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“You must lose that which you love.”
Natasha sits down on a log. Sits facing away from the edge even though it was a nice view. She wouldn’t get one like it anywhere else probably. But she doesn’t want to think about that yet. She just wants a minute. A minute longer to mourn.
Lose what she loves. Hasn’t she already done that?
“You must lose that which you love.” It repeats in her head over and over. And so does another. “Never let them take your heart.”
She closes her eyes and the metal of handcuffs bites into her skin. She lies still and quiet. No tossing and turning. She closes her eyes and she can feel a hand in her own.
Yelena.
She can barely let herself think the name. She’s here, somewhere, but she hasn’t seen her in so long. She tells herself it wasn’t real so that they can’t be used against each other. It was for the best. But she closes her eyes and-
When she opens her eyes the hand is gone. She is alone.
She wonders, in those few moments that she gets to have with her own thoughts, if her own mother had felt it too. She wonders if that woman had wanted to keep her. If that woman had loved her, before she lost her.
When she squeezes her eyes shut and pretends, she can hear her, calling her Natasha. Trying to hold on to her.
Natasha knows what it’s like to be abandoned. She never thought she would be the one doing the abandoning. But every night she closes her eyes and she hears a whistle. Every morning, silence.
Sometimes Natasha dreams that she doesn’t fly that plane. She dreams that she never gets it to take off. And SHIELD-it takes many years but she does learn that it was them- SHIELD catches them. They take all of them in. And Yelena, Yelena walks free. (Except SHIELD turned out to be Hydra and maybe it was a stupid dream anyway.)
She dreams that Melina doesn’t get shot. And Alexi chooses them and loves them. She dreams that Melina flies them all far away. And they are a family. A real family. The most childish dream of all.
Natasha wakes up, eyes wide open, cuffs gone. She tucks her heart away. Hides it behind scar tissue where no one can find it. No one can take it.
Natalia was a killer by the time she was eight years old. She was smaller than the other girls but she was tricky and clever. She thinks thats why they choose her for the mission.
Three years later Natasha holds a gun and stands in front of her sister, her six year old sister, and she swears she will kill every one of them to protect her. They can’t take her. They can’t. Natasha will kill them all. She would have.
She should have.
She does.
Years later, she does.
When she finds out they killed her. Yelena, her baby sister. She was gone, or at least, she was almost certainly gone. Natasha hadn’t seen the body, but she’d seen enough. Draykov knew. He was there that day in Cuba. That’s why he split them all up. He knew Natasha would do anything. And she did.
Natasha is a weapon. She is the best. Because she’d failed. Failed on that tarmac. Failed flying that plane. Failed even before that, running around the playground in Ohio. She is the fool. She could not hide her heart. Her heart is running around outside her body, but he’s already taken her too. Natasha failed.
Nothing lasts forever. She graduates. One more choice taken. One more piece of hope stolen. Eventually, she gets tired. So fucking tired. She fails a mission but he doesn’t kill her. No. The punishment is crueler.
Natasha was trained to be a knife in the night. Silent. Precise. She goes off like a bomb.
She kills them all.
And then she is alone.
She has a very specific skillset and she doesn’t really care who she uses it for, or on. What does any of it matter.
The cars that came for them had giant symbols on them. Some sort of crest. A bald eagle. SHIELD, she found out. The SHIELD cars chased after them. Shot at them. Killed her mother, so she thought. And she wonders, what if they had succeeded. What if she had just, let them catch her. What if she just lets them catch her?
Death by arrow seems like a pretty stupid way to die all things considered, but Natasha doesn’t much care. She doesn’t really believe in any afterlife, but maybe, they could be together again.
She waits for the shot, but it never comes.
“I have something that I think you need,” the archer, her would be assassin, says calmly. She raises an eyebrow in a question that he answers. “Hope. Take a leap of faith. Trust me.”
He offers her his hand. She takes it.
And just like that, she has a second chance.
She closes her eyes and a small hand is holding on to hers. She holds on tight. Her hand is covered in blood. Their hands are ripped apart. And everything slips through her fingers.
“What’s wrong?” Clint asks her from the co-pilots seat.
Natasha shakes her head. Wishes she could shake away the memories. Wishes she could scrape the knowing out of her bones. Knowing that she failed. She lost.
Natasha shakes her head. “Nothing. I’m fine. I can do it.”
“Hey. You don’t have to,” Clint tells her with something that almost looks like understanding. “I’ve got your back.”
He pilots the jet that day. Later he almost gets shot. Natasha saves him. She has his back, too.
A little girl. She will die. What does it matter. What’s one more little girl after all those who have already been lost and those who are going to be taken. Natasha has to kill him. She has to do it herself. That was the deal. She looks at the little girl. She hesitates. She has to. What choice does she have. She has to kill him. That’s all that matters. The only way to get close to him is through her. She put a bomb in her bag. She has to be sure.
She sees the Barton’s farmhouse in Iowa and she can’t help but think of Ohio. Kids could grow up here, safe and loved and happy. She takes one look at Laura, child in her arms and love in her eyes, and Natasha knows, she will keep them safe. She won’t fail. Not again.
Laura was a field agent before, a good one too. They spar and Natasha takes the opportunity prepare Laura, just in case.
“Ouch,” Laura says good naturally when Natasha knocks her on her ass. “Damn you’re strong.”
Natasha just shrugs. “Black Widow.”
Laura looks at her contemplatively. Her tone changes into something softer. “No. You were already strong.”
A little girl looks at her with wide innocent eyes. “Love you, Auntie Nat.”
Natasha’s breath catches, her whole body freezes, and then, she whispers the words back in Russian.
What’s one more little girl, she had once asked herself. But she looks at Lila and she accepts what she has always known. Everything. She is everything.
She returns from a particularly shitty mission and debriefs with Fury himself. She looks at him, waiting to see what he will say. His expression twists into something like fondness.
“Welcome home, Agent Romanoff.”
The first time it all goes to hell it’s her and Clint, having each other’s backs like always. And then all at once it’s a whole lot bigger than them. She is a spy, not a soldier. This is nothing she was ever trained for. But Natasha has always been good at adapting.
“I’ve got red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.”
And so it begins.
She doesn’t actually think the red can be wiped out. It’s not as though saving one life means unkilling someone else. It’s not as though anything will ever be able to make up for her. (Yelena. Yelena. Yelena.)
But, she’s going to try anyway.
Things are good for a while. Until they’re not.
“I thought I knew who’s lies I was telling. Guess I can’t tell the difference.”
There is a very small group of people who Natasha trusts and somehow Steve has become one of them. He saved her. He would trust her to do the same. Trust, that means something.
It’s evening on the Barton household. Clint and the kids are catching fireflies and Natasha and Laura sit on the porch, watching them. And that’s when Laura drops the news.
Natasha stares at her, genuinely shocked.
“You want to name your child after me? Why?”
“Because we love you,” Laura says simply.
Natasha swallows. A tell she doesn’t normally let show. This is well past normal. “I didn’t think, I could ever be apart of something like this,” Natasha admits. She thought she lost her only chance on a tarmac in Cuba a long time ago.
“Like what?” Laura says. Natasha half heartedly glares at her but Laura just looks patiently back. Laura is going to make her say it.
Natasha looks out at the fireflies, filled with such bittersweet longing and happiness she almost can’t bare it. “A family. A real family.”
It’s ironic, but the Hulk is like an abandoned child. Angry and hurt and not sure how to deal with it. He just needs someone to be soft with him. Maybe that’s why Bruce is so scared of him. Maybe that’s why Natasha is. Natasha has a lot of experience with abandoned children, but she was never allowed to be soft. That brings back different memories entirely.
“Hey Big Guy,” she tells Hulk standing in a field. “Suns getting real low.”
“I had this dream,” she tells Bruce standing in a nursery. “That I was an Avenger. That I was anything more than the assassin they made me.”
Love is for children. That’s why they took her choices away. Love is for children. That’s why they took her sister away. Love is for children. Not for her. Not with her hands dripping red and the scars of handcuffs on her wrist chaining her to them. Not for girls who can’t protect their baby sisters. Not for people who fail.
But she had this, dream.
“I was kinda hoping when I saw you you’d have more than that.”
“I do. I have you.”
The next time it goes to hell the Avengers fall apart. She couldn’t keep them together. She tried, fuck she tried so hard. It seemed like she was the only one who was. Family, they were her family, right?
“Staying together is more important than how we stay together.”
And she is helpless on that tarmac, powerless to stop it.
She was fooling herself. She’s better off on her own. She ruins every family she is a part of. They slip away, lost in the bitterness. And she is alone.
Yelena is alive.
Natasha is standing in freezing water after getting thrown off a bridge and she’s looking at pictures she hasn’t seen in twenty years. Pictures that mirrored and completed her own.
Yelena is alive.
Her sister. Yelena is alive and has been this whole time. And never reached out to her. Because she hates her. Or thinks that Natasha does.
“Shit.”
Her sister is alive and look at her. Look at her. All grown up. And Natasha is sorry. She is guilty. But she is also so very proud. Look at you, she wants to say. Could I hold you? One last time? To pretend. Just let me pretend.
Death by Widow. Maybe that’s how Natasha was always meant to go. But she can’t die. She has to save them. Nothing matters more than that. If she can hold on long enough, Yelena will find them.
A shower of red and they’re free.
“You get to make your own choices now.”
A jump drive of info, the last two vials of the antidote, and the rest of the Widows can be saved too.
Antonia is trapped still. Behind the mask, behind the glass cell, behind her father’s cruelty. There is no redemption here. Natasha doesn’t want it, and she doesn’t need it. But there is a choice. She has a choice now. No more collateral damage.
“I’m gonna open the door. You’re gonna come after me. It’s okay. It’s okay. I know you’re still in there. And I’m not gonna leave you. Okay.”
“I should’ve come back for you.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“It was real to me too.” She puts her hand on Yelena who presses against it with her cheek.
Natasha says, “I never should have let you go in the first place.”
“What?”
“I was flying that plane,” Natasha says as though she is confessing something Yelena does not already know. “I flew you straight into hell. They took you from me. I was suppose to protect you.”
“I remember that day,” Yelena says quietly. “You took down that guard. Took his gun. I remember you stood in front of me. I was so scared and you were so brave. I held on to those pictures, hid them. For years. I remembered. I knew it was real. My sister.”
Natasha hastily wipes away her tears. “Where did you think I was all those years?” Yelena again asks the question from what feels like a lifetime ago, but much softer this time. Natasha is not surprised Yelena saw through her the first time.
Natasha takes a moment to look at the destruction that surrounds them. “I had this, dream. You were there. You were in Ohio. Living in this little house. Had this dog with some stupid name. And you would watch the fireflies at night. You were happy. And I thought that maybe one day, I would go there too.”
“Natasha,” Yelena says, not unkindly but requiring an answer to her question all the same.
“I thought you were dead Yelena.” She thinks about what she had seen and known both in the Room and after, when she and Clint had taken it down and there was a trail of bodies and destruction and always, always Natasha looked, hoping she would find her. But she never did. She doesn’t bother to explain. What did it matter what she thought? “I should have gone back,” she states. “I should have made sure.”
Yelena looks at her for a moment, as contemplative as Natasha has seen her. “It’s okay,” she whispers finally.
Natasha just pulls Yelena back into a hug.
They had time together. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough.
They failed. Just like that. A snap of his fingers and everything was gone.
And then Clint was gone too.
She failed. But she can’t move on. Not again. Even if there’s the smallest chance. She has to try. She has to make sure.
She tries. And tries. And keeps trying.
“I used to have nothing,” she tells Steve, who is somehow the only one left with her. “And then I got this. This job, this family. And I was…I was better for it. And even though they’re gone, I’m still trying to be better.”
“I think we both need to get a life.”
It’s raining.
“Don’t give me hope.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner.” She takes his hand in hers. Asking him to trust her. To take a leap of faith.
Clint is holding her hand. He’s holding onto her and looking at her with such agony. She wishes she could say she’s sorry but she’s not. Not for this. Not for bringing everyone back.
“Let me go.”
“No. Please no.”
“It’s okay.”
And she’s terrified, but she’s honest. It’s her time now. Her purpose. The sky is purple and pink and beautiful in a way that reminds her of fireflies. She pushes off, into the light. She keeps her eyes open as she falls.
She is standing alone in the glow of some sort of sun, similar to Vormir but different. There is a couple inches of water on the ground and nothing for what could be miles. And then all of a sudden, there is a child. A little girl, 11 years old, blue hair, and a distrustful frown.
“Hi,” Natasha says to her younger self.
“Where’s my sister,” younger her says with a glare.
“You’ll see her again. Promise.”
The tough angry facade cracks. “I miss her. I should have never let her go.”
Natasha looks at her. This young girl. She’s just a kid. She was just a kid. She bites her lip. “It’s okay,” she whispers. It seems that’s all she can say. “She forgives you,” she adds. “And so do I.”
The young Natasha changes and something else takes her place. And indistinct form that she can’t make out.
“To gain the stone you must lose that which you love,” it says.
Natasha knows this. “I love them. All of them.”
“Yes.”
“I’m never going to see them again.”
“No.”
“I don’t want to die,” Natasha admits though she has a feeling this being already knows.
They nod. “That’s what makes it a sacrifice.”
“Okay. I’m ready.”
The figure stares at her for a long while. And please, Natasha thinks, please just let this be enough.
There is something in her hand. The stone.
“My armor is yours, Natasha Romanoff. My soul in your hands. Do with it what you will.”
Maybe it was all for this. Never let them take your heart. She never did. Somehow she kept it safe all that time. All that love. She never knew what to do with it. She brings the stone to her chest, holding it tightly. Then she holds out her arm to the figure and opens the palm of her hand.
“Clint. I want to give it to Clint.”
The figure blinks at her inscrutably.
Natasha closes her eyes.
For a moment, she swears she can see them all there. Yelena. Melina and Alexi. Sam and Wanda and Bucky. Nick and Maria. Laura. Nate and Cooper and Lila. She saved them. She breathes.
Natasha opens her eyes. Everything hurts. She sits up gingerly. She’s on Vormir, and she not alone. There is an old man staring intently at her.
“What the?”
“Hey, Nat,” The man says softly.
And when she looks in his eyes, she recognizes him. “Steve? Is this, what?” She must have lost her mind.
Steve just smiles at her and takes her arm. He puts the device she recognizes as his time travel watch around her wrist with a new vial of particles. “Last one,” he says. “Saved it for you.”
“What?”
“You’re going home Nat. It’s time for you to get that life we talked about.”
“And, you?”
He smiles softly. “I had a good one. Took the long way round. You’ll see me soon enough. Nine years, or, a few seconds.”
She is still in shock.
“Trust me?” he asks.
“Always.”
She returns to Earth on a platform, lying on her side.
“Oh my god, Nat?”
“Natasha?”
She gets up to her knees. There is a flash of blond hair and then all of a sudden there is a pair of arms around her. Natasha smiles and lets out a long breath.
“I knew you’d come back to me,” Yelena says. Natasha holds her tighter. She can see Clint in the corner of her eye walking towards them, tears streaming down his face. She holds out her hand to him. He takes it.
“I’m never leaving you again.”