to it and everything within a mile radius of here could be blown up. Including us.”
“Healed?” Quill scoffs, earning him an elbow to the stomach from Gamora. After wincing, he shakes his head and looks back at Tony. “It’s a big, ugly building, not a living creature. I thought you said these defense systems would…defend…really well.”
“This building is stacked with artificial intelligence and labs full of chemicals you could never dream of,” Tony counters. “It was destroyed by the guy who managed to kill half of all living things. So, yes, Dancing Queen, it needs to heal. It’s vulnerable.”
Natasha eyes the ship again. Not letting the Compound get seriously damaged is definitely a barrier, but she’s fought with worse odds before and come out alive. Most of the time.
On instinct, she nearly opens her mouth to tell Steve to call out the play before remembering that not only is he inside and not in proximity to the fight, but he’s also over one hundred years old and physically wouldn’t be much help. That’s going to take a lot of getting used to, especially now that they’re home.
Home. Natasha likes the sound of that. She’s not going to let this go that easily.
“Alright,” she says, mainly to Tony, but she’s surprised when everyone quiets and looks attentively to her. She supposes sacrificing your life will earn you a legitimate leadership role with the people you died to save. “Thor’s right. We’ve got a hell of a lot of hitters with us. Don’t underestimate Adam and Magus, but…” She gives everyone a small smirk. “If everyone gets a turn showing off a party trick, I’m not being too cocky when I say I think we’ve got this.”
Natasha doesn’t possess Steve’s giddy optimism, as Tony has labeled it, but she tries not to think negatively about her own odds when in a fight. She’s good at being unbiased, something she desperately needed to be in the Red Room, when you could be forced to choose which girls got to wake up in the morning and which ones would never wake again. The chances of them winning this fight against Adam and Magus are high. That’s a fact.
The ship halts suddenly, and a beam of light bursts out from the bottom of the ship. A second later, Adam and Magus appeared below the ship, and began stalking toward the group.
Clint grabs Natasha’s hand suddenly. They’ve held hands countless times before, but she thinks this might be the most desperate, the most rushed, it’s ever felt.
“I already lost you once before. I’m not losing you again,” he grits out, softly enough for only her to hear. His black tinted sunglasses make it seem like he’s studying Adam, but Natasha knows that he’s looking earnestly into her own eyes. “Go inside. Please.”
“We’re not fighting over this again,” Natasha murmurs. “We can both do this now. It’s not one or the other. We’re a team.”
“I think good ol’ STD disbanded around the time its handler died and then came back to life,” Clint chuckles, but there’s no humor in his voice.
“Would it seriously make you feel better if I went and hid inside?” Natasha asks, exasperated.
Clint’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “W-what…yes. Yes! You know it would.”
“Well, too bad.”
Adam continues to march toward them. Without warning, Thor bellows loudly, and the white, wispy clouds in the sky transform into angry, dark storm clouds. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and lightning crackles, lighting up Stormbreaker. An aura of raw power and strength emits from the god, and it’s enough to make Loki sputter and Adam halt in his footsteps.
That split second is all they need. Dr. Strange’s cape flies him up in the air, and strong, fiery orange whips emit from his hands. He controls them to wrap around both Adam’s and Magus’s necks. Some of the other group rush toward Magus and the ship itself to destroy it, and Natasha figures there’s enough people covering those two items so that she can focus all of her attention on Adam.
She channels her anger at him into something productive and delivers a swift uppercut to his jaw. Her Sovereign strength makes him stagger back, and she uses this opportunity to climb up his back and wrap her thighs around his neck, choking him.
Tony and Pepper, both in their suits, fly in front of Adam. Tony uses the beams to fire at Adam’s legs. The blast makes him wobble, but his gold skin seems to be an extraordinary defense barrier.
Natasha takes one of the knives strapped to her thigh and plunges it into Adam’s neck, making him howl with pain. He twists suddenly, flinging her off of his back. More people rush in to attack him.
By the time she stands up, both Adam and Magus are subdued. Natasha would be lying to herself if she said she hadn’t been expecting more of a fight. Compared to the Time Heist missions, this seems extremely anticlimactic.
But it also feels safe, something she hasn’t felt in a long time. For once, she doesn’t feel like there’s a threat around the corner, or that she has to lose sleep for the next month to take care of an issue.
“What do you want to do with them, Natasha?” Gamora asks.
“Once the Compound is finished, we can set up a state-of-the-art prison. It can make Guantanamo Bay look like summer camp,” Tony suggests, his hand raised at Adam, ready to blast again at any second. “Just say the word, Nat.”
“I don’t like the idea of them here alive,” Clint counters. He nods his head toward Loki. “Hell, I don’t even like him here. Send them somewhere else. It’s not our job to take them.”
“But it is our duty,” Wanda argues. “I was viewed by many as a criminal. What if you all had killed me instead of—”
“Stop.”
They fall silent at the harshness in Natasha’s voice. The argument seems too similar to when the Avengers broke apart over the Sokovia Accords, and Natasha is not about to let her family be broken apart again, especially over a threat that she helped bring to them.
“Adam and Magus were willing to kill this whole planet, if they needed to. Potential evil,” Natasha explains, looking at Wanda. “The situation is vastly different than yours. We can’t risk this.” She turns to face the whole group. “They were going to kill us. They die.”
Loki grabs her arm. “If you do this,” he warns her quietly, “it will send a message to the rest of the universe. They may not react to the message, but it will be there.”
“And what would that message be?” Natasha asks, looking up at him curiously.
“That you are a fierce leader, one not to be messed with. That you are a force to be reckoned with, someone others should fear,” Loki answers.
“I am.”
“There could be dangerous consequences to your actions,” he continues. “Believe me, I have firsthand experience in that department.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Natasha tells him. “But this is done.” She nods her head, and Thor raises Stormbreaker, beheading Magus, and Dr. Strange uses the orange whips to do the same to Adam.
Natasha stares at the lifeless bodies in shock for a moment, flashing back to the same thing happening with Thanos over five years ago. She senses the same familiar feelings of despair and guilt, of accomplishment and relief.
She realizes how tired she is. She hadn’t really rested during the five years after the snap, and while everyone may have gotten to after bringing everyone back, she had been working on getting home.
Clint must sense her sudden shift of energy, because he rushes over to catch her when her suddenly jelly legs collapse. He walks her over to the nearest bench, and she gratefully leans her head on his shoulder. The two of them watch the rest of the group begin cleaning and patching each other up, and someone makes a call for the others inside to come out.
There’s a sense of community and rebuilding that Natasha hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s a bit unsettling, but definitely welcome. She sighs, satisfied for now. She’s too tired to think about anything else.
“We’ll Skype the kids in a minute. They’re going to be thrilled,” Clint tells her, grinning. He wraps an arm around her shoulder. “Man, the whole world is going to be thrilled. What a legend. Died to save everyone, and managed to save yourself too and come home. I mean, what’s going through your mind?”
Natasha smiles.
“On the way here, there were many rocks in the road,” she answers, looking up at the sky. “And I’m so thankful that somehow, it led to me coming home.”