idk why people are still trying to do "hear me out"s on tumblr
you could talk about wanting to fuck the space needle on here and people would still call you a poser for insisting on fucking "conventionally attractive architecture" as if that's a coherent, easily-recognizable category
Warnings: 18+! MINORS DNI! Age gap (N=31, r=24), violence, blood, death, hate sex, oral (r receiving) fingering (r receiving), multiple orgasm
Word count: 13,3k
A/N: Final this Sunday.
Part 4
Two weeks should have been enough time for the world to begin making noise again..but it hasn’t.
That was the first thing Natasha noticed after the Snap. Not the empty streets, though there were too many of those or abandoned cars left crooked across bridges and highways. Not the phones ringing in houses where no one remained to answer them, not even the news broadcasts that had stopped sounding like news after the first three days and had become nothing but lists, emergency orders, missing persons appeals and anchors trying not to cry on camera.
Natasha had lived most of her life learning how to survive aftermaths. She knew how to step over bodies, how to read panic in a crowd, how to make herself useful when everyone else was screaming. She knew how to fold grief away until it became small enough to carry under her ribs without slowing her hands.
Half the universe had become dust and two weeks after Wakanda, everyone looked older. Steve stood at the head of the briefing room with his arms folded and his face hollow in a way Natasha had never seen before. He had bruises fading yellow along his jaw and a cut near his brow that should have healed faster, but grief had a way of slowing the body down.
The hologram above the table turned slowly, showing casualty estimates that were not estimates anymore. They had become admissions. Governments fractured, emergency services collapsed and entire towns vanished down to a handful of survivors. In some places, the dead from the accidents after the Snap were still being counted separately, as if arithmetic could make the first impossible number more bearable.
“Confirmed global population loss is holding at forty nine point six to fifty point three percent depending on region.” Bruce said quietly. “The variance comes from incomplete reporting. Some areas still haven’t reestablished communications.”
Steve’s eyes stayed on the projection. “And off-world?”
“Everywhere..” Rocket muttered.
Natasha had stopped looking at the numbers after the first hour. She knew what they said, everyone knew what they said. The universe had been cut open with one hand and the wound was too wide to close. She looked instead at the empty chair beside her. It had not belonged to anyone in particular, but that almost made it worse.
Steve followed her gaze and something in his face shifted and looked at Natasha. “What about Y/n?” The room changed and Natasha felt the question pass through everyone like a blade finding places already bruised. Y/n..
For two weeks, Natasha had tried not to think your name unless she had somewhere private to bleed from it. She remembered ash in the air, Vhassar wounded and lowering his massive head around you. She remembered soldiers vanishing in front of you and the exact moment understanding entered your face.
Then the mountain men had come and had surrounded you on the battlefield without speaking. A wall of blackened armor and blood-soaked cloaks closing around their princess while Wakanda still smoked around them. Their eyes had been wild with grief and fear and devotion, but none of them looked at Natasha. Not one.
You had looked once over her shoulder. There had been so much blood on her that Natasha could not tell where you were hurt. Your white braid had come undone in torn strands around your face and one hand still rested against Vhassar’s jaw and the other was closed around nothing, as if it still held dust. Then Thor’s bridge had opened one last time, burning rainbow fire across the ruined field, and you had disappeared into it with the remains of your army and your wounded dragon.
Natasha had not seen you since. She felt everyone waiting for her answer and hated that she did not have one. “I don’t know.”
From the far side of the room, Okoye shifted her weight and swallowed once. Her eyes moved briefly to the empty place where T’Challa should have been and straightened. “The mountain kingdom has fallen under her rule.”
The words did not make sense at first, not because they were complicated, but because the mind rejected them. Natasha felt her own body refuse the sentence for half a breath. Steve’s voice was very quiet. “What do you mean?”
“Her father is gone. Her mother as well. Their chief advisor vanished with them and several members of the high council. Their line of succession was not broken, but it was burned down to one name.”
Natasha’s fingers curled against the table. Your parents.. For one sick second, all Natasha could see was you on the battlefield, asking what was happening while ash slipped through your hands.
“She is not only Khaleesi now..She is queen.”
The room remained silent and Steve looked at Natasha as if he wanted to say something and could not decide whether it would help or only break another thing that was barely standing. Natasha said nothing, but inside her, something cold and sharp began to move. She imagined you returning to the kingdom with the castle corridors that had roared with war now hollowed by absence and the throne room half empty.
Bruce cleared his throat, “There’s more.”
The projection shifted before anyone could ask. A burst of energy appeared above the table and carol leaned forward slightly. “This was detected two days ago. Same energy signature as the Snap.”
“The Stones..” Bruce nodded. “Another surge. Smaller, but still massive. Wherever Thanos is, he used the gauntlet again.”
“Can we track it?”
Nebula’s eyes stayed fixed on the table. “I know where he said he would go.” Thor finally lifted his head.
“After he finished his work, he planned to rest. He called it a garden.”
Rhodey stared. “A garden.”
Steve put both hands on the table and leaned forward. “If he used the Stones again, then he still has them.”
Bruce’s eyes flicked up. “Maybe.”
“Then we take them.” Steve said. “We use them to bring everyone back.”
The thought of hope had barely formed when the room filled with thunder. The lights flickered once and glass along the far wall hummed. Everyone moved, Steve reached for his shield and Carol’s hands lit gold. But when the light vanished, you stood in the center of the room.
For a second, Natasha forgot everything else. You had always carried attention like a blade, even before Thanos. Even in soft rooms and half lit mornings, there had been something in her that made the world adjust around her. But this was different..This was not the princess from the balcony anymore, this was not even the Khaleesi riding a dragon over Wakanda..This was someone grief had crowned and failed to kill.
Your eyes did not move to Natasha, they went to Steve first, then Thor and to the projection above the table. Six soldiers stood around you, each in black armor, each with a hand near a weapon. One had his arm in a sling and still stood like he would kill everyone in the room before allowing anyone to touch you.
“Where is he?”
“All respect-”
“Where is Thanos?”
Natasha took one step forward before she could stop herself. “Y/n-”
The soldiers moved and Natasha stopped. Not because she was afraid of them, because you had not told them not to. She looked at you and you looked back at last. There was no relief in your face or a flicker of the woman who had once stood behind Natasha and braided survival into her hair. Natasha felt something in her chest go very still and Thor stepped forward. “I gave her leave.”
Steve turned his head. “What?”
“The Bifröst answers to Stormbreaker. I told her if she needed passage, she would have it.”
Your gaze did not leave the projection. “You found him.”
“We tracked an energy surge..” Bruce said carefully. “Same signature as the Stones. He used the gauntlet again.”
Steve watched her. “We’re not going there for revenge.”
Your eyes moved to him. “Then you are already lying to yourself.”
Steve did not flinch. “We’re going to get the Stones.”
“And use them.” Bruce added quickly. “To reverse what he did. Bring everyone back.”
For the first time, you were still in a way that looked less like command and more like impact. “Can you do that?”
“Maybe.”
Natasha wanted to hit him, because now you looked at him. “Maybe.”
Steve stepped in before the air could split open. “We don’t know what condition the gauntlet is in. We don’t know what condition he’s in. But if the Stones are there, this is our best chance.”
Carol’s voice was steady. “I can scout ahead. If he’s alone, we hit fast.”
“I am coming with you.” You said and Natasha’s stomach clenched and Steve looked like he had expected it “This isn’t-“
“I did not ask your permission, Captain.”
Your title for him was polite enough to draw blood. Steve held your gaze for a long moment till he looked at Natasha and she hated him for it. Because the answer was there before either of them said it: If they told you no, you would go anyway. If they tried to stop you, people would get hurt. And if Thanos still had the Stones, they needed every powerful ally they had left. And if there was any chance of bringing back the vanished, there was no world in which you stayed behind.
Steve looked back at her. “We leave now” and you gave one nod. The meeting broke apart into motion and weapons were gathered. Natasha waited until your soldiers were all gone and you turning toward the hangar. She caught up to you before you reached the ship. “Y/n.”
You did not stop and Natasha moved faster and stepped into your path. “Y/n.”
Those pale eyes lifted to hers and up close, the changes were worse. Your face was thinner and the softness had not vanished exactly, but it had been buried beneath sleeplessness and command. There was a faint bruise still shadowing your throat where Thanos’s hand had closed around it.
“What happened back home?” Natasha asked and you stared at her. The question was useless as if there were any answer small enough to fit between them. But Natasha needed to hear you speak, needed to know there was something beneath the armor that had not turned entirely to steel.
You moved to walk around her but Natasha caught your arm. The reaction was immediate, your gaze dropped to Natasha’s hand on your arm and for one second, Natasha felt the entire corridor freeze.
“Let go.”
Natasha did not. “Talk to me.”
“There is nothing to say.”
“There is everything to say.”
“You want a report?”
“I want you!” The words came out before Natasha could stop them and for a moment, something cracked behind your eyes. “You should have thought of that before you brought my kingdom to your war.”
Natasha’s hand loosened, because the words hit exactly where you meant them to. You looked at the place where Natasha still touched you, then back at her face. “I came back, do you understand that? I came back through the Bifröst with the wounded, with the dead, with my dragon bleeding onto the stones of my own courtyard and no one was there.”
Natasha said nothing and your eyes glistened “No one came down the steps. No horns or healers waiting because the healers were gone and my parents too.” Natasha’s throat closed. “My father’s crown was in the ash beside his chair.”
“Y/n…”
“I agreed to enter your war..I agreed because you asked me. Because I believed you. Because I thought if the world was ending, then perhaps the world deserved everything I had to give it.” Your voice lowered. “And what did it cost?”
Natasha could not answer and you stepped closer. “My knight is dead. My parents are dust. Half my people vanished while calling my name. My dragon screams in his sleep and my kingdom kneels because there is no one else left standing.” Your eyes searched Natasha’s face with something almost like hatred and almost like begging. “Tell me, Natasha. What did it buy?”
Natasha’s grip fell from your arm and you looked at the empty space where her hand had been. For one moment, you seemed smaller than the armor, then you turned away and Natasha watched you walk toward the ship and did not follow.
No one spoke much after takeoff. You stood instead of sitting at first, one hand braced against the wall as the ship lifted from Earth. Natasha watched from across the cabin and saw the exact moment the planet disappeared beneath them and space opened around the windows.
Rocket climbed into the pilot’s seat and looked over his shoulder. “All right, who here hasn’t been to space?”
Steve raised his hand, Natasha did too. Rhodey, Bruce and you followed after a beat. Rocket stared at them, then barked a laugh. “You people are going to hate this..”
Outside the ship, the stars stretched into lines and the jump hit like the universe had grabbed the ship and pulled. The ship pushed deeper into dark and for hours, no one said anything that mattered. Coordinates were checked, weapons loaded and plans repeated until they became less like strategy and more like prayer.
The planet appeared slowly and it was..green. Everyone had expected darkness, like a dead moon, but the world below them was green and gold and blue in places where water caught the light.
Carol’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll go first.”
She moved before anyone answered, light gathering around her as the airlock opened. For one brief moment, sunlight from the planet spilled across her face, then she was gone and the ship remained in orbit.
Then she came back, “He’s alone.”
They landed in a field where tall grass bent under the pressure of the engines. They moved in formation toward the small hut at the edge of the garden and saw smoke curled from the hut’s chimney.
Then Carol moved and the door exploded inward. Everything happened at once: Carol hit Thanos before he could fully rise from the chair, the force of it drove him through the back wall and Steve and Rhodey moved in and Bruce containment tech locked around Thanos’s torso. Thor came down with Stormbreaker in both hands and the blade flashed. A heavy, wet sound split the air and Thano’s left arm hit the ground with the gauntlet still attached.
For one second, no one moved, till Rocket lunged for it, “I got it! I got it!”
Natasha’s eyes snapped to the gauntlet and..it was ruined. The metal was blackened and warped, fused in places to what remained of Thanos’s severed arm. The sockets where the Stones had once burned were empty.
You saw it at the same time Natasha did. The hope went out of their faces so quickly it looked like death. Bruce dropped to his knees beside Rocket, his hands moved over the gauntlet, “No. No, no, no…”
Steve stared at it. “Where are they?”
Thanos lay in the dirt, one side of his body burned beyond recognition. Thor stepped toward him. “Where are the Stones?”
Thanos’s eyes opened and for a moment, he looked at all of them without surprise. Then his gaze found you and for the first time, his expression changed. “You..”
You stood in the broken doorway, with no expression on your face. Thanos breathed through the pain. “The child queen.”
Natasha’s skin went cold and you stepped inside. “Where are they?”
Thanos looked at the ruined gauntlet. “Gone.”
Bruce shook his head. “No.”
Thanos’s eyes stayed on You. “Reduced to atoms.” The room seemed to lose air and Rocket looked from the gauntlet to Thanos. “You used them two days ago!”
Thanos’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “I used the Stones to destroy the Stones.”
“That’s impossible.”
Thanos blinked slowly. “It nearly killed me.”
You walked closer and stopped at Thanos’s severed arm. You looked down at the gauntlet and at the empty sockets. For a moment, your face did nothing till you crouched and Natasha tensed. You reached toward the gauntlet and touched the edge of one empty socket with two fingers. “Bring them back.”
Thanos watched her. “I cannot.”
You looked at him. “Bring them back!”
“The work is done. It always will be.”
You rose. “The work.” You repeated and Thanos looked up at you from the floor. His body was broken, his arm was gone and his blood was under your boots. “I destroyed them because temptation is the enemy of balance..As long as the Stones existed, what I gave the universe could be undone.”
“What you gave?” Bruce whispered and Thanos’s eyes did not leave you. “Mercy.”
The word entered the room like rot and your head tilted slightly. “You call it mercy?”
“I saved what remained.”
“You murdered what was whole.”
“Whole?” Thanos drew in a painful breath. “You were a ruler before you understood the word. Tell me, child. Did your kingdom never take life to preserve itself? Did your armies never burn enemies to keep your borders? Did your dragon never turn men into ash because you called it necessary?”
Thanos looked almost pleased by her silence. “You understand more than they do..That is why you hate me. Not because I am a monster. Because I did what rulers pretend they are too moral to do. I chose the necessary slaughter.”
You stepped closer. “My mother had a garden.” The sentence made Natasha’s throat tighten because you said it with the same coldness as everything else. “She grew white roses in a place where nothing gentle should have survived. She used to say the mountain only looked cruel to people who did not know where to touch it.” You looked around the hut. “You came here to grow things.”
Thanos’s expression did not change, but your voice lowered. “With their dust still under your nails.”
Carol’s grip tightened around his throat and Thanos looked at you for a long moment. Then he said, “I do not know your mother.”
Your sword came free fast and Natasha moved at the same time. You did not swing for Thanos’s throat, that would have been cleaner, no, you drove the blade down through his remaining hand. The steel punched through flesh and wood beneath, pinning him to the broken floor and he roared. “Y/N!”
You did not look away from Thanos. His fingers spasmed around the blade and blood welled up and running along the fuller of the sword. You leaned over him. “Learn one name before you die.”
Natasha grabbed your arm. “Stop.” You did not move and Thanos breathed hard through his teeth and your eyes were black with rage and empty of heat. “Her name was Maeryn. She was my mother and liked winter apples. She hated council meetings, laughed when my father was angry because it made him angrier. She touched Vhassar before anyone else dared.” Your voice did not break and that made it worse.
“My father’s name was Vaelor. He taught me the weight of a crown before I could lift a sword, told me fear was a poor ruler but a useful guard dog.” Your hand tightened on the hilt, twisting the blade slightly and Thanos made another sound.
Natasha’s grip tightened. “Y/n!”
“My knight was Seraya. She died with your creature’s arm through her body and apologized to me while drowning in her own blood.” The room had gone absolutely still and you leaned closer. “Say one of their names.”
Thanos looked at her and for a moment, his face showed pain. “No.”
Your expression emptied completely and Natasha knew then that she had lost her. You pulled the sword free and lifted it for his throat but Natasha caught her from behind. Natasha’s arms shook with the effort of holding you back. “Killing him won’t bring them back!” Behind them, Thor moved and Natasha saw it from the corner of her eye when Stormbreaker lifted and coming down.
Blood struck the floor in a heavy spray and a body jerked once beneath Carol’s hands. Thanos head rolled across broken wood and stopped near the ruined gauntlet, eyes open, mouth slack and the last certainty gone from his face. For one second, the only sound in the hut was the slow drip of blood through the floorboards and Thor stood over the corpse, “I went for the head.”
You stared at the body, while Natasha still held your wrists. She let go by degrees, ready for you to move again, but you did not. You looked at Thor, then at Thanos’s head. “No..”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, they left the garden with Thanos’s blood still dark in the grass and the ruined gauntlet wrapped in containment cloth that no longer mattered. No one looked back except you. You stood at the ship’s ramp for one final second, staring at the quiet hut, the rows of crops and the smoke still rising from a fire someone had lit as if he deserved warmth. Then you turned away.
Five years later:
The world had adapted and some people called it proof. They whispered it first, then they said it louder. Then some of them wrote articles and formed groups and stood outside government buildings with signs that said things like Thanos was right.
Some of them had lost no one. Some of them had lost everyone and decided pain needed meaning badly enough to accept any lie that gave it shape.
Natasha understood that more than she wanted to. The world had settled into the aftermath because there was no other choice. People remarried, children grew and governments rebuilt badly. But Natasha had not settled, she worked. The Avengers compound had become a command center, a shelter, a grave and sometimes, if she was exhausted enough to be honest with herself, a punishment. She slept in the same building where empty rooms still held people’s names. She ate at a table too large for the living and answered calls that were not hers because no one else was there to answer them. She stayed because the world was broken and someone had to watch the cracks.
The holographic screen in front of her flickered blue over the dark meeting room. “All right.” Natasha said, scrolling through the reports on her tablet. “Earth side reconstruction in the Eastern European zones?”
“Stable enough.” Carol said. “If your definition of stable includes three governments arguing over border authority while half their labor force is gone.”
Natasha made a note she would probably reread at four in the morning and hate herself for not being able to fix. Her eyes shifted to Rhodey and he had gone quiet. Natasha leaned back slightly. “Where are you right now?”
For a second, he said nothing. Then he exhaled through his nose. “Mexico. For now.”
Natasha’s fingers stilled over the tablet. “I picked up information about a series of killings. Different cities, but same pattern if you know what to look for.”
Natasha’s stomach dropped before he finished speaking. Okoye’s voice sharpened. “Barton?”
“No.” Rhodey said and looked at Natasha, because she already knew. Clint left bodies like a man trying to cut out the parts of the world that had survived instead of his family. He went after organized crime with the precision of a blade that did not care whether it broke in the wound. This was not him..
Rhodey continued, “These aren’t cartel hits. Two men involved in trafficking, a father who beat his children badly enough that one of them won’t walk right again. Another guy who burned his wife and walked on a technicality.”
The room chilled by degrees and Natasha looked down at her tablet, though she was no longer reading. “Method?” she asked and Rhodey watched her. He knew. She could see it in his face that he knew she knew.
“Brutal.” he said. “One had his tongue cut out and nailed to the table beside the gag order he paid for.” Rhodey looked directly at Natasha through the screen. “Not Barton.”
Natasha closed her eyes for half a second. “Send me everything.” Rhodey did not move. “Nat.”
Natasha’s jaw tightened. “The meeting’s over.”
The screens blinked out one by one until Natasha was alone with the rain, the empty chairs and the report Rhodey had sent. She opened it and photographs filled the tablet. A man tied to his own dining chair, eyes open, throat cut cleanly and documents spread across his blood soaked table. Another in a warehouse, hands severed and arranged over police files he had buried. A third on the steps of a courthouse with a brand burned into his chest in a language almost no one on Earth could read..Natasha could.
She set the tablet down very carefully. Then she bent forward, both hands gripping the edge of the table and the breath went out of her like something had punched through her chest, torn from somewhere too exhausted to protect itself anymore.
You were somewhere in the world carving justice into bodies because justice had not arrived fast enough through courts, governments, kings or gods..and Natasha had not reached you.
Five years.
Five years of reports, rumors, closed borders, unanswered messages, Bifröst flares over places where murderers stopped breathing. Five years of Natasha telling herself you were ruling and surviving. Five years of knowing survival could look like a blade in the dark.
“Nat?”
Steve stood in the doorway. He had always had the worst timing and the best instincts. Natasha straightened too fast, wiping at her face with one hand. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough.”
She gave him a look that would have frightened most people. Steve only walked in and stopped beside the table and glanced at the dark screens. “Rough meeting?”
Natasha laughed once. “They’re all rough.”
For a while, neither of them spoke. Then his eyes moved to the tablet lying face down on the table. “Rhodey?”
Natasha’s mouth tightened. “He found bodies.”
Steve’s expression changed. “Clint?”
“No.”
Steve understood almost immediately and Natasha looked away. Steve then sat beside her, “What happened?”
“What always happens.” Natasha said. “Someone falls through the cracks and someone else decides the cracks are the problem.” Steve was quiet.
“She’s killing them..Rapists, traffickers, abusers..People who paid their way out of punishment and men no one bothered to stop.”
“And you’re sure it’s her?”
Natasha looked at the tablet. “No.” A beat. “Yes..” Natasha stared at the empty projection table. “She saw what this world became after the Snap.. saw governments collapse and people disappear into systems that were already broken before half the people running them turned to dust. She saw the worst people survive and the best people become memorials.” Her voice hardened. “And Y/n does not tolerate unfinished punishment.”
Steve looked at her carefully. “Have you talked to her?”
Natasha smiled without humor. “She sealed the kingdom.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I tried.”
“How hard?”
The question struck exactly where he intended and Natasha turned on him. “Do not do that.”
“Nat.”
“No. You don’t get to sit there and make this about me not trying hard enough.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I’m saying maybe you stopped because part of you was afraid she wouldn’t answer.”
Natasha went still and Steve’s face softened in that unbearable way of his. Of course she had been afraid..afraid you would hate her. Afraid the woman she found would no longer be the woman she remembered and that five years of grief had made Natasha into someone who only knew how to lead a dead team from an empty room and call it purpose.
“She blamed me..In the ship. Before we went to Thanos. She said I asked her to risk everything.” Natasha’s throat tightened. “And she was right.”
“She made her choice.”
“She made it because I asked.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It feels the same.”
Steve looked at her with a grief so familiar it almost made her angry. “We all asked people to follow us.” he said. “Wakanda. The Asgardians and her kingdom. We asked them to stand between Thanos and the universe. They did.” His voice dropped. “And then he won anyway.”
Steve looked toward the dark windows. “How is she?”
Natasha laughed softly. “I don’t know-“ Suddenly a crackling sound came from the corner monitor and both of them turned. The camera feed outside the compound gate flickered and a man’s face filled the screen, “Hi, uh, is anyone home?”
Natasha stared and Steve stood. The man leaned closer to the camera. “This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago? At the airport? Germany? I got really big and then really small. I had a mask!”
Natasha and Steve looked at each other while Scott waved awkwardly into the camera. “Can you buzz me in? I think I might have a crazy idea.”
—
Inside the mountains, the kingdom had changed too.
The old royal banners still hung from the black stone towers, but beneath them flew new cloth: ash-gray, black and deep red. Mourning colors that had become national colors because grief had lasted long enough to become identity. The city below the castle had been rebuilt in careful layers after the Snap gutted whole districts. Homes once empty were filled by refugees and market squares were quieter than they had been before the war, but not dead.
Children still ran through alleys, bread still baked and smiths still hammered steel into useful shapes. At sunset, bells rang for the vanished, every single day and in the castle courtyard stood a wall of names. Every person taken by the Snap and soldier who died in Wakanda. Every civilian lost when the kingdom’s systems collapsed in the days after. The letters were carved into black stone and filled with pale metal so they caught moonlight like wounds refusing to close.
At the center of the wall were three names larger than the rest. The king. The queen Seraya. The first knight sworn to you
The queen did not visit the wall when others could see, but every morning, fresh white roses appeared beneath those names and the people noticed. They noticed the way their queen walked through the lower city without a crown and listened to old women complain about grain storage. They noticed the way she knelt to speak to children instead of making them look up at her. They noticed the way no hungry person was turned from the kitchens during winter and they noticed the way widows of Wakanda received letters written in the queen’s own hand when the bodies of mountain soldiers were finally sent home.
They loved her, but feared her too. Because mercy had survived in you, but it had grown teeth. When a village lord beat a servant girl so badly she lost an eye, he was dragged before the queen’s court in chains. He pleaded his bloodline, his service and loyalty to her father.
You listened and asked the girl whether he had begged when he hurt her and the girl said no. The lord was executed before sunset. When three soldiers attacked a refugee boy in an alley and thought their armor would save them, you stripped their ranks herself and one died by your hand. Two were sent to the mines with their names removed from the rolls of honor.
The kingdom learned and the queen was kind to those who had been hurt. She was merciless to those who hurt because they thought no one would stop them and sometimes, when the moon was dark and the court believed she slept, you left the mountain.
The world beyond your borders had taught you too much. You saw what Natasha’s world had become: the abandoned systems, reports filed and forgotten, the wealthy buying clean names with dirty money and men who hurt families behind closed doors and walked free because half the officers were gone, half the judges buried grief in whiskey, and half the governments cared more about stability than justice. You did not ask permission from governments that had failed their own people. You just crossed borders like weather. Five years made you into a legend twice over. Once, as the queen who fed orphans and again, as the shadow that came when the law refused to.
Natasha entered the mountain kingdom through an old northern pass with no escort and two knives she knew would not save her if the mountain decided she did not belong. Natasha knew she was being watched long before she saw anyone and then a shadow moved once above her and the dragon landed in front of her.
Vhassar came down without warning, black wings snapping open hard enough to throw snow and stone dust into the air. Natasha staggered back and barely kept her footing. He was larger than she remembered or maybe memory had made him smaller because remembering the truth was too much.
His eyes fixed on Natasha with molten, terrible recognition and he lowered his head. The sound in his throat was not a roar, it was more like a warning growl that made the snow beneath Natasha’s boots tremble.
Natasha’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Hey..”
The dragon’s lip lifted just enough to show teeth longer than her forearm.
“Yeah..” Natasha breathed. “Fair.”
Her knife suddenly felt embarrassing and she removed her hand from it. Vhassar’s eyes followed the motion. “You know me.”
The growl deepened and Natasha swallowed. “You do.” She took one careful step forward and the dragon’s head moved closer, so fast the air shifted and Natasha froze. Heat rolled over her face and her body screamed at her to move and to run. To do anything except stand in front of a creature that could end her with one breath. “I’m not here to hurt her.”
Vhassar’s pupils narrowed and Natasha almost laughed, “I know.” she whispered. “I know I already did.” Natasha took another step and her hand shook when she lifted it. The space between her palm and his scales felt impossibly wide and impossibly small. One wrong movement, one breath he did not like and the mountain would have one more name to carve.
Natasha touched him and he exhaled. The breath nearly knocked her backward, but he did not pull away and Natasha closed her eyes for half a second. “Please..”
Minutes later, Vhassar did not fly toward the gates with her but towards the castle. Toward the balcony carved into the side of black stone and Natasha realized what he intended half a second before he landed.
“Wait-”
Vhassar struck the balcony with terrifying precision and Natasha barely held on as his wings folded and his massive head swung toward open doors leading into a chamber she remembered too well. She slid down from Vhassar’s back and landed silently on the balcony and inside the chamber, you moved.
Natasha saw only the flash of your hand, till a dagger flew toward her face and Natasha twisted. The blade cut past her cheek close enough that she felt the air move, it struck the stone wall behind her and buried itself to the hilt.
For one suspended second, neither of them moved. You stood near the center of the room in a black robe belted over trousers a second knife already in your hand. Natasha straightened slowly. “Hi.”
For the first time in five years, Natasha watched shock break through the queen’s face. “Natasha.”
Her name sounded strange in your mouth now. Vhassar shifted on the balcony behind Natasha and your eyes flicked to him, then back to Natasha. “How did you get in here?”
Natasha glanced over her shoulder at the dragon. “Vhassar.”
“What?”
“He brought me.”
You looked at Vhassar and he lowered his head through the open balcony doors with the smugness of a creature too large to be questioned by anyone but you. For one brief, impossible second, your mouth changed.
“Traitor..” You said softly in the old tongue and Vhassar rumbled. Natasha looked between them. “I’m choosing to believe that means welcome.”
“It does not.”
You set the knife down on the table with careful precision. “You should not be here.”
“I know.”
“Then leave.”
“No.”
Your gaze returned to her slowly. Natasha had stood in rooms with assassins, war criminals, gods, monsters. She had faced guns held by men who wanted her dead and smiles from men who wanted worse. None of them looked at her the way you did now.
“You come into my chambers after five years, through my skies, on my dragon and your first act is refusal?”
Natasha swallowed. “Not my first act.”
“No. Your first act was silence.”
That hit, but Natasha let it. “I wrote.”
“You sent letters.”
“I tried to come.”
“You turned back at the third pass.” Natasha went still and you knew. “You thought I did not watch my borders?”
Natasha’s jaw tightened. “I thought if you wanted to see me, you would let me through.”
“And if I had let you through then? What would you have said?”
Natasha had no answer for that. Five years ago, she would have said she was sorry. That the world was broken. That she did not know how to fix anything. That she missed you. That she was afraid of what you were becoming and more afraid that you had become it because Natasha had asked you to join a war. Five years ago, none of that would have been enough.
“Leave before the court knows you are here.”
Natasha stepped into the room and you stopped. Vhassar’s head shifted behind them and Natasha moved carefully, not because she feared you would kill her, but because part of her feared you would let her speak and still feel nothing. “I know what you’re doing, Y/n..”
You stood with your back half-turned. “I rule.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
Natasha looked at you and saw the terrible truth of it. That was why this was so hard, because you had not been hunting innocents. You had found people who had turned survival into permission to harm and you had ended them. The world had become quieter after the Snap and you had filled the silence with screams no one mourned.
“That is not the way.”
“Your way left them alive.”
Natasha inhaled sharply and you walked to the table and lifted one of the reports, barely glancing at it before setting it aside. “I have spent five years watching your world ask the wounded to be patient while the cruel reorganized. I have watched councils debate what to do with men whose crimes were known to every person in the room. I have watched mothers stand outside locked offices with photographs of daughters no one intended to search for.” Your eyes returned to Natasha’s. “Your world is very fond of procedure. It keeps its hands clean while others bleed.”
Natasha’s voice softened despite herself. “What happened to you?”
You looked at her and for a second anger flashed. “What happened to all of us.”
“No.” Natasha stepped closer. “This is not the same.”
“Five years and you still believe there was a version of me waiting to be preserved.”
“I know there was.”
“You knew a princess.”
“I knew you!”
Your eyes sharpened. “No. You knew what grief had not taken yet.”
Outside, Vhassar shifted and you looked toward him briefly and something in your face eased by a fraction. Natasha saw then that your softness wasn’t gone..It was just guarded by teeth, fire, law and five years of blood.
“I came because we found something.”
Your gaze snapped back to her. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“No.”
“Y/n-“
“No!” This time the word cracked through the room, even Vhassar lifted his head. “Do not!”
Natasha stopped and your hand gripped the edge of the table. “Do not come here with that look on your face.”
“What look?”
“Hope..”
The word was almost spat and Natasha’s chest tightened. “Do you think I do not recognize it? I wore it into Thanos’s garden, I carried it across stars like a fool. I stood over the gauntlet and believed, for one breath, that the universe had left me one mercy..It had not.”
Natasha took a slow step forward and you stepped back. “Do not give me hope unless you are prepared to watch what it does to me when it dies.”
Natasha’s throat worked. For five years she had imagined this conversation a hundred ways. She had imagined you blaming her. She had imagined you refusing to see her. She had imagined violence, silence and tears. She had not imagined this.
You standing in the room where Natasha had once been allowed to see her scars, begging without begging not to be made vulnerable again. “I wouldn’t be here if it were nothing.”
You stared at her. “That is what everyone says before they ask a queen to bleed.”
Natasha reached for her and you watched the movement as if it were a weapon. Natasha’s fingers touched your hand and you went very still. For a second, Natasha saw the battlefield again. Your hand catching her sleeve to make sure she was real and Natasha covering it and saying, I’m here.
“Someone we know was trapped somewhere. Somewhere outside time as we understand it. For him, it was hours, for us? It was five years.” You did not breathe, Natasha felt it through her hand. “Bruce thinks it may be possible to use that. Not to find the Stones now, but go back to when they existed.”
Your face lost color and Natasha tightened her grip. “We found a way.”
“No.”
“It’s real.”
“No.”
“Y/n-”
“No!” The word broke from you again, “Do not say that to me..”
Natasha held on and you tried to pull her hand away, but Natasha did not let you. “Listen to me.”
“No!”
“Listen!”
Your eyes burned. “You do not get to come here after five years..” you whispered, “touch my hand and tell me my dead may not be dead.”
“I know.”
“You do not know what those words do.”
“I know what they do to me.”
You looked away violently, but Natasha stepped closer, refusing to let the moment close.
“We have a chance, Y/n..” Natasha said. “Not a promise or certainty. A chance.”
You inhaled like the words had struck you. “And if you fail?”
“Then we fail.”
You laughed, but it broke halfway through. Your hand twisted in Natasha’s grip, not pulling away now but gripping back with sudden, painful force. “And what am I supposed to do if I become that fool again?”
Natasha stepped closer until there was almost no space between you both now. “Then I’ll be one with you.”
Natasha lifted her other hand and touched your face and you closed your eyes at the contact. Then, finally, one tear escaped and slipped down your cheek and over Natasha’s thumb.
“I cannot bury them twice..” You whispered and Natasha leaned her forehead against yours. “I know.”
“I cannot.”
“I know.”
“If this is another garden-”
“It isn’t.”
“You do not know that..”
“No.” Natasha said. “I don’t.”
You opened your eyes and Natasha held your face still so, so gently. “But I came anyway.”
You looked at her for a long time, then your gaze shifted past Natasha to the balcony. Vhassar watched you both, his scarred wing folded close, but his head remained lowered towards you and you spoke in the old tongue.
Vhassar rumbled and Natasha did not know the words, but she knew the sound of a creature being told something it did not want to accept. You pulled away from Natasha and crossed to the balcony and placed one hand against Vhassar’s jaw. The dragon leaned into your touch with a low, wounded sound that seemed too gentle for something so enormous. For a moment, you stood there with him, moonlight catching the white of your hair and the black of your robe, queen and dragon framed against the mountains that had kept them both alive.
Then you looked back at Natasha and the tear was gone from your face. “Tell me everything.”
You said nothing as you walked through the compound. You still wore the black traveling cloak from hours before. Natasha kept glancing at you and you pretended not to notice. The compound smelled faintly of rain, old coffee, machine oil and loneliness. It smelled like people had once filled it and then stopped. In one hallway, you passed a framed photograph of several people standing together, smiling as though the world had not yet learned how to punish them for being alive.
There were faces she knew from Wakanda, but there were so many kinds of absence now. At the end of the hallway, voices carried from a large workroom and Natasha stopped just outside the doors and looked at you
“You don’t have to like them.”
Your brow lifted. “Am I expected to?”
“No.” Natasha almost smiled.
Then the doors opened and the room beyond was chaos wearing the costume of science. Screens glowed along the walls, diagrams floated in the air and tools covered half the tables. In the center of it all stood a narrow platform surrounded by metal arms, wires, and glowing blue white rings that hummed softly with contained power.
“I’m just saying, the rules of it are not normal rules. I mean, obviously, because I was gone for five years but it felt like five hours! So either time is broken in there or it works differently and if it works differently, maybe we can use different differently!!”
Tony looked up from a tablet. “That sentence just committed several crimes.”
Scott pointed at him. “But you understood me!”
Then Bruce turned and you stopped. For a second, you simply just stared, because he was..there and was green. Not the mild, nervous man who had spoken too quickly and looked at her dragon with scientific terror in his eyes, no, this was something between and beyond..both. Massive
He smiled carefully. “Prin- Your Grace..”
“Dr. Banner.”
Scott looked between them. “You know her?”
Bruce lifted one large hand in a small wave. “We met before.”
Your gaze moved over him slowly. “You were not green.”
Bruce’s smile faltered into something sheepish. “Yeah. A lot happened.”
Scott raised his hand slightly. “Hi. Sorry. Medieval execution committee?”
Natasha gestured faintly. “Scott Lang.”
You looked at him and Scott straightened. Your gaze then dropped to his shoes, then returned to his face. “You are the insect man.”
Scott blinked. “Okay. That has come up twice now and I feel like maybe there’s branding damage happening..”
Tony snapped his fingers toward Scott and your attention returned to the machine. “Explain it.”
It took exactly one hour until they got through the most important details and you found yourself following along and despite yourself, having to admit that it might actually work.
“We identify when and where the Stones existed, go back, retrieve them, bring them here, use them to undo the Snap, then return the Stones to their timelines before reality sues us.”
You looked at Bruce. “Can this really be done?”
Bruce hesitated but Tony did not. “Maybe.”
Your gaze turned to him. “We’re past certainty. Certainty died five years ago with half the universe. What we have is math, a rat, Scott’s weird survival story, my brain, Banner’s brain body situation and a prototype that might either work or turn someone into soup.”
You looked at the platform again and Natasha did too. “Someone has to test it.” Bruce said quietly.
You stepped forward “I will do it.”
“No.” Natasha stepped towards you and Bruce as well. “We need more calibration. More safety checks.”
Your eyes stayed on the machine. “Then calibrate.”
Natasha crossed the space between them. “You are not doing this. You do not get to walk into this building after five years and throw yourself into the first machine that might kill you because you want proof.”
“That is exactly what I get to do.”
“No.”
Your gaze hardened. “I am not one of your agents.”
“I know.”
“Then do not speak to me as if I am waiting for permission.”
Natasha took one step closer. “Then do not act like dying is just another way to make a point.”
Bruce cleared his throat softly. “There are risks.”
You turned to him. “What kind?”
“Temporal displacement..Memory disturbance. If the suit fails to anchor you, you could be lost in the Quantum Realm..”
You listened without flinching. “Send me.”
Natasha’s jaw clenched. “Y/n-”
“I need to know if hope has a body..” You said quietly. “Or if it is another ghost.”
Natasha felt her anger falter. That was the cruelty of it, because you’re not being reckless because you thought you could not be hurt. You were being reckless because you had been hurt so much that pain had stopped being persuasive.
You saw the circle of silent permission forming and stepped onto the platform before anyone could make it more formal and Natasha followed instantly. “Y/n!”
You did not turn around as Bruce approached with the suit components. The test suit was sleek and strange, black and white with red accents, designed to fit over clothing and seal around the body. It looked too modern against your dark leathers and old steel. Bruce adjusted the wrist controls with careful fingers and Tony handed him a helmet.
You looked at it and then at Natasha. “You said there was a chance.” Natasha’s throat tightened. “There is.”
“Then let me look at it.”
Natasha wanted to refuse, wanted to drag you off the platform. Wanted to say no until the word became law, wanted to take every weapon from your hands, every crown from your head, every grief from your body and put them somewhere safer than this humming circle of metal and impossible science. But you had spent five years being queen of the dead. Natasha could not ask you to trust hope blindly, so she stepped closer and helped seal the collar of the suit.
Her fingers brushed your throat, the bruise from Thanos was long gone, but memory was not. Your eyes flicked down to Natasha’s hands and neither of you moved for one breath. Then Natasha lifted the helmet and you let her put it on.
Tony moved to the console. “We’re sending her back and pulling her out after ten seconds subjective and no souvenirs.”
Your eyes cut to him through the helmet and Tony pointed at you. “I mean it. Time is not a market, don’t steal anything.”
You said nothing and Natasha stepped off the platform slowly. Every instinct screamed at her not to.
“Ready?” Bruce asked and you looked at Natasha. Then you gave one short nod and Tony’s hand hovered over the controls.
“Three.”
Natasha’s hands curled into fists.
“Two.”
Steve’s shoulders tightened.
“One.”
Tony pressed the button and the platform flashed white and you vanished. For one second, nothing happened, then everything happened somewhere else.
You opened your eyes in your own room. Not the room as it was now, or the queen’s chamber full of reports, knives, maps and grief. Your room, five years ago-
No. More than five..way before because the air hit your first. The faint spice of the oils her mother’s attendants used to polish the old wood centuries ago..the smell of the mountain before ash became its second skin.
You couldn’t move. Your bed stood near the far wall, carved posts draped in pale fabric and a gown lay across it. Your fingers lifted without permission, and remembers the last time she had worn it, her mother had stood behind her and complained that you never stood still long enough to be dressed properly. Your father had laughed from the doorway and told the queen she should be grateful their daughter could stand still before armies, even if not before seamstresses.
Your hand clenched in the gown. No. No, no- Suddenly a roar split the sky and you turned so fast the room tilted. You stumbled toward the balcony and outside the kingdom lived. The courtyard below was full of voices, soldiers crossing between gates and servants carrying baskets. Children chasing one another near the fountain before a guard barked at them and failed badly at hiding his smile.
Then shadows passed over the towers. Three dragons flew across the mountain sky and you stopped breathing. Vhassar was first, younger by years and untouched by the scars Wakanda had burned into him. Beside him flew two others. A silver gray dragon with long narrow wings and a red crest like a wound of flame down her neck and a bronze one, smaller but faster, cutting through the clouds with a cry that made the windows tremble.
Your knees almost failed. “W-What?”
They were dead. They had been dead before Wakanda, before Thanos and Natasha. Lost in the old wars of the mountain kingdom, buried in stories you carried like bones beneath your skin, but there they were..alive.
You made a sound that was not a sob only because there was not enough time for it to become one when suddenly l a voice called from the corridor. “Y/n?”
The world stopped because it was your l mother. You turned from the balcony so violently your shoulder struck the doorframe. “Y/n, are you dressed? Your father will start the council without us if you make him wait again.”
You ran. You did not think, did not remember Tony’s warning, did not remember the suit or the compound or the machine or Natasha. There was only that voice, that impossible, living voice moving away down a corridor that had been silent for five years.
“Mother!”
Her own voice came out ragged and suddenly a distant signal began beeping in your ear. “Mother!” You reached the chamber door and tore it open. The signal in your ear screamed, white light took the hall and you hit the compound platform on your knees.
The impact cracked through the room and Natasha was moving before anyone else understood you had returned. Your hands slammed against the metal platform, your breathing came too fast and one fist was closed around something red and black.
Natasha dropped in front of you. “Hey, hey..”
You did not seem to hear because your whole body shook. Natasha grabbed the helmet release with fingers that fumbled only once and the seal hissed. You gasped like someone dragged from drowning and Natasha cupped your face. “Look at me.”
Your breathing hitched. “Look at me.” And your eyes found hers. For a second, Natasha was not sure you knew where you were. Then you looked down at your hand.
You had brought back part of the gown and Tony stared. “She brought back a souvenir.”
Bruce looked like he might cry and Scott whispered, “Oh my God.”
You touched the fabric with your free hand and looked up. At Natasha first, then to the others. “It..works.” The words came out barely above a whisper.
Natasha did not look away from you and saw how your eyes filled. “It works..” you said again and this time, the room heard the second meaning. They were alive somewhere..somewhen.
Hours passed and the compound became something it had not been in five years. People moved quickly now. Screens filled with timelines, locations, energy signatures, historical records, old mission files. Tony and Bruce argued with the speed of men trying to outrun doubt. Scott told the same Quantum Realm explanation three more times and made it worse each time.
You sat on a couch near the back of the room and had not let go of the fabric. The strip of gown lay across your palm, your thumb moving slowly over the embroidered silver wing, again and again. You had said very little since the test and that worried Natasha more than tears would have. She crossed the room while Tony and Bruce argued over branching timelines near the holographic board. “Hey.”
You looked up when Natasha sat beside you. “You okay?”
You looked at the fabric. “No.” After a moment, your voice came softer, “I saw my room. The way it was before the war. Before all of this. The gown was on my bed.”
Natasha watched your face and you looked toward the windows, “I saw them.”
“Your parents?”
Your mouth trembled once. “My dragons.”
Natasha stilled and you looked down at the fabric again. “All three of them..” your voice changed on the number, “Vhassar and his two siblings I buried before him. They were flying together.”
Natasha remembered enough of old stories and quiet confessions to understand. “I thought I remembered the sound of their wings, but I didn’t..”
Natasha’s hand moved before she could stop it, covering yours where it gripped the cloth.
“Then I heard my mother. he called my name from the corridor..It has been so long since I heard her voice without dreaming it wrong.”
“You saw her?”
You shook your head and a tear finally slipped free. “No..”
Natasha looked at the strip of gown. “But you brought this back.”
“Yeah.”
“Then it was real.”
You inhaled carefully. For five years, hope had been a thing you killed on sight. Now it sat in your hand wearing your mother’s embroidery. You looked toward the glass board where Tony had begun writing possible Stone locations in aggressive strokes. “When do we go?”
Natasha’s answer was immediate. “As soon as we can.”
The planning took hours..The universe had hidden its salvation across time, space and several bad decisions. They gathered in the main briefing room once the initial calculations stopped exploding into arguments. The table filled with holograms of the Stones: Space, Mind, Reality, Power, Time, Soul. Six colors hanging above them like accusations.
You sat beside Natasha this time and Tony stood near the board with a marker in one hand and the expression of a man trying very hard not to admit he was enjoying the puzzle because the stakes were too obscene.
“Same year, same place, Mind Stone was in Loki’s scepter.”
Bruce pulled up another image. “And the Time Stone was with the Ancient One. Also in New York.”
Rhodey leaned forward. “Three Stones in one place?”
“One city.” Tony corrected. “Not one place. And it’ll still be a mess because we were also there, the Chitauri were there, S.H.I.E.L.D. was crawling everywhere and half of us were emotionally less developed.”
Steve gave him a look and Tony tapped the marker against the board. “Some of us.”
Natasha studied the timeline. Three Stones in 2012. It was almost too clean. “If we time it right, three teams can hit New York at the same point.”
Tony looked at the last hologram. The Soul Stone.
Nebula’s voice went flat. “Vormir. 2014.”
Steve looked at her. “You know it?”
“Thanos found it there.”
“How?”
Nebula did not answer quickly. “He sent Gamora with him.” she said at last. “He came back with the Stone but without her.”
The room chilled and you looked at the orange light while Natasha looked at you.
Steve leaned forward. “So that’s six Stones. Three in New York, one on Asgard, one on Morag, one on Vormir.”
They began assigning teams. Tony, Steve, Bruce and Scott to New York, 2012.
Thor and Rocket to Asgard, 2013.
Rhodey and Nebula to Morag, 2014.
Then the room turned toward the last Stone and Natasha knew before Steve said anything. Maybe because she had lived long enough to recognize the shape of her own road before seeing its end. “I’ll go.”
You spoke at the same time. “I go with her.”
Natasha turned. “No.”
Your eyes moved to hers. “Yes.”
“You do not even know what Vormir is.”
“Neither do you.”
Steve looked between them. “Nat-”
“No.” Natasha said and you leaned back slightly, “Are we doing this again?”
“You are not coming with me because you think every dangerous place is yours by right.”
“And you are not going alone because you think dying for the mission is a personality.”
The room went silent and Natasha stared at you. There were years between them. Blood, ash, letters unanswered and hands held too late..Finally, Steve said, “You two are the best fit.”
Natasha looked at him sharply and Steve’s expression was gentle and terrible because he knew exactly what he was doing and hated it. “Vormir is unknown territory. We need someone who can move quietly, read danger fast and get out if something goes wrong. That’s Nat.” His gaze shifted to you. “And if something bigger is waiting there, we need someone who can survive it.”
Natasha hated the logic because it was sound. The teams settled around the table like pieces on a board no one trusted and hope had shape now. By the time they stopped, night had folded fully around the compound, but no one called it sleeping.
They called it resting. Anything but admitting they were going to lie down with the possibility of tomorrow pressing against their throats. Tony left first and soon everyone else followed, but you remained seated after the room emptied. Natasha stood near the door. “I’ll show you your room.”
You both walked through the compound in silence. It was different now with the building dark and the glass walls reflected them as they passed. Natasha opened a door near the guest wing and the room beyond was clean. You stopped at the threshold and Natasha watched her face. “It’s temporary.” Natasha said.
You looked at the bed. “At the compound, I mean. We leave in the morning.”
Your fingers tightened around the fabric. “It does not feel like a room..”
Natasha looked inside. She had never thought about it that way before. Now she saw it through your eyes, no books worn by hands, no weapons within reach except what a guest brought in. No scent of smoke or leather or old stone. Just a place to place a body until morning.
Natasha’s voice softened. “No. It doesn’t.”
You looked at her then. For the first time since the test, uncertainty crossed your face without armor rushing immediately to cover it. “Could I…” The sentence died.
Natasha waited and you hated asking, Natasha could see it. This was a woman standing outside an empty room after seeing your dead almost alive and not knowing how to be alone with it. Natasha stepped closer. “What?”
You looked away. “Could I stay with you?”
Natasha’s chest tightened. “Yeah.” Way too fast, but she doesn’t care. You looked back and something moved between you then.
“This way.” Natasha said quietly. Her own room was on the other side of the compound. She had chosen it because it was close to the operations center and far enough from the rooms that hurt most. It was smaller than the guest suite, but less empty, though not by much. Natasha opened the door and stepped inside first. “It’s not much.”
You entered behind her and the room changed with you in it. Not because it became warmer, because Natasha suddenly saw every part of it as evidence. The exhaustion she had folded into this room night after night because no one else had been there to see it. You stood in the center, looking around quietly. “This is where you live.”
Natasha closed the door. “Yeah.”
Your gaze moved over the desk. “You work here too..?”
“I work everywhere.”
You looked at her then. The tension from the hallway had followed you inside and grown teeth. Natasha felt it under her skin too. You placed the strip of gown carefully on the desk and turned back. “You kept going.”
Natasha leaned against the door, because standing upright without support suddenly felt too honest. “So did you.”
“Do not compare them.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I did was not noble.”
Natasha’s mouth tightened. “Neither was all of what I did.”
“You answered calls. Held your team together. Led what remained.”
“I hid in work because the alternative was sitting still long enough to feel everything.”
You stared at her because the truth shifted something. Natasha stepped away from the door. “You think I don’t know what it’s like?” she asked softly. “To turn pain into a job because at least jobs have rules? Reports, targets, missions or people to save so you don’t have to count the ones you didn’t?”
Your jaw tightened and Natasha took another step. “I know exactly what you’ve been doing.”
Your voice dropped. “Then you should know not to stand too close.”
Natasha stopped and you looked at your hands. “There is blood on me you have not seen.”
“I’ve seen blood.”
“Not this kind.”
Natasha’s face softened despite the ache in her chest. “Y/n.”
“No.” You looked up sharply. “Do not say my name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you remember me.”
Natasha’s breath caught and you looked away, but there was nowhere in the small room for either of them to hide. “I do remember you.” Natasha said and your mouth trembled once.
“I remember your hands in my hair. I remember the way you looked at me when you gave me your clasp. I remember you on Vhassar above Wakanda. I remember you kneeling in the mud with Seraya in your arms. I remember you in that garden, asking where to put your grief.”
You closed your eyes and Natasha stepped closer. “I remember all of it.”
“Then you remember that I blamed you.”
“Yes.”
“You should have.”
“I did.”
Your eyes opened and Natasha was close now. Too close for five years of restraint but not close enough for five years of wanting. “I did blame myself.” Natasha said. “Every day. For asking, surviving..For not following you through the Bifröst or stopping outside your borders. For being relieved when you didn’t answer because it meant I didn’t have to hear you tell me you hated me.”
“I did not hate you..”
“I know.”
“No.” You stepped closer now. “You do not know. Hatred would have been cleaner. I tried, I wanted to hate you. I thought if I made you part of the wound, then maybe the wound would have a name I could speak without breaking.” Natasha’s eyes burned. “But I missed you, Natasha.”
You looked furious with yourself for saying it. “I missed you.” You said again as if repetition could punish the softness out of it. “While I buried my dead. While I wore a crown I did not want. While I judged people and killed monsters and stood before my people as if I was not still kneeling in Wakanda with ash in my hand. I missed you and I hated that too.”
Natasha’s breath shook, you were close enough now that Natasha could see the faint line of a scar near your mouth, the silver thread at the edge of one braid, the places where grief had altered you and failed to erase her. “I missed you too..” Natasha whispered.
You looked at her mouth and that was all it took. Five years collapsed and Natasha moved first or maybe you did, it did not matter.
They met in the middle like two storms that had spent too long pretending to be weather systems instead of hunger. Your hand caught Natasha’s waist and Natasha’s fingers slid into your hair, careful for half a second and then not careful at all. Their mouths collided hard enough to hurt.
Natasha backed into the door with a soft, sharp sound and pulled you with her. Your body pressed against hers and Natasha kissed you again, deeper this time and you made a sound against her mouth that broke something open in Natasha’s chest.
Her hands fisted in the front of your cloak and yanked it open, shoving it off your shoulders so it hit the floor in a heavy pool. Your own hands were already under Natasha’s shirt, nails dragging up her ribs like you wanted to mark her, like you needed proof she was real and not another ghost. Natasha gasped into your mouth when your thumb brushed the underside of her breast.
She shoved a thigh between your legs and you ground down against it immediately, a broken sound escaping you that Natasha felt all the way down to her bones. She bit at your jaw, your throat, the place just beneath your ear that had always made you shiver. Your hands were in Natasha’s hair now, yanking her head back so you could look at her. “I wanted to hate you..” you hissed. “I tried so fucking hard.”
“I know.” Natasha’s voice was hoarse. She slid her hands down to your thighs and lifted, and you wrapped your legs around her waist without hesitation. Natasha carried you the few steps to the bed and dropped you onto it, following you down. “I wanted you to.”
You pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it somewhere behind her. You stared up at her for one suspended second, eyes glassy and furious and so full of want it hurt to look at. Then you surged up and kissed her again. Your hands went to Natasha’s belt, yanking it open with impatient fingers.
Natasha pushed you back down and kissed her way down your body like she was relearning it. She bit at the curve of your breast, soothed it with her tongue, then moved lower, dragging her mouth over your stomach, your hip, the inside of your thigh. You were already shaking when Natasha settled between your legs.
“Look at me.” Natasha said and you did and Natasha licked into you like she was starving for it. Your back arched off the bed. One hand flew to Natasha’s hair, gripping tight, the other fisting the sheets. Natasha didn’t go slow, she licked and sucked like she was trying to pull every sound you’d held back for five years out of your throat. Your thighs trembled around her head and you made a noise that was half a sob and half a curse and Natasha groaned against you, the vibration making you jerk.
“Natash-” Your voice broke on her name. “Fuck-”
Natasha slid two fingers into you without warning and you came almost instantly, clenching hard around her, with a broken moan tearing out of your chest. Natasha didn’t stop and worked you through it, then kept going, gentler now but relentless, until you were gasping and pulling at her hair, “Get up here..” you rasped. “Now.”
Only then did she crawl back up your body and shoved her fingers back inside you without asking and buried her face in the curve of your neck, breathing you in like she needed it to live.
“I fucking missed you..” she whispered against your skin, her fingers curled deep, fucking you slow and rough at the same time. “Missed the way you taste. Missed the way you sound when you finally let go.” She bit at your throat, not hard enough to mark but enough to feel. “Missed being the one who makes you fall apart.”
You made a wounded noise and grabbed her wrist, not to stop her, but to hold her there. Your other hand was still in her hair. She fucked you like that until you came again, quieter this time, your face turned into her hair and your body trembling under hers. She stayed pressed close the whole time, whispering against your skin between thrusts, how she thought about you every night, how she wrote letters she never sent, how she was terrified you’d never let her touch you like this again.
When you finally pushed her onto her back, it was with shaking hands and a look that said you were done being taken apart. You straddled her stomach, completely bare and Natasha went still beneath you. Her eyes dragged over every inch of you like she was starving. The way your body moved when you breathed, the way your hair fell around your face. The queen and the woman and the girl she had slept with before the world broke.
Natasha’s hands came up to your thighs, gripping tight and thumbs stroking over your skin like she couldn’t believe you were real. You leaned down, kissed her once and slid down her body until your mouth was between her legs. Natasha’s head fell back against the pillow the second your tongue touched her. She was already soaked, already shaking from how worked up she’d gotten just from touching you.
Hours after hours passed, till you finally crawled back up and collapsed half on top of her, both of you were shaking. Natasha pulled you in immediately, one arm locked around your waist, the other hand stroking your hair with trembling fingers. Your face was tucked into her neck and neither of you spoke for a long minute. Till you whispered, “Why did you come for me?”
The question was simple but too simple for what it carried. You looked at her. “Not for the mission..not because I can fight or because I am useful.” Your voice lowered. “Why did you come?”
Natasha stared at you. There were so many answers, because Scott came back and the world had changed again, because you deserved to know, because the kingdom deserved its vanished, because Natasha could not bear the thought of you discovering hope from anyone else.
All true and none enough.
Natasha looked at the ceiling, then back at you. “Because I never stopped looking for a reason to.” She forced herself to keep going before fear could close her throat. “I told myself I stayed away because you closed the borders. Because you didn’t answer or maybe you hated me and maybe you had the right to. I told myself you were better off without me standing in front of you with apologies that couldn’t bring anyone back. But the truth is, I was afraid.” Natasha said. “Afraid you wouldn’t let me in or you would. Afraid I’d find you and there would be nothing left of the person I-” She stopped but it was too late.
Your eyes searched hers. “The person you what?”
Natasha closed her eyes briefly. All the things she had survived and this was still the place her courage thinned. When she opened her eyes again, you were watching her. Natasha reached up and brushed a loose strand of white hair from your face.
“The person I loved.”
The words were barely louder than breath but the room heard them and you heard them. Everything stopped and for a second, you did not move at all. Then your eyes filled so quickly it looked painful.
Natasha’s chest tightened. “Y/n-”
“No.”
Natasha froze and you shook your head once, but your hand clung to Natasha’s like letting go would drop you through the bed, through the floor, through every year between them. “Do not take it back.”
Natasha’s breath broke. “..I wasn’t going to.”
You stared at her. “You loved me?”
Natasha gave a small smile. “That’s what I said.”
“Before?”
“Yes.”
Your voice was fragile now. “Before Wakanda?” Natasha nodded. “Before the garden?”
“Yes.”
“After?”
Natasha’s eyes burned. “Especially after.”
A tear slipped down your temple into your hair, you looked almost angry at it. Natasha reached for it, but you caught her wrist. “I tried to kill it..” You whispered and Natasha’s smile faded. “What?”
You looked at her with a grief so open it felt like being trusted with a wound still bleeding.
“What I felt for you, I tried to kill it. I thought if I could make myself cold enough, if I could bury enough of myself under the crown, under the names, under all the blood, then it would die too.”
Natasha’s throat closed. “It did not.” Your fingers trembled around Natasha’s wrist. “It survived everything I did to it. I hated that most..” You whispered. “Not you. The wanting.. the way I could stand before my people and command executions without shaking, but then hear your name in a report and feel like the floor had gone out from under me.”
Your breath caught. “I loved you too.” You said and the words sounded almost unwilling, as if they had been dragged from somewhere too guarded for language. “I loved you when I left Wakanda. I loved you in Thanos’s garden. I loved you every time I told myself I had become something that could not love anyone anymore.”
Your hand rose to Natasha’s face, “I love you still..” You shifted closer under the sheet until your forehead tucked against Natasha’s collarbone. The movement was small, almost awkward, like you were remembering something your body had learned before the rest of you forgot. Natasha wrapped an arm around you and held on.
Natasha pressed a kiss into your hair. “I love you.” she whispered again, because now that she had said it once, keeping it back felt cruel. Your fingers tightened against Natasha’s ribs. “I love you.”
Regular compliments? Honestly idk bc I can't seem to accept nice things about me so i just don't take compliments seriously? or my brain just bypasses them lol.
I have serious self-esteem issues, I feel like the ugliest person in the world so I don't think I deserve them or the person saying it doesn't really mean them. 😅
theartofmadeline
jbbartram-illu
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
janainaart
