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Carol had no intention of stopping on Balta IV, in part because she knew if she didn’t make it to the negotiations in the Vdien System on time, shit was going to get ugly fast, but also because Balta IV was mostly a toxic wasteland of a planet that had unpredictable effects on her powers and there was nothing to stop there for. Ever.
Her ship, however, set off a sentience alarm as they were passing by. Normally, Carol would have figured that was odd but that it was probably smugglers or other small time sector outlaws who’d chosen the wrong planet to hide out on. Only, the ship’s computer followed up the alarm with, “life sign readings align with species, human.”
And that was more than odd. That was…highly unlikely, for one. If it was true, though, no regular human could survive on B-IV for longer than a standard earth month, at best, and that would take an extraordinary amount of survival skills.
Technically, this was not her problem, and Vdien at least marginally was. And would become more so if war broke out.
“Fuck,” Carol said softly, and changed coordinates to guide the ship through the planet’s rough atmospheric layers.
B-IV’s atmosphere had just enough oxygen saturation that humans could breathe, but only barely. A person on its surface would quickly feel as though altitude sick. Carol grabbed an oxygen mask and packed it with the other first aid supplies, as well as several nutrient-dense snacks and water bags, then set out to where the signal was originating from.
The signal’s origin was less than a quarter mile from where she’d set down. The terrain was crap, so she mostly flew above it despite the drain on her considerably less-replete powers, scanning visually for anything that seemed human. When she found it, it was so unexpected, she fell out of the air hitting the ground with enough force to make human bones crumble. Carol blinked, wondering if maybe B-IV had mirage capabilities she wasn’t aware of. It wouldn’t shock her. Whatever was in the bedrock of the planet definitely didn’t play nice with Infinity Stones, or anything powered by them.
Walking forward quickly, she crouched down to touch the arm of the person who was curled in the lip of one of the larger sand dunes, attempting to use it against the sharp winds. (Literally: the winds carried the sand in a way that could easily abrade and even slice through skin.)
At Carol’s touch, the person sprang awake and had Carol in a headlock, which would have been an issue if a) Carol wasn’t Carol, and b) the person wasn’t stranded on a planet with nearly no food, water, or oxygen and a few dozen things that could kill a person around every corner. As it was, Carol carefully removed the mostly-skeletal arms from her neck and pulled the other person around so they were facing each other.
The other person fought, and they were good, skilled in a way that forced Carol to use a little more power than she would have preferred. In the end, though, she had the person in front of her and she could verify what her eyes had been telling her. “Nat?”
The woman was a scarecrow, barely enough weight to hold herself upright. Her lips were so badly cracked Carol could see traces of dried blood. Her hair was a mass of matted knots, everywhere skin was visible there were scrapes and even a gash higher up on one arm. She was favoring her left leg.
“Natasha?”
Swallowing was clearly a struggle, but the woman tried before opening her mouth, lips tearing again as she did so. “C-carol. You.” She closed her eyes and shook her head very slightly, murmuring to herself. Carol took a chance, letting Nat go to grab one of the water bags. Carol unscrewed the cap and then gently placed Natasha’s right hand around it, keeping hold of it herself. Natasha’s knuckles were bloody messes and some of the skin surrounding them looked puffy and red in a concerning fashion.
Moving with care, Carol lifted Natasha’s hand holding the water bottle to her lips, spreading a little water across them. The first drop of liquid had Natasha’s eyes opening again, wide and much more focused this time. Her right hand tightened on the bag. She ran her tongue lightly over her lips, and then tipped a little more into her mouth. A few sips later, she croaked, “Y’re real. Th’s is real.”
“Yes.”
Natasha’s glance flickered somewhere beyond Carol. “St’rm coming. B’rely surviv’d th’ last.” She took another drink, as though she weren’t entirely sure how much difference this statement made.
Carol did the calculations inside her head, but she wasn’t confident enough that Natasha could handle the pressure of flight right now, even low-level flight, nor was she confident she could fly and shield against a storm given the atmospheric restraints of the planet on her capabilities. She was confident they wouldn’t make it back walking. She looked over at the dune Natasha had been using.
Pulling out the oxygen mask, she said, “Put this on, and go back to where you were when I found you. And, uh. Keep your eyes shut. This is gonna get a little bright.”
It took Natasha three tries to get the mask secured to her face. The adrenaline from waking to a perceived threat had drained her, and now it was all she could manage not to sink to her knees and pass out. She managed the mask, though, and hit the button to start the flow.
The water bag was mostly empty. She’d capped it and pressed it between her thighs all the same. Taking it in her hand, she walked—stumbled—back to the sandbank and curled tightly into the curve of it, closing her eyes. Natasha couldn’t have begun to guess how long she’d been on this planet, but the hit of a regular dose of oxygen felt like a drug.
Slow breaths, Nat, slow. The water and the oxygen highly suggested that this was real, but it wasn’t impossible she was so close to death she was hallucinating all of this. The thought didn’t bother her as much as it probably should have.
Just as the howl of the storm began to ring in Natasha’s ears, a wall of heat hit her back, and even through her closed eyes, the glare of Carol’s shielding wasn’t wholly absent. It was silent, then. Still and quiet and warm. Natasha kept her breathing measured and slow and fought not to fall asleep. She’d forgotten the actual feel of warmth. Not the concept of it, but the sensation. The same for the sense of not being buffeted by the harsh sands. The calm of it, the mere cessation, coupled with the adequate oxygen, meant it was a fight she was destined to lose.
Carol’s internal clock told her the storm lasted hours. She couldn’t feel the storm per se, but holding her shields as heavily as she needed against that much atmospheric force on B-IV, which was fighting her power every inch of the way, for that kind of time, took serious concentration. When it had finally settled enough, she lessened the strength of her shields, took a breath against the nausea and dizziness that wanted to bring her to her knees, and called out, “Natasha.”
Natasha tensed immediately. The oxygen and sleep seemed to have given her a bit of her equilibrium back, though. She moved the mask aside with not-entirely steady hands and drank some of the water. “Know where we are?”
“Balta-IV.”
Natasha replaced the oxygen mask without responding, but the confusion in her expression was clear. Carol raised her forearm, activating a screen on her suit, so that she could look at where the ship was in relation to them. As she had been concerned, given the storm’s violence, the ship was now closer to a mile away over the uneven terrain.
Sitting down, she handed over another waterskin, and with it, a protein pack. Even if she could have stretched her power to shield Natasha through flight this close to the surface before the storm, she definitely couldn’t now, in the aftermath of it. “How far do you think you can make it on foot?”
Natasha chewed slowly on a bite of the protein square. Taking a sip of water, she said, “Couple of miles, maybe.”
“That’ll do,” Carol said. “Lemme see your arm.”
Natasha shifted so that the arm with the worst of the abrasions was facing Carol. Grabbing several alcohol pads, Carol told her, “This is gonna suck, sorry.”
Silently, Natasha placed the oxygen back over her face and breathed through the process of Carol wiping sand and debris out of the wounds. One of them was deep enough to use a butterfly bandage on, and would likely need stitching, but the others could be covered with plain bandages for the moment. Carol gave her a shot of antibiotics and asked, “Anything else that can’t wait?”
Natasha set the mask to the side and took another slow sip of water. “Not that I know of.”
Carol wondered if the other woman even realized she was shaking from head to toe. Carol didn’t mention it. Instead, she said, “All right. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
Natasha learned very early how to leave her body if it was in pain. It wasn’t all that hard as long as she didn’t have to concentrate on anything else. Unfortunately, it was more complicated if she had to worry about things like footing and remembering that there was something super wrong with her left knee.
At least she knew where she was now. For all the good it did her. She couldn’t remember getting here. She remembered Clint’s face. The last touch of his hand. She remembered an omnipresent sense of irritation, like an itch, but in her brain that had seemed to last forever. And then there was this planet with not enough air and not enough water and not enough fucking anything except razorblade sand. It had more than enough of that.
She couldn’t even rightly say how long she’d been here. She didn’t think the planet had any suns, and she couldn’t figure out how many moons it had except a-fucking-lot. Nothing that corresponded to time as she would be able to quantify it.
“Natasha!”
Natasha blinked. Oh. She was—everything hurt. She thought she might have accidentally let her mind go elsewhere because she was definitely crumpled in the sand. “S’rry.”
“Don’t be. Just tell me you need to stop before you fall over.”
Natasha rubbed at her eyes with knuckles that felt like they were on fire. “I don’t always know.”
Carol was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, all right. Let’s do it this way, I’m gonna talk to you the whole way, and if my voice starts getting weird or going out, just say my name.”
It was a good plan. Natasha would notice if a focal point began to waver. It meant Carol’s throat was going to get ripped to shreds, but the other woman clearly healed pretty easily, and she was definitely in the group of people Natasha trusted to know their limits. “Yeah.”
“I’m gonna help you up, okay?”
Natasha nodded, and Carol aided her up. Natasha gulped oxygen in the mask and swore mentally in the weird mishmash of Russian and English her brain defaulted to when not really tracking. She swallowed, nodded, and took a step.
Carol said, “Okay, uh, I’m just gonna start thinking aloud about what the fuck it is you might be doing on Balta-IV.”
It was what Carol had been musing over when Natasha had folded like a cheaply made marionette, and she doubted Natasha was paying a ton of attention to her words so it didn’t much matter what she talked about, just that she kept doing it. She should have brought another water. Even she had her limits, especially on this landfill-that-time-forgot of a planet.
“None of the Baltas play nice with Infinity matter. Rocket thinks it might have to do with some kind of matter-anti-matter type situation at the core of the planetary system, but nobody really knows. Just that shit gets weird. Nobody really cares because all of them are inhospitable as fuck and not exactly hot property. My best guess is that the soul stone has some type of…dimensional plane that you got stuck on, somehow, and that plane accidentally came into contact with B-IV and caused the stone to basically burp you out.”
Carol was keeping an eye on Natasha, who was stridently paying attention to every step she took. Carol asked, “Can you remember where you were before here?”
A single shake of the head was all the answer Natasha gave, but it was enough. Carol said, “You are here, though, and I’ve found you, and we’ll get you to the ship. I have to make a stop where I was headed or there probably is going to be war and it’ll be, mm, nine percent my fault? Which is nine percentage points too high, but Vdi’L is close to Reima which has a substantial humanoid population, so we should be able to get you medical care once we’re there.”
Carol stopped for a moment, because Natasha tripped and she wanted to give the other woman a second to steady herself. “Also, conveniently, Vdi’L is pretty nice if you’re not trying to negotiate a settlement between planets with long-time clashing economic interests. It’s an ice-planet, but the native Vdian’s have interpopulated with other species for centuries, so they’ve had to create significant habitats and structures for life forms that can’t survive in windchill it-doesn’t-matter-you’ve-already-lost-your-extremities, and the views from them are pretty epic. It’s hard to feel jaded looking at them, and I’m pretty talented at cynicism, as you know.”
Carol wasn’t sure, but she felt like Natasha was trying to side-eye her. The oxygen mask and the need to pay close attention to their surroundings was stunting the attempt. Carol said, “Well, sure, I didn’t say I was better at it than you, but also, high bar.”
Natasha bumped into her a little harder than the moment before. Carol, despite everything, smiled.
Carol was talking. She hadn’t stopped, not for long, even well after Natasha had ceased any type of reaction, mostly because she couldn’t track what Carol was saying. The world had narrowed down to taking a breath, and then a step, another breath, another step. She was just barely clinging to consciousness when Carol picked her up. She tried making a noise, something, through the mask.
Carol said, “Not far to go, and you’re not exactly dense matter at the moment.”
Evidently, Carol knew her strength limits well enough, because time skipped, the sand whipping around them, and then, silence, stillness. Carol set her carefully down on a padded surface and said, “Don’t move,” then removed the mask. “The cabin is pressurized, you don’t need this. I’m going to see if you’re hydrated enough for me to find veins I can get IVs in. If not, we’ll work on that.”
Natasha hadn’t grown up with baths. She hadn’t even grown up with hot showers most of the time. Just quick spray downs in the common showers. The first time she’d had a bath was on a mission. She’d been seventeen and her cover was as the daughter of a wealthy investor out of Belgrade. The cover had necessitated actually having a hotel room in the same hotel as the mark, a boutique spot in Lyon. When she’d been getting ready, she’d thrown caution to the wind and run herself a bath.
She’d thought she’d never get out. It was the first time in her life she’d ever felt that warm, that weightless. When she’d gone under the water to wet her hair there was nothing but the sound of the lapping water, almost as if she could hear the inside of her head.
Later she would wonder if maybe that had been one of the first times she had known she was going to run. The awareness that if she could get free, if she could take her body and her time into her own hands, she could have more moments of that silent, still warmth, had been intoxicating in a way no liquor or drug even challenged.
Lying on the cot or the bed or bench, wherever she was on this ship, felt like that bath. Natasha felt the needle go in, too floaty not to be distracted by the new pain of it, the way the metal felt foreign inside her. Carol said, “Yeah, that probably hurts, sorry, but once I get some fluids and pain meds running, the worst of the edge should come off.”
Natasha heard the words, but mostly she heard Carol’s tone, the promise that she was going to make things okay. Carol’s sureness could be a lie—not an intentional one, Carol just went in fight first—but her promises weren’t. Five years in a silence Natasha hadn’t chosen, alone with Carol and only the few others willing to stand by her, had taught her that.
Natasha worked enough moisture into her mouth to say, “Hey.”
Carol looked over at her from where she was pulling out a syringe. “Hey.”
“Did we win?”
Carol put the syringe in the IV line, hooked a saline bag to a drip, and said, “We reversed the Snap.”
Natasha knew when something wasn’t a yes. Carol was pushing something through the syringe into the line, though, and even without a sedative, the relief from pain was too much to fight against. Natasha said, “Later.”
“Yeah,” Carol agreed. “Later.”
Once Carol had gotten them off the surface of Balta-IV and was starting to feel like herself again, she took a long shower, in part because she felt disgusting and in part because she could soundproof the bathroom and have a little bit of a meltdown. She had been saddened by Stark’s death, truly, but Natasha’s—
Natasha’s had been like losing a piece of herself. Somewhere in those five years of reaching out when she needed to hear a voice that was familiar, or have a conversation with someone who would understand what she felt without Carol having to give background, Natasha’s presence had become necessary, even galaxies away.
She’d had to hold herself back from pounding Clint into the ground in irrational anger when she’d found out what had happened. Only knowing that Natasha would find a way to kill her from beyond the grave had kept her in her skin, and gotten her off-planet without doing anything she would regret.
In the nine months since, she had accidentally tried contacting Natasha in the middle of a night cycle or long period of space flight no less than six times. Once she was so tired she didn’t realize in time to hang up and Rhodey had answered. At which point she’d said, “Shit.”
“Nice to hear from you, too,” he’d said calmly, because Rhodey was a guy who took things in stride.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“There’ve been missed call signatures from you before. You need something?”
She’d given him the edge of a smile. “No. Nah. It was good to hear your voice, though. Been a minute.”
He’d tilted his head. “It has.” Then, “I miss her, too.”
Her smile had gotten sharper then, not intentionally. “Yeah. Yeah, there’s that.”
But Natasha was here, on the ship. Sure, she was in terrible condition. Alive, though. And for the first time since Rocket had told Carol about Natasha, all she could do was cry and scream like it was the moment she had heard those words.
She was on the floor of the shower when she’d managed to cry out everything. Turning the water off, she wrapped a towel around herself and said, “Okay. Okay. Let’s go stop a war.”
Natasha awoke in a different place than where she had passed out. She took a measured breath and noted the lack of pain that said she was still on some heavy drugs. That might or might not have been a part of why everything felt extremely bright.
A large creature covered entirely in dense white fur approached. Natasha had the sense that she was listening to the rush of wind and then a voice she recognized as the AI from Carol’s ship translated, “You are in a healing facility on Vdi’L. Your companion is in the talks.”
Natasha blinked. That matched up with the few details she could recall Carol talking about. Or, well, sort of. She wanted to ask some questions regarding her condition, but her mouth was dry and the idea of trying to talk was exhausting.
She had nearly floated back off into sleep when a much-more humanoid-type alien hustled into the room. It was no more than three feet, had two arms on each side in addition to being bipedal, had rust-colored “skin” and eyes that were on the side of its head with no apparent nose or ears, but compared to Shaggy the Wind Chime, Natasha could at least somewhat identify this alien’s parts. The noise from its mouth was a series of low-toned pitches, but the translator said, “Ah, I see you’re awake. I go by Nonodi. You’ve met my colleague, Ba’achra. They are a Vdi’Lai medical professional. Neither Vdi’L nor Reima have your species, but mine, which has largely married into the Reimi, has similarities. We have made sure your skeletal structure is stabilized.”
Nonodi stepped on a stool to be able to better point to spots on Natasha, but didn’t touch her, which she appreciated. “You had soft tissue damage in a few places, we are working on healing that. Your companion was able to donate blood to help with this process. Several of your abrasions were growing bacteria. We do not have the same kind of anti-bacterials that you need, but Carol Danvers has given us some until she can get another shipment, and they appear to be working. Otherwise, you are simply in need of rest, nutrients, and liquids, all of which we are providing.”
Natasha eyed the port that seemed to be running into her left wrist. It didn’t appear like the IVs she was used to, but she imagined the purpose was the same. Nonodi made an expression that might have been a smile. “Yes, that’s where it is entering your system. Do you need fluids to be taken in externally? Carol Danvers mentioned that might be necessary upon awakening.”
Natasha nodded. Ba’achra…floated off, and then returned, unfurling what appeared to Natasha to be a very fluffy scarf, but was obviously an arm or something of that ilk. Natasha held her hand out, and within it the scarf deposited a pod-shaped thing. Nonodi said, “Place it on your tongue.”
Too bone-tired and thirsty to be that concerned, Natasha did as instructed. And was pleasantly surprised by the sensation of cool water seeping over her tongue, sliding gently down her throat for moments on end. She barely managed to swallow the last of it before she was dragged back under the pull of her body’s need for sleep.
The peace talks weren’t precisely progressing, but they hadn’t fallen apart, and sometimes, Carol knew, the best you could hope for was a stalemate. Given that so much of her mind was elsewhere, she figured the fact that nobody had killed each other yet was evidence of solid work. When she’d called the talks for the fourth round, she headed down to the medical sphere where Natasha was being treated.
Human ears didn’t have the necessary physiological infrastructure to understand the Vdian language or any of its dialects, which meant that to Carol, the wisps of conversation that floated around her sounded like a variety of types of winds, those on a stormy day, the barely-there ones before a tornado moved in, the summer zephyrs that were the perfect break in the heat. It was hard to deny the beauty of it.
When she reached the tier where Natasha’s sphere was, Nonodi was curled around a piece of Reimi furniture that always struck Carol as a more sophisticated bean bag, but she knew it was the equivalent of a chair for the Reimi. Carol asked, “How are you?”
Nonodi said, “Hoping I’ve gotten your friend’s insides correct.”
Carol nodded in acknowledgment. “Either way, I owe you for the help.”
“We’ll discuss who owes whom at a time when it matters, hm?”
Carol huffed. Normally she’d argue. What she’d done for Nonodi and their people hadn’t been a favor. It had been the kind of thing someone with Carol’s abilities was responsible for doing. For the moment, though, she was more interested in checking on Natasha, so she let Nonodi have the last word and went into where Natasha was lying, Vdian and Reimien tech sticking out of her at various angles. Her skin was starting to lose the worst of its cracked appearance, beginning to regain some of the elasticity. Otherwise, though, she was more bandage than human, and even with all the bandages, she looked to weigh about ten pounds soaking wet.
Natasha shifted, as if recognizing someone was in the room, and Carol said, “Just me,” quietly.
Natasha’s eyes fluttered open. “Just.”
“They making you comfortable?”
The corner of Natasha’s mouth curled. “’M okay, Carol. Sit down.”
Carol took a seat. Or, well, she rested against the curved element in the wall that Vdians used to recline. As a race, they didn’t really sit. “You were looking a little rough out there, and I was on half-power. Also, you’ve been presumed dead for the better part of eight months,” she said quietly.
Natasha mouthed, eight months. Carol said, “Clint’s with his family. He’s good.”
Even drugged, Natasha caught on to what was left unsaid. “Who’s not?”
Carol took a breath. “Tony’s dead. Rhodey and Happy are watching over Pepper and Morgan, and I know Peter and his aunt have been spending time with them, too.”
Natasha swallowed and Carol could see the way she was controlling her breathing. It was the same way you prepared to take a hit or fall out of an airplane.
“I’m sorry,” Carol said. “I—” she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Natasha sniffled. “Steve. You didn’t—where’s Steve?”
“You’re going to think I’m shitting you, but I don’t actually know. He went to return the stones, and Sam, Bucky, and Bruce swear he’s fine, but nobody has seen him since.”
Natasha’s eyes, wet and bewildered, focused unblinkingly on Carol, who grimaced. “Believe me, if I knew, I’d tell you.”
“I know,” Natasha murmured. “That’s not—” She pursed her lips. “Sam and Bucky and Bruce? Okay?”
“Sam’s taken up the shield, and Bucky’s, uh. Being his wingman. Without wings. Bruce has gone underground again, but he sends Thor a message now and then, so we know he’s fine just, according to Thor, ‘being Banner’.”
“Wanda.”
“Yeah, so my reports on that one are a little all over the place, but she seems to have holed up in a remote mountainous area in the Tennessee-Kentucky border region.”
Natasha tilted her head. Carol said, “I’ll get you what Monica sent me.”
“Rocket and Nebula back with their team?”
“Not sure Nebula has yet to admit it’s her team, but yeah, she’s still with the Guardians, mostly, as far as I can tell, keeping Gamora from killing Peter before she remembers she likes him.”
“And Okoye?”
“Dealing with the fallout of having half your fighting force come back five years out of sync with the rest of it, and helping your best friend govern a country that’s never dealt with any type of population-related crisis. Otherwise fine.”
Natasha frowned. “She looks good doing it, doesn’t she?”
“It’s annoying, I agree. Would it kill her to be bad at something?”
“Probably.”
Carol laughed, the depth of the sound surprising her. “I. I really missed you, you asshole. And when it won’t be totally unsporting, we’re going to the mats. Literally.”
It was Natasha’s turn to laugh, a quick burst of amusement. “You might be waiting a while.”
“I can wait,” Carol said, low and all-too-serious. “I can fucking wait.”
Natasha met her gaze. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have done it any differently. Especially not knowing that it worked, that he got them back. But I can see how it had an asshole dimension to it.”
Carol’s responding laugh had a wetness to it, a choking quality. “Nat.”
“I don’t really remember most of it. What I do though. I missed you, too.”
Natasha’s right hand wasn’t encased in alien tech. Carol reached out and cradled it between both of hers. “It’s always nice not to be alone.”
Time wasn’t something Natasha could really track when most of her existence was made up of sleeping and eating, and she had no idea what the solar pattern of the planet she was on consisted of. Even so, she was decently confident it had been several earth days, possibly close to a week, when she started being able to sit up without feeling dizzy. Her wounds were scabbed and itching, but the latent infections seemed to have cleared up.
She knew Carol was sleeping in the room. Some kind of sleep pod had been pulled together so that Carol could have somewhere that wasn’t the wall to rest. Natasha herself was resting on a padded platform that did not particularly conform to the furniture—as it were—elsewhere in the room. She suspected the Vdians didn’t use furniture in the same way humans did.
Nonodi had helped her to walk around a bit, which had given her an idea of how weak she was, and also allowed her a glimpse out the windows. Carol hadn’t been wrong about the breathtaking nature of the planet. And Natasha was pretty sure that wasn’t just the relativity of having been stuck on a shit heap of a planet for…a while. She wasn’t entirely clear on how long she’d been there.
Now that she could think of something aside from surviving, it was hard to think of anything except for how it had been over eight months since she’d let go of Clint’s hand. He was probably pissed. Also kind of a mess.
The first time she was awake at the same moment Carol returned, Carol said, “Nice to see you semi-vertical.”
“Feeling pretty accomplished myself.” She pulled up a smile. Just staying awake was still bone-achingly exhausting.
“I got word to the Ajo Keepers. They’re kind of a…peacekeeping faction a couple of sectors over. They’re gonna send a couple of their group to spell me now that I’ve gotten things stabilized here. Nonodi says you’re stable enough for flight as long as we don’t run into any problems.” She leaned against the doorway. “Want me to take you home?”
“Not to sound dramatic, but if Tony’s gone and Steve’s…not there, do I have a home? I mean, I can crash with Clint until I figure something out, but I should probably give him a heads up that I’m, ah, not dead.”
“Nat. Even if you’re not interested in continuing as an Avenger, I’m confident Rhodey will let you stay at the compound until you want to leave, if you decide you do.”
“Is Rhodey there?”
“Not full time, he goes back and forth between there and the cabin.”
“Anyone there full time?”
Carol shook her head. “Not right now. But Scott and Hope are around a bunch, Peter is in and out, and I’ll take a wild guess that if you’re there, Sam would be around more, so probably Bucky, too.” She paused. “Nobody’s gonna leave you alone, not if you don’t want to be.”
Natasha looked toward the window. She couldn’t actually see anything out of it other than the endless white sky. “I’d think if earth is busy re-integrating all of those lost in the Snap, our people probably have better things to do than baby-sit me.”
Pushing away from the door, Carol walked over to the window, looking out so that she was facing away from Natasha. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s how everyone would see making sure a friend who literally died to save the world isn’t lonely while recovering from some trauma. Sure that’s how you would see it, definitely.”
“Could you look at me if you’re going to call me an asshole?”
Carol turned around and rolled her eyes. Natasha said, “I take your point. But also, tell me how easy it would be for you, to just—”
“So go back, reassure everyone you’re fine, get yourself a little more stable, and then come ride with me for a bit. Trust me, there’s plenty to be done out here. You won’t be slacking.” She swallowed. “Also, it’d be nice. With everything, I don’t get back to see Telos and the community much these days. I only team with the Guardians when something calls for it; there’s a lot of space out here.”
Natasha rubbed the fabric of the garments they’d put her in between her thumb and pointer finger. “Lots of space.”
“Endless, really.”
Natasha nodded for a long moment. “I’ll have to think about that. First, though, I should probably say hi to some people.”
Carol smirked. “Probably.”
For the first few days in transit, they were too far to get a message to Earth, so when Natasha wasn’t sleeping—she still was most of the time—they watched movies they both loved from the nineties, played low-stakes games, talked about the things they missed from Earth, and enjoyed the ease of existing in each other’s space. Carol didn’t mind being alone, she was good at it, but it did wear on her after a while. And as she’d pointed out, she was alone a lot these days.
It wasn’t that Natasha was small, precisely, nor quiet, but she didn’t take up an inordinate amount of space and she never felt loud. She fit in a way that Carol couldn’t define, and so chose to merely enjoy.
On the third day, when they reached an area where a subspace communication would relay, Carol asked, “You want me to explain, or you just wanna…pop on and say hello?”
She kept her voice even. Natasha knew Clint best, and neither was exactly a great choice. Natasha had obviously been thinking about it, since she didn’t hesitate before saying, “Tell him you found me, and that as far as I know, minus the last…two weeks or however long I was on Balta-IV, I wasn’t alive. I don’t think. I’ll take over from there.”
Carol nodded and made the call. Clint picked up quickly. “Danvers? Everything okay?”
“Hey Barton. Yes, I’m fine, no emergencies on my end. I do have something to tell you, though, and it’s going to be a lot, so just—let me finish.” She swallowed. “I found Natasha alive. Neither of us thinks she was alive until about three and a half weeks ago. I’ve been handling some peace talks and she’s been receiving medical attention, but we’re currently en route to earth. She wanted me to tell you so you wouldn’t pick up to her face and freak the hell out, but now I’m going to turn the call over to her.”
She stood and let Natasha take the seat she’d been occupying, taking in the way the wheels seemed to have just stopped turning for Barton. He blinked at the appearance of Natasha’s face and choked out, “Nat?”
“Hey,” she said quietly, fingers reaching out to press the screen. His fingers came up to “meet” hers automatically, like the tips of their fingers were magnetized.
“What the fuck,” he said, but it wasn’t a question, more a statement scraped up from the pit of his stomach.
“Not sure. Carol thinks some kind of interference with stone powers on the planet she found me on. I—there’s nothing, really, from before that planet, so I don’t know.”
“You’re headed to the complex,” again, not a question.
“Carol says Tony made a trust for active-duty members and retirees.”
“Yeah. What’s your ETA?”
Natasha glanced back at Carol. Carol said, “Assuming no elemental interference, four days.”
“We’ll be there,” Clint said.
“Clint. Tell the others?”
“Done.”
She pressed the fingers of her other hand to the screen and cut the connection. Carol rested her hands on Natasha’s shoulders. “All right?”
“No idea. How was coming back from the dead for you?”
“Less nerve-wracking, I didn’t know I’d been dead.”
It got Natasha to laugh, which had been the goal. Carol squeezed her hands a bit. “C’mon, nap time.”
Natasha leaned her head back. “Join?”
Carol tugged her up, and into the captain’s quarters.
Touch starvation was an incredibly specific feeling, in Natasha’s experience. She doubted that was universal, she had yet to find much that was. But for her, there wasn’t anything else that felt quite the same. It was weird to be starved of contact when she couldn’t recall most of the time that she’d been missing said contact, all the same, it was as if her body knew.
Waking up curled over Carol in demented-octopus pose was a bit embarrassing. Much more embarrassing was her inability to let go. Carol must have felt the tightening of her frame, because she asked, “Have somewhere to be?”
Natasha said, “I’m rolling over,” at the same time as she stayed precisely where she was, which was, by definition, not rolling over.
“Why? You’re warm and I’m enjoying that. So unless you need some space, not moving would be nice. Highly acceptable.”
Natasha pressed her face into Carol’s side and smiled. Pulling back just enough to be heard, she said, “Carol.”
“Natasha.”
“I was trained by people who wrote the book on making people think something is their own idea. I wrote additional parts of it.”
“I’m not trying to make you think anything. I have you where I wanted you for three and a half, maybe four years.”
Natasha blinked. “Sorry?”
“Sometimes I think you’re willfully blind about certain things. It’s the only way in the world someone who knows as much as you do about how to read people wouldn’t have caught on.”
“In fairness, I was a little depressed.”
“You were a lot depressed. We were all a lot depressed. And I was never there, which was why I didn’t bother to bring it up. Wouldn’t have done any good. Then you were dead and I—I was pissed at myself.” Carol’s grief was almost a presence of its own under Natasha’s body.
“Yeah, okay,” Natasha said.
“I’m not bringing it up because I want something. I’m bringing it up because you’re not dead. You’re here. And I—” Carol’s breath caught in her throat.
When Carol’s breath evened out, Natasha tightened her hold. It wasn’t a squeeze so much as a slow hug. “Okay,” she said again, mostly because she wasn’t sure what else to say yet, and didn’t think Carol was asking anything of her in any case. “I’m just gonna stay here, then, for now.”
Carol was right. It was nice and warm.
By the time they reached earth, sleeping together had become routine, just the way they did things, and Carol had stopped allowing herself to think about what happened once they left the ship.
Clint was halfway up the gangplank before it had even entirely lowered. Carol called, “Careful, she’s not completely healed.”
Natasha wrapped herself around him and let him carry her the rest of the way off the ship. Outside, a woman and two teenagers were watching the two of them, and Rhodey was standing back, Sam on one side, Pepper on the other, with Maria on her other side. Bucky was off to the side of their little group, with Okoye.
It took quite a while for Natasha to plant her feet on the ground and disengage. Nobody hurried her. Once she’d managed, Pepper and Maria moved toward her. Natasha pulled Pepper into a hug and murmured in her ear. Pepper shook her head, held on, whispered something back.
Carol was busy watching the procession of hugs, of tactile checking to be certain that Natasha was really there, in the flesh, so she missed Okoye sidling up to her and saying, “I presume you checked that she is…who she is?”
“DNA and RNA match, her memories, aside from the last eight months, are completely whole. We ran a battery of other basic tests. Nothing suggests anything odd other than the part where she came back from the dead, but also, infinity stones.”
“Infinity stones,” Okoye agreed quietly. She caught Carol’s eye and flashed her a minute smile.
Carol tilted her head. “Go, I’ve had her for a couple of weeks.”
Okoye rolled her eyes and said, “I’m not willing to pretend as hard as you that a couple of weeks is anywhere enough of her for you.” She also walked away to go greet Natasha. Carol took the reprieve.
Being home was weird. (Home?) Clint kept seeming surprised to see her. Rhodey brought her food every few hours. Admittedly, Natasha was hungry every few hours, so that was convenient, but she wasn’t used to that kind of hovering from him. He’d always saved that for—for Tony.
Pepper had gone home a couple of hours after Natasha’s arrival, and Natasha felt guilty because it had been easier, not feeling the gigantic emptiness that seemed to exist around her. Even Maria was different, thrown into a world without either Steve or Tony to take on some element of leadership for the team, Nick largely off-planet, evidently, and five years of her life missing.
It wasn’t bad. Natasha didn’t want to be anywhere else. But it was definitely weird.
She fell asleep in the late afternoon with her head on Sam’s lap. He was arguing with Bucky about…dating his sister? Natasha would have to ask about that later. Clint’s eyes were on her. It was an extremely specific feeling and one she’d missed without even realizing it. That surety, knowing nothing would get to her as long as he was paying attention, made it easy to drift off.
Carol’s voice woke her, probably because it was saying her name. In this room, her body knew she was safe, knew it so deeply that her mind was capable of accepting her body’s knowledge.
Natasha said, “Hm?”
“Dinner? I’ll get it from wherever you want.”
She opened her eyes. “Anywhere at all?”
Carol pretended to consider. “Planet-wide. No off-planet service this evening.”
Before she even knew what she was doing, Natasha leaned up to brush a kiss against Carol’s lips, a simple gesture of happiness, of thanks. As soon as she pulled away, Natasha could feel the stillness that had settled around them. Then Okoye asked, “If I kiss you, will you get me dinner from a place in Philly I like?”
Natasha laughed, as did Carol. Carol also said, “Pucker up, bitch.”
Clint, Sam, and Bucky finally crashed in the main area hours after Okoye had left the compound, and Rhodey, the Bartons, and Maria had gone to bed. Carol was on the couch with Natasha, the two of them curled against each other as they had been since after dinner. Clint had kept his eyes on them, but Natasha whispered at a certain point, “He’s just making sure I’m still here. This isn’t bothering him.”
Rhodey and Okoye were clearly unsurprised. Carol didn’t love feeling that transparent, but it was also a little hard to care at the moment, while she was getting what she wanted, what she had wanted for so long.
Sam, Bucky, Laura, and Maria were all quietly pleased, if Carol was reading them correctly. Natasha knew them better and was more versed in non-verbal cues. Even so, the ease of their bodies, the small smiles they cast when neither Carol nor Natasha was directly looking at one of them were all easily recognized indicators.
Natasha was halfway to sleep, so Carol asked, “Wanna stay here, or want me to take you to a bed?”
“Pretty sure I can walk,” Natasha said, without opening her eyes.
“You can,” Carol agreed. “But your girlfriend has super strength. Oughtta be good for something.”
Carol knew for a fact that Natasha’d had female lovers before, but she said, “My girlfriend,” emphasizing the word like it was something novel, “has a point.”
“Been known to happen.”
On the end of a yawn, Natasha said, “Take me to bed or lose me forever, flygirl.”
“Wow, really?”
From the floor, Clint muttered, “Get used to it, she’s like an encyclopedia of eighties movie quotes for the exact right moment.”
Carol laughed. “Well, given those choices…” She stood and swept Natasha into a bridal carry. “I think I’ll take you to bed.”