Chapter 2
Natasha knew she’d only been on two planets before, but this was officially her least favorite one.
They’d crossed through every possible climate. They’d scaled mountains, trekked through the snow, crossed a desert of dust and sand, all in their attempt to find...something. She didn’t know what they were looking for, how they planned on getting off Vormir, but neither of them could handle sitting in what should have been their graves any longer.
They hadn’t spoken since Gamora declared they needed to find a way out and started walking. Part of Nat desperately wanted to talk to her, to figure out this woman who had become a puzzle over the past five years, but instead she left the silence alone, taking a mental inventory as they crossed through another field. Part of her suit had broken on the fall. The mask still came up, but her time compass had shattered. Not that she’d use it — she had no idea what year they’d woken up in, not to mention she couldn’t leave Gamora. She didn’t know if her com still worked, but it didn’t look broken, so maybe they could salvage something from it.
But even if you could, her thoughts whispered, the odds you could get it functioning, make it useful with just the suit for extra supplies...it didn’t look great. She often prided herself on her mind, on her ability to get out of every possible situation. Ever since New York, when she’d fought aliens with a pistol and come out the other end, she’d known she was in way over her head. She refused, though, to be left in the dust, to let her lack of powers or alien DNA stop her; she always adapted, found a way to hold her own and save her ass. Even with the snap, she’d known a solution existed, and the fact that she had woken up meant she had likely been right. Now, however, as she continued on their seemingly endless journey across the barren planet, she wondered whether her luck had run its course.
They passed through the field and found themselves below another mountain. “If we can scale this,” Gamora said, the first time either of them had spoken, “we might be able to find a way out.”
“Okay, wait,” Nat said. Gamora had already started climbing by the time Nat spoke, and she stared down at her from three feet in the air. “How is climbing another mountain going to get us any closer to getting off this planet?”
“Doing nothing won’t help us.”
“I’m not saying we do nothing, I just think that—“
“What would you suggest we do then?” Gamora snapped, “what else is there to do?”
“We should stop wandering aimlessly, try and come up with a real rescue plan.”
“I’m sorry,” Gamora said, rolling her eyes, “I didn’t realize you Terrans were so fond of waiting for others to save you.”
“How many people come to Vormir usually, huh?” Nat asked, her agitation slipping into her tone. “Because there wasn’t a lot of space traffic on my flight in.”
Gamora froze, still hanging on the side of the mountain. She closed her eyes, and Nat regretted letting her irritation out. They wanted the same thing -- fighting about it wouldn’t solve anything. “No one,” Gamora whispered, “no one comes to Vormir. Nobody’s coming for us.”
She jumped down and sat on the ground. Nat sat next to her, and hesitantly put a hand on her knee. “Nobody’s coming to save us,” she agreed, “unless we can tell them we’re here.”
Gamora looked at her. “You think you can get a message to your Terran friends?”
She shook her head. “They’re too far away, and the tech isn’t advanced enough, not if all we have are pieces of my suit. We gotta call someone else, someone closer.”
“The Guardians could be anywhere,” Gamora said, “there’s a chance they could hear it.”
Nat nodded, “We can try and send out an SOS signal as far as we can. Maybe if they’re out here, they’ll catch it. But,” she said, “There is one person I know who spends most of her time in space — if anyone’s gonna hear us, I think it’s her.”
Gamora nodded, standing up. “We should start then. Now. We can work in the field, and once we get a signal we can climb the highest mountain on Vormir.” She reached down a hand for Nat, looking at her impatiently.
Nat accepted the outstretched hand and stood up. They began walking, and Gamora moved so quickly Nat nearly had to jog to keep up. She walked with such purpose: back straight, head up, and wearing an expression that could kill. She’d pulled her knife out again, and let it dance around her fingers. Nat didn’t scare easy, but she pitied the fool who ended up on the other end of that gaze. She laughed when she realized where she’d seen it before.
“What is it?” Gamora asked.
“God, you’re so much like your sister,” she said with a smile.
Gamora froze for an instant, before continuing her stride at a slower pace. “How is she?”
“She’s…” Nat started, thinking about her new ally, her new friend. “She misses you. A lot. Wouldn’t say much about you, but the only time I ever saw her get emotional was when your name came up.”
Gamora nodded. “Did she...I mean, has she been alone? Is she part of your team now?”
“She spent a lot of time with Rocket,” Nat said. “They relied on one another. Did most of their missions together. She hung out with Rhodey, too.”
“Rhodey?”
“He’s a friend,” Nat said, “Good man. Been through a lot. They worked well together. She seemed...I wouldn’t say happy, but less angry when she was with him.”
Gamora smiled. “Less angry is good.”
They walked in silence for a while. When they reached the field, Nat clicked the button on her suit, letting it cover her body before trying to take it off. “I think we can try and use some of the tech in the suit to amplify the com’s range,” she said, already working to disassemble it. “You’ll probably know more than I will about how to—“ Nat looked up, and stopped talking when she saw Gamora staring out at the sky.
Nat looked up, too. The lack of sun made the sky a mix a blues and grays, a depressing mosaic fit for Vormir. The darkness made it feel as if she stared out directly into space, into the abyss that kept them captive. It unnerved her, fueled her restlessness, but Gamora stared at it as if she saw something else, as if the sight calmed her.
“Do you think...do you really think everyone from the snap is alive?” Gamora asked. She kept her gaze upwards, as if the answer laid out there, and Nat remembered the man Nebula described as her “idiot lover” — Quill, the one they had planned to steal the power stone from.
Nat put a hand on her shoulder, and Gamora turned toward her. “They have to be.”
Gamora nodded, and looked down at the tech. “It’s not the best selection, but we could probably come up with some sort of amplifier out of this.”
Nat nodded. “Alright,” She said, shoving the restlessness and the anxiety away and replacing it with the determination that got her through the past five years, “Let’s get to work.”