Chapter 8
A week passed.
Nat settled into a new routine. In more ways than one, it mirrored her post-snap routine: she monitored civilian and governmental adjustment, tried to set up better communication between the Avengers and their allies, and trained mercilessly. Despite the fact that months had passed since the snap victims came back to life, the world was still in a delicately controlled chaos, and the Avengers themselves weren’t doing much better. The loss of Tony hit deep, and the absence of Steve in any sort of leadership role didn’t help. Thor seemed to be doing better, according to the others, but he’d left with the Guardians, and Bruce had all but disappeared from the public eye. The team and the world were desperate for leadership, for a familiar face to take control, and Nat knew it had to be her.
A knock on the door grabbed her attention. Wanda walked in, lingering in the doorway of the control room. Nat had spent all morning there, trying to create a comprehensive list of the different time lord who had apparently helped them fight Thanos after she died, just in case they needed to call upon allies in this inevitable fight against Time.
She turned her eyes away from the list and up to meet the young woman standing in the doorway. She’d acted as a shadow to Nat this week, finding reasons to be in the same room as her no matter what. Nat didn’t mind. She knew firsthand how loss could mess with your confidence, with your mind, and Wanda had already been through the ringer in that department.
“What’s up?”
“Do you think,” Wanda started, “maybe we could keep the lessons going? I know that must feel like forever ago to you, but—“
“Of course,” Nat said, standing up. She’d started the ballet lessons when Wanda had first joined the team, told her that understanding how to control her body might help her control her power. She’d forced her to continue them while they were fugitives, more so as a form of distraction than because of the training benefits. After the snap, it took her months to lace up her shoes again. She’d gotten so used to doing it with someone else that she hated the thought of dancing alone — even though she’d spent years in the studio by herself.
“You might have to remind me where we left off,” Nat said. She hadn’t thought about the lessons, hadn’t brought them up in the week she’d been back, and she mentally chided herself as they made their way to the studio. She needed to be better than that, needed to be on top of things. Wanda might have been one of the strongest people she knew, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still fragile. Especially after losing Vision. Nat couldn’t afford to give her any reason to feel worse than she already did.
“I’ve missed this,” Nat said as they both started stretching.
“What, Rhodey didn’t want to lace up ballet slippers?” Wanda asked with a smile.
Nat laughed at the image. “None of the guys had any sort of interest in ballet. Although I kept trying to convince Steve to try. He’s got the best posture I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, he would be so good at this.”
“Right? No matter how much I told him, he wouldn’t believe me. Just stuck to running.”
“Lame,” Wanda said, and they both smiled.
It lasted three seconds before Nat remembered. “I guess I don’t know if that’s still true,” she said, picturing the old man she saw a week ago. He had his own place, apparently, and Nat hadn’t built up the courage to go visit him yet.
“I miss him,” Wanda said, staring at a spot on the wall. “Is that weird? He’s still here, but I miss him.”
“It’s not weird,” Nat said. “I miss him too. He’s not the guy we remember — he lived a whole life without us.”
“I don’t know why,” Wanda said, and Nat could hear the way her voice shook slightly, the emotions she tried to keep a handle on, “but I always assumed he’d stay the same. Maybe it’s because he didn’t really age like the rest of us, but I never thought he’d outgrow me. Not that quickly, anyway. I just— I expected him to always be here, and now he’s not.”
Tony’s face flashed before her, and she tried to shove the image aside. “I thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life trying to keep him from dying. All the hero business he gets into, his constant need to sacrifice himself for everyone else, I thought — I didn’t prepare for this.”
“The worst part is we can’t get him back,” she said. She still didn’t look at Nat. “We invented time travel, and it doesn’t even matter. We can’t get him back. It isn’t fair.”
“Nothing about our lives have ever been fair,” Nat said. She had to admit, this felt particularly cruel. To be surrounded by reminders, memories, and to know that it would never be enough.
“I miss him,” Wanda said, and this time she couldn’t stop the tears from sneaking out, from making a trail down her face. “And every time I close my eyes I see it. See him. See myself—“
Nat moved across the room, put her arms around her. She knew she’d shifted, that Wanda wasn’t talking about Steve anymore. Neither are you, her mind whispered, and she let the thought echo as she ran her hand through Wanda’s hair.
“I did it,” Wanda said, and even though she sat in Nat’s arms, she sounded a thousand miles away. “I held him off. I destroyed the stone. I killed him, and it wasn’t enough. Thanos just went back and did it all over again.”
Nat froze. She didn’t know. She’d seen Vision, seen what remained, but she’d assumed Wanda hadn’t made it, assumed she didn’t have the strength, either mentally or physically. But now…
“I can’t sleep,” she continued, “and I know I should be used to it by now, but I — I just—“
“Hey,” Nat said, and as Wanda looked up at her, Nat made a vow to herself to do everything possible to make sure she never suffered like this again. “You don’t get used to losing someone like that.”
“It’s stupid,” she said, “weak. I should be stronger than this.”
“Grief doesn’t make you weak -- it makes you human.”
“Does it ever get easier?” She asked, and Nat thought back to the last five years, to her entire life before that. The faces of everyone she couldn’t save flashed before her eyes. Her own face flashed by, and she didn’t know what to make of it.
“Losing people never gets easier,” she said. “I wish I could say that it does, but it doesn’t. It’s not something you ever really learn how to do. And it isn’t something that you should get used to. Especially in our line of work.”
“I wish I didn’t care so much.”
“No,” Nat shook her head. “Trust me when I tell you that apathy doesn’t make anything better. When you force yourself to ignore pain, to ignore heartbreak, it becomes nearly impossible to feel anything else. It can’t get easier, because if it did, we’d lose our humanity. But this?” She said, motioning toward her, “This gets better. I promise you, it gets better.”
Nat wasn’t sure how long they sat there, in the middle of the studio floor. Wanda cried, and then she stopped. Nat almost cried, but didn’t. The world kept spinning, kept moving on, and Nat knew they had to move on with it.
“I changed my mind,” Wanda said after a while, after the tears had dried and her breathing calmed down, “I don’t think I want to start training today.”
Nat smiled as she unlaced her shoes and stood up. “What do you say we start tomorrow then?” She asked, holding a hand out for her.
Wanda accepted it and pulled herself up. “We’ve still got some ice cream left in the freezer,” she said with the smallest hint of a smile. “We could do a movie night instead. Haven’t had one of those in a while.”
“You go set it up,” Nat said, “I’m gonna ask Gamora if she wants to watch with us.”
Wanda nodded, and they each turned in separate directions. Nat made her way down the hall, toward the extra bedroom that Gamora had called her own for the past week. She didn’t show it, but Nat could tell that the longer it took the Guardians to show up, the more worried she became, the more time she spent hidden in her room.
She knocked on her door, and Gamora answered an instant later. “Wanda and I are going to eat some ice cream and watch a movie,” she told her. “You wanna watch with us?”
Gamora looked back at her room. Nat could see the computer she had on her desk, the building’s atmospheric radar visible from the doorway. “I think it’s best if I wait here.”
“Staring at the screen is only going to make you feel worse,” Nat said. “A distraction will be good for you.”
“But what if—“
“I’ll pull it up on my phone,” Nat said, “if something happens, we’ll know. Now come watch cheesy movies and eat weird Earth food with us.”
Gamora stood for a moment, before sighing and shutting the door behind her. “You have to sit next to the witch.”
Nat laughed. “How is it that a talking raccoon is normal but Wanda’s powers freak you out?”
“They remind me of--" Gamora started, but cut herself off as she shook her head. "They don’t feel right. I don’t trust it.”
“She’s harmless,” Nat said, then added with a smirk, “she hasn’t controlled anyone’s mind in ages.” Gamora gave her side eye, which only made her laugh harder. “I’ll sit between you and Wanda, don’t worry.” Nat practically dragged her down the hall, but she knew that if Gamora truly didn’t want to go, she wouldn’t have.
They chose The Breakfast Club. Truthfully, it wasn’t Nat’s favorite, but Wanda adored it, and it didn’t take long before Nat noticed how invested Gamora was in it, too. She’d sat down hesitantly, doing little to hide her discomfort when Wanda used her powers to grab the spoons and ice cream, but within fifteen minutes all animosity seemed to have disappeared. Wanda explained the Earth concepts Gamora didn’t understand, and they exchanged commentary throughout the entire movie.
When the credits began to roll, Gamora looked at Wanda. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Do they remain a team?”
“We don’t know,” Wanda said with excitement. “That’s part of the beauty of it. Do they decide to change? Hang out with one another when the rest of the school is watching? Or do they go back to their old ways, pretend like it never happened?”
Gamora shook her head. “No. They become a team. Stay friends.”
Wanda smiled. “That’s what I’ve always thought, too.”
Gamora stared at the DVD case as Wanda used her powers to eject the disc. “Do you have one of these called Dirty Dancing?” she asked.
“How do you know Dirty Dancing?”
Gamora smiled. “Peter claims it’s the best movie ever made; I suspect he exaggerated its level of success.”
“It’s not bad,” Wanda said, “but I don’t think a lot of people still watch it. At least, not young people.”
“Did Nebula watch any of these?” Gamora asked, turning to Nat.
“I don’t know,” Nat answered. “She spent most of her time with Tony. Probably watched a lot of Disney movies with Morgan.” Her heart stung at the realization that she had no idea what they did, that she’d missed the opportunity to find out. She forced the thoughts away, buried them deep in her subconscious where she couldn't hear them anymore.
“Disney?”
“Kid movies. Animated. They’re cute,” Nat said with a smile, “I’ll show you Frozen. You’d like that one.”
“Ooh!” Wanda said, “We should watch Mulan! She's a warrior, you’d love it.”
Gamora looked at her, and Nat could have sworn she smiled, no longer afraid of her powers. “I’d like that,” she said, and as Wanda excitedly put in the next DVD, Nat couldn’t remember a time she’d felt so at ease. Since she’d landed back on Earth she had the weight of the world sitting on her shoulders, but somehow it disappeared when she sat on the couch, friends on either side of her. Maybe this was what Steve had meant, she thought as the familiar music began to play, when he talked about getting a life.