Chapter 6
By some miracle, her friends had planned ahead and ordered food already.
As they walked through the new base, she couldn’t stop staring. So much of the base was new, unfamiliar to her and her alone. The walls had changed colors, the structure of the space had shifted. Everything felt out of order, out of place. It irked her, set her instincts wild despite her internal reassurance that this place was safe. Her body didn’t buy it, and it took more effort than she’d like to admit to keep an aura of calm, to pretend to feel as relaxed as those around her.
Her restlessness relented slightly once they started eating. Everyone sat at the table together. Nat didn’t even know they had a table that big, but Rhodey had clicked a button and it kept expanding, growing until everyone could fit side by side. They’d ordered way too much food, a little bit from everywhere, and Nat hadn’t realized how hungry she’d been until they placed it in front of her. Now, a few hours later, everyone still sat at the table, conversation keeping the night alive.
It had been harder than she’d thought, at first. When she asked them to fill her in on the battle, and on the months after, she hadn’t expected their responses to make her feel so...lonely. They’d all fought a war together, grieved together, and she’d missed it. And it wasn’t just the intimate moments she’d missed — the funeral, reuniting with the Snap victims — she’d missed the rebuilding efforts, the world trying to put itself back together. She couldn’t help but feel angry, almost, that she had lost the chance to finish what she’d started. All the work she’d done for five years to keep the world in one piece, and when it finally mattered, when they finally brought everyone back, she wasn’t there to help.
She blinked, forcing herself back to the present. The team had moved past big group conversations, everyone picking at leftover food and talking in groups now. Scott sat on one end of the table describing the Quantum Realm in depth to a very suspicious-looking Okoye. Carol and Valkyrie were having their own conversation, one that Nat couldn’t quite make out, largely because right across from her Sam and Rhodey loudly debated the best parts of flying. The commotion was somehow comforting and overwhelming, and maybe it was because she’d come back from the dead and traveled through space, but Nat felt too tired to do anything but listen, simultaneously a part of and outside of the conversation.
Clint nudged her knee with his, drawing her attention. He’d barely left her side since they got back, and it felt right to have her hand in his, even if she knew it didn’t give him the same feeling it gave her. With his free hand, mostly hidden from the group by the table, he signed you ok?
She nodded, then let go of his hand to sign back: Just tired.
Is it weird? He asked with his hands, still hidden from the group. Not that it mattered if they could see — no one else knew how to sign, not fluently the way they did. She’d learned it nearly a lifetime ago, when they first became partners and he told her about being deaf. She’d told herself it was for work only, a better way for them to communicate on missions, but honestly, it was one of the first things she taught herself that she knew could never be used to hurt someone. And it was her choice — nobody else’s.
Is what weird? She asked back.
Being back home. Being alive again.
Nat shrugged. I’m fine.
Clint gave her a look, calling bullshit without speaking a word.
Nat sighed. What do you want me to say? Her hands moved quickly but subtly, as if visually whispering. Yeah, it’s weird having to play catch-up, but you guys fought a war. Some people have to catch up the past five years. What I went through is nothing compared to that.
You died, he responded, I wouldn’t call that nothing.
She shook her head. You know what I mean.
I’m just saying, he said, It’s okay not to be okay, Nat.
“Hey!” Sam’s voice saved her from coming up with a response, and they both looked up at him. “As much fun as this has been, some of us have to get up at the crack of dawn for patrol, so I’m gonna go ahead and call it a day.”
Pepper stood up. “Yeah, I should head out too — I left Morgan with a sitter, which ends in disaster at least 50% of the time.”
She walked toward Nat, who got up to hug her goodbye.
“When you’ve settled in, I have something I want to show you,” Pepper said, “something we did, well, before we knew.”
Nat nodded, and watched as the group began to disperse. Eventually all that was left were those who she assumed stayed at the base — Sam, Wanda, Bucky, and Rhodey — and Clint.
“Aren’t you gonna head out too?” She asked him. “Head back to my favorite niece and nephews?”
He shook his head. “They’ll survive a night without me. I’m gonna crash here, if it's alright.”
Nat nodded, but something about his words set off an alarm in the back of her head. She filed the thought away, made a note to bring it up in the morning.
“I can show you where your room is,” Clint added, “we started setting it back up a few days ago when we got Carol’s message.”
Nat nodded, and turned to tell Gamora to follow her, before she realized the woman no longer sat at her right as she had when they’d arrived.
“Hey, did you see Gamora leave?” She asked no one in particular, and everyone shook their heads. Rhodey grabbed a tablet from the table, searching for a moment before showing her the security footage of the base.
Nat turned to Clint. “Give me a minute?” She asked, and he nodded, pointing her in the direction she needed to go.
A little while later she opened the door to the roof. Gamora sat, back to her, facing the field where Carol had landed. Nat had no idea how Gamora even got up here, how it didn’t set off any alarms. She had half a thought to bring that up to Rhodey, but put her security concerns on the backburner. She quietly shut the door. “Nice night for star-gazing,” she said, getting Gamora’s attention. Nat came over and sat down next to her, staring up at the sky.
She’d always loved the stars. Tonight was no different. They were a map, a way to know exactly where she was at any time and in any place. Even now, having traveled beyond the stars, she found a comfort in their familiarity. They drew a boundary for her, served as another constant reminder that she’d found her way back home. They helped prove that she didn’t imagine their rescue, their homecoming; after all, Vormir didn’t have any stars.
“We’ve got a room for you,” she said, “and you’re welcome to stay here for as long as it takes for the Guardians to get back.”
Gamora nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off the sky. Nat sat with her, doing nothing to disrupt the silence that surrounded them. It didn’t bother her the way it did on Vormir, where even the air surrounding them felt dead. Here crickets chirped from beneath them, owls called out to one another in the trees around them, the wind sang its own song, a gentle breeze whispering melodies that she’d once taken for granted. She felt herself relax, feel at ease in a way she hadn’t since she’d first reconnected with Clint.
“Do you really think they’re coming?” Gamora asked, her voice filled with a fake indifference that Nat herself had mastered long ago.
“Of course they are.”
“All of them?”
Nat turned toward her, noticing the way her hands flipped her knife open and shut, open and shut. Nat recognized the motion, not as a cool and intimidating trick but as a way to fidget without showing weakness, a release for an anxiety warriors were forbidden from having.
“She’ll be here,” Nat said, placing a hand over Gamora’s and stopping the knife in its closed position. “I promise.”
“It’s my fault,” she whispered, and Nat forced the words out of her own head, quieted the whisper that had been echoing the same sentiment since they first found Carol. “If I hadn’t beat her all those times, if I hadn’t let so much of her get taken away, Thanos never would have found the stone.”
“It’s not your fault that Thanos used the stones,” she said. “And it’s not your fault that he was willing to kill you and torture Nebula to get them.”
“I wasted so much time,” she said, “time I can never get back.”
“You’ve got time now,” Nat shrugged, “at least, before Actual Time comes to kill us all.”
Gamora laughed, and Nat smiled despite the less than optimistic sentiment.
“Peter is going to throw a fit when he realizes I had my first taste of real Terran food without him.” Gamora said, a topic change that Nat embraced.
“What’d you think of it?” She asked, and Gamora’s face answered the question for her. Nat laughed. “Really? That bad?”
“It wasn’t bad,” she said quickly, too quickly for sincerity, “It was just...different. Odd.” She looked up. “Kind of like your stars.”
Nat looked back up. “Yeah, when I left Russia, the first thing I noticed was that the stars were different.”
“Peter told me about that -- how the stars shifts on your planet. That must be strange,” she said, “having the sky change so frequently.”
“I actually found it comforting,” she answered. “Everywhere I went they changed, just as I did. It felt like I had a partner, someone I could trust, long before I met Clint.”
They both sat for a minute, staring up at the sky.
“It must feel nice to be home,” Gamora said, and Nat tried to smile but found she no longer had the energy.
“It...it’s different. Odd,” she said with a smile, “in a way I didn’t expect it to be.”
“How so?”
Nat thought for a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. “I guess I’d convinced myself that if we could bring everybody back, it would feel as if the snap had never happened. Everything would feel normal again.”
“And It doesn’t?”
“Not yet,” Nat said, before turning her body to face Gamora. “Will it ever? Are we ever going to go back to the way we were before Thanos?” She had wrestled with that question for the past five years, and never once come up with a promising answer. So much had changed in the time it took to fix the damage done five years ago, and even with the knowledge that time travel existed, she was beginning to feel like nothing could ever be the way it once was.
“For me, ‘before Thanos’ doesn’t really exist,” Gamora answered. “He slaughtered my village when I was a child. My memories of home are few and faded, reduced to mere glimpses of a life I once lived. I’ve already spent days and nights crying because of him, begging the universe to undo what had been done. Eventually, I realized that the universe doesn’t particularly care about us, so it was best to focus on surviving each new day as opposed to trying to go back to the old ones.”
Nat turned back toward the sky, letting the words echo around them for a moment. The more she thought about it, the more she felt her calm unravel. She didn’t have the energy for the truth, not today. “Rocket was right,” she said instead, “you are the smart one.”
Even though she kept her body facing forward, she could see Gamora smile out of the corner of her eye. Nat stood up, and turned to offer Gamora a hand. The woman took it, and together they made their way back inside. Tomorrow, Nat thought as the door shut behind her, I’ll figure everything out tomorrow.