@ofromcnovas
We’ll talk after. That was the last thing he’d ever said to her, in that moment just before that last big fight. She’d caught his eye and he’d seen the question there, the silent acknowledgement. Natasha had never been good with words, and that had always been okay. Sam had a way of knowing what she meant anyways. We’ll talk after, he’d told her, and she’d given him a nod. It was a promise, a commitment, a reassurance. We’ll talk after.
And they never did.
Sam had turned to dust, alone in the dirt. He’d watched every last piece of himself floating away in the wind, watched his fingers turn to sand, watched the sand turn into a dessert, watched the blood seep into it, heard his own voice crying out in a memory. We’ll talk after, he’d promised, and then he’d floated away on the wind. So many people had broken their promises to her. Sam had never wanted to be one of them.
When he opened his eyes again, when he found a stranger standing over him and telling him five years had passed and the battle wasn’t won yet, he’d thought he’d been given a second chance at keeping that promise. He’d fought in that fight, he’d defeated a goddamn alien army, and when all was said and done he still had that broken promise. We’ll talk after, he’d said, and the two of them would never share the same world again.
And now he was here, in another world, and he had no idea if the version of him that had belonged here had ever made that promise to her. He had no idea if he still owed her that talk, and he had no idea how to ask. All he knew, really, was that Natasha was alive and he wasn’t alone for the first time in months and that was a hard thing to swallow. That was a hard change to understand.
He was looking at her like she was a ghost standing in the doorway of the safehouse he’d taken up temporary residence in, and he knew it. He also knew that she knew it, that she must have recognized that look on his face.
(He wondered if it was anything like the look they’d seen on Steve’s face when the Winter Soldier’s mask came off. He wondered if seeing a ghost inspired a universal kind of shock.)
“Hey,” he said, and his throat was dry and it hurt to breathe, just a little. “Uh, so, I should --- Full disclosure, I’m not --- I’m from... the other place. Like Barnes and Barton. We were friends there, and you showed up in my crappy warehouse, so I’m guessing that’s the same here. Right?” Had anyone told her, he wondered? He didn’t know how to have the conversation. Hey, in the universe where I’m from, you died on some barren planet so we could play with a cool rock! Not exactly the kind of talk he’d had in mind when he’d made that promise.
