Chapter Text
Natasha Romanoff chooses to fall.
The cold wind tears at her and her hair whips around her head, but she keeps her eyes fixed on Clint's anguished face. She can only hope that he eventually understands that this is the way it had to be. This was her mission. Scott may have been the catalyst, but Natasha brought everyone together - dragged Clint back from his exile, Tony from his family, and Steve from his apathy. If someone has to pay the ultimate price, it should be her.
Yes. She wants this. Not to die, not to leave what’s left of her family, but to finally do something, anything, to undo the most devastating failure of her life. To make things right.
Whatever it takes.
She can’t make out Clint’s face anymore, but his pain is clear in the curve of his body, tense against the cable. She hates putting him through another death, but it’s gratifying to give him what he gave her long ago: a chance for life, purpose, family, love. Hope for redemption. It's a debt she never thought she could repay, but maybe, if this works…
It will work. It has to work. Natasha may not die with her ledger balanced, but Clint will return with the stone and the others will bring everyone back. They will, she knows it. Laura, Cooper, Lila, Nathaniel, Sam, Wanda - everyone. The family she was never supposed to have will avenge her with life instead of death and trillions of lives will be saved and maybe, maybe, she'll finally be in the black.
Clint is a tiny, blurry speck against the looming cliff, but she knows he can still see her, so she keeps her eyes open. Why hasn’t she hit yet, how far can it be?
No. No fear.
No regrets.
It's oka-
***
There's a flash of white light and a tugging sensation in her chest, and Natasha blinks open eyes that she doesn't remember closing. She's lying on her back. Her ribs don't hurt anymore, and she's not cold. The sky overhead is peaceful, the amorphous clouds painted in muted twilight colors. The ground beneath her is soft with thick grass.
Puzzled, she sits up and finds herself surrounded by a rainbow of mismatched, childlike aliens. They're at a respectful distance and nothing in their body language seems aggressive from a human point of view, which has been a reliable indicator with Rocket, Nebula, and Thor. "Hello," Natasha says cautiously, easing up to her feet. She's in the middle of a bowl-shaped clearing in a semi-wild garden that is definitely not on Earth. Or Vormir, for that matter.
A pretty, brown-skinned little girl waves and the hairless, pale green boy beside her loudly chirps, "Hi!"
Natasha smiles at them and makes a show of relaxing. "I'm Natasha," she says. "What are your names?"
Excited and friendly, they introduce themselves as Shalla and Torp, talking over each other to name the other children (Baldur, Keretzenia, Tarlet, Jai, Jormi, and Xinn), but ignoring the giant, brown insect and skinny, chalk-skinned man who glower from isolated corners of the clearing. Natasha commits the names to memory.
"That was very brave!" Torp announces when the introductions are complete. He seems to only have one volume: loud. "How you saved your brother! I wish I'd been brave, but I screamed all the way down when Mama threw me over!"
Natasha is suddenly very grateful for the training that allows her to keep smiling as if nothing is wrong. The children are all nodding and happy, unperturbed by the boy's statement. Orange-furred Jai even laughs.
"Me too," Shalla says, looking up at Natasha admiringly with her slit-pupiled eyes full of wonder. "And I've never seen anyone sacrifice themselves."
Solemnly, the oldest boy, Baldur, says, "Nor have I." The other children react as if this is very exciting.
There's really no other way to interpret the conversation, but Natasha carefully asks, "You were all sacrificed for the Soul Stone?"
They answer with a chorus of affirmatives, some of them tossing in details that she could have lived without knowing. Although maybe that should be died without knowing.
"Okay." Looking around at the blue grass and dense bushes with feathery, deep green leaves, she asks, "Could you tell me where we are now?"
"In the Soul Stone. A prisoner, just like the rest of us," the white-skinned man says sourly, speaking up for the first time. The children grow quiet, watching him solemnly but without fear. "Regret your foolishness, don't you?"
"No," Natasha says honestly, her mind racing. She was warned; the price of the exchange was a soul, not a life. It makes sense that the people sacrificed for the stone wouldn't be allowed to move on to wherever other souls go, and it could be much worse. Eternal captivity in some sort of garden is better than being consumed or erased. The children seem happy enough. Anyway, she's never really believed in life after death, so why should she care that she's been taken out of the natural order?
No, Natasha doesn't regret falling, but she can't help thinking, prisons can be escaped.
***
Though the Infinity Stones have existed since the birth of the universe, Natasha is only the sixteenth soul to inhabit the vast garden inside the Soul Stone.
The others are happy enough to explain: most beings who climb to the top of the mountain on Vormir and stand on the precipice fail to retrieve the Soul Stone. Some come alone and have no soul to give up but their own. Some turn away when they hear the price. Most of the time, they don’t come alone. Most of the time, seekers of the stone murder a companion - a friend, a fellow seeker, a relative - and discover that the words of the Keeper are perfectly true: to gain the stone, they must lose that which they love most.
It's a strange, bittersweet revelation. If Laura and all three kids hadn't died, Natasha is almost positive that she wouldn't be in the garden. On the other hand, she knows with absolute certainty that she was loved above all else. Honestly, she thinks she realized when Clint wouldn't let her go, when she had to tear herself out of his grasp. The thought sticks with her as she acquaints herself with the other prisoners: they were loved, too, but their loved ones chose power over love.
She begins with the adults.
The rail-thin, pale alien named Ghezit won’t talk about his own death. He’s much more interested in the trials of others, and considers watching the failures to be one of the few entertainments available to successful sacrifices. In his favorite story, a woman approached the altar alone and left when told the price. She came back with her newborn baby some years later and flung the child from the peak of the mountain without a second thought. The baby didn't appear in the garden afterwards, and the woman went away empty-handed a second time.
Natasha doesn't care for Ghezit. She milks all of the information she can from him early on and then avoids him. Sadly, he’s the most informative of the adult residents.
In a quiet grotto, an ethereal woman with pale, canary-yellow skin reclines on a soft patch of moss-like growth in eternal sleep. Her long, light blue hair fans around her like a halo. No one remembers her name. As far as anyone knows, she lay down long ago and simply stopped. Her soul may be present, but her mind is gone.
The insectoid Breev is still consumed with bitterness centuries after being defeated in combat and sacrificed by his own brother. He doesn't understand why Natasha would choose to fall, and he picks at the topic every time they talk, refusing to speak of anything else. His remote corner of the garden is rocky and dry, the closest thing to his homeworld he can find in an otherwise lush paradise. He hates it, just like he hates her and himself and everything else in his prison.
If adulthood is defined as physical maturity, there's also a bear-sized, wolf-like quadruped that doesn’t seem to be intelligent. Natasha introduces herself just in case and puts up with being sniffed all over. She even pets him when he shoves his head demandingly under her hands, running her fingers through thick, coarse, gray fur and wondering if tigers feel similar. The beast is the only animal in the garden, and far too tame to have ever been wild. Someone must have loved him enough to successfully trade him for the stone.
The rest of the trapped souls are children, and it seems like the world was made for them.
Under an endless twilight sky of lavender and coral, meadows of soft, blue grass are scattered through shady woods full of tall, climbable trees. There are hidden waterfalls and winding caves lit by luminous silver moss, gentle streams perfect for wading, and deep pools of cool, clear water for swimming. There are no man-made structures, but there are thickly canopied grottos to shelter in (though nothing to shelter from).
There is no pain, so there are no consequences for long falls or roughhousing. Though there is no hunger, there is a variety of fruit to eat, in reds and purples and deep blues. There is no thirst, but the water is refreshing. Even the temperature of the air is eternally pleasant. It's a paradise. All things considered, the afterlife could be much worse.
Natasha has accepted her death and her fate. She knows that she may as well make the most of it. Still, she tries to find a way out. She explores thoroughly, finding the boundaries of the garden and discovering that while massive enough for the less social inhabitants to avoid contact completely, the landscape loops back on itself in physics-defying ways. Eventually, she knows the world well enough to be nearly sure that there is no accessible path to freedom.
With her exploration done, she turns to the kids. They're happy for the attention and fascinated by her choice to give her life to save Clint. No one else has ever willingly traded their own soul for the Stone. None of the children were given the option. Most of them were sacrificed by a parent.
The oldest is a golden-haired, blue-eyed, Asgardian boy named Baldur. He’s been in the garden for over three thousand years, he thinks, though he claims that time has little meaning inside the stone. If he were human, Natasha would guess him to be about thirteen, and he’s already just a hair taller than her - if he’d lived to grow up, he’d easily have been as tall as Thor. Baldur is even-tempered and kind, but a little distant. He makes a habit of teaching newcomers the Allspeak to allow everyone to communicate easily, but once Natasha is conversant he keeps to himself.
Next in apparent age at approximately ten are Shalla (the bossy one), skinny, blue Keretzenia (the most timid), Torp (the loudest), and camouflaged Xinn (the hermit). The first three are inseparable, and spend their eternity wandering aimlessly and entertaining each other with stories. Natasha joins them more often than not, giving them sanitized versions of her old missions when it's her turn to spin a tale. Xinn seems to prefer to be left alone and is usually hiding in the wide-spread branches of the tallest trees. With his dull, gray-green skin and dark gold tiger-stripes, he blends in amazingly well, but Natasha spots him lurking often enough to suspect that he follows his age-mates around.
Tarlet has a grinning mouthful of sharp teeth and smooth, gray skin, reminding her of a cheerful shark. He and orange cat-boy Jai are smaller than the story-tellers, but may not actually be younger. It’s hard to judge their level of maturity, as they're secretive and giggly, endlessly engaged in a one-on-one tag match that they never seem to tire of.
Kirel, Dona, and Fiet are the youngest, tan and pink and crimson, and mostly toddle around in a clearing under the watchful eye of the dog, stuffing their faces with fruit and splashing in a shallow stream. They're not old enough to speak intelligibly, but they learn her name and chant it at her when she visits.
One of the children is so alien that it’s impossible to guess at an equivalent age. It looks like something out of a nightmare, with wet-looking gray skin and far too many tentacles and eyes for comfort. Despite appearances, it’s polite and pleasant, fond of hugs, and very gentle with the smaller children, who it sometimes plays with. Its name is unpronounceable even in the Allspeak, so Baldur calls it Jormi.
Natasha’s experience with Clint's kids makes it easy to interact with the children. Their hugs and smiles assuage her loneliness and loss a little. She joins in their games and tells them stories. She mediates their infrequent disputes. She has enough of a classical education to avoid the fruit for a long time, but eventually she gives in to the children’s coaxing out of curiosity and finds it to be delicious. When she needs time alone, she trains, pointless though it may be with a tireless, unchanging body and all of her gear and weapons missing.
As time slips away in the eternal perfection of the garden, her grief subsides. There are distractions aplenty and her fondness for her fellow sacrifices grows to fill the void in her heart. While she supposes that she’ll always wish that things could have been different, she thinks about what she’s lost less often.
She knows that four years after her death, Thanos will come with his daughter, Gamora, and sacrifice her for the stone. Natasha idly wonders whether there might be some way to escape when it happens, but she doesn’t dwell on it. It’s so much easier to just let herself have a little peace.
***
Natasha is walking with the story-tellers when it happens.
She's holding Keretzenia’s hand while the child clings tight and whimpers in fear. It’s strange how anxious the little girl seems, since she requested the story specifically. Torp seems to be enjoying the telling as he stalks around them, sharing the tale of a great hunt for a fearsome beast in a pitch-black swamp. The hunters have been eaten one by one as the clever beast outsmarted them, and only two remain, with a single, flickering light between them to stave off the darkness. Shalla has opinions on what the hunters should be doing to save themselves, but Torp talks over her when she tries to share them.
Suddenly, the sky rumbles overhead and Keretzenia shrieks. Natasha startles at the sound before she recognizes it from her homeworld. It’s thunder, but there’s never been any change in the garden’s weather before.
“A test!” Shalla cries excitedly, dancing ahead, “Come on, let’s see!”
The children go running off together and Natasha follows after them more slowly, not sure that she really wants to see. They head for the large clearing in the center of the garden, a wide-open space in the shape of a shallow amphitheater.
When she steps past the trees, all of the humanoid sacrifices except for the three smallest children and the sleeping Lady are already there. A seven meter circle at the lowest point in the clearing is surrounded by a crystalline barrier and most of the kids are pressed up against it, peering through. Ghezit, Breev, and Xinn lurk at the treeline. Inside the barrier is the broad, flat altar that sits at the top of the sacrificial mountain on Vormir, the last solid ground any of them stood on before falling to their deaths.
As Natasha walks closer, she sees that the Keeper is coming up the steps with a solitary figure behind him, someone smaller than she was expecting. Thanos was huge, at least eight feet tall, and came with his daughter. This person is about the same size as the Keeper and alone.
The supplicant steps out of the shadows, strangely familiar. He looks human. It takes her too long to recognize Captain America - Steve - in darkened red, white, and blue but without his shield. His blond hair looks tarnished under the sullen light of the alien sky. But why would Steve be on Vormir? They should have the stone. Did something happen to Clint?
Stumbling down the incline, Natasha presses her hands against the barrier. It’s cold, oddly unpleasant in a way that reminds her vaguely of pain, and completely unyielding. As Steve strides forward, she moves along the wall so she can keep his face in sight. He looks sad and determined, and there’s dread in his eyes.
He walks to the edge of the cliff and looks down, then frowns. “Where's her body?” he demands curtly. Her useless breath catches. He came for…?
“Gone,” the Keeper replies curtly. “They fade quickly.”
Steve's jaw tightens, but he doesn't argue. He takes a long moment to look out over the alien world spread out before him. Then he reaches into a pocket and pulls out something small, something he keeps tightly closed in his fist. “Hey Nat,” he says quietly, staring out into the open air. Somehow, she can hear him clearly despite the wind. “I don't know if this is going to work. Schmidt says the exchange is irreversible, but he also says ‘a soul for a soul’.
“Just in case, I want you to know that we did it - we won. We got everyone back, and Thanos is gone for good. Clint made it home to his wife and kids. Sam and Bucky and Wanda are all okay. We… we didn't come out unscathed. We lost you. We lost Tony. He gave his life to save us all.” His face contorts for a moment with grief and regret, but he controls himself quickly. He breathes out and continues softly, “We couldn’t have done it without you, Natasha. Your sacrifice saved trillions of lives. I hope you're at peace, but if there's some way to come back…” He glances down, clearly fighting tears but also looking strangely guilty. After a long moment, he raises his eyes to the sky and whispers, “We all miss you so much.”
Looking down, he opens his hand to reveal an orange gemstone, glittering in his glove. The Soul Stone, it has to be. Steve takes a deep breath, extends his hand out over the void, and prays, “See you in a minute.” Then he tips the stone off his palm and lets it fall.
The barrier flashes and disappears, taking Steve and the altar with it. Natasha staggers forward and drops to her knees in the empty clearing, feeling hollowed out. They did it, they won, and she remembers what she gave her life for. Clint, oh god. Laura and Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel. They’re all alive and she’s still among the dead, and she’s so thankful that she doesn't have to watch Steve realize that. He tried to get her back by returning the Soul Stone… but the way he was talking, he expected to find her body still intact, and she died in 2014 so he must have travelled through time again and he would have kept the window narrow so...
Natasha reels with the sudden certainty that all the ‘time’ she's spent in the garden has been a few days at the most. A year or two’s worth of subjective experience has passed in days, maybe only hours, and there are four years to go before the stones are all destroyed. Worse, something is happening to her mind. She barely recognized Steve, her best friend and the person she was closest to for most of the last decade of her life. By the time the stone is destroyed, she probably won't remember her own name. Has this happened to everyone else?
Of course it has. The children are so happy.
For a moment, there’s silence. Then Breev buzzes with annoyance and disgust. “Your people are mad, self-sacrificer,” he grumbles as he turns and scuttles away. Ghezit and most of the children leave quietly, disappearing in different directions. Shalla drags Torp away when it looks like he’ll say something.
The only one who stays is Baldur, who comes to sit silently next to her, his legs drawn up and ankles crossed, arms braced on his knees. They don’t move for what feels like hours, though time has no meaning anymore. Natasha starts to count her unnecessary breaths just to ground herself while she forces herself to remember what she almost lost. Steve and Clint and Laura and Cooper and Lila and Nathaniel and Bruce and Tony and Thor and Wanda and Sam and Rhodey and Vision and Fury and Hill and Pepper and Okoye and Rocket and Nebula and...
***
...Clint and Laura and Steve and Lila and Tony and Sam and Cooper and-
“It is normal for the painful memories of life to fade,” Baldur says after a while, interrupting her train of thought.
Natasha turns her head toward the Asgardian slowly, thinking ten million eight hundred thirty thousand one hundred ten and wondering why she was counting. She was…. she was trying to remember Clint and Laura and Steve-
“The stone wishes for us to be content in our imprisonment,” he muses, “or so it seems. When you were new to the garden, you quickly learned that there is no pain, no need. Now you have discovered that the timelessness of this place takes a toll on mortal minds. We fill our heads with idle pursuits and our past lives blur into mere shadows. But to dwell on what’s lost without ceasing will lead to the fate of the Lady in the grove, lying insensate for eternity.”
“I…” Natasha fists her hands in the grass beside her knees. “I don’t want to forget.”
“Then do not,” Baldur counsels. “Keep your dear ones in your thoughts, but allow yourself to partake of the peace this place offers as well. You are too noble to lose yourself in regret.” The face of a boy smiles at her kindly, but the weight of millennia is in his sky blue eyes. “Your friends would agree, I think. The man who fought for the right to die for you. The one who returned an Infinity Stone for the hope of having you by his side again.”
“Clint,” she breathes. “And Steve.”
“Clint and Steve,” Baldur echoes. He rises to his feet and turns, extending his arm to her. He reminds her so much of Thor when he stands above her and smiles. “Come, Natasha of Midgard. Tell me stories of your shield-brothers while you teach me your way of fighting. It seems very different from what my father and sister taught.”
Natasha takes his hand.