The grief of losing Natasha comes over him slowly, in bits and pieces.
It’s been a scant few hours since Clint had broken the news, but Steve swears it feels like days, no, years , already. The knowledge of what’s happened suffocates him like a thick, dark fog. Sits on his chest like a dead weight.
It’s like his mind can’t process just what’s happened. Like it doesn’t want to.
Natasha and death just seem so incongruous, in his head.
Missing? Sure. Undercover? Well, always . Natasha knew how to disappear and reappear at whim like no one’s business. But she’s always been a resourceful one. Smarter and quicker and faster than all of them.
Catching her was like trying to catch falling water in a sieve. An exercise in futility, for all parties involved.
So he closes his eyes, and tries desperately to convince himself that what he’s just heard is not real.
Steve doesn’t know how long he sits there in a haze. How many hours pass, before he finally drags himself through the compound, past the living room, past the kitchen.
And then he sees it.
A plate, left on the kitchen counter. On it is a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich, cut into two neat, diagonal pieces.
It had been her breakfast from that morning, before they’d entered the Quantum Realm. She’d been smiling, teasing, laughing -- the happiest he’d seen her in so damn long.
(Steve knew she’d been putting up a brave front. As she always did.)
It’s so innocuous, really, but staring down at the dish Steve suddenly finds that the room around him is spinning. That he can’t help the loud sob that wracks his body, coming from somewhere deep and sharp and painful in his chest.
There’s something about staring down at the sandwich, realizing that this last vestige of her presence is there but she isn’t, that finally breaks him. Opens up the floodgate of emotion, one that he’s been battling all day.
That’s what it takes. For him to realize that she’s not just absent or missing.
She was his best friend, once. And now she’s simply gone .
Clint tells him more details when he’s ready. Everything that had happened at Vormir.
How Nat had fought him. Her life, in exchange for the stone. The ultimate sacrifice.
Her last words to him, soft and reassured -- it’s okay .
She’d always been so careful with their hearts. Right up to the very end.
Time beats forward, relentless and merciless as always.
They’re hardly given time to grieve her before they’re called back to the mission at hand. Because time waits for no one. Not the good or the wicked.
Nat’s the one who’s given them a shot at this, he reminds himself. Any of this.
So he carries on. With the mission. Her mission.
Whatever it takes , he reminds himself. Whatever it takes.
And in his heart of hearts, Steve hopes she will be able forgive them for these small transgressions.
In the end, they manage to hold a real, proper funeral for her. It’s a small, private affair, held a few days after Tony’s.
Steve gathers a few of her belongings for the ceremony, the ones that haven’t been claimed by someone else. Clint keeps her arrow necklace. Wanda, a tan leather jacket. Bruce, a tiny bit of her perfume.
In the end, the event is attended by a handful of people she’d loved, whether they’d claimed a piece of her earthly possessions for themselves or not. Thor. Rhodey. Sam. Even Okoye, who she’d grown so close to during the five years that had passed.
Nick Fury is in attendance, too. He manages a few words about Natasha, her life and her legacy, before he breaks down and his stern, somber face dissolves into tears.
She’d practically been like a daughter to him, Steve remembers. And she’d loved him like he was her own father, too.
Hell, she’d grieved for him once. It seems like a lifetime ago, now.
For him to be doing the same for her, now, under these circumstances, is simply too much to process. Steve closes his eyes and tries to remember how to breathe.
“Don't let her be forgotten,” are the last words Nick manages to get out before stepping off the podium. “ Don’t let her be forgotten .”
Steve is the last one to speak. He doesn’t know how he came to be worthy of that honor. Frankly, he doesn’t know if he’s the right choice. But he can’t find it in himself to protest.
She’d meant everything to him. He can’t be damned what anyone thinks, anymore.
His speech is ready. He sketches out her life, the journey she took. How their paths had come to intersect, and then stayed that way.
Steve’s got an ending, already prepared. A clean way, to wrap it all up. But looking out to this tiny of crowd of her friends, no, her family , he finds that unscripted words fall out of his mouth, instead.
“Natasha -- Natasha didn’t have any known family members we could call today. Whenever we asked, she always said we were her family. But she was ours , too.”
A stillness passes over all of them. Steve pauses a moment, trying not to let the emotion overwhelm him. When he finds that he’s steady again, he continues.
“She told me once, that even after all this time -- she was still trying to be better.” Because she was relentless, like that. Stubborn and hard-headed, just like him.
“I hope, wherever she is, that she knows -- she was the best of all of us, in the end.”
She was. No question about it.
“But mostly,” he murmurs, “I hope she knows that she was loved. She was so, so loved.”
Because that was just the truth of it all, wasn’t it? She’d loved them. Enough to make the ultimate sacrifice. And they’d loved her back, just the same. Even if they’d never quite been able to put it into words.
Now, at last, he can’t keep the tears from his eyes. Below him, he finds that they’re all misty-eyed. Clint swallows hastily, wipes away a free falling tear, while Wanda bites back a sob and Sam rubs a soothing circle on her back. Steve closes his eyes, wipes away his own stray, watery tears, before he continues.
“A few years ago, she told me something I’ll never forget. Such a Natasha turn of phrase, really.”
“‘ We have what we have when we have it .’ she said. Just as simple as that.”
“Well -- we were lucky to have her, while we had her. She was definitely right about that.”
“So thank you , Nat. For all of it. It was beautiful and wonderful while it lasted.”
Steve is the last one to leave. Even after everyone’s packed and left, he finds himself alone, staring out onto the lake. Watching the colors of the setting sun.
The sky is brilliant -- painting itself in reds and oranges that remind him of her so strongly he swears it’s more than coincidence.
If she were here right now, he knows what she’d say. Something she’d said to him, so many years ago, when they both thought they were about to die:
Where else am I gonna get a view like this?
He hopes some lone, wandering breeze will take his message to her, wherever she is. Preferably somewhere with a view like this one.
Mostly, though, he just hopes that she’s happy. That her soul is finally at peace, something she’d always deserved.
She hadn’t just wiped out the red from her ledger. She’d obliterated it.
He finds himself repeating what he'd said, just a few hours before:
Thank you, Nat . Thank you for everything.
Then, the promise, she’d made him, all fun and flippant, right before she’d left --
See you in a minute.
He'd never dream to keep her waiting.