Tony turns from staring up at crisp white clouds, a pang piercing his heart as he recognizes vibrant red hair and warm golden eyes. He smiles softly, a smile for comfort and a smile to release the tension loneliness in death brings. “We won, Nat.”
Her smile deepens and she crosses her arms against her chest. “I’m guessing since you’re here that you didn’t.”
The brunette laughs and shakes his head as he turns to face her fully. “I most definitely won. I got the kid back. We brought everyone back.” His eyes crinkle at the corners and he holds out a hand to take hers. “When it comes to saving the world, sometimes people die. It’s for a good cause though. At least I’m here with you.”
Natasha squeezes Tony’s hand and pulls him in for a hug. He buries his head in her neck and takes a deep breath as if trying to capture her familiar scent. She leans in against him and feels tears prickle in her eyes at the rough scratch of his beard. A deep sorrow fills her chest. “I’m glad it’s you here with me.”
He huffs a gentle breath into her skin. “I knew you’ve been wanting me dead since you first started spying on me!” She pinches his side and laughs loudly when he pulls away clutching his stomach and glaring at her with no real anger in his eyes. He smirks and shakes his head before looking up at the clouds again. “Is it just us here? Some sort of purgatory for using the Stones?”
Natasha shrugs and looks up at the clouds too. They’re a perfect shade of white she never saw on Earth, a blend of shades that carry hope, desire, desperation, and courage deep in their fluffy curves. It’s both blinding and soothing and she wonders for a moment what Tony sees when he looks up in the clouds. “What do you see up there?”
Tony turns back to look at her to reply, probably with some sarcastic jib about seeing “clouds because duh, Natasha, what else are gaseous blobs of dust particles and water gonna look like” but he looks past her shoulder with widened eyes. Natasha turns on her heels, falling into a fighting stance even though she has no weapons with her here. There’s a sparkling nebula bridge before them, glistening with impossible shades of the rainbow until they blend to almost look translucent white at the edges. Tony steps forward but Natasha puts an arm in front of him to stop him for a moment longer. The brunette looks down at her, his eyes wet with unshed tears and a longing she’s never seen in his eyes.
“It’s the bridge to the other side, Nat,” he whispers hoarsely, turning from her sharply to look down at the ground at their feet. She places a gentle hand on his shoulder and watches him turn back to her. He’s crying. Her heart hurts even more.
“If you cross, you’ll never come back,” Natasha whispers in turn. “We’re between realms, Tony. We’re neither dead nor alive but there’s a chance-,”
“I’ve taken many chances, Natasha,” Tony laughs sardonically and motions to the empty space surrounding them. “I’ve taken all the chances I ever could and this is where I am for it.”
“You have a family down there, Tony!”
“And so do you!” Tony shouts back. “Steve cried for you, Nat. Barton could barely speak when he returned from Vormir. I could barely think when building the gauntlet because I knew we only had one of those stones because of your death. Bruce even tried to bring you back but he couldn’t.”
Natasha feels like a wet rag has slapped her across the face. She steps back from Tony with a heavy breath, unsure if she should be happy to know the Avengers mourned her or sad that she can’t be there to celebrate victory with them. “They could try to find a way to bring you back.”
“If I’m here with you and you can’t come back, then I probably can’t either. And even if they could, I think it would be a little Frankenstein-ish in concept and in realization.” He steps forward to grab her hands. His are calloused but warm and comforting. It reminds her of home. “I want to cross the bridge with you. See what life is like after our time on Earth. Hell, you know I’m not religious and I don’t believe in the after life but it’s real and we’re here in it. Who are we to ignore what’s to come next for us? We won, Natasha. We defied life and beat Thanos’ ass. Pep told me everyone is gonna be okay. We can rest.” He motions to the bridge and sighs. “Let’s just reap the rewards for our sacrifices.”
Natasha turns to face the bridge, her eyes watering with the realization of leaving this perfect in between place where she waited for some counterpart to join her. She turns back to Tony, who is giving her that soft loving smile he always wore when the mask fell off and his true compassion found homage in his sparkling brown eyes and on his curved pink lips. “You think they have what we want on the other side?”
“Nah,” grins Tony as he strokes her hands with his thumbs, “What we both want is still out there on Earth. I think the other side will give us what we need in order to rest well. Probably something like a memory foam mattress on a king side bed.” Tony’s eyes glow as he continues on. “Man, I would kill for a long nap after all of this fighting. My back aches in places I didn’t even know were considered ‘back’.”
Natasha chuckles and squeezes Tony’s hands with her own before stepping forward toward the bridge. “Then I hope they have memory foam mattresses for you, Tony.”
“How about you?” he asks as they walk hand in hand toward the rainbow bridge that shimmers under a sun they can’t yet see. “What do you think you need?”
The red-head looks up at the sky and spots a peak of blue sky shining through the clouds. She remembers a conversation with Steve before this all started, when she was trying to keep the Avengers together through mostly will power and faith than anything else. A faith that brought them back together to save the universe one last time. “I need a giant bottle of vodka and a game of darts.”
Tony laughs boisterously and the sound carries through the halls of Valhalla as the duo cross the rainbow bridge to complete their past lives and start anew in eternity. Natasha smiles to herself and lets memories of the past wash over her and rebirth her into the ever developing modern Earth mythos. Black Widow will go down in history as the Soul Stone itself. The woman who was the heart of the Avengers and stuck by the initiative until the end.
