Chapter 1
Natasha woke up with a gasp.
Her first concern was that she was awake. She remembered letting go, giving herself up for Clint, for the stone. She hadn’t felt an ounce of regret as she fell. She’d make that choice for him every time, had prepared herself to close her eyes and never open them again.
Her second concern was that when she did open her eyes, a green woman was standing over her, holding a knife inches from her face.
Nat flung herself backwards. The woman looked at her like Nat’s presence confused her, and she figured her own face likely wore a similar expression. Standing up, she tried to figure out what was happening. Something must have gone wrong, because if she was alive…
“Where am I? Where’s the stone?” She asked the green woman.
The stranger just looked at her. She lowered the knife, but didn’t put it away. “You came here for the stone?” Nat nodded. “But that’s impossible,” the stranger said, more to herself than to Nat. The knife danced around her hands, a nervous tick that Nat found incredibly familiar.
“What? Why? We did everything Red Skull told us to. Clint should have the stone, and I should be dead.”
“How can your...Clint…have the stone,” the woman said, “if Thanos already has it?”
The realization hit her, and she chided herself for not putting it together sooner. “You’re Gamora. Nebula’s sister.”
Gamora’s eyes lit up. “You know Nebula?”
“Yeah, she’s working with us. We’re trying to save the world.”
Nat explained everything that had happened: the snap, killing Thanos, the five years it took them to find a way to fix everything. A myriad of emotions flickered across Gamora’s face, but she remained silent the entire time. When Nat finished, they both sat in silence, and Nat wondered how she hadn’t fallen apart, how it must have felt for her to wake up and realize the world as she knew it no longer existed.
Gamora was the first to speak. “How are we alive then? Who has the stone?”
“I’m not sure. But if I’m alive, then Clint must not have it.”
“And if I’m alive,” Gamora added, “neither does Thanos.”
“It’s back where it belongs,” a voice came from above them, and they looked up to see Red Skull floating down toward them.
“I don’t understand,” Gamora said.
“The stone requires balance,” he said, “a soul for a soul. When the stone was returned, so was the soul that had been exchanged for it.”
Nat‘s face scrunched up in confusion. “They brought it back? Why?”
“The actions behind it are of no concern to me,” Red Skull said, “my sole concern is the stone.”
“Thanos would never give the stone back,” Gamora said. The woman was shaking, with fear or rage or maybe both. “I know my father. How. Am I. Alive?”
“Balance,” Red Skull answered. “The events that led to your sacrifice can no longer happen; therefore, the debt is no longer owed.”
“I still don’t understand,” Gamora yelled, and Nat noticed that the tears in her eyes threatening to spill onto her face at any moment. “I remember it — how could it not—“
“They did it,” Nat whispered. Gamora looked at her, confused, but for the first time since waking up she felt a sense of clarity. “They killed him — a past him, probably, and now he can’t kill you in the future.”
Gamora looked at her. A few tears left streaks down her face. “He’s dead? Are you sure?”
Nat smiled. “He has to be. I don’t know how, or what they did, but I can feel it — we won.”
Gamora shook her head. “Then how am I here? How am I alive if he — if the future has changed?”
“Time is a fickle creature,” Red Skull answered. “She does as She pleases. She is not some linear concept, where events happen in one predetermined order. She is a spiral, an explosion of universes and contexts, a tangled web of every possible occurrence. She is not something to be messed with — it is yet to be seen how She will react to your people’s meddling.”
“So the past can change, but the present will stay the same?” Nat asked. “We’ll still remember the snap, even though technically it never happened now?”
“It happened and it did not,” Red Skull said. “Your universe has warped itself. The past no longer fits with the present. There are errors,” he turned to Gamora, “that have become permanent fixtures in an unstable universe.”
Nat’s brain hurt just trying to comprehend everything, but Gamora seemed to be one step ahead of her.
“You say Time is a being,” Gamora said, “and that She won’t be happy with whatever they’ve done to ruin the timeline.”
“That’s correct,” Red Skull confirmed.
“Will She retaliate? What happens when She decides to deal with whatever just happened?”
“Oh, yes,” Red Skull said, “She will certainly have her revenge on your people for tampering with her delicate web.” His monotone voice, Nat thought, somehow made the statement much more chilling.
“When?” She asked. “And how do we fight Time?”
“It’s hard to say,” Red Skull answered. “She moves at Her own pace, one that none can predict. She could come within hours; She could make Her appearance eons from now. And you do not,” he said, a semblance of emotion underlining his tone for the first time, “fight time. It’s a battle none can win.”
“Then how can we stop Her?” Nat asked.
“That is none of my concern,” Red Skull said, floating back up as the words hung in the air around them. “I might suggest, however, that you start with an apology.”
“Wait!” Gamora shouted. “How do we get out of here?”
“That is none of my concern,” Red Skull said, his voice echoing across Vormir, filling the space around them. As soon as the echo of his words finished reverberating across the stones, he was gone.
Natasha looked at Gamora. Here was the woman whose name she’d known for five years, whose death had fueled Nebula more than anyone else’s. How many times had she tried and failed to get Nebula to talk about her, to properly grieve her? She felt a connection to this woman, yet she was surprised to realize she knew next to nothing about her.
She did know one thing. “You’re the space expert,” she said, “you have any ideas on how we get out of here?”